by Amanda Smyth
‘Take a good look,’ Raymond said, ‘these are the people we deal with. There are some in here who’ve killed eight or ten people. They not frightened of the law or anybody.’
Young men, couples playing dominoes, women in shorts, flimsy dresses, tight jeans, some of them already drunk, shimmying around a pool table. It was all going on. Everyone seemed to be having a good time, including the two of them.
‘You want to know why we have so much trouble? Drugs. Drugs are shipped all over the world—to the USA and the UK, Europe. Transshipment from Columbia to Trinidad is six hours. We’ve had cases where large ships were supposedly being refurbished in Trinidad, and then intercepted in Spain with a billion dollars of cocaine.’
Martin had heard about this.
‘Two months ago, we pick up a boat from Columbia. It was thirty-five foot long. Five engines on board, each one 150h.p. They all stacked in the back, and to the front of the boat is all the big parcels of coke and marijuana. The men are heavily armed, eight or ten guns, including machine guns. They come here, drop off the drugs and fly back from Piarco, leaving their guns behind. So now there is a proliferation of guns.’
Raymond was on a roll.
‘In June 1999, we hang nine people in the state prison gallows. You know how many murders there were that month? None. You know why?’ He thumped his hand on the bar: ‘Trinidadians don’t like hanging.’
Martin said, with a half smile. ‘Well, it’s a little barbaric, don’t you think?’
Raymond shook his head. ‘Barbaric? You know what’s barbaric? Kidnapping someone from their home, and when the ransom money come, shooting them in the face. Two young women bashed and beaten like piñata dolls in front of their children in West Moorings; a baby playing in her grandparents’ blood. A child found in a cane field, raped so bad she split like a piece of bamboo. That is barbaric. This kind of thing is happening far too often. Like it’s normal. Murders are up thirty-eight per cent. And we are letting it happen.’
He steamed on. ‘Tell me, what do the Privy Council understand about this country? They don’t live here; they don’t know the mentality of the people or the history of the islands. So how can they tell us how to punish our criminals? They should mind their own business and let us hang those who need to be hanged.’
Martin wanted to say that capital punishment is a sign of a backward society and could never, in his mind, be justified. An eye for an eye leaves everybody blind. Yes, he could rant about this for hours. But he kept quiet and drank his beer.
‘Just last week a woman up near St Joseph went to a salon in Tunapuna. There were three other women having their hair styled. Two guys burst in and raped all of them. In the middle of the day. You hear what I say,’ Raymond wagged his finger, ‘in the middle of the day. While raping one of them, the woman cried, “Why you do this? Why you do this to us?” The man look her in the eye and say, “I need a reason?”’
That same day, Martin was allocated a 9mm Glock pistol. Then he was sent on a two-week course where he learned how to use it; apparently superbly functional, compact; less recoil and blowback than others. He learned about stance, ‘nose over toes’, and for rapid fire how the shoulders must come forwards: grip as tightly as you can, until you feel a tremor in your hands. He learned about perceptual distortion; how, under pressure, you might take half a dozen shots and have no idea of the number you’ve fired. Working with firearms had never appealed to him. He preferred the world of policy, strategy, performance, governance.
But he was better than he’d thought; the instructor told him, another few weeks and he could decorate a target with clover leaves all day long. To begin with the pistol made him feel nervous. Though he’s never had reason to use it, he is accustomed to it now, carrying the little case on his hip, the two-stage lock. He cannot deny it gives him a sense of empowerment, confidence. And he understands why in Trinidad it is necessary. As a young trainee officer in Warwickshire, he was given the best piece of advice of his career—get in, get it done, get out. Thirty years on, it still applies.
His instincts are finely tuned; he has always stood by them. Mistakes might as well be his own, rather than someone else’s. It was, in fact, his instinct that led to his first success in Trinidad, and won over Raymond.
Soon after he arrived, the eleven-year-old son of a wealthy Indian family was snatched on his way home from school. There were a couple of phone calls, a ransom was mentioned. Before talking to the police, the distressed father of the boy dropped off half a million dollars to a cane field in southern Trinidad. Then everything went quiet. Days passed. Police cordoned off the area around the drop-off point, started searching the field, interviewing family members, colleagues. They exhausted every lead. Raymond was stumped. Martin was invited to sit in on the interviews, oversee the forensic part of the investigation process; see if there was anything they’d missed.
He pointed to the father’s brother and business partner; likeable enough, there was something about him that didn’t feel right. When they spoke to the man, he put his hands up to his face and wept. He loved the boy, he said. He would never hurt him. Martin suggested they seal off the uncle’s house for a major forensic search. Raymond was unsure—it was costly, time-consuming; no one else thought the man was guilty. The house was big, seven or eight rooms; in the back room overlooking the large manicured garden was an eight-foot snooker table imported from San Diego. The green felt top appeared unmarked, clean, like new. It was Martin who hovered around the table, and suggested they strip it down, dismantle it. At first there was nothing, but then they checked the pockets and they were full of blood. The boy’s blood. An angle saw was found buried under an orange tree in the garden. They had, in fact, cut him up on the snooker table.
The highway is congested, and he wonders if there has been an accident up at the crossroads by the Kay Donna Drive-In cinema. The traffic lights are often broken. It is not uncommon for drivers to assume the lights aren’t working and accelerate straight through. Fatalities are on the rise, which is no surprise; Trinidad has one of the highest rates of road deaths in the Caribbean.
Cars crash in a way that makes it almost impossible to survive: high-speed collisions; passengers and drivers are often without seat belts and ejected through the windscreen. Most crashes take place during the early hours of the morning, between midnight and 6 a.m. along the three main highways, many along this same highway where he is now driving with his air conditioner notched up high, his small Antler suitcase on the back seat, the midday sun bouncing off the shiny bonnet.
This is the season for fires. And, in fact, a fire has started in a field on the left: black smoke curls upwards, and he wonders if this particular fire is deliberate, if farmers are burning cane to kill pests: spiders, rats, scorpions and snakes. Snakes can be a common hazard, especially in houses near the hills. Vishnu has warned him, a nip between the toes from a coral snake will have you dead in hours.
A local radio station is playing a Gloria Estefan song that he remembers from his twenties, ‘Don’t Wanna Lose You’.
It is a fact, in bars, clubs, restaurants, in hotels or on the radio, Trinidadians play the most unashamedly sentimental songs—American west coast wet, as he used to call them. To his surprise, these days this kind of music does not irritate him. Safiya says, songs like these make you feel things in a more powerful way: sadness, loss, longing. And today he is feeling a mixture of these emotions. He is feeling, for the first time in weeks, alerted to the reality and facts of his life; the many tiny decisions that have brought him to this place, to where he is right now. Two years ago, if someone had warned him, he would not have believed it. And yet he is not unhappy. His world is much too alive for him to be unhappy. How did this happen? How did he get here?
It was Safiya who once told him that decisions are discovered, not made. A strange thing to tell someone so early on, and he often wonders if, that first afternoon, she had some kind of insight into their encounter. He was in the bar of the Hyatt Rege
ncy Hotel, where he was staying when he first arrived in Trinidad. The rain was clattering outside, and she had appeared with a Trinidad Guardian Life umbrella, her feet wet inside her sandals, the bottom of her blue jeans, dirty and soaked. He was sitting near the entrance, waiting for the rain to stop, and she plonked her bag, a leather carry all, on the next seat. She was looking around the busy lobby. A young football team had gathered at reception, and their luggage was strewn over the floor. Some visitors had taken shelter from the blowy terrace, and there were delegates arriving for an international AIDS conference. He had never seen the Hyatt so busy.
‘Oh boy,’ she said. ‘Piccadilly Circus.’
He asked if she was looking for someone in particular. She told him that she was there to interview a local musician but it looked as if the musician hadn’t turned up.
‘Trinis won’t come out in the rain if they can help it.’
He offered to watch her bag while she checked inside. Outside the rain was getting heavier, a grey veil, and he could hear the dark sky growling. She looked out at the entrance to the lobby where cars were lining up. Then she came back and slumped down in the seat opposite.
‘We’ve been waiting for rain for so long and then the rainy season arrives and it comes like a monsoon.’
Her green eyes were slightly hooded, small, and intense. She could be Spanish, or Italian, but she was probably a Trinidadian mix. African, Indian and maybe a little Chinese thrown in.
‘It’s still hot even with the rain.’
‘Yes, it only ever gets cool here around Christmas. Then everyone starts putting on socks and sweaters.’
‘Be glad it’s just once a year.’ He sipped his coffee.
‘Are you on holiday?’
‘No, I’m here working for your government.’
‘Lucky you.’ Then she said, ‘What made you want to come here?’
‘I’d had enough of English summers.’
‘There’s plenty islands in the Caribbean, why Trinidad?’
‘I suppose I just made a decision.’
‘Decisions are usually discovered and not made.’
She smiled wide and revealed her straight white teeth, and he thought how different she looked—bright, lit.
‘Well, okay. It’s exotic; it’s very different from where I come from.’ He suddenly felt awkward. ‘Have you ever been to England?’
‘No,’ she said, ‘I’ve been to New York a couple of times. I love the States, but I love here more.’
She told him that she worked for the Trinidad Express, although these days she was also involved in some television reporting, which she found more interesting. She had thought about going away to America, or even Canada. She had a good friend in Vancouver. But there seems to be enough work here to keep her going.
‘You’d be surprised. There’s a lot happening here.’
Her mobile phone rang, and she got up and walked towards the lobby. From behind, she was curvy, wide-hipped, and yet proportional to her narrow waist. She could be in her late twenties. He had always been good at guessing people’s ages but she had him foxed. Something about her confidence made him wonder if she was older. She turned and saw him staring at her; he felt embarrassed.
‘I’m going to make a run for it. The rain is slowing down.’
He hadn’t noticed that the rain had, in fact, almost stopped. She tucked her phone in the pocket of her jeans, zipped up her bag.
‘Do you mind me asking how old you are?’ he said, getting up.
She grinned. ‘Old enough to be your daughter.’
Five years ago, his friend, Nigel Rush, a Chief Officer in Shrewsbury, left a wife and two young children for his twenty-two-year-old secretary, Marilyn. Everybody was shocked. By chance, Martin had bumped into them while shopping for lamps in John Lewis. She was blonde and voluptuous, if a little cheap-looking. It was an awkward moment, and Nigel was red-faced. But they shook hands, and he told the lady it was nice to meet her, which it was. A part of him thought, good for you, Nigel, but at the same time, the whole thing seemed to him ridiculous, tragic, and as far as he could tell, completely avoidable. What would Nigel say to him now?
Ahead, cars are finally moving slowly. He passes an old truck full of gas canisters; it appears to have broken down. Two men are standing beside it smoking cigarettes; they are laughing and joking about something. He imagines that this broken-down truck was the cause of the delay. Safiya says that if you break down in Trinidad, hope that it happens in daylight.
The airport is not as busy as he expected. He parks the car underneath an Air Canada advertisement and wheels his suitcase to the terminal building. It is a large, attractive building. Sunlight is streaming onto the shiny white tiles. It is cool, and spacious, and he easily finds the check-in counter for Tobago where three or four people are lined up. The attendant takes her time, slowed by her long fake nails. She presses the computer keys with the flat pads of her fingers. He cannot imagine how she manages to do basic things—wash dishes, dress, or put on her make-up. Her hair is tightly braided and bleached a coppery brown. She gives him a boarding pass. They look at each other for a moment, her dark eyes expressionless and staring, and he realises her job is done and he must now make his way through security.
He is hungry. No doubt they will be eating dinner early tonight, but he is not sure he can last that long. There is a coffee shop, which reminds him of Starbucks. Muffins, sandwiches, croissants and quiches. Everything looks too yellow and dry. He decides on a biscuit, a kind of savoury scone, one of Safiya’s favourites, and a cup of coffee. If she was here, she would order a Mocha Chiller, a tower of frothy chocolate-flavoured coffee, topped with whipped cream, sucked noisily through a straw like a kid.
The table where he sits is greasy and he half-heartedly wipes it with his napkin. Lately, he has realised that when something big happens, small things mostly stop bothering him, at least for a while. Yesterday, he saw a poster in the mall. ‘Don’t sweat the small stuff’. And written underneath, ‘It’s all small stuff.’ A pocket-size book of affirmations by an American psychologist. Is the situation he finds himself in small? How can it possibly be small?
The departure lounge is quiet with fifteen people or so scattered on the bright plastic chairs. A mounted television is showing CNN and thankfully it is muted. George Bush is speaking from the White House, his chimp face close to camera, smirking as if he is telling a joke.
He finds a seat near the doors, where he can see the small Caribbean Airways airplane waiting on the tarmac. There is something romantic and old-fashioned about a plane with propellers. He does not particularly like flying, but a small flight like this can be thrilling.
Last year the wheels of one of these planes refused to come down and it was forced to land on its belly in a field. Passengers were mostly made up of a gospel choir who sang hymns as the plane crash-landed. On the evening news, people were seen stumbling from the aircraft, wailing and crying and praising God. It was a miracle, Safiya said. No one was hurt. But then Safiya believes in miracles. Asking for a miracle is as simple as ordering from a restaurant menu.
‘And how do you pay for your miracle?’
‘With your faith.’
A young woman sits opposite him with a small baby. She is overweight and her breasts look enormous in her pink T-shirt, which is marked with a number 19. She has been staring at him for a while, and he wonders what she has seen in him that holds her interest. He assumes there is nothing peculiar about his appearance, and he smoothes his greying hair. He is wearing a khaki cotton shirt and Levi jeans and dark leather sandals. Safiya has always said that the sandals are a giveaway, and with a tan he could almost pass for a Trinidadian. But he doesn’t really have a tan, it’s just that his freckles seem to have multiplied and given him a brown look. On his face there are hundreds of freckles, and thousands more on his legs and feet. He has never liked them. Safiya says his skin is unusually smooth. Sometimes when he is drying off after a shower, or searching his cupbo
ard for something to wear, he catches her watching him intensely.
Once when she was drunk, she told him that he is physically fascinating to her in a way that no one else has ever been.
‘In what way?’ he’d said. ‘Is it because I’m old?’
‘Maybe,’ she said and laughed.
He’d huffed outside to the veranda to smoke a cigarette. He had never been moody until he met her. In the early days, he behaved like a lovesick teenager.
The baby starts to cry. The woman shifts the blue bundle closer to her face and rocks a little. He imagines that her breasts must be a great comfort, the softness and warmth in this air-conditioned room. Cradling, she leans over and from her plastic leather bag plucks out a bottle which she eases into the baby’s mouth. The crying stops at once and he is relieved. But then the glass doors open with a blast of hot air and everyone starts to get up. The airline clerk announces the departure of the flight into Crown Point, Tobago. In the distance, he can see an American Airways jet taking off, a silver finger penetrating the deep blue sky. He offers his boarding pass, and steps outside into the glare of the sun. It is fierce now. In the hot wind, he quickly walks across the tarmac to the small aircraft. What will they make of this heat?
As the plane accelerates and lifts, the propeller’s sound whirrs and intensifies, and he looks down at the land below as it rushes away—the waving coconut trees, the tiny cars on roads no more than fine lines, the clusters of houses with roofs like scraps of tin foil. The patchwork land becomes vast and sprawling and it is flat and scorched in parts. Rain needs to come soon; this is what everyone is talking about, the agriculturalists, the politicians, and the workers. To the left he can see the Northern Range, and the hills are darker now because of the position of the sun as the plane moves north and east.