Gibraltar Road by Philip McCutchan Read Free Book Online

girl watched him; squinted through the red glow as the lights shone behind the crystal, saw the pinky-red pool of its reflection thrown on to the cloth. Like blood, that glass . . . He thought of a man dying in a dark alleyway, of the sudden flick of steel behind a dirty bar in a Tunis back street, a body somersaulting over rocks outside Mers-el-Kebir, in North Africa, somersaulting into a ripple of silver moonlight on the Mediterranean. All these things and so many more he had seen and done; and all were there yet in his mind, a dark backcloth to his imaginative thoughts. But maybe Spain would be a piece of cake compared with the past. Couldn’t be worse. He ran his fingers slowly along the edge of a table-knife . . . the blade was thick, blunt. That surprised him. Ridiculous. In a way it had been a shock to find that knife so blunt to the touch—all knives weren’t blunt like that. But Spain, now . . . the full red glow on the tablecloth, the blood in the glass, the blood which was only wine—it could be symbolic merely of the blood on the sand—bullfights, bottles of wine, a maddened crowd sweating in the close-packed stone seats of the ring, the vicious dark-red spurt as the picadors thrust home with their lances, shielded legs dangling from the scraggy horses’ sides, straw-bloated against the gashing horns of the sacrificial victim. . . .
    He gave a hard laugh, put down the glass. His fingers shook a little. Dear God, he thought, it’s really time I quit, the way my mind’s working.
    The girl looked up quizzically, and he smiled across at her. He said, “I was just reminding myself that I’m a bit of a clot and oughtn’t to think too much.” He touched her hand, a look of rueful amusement coming into his eyes now. “Joe Soap—that’s me.”
    “A nice Joe Soap.”
    He remained silent. She watched his eyes; they were nice ones, she’d always thought. “Penny?” she asked softly.
    “Oh . . . never mind. Not worth even that.” He passed it off with a quick pursing of his lips. But the thoughts wouldn’t go, not even with the girl there opposite him looking troubled. He thought: Yes, I’m Joe Soap and I’m Esmonde Shaw and the day after to-morrow I’ll still be Esmonde Shaw, but on the retired list and Admiralty Inspector of Armament Supply. And Heaven knows who else I’ll have to be, whatever the Old Man says, when I get into Spain and on Karina’s track. Karina, he thought, Karina! Will she have changed much in the intervening years? She was quite a few years younger than he was—she’d begun her career early.
    There were many gaps in the story of Karina, and not even the F.O. or M.I.5 or the outfit had managed to fill them in satisfactorily. Shaw had a memory, a very vivid and enchanting one, of thick auburn hair, slightly slanting greenish eyes, and a supple figure which did all sorts of things to a man. Skin oddly like Debonnair’s—that lovely golden colouring, but without the tawniness of the girl herself. A small, oval face, full of life and danger-signals. That auburn hair longish, as well as thick. And there, with Karina’s body, the enchantment ended; for, of course, she was a bitch, and a clever bitch who’d pulled fast ones on both him and the Old Man, and Shaw himself realized quite well that, though he’d gone more than half-way towards falling for her in those days, the attraction was purely, passionately physical. And nothing more. He’d been a bit more impressionable then, maybe—younger, anyhow—and he hadn't met Debonnair. He had an idea, and it made him feel ashamed, that Karina really had been in love with him in her own fashion.
    Suddenly he had a recurrence of that nasty feeling that he was going to muff this job, muff it right from the word go. The nagging pain in the pit of his stomach grew into a ball of fire, gave him an extra jab of hell as though in sympathy with his thoughts. . . .
    “Darling, do come back to Martinez. I don’t know where you’ve been, but