by Jacob Ross
31
Maybe I didn’t want to believe Rumcake’s conclusions about the way Jana Ray died. But from the moment I saw him lying on the beach, I felt that nudging in my brain like when I’m about to set off to work and I forgot to lock my door.
I picked up my phone.
‘Hullooo! Missa Digger?’
‘Miss Stanislaus, you got thick clothes?’
‘I got clothes.’
‘Thick, Miss Stanislaus – like for overseas weather; you got that?’
‘Missa Digger, what happen?’
‘I taking you out tonight round midnight. Dress for the cold, y’unnerstan?’
‘Uh-huh.’
‘Catch some sleep before.’
‘Uh-huh.’
‘See you tonight.’
‘Uh-huh.’
I pulled out the lower compartment of my little fridge, withdrew containers, spray bottles, measuring beakers – part of the paraphernalia I’d ordered over the Internet from the time I finished my forensics course in England. I spread two newspapers on the floor and sat down to prepare.
I could live with Rumcake’s diagnosis, but I could not go along with his conclusion. The old whitefella was not wrong about me. When the grieving and the rituals and the shock of death are over, what remains of the physical self is nothing more than chemistry. Like I kept telling Miss Stanislaus, a murdered body rails against it own death. It will record every second of its passing. The trick was to know which chemistry to use to make that body talk to you.
I called Daryl who worked at the mortuary. ‘You on night shift, Daryl?’
‘No, Francis on tonight.’
‘You kin swap with him for tonight?’
‘Missa Digger, you think dis man like lookin’ at dead people all de time?’
‘You don’t? You know Jonathon Rayburn?’
‘Jonathon who?’
‘Jah-Ray. Nice youngfella from Beau Séjour.’
‘Jah-Ray! I know Jah-Ray. Why you didn’ say Jah-Ray. Me an Jah-Ray go down good.’
‘He dead.’
‘He . . . ? Missa Digger, you jokin.’ His voice dropped to a whimper. ‘That don’t make no sense. How come?’
‘Is what I want to find out tonight. You comin in?’
‘Lemme call Francis.’
Miss Stanislaus put on so many layers she looked like an overstuffed teddy bear – a tropical one – with all those layers of colour on her person. She flashed a look at me as if to say, If is the arse you playin, you better watch out.
On the way, I briefed her. She said she already knew about the boy from Pet. Did I know they’d announced it on the radio?
At the high steel gate, I rang the bell. Daryl came out in a heavy coat and boots. I checked my watch – just past 1am.
‘Missa Digger,’ he yawned, ‘you reach?’
‘You sleepin on the job?’ I said.
‘Man tired. I really sorry for the fella. People does dead so stupid.’
‘Daryl, say good night to Miss Stanislaus.’
Daryl muttered something polite and turned to lead us in. He swung back his head to look at Miss Stanislaus. She had that effect on fellas. Always.
‘Unit 3, third shelf from the bottom.’ Daryl swung open the heavy door.
The cold hit me in the face and on the skin of my throat. Miss Stanislaus lifted her shoulders and dropped them, settling the layers on her body.
‘Stay close,’ I said.
She nodded.
Daryl slid out the shelf. He looked upset. I understood that. Grief is adjustment before acceptance settles in. I asked him to switch off the florescent, then handed my regulation torch to Miss Stanislaus. ‘Point it at the ceiling.’
In the diffuse glow from the torch, I could see the whites of Daryl’s eyes.
‘Remember what I tell you about your profession, Daryl?’
‘Nuh.’
‘Confidentiality.’
‘No worries, Missa Digger. I born confidential. I don’t ask nobody nothing about their bizness. What y’all doin to the fella?’
‘Stay quiet or I’ll ask you to leave.’
‘Wake me when you ready.’ Daryl slipped out the door and closed it.
‘Missa Digger, you cryin,’ Miss Stanislaus mumbled. She rested a hand on my shoulder.
‘I’m not,’ I said and shrugged her off.
I took out the six spray bottles I’d prepared before leaving my house, lined them up on the floor and pulled on a pair of Neoprene gloves.
I turned to Miss Stanislaus. ‘To explain what I about to do, I have to confuse you first. I going to talk to Jana Ray and if he answer me, is going to be with light.’
She shifted her feet and nodded.
‘You ever wonder what make firefly backside light up?’
‘Tell me,’ she said.
‘Well, firefly mix something called ATP with a coupla other substances that got the devil name – luciferin and luciferase. Firefly combine them in doses and that make their backside blink like the indicator of my car. People call that bioluminescence.’
I took up one of the spray bottles. ‘What I have in here is luminol. When I combine it with blood, it will give off a glow. I got another one here call fluorescein, but tonight, I using luminol. If there’s blood anywhere on this youngfella, the dimmest trace of it, any kind of bruising, what I got in here will show me. Forty-five seconds is all I have before the glow disappear. Should be enough time to get a coupla pictures. You follow me?’
She nodded.
‘I doing his front first, toes to head. When I finish, Daryl will help me turn him over. Then I starting from the feet again. Is going take us until sun-up.’
I felt her shiver; couldn’t tell whether it was from the temperature of the room or what I’d just told her.
I began the slow, energy-sapping work: a fine spray along the limbs and trunk, the wait, then moving on – always worried that I might have missed an area, and so going back on myself from time to time. Now and then, the torch in Miss Stanislaus’s hand wavered, but she held it steady for the most part. By the time I got to Jana Ray’s face the cold had begun to seep into my bones.
I glanced at my watch – 3am. I straightened up and stretched my limbs. ‘Miss Stanislaus, you want a break?’
‘Nuh.’
‘Let’s get Daryl.’
I opened the door. ‘Daryl, I want to turn the fella over.’
Daryl strode in and with a movement of his hands and shoulders, flipped the body over.
‘Jesus!’ I said.
‘Is not Jeezus, Missa Digger, is me.’ He chuckled and left the room.
Another three hours crouched in a room cooled to four degrees centigrade began to slow me down. Miss Stanislaus lowered the torch and folded her arms around herself. ‘Mebbe is not what you think, Missa Digger? Mebbe is just . . . ’
‘Only the head now,’ I said.
Like most youngfellas his age, Jana Ray cropped his hair close to his scalp, with a designer tuft on the top. I was on my last bottle and it was already half empty. I ran my torch across the scalp. No sign of bruising or contusion, but that proved nothing.
I inched my way up from the nape of the neck and was just over to the right ear when I straightened up and beckoned Miss Stanislaus.
She leaned forward and pressed a shoulder against me.
‘See anything?’ I said.
Miss Stanislaus shook her head. I sprayed more heavily this time, felt her body heave and subside.
‘Tell me,’ I said.
‘Blue light, not so? Deep blue.’ I hadn’t told her what colour to expect.
‘Now I betting you we find the same result on the other side.’
I eased the head the other way and sprayed. And there it was, the deep blue glow between the short hairs on the scalp like the hint of a rippling sea. I asked her to shine the light obliquely. I sprayed more generously, took a picture with my phone. It wasn’t a steady shot but it would have to do.
‘You wondering
what I make of all of this?’ I said.
She’d pulled her lower lip between her teeth, making chewing motions with her jaw.
‘Somebody drowned Jana Ray. Somebody with good-sized hands.’ I placed one of mine behind her head and pressed forward slightly. ‘Must’ve kept his head down in the water that way. He struggle – of course, the youngfella struggle. Is where the thumb and index tighten round his head to keep him down that you have the abrasions on the scalp. You can’t see them with your naked eye, but they there.’
She placed a hand on my arm. ‘Missa Digger, you cryin again and that upsettin me. You leavin this place with me right now!’
Once outside, Miss Stanislaus was all business. ‘That remind me, is time to see that woman again – Laza Wilkins’ mother. We going to be needing a warrant, I fink?’
I cleared my throat. ‘Why?’
‘Becuz, I going be needin it.’
32
Jana Ray’s death shifted something in me – a gnawing deepdown rage and helplessness. Staff Superintendent Gill was right. I could not work in Central. The place wasn’t safe, the hours were too regimented and they treated me more like a curiosity than as a member of Camaho Police Force. To deal with Lazar Wilkinson’s and Jana Ray’s murders I needed the territory I was accustomed to: my desk.
I broke into the office at 10pm the following day. I called my friend, Caran, from the Bush Rangers. He arrived with his crew.
In half an hour we were inside. The place looked desecrated. The photocopier had been unplugged and moved to the middle of the room. Our desks were rearranged, the water cooler gone, and the old, precious fax machine that we used for inter-island exchanges was on the floor near the bin. Miss Stanislaus’s vase had disappeared. The storeroom where we kept our munitions and other important stuff was still locked. We’d reinforced the door with Titan locks in two places. Somebody had taken an instrument to them but they’d resisted the break-in.
A rolled-up poster lay on the floor with the MJ’s name headlined on it. Stacks of campaign leaflets.
Caran hesitated when he saw them. ‘Digger, you sure?’
‘I sure,’ I said. ‘Looks to me like the MJ didn’t just kick us out, he’s setting up his party office here.’
I thought of the Commissioner and felt let down, almost ashamed of him. All my old childhood resentments returned. I began wishing again that he wasn’t my father.
We rearranged the office as it used to be.
I checked that the phones were still working and the number hadn’t changed. I texted Malan and Miss Stanislaus and told them that the office would be up and running from tomorrow night. I told Pet I wanted blackout curtains for the windows because I’d be working at night in the meantime. Pet was feverish with delight. Then I called Chilman.
‘Is like you prepare to lose your job?’ the old man said. I could hear the big smile in his voice.
‘What he getting away with is illegal,’ I said. ‘If Commissioner Lohar don’t have the balls to take back his job from that man, he should resign. And I going to tell him that.’
‘You prepare to lose your father too?’
‘I ain got no—’ I stopped short. Felt so choked, I had to swallow hard.
‘Okay, Digson, you upset. Is obvious.’ The old man’s voice was gentle. ‘Them killin that lil friend ov yours got to you, not so?’ He went quiet for a while. ‘Is another argument for me to keep my department runnin. Go easy, youngfella.’ Chilman clicked off.
I sat back and reviewed what Jana Ray told me about his connection with Lazar Wilkinson. That something big was going down, I had no doubt. I sensed it in what Jana Ray refused to talk about and the shivering fear that seized his body when I broached the subject of Lazar’s murder, and that name – Shadowman.
I tried to recall every minute of my encounter with the youth – from the time I cornered him in the roadside bush in Beau Séjour to my standing over his body in Cayman Bay. I made notes and at the end of it, stretched out on the floor to catch a nap.
When I raised my head, the sun was streaming through the window of the office and the MJ’s secretary was getting out of her car with a roll of posters in her arms. She was a small woman, long in the face with the glazed eyes of a sheep. She was wearing thick clothes for the Arctic conditions of the MJ’s office. I wondered if she ever smiled.
I grabbed my bag, stepped out the door and locked it behind me.
‘Sorry, Miss, Office reclaimed,’ I said. ‘Tell the Minister of Justice,’ I bit down on the last word, ‘that we got two murders dealing with right now. Y’hear about the youngfella who throat got cut last week?’
She remained as impassive as stone.
‘Well, the other one got killed yesterday, and people from the press going be asking what San Andrews CID doing about it. We don’t want to tell them we can’t do nothing about it cuz Justice Minister lock us outta the office where we work. We don want him to have to answer that in public.’
She slid expressionless eyes over my face. ‘What’s your name?’
‘Digger.’
I was on my way to the market square when the Commissioner phoned. ‘Michael, the MJ just called.’
‘Yessir, what about him?’
‘Well, he said—’
‘Commissioner Lohar, I don’t want to hear what the MJ said. You the one should be standing between him and us. You the one should be fighting back on our behalf.’ I was so choked up, I could barely speak.
‘Michael—’
‘Don’t Michael me, Sir! You letting me down again. You didn stand up for me as a father, and you not doing so as my boss. What I s’posed to do? All my fuckin life, when I need your support, you been leaving me out in the cold. So don—’ I cut off, pressed my back against a storefront, closed my eyes and filled my lungs a couple of times until I calmed myself.
When I opened my eyes, a white car had slowed down in the road in front of me. Switch sat in the driver’s seat, his elbow hanging out the door. Staring at me with that mouth of his screwed down.
‘This time,’ I breathed to myself, ‘I goin to have to deal with him.’
Switch raised his brows, nodded and drove off.
33
Miss Stanislaus called twice to remind me about seeing Lazar Wilkinson’s mother, and could I also get her a warrant? She didn’t want plastic cuffs, she needed the ones made of steel.
She sounded brisk and businesslike on the phone.
‘Steel cuffs went out with the donkeysaurus,’ I explained. ‘Like you know, what people nowadays use is plastic. Nobody ever break loose from one.’
‘I want steel,’ she insisted.
‘Why, Miss Stanislaus?’
‘Missa Digger, you shoutin. You’ll see – that’s all.’
I left the office mid-morning, picked up the warrant from Central then drove to her place to meet her.
‘Where’s the hankuff, Missa Digger?’
‘You’ll get it,’ I said.
An idea had struck me at the last minute: given his length of service in the Force, Chilman would probably have a pair of metal handcuffs. When I asked him, the old fella even offered to bring them to us.
When we arrived in Beau Séjour, DS Chilman’s half-dead Datsun was parked by the seafront. I noticed that the grass had begun to cover the scar that Lazar Wilkinson’s burntout vehicle had made by the side of the road. Boats rose and fell on the water in the bay. A dazzling mid-afternoon sun had turned the water into molten silver. The deserted beach, with its pile of black rocks at the southern end, looked desolate.
He held the cuffs out through the window. Miss Stanislaus sent me to get them.
The rum-fired eyes sought mine. ‘What y’all up to, Digson?’
‘Doing the government work, Sir. That alright?’
He looked me up and down, pulled his lips to one side. ‘Digson, you’z a . . . ’
‘Dog, Sir. I know.’
‘Correct!’
I jangled the handcuffs. ‘Thanks for the rel
ic.’
He winked at me before chugging off.
Miss Stanislaus dropped them in her bag. ‘Missa Digger, what’s de worse thing a woman kin do to another woman in Camaho?’
I thought about it. ‘Embarrass her, Miss Stanislaus, bring down shame on her head.’
She shot me a look. ‘You know too much! Shall we persevere?’
Lazar Wilkinson’s mother was pulling her washing off the line. The woman next door turned from entering her house and planted both elbows on the wall of her veranda, hands propping up her chin.
Miss Stanislaus followed Dora Wilkinson inside her house, fluttering the warrant. I stayed in the yard. From there, I had a clear view of the inside: a six-ringed gas stove, a tall white fridge with the Styrofoam still fitted on the top. Bags of dry goods – wholesale size – heaped against the kitchen counter. In the living room beyond, a flat-screen colour TV on an aluminium and glass stand, with stereo components stacked below it. Four plump sofas arranged around a low glass table.
‘Miss Wilkins, I got a warrant to search your house. Dependin on what you say – in fact, no matter what you say – I going have to arrest you.’
I lowered my head and smiled. Wait till the fellas in the Force hear this version of the Miranda warning!
Miss Stanislaus dropped the handcuffs on the kitchen counter with a terrible clatter. Dora Wilkinson jumped as if she had been struck.
‘Who give you de money to buy all dem things in here?’ The woman’s eyes were on the handcuffs and I could see that she was terrified.
‘Well, I . . . I . . . nobody didn . . . ’
‘Don bother lie for me. If you lie for me, I take you outta here in this.’ Miss Stanislaus raised the cuffs, shook them in the woman’s face. ‘When I put this on you, Miss Lady, you’ll never forget the shame from people seein you walkin behind me in it. Where you get the money from?’
‘I dunno, the man.’
‘Which man, what’s his name?’
‘Dunno, he ring me, say money wire to my account and is to make up for what happen to Lazar. He say everybody sorry. He say they look after their own people, and he know how hard I take it but nothing they kin do now. Then, same night, Shadowman come outside my door an say dat now I get de money I not s’pose to talk.’