Natasha Innocent glanced at her watch. Johnny Finch was on shift but she thought he might have popped his head in just to say hello. He always stuck out like a sore thumb at these parties with his neat hair and manner but he was fundamentally likeable and people responded to that. Maybe it was his genuineness.
He always stiffened when the dope came out – which it always did – but he wasn’t overt about his disapproval. Neither of them would have tolerated cocaine use but people seemed to know that instinctively. If it was used – which she was sure it was – it was used out of their sight.
She was also watching the door for Josie to arrive. She liked these people but she always felt too square for them. Sure, they knew they could do drugs in front of her, as they did with Johnny. But they knew she was a cop – that she liked being a cop – and that always caused certain constraints.
Josie, though, was a free spirit. Everyone responded to her and Natasha could float in her slipstream. Maybe having a Josie would help Finch. The only woman she knew for sure he’d dated was Evangeline. Evangeline too was a free spirit but not in a way that would bring a man much peace.
She glanced at her watch again. Josie was probably held up at the nature reserve by those damned turtles that obsessed her. She exchanged glances with Ruth. She didn’t look so sad today. Natasha had been figuring it was her husband who was affecting the Englishwoman but here he was, being an a-hole, and she still seemed relatively happy.
Innocent felt different at this party anyway. As she looked from one man to the other in the room she wondered if one of them was living a lie. If here in Barbara’s home she was drinking and chatting with the person in the Witness Protection Programme with a price on his head.
‘How’s my favourite bobby?’ Barbara said, giving Innocent a squeeze.
‘Okay – wasn’t expecting to see you back on the island so soon.’
‘Is that disapproval I hear in your voice?’
‘Not at all. It was a straightforward comment. But what are you doing back so soon? Some guy?’
Innocent examined Barbara’s face.
‘It is some guy. Doggarn.’
‘Doggarn?’ Barbara had an engaging laugh. It kind of tinkled. ‘Isn’t that one of those Wild West things? We’re on an island with not a single horse on it – don’t get all Annie Oakley on me.’
‘How about Calamity Jane?’
‘Might be more your style but, even so, no.’
Innocent took a sip of her wine.
‘Josie is late.’
‘Josie is always late, Natasha.’
Innocent looked up at Barbara.
‘Do you think we’ll ever be friends?’
Barbara seemed surprised.
‘I’m English. As far as I’m concerned, this is friendship.’
They both grinned.
‘Okay, then,’ Innocent said.
They chinked glasses.
Ruth looked around the room at the boisterous group of people. She was feeling disconnected, from them and from herself. The smell of dope was pungent in the air. David was laughing at something the preacher, Gus Levy, was saying to Natasha, Phoebe, Tom Haddon and Grady Cole. His face was flushed.
Barbara interrupted her thoughts.
‘Hey lover,’ she said, sashaying over to her. ‘We’re missing Harry Wilson.’
‘Who he?’ Ruth said.
‘Our sheriff. Big hunk? Looks like a cross between Rockford and Clint Eastwood. Drives a Firebird Esprit when he’s off-duty?’
‘I don’t know about the car but I think he was at the toll-booth when we came onto the island.’
‘That sounds right. Anyway, I’m going to drag him down here if he’s around. He lives up the street.’
Barbara slipped out the back way and Ruth stood uncertainly by the record player, Bob Marley singing out next to her. He couldn’t wait in vain for her love. She looked beyond the yard to the fringe of live oaks and palmetto and the marshy beach down to the choppy waters. Her skin prickled with sweat and her back itched madly.
She looked across at the group of people, laughing at something Haddon had said. He looked over at her and winked. She smiled and looked at David. He seemed on the fringes of the group now, an outsider, peering distractedly into his wine glass.
The front door bell chimed, playing the first few bars of Tubular Bells.
Karen went up to the front of the house and rang the bell. It played a vaguely familiar tune. An attractive, nervy woman opened the door. Music wafted down the corridor. That reggae guy?
‘Barbara’s not here, I’m afraid,’ the woman said, sweeping back her hair with her hand. She had an English accent. Karen clocked the wedding ring. ‘She’s just popped down the road. But other people are here.’
Her words and accent threw Karen for a moment.
‘So I hear. But I don’t know Barbara. I need to call a tow-truck. My car’s blown a gasket. I wondered if I could use your phone.’
‘Sure,’ the woman opened the door wide and waved an arm. ‘Come on in.’
‘After you.’ Karen stepped through the door, taking the pistol from her pocket. She closed the door behind her.
‘You English?’ she said as she followed the woman down a long corridor.
‘Visiting Barbara.’ The woman stopped and started to turn. ‘Oh wait, I forgot: the phone’s not working again.’
Then she saw the gun and a weird thing happened. She put her hands to either side of her face and opened her mouth and looked like that picture in poster shops – the Scream thing by that Norwegian guy.
‘Don’t!’ Karen hissed but, actually, no sound was emerging from the Limey’s mouth.
Karen moved up close and touched her ribs with the gun. Chris had entered the house now.
‘Don’t do anything,’ Karen said. ‘We’re not going to hurt you. We just want your car.’
The woman crumpled against the wall, her body curling down into a ball. Karen was pained to see the fear she’d caused but couldn’t decide whether she wanted to comfort the woman or shake some sense into her.
A man appeared at the end of the corridor. Burned red face turning to brown.
‘You okay –?’ he said. Another English voice.
He froze when he saw the tableau in front of him. Chris pushed into it, walking down to the man and putting a gun to his forehead.
‘Heard there was a party. Where’s the bar?’
Wilson was jumpy. He’d sealed off the island unwillingly. He didn’t want to cage the hit man in and now he feared that the people in the white van were also the kind you don’t want to try to restrain. The kind you just want out of your life.
His radio buzzed. He picked it up.
‘Chief? It’s Johnny. This woman in the hospital?’
‘How is she?’ Wilson said.
‘Not good. But chief –’
‘Hang on, Johnny…sorry, thought I saw a white van coming down from Teach Avenue. You were saying.’
‘I’ve identified the woman.’
‘You know her?’
‘So do you.’
‘That sounds ominous.’
‘It’s Josie.’
Shit.
‘Natasha’s Josie?’
‘Yes, sir. Should I let her know?’
Wilson looked out of the car window at an egret standing like a statue in the shallows.
‘No. I’ll call her at her house. She’s off today.’
‘This white van. Do you think it’s connected to the other matter?’
‘I don’t know but I doubt it.’
‘Hal says he thinks he may have seen it come on the island earlier today.’
‘He get a close look at the people in it?’
‘Negative, Sheriff.’
‘Because?’
‘He was taking a comfort break.’
‘Great police-work, Hal. Tell him I said so.’
There was no answer when Wilson phoned Natasha’s house. He wondered if she was across the road at Barbar
a’s. He phoned there but the line was dead. He decided to drive over.
There were a dozen or so people in the room when Chris pushed the man in ahead of him and Karen followed, half-dragging, half-supporting the English woman. She let her go to grip her weapon with both hands as she pointed it at the group. The woman slumped to the floor.
The group was seated and all of them remained so, too stunned to move. Donny and Jimmy came in from the garden and fanned out either side of the sliding doors. Chris pushed David over to join the others.
‘Okay,’ Chris said. He waved at the bottles of wine and spirits open on the table, the joints in the ashtrays, the plates and bowls of food. ‘Looks like you’re having a mellow kind of scene. Good. Carry on with your party. Stay mellow. But stay in your seats. This is very simple. We need to stay here a couple of hours, then we need a car, then we’re gone. You all stay calm, nobody gets hurt.’
He pointed at Donny.
‘Get the van down the side of the house and out of sight.’
‘Shall I bring the –’
Chris cut him off.
‘I’ll do that,’ he said curtly.
‘Anyone else other than Barbara popped out?’ Karen said.
After a pause a dark-haired woman shook her head.
‘Okay, we’ll watch for her return.’ Karen cocked her head. ‘So this is reggae? Sounds good.’
When the armed man and woman pushed the English couple into the room, Natasha Innocent stayed seated not because she was stunned but because she deliberately resisted the impulse to rise. Now she perched on the edge of her chair, trying not to stare at the intruders. She was in civvies and unarmed and was wondering whether declaring she was a policewoman would help or harm the situation.
She glanced around the group she had been partying with just a moment before. Tom Haddon caught her look and gave a slight shake of his head.
‘My car’s parked next door,’ he said to the lean, greying man who seemed to be in charge. ‘Keys in the ignition. It’s good to go.’
The man looked at him and nodded.
‘Thanks for that, sir. I assure you we’ll take advantage of your offer. When we’re ready.’
‘Woman coming up from the beach,’ the slight man with the ferrety face said from the doorway into the yard.
The grey-haired man looked round the group as the tall woman put her gun to Ruth’s head. Ruth moaned.
‘I guess we don’t need to spell out what is going to happen if you do something foolish,’ the tall woman said. She looked out of the window. ‘Is this woman walking up from the beach your friend, Barbara, coming back?’
Innocent nodded.
Barbara, loose kaftan blowing against her breasts and thighs, had a glass in her hand and took a sip as she entered the garden. She walked through the open windows.
‘Wilson isn’t home –’
The slight man reached out from his concealment, took the glass from her hand and pushed her towards the group on the sofas.
‘What?’ Barbara said.
Innocent was impressed that Barbara seemed to take in the scene so calmly. Barbara looked at the guns then down at her friends. She reached for another glass, poured herself some wine with a hand that scarcely shook, and sat down cross-legged on the floor. Very cool.
‘There’s no money here,’ Barbara said to the tall woman. ‘And you’re a creep for picking on my friend. She’s not been well.’
The woman looked down at Ruth, frozen-faced and huddled on the floor at her feet. She took her gun away from Ruth’s head and stepped back.
‘Bring her over to you guys,’ she said.
Tom Haddon got easily to his feet and, palms out, moved over to Ruth. He helped her over to Phoebe and Eddie on the sofa. Phoebe put her arm round her. Tom stayed by the table fiddling with the bottles of drink. The music stopped. It was quiet enough in the room to hear the pickup arm lift, swing back and click down on its stand.
‘Okay, let’s make this civilised,’ the tall woman said. ‘Let’s have your names. First names will do.’
‘Do we get yours?’ Grady Cole said.
‘I wouldn’t think you’d want ours,’ the grey-haired man said.
The giant came back into the room. He’d taken his cap off to reveal a half-flattened Mohawk. He now had a safety pin dangling from his right nostril.
‘Van’s parked, Chris, hidden by trees. No one else in the house. The phone’s dead.’
The man identified as Chris gave him a hard look. The tall woman looked at Barbara. Barbara shrugged.
‘I’m not good at paying bills. So shoot me.’
‘Tempting offer.’
‘I’m Barbara by the way.’
‘Yours is the one name we know.’
The others gave their names sullenly. David pointed at Ruth.
‘She’s Ruth, my wife.’
Innocent wondered why he wasn’t over there comforting her.
‘We supposed to remember these names?’ the giant said. ‘What’s the point?’
‘The music’s stopped, big man,’ Chris said. ‘Why don’t you put something else on?’
The hulk stepped over to the pile of records. He picked them up one by one and each one he discarded he dropped on the floor.
‘Hippy shit. It is 1978 you know. Where’s the Ramones or the Voidoids? Oh, here we go. Blondie. Poser punk. That said, I’d love to make her bite the pillow.’
He let the whole pile clatter to the wooden floor. They skidded in an arc. He walked on the discs in his lace-up Doc Martins towards the drinks table.
‘We’re not drinking,’ Chris called from the kitchen bar.
The giant picked up a bottle of bourbon and a smouldering joint and retreated to the open windows.
‘You’re not drinking,’ he said over his shoulder, drawing on the joint.
Chris looked at the slight man. The slight man shrugged.
‘The van locked?’ Chris said after a moment.
The punk shook his head, expelling smoke.
Chris nodded to the tall woman and went out into the yard. Innocent kept her eyes down but saw the punk alternating big swigs of the Jack Daniels with draws on the joint. The ferrety man stood by the window, a weird smile on his face as if he knew something nobody else did. The tall woman scoped the room constantly.
When Chris came back through he was carrying two flat leather cases. He went down the corridor and into Barbara’s bedroom.
Innocent wondered about the cases. She was pretty sure they were used to carry paintings. Who on earth would go to the trouble of stealing art from any of the artists on this island? Much as she liked them as people, the artists here weren’t exactly Andrew Wyeth or even Andy Warhol. The joke was that the only Edward Hopper on the island was a cook not a painter.
The big guy and the skinny guy sounded like they were from the Appalachians. Not wise to look too deeply into the gene pool there. But Chris and the woman looked like high-end thieves. Although why they were consorting with the two Appalachian low-lifers she had no idea. What the hell was going on?
Chapter Thirteen
‘Okay, what are our options?’ Chris was looking back into the room from the yard, the others gathered around him. ‘We take a car now, maybe a couple of cars and we crash through the tollbooth barrier then we’re out in the open on the causeway. Vulnerable. Then we make it to the other end and mainland cops will be waiting for us. They likely won’t be as honky tonk as these fellas.’
‘Why break through?’ Jimmy said. ‘Regular tourists are coming and going all the time. We stop, they check us out, they roll us on the way.’
‘Except we’re driving someone else’s car,’ Chris said. ‘Somebody who lives here. Somebody the cops probably know.’
‘Not a good plan then,’ Karen said.
‘Plus, Donny here kind of stands out,’ Chris said. ‘If anyone caught so much as a glimpse of him when he hit that woman he is a major liability.’
‘What are you saying?’ Donny said. �
�You abandon me?’
‘Nobody is abandoning you, Donny,’ Jimmy said. He punched him on the arm. ‘Though it will be a tight fit getting the trunk lid down on that rooster hair of yours.’
‘Let’s do as planned,’ Karen said. ‘Wait a couple of hours until night falls and hope the cops think they’ve missed us. Then we just drive off the island.’
‘Is it me or is it getting kinda hot?’
Donny was looking back into the house at the women huddled on the sofas.
‘I know I’m hot.’ He cupped his crotch with a big fist. ‘All that leg and tit on show.’
‘Keep your mind on the job in hand,’ Karen said.
‘Oh, it is,’ Donny said, giving himself another adjustment. ‘But my pappy said all work and no play makes Donny a dull boy.’
‘I doubt you knew your pappy,’ Karen said. ‘And I can’t see anything stopping you being dull as ditchwater.’
‘Now that first part is rude,’ Jimmy said. ‘No call for it. And if Donny wants to have a little fun with those ladies – where’s the harm?’
‘Because we’re not those kind of folk,’ Chris said. ‘We’re a heist crew that had the misfortune to knock a pedestrian over. We’re not rapists.’
Jimmy sniggered.
‘A rapist is just a guy too mean to buy the extra drink.’
Donny started guffawing. Karen looked at him. Guffawing was the only word to describe it. A word she knew but had never experienced until now. God, she loathed this creep.
‘The other way we can try is by boat,’ Chris said.
‘No ferry service here,’ Karen said. ‘I didn’t see a yacht harbour. I saw rocks though. A lot of rocks.’
‘What if we get a dinghy?’ Donny said. ‘One of those inflatable things. Take it in the car at night onto the causeway – drop it over the side and go the rest of the way by boat?’
Karen and Chris both looked at Donny in surprise.
‘Donny,’ Karen said. ‘You’re never going to redeem yourself in my eyes for the skateboarder and for being an all-round asshole – but that is not a half-bad idea.’
‘There’s just the small matter of finding a dinghy on an island where nobody seems to sail,’ Chris said.
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