Chattering loudly they all went back to work, a few passing happy glances at me. I heard the words King Rat a few times. Funny what you have to do sometimes to earn respect.
Broga went up to the plantation next to give the same spiel to the workers there and by the time he returned the cops had arrived wanting statements. Handler was in charge and we spoke to him for some time though Broga didn’t ask any favours. He preferred to organize those through his contact.
That night I took Kari to dinner and completely fell for her. Her exuberance and general love of life came through in everything she talked about. She volunteered the information about the scar and told some horrific stories about her father.
She obviously cared deeply for her brother, Endell, and didn’t resent his position as stable jockey in the least. She had her own ambitions and a zealot’s belief that they’d be achieved. I wished I was a big owner or trainer who could help make her dreams come true and resolved to get a commitment from Broga to put her up whenever possible.
Over a final drink at my cottage, she let me unpeel the bandages and look at her injuries. Most of the blistering had subsided leaving red patchy skin. I thought of her this morning grasping that rifle and thrusting hard to break the bottleneck of rats in the pipe. That must have hurt her hands.
Then again, the pain she’d been through in her first fifteen years made something like that laughable.
In the early hours, I moved to kiss her. She smiled and led me outside onto the porch to where the moon hung large over the sea. Looking up at it she said, ‘I wan’ it to be romantic, like I read in books when I was li’l.’
I wasn’t sure if this wild tomboyish woman was winding me up but I took the chance and kissed her very gently, very softly but long and deep and the memory of her swinging breasts, of her swaggering athletic entrance into the yard the first time I saw her made me want her very badly.
‘Come back inside,’ I said.
The moon lit her face. She looked at me, tempted I could see, but her romantic ideals won out. ‘Not tonigh’, Eddie, not firs’ nigh’. Mek yuh t’ink I a slut.’
As she tried to pull away, I held her, trying not to seem too desperate. ‘I won’t, honestly, Kari, I won’t!’
I sounded extremely desperate.
She eased herself out of my arms. ‘Tuhmorrow nigh’,’ she promised smiling and slipped away to her own cottage. I went to bed feeling deliciously frustrated.
45
Next morning over breakfast on the terrace, Broga told me he’d arranged for the Archangel to be salvaged in the hope of finding some evidence.
‘When’s that happening?’
‘Probably take a week.’ He picked up an orange, bit into the skin and peeled slowly sending the scent across on the mild breeze.
‘Waste of time and money, Broga.’
He shrugged, kept peeling.
I said, ‘All they’ll find is a big hole in the side and a chance to make jokes about something fishy going on.’
He said, ‘You never know. Experts can tell if an explosion’s been set off deliberately.’
‘After the evidence has lain at the bottom of the sea for two weeks? Good luck to them.’
‘It’s all we’ve got at the moment; we’ll have to run with it.’ He bit into an orange segment sending a long squirt of juice onto the tablecloth.
Frustrating. I returned to the lines I’d been thinking on yesterday. ‘Are you certain there’s no one who’d want to scare you away from Barbados?’
He frowned, chewing in slow motion, shaking his head without much conviction.
I said, ‘What about Headlands itself? Is there anyone who wouldn’t want you here, on this estate?’
He thought again then smiled and said, ‘Only on a friendly basis.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘Phil Campbell, a good friend of mine, he spent half of last year trying to buy me out.’
I sat forward. ‘Of here?’
‘The lot, stables and all.’
‘What did he want it for?’
‘It wasn’t him exactly. He’s the MD of a company with the second biggest sugar business on the island, plantations, refineries, transport, the works. Just looking to acquire a few more acres.’
‘How hard did he pitch for it?’
‘Very hard. But I know exactly why.’
I waited.
‘There’s been speculation for the past eighteen months that the Government want to take over all the sugar production. They already control around half of it and word was that they’d be willing to pay premium prices to buy people out.’
‘And did your man know you knew that?’
‘Course he did. He put his cards on the table, offered me a good price, one that he’d end up losing on if the Government thing didn’t come off.’
‘Which it hasn’t?’
‘Not yet but there’s still every chance.’
‘So Mister Campbell would still be interested if the place came back on the market?’
‘Eddie, forget it. Phil’s company already have over five thousand acres including the estates adjoining mine so it wasn’t as if this was exactly do or die for them. Anyway, I’ve been good friends with Phil for years. He’s been on the phone commiserating over my problems here.’
‘When?’
‘Just before I left for Stockholm.’
Letitia brought tea on a trolley and poured two cups. Broga sat opposite me in a cushioned chair and drew the saucer slowly toward him across the yellow tablecloth.
I said, ‘It’s worth looking into, Broga.’
His eyes hardened, ‘Eddie, I’m his daughter’s godfather.’’
I stood firm. ‘So you can’t judge it objectively.’
His eyes rolled skywards. I pressed on, ‘Let me have a look at it. No harm done if it’s all above board.’
‘I’ll tell you what to do first, come and have dinner at his house tomorrow night.’
‘What are you trying to do, make me like him?’
‘Look, come and meet him. You’re your own man. Do what you want afterwards.’
‘And you’ll support me?’
He nodded solemnly and finished his tea. ‘Carte blanche.’
I agreed then we discussed security, decided what was needed. Broga asked me to take care of it.
I organized high-powered lights around the yard and the plantation buildings. The main houses were already alarmed. I ordered a review of all the systems, an electronic sweep for bugging devices and booked guards with Rottweilers to patrol the estate round the clock.
As dusk fell that afternoon, I decided to soak in the Jacuzzi before taking Kari out to dinner again. As I stepped into the bubbling water, the phone rang. It was George, the big sailor from the Archangel. He told me Mister Dann had just walked into the Southern Parish Club.
‘Are you there now?’
‘Yes, suh. Waitin’ fuh ma money!’
‘I’ll be there in fifteen minutes. Meet me outside.’
George stood by the entrance to the club. He smiled wide, nodding as I crossed the road toward him. I said, ‘He still in there?’
‘Sure is!’
‘Where’s he sitting?’
‘By de window. Playin’ dominoes.’
Knowing how sly he could be, I asked him to wait while I peeped carefully through the doors. Mister Dann was there with three others.
George told me which car was his, a sleek red Toyota. I paid the big man off but he wouldn’t leave till I assured him it wasn’t yet boat-buying time and that my business with Mister Dann tonight was nothing to do with him.
Tackling Mister Dann in the bar would have been silly so I settled down to wait, knowing I could be there all night but reasoning that I might get lucky on the basis that he’d brought the car. Maybe it was a flying visit.
An hour and a half later, he came out.
He drove the sporty Toyota at a steady pace and I followed. He set off up the west coast for about ten miles, s
lowing a long way from his turn into a narrow driveway.
Approaching the turn, I cut my engine and headlights and rolled the last hundred metres or so in what light there was from the moon. I got out, softly closed the door and walked toward the opening.
The red Toyota sat in darkness. Then a light came on in the house. Cautiously, keeping to the edges, I crept forward.
Small cottage, once white now shabby, patchy. The window of the room where the light had just been switched on was on the left side, low enough for me to look through if I stood on tiptoe.
I did, clutching the ledge, peering in. A small room. Mister Dann was alone inside, bent over, lifting stuff out of a box. I smiled. He was a wiry little guy but I was confident I could handle him. Suddenly from behind, a single hand clasped my throat and a voice from a foot above me boomed, ‘Come join we, Mistah Malloy, have a beer.’
Then he laughed and carried me inside.
46
The giant had to duck to get through the doorway into a room at the rear of the building. He put me down and shut the door, then stepped back against it standing to attention, a huge black guardsman.
Clemence sat as still as a waxwork at an old table set diagonally in the corner staring at me; his eyes were cold and unblinking. A bare light bulb reflected in his receding hairline and made his yellow short-sleeve shirt look dirty and his olive skin seem even darker.
On his right, slouched in a wooden chair against the wall was another huge black man shiningly bald, stern faced, silent, his wide jaws chewing lazily as he stared at me. He wore a pink vest with Sun of The Beach printed on the front. I wished he were on the beach now.
Mister Dann did not come in, leaving just the three of us.
The whole house smelt of stale piss and marijuana. Heavy dirty curtains covered the window. The floor was bare boards. Rubbish choked an old fireplace. Thoroughly depressing. Gloomy. Dangerous.
Clemence slowly opened a drawer in the table and took out a long Bowie knife. He laid it alongside a corkscrew, reached in the drawer again and brought out steel nutcrackers.
Six open beer bottles stood on the table. Clemence moved them so I could see his array of metal: knife, corkscrew, nutcrackers.
Nobody had spoken. I’d expected jeering and mockery for being such a sucker, I’d have been more comfortable with that. Instead, it was cold professional ominous silence.
Clemence slowly opened a different drawer. My eyes fixed on his hand like a rabbit on a snake as he pulled something out. It was a small melon. My mind searched crazily trying to make sense of this new ingredient. It drew a blank.
Clemence reached in again: a sealed string bag of walnuts this time. He put them beside the melon. At least they went with one of the other items, gave me a shred of hope. He bent to a crate at his feet and came up with a bottle of beer He laid it beside the walnuts.
Then he picked up the knife. He looked at me. I tried not to swallow, to let that bobbing Adam’s apple convey the fear I felt. All three were looking at me, though my eyes were fixed on Clemence’s.
He lifted the melon, sliced it, put the knife down, ripped the loose seeds out with his hands flinging the soggy mess on the floor, bit deep into a piece and, juice streaming down his chin, smiled a wide white-toothed smile. I almost smiled back in relief.
He took the corkscrew, flipped an opener from the side of it and levered the top off the beer, cut into the walnut sack and started cracking nuts; all potential instruments of torture accounted for. Some tension-easing breath came out of my nostrils.
He drank and popped a nut in his mouth; I could see shards of it on his big glistening teeth as he said his first words, ‘You don’t learn very quickly, Malloy.’
No smile now just patient chewing.
I didn’t reply.
‘Mister Barclay warned you, Mister Goodwin warned you. The boss did not want to harm you. He insisted you be given every chance. Now, regrettably, he has asked me to try and persuade you more forcefully to keep your nose out of things, to go home and resume riding horses.’
The giant stooped and hit me below the ribs. Blinding pain. Sickening. I went down. Lay grunting, trying not to vomit.
Clemence said, ‘Is that sufficient, Malloy? Will that make you go home?’
Couldn’t answer. Gasping for breath. Angry that he’d always had the upper hand, this boss guy, whoever he was.
I pushed myself to a sitting position. The giant moved in again, his head hitting the light bulb. Clemence glared at him and put up his hand. The man backed off.
The creaking bulb swung in a circle glowing on each of us in a crazy pass-the-parcel of light. I tried to work out what to do. Couldn’t. If the giant hit me again, I’d be out. A couple more and I’d be dead.
I sat there in pathetic bewilderment angry with myself for being so stupid, so arrogant as to think I’d simply catch up with Mister Dann and beat some information out of him.
Clemence looked past me at the giant and said, ‘Take his pants off.’
I turned quickly, lashing out as he came at me. He was almost seven feet tall, laughing. His huge left hand gripped my shoulder lifted me and squeezed, paralyzing my right side. He pushed, bending me backwards over the table and grabbed the waistband of my flimsy khaki trousers. He ripped them down, boxer shorts tearing at the seams.
‘On the floor,’ Clemence said.
He threw me onto my back.
I rolled and grunted grasping my genitals in pointless hope of retaining some dignity, providing some protection.
I looked up and Clemence stood over me.
In his right hand were the steel nutcrackers.
My stomach lurched. I felt my face blanch. Suddenly all the old jokes didn’t seem funny anymore.
The bald guy was there now too, still chewing slowly. Clemence said to him, ‘Open his legs.’
He knelt at my feet, forced my ankles apart.
Clemence stared down. ‘Are you going home?’
My anger boiled over. ‘I’m staying here so you can tell your boss to go fuck himself. And fuck you too!’ I said.
‘You won’t be fucking anybody for a long time Malloy.’
I glared at him with a mixture of defiance and hate. No fear showing I hoped. He nodded and the giant bent over me and pulled my protecting hands clear as easily as a kid would move a doll’s limbs.
Clemence smiled. ‘Maybe I am not scaring you enough.’
He turned to the bald one. ‘Give me that gum.’ The guy stopped chewing and looked as puzzled as I felt. Clemence held his hand toward him, ‘Give!’
The guy spat it into his palm and gave it to Clemence who put the nutcrackers between his teeth and pulled the sticky gum in two. He then fixed a piece inside each of the jaws of the instrument.
I almost forgot my terror as I tried to figure out what the crazy bastard was doing. He reached to the table for a beer bottle cap, which he stuck to the gum. Carefully he did the same on the other side then held it up to the light showing the caps’ jagged edges pointed inwards.
I nearly passed out before he touched me.
He grinned. ‘An expensive lesson, Malloy.’
I said nothing, wondering only how long the pain would take to push me into unconsciousness. All my previous agonies came back to mind: the breaks and fractures... a leg, wrists, collarbones, ribs, all the result of falls. Falls in the mud and cold of a British winter. A beautiful safe British winter.
How would the pain compare with those limb breaks? With the incident last year when I was whipped till I bled?
Clemence got to his knees beside me his sweaty hands easing my penis aside.
I shut my eyes.
‘Delicate,’ he said softly.
A touch of cool steel on my thigh.
The giant’s acrid breath in my face.
Then my right testicle eased gently, ridiculously gently between the ragged jaws.
No snapping closed.
Slow, steady pressure increase. But the first ounce, the first
gram sent a starburst, a constellation of agony upwards through every organ, every strand of intestine, every electrified nerve along its searing length till merciful, heavenly overload blew the fuse box in my brain.
47
It must have taken me a full minute when I woke to recall what had happened. I lay on my side in the gloom, on the stinking floor where they’d left me.
Badly dazed, I tried to figure things out, where the ballooning ache in my groin had come from.
There was heat on my bare thigh, uncomfortable, just a spot the size of a coin. I reached to rub it. The heat hit my hand then. Groggily I looked round. Through a small hole in the curtains came a single circular shaft of light like a laser beam. I eased myself out of its path.
At least it was morning. At least I was alive.
I turned to lie staring up at the dead bulb, the grimy flaking ceiling. Where were they? When would they come back?
The pain wasn’t terrible now. Just a big spherical ache in my groin and lower gut. I was scared to try and get up in case I couldn’t, in case the agony returned.
I thought about Kari and smiled. She’d be proud of me. I was proud of myself. The way I felt I’d probably never sit down again let alone bump along on a horse but I was bloody proud that I’d held out, hadn’t begged for mercy.
Then I remembered how I was supposed to be spending last night. I’d dashed out without telling Kari I couldn’t make our date.
My mind returned to the present. Where were Clemence and the gorillas?
I eased myself up a bit, leant on my elbow. Bottles and scattered walnuts littered the room but if there was anyone else in the house, they were dead silent. All I could hear was some birdsong and the distant sound of waves breaking.
Gradually I worked myself into a sitting position, sweat beading on my scalp and brow. I forced myself to look down, to check the damage.
Running Scared (The Eddie Malloy series Book 4) Page 17