by Jacob Ross
I took the sharp uphill rise at a steady 20mph. My head was filled with the thundering ocean as the car levelled out, slipped into second gear. I closed my eyes and stepped on the accelerator. I counted to eight then swung hard left. I counted to four, then braked, and I was on the narrow finger of rock with nothing on either side of me but the long fall to the waters below and the glittering heave of the ocean just ahead. I sat there soaked in my own sweat, conscious of the rise and fall of my chest and the throbbing in my blood. I remained until something in me quietened and readjusted. Then I returned home to rest.
*
When I got back, there were lights on in my house. Dessie knew where to find my spare key.
She put aside her phone when I walked in.
‘Been calling you,’ she said.
‘Been out,’ I said.
She uncoiled herself from the sofa, draped her arms around my neck and offered me a close-up of that face that never failed to turn heads. She’d made a mane of her hair, held together just over her shoulder by a band. She was wearing a light grey dress, soft to the touch, a pair of Clarks shoes – the preferred brand of the Camaho rich. She looked drowsy in the light.
‘You been messing me about, Digger,’ she said. ‘I keep telling you I don’t like it.’
‘Is the job, Dessie. I sorry.’
‘A time might come when apologising won’t be enough.’
‘Sorry again. You want a drink?’
‘Something weak,’ she said. ‘But not now.’
I washed my hands, stripped myself and walked into the shower. Dessie trailed after me, leaned a shoulder against the door, observing me. It was the way we sometimes began our lovemaking – a slow, indirect journey to each other’s bodies. She would dry me, we would touch then pull away. I would follow her out onto the veranda with my drink, sit and watch the moon make its cold indifferent arc over the valley, liking the discomfort of the early-morning chill because it roused our appetite for warmth.
‘Digger, what’s happening with you?’
I told her about the murder of Lazar Wilkinson.
‘These things happen here?’ She spoke in whispered shock.
Dessie and her people could live the rest of their lives with the island falling apart and they would only notice if the trouble touched their profits. When it got too hot they left for Washington or New York.
‘I want to go in,’ she said.
She did something with her hand behind her and the dress slipped to the floor in a soft grey heap.
It had taken me months to learn Dessie’s preferred way of making love – the pleasure and the patience that went with it, the ritual and the waiting. I wondered if it was a reaction to her marriage to Luther Caine.
‘Luther didn’t use to lay with me,’ she told me once. ‘He used to take me. And if I wasn’t in some kind of pain he wasn’t satisfied. Sex wasn’t something we did, it was something he inflicted. I didn’t feel whole afterwards.’
Sometimes I felt his presence between us. In her silence, especially after sex, I sensed his shadow there. Sometimes she called me by his name. I never brought it to her attention.
She was up before me. I heard the shower going. Dessie came out dressed in one of my shirts.
I showered, slipped on a pair of shorts and a string vest with a marijuana leaf emblazoned on the front and back. She watched me watching her.
‘Is the way you look at me that does it, Digger. You come in the bank sometimes and Jesus!’ She rolled her eyes. That made me laugh.
She drifted around the living room looking at the pictures on the wall, passed a hand across my school trophies and stretched a finger at the picture of the child leaning against the woman. ‘You get the looks from her,’ she said. She turned around to face me. ‘You never talk about your father, Digger.’
I’d never told Dessie who my father was.
‘Breakfast?’ I said.
For Dessie, I prepared food their servants ate – the food I grew up on: a cup of boiled Camaho cocoa, steamed green bananas and sweet potatoes, soused salt-fish blessed with coconut oil, tomatoes, chives, garlic and green pepper that I picked from my little garden behind the house. She ate with her fingers because she knew I loved watching her feed herself that way.
She came behind me and wrapped her hand around my stomach. Her chin nestled in the hollow of my neck, moved with me like a dancer would, with her breath against my ear.
‘Digger, when you coming to meet my people?’
She’d been pressing me for months.
‘Why?’
‘My father says he wants to meet you.’
‘What you told him about me?’
‘I want him to find out for himself. You’re doing this for me – for us.’
‘Let’s eat, Dessie.’
We sat on the steps, the plate on our knees. ‘Dessie, you need somebody to run lil errands at the bank for y’all: photocopying, sweeping up, polishing up y’all marble floor and counter – that sort of thing? I know a youngfella perfect for the job.’
‘Not sure, Digger.’ She’d put on her bank-manager’s face. ‘We do need people sometimes. They don’t always stay. How old?’
‘Eighteen – nineteen, sixth form.’
She slid a glance at me. ‘You come to lunch, I find a slot for your friend. Deal?’
‘Get him the job first. Like tomorrow? Is urgent. Please?’
‘You promise?’
‘I promise.’
20
Monday morning, at nine o’clock I received a voice message that I was to report to work at San Andrews Central. It came from the MJ’s secretary.
I was on the way there when Chilman phoned and said he couldn’t get into the office – they’d changed the lock, but rather than let the Justice Minister have the place he, Chilman, would burn the damn thing down. It gladdened my heart to hear the fight in the old man’s voice.
San Andrews Central sat in the middle of four streets, one on each side of it. A grey two-storey building with a wide forecourt, low-roofed rooms, strip-lit with cold, greenish fluorescent tubes. The market square began almost beneath the east-facing windows.
The place was a hive of offices. Through the walls, I picked up the grunts and coughs of middle-aged men. Four secretaries sat at their desks in the far right corner of the room – all with harassed faces, answering calls or deciphering pages of badly written reports. We knew them as a tight, secretive bunch who collected other people’s ‘sins’, including those of officers. They thought nothing of using them as currency to have the excesses of their family and offspring overlooked.
Staff Superintendent Gill dragged a chair and table just outside the common area. I felt like an exhibit with all those eyes on me. Heads and shoulders were leaning into each other, muttering words: young fella . . . soft-man . . . trag . . . I took exception to ‘trag’, especially. It was short for toe rags – Chilman’s toe rags. I pretended I didn’t hear them.
I was flipping through a Forensics Today magazine and making notes when I sensed a presence over me. I raised my head. It was Switch, the man who’d stopped in the middle of Grand Beach Road with his friends and tried to stare me down. I’d never seen such malice in the eyes of another human before. And it was odd because I felt completely unflustered. I returned his gaze.
I thought I heard Malan’s voice somewhere in the building, then I was sure. He strolled out of one of the offices at the far end of the corridor and lengthened his stride when he saw me.
‘What go on, Switch?’ Malan’s voice was relaxed. His eyes weren’t.
Switch shifted his gaze to Malan. Something in Malan’s stance had changed. He’d hooked a thumb in his belt, his shoulders pulled back slightly. I had the impression of two bad-dogs sniffing each other out.
Switch nodded, held out a hand to Malan. Malan took it.
‘You want to come for a drink later?’ Switch said.
‘I easy.’ Malan shrugged.
He hung out with them for th
e rest of the day. By the evening, the stiffness between them was no longer there.
I was about to pack up at the end of the day. Malan was at the door with the men. Sidelong glances from the one I knew as Machete. He was bone thin, smaller than the rest with an oddly shaped head. His lips never stayed still. He wore steeltoecap boots, designed to strike bone and break it – the type extrajudicial henchmen used to wear in my mother’s time. The wickedness came off him like smoke.
Malan turned back, muttered something and raised his chin at the toilets at the back. He told them he’d meet them outside.
He was barely a minute there. When he returned, he halted at my desk. His words were hot and hissing with annoyance. ‘Digger, walk with your fuckin gun.’
He threw his weight against the swing doors and was gone.
I was about to follow him when I heard my name. Staff Superintendent Gill was at his office door curling a finger at me.
‘Is like everybody on my case today,’ I mumbled.
A wide black desk took up most of the office space. Everything neatly arranged and in its place. It was the tidiest desk I’d ever seen. A full set of Encyclopaedia Britannica on a shelf above his head. A big red volume entitled The Tragedies of Shakespeare on the left corner of his desk.
Staff Superintendent Gill was broad at the shoulders, thickfingered. A single gold band peeped through the flesh of his fourth finger, now impossible to take off.
Clear eyes in a very dark face.
He dropped into his chair and gestured at the one facing his desk.
‘I didn’t get time to tell you welcome,’ he said. ‘And sorry about my unfortunate use of language the last time we spoke about you locking up Officer Buso. You not enjoying it here, not so?’
‘Nuh.’
He nodded. ‘You younger than I thought. You look older in the pictures. The woman who partner with you, she’s the same?’
‘Miss Stanislaus and me same age,’ I said.
‘I been following the cases you and Chilman’ daughter been handling. Is good work. I want to be honest with you. You look like a decent youngfella, not cut out for this place—’
‘I not as soft as I look, Sir.’
‘Regardless! What I want to say is I got no use for you. I not going to have you on night duty. I not going to send you on no patrol with the others. After what you done to Buso, a lot of the officers here got a problem with it.’
‘In other words, they have it in for me?’
He shifted in his chair, picked up a stapler and replaced it on the desk. He nudged it into the exact position it was in before. ‘You don’t have to waste your time here in Central. You don’t even have to come in. You’ll get your salary as normal. Treat it like a holiday till I work out something for you.’
‘We working on the Lazar Wilkinson case right now, Sir, and what you saying sounds like Restricted Duties to me. Sorry, I have to decline.’
The man actually chuckled. ‘You don’t do enforcement – Malan Greaves fit in easily with the others. Chilman’ daughter – I sorry to hear about the trouble she in – she sounds to me like a real enforcer. You, I dunno what you do.’
‘I just told you, Sir.’
‘What exactly, youngfella?’
‘Forensics,’ I said. ‘And a lil bit of enforcement too, as and when necessary.’
‘Tell me about the forensics part.’
‘The body is a book, Sir. Criminal forensics teaches you how to read it.’
He twisted his mouth and showed me his palms.
‘Like I could tell that you sustained damage somewhere on your right side – probably a coupla ribs under your shoulder. It shows by the way you move your upper body, and how you sitting now, and the fact that the heel of your left shoe is more worn down than your right shoe. In other words, you favour your left side and you not left handed. Mebbe accident or bad fall? Also you would’ve been much younger when it happened.’
‘Why you say much younger?’
‘You had to be much younger to recover this well.’
‘Twenty-eight,’ he said.
‘What happened?’
‘Gunshot. Another officer. Over a woman.’
‘What happened to the woman?’
‘She married me.’ He pulled open his desk drawer, took out an envelope and held it out. ‘I – er – I could’ve held this back. I decided not to. Police Constable Buso will be appearing in court next week Friday. Sorry, my secretary opened it. Is accepted practice here.’
I scanned the letter – a request from A. J. Whitney & Son, attorneys at law, to serve as witness in the Buso vs Camella Whyte case.
‘You going?’ he said.
‘I going,’ I said.
‘The judge is a woman. Things changing,’ he said.
I rose from the chair and pocketed the letter.
The superintendent extended his hand. I took it. ‘Go safe,’ he said. ‘You been issued with a gun?’
I pretended I didn’t hear him.
21
I stepped off the Osprey at 9.47am. and stood for a while on the jetty on Kara Island watching a yacht with what looked like four panicking crewmen battling the tides around Blackwater. The seafront was quiet. Muted voices stirred the air. Four dogs brawling over something they’d just pulled out from the roadside drain.
I’d given myself enough time to meet Miss Stanislaus’s people and leave them with a job. I also wanted to see Chief Officer Mibo. If my trip went as planned, I’d be back in Camaho by early afternoon.
I didn’t tell Miss Stanislaus I was returning to Kara Island. I’d called her and reminded her to keep the Glock a secret.
‘Is not like Miss Betsy,’ she said. ‘I got to practise a lot with it, Missa Digger, becuz it behave like a fella.’
‘Try a bigger saucer,’ I laughed. But Miss Stanislaus refused to be provoked. ‘Missa Digger, we got a case to chase an’ you not takin it serious.’
‘I busy working on yours. Which you prefer?’
‘Both,’ she’d said. ‘And you promise you take me see Missa Laza Wilkins’ mother later.’
She wished me a good day and hung up. Miss Stanislaus sounded up-beat, even happy, but I wasn’t fooled. It was her way of stifling the awful anxiety of waiting for a verdict. It had happened to me before and I remembered what that felt like.
Dada did not seem at all surprised to see me but she wasn’t welcoming. I asked her what they’d done with Juba.
‘The usual,’ she replied and would say no more. It was as if she was meeting me for the first time, and I resented her attitude.
‘How’s Kathleen?’
‘She’s alright,’ I said. ‘She had a great-uncle who is no longer with us?’
‘Koku. Yes.’
‘Miss Stanislaus said something not right about the way he disappear, jusso?’
‘She send you?’ Dada said.
‘You could say so,’ I said.
‘Is either so or is not so. She send you?’
‘Nuh. I—’
‘If Kathleen didn send you, we got no bizness with you.’ She hadn’t moved and yet it felt as if she’d turned her back on me.
‘Miss Stanislaus got reasons to believe that Juba Hurst, the man who pushed your granddaughter to kill herself, is behind whatever happened to her great-uncle. Two years come and gone and y’all didn’t have the decency to let her know her uncle dead or disappear. I happen to know what that feels like. In here.’ I tapped my chest. ‘Besides, she up for murder, yunno that?’
Her expression shifted and then her face closed up again.
‘I want something to pin against Juba. If he got anything to do with that old fella disappearing and I can prove it, I’ll have a case to argue on Miss Stanislaus’ behalf. Just because you not interested don’t mean I’m giving up. G’d morning to you.’ I turned to leave.
‘Hold on,’ she said. She tilted her face at the sky and made a keening sound. I heard another somewhere in the near distance, then another. Voices approac
hed. Benna and two women walked into the yard. They threw quick glances at my face.
‘Woman, you upset him!’ Benna said. Dada seemed to wilt in Benna’s presence. ‘If you hate man so much, how come you have chil’ren with them? Not one but five!’ She turned to me. ‘Missa Digger, I glad to see you. What bizness you want with us today?’
I repeated what I’d said to Dada. Added, ‘And because Miss Stanislaus convinced, I feel convinced too.’
Benna fixed me with those pale eyes, as if my words had alerted her to something. ‘Is so close Kathleen let you get to her?’
I shook my head but Benna said nothing more.
I wanted to leave them with a job, I said. I could only afford a couple of hours on Kara Island. To explain what I wanted done, would they take me to their cemetery?
The way I figured it, I said, if Juba had anything to do with the old man’s death, he wouldn’t have disposed of him in the sea. Certainly not around Kara Island. He would have had to take him out to the sucking tides of Blackwater – most likely at night. I couldn’t imagine Juba doing that.
Benna nodded in agreement. Juba was a sailorman, she said, but everybody knew he hated water touching him. She wrinkled her nose. S’matter ov fact, he couldn’t steer a boat to save his life.
They settled their headwraps and asked me to follow them. They formed a tight group ahead of me, their conversation riddled with disbelief and exclamations.
These elders would be carrying in their heads the family tree of every person on Kara Island, and their connections to each other. They still named their children in the language their people brought with them across the Atlantic a few centuries ago. Could tell the nations they’d belonged to and prove it with their dances and songs. They still held on to fragments of their old languages, cherished their bloodlines, built tombstones for ancestors that were more expensive than the homes they lived in. For one of their own to kill an old man and dispose of him without a trace was not just an act of wickedness, it was evil, pure and simple. Perhaps that was why they didn’t tell Miss Stanislaus. They probably couldn’t find the words for such a thing. All this I’d learned from listening to Miss Stanislaus and observing her.