“There is a hint of American in your accent,” said Hannah as he left. “Can you tell me why?”
“There are many Baptist theological schools in America,” replied Reverend Drake. “I studied for the ministry there.”
Hannah drove back to Government House. On the way, he considered a list of possible suspects.
Lieutenant Jeremy Haverstock undoubtedly knew how to use a gun if he could get hold of one, but he had no apparent motive. Unless it was he who was the father of Myrtle’s baby, and the Governor had threatened to break his career.
Lady Moberley, driven too far. She had plenty of motive, but she’d have needed an accomplice to rip off that steel gatelock. Unless it could have been done with a chain behind a Land-Rover.
The Reverend Drake, despite his protestations of being a man of peace. Even men of peace can be driven too far.
He recalled the advice of Lady Coltrane to look at the entourages of the two electoral candidates. Yes, he would do that, have a good look at these election helpers. But what was the motive there? Sir Marston had been playing their game for them, easing the islands into independence, with one of them as the new Prime Minister. Unless one of the groups had thought he was favoring the other.
When he got back to Government House, there was a spate of news waiting for him.
Chief Inspector Jones had checked his firearms register. There were only six workable guns on the island. Three were owned by expatriates—retired gentlemen, two British and one Canadian. They were twelve-bore shotguns, used for clay-pigeon shooting. The fourth was a rifle, owned by the fishing skipper Jimmy Dobbs, for use on sharks if ever a monster attacked his boat. The fifth gun was a presentation pistol, never fired, owned by another expatriate, an American who had settled on Sunshine. The gun was still in its glass-topped case, its seal unbroken. And the sixth gun was Jones’s own, kept under lock and key at the police station.
“Damn,” snorted Hannah. Whatever gun had been used, it was not kept legally.
Detective Parker, for his part, had a report on the garden. It had been searched from end to end and top to bottom. No second bullet. Either it had deflected off a bone in the Governor’s body, come out at a different angle, and sped over the garden wall to be lost forever; or, more likely, it was still in the body.
Bannister had received news from Nassau. A plane would be landing at four, in one hour’s time, to take the body to the Bahamas for post-mortem. Dr. West was due to touch down in a few minutes, and he would be waiting to take his charge to the mortuary at Nassau.
And there were two men waiting to see Hannah in the drawing room.
Hannah gave orders to have a van made ready to bring the body to the airstrip at four. Bannister, who would return to the High Commission there along with the body, left with Inspector Jones to supervise the arrangements. Then Hannah went to meet his new guests.
The man called Frank Dillon introduced himself and explained his chance vacation on the island and his equally chance meeting over lunch with the American. He produced his letter of introduction, and Hannah studied it with little pleasure. Bannister from the official High Commission in Nassau was one thing; a London-based official who happened to be taking an away-from-it-all holiday in the middle of a murder hunt was as likely as a vegetarian tiger. Then he met the American, who admitted that he was another detective.
Hannah’s attitude changed, however, as Dillon narrated Favaro’s story.
“You have a picture of this man Mendes?” he asked finally.
“No, not with me.”
“Could one be obtained from police files in Miami?”
“Yes, sir. I could have it wired to your people in Nassau.”
“You do that,” said Hannah. He glanced at his watch. “I’ll have a search of all passport records made, going back three months. See if there’s a name of Mendes or any other Hispanic name entering the island. Now, you must excuse me—I have to see the body onto the plane for Nassau.”
“Are you by any chance thinking of talking to the candidates?” asked McCready as they left.
“Yes,” said Hannah, “first thing in the morning. While I’m waiting for the post-mortem report to come through.”
“Would you mind if I came along?” asked McCready. “I promise not to say a thing. But after all, they are both ... political, are they not?”
“All right,” said Hannah reluctantly. He wondered whom this Frank Dillon really worked for.
On the way to the airstrip, Hannah noticed that the first of his posters were being affixed to spaces on walls where room could be found for them between the posters on behalf of the two candidates. There was so much paper being stuck over Port Plaisance, the place was getting plastered in it.
The official posters, prepared by the local printer under the auspices of Inspector Jones and paid for with Government House money, offered a reward of one thousand U.S. dollars to anyone reporting seeing someone in the alley behind the wall of the Government House garden at approximately five P.M. on Tuesday evening.
A thousand American dollars was a stunning sum for the ordinary people of Port Plaisance. It should bring someone out—someone who had seen something, or some person. And in Sunshine everybody knew everybody.
At the airstrip Hannah saw to the loading of the body, accompanied by Bannister and the four men of the Bahamian forensic team. Bannister would see that the entire volume of their scrapings and samples went on the evening flight to London, to be collected at dawn by a squad car from Scotland Yard and taken to the Home Office’s forensic laboratory in Lambeth. He had few hopes it would turn up much; it was the second bullet he wanted, and Dr. West would retrieve that for him when he opened the body in Nassau that night.
Because he was at the airstrip, Hannah missed the Johnson rally in Parliament Square that afternoon. So did the press corps, who having covered the start of the rally, saw the police convoy driving past and followed it out to the airstrip.
McCready did not miss the rally. He was on the verandah of the Quarter Deck Hotel at the time.
A desultory crowd of about two hundred had gathered to hear their philanthropic benefactor address them. McCready noticed half a dozen men in brightly colored beach shirts and dark glasses mingling with the crowd, handing out small pieces of paper and flags on sticks. The flags were in the candidate’s blue and white colors. The pieces of paper were dollar bills.
At precisely ten past three, a white Ford Fairlane—certainly the biggest car on the island—swept into the square and up to the speaking platform. Mr. Marcus Johnson leaped out and ascended the steps. He held up his hands in a boxer’s victory salute. Led by the bright-shirted ones, there was a round of applause. Some flags waved. In minutes, Marcus Johnson was into his speech.
“And I promise you, my friends, and you are all my friends”—the dentifrice smile flashed from the bronze face—“when we are finally free, a wave of prosperity will come to these islands. There will be work—in the hotels, in the new marina, in the bars and cafés, in the new industries for the processing of fish from the sea for sale on the mainland—from all these things, prosperity will flow. And it will flow into your pockets, my friends, not into the hands of men far away in London—”
He was using a bullhorn to reach everyone in the square. The interruption came from a man who did not need a bullhorn. The deep bass came from the other side of the square, but it came over the sound of the politician.
“Johnson!” roared Walter Drake. “We do not want you here! Why don’t you go back where you came from, and take your Yardies with you?”
Suddenly there was silence. The stunned crowd waited for the sky to fall. No one had ever interrupted Marcus Johnson before.
But the sky did not fall. Without a word, Johnson put down his megaphone and jumped into his car. At a word from him, it sped off, pursued by a second car containing his group of helpers.
“Who is that?” McCready asked the waiter on the verandah.
“Reverend Drake, sir
,” said the waiter. He seemed awestruck, even rather frightened.
McCready was thoughtful. He had heard a voice used like that somewhere before, and he tried to recall where. Then he placed it; during his National Service thirty years earlier, at Catterick Camp in Yorkshire. On a parade ground. He went to his room and made a secure call to Miami.
Reverend Walter Drake took his beating in silence. There were four of them, and they came for him that night as he left his church and walked home. They used baseball bats and their feet. They hit hard, whipping the wooden staves down onto the man on the ground. When they were finished, they left him. He might have been dead. They would not have minded. But he was not.
Half an hour later, he recovered consciousness and crawled to the nearest house. The frightened family called Dr. Caractacus Jones, who had the preacher brought to his clinic on a handcart, and he spent the rest of the night patching him up.
Desmond Hannah had a call that evening during supper. He had to leave the hotel to go to Government House to take it. It was from Dr. West in Nassau.
“Look, I know they’re supposed to be preserved,” said the forensic pathologist, “but this one’s like a block of wood. Frozen solid.”
“The locals did the best they could,” said Hannah.
“So will I,” said the doctor. “But it’s going to take me twenty-four hours to thaw the bugger out.”
“As fast as you can, please,” said Hannah. “I need that damned bullet.”
Chapter 4
Detective Chief Superintendent Hannah elected to interview Mr. Horatio Livingstone first. He rang him at his house in Shantytown just after sunrise, and the politician came to the phone after several minutes. Yes, he would be delighted to receive the man from Scotland Yard within the hour.
Oscar drove the Jaguar with Detective Parker beside him. Hannah was in the back with Dillon of the Foreign Office. Their route did not pass through the center of Port Plaisance, for Shantytown lay three miles down the coast, on the same side of the capital as Government House.
“Any progress with your inquiries, Mr. Hannah, or is that an unprofessional question?” Dillon asked politely.
Hannah never liked to discuss the state of an inquiry with anyone other than colleagues. Still, this Dillon was apparently from the Foreign Office.
“The Governor was killed by a single shot through the heart from a heavy-caliber handgun,” he said. “There seem to have been two shots fired. One missed and hit the wall behind him. I recovered the slug and sent it to London.”
“Badly distorted?” asked Dillon.
“I’m afraid so. The other bullet seems to be lodged in the body. I’ll know more when I get the results of the postmortem from Nassau tonight.”
“And the killer?”
“Seems to have entered from the gate in the garden wall, which was torn off its locks. Fired from about a ten-foot range, then withdrew. Apparently.”
“Apparently?”
Hannah explained his idea that the torn-off lock might have been a ruse to distract attention from an assassin coming from the house itself.
Dillon was most admiring. “I’d never have thought of that,” he said.
The car entered Shantytown. As its name implied, it was a village of clustered homes made of wooden planks and galvanized sheet roofing, with some five thousand inhabitants.
Small shops selling an array of vegetables and T-shirts jostled for space with the houses and the bars. It was clearly Livingstone territory—no posters for Marcus Johnson were to be seen here, but those for Livingstone were everywhere.
In the center of Shantytown, reached by its widest (and only) street, stood a single walled compound. The walls were of coral blocks, and a single gate wide enough for a car admitted entry. Beyond the walls could be seen the roof of the house, the only two-story edifice in Shantytown. Hannah knew of the rumor that Mr. Livingstone owned many of the bars in the village and took tribute from those he did not.
The Jaguar halted at the gate, and Stone sounded the horn. All down the street, Barclayans were standing to stare at the gleaming limousine with the pennant fluttering from the front right wing. The Governor’s car had never been into Shantytown before.
A small window in the gate opened, an eye surveyed the car, and the gate swung open. The Jaguar rolled forward into a dusty yard and stopped by the verandah to the house. Two men were in the yard, one by the gate and one waiting at the verandah. Both wore identical pale-gray safari suits. A third man in similar dress stood at an upstairs window. As the car halted, he withdrew.
Hannah, Parker, and Dillon were shown into the principal sitting room, cheaply but functionally furnished, and a few seconds later Horatio Livingstone appeared. He was a large fat man, and his jowly face was wreathed in smiles. He exuded bonhomie.
“Gentlemen, gentlemen, what an honor. Please, be seated.”
He gestured for coffee and seated himself in a large chair. His small, button eyes flickered from one to the other of the three white faces before him. Two other men entered the room and seated themselves behind the candidate. Livingstone gestured to them.
“Two of my associates—Mr. Smith and Mr. Brown.”
The two inclined their heads but said nothing.
“Now, Mr. Hannah, what can I do for you?”
“You will know, sir, that I am here to investigate the murder four days ago of Governor Sir Marston Moberley.”
Livingstone’s smile dropped, and he shook his head. “A dreadful thing,” he rumbled. “We were all deeply shocked. A fine, fine man.”
“I’m afraid I have to ask you what you were doing and where you were at five P.M. on Tuesday evening.”
“I was here, Mr. Hannah, here among my friends, who will vouch for me. I was working on a speech to the Smallholders Association for the next day.”
“And your associates, they were here? All here?”
“Every one of them. It was close to sundown. We had all retired for the day. Here, inside the compound.”
“Your associates—are they Barclayans?” asked Dillon.
Hannah shot him a glance of irritation; the man had promised to say nothing.
Livingstone beamed. “Ah, no, I fear not. I and my fellow Barclayans have so little experience of organizing an election campaign, I felt I needed some administrative help.” He gestured and beamed again, a reasonable man among reasonable men. “The preparing of speeches, posters, pamphlets, public meetings. My associates are from the Bahamas. You wish to see their passports? They were all examined when they arrived.”
Hannah waved the necessity away. Behind Mr. Livingstone, Mr. Brown had lit a large cigar.
“Would you have any idea, Mr. Livingstone, who might have killed the Governor?” asked Hannah.
The fat man’s smile dropped again, and he adopted a mien of great seriousness. “Mr. Hannah, the Governor was helping us all on the road to our independence, to our final freedom from the British Empire. According to the policy of London. There was not the slightest motive for me or any of my associates to wish to harm him.”
Behind him, Mr. Brown held his cigar to one side, and with the much-elongated nail of his little finger, he flicked an inch of ash from the tip so that the ash fell to the floor. The burning ember never touched the flesh of his finger.
McCready knew he had seen that gesture somewhere before. “Will you be holding any public meetings today?” he asked quietly.
Livingstone’s small black eyes switched toward him. “Yes, at twelve I am addressing my brothers and sisters of the fishing community on the docks,” he said.
“Yesterday there was a disturbance when Mr. Johnson addressed people in Parliament Square,” said Dillon.
Livingstone showed no pleasure in the ruining of his rival’s meeting. “A single heckler,” he snapped.
“Heckling is also part of the democratic process,” observed Dillon.
Livingstone stared at him, expressionless for once. Behind the creased jowls, he was angry. McCready re
alized he had seen that expression before; on the face of Idi Amin of Uganda, when he had been contradicted.
Hannah glowered at Dillon and rose. “I won’t take up any more of your time, Mr. Livingstone,” he said.
The politician, exuding jollity again, escorted them to the door. Two more gray safari suits saw them off the premises. Different men. That made seven of them, including the one at the upstairs window. All were pure Negroid except Mr. Brown, who was much paler, a quadroon, the only one who dared smoke without asking, the man in charge of the other six.
“I would be grateful,” said Hannah in the car, “if you would leave the questioning to me.”
“Sorry,” said Dillon. “Strange man, didn’t you think? I wonder where he spent the years between leaving here as a teenager and returning six months ago.”
“No idea,” said Hannah. It was only later, in London, when he was thinking things over, that he would wonder at Dillon’s remark about Livingstone leaving Sunshine as a teenager. It was Missy Coltrane who had told him, Desmond Hannah, that. Dillon had not been there.
At half-past nine, they arrived at the gates of Marcus Johnson’s estate on the northern flank of Sawbones Hill.
Johnson’s style was completely different from Livingstone’s. He was clearly a wealthy man. An assistant in psychedelic beach shirt and black glasses opened the wrought-iron gates to the drive and let the Jaguar proceed up the raked gravel to the front door. Two gardeners were at work, tending the lawns, flower beds, and earthenware jars of bright geraniums.
The house was a spacious, two-story building with a roof of green glazed tiles, every block and stick of it imported. The three Englishmen alighted in front of a pillared Colonial portico and were led inside. They followed their guide, a second brightly shirted “assistant,” across a reception area floored in marble slabs and furnished with European and Spanish-American antiques. Rugs from Bokhara and Kashan splashed the cream marble.
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