by Jacob Ross
‘Dunno,’ he said.
‘I know you know, Missa Tomas. I listening.’
He kept shaking his head.
‘Okay.’ I took the fabric from his hand. ‘I going to ask Benna to get the information from you. You prefer I do that?’
‘De only pusson I know round here who dolphin hunt is my family and my family will never . . . ’
‘Go on.’
He flicked a hand at the fabric. ‘That kin never involve my family.’
‘I listening, Sir.’
‘Is not de kinda fing Mibo going—’ Tomas stopped abruptly.
‘Missa Tomas, from the time you put your hand on this,’ I waved the cuttings at him, ‘you know it was Mibo’ bag, not so?’
The old man smacked his lips, blinking rapidly.
‘What’s Officer Mibo to you?’
‘My youngest brother’ child. Mibo is the last one.’ He spoke as if that explained everything. The old man threw me a fast furtive glance. ‘Queenie know bout this?’
‘Who’s Queenie?’
‘You call her Benna.’
‘Where you think Mibo got the bag from?’
‘Is a surfin bag, Missa erm . . . ’
‘Digger! You order it for him, not so?’
‘Is what ’Merican surfin fellas carry their surfin board in. We use it for dolphin.’
‘You didn answer my question, Sir. You order the bag?’
Tomas kept swallowing and shaking his head. ‘Uh-huh,’ he said finally.
‘From?’
‘Not far.’
‘From?’
‘Miami. Queenie know bout this?’
‘Not about Mibo. Not yet.’ I lowered myself in front of him. ‘What I got right now is a link between you and a bag that had Koku Stanislaus’ body in it. You say y’all didn get on, so you might have your own reason for killing him. That make you a suspect, Missa Tomas, at least. Unless you kin prove otherwise, y’unner—’
The old man shot to his feet and marched through the door. He slammed it shut behind him. I heard a series of bangs and rattling as if he were pulling apart the place. I felt relaxed. The good thing about Kara Island was that there was nowhere to run.
Tomas returned with a black hard-cover A4 notebook. He opened it and turned it towards me. I could hear his breathing. I never knew a person could communicate so much indignation by their breathing.
Neatly lined pages.
Seven columns: name of buyer, item ordered, date of order, amount deposited, amount owing, date of arrival of the item, date of delivery to the buyer. Mibo had paid the full amount in advance. He’d received the item three weeks and four days later. That was three years ago.
‘You got the order-invoice?’
He left the book in my hand, turned and marched back inside. I retrieved my camera and photographed the pages of the notebook.
Tomas returned and held out the invoice. The address: Surf Edge Supply
Miami Beach, FL
The price: US$ 269.95.
‘Expensive bag,’ I said. I took a picture of the page.
‘A coffin cost more,’ the old man said.
‘You know where Mibo live?’ His face had gone grim; his expression vengeful.
‘Benna told me,’ I said.
The old fella raised a hand and shooed me off. He looked as if he’d just received a beating.
47
Officer Mibo had built his house a couple of miles outside the town.
It stood among smaller residences about one tenth its size. The place still smelled of raw concrete, built in what someone thought was Roman-style architecture: a lion’s head on each gate post, wide curved steps and columns leading up to a doorway that was arched at the top. A paved yard with four cars including an SUV. I wondered what he did with such a vehicle on a 12-square-mile island.
I climbed the steps and knocked on the big glass door. Mibo appeared from a sideroom – thin as drought, skin so tight on his face I could see the bone structure of his head. He was in a pair of floral shorts and rubber slippers. There was a remote control in his hand. A cinema-sized wide-screen TV shimmered blue in the living room behind him.
‘Digger here.’ I showed him my ID. He knew who I was, of course, but I wanted to unsettle him with my attitude. Mibo blinked, tried one of those brotherly police smiles. I did not return it. His face froze.
‘You heard what happened to Officer Buso, the policefella I arrested for running over—’
‘I hear about it,’ he said.
‘So you know what I was forced to do to him!’ I looked at my watch, then at his clothes. ‘Is one o’clock. You on lunch break?’
He muttered something about ‘not feelin so good today’.
I looked him in the eyes. ‘Coupla days ago, I had a conversation with the Commissioner of Police. Officer Mibo, I want you at the station right now.’
His eyes popped wide. He licked his lips. ‘Something go on?’
‘A lot! If you got doubts about my authority for being here, give the Commissioner a call.’ I pulled out my phone and held it out to him. As I expected, he declined. ‘Go fix yourself, Mibo. I waiting.’
I descended the steps and surveyed the yard: fishing tackle – lots of it, a couple of dinghies out back, a sleek grey speedboat with a big Yamaha outboard engine.
Mibo came out buttoning up his shirt, his belt undone. The woman I’d met at the station when I went looking for him before followed him out on the veranda. She stared at me with intense unreadable eyes.
Mibo headed for the SUV. I pointed at the blue and white Toyota at the far end of the yard marked POLICE.
We drove in silence. I’d taken out my Remington and rested it, Malan-style, on the dashboard. I could smell the sweat on the man. Mibo drove with his arse pushed hard back against the seat, his chin almost on the steering wheel, both elbows jutting out at right angles.
‘Officer Digger—’ he said.
‘Talk to me in the station.’ I’d rehearsed all this in my mind – my own version of Chilman’s approach to sharing out justice: Keep opponent off-balance always. But right now, sitting beside Mibo with the muzzle of my Remington angled ‘accidentally’ towards him and my memory of the old man’s remains on White Island, this was as real as it could get.
By the time we got to the station, I was in a stinking mood. I was thinking of the terrible toll that a single person’s greed and selfishness took on other people’s lives. I was thinking of the pressure Miss Stanislaus was under partly because of this fella’s report.
I followed him into the station, my eyes on the nape of his neck.
An old desk in one corner of the room, a broken keyboard sitting in the middle of it, the telephone handset the woman had tried to warn him on the last time I came, a stack of biros and an A4 notepad.
‘Where the others?’ I said.
He muttered something about holiday. ‘Nice life,’ I said. ‘Benna say you one of the best navigators on Kara Island with boats. That true?’
He shrugged.
‘Officer Mibo, you not talking much. Why?’
‘You not givin me a chance,’ he grated.
‘I giving you a chance now. Talk!’
He threw me a red-eyed, hateful stare. A coward, I decided – despite his size and demeanour.
‘You ’fraid to talk because you dunno what might leak outta your mouth, you got so much to hide – that’s why.’
‘I ain got nuffing to hide. I dunno why you come here giving me grief!’ He’d bared his teeth and widened his eyes at me, and now I saw the nastiness in him.
I dragged the only two chairs in the room and placed them side by side. ‘Siddown, Officer Mibo. I got some pictures to show you.’
He made as if to leave.
‘If you run out of here, I’ll take out your legs from under you. I serious!’
He lowered himself on the chair, his eyes on my face. It took a special kind of policeman to be like him – to surrender so much of himself for money, a
n ugly house big enough to accommodate a small village, a car you couldn’t drive a coupla miles before ending in the sea.
I retrieved my tablet and switched it on. I sat with my shoulder pressed against his. He didn’t like it, but he could do nothing about it without falling off his chair. A trick I’d learned from Chilman.
I began swiping through the photos with Mibo’s face in my peripheral vision. He remained expressionless. I stopped at the photo of the old man’s belt, felt the abrupt convulsion of his body. I pulled up a photo of the old man’s remains in the bag. Another convulsion.
‘That your bag, not so?’
‘Nuh! I never had no bag like dat.’
‘You sure?’
‘Of course, I—’
The pictures I’d swiped and raised in front of him had cut him off: the old man’s record of their transaction and the invoice. ‘You still sure?’ I said.
Mibo’s lower lip was twitching.
I positioned my chair to face him. ‘If Juba was alive, I’d have the evidence to lose him in jail for murder. I wouldn’t’ve found out about your part in this killing and your links with Juba Hurst until you exposed y’arse by filing a bad-minded report to the Justice Minister and the press. Why?’
He threw a quick look at the door.
‘Run if you want to die, Mibo. Go right ahead.’ I raised a finger at his face. ‘Next coupla days is the hearing. If Miss Stanislaus go down, you go down further. I’ll send you so far fuckin down, you’ll wish you never born. I will make it so you never leave jail, because I got strong enough evidence to show that you took the old man’ body to White Island in one ov your boats. You probably the only person round here to brave them badwater out there, night-time, with the old man’s body in your boat. And the bag – you had to use your expensive bag becuz I sure you find out how a dead body could fight you back – four limbs and a head that won’t stay where you want them to stay. A dead body don’t help you to lift or move it. You feel as if it resisting you. If you drag it, it heavy like concrete, not so? And it leave a trail ov blood or shit behind it, or both. So you had to hold it together in your dolphin bag. The first thing you learn in forensics, Mibo, is that dead or alive, a body never stops talking.’
I felt so choked up, I had to swallow hard.
Mibo shifted in his seat. I could see the strain on his face. The fear. It crossed my mind that if I spoke to Benna about this, Mibo would probably be dead by tomorrow. Like Chilman said, Kara Island people needed no police. Controlling forces more powerful than us ran this island – some system of justice and retribution that I’d only got a glimpse of through the old woman that even an old fella like Tomas seemed to fear. I picked up one of the biros, pointed at the notepad with the letterhead of Camaho Police Force on it. ‘I want a signed statement from you confirming that all the claims and allegations against Miss Stanislaus were hearsay. In other words, you make them up! I want you to state that you had a personal grudge against Miss Stanislaus – make up the reason if you have to – and you have no grounds for doubting Miss Stanislaus and my account of what happened the night we shot Juba.’
I stood up, looked down on his head. ‘If I not satisfied, I going to make you do it again. After that, I got a couple of questions for you about who instructed you to ignore procedure and give your opinion on the radio about a police incident almost as soon as it happened. I giving you half an hour.’
I stepped out of the tiny concrete room. I felt drained. The heat of the day was suffocating and unbearable.
After half an hour, I went back in, my belt rolled around my hand.
He’d written the statement, of course, just in case. But he wouldn’t let me have it if he could help it. Too much to lose. I knew that before I’d ordered him to do it.
He rushed me with the keyboard – a murderous swing at my head. I ducked and back-pedalled out the door. The sight of the raised gun in my hand sent him scuttling backward.
‘Okay, letter done,’ I said. ‘Now for the conversation.’
I spent an exhausting three hours with Mibo. I found myself battling with a liar. The cunning and deceit came out of him as naturally as the sweat trickling down his face. I learned to read him quickly. Before he told a lie, he licked his lips. A thumb folded tight inside his fist was a sure sign that the question I threw at him would shut him down or scare him. I learned a lot by what he didn’t say. Miss Stanislaus would have been proud of me.
48
Killing Juba Hurst upset ‘a lot of things’, he said. Juba had set up a cocaine-cooking operation on the piece of land he killed Koku Stanislaus for because the old man refused to sell.
Mibo confirmed everything Benna had told me, and told me a lot more: the boys Juba brought over from Vincen Island to help him, the sprint boats that arrived late at night to collect the processed cocaine, before heading off to Trinidad, Miami or Florida – that was until the old women began their guerrilla war on the camp and drove Juba off Kara Island, because, according to Mibo, ‘it wasn worth de boderation’. No it wasn’t! From what I observed, if Juba had laid his hands on any of those old women, Kara Island would have probably burnt them alive.
Killin Juba upset a lotta things . . . What the hell was things? The processing operation? People? Both? Who was people?
I made the leap. ‘What’s Juba’s connection with Shadowman?’
He lifted his shoulders and dropped them. ‘Cousin,’ he mumbled.
‘That make him your cousin too, not so? Shadowman come from Kara Island?’
He nodded.
‘What’s his real name?’
He muttered something.
‘Never mind, I’ll ask Benna.’
‘Ronald Hurst,’ he said.
I stood up. Mibo flinched as if he thought I was about to hit him and my mind shifted to Eric. ‘So, I take it that Camaho is where Juba set up after Benna chase him out! That operation in the Beau Séjour mountains was Juba’s, not so?’
He did not reply.
‘Look, you already deep in shit. You a policeman involved in drug-dealings and you’z an accomplice to one of the nastiest murders that happen here on Kara Island. You can’t get any deeper. All I need to do is pass the word to Benna and her people that you involved in the old fella’s murder.’
I sat back on the chair and leaned into his face. ‘Now if you dunno it yet, you part of some runnings that done kill three people: Koku Stanislaus, Lazar Wilkinson and a youngfella I happen to know.’
I brought my face so close to his, he was forced to lean back, now only the back legs of the chair supported him. ‘Yunno Lazar Wilkinson, not so?’
He nodded stiffly.
‘Who kill im?’
He lifted a hand in what looked like an attempt at denial, thought better of it and steadied himself on the teetering chair.
‘All I hear was he turn greedy. He say Beau Séjour is his area. And he don’t want no fee for processing the cargo, he want a percentage.’ Mibo sounded indignant. ‘The fucker been pressuring de bossman, uhm, Juba, I mean . . . he say he goin expose the whole thing to y’all.’
I watched him wipe the spittle from his mouth with the back of his hand. I pushed my chair backward. ‘By “y’all” you mean the police. Right? You not a policeman too?’
Mibo’s eyes froze on my face.
I stood up and unrolled my belt. ‘Now, if you think I got any problems fuckin you up right now for holding back on me, I’ll prove to you that you wrong.’ He saw what was coming, raised both hands to his face, his palms turned towards me.
‘What’s the bossman name?’ I said.
‘I didn say “bossman”.’
‘You just said “bossman”. You said Lazar Wilkinson was pressuring the bossman. I happen to hear he’s a pale-skin fella – what’s his name?’
He’d licked his lips. ‘Is Juba I call bossman.’
‘Mibo, you lying. This is what I want to know: where the cocaine base come from? Who bring it here? Who running Juba, Lazar Wilkinson and Shadow
man? Becuz is clear to me that after Juba dead the operation still going on as if nothing happened. And I want to know about that boat that I been hearing a lot about recently. What you know about the boat?’ I snapped.
He licked his lips and nodded.
He didn’t know about no boat for sure but he heard about one – a speedboat. It arrived in Camaho from Venezuela a coupla days after Miss Stanislaus shot down Juba. He’d heard that it was transporting cocaine base. Juba, he believed, been handling arrangements. And becuz Juba couldn’t risk no problem from no ole wimmen on Kara Island, he got the order to move to Camaho. And yes, from what he picked up from Shadowman, there’d been a big hold-up – some kind ov problem with engine transmission.
‘Where’s the boat heading after it leave Camaho?’
‘Word reach me that is Europe,’ he said. Mibo wouldn’t look at me. I thought back to the description that Eric gave me of the craft he said he’d helped unload. Small enough to be brought into the little bay in Beau Séjour, no cabin, just a windshield. A trip across the Atlantic in a craft like that made no sense and yet Jana Ray had said the same thing.
‘Impossible,’ I said.
‘Is what I hear,’ he said.
‘Who ordered Juba to move to Camaho?’ I said.
‘Dunno. I didn say nobody order nobody.’
‘You just said Juba got the order to move to Camaho. Somebody had to give the order, Mibo.’
‘I hear talk bout bossman an’ bosslady. But I didn listen to that.’
‘“And bosslady”?’
‘I didn say bosslady.’ He shook his head and kept it lowered.
I didn’t press him, he’d clamped his hands down on both thumbs.
I left him standing at the back door of the station, his arms folded tight around his chest.
‘You dead and you don even know it yet,’ he shouted at my back.
And you in jail, I thought. Becuz I coming back for you.
‘The bossman going to do it?’ I threw back.
I saw the panic in his eyes and smiled.
49
By the time the ferry swung into Blackwater, the headache that I’d been dodging for the past few days tightened its grip on me. I stood on the deck, holding onto the protective railing. Every dip and shudder of the boat felt amplified. For a moment everything around me became smeared and fluid. I threw up. Fell onto my hands and knees and began crawling towards the doorway of the cabin.