‘Who’d have thought that the chauffeur who tricked me in St Ives a week or so ago would end up indirectly setting us free purely because he was vain enough to put on that ridiculous feather earring,’ Laura remarked the following morning as she and Tariq sat on the balcony of Guava Villa tucking into a breakfast of fried plantains, baked beans, scrambled eggs and pancakes dripping with maple syrup. Skye crunched up bacon slices at their feet.
‘I almost feel sorry for Celia and Sebastian LeFever,’ Tariq said, spearing a piece of pancake and several slices of plantain. ‘When Calvin Redfern escapes or we find him, which will happen, their lives won’t be worth living.’
‘You can’t possibly feel sorry for them,’ Laura told him. They’d enjoyed an early morning swim in the bay and her short blonde hair was standing up in spikes. ‘I hate to imagine what grisly fate they had in store for us. They’re the kind of people who keep sharks in their swimming pool. We’d have been fed to them, a limb at a time.’
Watching pelicans dive for fish in the lagoon below them, Laura almost pinched herself. It was hard to take in that they were temporarily safe and in this beautiful place when it had seemed certain their visit to Antigua would end in arrest or worse. Collapsed on the roadside the previous night, their situation and that of her uncle had seemed hopeless. Then, like Good Samaritans, Joshua and his old horse had come along.
‘Where you folks headed?’ he’d asked them, as if there was nothing in the least unusual about coming across an English girl, a Bengali boy and a Siberian Husky sitting on the roadside in the moonlight.
‘Blue Haven Resort,’ Tariq answered, quick as a flash. ‘We’re staying there. We took our dog for a walk and got a bit lost.’
‘Dat right?’ Joshua muttered but he didn’t say anything. ‘Well, hop in, boy. Don’t know exackerly which hotel dat one is. I ain’t from around here. But I’m guessing it’s near Blue Haven bay, not ten minutes down dis here track.’
And with a click of Joshua’s tongue and flick of the reins, they were on their way.
‘Are you nuts?’ Laura whispered to Tariq as they bumped through the darkness along a beach road. The air smelled of coconut and sea salt. Skye hung over the side of the cart, fur ruffling in the breeze, determined not to miss a single scent. ‘The Straight A gang booked us in there. We might as well call them and say, “We’re staying in the most obvious place in Antigua. Come and get us!”’
‘It’s because it’s so obvious that we should go there,’ Tariq told her. ‘They won’t think of looking for us there for days, and by then we’ll be long gone. Anyway, grown-ups always underestimate kids. They don’t think we can find our way out of a paper bag. Celia and Sebastian will be picturing us as couple of crying babies, lost in the rainforest, right now. The last thing that would occur to them is that we might hitch a ride to our hotel, calmly check in and stay the night.’
‘If the hotel allow us to check in without a grown up,’ Laura said. ‘They might not. They might even call the police. But if it works, it’s a great idea. Matt Walker says the simplest plan is usually the best one.’
She scooted along the wooden bench. ‘You said you’re not from around here, Joshua. Where’s home?’
He pointed at the shimmering sea. ‘Dat’s home, right der.’
Laura thought at first that he meant he lived on a boat, but then she saw it: a dark shape on the horizon. A swirl of cloud obscured the top.
‘Dat der’s Montserrat.’
‘Montserrat, the volcano island?’ Laura felt her heart clench. It had been the part of the trip her uncle had been most looking forward to.
‘Sure is, honey love.’ Only with Joshua’s accent it sounded like ‘onny lov’.
‘Were you there when it erupted?’ Tariq asked excitedly. He’d been learning about volcanoes at school and found them fascinating.
‘Sure was. And for tree years before dat when earthquakes trembled and rocked da island like it was a dinosaur wit’ indigestion. Da Soufriere Hills Volcano erupted on 18 Joolly 1995 after lying dormant for centuries. For two years dat volcano billowed smoke twenny-four seven. Burning rocks and steam came pouring down the mountain. Dey buried Plymouth, our capital city. Nowadays, it ain’t nutting but a ghost town.’
‘My uncle says that two-thirds of the islanders were forced to flee and that most of them never went back,’ Laura said. ‘Is that was happened to your family?’
At the mention of family she was reminded once again of her uncle’s plight. Her stomach heaved. Where was he? Had they hurt him? Was he afraid? Would she ever see him again? She took a deep breath. Yes, she told herself firmly, she would. She definitely would.
The cart slowed. An arching blue sign announced the Blue Haven Resort. A security guard stepped from his hut and regarding them enquiringly. Joshua was talking but she’d missed some of it.‘… because of dem skeletons,’ he was saying.
‘I beg your pardon,’ Laura said. ‘Would you mind repeating that?’
‘I say my wife and I were ’vacuated after the volcano, but we went back soon as we could. We lost everything but we wanted to help rebuild our homeland. Dey call it da Emerald Isle, you know. Folks say it’s as lush and green and beautiful as Ireland. All was coming along nicely till around one year ago when da skeletons started.’
Tariq craned forward. ‘What skeletons?’
‘Skeletons dat dance on the slopes of da volcano. I tell my wife it’s a trick of da light, but she tell me she see dem clear as day close to the dolphin place. Other people see dem too. Not once. Two, three, five times. So I move her to Antigua because she weren’t giving me no peace about it.’
‘You said something about a dolphin place,’ Laura reminded him. ‘An aquarium or dolphinarium, you mean?’
‘No, no, it’s a scientific company. Researching how to save whales and sea life and such like. My friend, Rupert Long, he’s a scientist his self – a volcanologist – he say dey all crazy nutters down dere. Da Government advised dem not build dat laboratory right next to da volcano, but dey insist it’s important for der work.’
Why is it that people who are passionate about saving whales and other mammals are always labelled as ‘crazy’, Laura wondered.
The security guard strode up to them, bristling. ‘Move it along,’ he said sharply. ‘No loitering. This is private property.’
‘We’re guests of the hotel,’ Laura informed him. Skye loomed out of the darkness, snarling, and the guard jumped back.
She hugged the old man. ‘Joshua, you’ve saved our lives. I don’t know how to thank you.’
‘Go to Montserrat,’ he said, shaking Tariq’s hand. ‘We need tourists if we is ever to recover. If you need help or want to get up close and personal wit a volcano, find Rupert Long and tell him Joshua sent you. Take care y’all. Nice dog, by da way.’
With a click of his tongue and a squeak of wheels, he and his horse were gone.
‘Now look here, kids,’ said the guard, ‘I don’t know what you think you’re playing at, but you’re not staying at Blue Haven. The kind of people who come here arrive by limo or private taxi. They don’t turn up on the back of a cart and they don’t bring wolves.’
Laura thrust their passports into his hand, lifted her chin and stared at him with as much authority as she could manage. ‘My name’s Laura Marlin and this is Tariq Miah and my husky, Skye. Back in England we won a prize for a dream holiday, which has so far been a complete nightmare. The final straw was when our limousine burst into flames. We’re hoping for more from your lovely resort. Now if you’ll excuse us, we’re very tired and we’d like to check in.’
The manager behind the reception desk hadn’t been quite so easy to convince.
‘Your name is on the booking so I don’t have a problem with that,’ she told Laura. ‘But it’s most unorthodox to have children checking in on their own, especially with no luggage. Tell me again how you came to arrive here without your uncle.’
Laura decided that if they were ever to get a meal
, a shower and a decent night’s sleep, now was the time to be economical with the truth. ‘He’s a detective,’ she explained, omitting to mention that Calvin Redfern had left the police force over a year earlier and now investigated illegal fishing. ‘He’s tied up with an important case – a kidnapping case – and has been delayed, but he’ll be with us as soon as he can. He apologises and asks for your cooperation and understanding at this difficult time.’
As she’d suspected, the word ‘detective’ had a magical effect. In a matter of minutes, she, Tariq and Skye were on a golf cart being whisked through the palms and vines to their villa. They’d fallen asleep to a soundtrack of cicadas and frogs and the soothing swish of the sea.
‘The problem,’ Laura said at lunchtime the next day, ‘is that we don’t know where to start looking. Antigua is a huge island. My uncle could be anywhere. We might as well search for a star in the sky or a grain of sand on one of the three hundred and sixty-five beaches.’
She rested her elbows on the railings of the Driftwood Kitchen, a thatched diner open to the elements, and gazed down at the lagoon. She felt very despondent. It was bizarre being in the island paradise she’d dreamt of, but being too frantic about the fate of her uncle to enjoy it.
On the white shore below her, families and bronzed young couples paddled in water dappled with every conceivable shade of blue. Teenagers made comical attempts to windsurf or lay sprawled on deck chairs, baking in the honeyed sunlight, oblivious to the darker side of the Caribbean.
‘We will find him,’ Tariq said determinedly. ‘I don’t care what it takes, we are going to do it.’
He perched restlessly on the stool beside Laura, absent-mindedly rubbing the husky’s ears and scanning every face that passed. They both knew that it was only a matter of time before the Straight A gang figured out where they were. If you were eleven years old and a stranger to it, Antigua felt as big as Africa. If you were an adult with limitless money and knew the island like the back of your hand, it was child’s play. And Celia and Sebastian could afford to hire every able-bodied man in Antigua to comb the island until they were found.
Tariq sipped the water from a hairy coconut. As they’d hoped, all meals and drinks were included in their prize, and Celia’s money had paid for some extra essentials: clean T-shirts, shorts, trousers, socks, underwear, sunblock, toothpaste and toothbrushes, swimming costumes, sweatshirts and a backpack.
‘Let’s start with what we know,’ Tariq said. ‘Or with what we think happened. We’re pretty sure that Calvin Redfern was kidnapped by a couple of Straight A gang members posing as pirates. If that’s true, we could make enquiries about the pirate galleon and ask if there were any changes of staff that day.’
‘That’s a good idea in theory, but what if the pirates have friends on the boat or actually work on the boat themselves?’ Laura said. ‘We’d be walking right into the Straight A gang’s hands.’
‘Okay, how about doing the obvious thing again? We could go to the police.’
‘And say what? That my uncle, who we have no proof was ever on the ship, has been kidnapped by the Straight A gang? Dozens of people saw the LeFevers claim us as their children on the ship, and heard us call them Mum and Dad. They’re about as likely to believe that the LeFevers are part of an international crime syndicate as they are to believe that pirate actors put Calvin Redfern in a conjurer’s trunk.’
She sighed. ‘What we need is a clue. Just one tiny clue.’
A waitress with a gap-toothed smile and a name tag identifying her as Ira put two spicy shrimp salads, a bottle of Susie’s hot sauce and a basket of bread on the narrow ledge that served as a table in the Driftwood Kitchen. ‘Enjoy!’
‘Thank you,’ said Laura, forgetting her worries for a moment and smiling as Ira offered a large bone to Skye. He took it delicately and carried it over to a nearby patch of lawn. ‘Skye says thank-you too. You’ve just made a husky very happy.’
‘Happy is good. Happy is what we aim to do.’ Ira brushed Laura’s fair skin with her dark hand. ‘Very sensible you are, darlin’. Staying out of the sun on the first day. A lotta our guests, they so excited to see our gorgeous clear water, they do nothing but swim and roast, swim and roast, like they hogs on a spit. By nightfall they’re about ready to be carved. They has to spend the rest of their vacation in the shade, plastered with aloe vera.’
‘Are there sharks in the bay?’ Tariq asked her.
‘Only on Sondays,’ she retorted, straight-faced. Turning away she giggled, delighted at her own joke.
‘Hey Laura, look at the back of her T-shirt,’ Tariq said in a low voice. ‘“Marine Concern”. Wasn’t that the name on that badge you showed me on the ship, the one that had a smiling dolphin on it?’
He hopped up and went over to the counter, where the waitress was loading a tray with iced drinks. ‘Excuse me, Miss Ira,’ he said, ‘I noticed the dolphin on your shirt. What is Marine Concern? Is it a charity?’
She beamed at him over the top of a tray of Pina Coladas. Polite children were a rarity at Blue Haven so she made a special effort when she came across them. ‘You like dolphins and whales? Marine Concern, they doin’ research on how best to save ’em. They very popular here in the islands. People give ’em millions to continue their studies.’
‘Laura and I love dolphins and whales,’ Tariq told her. ‘Where is Marine Concern located? We’d really like to visit.’
Ira hoisted the tray onto her shoulder. ‘You’ll need a helicopter or a boat. And a life insurance policy. They is based in Monsterrat – right close to the volcano. They is either brave or crazy, that much I know. That volcano, it could go any day. Believe me when I tell you, you don’t wanna go anywhere near it.’
He thanked her for her help and returned to Laura and his shrimp salad.
‘Montserrat?’ Laura said. ‘You mean, the Emerald Isle with the dancing skeletons and the volcano that could erupt at any moment? Sounds like the kind of place I’ve been waiting to visit my whole life.’
Tariq couldn’t help laughing. ‘All I’m saying is it’s the only clue we have. You thought there was a chance that the pirates might have dropped it. What if you’re right? The pirates didn’t strike me as the kind of people who care about dolphins.’
‘Mmm, I doubt if those pirates care about their own mothers. And if Marine Concern is the place Joshua mentioned – the one with “crazy nutter” scientists working in the shadow of the volcano, it might be worth a visit. Where better to hide my uncle than a place where nobody wants to go because, any day now, a river of orange lava is going to come pouring down the mountain and swallow everything.’
Tariq sprinkled hot sauce all over his shrimp. His eyes met Laura’s and she saw behind his smile a steely determination. ‘How soon do we leave?’ he said.
AT 4 P.M. THEY were at the helicopter pad for the last volcano tour of the day. Laura had been worried that without their competition vouchers – snatched by the Straight A gang – they wouldn’t be able to afford the flight, but it turned out that Calvin Redfern had been so excited about seeing Montserrat, he’d reserved a couple of spots in advance before they’d even left Cornwall.
It was eerie to see her uncle’s name on the register. It was almost as if he was speaking to her from … From where? Laura had no idea. ‘Beyond the grave’ was the phrase that popped into her head, but she pushed it out. Thinking positively had saved her life once before, and she was determined to use it to save her uncle’s.
‘Sorry kids, no pooches allowed,’ the pilot told them when he arrived. A button nose and a cow’s lick at the front of his fair hair gave him a cartoon character appearance. He barely looked old enough to drive, let alone fly a helicopter.
Laura had her response prepared. ‘He’s not a pooch, he’s a police dog, and my uncle, Detective Inspector Redfern, urgently needs him to help solve a case in Montserrat. It’s a matter of life and death.’
In a way, every word was true.
‘A police dog you say. A mat
ter of life and death. That puts a different slant on things.’
He gave them a sideways grin. ‘You’re not messing with me, are you?’
‘We’re not messing with you,’ Tariq assured him. ‘Skye is urgently needed to track down a missing person.’
‘So urgently you thought you’d take a volcano tour first?’
‘That,’ Laura informed him, ‘is for research purposes.’
He looked over at the hangar, which also served as an office. ‘If my manager was here, he’d kill me for even considering it. Health and safety and all that.’
‘He’s not?’ Laura asked hopefully.
The young man tugged at his cow’s lick and scowled. ‘He’s on vacation again. Oh, what the heck. You’re my last passengers of the day. If it’s a matter of life and death …’
The volcano was smoking. That was a shock. So was the sight of the former capital city, its shops and houses crushed and upended, all coated in a thick blanket of greeny-grey volcanic ash.
‘That’s Plymouth,’ explained the pilot. ‘Forty feet of ash and mud poured over the place and crushed it as if it was a toy village. I always think it looks like the abandoned set of some science fiction disaster movie.’
To reach Montserrat they flew across an expanse of aquamarine sea so clear they saw a couple of feeding whales. From the air, Antigua really was a paradise. A tropical island fringed with exquisite beaches and inviting lagoons. Montserrat was small by comparison, but the part of the island undamaged by the volcano was the emerald green Joshua had talked about. Pastel-painted houses dotted the third of the island deemed safe from the lava flows. Cows and goats grazed on the edges of patchwork fields.
The helicopter doors were glass from floor to ceiling and the craft tipped and rolled as the pilot pointed out the sights. It was like being whooshed across the sky in a glass bubble. As they buzzed around the volcano’s grey rim, Laura had to fight back a feeling of vertigo.
Laura Marlin Mysteries 2: Kidnap in the Caribbean Page 9
