by Jacob Ross
She took the book and bent her head over it, her brows pulled tight. ‘Same engine, Missa Digger, only difference is pro-puller not fit proper on the first two.’
She raised her head and looked past me as if she were listening to something beyond the room. ‘Mebbe they need fixin?’
‘I not so sure that’s what it mean, Miss Stanislaus. I not—’
‘Everyfing Missa Jamma Ray say so far is true,’ she snapped. ‘So why you doubtin him now?’
I left her there, walked out onto my veranda, staring into the darkness beyond the grapefruit and banana trees that fenced my house. And it came to me that everything about Miss Stanislaus’s visit and her attitude tonight was about the weeks of waiting for a verdict on her future with San Andrews CID. She was expecting me to understand her fears without having to spell them out.
Still, I was waiting for her to tell me. Miss Stanislaus was the only human I knew who, however much she tried, could not sidestep the truth.
She came out and placed herself beside me.
‘Missa Digger, I love my job. Bes’ fing dat ever happen to me. An’ I good doing it, not so?’
‘The best,’ I said.
‘If I lose it, I wouldn fall down an’ dead, Missa Digger. But I don’ want to lose my living becuz of a man that take so much from me arready. Else, nothing else make sense.’
‘Miss Stanislaus, if you go, I go too.’
‘Mebbe that’s what they want?’
‘Mebbe, Miss Stanislaus. Dunno.’
45
Early morning, Benna called me from Kara Island. She greeted me cheerily, apologised on behalf of herself and the others for taking so long. Yesterday, they’d found Koku Stanislaus – or at least the place they were almost certain he might be.
This woman’s way of saying things always left me full of doubt.
‘Might be?’ I said. ‘Y’all not sure?’
‘We sure,’ she said. ‘We jus didn take im out.’
‘He’s, erm, still buried?’
‘Yes.’
‘So how you know?’
‘We know,’ she said. ‘We done we work, you come do yours now.’
I glanced at my watch. She’d phoned me just after 6am. The first ferry left at 7. Weather permitting, I’d be there around 8.
They were waiting for me on the jetty. Beach Street was humming with clusters of people sorting themselves – probably unconsciously – by age groups. The women had clearly broadcast the news.
Two men, their faces expressionless as planks, stood to one side of Benna and her crew. They were leaning on forks and shovels. I greeted the women, took their proffered hands and bowed. The childhood habit returned so easily, it surprised me.
‘Come,’ Benna said. The crowd moved aside for her as if parted by a hand. She took me to an eatery across the road, named Delna’s Diner. Benna sat me at a table.
‘I tell Delna you goin be hungry. She open up early and prepare somefing for you.’
‘Where on the island you find the body?’
She shook her head. ‘Is not on Kara Island. Eat first, then we show you.’
She watched in silence while I ate, attentive to every movement of my hand and mouth.
‘You live on your own, not so?’
‘I do,’ I said.
‘You been doin it a long time.’
‘How you know?’
‘Is the way you eat.’
I raised my head and looked at her.
‘Never mind.’ She smiled. ‘You tell Kathleen you here?’
‘Nuh. I want to make sure first.’
She nodded. ‘Kathleen was walkin a clean road before Juba spit on it. Pretty, pretty girlchild she was! An’ bright! She used to make us laugh with the things she say and the questions she throw at people. You had to be quick to keep up with her.’ She leaned into me. ‘Missa uhm . . . ’
‘Digger,’ I said.
‘Yes.’ She laid her stick across her lap. ‘We could’ve put away Juba long time ago. H’was a burden for all of us to carry all these years. But was not our job to do it. Ain got a pusson here who didn know Kathleen comin back for him. However long it take. Mebbe Juba know dat too.’
‘Is the exact opposite I here to prove, Benna. Don’t let nobody hear you say that. Specially in Camaho.’
‘I not surprised! Camaho people got no culture, and even less common sense. Exceptin you, mebbe.’ She showed me a row of healthy teeth. ‘Come, we find Koku on White Islan.’
I’d finished eating the soused crab meat and bread, thanked Delna and followed Benna to the jetty. They’d hitched up a big wooden boat against it. The women climbed on board, then the men with their tools. I passed over my murder bag to one of the men and climbed in.
The pilot took us south, following the contours of the island. Once around the southern tip, he veered north. Ahead of us two small islands appeared – one humped like a tortoise; the other, a white sand bank partly covered in vegetation. At one end of it, a round thirty-foot-high rock formation thrust out of the water. I thought of an octopus with its body streamlined for flight.
The women had their heads together, conversing in low tones. I found myself in awe of them.
White Island was more beach than land, the purest, whitest sand I’d ever walked on. They took me towards the ‘head’ of the octopus, up a slight incline – the boatman in front, flashing his machete at branches and lianas.
We walked into the cool gloom of a Lignum Vitae glade, the leafy floor dappled with sunlight, the roar of the sea in my head. I followed Benna’s pointing stick. All the signs were there.
‘It might not be him,’ I said.
‘Is him,’ she said. I marked out the rectangle I wanted the men to excavate and they set to work: fast, proficient, their movements economical.
Koku Stanislaus’s killer had placed him in a long bag before they threw him in. The fabric was some sort of coarsely weaved material.
‘Fish bag,’ one of the men said.
‘What?’
‘Fish bag, yunno. Fellas who hunt big-fish does carry dem in it.’
‘You know the people who use them?’
He shrugged. ‘Most fishin-fellas got one. Tomas does order it for us.’
‘Who’s Tomas?’
‘Ole fella who got a little hardware shop back of Delna’ place.’
‘Where Tomas order the bags from?’
The man lifted his shoulders and dropped them. ‘Ask him.’
‘I intend to,’ I said. ‘You got a fish bag too?’
‘Course!’ he said.
‘We got work to do,’ Benna cut in.
I nodded and turned back to the hollow in the ground.
‘Is not going to be pretty,’ I said. ‘Y’all might want to leave now?’
‘Why?’ Dada said.
‘Okay.’ I shrugged. I took out my LED torch. ‘Lemme explain what I will be doing. At some point I might be needing the help of y’all fellas. Y’all might want to cover y’all nose.’
They didn’t seem to hear me.
Flies and moths and, later, Carrion and Rove beetles had already done what no priest nor prayers could do: stripped Koku Stanislaus of his mortal coil and returned him to the earth.
I took photos, of course, then ran my torch along the length of the bag, pausing on what looked like printed letters at the side, which were so faded I could have mistaken them for stains had I not brought my torch closer.
I turned to Benna. ‘I’ll have to have our people take him to Camaho. So I could do a proper job.’
‘Nuh!’ The old woman looked affronted.
‘I have to,’ I said.
Benna shook her head and tapped her leg with her stick. ‘Koku not crossing no long-water no more. He already where he s’pose to be.’ She waved her stick in a way that took in the bushes, the sky, the sea, and Kara Island in the near distance.
I thought of Miss Stanislaus and imagined her being similarly outraged.
I could barely hold in m
y irritation. ‘Then you want me to desecrate the body?’ I meant it in a forensic sense, of course, but she wouldn’t understand that.
Benna tensed, she narrowed her eyes and showed me her teeth. Whatever emotion that ran through the old woman now transformed her. I could see why the whole island deferred to Benna. ‘Lissen, youngfella, don’t play de arse with me, y’hear?’
‘Sorry,’ I said. ‘By desecrate I mean, I got to take away a coupla things with me.’
She hadn’t relaxed. Those pale eyes were still drilling into mine.
‘I want the handles of the bag. The zip might be useful, and the side of the bag where I saw what I think is the brand name of the bag. I have to take that.’
Benna relaxed her shoulders then gestured at the men who promptly set to work.
The way I saw it, somebody would have had to lift that bag and carry it. Traces of that person would have been on the handle. I’d read somewhere that in ideal conditions, DNA could last longer than a million years. But this was no textbook situation. Here, with warm weather, very porous soil, a shallow grave and the fact that the old man had been lying there a coupla years, I doubted whether I’d be able to isolate any trace of whoever it was that had brought him here. At least not forensically.
Besides, taking samples and having the lab in Trinidad run a thorough test made no sense. It would take time, and time was what Miss Stanislaus and I did not have.
One of the fellas I knew now as Vaz – short, muscled, with heavy eyebrows and small eyes – handed me the cuttings from the bag that I’d asked for. He’d wrapped them in a bunch of seagrape leaves and seemed anxious to get them out of his hands.
A couple of hours later, a flannel still around my lower face, I straightened up. Under the light of my LED torch, they identified Koku Stanislaus’s canvas belt which, they said, the old man always wore. There was no other like it on the island. Or prob’ly anywhere else. Koku had brought it back from his work-years in Aruba long before I was born. The sight of that belt brought down a heavy silence on them.
‘I finish here,’ I said finally. ‘Y’all got to preserve this place. Is evidence.’
I had more than two hundred photos stored in my camera. ‘I leaving that to y’all until I send the people from Camaho to do their part.’ I glanced at Benna. ‘Then we going to hand him over to y’all, his people. Come, lemme explain what I find.’
They followed me through the vegetation to the shade of a seagrape tree on the beach. I extracted the data card from my little Casio camera and slotted it into the seven-inch Android tablet I’d brought along with me.
I sat on the sand while they crowded around.
I pulled up the pictures on the screen. ‘His bones and teeth and joints give an idea of his age and the condition of his body before he died. He had strong bones, though his knuckle joints tell me that the ole fella had arthritis, specially his right hand.’
Dada grunted assent.
‘No problems with his knees, though. H’was around eighty, mebbe older.’
‘You say dat you kin tell what happen to him?’ Benna said.
‘Yes.’ I traced a finger along the picture of the spinal column. ‘We call these bones vertebra. Like y’all see, every one of dem got two lil wings on each side, except this one.’ I dropped my finger on the left side of the fourth vertebra. ‘This one broken. That suggest that something strike the ole fella with great force from behind and break it off.’
I showed them a frontal photo of the ribcage. ‘Whatever went through his back and break the bone didn’t come through at the front. It hit one of his ribs also at the back but higher up. You would expect it to hit the front part of the ribcage, if the weapon was straight like a steel rod, or something like that. But no, it hit the back. I asking y’all, what could enter a pusson from the back with such force and not go through his front?’
I raised my head at them. ‘It’s got to be something that curve back on itself.’
One of the men cleared his nostrils, a harsh scraping sound. ‘Hook.’
‘Gaff,’ the other said.
‘It also mean the person was behind him when they strike.’
I rose to my feet, stood behind one of the men and showed them the blow that would achieve this.
One of the women covered her face.
‘Something else: a blow like that is only possible with the left hand.’
There was a long silence, filled in by the sound of the water licking the sand.
‘Juba carry dat gaff in iz right hand. Always,’ Vaz said, and looked to the other for confirmation.
‘Y’ever see him use it?’ Benna said.
The fella shook his head. He appeared stunned by the idea.
‘I witnessed it myself,’ I said. ‘The night Juba tried to kill Miss Stanislaus and me. When I saw him on the road that night, he was carrying the hook in his right hand. When he was about to strike me down, he switched it to his left.’
‘What come after this?’ Benna wanted to know.
‘I might need y’all as witnesses.’
Benna nodded. The others looked unsure.
Dada soured her face. ‘I don like Camaho, y’all kin bring the courthouse here?’
Benna sucked her teeth. ‘Woman, you too fool!’
One of the men laughed out loud.
‘We can’t keep dis from people,’ she muttered. ‘We got to let everybody know.’
‘Go right ahead, Benna. Let everybody know.’
‘Anyfing else, youngfella?’
‘Yes, I want to visit Missa Tomas. After that I going to find Officer Mibo – y’all kin tell me where he live?’
‘Is time.’ Benna nodded. She turned to the men. ‘Put some branches over Koku. Let im know we comin back for him.’
The men hurried off. Benna waved me into the boat.
46
Tomas’s place looked at first glance like a rectangular hole cut into a peeling brown wall. An old man with a face wrinkled like a raisin was resting his head against it. I looked past his shoulders into a gloomy room, as narrow as a corridor, with a confusion of fishing tackle on either side. The old fella seemed indifferent to the sizzling heat of the midday sun. Not a bead of sweat on him.
‘G’d afteroon, I looking for Missa Tomas?’
‘He here,’ he said, nudging a finger at his chest. He looked me up and down, then up again. ‘What you want?’
‘I got a coupla questions,’ I said.
‘Questions is not money; you want to buy somefing?’
‘I want some answers,’ I said.
‘You won’t find none here.’ His face shut down. He might as well have turned his back on me.
I opened my bag and pulled out the pieces of the bag we’d found Koku Stanislaus in. I held out the handle that we’d cut off in front of him. ‘Yunno what kinda fish bag these might belong to?’
He didn’t answer me.
‘You sell fish bag, not so?’
‘You want to buy one?’
‘Nuh, I want to know who buy this one from you.’
He threw a quick look at my hand and chuckled. ‘Damn small bag,’ he said. ‘You carryin ants in dat?’
His grumpiness reminded me of DS Chilman and Dada.
‘We just find Koku Stanislaus body in a bag on White Island. Them is the handles of the bag. Somebody kill’ him and bury him in it.’
The yellow eyes shot wide and froze on my face. ‘For true?’
‘Ask Benna,’ I said. ‘Is two years now Koku disappear and you telling me y’all didn notice it? Is a lil island y’all living on. Not a continent.’
He shook his head. ‘For true?’
‘Yes, Koku dead for true. I got good reasons to believe Juba Hurst kill him.’
The old man licked his lips and blinked at me. ‘Koku kept to himself. Me and he – we never use to get on. People say he went to live in Camaho wiv the girlchile he adopt – the one dat come back here an’ kill’ Juba. Me, I never trust dat girl—’
‘I do
! I was with her when she took down Juba. You going answer my questions?’
He nodded.
‘These come from your shop?’ I handed him the handles of the bag. They were made of some thick nylon fabric and were padded – blackened now by the soil they’d been covered with.
The old fella bent his head, his thumb exploring the fabric, his lips moving as his fingers rolled away the grit. When he looked up, his eyes were distant, his voice gone low. ‘Is not mine,’ he said. ‘It feel expensive. That the only part ov the bag you got?’
I reached into my case and pulled out the piece that had been cut from the side.
Tomas took it from me and began doing that rubbing thing with his hand. ‘Like I done tell you, is expensive. De material make of hemp. Is what you find Koku inside, for true?’
‘You would notice one of these if somebody carrying it around, not so?’
He shook his head. ‘It different from de rest,’ he said. ‘But I hardly leave my place. I wouldn know. How big you say de bag was?’
‘Six or seven feet,’ I told him.
‘You wouldn buy a bag like this unless you dolphin huntin.’
‘You got dolphin hunters round here?’
‘Eastward Island people.’ I visualised the place – a couple of miles off Kara Island with big concrete houses rising from it like fortresses.
‘We don’t eat dolphin.’ Tomas coughed into his hand. ‘Vincen Island people pay good money for the meat, though.’
‘I happen to know dolphin meat is poison,’ I said. ‘They pick up mercury from the ocean. Pollution, yunno, from all that gold they processing in Guyana.’
‘Who you after?’ he said. The old man looked worried. ‘You mention dolphin hunters from Eastward Island. Ain got no Kara Island fellas here who hunt dolphins?’
He shook his head, shook it again then dropped his eyes on his rubber slippers.
‘Tell me,’ I said.