The Sun Place

by Ray Connolly

  The Sun Place

  Ray Connolly

  For Sylvia

  Contents

  Part I

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Part II

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Part III

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Chapter Thirty

  Chapter Thirty-One

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  Chapter Thirty-Three

  Part IV

  Chapter Thirty-Four

  Chapter Thirty-Five

  Chapter Thirty-Six

  Chapter Thirty-Seven

  Chapter Thirty-Eight

  Chapter Thirty-Nine

  Chapter Forty

  Part V

  Chapter Forty-One

  Chapter Forty-Two

  Chapter Forty-Three

  Chapter Forty-Four

  Chapter Forty-Five

  Chapter Forty-Six

  Part VI

  Chapter Forty-Seven

  Chapter Forty-Eight

  Part VII

  Chapter Forty-Nine

  Chapter Fifty

  Part VIII

  Chapter Fifty-One

  A Note on the Author

  Part I

  One

  Delicately resisting the swell, the small white boat nosed curiously along the pink sliver of beach. Curling breakers sucked inwards toward the shore. It was late afternoon and the sun hung limply above the green carpet of bush that dressed most of the small island. A steady breeze fanned kindly from the sea.

  The boat was shallow and wedge shaped, a two-seater runabout with a couple of Volvo Penta outboard engines. At the wheel sat a slim, muscular man of about thirty-five. He was alone. On the seat next to him a blue transistor radio sang with the fractured rhythms of reggae. The man mouthed the words as the wind dispersed the song across this quieter corner of the Caribbean.

  Carefully the man scanned the long beach, casting cautious glances at a jutting promontory of coral. Suddenly becoming aware of potential danger he accelerated into the security of deeper water sending two jets of foam arcing in his wake. A miscalculation of an inch over a spire of pillar coral and the see-through bottom of the boat could be sliced open.

  Satisfied that he was clear of the reef, the man settled back and studied the line of coast intently through heavy binoculars. He was a cautious sailor. Had he not handled his craft so expertly, he might have been mistaken for a tourist down from New York for a couple of weeks jetting around the islands. But his skill, and his sun-bleached, shoulder-length hair and prematurely dry, deeply lined brown skin, identified him as someone who had made the islands his home. His clothes were casual, but almost like a uniform—white tennis shoes, socks, and shorts, and a pale blue V-necked shirt, which bore on the pocket a small red motif of a reclining mermaid and the letters CV. He edged the boat north, moving carefully around a headland and into a small bay, where mangroves tangled with sea grapes along the shore. A partly obscured break in the bush seemed to beckon to him. He looked at his watch. It was nearly five o’clock. “Just one last look and then home,” he said aloud, and delicately guided the boat down a narrow channel and into a large crescent-shaped lagoon, a scented, mysterious place overhung with casuarina trees.

  Now that he was turned into the late-afternoon sun the man squinted and put a smooth, unworn hand to his eyes. The lagoon looked idyllic, but he could see why it had never been of any use to the islanders and why it would be unsuitable for his purposes. Swamps lined all the shores, beyond which lay apparently impenetrable bush.

  He was about to turn away when he caught sight of a flash of steel in the far western corner of the lagoon—a distance of about two hundred yards. Intrigued, he screwed up his eyes, pulled the boat around, and headed into the sun.

  Even before he reached the mangroves their insect population began bidding him welcome as squadrons of sharp stinging bugs, disturbed by the noise of his boat, made kamikaze attacks at his skin. Irritated, he pushed open the throttle and sped quickly down the wider channels, sheltering behind the windshield for protection.

  Now he could see clearly what had caught his eye. It was a powerboat, identical to the one he was using, right down to the CV emblem and mermaid painted on the stern. The only difference was the name. His was the Méditerranée, the other boat was called the Pacifique.

  He slipped his own boat into neutral and drew alongside the deserted sister craft, which was tethered to a stake driven into the beach, a remnant of what had once been a small landing stage. Threading a length of rope through the fairleads of both craft he secured them and, using the Pacifique as a stepping-stone, he jumped down onto the beach. The swamps around him whispered as a slight breeze stole through the leaves. Puzzled, he began to make his way up the path, which led through the undergrowth toward the interior of the island.

  He heard the music before he saw the house, a melancholic electric wailing sound, a high-pitched voice of vigorous despair, dipping and soaring above the howling of guitars.

  What was left of the house was standing in a clearing that the forest had all but reclaimed. It might once have been an elegant island home, but now it was a broken-down wooden shell from which the shutters hung, torn from their hinges by years of hurricanes, and where the veranda and balcony had fallen away to provide a ramp up to the gap where once there had been a front door. Incongruously, a basket of bougainvillea and jasmine hung above the veranda in full bloom.

  Suddenly the music stopped. The man started up the broken steps, making a creaking sound. A lizard skittered up the peeling wall and disappeared into a niche in the window frame.

  At the porch the man stopped and peered inside. It was dark. The creepers, which had once been trained to grow in pretty profusion around the walls, had stretched across the window frames and into the house, blocking out the sunlight. He stepped into the house and moved silently along the dark hall. Weeds grew determinedly through the rotting floorboards.

  “Hello! Is anyone home?” he called out, more to break the stillness than because he expected an answer.

  The silence became deeper, sharper. He held his breath and listened, peering up into the gloom of the staircase.

  “Hello,” he called again. “Anybody home?”

  A low giggle in the darkness behind him made him spin around.

  “Just us chickens.” The voice was slow and lazily sardonic.

  A figure moved into a shaft of pale light, where some sun had forced its way through a cracked wall. It was a young man, his face grotesquely painted yellow, black, and green into a lizard’s mask. A cheap wig of long, straight black hair hung limply beyond his shoulders. He was naked to the waist, his body smooth and tanned, and a floral Tahitian pareo was tied loosely around his hips, falling around his legs like a skirt.

  “Jesus God,” the man murmured, stepping back, his eyes fixed, almost hypnotized by the grinning, distorted mask of paint.

  “Welcome to my house,” the boy’s voice
hissed mockingly from the slash of green that was his mouth. “How did you find me?”

  Slowly the man began to back away.

  The boy moved toward him. “Don’t be frightened, Dick,” he cooed. “It’s only me.”

  The man stared. “Who?”

  “You don’t recognize me? Well, isn’t that just neat?” There was a low snicker of amusement.

  “My God …” Recognition and a kind of relief shredded the man’s voice. “Jesus … you scared me. What the hell are you doing done up like that?”

  “You scared me, Dick.” The voice was even and calm, but the grin was gone. “I didn’t think anybody knew I was here. Why did you follow me? Why can’t you leave me alone?”

  “Follow you? Are you crazy? I didn’t know you were here. I came by to scout for picnic sites,” the man rushed on, but his voice faded as he realized that he wasn’t being listened to. The boy was suddenly holding a long, double-bladed knife. And even as the man stared at it, he realized it was already too late.

  An hour later, as the sun was giving way to the silver gray of a Bahamian evening, the pilot of a DC-3 Trans Island Airways freight plane noticed a fire far below on one of the Dutch Cays, and banked his orange-and-white plane to get a better view.

  “Looks like someone’s house caught fire down there,” Carl Ellington remarked laconically to his copilot, Aaron Jones.

  Jones peered downward. “No one lives on those islands anymore. Probably some Club Village picnickers let their barbecue get out of control,” he said.

  Ellington banked again, did a circle, and peered down for signs of activity. There was nothing, and even before he had completed his circle the fire began dying. “Better report it to Nassau, anyway” he said as he brought his craft back onto an even keel.

  Aaron Jones grunted a reply and made the requested radio call.

  Someone in the Nassau control tower probably took his call, and doubtless it was logged in the appropriate place. But if so, it was soon forgotten. And no one, not even Ellington or Jones, gave it further thought. A fire on a tiny, uninhabited island in a remote part of the Bahamas was of no significance to anyone.

  Two

  “What makes you think I’m looking for an affair with you? What makes you think that your body is so attractive to me, so tantalizing that I would drive four hundred miles from Paris just to taste its delights? Don’t you think, James, that you’re being just a little presumptuous?” Beta Ullman lifted a carefully etched eyebrow and smiled; standing with her arms buried inside the deep pockets of her fur coat and with her snow goggles perched just above her blond hairline, she possessed a kind of recklessness only the most exquisite, self-confident women enjoy.

  James Hardin considered her carefully before answering. He liked her. She had a bantering jokiness that turned every conversation into a sexual game of wits. Not for the first time he found himself regretting that she was the mistress of one of his employers.

  “I didn’t presume anything of the sort,” he countered untruthfully. “I merely wondered aloud why, out of the eighty-three Club Villages scattered around the world, you happened to choose this one.”

  Beta shrugged, dismissing the question. “Why not here? It’s very beautiful. The snow’s good. The company is convivial. I even know the chef de village. And sometimes I even like him. Besides, I enjoy making Ernst jealous. Don’t you?”

  Hardin imagined the polished, aquiline features of Ernst Ronay, his managing director. “No,” he said, “not really.”

  Beta giggled. “Coward! Anyway, I mustn’t monopolize you. I’m sure you have all kinds of interesting and important duties to be getting on with. Perhaps we could have dinner together tonight … if you can drag yourself away from your job for just a couple of hours?”

  “Perhaps,” Hardin repeated.

  Again Beta laughed, and, ghosting his cheek with a kiss, she closed one huge gray eye in a provocative and promising wink and began to trudge off through the snow, her slender figure now made chunky by the fur and boots.

  Hardin smiled inwardly. She was the kind of woman he could only imagine God creating in a most ungodly moment of high libido. She was wonderful, but fraught with delicious hazard.

  Resolving to cast his mind to more serious matters, he turned and, pushing his weight on the soles of his feet, he listened as the thick bank of snow crunched under him. Twenty feet below, the morning’s first ski class was returning, coming to startling, calamitous stops as the beginners lost control and tumbled into drifts that banked against the log walls of the ski room. Flurries of fine snow blew sharply into his face. It had been snowing for two days, and no break in the weather was forecast. While it was safe for the beginners to putter about on the easy slopes, Hardin had felt it prudent to ban all intermediate and senior classes. There was nothing to stop the guests from going out by themselves, but Club Village certainly wasn’t going to encourage its employees and guests to take their lives into their hands. This particular area of Haute Savoie was renowned for its beauty, but a couple of the higher runs were hazardous in bad conditions.

  Nearby a group of children skidded to a halt, shouting and laughing to each other in a polyglot of Western European languages. Club Village had originally been a French organization, and had been established in 1952 as an outdoor sporting society for Parisian health fanatics. But in the past decade the combination of cheap travel, jumbo jets, and a massive investment by four of the biggest banks in Paris and Zurich had turned the club into the second largest holiday organization in the world—just behind the archrival, Club Méditerranée. Now, at any of the vacation villages around the world, less than a third of the guests would be French. Guests came from all over Europe, enticed by clever advertisements that subtly suggested sexual freedom and potential variety, while reassuring those who were not looking for romantic adventures that the club also offered sports, sun, and health. To keep the one-hundred-million-dollar-a-year Club Village turnover in healthy profit the balance between the two types of guests had to be measured very delicately.

  As head of the village, Hardin’s job was both administrative and symbolic. He was on show the whole time—inspiring confidence, talking to the lonely, watching the staff, and generally keeping in close touch with every facet of village life, from security to after-dinner entertainment. The philosophy of Club Village was that a guest who left with a substantial reason for dissatisfaction could undo thousands of dollars’ worth of advertising.

  Choosing his footholds carefully, Hardin strode down the bulldozed mountain of snow.

  “Well, how did it go this morning?” he asked Solveig, a plump, dimpled milkmaid of a Danish girl who was head of the Children’s Club, noting as he did that one small English child was sobbing silently.

  “It was very cold up there,” said Solveig. “The English always feel it more than anyone else.” And, putting a chubby arm around the pink-nosed, weeping child, she bent down and kissed him warmly on his lips. In his embarrassment the boy stopped crying. Solveig winked at Hardin. “That always works on the boys,” she whispered wickedly. Then, turning back to her charges, she began shouting orders in French and English.

  Hardin smiled and, ruffling the snow-flecked hair of a couple of children, left Solveig and her two French assistants to shepherd their charges in for lunch.

  Hardin, thirty-five years old, was a big man, six foot three and handsome in the way of an athlete, his uneven features receiving more than adequate compensation in the strength and grace of his body. He had short, black hair and blue eyes, and a loping, sinewy spring to his step, which gave the illusion of moving in slow motion.

  Born in Caracas of a French mother and American father, Hardin’s early life had been a blur of half-packed suitcases. He had trekked around the world after his parents while his father rose slowly and unspectacularly through the rungs of the diplomatic trade. Although he had American citizenship he was equally at home virtually anywhere in the world, having had most of his education at the International
School in Geneva, spending his vacations at any number of places between Manila and Helsinki. At seventeen he had begun his university education at Trinity College, Dublin, added a little more to it at Northwestern in Illinois, and eventually ended it some four years later with a degree in international relations from the University of New South Wales. Traveling was in his blood, and any excuse to get on to an airplane was all he needed. For a time the excuse had become tennis. He was not a great player, having started to take an interest in the game too late in life, but he was good enough to win some top amateur tournaments. So when he was twenty-three he had walked away from a promising career in the Foreign Service in order to join the pro circuit, where he had been a happy-go-lucky low-ranking player. Then one day he had collided with Club Village, and along had come a third career.

  As he made his way through the new drifts around to the front of the club Hardin reflected again that he was lucky to have been given this particular village as his first appointment as chef de village. With only 350 guests and 150 staff Val d’Isabelle was small enough for him to keep an eye on everything.

  Crossing the polished marble foyer he headed toward the dining room. As he passed through the bar a couple of Lufthansa stewardesses caught his eye and said something to each other. He smiled and walked on. Their ski suits were skin-tight, brand-new, and, so far, untested for warmth since the wearers had scarcely moved from the environs of the bar. They had already been at Val d’Isabelle for nearly a week and their willingness to make new and close friends was already the enthusiastic talk of the staff quarters. Hardin didn’t need his name to be added to their list. Every week brought girls like that. The trick was to avoid finding oneself alone with them without being rude.

  The dining room was large, high, and airy, but the log beams and massive open fireplace gave a semblance of coziness. Forty tables, each set for twelve and bearing bottles of red and white wine and mineral water, waited for the avalanche of lunch. Hardin’s eye passed quickly over everything, seeking out the details, checking that the carnations on every table were fresh, that the tablecloths were spotless, and that all the glasses were polished. Nimbly the waiters, Turkish boys and North Africans, skipped about the room making last-minute preparations.