Black Rain Falling

by Jacob Ross

  ‘I working on it, Miss Stanislaus. Right now I got to go back to Beau Séjour.’

  ‘Becuz of the book?’

  ‘Yes, the other one – the one he didn’t touch. And the lil dedication there.’ I dropped my finger on the handwritten line, Fr. your star-apple. I damn sure I know who write that.’

  ‘I come with you?’

  ‘Nuh, is only going to complicate matters.’

  39

  It was late evening when I got to Beau Séjour.

  I waited by the side of the road until Miss Blackwood parked her car and entered her house. I gave her another thirty minutes to settle down.

  She did not unlock the door until I said my name, and even then I caught a movement of the blinds at the window on the far right of the house. A minute or so later she let me in.

  She waved me into a small living room: clean, uncluttered; a mahogany table with square mats weaved from wild pine. A single light with a big lampshade suspended over the table.

  Stacks of Mills & Boon and Denise Robins romances in a wide glass-fronted cabinet. A few saucers filled with decorated seashells. She brought me a glass of sorrel, sat at one end of the table with those enigmatic eyes on me.

  ‘You know why I here, not so?’ I dragged my bag and opened it. I dropped Jana Ray’s book on the table. ‘You bought this for him, right?’

  She nodded.

  ‘And this?’ Her eyes moved from my face to the thermohygrometer. She made a series of little movements with her lips, then blinked – a slow shuttering of her eyelids. I took that for a yes.

  A new hardness had risen in my chest. ‘I telling you this right now, Miss Lady, don’t try to hide nothing from me, and with all due respects don’t gimme no bullshit either. Why you so slow to admit you buy this thing for him? What you think you hiding?’ I flicked the Amazon shipment card across the table towards her. ‘Is easy to figure out. I just didn’t have time to think about it. Jana Ray ain’t got no credit card to open no Amazon account. It got to be somebody who done it for him. I could bet my last dollar it was you.’

  ‘He wanted things and I could help him.’ She’d put on her bank-teller’s voice. ‘He would never ask for something unless he really wanted it, and even then—’

  ‘He’ll find a way to pay you back,’ I cut in. ‘Miss Blackwood, he’s all over you.’ I pointed at the polished seashells, then at the gru-gru ring on her index. I opened the book and turned it toward her. ‘From your star-apple. No signature, of course, but that’s your handwriting, not so?’

  She didn’t answer me. Her hand was turning the gru-gru ring.

  ‘So! Jana Ray was not just a youngfella you been helping out. I believe you been intimate with him. I not saying you start it, I dunno and I don’t care. You in your mid-thirties with a respectable job and a reputation to protect, and Jana Ray is eighteen. So I unnerstan if you prefer that nobody know about it. S’far as I see, Jana Ray had more sense in him than a whole heap of big men put together. So I not here to judge you. What I want to know—’

  She got up abruptly and strode over to the kitchen.

  I heard the sigh of the fridge door, liquid being poured. She returned with a glass brimming with water and rested it in front of her.

  It was then I realised that I’d raised my voice. ‘Sorry,’ I said and sat back. ‘I s’pose what I saying is that he must’ve said some things – called names, yunno.’

  ‘You right,’ she said. Her voice had dropped to a whisper. ‘He talked about Lazar all the time. He liked him. Shadowman was the one he hated. Always said that Shadowman is the devil, erm – the devil’s spawn.’

  She’d pushed her head so close to mine, I could smell the pomade in her hair. ‘People don’t call his name round here. They convinced he always hears them. Somewhere on the coast,’ she breathed, ‘is where they say he’s living.’ She sat back rigid, her head cocked as if listening to the darkness out there. The fear was so strong in her, I could almost taste it.

  I found myself leaning towards her, my voice dropping to a whisper too. ‘When was the last time you saw him?’

  She shook her head. ‘Shadowman—’

  ‘Is Jana Ray I talkin bout.’

  ‘Oh! The night before y’all found him.’

  ‘So you got his blue bag?’

  She nodded, looked stricken, then got up with a sigh. She retreated to her bedroom and returned with Jana Ray’s bum-bag.

  I dug into it, pulled out a small notebook and dropped it on the table. My fingers returned to one end. ‘You got scissors?’

  She left and promptly returned with a pair.

  I made a careful incision in the fabric, extracted a sachet of seeds labelled ‘MM’ and a four-gigabyte SD data card wrapped in plastic.

  ‘I’ll keep these,’ I said. ‘Anything about his behaviour changed? I mean before he—’

  She shook her head.

  ‘You sure?’

  ‘Except, he started, erm,’ she began picking at her sleeve, ‘visiting almost every night – three, four weeks ago.’

  ‘And before that?’

  ‘Once a week – sometimes twice. Depending.’

  ‘On what?’

  She slid an eye at me, then looked away. ‘The work . . . ’

  I raised my brows, gave an interrogatory shrug.

  ‘He wouldn’t say what work. Told me is better if I didn’t know. The last time,’ she shook her head, ‘he look like he been through hell.’

  ‘You say he started seeing you almost every night?’

  ‘To talk or sleep.’ She slid a hand along her arm. Her eyes went wide and dreamy. I listened to the new husk in her voice. ‘As if . . . ’

  ‘As if?’

  ‘He wanted to, erm—’ She stopped. I watched the movement of her lips, the shift of her hands on her lap. ‘Hide himself, yunno.’

  ‘No, I dunno.’

  ‘In, in me.’ And then she folded over, her hands covering her face, and she was shaking with sobs.

  I got up. ‘I sorry to distress you.’

  I walked out the door and pulled it behind me, stood on the veranda and took in the night, thick with the clink and scrape of insects, the cough and sigh of the waves in the bay beyond. Then, close by, the abrupt shuffle of bush. Beyond the road – barely visible against the skyline – stood the high dark fence of mangroves.

  I tapped the door and opened it. ‘You got a friend or family you kin stay with for a while? The further from here the better.’

  She rolled startled eyes at the window. ‘Something happen?’

  ‘Pack a bag, take everything you need. Then lock up. I’ll wait.’

  The woman reached for her cellphone. I stepped out the door into the cool of the night, listening to the fast pulse of her voice, the sudden urgency in it. I counted to forty before she was out on the veranda.

  ‘Golf Course,’ she muttered.

  I took the small suitcase and waited while she locked up, then I walked her to her car. When she buckled herself in, I slipped into the passenger seat. ‘I parked a coupla miles down. Drop me by my car. Then I’ll follow you.’

  She threw me an alarmed glance. ‘Something happen?’

  ‘Just a feeling – that’s all.’

  I trailed her car the nine miles to Grand Beach Road, then uphill to the Golf Course, past rows of opulent bungalows that sat in front of wide front gardens studded with fan-leaf palms. Their wraparound verandas glowed warmly under low-hanging lamps. She stopped at the last one.

  A tall, toffee-coloured man, bald as a polished coconut, stood at the door with a dog at his side. I’d expected a woman. Miss Blackwood lifted a hand in my direction. The man raised his head and nodded.

  For a while I kept my eyes on the donkey-sized Alsatian making happy circles around Miss Blackwood’s legs, then I tapped my horn and reversed.

  40

  The sun hadn’t yet risen when I began tapping on doors in Beau Séjour. Heads popped out. Faces stupefied by sleep squinted at me. A few mumbled words.
I followed the pointing fingers till I came to a narrow yard with a small burnt-out house in the middle. Eight yards or so beside it, a smaller structure, awkwardly put together with sheets of MDF. I tapped the door. The woman who opened it was in the same dress that I’d seen her in at Jana Ray’s place. I still had that picture of her in my mind: standing barefoot on the bank above the entrance to Jana Ray’s house, a rusty machete in one hand, glaring hatefully at me and wanting to know what the hell I was doing in the dead boy’s place.

  At the sight of me, she looked dumbfounded. ‘My boy didn do nothing!’

  Inside, approaching footsteps. ‘Stay there,’ she snapped. She was fully awake now, eyes hot and hateful on my face.

  ‘I not after your boy,’ I said. ‘I want to know where I kin find Shadowman.’

  ‘S’far as I see, de fuckah everywhere. I dunno where he is.’

  ‘He got to be somewhere.’

  ‘He’s a devil. See what he done to my boy.’ She reached an arm behind her. A head appeared under it. Eric, the little boy I’d offered food the night after the murder of Lazar Wilkinson, which he could barely lift to his mouth. He was looking up at me with big wet eyes. I reached out and passed my hand along his arm. Dislocated shoulder.

  ‘How long he had this?’

  ‘More dan two weeks,’ the woman said.

  ‘And you didn’t take him to hospital?’

  ‘First time I try, Shadowman put fire to my house. Middle of de night when we sleepin.’

  ‘If this shoulder heals like that, he’ll never be able to use it proper again. Hold on.’

  I phoned the ambulance.

  ‘Digger, is early mornin,’ Pedro grunted.

  ‘Pedro, I have a lil fella here in Beau Séjour. Come take him to the hospital.’ I explained the problem and gave him directions. ‘Make it quiet, okay? No showin off with y’all siren.’

  ‘I don’t want no trouble,’ the woman said.

  ‘S’far as I see, y’all got trouble already.’ I turned to the boy. ‘Tell me where I find Shadowman.’

  Shadowman lived somewhere up the coast. He believed it was Victoria. He described a ‘harden-back’ man, strong, very strong. ‘He got short knotty hair and a cloth tie round iz forehead. He say is for the sweat. He always sweatin. He—’ Eric had become almost speechless with fright.

  ‘What’s his real name?’

  ‘Sha-Shadowman.’

  ‘His real name.’

  He shrugged. ‘Shadowman.’

  ‘Why they call him that?’

  Eric thought for a while. Then gave me one of the most honest, open looks I’d seen from anyone. ‘Becuz he is a shadowman.’

  ‘Put on some clothes,’ I said. ‘I’ll take y’all myself.’

  I called Pedro and cancelled the ambulance.

  ‘I not coming,’ the woman said. ‘I not dress’ to go nowhere.’

  ‘They might keep him in,’ I said. ‘Mebbe a coupla weeks.’

  ‘Fanks, Missa . . . ’

  ‘Digger.’

  ‘That your real name?’

  ‘For now.’

  I waited for the boy to change: same trousers and what looked like his school shirt. A pair of rubber sandals. He came out with a comb in his hand, threw a doubtful look at it, then handed it back to his mother.

  ‘He didn have no time for brekfas’,’ the woman said.

  ‘No worries,’ I said. ‘C’mon, youngfella. I feed you first and then we talk. Then I take you to hospital. That awright by you?’

  He nodded without looking at me.

  ‘You sure Shadowman live in Victoria?’

  ‘I dunno for sure. S’only what I hear.’

  I took Eric to God Fries Eat Inn, a little food place that overlooked the market square. The boy’s eyes were everywhere. He twitched at the sound of raised voices out there. A vehicle backfired in the near distance and he jumped. I observed him closely, the film of sweat on his upper lip, the damaged hand. I felt sorry for him.

  Eric stared at the food counter, then at my face. ‘I could eat what I want?’

  ‘Of course – what you want?’

  ‘A lil bit ov everyting.’

  ‘Makes sense.’ I raised a finger and winked. ‘That mean some serious negotiations.’

  ‘You could afford it?’

  ‘Hope so.’ I got up and went to the counter. I did some explaining to the aproned woman behind it. She pushed out a hand. I paid. ‘Coming up,’ she said and disappeared through the adjoining door.

  ‘Coming up,’ I said to Eric. I pulled a seat to face him. ‘You never come to town before?’

  ‘I don like it. Too much noise an’ ruction,’ he said.

  ‘That bother you – noise and ruction?’

  ‘I like quiet more.’ He sniffed and wiped his nose.

  ‘Is quiet up in the hills, not so?’

  Eric looked as if he expected me to strike him any minute. And I guessed that kids as brutalised as he was would think that it was normal.

  ‘Eric, I want you to tell me everything you know about Shadowman, what he look like and where I kin find him. I want to know who been visiting him, who been visiting Lazar Wilkinson and how close Jana Ray was to them. I want to know everything you saw and heard from the time they got you climbing them Belvedere mountains with heavy load on your head. What I saying is—’

  His eyes switched to the door. ‘I-I ’fraid, Missa Digger. I—’

  ‘I promise you this, Eric: nobody going touch you from now on. Whatever need to get fixed in Beau Séjour going to get fixed.’ That awful tightness in my throat returned. I filled my lungs, trying to blink away the image of Jana Ray. Eric’s eyes were on my face, his lips twitching, his head cocked sideways as if he were tuning in to the current of emotion running through my body.

  The woman arrived with a wide plastic tray with the ‘lil bit of everything’ I’d ordered: fish – fried and stewed, a small bowl of breadfruit and potato chips along with a plate heaped with rice, sweet potatoes and fried plantains; and to top it off, a barbecued chicken leg.

  Eric sat blinking at the food a while, and after seeming to have worked out a strategy, he attacked the chicken first.

  I felt like crying just watching this lil boy with his displaced shoulder struggling to feed himself.

  ‘How that happen – the shoulder?’

  ‘Shadowman lift me up an throw me.’

  I winced.

  ‘He bigger than you,’ Eric said. ‘He got more muscles. You can’t hear him when he walk.’

  ‘You worrying about me?’ I smiled.

  ‘Uh-huh.’

  When he paused from eating, I passed him a tissue and dropped my elbows on the table. I looked into his face. ‘Talk to me, Eric. How they got you involved in this?’

  ‘Lazar,’ he said. ‘He give us money to take some fings from de boat in de bay up to de mountain. Shadowman was up dere waitin for us. He tell us what to do.’

  So after all, Miss Stanislaus was not wrong about her reading of Jana Ray’s drawing. I felt a flush of admiration for the woman – boat loaded, then boat unloaded . . .

  ‘Who run things – Shadowman or Lazar?’

  He lifted his shoulders and dropped them. ‘Not Shadowman, not Lazar.’

  ‘How you know?’

  He shrugged. ‘Shadowman didn like Lazar. Shadowman don’t like nobody. Lazar didn like im either and Lazar use to tell him dat. Specially when he beat us.’ The boy threw me an appealing look. ‘You say you goin proteck me, not so?’

  ‘I promise.’

  ‘Becuz Shadowman say he kill us if we tell anybody what we do up in de Hole.’

  ‘That what you call the place in the mountain – the Hole?’

  He nodded.

  ‘What part Jana Ray play in all ov this?’

  ‘Jah-Ray do the pourin and de mixin. De rest ov us cook an stir. Shadowman hit Jah-Ray once cross his back wiv his whip.’

  I visualised Jana Ray lying face-down on the beach. The laceration, gone pale in d
eath, running across his back.’ I took a breath and looked Eric in the eyes. ‘You witnessed that?’

  ‘Everybody was there. Jah-Ray didn come back for two night. Jah-Ray wasn ’fraid ov Shadowman. Shadowman couldn make im ’fraid.’

  ‘Why – what Jana Ray done to get hit?’

  ‘Shadowman always askin Jah-Ray for his marijuana seed and Jah-Ray give im de wrong one. Mebbe dat’s why he hit im.’

  ‘And what happen after Jah-Ray left?’

  ‘He come back.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Cuz, Lazar say de Townman ask Jana Ray. I hear Townman threaten Shadowman an say Jana Ray the only one know how to do the mixin. And they ain got no time to teach nobody else.’

  I sat back. ‘Who’s the Townman?’

  ‘I never see him proper. Was night when he come. I – I see.’ He looked uncertain now.

  ‘What you see, Eric?’

  He hesitated, licked his lips. ‘I see his hand.’

  I frowned at him.

  ‘H’was in a car. Lazar was by the road talkin to im. He was pushin iz hand outta de car an pointin it in Lazar face.’

  ‘Was night, not so?’

  ‘Uh-huh.’

  ‘So, how come you see the hand?’

  ‘Was moonlight, Missa Digger.’

  ‘How long that was before y’all find Lazar dead?’

  He shook his head. ‘Dunno, mebbe a week, mebbe—’

  ‘You don’t remember days?’ He shook his head.

  ‘Or dates?’

  That look again as if he expected me to hit him.

  ‘What the hand look like, Eric?’

  ‘Was night, Missa Digger. I couldn see proper.’

  ‘But you jus tell me was moonlight.’

  He blinked a couple of times.

  ‘Okay – what you think the hand looked like?’

  ‘I fink was a fair-skin hand.’

  ‘You sure?’

  ‘I tell you it was night.’

  ‘Moonlight night,’ I said. ‘Okay.’ I eased back on the chair. ‘You want to finish your food?’

  ‘I full. Didn know I would’ve been so full so quick.’ He looked distressed.

  ‘One last thing, Eric, then I promise we get outta here – you want to rest a lil bit?’