Blood and Belonging

by Vicki Delany

  Copyright © 2017 Vicki Delany

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or by any information storage and retrieval system now known or to be invented, without permission in writing from the publisher.

  Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication

  Delany, Vicki, 1951–, author

  Blood and belonging / Vicki Delany.

  (Rapid reads)

  Issued in print and electronic formats.

  ISBN 978-1-4598-1284-0 (paperback).—ISBN 978-1-4598-1285-7 (pdf).—ISBN 978-1-4598-1286-4 (epub)

  I. Title. II. Series: Rapid reads

  PS8557.E4239B56 2017 C813'.6 C2016-904576-5

  C2016-904577-3

  First published in the United States, 2017

  Library of Congress Control Number: 2016950245

  Summary: In this work of crime fiction, RCMP Sergeant Ray Robertson is on holidays in Turks and Caicos when he discovers the body of a man on the beach. (RL 2.4)

  Orca Book Publishers is dedicated to preserving the environment and has printed this book on Forest Stewardship Council® certified paper.

  Orca Book Publishers gratefully acknowledges the support for its publishing programs provided by the following agencies: the Government of Canada through the Canada Book Fund and the Canada Council for the Arts, and the Province of British Columbia through the BC Arts Council and the Book Publishing Tax Credit.

  Cover design by Jenn Playford

  Cover photography by iStock.com

  ORCA BOOK PUBLISHERS

  www.orcabook.com

  Printed and bound in Canada.

  20 19 18 17 • 4 3 2 1

  For Mom, a teacher

  CONTENTS

  ONE

  TWO

  THREE

  FOUR

  FIVE

  SIX

  SEVEN

  EIGHT

  NINE

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  AN EXCERPT FROM JUBA GOOD, A RAY ROBERTSON MYSTERY

  ONE

  Waves lapped against pale sand. The breeze was soft and heavy with salt. Water filled the imprint of my shoes and soon erased them. In seconds, no sign that I had been here would remain.

  My legs ached, but it was a good ache. My breathing was heavy, but clean air filled my lungs. I slowed to let my heart rate return to normal. Once I could have run forever, but I am not a young man anymore. Age is creeping into my joints whether I want it to or not. These days I run as much for the solitude as the exercise.

  I’d left Jenny, my wife, sleeping and crept out of our room without turning on any lights. The promise of a new day had been no more than a gray smudge in the sky to the east. I walked through the quiet hotel grounds. Staff heading for an early shift wiped sleep from their eyes and smothered yawns. Otherwise, only the birds were up. I had the gorgeous beach to myself. I hit the beach and ran for half an hour while the sun rose in a blaze of pink and yellow. Now some other early risers were joining me.

  The Caribbean. The Turks and Caicos Islands. Providenciales Island. Grace Bay, which is, according to many, the world’s best beach. You’ll get no argument from me on that. Miles of white sand, gentle turquoise waves breaking on the shore. Small birds with long legs ran through the surf. Gulls and pelicans swooped low over the water or sat on the gentle swell. Farther out, deep blue water turned into white breakers as waves broke on the reef.

  I did a few stretches, ready to turn around and head back to the hotel. I thought about breakfast. Coffee and fried eggs and a mound of bacon. Piles of toast with butter and strawberry jam. Fresh tropical fruit.

  I felt myself grinning. Never mind breakfast. I might be lucky enough to find Jenny still in bed.

  As I turned, enjoying that happy thought, something in the water caught my eye. About twenty feet out, large and black, floating on the waves. Much too big to be a bird. A shark maybe? Small, usually harmless nurse sharks came over the reef sometimes. When that happened, the tourists either ran screaming in fear or waded into the water to take pictures.

  No, this wasn’t a shark.

  I squinted as I tried to see better. My eyes aren’t quite what they used to be either. Gradually the shape came into focus. It looked like a person. A man, most likely. He was face down in the water and not moving. He was fully dressed. I glanced up and down the beach. No one else was around. I bent over and untied the laces of my running shoes. I kicked the shoes off, took my phone out of its armband and placed it in one of the shoes.

  Then I waded into the warm, salty water. As I got closer I could see that it was a man, all right. Before I reached him, I knew he was dead. No one would be lying in that position, face in the water, not moving, for fun. I braced myself to see something bad. The sea is not kind to bodies, human or otherwise. But I’ve seen a lot of dead bodies, some of them about as bad as it gets. I could handle this one. I still have a hard time when it’s little kids, but even a quick glance showed me this was no kid. He had to be at least the size of me, and I’m a big guy.

  He was a black man, dressed in jeans and a gray T-shirt. He wore only one running shoe. The other must have come off in the waves. His hair was cut very short. The back of his neck was wide. His biceps were thick with ropy muscle. He was only a few feet out. I stood beside him, my feet on the sandy bottom, water as high as my chest. Small fish darted around me, flashes of silver in the shallow, sunny water. I took a deep breath and flipped the man over. I let out a sigh of relief. He hadn’t been in the water for long. His eyes were a bit of a mess, but everything else looked intact. I grabbed his right arm and pulled him to shore. He bobbled along after me as if this were some sort of macabre game.

  A small crowd had gathered while I’d been in the water. Brightly colored shorts and bathing suits. Big hats and white skin turning pink. Some of the women took one look at my burden and recoiled in horror. Men blanched, and one turned away, hand over his mouth. A small girl with a deep tan and scraped knees said, “Cool.” She darted toward me. Her father grabbed her arm and pulled her away, the child protesting loudly.

  We were in front of one of the grandest, most expensive hotels on the island. Staff had begun setting out lounge chairs and red-and-white-striped umbrellas. A skinny brown guy in a T-shirt with the hotel logo ran into the water to help me pull the body onto shore. I picked a man out of the watching crowd. White guy turning bright pink. Big round belly and expensive shoes. Bermuda shorts and a loud Hawaiian shirt. Cell phone attached to his belt. “You,” I said. “Call the police.”

  “Do they have 911 here?” he asked.

  “Yes.” What can I say? I’m a cop. First thing I do on arriving in a place is learn how to call for help. The man nodded and pulled out his phone.

  The crowd of onlookers was growing steadily. A white woman pushed herself through. She wore an ironed khaki skirt and a crisp red-and-white button-down shirt. Her dark hair fell in a sleek bob to her chin. I didn’t need to read her name tag to know she was a hotel manager. She glanced at the body and swallowed. She raised her head and looked into my face. “Do you, uh, know this man?” she asked me.

  “Never seen him before. I was out for a jog and spotted him in the water.”

  “Are you a guest here?”

  “Nope. Just passing by.” The hotels put their chairs and umbrellas on the sand, but all the beaches in Turks and Caicos are public. I gestured to the body. “Do you recognize him?”

  She avoided looking at him again. “No. He’s not an employee here.”

  “A guest maybe?” I said.

  The manager was about to say no. Instead, she quickly said, “I don’t recognize him.”

  The
dead man was highly unlikely to be a guest. He was black, for one thing, and most of the tourists were white, although some African Americans did come. Anyone was welcome here. If they had enough money. His clothes were ordinary and not very expensive. That didn’t mean much. These days some rich people dressed like street bums, although with better shoes and jewelry.

  “We’ve called 911,” I said.

  “That’s good.” She turned to the onlookers. “Don’t worry, everyone. Help is coming. A most unfortunate incident.” She waded into the crowd, offering sympathy while trying to get people to leave. A couple of hotel security guards arrived at a rapid trot. They then stood around, not doing much of anything.

  I dropped to my knees beside the body. For the first time, I looked fully into the man’s face. He was young, probably in his midtwenties. His skin was dark but not a true black. I ran my eyes down his body. His clothes were pretty much undisturbed. That meant he hadn’t washed over the razor-sharp rocks and coral of the reef. His T-shirt was wrapped around his neck, pushed up by force of the waves. His stomach was flat, his chest hard with muscle.

  The center of his belly had a small but deep tear. Around it were the marks of little teeth. The fish would have gone for the wound immediately. They liked to nibble on the easier-to-get bits first. The man’s stomach might have had been sliced open on a sharp rock or torn apart by a larger fish.

  Or not.

  I knew better than to disturb a crime scene, but I figured the sea had already done that. Most of the crowd had wandered away. A few people were still watching me, but no one ventured too close. The chewed-up eye sockets were enough to keep them back. I unwrapped the T-shirt from around his neck and lowered it over his chest. Not for modesty, but to check something out. A tear in the shirt matched the location of the stomach wound. No, not a tear, but a cut. I leaned over and looked closer. I ran my fingers across the fabric. I studied the edges. The cut was clean and sharp.

  This man had been knifed.

  TWO

  I shoved my hand into the pockets of the dead man’s jeans. Nothing. That in itself was unusual. All men, regardless of social class or income bracket, fill their pockets with stuff. I rolled him onto one side and then the other. I checked the back pockets. I felt something beneath the wet denim. I carefully pulled out a small waterproof bag. It contained a single piece of paper. Without taking the paper out of the bag, I held it up and studied it. A head-and-shoulders photograph of a man. No, not a man. A boy. A teenager. He was thin and dark-skinned. Big nose, sharp cheekbones. Long dreads were gathered in a knot behind his head. He wore a New York Yankees ball cap backward. A scattering of whiskers on his upper lip formed a thin mustache. He was not smiling. He might have been a good-looking kid if he dropped the “screw you, buddy” expression.

  The boy in the photo was younger and thinner than the dead guy. But the resemblance was there. Too old to be the dead man’s son. A brother maybe?

  I studied the still face of the man on the sand again. His face was calm. Except for the eyes, he looked like a tourist snoozing in the sun.

  With a shock, I realized I might have seen him before. I struggled to remember where. Not recently—not since we’d begun our vacation. Maybe in Haiti, where I was currently posted?

  Someone shouted, “Over here.” I pushed myself to my feet.

  They were coming down the steps from the boardwalk. Two paramedics and a uniformed cop. The medics carried a stretcher. “Move along,” the cop said as he walked through the crowd. “Nothing to see here.” No one did as they’d been asked. Some of the people who’d left earlier came back. The hotel manager ran up to him. They looked my way and exchanged a few words. The police here have been trained by the RCMP. Their blue uniforms have red bands on the hats and a red stripe down the pant leg. Just like the Mounties at home. Except that in this country most officers here don’t carry guns.

  Before they reached me, I scooped up my shoes and phone. Using my body to hide what I was doing, I snapped a couple of quick pictures of the dead man’s face and the wound on his belly. Then, I slipped his photograph out of the waterproof wrapping and snapped a couple more shots. I don’t know what I was thinking. I wasn’t here to work. But I knew this man from somewhere. I wanted to remember.

  I put the photo back in the bag as the paramedics reached me. They set their stretcher on the wet sand. She was young, white and pretty, with long dark-red hair. He was an older black guy, short and thin. She gave me a smile. He growled.

  She dropped to her knees beside the man while her partner watched. The cop strolled over. “You find him?” he asked me.

  “Yup. Ray Robertson.” I stuck out my hand. “Sergeant. RCMP.” I was conscious that I was wearing nothing but a pair of orange board shorts. “No ID. Sorry.”

  He accepted the handshake. “Constable Simon White. On vacation?”

  “Yes.”

  “What have you got there?”

  I held out the waterproof bag. “I found this in his pocket.”

  “You went through his things?”

  “Looking for ID. Nothing but this.”

  “Nothing else?”

  “Nothing.”

  I wasn’t sure he believed me. But I didn’t have any place to conceal anything I might have taken from the body. White shrugged. He was a young guy, gleaming white teeth in a very dark face. He was a good bit shorter than me, but lean and hard-muscled. He wore his uniform well, and I noticed the female tourists giving him second glances. He noticed too.

  “You’re going to move him, right?” the woman from the hotel said. “You’re not going to leave him here any longer?”

  The female paramedic got to her feet. “We’ll take him into town.”

  The look of relief on the hotel manager’s face was almost funny. The circle of onlookers was growing again. Cell phones came out and people snapped pictures. Not the sort of pictures the hotel wanted popping up on the Internet.

  “He probably came off one of the boats last night,” the paramedic said. “I’m Sandy, by the way.” Her accent was Canadian.

  “Ray. What boat?”

  “I was working last night. Pulled a double shift.” She yawned. “A refugee boat was intercepted offshore. It was a dark night. No moon. Good for getting onto land undetected.”

  “Medics were called out?” I asked her.

  “We try to help if we can. Lots of people get pretty sick on those miserable boats. We took a pregnant woman and some kids to the hospital. And one guy who broke his leg trying to get away.”

  The cop grumbled, “One got through.”

  “Another boat you mean?” I asked.

  “Yeah. Nothing but trouble.”

  “Where are they coming from?”

  “Haiti,” Sandy said. “By the hundreds. Thousands. They cross the ocean in barely seaworthy boats. Some are so crowded it’s standing room only.”

  “They come here? To Turks and Caicos?” I said. “The whole population of the country’s what, thirty thousand? Who can hide here?” This small but thriving country is 140 miles north of Haiti. Desperate, poor Haiti.

  “It’s thirty-three thousand,” she said, “spread over forty islands, only eight of which are actually inhabited. I’ve been to concerts with a bigger population than this entire country. Haitians are told they’re being taken to the States. Instead they’re dumped here. After paying a lot of money, of course. Some are trafficked into construction or the sex trade.”

  The cop laughed. “We’ve picked up hitchhikers trying to get to Miami or New York City.”

  “Doesn’t sound like a laughing matter to me,” I said. He shrugged.

  “Are you people going to stand around talking all day?” the hotel manager snapped.

  “Can you get a couple of your people to help us carry the stretcher to the ambulance?” Sandy said. “Then we’re ready to go.”

  The manager shouted for two security guards to lend a hand. Sandy and her partner gently and respectfully rolled the body onto the stret
cher. Two teenage boys crept close for a better look. Constable White growled at them to get back.

  “Just a minute,” I said. “I want to show you something.” I dropped to my haunches and gestured to White to come closer. The paramedics and security guards also crowded around. The hotel manager tapped her foot. I pointed to the man’s T-shirt. “What do you make of that?”

  “The reef,” White said. “It’s sharp.”

  “He didn’t come over the reef, or he’d have a lot more damage.”

  “Lots of rocks in the water.”

  “True.” I lifted the shirt. The cut stood out against the man’s dark skin. It was about three inches long, slicing crossways below the belly button. One cut only, clean and sharp.

  “Fish have been at him,” White said, barely controlling his boredom. He pushed himself to his feet. “What do you expect?”

  “The fish have had a go, sure,” Sandy said. “But I see what Ray means. That cut came first. Then the fish had a nibble. It’s straight and sharp-edged. A knife, I’d say. A good one.”

  I nodded to her. “That’s what I’m thinking.”

  “Not my problem,” White said. “Let’s go.”

  “What do you mean, not your problem? This man’s been murdered.”

  He lowered his voice. “Look, Sergeant. You’re not from around here, so let me explain it to you. It’s obvious he came off one of the refugee boats. No ID. Nothing.”

  “He has that picture.”

  The edges of White’s mouth turned up in a sneer. “We can guess what that means.” He spat onto the sand. “No loss to anyone. They’re always fighting on those boats. People realize they’re being cheated and want their money back. Even the traffickers fight among themselves sometimes. He could be one of them. Happens all the time.” He shrugged. “Saves us the trouble.”

  “You don’t know that,” I said. “You don’t know anything about him.”

  “And I don’t care,” he said. “Come on. Let’s get him out of here. Give these people back their beach.”

  Sandy made a face behind White’s back. Then she instructed the security guards to lift the stretcher. It had to be carried out, as the sand was too deep to allow for a stretcher on wheels. Sandy tossed a blanket over the body and pulled it up to cover the face. At that moment I remembered where I’d seen him.