by Cave, Hugh
In the town, Ken Daniels stopped in front of a grocery store and turned the battered car's nose in to the curb. Having squeezed into the conveyance last, Will was the first to exit. While the others followed, dropping coins into the driver's hand, he waited on the sidewalk. The town's main street was remarkably clean. Across the way an old fellow plied a broom in the gutter.
"Well now, Mr. Platt, you want to go to Silent Hill, correct?" Daniels, his passengers attended to, stood solidly before him, ready to dicker.
"That's right, Mr. Daniels."
"Just call me Ken, if you don't mind. Everybody calls me Ken. Where you want to go in Silent Hill?"
"I don't know. I'm looking for Sam Norman, who went there yesterday morning to find a man named Emmanuel Bignall and hasn't returned."
"All right. What I can do is this. I will drive you there and do whatever we have to, and leave the pay up to you for the time it takes. If I drive somebody to MoBay airport these days, I have to charge eighty dollars because the price of gas and car parts is so high. MoBay and back is a six -hour ride, so you can figure today's cost accordingly. Is that okay with you?"
"That's fine with me, Ken."
"Good. We're gone."
While driving through the town, the taxi man was silent. After turning down the hill at Barclay's Bank, however, he said with a frown, "Who is this Mr. Norman we are looking for, Mr. Platt?"
"He came here to help the United Nations man, Juan Cerrado."
"I know Mr. Cerrado."
"You must know he is missing, then."
"Yes. He disappeared about ten days ago."
"Sam Norman is trying to find him. I came down from Florida to help Sam. We're old friends."
As the car left Christiana behind, the driver removed his left hand from the wheel to rub his whiskered chin. "And your Mr. Norman went to Silent Hill to seek Emmanual Bignall?" he said without taking his gaze from the steep downgrade.
"That's right."
Silence. The road leveled and spawned some sharp turns. After handling the curves at what would have been reckless speed with a less skillful driver at the wheel, Ken Daniels said quietly, "Emmanuel Bignall is an obeah man. You know that?"
"So I've heard. Are you afraid of obeah?"
"I don't mess with it, but I'm not afraid. Not of people like him, anyhow. He is not big like—well, some others I could name."
"Sister Merle, for instance?"
The driver's gaze flashed to Will's face and away again. "You know about her too, do you?"
"Sam and I called on her the day before yesterday."
"At her place in the Cockpit?"
"Yes."
"You're not a timid man, then. And now you want to call on Bignall."
"I want to find Sam, and it was Bignall he was looking for. Do you know where the fellow lives?"
"I can take you there."
The unpaved road crossed a narrow bridge above a stream, then climbed. There were yam fields on both sides, and now and then a small house. A pickup truck filled with green bananas and ginger root rattled past on its way to Christiana. A dirt road angled off to the left, and Ken Daniels took it.
They passed half a dozen houses and a pair of shops, in one of which men stood around in work clothes drinking beer and listening to a jukebox thunder out reggae. Then more yam fields and some banana walks. Suddenly Will leaned forward to peer through the car's windshield.
"Isn't that a Land Rover parked ahead, Ken?"
Ken eased his foot off the gas. "It is." He brought the taxi to a halt behind the standing vehicle, and they got out. "It's the U.N. Rover, no key in it." Twisting his big frame at the hips, he frowned at a footpath angling down to his right. "That track there goes to Emmanuel Bignall's home."
"How far?"
"Maybe half a mile. You can walk that far?"
Two years ago Will had walked across the Massif du Sud in Haiti, one of the Caribbean's most challenging wildernesses. "I think so. I walked to Sister Merle's."
"So you did. I forgot."
The path was not as difficult as the one to Merle's. Reaching a level some twenty feet below the road, it wound its way leisurely through planted fields where the red earth seemed ablaze in the sun, then through patches of trees where the cool shade was a relief. Bignall's home, too, was unlike the obeah house Will had visited with Sam. Little more than a shack, it stood in the center of a small, weed-grown clearing, with a rusty and dented oil drum at its door to catch rainwater from the roof.
Will tried to recall what Ima Williams had said about Emmanuel Bignall, and the phrase that came to mind was "big, black, and ugly." When Ken Daniels called out, "Manny, you home?" the man who appeared in the doorway in soiled khaki pants and a sweat-stained undershirt, yawning and stretching, well fitted the housekeeper's description.
"Mornin', Manny," the taxi man said. "This here is Mr. Platt and we lookin' a friend of his, a man named Mr. Sam Norman. He did come here yesterday to talk to you."
The whites of the eyes that looked Will over were streaked with red. The eyes themselves were hostile. "You lookin' who, suh?"
"Mr. Sam Norman," Will said. "His Land Rover is out there on the road, where he left it when he came in here."
"Him never come in here," Bignall said, warping his oversized face into an expression of puzzlement. "Nobody never come here yesterday. Not a soul."
Ken Daniels said, "Why his vehicle is out there, then? You tryin' tell us he couldn't find his way in here, when your track don't go nowhere else but here?"
The expression on Bignall's face again changed, this time to anger. "Me tellin' you me never did see him!"
"You was here?"
"The whole entirely day."
"Manny, you not bein' too polite, you know. Why you don't invite us in?"
"Come in if you likes." The big man stepped back from the doorway to let them enter.
The shack was a single room containing a bed and a few other sad bits of furniture. A two-burner oil stove against the far wall looked as though it was used often but cleaned seldom. The obeah man eased his bulk into a rickety chair and waited for his callers to be seated. In silence he scowled at them, obviously resenting their intrusion. Ken Daniels looked questioningly at Will.
"Mr. Bignall, I'll tell you why Mr. Norman came to talk to you," Will said carefully. "He and I are trying to locate Juan Cerrado, the United Nations man who disappeared a week ago last Friday. Yesterday we learned that you and another man drove him away from the Christiana market that day in a Prefect. Mr. Norman wanted to ask you where you took him."
Did the fellow understand ordinary English, or would Ken have to translate? Ken himself had used the patois, more or less. Perhaps it was common practice when conversing with those whose only tongue it was.
With a ponderous shrug Emmanuel Bignall said, "The two of we never did bring Mr. Cerrado here."
"Where did you take him?"
"Me never did take him nowhere. Me was finished in the market and talkin' to Nevil Walters that mornin' when Mr. Cerrado come along. Him say, 'I hear you has a fine farm, Nevil; I would truly like to see it.' Nevil, him say, 'Well, Mr. Cerrado, me goin' home right now and me has a car here, so if you wants to come along, you can come.'
" 'I better follow you in mine,' Mr. Cerrado him say."
" 'No need to do that,' Nevil tell him, 'because me comin' back here with me woman to buy her a dress.' " The obeah man looked innocently at his callers and shrugged his shoulders again. "Does you know where Nevil Walters live, either of you?"
Ken Daniels nodded. To Will he said, "We passed the place on our way here, a couple of miles outside Christiana."
"So what happen," Emmanuel Bignall said, "the two of them did stop at Nevil's and me did walk home from there. Next day me did see Nevil in Case's bar and ask him how things go, and him tell me him did take Mr. Cerrado back to town when him drive the woman in. Them did drop him off at the bank to draw money for him Friday pay bill."
"Which bank?" Ken aske
d casually. "Barclay's or Scotia?"
Bignall hesitated, but only slightly. "Barclay's. How me know, us was drinkin' in Case's when Nevil say this, and him turn and point across the street."
The taxi man only nodded.
Will said, "Now tell us why the U.N. Land Rover, which Mr. Norman drove here yesterday, is parked out on the road where your path begins."
"Me have no idea. Me never know it there till you say so."
"Mr. Norman came here to talk to you," Will persisted, speaking slowly and deliberately now. "He didn't know where you live, so he must have asked—probably at one of the shops. He then found the path to this house, took the ignition key out of the vehicle so no one could make off with it, and walked in here. Where is he, Mr. Bignall? What happened to him?"
"It seem a real problem, don't it? For me was here all day yesterday and all last night, and no one did come here to call on me."
To Will's surprise, Ken Daniels interrupted with, "Mr. Platt, maybe we should go talk to Nevil Walters."
Glancing at him, Will saw something that spelled "urgent" in the man's face, and got to his feet. Ken rose with him and turned to the door.
"If me hear anything, me will surely let you know," Emmanuel Bignall said.
Will muttered, "Thanks." Ken said nothing. They walked across the shabby clearing to the footpath by which they had come.
Half way out to the road the taxi man said, "Mr. Platt, do you have another key to the Land Rover?"
"There may be one at the house. I don't know."
"It would not be wise to leave the vehicle here. In Jamaica today cars cost a fortune and are being stolen or stripped every day."
"I'll ask Ima if there's another key. Can we stop on the way and talk to this Walters fellow?"
"It would be a waste of time."
"But you said back there—"
"I know. I wanted to get away. Those two have got together and invented a story, Mr. Platt. You noticed what happened when I asked him which bank? They hadn't expected that, and he made a mistake. At least, I think he did. There are only two banks in Christiana, and the one I've seen Juan Cerrado in is the other one, the Bank of Nova Scotia."
"It isn't much to go on," Will protested.
Still speaking over his shoulder while leading the way out to the road, the taxi man said, "A man like you could find out if Juan Cerrado withdrew money that day, couldn't he?"
"I don't know."
"I believe you could, if you explain why you need the information. But even if you can't, I am certain Bignall was lying to us."
"Are you? Why?"
"Do you know where Craig Head is?"
"No."
"It is a village beyond Christiana on the road to Troy. The Friday Mr. Cerrado disappeared, I carried some people there because the taxi serving that district broke down and they begged me to take them home from the market."
Ken paused, scowling. "On my way back from Craig Head, Mr. Platt, I saw Nevil Walters' yellow Prefect come streaking out of a side road in front of me, in a real big hurry to get to Christiana, with both Walters and Bignall in it, but no Juan Cerrado. This was well before noon when, if we are to believe Bignall, Mr. Cerrado was at Nevil's farm."
"Where was the Prefect coming from?"
"That road goes to one place. Gourie Forest."
"Where?"
"Gourie Forest. A big pine forest with trails to explore, and Gourie Cave, that is said to be one of the longest and most dangerous caves in all Jamaica."
Taking a hand from the wheel, Ken emphatically gestured with it. "I think we should go there, Mr. Platt, when you have the keys to the Rover and have asked at the banks if Mr. Cerrado took money out that day. Because I don't think he did. And I don't think he was driven to any farm. Bignall told us that pretty story—and, mind you, it's a very likely story right down to the bank business—to throw us off the scent."
Without shifting his gaze from the road, Ken managed somehow to convey the impression that he was peering at Will. "What I think really happened," he said, "is that Juan Cerrado was taken from the Christiana market to Gourie and maybe killed there. And if so, Mr. Platt, your friend Mr. Sam Norman may be there too."
15
The Telegram
Juan Cerrado had no account at Barclay's. He had one at the Bank of Nova Scotia but had not used it on the day of his disappearance or since.
At the house Ima Williams said yes, there was a spare set of keys for the Land Rover. She lifted them from a nail in the kitchen broom closet and put them in Will's hand.
On the way back to Silent Hill in the taxi, Will went over the events of the morning and tried to make sense of them.
It was an exercise in frustration.
"Ken, tell me if I've got this straight. Cerrado made an enemy of your obeah woman, Sister Merle, by telling his farmers to keep away from her. To stop paying her their hard-earned money for services he thought were worthless. Is that right?"
"That is correct, Mr. Platt."
"So you think she may have had him killed."
"Yes."
"But why, if she is such a powerful sorceress? Why didn't she just use her obeah on him?"
"The way I understand it, Mr. Platt, some people are easy for an obeah person and some are not. I shouldn't think Mr. Cerrado was one of the easy ones. Then again, I'm told you must believe, though I don't go along with that."
An old notion, Will thought. One that existed in Haiti, too, in connection with bocorism. Unless you believed in the powers of such people, you could not be brought under their influence. His research in Haiti had led him to reject the theory even before Sam Norman's clash with Margal had made a mockery of it.
"What can have happened to Sam, Ken?"
The taxi man thoughtfully scratched at his beard. "All I can think of is that he may have walked to Bignall's place and been disposed of."
A chill took Will and he winced. "To stop him from finding out what happened to Cerrado?"
"Yes."
"But if he was disposed of, as you put it, would Bignall have left the Land Rover there?"
"If he could not drive it. I have never seen him drive a car. Few people of his kind know how to."
"Should we go there again and ask him what he was doing with Walters in your Gourie Forest?"
Ken shook his head. "There is a potato storehouse on that road. He is not a potato farmer, but could say he went there to see someone. There are houses, too, though not many. He could claim he was calling on a friend." A deep frown changed the shape of the taxi man's jaw. "What I think, Mr. Platt—we should ask some of those people in Gourie if they saw a yellow Prefect that day, and who was in it. We can do that today."
The U.N. vehicle was still standing at the roadside by Bignall's path. It started for Will at a turn of the key. Ken, leaning from his taxi, called out, "All right. I will drive to your house and wait for you there."
At the house they parked the lavender-striped taxi in the yard and closed the gate on it for security. After telling an anxious Ima their intentions, they drove in the Land Rover through Christiana and up the steep grade beyond the town to the road Ken had talked about.
It was unpaved and rough. Circling a large metal storehouse that glistened in the sun, it became even rougher, with fields of corn on both sides. After a sharp left turn the farms yielded to pine trees, tall and straight, taming the harsh sunlight to a cool, dim darkness.
Roads and trails wore Forestry Department signs of rustic design to indicate where they went. Today the whole place seemed empty and eerily silent except for the wind-sigh in the pine tops.
"Your forest is bigger than I expected," Will remarked.
"We would need days to explore it. I just want you to drive the roads now and see the size of the problem."
They finished their tour, during which Will felt he had been magically transported from the tropics to some secret part of the Maine woods. "Now let's talk to people," Ken said.
There were houses on the roa
d by which they had entered. At one after another the taxi man asked questions while Will stood by in silence, not knowing how to contribute. Only at the last one, near the potato storehouse, did Ken score.
"The week before last on Friday?" said the woman trying to respond to his questions. "Yes, me did see an old yellow car come by here. It was about eleven o'clock, 'cause me was dressing to go-a-town and fretting 'cause me so late."
"Who you did see in the car, mum?"
"Seem like me remember two men, one o' dem really big an' black."
"Not three?"
"Coulda been three if one was in de back seat. Me never really look, you understand."
Ken gave her a bright new fifty cent coin and thanked her. As they got back into the Land Rover, he said, "We've done what we can here, don't you think? At least for now. Seems to me what we ought to do next is go to your house and decide on a plan of action."
Will nodded. "Can you stay with me on this for a while, Ken? I can't handle it alone. I don't even speak the language."
A smile touched the taxi man's ruggedly handsome face. "Well now, Marse Platt, me sure can and will. Me must have to admit me really curious now."
"You'd better drop the 'Platt' if we're going to be working together. My name's Will."
"Okay, Marse Will."
On reaching the house, Will suddenly realized he should call Florida. "I ought to tell my wife I won't be returning as soon as expected," he said to Ima Williams. "Where's the nearest telephone?"
"When Mr. Sam called you, he used the outdoor pay phone opposite the police station. But some of our neighbors have telephones they would let you use, I am sure."
Not eager to become involved with strangers, Will drove up to the town, then wished he hadn't. The booth looked as though it had been without maintenance for years. The door refused to close properly, and every vehicle snarling up the grade outside added to his hearing problem. But he got through eventually.