One of those was Maurice – or Maureece, as the all-smiling, dreadlocked owner of the car hire place near the bay pronounced it. Maurice’s speciality was banged-up old nails, and for thirty dollars he offered Ben a day’s rental on a Toyota four-wheel-drive that looked as though it might have done service in the Iraqi desert at some stage of its very long life. No paperwork, and Maurice didn’t take any notice of the object, wrapped in a blanket, that Ben had brought with him from the moored yacht and loaded into the back of the Toyota. Ben was liking the guy already.
‘Visiting someone on the island?’ Maurice asked with a beaming smile, pocketing Ben’s cash.
‘Old pal of mine lives here,’ Ben said. ‘We lost touch a while back, but I thought I’d drop by.’
‘I know most folks on this island. What’s his name?’
The list of what that L initial could stand for had been growing in Ben’s head: Lionel, Louis, Lucien, Luther, Luke, Lloyd … ‘We called him “Mossy” in the army. Mossy Moss,’ he said, playing it safe.
Maurice reflected for a moment. ‘Name don’t ring no bells. You sure he lives here? Lot of people come and go.’
‘Maybe he moved away,’ Ben said. ‘No worries. All I want to do is chill out for a while.’
‘You sure come to the right place for that. Nearest thing to Paradise on earth.’
‘That’s good to hear,’ Ben muttered to himself as he drove away in a cloud of dust.
On an island no more than ten miles long by one mile wide, it was only a short drive to the first of the hotels on Ben’s list. There were just three on the island, which made his process of elimination a good bit easier.
His routine was the same in all of them: ‘Hi, I’m looking for a friend of mine, Mr Moss. I think he might have checked out, and wondered if he’d maybe left a forwarding address?’
Three attempts, three blanks, and the day was wearing on. No Mr L. Moss appeared on any of the hotel registers. Once his list was exhausted, Ben climbed back in the beaten-up Toyota and decided to pay a visit to the Little Cayman airport. Maybe he’d find someone there with a memory to jog.
Or maybe that was just a desperate long shot.
At the end of a dusty road flanked by grass-roofed huts, open-air bars and beachside villas, Ben reached the island’s only airfield. Now he could see what had made Nick’s mini-squadron of Trislanders so perfect for their purpose. Few other commercial aircraft could have made use of the short runway, which was no more than a strip of patchy grass, burned into yellow stubble by the sun.
The airport complex looked more like an old-fashioned filling station. A prefabricated building served as a check-in lounge and waiting room. An adjoining lean-to housed an ancient fire engine that probably hadn’t been driven in years. But what could have been a cheerful, laid-back environment was still clouded by the gloomy memory of the CIC air crash. A desultory queue of just seven passengers hung about in the check-in area waiting for the next shuttle flight. Which, the dour woman at the check-in desk informed Ben, was due in twenty minutes’ time.
He was beginning to realise he had a lot to learn about the detective business. What had started out feeling like a rich source of potential information was already crumbling away to nothing, and one look at the woman’s dull face told him there wasn’t much point in probing her with discreet questions. Forget playing the reporter card.
Behind the check-in counter was a small office scattered with the usual computer terminals and screens. He wondered if Jennifer Pritchard, or whatever her real name was, had been able to hack into the Little Cayman end of the computer system and make the footage from the day of the crash disappear from here too.
She probably had.
But it was still worth checking out. Heading casually into the men’s toilets, Ben closed himself in a cubicle. After a moment’s pause for the sake of realism, he worked the flush. While the pipes were groaning and gushing, he quickly stepped up on the toilet lid, reached up to the grimy window overhead and undid the window catch, so that it would be easy to slip through from outside. That part would have to wait until after dark.
There was the whole rest of the day to kill first. Just half a mile from the airport Ben found a little bar called Claude’s, parked the Toyota under some trees and wandered into the lazy atmosphere of the bar-room, where a few drinkers were sitting round playing cards and sweating in the heat. The radio was playing Stevie Ray Vaughan’s cover version of Voodoo Chile. The most active guys in the place were the two workmen who were busy mounting a large mirror on the wall behind the bar.
The barman was a chunky, fleshy white guy of around fifty, in a flowery short open halfway to the waist. He turned away from surveying the workmen and greeted Ben with a surly nod. ‘I’m Claude. What can I get you?’
‘Whisky.’
‘Whisky it is. You want the regular or the expensive?’
‘That one,’ Ben said, spotting the half-full bottle of eighteen-year-old special cask strength Islay malt on the counter.
‘The hard stuff,’ Claude said, reaching for the bottle.
‘Make it a double,’ Ben said. He perched on a stool and laid a twenty dollar note on the bar. When Claude set the glass down in front of him, he drained it down in one gulp. Feeling better already, he lit a cigarette. The ashtray on the bar read ‘Quint’s shark fishing’.
‘I’ll have another double,’ he said to Claude.
Claude looked at him, raised an eyebrow and picked up the bottle again. ‘Go easy with this stuff,’ he said as he poured it out. ‘This ain’t your normal whisky.’
‘Helps me think,’ Ben said.
‘It goes to people’s heads. Makes ’em crazy if they can’t handle it.’
‘First time I’ve heard of a barman telling people not to drink.’
Claude pulled a face. ‘Yeah, well, the last time I had a customer start knocking down too much of this stuff, I ended up with three hundred bucks damage.’ He pointed angrily at the new mirror that the workmen had almost finished mounting to the wall.
‘I’ll have to try not to smash anything,’ Ben said, turning to his drink.
‘Fucking prick,’ Claude muttered.
Ben looked sharply up at him – then realised Claude was still complaining about his troublesome customer. He obviously hadn’t got over it yet. ‘Comes in here bawling everyone out, acting the big shot. Treats Raoul like shit. Then starts flashing cash in here like there’s no tomorrow. No tomorrow. I like that one. That’s funny.’
‘You think so?’ Ben said, thinking about carrying his drink over to one of the empty tables.
Claude grinned. ‘Sure. Cause for him there really was no tomorrow. Raoul took him to the plane. You know, the plane that crashed?’
Now Ben was giving it his attention. ‘Yeah, I get the part about the plane. But I don’t get who Raoul is.’
‘Cab driver. My brother in law. Anyway, this prick hires him to drive him to the airfield. On the way, tells him to stop here so he can tank himself up even more than he is already. Raoul says, he’s not a fucking chauffeur. Guy throws a wad of dough at him. So Raoul waits for him in the car. Guy starts knocking back that same whisky you’re drinking. Pretty soon he’s out of control with it. Carrying on about how he’s flying to London or someplace and how he’s gonna kick ass.’ Claude made a dismissive gesture. ‘Like I was interested. I just wanted this loudmouth sonofabitch out of my place, and I told him so. Now he’s really pissed off. Me and Dave had to sling his ass out of the door, but not before he’d managed to throw his glass through my damn mirror.’
Claude turned and motioned towards its replacement above the bar. ‘I liked that old mirror. Hung there more than fifteen years, and some asshole who can’t hold his liquor goes and smashes it.’ He pointed at Ben’s glass. ‘So all I’m saying is, mister, go easy on that stuff. You’re still thirsty after this one, I’ll pour you a beer. How’s that?’
‘I’ll pass on the beer,’ Ben said. ‘Where can I find Raoul?’
&n
bsp; Claude looked at him. ‘What for?’
‘I need a taxi ride,’ Ben said.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
‘Where to, mon?’ Raoul drawled over his shoulder with a Jamaican lilt as Ben climbed in the back of the taxicab outside Claude’s thirty minutes later. The Peugeot 504 made Ben’s rental Toyota look showroom-new. Reggae thumped over the speakers and the tang of cannabis smoke was imbued into the worn-out fabric of the seats.
‘How about a little scenic tour?’ Ben said.
‘Sure,’ Raoul said, lurching away from Claude’s. ‘You wanna go right round the island? It ain’t a big place.’
‘Just as far as it takes for you to answer a few questions,’ Ben said, tossing a thin wad of cash over the backrest of the front passenger seat. Raoul thumbed the money expertly with one hand as he drove, and flashed Ben a dazzling smile in the rear-view mirror. ‘What you wanna know?’
‘Tell me about the guy who smashed up Claude’s place.’
‘You a cop?’ Raoul looked worried for a second, probably thinking about the pot he’d got stashed away in the glove compartment or somewhere. Ben knew that the Cayman laws on ganja-smoking were pretty Draconian.
‘A cop’s the last thing I am,’ Ben told him. ‘Relax. Talk to me about this guy you drove to the airport the day the plane went down.’
‘A real rat’s ass,’ Raoul declared , launching enthusiastically into his story. ‘He was already totally canned when I went to pick him up. By the time we got to Claude’s, the guy’da picked a fight with Mike Tyson.’
‘Why’s that?’
‘Because of what was on the radio,’ Raoul said simply.
‘He didn’t like your music?’ Ben said.
‘No, mon. He didn’t like the news.’
‘The news?’
Raoul nodded. ‘The news about London. You know, the terrorist thing? Bombs and shit? They were talking about the sisterfucker that did it. This guy, he suddenly goes crazy. Starts yelling at me: “Turn that crap off! Turn it off right now or you can kiss my ass for your money!” So I turned it off. Like I’m gonna lose my fare over what goes on in fuckin’ London, right?’
‘Claude says he got you to drop him off at the bar and wait for him. What happened next?’
‘Drunk fuck. After they threw him out, he gets back in the taxi. I take him to meet the plane, like he wanted.’
‘You saw him get on the plane?’
Raoul shrugged. ‘Sure. He got on the motherfucking plane and it flew away. Then it crashed.’ He shrugged again. ‘Feel sorry for the rest of those folks. Not for Mister A-hole.’
‘You wouldn’t happen to know Mr A-hole’s name?’ Ben said.
Raoul waved towards the glove box. ‘Guess it must be in my book,’ he said.
‘Another ten bucks in it for you if you let me see it,’ Ben said.
‘No problemo.’ Raoul flipped open the glove box, battered about inside, yanked out a tattered and much-thumbed notepad and passed it back over his shoulder for Ben to examine. Raoul had his own special book-keeping system. Ben turned back a few pages, tracing his finger down the date entries scrawled in the grubby left-hand margin until he’d worked his way back to July 23.
And there it was: there in Raoul’s chicken-scratch capitals, the name he was looking for.
‘Moss,’ Ben read out loud. Beside it was the name ‘Palm Tree Lodge’.
‘That’s the guy,’ Raoul said.
‘This address. That’s where you picked him up from?’
‘Uh-huh. So what now, mon?’
Ben had a feeling he wouldn’t be returning to the airfield that day. ‘Scenic tour’s over,’ he said. ‘Take me back to my car. Then you can show me the way to Palm Tree Lodge.’
CHAPTER TWENTY
Palm Tree Lodge was one of a row of little white wooden houses scattered along a deserted stretch of beach. As Raoul’s taxi disappeared into the distance, Ben climbed out of the Toyota and trudged across the soft white sand. Palms rustled overhead, shading him from the late afternoon sun as he walked up to the house. He climbed the three sandy steps to the veranda, knocked on the front door and waited for a response. There was none. After a couple more knocks, he crossed the shady veranda to the nearest window, and peered through.
The place looked empty. Chairs had been stacked up in a corner, as if cleaners had gone through the place. Ben headed back down the steps to the sand.
The next house along the beach was just about visible through the trees. As Ben approached he saw a dusty Renault Scenic parked outside, and a couple of kids’ bicycles propped against the rail of the veranda. He could smell charcoal smoke and grilling sausages. Rounding the side of the property he caught sight of a twenty-something guy in colourful shorts, flip-flops and a Whitesnake T-shirt, tending to a spitting, flaming barbeque. In the background, two young children were diligently helping their mother set the picnic table.
The couple smiled amicably as Ben approached. He apologised for interrupting them, and asked if they knew whether the place next door was vacant – if it was, he told them, he’d be interested in renting it.
‘Can’t help you there,’ the guy said, flipping a sausage away from the flames. ‘We only got here this morning. But we got the number of the agency that rents them out. Babe, can you get the card from inside?’
Armed with the number, Ben thanked them and continued up the beach. He took out his phone as he walked. It was after six, but he hoped there might still be someone in the property agency office. Just as the answer-phone was about to kick in, someone picked up. ‘Is that Sunshine Villas?’ Ben said. ‘I was interested in renting one of your properties. Palm Tree Lodge. Can you tell me if it’s vacant?’
‘Sorry, sir,’ came the reply. ‘That isn’t one of ours. I believe it’s let privately.’
‘Would you know who I could contact about the place?’
‘Afraid not, sir. But if it’s a beach property you’re interested in, we do have a whole selection of—’
Ben cut them off and put the phone back in his pocket. He walked on, following the curve of the beach. From beyond a thick stand of palms up ahead he could hear the offbeat sound of Afro-Cuban jazz drifting towards him on the breeze. As he passed by the palms he caught sight of a little open-air beach bar at the foot of a wooden jetty, shaded under a stripy awning. He headed across the white sand towards it.
Feeling thirsty and maybe influenced by the catchy Cuban rhythms, Ben ordered a daiquiri at the bar. The owner-manager, a cheerful black guy in a Fedora hat, was a pretty useful cocktail maker. White rum, lime juice, not too heavy on the sugar. Ben took his time over his drink, deep in thought. The breeze from the sea was freshening as later afternoon turned into early evening.
‘Nice little place you have here,’ he said when he went to get a refill.
‘Pays my bills, you know?’
Ben pointed at the white wooden house in the distance. ‘You wouldn’t happen to know the guy who lives in Palm Tree Lodge over there, would you? Mr Moss?’
‘Oh, you must mean Larry,’ the barman laughed over the rattle of the cocktail shaker.
‘Yeah, Larry,’ Ben said, like he’d already known.
‘You know him?’
‘Sure, we grew up together in Ireland,’ Ben said.
‘Shit, I never would’ve taken Larry for an Irish guy. Sounded real English to me. You here on vacation, mister?’
Ben nodded. ‘Thought I’d drop in on my old friend. But he’s not at home.’
‘That figures. Haven’t seen him for a week or so. Must have gone, I reckon. Shame. He was one of my best customers the coupla months he was here. Always running out of booze, always needed ol’ Cuban George to sell him a bottle. He was here just ’bout every day.’
‘Did Larry mention anything about a trip to London?’
‘Don’t think he said nuthin’ about that. We talked about sport mostly. Sometimes he didn’t talk at all. But I sure do miss him.’
‘Pity when you lose a good custo
mer.’
‘Oh, there’ll be another,’ Cuban George said, waving in the direction of Palm Tree Lodge. ‘They come and go, you know? Sometimes one guy on his own. Sometimes two at a time. Mostly they keep themselves to themselves.’ He raised an eyebrow meaningfully. ‘Me, I don’t ask. I got an open mind. Questions get a guy into a whole lot of trouble.’
‘You got that right,’ Ben said. ‘So the place is empty right now?’
‘I ain’t seen nobody there for a couple of days. After Larry left, there was a few guys hanging around there. Coupla cars. Then nothing since.’
The place must have been totally cleaned out, Ben thought. ‘Do you remember what day Larry left?’ he asked.
‘Wouldn’t normally, but it was the day that plane went down, man. That’s a day nobody round here’s gonna forget in a hurry.’ Cuban George shook his head mournfully, then suddenly frowned as a thought came to him. ‘Say, you don’t s’pose Larry was on that plane, do you?’
‘I’m sure Larry’s just fine,’ Ben said. ‘Do you know who owns the place? I’m looking to rent something myself. It’d suit me down to the ground.’
‘No idea, man. Like I say, I never ask questions.’
As the sun went down, Ben sipped down his second daiquiri and went over what he knew so far. There couldn’t be much doubt that Larry Moss had been the enigmatic thirteenth passenger on board the fatal CIC flight that day. It seemed that he’d been on his way to London: possibly intending to take a direct flight there from Owen Roberts on Grand Cayman, maybe via Havana, Mexico City or Miami. It didn’t matter. What mattered was that someone hadn’t wanted him to get there. And didn’t want anyone else to know he’d ever boarded the plane.
That was where the facts ran out and the questions resumed: the whos and whys that, right now, were pretty unanswerable. Ben didn’t like dead ends.
‘Say hi to Larry for me if you see him,’ Cuban George called as Ben walked away across the sand.
‘I’ll be sure to do that,’ Ben muttered in reply. As he retraced his steps back down the beach, the glorious reds and golds of the sunset dipped over the sea and silhouetted the palm trees against the sky like something out of a picture postcard. The empty lodge was half-hidden in shadows by the time he got back there. Ben climbed the steps onto the porch, glanced left, glanced right, then kicked the door in with a crump of splintering wood.
Passenger 13 (Ben Hope eBook originals) Page 8
