The Bone Readers

by Jacob Ross

Chilman rasped a laugh. ‘I prefer recruited. I didn’t tie a rope around your neck and drag you here.’

  He planted his elbows on the table and lowered his voice.

  ‘What make you change your mind – desperation or the temptation to find out what happen to your mother?’

  I held his gaze and said nothing.

  ‘You got what I lookin for,’ he said. ‘And if you thinking Commissioner Joseph Lohar got anything to do with this, you wrong. But…’ He looked me in the eyes. ‘I will have to tell him.’

  ‘Fuckim,’ I said.

  ‘Sorry, youngfella, I can’t oblige you.’

  I was surprised that he’d heard me. He stiffened, a sudden finger in my face. ‘Make this the last time you speak in front of me like that.’

  ‘I take the job on one condition, Sir.’

  He raised his brows.

  ‘One month pay in advance.’

  ‘It don’t work like that.’

  ‘I got to fix my roof.’

  ‘What happm to your roof?’

  ‘Part of it blow off.’

  ‘How?’

  ‘Bad weather.’

  ‘Okay, so you take the job to fix your roof. I must be thankful for bad weather, then.’ I thought he was going to laugh. He did no such thing.

  He pushed himself to his feet and went through the door. He was out there a while, his lips close to Ms. Maureen’s ear. The DS returned with a brown envelope and dropped it on my lap.

  ‘I know you don’t have an account. Open one. When your employment’s confirmed, borrow from the bank and fix your house.’ He dropped a book and a pile of typewritten sheets in front of me. ‘Recent cases and this…’ – he tapped the book – ‘Operational Handbook: offences, basic legislation, police powers and procedure, sentencing and punishment. Learn everything. What’s not in there you’ll pick up on the job, or learn from me.

  ‘Now for the other matter.’ He placed both hands on his desk and leaned into my face. He’d dropped his voice to what sounded like a deep-throated rattle. ‘You mother is your jumbie. Nothing to do with San Andrews CID, y’unnerstand? I dunno nothing about what you looking for. You get that?’

  I nodded.

  ‘Only thing I goin say to you is, walk careful, because if you walk too hard, you going to stir up snake.’ He jabbed a finger at the envelope. ‘Remember, you have to pay this back. Now get out of my face and go fix yourself. You starting work tomorrow.’

  5

  DS Chilman reminded me of geezers I saw sitting on wooden stools by roadside rumshops with their backs against the sagging walls. But, here, everyone turned to him.

  Eleven weeks and two days later, he stood over my desk. ‘Digson, I want you to pick up a man. In other words, today you make your first arrest. Forget all that stuff you read about the Miranda rights. Just arrest the fella and bring him in.’ He tossed a pair of handcuffs on my desk.

  I found myself travelling by bus along the western coast. I watched roadside villages slip past and it crossed my mind that two hundred square miles of island territory, pitted with valleys and mountains and rain forests, was a lot of country. Enough for the Europeans to kill each other for a couple hundred years ago, and to frighten the hell out of Ronald Reagan in my mother’s time; enough to have him put an aircraft carrier on our horizon and launch Blackhawk helicopter gunships and F16 bombers to pound us into the sea. Small island my arse!

  I sat sandwiched between two women, one with a child on her shoulder who seemed fascinated with the collar of my shirt, gripping and tugging it with surprising strength its little fists.

  By now I knew that I, along with Malan, Lisa, Pet and Chilman’s ‘recruits’, whom I had not yet met, were part of the DS’s plan for a separate office from San Andrews Police Central, with its own staff and resources. Chilman wanted a squad of men who could navigate the forests and the valleys of Camaho blindfolded, with guns at their disposal. ‘Because is not nice what I see coming in a coupla years time.’

  According to him, San Andrews CID had to be at the crime scene first. The four Police Divisions on the island – The North, The South, the East and the blaastid West – must be at the service of San Andrews CID when the department needed them. And the Justice Minister must show him some respect.

  He was getting there, he said, but slowly. The Commissioner understood him, the Permanent Secretaries did what they were told. The politicians ignored him.

  There were times when I thought I saw his point, like the Friday evening, having been away from the office all day, Chilman turned up in such a rage he almost broke down the door. We let him talk until he stopped to draw breath, then we dragged our chairs to the centre of the office space and sat down.

  ‘How many of y’all heard about the Dorian case in Cherry Hill?’

  We exchanged looks, then shook our heads.

  ‘That’s my point,’ he said. ‘Here’s how it go. Four days ago, young woman name Dorian didn turn up at her mother place to pick up her lil two-year-old daughter. Mother keep phoning the husband on his cell phone, but he not answering.

  Next day, the mother phone West Division to say she can’t find her daughter. By way of information, it turn out that the daughter married to an English fella name Edwin Jack. He 32, she 27. He run a business supplying fish to them hotels in the Drylands. Is six years that he and the Dorian woman married. Now hear this, she disappear on the anniversary of their marriage.’

  The DS dragged a chair and planted himself between Lisa and Pet. ‘West Division out there four days looking for the woman and San Andrews CID don’t know nothing about it. It not even on the news. They say they called me and they couldn’t get through.’

  Drunk, I thought. That’s why, but I said nothing.

  ‘I only hear about it this morning. First thing I do is ask the neighbours and the relatives a coupla questions. Here is what they say.

  ‘English fella used to beat up the woman all the time. They didn think it odd because that’s what fellas here do. Make it worse, the wife couldn’t leave the house when she want because this fella train his dog to tear her up if she put a foot outside, unless he want she to leave the house. He used to be a dog trainer for some prison or other in England.

  ‘The neighbour also mention in passing, people, in passing, that the husband have a girlfriend living in one of the houses next door and it been going on for some time. The girlfriend seventeen years old; she still in school.’

  Chilman scanned our faces, then narrowed his eyes at me. ‘How you would’ve proceeded from there, Digson?’

  ‘Pick up the schoolgirl, Sir. Question her.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘She’s intimate with the fella, chances are she knows something. Besides, she has a vested interest. I’d instruct her to call the husband from her cell phone – ain’t got nobody who don’t have one these days. Most likely he will answer. I’d make her ask him, under duress if necessary, where he is.’

  Chilman turned to Malan. ‘You?’

  ‘Find the dog, shoot it. Find the fella, shoot him.’

  Pet chuckled. Malan frowned at her.

  ‘Digson not wrong. I had the fellas from West Division arrest the girl and make her call the fella. The rest was easy. He lead us to the wife in a shallow grave that he and the schoolgirl dig. Grave 3 feet 6 inches wide, 3 feet 8 inches long in a patch of land that belong to the family of the girl. Mister Jack zip up his wife in a suitcase and plant her there.’

  Chilman shook the sheaf of paper in his hand. ‘Preliminary autopsy: death by blunt-force trauma and asphyxiation by strangulation. Four days and them still looking! It take me a coupla hours to find the wife.

  ‘So, y’all unnerstand me now when I say is rapid response I want. Young people without rum guts, who could think fast and move fast. Not no ole fellas who, before their duty over, run home to their wife and their kingsize plate of food. And if I got to lift young people off the street and plant them in this office, I will make it happen. Watch me!’

 
; The DS directed his chin at Malan. ‘Why you want to shoot the fella?’

  Malan muttered something about blasted foreigners.

  ‘So you think is only Camaho man got the right to maltreat Camaho woman, right? My eldest daughter will tell you is we fault. Whitefella come here; he see how some of y’all behave with woman, so he think is normal. Y’all give him licence.’

  ‘I asking for permission to question him, Sir,’ Malan said.

  ‘About?’

  Malan pushed his back against the chair, folded his arms and crossed his legs. ‘What’s the charge?’

  ‘You want to guess?’

  ‘Non-capital?’

  ‘Non-capital murder, yes. You got a problem with that?’

  ‘Yes, we have…’

  ‘Death penalty, right? And since that not happening, you want to go to the jail and bus’ the whitefella arse, not so? You think you different? You married, but tell me how much woman you got around this island?’

  ‘Is different,’ Malan said.

  ‘How?’ Chilman said.

  They locked eyes until Malan twisted his mouth and shifted his gaze.

  I prised my collar from the child’s grip, knuckled the roof of the minibus and dropped off amid the smell of the ocean and fermenting cocoa.

  I was on the northernmost tip of the island. On my right was the rising spine of Saint Catherine mountain. Leapers’ Town huddled at its base, almost tipping over into the sea.

  A whitening sun beat down on the road. Unpainted galvanized roofs simmered with heatwaves, and it was just mid-morning.

  Chilman had given me no instructions, and when I asked about backup, the fellas in the office chuckled. I would need transportation, I insisted, to bring in the fella. The officers laughed again and went about their business. Pet, the junior secretary, looked worried even as she tried to make me feel better.

  ‘The DS testing you,’ she whispered. ‘He do it to everybody.’ Then she muttered under her breath, ‘One of these days they going get somebody killed.’

  She huffed to her side of the desk and began sorting papers.

  All I had was a description of the man from an officer who knew him. They called him Travis, nicknamed Dog Ears. Dog Ears was a badjohn – the type that carried a machete so honed he could shave with it. Travis was the kind who frightened people’s daughters into the bush and had his way with them. Eighteen counts of sexual assault, five outright rapes, including a boy. Twelve instances of grievous bodily harm – an arresting officer being one of them. Forty-five years old – twenty-seven of which he’d spent in jail.

  My time in the job had already taught me that every badjohn was fucked up. There wasn’t a village on the island that didn’t have one, and they all had the same history: parents who didn’t give a damn about them, and left them almost from infancy to fight up with life on their own. Some little child in them was screaming and bleeding, and they really didn’t give a shit about anybody because they had nothing much to live for. Deep down, a badjohn wanted to die and if that meant killing an officer to make it happen, he wouldn’t hesitate to do so.

  It was easy to find the house where Travis was holding the woman hostage, along with the man who moved in with her during the five years he’d been in prison. When word reached the office – a cell phone call, number withheld – they were already in there for two days.

  All I had to do was follow the noise. On the grass verge, a cluster of agitated women – their protests full of attrition and abuse, rising on the air in waves. They were on the bank of the road above a two-room board house behind which the land plunged down past a thick growth of banana to a deep ravine.

  A small wooden platform led up to the door. Travis sat on it whittling the end of a piece of wood into what looked like a stake. No movement or sound in the house. My eyes fell on his ears. Lobes large and fleshy, dangling like a dog’s. The danger came off him like smoke. I felt my nostrils flare at the size and the heft of the man. I eased my way through the crowd, my hand protecting my face from the women’s windmilling arms.

  He knew who I was as soon as he saw me. Travis laughed. The fucker laughed. A wash of indignation flushed my skin.

  ‘They joking! Townboy! Go back an tell them they got to send a whole set-a-man for me. Bring the fucking army, y’unnerstan?’ And he was laughing out loud, like he’d just cracked the sweetest joke in the world.

  The women went quiet, their grumbles retreating down their throats. After a while Travis lost interest in me, and the women picked up their protests again.

  I stepped back onto the road, made my way down the steep curve to the Catholic church perched on the edge of a high precipice that dropped sharply to the ocean. I stood among the headstones of dead parishioners and looked out at the chain of little islands that progressed in a darkening semicircle past the sleeping volcano we knew as Kick Em Jenny, all the way up to the grey shape of Kara Isle sitting on the ocean like a petrified whale. Chilman was born there. I wondered if that little island – crisp and dry as a biscuit even in the rain season, and encircled by a murderous cross-tide – had anything to do with the perverse way his mind worked.

  I emptied my head of everything and stood there listening to the breakers destroying themselves against the rocks below, while a hard sea-wind pushed against my body. Two incoming boats ploughed the heavy waters, heading for the frothing bay below.

  I left the churchyard and walked down to the beach. There was a dry-goods store backing the shore with, a rumshop beside it – its door propped open with a rod. Inside, four men perched on tall stools with their elbows on the counter.

  I walked in.

  The shopkeeper sat on a chair with his belly between his knees, his mouth making circles around a matchstick. I dropped a fifty dollar bill on the counter and pointed at a bottle of Jack Iron rum. The man got up, took down a bottle and slid it along the counter.

  ‘Five glasses,’ I said. The eyes of the men switched to my face and stayed there.

  I looked around and smiled. ‘Straight or chaser?’

  The smallest reached for a glass. The man furthest along the counter shot out a hand and blocked him.

  That one was bone thin, his face so drawn I could see the detailed outlines of his skull. His eyes reminded me of Chilman’s. He even sounded like the DS.

  ‘You not a tourist; you don’t look stupid enough to throw away your money on people you don’t know, and you not from round here, so why you offering?’

  ‘Y’all want the rum or not?’ I said.

  ‘You didn’t answer me, fella – why you offering?’

  The little man who’d reached for the glass cut in. ‘Oh Gor, Shadow. How you so? The fella jus feel like offerin.’

  I took out my ID and dropped it on the counter. ‘I here to arrest Travis.’

  Their eyes dropped to the ID. Shadow looked up, squinting.

  ‘Is ask you askin we to do it for you?’

  ‘Nuh.’

  ‘What you want with us then?

  ‘I can’t do it on my own.’

  ‘Where all them other police fellas that come with you?’

  ‘I on my own.’

  Shadow blinked at me. ‘You got a gun?

  I lifted my shoulders and dropped them. The man rubbed his head, squinted at me again. A chuckle bubbled out of him, ‘If I was you, I would go back to San Andrews and tell all your police friends they playing de arse to send youngfella like you to pick up Travis. Whapm dey don like you? They want you dead?’

  I left the bottle on the counter and walked out on the beach. A man sat on the sand, a fish-pot between his knees; three youths, legs crossed at the ankles leaned against the trunk of the only sea-grape tree. Directly in front of me, the raw Atlantic fretted and chafed against the sand, the water darker than I remembered it from the view over the precipice I’d just left.

  The prow of an incoming twenty-footer jigged and yawed on the heaving water. The men on the beach moved forward, breasting the waves. Wordlessly, they for
med a line along both sides of the craft, steadied it and hauled it up on the sand. They eased it on its side and began to empty the boat: five giant mahi-mahi, a sheaf of barracudas, a bluefin tuna. They left the oars and gaffs for last and were careful with the gillnet, which they laid against the tree trunk. Fifteen minutes exactly and they were done – the fish hauled onto a giant, rough-hewn wood-stand, the oars and utensils lying in a hollow in the sand.

  The men from the rumshop had followed me to the beach, the bottle of Jack Iron – half-empty now – cradled like a baby in the crooked arm of the smallest man. Shadow came to stand at my elbow. A half-smile creased his lips. ‘Like yuh give up befo you start, man!’ He turned to the others, ‘Like the police-fella forget Travis and come to arrest the sea instead.’ His laugh was a hiss – a tight release of air through his teeth. ‘Lissen, officer, we not sweatin over Dog Ears, yunno. Dog Ears boat done sink arready, an de fucker don’t even know it. Them woman up dere just wastin time.’

  ‘I got an idea,’ I said.

  ‘Wozzat?’

  I told him.

  He hesitated, surveying the beach as if seeking some kind of answer there.

  ‘You sure?’ he said.

  ‘I sure.’

  He scratched his head. ‘If it don’t work is trouble. Anyway is your blood. I won’t be hanging around.’

  He was interested enough to gather his friends around him. They called over the three youths who’d been throwing sidelong glances at me from the time I stepped onto the beach. He told them to listen to what I had to say.

  They were quiet boys, lean-limbed and muscular with their hair clean-shaven at the sides, the top ruffled with the beginnings of designer lox. It was important, I said, that they stand behind the women who, I hoped, would still be throwing words at Travis. They passed quick glances at each other and sauntered off.

  When we got there, Dog Ears looked alert and twitchy. He’d laid a harpoon gun beside his foot, the machete across his lap, his chin pushed forward, the pale brown eyes flaring up at us.

  ‘The officer here to arrest you, Dog Ears, so you better give up yourself.’

  Shadow’s voice had taken on a new tone, his body stiff as a cockerel’s, his voice hoarse with venom. And I knew that magga-bone and rum-sodden as he looked, Shadow was not the kind of fella to run from anyone, once he was stirred up.