Black Rain Falling

by Jacob Ross

  The woman laughed – a high bright sound. ‘At least he’s clever,’ she said, and lapsed back on the chair.

  I followed Dessie to the back of the house where the lawn swept down and ended in a tangle of briar and love vines.

  ‘Dessie, you have to tell your mother all your business?’

  ‘I told her you were pressuring me.’

  ‘I here to talk.’

  ‘Digger, I don’t want to talk about Luther.’

  ‘I just trying to limit the damage, Dessie.’

  ‘Damage to?’

  ‘Yourself. I intend to finish what I start. I need a printed statement of all Luther Caine’s transactions for the past two years.’

  ‘I can’t.’

  ‘Then I’ll have to get a court order, and that will mean . . . ’ I didn’t say the rest.

  ‘He will know I authorised it.’

  ‘He’ll be informed that the Commissioner of Police ordered it.’

  ‘I can’t.’ Dessie didn’t sound frightened, just tired. ‘Digger, I want to be out of here. I want my own place. I want my money from him, and the money he made me borrow from my father to lend him. If you people do what you’re supposed to do with him, I can’t get my money back. You think I like—’ She stopped short, began chewing on her lower lip.

  I could have told her that I didn’t think that she’d ever get back her money from Luther Caine. Instead, I showed her my palms and said, ‘All I asking now is that you think about it. Another thing: I want a photo of the back of the house facing the swimming pool, with the shed in the picture.’

  She shook her head. ‘You asking me to go up there again? I thought you had a problem with that!’

  ‘And you know why – okay, okay. Up to you, Dessie.’ I turned to leave. ‘Either way, if that fucker touch a strand of hair on you, I will, I’ll—’

  ‘You will what?’

  I said nothing more.

  ‘Say it, Digger.’ She stood in the hot evening light with a smile I’d never seen on her before, her eyes sweeping my face and pausing at my mouth. And for some reason Miss Stanislaus came to mind.

  ‘Digger,’ she said, very, very softly, ‘you strong, but you weak too. It’s hot out here, you want to come inside?’

  I shook my head. ‘Is better if I don’t, Dessie Manille.’

  The next morning at the office I received forty-three screenshots of Luther Caine’s account, forwarded from a new Gmail account that Dessie had the good sense to set up.

  Thnx. Pls delete Gmail acc.

  M not stupid, she replied.

  Later that evening the photo arrived. Cook took it.

  I studied the photo of the shed with what looked like two big squares of tarpaulin heaped at the entrance. Whatever had been covered up there the night Miss Stanislaus and I were at Luther Caine’s cocktail party was now gone.

  I sat back in my chair in the office and looked at Miss Stanislaus quietly sipping her cup of chamomile tea.

  ‘You somefing else,’ I muttered.

  60

  I was at the Commissioner’s house at 6pm.

  He took me out on the lawn. The place was ablaze with the last of the evening sun. He rested deep enquiring eyes on my face. ‘I’m assuming you’re not getting your way with Chilly, so you’re trying to go above his head?’

  ‘Is not about people getting in my way, Sir. Is a difficulty I have with progressing my work.’

  ‘So, you are going above his head. Okay, Michael, I’ll hear it, but I’m warning you if you expect me to override Chilly, I won’t.’

  ‘It’s about Luther Caine.’

  Something shifted in his face. ‘Okay, tell me about Luther.’

  ‘We looking for a boat about to leave here any time soon. We looking for the people who will take it out of here with a load of purified cocaine with a street value of anything between twenty-two and forty-six million dollars. US! That’s based on Caran’s estimate of the quantity that the set-up in the hills was able to produce.’

  ‘I know all that. Heard it a hundred times. What’s that got to do with—’

  ‘I coming to that, Sir. What I certain of is that the boat got an engine problem—’

  ‘I’ve been told that already, Michael!’

  ‘Which Luther Caine was fixing.’

  That got his attention. He was frowning now. ‘You not suggesting—’

  ‘He’s connected to the shipment and to a couple of others before that. I have the proof. I also know for sure that Luther Caine was paid to fix two engines for the boat. The transfer was made in US dollars from an account in Venezuela. I also have evidence of a payment he made through his company to Lazar Wilkinson’s mother. Lazar Wilkinson was the victim of the necktie killing.

  ‘I have a photograph of the back of Luther’s house where he got a boat shed. Me and Miss Stanislaus paid him a visit. He had what looked like covered-up machinery in that shed. That space is empty now.’

  ‘Michael, are you suggesting—’

  ‘I not suggesting, Sir. I stating! Is state that I stating! I have the evidence here, and I want to know why nobody listening to me. That is what it means to own this island? Money and family name exempt y’all? That’s what you telling me?’

  ‘Michael!’ His eyes were flaming. ‘You’re in my place – show me some respect.’

  ‘Okay.’ I stood up. ‘So I can haul my arse outta your place.’

  His hand shot out and grabbed my arm. ‘Sit down, young man. Sit!’

  I sat.

  He’d dropped his voice, seemed as calm as ever. ‘Finish what you’re saying.’

  I could barely look him in the face. ‘I have reasons to believe the boat is still here. It’s running on six of the most powerful outboard engines ever built. Spiderface in the Department knows all about them. By his estimate they can easily reach a hundred miles an hour, so even if we see them shooting outta here we can’t stop them. Basically, they know they can outrun us – or anything in the region, for that matter.’

  ‘You sound sure these people still here. You haven’t explained why.’

  ‘I’m waiting for notification of a final payment to Luther Caine’s account. I’m assuming that would indicate they satisfied with the job. That’s when they’ll leave.’

  ‘You sure Luther Caine’s involved?’

  ‘Yes.’

  He looked stunned, as if he were only just beginning to absorb my words. ‘I knew Luther from the time he was a boy. He was always in my house. His mother is my cousin, a few times removed.’

  ‘In a small island like this, everybody’s family.’ I felt exhausted.

  ‘Luther won’t do anything without covering himself. I know him well enough. He could claim that he was doing the business he is set up to do: fix boats.’

  ‘He can’t! I can prove it.’

  ‘And that he was following a client’s instructions. You need to give us something that pins him to this whole affair without the shadow of a doubt, Michael.’

  ‘I got it right here!’

  ‘Besides, you’ve been consorting with Dessima. Luther will claim it’s personal. A Camaho jury can be swayed by that, you know.’

  ‘Specially if they come from this high up on the hill, right?’

  He brushed aside my remark. ‘Seriously, Michael, you think that you can pull this off?’

  ‘We got to get the drivers of the boat.’

  ‘Reality is, you haven’t been able to do that.’ He sat back, staring past my head. ‘I’m going to talk to Chilly. To digress a bit, Raymond Manille is not on good terms with me these days. He called me recently about a young upstart who came to his place chasing after his daughter. Apparently the upstart in question had no family to speak of, no decent job and little means. He said the young man should find his level. I took that personally. You told him something about arriving on a boat?’

  I shrugged. ‘I told his wife.’

  ‘That’s what really upset him. I suggested to him that the officer had a point.�
� He chuckled in his throat. ‘You didn’t get that pepper from me! How’s the car?’

  ‘Thanks.’ I shrugged.

  He said nothing for a long while. ‘When you finish this case Chilly wants you to leave. He said he’s wasting you and that lovely woman. You two should further your education. I agree. I’ll leave you to your sisters.’

  They promptly popped out from behind a tall hibiscus bush a little way behind us, their smiles broad and shameless.

  ‘Y’all wuz listening!’ I said.

  ‘We always listen,’ Lucia said.

  ‘Why d’you think I don’t hold meetings here?’ The Commissioner chuckled.

  I opened my arms and braced myself as they threw themselves at me.

  61

  Malan arrested Tamara the morning Miss Blackwood sent me confirmation that a payment had been made to Luther Caine’s account. Ten thousand US dollars. The first payment that Dessie told me about, under mild duress, amounted to twelve thousand US dollars. The first amount would have been for the purchase of the two replacement propellers from the suppliers in the USA.

  An hour later, Dessie pinged me. Money in.

  My heart stepped up pace. I’d reached for the phone to call Chilman. It rang before I touched it.

  ‘Digger, I got the whore.’ Malan.

  ‘Where she is?’

  ‘Central. De woman is a bitch! She spit in my face,’ he snapped and cut off.

  An off-duty officer had spotted Tamara entering the road to her mother’s house and attempted to arrest her. She punched him in the eye and directed a couple of kicks between his legs which doubled him over and had him squirming in the road. He called for back-up. A jeep full of officers arrived and, short of shooting the young woman ‘to calm her down’, they were forced to back off. The news reached Malan in his chill-out place on the Carenage. He finished his drink, excused himself, dropped Sarona at his house and headed for the village. Tamara fought him too, but Malan traded punches for slaps until she crumpled at his feet.

  There were a couple of holding cells in San Andrews Central station. Pit was for the drunks, low-lifes, absconders, and a stopover for Camahoans in transition to the prison on Edmund Hill. It was a six-foot by four-foot cell, never cleaned and smelling of every imaginable human secretion. House was for the occasionally errant citizen of San Andrews. It reeked of Iodoform and had a thin, fibre-stuffed mattress and pillow laid out on a bench. No sheet. Malan locked up Tamara in Pit.

  It was then that Malan called me.

  ‘They got Tamara,’ I told Miss Stanislaus.

  ‘Where, Missa Digger?’

  ‘Central,’ I told her. ‘C’mon.’

  ‘Nuh,’ Miss Stanislaus said.

  ‘You not coming wiv me?’

  ‘You not going wiv me,’ she replied. ‘Is me to handle it.’

  I knew that tone. I glared at her and sat back at my desk.

  Miss Stanislaus looked close to tears when she returned to the office. She could not soften the woman, she said. If Tamara chose to speak at all, it was to deny everything. She knew nothing about no drugs boat, so how people expect her to tell them where boat is and when boat leaving? So what if she had bizness with Lazar Wilkinson, dat didn mean she knew what happened to him.

  She didn know where the two men took her becuz they put a towel over her head and didn tell her where she was. She couldn see no surroundings becuz the two fellas never let her out of the room they put her in, unless they threw a towel over her head.

  Chilman, who’d walked in earlier and demanded to know ‘what go on’, addressed Miss Stanislaus through me. He fixed me with a yellow-eyed stare.

  ‘You tell the young woman that we not letting her go until she cough-up the information?’ Chilman grated. ‘You inform her that she’s a suspected accomplice to murder and what that means for her? You explained to her that if she continues playing the arse she is not going to see her child?’

  ‘I don fink she lying, Missa Digger. If I wrong about that, I wrong about everyfing.’ Miss Stanislaus replied to Chilman through me.

  ‘She not telling the truth either, Miss Stanislaus, and time passing,’ I said.

  Pet rested a hand on Miss Stanislaus’s arm. ‘We got to get her to talk, Miss Stanislaus.’

  ‘Mebbe if people start believin what she say, mebbe they get what they want.’

  Late evening, we were still at the office when a lawyer named Peter Sandiford called, said he was asked by a concerned party to represent Miss Tamara Crawford, and not only did he have a right to visit and advise her, but tomorrow afternoon he will be serving a writ of Habeas Corpus. Did San Andrews CID appreciate the implications of a Habeas Corpus? Should he have a sample sent over by messenger, first thing tomorrow?’

  ‘Is I ask the lawyer,’ Miss Stanislaus said.

  Chilman looked sick.

  I left my desk and went outside.

  Miss Stanislaus came out after me. ‘Missa Digger—’

  ‘Why!’

  ‘She got a baby.’

  ‘That she left with her mother and disappear for months!’

  ‘Mebbe she will talk to you, Missa Digger.’

  ‘She won’t.’

  ‘Mebbe Miss Tamara dunno what she know. Mebbe you kin—’

  ‘Miss Stanislaus, I tired and fed up. I getting outta here.’

  I drove back to my yard, shivering with frustration. Spent the next couple of hours trying not to think about the case.

  Mebbe if people start believin what she say. When I looked at my watch it was 11.03pm. I messaged Miss Stanislaus.

  1 2 c Tamara. Pick u up 30mins.

  Miss Stanislaus was waiting by the road. ‘What you goin do to her?’

  ‘I not using no force, Miss Stanislaus.’

  ‘It got different kinda force, Missa Digger.’

  ‘Is an idea I got from my two lil sisters, yunno. Is sixteen hours gone since Luther Caine got his last payment. The way I see it, boat leaving this foreday morning or next foreday morning. We need the woman to talk.’

  ‘Why foreday morning?’

  ‘Just enough light to see where they going, not enough to be spotted easily. Besides, they can’t do Blackwater in darkness.’

  ‘How you know is Blackwater they going?’

  ‘They not going back to Venezuela with the drugs – that don’t make no sense. They continuing on like Mibo said. To “continue on” to anywhere by boat, you got to go through Blackwater, even to Europe, which don’t make no blaastid sense to me.’

  When we got to Central, an officer in uniform had his shoulder against the grille-work of the cell.

  He straightened up when he saw us. ‘I trying to get something outta she,’ he loud-whispered, unlocked the door and eased past us.

  ‘I sure is not no information he tryin to get outta she,’ Miss Stanislaus muttered.

  It was the first time I’d come this close to Tamara. Looking at her, I had a sensation of heat and rage. What struck me also was her muscularity, then her eyes – cat-bright, fierce and unafraid, just like her child.

  I leaned towards Miss Stanislaus. ‘Don look like she going talk to nobody.’

  ‘You try?’

  ‘That’s a fighter-woman there.’

  ‘Go get me a cuppa water, Missa Digger. Bring it when I call you.’ Miss Stanislaus stepped inside the cell.

  I strolled over to the cooler, filled a plastic cup with slow spurts, my ear cocked towards the holding room. Miss Stanislaus’s musical chirping went on for a while. After some time I heard the woman’s husky monotone. Miss Stanislaus began chuckling at something, a series of short coughs came from the woman, followed by a stream of words.

  ‘Missa Digger, you got the water?’

  I walked into the room. Miss Stanislaus pointed at Tamara. I handed the woman the cup.

  ‘Missa Digger, Miss Tamara willing to c’operate, but she want me to stay with her while you ’terrogate her. She say Missa Malan was very rude – he call her a, erm . . . ’ Miss Stanislaus bl
inked, turned her eyes down at her hands.

  ‘Whore,’ Tamara said.

  Miss Stanislaus nodded. ‘I tell her that she was right to insist. I tell her that you, Missa Digger, goin be very, very respeckful.’ That came with a threatening glance from Miss Stanislaus.

  ‘Course,’ I said. ‘I born respectful. Miss Tamara, I want you think back to the night they pick you up from San Andrews. Miss Stanislaus say they asked you to lie down on the seat so you couldn’t see where they taking you?’

  She nodded.

  ‘I could ask you to close your eyes? Is good for remembering sometimes. I even bring a handkerchief just in case you prefer that. It clean.’ I held out the blue square of cloth.

  She shook her head.

  Miss Stanislaus didn’t look convinced either, but she must have seen the desperation on my face. She plucked the kerchief from my hand and held it out to Tamara. Tamara took it and kept it balled up in her fist.

  ‘How long you lay low in the car?’

  ‘Dunno.’ She shrugged.

  ‘Okay, you ever travel by bus to Leapers’ Town?’ It was the furthest north that any vehicle could go.

  ‘It was longer.’

  ‘Longer!’

  She nodded.

  ‘Any difference in the way the road felt at any point?’

  ‘Road is road,’ she said.

  ‘I serious, Miss Tamara.’ I repeated the question.

  She went still, brows clenched, eyes turned inward. ‘The last part was rough.’ She looked up – not at me, but at Miss Stanislaus.

  ‘Rough how?’ I said.

  ‘Car dip-an-bounce a lot.’

  ‘No sharp turn before that happen?’

  ‘Nuh! Just the car bouncin me about, all the way up.’

  ‘Up? How you know was up?’

  She rolled her eyes.

  ‘And then?’

  ‘And then the car level off and stop. Like I been saying, them two pyul fellas throw a towel over my head and take me inside some place.’

  ‘What’s pyul?’ Miss Stanislaus wanted to know.

  ‘Nickname for South Americans,’ I said.

  ‘Dey talk Spanish,’ Tamara told Miss Stanislaus, her tone almost apologetic.

  ‘Long or short walk to the door?’ I said.