In the city of Kingston that morning, Sean Whittaker was having a remarkable reception. He had arrived late and gone straight to his apartment. Just after seven the next morning, the first call had come in. It was an American voice.
“Morning, Mr. Whittaker. Hope I didn’t wake you.”
“No, not at all. Who’s that?”
“My name is Milton. Just Milton. I believe you have some photographs you might care to show me.”
“That would depend on who I am showing them to,” said Whittaker.
There was a low laugh down the line. “Why don’t we meet?”
Milton arranged a rendezvous in a public place, and they met an hour later. The American did not look like the head of the DEA field station in Kingston, as Whittaker had expected. His casual air was more that of a young academic from the university.
“Forgive my saying so,” said Whittaker, “but could you establish any bona fides at all?”
“Let’s use my car,” said Milton.
They drove to the American Embassy. Milton had a headquarters office outside the embassy, but he was persona grata inside it as well. He flashed his identity card to the Marine guard at the desk inside, then led the way to a spare office.
“All right,” said Whittaker, “you’re an American diplomat.”
Milton did not correct him. He smiled and asked to see Whittaker’s pictures. He surveyed them all, but one held his attention.
“Well, well,” he said. “So that’s where he is.”
He opened his attaché case and produced a series of files, selecting one. The photograph on the first page of the dossier had been taken a few years earlier, with a long lens, apparently through an aperture in a curtain. But the man was the same as the man in the new photograph on his desk.
“Want to know who he is?” he asked Whittaker. It was an unnecessary question. The British reporter compared the two photographs and nodded.
“Okay, let’s start at the beginning,” said Milton, and he read out the contents of the file—not all of them, just enough. Whittaker took notes furiously.
The DEA man was thorough. There were details of a business career, meetings held, bank accounts opened, operations run, aliases used, cargoes delivered, profits laundered. When he had finished, Whittaker sat back.
“Phew,” he said. “Can I source this on you?”
“I wouldn’t specify Mr. Milton,” said the American. “Highly placed sources within the DEA—that would do.”
He escorted Whittaker back to the main entrance. On the steps he suggested, “Why don’t you go down to Kingston police headquarters with the rest of the pictures? You may find you are expected.”
At the police building, the bemused Whittaker was shown up to the office of Commissioner Foster, who sat along in his big air-conditioned room overlooking downtown Kingston. After greeting Whittaker, the Commissioner pressed his intercom and asked Commander Gray to step in. The head of the Criminal Investigation Division joined them a few minutes later. He brought a sheaf of files.
The two Jamaicans studied Whittaker’s pictures of the eight bodyguards in bright beach shirts. Despite the wraparound dark glasses, Commander Gray did not hesitate. Opening a series of files, he identified the men one after the other. Whittaker noted everything.
“May I cite you two gentlemen as the source?” he asked.
“Certainly,” said the Commissioner. “All have long criminal records. Three are wanted here as of now. You may quote me. We have nothing to hide. This meeting is on the record.”
By midday, Whittaker had his story. He transmitted his pictures and text down the usual London link, took a long phone call from the news editor in London, and was assured of a good spread the following day. His expenses would not be queried—not for this one.
In Miami, Sabrina Tennant had checked into the Sonesta Beach Hotel, as she had been advised the previous evening, and took a call just before eight on Saturday morning. The appointment was set for an office building in central Miami. It was not the headquarters of the CIA in Miami, but it was a safe building.
She was shown to an office and met a man who led her to a TV screening room, where three of her videotapes were screened in front of two other men who sat in half darkness. They declined to introduce themselves and said nothing.
After the screening, she was led back to the first office, served coffee, and left alone for a while. When the first officer rejoined her, he suggested she call him Bill, and he asked her for the still photographs that had been taken at the dockside political rally of the previous day.
On the videos, the cameraman had not concentrated on the bodyguards of Horatio Livingstone, so they appeared only as peripheral figures. But in the stills they were in full-face shot. Bill opened a series of files and showed her other pictures of the same men.
“This one,” he said, “the one by the van. What was he calling himself?”
“Mr. Brown,” she said.
Bill laughed. “Do you know the Spanish word for ‘brown?’ ” he asked.
“No.”
“It’s moreno—in this case, Hernan Moreno.”
“Television is a visual medium,” she said. “Pictures tell a better story than words. Can I have these photos of yours for comparison with my own?”
“I’ll have copies made for you,” said Bill, “and we’ll keep copies of yours.”
Her cameraman had had to remain outside in the taxi. Covertly, he took a few pictures of the office building. It did not matter. He thought he was photographing CIA headquarters. He was not.
When they got back to the Sonesta Beach, Sabrina Tennant spread the photos—hers and those unusually provided from secret CIA files—on a large table in the borrowed banquet room, while the cameraman shot moving film of them all. She did a stand-up piece against a backdrop of the banquet room wall and a picture of President Bush, borrowed from the manager. It would suffice to give the impression of an inner CIA sanctum.
Later that morning, the pair found a deserted cove down a lane off U.S. Highway One and she did another piece, this time backed by white sand, waving palms, and a blue sea, a facsimile for a beach on Sunshine.
At midday she set up her satellite link with London and beamed all her material to the BSB in London. She had a long talk with her news editor as the cutting-room staff began to put the feature together. When they had finished it was a fifteen-minute news story that looked as if Sabrina Tennant had gone to the Caribbean with only one idea in mind—the exposé.
The editor rejigged the running order of the Sunday lunch-time edition of Countdown and called her back in Florida.
“It’s a bloody cracker,” he said. “Well done, love.”
McCready had been busy, too. He spent part of the morning on his portable telephone to London and part talking to Washington.
In London he found the Director of the Special Air Service Regiment staying at the Duke of York’s Barracks in King’s Road, Chelsea. The leathery young general listened to McCready’s request.
“As a matter of fact, I do,” he said. “I’ve got two of them lecturing at Fort Bragg at the moment. I’ll have to get clearance.”
“No time,” said McCready. “Look are they owed leave?”
“I suppose they are,” said the Director.
“Fine. Then I’m offering them both three days of rest and recreation here in the sun. As my personal guests. What could be fairer than that?”
“Sam,” said the Director, “you are a devious old bugger. I’ll see what I can do. But they’re on leave, Okay? Just sunbathing, nothing else.”
“Perish the thought,” said McCready.
With just seven days to go to Christmas, the citizens of Port Plaisance were preparing for the festive season that Saturday afternoon.
Despite the heat, many shop windows were being decorated with depictions of robins, holly, Yule logs, and polystyrene snow. Very few of the islanders had even seen a robin or a holly bush, let alone snow, but the British Victorian tradition had long suggested that Jesus had been born surrounded by them all, so they duly formed part of the Christmas decorations.
Outside the Anglican church, Mr. Quince, aided by a swarm of eager little girls, was decorating a tableau beneath a straw roof. A small plastic doll lay in the manger, and the children were placing figurines of oxen, sheep, donkeys, and shepherds.
On the outskirts of town, Reverend Drake was conducting choir practice for his carol service. His deep bass voice was not up to scratch. Beneath his black shirt, his torso was swathed in Dr. Jones’s bandages to ease his sprung ribs, and his voice wheezed as if he were out of breath. His parishioners eyed each other meaningfully. Everyone knew what had happened to him on Thursday evening. Nothing remained a secret in Port Plaisance for long.
At three o’clock, a battered van drove into Parliament Square and stopped. From the driver’s seat emerged the enormous figure of Firestone. He went around to the rear, opened the door, and lifted Missy Coltrane out, invalid chair and all. Slowly, he wheeled her down Main Street to do her shopping. There were no press about. Most of them, bored, had gone swimming off Conch Point.
Her progress was slow, being marked by innumerable greetings. She responded to each, hailing shopkeepers and passersby with their names, never forgetting one.
“G’day, Missy Coltrane,” “Good day, Jasper,” “Good day, Simon,” “Good day, Emmanuel”—she asked after wives and children, congratulated a beaming father-to-be on his good fortune, sympathized with a case of a broken arm. She made her usual purchases, and the shopkeepers brought their wares to the door for her to examine.
She paid from a small purse she kept in her lap, while from a larger handbag she dispensed a seemingly inexhaustible supply of small candies to the crowd of children who offered to carry her shopping bags in the hopes of a second ration.
She bought fresh fruit and vegetables; kerosene for her lamps, matches, herbs, spices, meat, and oil. Her progress brought her through the shopping area to the quay, where she greeted the fishermen and bought two snapper and a wriggling lobster that had been preordered by the Quarter Deck Hotel. If Missy Coltrane wanted it, she got it. No argument. The Quarter Deck would get the prawns and the conch.
As she returned to Parliament Square, she met Detective Chief Superintendent Hannah descending from the hotel steps. He was accompanied by Detective Parker and an American called Favaro. They were off to the airstrip to meet the four o’clock plane from Nassau.
She greeted them all, although she had never seen two of them. Then Firestone lifted her up, placed her and her chair beside the groceries in the rear of the van, and drove off.
“Who’s that?” asked Favaro.
“An old lady who lives on a hill,” said Hannah.
“Oh, I’ve heard of her,” said Parker. “She’s supposed to know everything about this place.”
Hannah frowned. Since his investigation had run out of steam, the thought had occurred to him more than once that Missy Coltrane might know more than she had let on about who had fired those shots on Tuesday evening. Still, her suggestion about the entourages of the two candidates had been shrewd. He had seen them both, and his policeman’s instinct had told him he thought very little of them. If only they had a motive.
The short-haul island-hopper from Nassau landed just after four. The pilot had a package from the Metro-Dade Police Department for a Mr. Favaro. The Miami detective identified himself and took the package. Parker, his sample bottle containing the vital bullet in his jacket pocket, boarded.
“There’ll be a car for you at Heathrow tomorrow morning,” said Hannah. “Straight to Lambeth. I want that bullet in the hands of Alan Mitchell as fast as possible.”
On the ground, after the plane took off, Favaro showed the photos of Francisco Mendes, alias the Scorpion, to Hannah. The British detective studied them. There were ten in all, showing a lean, saturnine man with slicked-back black hair and a thin, expressionless mouth. The eyes, looking into the camera, were blank.
“Nasty-looking bastard,” agreed Hannah. “Let’s get them up to Chief Inspector Jones.”
The head of the Barclayan Police was in his office on Parliament Square. The sound of carols came from the open doors of the Anglican church, and laughter came from the open bar of the Quarter Deck. The press was back.
Jones shook his head. “No, never seen him, man. Not in these islands.”
“I don’t think Julio would mistake his man,” said Favaro. “We sat opposite him for four days.”
Hannah was inclined to agree. Maybe he had been looking in the wrong place, inside Government House. Perhaps the killing had been a contract job. But why ...?
“Would you circulate these, Mr. Jones? Show them around. He was supposed to have been seen in the bar of the Quarter Deck last Thursday week. Maybe somebody else saw him. The barman, any other customers that night. Anyone who saw where he went when he left, anyone who saw him in any other bar—you know the score.”
Inspector Jones nodded. He knew his patch. He would show the picture around.
At sundown, Hannah checked his watch. Parker would have arrived at Nassau an hour ago. He would be boarding the overnight plane to London about now. Eight hours’ flying, add five hours for time zones, and he would touch down just after seven A.M. London time.
Alan Mitchell, the brilliant civilian scientist who headed the Home Office ballistics lab at Lambeth, had agreed to give up his Sunday to work on the bullet. He would subject it to every known test and phone Hannah by Sunday afternoon with his findings. Then Hannah would know exactly what weapon he was looking for. That would narrow the odds. Someone must have seen the weapon that was used. This was such a small community.
Hannah was interrupted over his supper by a call from Nassau.
“I’m afraid the plane’s an hour delayed on takeoff,” said Parker. “We’re off in ten minutes. Thought you might like to alert London.”
Hannah checked his watch. Half-past seven. He swore, put the phone down, and went back to his grilled grouper. It was cold.
He was taking his nightcap in the bar at ten when the bar phone rang.
“I’m awfully sorry about this,” said Parker.
“Where the hell are you?” roared Hannah.
“In Nassau, Chief. You see, we took off at half-past seven, flew for forty-five minutes over the sea, developed a slight engine fault, and turned back. The engineers are working on it now. Shouldn’t be long.”
“Give me a call just before you take off,” said Hannah. “I’ll tell London of the new arrival time.”
He was awakened at three in the morning.
“The engineers have fixed the fault,” said Parker. “It was a warning light solenoid cut-out on the port outer engine.”
“Parker,” said Hannah slowly and carefully, “I don’t care if it was the Chief Purser pissing in the fuel tank. Is it fixed?”
“Yes, sir.”
“So you’re taking off?”
“Well, not exactly. You see, by the time we make London, the crew will have exceeded their permitted hours without a rest. So they can’t fly.”
“Well, what about the slip crew? The ones who brought that plane in yesterday afternoon, twelve hours ago. They must have rested.”
“Yes, well, they’ve been found, Chief. Only they thought they had a thirty-six-hour stopover. The First Officer went to a friend’s stag night. He can’t fly, either.”
Hannah made a remark about the world’s favorite airline to which the chairman, Lord King, would have taken considerable exception, had he heard it.
“So what happens now?” he asked.
“We have to wait until the crew has rested. Then we fly,” said the voice from Nassau.
Hannah rose and went out. There were no taxis, no Oscar. He walked all the way to Government House, raised Jefferson, and was let in. In the humid night he was soaked in sweat. He put through a long-distance call to Scotland Yard and got Mitchell’s private number. He called that number to warn the scientists, but the man had left his home for Lambeth five minutes earlier. It was four A.M. in Sunshine, nine A.M. in London. He waited an hour until he could reach Mitchell at the laboratory to tell him Parker would not be there until early evening. Alan Mitchell was not pleased when he heard it. He had to drive all the way back to West Mailing in Kent through a bitter December day.
Parker called again at midday on Sunday. Hannah was killing time in the bar at the Quarter Deck.
“Yes?” he said wearily.
“It’s okay, Chief. The crew is rested. They’re able to fly.”
“Great,” said Hannah. He checked his watch.
Eight hours’ flying, add five for time zones—if Alan Mitchell would agree to work through the night, Hannah could have his answer in Sunshine by breakfast hour on Monday.
“So you’re taking off now?” he asked.
“Well, not exactly,” said Parker. “You see, if we did, we’d land after one A.M. at Heathrow. That’s not allowed. Noise abatement, I’m afraid.”
“So what the hell are you going to do?”
“Well, the usual takeoff time is just after six this afternoon here, landing just after seven A.M. at Heathrow. So they’re going to revert to that timing.”
“But that’ll mean two jumbos taking off together,” said Hannah.
“Yes, it does, Chief. But don’t worry. Both will be full, so the airline won’t take a loss.”
“Thank God for that!” snapped Hannah, and put the phone down. Twenty-four hours, he thought, twenty-four bleeding hours. There are three things in this life about which one can do nothing: death, taxes, and airlines.
Then he spotted Dillon walking up the steps to the hotel with two fit-looking young men. Probably his taste, thought Hannah savagely, bloody Foreign Office. He was not in a good mood.
Across the square, a flock of Mr. Quince’s parishioners—the men in neat dark suits, the women brightly caparisoned like birds of brilliant plumage—were streaming out of the church at the end of morning service, prayer books in white-gloved hands, wax fruit bobbing and nodding on straw hats. It was an (almost) normal Sunday morning on Sunshine Island.
In the home counties of England, things were not quite so peaceful. At Chequers, the country residence of the Prime Ministers of Great Britain, set amid twelve hundred rolling acres of Buckinghamshire, Mrs. Thatcher had been up early as usual and had plowed through four red dispatch boxes of state papers before joining Denis Thatcher for breakfast before a cheery log fire.
As she finished, there was a tap on the door, and her press secretary, Bernard Ingham, entered. He held the Sunday Express in his hand.
“Something I thought you might like to see, Prime Minister.”
“So who’s having a go at me now?” inquired the PM brightly.
“No,” said the beetle-browed Yorkshireman. “It’s about the Caribbean.”
She read the large centerfold spread, and her brow furrowed. The pictures were there: of Marcus Johnson on the hustings in Port Plaisance, and again, a few years earlier, seen through a gap in a pair of curtains. There were photos of his eight bodyguards, all taken around Parliament Square on Friday, and matching pictures taken from Kingston Police files. Lengthy statements from “senior DEA sources in the Caribbean” and from Commissioner Foster of the Kingston Police occupied much of the accompanying text.
“But this is dreadful!” said the Prime Minister. “I must speak to Douglas.”
She went straight to her private office and rang Douglas.
Her Majesty’s Principal Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs, Mr. Douglas Hurd, was with his family at his official country residence—another mansion, called Chevening, set in the county of Kent. He had perused the Sunday Times, Observer, and Sunday Telegraph, but he had not yet reached the Sunday Express.
“No, Margaret, I haven’t seen it yet,” he said. “But I have it within arm’s reach.”
“I’ll hold on,” said the PM.
The Foreign Secretary, a former novelist of some note, knew a good newspaper story when he saw one. This one seemed to be extremely well sourced.
“Yes, I agree. It’s disgraceful, if it’s true. ... Yes, yes, Margaret, I’ll get onto it in the morning and have the Caribbean desk check it out.”
But civil servants are human beings too—a sentiment not often echoed by the general public—and they have wives, children, and homes. With six days to go to Christmas, Parliament was in recess and even the ministries were thinly staffed. Still, there had to be someone on duty the next morning, Monday, and the matter of a new Governor could be addressed then.
Mrs. Thatcher and her family went to Sunday-morning service at Ellesborough and returned just after twelve. At one they sat down for lunch with a few friends. These included Bernard Ingham.
It was her political adviser Charles Powell who caught the BSB program Countdown at twelve o’clock. He liked Countdown. It carried some good foreign news now and again, and as an ex-diplomat that was his specialty. When he saw the program’s headlines and a reference to a later report on a scandal in the Caribbean, he pressed the “record” button on the VCR machine beneath the TV.
At two, Mrs. Thatcher was up again—she never saw much point in spending a long time over food; it wasted part of a busy day—and as she left the dining room a hovering Charles Powell intercepted her. In her study he put the tape into her VCR and ran it. She watched in silence. Then she rang Chevening again.
Mr. Hurd, a devoted family man, had taken his small son and daughter for a brisk walk across the fields. He had just returned, hungry for his roast beef, when Mrs. Thatcher’s second call came through.
“No, I missed that too, Margaret,” he said.
“I have a tape,” said the Prime Minister. “It is quite appalling. I’ll send it straight to you. Please screen it when it arrives and call me back.”
A dispatch rider roared through the gloom of a dismal December afternoon, skirted London via the M25 motorway, and was at Chevening by half-past four.
The Foreign Secretary called Chequers at five-fifteen and was put straight through. “I agree, Margaret, quite appalling,” said Douglas Hurd.
“I suggest we need a new Governor out there,” said the PM, “not in the new year, but now. We must show we are active, Douglas. You know who else will have seen these stories?”
The Foreign Secretary was well aware that Her Majesty was with her family at Sandringham but not cut off from world events. She was an avid newspaper reader, and she watched current affairs issues on television.
“I’ll get on to it immediately,” he said.
He did. The Permanent Under-Secretary was jerked out of his armchair in Sussex and began phoning around. At eight that evening the choice had fallen on Sir Crispian Rattray, a retired diplomat and former High Commissioner in Barbados, who was willing to go.
He agreed to report to the Foreign Office in the morning for formal appointment and a thorough briefing. He would fly on the late-morning plane from Heathrow, landing at Nassau on Monday afternoon. He would consult further with the High Commission there, spend the night, and arrive on Sunshine by chartered airplane on Tuesday morning to take the reins in hand.
“It shouldn’t take long, my dear,” he told Lady Rattray as he packed. “Mucks up the pheasant shooting, but there we are. Seems I’ll have to withdraw the candidacy of these two rascals and see the elections through with two new candidates. Then they’ll grant independence, I’ll hoist the old flag down, London will send in a High Commissioner, the islanders will run their own affairs, and I can come home. Month or two, shouldn’t doubt. Pity about the pheasants.”
* * *
At nine o’clock on Sunday morning on Sunshine, McCready found Hannah having breakfast on the terrace at the hotel.
“Would you mind awfully if I used the new phone at Government House to call London?” he asked. “I ought to talk to my people about going back home.”
“Be my guest,” said Hannah. He looked tired and unshaved, as someone who had been up half the night.
At half-past nine, island time, McCready put his call through to Denis Gaunt. What his deputy told him about the Sunday Express and the Countdown program confirmed to McCready that what he had hoped would happen had indeed happened.
Since the small hours of the morning, a variety of news editors in London had been trying to call their correspondents in Port Plaisance with news of what the Sunday Express was carrying in its centerfold page spread and to ask for an urgent follow-up story. After lunch, London time, the calls redoubled—they had seen the Countdown story as well. None of the calls had come through.
McCready had briefed the switchboard operator at the Quarter Deck that all the gentlemen of the press were extremely tired and were not to be disturbed under any circumstances. He had himself been elected to take all their calls for them, and he would pass them on. A hundred-dollar bill had sealed the compact. The switchboard operator duly told every London caller that his party was “out” but that the message would reach him immediately. The messages were duly passed to McCready, who duly ignored them. The moment for further press coverage had not yet come.
At eleven A.M. he was at the airport to greet two young SAS sergeants flying in from Miami. They had been lecturing for the benefit of their colleagues in the American Green. Berets at Fort Bragg, North Carolina, when alerted to take three days’ furlough and report to their host on the island of Sunshine. They had flown south to Miami and chartered an air taxi to Port Plaisance.
Their baggage was meager, but it included one hold-all containing their toys, wrapped in beach towels. The CIA had been kind enough to ensure that bag cleared customs at Miami, and McCready, waving his Foreign Office letter, claimed diplomatic immunity for it at Port Plaisance.
The Deceiver brought them back to the hotel and installed them in a room next to his own. They stashed their bag of “goodies” under the bed, locked the door, and went for a long swim. McCready had already told them when he would need them—at ten the next morning at Government House.
Having lunched on the terrace, McCready went to see the Reverend Walter Drake. He found the Baptist minister at his small house, resting his still bruised body. He introduced himself and asked how the pastor was feeling.
“Are you with Mr. Hannah?” asked Drake.
“Not exactly with him,” said McCready. “More ... keeping an eye on things while he gets on with his murder investigation. My concern is more the political side of things.”
“You with the Foreign Office?” persisted Drake.
“In a way,” said McCready. “Why do you ask?”
“I do not like your Foreign Office,” said Drake. “You are selling my people down the river.”
“Ah, now that might just be about to change,” said McCready, and told the preacher what he wished of him.
Reverend Drake shook his head. “I am a man of God,” he said. “You want different people for that sort of thing.”
“Mr. Drake, yesterday I called Washington. Someone there told me that only seven Barclayans had ever served in the United States armed forces. One of them was listed as Drake W.”
“Another man,” growled Reverend Drake.
“This man said,” pursued McCready quietly, “that the Drake W. they had listed had been a sergeant in the U.S. Marine Corps. Served two tours in Vietnam. Came back with a Bronze Star and two Purple Hearts. I wonder what happened to him?”
The big pastor lumbered to his feet, crossed the room, and stared out at the clapboard houses up and down the street where he lived.
“Another man,” he growled, “another time, another place. I do only God’s work now.”
“Don’t you think what I ask of you might qualify?”
The big man considered, then nodded. “Possibly.”
“I think so, too,” said McCready. “I hope I’ll see you there. I need all the help I can get. Ten o’clock, tomorrow morning, Government House.”
He left and strolled down through the town to the harbor. Jimmy Dobbs was working on the Gulf Lady. McCready spent thirty minutes with him, and they agreed on a charter voyage for the following day.
He was hot and sticky when he arrived at Government House just before five that afternoon. Jefferson served him an iced tea while he waited for Lieutenant Jeremy Haverstock to return. The young officer had been playing tennis with some other expatriates at a villa in the hills.
McCready’s question to him was simple: “Will you be here at ten o’clock tomorrow morning?”
Haverstock thought it over. “Yes, I suppose so,” he said.
“Good,” said McCready. “Do you have your full tropical dress uniform with you?”
“Yes,” said the cavalryman. “Only got to wear it once. A state ball in Nassau six months ago.”
“Excellent,” said McCready. “Ask Jefferson to press it and polish up the leather and brasses.”
A mystified Haverstock escorted him to the front hall. “I suppose you’ve heard the good news?” he asked. “That detective chappie from Scotland Yard. Found the bullet yesterday in the garden. Absolutely intact. Parker’s on his way to London with it.”
“Good show,” said McCready. “Spiffing news.”
He had dinner with Eddie Favaro at the hotel at eight. Over coffee he asked, “What are you doing tomorrow?”
“Going home,” said Favaro. “I only took a week off. Have to be back on the job Tuesday morning.”
“Ah, yes. What time’s your plane?”
“Booked an air taxi for midday.”
“Couldn’t delay it until four o’clock, could you?”
“I suppose so. Why?”
“Because I could do with your help. Say, Government House, ten o’clock? Thanks, see you then. Don’t be late. Monday is going to be a very busy day.”
McCready rose at six. A pink dawn, herald of another balmy day, was touching the tips of the palm trees out in Parliament Square. It was delightfully cool. He washed and shaved and went out into the square, where the taxi he had ordered awaited him. His first duty was to say good-bye to an old lady.
He spent an hour with her, between seven and eight, took coffee and hot rolls, and made his farewells.
“Now, don’t forget, Lady Coltrane,” he said as he rose to leave.
“Don’t worry, I won’t. And it’s Missy.”
She held out her hand. He stooped to take it.
At half-past eight, he was back in Parliament Square and dropped in on Chief Inspector Jones. He showed the chief of police his Foreign Office letter.
“Please be at Government House at ten o’clock,” he said. “Bring with you your two sergeants, four constables, your personal Land-Rover, and two plain vans. Do you have a service revolver?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Please bring that too.”
At the same moment, it was half-past one in London. But in the Ballistics Department of the Home Office forensic laboratory in Lambeth, Mr. Alan Mitchell was not thinking of lunch. He was staring into a microscope.
Beneath the lens, held at each end in a gentle clamp, was a bullet. Mitchell stared at the striation marks that ran the length of the lead slug, curving around the metal as they went. They were the marks left by the rifling in the barrel that had fired the bullet. For the fifth time that day, he gently turned the bullet under the lens, picking out the other scratches—the “lands”—that were as individual to a gun barrel as a fingerprint to a human hand.
Finally he was satisfied. He whistled in surprise and went for one of his manuals. He had a whole library of them, for Alan Mitchell was widely regarded as the most knowledgeable weapons expert in Europe.
There were still other tests to be carried out. He knew that somewhere four thousand miles across the sea, a detective waited impatiently for his findings, but he would not be hurried. He had to be sure, absolutely sure. Too many cases in court had been lost because experts produced by the defense had flawed the evidence presented by the forensic scientists for the prosecution.
There were tests to be carried out on the minuscule fragments of burnt powder that still adhered to the blunt end of the slug. Tests on the manufacture and composition of the lead, which he had already carried out on the twisted bullet he had had for two days, would have to be repeated on the newly arrived one. The spectroscope would plunge its rays deep into the metal itself, betraying the very molecular structure of the lead, identifying its approximate age and sometimes even the factory that had produced it. Alan Mitchell took the manual he sought from his shelves, sat down and began to read.
McCready dismissed his taxi at the gate of Government house and rang the bell. Jefferson recognized him and let him in. McCready explained he had to make another phone call on the international line that had been installed by Bannister, and that he had Mr. Hannah’s permission. Jefferson showed him into the private study and left him.
McCready ignored the telephone and addressed himself to the desk. In the early stages of the investigation, Hannah had been through the drawers, using the dead Governor’s keys, and after assuring himself there were no clues to the murder therein, he had relocked them all.
McCready had no keys, but he did not need them. He had picked the locks the previous day and found what he wanted. They were in the bottom left-hand drawer. There were two of them, but he needed only one.
It was an imposing sheet of paper, crisp to the touch and creamy like parchment. In the center at the top, raised and embossed in gold, was the royal coat-of-arms: the lion and the unicorn supporting the shield emblazoned in its four quarters with the heraldic emblems of England, Scotland, Wales, and Ireland.
Beneath, in bold black lettering, were the words:
WE, ELIZABETH THE SECOND, OF THE UNITED KINGDOM OF GREAT BRITAIN AND NORTHERN IRELAND, AND OF ALL HER TERRITORIES AND DEPENDENCIES BEYOND THE SEAS, BY THE GRACE OF GOD QUEEN, DO HEREBY APPOINT ... (here there was a gap) TO BE OUR ... (another gap) IN THE TERRITORY OF ... (a third gap).
Beneath the text was a facsimile signature that read, “Elizabeth R.”
It was a Royal Warrant. En blanc. McCready took a pen from the inkstand of Sir Marston Moberley and filled it in, using his best copperplate script. When he had finished, he blew gently on the ink to dry it and used the gubernatorial seal to stamp it.
Outside in the sitting room his guests were assembling. He looked at the document again and shrugged. He had just appointed himself Governor of the Barclays. For a day.