by Jacob Ross
Miss Stanislaus decided that we should take to the rough roads of the island in search of the woman.
The first few villages we stopped at treated us with the disdain they probably reserved for foreigners – San Andrews folks being in that category too. Sometimes the hostility came off them like a heatwave.
We were entering Grenville Town when Miss Stanislaus ordered me to stop the car. ‘Missa Digger, we been doin the whole thing wrong. We been talkin to the wrong people.’ She got out, went into a shop and returned with a bulging paper bag.
‘What you got in there?’
She opened the mouth of the bag and showed me. Sweets – all sorts, mostly lollipops.
I shook my head and frowned.
‘Just watch!’ She sat back, staring calmly ahead.
From then, we had to make our escape from the children who crowded us, offering whatever they thought we wanted to hear just to earn some sweets.
At Menere village, we learned that Missa Geoffrey had one baby with his sister; that Miss Panadool had two boyfriends – one who visited her on Tuesday and Friday nights, and another who came home once-a-year becuz he was bustin his arse on a touris’ boat overseas.
Requin was full of late-night ‘sexin’ on the beach. ‘An dem believe we dunno.’
The old Anglican priest in Bacolet had poisoned the mangoes that grew behind the church and drank aaaall the holy wine. He beat up his wife when he got drunk. And the Merican man in the big concrete house overlooking Prickly Bay got locked out by his wife every time he came home late or drunk. ‘She one o’ we,’ they explained.
Once or twice an adult barged through the bunch and shooed them off. They would scatter like a flock of routed chickens, then converge on us again. I could have stayed and listened to them all day.
We found the young woman’s place halfway down the eastern coast – a small village without a name, perched on a rock above a beach bordered by a forest of manchineel and mangroves. The air was fresh and clean, the sea so clear it was transparent.
‘I think she got a baby,’ I’d told the children. They pointed out a narrow limestone track that wound like a limp thread towards a two-roomed board house with frayed curtains billowing through the windows. A sun-scorched vegetable garden at the front was almost taken over by patches of cactus and mint grass.
A woman was stooping over a basin of washing. Slim, dark-skinned, head tied with a blue wrap, bands of coloured cloth around one wrist, a plaited cotton cord holding her dress against her hips – Fire Baptist.
The transformation in Miss Stanislaus was immediate. Her face softened, her voice thickened with love. ‘Sister,’ she said and curtsied. I was sure they’d never met before but the woman seemed to recognise Miss Stanislaus by that call. I’d never ceased to wonder at the bond between the women of my grandmother’s religion.
Conversation was a gentle affair between them: lowered voices, touches on the shoulder, fluttering fingers, the occasional lifting of widespread palms.
The woman brought out a baby and placed it in my arms. Boychild – firm and plump as a well-kneaded dumpling. About ten months old. Completely at ease in my arms.
I rocked the baby while they talked, my mind drifting back to a girlfriend I used to have called Lonnie, who – to shield herself from Malan – had offered to have my child.
We were on the Atlantic side of the island, the water in the distance kyanite blue. A raging procession of breakers destroyed themselves on the barrier reef that stood between the ocean and the bay.
The woman came out and took the child from me. ‘How you, Missa Digger? I’z Philo.’ She had quick brown eyes. About thirty-five, I thought. ‘I remember your granny from Convention Time. Mother Sheila Digson, not so?’
‘Is so,’ I said. ‘Miss Philo, you got a picture of your daughter?’
‘Uh-huh,’ she said, and without hesitation returned to the house with the child.
She came back with a small stack of photos and handed them to me. One was of a baby, head weighed down with ribbons. A couple were of a prepubescent girl, her hair in two long plaits, standing unsmiling at the end of a grinning line of children her age. All in school uniform. The last two were as I remembered the woman at The Flare. She was holding the baby in her arms and staring directly at the camera – no smile, no pose – just a lean, straightbacked Camahoan woman presenting herself to the world as she was.
Miss Stanislaus approached with an outstretched hand. ‘You got your wallet, Missa Digger?’
I handed it to her along with the photos. ‘Leave ten dollars. Give her the rest.’
‘All of it? I done give her what I got.’
‘All of it,’ I said.
When Miss Stanislaus returned, she laid a hand on my arm. ‘You know what I been thinkin, Missa Digger?’
‘Tell me.’
‘How much people we got on Camaho?’
‘About a hundred thousand.’
‘Eggzackly.’ She sniffed. ‘Camaho too small to have poor people.’
‘What that got to do with the case we chasing now?’
‘Everything, Missa Digger. Believe me.’
Back on the road, Miss Stanislaus pointed at a sprawling plantation house on the hill above the village, crowded by ancient mahogany and royal palm trees.
‘Baby father,’ she said. ‘Lawyer name Joe Carter. Miss Tamara work for him five months. He pregnant her with baby. When wife find out, she fire the girl. Now they don’t want to know.’
‘Reminds me of a story,’ I said. ‘Ever hear about Olive Senior?’
‘This not no story, Missa Digger, this is Camaho life. It got to stop.’
‘Mebbe Miss Olive was thinking the same thing when she write that story. Okay, so what we find?’
The girl’s name was Tamara, daughter of a hotelier in San Andrews’ tourist south. He escaped the island when Tamara was an infant. She was a good girl, the mother said, strongminded. Tried to burn down the house of the lawyer who’d left her with the child and stoned his car a couple of times, until he sent the police to arrest her. They ended up warning her, but from then, Tamara couldn’t find a job anywhere in the parish.
Tamara took to sleeping in the day and leaving home at night, returning in the early hours of the morning. Began staying out for days at a time, but always sent home money for the upkeep of the child through one of the bus drivers.
The past coupla weeks, Miss Philo heard nothing from her daughter. She was worried. People from the parish sometimes caught glimpses of the young woman in a San Andrews restaurant or night club. Whenever they did, they always brought the news to her.
‘She might’ve skipped the island,’ I said.
‘Nuh.’
‘Why you so sure?’
‘She hate the father, Missa Digger, but she love the baby. Is obvious. To do what she doing to feed her child – that’s love.’
Miss Stanislaus asked me to repeat everything I’d said about my meeting with the young woman at The Flare, including a description of the two men.
‘Them two foreign fellas still got her, Missa Digger. I sure of that.’ She turned worried eyes on me. ‘You think she in trouble?’
‘I know she in trouble. She got a murder to explain. I’ll put out a lookout notice again. I’ll notify Caran too, just in case.’
My phone buzzed. ‘Digger!’
‘Whozat?’
‘Is me, Malan. You find de prostitute yet?’
‘Still searching.’
‘Digger, I decide you need a break. We going to Dog Island on Saturday. You want to come?’
‘Not sure about that.’
‘Digger, I really want you to come.’
‘Why Dog Island?’
‘I show you when you come. Besides, Sarona want to meet you proper. You coming?’
‘What time?’
‘Afternoon, about one. Bring your woman.’
‘Uh-huh.’
‘You sure you comin?’
‘Yep.’
&nbs
p; ‘Don’ forget, yunno!’
‘Nuh. See yuh.’
‘What he want from you?’ Miss Stanislaus muttered. She looked sullen, resentful. I didn’t blame her.
‘That’s what I going to find out.’
‘Careful, Missa Digger.’
‘Uh-huh.’
25
I dropped off Miss Stanislaus and came home to find Jana Ray sitting on my step, a cloth bag beside him and a blue bum-bag at his feet.
I barely recognised the youngfella. He’d groomed his hair with a designer pattern at the sides. A sky-blue, long-sleeved shirt, grey trousers and perfectly laced-up Convos. He wore a fluorescent-green plastic Casio watch on his right hand. The youngfella looked stunning.
‘You start trespassing now?’ I said.
His face lit up with a grin. ‘I bring you something.’
Without my torch in his face, Jana Ray looked relaxed and self-possessed.
‘I don’t remember giving you my address.’
He reached into his blue bum-bag and pulled out a cellphone – the cheap two-sim Chinese type. ‘The Camaho Chronicle got a big article on you and, erm, Miss, erm, DC Stan—’
‘Stanislaus. That was a while back.’
He looked around him then up at the Mardi Gras mountains. ‘Small place.’
‘Still bigger than where you from.’
‘We ain got no mountain blocking the sea.’ He grinned. He pulled the cloth bag towards him and tipped it over. A beautiful assortment of Camaho’s rarest fruits tumbled out onto the step: gru-gru nuts, star-apples, sapodillas and mami sipote from the mountains; water lemons, white-fleshed guavas and short lengths of crayfish cane that thrived around the streams of the interior; custard apples, seagrapes and red plums from the southern Drylands.
‘How long this take you?’ I said.
‘Coupla days. You like them?’
‘More than like them. I figure you don’t take nothing from nobody without paying back – that right?’
He lowered his head, smiling.
‘Well, thanks for thanking me. I like that. I telling you what I going do now. I going invite you inside. We going to eat something, then I going to do my job: interrogate you.’
I opened the door and let him in. ‘I don’t want no lie from you, else no amount of super-fruits going save you. I want names, things that Lazar said that you remember. Basically, I want to empty your head of all the information connected with this case, some of which you might not even know you know.’
I pointed at a chair and poured him a drink. ‘You eighteen. In Camaho law, that make you an adult. Miss Stanislaus told me I should’ve arrested you. Fact is, I didn’t, but nothing preventing me from doing that right now, or some time in the future. That clear?’
I watched his body tense. Now there was the same uncertainty and vulnerability about him that I saw when I’d pulled him up the first time. ‘First, you tell me a lil bit about yourself.’
He told me of a mother who drank too much, grieving over a father he’d only heard about. She ignored the doctor’s warning about her drinking. An epileptic fit killed her. He had an uncle who owned a shop a couple of miles from where he lived. As far as his uncle was concerned, he didn’t exist.
He’d been sending himself to school and with the little jobs that Lazar Wilkinson gave him, was managing alright. University – that was all he thought about. University was a must because . . . he pointed at his head. ‘I have plans, Missa Digger. Gimme a couple more years and I off to university. You want to bet?’
No, I didn’t, I replied. Was he sure there was no new woman with Lazar recently?
Lazar was a dog, he said. He had lotsa women. He, Jana Ray, was never into that kinda living.
I asked him how come.
‘Is wasteful, Missa Digger. Wasteful is not good. S’far as I see, a woman is an, erm, ecosystem. You interfere with one part, another part get affected. That’s what Lazar and them fellas don’t unnerstan.’
‘And what a man is?’
‘Ecosystem too.’ He lowered his eyes and smiled. ‘I think we less diverse.’
‘You actually think like that?’
‘Uh-huh.’
‘Miss Stanislaus going to like you! You got any idea why they killed Lazar?’
‘Lazar had dealings with people from all over. From high up and from low down. Could’ve been any one of them.’
‘Where is all over?’
‘Vincen Island, Kara Island . . . I even hear them say Europe.’
‘Europe!’
‘Is what I hear.’
‘You not giving me names.’
‘I don know no names.’
‘You mention Kara Island. Ever heard about a fella named Juba Hurst?’
‘I fink Shadowman from there.’
‘Who’s Shadowman?’
‘What?’
‘You just said, Shadowman – who’s Shadowman?’
A change had come over him – his mouth gone loose, his arms hugging himself. Small tremors in his shoulders.
‘You think this Shadowman fella kill Lazar?’
‘What?’ He shook his head and looked away.
‘Who kill him, Jana Ray?’
‘I tellin you I dunno.’ His voice had risen a couple of pitches.
‘And I tellin you, you got a good idea. Who you think kill Lazar Wilkinson, then?’
‘Like I tell you, it could be—’
‘Anybody! That’s what you keep saying. Well, it can’t be anybody. Somebody had a reason to get rid of him. I believe you know.’
‘Missa Digger, all I want to do is go to school. Finish what I set out to do. I don’t want no part in this no more.’
‘Part of what no more?’
‘Big things happenin, is why dey kill Lazar. Mebbe he got greedy, mebbe he didn want no part of it either.’
‘No part of what, Jonathon Rayburn. Of what!’
Jana Ray had become a fidgeting wreck. He’d broken out in a sweat. I handed him a drink, stepped back and watched him gulp down the soursop juice. He rested the empty glass on the floor. Fear, I thought. No, not fear. Terror.
‘You want another drink?’
He shook his head.
‘I’ll get you one anyway. Listen to me, youngfella, you think I rough? Well, we have a policeman I work with who will get whatever he wants to hear from you, and the price you’ll pay is a coupla broken bones for taking up his time. So count yourself lucky. You like music?’
He shrugged.
‘Ever hear bout John Coltrane? Nuh? One day I’ll tell you about Coltrane.’ I fed ‘A Love Supreme’ into my player. He looked absorbed, his forehead clenched. All ears.
‘I like the patterns,’ he said, then rose abruptly and strode over to my bookshelf. He reached up a long arm and began fingering the book spines. He pulled down a text, ran a hand along the covers. Now Jana Ray looked different: serious, focused, mature – someone who understood and valued books.
‘Phytochemistry – I can borrow this?’ He turned the front cover towards me.
‘Not that one.’
‘Which one then?’
‘None.’
He dropped the book on the kitchen worktop. ‘I got a question on plant chemistry for my exams. What use you got for it anyway?’
‘Is my book, youngfella. I bought it. You into poisoning people with plants?’
‘You didn tell me bout yourself.’
I gave him a quick rundown about my grandmother who brought me up, my murdered mother, the hole her absence left in me and the craving I sometimes felt for something close to family.
He nodded at that, his face grave and distant at the same time. I also told him how I got my job in San Andrews CID. ‘Basically, Chilman cornered me and forced me to join the CID unit he was forming. Straight blackmail – no other word for it!’
Jana Ray found that funny. I still didn’t see the joke.
‘He pick y’all up off de street for true?’
‘Is the way he enjoy p
utting it to us. And like you, I sent myself to school. My father didn want to know.’
‘You know your father?’
I nodded.
‘What’s he like, Missa Digger?’
‘Is only now he want to know me.’
‘Because you doin all right?’
‘Because I turn out to be the kinda fella he would like to call his son. Mebbe if I was shorter, darker – a thief – he wouldn want to know.’
It was late evening when he glanced at his watch and said he was ready to leave.
I offered to take him home. He would only let me drop him off at Cross Gap Junction, from where he said he would get a bus or walk.
He halted at the door. ‘I could borrow the book? I know Phytochem is not just about poisoning.’
‘I had a lot of trouble getting it . . . ’
‘I’ll take care of it. Swear on my life.’
‘You got to take care of it, Star Boy. You have no choice. Come, I drop you off.’
At Cross Gap Junction, a thought popped into my head. ‘What you doing Saturday?’
He shrugged.
‘Y’ever been to Dog Island?’
‘I hear bout it.’
‘We got a lime there. You’ll meet my girlfriend too – she manages the Co-op Bank. I ask her to set up a lil job for you.’
‘Don wan’ no job, Missa Digger. Thanks but I awright.’
‘You don want no job!’
‘I kin still come with you, though.’ He made it sound like he was doing me a favour.
‘Okay, Saturday I come pick you up.’
I watched him walk away, upright, fast-footed, the white shoes flashing in the late-evening gloom. Jana Ray – manboy, slippery as a river eel. Miss Stanislaus was right. I should have arrested him.
Perhaps.
26
Friday morning, I woke with a headache. All night my mind had been a hive of questions:
What really lay behind the awful killing of Lazar Wilkinson? Why would anyone want to strangle a man then cut his throat and leave him on display by the side of a public road? If it was a warning to others, why did it have to be in such a horrible way?