by Tom Riggs
“The gringo has been busy boss. Last night he was talking to people at the posada. This morning he bribed a guy at the posada for a copy of the guest register.”
The man in the office took some notes. “And now?”
“He is sitting by the pool, talking to a lady. She is real pretty boss. What you want me to do?”
“Sit tight, keep watching.”
“Want me to take him out?”
“No. Sit tight, keep following him. Do nothing until I say.”
The man in the office hung up. It was one o’clock and the air conditioning in his office was faltering. He wiped the sweat off his forehead and thought, not for the first time, how much he hated Venezuela.
Kenneth James was not who Munro was expecting. Rudd had said that he was the Foreign Office representative and given Munro an address. Nothing more. He had assumed that James would be a low-level administrator, sent out to Isla Margarita to deal with the British package tourists who got mugged, lost their passports or got caught with drugs. A pen pusher, biding his time until he and his wife could go back to the UK and live out a comfortable retirement on the generous Foreign Office pension. There were these little outposts of England in every corner of the world – Munro did not have much time for them. In his experience, if you asked them to do anything that was outside of their narrow remit of issuing new passports and suggesting local lawyers they would invariably retreat into officialdom and petty bureaucracy.
Kenneth James’ “office” was in fact Kenny’s Bar on Playa Paraguita, fifteen miles south of Playa Agua, twenty minutes in a cab. Paraguita was smaller than Playa Agua and more crowded, even at five o’clock in the evening when Munro arrived. Vacationing Venezuelans had appropriated almost every square foot of the beach. Munro noticed that the women were all wearing Brazilian-style mini-bikinis, whatever their age or size. The men were all wearing Speedo-style swimming briefs, their over-hanging bellies usually hiding anything that they had wanted their Speedos to show. Munro’s eyes settled on a group of men and women in their sixties, all proudly wearing very little.
“Fuckin’ marvellous innit?” said a voice behind Munro. He turned to see a small hairy man in his mid-sixties holding out his hand.
“Kenny James, her majesty’s honorary consul in Isla Margarita. Nice to see you, to see you…Nice!”
Her majesty’s honorary consul in Isla Margarita was wearing only swimming trunks (surfing shorts, Munro noted with relief) and a large gold chain. The chain rested neatly on the overhang of his belly.
“Jack Munro, you got my message?”
“Indeed I did, indeed I did Mr Munro. Let’s have a beer. Always start any meeting with a nice cold beer,” said Kenny as he led Munro to a slightly raised table on the edge of the bar. From it, he and Munro had an uninterrupted view of the beach and all its glories or otherwise. Kenny started to talk before they even sat down.
“I came here in ‘86 for a holiday, fell in love with the place. Bought this bar and a house inland for ten thousand US. Can you believe that? Five grand English at the time. Most people they go to Spain, maybe Florida. Not me. Here I am, king of the castle. Only other Brit here runs an Irish pub in Porlamar. But that’s a shit hole. You want to watch Premier League football, you come to Kenny’s. When the football’s not on, I get the local crowd. They love this place. Think it’s sophisticated to eat in a European bar.”
Munro looked round the bar. Sand floor, open to the elements on three sides. A large boxy TV above the bar. It had a certain charm, but sophisticated it was not.
“You’ve got a nice place here, Kenny. But the reason I’m here is to find out about…”
At that moment a very pretty Venezuelan girl bought two beers to their table. Kenny leered at her as she walked away.
“As I said, I fuckin’ love this place.” Kenny gave Munro a conspiratorial wink.
“It’s a lovely place Kenny, really lovely. But I am here at the request of Ms Stanfield, the mother of the English boy that was killed last week.”
“You a relative?”
“No, an investigator.”
Kenny bristled slightly, “Old bill?”
“No, I was in the army for 12 years. Now I run investigations. Privately.”
“Ok then, I don’t have much time for the filth.”
Munro wondered if Venezuela had an extradition treaty with Britain. He doubted it.
“Well I’m not the filth, as you call them. I’m a private investigator hired by Ms Stanfield to look into the death of her son. She’s concerned that no one has been arrested for it and the local police investigation seems to have ground to a halt.”
“It certainly did. They issued a statement four days after the boy was killed saying that they knew who did it - a couple of Colombians. But that they had since left the country so it was not their problem anymore.”
“Neat. You think it was two Colombians?”
“I have no idea. It might have been, there are a lot of them around and some of them are dodgy fuckers. But the Venezuelans are hardly saints either. It’s like in Europe with the gypsies, if anything ever gets stolen here – the Colombians get blamed.”
“Was it a thorough investigation?”
Kenny snorted a laugh. “Thorough? I wouldn’t say thorough exactly. The local police here are not exactly a bunch of Sherlock Holmeses. More Dirty Harry, if you catch my drift. But a European tourist getting murdered here is a big deal. A very big deal. The last time it happened was three years ago, in Porlamar. Some drunken idiot tried to fight a couple of drug addicts who wanted his wallet. They pulled a knife on him and he ended up dead. Afterwards the police turned the island upside down. Arrested a load of people, beat up all the usual suspects. There were roadblocks in Porlamar for two months afterwards. They got the guys that did it. There was a big public trial and the guys were sent down for forty years a piece, which in Venezuela means death – because no-one lasts more than a few years in the prisons here.”
“But this time?”
“This time, it started out like that. The police were all over Playa Agua for a couple of days, arresting anyone that looked even slightly dodgy.”
“And then?”
“And then they all left. They said that these two Colombians had done it so there was nothing more for them to do.”
“Odd considering that Richard Lipakos was relatively high profile”, said Munro, half to himself.
“Exactly, the boy was some kind of millionaire’s son right?”
“More like billionaire, but yes.”
“Whatever … the last thing this island needs is a high profile murder of a tourist. Porlamar has a bad enough rep already. We’re losing more and more punters to Trinidad and Tobago by the day.”
Munro was beginning to see why. Why go to Isla Margarita and run the risk of knife wielding junkies and Colombian robbers when you could go to Tobago, stay on a little bay, listen to some reggae and drink rum punches?
“So what was your involvement?” asked Munro.
“A lot, unfortunately. Normally, I don’t get involved with something like this. Someone from the Foreign Office proper would come over from Caracas and deal with everything. But there’s an election coming up and they were understaffed. I get a nice little stipend if I take on official duties and I owed them a favour, so I agreed to manage this one. Wish to God I hadn’t though.” Kenny was onto his third beer of the meeting, and Munro guessed that it was not his third of the day. He was beginning to get morose.
“Poor little bugger… such a shame.” Kenny looked out onto the beach - tears were beginning to form in his eyes.
“So what was your involvement Kenny?” persisted Munro.
“I had to help identify the body didn’t I? No family nearby, no dental records they could find, so I had to have a go. They sent me out a bunch of pictures of him. The lad on holiday, graduating from his university. He looked like a really nice boy. He really did.”
“Did you identify the body?”
“That’s just it. I couldn’t. I went down to the morgue in Porlamar with all the photos. They took me down to this basement room, all concrete with no windows. I wasn’t too worried, cause I’ve seen dead bodies before. But nothing prepared me for this. He was laid in a massive tray, covered in ice, like some kind of fish.” Kenny took a slug from his beer and, realising it was empty, threw it onto the beach in front of them.
“Were the injuries bad? The report said he died from head injuries.”
“That’s just it mate. There was no head left. I couldn’t ID him.”
“No head at all? He had been decapitated?”
“No, part of it was still there. All that was left was a caved in skull and some gristle… oh shit” Kenny stopped talking as he stared into space.
Munro walked out of Kenny’s Bar fifteen minutes later. Kenny had recovered enough to give him the photos of Richard’s body taken from the mortuary. Munro had seen a similar body in Afghanistan. A Taliban commander had suspected one of his men of betraying them. They had tied him down and driven a two-tonne pickup truck over his head. The force had crushed the man’s skull and exploded his brain out either side. The head was still there, it had just caved in on itself. The pictures of Richard’s head were similar. Some powerful and consistent force had beat down on it until his skull had been crushed. It wasn’t easy to break a human skull.
He thought of Sarah Stanfield, alone and grieving. Thoughts from his past came into his head unasked for. He tried to push them away. He looked at a picture of Richard that she had given him, 12 years old, squinting into the sun, laughing at some long-forgotten joke. The money wasn’t important; he needed to find whoever had killed this boy.
9
The sun was beginning to go down in Caracas, but it was still at least 80 degrees in the office. A close, sticky 80 degrees. The man opened his desk drawer and took out his gun. 9mm, Browning semi-automatic handgun. Sixteen in the clip and one in the barrel. More than enough. He put on his jacket and left the office, no bag, no passport. The flight to Isla Margarita was short and he intended to be back in time for a late drink in the nightclub district, El Rosal. Possibly followed by a trip to Aphrodite, his current favourite brothel. A motorbike taxi, a motorizado, was waiting for him in the street to take him to the city’s private aerodrome. The traffic in Caracas in the early evening was the worst in the world. It could take three hours to go as many miles. On the back of a motorizado he could make the journey to the waiting jet in twenty minutes. In a car it would have taken two hours. Motorbikes were also useful as the helmet hid the fact that you were a gringo. Gave the carjackers and kidnappers less time to react. Caraquenos, as residents of Caracas are known, had pioneered the sequester express. Express kidnapping. Short and violent, an express kidnapping usually lasted only a few hours. But that was usually all they needed. In that time the kidnappers could empty your bank account and beat you half to death. If you were particularly unlucky they might also rape you. The man was happy to have his gun. He felt as safe as he was ever going to in this godforsaken city.
Munro had operated in some of the most dangerous cities in the world. Downtown Porlamar after dark was by no means the worst, but it was up there. There were not many people about, and those that were looked like either junkies or their dealers. Evidently his taxi driver thought the same thing. They drove around for thirty-five minutes until he found an ATM he deemed safe enough for Munro to use. Even then, he kept the engine running and advised Munro to run the fifty meters between the road and the bank. Munro walked. The capital of Isla Margarita was not a particularly welcoming place, true, but Munro was not in a particularly welcoming mood. He felt slightly naked without a weapon of any sort, but he was confident that he could take out a couple of Venezuelan crackheads. The ATM was located on a four-lane highway. Although it was only half past seven at night everything was closed, except for a large bar on the far corner called Club Amor. Early evening in the Caribbean and nothing was open except a brothel. No wonder Isla Margarita was losing out on the family holiday market.
The cab pulled off the main highway onto a smaller side road. The surface began to get uneven immediately and before long the road was more sand than concrete. Munro had not seen any police up until now, but after driving a few blocks on the small road, this began to change. At the corner of every other block was small groups of police officers. All were wearing black combat trousers, tight black t-shirts and black baseball caps. Some were on Suzuki scramblers. All of them carried machine guns – Uzis in the main part. They looked young, bored and scared. Driving through the narrow dark streets between the better-lit corners, Munro could see why. It was hard to tell which houses were derelict and which were occupied. Through one open door Munro saw three shirtless men sitting on a dirty floor, staring into space. At one of their feet was an AK 47.
Porlamar’s central police station was the only building in a large cleared expanse of land. Next to it was a football pitch that had seen better days, surrounded by derelict buildings. There was no grass to speak of, just hard baked dirt and rocks. The police building was two-stories of concrete set safely behind twelve-foot high walls topped by razor wire. The one gate was guarded by at least twelve cops – all with Uzis and baseball caps, all bored. As Munro went in through the small steel door to the side, he could feel their stares. He walked through the door and across a small courtyard into the main building and the guards continued to stare. He guessed gringos did not come down here much. Not voluntarily anyway.
“Inspector Salinas, por favor.” Munro said to the man at the dirty front desk as he handed him fifty dollars and a business card.
The desk cop took the money without question, his eyes were bloodshot and his vest was stained. If it had not been for his blue trousers and gun belt, it would have been hard to tell that he was a cop at all.
“Quédate aqui”
Munro hoped that the small bribe might speed things up, but it was no guarantee. Luckily the waiting room was empty. Its peeling pale green paint did nothing for its atmosphere, but empty was good. He checked his phone: no reception.
An hour later, the desk cop called Munro.
“Sigame,” he grunted as he led Munro through a side door.
Munro was made to wait another half hour in a small interrogation room. Same peeling light green paint. It had one small slit window twelve feet up. Other than that, there was no source of air. It smelt of urine, sweat and disinfectant. Eventually Salinas arrived.
“Señor Munro please sit down.” Salinas was flanked by two uniformed guards, although he himself was in jeans and an open neck shirt. He was a mean looking cop, all the more so for being very skinny. Many senior police in South America were heavy jowled and obese from years of bribes and good living. Salinas may have lived well – his watch looked gold and expensive – but it had not made him heavy. His skin was sallow and pock marked, his scalp slightly flaky along the edges of his tight greased hair. The man looked as if he needed a square meal, lots of fruit and a day on the beach.
“Señor Jack Munro, from Brook Investigations, London,” said Salinas as he read from Munro’s business card. “How may we be of assistance señor?”
“Inspector Salinas, thank you for seeing me on such short notice.”
Salinas waved his hand dismissively. He knew it was good of him to spare the time. He did not need Munro to tell him so.
“What can we do for you señor?” Salinas repeated.
Munro told him that he worked for Ms Stanfield and had been asked by her to come out and get an update on the case. She was a worried mother and too upset to ask herself.
“You are a private investigator?”
“In a way, yes.”
“The mother, she does not think the Venezuelan police can do their job?”
“Not at all, Inspector. In fact, she is very impressed by the job that has been done so far. She has asked me to come out here to get an update on the investigation.”
“You want an updat
e?” said Salinas as he leaned back into his chair, never once taking his eyes off Munro. “The update, señor, is that the case is closed. We found the men who did it. Two Colombian drug addicts. We have a problem with Colombians here. They bring their drugs and their addicts here and corrupt our young people.”
“Have you arrested the two suspects?” asked Munro, although he already knew the answer.
“No, señor,” he almost spat the word out. “We have not arrested the two suspects, as you call them. They went back to Colombia the day after the killing.”
“Then how do you know it was them, Inspector?”
Salinas did not say anything for a while. He simply stared at Munro. Munro returned the stare. He was tough, and the two uniformed police standing either side of the door were tougher. But they weren’t going to attack an innocent gringo who hadn’t been arrested. Not just yet. After two minutes of staring, Munro asked again.
“How did you know it was them, Inspector?”
Salinas paused, still staring at Munro. “D-N-A, señor. We recovered the DNA of the Colombians from the body of the dead Ingles.” Dee eehn aay. Salinas pronounced the three letters slowly, carefully enunciating each one.
“Inspector, I know this is an imposition, but may I see the file on the murder and the two Colombians? The family of Richard Lipakos want to know who it was that killed their son.”
Salinas relaxed a bit and leaned back into his chair.
“Señor, I would like to assist you, I can promise you I would. But police regulations prohibit me from showing the file to anyone.”
“I completely understand, Inspector.” Munro looked at the two guards. “Perhaps I could speak to you in private?”
Salinas looked straight into Munro’s eyes. “I have nothing to hide from my men, señor.”
