‘Cops are the same the world over, I guess.’
‘Damn right. I wouldn’t be surprised if they hang him for it, too.’
‘You still hang people here?’
‘When we’re allowed to, by your English courts. Legal system here allows these bastards to appeal to something called the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council. Whatever that is. You ask me, it’s a lot of do-gooders who don’t know shit about Antigua.’
I smiled. ‘You know the Leeward Islands well, Everton?’
‘Like the back of me hand, boss. Got my own boat. I like to go fishing sometimes. When I’m not watching Asot Arcade Parham play football.’ He shrugged. ‘That’s a local side. Pretty good by island standards. Like they’re top of the Antigua Premier Division. But not Spurs standard, you know?’
I nodded. ‘Tell me something. How easy is it to get from Antigua to Guadeloupe?’
‘LIAT — that’s the local airline — they operate a flight most days from St John’s to Pointe-à-Pitre. A short hop. Half-hour at most. Cost you maybe eighty bucks.’
‘If Jérôme Dumas did decide to leave the island, then I’m thinking a boat would be the best way to do it, undetected.’
‘Oh sure. All sorts of folk come and go by boat, especially at night. Weed smugglers, mostly. Like DJ Jewel Movement. Word is he moved a bit of grass hisself, sometimes. But why Guadeloupe? Barbuda is nearer. And British, too. You don’t have to show your passport there when you land.’
‘Because Jérôme Dumas is originally from Guadeloupe.’
‘Gotcha. Well now. Ain’t no ferry service from here down to there, boss. But I could take you there on my next day off, no problem. Off the books, as it were. Guadeloupe is only a few hours’ sailing away.’
‘All right. It’s a deal. And ask around St John’s, will you? Discreetly. See if you can find out if anyone else with a boat might have performed a similarly clandestine ferry service for Jérôme Dumas.’
‘Tongues sure wag better when the nose smells cash, boss.’
‘True.’ I handed over a couple of hundred East Caribbean dollars. ‘See how much talk you can get with that, Everton. And keep the rest for yourself.’
Everton throttled back and let the boat drift towards the little wooden jetty where several porters were awaiting our arrival in what resembled a largish birdcage. A little red golf cart took me up to the main part of the hotel where I swiftly checked in and went to my suite, which lay on the other side of an antique gate and at the end of a small private courtyard surrounded with palm trees overlooking the sea. There was an outdoor garden full of frangipani flowers with a rain shower and a tub. It was hard to believe that I was being paid, handsomely, to be here. I sipped my welcome cocktail, switched on the TV and settled down to find out what sports channels they had on cable. You do the important things first, right?
16
The RPF police station in St John’s Newgate Street had seen better days but none of them I’ll warrant since the British had left. A yellowing concrete three-storey building with iron bars on the lower windows and a threadbare flag on a crooked white pole in the front courtyard, it looked more like a cheap motel with hot and cold running cockroaches. Close by was the Museum of Antigua and Barbuda but the police station itself might easily have been one of the museum’s more interesting exhibits. Everything in there seemed to move at an invisible pace, as if displayed in some dusty glass case. Just around the corner to the east was St John’s Cathedral and a girls’ high school and a few blocks to the west was the island’s deepwater harbour where cruise ships as big as office blocks from places as far afield as Mallorca and Norway were now docked. The girls’ school was on its break or its lunch hour. I knew that because through the open windows of the police station you could have heard the girls’ screaming and shouting back in Palma and Oslo.
I’d seen the police inspector handling Jérôme’s disappearance before — on Google Images. His name was Winchester White. There was a photograph of the island’s top-ranking security officials in a meeting about something and, in the picture, it looked a lot like he was asleep. Maybe it was just an unfortunate photograph but, speaking to Inspector White, I quickly gained the impression that he was looking forward to closing his eyes again the minute I’d left his office — not least because there was a large tin of Ovaltine behind his woolly head. He wore a neatly pressed khaki shirt and a pair of matching trousers. His dark, peaked cap lay on the desk in front of him as if he’d been begging for change. Except for the fact that Winchester White was black he looked like the district commissioner from an old Tarzan movie. I wouldn’t have been at all surprised if he’d had an officer’s swagger stick.
‘It’s not that my employers doubt the efficiency of the RPF,’ I said. ‘Not for a minute. It’s just that they feel they have to be seen to be doing something. In fact, the insurance company is insisting on it. I’m sure you understand how that works. Jérôme Dumas is extremely valuable to both Paris Saint-Germain and FC Barcelona. Not to mention a whole host of companies with whom Mr Dumas has important commercial arrangements to do with his image rights. My intention here is not to step on the RPF’s toes but, perhaps, to provide a different perspective on exactly what might have become of him. Please understand, I’m here to assist, not to obstruct.’
This sounded good; shit, it might even have been true. There are times when I even manage to convince myself. The UN Secretary General himself couldn’t have sounded more diplomatic.
‘It’s not the RPF,’ he said dully. ‘It’s the RPFAB.’
‘Right. Thank you.’
‘You’re forgetting Barbuda.’
‘No, I wasn’t. I was just giving you some shorthand. So that I didn’t waste your valuable time. But my mistake. I can see now that wasn’t really important.’
‘It’s important if you is from Barbuda,’ he said. ‘Like I am.’
There was a longish silence while the police inspector tasted the inside of his mouth and then scratched an almost invisible pimp moustache before a short coughing fit had him hawking something up, and going to the window to spit. As he moved I caught the strong smell of sweat on his body, like the sharply sour odour of a waxed jacket, and I began for the first time to consider something of the everyday, harsh reality of his life as a policeman on a little tropical island. Against the bright sun he almost disappeared for a moment, like a character on Star Trek, before he strolled back to his swivel chair and sat down again amidst a cacophony of creaking wood, imitation leather and professional pride.
‘Go ahead and ask your questions,’ he said, ‘and I’ll tell you what I can tell you.’
‘Are there any leads you’re working on?’
‘Not as such, no.’
‘Have any bodies been found on the island that have yet to be identified?’
‘I don’t think he dead, if that’s what you mean, Mr Manson. Antigua’s a very safe place. Safer than London or Paris.’
‘Still, there are murders here, aren’t there? DJ Jewel Movement, for example.’
‘Murder is rare on the island. We caught the man who killed DJ JM more or less immediately. The whole thing be cut and dried.’
‘Yes, yes of course. But actually I was thinking of suicide.’
‘Don’t do it, Mr Manson.’ He grinned. ‘You’re still a young man with your whole life in front of you.’
I smiled back at him. ‘He was prone to depression, you see.’
‘What the hell he have to be depressed about when he can afford to stay at Jumby Bay?’