Shades of Evil

by Cave, Hugh

  A few yards behind him, Will nodded and said, "We're all right. Keep going." Behind him, Ken Daniels merely grunted.

  They trudged on. Will was wet to the knees now and shivering. A little awed, too, by the stillness that amplified even the smallest sound as they advanced. You kicked a stone and the echoes scurried like lizards along the walls of the tunnel. You spoke, and a choir of voices picked up the words, running them together and making them incomprehensible unless you had spoken slowly.

  And although they had left the stream behind them at the last exit, where it flowed into the cave for its long run underground, there was everywhere a ghostly sound of dripping water, as though the dark walls eternally wept.

  McKoy stopped. The long, narrow beam of his five-cell flashlight had fastened on a side passage ahead. "From here we have to be careful," he said. "Small tunnels go every which way, even up and down. Stay close to me, please. You could get lost and maybe not find your way back out." He turned along the side tube. "This goes to a big chamber with lots of hiding places. We should search it first, I think."

  A wild-goose chase, Will thought. Even if the U.N. man had been lured from the Christiana market to his death, what killers in their right minds would have gone to the prodigious effort of concealing him in a place like this?

  Still, maybe they had killed him after leading him here on some pretext he had believed plausible.

  He plodded on, following the light ahead and the five-foot-two figure silhouetted against it. His own shadow jerked over the uneven floor ahead of him, created by the light in Ken Daniels's hand. The ceiling rose and fell. The walls dripped. The flight of stone steps by which they had descended into this underworld seemed far behind now.

  McKoy halted. On reaching him, Will and Ken did too, and their combined lights slowly probed a nearly circular chamber some sixty feet across. "I don't think I'd go beyond this room if I had a body to hide," McKoy said. "Suppose I take the right hand wall and you fellows the left, and we meet where the passage continues over there on the other side."

  "All right," Will said.

  "Look in every cranny."

  And hope to God, Will thought, we don't find what we're looking for. Yet it would be a relief, in a way, to find Cerrado, for by now he must be dead somewhere. If Sister Merle had engineered his disappearance from the market, why would she want to keep him alive? The one hope was that she had not wanted to kill Sam Norman too. He had merely blundered into her world in his attempt to help Cerrado, and so just might still be alive.

  With the wall on his left and Ken at his heels, Will led the way forward, moving very slowly and shining his light into every crevice. The room had its share of those, some deep enough to be mistaken for tunnels. On the other side of it McKoy kept pace, his light moving over the wall there like a brush in the hands of a careful painter. The scuffing of two pairs of shoes and McKoy's hard-soled bare feet filled the chamber with a sound that seemed unreal-and somehow threatening.

  "Hold it." The voice was McKoy's, not loud but sharp. Turning toward it, Will saw that the guide had stopped and was holding his light steady. Its beam slanted downward at what looked like a dark vertical streak on the chamber wall. "Found something!"

  Followed by Ken, Will hurried across the room and saw that the dark streak was a niche some twenty feet high and twelve feet deep, ranging from a yard in width at its base to mere inches at the top.

  In it, on his back and with his feet toward them, lay a man wearing a khaki shirt, khaki pants and socks, but no belt and no shoes. His head was deep in the niche and twisted sideways, so that their lights could not reach his face. His knees were upthrust, as though he had been placed on the floor and pushed in by his feet.

  "This is the man we are looking for?" McKoy asked, frowning at Will.

  "I've never met Cerrado. Is it, Ken?"

  "I think so. Let me pull him out."

  "Maybe the police would not want us to touch him," McKoy warned.

  "Well, then. . ." Ken dropped to hands and knees and gingerly worked his way into the niche to shine his light on the man's face. "Yes, it's Cerrado. Dead for days, I'd say." He suddenly voiced a sound of fright that came loudly from the niche and struck echoes from the walls of the main chamber.

  "What is it?" Will asked quickly.

  "I thought he moved. It was a beetle crawling out of his shirt front."

  "Can you see how he was killed, Ken?"

  Still on hands and knees, Ken played his light over the body, letting it rest finally on the dead man's neck. "He was chopped once on the neck, deep—with a machete, it looks like. And from behind. There's no blood on the floor here, so it must have happened elsewhere. His clothes are torn, as if he was dragged through the cave instead of carried through. Dragged some of the way, at least. Should I turn him over?"

  "No. As McKoy says, the police may not want him moved. And the sooner we get to the police, the better. Let's go."

  Ken crawled back out and stood up. "Should we look further for Mr. Norman?"

  "Well—the rest of this chamber, maybe. It seems to me if they thought it a good place to hide Cerrado, they might have hidden Sam here too." But I don't want to believe Sam is dead, Will thought. I won't believe he is, damn it!

  They searched the rest of the room and found nothing. Returning through the cave to the flight of steps by which they had entered it, they hurried back to the Land Rover.

  "McKoy, you'd better come with us to the police," Will said as he drove out of Gourie Forest. "You'll have to guide them to the body."

  "Add that to what you pay me," their guide said unhappily. "I'll get nothing from them for doing it, you can be sure."

  "Of course."

  At the Christiana station the police listened attentively to what Will told them, and asked questions. When told that Sister Merle's follower, Keith Mowatt, was apparently under an obeah spell, they demonstrated even deeper interest.

  "Will you now question the two men Ken saw coming out of Gourie the day Cerrado disappeared?" Will pressed.

  They agreed to do so.

  "Let me make a suggestion, then. It might be wise to talk to them in such a way that Sister Merle won't hear about it. Otherwise you may have two more men in the hospital for no apparent reason."

  A slender corporal in red-striped pants gazed at him with obvious curiosity. "You believe in obeah, Mr. Platt?"

  "I can't answer that. I don't know enough about it."

  "You seem to believe. I thought you Americans looked upon us as superstitious Africans for believing in such things."

  Will studied the handsome young face and thought he detected a touch of the racism that prompted some Jamaicans to snarl at white-skinned visitors. "I'm an old Haiti hand, friend," he said quietly, "and have written books about voodoo. I happen to have a healthy respect for some of the so-called superstitions of Africa."

  It could well have been this brief exchange that brought about a shift of attitude there in the police station. Something, at any rate, seemed to rid the room of its hostility. "We will go to Gourie and get Cerrado's body," the man in charge said. "You can take us to where it is, McKoy. Then tonight, when there will be less chance of our being seen, we will pick up Bignall and Walters and bring them in for questioning."

  He gazed at Will with new respect. "I commend you for finding the body, Mr. Platt."

  "Commend McKoy. But thanks."

  "We'll keep in touch with you."

  "And please keep looking for Sam Norman."

  "Of course."

  Leaving McKoy at the station, Will and Ken returned to the house. It was quarter to one. Vicky had apparently not returned from town, and Ima was in the kitchen where they could hear her bustling about when they came in.

  "Stay for lunch," Will urged the taxi man. "My wife is enjoying the mob scene in the market, I'm sure."

  "Thanks."

  "Don't thank me." Will glanced toward the kitchen. "I need help, Ken."

  "Help?"

  "Someone
has to tell Ima about Juan Cerrado. She was fond of him. Perhaps sleeping with him.".

  Ken smiled. "Fond of him, yes. Sleeping, no."

  "How do you know?"

  "I have been trying to take that woman to bed for at least two years."

  "That doesn't mean he didn't succeed."

  Just then Ima came out of the kitchen. She looked from one to the other, reading their faces, and then asked, almost hesitantly, "Did you find anything in Gourie Cave, please?"

  Will looked at Ken, who gazed at Ima's anxious face and said, "Ima, I'm sorry. I don't want to tell you this, but I have to. He is dead."

  She stared back at him, her face expressionless. "Dead? Juan is dead?"

  "Yes, Ima. Murdered."

  Her tall, slender body began to sway from side to side like a clock's pendulum. Her hands trembled to her face and covered it. Through her long fingers poured a bawling like that of a wounded calf, filling the room, the whole house. She fled into the kitchen.

  Ten minutes passed before her torrent of grief began to subside, and then another five went by before she stopped sobbing. Finally she came from the kitchen to confront them.

  She stood quietly, her face now empty of expression and her long arms at her sides. "Who killed him?" she asked in a controlled voice. "The obeah woman, Sister Merle?"

  Will said, "We think she arranged it, Ima. We have no proof yet."

  "When you find proof, will you let me know?"

  "Of course."

  "Thank you. Lunch is ready now."

  I wonder, Will thought at the table, if any woman on the face of this earth will ever grieve like that on hearing I am dead. You were a fortunate man, Cerrado. I envy you.

  19

  Trapped

  Vicky, he soon learned, was doing more than exploring Christiana on her daily tours of the town. "I hear you've been asking about Sister Merle," he said to her at breakfast, five days after her arrival on the island.

  "Meaning I shouldn't? Who told you?"

  "Ken."

  "Oh, your buddy. And how did he find out?"

  "You questioned some of the taxi men. They all know one another." He frowned at her across his uplifted fork, on which a peg of breadfruit was impaled. "What do you want with Sister Merle, Vicky?"

  "I told you before. I'd like to meet her."

  "My God."

  "What do you mean, 'My God'?"

  "That woman is almost certainly responsible for the death of Juan Cerrado." He had told her about finding the body in the cave. "And she's probably responsible for the condition of that fellow Mowatt, in the hospital."

  Mowatt, at last report, was in a coma. Will had driven to nearby Spaldings to inquire about him and had talked to two doctors at the excellent little hospital there. So far their tests had failed to turn up anything to explain his condition.

  "There's something else, Vicky."

  Her reluctant gaze conveyed indifference, but she did look at him.

  "Something I haven't told you. Saturday night, after we found Cerrado, the Christiana police arrested the two men who were seen driving out of Gourie Forest the day he disappeared. The police picked them up at night so the arrest wouldn't be noticed and Sister Merle wouldn't hear about it, because these are the men we think actually murdered Cerrado, at Merle's bidding."

  Vicky was apparently more interested now. She stopped eating and sat motionless, watching his face as he spoke.

  "The plan went wrong," he said. "They got Bignall quietly enough; he lives alone back in the bush. But when they went for Walters, he had a woman with him, and apparently she went straight to Sister Merle to report his arrest."

  Vicky continued to stare at him.

  "Now," Will continued, "Bignall and Walters are in the lockup, and they seem to have embarked on the same dark journey that took Mowatt from the Wait-a-Bit jail to the hospital. They won't eat or talk, just sit there gazing into space."

  "Interesting."

  "Don't call on Sister Merle, Vicky."

  "But she sounds fascinating."

  "Don't do it. This isn't voodoo, with drumming and dancing and lovely exotic ceremonies. It's dangerous."

  "Margal," she said.

  "Yes. The kind of dirty business Margal practiced. A dark magic involving mind control."

  "But I'd like to know more about mind control. It's a coming thing, really big in Russia. Haven't you heard?" She actually smiled at him. "And you need all the help you can get, it seems to me. You don't seem able to find out what's happened to Sam Norman."

  It was true. While the police had searched the rest of Upper Gourie, Ken and he had doggedly continued their questioning of anyone who would stand still long enough to be interrogated. There was scarcely a road within fifty miles of Christiana, paved or otherwise, that did not know the tread of the Land Rover's tires. And they had learned nothing. Absolutely nothing.

  Finishing his breadfruit, which Ima had roasted over charcoal the day before and simply fried in butter this morning, Will stood up.

  "Where to this morning?" his wife asked.

  "Gourie again."

  "You're going back to the cave?"

  He shrugged. After days of getting nowhere in their search for Sam, Ken Daniels last night had suggested they employ Waldon McKoy again, this time to guide them into the part of Gourie not yet explored. "We can't drive around forever asking questions," the taxi man had said, "and it's all but certain Bignall and Walters won't talk, any more than Keith Mowatt would."

  Will said to Vicky, "Don't think I'm overjoyed at the prospect. But we're at a dead end."

  "What time will you be back?"

  "God knows. But please—don't try to visit Sister Merle."

  She did not reply. A car had stopped at the gate outside, and she stood up without bothering to finish her breakfast. "That will be your friend now," she said. "Do me a favor and tell him to stop spying on me. I don't appreciate it."

  Disappearing into the bedroom, she slammed the door behind her.

  Will had already opened the gate in anticipation of Ken's arrival. He went to the front door now and watched the battered old Austin Cambridge roll into the yard. The taxi man made several trips from his car to the Land Rover with caving gear—much more of it than they had carried before, Will noted with dismay. Then he called out, "Ready, Will?"

  "Have you had breakfast?"

  "Hours ago."

  "One minute, then." Will turned and walked back through the living room to the bedroom. Vicky was seated by a window, silently gazing out at the road.

  "I'm gone, Vicky." He was beginning to talk like a Jamaican, he thought with a welcome touch of amusement. In Haiti, his excellent French had quickly been corrupted by Creole the same way.

  "Good luck," she said coldly.

  "Please. Don't go to see Sister Merle. You could make everything more difficult. Even more dangerous."

  She did not even turn her head to look at him. Knowing he was wasting his time, he angrily walked out.

  Ken Daniels was waiting for him at the Land Rover, and when they reached the gate, Ima Williams was there to close it. She too called out "Good luck!" but with far more sincerity than Vicky had. Will thanked her with a wave.

  "We are to pick up McKoy at his house this time," Ken said. "It's on our way."

  "I suppose he thinks we're crazy to be doing this."

  "Well, yes, in a way. If you remember, he said before that he didn't think anyone would try to carry a body into the lower cave." The taxi man fell silent while Will steered the bulky vehicle between double files of children en route to school: boys in khaki, girls in yellow and brown. Then he said, "I've got a rope ladder. You remember he said there's a place where we'll need one to reach a lower level."

  "Ken, they wouldn't have carried Sam Norman's body down any rope ladder."

  The taxi man swiveled on the seat to scowl at him—a long, intense scowl that to Will was most eloquent. It said, he was certain, that Ken Daniels was now a close friend and just as conc
erned about the fate of Sam Norman as he himself was. True, Ken was being paid for his help, but this was not a man who would stick so close and work so hard for money alone.

  "Will, he could have gone down a ladder under his own power if they told him he might find something down there," the bearded man said. "He was looking for Mr. Cerrado, remember. They could have lured him deep into the cave, even down a ladder, and then killed him. Or—"

  Will said through dry lips, "Or what?"

  "Or pulled the ladder up and just left him there alone in the dark, to die. I hate to say it, but that would have been easier."

  Will could not think of an answer.

  A mile beyond the town their McKoy was waiting at the road's edge in front of a small cottage. Barefoot again, he wore ragged khaki pants and shirt, and from one hand dangled a well stuffed knapsack.

  With a polite "Good morning" he climbed into the back of the vehicle, then was silent until the Land Rover had growled its way through the pine tree whisperings of Gourie Forest to the cave entrance.

  "We will be here longer this time, I think," he said then, dropping to the ground. "I brought along some bammies in case we get hungry in there. You eat our Jamaican bammies, Mr. Platt?"

  Will recalled a time he had bitten into a flinty round biscuit and nearly shattered a tooth. Were all bammies like that? "If I have to," he said grudgingly.

  McKoy grinned, then divided up the gear and handed out the hard hats. This time at the bottom of the stone steps he turned left and led a difficult climb over the slanting rock face there. Will followed, and again Ken Daniels brought up the rear.

  We're wasting our time, Will thought dourly, unless Ken is right and Sam was lured into doing this under his own power.

  As he struggled on, the feeling became stronger. No one could possibly have carried or even dragged a body through this labyrinth. Floating one would have been easier. A glimmer of daylight on the left caused their guide to say quietly, "Another entrance. Small one. After this there is no way out."

  Will peered long and hard at the light as they passed it, and turned to look back as it fell behind. Then the darkness engulfed them again.