Absolute Money: Part I: An Oliver Holmes Caribbean Thriller

by C B Wilson

  “Hutchinson was a few years from retirement, so they gave him the case. He got nowhere,” said Floyd. “But right around that time, him got a job in Cayman Islands doing security for a bank and moved over there.”

  “So?”

  “The talk was, it wasn’t a real job. He was guarding a letterbox, not a real bank.”

  Holmes said, “Did anyone pick up the case after him?”

  “Seemed like a lot of stuff might have been missing from the files.”

  Oliver chewed on that for a while. “The way you set it out, seems like you think he was bought off. Make sure the case goes nowhere and the reward is an easy job, well paid.”

  Floyd said, “I didn’t say that but I can see how you would draw that conclusion.”

  They drove in silence for a while. Floyd winced every time the front of the car scraped against the road surface as they drove out of the huge potholes where water running off the mountains had worn away the road in steep gullies.

  Hutchinson’s house was on the cloudline. Banks of mist rolled down the valley, cutting out what was left of the sun and then just as quickly rolling back.

  Floyd pulled into a tight driveway and pointed up at the house. It was on a spur of the hillside that made a triangle of land with steep sides falling away into the valley. The small plot was overhung with trees. Tendrils of mist clung to the topmost branches. A man was sitting on a bare concrete porch looking out over Kingston. The sea glowed gold in the evening sun beneath them. It was a beautiful spot.

  Oliver and Floyd walked up towards the house. “I’ll introduce you and then I’ll wait back at the car,” said Floyd. “Sometimes them policemen don’t love me like they should.”

  Floyd hadn’t exaggerated. Hutchinson didn’t move from his chair as they approached the fence around the property. “Floyd Powers. I said to myself, the next time I see you, I would shoot you.”

  “Nice to see you too, Courtney. I brought a man to see you. He’s OK. You should talk to him.”

  “Don’t tell me what to do.”

  Floyd gave Hutchinson a wave and walked back to the car, telling Oliver he was on his own. Holmes noticed that Floyd was careful not to completely turn his back as he walked away.

  Oliver waited by the gate. Through the bars, he could see Hutchinson sitting on his terrace, but the man didn’t move. He kept staring down the valley, giving Holmes his profile in the fading light.

  “Can I come in?”

  Instead of replying, Hutchinson pitched his empty beer bottle by the neck off the end of the terrace. It smashed, and by the sound of it, there were a lot of other bottles down there.

  Holmes peered through the gate at the house. It was a small two-room building right on the edge of the drop. The whole compound was a mess of rubbish. It looked like a place where a man had decided to drink himself to death.

  Holmes said, “I wanted to ask you about Kimberly.”

  Without taking his eyes off the view, Hutchinson said, “I got nothing to say to you about anything, so you get back in your car and leave.”

  “We’ve got another case where a woman went missing. Seems similar to yours. I wondered if you could help.”

  “Lot of young women go missing in Jamaica.”

  “It would be a big help if you could talk to me about what happened with Kimberly.”

  “I’ve got a gun inside. You aren’t out of here in one minute, we’re going to see how good I can aim after an afternoon’s drinking.”

  Holmes said, “I can see you don’t want to talk, but I’m going to leave my card here, on your gate. You change your mind, you call me.”

  Hutchinson flipped the top off another bottle. “Thirty seconds.”

  Holmes tucked his business card into the wire on the gate. “I’m leaving.”

  Floyd had been watching them, and when he saw Holmes leaving, he started the car and began a three-point turn. It was getting dark and he needed his lights.

  In the car on the way down, Floyd told Holmes about Hutchinson’s wife. “They had a place on the sea in Cayman. She drowned. Police report said she was drunk. Some people said they argued all the time when they were drunk and maybe he killed her.”

  “No way. He seemed like a nice guy to me,” said Holmes.

  “You’re being sarcastic.”

  “You want sarcasm? Try this – that wasn’t a waste of time and thank you very much for taking me up there.”

  Floyd put on a CD and they drove back to Kingston listening to the kind of high-pitched reggae that Holmes hated. The CD skipped every time they bumped over a pothole, which didn’t help.

  * * *

  Hutchinson waited until he saw the lights of their car disappearing round the last of the hairpin bends. He took Holmes’ card from the gate and went inside. He pushed around some papers, found a number and dialled. When a voice answered, he said, “You told me to tell you if someone ever contacted me about Kimberly.”

  He listened and then read the name off the card. “Oliver Holmes. Justice Unlimited.”

  31

  Nobody looks good after a crying session, not even a woman as beautiful as Nikki. When she opened her hotel room door to Oliver, she tried to hide her face. He held her for a while. When she stopped crying, she said, “She’s gone, hasn’t she?”

  Oliver said, “We’re going to keep looking.”

  Nikki felt like she could do with a drink. While they waited for room service, she told him about Ellie, sniffing and dabbing at her blotchy face with paper tissues as she talked.

  “Ellie’s in Miami.”

  “What?”

  “She said she had to work. She got a call from a client. She jumped on a plane. Charlotte went with her. Said she was going to see some friends down on the Keys.”

  “They’ve given up?”

  “They said there was nothing more they could do, but they’ll come back this weekend.”

  Nikki took the bottle of wine from the room service guy, signed for it and poured herself a huge glass but didn’t ask Oliver if he wanted anything.

  “They couldn’t find the witness who had seen Nadia on the jet-ski. There was nothing at any of the hospitals or clinics, and they said there was nothing else they could do.”

  Oliver poured himself some wine and sat on the edge of the bed.

  “Charlotte I’m not surprised about – she struck me as kind of flakey – but Ellie…”

  “I can understand that. She needs money like everybody.”

  Oliver didn’t know what to say. Nikki stood in front of him. He put his glass down and hugged her. She said “Don’t leave me” a couple of times.

  “I won’t leave you.”

  She hugged him tightly, really tightly.

  After what seemed like forever, he edged out of her grip. “Have you eaten anything?”

  Nikki shook her head. She didn’t feel like eating.

  “You have to eat.”

  “I don’t want to leave the room.”

  Oliver ordered room service. Nikki was too sad to eat. She pushed her food round her plate. All her fire and energy was gone.

  Oliver said, “You’re exhausted. Get some sleep and we’ll try again in the morning.”

  “What? Try what? What can we do?”

  Oliver didn’t know. “We’ll think of something in the morning. I’ll pick you up early and we can start again.”

  “Where are you going?”

  “Home.”

  “Stay here tonight.”

  Oliver said, “Until I’ve sorted out my bank, I can’t afford to stay anywhere.”

  It turned out that the money wasn’t a reason for him to leave. There was a small annex to Nikki’s room that had a sofa and chairs and a TV. “It turns into a bed. You could sleep there.”

  Oliver was all business. He showered and made up the sofa bed and pretended that he wasn’t in a hotel room with a beautiful, sad woman who needed somebody.

  He dealt with Nikki in a practical way. Had she eaten enough? Was she goi
ng to sleep properly? Had she charged up her phone? He managed her like she was a project, until he got into bed, exhausted. He checked his emails. He didn’t have time to think about sex.

  He was asleep for no more than ten or fifteen minutes when she sat on the edge of his bed. There was just enough light for him to appreciate that she was wearing a short grey silk negligee that clung to her figure. He looked away. This was no time to be inappropriate. He was supposed to be her friend.

  “Hold me,” she said.

  He sat up, swung his legs out of bed and put his arm round her. That wasn’t enough. She wanted both arms. They lay on the bed. She was tight against him. He didn’t know what this was.

  Oliver said, “Nikki. Is this a good idea?”

  Nikki said, “Don’t talk.”

  He stroked her hair, and she pushed her body against his so that they were completely touching. His mind raced. Should he? Was that wrong? Was he taking advantage of her? But she was the one who came into his bed…

  His phone buzzed and jumped around on the table beside the bed.

  Nikki sighed. “Answer it.”

  He didn’t want to answer it.

  “It might be about Nadia.”

  It was Floyd.

  Nikki moved away and sat on her own bed while Oliver talked. He covered the receiver and said to Nikki, “He’s found Omar. He wants me to meet him now.”

  Nikki said, “Go. I’ll be OK.”

  “I can stay if you want.”

  “I’ll be fine.”

  Oliver was up and dressed and out of the room in seconds. He kissed Nikki on the top of the head before he left but she didn’t seem to notice.

  32

  François-Dominique Toussaint Louverture led the only successful slave revolt in history when he headed a rebellion in Haiti in 1791 Although he was ultimately doomed to die in captivity, he became a hero to poor and oppressed people throughout the Caribbean.

  It was an odd name for a property developer to choose for a plot of uptown villas overlooking Kingston, and, like the man himself, the Toussaint Louverture development ended up a failure. A couple of the houses were bought off-plan by American lawyers with groovy beards and Tommy Bahama shirts, but the financing fell apart in the aftermath of the financial crash and the development was never finished.

  Of the houses that had been finished, most were still empty and always would be. The shared swimming pool had never been filled with water and was home to lizards and leaves and snakes hiding in the builder’s rubble and smashed tiles.

  The development had been hacked out of the scrubby brush on a steep hillside and the vegetation was gradually reclaiming the space. Oliver’s villa had a garden but the landscape crew rarely showed up, and Oliver had no idea about gardening and even less interest. His plot had almost completely merged back into the wild.

  It was raining when Oliver pulled up outside his villa, the rain hot and heavy, the moon intermittent behind the clouds. Oliver barely looked at the lights of Kingston on the coastal plain below, like a poor man’s view of LA by night. His attention was focused on Floyd’s Mercedes blocking the drive.

  The car was the first indication that something was wrong. The driver’s side window was open. Rain had pooled onto the purple leather upholstery. Oliver knew that Floyd would never, ever let that happen.

  Instantly, Oliver’s senses were crackling. The house was quiet. No lights. That didn’t make sense. If Floyd was in there with Omar, there would have been noise, lights.

  Oliver stepped off the driveway and edged his way through the bushes and closer to the house. A man shouted in the house. It sounded like a Jamaican accent but it wasn’t Floyd. Oliver moved closer. Another voice shouted back; this one was not Jamaican. Holmes couldn’t place the accent. He couldn’t hear the words clearly.

  Two gunshots sounded close together. Oliver dropped to the ground, the moisture soaking into his clothes. More shouting came from the house. Another shot; then two more. Oliver tried to burrow his way deeper into the bush.

  The front door to the villa slammed open. Oliver saw a young man stumble through shoulder first, as though he had charged the door open. His hands were behind his back, cuffed at the wrist. The young man staggered, regained his footing and began to run. From the doorway, another man appeared. He pointed a gun and fired. A volley of shots hit the young man in the back. He screamed and fell.

  Oliver began to wriggle backwards away from the house. He saw the killer stand over his victim and fire one shot to the head. Oliver didn’t recognise him.

  The killer saw Oliver’s car in the driveway. He crouched down and looked around. He took a torch from his pocket and clipped it to his gun. His actions seemed smooth. Trained. He started scanning the garden, following the light from the gun. Oliver closed his eyes, turned his face towards the earth and held his breath. His heart was pounding, his chest heaving. He remembered: this is what terror feels like.

  The killer stayed in the kneeling position, listening. The only sounds were the dripping of the fat raindrops from the leaves and insects that sounded like screeching metal.

  The gunman began shining his torch into the bushes, scanning slowly. Oliver knew that when the arc of the torch reached him, he would be clearly visible to the killer.

  He couldn’t run. The killer would see him. He had seconds to live unless he did something.

  Oliver grubbed around in the earth. He picked up a piece of concrete, builder’s rubble that had never been cleared away.

  He wriggled in the bushes until he had the space for a gentle lob. He tossed the chunk of concrete over the fence into his neighbour’s drive.

  It landed on top of his neighbour’s car. Oliver didn’t know the man but he knew that his car alarm was way too sensitive. It would go off at all hours of the day or night.

  The thump of the concrete on the car roof was enough. The alarm sounded. Loud, strident, lights flashing, the car rocked enthusiastically.

  Oliver grabbed another piece of rubble. A few seconds later, Oliver’s neighbour opened the French window on the first floor and stepped out to check his car.

  Oliver tossed another chunk of concrete over the fence. It hit the car.

  His neighbour saw it. He shouted “Bomboclaat” and a stream of Jamaican expletives.

  The gunman turned his torch off and shrank back into the shadows. Oliver watched in horror as he took aim at the man on the terrace next door. There was a spit of flame. The neighbour fell backwards. There was a scream: Oliver’s neighbour’s wife.

  She screamed long and loud. The car alarm kept up its sharp, insistent assault on the night.

  The killer kept his body still. His head turned slowly as though he was a surveillance camera. He moved sideways along the wall, never taking his eye off the garden.

  He edged forward, towards the edge of the property, looking for the place that Oliver had thrown the rocks from. But Oliver had taken his chance. While the gunman had been distracted, he slid away from the fence and was now trying to get behind the house.

  The sound of police sirens was faint at first as it echoed around the hillside. It was one of the advantages of living uptown. The police responded fast to calls from the rich people on the hill, especially when shots were fired.

  The killer listened to the sirens pulsing louder as the police raced towards them. He unclipped the torch, put the gun down by his side and walked away from the house, along the street and behind the wall. A few seconds later, Oliver heard an engine start, and a car that might have been a grey Toyota Corolla eased past the house and back towards Kingston.

  When the noise of the engine died away, Oliver’s every sense was heightened. He was certain he could smell the thick, iron aroma of blood.

  He leaned against the wall. Gradually, his breathing calmed, his pulse slowed. He stopped sweating and panting and he started to get cold. The sirens were close now.

  Holmes walked quickly towards the house. He had to see inside.

  The young man lyin
g on the path to the front door was dead, his face turned to the tiled floor. Holmes assumed that it was Omar Hall but he couldn’t be sure. He didn’t have time to turn the body over to see the face. He walked around the corpse, taking care not to step in the blood pooling around the young man’s body, and into the house.

  Holmes had been to a lot of crime scenes. He had seen bodies dug out of pits, shallow graves and skeletons crumbling with age, but he had never been anywhere were the bodies were still warm. Still bleeding.

  In the kitchen, a young man lay on the floor, his eyes staring at the ceiling, a Rasta cap on the floor beside him, a gun untouched by his hand. Chairs and furniture lay around him as though there had been a struggle. Oliver didn’t recognise him. The police sirens were louder now. Holmes stepped carefully past the corpse and headed down the corridor to his study.

  Holmes had never got along with Floyd. The detective was too lazy, too willing to cut corners. Holmes thought that anyone who was less obsessive about the job than he was was in some way a lightweight, and they had argued about that. But as he reached the study, Holmes could hardly bear to look. He didn’t want to open the door, didn’t want to see the detective.

  The sirens were almost on top of them now. Holmes knew he had to run. He pushed the door open. Floyd was on the floor, hands cuffed behind him, his shirt a mass of blood, his trousers soiled. Holmes wanted to be sick.

  The police cars were at the villa next door. The sirens had stopped. Holmes heard the thud of car doors, shouting commands, saw the flashing lights illuminating the garden. The video camera was on its tripod in the corner of the room, set up ready to record Omar’s testimony. The red light was on.

  The police were outside. Shouting. Holmes took the camera from its tripod. The tripod fell. He backed out of the room, heading to the kitchen again.

  The police hammered on his front door. Oliver took a small leather wallet from the bookcase. As he stepped back, his foot slipped in the rivulet of blood from the dead man on the floor.