Despite the twin booms of the handgun from the garden, there was no immediate reaction from inside the house. Only two people were there at that hour.
Jefferson was belowstairs preparing a fruit punch for the evening meal—Lady Moberley was a teetotaler. He would say later that when the blender was switched on the noise filled the kitchen, and it must have been on when the shooting took place.
The Governor’s adjutant was Lieutenant Jeremy Haverstock, a downy-cheeked young subaltern seconded from the Queen’s Dragoon Guards. He was in his room at the far end of Government House with the window closed and the air conditioning at full blast. He was also, so he would say, playing his radio and listening to music from Radio Nassau. He, too, heard nothing.
By the time Jefferson came out into the garden to consult Sir Marston over some point concerning the preparation of the lamb cutlets, the assassin had clearly withdrawn through the steel gate and had gone. Jefferson arrived at the top of the steps leading down to the garden and saw his employer lying flat on his back, arms wide, as the second shot had thrown him, a dark blotch still spreading across the front of his dark-blue-cotton shirt.
At first, Jefferson thought his master had fainted, and he ran down to help him up. When he saw the hole in the chest more clearly, he stood back, disbelieving for a moment, then ran panic-stricken to fetch Lieutenant Haverstock. The young army officer arrived seconds later, still in his boxer shorts.
Haverstock did not panic. He examined the body without touching it, established that Sir Marston was extremely dead, and sat down in the ex-Governor’s chair to ponder what to do.
A previous commanding officer had written of Lieutenant Haverstock, “Wonderful breeding, not terribly bright,” as if he were a Cavalry horse rather than a Cavalry officer. But in the Cavalry they tend to have their priorities about right: A good horse is irreplaceable, while a subaltern is not.
Haverstock sat in the chair a few feet from the body and thought the matter through, while a wide-eyed Jefferson watched from the top of the stairs that led to the verandah. The subaltern decided that (a) he had a dead Governor on his hands, (b) someone had shot him and escaped, and (c) he should inform a higher authority. The problem was, the Governor was the highest authority, or had been. At this point, Lady Moberley came home.
Jefferson heard the crunch of the wheels of the official Jaguar limousine on the gravel of the front drive and rushed out through the hallway to intercept her. His breaking of the news was lucid, if not very tactful. He confronted her in the hall and said, “Oh, Lady, de Governor been shot. He dead.”
Lady Moberley hurried to the verandah to look down and was met by Haverstock coming up the steps. He assisted her to her bedroom and comforted her as she lay down. She seemed more bewildered than grief-stricken, as if worried lest the Foreign Office might now play merry hell with her husband’s career.
Having got her settled, Lieutenant Haverstock dispatched Jefferson to summon the island’s only doctor—who also happened to be the island’s only coroner—and Chief Inspector Jones, who was the doctor/coroner’s nephew. The lieutenant instructed the distraught butler to explain nothing to them, simply to ask each man to come urgently to Government House.
It was a fruitless request. Poor Jefferson told Inspector Jones the news in the hearing of three wide-eyed constables, and Dr. Caractacus Jones in front of his housekeeper. Like wildfire the news spread, even as the uncle and his nephew hurried to Government House.
While Jefferson was away, Lieutenant Haverstock pondered how to tell London. The residence had not been equipped with modern or secure communication systems. It had never been thought necessary to do so. Apart from the open phone line, the Governor’s messages had always gone to London via the much more substantial British High Commission in Nassau, the Bahamas. For this, an elderly C2 system was used. It sat on a side table in the Governor’s private office.
To look at, it was an ordinary Telex machine of the type known to, and dreaded by, foreign correspondents the world over. Connection was made to Nassau by tapping in the usual code and securing an acknowledgment from the other end. The Telex could then be switched to encrypted mode through a second box that sat beside the Telex machine. Any message sent would then appear “in clear” on the paper in front of the sender and would be automatically decoded at the Nassau end. In between the two points, it would be in code.
The trouble was, to operate the encoder, one had to insert corrugated disks according to the day of the month. These disks were kept in the Governor’s safe, which was locked. The dead man’s private secretary, Myrtle, had the combination of the safe, but she was away visiting her parents on Tortola in the Virgin Islands. During her absences, the Governor was wont to send his own messages. He too knew the safe’s combination; Haverstock did not.
Eventually, Haverstock simply rang the High Commission in Nassau via the telephone exchange and told them verbally. After twenty minutes, an incandescent First Secretary called him back for confirmation, listened to his explanation, and told him crisply to seal Government House and hold the fort until backup could arrive from Nassau or London. The First Secretary then radioed a top-secret and coded message to the Foreign Office in London. It was already six P.M. and dark in the Caribbean. It was eleven P.M. in London, and the message went to the night duty officer. He called a senior official of the Caribbean desk at his home in Chobham, and the wheels began to roll.
On Sunshine, the news went through Port Plaisance within two hours, and on his regular evening call a radio ham told a fellow enthusiast in Chevy Chase, near Washington. The American ham, being a public-spirited fellow, called the Associated Press, which was dubious but finally emitted a dispatch that began, “The Governor of the British Caribbean Dependency known as the Barclay Islands may have been shot dead by an unknown assassin this evening, according to unconfirmed reports from the tiny group of islands.”
The dispatch, written by a night duty subeditor who had consulted a large map with an even larger magnifying glass, went on to explain where and what the islands were.
In London, where by now it was the small hours of the morning, Reuters took the story off its rival’s tape and tried to get confirmation from the Foreign Office. Just before dawn, the Foreign Office admitted it had received a report to that effect and that the appropriate steps were being taken.
The appropriate steps had involved the waking of a considerable number of people scattered in their various homes in and around London. Satellites operated by America’s National Reconnaissance Office noted heavy radio traffic between London and its High Commission in Nassau, and the obedient machines reported down to the National Security Agency at Fort Meade. They told the CIA, which already knew because they read the Associated Press. About a billion dollars worth of technology worked it out three hours after a radio ham with a homemade set in a shack on the side of Spyglass Hill had told a pal in Chevy Chase.
In London, the Foreign Office alerted the Home Office, and they in turn raised Sir Peter Imbert, Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police, asking for a senior detective to be sent out immediately. The Commissioner woke Simon Crawshaw of the Specialist Operations Division, who got on to the Commander controlling his Serious Crimes Branch.
Commander Braithwaite rang through to the twenty-four-hour Reserve Office and asked, “Who’s in the frame?”
The Reserve Office duty sergeant consulted his roster in New Scotland Yard. The RO at the Yard is a small office whose duty is to maintain a list of senior detectives available at short notice in the event of an urgent request to assist a police authority outside the metropolitan area. The detective at the top of the list has to be available to move at one hour’s notice. The man next in line must move at six hours’ notice, and the third one on twenty-four-hour notice.
“Detective Chief Superintendent Craddock, sir,” said the duty sergeant. Then his eye caught a note pinned to the side of the roster. “No, sir, sorry. He has to be at the Old Bailey to give evidence at eleven this morning.”
“Who’s next?” growled the Commander from his home at West Drayton, out near Heathrow Airport.
“Mr. Hannah, sir.”
“And who’s his Detective Inspector?”
“Wetherall, sir.”
“Ask Mr. Hannah to call me at home. Now,” said the Commander.
Thus it was that just after four A.M., on a bitter, black December morning, the phone rang on a bedside table in Croydon and woke Detective Chief Superintendent Desmond Hannah. He listened to the instruction from the Reserve Office, and then, as bidden, he called a number in West Drayton.
“Bill? Des Hannah. What’s up?”
He listened for five minutes, then asked, “Bill, where the hell is Sunshine?”
Back on the island, Dr. Caractacus Jones had examined the body and pronounced it very dead. Darkness had descended over the garden, and he worked by flashlight. Not that there was much he could do. He was a general practitioner, not a forensic pathologist. He looked after the islanders’ general health as best he could, and he had a small surgery for the treatment of cuts and bruises. He had delivered more babies than he could recall, and he had removed ten times that number of fish hooks. As a doctor, he could issue a death certificate, and as a coroner, issue a burial certificate. But he had never cut up a dead Governor, and he did not intend to start now.
Serious injuries and maladies needing complex operations were always flown to Nassau, where they had a fine modern hospital with all the facilities for operations and post-mortems. He did not even have a mortuary.
As Dr. Jones finished his examination, Lieutenant Haverstock returned from the private office.
“Our people in Nassau say that a senior officer will be sent from Scotland Yard,” he announced. “Till then, we must keep everything just as it was.”
Chief Inspector Jones had posted a constable on the front door to keep away the sightseers, whose faces had already begun to appear at the front gate. He had prowled the garden and discovered the steel door through which the assassin had apparently entered and left. It had been pulled closed by the departing killer, which was why Haverstock had not noticed it. Inspector Jones at once posted a second constable outside the door and ordered him to keep everyone away from it. It might contain fingerprints that the man from Scotland Yard would need.
Outside in the darkness the constable sat down, leaned his back against the wall, and promptly fell asleep.
Inside the garden, Inspector Jones pronounced, “Everything must be left untouched until morning. The body must not be moved.”
“Don’t be a damned fool, boy,” said his uncle, Dr. Jones. “It will go rotten. It is already.”
He was right. In the heat of the Caribbean, bodies are normally interred within twenty-four hours. The alternative is unspeakable. A crowd of flies was already buzzing over the dead Governor’s chest and eyes. The three men considered their problem, as Jefferson tended to Lady Moberley.
“It will have to be the ice house,” said Dr. Jones at length. “There’s nowhere else.”
They had to agree he was right. The ice house, powered by the municipal generator, was down on the dock. Haverstock took the dead man’s shoulders, and Chief Inspector Jones took his feet. With some difficulty they maneuvered the still-limp body up the stairs, across the sitting room, past the office, and out into the hall. Lady Moberley put her head around the corner of her bedroom door, glanced over the banisters as her late husband went across the hall, uttered a series of “oh-oh-oh-ohs,” and retired again.
They realized in the hall that they could not carry Sir Marston all the way to the docks. The trunk of the Jaguar was considered for a moment, but it was rejected as being too small and not very seemly.
A police Land-Rover turned out to be the answer. Space was made in the back, and the former Governor was eased inside. Even with his shoulders against the rear of the front seats, his legs hung over the tailgate. Dr. Jones pushed them inside and closed the rear door. Sir Marston slumped, head forward, like someone returning from a very long and very liquid party.
With Inspector Jones at the wheel and Lieutenant Haverstock beside him, the Land-Rover drove down to the docks, followed by most of the population of Port Plaisance. There Sir Marston was laid out with greater ceremony in the ice house, where the temperature was well below zero.
Her Majesty’s late Governor of the Barclay Islands spent his first night in the afterworld sandwiched between a large martin and a very fine blackfin tuna. In the morning the expression on all three faces was much the same.
Dawn, of course, came five hours earlier in London than in Sunshine. At seven o’clock, when the first fingers of the new day were touching the roofs of Westminster Abbey, Detective Chief Superintendent Hannah was closeted with Commander Braithwaite in the latter’s office in New Scotland Yard.
“You take off just before twelve on the scheduled BA flight from Heathrow for Nassau,” said the Commander. “Tickets in first class are being arranged. The flight was full—it has meant easing another couple off the plane.”
“And the team?” asked Hannah. “Will they be in club or economy?”
“Ah, the team, yes. Fact is, Des, they’re being provided in Nassau. The Foreign Office is arranging it.”
Desmond Hannah smelled a large rat. He was fifty-one, an old-fashioned thief-taker who had worked his way rung by rung up the ladder from bobby on the beat—testing door locks on the streets of London, helping old ladies cross the road, and directing tourists—to the rank of Chief Superintendent. He had one year to go before retirement from the Force and was probably destined like so many of his kind to accept a less stressful job as a senior security officer for a major corporation.
He knew he would never make Commander rank, not now, and four years earlier he had been seconded to the Murder Squad of the Serious Crimes Branch of the Specialist Operations Division, a slot known as the elephants’ graveyard. You went in a hefty bull, and you came out a pile of bones.
But he liked things to be done right. On any assignment, even an overseas one, a Murder Squad detective could expect a backup team of at least four: a scene-of-crime officer, or SOCO, at least a sergeant; a lab liaison sergeant; a photographer; and a fingerprint man. The forensic aspect could be crucial, and usually was.
“I want them from here, Bill.”
“Can’t be done, Des. I’m afraid the Foreign Office is calling the shots on this one. They’re paying for it all, according to the Home Office. And it seems they’re penny-pinching. The High Commission in Nassau has arranged for the Bahamian Police to provide the forensic backup. I’m sure they’re very good.”
“Post-mortem? They doing that, too?”
“No,” said Commander Braithwaite reassuringly, “we’re sending Ian West out to Nassau for that. The body’s still on the island. As soon as you’ve had a look, get it shipped back to Nassau in a stiff-bag. Ian will be following you twenty-four hours later. By the time he gets to Nassau, you should have got the body to Nassau in time for him to go to work.”
Hannah grunted. He was slightly mollified. At least in Dr. Ian West, he would have one of the best forensic pathologists in the world.
“Why can’t Ian come to this Sunshine place and do the PM there?” he asked.
“They don’t have a mortuary on Sunshine,” the Commander explained patiently.
“So where’s the body?”
“I don’t know.”
“Hell, it’ll be half decomposed by the time I get there,” said Hannah. He could not have known that at that hour Sir Marston was not half decomposed. He was rock solid. Dr. West could not have gotten a chisel into him.
“I want ballistics done here,” he said. “If I get the bullet or bullets back, I want Alan to have them. The bullets could tie up the whole thing.”
“All right,” conceded the Commander. “Tell the High Commission people we need them back here in the diplomatic bag. Now, why don’t you get a decent breakfast? The car will be here for you at nine. Your Detective Inspector will have the murder bag. He’ll meet you at the car.
“What about the press?” asked Hannah as he left.
“Full cry, I’m afraid. It’s not in the papers yet. The news only broke in the small hours. But all the wire services have run it. God knows where they got it so fast. There may be a few reptiles at the airport trying to get on the same flight.”
Just before nine, Desmond Hannah appeared with his suitcase in the inner courtyard, where a Rover was waiting for him, a uniformed sergeant at the wheel. He looked around for Harry Wetherall, the Detective Inspector with whom he had worked for three years. He was nowhere to be seen. A pink-faced young man of about thirty came hurrying up. He carried a murder bag, a small suitcase that contained a variety of swabs, cloths, capsules, vials, plastic bags, scrapers, bottles, tweezers, and probes—the basic tools of the trade for discovering, removing, and retaining clues.
“Mr. Hannah?” said the young man.
“Who are you?”
“DI Parker, sir.”
“Where’s Wetherall?”
“He’s ill, I’m afraid. Asian flu or something. The Reserve Office asked me to step in. Always keep my passport in my drawer just in case. It’s awfully good to be working with you.”
Blast Wetherall! thought Hannah. Damn his eyes!
They rode out to Heathrow largely in silence. At least, Hannah was silent. Parker (“It’s Peter, really”) expatiated on his knowledge of the Caribbean. He had been there twice, with Club Med.
“Have you ever been to the Caribbean, sir?” he asked.
“No,” said Hannah, and lapsed back into silence.
At Heathrow, he and Parker were expected. Passport examination was a formality. The murder bag did not pass through the X-ray scanners, where it would have caused much interest. Instead, an official led the pair around the formalities and straight to the first class lounge.
The press was indeed in evidence, though Hannah did not see them until he was aboard the aircraft. Two organizations with money to spend had persuaded booked passengers to vacate their seats and take a later flight. Others were trying to get on the two Miami flights of the morning, while their head offices arranged charter planes from Miami into Sunshine. Camera teams from BBC TV, Independent TV News, and British Satellite Broadcasting were heading for the Barclays, spearheaded by their reporters. Reporter-photographer teams from five major newspapers were also in the melee.
In the lounge, Hannah was approached by a panting young sprog who introduced himself as being from the Foreign Office. He had a large file.
“We’ve put together some background briefing for you,” he said, handing over the file. “Geography, economy, population of the Barclays, that sort of thing. And, of course, a background on the present political situation.”
Hannah’s heart sank. A nice domestic murder would probably have cleared itself up in a few days. But if this was political ... They were called for their flight.
After takeoff the irrepressible Parker took champagne from the stewardess and answered questions about himself with great pleasure. He was twenty-nine—young for a DI—and was married to a real estate agent called Elaine. They lived in the new and fashionable Dockland area, quite close to Canary Wharf. His own passion was a Morgan 4+4 sports car, but Elaine drove a Ford Escort GTI.
“Convertible, of course,” said Parker.
“Of course,” murmured Hannah. I’ve got a dinky on my hands, he thought. Dual-income-no-kids. A high-flyer.
Parker had gone straight from school to a red-brick university and gotten a degree, starting with PPE (politics, philosophy, and economics) and switching to law. He had joined the Metropolitan Police straight from there, and after the mandatory cadetship he had worked for a year in the outer suburbs before going on the Bramshill Police College Special Course. From there, he had spent four years in the Commissioner’s Force Planning Unit.
They were over County Cork when Hannah closed the Foreign Office file and asked gently, “And how many murder investigations have you been on?”
“Well, this is my first, actually. That’s why I was so pleased to be available this morning. But in my spare time I study criminology. I think it’s so important to understand the criminal mind.”
Desmond Hannah turned his face to the porthole in pure misery. He had a dead Governor, a pending election, a Bahamian forensic team, and a rookie DI who wanted to understand the criminal mind. After lunch, he dozed all the way to Nassau. He even managed to forget about the press. Until Nassau.
The Associated Press news bulletin of the previous evening had been too late to make the British newspapers in London, with their five-hour disadvantage, but it had been just in time to catch the Miami Herald before that paper was put to bed.
At seven in the morning, Sam McCready was sitting on his balcony sipping his first prebreakfast coffee of the day and gazing out over the azure sea when he heard the familiar rustle of the Herald coming under his door.
He padded across the room, took the paper, and returned to the balcony. The AP story was at the bottom of the front page, where a piece about a record-breaking lobster had been scrapped to make way for it. The story was just the AP dispatch, referring to unconfirmed reports. The headline said simply: BRITISH GOVERNOR SLAIN? McCready read it several times.
“How very naughty,” he murmured, and withdrew to the bathroom to get washed, shaved, and dressed. At nine, he dismissed his cab outside the British Consulate in Miami, went in, and made himself known—as Mr. Frank Dillon of the Foreign Office. He had to wait half an hour for the arrival of the Consul, then he got his private meeting. By ten, he had what he had come for, a secure line to the embassy in Washington. He spoke for twenty minutes to the Head of the SIS Station, a colleague he knew well from London days and with whom he had stayed the previous week while attending the CIA seminar.
The Washington-based colleague confirmed the story and added a few more details that had just arrived from London.
“I thought I might pop over,” said McCready.
“Not really our cup of tea, is it?” suggested the Head of Station.
“Probably not, but it might be worth a look. I’ll need to draw some funds, and I’ll need a communicator.”
“I’ll clear it with the Consul. Could you put him on the line?”
An hour later, McCready left the consulate with a wad of dollars, duly signed for, and an attaché case containing a portable telephone and an encrypter with a range that would enable him to make secure calls to the consulate in Miami and have them passed on to Washington.
He returned to the Sonesta Beach, packed, checked out, and called an air taxi company at the airport. They agreed on a two P.M. takeoff for the ninety-minute run to Sunshine.
Eddie Favaro was also up early. He had already decided there was only one place he could start—the game-fishing community down at the fishing quay. Wherever Julio Gomez had spent his vacation, a large part of it surely had been there.
Having no transport, he walked. It was not far. Almost every wall and tree he passed bore a poster urging the islanders to vote for one candidate or the other. The faces of both men—one big, round, and jolly, the other smooth, urbane, and paler in tone—beamed from the posters.
Some had been torn down or defaced, whether by children or by adherents to the other candidate, he could not tell. All had been professionally printed. On a warehouse wall near the docks was another message, crudely painted. It said, WE WANT REFERENDUM. As he passed, a black jeep carrying four men raced up.
The jeep screeched to a halt. The four men wore hard expressions, multicolored shirts, and wraparound black glasses that hid their eyes. Four black heads stared at the message, then swiveled toward Favaro as if he were responsible for it. Favaro shrugged as if to say, “Nothing to do with me.” The four impassive faces stared at him until he rounded a corner. Then he heard the jeep, revving hard, drive away.
At the fishing quay, groups of men were discussing the same news that had occupied those in the hotel lobby. He interrupted one group to ask who took visitors fishing. One of the men pointed farther down the quay to a man working on a boat.
Favaro crouched on the quay and made his inquiry. He showed the fisherman a picture of Julio Gomez.
The man shook his head. “Sure, he was here last week. But he go out with Jimmy Dobbs. That’s Jimmy’s boat over there, the Gulf Lady.”
There was nobody on the Gulf Lady. He leaned on a mooring post to wait. Like all cops, he knew the meaning of patience. Information gathered in a matter of seconds was for TV thrillers. In real life, you spent most of your time waiting. Jimmy Dobbs showed up at ten.
“Mr. Dobbs?”
“That’s me.”
“Hi—my name’s Eddie. I’m from Florida. This your boat?”
“Sure is. You here for the fishing?”
“That’s my game,” said Favaro. “Friend of mine recommended you.”
“That’s nice.”
“Julio Gomez. You remember him?”
The black man’s open, honest face clouded. He reached into the Gulf Lady and took a rod from a holder. He examined the jig lure and the hook for several seconds, then handed the rod to Favaro.
“You like yellowtail snapper? They some good snapper right under the dock. Down at the far end.”
Together they walked to the far end of the jetty, out of earshot of anyone else. Favaro wondered why.
Jimmy Dobbs took the rod back and cast expertly across the water. He reeled in slowly, letting the brightly colored jig wriggle and turn beneath the surface. A small blue runner made a dart for the lure and turned away.
“Julio Gomez dead,” Jimmy Dobbs said gravely.
“I know,” said Favaro. “I’d like to find out why. He fished with you a lot, I think.”
“Every year. He good man, nice guy.”
“He tell you what his job was in Miami?”
“Yep. Once.”
“You ever tell anyone else?”
“Nope. You a friend or a colleague?”
“Both, Jimmy. Tell me, when did you last see Julio?”
“Right here, Thursday evening. We’d been out all day. He booked me for Friday morning. Never showed up.”
“No,” said Favaro. “He was at the airstrip, trying to get a flight to Miami. In a hurry. He picked the wrong plane—blew up over the sea. Why did we have to walk down here to talk?”
Jimmy Dobbs hooked a two-pound horse-eye jack and handed the shivering rod to Favaro. The American reeled in. He was inexpert. The jack took some slack line and jumped the hook.
“They some bad people on these islands,” he said simply.
Favaro realized he could now identify an odor he had smelled in the town: It was fear. He knew about fear. No Miami cop is stranger to that unique aroma. Somehow, fear had now come to paradise.
“When he left you, he was a happy man?”
“Yep. One fine fish he was taking home for supper. He was happy. No problems.”
“Where did he go from here?”
Jimmy Dobbs looked surprised. “To Mrs. Macdonald’s, of course. He always stayed with her.”
Mrs. Macdonald was not at home. She was out shopping. Favaro decided to come back later. First, he would try the airport. He returned to Parliament Square. There were two taxis, but both drivers were at lunch. There was nothing he could do about it; he crossed the square to the Quarter Deck to eat and wait for them to come back. He took a verandah seat from where he could watch for the taxis. All around him was the same excited buzz that had pervaded breakfast—the talk being only of the murder of the Governor the previous evening.
“They sending a senior detective from Scotland Yard,” one of the group near Favaro announced.
Two men entered the bar. They were big, and they said not a word. The conversation died. The two men removed every poster proclaiming the candidacy of Marcus Johnson and put up different ones. The new posters said, VOTE LIVINGSTONE, THE PEOPLE’S CANDIDATE. When they had finished, they left.
The waiter came over and set down grilled fish and a beer.
“Who were they?” asked Favaro.
“Election helpers of Mr. Livingstone,” the waiter said expressionlessly.
“People seem to be frightened of them.”
“No, sah.”
The waiter turned away, eyes blank. Favaro had seen that expression in interrogation rooms at the Metro-Dade headquarters. Shutters come down behind the eyes. The message is, “There’s no one home.”
The jumbo carrying Superintendent Hannah and DI Parker touched down at Nassau at three P.M., local time. A senior officer of the Bahamian Police boarded first, identified the two men from Scotland Yard, introduced himself, and welcomed them to Nassau. He escorted them out of the cabin before the other passengers, then down to a waiting Land-Rover. The first gust of warm, balmy air swept over Hannah. In his London clothes he felt sticky at once.
The Bahamian officer took their baggage checks and handed them to a constable, who would extract the two valises from the rest of the baggage. Hannah and Parker were driven straight to the VIP lounge. There they met the British Deputy High Commissioner, Mr. Longstreet, and a more junior staffer called Bannister.
“I’ll be coming to Sunshine with you,” said Bannister. “Some problem over there with the communications. It seems they can’t get the Governor’s safe open. I’ll fix a new set, so you can talk to the High Commission here on a direct radiotelephone link. Secure, of course. And of course, we’ll have to get the body back when the coroner releases it.”
He sounded brisk and efficient. Hannah liked that. He met the four men from the forensic team provided by the Bahamian Police as a courtesy. The conference took an hour.
Hannah looked down from the windows to the airport apron below. Thirty yards away, a chartered ten-seater was waiting to take him and his now-expanded party to Sunshine. Between the building and the airplane, two camera teams had been set up to catch the moment. He sighed.
When the final details had been settled, the group left the VIP lounge and headed downstairs. Microphones were thrust at him, notepads held ready.
“Mr. Hannah, are you confident of an early arrest?” “Will this turn out to be a political murder?” “Is Sir Marston’s death linked to the election campaign?”
He nodded and smiled but said nothing. Flanked by Bahamian constables, they all emerged from the building into the hot sunshine and headed for the aircraft. The TV cameras recorded it all. When the official party had boarded, the journalists raced away toward their own chartered planes, which had been obtained by the production of large wads of dollars or prechartered by the London offices. In an untidy gaggle the planes began to taxi for takeoff. It was four twenty-five.
At three-thirty, a small Cessna dropped its wings over Sunshine and turned for the final run-in to the grass airstrip.
“Pretty wild place!” the American pilot shouted to the man beside him. “Beautiful, but from way back! I mean, they don’t have nothing here!”
“Short on technology,” agreed Sam McCready. He looked through the prespex at the dusty strip coming towards them. To the left of the strip were three buildings: a corrugated-iron hangar, a low shed with a red tin roof (the reception building), and a white cube with the British flag flying above it—the police hut. Outside the reception shed, a figure in a short-sleeved beach shirt was talking to a man in boxer shorts and singlet. A car stood nearby. The palm trees rose on either side of the Cessna, and the small plane thumped onto the grit. The buildings flashed past as the pilot settled his nose-wheel and lifted his flaps. At the far end of the strip, he turned around and began to taxi back.
“Sure, I remember that plane. It was dreadful when I heard later that those poor people were dead.”
Favaro found the baggage porter who had loaded the Navajo Chief the previous Friday morning. His name was Ben, and he always loaded the baggage. It was his job. Like most of the islanders, he was free-and-easy, honest, and prepared to talk.
Favaro produced a photograph. “Did you notice this man?”
“Sure. He was asking the owner of the plane for a lift to Key West.”
“How do you know?”
“Standing right next to me,” said Ben.
“Did he seem worried, anxious, in a hurry?”
“So would you be, man! He done told the owner his wife called him and their kid was sick. The girl, she say that was real bad, they should help him. So the owner said he could ride with them to Key West.”
“Was there anyone else nearby?”
Ben thought for a while. “Only the other man helping load the luggage,” he said. “Employed by the owner, I think.”
“What did he look like, this other loader?”
“Never seen him before,” said Ben. “Black man, not from Sunshine. Bright-colored shirt, dark glasses. Didn’t say nothing.”
The Cessna rumbled up to the customs shed. Ben and Favaro shielded their eyes from the flying dust. Favaro saw a rumpled-looking man of medium build get out, take a suitcase and attaché case from the locker, stand back, wave to the pilot, and go into the shed.
Favaro was pensive as he studied the scene. Julio Gomez did not tell lies. But he had no wife and child. He must have been desperate to get on that flight and home to Miami. But why? Knowing his partner, Favaro was convinced that he had been under threat. The bomb was not for Klinger. It was for Gomez.
He thanked Ben and wandered back to the taxi that waited for him. As he climbed in, a British voice at his elbow said, “I know it’s a lot to ask, but could I hitch a ride into town? The cab rank seems to be empty.”
It was the man who had just gotten off the Cessna. “Sure,” said Favaro. “Be my guest.”
“Awfully kind,” said the Englishman as he put his gear in the trunk. On the five-minute ride into town, he introduced himself. “Frank Dillon,” he said.
“Eddie Favaro,” said the American. “You here for the fishing?”
“Alas, no. Not really my scene. Just here on vacation for a bit of piece and quiet.”
“No chance,” said Favaro. “There’s chaos here. There’s a whole crowd of London detectives due in soon, and a whole bunch of journalists. Last night someone shot the Governor in his garden.”
“Good Lord!” said the Englishman. He seemed genuinely shocked.
Favaro dropped him on the steps of the Quarter Deck, dismissed the cab, and walked the few hundred yards through the back streets to Mrs. Macdonald’s boarding house. Across Parliament Square, a big man was addressing a subdued crowd of citizens from the back of a flat truck. It was Mr. Livingstone himself. Favaro caught the booming roar of his oratory.
“And I say, brothers and sisters, you should share in the wealth of these islands! You should share in the fish caught from the sea, you should share the fine houses of the few rich who live up on the hill, you should share the ...”
The crowd did not look very enthusiastic. The truck was flanked by the same two large men who had torn down the Johnson posters in the Quarter Deck Hotel in the lunch hour and put up their own. There were several similar men throughout the crowd seeking to start a cheering response. They cheered alone. Favaro walked on. This time Mrs. Macdonald was in.
Desmond Hannah touched down at twenty to six. It was almost dark. Four other, lighter aircraft had just made it in time and were able to depart back to Nassau before the light faded. Their cargoes were the BBC, ITV, the Sunday Times man sharing with the Sunday Telegraph, and Sabrina Tennant and her team from BSB, the British Satellite Broadcasting company.
Hannah, Parker, Bannister, and the four Bahamian officers were met by Lieutenant Haverstock and Inspector Jones, the former in a cream tropical suit and the latter immaculate in his uniform. On the off-chance of earning some dollars, both of Port Plaisance’s taxis and two small vans had also appeared. All were snapped up.
By the time formalities were completed and the cavalcade had descended on the Quarter Deck Hotel, darkness had fallen. Hannah decreed there was no point in beginning investigations by flashlight, but he asked that the guard on Government House be continued through the night. Inspector Jones, much impressed to be working with a real Detective Chief Superintendent from Scotland Yard, barked out the orders.
Hannah was tired. It might be just after six in the islands, but it was eleven P.M. on his body clock, and he had been up since four A.M. He dined alone with Parker and Lieutenant Haverstock, which enabled him to get a firsthand account of what had actually happened the previous evening. Then he turned in.
The press found the bar with unerring and practiced speed. Rounds were ordered and consumed. The usual jocular banter of the press corps on a foreign assignment grew louder. No one noticed a man in a rumpled tropical suit drinking alone at the end of the bar and listening to their chatter.
“Where did he go after he left here?” Eddie Favaro asked Mrs. Macdonald. He was seated at her kitchen table while the good lady served up some of her conch chowder.
“He went over to the Quarter Deck for a beer,” she said.
“Was he in a cheerful mood?”
Her lilting singsong voice filled the room. “Bless you, Mr. Favaro, he was a happy man. A fine fish for supper, I was preparing him. He said he would be back at eight o’clock. I told him not to be late, or the dorado spoil and go dry. He laughed and said he would be on time.”
“And was he?”
“No, man. He was an hour and more late. The fish done spoil. And him talking nonsense.”
“What did he say? This ... nonsense.”
“He didn’t say much. Seemed worried bad. Then he said he seen a scorpion. Now you finish this soup up. That one bowl of God’s goodness in there.”
Favaro stiffened, his spoon halfway to his lips. “Did he say a scorpion, or the scorpion?”
She frowned at the effort of recollection.
“I thought he said a. But he mighta said the,” she admitted.
Favaro finished his soup, thanked her, and went back to the hotel. The bar was rowdy. He found a place near the far end, away from the press crowd. The end stool was occupied by the Englishman from the airstrip, who raised his glass in salute but said nothing.
“Thank God for that,” thought Favaro. The crumpled limey seemed at least to have the gift of silence.
Eddie Favaro needed to think. He knew how his friend and partner had died, and he thought he knew why. In some mysterious manner, here in these paradise islands, Julio Gomez had seen—or thought he had seen—the coldest killer either of them had ever met.