Read Online Shadow of the Rock (Spike Sanguinetti) by Thomas Mogford - Free Book Online Page A

where the city rose. The driver shrugged. ‘ On va à Chinatown, donc .’

Chapter 18
     
    Spike forced down the stiff window to let the curried air circulate. Once they’d passed through the Ville Nouvelle, with its ornate, Parisian-style apartment blocks, they crested the hill and rolled down the other side. Vandalised, half-finished buildings – breeze blocks and rusting girders – protruded from a cacti-studded wasteland. The road began to dispense with pavements, then markings, then traffic altogether until a jeep drew up behind. Once it had grasped that the taxi couldn’t speed up, it overtook on a blind corner.
    The driver braked suddenly as a tall man with a long white beard emerged from the wayside, guiding some goats over the road. Kids crossed behind, bleating. Somewhere a dog barked.
    They drove on, turning left down a potholed track. The food parcel bounced on the driver’s lap. He stopped the car. ‘ C’est Chinatown .’
    Spike stared down the slope to a line of low-slung brick buildings clustered at the bottom of the track. The light was poor but they appeared to have sprung up in a dip between two hills, like fungus on a moist enclosed part of the body.
    ‘It’s a shanty town?’
    ‘ Bidonville .’
    ‘Can you get any closer?’
    The taxi driver crunched on his samosa. He was a small, bug-eyed man with pictures of small, bug-eyed children gummed to his glove compartment. Spike took out his wallet and removed a hundred-dirham note.
    The driver shook his head. ‘Bad place for taxi.’
    Spike looked again down the slope. A few lights were visible. It clearly had electricity. ‘Why’s it called Chinatown?’
    ‘No laws for building.’
    ‘Seems quiet.’
    ‘People working. In the city.’
    ‘Bedouins?’
    The driver coughed a flake of samosa onto his beaming children. ‘ Tu parles des bédouins? ’
    ‘Do Bedouins live in Chinatown?’
    ‘Desert peoples . . . C’est bien possible .’
    Spike put away the note and held up a two hundred. The driver restarted the engine and they continued another fifty metres up the road before turning left. This time they drove further down the rough, unsurfaced track. Reeds sprouted by a stream; a patch of dusty scrubland revealed two burnt-out cars, kissing bumper-to-bumper like some untitled art installation. More brick buildings ahead; the driver switched off the engine.
    ‘Twenty minutes,’ Spike said, signalling the number with his fingers. As Spike opened the door, he felt a tap on the shoulder. ‘ Attention, uh? ’
    Outside, the air smelled sulphurous. Spike removed some low-denomination notes from his wallet and stuffed them in the top pouch of his cargo trousers. The driver watched on in silence, chewing his samosa.

Chapter 19
     
    The ground consisted of layer upon layer of trodden rubbish: flattened cans, shredded sackcloth, powdered glass. A stream snaked between the brick shacks. Its stench – eggs and rotten meat – suggested open sewer. The tall, nuclear-green reeds grew on one side only, giving Spike a glimpse of a brownish sludge oozing through the centre.
    Covering his mouth and nose, he followed the stream between the buildings. The walls, he saw, had plywood embedded in the brickwork. Sticking from the top of one was an incongruously modern satellite dish.
    Spike gagged as he neared the water. Beneath the surface lay an eyeless mongrel puppy, its chest swollen, guts flapping in the current like pink pondweed. He put a hand to his neck as he passed, folding a soft mosquito beneath.
    The stream continued on through the settlement, forming a muddy half-moon-shaped bank. A few plastic tables had been pushed together, at which a group of men sat smoking clay pipes and playing cards. All wore thick black moustaches, their faces darker than the other Moroccans Spike had seen, Indian almost. Paired with white djellabas were coiled, light-blue turbans.
    Candles guttered on tables, an electric light fizzing behind, dive-bombed by suicidal,