Blood and Belonging

by Vicki Delany

  Next, I called the front desk and asked them to get me a taxi. Ten minutes later I was heading across the island to the main police station near the airport. I decided not to call ahead to tell them I was coming. With the bosses not in, I didn’t want to get tied up in trying to find the right person to talk to. I didn’t even know what I hoped to accomplish. I just went on impulse. I wasn’t even sure I was heading for the right place. But the web page said this was where the Criminal Investigation Division was located. The two-story building was painted a cheerful pink. It had a full upstairs balcony and a neat garden. It might have been a second-rate hotel except for the white vans decorated in red and blue with the big word POLICE on the sides.

  I told the cabbie not to wait and hopped out. Trying to look as though I wasn’t just any other tourist, which I was, I’d dressed in khaki chinos and a blue shirt with a collar. I introduced myself to the receptionist as “Sergeant Ray Robertson, RCMP.” I told her I wanted to speak to a senior detective. She didn’t look terribly impressed, but she picked up the phone and told me to take a seat.

  I’d barely sat down before a man came into the room. He was dressed pretty much like I was and gave me a broad smile full of perfect, white teeth. He held out his hand. “Detective Inspector John Summerton. Pleased to meet you.” He was large and very dark, with an accent straight out of the back alleys of London, England.

  We shook hands, and he led me into the station. Men and women, uniformed and not, typed at computers and paid us no attention. We went into what I assumed, by the undecorated walls and stark furniture, was an interview room.

  “I wasn’t expecting you until next week,” Summerton said.

  “Huh?” I replied.

  His smile faded. “You’re from Ottawa, right?”

  “Only indirectly,” I said. “Sorry if there’s been a misunderstanding. I am with the RCMP, but I’m stationed in Haiti. I’m here on vacation. I was involved in an incident yesterday and wanted to talk it over with someone.”

  His look was still wary, but he gestured to a chair. “Take a seat.”

  I explained about the body in the water. The knife wound. How I knew who he was. Robert Savin’s sudden leave of absence and his disappearance from his home.

  “Give me a minute,” Summerton said. He left the room. He came back before I’d managed to find out what my daughters were up to on Facebook. “I checked the report on that call. The body’s unidentified. Our officer says death by drowning.”

  “That might be how he died, but he was in the water because someone stuck a knife in his belly.”

  Summerton’s dark eyes studied my face for a long time. “I’ve been to Regina,” he said. “To the RCMP Academy. Tell me what you want us to do.”

  I let out a breath I hadn’t realized I’d been holding. I called up the pictures on my phone. First the one Pierre had sent me. Robert Savin’s official police photograph. He looked smart, handsome and proud. I showed it to Summerton. “Robert Savin, PNH. Haitian police. He was a student of mine at the police college in Haiti. Good man.” Then the photos I’d taken myself. “This is as I found him yesterday in the ocean off Grace Bay. This one shows what’s clearly a knife wound. Are you going to do an autopsy?”

  “It was not requested,” he said. “We have limited resources here. It will be requested now.”

  “Do you do autopsies here on the island?” In Haiti, bodies have to be sent to Miami or Montreal if the authorities hope to get them to give up their secrets.

  “Yes. I’ll see it’s done as soon as possible,” Summerton said.

  “Thanks. And this is a shot of the picture he had in a waterproof bag in his pants pocket. I recognize his brother, Jean-Claude. Aged fifteen or sixteen. Wants to be an American rap star.”

  Summerton snorted. “Don’t they all? This is a poor picture of a poor picture. I’ll locate the original.” He spoke briefly into his own phone.

  “Thanks,” I said again.

  “Why do you think your Haitian friend was in our sea?”

  “I’ve been told two refugee boats came in night before last.”

  He nodded. “At least two. One we captured, and we know of one that got away. It was dark. Many clouds, no moon. There’s a lot of shoreline in this country.” He laughed. “This country’s all shoreline. We can’t watch it all, all the time.”

  “I believe Jean-Claude might have been on one of those boats. If not last night, then an earlier one. He had a fight with his brother and ran away from home. He wanted to go to the States to be a rap star. Easy prey for a human-smuggling operation.”

  “And your friend?”

  “Robert might have followed him, pretending to be another refugee or working on the boat. He was discovered, knifed and tossed overboard. I’d like to find the boy, if I can.”

  Summerton nodded.

  I glanced outside. A man was trimming the hedges around the parking lot. Two women walked past, laughing. The sun was high in the sky, and the wide leaves of the palm trees swayed in the wind. Summerton followed my glance. “My parents are Belongers, but we lived in England for many years when I was a child. That’s where I went to school.” A Belonger, I knew, is what they call a person native to the Turks and Caicos Islands. “I thought it was cold there. I didn’t know what cold was until I went to Regina in February.” He almost visibly shuddered at the memory. “Now, I’m happy to be here. On our warm little island. We do what we can, Ray, but we can’t keep the problems of the world out.” He stood up. “Let’s go.”

  “Where?”

  “The refugee holding facility. The people taken off the boat would have been taken there. Other than the ones who went to the hospital. Send those pictures to my email account. Before we go, I’ll print them off so we have something to show them. This boy you seek may be there. Or someone who has seen him or his brother.”

  SIX

  Providenciales, or Provo as it’s called, may be paradise, but the holding facility is a mild version of hell. We drove to a cluster of dull cinder-block buildings on a patch of bare dusty ground. It was surrounded by high fencing topped with barbed wire. Hard to believe we were only a couple of miles from the luxury hotels and gorgeous beaches of Grace Bay. Inside the fence, men shuffled about aimlessly. Their expressions were hostile. A group of women sat in a patch of shade and watched six children kicking a soccer ball around in the dirt. The women barely glanced at us, but the kids stopped their game to watch us with wide, wary eyes. I thought of Jenny, enjoying her day of pampering at the spa.

  Different worlds.

  Detective Inspector Summerton and I were shown to a small, cramped office containing a desk and a single chair. The room was too hot, and the air too close.

  “How long do you keep these people here?” I asked Summerton while we waited for someone to help us.

  “They’re photographed and fingerprinted. A quick record check to make sure they’re not wanted by us. Then most of them will be flown straight back to Haiti. That’s an enormous expense for a country this small. If there are children on their own, they’ll be kept until we can find a place for them.”

  “You get kids traveling alone?”

  He shrugged. “Sometimes their parent dies on the boat. Sometimes they’re put on the boat to follow one who went earlier.”

  The man in charge of the holding facility soon joined us. His skin was the color of midnight, and he had the unlikely name of O’Reilly. We all shook hands. Summerton explained what we wanted. O’Reilly looked dubious, as well he might. I handed him the picture of Jean-Claude that had been printed off at the police station. He studied it carefully, but recognition did not light up his face. He gave it back to me with a shake of his head. “I do not know him. But he might be here. One of the others may know where he is. I will get the ones you want. You will wait here.”

  “One hundred and five came ashore night before last,” Summerton said to me. “An earlier lot is still here. This facility was built to hold a maximum of eighty people.”


  O’Reilly was soon back. “Come with me.” Clearly, a man of few words.

  The refugees who’d arrived the other night were brought into a large empty room to meet me. The men shuffled as they walked, full of anger and resentment. Some kept their eyes downcast. A few glared openly at me. The women were hesitant. Those who had children clung tightly to their hands.

  They were almost all men, with a few women and a scattering of kids. I didn’t see anyone I recognized. No Jean-Claude.

  They relaxed, if only slightly, when I spoke to them in French mixed with my poor Creole. “I am looking for a young man. He is not in trouble. He is a friend of mine. He might have been on your boat. Will you look at a picture?” I walked up and down the line, showing the photo of Jean-Claude. I started with the women, thinking they’d be more likely to notice a teenage boy. Some of them studied it carefully, wanting to be helpful. Some barely glanced at the photo before turning away with a sneer. One girl, maybe thirteen or fourteen, spent a long time looking at the picture. Then she stretched out her hand. Her nails were long, a couple broken at the quick. The red polish was badly chipped. I expected her to touch the paper. Instead, she ran her fingers over the back of my palm. I jerked away. When I looked at her face, she flicked her pink tongue across her lips. She wore a tight red skirt and a blouse with several buttons undone. Her sandals had three-inch heels. I moved on to the next person, the tips of my ears burning.

  No one said they knew Jean-Claude.

  “I am now going to show you another picture,” I said. “Of another man.”

  I’d cropped the shot of Robert as best I could to take out most of his police hat. I didn’t have to go far down the line before a woman sucked in a breath. She swore.

  “You know him?” I said.

  “He was one of them. He worked on the boat.”

  “He isn’t here.” I gestured to the people in the room. “Did he get off the boat?”

  She shrugged. “I was sick all the time. I thought I would die. One of them said he would throw me over the side. That man, he told him to leave me alone. I did not see him again.”

  “They fought,” the girl in the red skirt said. “Him and one of the others. And then he was gone.”

  “Splash,” a man said.

  “He fell over the side?”

  The man shrugged.

  “It was when we saw the police boat coming for us,” the girl said. “The bright lights. The noise. They said he had told them we were coming. They fought. Everyone was yelling, screaming. The children were crying. Some men jumped into the water. I did not see him, that man, again.”

  “He was kind,” the older woman said.

  Poor Robert. He wasn’t trained to go undercover. It sounded as if he’d been pretending to work for the snakeheads. His kindness to the refugees would have made him stick out like a sore thumb. A polite word. A friendly smile. Then a knife in the dark and the confusion. Tossed over the side in the chaos of the police raid.

  “Thanks,” I said. “You’ve been a big help.”

  “You need help?” The girl in the red skirt slid up to me. She touched my arm, smiled up into my face. She was very pretty. Her teeth were good, her complexion clear. She was slim but not too skinny. Her large black eyes were as empty as the heart of a snakehead. “I can help you in many ways, American man who speaks Creole,” she whispered.

  I peeled her hand off me. “No thanks.”

  “I can guess what she wanted,” Summerton said once we were in the hallway.

  “Poor kid,” I said. All she really wanted, I knew, was protection. “Let’s have a talk with the snakeheads. I might not be able to find Jean-Claude, but we should be able to get them for Robert’s murder.”

  Summerton grinned. “I admire your dedication, my friend. We’ve identified one man who seemed to be piloting the boat. I’ll talk to him. You’ll go back to your hotel.”

  “But…”

  “No. I brought you here to try to find a missing kid. This is now a murder investigation, Ray. You have no jurisdiction. You can’t be involved.”

  He was right. And I knew it. But I didn’t have to be happy about it.

  “I’ll keep an eye out for young Jean-Claude. I have your number. I’ll call you if I learn anything.”

  “I appreciate it,” I said. “If he did land in an earlier boat, what’s likely to happen to him?”

  “This is a small island, but if people do not want to be found…We do what we can. He’s a fit young man, you say. It’s possible he’s been trafficked into the construction trade or to another island to work fishing boats.”

  “You get a lot of trafficking here? That surprises me.”

  “It shouldn’t. Men are put into hard labor. Women, and even some girls, to service the tourists staying in the expensive hotels. I suspect that would have been the fate of your pretty young friend back there. There’s a great deal of money to be made in this country. Where there’s money, there are men ready to do whatever they can to get some of it. We break up one ring, another takes its place. The trafficked refugees are moved around the island. In some cases the police get news of where they are, but by the time they arrive, the refugees have been moved.”

  “They’re tipped off ?”

  “Probably. You must know, Ray, chances are not good Jean-Claude will ever be found.”

  I knew that too.

  SEVEN

  Summerton dropped me back at the hotel. He invited Jenny and me to his house for dinner, but I declined. I really was supposed to be on vacation here. Jenny wouldn’t be pleased if we started shoptalk.

  It was too hot to go for a run. Instead I headed for the beach and had a good hard swim. Then I went to the pool and the swim-up bar. A good swim-up bar is one of life’s greatest pleasures. I sat on a stool in the water and ordered a beer. The bartender was a young English-woman. She told me she was traveling the world before settling down. We chatted easily about the islands. I didn’t tell her what I was or where I was now living. I ordered a second beer and a platter of fried conch and fries. By the time I finished my meal, I was feeling a lot better. I was no stranger to the problems of the world. All I could do is what I could do. And let the rest go. I gave the bartender a healthy tip. Then I found a lounge chair under an umbrella near the pool and stretched out with my book.

  I was dozing lightly when Jenny found me. Her tanned skin glowed. Her blond hair was piled on top of her head. The nails on her fingers and toes had been painted a pretty pink that sparkled in the sun. She gave me a smile. “Nice day?”

  “All this lying around in the sun is exhausting.”

  She laughed. Jenny has a light, tinkling laugh. I love it. I love her.

  “Let’s go someplace special for dinner tonight,” I said. “Any place you like.”

  She leaned over and kissed me. She smelled of vanilla with a touch of peach. “I’m going up for my bathing suit. Be right back. If you’re so inclined you can get me a mojito.”

  “A husband’s work is never done.”

  We went to Coco Bistro for dinner. Nothing in Turks and Caicos is cheap—not for the tourists anyway. I swallowed heavily at the prices but reminded myself I was treating Jenny. She deserved it. She’d dressed for the occasion in a long white dress shot with silver threads that shimmered as she moved. The dress was accented by chunky turquoise jewelry. We snagged a good table under the palms. White lights twinkled in the trees. Candles shone on every table. We ate seafood and drank wine. We talked about our daughters and people we knew. Jenny’s brother was going through a tough divorce, and it was hard on her mom. We avoided any mention of Haiti or my job or our plans for the future. I managed to go the rest of the night without giving a thought to Robert or Jean-Claude Savin.

  The next morning, I was thinking about them again.

  Once again, the phone rang at breakfast. Once again, Jenny gave me a look.

  I checked the display. “Sorry,” I muttered. “Gotta take this.”

  Once again, I went onto
the verandah. Far out at sea, the horizon was black with clouds, but sun shone on the beach.

  “Thought you might be interested in seeing us at work,” Summerton said.

  “What’s up?”

  “We’ve had a tip about a construction company employing illegal workers. I’m heading out there now. No reason to think your young friend is one of them, but you can come along if you like. I’ll pick you up. Ten minutes.”

  “I’ll be waiting.”

  I went back to our table. “Sorry,” I said. “I have to go out for a while.”

  “Please, Ray,” Jenny said. “We’ve arranged a rental car for the day, remember? We’re going to Chalk Sound today and then to North Caicos on Thursday.”

  “You go and get the car. I should be back in a couple of hours.”

  “Ray.”

  “There’s this kid, Jenny. And a man I knew in Haiti.”

  “Can’t the local police handle it? You told me they’re Canadian-trained.”

  I threw up my hands. “I have to try.”

  She shoved a piece of toast in her mouth and chewed with quick, angry bites. Her eyes were like the sky over the ocean.

  I left the dining room.

  Summerton picked me up and we drove a couple of miles down the Leeward Highway. He slowed and turned onto a rough road heading toward the beach. In the distance, I could see a seven-story building. Nothing more than steel girders and concrete floors without walls.

  “A hotel under construction,” he said. “There was a lot of opposition to it being so tall. It’ll ruin the view from some of the other hotels. Somehow permission went through. The head of the planning department bought a very nice car shortly thereafter.”

  “Fancy that,” I said.

  “This is going to be a full-on raid, Ray,” Summerton said. “I’ve got armed teams getting into place now. The intel is good. I have high hopes they haven’t been tipped off that we’re coming. Let’s just say that the head of the planning commission is going to be in hot water if it gets out that his pet project is using illegal labor.”