Black Rain Falling

by Jacob Ross

  ‘You could tell me and Missa Digger what the Shadowman look like?’

  The woman looked about her as if she might be overheard. ‘Is night he come. I-I didn . . . ’

  Her throat was glistening with sweat.

  Miss Stanislaus dropped the cuffs on the counter.

  The woman’s body stiffened. ‘I hear say he’s a big fella. Mebbe bigger than that man there.’ She directed a shaking hand through the window at me.

  ‘Where we find him?’

  ‘I dunno. I swear to God, I dunno.’

  ‘How much they pay you for your boy’ life?’

  ‘Dunno, I . . . ’

  ‘How much?’

  Dora licked her lips, threw a helpless look at me. I almost felt sorry for the woman.

  ‘How much?’ Miss Stanislaus raised the warrant from the counter.

  Lazar Wilkinson’s mother muttered something.

  ‘How much you say?’

  Dora Wilkinson mumbled again.

  ‘Ten thousand dollars! That’s what your boychild worth to you?’

  The woman kept her head down. She looked haggard and deflated. Her hands were still trembling.

  Miss Stanislaus passed me a quick sideways glance. I hopped up the steps and entered the house.

  I cleared my throat. ‘Your bank book, Miss Dora. I want to see it.’

  She began making soft stomping motions on the floor with her feet. I leaned against the doorway and held out my hand. ‘The book?’

  Lazar Wilkinson’s mother did not move.

  ‘Okay, Missa Digger, we done here. I take her with us.’ Miss Stanislaus reached for the cuffs, slotted in the key and snapped them open.

  ‘I gettin it, I gettin it.’

  I listened to the woman shuffling in her bedroom. Something grated on the floor, then came the whisper and flutter of fabric. She returned and dropped a small green book in front of me.

  I flicked through the pages. ‘Twenty-two thousand deposited middle of last week. Twelve thousand, forty-two cents in there now. The ten thousand, I s’pose, was for all this?’ I made a circular gesture.

  I didn’t expect Dora to answer me. She didn’t.

  Miss Stanislaus held open the bank book while I photographed the pages. Finished, I handed it back.

  Miss Stanislaus touched my elbow and we left.

  With a hand on the car door, she raised her head at me. ‘Missa Digger, how I do?’

  ‘You born for this,’ I said.

  ‘Fank you. I decide you not so bad yourself.’

  ‘Fank you too, Miss Stanislaus!’

  She drew the plasticuffs from her bag, shook them in my face. ‘You fink I could’ve make that woman talk with this?’

  ‘What made you think they would try to buy her off?’ I asked.

  ‘Common sense, Missa Digger. Lazar is the woman’ son. They know she goin be hurtin-an-complainin, and whatever little she know, she goin tell it to de world. They make sure they buy her mouth.’

  She went silent for a while, her eyes lifted at the peaks of the Belvedere mountains.

  ‘Missa Digger, tell me the truth. You fink this will pass over?’

  ‘What you talking about now?’

  ‘What waiting for me in two weeks an’ four days’ time.’

  ‘You mean the hearing? You been counting?’

  She nodded.

  ‘Miss Stanislaus, it got to pass over. I got to make it pass over.’

  ‘What you have in mind?’ she said.

  ‘Maybe I get a breakthrough. Maybe I beg. Maybe I blackmail. Dunno.’

  ‘You do that for me?’

  ‘What you think?’

  She shrugged. ‘Mebbe I do the same.’

  ‘For?’

  ‘Missa Digger, you like fry-breadfruit? I got some in my bag for you.’

  ‘I ready to have it now,’ I said.

  ‘Nuh. You eat it in the car.’

  34

  The hillside on which my house was built climbed another half-mile up to a giant rock formation on the summit. A few families had built their homes in the valley directly under those rocks, and I always wondered how the inhabitants down there could go to bed knowing that several megatons of granite were perched above their roofs. Rock Top was a barren place with a line of glory cedar trees, stripped of their leaves and tormented by a steady chilling wind that rose off the ocean a couple of miles away. But I liked the isolation that I found when sitting up there. It cleared my mind and drowned the static in my brain.

  I ran through the list I carried in my head. These days I felt weighed down by them.

  I had no results from the old women on Kara Island about finding the body of Miss Stanislaus’s great-uncle, Koku. The last time I spoke to Benna she told me, ‘Koku not buried in dis soil, Missa Digger. Else he would’ve reveal himself to me.’

  ‘I don’t unnerstand,’ I said. ‘You been searching? I mean actual searching—’

  ‘Why you doubting me?’ she said.

  ‘I not. I sorry. Call me if—’

  ‘Somefing cross my mind last night, Missa Digger. Just one idea.’

  ‘Tell me.’

  ‘Nuh!’

  ‘Benna, you not helping me or Miss Stanislaus at all! I need to know.’

  She must have picked up my distress because when she answered, her voice had softened. ‘We got other islands round here. Kara Island not the only one, yunno.’

  ‘Do your best, Benna. Please!’

  ‘Uh-huh,’ she said and hung up.

  I could hardly bring myself to think about the hearing, couldn’t bear the thought of Malan striding out of whatever room in which the meeting was held with that sneering mouth and his eyes locked on Miss Stanislaus’s face.

  When my father, the Commissioner, had asked me how far I was prepared to go with this, I’d told him the truth. I would go as far as I felt I needed to, and that included losing the job.

  Was it all because of Miss Stanislaus? Nuh . . .

  Like Chilman said, the MJ’s actions stank of the kind of control that Camahoans had died from before and I didn’t have to look far to find an example. It was the words that came from a Justice Minister’s mouth that unleashed a posse of officers on women protesting on the streets in ’99 against the rape of a schoolgirl all those years ago. It resulted in the murder of my mother and the disappearance of her body.

  But how could I even begin to take on a man with the MJ’s clout? I had no illusions about what he was capable of. I’d learned of a personal assistant of his who’d rejected his advances and walked off the job. A few months later she fell seriously ill, had to leave Camaho for treatment in Canada. The MJ had her passport seized. Her sister sneaked her off the island on another woman’s passport. Pet said she knew the woman.

  And there was Jana Ray . . . However much I tried to blank the youngfella from my mind, my thoughts always ended up on him. There was so much I didn’t have a chance to drag out of him. He’d admitted to working for Lazar Wilkinson. Seemed disturbed by the change he noticed in the stuff that they were handling and wanted to get out of it. The way I saw it now, those changes might have contributed to his and Lazar Wilkinson’s murder. Might indeed be the cause of it. Dunno! That their deaths were connected in some way, I had little doubt.

  I’d learned in that Forensics course in England that there were many points of entry to investigating a crime. The most obvious was not always the best. And depending on the one you chose, you can either arrive at a dead end or a breakthrough. For the moment, I decided to focus on Jana Ray.

  I stood up, dusted the seat of my trousers and headed back down the hill.

  The hillside houses were quiet when I got to Jana Ray’s place – the sea flat grey in the distance. The chill of the mountain air that settled over the village at night had not yet been lifted by the early sun. Somewhere in the near distance came the thack-thack of a machete attacking wood.

  I pushed open the door, stood in the middle of the front room. Jana Ray’s books were
packed as usual on the floor, his utensils upturned. A hand of rotting bananas against the foot of the dresser, writhing with ants and aphids. A small canvas purse on the floor, the tip of a five-dollar bill sticking out. A kingsized Anchor matchbox sat on the edge of the stove. I reached over and slid open the drawer of the box. Empty.

  My eyes fell on what looked like a digital clock beside a small card stamped Amazon.com. I picked it up, brought it to my face. The print on it said: thermometer/hygrometer. Made in China.

  I stuffed it in my bag.

  I switched on my torch and walked into the gloom of the bedroom. The mattress on the floor had been gutted – the coconut fibres strewn in clumps across the space, the floorboards in each corner raised. A small cloth suitcase lay with its flap unzipped. I opened it and pulled out the jumble of shirts and underwear I’d bought him, crumpled but unworn. I fingered the lining of the suitcase.

  As I was straightening up, I spotted a book against the wall, half-opened, obviously tossed aside. Hydroponics: Principles and Practice – heavy, thick cover, cloth-bound. Expensive. A card promoting Amazon Prime peeked out from the pages. On the inside cover a few handwritten words, Fr. your star-apple. Underneath it, barely visible in the gloom, the book I’d lent him. I stood there for a while, my head pulsing with the headache I’d been ignoring since I woke.

  Footsteps outside. I closed my eyes and listened. Woman . . . heavy. Breathing loudly from the climb. I shoved the books into my bag, strode across the floor and pulled open the door.

  Brown feverish eyes settled on my face. She stood barefoot on the bank above the entrance, a rusty machete in one hand, her body pushed forward as if she were about to throw herself at me. ‘The boy gone, why y’all don’t leave im alone. Why y’all diggin up his place? Y’all don’t do enough already?’

  I pulled out my ID and turned it towards her. ‘I’m DC Digson, San Andrews CID. Who’s “y’all”?’

  She shifted sideways, glanced quickly behind her. ‘People! Fuckahs! Doin all kinda wickedness round here and people can’t stop dem. Is a gun I want for them. Take people chil’ren . . . donkey . . . ’ The rest of the words got lost in her throat.

  I felt my body stiffen with annoyance. ‘Is names I want. Gimme some blastid names!’

  I stepped down from the doorway. The woman pulled back abruptly, her heels beating a heavy rhythm down the path. I followed her as she swung into a track between a row of houses. A brace of pothounds, all ribs and bared teeth, rushed out and blocked my path, their racket raking against my ears.

  ‘I coming back,’ I snarled. ‘Is come, I coming back.’

  I returned to the house and closed Jana Ray’s door.

  I called Dessie.

  ‘Dessie, Digger here. How you?’

  ‘Digger! I so cut-up about your little friend.’

  ‘I cut-up too, Dessie.’

  ‘When we seeing?’

  ‘Dessie, is a favour I call to ask you. I want you to check an account for me. It belongs to one Dora Wilkinson. I told you about the necktie killing?’

  ‘It was all over the radio, Digger.’

  ‘Well, Dora Wilkinson is the fella’ mother. She received a payment of twenty-two thousand dollars, middle of last week. I want to know where or even better who the money got transferred from.’

  ‘Hold on Digger, you going too fast. Give me the name again.’

  I gave her the name again.

  ‘You sure she has an account with us?’

  ‘I sure.’

  ‘I’m sorry to say, it’s not that simple. We have procedures, you know.’

  ‘Dessie, I could get a court order but I prefer to keep it simple, that’s all. You still there?’

  ‘You have the account number?’

  ‘Hold on,’ I said. I pulled out my phone and brought up the photo of the bank book.

  ‘09434. Name, Dora J. Wilkinson; address Beau Séjour, San Andrews.’

  ‘I think I see it.’ She lowered her voice. ‘You free later?’

  ‘Nuh. Sorry. Lemme know what you find. Fax it to the office if you want.’

  ‘I’ll text,’ she said.

  ‘Thank you, Dessie.’

  A couple of minutes later, Dessie called back. ‘Money was deposited by the customer, Digger. Not transferred.’

  ‘You sure?’

  ‘Of course I am.’

  I sat on the seawall facing the ocean. The bay was empty but for a small group of boys tossing water in each other’s faces at the northern end. Someone had planted a black flag on the spot where we’d found Lazar Wilkinson’s body. Probably his mother. The houses on the hill behind me had begun to brighten in the early-morning sun. To the side of them, further up the hill, Jana Ray’s place. All I could see from here was his rusting roof, like a scab against the green.

  I jumped off the wall and walked to the beach. The boys’ shouting died, their heads now swung in my direction. They began leaving the water and were out on the sand by the time I reached them. Lean, bony kids with scooped-out collar bones, scarred hands and welts along their legs and shoulders. A picture of the scar that ran all the way down Jana Ray’s back popped into my head. They watched me watching them, mouths partly open. The night I returned to Beau Séjour with Miss Stanislaus and chased down Jana Ray, I’d shared my food with two of them. The one who’d said his name was Eric wasn’t among this bunch.

  ‘Tell me about them marks on y’all skin,’ I said.

  They bolted, almost as if they’d rehearsed it – became fast, zig-zagging shapes through the trees.

  I shouted at their disappearing backs, the same thing I’d said to the dogs.

  35

  I arranged to meet Miss Stanislaus at the office. She was hesitant at first.

  ‘We ain got much to lose,’ I said.

  I ran a damp cloth on the surfaces of the desks, fussing over Miss Stanislaus’s especially. I’d already re-positioned the bits of furniture to their original positions and swept up the grit that had been left on the floor. I’d stacked the MJ’s leaflets and posters in the corner by the door. But wherever I turned, my eyes were drawn to them. I finally placed them in the storeroom.

  Chilman walked in before Miss Stanislaus. ‘Digson, you look sick. When last you sleep? Place change,’ he grumbled.

  Miss Stanislaus arrived an hour later. ‘Office don’t feel de same,’ she muttered. She ignored her desk, pulled a chair and positioned herself to face the window.

  ‘Pet and Lisa not here,’ I said. I didn’t tell them Pet had said she doubted Lisa would return.

  Malan turned up late afternoon. He poked his head through the door and gestured me outside. He had a hand under his chin. His brows were clenched.

  ‘Digger, I decide they wasting me down in Central.’

  ‘What you want, Malan?’

  ‘Staff boss, Gill, say he still doin de paperwork for my job. And,’ Malan looked away, ‘like Sarona say, I got de time so ain’t no reason why I can’t help out. I think Sarona right.’

  ‘You sure is Sarona who make you decide? Mebbe the MJ called you and told you he got no use for you no more?’

  Malan could barely look at me. ‘Nuh, I call him. I tell him we need de Department; was a mistake I make. I tell him about the case you chasin—’

  ‘We! Me and Miss Stanislaus.’

  ‘I tell him nobody else kin handle it – San Andrews CID specialise in that—’

  ‘And Miss Stanislaus?’

  ‘Is the only fing he not letting go. He say he want the hearing. He say the rest is awright in the meantime.’ Malan looked at me. ‘Digger, what he got against you? Becuz is a lot of questions the MJ ask me about you. He want to know where you live, where your family from and even the name of the woman you going with. I only tell im about your bourgeois woman – the Manille girl. That slow im down, becuz he know he can’t fuck wid that family. They prob’ly the one dat make him minister. And they kin suttinly take him down.’

  ‘Why he not dropping Miss Stanislaus?’
<
br />   ‘Becuz of you, I fink. He know you partnering with she, and y’was on the scene. Mebbe he decide he can, erm, impli-cate you too. I show you somefing.’

  Malan pulled out a sheet of paper from his pocket, unfolded it and turned it to face me. It was a drawing of a prostrate man that took up the whole page. There were circles on the shoulders, the thighs, the knees, the groin and sternum.

  Malan cocked his chin at me, the black eyes flat and lightless. ‘Mibo from Kara Island send him this. I suspect the MJ ask for it. You seein what I see?’

  ‘Tell me,’ I said.

  ‘That’s a map of the bullets on Juba’ body. Check the placement of them shots. Keep in mind y’all say the fella was a movin target and it was nighttime. You see what it sayin?’

  I lifted my shoulders and dropped them.

  ‘Digger, you gone blind?’

  ‘For the time being, yes.’

  He licked his lips and blinked at me. ‘You don’t see? That woman place every fuckin bullet as if she reach out ’er hand and stick them on the fella. Digger, she almost as good as me.’

  ‘Almost?’

  I didn’t think Malan heard me. He was staring at the silhouette of Miss Stanislaus in the office. ‘If you teach De Woman to shoot like that, you stupid. I not teachin no woman to do nothing better than me.’

  I turned towards the door. ‘You finish with me?’

  ‘MJ say is impossible for woman to shoot like dat, nighttime. I almost believe him. He make it clear to me that she must’ve wounded Juba first – gone close to im after she disable im and done the rest in cold blood. He conclude was an execution – she use the cover of the law to get revenge. A clear case of pre-med-i-ta-tion. I tell im you was there. He say that you’z a liar, Digger. You sure it happen the way you say?’

  ‘When you talk to your boss again, tell him I sticking to my story.’

  ‘I know he don’t like de best bone in you, Digger. But what de MJ tell me make sense. I soften him lil bit, yunno, but he say he got to take action against de Department becuz he got no argument in his cabinet meeting to explain why you and De Woman shoot down dat fella. He ask me what evidence y’all got dat Juba is a murderer. I tell him I dunno.’