I introduced him to Unwin and reunited him with the aeroplane, which was the same one, chartered from Downsouth, that he had flown in to Trox before.
Unwin gave me a broad grin and patted Robin Darcy on the back. Amused at the mixed Darcy expression at this piece of presumption, I checked again with our pilot how our trip looked for weather as I stowed my hold-all in the cabin.
‘The lady Sheila,’ he said, ‘has overnight picked up her skirts and hiked north-east. She’s Category 2, and building, and if I lived on Grand Cayman island, I’d be hiring me this morning to go and fly me out.’
Long years a professional, Unwin moved economically around the aeroplane and forgot nothing. I’d thought Kris a good pilot, but Unwin flew like silk. In his hands Trox Island appeared punctually in its co-ordinates and the solidified grass strip accepted the rented turbo-prop twin without lurch or slither. When he had braked to a standstill near the ruined church, Unwin climbed down alone and walked off by himself towards the remains of the village.
It seemed strange for me to be back on that land and stranger still to have Robin Darcy beside me.
As we sat in the seats behind the pilot’s, I said to Robin, ‘You heard Amy say the island’s hers?’
He nodded. ‘She maintains it’s hers as no one else had set foot on it for months. Some sort of ancient law, I believe.’
‘She said I’d never been here.’
‘Yes,’ Robin said, explaining, ‘she wants her claim unopposed.’
‘I suppose you know,’ I said to Darcy, ‘she stands to make a million or so from pasteurisation techniques if she can keep that herd of cattle isolated. You must actually know that, as you helped her chase off the whole population with your radioactive mushrooms. You came back and tested that herd again in radiation protection suits the day you took me blindfolded to Cayman. The herd isn’t radioactive and will be worth several fortunes... maybe.’
‘How do you mean... maybe?’
I said, resigned, ‘I drank the milk of those cows, and it gave me a unique illness now called Mycobacterium paratuberculosis Chand-Stuart X.’
He said with understanding, ‘So that’s why you were in that hospital! But you’ve obviously thrown it off. That won’t prove that you were on the island.’
‘The antibodies will.’
He said, ‘Oh,’ and then ‘Oh,’ again. ‘And culture dishes by the hundred, I suppose.’
‘Those too.’
‘So you can prove you were on the island.’
I said, ‘Not only that. Amy won’t like the illness you can get if there is a glitch in pasteurisation. It’s a fierce disease, acute at first and lingering after. It seems I still have weeks of treatment ahead before I’m cured.’
I didn’t care much to think about it, and to change the subject I said to Robin, ‘What became of the original folder full of letters in strange foreign scripts?’
‘The one you saw here, that you managed to get out of the safe?’
‘That one,’ I agreed.
‘I was astounded when John Rupert reported you’d seen it.’
‘But you came back here for it,’ I said. ‘And you took it away the day you shipped me blindfolded to Cayman — and thank you for that.’
He smiled. ‘It didn’t fool you, though.’
‘Just saved me from a watery grave.’
‘Michael was all for dumping you,’ Robin nodded, and went on with gloom, ‘and he was also keen to get on with making profits from the orders in the folder, as there had already been too many delays, so he took it when I wasn’t looking.’
Robin had had trouble with the Traders insisting on doing their own thing. He said, ‘Only last night Michael told me he wasn’t very good with all those different scripts so he had given the folder to Amy to put it back in the safe here on Trox Island with all her cow stuff while he worked out what to do, and as far as I know it’s still there. That must be one of the reasons why Michael will fight anyone anywhere, because he’s made a fool of himself.’
‘Do you want that folder?’ I asked.
‘Of course. But the safe won’t open.’
‘Who says?’ I asked.
‘Amy says it won’t open so no one can take her cattle records.’
‘It might not matter,’ I said. I brought Jason Wells’s careful envelope of photos out of my hold-all. ‘I took all of these on the island,’ I said. ‘The first ones are of the raked clean mushroom sheds before the hurricane, and of the village and cattle before the hurricane, and the last one of cows and the three of the foreign scripts are from after.’
Robin looked with fascination at the pictures of the scripts.
‘I’ll use these,’ he said. ‘Better than nothing.’
I opened the aircraft’s rear unfolding door and stairs and, blown sideways by the wind, I walked down them, not blindfolded and with clothes and shoes on, and Robin hesitantly stopped, holding onto the handrails.
‘Come on,’ I encouraged him. ‘There’s no danger of radiation. The residents here were scared away by something like George Loricroft’s little packet of alpha particle powder, which gave off a lot of noise but made no one sick.’
Robin shrugged and followed me down the steps, and we walked in the blustery wind together towards the second of the thick-walled huts.
There were bulls about in the ruined village, and Friesian cows that mooed and rubbed against me as I patted them with fondness despite the rotten time they’d given me. They were, after all, the world’s only source of Mycobacterium paratuberculosis Chand-Stuart X.
Robin and I went into the hut away from the gathering gale, and looked at the safe.
Robin tried 4373 3673 (HERE FORD) and nothing happened.
‘Amy’s right,’ he said, frustrated. ‘It doesn’t open.’
‘Try 3673 4373,’ I said, ‘FORD HERE.’
Robin gave me a gruesome look of scepticism but punched in the numbers. Still nothing, still immovable door.
‘Hopeless,’ Robin said. ‘Amy was right.’
‘Amy was right,’ I agreed. ‘Amy knows her way about video rentals, and she may know about pasteurisation, and she also knows about safes.’
‘How do you mean?’
‘There’s no electricity on this island,’ I said.
‘I know that...’
‘So what powers the safe door?’
Robin, clever in all ways except in elementary science, frowned and didn’t answer.
‘Batteries,’ I said.
I slid downwards the small metal plate located under the display of numbers and letters, and there, side by side, stood a row of three very ordinary double A batteries.
‘But,’ Robin objected, ‘it’s got batteries in it, and it still doesn’t open.’
I said, ‘It’s got three batteries, but it’s got space for four.’ I fished in my hold-all, brought out the unopened pack of four double As that I had bought with my camera and, removing the three old ones, I pushed the four new ones into place and closed the flap.
I pressed 4373 3673, listened to the sharp click, lifted the flat lever upwards and opened the door.
Inside there was Amy’s row of cattle files and one buff familiar folder. I lifted it out, checked its contents, and with a slightly ceremonial gesture handed it to Robin.
Astonished, he said, ‘How did you know how to open the safe?’
I answered him, ‘I spent four days alone on this island. I know this safe well. I discovered its password. I checked its batteries. I just couldn’t decipher the scripts.’
‘I’ll get that done,’ Robin said. ‘I’ll use them. Nothing you have done will be wasted.’
Epilogue
Unwin flew through Hurricane Sheila.
He flew three straight passes through the eye at ten thousand feet and levelled the fuel in the tanks as a matter of course. Downsouth’s turbo-prop twin, in his hands, took Category 3 pressures and wind speeds as merely numbers that he dictated for me to write down.