Absolute Money: Part I: An Oliver Holmes Caribbean Thriller

by C B Wilson

  James said, “Along the way, you get sidetracked, and here I am doing this for the money and for my kids. Looking at you kind of reminds me of when I was young and idealistic.”

  “Spare me the speeches and get me another lawyer.”

  Again the lawyer shook his head. “There’s half-a-dozen big firms in Jamaica. None of them will take you. They all have the same conflict as us.”

  “How can that be?”

  James said, “I know it’s wrong but what can I do? Somebody took all the best lawyers on the island off the table.”

  Holmes said, “Thanks for nothing.”

  “Wait a second.” James scrolled through his phone contacts. “Take this number.”

  “Who is it?”

  “We went through law school together. It didn’t work out for him. He drinks more than he should, and he’s had a few complaints against him, but mention my name and he’ll help you.”

  That was enough for Holmes. “That’s the best you can do? A drunk incompetent deadbeat. You’re a big help. Why don’t you fuck off back to your stupid little law firm and suck up to the rich.”

  He turned his back and headed for the street. Before Holmes left the hotel, he told the receptionist that a taxi driver would be coming round with a shirt for him. He told her to keep it behind the desk. He would try and get back for it.

  As Holmes opened the door, he had a sudden premonition that he would never see that shirt. He said to the receptionist, “On second thoughts, if you’ve got a brother or a husband, give them the shirt.” He stepped out of the air-conditioned hotel and into the flabby heat of early morning in Kingston.

  37

  Instead of meeting her at his office, Superintendent Roberts suggested a coffee shop off Hope Road. When Nikki got there, there was a policeman sitting in a booth but it wasn’t Roberts.

  She joined him and he introduced himself as Detective Lloyd Simmons. His voice had the singsong lilt of patois but he spoke in an accent that suggested an English education. His eyes were bright and looked straight into hers in an interesting way. If things had been different, she could have found him attractive, but the policeman quickly made it plain that they were on different sides.

  “Where is Oliver Holmes?” he said.

  Nikki didn’t know and told the policeman that. He wanted to know when she’d last seen him, and Nikki got snippy with him.

  “I don’t know anything about where he is. I arranged to meet Superintendent Roberts so he could tell me about what’s going on in the search for Nadia, my friend. I have nothing to do with whatever Oliver is doing.”

  Simmons said, “You need to know that Mr Holmes is in a lot of trouble. Four people have been murdered in his house and we need to talk to him right now. Help me find him, or you might be put on a charge of conspiracy or you could be seen as an accessory.”

  Nikki said, “If you think he’s murdered four people, you’re wrong. He would never do that.”

  Simmons said, “I hope he’s got a better defence than that.”

  “I know it sounds stupid but he’s really not a murderer. His whole life has been about stopping murders, not killing people.”

  Simmons drained his coffee and pushed back from the table.

  Nikki said, “Where is Roberts?”

  “Senior Superintendent Roberts asked me to tell you that he couldn’t see you at this present time, but he will have some information after the post-mortem that is being held today.”

  “That sounds like bullshit to me.”

  Simmons smiled at her. “They said you were lively.”

  Nikki’s phone buzzed with a text from Holmes. She looked at the screen and put it in her handbag.

  “You not going to answer that?”

  Nikki said, “Superintendent Roberts is supposed to be co-ordinating the search for a missing tourist. Isn’t that important enough for him to meet me?”

  The detective ran a finger round the neck of his shirt where his collar was too tight. He said, “Lot of times, the family of a missing person, or the friends, they have a hard time accepting the truth. They keep pushing the police, getting angry with us because they don’t want to let go. Even when the facts are telling us that…that maybe they should let go.”

  Nikki was hollow inside. She was fed up with people telling her to stop looking. “It’s only been three days.”

  Nikki’s phone buzzed again with the same text.

  “Is that him?”

  Nikki pulled her bag towards her. “It’s none of your business who texts me.”

  “I could arrest you and have a look at your phone.”

  Nikki took her phone out of her bag. She started to dial a telephone number.

  “Who are you calling?”

  “Verity Lambert, a journalist with Voice of Jamaica. She’s doing a piece about the search for Nadia and I’m going to tell her that I’m being harassed by an officer of the JCF.”

  “Fine. Let it go.” Simmons had a guitar player’s fingernails which he tapped on a business card on the table. “If Mr Holmes makes contact with you, you get him to call me.” Then he said, “I’m sorry for your loss.”

  When Nikki looked up from the table to tell him that Nadia wasn’t lost, the detective was already gone.

  38

  The shirt and jacket Nikki picked out were exactly the right size. The shirt was a little shinier than Holmes would have chosen himself but she’d also bought him a toothbrush, some toothpaste and deodorant. As she handed them over, she asked what the hell was going on.

  They met in Emancipation Park, walking in from different entrances at the same time. All of the benches in shade had people on them, so they sat on the grass far enough away from everyone so as not to be overheard.

  There were people in uniform in the park, but when Oliver looked more closely he saw that they were scrubbing the water feature and probably wouldn’t arrest him.

  Together they brushed off a couple of guys begging and then Oliver told Nikki about the murders.

  “I know about that,” she said, handing him Detective Simmons’ card, which he put in his new jacket pocket. “What are we going to do?”

  “My boss is on her way down here from Washington. She’s got some pull with the State Department. It’s a mess.”

  “Why don’t we go to the consulate?”

  “That’s exactly where the Jamaican police will be waiting for me.”

  “So we do nothing?”

  “The best thing that you can do,” said Oliver, “is to keep away from me until this is sorted out.”

  That was a shock for Nikki. “I thought we were going to stick together.”

  “That was when we were looking for Nadia. This is different.”

  It didn’t seem like an important difference to Nikki. “Unless, like everybody else, you’re trying to tell me that I should forget about Nadia and go home.”

  “I’m not saying that.”

  “Everybody else has walked out on me. Charlotte, Ellie and now you. She’s only been missing for four days – and you want me to give up?”

  The only reason that Holmes was backing away from Nikki was because he didn’t want the Jamaican police to arrest her, or shoot her, but he couldn’t seem to get that through to her.

  “You’re leaving me on my own, for my own good?” she said, her voice edging towards hysterical. “You’re doing it to be nice?”

  Holmes said, “Stop twisting my words. This is bad stuff I’m involved in. Three people were murdered in my house as well as my neighbour, and I can’t take the chance that the police will try and implicate you.”

  “I can’t believe you’re doing this.”

  “Go back to Montego Bay. Let Jerry help you to find Nadia. Being with me is not good right now.”

  “You want me to be with that horrible man?”

  “Please don’t make this more difficult than it already is.”

  “This is because you think I’m a prostitute, isn’t it.”

  Nikki’s cha
nge of tack threw Oliver off balance. “It has nothing whatsoever to do with that.”

  “You couldn’t handle it right from when I told you I was an escort.”

  “I said it didn’t matter.”

  “Your exact words, you said I was a prostitute.”

  “This really isn’t the time.”

  “You backed away from intimacy. And now you’re taking the first opportunity to dump me.”

  “Since when did I back away? And you’re being irrational.”

  “Irrational is what you say when you mean ‘stupid emotional female’, right?”

  “No.”

  “Forget it. Get out of here. I’ll find Nadia on my own. I don’t know why I even thought I needed you.”

  Holmes said, “How can I help you find her now? The police think I’ve shot four people. I’m trying to protect you.”

  Nikki said, “I thought we were a team. I thought we were going to help each other. No matter what.”

  Holmes said, “I want to help you find Nadia. I want to be with you, whatever, for the rest of my life. I don’t ever want to leave you. But you have to back off and let me take care of this business.”

  Oliver didn’t know he thought that about Nikki until he said it. But when he said it, it sounded good to him. But it was as though Nikki hadn’t listened. She was on her feet pointing at the exit. “Get out of here.”

  Holmes tried to speak but she yelled over him. “Go!”

  Holmes couldn’t think of anything else he could do or say. As he turned to walk away, Nikki said, “If you leave now, I will never speak to you, ever again.”

  “I have to go.”

  “No you don’t. We could do this together.”

  But Holmes kept walking.

  When he finally turned to look back at Nikki, she was marching out of the park, working her phone furiously.

  39

  Nobody actively wanted the job of cleaning up after one of Mr Volkov’s parties on the private deck. Twenty drunken Russian gangsters and a dozen hookers could make quite a mess. But Maria didn’t mind when she got assigned to the clear-up. She had long since forgotten that working on a super yacht in the Caribbean was supposed to be glamorous.

  She was actually counting off the days until she could quit. The money was good and she couldn’t spend anything while she was on board so she had a chunk of savings stashed away.

  A couple more months of this and she could go back home to Argentina in style.

  But her plans didn’t mean anything.

  Maria had been working for more than twelve hours straight by the time that she had finished cleaning. She had the work checked off by a senior steward and then she waited at the rear deck for the tender to pick her up at the end of her shift and take her to Iris.

  The tender didn’t come. She went to ask Sam, the duty operator, to call them again. Sam wasn’t there.

  A guard said to her. “The boat isn’t coming.”

  Maria was too tired to think. She said, “Why not?”

  The guard said, “Mr Malkin wants to see you.”

  Another man stepped in behind her and put his hand on her shoulder. Adrenaline spiked her awake.

  She had never met Malkin before or spoken to him, although she knew all about him and his reputation. There was only one reason she could think of that he would want to see her, and it wasn’t a good one.

  She had always imagined that when a moment like this happened, that she would run, jump, fight. But the hopelessness of the situation swamped her. She couldn’t run from these men. Where would she go?

  She sagged and tamely allowed herself to be led away, cursing Nikki under her breath.

  40

  It was easy enough to intercept Shelly at the airport. Holmes sent a taxi driver to Arrivals with a piece of cardboard with her name on it. He waited in the car, slouched low in the seat.

  “What was wrong with the original plan?” she said when she slid into the back seat next to him, “or don’t you ever stick to the plan or do what you’re told?”

  Shelly was a small, hyperactive woman who burned every ounce of fat off her bones with constant movement. She reminded Holmes of a small, hopping kind of desert rodent, except she wasn’t as cute and her teeth were better.

  “The police are looking for me,” he said, “and they were staking out the Nova and my office so I wanted to get to you first.”

  Holmes cranked the window down and told the driver to get moving. The kind of cabs he was taking didn’t have air-conditioning, and he was having some kind of reaction to the fabric of his new shirt and he didn’t smell too good. And he’d left the deodorant in Emancipation Park.

  He expected that Shelly would give him a hard time over the murders and the way that his investigations in Jamaica had been blown. Sure enough, she jabbed her finger at him across her luggage.

  “You’re screwed, you know that, don’t you? It’s just a question of how much.”

  When he tried to come back on that, she shut him down, saying she didn’t want to talk in front of the taxi driver. The atmosphere in the car hovered around “Unbelievably Tense”, peaking as they got into Kingston traffic. Shelly spent most of the ride working on her phone.

  Holmes directed the driver to a car park by the sea. He drove up one floor and stopped. It was shady and there was a breeze.

  Shelly wanted to know what they were doing there.

  “Those guys we passed in the entrance way are drug dealers,” Holmes said. “They’ve got a professional interest in spotting cops. They’ll let me know if anyone’s coming.”

  Holmes gave the driver some money and asked him to get some cold drinks. When he was out of earshot, Shelly couldn’t wait to get into it.

  “You’re screwed,” she said again. “Completely. Look at you, hiding in a car park.”

  Leaning against the concrete rail, Holmes looked out at the freighters in the bay and the aircraft coming in low over the sea. “I thought that was where you came in. You’re the cavalry. Haven’t you got a plan to fix this?”

  “Three people murdered in your house—”

  “Four.”

  “Four people murdered and the police are saying you are the prime suspect. Imagine how that went down in the C-suite this morning.”

  “Bullshit. I don’t even know how to fire a gun, let alone execute four people. And I’ve got a video that proves it.”

  “That doesn’t matter. Brendan would have you fired if you got a parking ticket. This is a career ender.”

  “He can’t do that.”

  “He’s the director of operations. He can do what he wants. And let me tell you, you have got no supporters in Washington. Everybody’s against you. If he wanted, he could have a lynch mob by lunchtime.”

  A low whistle came from the ground floor. Holmes peered down into the street. A grey Toyota Corolla drove slowly along the road, past the car park and down the boulevard. Another whistle gave the all clear.

  Holmes said to Shelly, “I get it. Everybody in head office thinks I’m this rude, arrogant shithead who doesn’t care about anybody else’s feelings and does what he wants.”

  Shelly agreed that was a good description of how he was viewed if he could work “Bastard” and “Asshole” into it somewhere.

  “So what? This isn’t a popularity contest. We’re supposed to be stopping governments from murdering their own citizens, not worrying about whether some pen-pusher in accounts likes my telephone manner.”

  “It’s like you’re autistic or something.”

  “Asperger’s. You’re trying to diagnose me with Asperger’s Syndrome, but I don’t have it. I’ve done the tests. I’m normal.”

  “So you think. But let me tell you this, it’s not the pen-pushers in accounts, it’s everybody. You have annoyed everybody in the whole organisation. You are Mr Unpopular.”

  “Even if I’m not winning any popularity contests, the murders at the villa is a set-up trying to discredit me. That’s all that matters.”

>   Shelly disagreed. “How are you going to prove it if you don’t have any allies?”

  “That’s what you’re for. You do the political stuff.”

  Shelly looked out of the window. “How can I help you if I go down with you?”

  Holmes didn’t get it.

  “Can we go someplace else? I don’t want to talk about this in a car park that smells like a toilet.”

  41

  Normally, Nikki packed her suitcases very carefully. She would roll and fold and place everything neatly. She could have exhibited her packing in an in-flight magazine photoshoot, it was that good.

  Not this time. After Oliver had left her in the park, she grabbed a taxi and headed for the hotel. On the way, she decided she would go straight back to Montego Bay and find Nadia herself.

  She wanted to get out of that hotel and onto a plane as quickly as she could. She started stuffing clothes into her bag. She was angry. Angry with everybody: Charlotte, Ellie, the police, herself, but mostly Oliver.

  A knock at the door made her heart jump. Oliver. He’d come back. She opened the door without looking. Right there at head height was a bunch of gorgeous orchids.

  Lovely. But behind them was Jerry.

  “Go away,” said Nikki, pushing the door closed. He wasn’t quick enough with his foot and he heard her get the chain on the door.

  “Go away. I’m calling reception.”

  Jerry smiled to himself at that idea. “I’ve got some news about Nadia.”

  She opened the door with the chain still on.

  “Are you going to let me in?”

  “No. You can tell me here.”

  Jerry said, “OK. Fine. Why don’t we go to the bar?”

  “Just tell me.”

  “You’re going to need a friendly shoulder…”

  “Just tell me.”

  Jerry said, “The post-mortem results came through on Henin.”

  “OK.”

  “It was an accident. Injuries consistent with having driven the jet-ski too fast into the rocks. He hit his head and drowned.”