by Jacob Ross
‘Not long.’
‘What shoes you wuz wearing?’
She pointed at her feet.
‘Miss Tamara, you mind standing? I want you to cover your eyes now. I going to walk you across the room. That alright?’
Miss Stanislaus touched Tamara’s elbow. Tamara stood up, pressed the heels of her hands into her eyes.
I placed a finger on her shoulder. ‘When you feel you walk far enough to the door in that place, tell me.’ I guided her across the floor. ‘What you walkin on – gravel, grass or—’
‘Rough stone.’
‘Right up to the door?’
‘Uh-huh.’
‘Any steps?’
‘Concrete. Steps wuz wide.’
‘How you know?’
‘A fella was on either side of me.’
‘And once you inside, you on a concrete floor, not so?’
‘Nuh, it feel like wood.’
‘Wood! You sure?’
She dropped her hands and glared at me.
I left her there and strolled towards the window. I could feel the tension in my shoulders. When I turned around, Miss Stanislaus’s face was tight with concentration, her lower lip pulled in.
‘And I guessing that when you got inside that house, they didn walk you in a straight line, right?’
She gave me a quick interested look. ‘How you know?’
‘Just guessin,’ I said. ‘When they lift the towel, what you see?’
‘A small room. One rickety ole bed dat smell of man. Was dark in dere.’
‘Warm or cool?’
‘The whole place cold.’
‘How outside sound?’
She frowned at me.
‘Y’ever walk through Sendall Tunnel?’
That quick frown and look again. ‘A lil bit like that. How you . . . ?’
I pointed at the window. ‘What you hearing out there?’
She shrugged and pulled down the corners of her mouth. ‘Traffic.’
‘And what y’was hearing in that place?’
‘Oh! The sea. Rough sea.’
‘You sure?’
‘I sure.’
‘What they bring you there for?’
‘What you think?’
‘I not thinking now. Tell me.’
She did not answer me.
‘Talk to me about Lazar Wilkinson – you been with him, not so?’
She shrugged and twisted her mouth. ‘Lazar was too rough and controllin. I couldn deal with that.’
‘And the two fellas?’
‘Was Lazar who introduce me. I needed money for my child. Lazar make them pay me upfront.’
‘Tell me about the murder.’
Everything about her changed. ‘What you trying to say? Same thing dat nasty man who call himself police come here hittin me and tryin to force me to sign paper and confess.’
Miss Stanislaus calmed her down.
‘I got one more question, Miss Tamara.’
She squared up like a boxer prepared to deflect a punch. ‘Ask, I don have to answer.’
‘How you get out of that place?’
‘They drop me in the big crossroad near Seven Falls. I walk till I get a ride.’
‘That’s the middle of the island. And at a crossroad. They smart. Harder to tell which direction you come from. Thanks,’ I said. ‘You kin go home. I’ll do the formalities.’
She looked at me, surprised. Miss Stanislaus blessed me with a lovely smile.
‘Don’t even try to leave the island, though. I got an alert on you. And you see what Malan is like. I don’t want him coming after you again.’
At the door Tamara swung back her head, flopped a wrist at Miss Stanislaus. I received a fleeting glance from her. ‘You weird,’ she muttered. I flopped a wrist at her.
Long, crisp strides across the courtyard, gun-barrel mouth, the head – hair now cropped close – held upright.
Miss Stanislaus was watching me watch Tamara. ‘I see you like her, Missa Digger.’
‘She got balls, I mean, uhm, spirit.’
‘Tell me what you find.’
‘Old building on a hill or slope, at the end of a mud road, with a yard big enough to take at least one vehicle. Steps – I believe is stone – wide enough for at least three people to walk. Wide steps suggest big door. Cool inside – remember the Sendall Tunnel question? They dig that tunnel outta stone so I thinkin is a stone building. Wooden floor not safe to walk on, yunno, but the two fellas know it well enough to avoid the bad part. That suggest to me that the building is most likely in disuse. I thinking big old church, Miss Stanislaus – Anglican or Catholic – becuz it ain got no other buildings on Camaho that got those features. What don’t make no sense is how close to the sea it is. Ain got no church like that apart from the Catholic cathedral on Leapers’ Hill. And that one get used all the time.’ I turned to Miss Stanislaus. ‘Look to me like she was lying.’
‘She wasn.’
‘Why you sticking up for somebody you only meet once?’ I said.
‘Why you putting down somebody you only meet once, Missa Digger? Becuz you can’t find a place like that in your head don’t mean it ain’t got one out there.’ She directed her chin at the window. ‘Mebbe you fink you know too much, Missa Digger.’
‘And mebbe you think you always right!’ I threw back.
Back in the car, she sniffed and slid a sideways glance at me. ‘Perhaps me’n’you upset becuz we not makin no headway. Missa Digger, you cook for me dis evenin?’
‘You comin to my place?’
‘Where else?’
‘You didn’t ask if I expecting people.’
‘You not expectin people. Miss Dressy not friends with you right now.’
My phone buzzed. ‘Digger, any luck with de whore?’
I gave Malan a description of the place I’d got from Tamara. ‘You know any place like that?’
He was silent for a while. ‘Nuh – don’t have no place like dat. Else I would know it.’ He mumbled something and hung up.
That night, Miss Stanislaus and I spent a couple of hours trawling through the biggest survey map of the island we could find.
I finally gave up. ‘We wrong, Miss Stanislaus. We been wrong all along. Ain got no place like that. Tamara was lying. Ain got no—’ A thought popped into my head.
‘Hold on,’ I said and stepped out of the house. I stared at my phone for a long while. I took a breath and called.
Malan’s response was a growl.
‘Quick question, Malan: Sarona there with you?’
‘Of course, Sarona here! Digger, what the—’
‘Malan, I got to tell you something about that fuckin woman. I want you to hear me out.’
‘How you call she?’
‘Okay, okay. Sorry, mebbe I had a lil too much to, erm, drink, yunno.’
He was bawling down the phone now. ‘You drunk! And is my woman you callin and askin for?’
‘Sorry, man!’ I cut off, my ears hot with embarrassment. I strolled back inside, dropped onto the sofa and sat there staring at the ceiling.
I perched on my step, a chill wind tugging on my shirt. I’d been swinging between hopelessness and what felt like serious fits of depression until Miss Stanislaus got so fed up with my moods she demanded that I take her home. That left me feeling worse.
I could hear bats zipping in the air above my head, their calls so piercing sometimes, it felt like they were driving needles through my eardrums and, not for the first time, I cursed the sensitivity of my hearing. Why was Miss Stanislaus so certain that Tamara was being truthful about a place that didn’t exist? Miss Stanislaus even had less faith in the survey map. ‘Is only road and hill them print on it. Ain’t got nuffing here bout sea and bush! I sure is not no Camaho people who make this map.’ That was when she decided to leave me to my fretting and go home.
I glanced at my watch – just past one. I picked up my phone and called Caran.
‘Caran, you up?’
�
��I up now, Digger. Tell me.’
‘Caran, I looking for a big ole stone house near rough sea. Big yard, wide doorway, wood floor, on a hill—’
‘Hell House,’ he said.
Hellon House. I didn’t correct him.
‘Jeezas!’ I said. ‘That Bush Ranger job don’t deserve you, Caran!’
‘What’s going down?’
I filled him in. ‘Call it logic, instinct, common sense – whatever you want, Caran, but everything telling me that boat ready to go. They got no more reason for staying here. They let go Tamara this morning. She gave us a description of the place the drivers been keeping her.’
‘Okay, Digger, instruct me.’ I heard the rustle of clothing.
‘Is one fifteen. We meet up at the beginning of the road that lead to the place. Let’s get there for three fifteen.’
‘Hell House make sense,’ he said.
‘A lot,’ I said. ‘It never cross my mind. Tell Mary I sorry to call you out this time-a-night. I got to pick up Miss Stanislaus and make some calls.’
62
Hellon House was on the far north-eastern tip of Camaho, facing the raw force of the Atlantic. In front of it, a dripping rock-rise, its crevices and ledges infested with crabs and resting seabirds. In bad weather the house became loud. Galeforce winds rattled the roof and made whirlwinds in the wide stone veranda that faced the raging waters.
After two centuries of hurricanes and the unending assault of the worst seas, Hellon House still stood its ground. The sea had carved out a small circular lagoon – fenced by thick mangroves – to the right of the edifice. To get to it from the sea, you had to know it was there. The stone beach that it led to could not be seen from the ocean or the building.
An Englishfella used to own it – same name as the house. Rumour had it that Hellon, the son of a plantation owner, read a book named King Lear and decided to be like that king-fella. Built the big ole house on the rocks, so the gulls became his audience. The fella went crazy. Went stupid. Went the way ov all flesh.
But then, I told Miss Stanislaus, maybe the story wasn’t exactly so, because we Camahoans treated history like food: we flavoured it to suit our tastes, and the spicier the better.
Eleven of us: Caran and his three Rangers, Malan, Miss Stanislaus and I; eight hundred yards out on the bucking waters were four coast guard men in a Guardian Class patrol boat, wrestling to keep their 12.7 mm machine guns trained on the exit from the lagoon. I’d called Malan because he had friends in the coast guard. By the time he called me back, the coast guard was on the way.
We raced up the hill with regulation torches in our hands. The front yard and door were more or less as I’d visualised them. Malan and I zig-zagged across the rotting floorboards and found the dirty little bedroom as Tamara had described it. I walked into the room. The only window was about eight feet above me – a big square cut into the stone wall and sloppily boarded over. An old spring bed, covered with a lumpy fibre mattress, was directly under it. A heap of shredded braids with a broken circular comb entangled in it, on the far end of the bed. A toothpaste tube squeezed flat lying on a makeshift stool in one corner by the entrance. Behind the stool, four condom wrappers with Manana printed on the box into which they’d been stuffed. I grabbed the condom wrappers and shoved them in my pocket.
Caran and his crew were out there shouting words at each other. I heard him calling my name and made my way to them through a tangle of young mangroves.
They were on the sharply sloping beach. Toya was pacing the pebbles. She’d taped a large LED torch to the helmet on her head.
She directed the muzzle of her rifle at two trenches that led from the lower part of the beach up to the foreshore. ‘Catamaran,’ she said. She moved around the indentations and again directed the muzzle at a tapering patch of dryness. ‘V-hulls – each bow is about twelve-foot long. Whole boat about forty feet.’
She flicked a booted foot at twelve lengths of coconut trunk. ‘They roll it back on these.’
She saw me observing her, did something subtle with her eyes and head – an underhand don’t-even-think-ov-it-fuckoff expression.
‘You say V-hull, what’s special about that?’ I said.
‘For speed. Faster in rough water too.’
‘When you think they move out of here?’
‘Not more than one hour ago – two for the most.’ She pointed at some tufts of salt-grass that fringed the beach. ‘Bruise still fresh on dem. They don’t fix themself back yet.’
I shook my head at her.
‘Toya know what she talking about. Eastward Island woman you looking at there, Digger. Sea people, yunno. De real thing.’
We combed the area, pushing southward through half an acre of mangroves because Caran said he thought there was another lagoon further down. There was and it was empty.
Morning had arrived by the time we returned. Malan was on the beach waving off the coast guard. The whole place was flooded with early light, yet the sense of desolation clung to it. I wondered how Tamara had survived it.
Malan stood watching the boat till it swung south for San Andrews. He sucked his teeth and shook his head. ‘So you fink we lose them?’ He’d fallen into a nasty mood, was glaring at me as if I was the one who’d taken off with the boat.
‘Not yet. They won’t be leaving daytime. I thinking foreday morning – a lil while before the sun come up. They need enough light to navigate the rough waters.’
Toya nodded. ‘Crosstide too – and Boko Reef, if is really north they headin.’
‘Is north,’ I said. ‘They come up from Venezuela.’
Malan cased his Sig Sauer, his mouth a sour knot. ‘I not wasting time here, I shooting ahead. Call me if y’all want me.’
Miss Stanislaus watched me watching Malan’s retreating back. ‘What you finking?’ she said.
‘If I right, Sarona won’t be here tomorrow. She’ll be leaving with the boat she come with. Or she’ll try to. I don’t believe he knows that.’
‘And you not tellin him?’
‘Last night I tried to.’
‘So, what you got in mind?’
‘Dunno yet, Miss Stanislaus.’
Chilman sounded subdued on the phone. Malan had already informed him.
‘Who’ idea it was to use the coast guard?’
‘I asked Malan to handle it,’ I said. ‘Made sense to me.’
‘Well, Minister of Justice know now. He been harassing me with calls. I not answering. I shut down the office and I instruct Malan Greaves to avoid him. You sure that boat leaving tomorrow?’
‘I strongly believe so, Sir.’
He cleared his throat. ‘What chance we got, Digson?’
‘Dunno, Sir.’
‘Digson, I want to ask you a pussnal question. The Luther Caine fella – you say he might be involved in this too?’
‘Yes, is what I been telling y’all from time.’
‘And he been communicating with his wife?’
‘Uh-huh?’
‘How much you talk to the man’ wife about your work?’
‘Not much.’
‘How much is not much?’
‘She knows what I do, Sir. If a case gets on the news, she would want to know whether I was involved in it. Is normal! But I don’t discuss my work with Dessie. If that’s what you getting at.’
‘It is what I getting at because what’s plain as day to me, Digson, is that the boat-people knew y’all wuz coming. From what Malan tell me, they leave Hell House in a rush.’
‘I don’t think—’
‘You don’t think, but you don’t know what she did or didn tell her husband.’
DS Chilman cut me off.
‘What happen, Missa Digger?’
‘That was Chilman on the phone. He’s upset. We let him down.’
‘We do we best, Missa Digger, and we best is the best that we kin do,’ Miss Stanislaus retorted.
I raised my eyes past the procession of breakers and the dim receding shapes of r
ock-islands in the far distance – a curving necklace at the end of which lay Kara Island. It made sense that the boatmen had chosen this place – it was the shortest distance between Camaho and Kara Island. After Kara Island, the open ocean. Blackwater was the only obstacle.
I felt a hand in the small of my back.
‘Missa Digger, yunno what I been finkin?’
‘Tell me.’
‘We got one last chance. You finkin de same ting too?’
‘Uh-huh – you think the others going want to try it?’
‘Missa Digger, they’ll go along with whatever you want them to do.’
I turned to face the group. ‘Okay! Me and Miss Stanislaus think we got one last window. Listen to what I have to say.’
63
Chilman stayed silent on the other end of the line when I called again.
‘Sir, we need transport. I wondering if we kin make use of the coast guard.’
‘What you up to?’
I explained our idea to him.
‘It not going to work.’
‘We dunno unless we try. Mebbe we get lucky. I asking you to use your powers, your contacts, or whatever, to get us a coast guard boat. We want the biggest one they got. Is six of us that going.’
‘No other boat going to do?’
‘We ain have no time to go looking for no other boat.’
‘I’ll see what I can do.’
‘Don’t see, Sir. I asking you to do it. We depending on you. They got to pick us up at Leapers’ Bay no later than five this evening.’
When we arrived at Leapers’ Bay, the morning sun was just hitting the peaks of Saint Catherine Mountain. Caran left us huddled under a seagrape tree, a hard wind grabbing at our clothing. He returned a couple of hours later with a bundle of waterproof ponchos, a big pot of steaming food, four flasks of hot chocolate, six aluminium cups and two loaves of bread the size of logs. Caran said something to his crew. They followed him and helped him drag a bag from his jeep. They formed a tight circle around it as he knelt in the sand and unzipped the canvas bag.
Guns: AK47s, and another wicked-looking weapon, four times the size of the others with a flat, skeletal stock and a long snout.
‘PKM,’ he said, looking up at me. ‘When them Americans invade Camaho, they make the government they force on us to get rid of them – communist weapons they call them, yunno. Better to get kill with American gun, at least you get a chance to go to heaven. A communist bullet hit you and is straight to hell you going. No argument!’