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‘DUNETECH’, the ‘N’ stylised to look like a desert sand dune.
    The man held out a signet-ringed hand. ‘Toby Riddell.’
    ‘Spike Sanguinetti.’
    ‘Crossing OK?’
    ‘Incident-free.’
    Riddell smiled slightly as he walked down the steps. Out in the sunshine, a queue of lorries was waiting to exit the port complex, harbour guards in Aviators checking documentation. Gulls circled above, cackling as though some stale old joke had set them off.
    They headed towards a silver Mercedes saloon. A hunched, toothless man emerged from the shadows, fingering a necklace of tasselled fez hats. ‘Special price –’ he began, but Riddell interrupted him with a palm to the forehead, handing him off like a rugby player. The man clattered back against the barbed-wire fence that ran along the pavement.
    ‘They’re like dogs,’ Riddell said without breaking stride. His shiny black shoes ticked on the flagstones like a metronome.
    With a satisfying bleep, Riddell unlocked the Mercedes. As soon as Spike got in, they accelerated away beneath an archway dedicated to private cars. The guard waved them through at once, and they came out onto the coast road, the Medina rising above, various official-looking port buildings to the left. The roadway was divided by a central reservation of dried yellow grass, on which clusters of men in prayer robes sat eyeing the traffic as though plucking up courage to leap before it.
    Riddell drove with a single, freckled finger on the wheel. ‘So how is old Solly-man?’ he said.
    ‘Bearing up.’
    ‘At least he’s back among his own –’ Riddell broke off to hoot at the moped in front, on which two men in tunics were perched, one clamped to the other. A container lorry was blocking the right-hand lane; Riddell drew up so close to the moped that his bumper was almost touching its back wheel. The driver glanced right before wobbling sideways, wing mirror inches from the lorry’s rusty steel slats. Spike saw wide, terrified eyes as they passed.
    ‘Give this mob half an inch,’ Riddell said, ‘and they’ll half-inch a mile.’ He adjusted the wheel with a fingertip to avoid a petit taxi . ‘So how’s business in Gib? Economy booming?’
    ‘Ticking over.’
    ‘I suppose there are enough Solomons and Abrahams to keep it that way. Angry Friar still open?’
    ‘Was yesterday.’
    ‘Quite a boozer.’
    Spike didn’t need to ask how Riddell knew the Rock. Gibraltarians had sensitive antennae when it came to spotting the British military. The sun reflecting in Riddell’s over-polished black shoes had spoken eloquently.
    Spike looked out at the beach below the coast road. Hand-painted signs protruded from the sand. Before Spike could read them, Riddell had veered right and they started to climb a cross street up the hillside. An entire block of buildings had collapsed here, leaving a landslip of rubble and weeds. Some entrepreneurial opportunist had taken advantage of the unexpected exposure to the coast road by scrawling ‘ Garage mécanique: 933317 ’ on the wall of the house behind.
    They turned onto a broader, French-style boulevard. Rather than plane trees, date palms lined the pavements. The windows were barred with wrought-iron balconies, while interspersed with the apartment blocks were pâtisseries , épiceries , pharmacies . On the roof of one, a billboard proclaimed ‘DUNETECH’. Beneath its logo was a phrase: Powering a Greener Future . The next hoarding advertised a failed bid for Tangiers to host the international Expo. Spike checked the date: four years ago.
    Riddell drove the Mercedes into a large commercial square. A fountain trickled in its centre, a bare-chested old man washing his prayer robes in its stone dish. ‘This is us,’ Riddell said, breaking sharply. ‘You get out and I’ll park the steer.’ His accent was a carefully neutral English, as though a posher edge had been planed off.
    As Riddell sped away, Spike realised why he’d been dropped in this