by Jacob Ross
I unrolled a heavy sheet of canvas to reveal an ornamental stick and a tamarind whip – the kind that cruel parents took to the skins of their children. This one was thick, its branches plaited – designed to draw blood.
I retrieved sachets from my bag, scraped the bottom of the drums and containers and dropped the sediments in separate bags.
I felt the hairs on my neck stir, straightened up and reached for my Remington. Stood still, listening. Nothing but the slur of disturbed leaves.
I stood in the gloom, the gun in my hand, until only the sounds of the mountains returned.
The hills were sinking into darkness and with it came the rising mountain chill. I wrapped the whip with wild sigin leaves, laid it across my shoulders and began my downward trek, halting at every rustle until my feet hit the climb to Jana Ray’s place.
From there, I looked up at those high indifferent hills, full of odd sounds and a raging sadness that perhaps only I could hear.
I phoned Caran and described the place to him. ‘Sound like a helluva cocaine factory, Digger.’ He sounded incredulous. ‘You sure that’s the size of it?’
‘You tellin me that’s not normal?’
‘Not for Camaho. Is not. Tomorrow we’ll check it out. That got anything to do with the Wilkinson fella and that lil friend of yours they kill?’
‘I not sure yet. Look to me like they finish whatever they been doing here.’
‘Careful, Digger, the kinda people who operate that bizness won’t have no problem killing you.’
‘I know.’
I hurried to my car and as soon as I got home, I extracted a bottle of pale brown liquid from the bottom of my little fridge, pulled down one of my notebooks from my shelf and ran a finger along one of the pages I’d bookmarked.
Scott’s presumptive test:
Cobalt thiocyanate, distilled water, glycerin, hydrochloric acid, chloroform.
Cocaine will turn the liquid blue.
Note: Presumptive tests cannot definitively confirm the presence of a drug, as other substances may cause false positives.
I emptied one sachet of the scrapings I’d taken from the metal drums in the mountain into a beaker.
I held it up against the light.
Is not no false positive here, Missa Scott. Is blue. Is true. Is true-blue. Is cocaine!
37
Two weeks after I broke into the office, we were fully up and running. Chilman had taken over Malan’s office – it used to be his before he retired.
This morning, he planted himself in our office space, his head jerking like a turkey’s as he followed our movements and conversation. Miss Stanislaus, as usual, pretended he wasn’t there. Caran had dropped in with his team after visiting the hill where I’d uncovered the cocaine processing operation. He sat with his back pressed against a chair, legs outstretched, his cinnamon-brown face clenched with concern. I’d never seen him look so worried. His three Bush Rangers remained standing like the soldiers they really were, with their rifles cradled in their arms. Inscrutable as stone.
Pet couldn’t keep her eyes off Toya. Caran’s lieutenant was a taut young woman – dark-eyed and unsmiling, with a Remington Bushmaster ACR slung from her shoulder. Her right index was always on the trigger guard of the rifle. The only people who could get a sentence out of her were Caran, her companions and, with no small amount of envy on my part, Miss Stanislaus. The rest of us were treated to grunts and monosyllables. Apart from those four, I wondered if Toya Furore liked humans.
Pet had walked off her job in Customs. When the Chief of Customs called her cellphone, she told him she was back at work. He must have told her something that annoyed her. ‘You don’t want me back there, Missa Torville, I telling you, because I sure to report one of your man-staff for sex harassment.’
She put down the phone and raised her head at us smiling.
‘What’s the name of the fella who harass you?’ Chilman growled.
‘Is not a fella,’ Pet replied.
‘Is who then?’
‘Nobody yet, Missa Chilman. I just jumping in front becuz one of them sure to try it.’
Chilman sucked his teeth and mumbled something.
The DS dragged a chair to the middle of the office space and we made the usual semicircle around him. He fished out a biro from his pocket and the tiny notebook he always carried.
When the old man raised his head at us, he was like a different person. The yellow eyes were unblinking and aggressive, his expression thuggish – that I-not-taking-nobullshit-from-nobody-right-now attitude that sent a thrill down my spine, even while I hated the Old Dog for it. I prepared myself for a grilling.
‘Okay, Digson, let’s see what we dealing with. Two youngfellas murdered in the village that I pass through every day. Name them.’
‘Lazar Wilkinson and Jonathon Rayburn, Sir. I think—’
‘I don give a damn what you think right now. You find out why they got killed?’
‘I believe is drugs, Sir.’
‘You believe! You gone religious now? Gimme the blaastid evidence!’
Miss Stanislaus stirred in her seat. Chilman glared at her. She began inspecting her nails.
‘Like you know, Sir, we just located the camp where all the drugs were processed. I can prove it was cocaine.’
‘And I kin prove that I got two hands! Is useless information, Digson, unless you find a link between the factory and the two deadfellas.’
‘Jana Ray admitted they were handling drugs before they killed him. He confirmed that Lazar Wilkinson employed him. And it is the same village, Sir. I can’t see them not being connected.’
‘Connected how, Digson?’
‘We working on it.’
‘You call that a proper answer?’
I shrugged.
‘So it boil down to this: two youngfellas dead, y’all fink you work out how they dead but you got no evidence to show why. And you dunno who kill them. Not so?’
I said nothing.
Chilman threw us a sour look, pushed himself off his seat and walked into the toilet.
Pet was passing me glances. The woman looked worried for me. Caran cleared his throat and readjusted his chair.
The Old Bull returned and sat back down. ‘The young woman and the two whitefellas y’all been chasing after – what they done to deserve y’all attention?’
‘We figured Lazar Wilkinson was murdered by at least two men and that a woman was involved. I already told you that.’
‘Tell me again!’
I gave him a quick recap. ‘Besides, a youngfella named Eric gave a description of the woman who was with Lazar Wilkinson a few days before he got killed. She happened to fit the description of a young woman I met at The Flare with the two whitefellas in question.’
‘So is only speculation?’
‘Reasonable speculation, Sir.’
‘What’s the difference, Digson? Why y’all picking on the two whitefellas – and I ask out of special concern for the tourist trade.’ He soured his face. Pet laughed.
‘At least one of the men attempted to kill me, or to maim me, Sir. He pulled a knife on me when my back was turned. In other words they got no problems killing people. In fact, Miss Stanislaus is concerned that the young woman with them, Miss Tamara, might even be in danger.’
That paused him for a second. ‘They try to kill you, you say? How come I didn know that?’
‘Because you wasn there, Sir.’
Pet brought her hand to her mouth, converted her chuckle to a cough. Chilman threw her a scalding look.
‘At least we have to eliminate them from the investigation,’ I said.
‘But you dunno how to find them,’ he threw back. He turned to Caran. ‘That factory Digson find in the bush – is really as he describe it?’
I raised a finger to object. Miss Stanislaus threw me an urgent frown. I sat back.
‘We talking bout millians-a-dollars’ worth of stuff they been cooking up there,’ Caran said.
; ‘Is true,’ I told Chilman. ‘Is like a laboratory in them hill up there: hydrochloric and sulphuric acid, potassium permanganate, ammonia – you name it.’
The DS blinked. He looked confused. ‘So what we do about it?’
‘Lock down the village,’ I said.
‘Impossible,’ Chilman said.
‘Why not?’
‘Is where the man who run this country grew up. Is his people. And if you dunno it yet, he’s a vindictive little soand-so. He’ll shut down San Andrews CID in no time.’
‘Technically, we already shutdown,’ I said.
‘Then what you doing here?’
‘Dis is not two fellas playing cook in a kitchen.’ Caran was almost pleading.
When he returned from the hills, he’d handed me a memory card of the photos he’d taken.
Chilman smacked his lips. ‘I still say, no! Is suicide.’
‘For who?’ I threw back. ‘You prefer to fill up Camaho with poison?’
‘The poison is not for Camaho, Digson. It can’t be for Camaho! Use your blaastid brains. Whatever drugs them fellas was making up there, is too much for one lil island. It got to be passing through. Them young-people who get beat-up-an-kill’ is not what’s important now. Them’s what Obama-in-America used to call co-oo-lateral damage after he drop bomb on poor-people arse in their own country and say it was a mistake, and that was only them theorist he was after.’
‘Terrorist,’ I said. ‘Not theorist.’
‘Digson, haul y’arse. You not askin the right questions! These is de right questions.’ Chilman made a machete of his arm and swung it. ‘Where aaaall dat cargo come from. Who bring it here and how, where they have it now, where they takin it to, and—!’ He froze the hand. ‘The best way we kin stop dem. For good! Forget about dem two deadfellas, and locking up poor-people in deir own house! Concentrate on that.’
He zig-zagged towards the door and pulled it hard behind him. Outside, the Old Dog threw us a nasty look before driving off.
In the silence Chilman left behind, I could hear the click of insects on the glass of the window, the hum of the fridge and photocopier. The whisper of Miss Stanislaus’s finger on the page of my destroyed book which, after complaining bitterly to her over the phone, she’d asked me to bring in. She closed the book and turned her chair to face us.
‘Why y’all feel so strong bout lockin up a whole village?’ Miss Stanislaus said.
‘Everybody there got something hanging over them,’ I said. ‘I never see that kinda frighten before. I ask meself what it take for a woman to lose her son and accept a few thousand dollars as repayment. Is not greed. Is not that she don’t care.’
‘Is what, then?’ Caran said.
‘Is what she knew was going to happen to her if she talked. She’s afraid.’ I picked up the tamarind whip I’d brought down from the mountains, unwrapped it and dropped it on the table.
A whinnying sound came from Pet.
Caran dropped deep expressionless eyes on the whip then turned his gaze on me.
‘Was a lil slave operation they had up there,’ I said. ‘I could walk into that village right now and pick out boys between ten and fifteen by the marks on their skins, including Jana Ray. They couldn’t get tired or fall asleep because this whip was there to wake them up. I still say lock down the village.’
‘What good that going to do?’ Miss Stanislaus wanted to know.
‘Like Digger say. All of them benefiting from the operation,’ Caran told her.
‘Dat’s not what I hear him say, Missa Crayon. I hear him say they frighten. You don fink dat lockin dem up or down or upside-down goin frighten dem even more?’
‘Okay, Miss Stanislaus – whatever you say, I go with it. Digger, you identify the fella who been using that thing?’ He was staring at the whip. He looked up suddenly, as if we’d caught him out.
‘He’s like a superstition among them. They ’fraid to say his name because they believe he will hear them. Even Jana Ray. But the fella real. The proof is this.’ I knocked the whip onto the floor. ‘What I want to know is what Camaho people got with whip! Is always—’
‘You didn say the fella name,’ Caran said. Again that stillness in his face.
I thought back to my last evening in the mountains when I’d sensed eyes on me, the brief disturbance of the bushes followed by the shuffle of quickly fading footsteps. ‘Shadowman,’ I said.
‘He live in de village?’
‘Nuh.’
‘How you know?’
I recalled the woman with the machete who confronted me at Jana Ray’s door. ‘One of those village wimmen would’ve already poisoned him or killed him in his sleep by now. I sure of that.’
He addressed Miss Stanislaus with that polite voice and shy-boy smile he reserved only for her. ‘Lock down or not, somebody got to get him.’ He stood up. ‘Call me when y’all find out where he is.’
Caran man-hugged me, and took Miss Stanislaus’s hand in his as if it were a flower. He waved at Pet and was off with his crew in their brown Land Rover.
38
Where aaaall dat cargo come from. Who bring it here and how, where they have it now, where they takin it to . . . ?
Chilman’s words kept looping in my head, my mind stopping always on the whip and the two deadfellas he was advising us to forget.
Miss Stanislaus’s voice broke into my thoughts. ‘Missa Digger, I decide you need to see me urgent. We take some breeze?’
I followed her to Kiran’s Food Palace – a no-frills restaurant laid out like a giant kitchen. We chose an eating area that looked onto the mile-long jetty built by the Chinese who’d brought their own workforce, reducing the Camahoan unemployeds to observers.
The air around us pulsed with the throb of minibus engines, conductor’s calls and the beehive hum of outerparish shoppers preparing to vacate San Andrews.
Miss Stanislaus sat facing me. She dropped her bag on the table and passed a hand across my cheek. ‘You should see yourself. That pretty face of yours gone rough and sour for true!’
She pulled out my book and laid it on the table. ‘Missa Jamma Ray was smart. I never see nothing like it before. You see, Missa Digger, I figure the youngfella would never touch your book if he didn have good reason. He borrow your best book because he figure you going be so damn vex, you will examine the damage while you cussin him. Is what normal people do, but not you – all you do is fling it away. You never ask yourself why Missa Jamma Ray going do a fing like dat.’
She stood up the book on the table squinting at the thing as if in some kind of wordless communication with it, the light settled on her face and hands as she slid her palms around the inner surfaces of the covers. She paused over the handwritten words, Fr. your star-apple, cocked her head and threw me a quick smile. I waited out the performance.
Miss Stanislaus laid the book flat on the table and opened the back cover. She slid her hand into her bag and brought out a razor blade. She began to cut away at the inside fabric of the back cover.
‘Nuh-nuh-nuh!’ I reached out to grab it from her.
She stopped me with a look, peeled away the rest of the fabric to reveal a small blue book. A Camaho passport. Miss Stanislaus handed it to me – a flimsy thing, half the size of previous passports and valid for half the number of years – the government’s latest scam for making money off the travelling poor. I took the treasury receipt, glanced at it, then at the photo page from which Jana Ray looked out at me with a soft face and radiant eyes. I flipped through the pages of the passport.
‘Never used,’ I said. ‘He got this last month on the third. Paid the extra hundred and twenty-five dollars for express service.’
‘One week before they kill Missa Laza Wilkins. Two weeks before they kill your boyfriend.’
‘He was not my boyfriend.’
‘H’was a boy, not so?’
‘Uh-huh.’
‘And h’was your friend, not so?’
‘Uh-huh—’
‘So! H
ow you call that? Now look at this, Missa Digger.’
Miss Stanislaus opened the book and pointed at the drawings.
‘I saw them, Miss Stanislaus. Is the kinda thing I used to do in school when I thinking through stuff.’
‘You draw sea tings?’
‘Anything.’
‘Nuh,’ she said.
‘Nuh what?’
She opened the inside back cover, dropped a thumb on the drawing of a boat. ‘Dis boat same as de one in front except it different.’
‘Jana Ray was bright but he couldn draw, Miss Stanislaus, that’s all.’
‘Missa Digger! I tryin to show you someting! And you not lissenin!’
She placed an index finger on the drawing of the boat at the back. ‘Yuh see?’ She flipped the book over to the other cover. ‘Yuh see?’
‘Nuh.’
‘Same boat, you agree?’
‘Not sure, Miss Stanislaus. Mebbe is the only way he know to draw a boat.’
‘Same boat,’ she snapped. ‘This tell me so.’
She pointed at a couple of hash marks on each drawing on the hull, so small I had to squint. ‘Front-picture boat low in de water. Back-picture, boat high in de water – what dat tell you?’
‘Boat loaded, then boat unloaded.’ I took the book from her, began paging through it. I went back to the row of stick drawings of people heading up an incline, then the six fans, each with the number 7–557 above it.
‘Okay, let’s say you not wrong. Let’s says the stickmen is them lil fellas carrying all that stuff up in the mountain . . . What else he trying to say?’
Miss Stanislaus pulled a tissue and patted her cheeks. ‘That he know they was goin to kill im.’ She took up the passport. ‘H’was tryin to run away.’
For a moment she looked as if she wanted to cry. Miss Stanislaus closed her eyes and took a breath and pulled herself together. ‘Missa Digger, we got a lotta work to do. An I needin time to do it.’
My heart flipped over. She was reminding me that the hearing was due in ten days’ time.