He changed the subject to the scientists who had built both of the thick-walled huts and measured earthquakes on seismographs there and sent up radiosonde balloons to measure air pressure and temperature aloft each day. He knew them all by name as he worked for them, flying the Dakota.
The Unified Trading Company had taken over the second hut, and Unwin, frowning, said that towards the end the residents had told him the second hut had had a man guarding it with a rifle all the time, so that no one except the top men in the company could go in there. Those top men had said that as long as they were there as caretakers, the island belonged to them.
‘A right muddle,’ I commented. ‘Why did the caretakers leave?’
Unwin leaned back in the wrought-iron café chair and assessed me from under lowered lids.
‘Something frightened the residents,’ he slowly said.
I asked, ‘Do you know what it was?’
Unwin hesitated, then said they were told the mushroom sheds had become radioactive and the houses were unsafe with radon gas coming up from their foundations. ‘A boat came for everyone though, and they loaded all their belongings onto it and sailed to Grand Cayman, where most of them have relatives. Everybody left Trox at least a month ago, and no one’s developed radiation sickness, as far as I know.’
I let a moment or two pass, and asked, ‘Did you see any of the top men of Unified Trading guarding the hut when you were there?’
Unwin nodded and finished his beer. I waited with stifled impatience while he arranged for refills, but at length the source of all explanations agreed that yes, the top men, about five of them, had taken it in turns to stand guard over the hut, only actually they had sat on a chair in the doorway with a gun across their knees, and that had gone on for about a week, until the fishing boat arrived and took everyone to Cayman.
‘Did the Unified Trading men come from Cayman?’ I asked.
After deliberation he answered, ‘Some of them did.’
‘And the others?’
Unwin answered straightforwardly, ‘I don’t know. First of all, before they started the evacuation, they brought a big heavy cardboard box in off the boat and rolled it up to the second hut, on a sort of cart with wheels they used there — and don’t ask me what was in the box. I don’t know.’ He paused. ‘Everyone watched.’
The safe had been in the box, I thought.
‘Did you go into the hut afterwards?’ I asked.
‘Everyone went in. The Traders didn’t stop people any more but no one knew what they’d brought in the box, and there was nothing to see except the seismograph, which had been there before.’
‘And... um... what did the top men look like?’
Unwin pondered and sighed. ‘They were all forty or fifty. They wore baseball caps, but they weren’t young. It was three or four weeks ago. I can’t remember.’ He swallowed half a pint of beer, stood up and flapped a hand in a forty-minute farewell. ‘I’m going back to Trox next week,’ he said. ‘I’m supposed to be taking people and things to help to rebuild the meteorological station.’
‘What was all that about radioactivity?’ Will asked, still mystified, watching Unwin’s vanishing back.
I looked at Will vaguely. ‘I don’t really know. Where does he live?’
‘Over a hippie T-shirt store, next road to the right. Unwin’s a funny fish. I thought he’d be more interesting. Sorry.’
I said, ‘He knew a lot about the place.’
Will nodded ruefully and said, ‘I’d hardly heard of Trox Island before you asked me about it.’
‘That makes two of us. Let’s just forget it.’
His fast agreement to this shuffling-off suggestion was the basis of our future friendship: he didn’t want to have to take anything seriously — except the weather, of course.
So I didn’t tell him I’d been sucked into some sort of conspiracy, and now the conspirators regretted it and would like to spit me out again, so to speak, but they wanted to be sure first that I hadn’t recognised them or understood why they needed to blindfold me to rescue me. All of that was more likely to alienate Will than engage his further help.
We finished our beers in easy accord, and he invited me without hang ups to go on sharing his world wind news; while I offered him, as we parted, tours of the meteorological headquarters, back home in Bracknell.
Unwin, when I went looking for him, was sitting under another sun umbrella, drinking another beer.
I sat beside him. He shrugged and said, ‘Trox used to be a pretty place, you know.’
‘Will you get back there by Dakota?’
‘Sure.’
‘Did the Unified Trading Company, too, use a regular aeroplane of their own to service their staff?’
Unwin, bored, drank his beer, yawned, and said that mostly they rented one, it was cheaper.
Did he know which aeroplane they rented?
He knew the type. When I wrote out the registration number, he nodded positively with recognition and awakening interest. ‘That’s the one. It belongs to Downsouth Air Rentals. You can charter it with or without pilot by the hour, day, week, whatever you like.’
He accepted another refill.
‘If anything much happens on Trox,’ I suggested, ‘anything odd, I mean, would you pass the gen to Will, to forward it to me?’ I gave him some money I could hardly afford and he counted it without enthusiasm.
‘All right,’ he agreed.
‘I left my camera there, in one of the thick-walled huts, tied up by its strap to a beam near the roof, out of the cows’ reach. The camera’s useless. It’s all stuck up with mud. But I’d quite like it back, if you find it. If you send it to me, mud and all, how about a full case of Heineken?’
‘Two cases,’ he said. We shook on it and I wrote for him my grandmother’s address.
I touched the small paper with the aircraft registration number on it and asked without hope, ‘I don’t suppose you know where I would find the fishing boat that did Trox Island’s evacuation?’
Unwin’s yellow teeth spread wide in a grin and he jerked a thumb over his shoulder.
‘You walk a bit lame,’ he observed, ‘and you have a long way to go. She’s the Darnwell Rose, down to the end of the road, turn left, third... no fourth dock along. It’s not really a fishing boat. It’s an all purpose off-shore merchantman.’
I thanked him sincerely and started down the long road, and presently found him catching me up.
‘I know the Master. He’s sailing tonight. I owe him a beer,’ he said, and I was glad of his company and his introduction.
The Master of the Darnwell Rose, bulky, with gold sleeve rings, bushily bearded, went below with Unwin to more beer in his cabin, and sent up a fearsomely tough-looking second in command to unbutton to me about Trox.
‘A trading company, Unified Traders, had chartered the Darnwell Rose to ship a whole load of household goods from Trox Island to Grand Cayman,’ he said, ‘and there had been a question about clearing everything from regulations about radon gas, but they’d had no problem in the end. None of the furniture was radioactive, so we did the job.’
I asked, ‘Do you remember taking to Trox Island a heavy cardboard container?’
‘The safe, do you mean?’
‘Yes,’ I nodded.
‘Look,’ he said, ‘if I tell you what happened, I’ll deny it.’
‘I would expect nothing less.’
He sniffed and wiped his nose with the back of his hand.
‘So,’ he said, ‘to stop it getting damaged on the journey the safe door was wedged open with a lot of screwed up paper, and there was a folder type of thing lying in a drawer in a desk nearby, and as we were to take all the furniture, one of the deck hands put the folder in the safe and took the desk, and when everything had been cleared by the Geiger counter they put that too in the safe, meaning both things only to be there for a minute or two, but a seaman shut the safe door and they couldn’t open it again — so they just put the whole safe into the slot in the wall that was ready for it, and left it there, and no one ever complained. The Master reckoned the trading company that chartered us knew how to get the door open again. Is that what you wanted to now?’