by Jacob Ross
‘You never knew if he was at home because you never saw a light in that house. Cleverly built, yunno, with a special air-conditioned basement that was impossible to get into if you didn’t know which doors to open, in what order.
‘There was a swimming pool on the grounds but he put a permanent canvas awning over it.’
‘What made him different?’ Dessie pressed a chin into my shoulder.
‘He had a bit of education to start with. And while the other Camahoan fellas took their role models from the movies, Bradley took his from his idea of an English gentleman: wide-brim hat, yunno, a pipe between his teeth and the most democratic grin a pusson could imagine. In fact, he stopped calling me Digger.’
‘What he call you?’ Jana Ray did nothing to hide the anticipation.
‘Doo-goo-er!’
The youngfella cracked up. Dessie shook with chuckles.
‘Okay, y’all laughing. Story done.’
Spiderface arrived and with one fast swerve was beside the jetty. I took Dessie’s hand and guided her in. Jana Ray hopped in.
‘Finish it, Missa Digger – de story.’
‘Is not no story, is fact.’
Jana Ray opened his palms at me.
‘Well, one early Monday morning we found Bradley drowned in the swimming pool that nobody knew was there.’
I held him in my gaze. He looked away.
We chose a cool and grassy grotto in a glade along the hillside. Dessie, her chin lowered, passed underhand glances at Sarona, her eyes shifting to Malan then back at the woman. I wondered what she was thinking. Sarona wore a sky-blue sarong around a yellow swimsuit. Malan was cool with Jana Ray – the usual policeman stiffness with teenage males – but he was not unfriendly.
Malan and I stood looking out at a promontory about a mile ahead. He wore a tight smile on his face. ‘Pretty wimmen – both of em,’ he said. ‘I like dat. I not comparin, yunno, but—’
‘That’s why you ask me to bring Dessie?’
‘Nuh, I pleased with what I got. I here for de goat.’ He pointed at the rise above the cliff.
For a moment I didn’t understand his words, then they registered.
I shook my head. ‘Nuh.’
‘I bring de SWS.’ He raised his chin at the long canvas bag propped up against the trunk of a manchineel tree a little way behind the women.
‘What you want to prove, Malan? Leave the fuckin goat.’
And suddenly the heat rose in him. ‘Digger, fuck you. Man do what man want to do. Man want goat meat an’ man goin to get goat meat.’
For months there had been talk among the fellas in the army and San Andrews Central about a goat they wanted to shoot. A Dog Island ram, with a curving crown of horns, that you could see against the skyline from a mile off. Problem was, before they could make the curried goat they fancied, they had to get on a boat. And so it never happened.
Years before, someone had let loose half a dozen of the animals on the island. They grew wild and thrived unmolested on the sparse grass. Fellas from Coburn claimed they could smell the males, especially in dry season, and though they barely saw them, the animals reminded them of their presence by the tracks they left on the hillsides.
An alpha male had sprung up amongst them. Evenings, it stood on the lip of a precipice above the ocean, facing the sunset – a magnificent bearded thing that stayed on the clifftop for the half-hour the sun took to set, its body darkening with the fading day. Evenings, children came out on the jetty in Coburn to stare at it, some of them remaining long after it was lost to the night, until their parents’ voices pulled them away from whatever they were dreaming.
I knew this because I too had seen the animal, and felt, I think, what those children must have been feeling when they looked at the creature standing straight-legged, head up, staring out to sea. A living thing, at ease in its world and sufficient unto itself.
I returned to Jana Ray, Dessie and Sarona. The women were listening to the youngfella talk about sea urchins and seahorses. They looked fascinated. He had a lovely laid-back way of speaking, voice low but resonant, neither show-off nor arrogant. Just excited by his own words.
He broke off when Malan hailed Sarona. She rose from the grass and hurried over to him.
Jana Ray was staring closely at me.
‘What?’ I said.
He shrugged, smiled. ‘Thought y’was upset bout somefing. The Sarona woman ask me if you’z my brother.’
‘And what you told her?’
‘I say we, erm, friends. Kind ov, I—’
‘You should’ve told her yes.’
His face softened. He didn’t know where to look. ‘Cool,’ he muttered, smiling at the sky.
Dessie dozed off, her head in my lap. Jana Ray muttered that he wanted to walk to the side of the island.
I stared at the long canvas bag, something stirring in my gut. The animal would be a long way off but I’d seen Malan take down men before with that rifle.
He was out there with Sarona, at the edges of the water, the woman cleaving to him, looking up into his face, the water washing around their feet.
I must have dozed off too because the sound of Spiderface’s engine brought me back. Dessie sat up with me.
Sarona joined us, her cropped hair making a halo with the sun behind her. I could see the fine hairs on her skin. That underhand gaze again from Dessie. I looked at my watch, then up at the promontory. Malan retrieved the canvas bag and headed for what looked like a primitive stone jetty further down.
The sun was yellowing the waters when the animal appeared. Dessie followed my gaze and gasped.
‘My God,’ she breathed. ‘It’s—’
‘Beautiful,’ I said. ‘Malan about to kill it.’
She swung her head at me. And I could not tell whether her expression was one of excitement or disbelief.
‘What go on?’ Jana Ray said. He dropped himself beside me.
‘Malan about to kill a goat.’ I pointed.
He looked up at the creature then at each of us in turn. ‘Why?’ And I could have hugged him, because suddenly he was angry. ‘Is a waste.’
He sank into silence. But then he raised his head again. ‘Where’s he?’
I pointed down at the stone jetty. Jana Ray angled his face up at the silhouette, then swung his gaze across and downwards towards the stone jetty.
‘Too far,’ he said and smiled.
As his face relaxed, we heard the crack of the Sniper Weapon System rifle. Saw the animal buck, its forelegs raised high and clawing the air. Then it slipped over the cliff, a black shadow falling to Jana Ray’s screams of indignation.
Sarona’s eyes were like two dark pools on my face, her lips working, softly, slowly. We locked gazes, me aware of the flare of her nostrils, the fine hairs along her jawline, the pink pearl of her earrings.
Dessie stirred behind me. ‘Digger, let’s walk.’
I followed her inland through a grove of trees. She stopped with her back against a trunk, her head lowered, her eyes turned up at my face. She gestured and I stepped into her arms.
‘Y’awright?’ I said.
She nodded, took my hand and rested it against her thigh. ‘If you want to—’
‘What’s the matter, Dessie?’
‘I can’t like her. I never liked—’ The rest of the words got lost in a mumble. ‘I don’t like the way she was looking at you. I don’t like how you—’ Dessie sucked in air, grabbed my hand and straightened up. ‘Let’s go back.’
Malan and Sarona weren’t there. I thought I heard Sarona’s love cries in the near distance. Then again, might be the gulls.
Jana Ray lay on his back, his blue bum-bag under his head, legs crossed, staring at the sky.
I lowered myself beside him. He looked me in the face – a steady resentful glare. ‘Fucker,’ he said.
And I wasn’t sure whether the word was meant for Malan or me.
29
I went to San Andrews Central to see Staff Superintendent Gil
l. He must have been waiting for me to come in because he was at the door when I arrived. The place felt more relaxed, and it certainly was louder. The secretaries at their desks were running an animated conversation about play-play men and real men.
Superintendent Gill was wearing a grave expression. ‘Digson, you mind following me to my office?’ His voice was gruff and loud enough to reach the furthest room. I prepared myself for a dressing-down and followed him into his office.
There was a tray in the middle of his desk. A pitcher of what looked like sorrel sat on it with two down-turned glasses.
He manoeuvred himself around his desk, sat and raised his head at me. Now I was looking at a different man. A big smile spread across his face. ‘Young Digson, you want a drink?’
Before I could answer he upturned the glasses and began pouring. He handed me one. ‘Sorry about my demeanour out there but I have to keep up appearances, yunno.’
He raised his glass. ‘DC Digson, I didn’t celebrate your arrival, but I have to celebrate your departure.’
‘You kicking me out?’ I smiled.
‘Yes! And,’ he lowered his voice, ‘I thanking you same time! Now, youngfella!’ He dropped his voice even lower. ‘I heard what you did, but not how you did what you did to certain hapless dogs who shall remain nameless in my office. You could regale me, just a lil bit, with some of the finer details of the encounter – some of which I’ll pass on to the ladies out there? With your permission, of course. They are very, very interested.’
‘No consequence for my actions?’
‘Of course,’ he chuckled, pointing at the drink. ‘Right there!’
Then he got serious. ‘The problem that every superintendent still got on this island is the bad seeds. They spring up like weed! I got a whole theory about why that’s so. If you lived through the sixties and seventies like me, you’d know exactly what I talking about. The Machetes and the Switches and the Skelos of the Force used to be the eyes and ears and guns of the fella who believed this island belonged to him. They were,’ he widened his eyes, ‘in the majority.
‘I not putting it on record, and if you quote me I’ll deny it, but I glad you passed through here and I sorry to send you off, but Chilly say he want you out of my station because I neglected my duty of care.’ He laughed out loud.
‘I told him DC Digson don’t need no protection from nobody. Is my officers that need protection from him! The youngfella don’t look like it, but he is a proper enforcer. Look at what he done to Buso! And Machete and Skelo string up like two man-crabs in the hospital, and Switch ’fraid to come in to work. So, I agree, you have to go, else you’ll indispose the whole of Central.’
‘Malan Greaves goin do a better job filling you in, Sir – that alright?’
He smiled broadly and stood up. ‘I got the details – proprietor called and complained. Said it was like a movie. I just wanted to compare your version with his.’
He walked me to the door, dropped a hand on my shoulder. ‘Chilman told me if I don’t kick you out, he’s coming to do it himself. I don’t want to cross thread with him. So is go y’all going.’
‘Malan too?’
‘Chilman offer him to me. I tell him thanks, but no thanks. I didn’t ask about the young lady. How’s that going?’
‘Which young – oh, Miss Stanislaus!’
‘She bad as you?’
‘More bad,’ I said.
He shook his head. ‘So, what Chilman feeding y’all up there?’
‘We got no more place “up there”. Justice Minister lock us out.’
‘Place alarmed and guarded?’
‘Don fink so.’
‘So what preventing y’all from breaking in?’
‘Sir, you suggestin . . . ’
‘I not suggesting anything, Officer Digson, I just thinking aloud. That Beau Séjour case y’all working on – y’all need resources, not so? Resources that we at Central don’t have?’
‘We kin manage—’
‘Nuh, y’all can’t manage! That’s the point! You need your resources! So, to access one’s resources one does as follows: one breaks in, one changes the lock and one ensconces oneself therein.’
‘Never thought of it, Sir. Is good advice.’
‘I not giving no advice, Digson. I just thinking aloud.’
‘So, I not s’posed to be hearing you?’
‘You definitely not!’
30
I was sipping on a cup of hot cocoa when the duty officer in San Andrews Central called me.
‘We just fish out a youngfella from de sea, Missa Digger. The name I got is Jonathon Rayburn.’ A fisherman, he said, had found the youth floating face-down in the shallows a mile down from his house.
Something in me convulsed. ‘Can’t be,’ I said. ‘What he look like?’
‘Youngfella, tallish, slim.’
‘Can’t be,’ I shouted. ‘You better don fuck with my head this morning, because—’
‘Is the details I got here, Missa Digger! People identify de fella—’
‘Where?’
‘Cayman Beach. I done pass on de message to Rumcake.’
I cut him off, tossed the cup in the sink and ran out the house.
A bright Tuesday morning, busy with minibuses on the main road.
I was breathing hard when I got to Cayman Beach, could barely hold up myself.
They’d laid him out on his stomach, naked but for a pair of shiny yellow shorts, the long arms straight down his side, as if he were asleep. A jagged eel of a scar ran obliquely from just below his shoulder blade to the right side of his lower back. Two officers from East Division had their backs half-turned, heads bobbing in conversation.
Rumcake, the pathologist, passed me his notes. I took them with shaking hands. The old man licked his lips and scratched the stubble on his face that looked white and prickly like a sea urchin’s. ‘On-for-chu-nate, Digson. Vory on-for-chu-nate. Messy business, won’t you say – life and death?’
I barely heard his words. The watery grey eyes were fixed somewhere beyond my shoulders. ‘I’ve arranged the pick-up of the body – blowflies and all that. Thought you wouldn’t mind?’
A wind came off the sea and tossed fine sprays of water in my face.
He’d measured the boy’s core temperature by inserting a thermometer into his rectum. Estimated time of death was no more than two hours before he arrived. That made it six in the morning or thereabouts. I never doubted Rumcake. With a head full of whisky he could work out the freshness of a fatal wound or time of death with an accuracy I envied. What happened in his head was quicker than math, and better. During his fifty years on Camaho, Rumcake had recalibrated his knowledge of thanatology. The old whitefella could factor in the nuances of temperature, humidity, exposure to air, and tell the time of death almost at a glance.
His conclusion about this dead boy’s passing:
Accident. Cause – asphyxiation by drowning.
All the indications were there: white froth around the mouth and nose, inflated stomach, the beginnings of lividity in the neck and chest.
I handed Rumcake his notebook. He swung his canvas satchel onto his shoulders and buckled it shut. The damn thing looked so tattered I was surprised it still had buckles.
‘Beautiful specimen, isn’t he? Terrible waste. It gets to you, you know – the young ones especially. Anything else I can help you with, young man?’
‘That’s all, thanks. Can you tell the mortuary to hold him until – erm – the Department authorises his release?’
The white eyebrows climbed his forehead like two hairy caterpillars. He showed me a row of cigar-stained teeth. ‘Double-checking – yes?’
‘I not doubting you, Sir. I just . . . yunno . . . ’
Rumcake and I were a running joke in the Force. Until I started the job, the Englishman’s words were better than gospel in a court of law. I’d heard it said that in his drunken moments – which were almost always – he pronounced me a whippet of an island-
lad who’d reduced the noble business of death to chemistry. In my presence, though, the old fella was polite and helpful. I didn’t give a damn about the rest.
‘You’ll contact next of kin?’ he said.
‘Yes, and thanks again. You’ll handle this bit of it for me – I mean the pick-up?’ I gestured at the body.
The old fella nodded. His watery eyes were steady on my face. ‘Relative?’
‘Like you know, on Camaho, everybody is family.’ I turned and headed for the road.
Up ahead I saw the ambulance men approaching: two grim-faced fellas, one with the stretcher on his shoulder, the other tripping quickly behind him. A small crowd trailed after them.
I stepped aside to let them pass, acknowledging their nods, my eyes on the smaller group behind: a dozen adults, an animated babble of children, a knot of teenage girls. I picked out the clean-limbed one, about seventeen, a well-groomed head of hair. I curled a finger at her.
‘Uh-huh?’ The big eyes flashed me with impatience.
‘You know Jana Ray, not so?’
Her hands flew to her mouth. ‘Is – Is Jah-Ray down there for true?’ I watched her face crumple. I took a breath and nodded.
‘He come down here regular, Miss, erm?’
‘Nadine.’
‘He go down there regular?’
She was in a fever to get away, kept switching her head in the direction of the bay. ‘Most mornings except Sunday. He go for a swim. I – we – watch im from up dere.’ She pointed at a nest of wooden houses on the hillside. ‘I hear talk say something happen to Jah-Ray. I say it can’t be Jah-Ray cuz Jah-Ray swim like fish. Is him for true?’
‘For true,’ I said. ‘I sorry.’
She shot off with flailing arms and hammering heels, her cries sharp in the air.
At home I sat on my steps, swallowing on the tightness in my throat, watching black cowbirds tussling in a hoq plum tree across the valley.
I fought with the heaviness in my guts, the throb at the base of my throat. And just when I thought I’d gotten a grip on it, the image of an outraged Jana Ray on Dog Island, watching a wild ram die, flooded my head. I covered my face with my hands and cried.