by Jacob Ross
ALSO BY JACOB ROSS
Song for Simone and Other Stories
A Way to Catch the Dust and Other Stories
Pynter Bender
The Bone Readers
Tell No-One About This
Behind the Masquerade, the Story of Notting Hill Carnival (with Kwesi Owusu) Voice, Memory, Ashes: Lest We Forget (co-edited with Joan Anim-Addo) Ridin’ n Risin: Short Stories by New Black Writers
Turf (co-edited with Andrea Enisuoh) Closure: Contemporary Black British Short Stories
The Peepal Tree Book of Contemporary Caribbean Short Stories (Jeremy Poynting, Jacob Ross)
SPHERE
First published in Great Britain in 2020 by Sphere Copyright © Jacob Ross 2020
The moral right of the author has been asserted.
All characters and events in this publication, other than those clearly in the public domain, are fictitious and any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.
All rights reserved.
No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior permission in writing of the publisher, nor be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.
A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
ISBN 978-0-7515-7442-5
Sphere
An imprint of
Little, Brown Book Group Carmelite House
50 Victoria Embankment
London EC4Y 0DZ
An Hachette UK Company www.hachette.co.uk
www.littlebrown.co.uk
To Adrian ‘Straight Nose’ Bierzynski for your tragedy and your genius
CONTENTS
Acknowledgements
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25
26
27
28
29
30
31
32
33
34
35
36
37
38
39
40
41
42
43
44
45
46
47
48
49
50
51
52
53
54
55
56
57
58
59
60
61
62
63
64
65
66
67
68
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
With gratitude to Ed Wood, Sphere Editor, without whose feedback on structure and procedure this book would not have been as fully realised as it is.
I’m beholden to Jeremy Poynting for his wonderfully perceptive feedback and for nudging me down this path.
And to my friend Dave Martin, whose unerring eye for contradictions and structure made a major difference in the refinement of this book.
You can’t put the past behind you. It’s buried in you.
Claudia Rankine
1
One thing I learned from my two years fighting crime in Camaho – sometimes, to uphold the law, you need to break the fuckin rules.
Five days after I arrested a police officer for drink-driving and much worse, Miss Stanislaus, my partner in San Andrews CID, shot down Juba Hurst – the man who raped her as a child. The trouble I started was nothing compared to hers. And there was no way I was going to let her face the consequences on her own. That’s me, Michael Digger Digson. It is the way I’m wired.
I’d spent all Sunday in the north of the island with my friend, Caran, who headed a semi-military unit of four: three fellas and a woman named Toya Furore – Caran’s lieutenant. We called them the Bush Rangers. They had the gun skills and bush-craft of soldiers, the arresting powers of the police and the deductive skills of detectives.
Detective Superintendent Chilman, our old boss, had handpicked Caran and his crew to patrol the gloomy interior of the island. Fit, fast and armed, they’d stay out in the mountains for weeks if they had to, turfing out ganja growers, bush-meat hunters, murderers and the occasional jail-breaker who ran for the mists and high forests of Camaho. Caran’s Bush Rangers could navigate the island in their sleep. They were legends in the north of the island.
As usual I’d spent the first hour with Caran puzzling over what Detective Superintendent Chilman had done to us. The old fella, we decided, was a bagful of contradictions: he’d resigned from the Force a couple of years ago, but still came in to San Andrews CID to run our lives. He was a fulltime drunk with a brain that had no room for bullshit and a tongue that stung like a syringe. The old fella had spent thirty years in the Police Force and he despised his colleagues because they were so useless at tackling crime. In fact, the old fella believed they were the cause of the crime sometimes. Like that young Canadian tourist who was walking her dog on one of the isolated beaches on the western coast and got accosted and murdered by a youngfella that the police had arrested only a couple of hours earlier for assault. The superintendent who’d ordered the killer’s immediate release was a relative.
Chilman decided he’d had enough. He couldn’t change the Police Force, but he could create his own team ‘by any and all means necessary’. That meant breaking every recruitment rule.
He picked me up off the streets in San Andrews. I was nineteen, I’d just left school with no job – despite my qualifications – and no prospect of one. A street killing changed my luck. My crime was simply being there. Chilman spotted me on the sidewalk busy doing nothing. He arrested me and brought me to his office. Join the new CID unit he was forming or face time in jail, he said. And I knew he was not joking.
He picked up Chief Officer Malan on Grand Beach with a shopping bag of marijuana, peddling the stuff to tourists. Fourteen years in prison and an unlimited fine or full employment with perks and prospects was Chilman’s offer to Malan Greaves. And there was Spiderface, arrested with a bale of ganja in his boat. Spiderface gave the coast guard so much hell before they caught him that Chilman was impressed enough to reward him with gainful employment.
He must’ve said something different to Miss Stanislaus, his daughter. ‘Best brains on the island,’ he told us when he dumped the woman on the Department. Pet and Lisa – trainee admins in another department – were invited to lunch and never went back to their old jobs.
‘Fuckin blackmail,’ I’d shot at the old fella once, in a fit of irritation.
‘Talent spotting,’ he’d retorted. ‘Look at y’all record, Digson! One thousand police officers serving the island, sixteen stations throughout the parishes, and San Andrews CID got the best crime-busting record in Camaho two years running. No wonder the whole damn Police Force want to mash us up. Including the Justice Minister!’
I’d left Caran’s little house feeling good with the food Mary, his wife, had fed me. I was shaking my head and chuckling at his stories about the mysteries of Camaho’s forests: boiling springs that gushed from crevices in the rocks, voices he swore they heard on
the wind up there in the mountains, the shadowy creatures they often glimpsed, and Princess Orchids that fed on the sap of forest trees and killed them. At the end of it he’d nudged me with an elbow. ‘Beautiful t’ings, Digger. Beautiful t’ings does kill.’
He’d directed his chin at his wife and grinned at her. Mary burst out laughing and tossed her kitchen towel in his face.
It was dusk by the time I came off the murderous mountain road of Grand Etang onto River Road, which would take me into San Andrews town. A line of vehicles stretched ahead of me as far as the old iron bridge that hung over the sea. Blaring horns and shouting a few yards ahead.
I pulled up on the side of the road, left my car and followed the noise. A man was pinned up against a Nissan minibus by a mob. The windscreen was a spiderweb of punched-in glass. The vehicle was skewed across the road with its engine running. About three yards ahead, a group of chattering teenagers were comparing phone footage of what looked like the mangled remains of a body. A slim-boned, detached arm with five copper bracelets told me it was a woman. About twenty-five, I guessed. The rest of the woman, I was told, was scattered along the stretch of road.
I walked into the crowd, raised my ID and ordered them to disperse. They shuffled back a couple of feet, with agitated voices.
I knew the fella. He was a constable from San Andrews Police Central, locked down to a desk job because of a prosthetic leg. There was a story floating in the Force about his wife and a lover she flaunted in his face.
Someone had already called the ambulance. No one phoned the police.
I called Recovery – a three-man unit that Detective Superintendent Chilman had created for situations such as these – fellas who would think nothing of eating their dinner with their plates sitting on a cadaver. They used to be gravediggers.
‘DC Digson here. This one is a scrape-up job. Four hours’ worth of work.’
I gave them the coordinates and turned to the officer. He was stinking of alcohol. ‘So what happen?’
People must have read my lips.
‘He knock down the woman, drivin’ drunk. He murder her. The woman got two lil children and . . . fucker drag she all de way from—’
I raised a cautioning hand at the speaker – a youngfella with his hair pulled out in tufts like a fluffy porcupine. His voice was lava-hot and raking.
‘You, Digshun, frum Shandrooz She-Eye-Dee, nuh so? I didn see ’er. I could’uv swear was, was a dog I hit, man.’
‘So, you run over a dog, and you keep driving?’
‘Naah, fella, I—’
‘Don’t fuckin “fella” me! Address me by my rank and name. You stinking drunk and you driving! You should be first to know is a criminal offence.’
I turned to face the crowd. ‘Who witnessed this?’
Four youths stepped forward with lit-up smart phones.
I took the handsets and stuffed them in my pocket. ‘Collect them tomorrow from San Andrews CID.’ I ignored their protests. ‘Anybody actually saw the accident?’
A man raised his hand – short, oily face, big eyes. I took his details.
I turned back to the officer. ‘If you dunno it yet, I arresting y’arse. I want jail for you. I want the maximum for you.’
‘O Gorsh, Digshun. I’z a officer too.’
‘That makes it worse!’ I handcuffed him and dragged him into my car.
By the time I got to San Andrews Central station, I was close to throwing up. My car stank of the officer. He’d clearly pissed himself and was a mumbling wreck on the back seat.
I dragged him out and carried him inside. I demanded the keys from the duty officer – a bug-eyed youngfella with a loose mouth, who dropped his gaze on the crumpled man then fixed my face. He looked confused, moved his lips as if he were about to say something, but then changed his mind. He followed me to the cell. I opened it, dumped Buso inside, then locked him in.
‘I’m DC Digson – people call me Digger,’ I told him. ‘San Andrews CID.’
‘Missa Digger, you sure—’
‘I more than sure. This officer just killed a woman. He said he mistook her for a dog. Look at him – drunk no arse and driving.’ I pocketed the keys.
The young man pointed at my pocket. I ignored him, pulled out my notebook and spent a few minutes writing. I tore out the page and held it out to him. ‘What’s your name?’
‘Kent, Sir.’
‘You new here, right?’ He nodded and took the page.
‘Make sure the Superintendent gets this,’ I said.
‘The, erm, keys, Missa Digger . . . ’ He was chewing his lower lip and throwing glances in the direction of the cells. A low hum came from down the corridor. A gargled hymn from Buso – ‘Rock of Ages’ . . .
‘I keeping the keys,’ I said and strode out of the building.
2
I was up at seven, a cup of hot cocoa in my hand, looking down from my veranda at the houses in Old Hope village spread across the hillside on which we lived. Directly ahead were the foothills, pulling my gaze all the way up to the Mardi Gras mountains – purple-dark in the early light. Last night’s accident was sitting on my mind.
At nine o’clock exactly I received a call from Staff Superintendent Gill of San Andrews Central Police Station. He demanded the keys to the cells in the building. Didn’t I know that a police officer never arrested another officer in public no matter what they did? And they certainly didn’t lock them up overnight and take away the keys. Where did I get my training? Who the hell did I think I was?
‘Detective Constable Digson, Sir! San Andrews CID!’ I retorted. ‘Two years serving, and I’m asking you to read the report I left with your duty officer before you start to insult me.’
‘That’s no excuse,’ he snapped. ‘I want the keys. When you bringing it in?’
‘When I ready,’ I replied and hung up.
I left my house at 11am, the jail keys in my pocket. I could smell the ocean from my place in Old Hope – the long cane valley that ran all the way down to the sea. Already the hills crackled with a strange high heat. All month it had been like this: dry, dusty, sapping; the air filled with the lament of suffering livestock that were hugging the shadows of the trees and hills. I could see the brown flooring of the forest receding all the way to the hilltops. With all that dryness a pusson felt afraid to strike a match, and I worried at the sight of smoke.
I took the long road to the office in San Andrews.
Chief Officer Malan called. I didn’t pick up.
Five minutes later, Office Admin, Pet, texted me: wh r u?
I didn’t reply.
The chief officer phoned again. I ignored him. Then Miss Stanislaus’s number popped up. ‘G’morning, Miss Stanislaus. How you?’
I imagined her at her desk in one of her glorious lilypatterned Monday-morning dresses, the window light on her hands and face, the phone poised delicately against an ear.
‘Count five,’ she said. It was her way of telling me she wanted to talk in private. Now, I could tell by the background noises that she’d stepped out of the office and was in the concrete courtyard.
‘Missa Digger, you askin for trouble?’ she said.
‘Nuh.’
‘Why you lock up de policefella?’
‘He killed a woman last night, Miss Stanislaus. Drunk driving, and he’s not getting away with it just because he’s an officer.’
‘I didn know,’ she said.
‘That’s because it is not on the news. San Andrews Central will bury it as usual.’
‘You plannin to fight them?’
‘That’s for the family of the victim to do. Ask Pet to get a lawyer who’s prepared to take the case on a no-win, no-fee basis – pro bono, they call that. I’ll give Pet the details when I get in.’
‘Send it now.’ Miss Stanislaus’s tone had changed.
I pulled up the car, consulted my notes and sent the details through my phone.
The whole department was there when I walked in, clearly waiting for me
. DS Chilman sat near the door, his elbows on his knees, his mouth twisted in a tight worried knot. The two office admins, Pet and Lisa, were side by side, their desks facing the door. Chief Officer Malan had wheeled his chair out of his office. He sat straight-backed in a pressed blue shirt following my movements with steady, vicious eyes. An officer in uniform was on a chair next to him.
Miss Stanislaus, in a beautiful sea-green dress, looked relaxed at her desk, her gaze directed through the window at the marketplace below. For a moment, she rested those big brown eyes on my face and then turned back to the window.
‘What take you so long?’ Malan grated.
I lifted my shoulders and dropped them, pulled a chair and sat down. ‘What’s the upset?’
The chief officer exploded. ‘How you mean what’s the upset! That’s the best you kin do? You lock up an officer, take the key an’ walk! And you asking, what the upset is?’
‘What makes Officer Buso different from any other person out there in Camaho?’
‘Digger, you can’t go arresting officers, jusso. Y’all doing the same blasted job!’
‘Malan, you shouting. Chill! You didn answer my question. Answer it.’
He shot to his feet, pushed out a hand. ‘Gimme de keys!’
‘Nuh! Not yet. And get outta my face, Malan!’
DS Chilman cleared his throat – a wet, threatening sound. Malan retreated. Miss Stanislaus turned from the window to take us in with an irritated, sidewise look.
‘Answer my question,’ I said.
‘Where y’ever hear about police arresting police? Is de same Force. You want to start a civil war?’
A flush of anger ran through me. ‘A police officer stinking drunk and driving run into a woman on the roadside. Woman went to buy some milk for her two children. The youngest child is two years old. The other one is six. Officer lost control of the vehicle and hit her. He so drunk he say he thought it was a dog. Didn stop for half a mile. Recovery had to scrape her off the road. Put yourself in my place, Malan. What you would’ve done?’
‘Why you didn take him aside?’
‘For what?’
‘Nuff of this!’ Miss Stanislaus’s voice cut through. She pulled her handbag, plucked a tissue and began to fan her face.