by Joan Smith
He fired. Loretta dived sideways, hit the sea wall, hardly felt the pain, cowered against it. The kid staggered almost comically from the recoil, recovered and walked towards James Noel, firing again, twice in quick succession, the gun leaping up each time. Blood spurted from Noel’s chest, he threw up his hands and a hideous gurgling noise came from his lips, but he didn’t fall, not yet. Pink foam flecked his mouth and he was trying to speak, his arms flailing, as if he still hoped to reason with the kid. Loretta saw the boy treading in Noel’s blood, smearing it with his trainers, she dropped her head and vomited. There was another shot and she heard Noel collapse, several yards away from her by now, an odd, quiet, crumpled sound. She looked up, spitting bile from her mouth, and saw the kid standing in a kind of daze, as though he didn’t understand the connection between the weapon in his hand and the man lying at his feet. The movement must have alerted him to her presence and he turned, staring down at her as though unable to work out what she was doing there. She saw him raise his gun hand, point it waveringly towards her, and for a few seconds she was paralysed, convinced he was going to fire. Then he blinked rapidly, grunted and tossed the gun over the sea wall.
Loretta let out an involuntary cry and for a moment the relief was so great she thought she was going to wet herself. She retched again, spewing out saliva this time, and when she raised her head from the ground an oldish man was running towards them, rounding the corner from the café. The kid saw him, muttered something and bolted in the opposite direction, towards the other side of the island.
‘What’s going on?’ The man saw James Noel slumped on the ground, the widening pool of blood, and exclaimed: ‘Oh my God. Oh my God,’ He turned and threw his arms wide, blocking the view of a plump woman trotting after him. ‘Emily, don’t look,’ Two men overtook them, one of them wearing the uniform of a security guard.
‘Jesus. Is he dead?’
‘You OK? Are you hit?’
‘Which way’d he go? What’d he look like?’
Loretta pointed, still crouching against the wall. ‘Dark hair. T-shirt. Long.’
They broke into a run. A woman was shouting over and over again: ‘A doctor, someone please go get a doctor –’
A man crouched beside James Noel, lifting his wrist, feeling for a pulse. He peered up at the rapidly growing crowd. ‘Sorry, folks, it’s too late.’ He removed his jacket and placed it over Noel’s head and chest.
‘Did you see it, hon?’ A head came down to her level and Loretta started back, flinching from the obscene rubber crown.
‘Albie, where are you?’ She looked round for her husband. ‘She’s sick, I think she’s gonna faint.’
Loretta said: ‘No.’
‘You want me to help you up?’
Reluctantly Loretta took the woman’s hand, struggled to her feet, clutching the strap of her bag. She walked unsteadily towards the crowd which by now partly obscured Jamie’s body, mesmerised by the trail of blood which showed how long he had taken to go down. Someone had knocked her Coke off the wall, diluting the blood into a viscous brown puddle.
She felt a touch on her arm, saw the ludicrous green spokes nodding towards her again. ‘He a friend of yours, hon?’
No one else seemed to have noticed her. Loretta said in a small, cracked voice: ‘I — I’ve never seen him before in my life.’
Someone called out: ‘He have any ID?’
‘Try his wallet.’
‘Mind out, don’t step in the blood.’
Loretta edged round the crowd, still unremarked. She turned and stumbled towards the café, skirting the lawn and the wall, veering right on to the path between the tables. Another security guard appeared from the building and hurried towards her, seizing her arm.
‘What happened? Someone get shot?’
‘Yes,’ said Loretta, and he broke into a run.
She was at the café door when the ferry hooted at the landing stage. Without making a conscious decision, she wheeled round and began pounding across the grass, rounding the front of the building as the last passengers filed on to the boat.
‘Hey lady, no need to kill yourself, we won’t go without you.’ A crewman put out a hand to steady her, regarding her with amusement, then his expression changed. ‘Are you OK?’
She nodded.
‘Maybe you should sit down. Here, let me help you inside.’ He slipped an arm under her elbow and she sagged dizzily against him, thinking for a moment she was going to faint. He supported her into the lounge, leading her to an empty table next to a window. ‘What’s up? Are you sick? You gonna be all right?’
She sank into a chair, shaking too much to speak.
‘Maybe you should–’ Someone called his name and he turned, not sure what to do.
Wanting him to go, Loretta got out: ‘The heat –’
He didn’t look convinced but he was wanted on deck, the summons more urgent this time. ‘You take care now,’ he said, leaving her with obvious reluctance.
Loretta closed her eyes, leaned forward and slumped over her clasped hands. There was a grinding noise, the engines revved up and she felt the ferry move off, forcing herself to take long slow breaths because she didn’t want to draw any more attention to herself. After a couple of minutes she got used to the gentle motion of the boat and something compelled her to turn her head to the window; Ellis Island was receding fast and she gasped, shocked beyond coherent thought by what had happened there. Her lips were dry and she licked them, tasting traces of vomit around her mouth, longing for a drink of water but too weak to do anything about it. She groped in her bag for something to wipe her mouth and drew out a crumpled handkerchief, dabbing at her lips and at the tears dribbling down her cheeks. Suddenly she remembered the crewman and glanced fearfully back towards the deck but there was no sign of him. Thankful for that at least, she began smoothing out the handkerchief on the table in front of her, doing it quite mechanically until the embroidered green initials leapt out at her and released a flood of memories almost a decade old.
Jamie—
Daily Telegraph, Monday August 8, 1994
Murdered Briton May Have Had Drugs Connection
Police in New York investigating the shooting last month of James Nowell, 29, a British art dealer based in Manhattan, say the dead man may have been killed after failing to deliver drugs which had already been paid for.
Nowell, who was co-owner of the Zenobia Gallery in fashionable TriBeCa, died from multiple wounds last month after a bizarre daylight shooting on Ellis Island, a popular tourist attraction in New York harbour. Johnny McGrath, 18-year-old son of billionaire property developer Clay Studley McGrath, was seen running from the crime scene and has been charged with first-degree murder.
McGrath’s defence team, led by top Manhattan lawyer Sidney Matousek, is lining up expert witnesses who will claim that the teenager was not responsible for his actions at the time of the murder because of his addiction to ‘crack’ cocaine. McGrath claims to remember nothing about the killing but detectives from the NYPD say that Nowell had been using his gallery and the high-society contacts he made through it to supply drugs to a circle of rich kids which included McGrath and his friends.
They also believe that something went wrong with Nowell’s usual line of supply just before his death, infuriating addicts who had paid in advance. Detectives have established that Nowell went to the Metropolitan Museum on the Friday before his death for a bona fide meeting with an expert on Indian art but they suspect he had also arranged a rendezvous with a courier who failed to turn up.
New Yorkers have been shocked by the fact that the murder happened on a site which has such a symbolic place in American history. Around half the country’s present population have ancestors who arrived in the US via Ellis Island, which has been turned into a very popular museum. Police have not yet established why Nowell went to the island but speculate he may have arranged to meet a drugs contact there.
Since his death Nowell has emerged as something of a myster
y man, moving in society Circles but apparently keeping himself to himself. He was unmarried and his business partner, Iranian-born Hazheer Fallahi, has told police he knows next to nothing about NowelPs private life. He vehemently denies any knowledge of his partner’s alleged drug-dealing activities.
Nowell had lived in New York for six years but police have only the sketchiest idea of his movements before that date. People who knew him say he had a ‘cultivated’ English accent and often talked about his time at a British public school; he claimed to have an Oxford degree but the university authorities have no record of him.
Detectives are working on the theory that Nowell was an assumed name and believe he may have entered the US using skilfully forged documents, possibly obtained in the Middle East, although he is also believed to have had high-level contacts in Colombia. The dead man’s fingerprints are being passed to Scotland Yard in the hope that they can help clear up the mystery.
Yesterday an NYPD spokesman said detectives were still hoping to trace a mystery blonde woman spotted near the body immediately after the shooting.
Among the first people to arrive on the scene were Maxine and Albert Chessler from Tallahassee, Florida. Mrs Chessler has told detectives she spoke to the woman, who seemed distressed, and asked her if she knew the murdered man. ‘She denied it,’ an NYPD spokesman said last night, ‘but we believe she may hold vital information. We think she may even have witnessed the crime, and we are appealing to her to come forward.’
Mrs Chessler said the blonde, who is believed to have left the island minutes before the alarm was raised and the ferry service suspended, spoke with an English accent. Police are working on the theory that she was a tourist who may already have returned to this country.
This electronic edition published in 2011 by Bloomsbury Reader
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Copyright © Joan Smith 1995
First published by Chatto & Windus Ltd
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ISBN: 9781448208128
eISBN: 9781448207886
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