The Tropical Issue

by Dorothy Dunnett

  Raymond stayed holding the doors, but Lenny followed Amy, and so did Johnson and I. Boughs and palm fronds and bits of bushes whirled through the big doors, and I wondered why Raymond wasn’t closing them.

  Pitched to carry over the racket, Porter’s voice teased us from the door. ‘Busy, cats? You know you locked in one angry lady? I’ve just released her.’

  With Amy, that put him into the opossum class. ‘Well, that’s great,’ she said. ‘Now you effing go back and stop her coming outside and forgetting she doesn’t know the first effing thing about hurricanes.’

  Leaning on the door, his clothes trembling and flapping, Porter was enjoying the torchlight. He called, ‘I think the old bag is right. I think you’re all planning to run off with Natalie. I’m not moving my butt.’

  ‘Then bring it with you,’ said Johnson mildly. ‘We don’t know where Mrs Sheridan is, but we think someone’s breaking into a storehouse. There’s a string of them, so Mrs Faflick says. If we cut along here, we may surprise them.’

  Porter grinned, his hair vibrating. ‘Sir,’ he said. ‘That’s a load of crap. The dogs would be barking.’

  ‘They stopped because they were told to,’ said Johnson. ‘The person holding your arm is Raymond. He thinks you should come along with us, too. Amy, wonder-woman, get the jeep out.’

  She put the torch down and began to do what he asked. A scuffle began and ended in the doorway. Amy started the engine, checked that the doorway was clear, and began to back into the yard.

  It was neat. If someone was breaking in further along, they might be reassured. And if they were watching, out there in the dark, they might not notice that some of us had slipped through this door at the back of the garage.

  They might not know, with any luck, that such a door existed. Or that it led, as I saw, directly to the network of storehouses.

  Johnson picked up Amy’s torch, and switched it on as the garage doors closed. Raymond shot the bolts with one hand. With the other, he was holding Porter. In Amy’s code, S.A.S. tiger-wise.

  Porter’s face was white with fury. He was a tall, well-made boy. He had probably never been physically compelled to do something he didn’t want to do in his life.

  ‘Oh, dear,’ Johnson said. ‘Do run along if you’re worried. If we find Mrs Sheridan, we’ll send her back to the house with a message. Raymond, let him go at once.’

  Raymond did, a bit slowly.

  Porter said, ‘That was just as well. But I’m coming. I want to see what you’re up to.’

  Lenny waited beside me at the door, as if he’d seen it all happen before. I wondered if he had. Amy hadn’t come back, but I thought I’d heard the house front door bang, and hoped she had safely stopped Dodo from interfering.

  Raymond, like a good lieutenant, was watching Johnson, whose current style was a sort of slow attentiveness, as with an angler in a boat he wasn’t rowing.

  Johnson said, ‘All right, Porter. After the next chamber, the rooms connect without any doors, so we have to put out the torch and be quiet. Can you, as Amy would say, shut your effing mouth for five minutes?’

  Porter glared, but he came. Johnson and Amy. The gerbils were lucky. I wouldn’t want to be trained by Johnson.

  Blundering along in the dark past the Faflicks’ junk, I tried to work out myself what he was up to.

  The dogs had warned of a break-in. They were trained, and I believed them.

  In such a storm, no one in his senses would break into a storehouse to steal anything. Even if you had somewhere to put it, the thing might be sucked out of your hands before you got there.

  In such a storm, a guy in his senses might, however, break into a safe place to stow something. To hide it for a short time. To store a priceless, portable commodity such as the load of cocaine planted on Dolly.

  For that, the Faflicks’ place was ideal. Remote, with only Amy to reckon with. And possibly Joe, the rich old yob from the big yacht. Amy had told the world about Joe. But not about the presence of the rest of us.

  The rest of us. Here and now, three men and Porter and me. With Johnson’s wiring and Porter’s ego as handicaps.

  The bushes had not been full of Neurosis officials tipped off by Johnson.

  Narcotics.

  Narcotics officials would be storm-stuck in Castries.

  Equally, the cautious sounds, half-drowned by the storm, that came to us now from the occupied lock-up didn’t seem to indicate a platoon of drug smugglers. Or even twelve Spanish-speaking bastards with guns.

  Which might argue that drug-smugglers, as well, could be held up by blocked roads and flash-flooding. And even that Johnson had suspected it.

  I ran into Johnson’s hand, and realised that we had all stopped, and that Raymond had been sent on ahead, to see what that dim light could show him.

  He was away only for moments. When he came back, he touched Lenny on the shoulder, and leaving him with Porter in the gloom, drew Johnson and me as far away as he could.

  We were in a store full of oil cans. Raymond faced Johnson and whispered, ‘I bloody owe you a tenner.’

  There was almost no light, but I swear that Johnson put out his hand, and Raymond paid him. Then Johnson said, ‘Many?’

  ‘Three. The Owl, the Cockerel and the lady. They’ve parked her outside, but I’ve heard her.’

  ‘Car?’ said Johnson.

  ‘Yes. As Amy thought, under the palms. I hope she’s fixed it. The room’s full of old crates, with double doors to the front, like the garage. They’re loading through one of these. You’ll have total surprise. The wind’s deafening.’

  I hardly heard that bit. I stared at them.

  Our intruders, according to Raymond, were wearing the Carifesta masks. The boss-masks. The masks worn at that top-level meeting in the Brighton Beach chalet, Barbados, when this consignment of drugs was first mentioned.

  No heavies. No porters. No Indians. Because of the storm, we had got ourselves into top-level management. The dope was being brought in, of necessity, by the Chiefs in this racket. The Cockerel. The lady. And Roger van Diemen.

  Johnson gave us our orders before he went in to challenge them. He told Porter to do what he was told, and me to stay out of it, and we both agreed.

  I hoped Lenny and Raymond meant to obey him. I thought of the severed head in the blue bag. And the men who had wrecked Dolly and given Johnson himself such very special attention.

  I thought of Kim-Jim. I remembered the ten-pound note that had just changed hands and wondered what sort of people could keep as laid-back as that, no matter what happened.

  I watched Raymond and Johnson, Lenny and Porter collect, quietly, at the throat of the passage and wait, quietly, until Raymond signalled that all three people were inside the store.

  There was a moment, before he signalled, when Raymond’s head turned, and his eyes met Johnson’s with pure surprise in them.

  Then his hand fell. I moved into the entrance. And all four men sprang forward and fanned out into the storeroom itself, surrounding the two men bent in the centre over a crate, and the woman sitting inside the half-open doorway beyond them.

  Because of the noise of the wind, it was a second before they saw us. A second in which we could see quite clearly the cockerel head and the owl head of the two men bent by the storm-lantern loading the chest.

  And the exquisite crepe-de-chine dress and bare head of the woman, whose blonde hair and vivid, self-confident face were known all over the world.

  ‘Natalie!’ Porter shrieked, and she spun round, her arms flung out, before Lenny and Raymond had stopped running.

  The Cockerel whirled round, but the Owl was quicker still. I saw his hand swing up. I saw the revolver in it, with Johnson in its sights. Then came the flame and the report, echoing round the low room and clashing with another report, this time from a gun in Johnson’s hand.

  Mixed with the smells of wood and sulphur and pulp, the smell of cordite. Mixed with the roar of the storm, the rustle of the Owl’s feathers as
he leaned over and slithered slowly downwards, dislodging his mask.

  Beneath it was the broad, Dutch face of Roger van Diemen, with the brown kinky hair streaked over his brow, and the light eyes shut.

  Johnson watched him. Watched, quite unmoved, as Kim-Jim’s murder was avenged at last.

  The Cockerel didn’t watch. The Cockerel caught his partner’s gun in one hand and turning, pulled the woman towards him and held her strongly across his body.

  ‘Now,’ he said. His voice boomed through his mask. ‘Now you do what I say, or I shoot Mrs Sheridan. Many times. The eyes. The stomach. Many times, before she is dead.’

  After all, there was no need to be anything other than laid-back. It was like blackjack. I said, ‘Rush him.’

  I counted on the Cockerel firing at me, and he did. I’d already jumped to one side. It gave Raymond, if he’d been quick enough, a chance to pounce, but he waited too long. And Johnson couldn’t.

  Porter said, ‘You stupid little bitch. He’ll kill Natalie.’

  ‘He won’t,’ I said. ‘She’s one of them. Rush him.’

  No one moved. The Cockerel laughed. Using his gun, he pushed the strap of her dress off one shoulder and then poked the muzzle playfully down and under one neat onion breast, pulling her round and up to look at him.

  ‘Are you one of us, darling?’ he said.

  The gun had just been fired. I wondered if it was burning her. I wondered if this was one situation Natalie Sheridan couldn’t turn to her own advantage.

  I should have remembered the banana plantation. She didn’t scream, or struggle, or plead. She spoke, not to the Cockerel, but to us.

  She said, ‘They don’t know Rita as we do. They think she resents me. That she’ll believe anything. But listen. Listen to me.’

  Her voice, in spite of herself, got high.

  ‘I’m not on their side. This is Roger’s idea, because I broke with him. I was kidnapped from the Hurricane Hole Hotel this evening. They’re smugglers. They’re smuggling drugs from Colombia and Roger was one of them. I didn’t know. Try to believe. I didn’t know. You may not like me, Rita, but you know I don’t harm people . . .’

  She was breathing quickly. She said, ‘Kim-Jim was the one real, staunch friend in my life. We would have married, if he’d agreed to it. We loved each other for fifteen years. I have his letters, every one, still today.’

  I stood, with my nose running and tears pouring down my face, through the sweat and the tiredness.

  I said, ‘He didn’t write you any letters. He couldn’t write letters. He was word-blind. He was a dyslectic.’

  Johnson said, ‘Oh, Rita, lass.’

  Raymond didn’t say anything. He just took a great leap towards the Cockerel and the woman, his shadow huge on the wall.

  Porter shouted. The woman screamed. But no shots, as promised, thudded into her heart, or her eyes, or her stomach.

  Instead, the Cockerel threw himself out of Raymond’s path, dragging the woman with him and jerking up his revolver.

  Johnson spoke fast. ‘Rita. I may hit her.’

  ‘Then hit her,’ I said.

  I saw him do it, flinging himself sideways like a man who had practised it often before, in the days when he skied, and raced beautiful ships.

  The shot from the Cockerel’s gun hit the wall. The shot from Johnson’s gun hit Natalie’s beautiful dress, and stained it all over with blood.

  The masked man hesitated, but only for seconds. Then he was out of the door, and racing hard for the palms.

  Where the car was. The car that Amy, we hoped, had disabled.

  Behind us, someone was screaming. ‘He shot her! He shot her! You son of a bitch, what did you do that for? Natalie!’

  Johnson slowed. Porter, still shrieking, ran up to him and was stopped by the force of Lenny’s arm. The Cockerel dashed over the path. Johnson, ignoring Porter completely, began to stumble forward again and Raymond said, ‘No, Jay,’ and plunged past into the palms.

  I saw the outline of the disabled car under the lashing palm trees. I saw the Cockerel reach it. I saw, from the corner of my eye, Amy run from the direction of the house, her hair barred white and black by the shutters. She was shouting something.

  A moment later, I saw the Toyota rocket round from where Amy had left it and screech to a halt beside the stranded car and the masked figure trying to start it.

  ‘Jump in!’ shrieked Grampa Joe from the driving seat of Amy’s Toyota. ‘Jump in! The bastards won’t get you!’

  The Cockerel looked up. We saw him hesitate. Then the next moment he had left his own car and vaulted in beside Joe Curtis, slamming the door. The Toyota roared, got into gear, and set off like a thunderbolt for the far end of the yard.

  Beside me, Johnson stood still. Porter, in Lenny’s grasp, had stopped shouting. Amy, withdrawing from the engine of the intruders’ car, yelled, ‘Are you all effing dummies? Come on! We can catch them!’

  Porter said, ‘Gramps?’

  Raymond and Lenny had already jumped into the car, and Amy had taken the wheel. Johnson said, ‘You’d better come,’ abruptly to Porter, and made for it too. I paced him but he was all right, and Raymond pulled him in.

  It was a big old Mercedes: Golden Memories Day. Porter and I jumped in while it was moving. The other car with the old man and the Cockerel in it had disappeared, but there was only one way to go. The wind blew and whined in the rainforest, and flung leaves in our faces, and lumps of mud, and torn flowers, and great gouts of air filled with sulphur.

  Amy said, ‘Who’s that with Joe Curtis? In the mask?’

  ‘His son Clive,’ said Johnson.

  ‘Then they don’t know the road,’ Amy said.

  Porter spoke. His voice sounded quite funny. He said, ‘Doesn’t it go down to Soufriere? To the coast?’

  Soufriere means sulphur-mine, actually. I know that now. There are lots of them. The one in St Lucia isn’t an active sulphur-mine. It’s a caldera, a collapsed volcanic crater. Natalie had told us all about it when she came back from her trip to Malmaison.

  The St Lucia caldera is a broken grey-white shallow basin like a quarry, set in the top of a hill. The smell of sulphur is choking. The air is full of cool and warm draughts, and you have to watch where you are walking, because of scalding water trickling over the rocks. There are also, here and there, nooks of bubbling water which vary in size and even place, but puff steam hot enough to take the skin off your hand.

  The first of the big pools is full of steaming pumice-grey mud, like watery porridge. On calm days it carries a boiling rosette in the middle, capped by steam plumes.

  On less calm days the liquid jumps, in handfuls of grey-black gouts. The surface is dull and not shiny.

  The temperature of the first pool is somewhere about 196 ° F. Over a high broken ridge is another, and beyond that, one so hot that steam hides it completely. In a breeze, it is best to keep away, for the steam swaying towards you can scald.

  The road which leads to the caldera is a dead end.

  This was the road that Grampa Joe Curtis had taken, driving his masked son to safety.

  Amy followed, her eyes straining ahead in the darkness. No one spoke. Only Raymond said, ‘Clive?’

  And Johnson said, ‘Of course. From the beginning.’

  Porter didn’t say anything.

  The end of the road isn’t exactly easy to see, or to accept. The Toyota, when we came up to it, stood on the far brink, and the cockerel mask lay where it had been chucked, when the owner went off to look for the track that didn’t exist.

  I didn’t care about the Cockerel, I found. I looked at the grey cauldron of steam that filled the darkness beyond the lights of the Toyota, abandoned by Old Joe, and our borrowed car, where Amy sat, gripping the wheel. The men had spread out, across the road and round the slopes that would look green in the daylight.

  Lenny and Raymond. Johnson and Porter. And suddenly, others.

  I turned to Amy, and she pointed behind. Unheard in the wi
nd, other cars had driven up behind us. Cars still letting out men, who ran like clockwork, lining the road and the rim of the caldera, with rifles in their hands.

  Rifles.

  I didn’t hear what Amy was saying. I had seen the man who was giving them directions, his dark clothes hardly picked out by the car lights. I couldn’t see who he was, so I listened, to hear if he was speaking Spanish.

  But it was English. And the shoulder flashes of the men he was commanding, when they came round to where our car was, showed the RSLPF of the St Lucia police.

  Our Indians had arrived.

  Porter had seen them too. He stood outside our car, his fingers white on the window-ledge, his hair like fire in the light of the circle of cars, and watched Johnson limp over.

  Porter said, ‘You son of a bitch. You drove them into this trap. What did they do? Smuggle coke, you tell me. Ship out a few snorts to make some party swing better. Cheating the Customs: who doesn’t? Dodging the lawmen: who doesn’t? At least it makes the party go, man. It doesn’t make you sick to your stomach like wet-nosed cripples who shoot women because they can’t lay them . . .’

  He was shaking. He said, ‘That’s my grandfather out there. That’s my uncle. You know what? I admire them.’

  Johnson was looking straight out over the caldera. In the gale, the steam acted like a sort of white fire, flickering and darting and sometimes almost hidden by gushers of black that sprayed up and shuddered and fell down again anyhow.

  When that happened, the line of men nearest the edge dropped unevenly back, like a ripple, until the steam eddied and corkscrewed and finally dropped down again.

  I said, ‘Out there? They’re not in the caldera?’

  And then I saw that they were. A tall figure, and one that was short and crooked and determined in the set of its shoulders, crouching a little too late when the jets of steam came; turning a little too slowly when the tall man, without his cockerel mask, took advantage of a lull to make ground from one ridge to another.

  He didn’t look back. You could hear the old man calling, at times, when the wind came round. And behind the steam, at the end of the caldera, was what the tall man was making for. The steep, forested slopes of the hill, where he could blend into darkness and run.