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bars and handles fitted to assist the infirm. Alongside stood a toilet cubicle. The red-crescent dial read ‘OCCUPIED’.
    Spike crouched down, but found no feet beneath the frame. Feeling his pulse quicken, he straightened up and put a hand to the door. The clasp was engaged: pressing an ear to the plywood, he made out the tremor of controlled breathing and the slow, careful creak of a window being pulled open.
    He slammed his shoulder against the door – ‘Who’s there?’ – before a response came, ‘ Lo siento, lo siento . . .’ The dial rolled to ‘Vacant’, and Spike stepped back as a timid head peered round. A yellow-skinned youth in a hospital gown, standing on the lavatory seat, drip stand in one fist, fag-end quaking in the other.
    Spike offered the boy a hand to help him down. ‘Those things will kill you,’ he said as the boy hurried away, drip stand rattling on the floor. I must be going mad, Spike thought to himself as he walked back to the ward, finding the nurse sitting at Galliano’s bedside, scribbling onto his chart. ‘Thought you’d gone home,’ she said, lowering her biro. ‘Listen, a few of us are going for a drink later in Casemates. If you’re at a loose end . . .’
    The idea of getting blitzed gave Spike’s heart a momentary lift, until he imagined what it would be like to spend an evening surrounded by medics. ‘Sorry. Got some work to do.’
    The nurse gave a teasing frown. ‘All work and no play . . .’ she chided as she plumped the pillows. Spike looked again at Galliano’s inert face. ‘Thanks all the same,’ he said as he walked away.

Chapter Twelve
    The broad, new-build avenues of the Europort ceded again to the dark labyrinth of the Old Town. Spike thought back to Genoa, to the caruggi of the Porto Antico: at least it had been light in there. As he entered Bombhouse Lane, he felt the moist levanter breeze blow on the nape of his neck, ruffling his hair like a clammy hand. Ahead rose the facade of the Cathedral of St Mary the Crowned, the pavement outside it wide and uneven. Beneath the ground lay hundreds of corpses, mostly Genoese émigrés who’d paid to be buried close to the Cathedral at a time when the graveyards were full and the Rock under siege. Spike had always dismissed them as superstitious fools, but now as he remembered a favoured line of his father’s – By night an atheist half believes in God – he didn’t feel quite so sure.
    He glanced back down Main Street: in the half-light, the wrought-iron balconies and blue wooden shutters took on the air of a Riviera fishing village. The Genoese again – always the largest immigrant population in Gib – making their mark. Spike found his mind turning once more to Zahra. Would it have made a difference if he’d stayed in Italy a few days longer? He might have been just yards away from her, yet he’d jumped at the first chance to abandon his search and slunk back home.
    Wiping the perspiration from his brow, he walked through the open doors of the Royal Calpe pub. Casey, the barmaid – crop-haired, peroxide blonde – glanced round from the muted TV. If Spike had hoped for a smile to lift his spirits he was to be disappointed.
    ‘What’ll it be?’ Casey snapped.
    ‘Pint of London Pride, please. And a vodka and tonic.’
    She fixed the drinks, then snatched Spike’s ten-pound note and turned back to a subtitled omnibus of Coronation Street .
    Shaking his head, Spike moved deeper inside the pub. Though the decor remained resolutely 1970s British – fruit machines, cask ales, Sunday carvery, diamond-patterned glass above the bar – the real change had come in the clientele. Where once had sat tables of brawling squaddies, now just the occasional soldier or sailor perched alone, texting on a break from a training exercise. The former hordes of British expats – Tesco bags of Marmite and Heinz Baked Beans at their feet – had diminished to the odd leather-faced couple waiting for the frontier queues