The Deceiver (52 page)

On Sunshine, the news went through Port Plaisance within two hours, and on his regular evening call a radio ham told a fellow enthusiast in Chevy Chase, near Washington. The American ham, being a public-spirited fellow, called the Associated Press, which was dubious but finally emitted a dispatch that began, “The Governor of the British Caribbean Dependency known as the Barclay Islands may have been shot dead by an unknown assassin this evening, according to unconfirmed reports from the tiny group of islands.”

The dispatch, written by a night duty subeditor who had consulted a large map with an even larger magnifying glass, went on to explain where and what the islands were.

In London, where by now it was the small hours of the morning, Reuters took the story off its rival’s tape and tried to get confirmation from the Foreign Office. Just before dawn, the Foreign Office admitted it had received a report to that effect and that the appropriate steps were being taken.

The appropriate steps had involved the waking of a considerable number of people scattered in their various homes in and around London. Satellites operated by America’s National Reconnaissance Office noted heavy radio traffic between London and its High Commission in Nassau, and the obedient machines reported down to the National Security Agency at Fort Meade. They told the CIA, which already knew because they read the Associated Press. About a billion dollars worth of technology worked it out three hours after a radio ham with a homemade set in a shack on the side of Spyglass Hill had told a pal in Chevy Chase.

In London, the Foreign Office alerted the Home Office, and they in turn raised Sir Peter Imbert, Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police, asking for a senior detective to be sent out immediately. The Commissioner woke Simon Crawshaw of the Specialist Operations Division, who got on to the Commander controlling his Serious Crimes Branch.

Commander Braithwaite rang through to the twenty-four-hour Reserve Office and asked, “Who’s in the frame?”

The Reserve Office duty sergeant consulted his roster in New Scotland Yard. The RO at the Yard is a small office whose duty is to maintain a list of senior detectives available at short notice in the event of an urgent request to assist a police authority outside the metropolitan area. The detective at the top of the list has to be available to move at one hour’s notice. The man next in line must move at six hours’ notice, and the third one on twenty-four-hour notice.

“Detective Chief Superintendent Craddock, sir,” said the duty sergeant. Then his eye caught a note pinned to the side of the roster. “No, sir, sorry. He has to be at the Old Bailey to give evidence at eleven this morning.”

“Who’s next?” growled the Commander from his home at West Drayton, out near Heathrow Airport.

“Mr. Hannah, sir.”

“And who’s his Detective Inspector?”

“Wetherall, sir.”

“Ask Mr. Hannah to call me at home. Now,” said the Commander.

Thus it was that just after four
A.M.,
on a bitter, black December morning, the phone rang on a bedside table in Croydon and woke Detective Chief Superintendent Desmond Hannah. He listened to the instruction from the Reserve Office, and then, as bidden, he called a number in West Drayton.

“Bill? Des Hannah. What’s up?”

He listened for five minutes, then asked, “Bill, where the hell is Sunshine?”

Back on the island, Dr. Caractacus Jones had examined the body and pronounced it very dead. Darkness had descended over the garden, and he worked by flashlight. Not that there was much he could do. He was a general practitioner, not a forensic pathologist. He looked after the islanders’ general health as best he could, and he had a small surgery for the treatment of cuts and bruises. He had delivered more babies than he could recall, and he had removed ten times that number of fish hooks. As a doctor, he could issue a death certificate, and as a coroner, issue a burial certificate. But he had never cut up a dead Governor, and he did not intend to start now.

Serious injuries and maladies needing complex operations were always flown to Nassau, where they had a fine modern hospital with all the facilities for operations and post-mortems. He did not even have a mortuary.

As Dr. Jones finished his examination, Lieutenant Haverstock returned from the private office.

“Our people in Nassau say that a senior officer will be sent from Scotland Yard,” he announced. “Till then, we must keep everything just as it was.”

Chief Inspector Jones had posted a constable on the front door to keep away the sightseers, whose faces had already begun to appear at the front gate. He had prowled the garden and discovered the steel door through which the assassin had apparently entered and left. It had been pulled closed by the departing killer, which was why Haverstock had not noticed it. Inspector Jones at once posted a second constable outside the door and ordered him to keep everyone away from it. It might contain fingerprints that the man from Scotland Yard would need.

Outside in the darkness the constable sat down, leaned his back against the wall, and promptly fell asleep.

Inside the garden, Inspector Jones pronounced, “Everything must be left untouched until morning. The body must not be moved.”

“Don’t be a damned fool, boy,” said his uncle, Dr. Jones. “It will go rotten. It is already.”

He was right. In the heat of the Caribbean, bodies are normally interred within twenty-four hours. The alternative is unspeakable. A crowd of flies was already buzzing over the dead Governor’s chest and eyes. The three men considered their problem, as Jefferson tended to Lady Moberley.

“It will have to be the ice house,” said Dr. Jones at length. “There’s nowhere else.”

They had to agree he was right. The ice house, powered by the municipal generator, was down on the dock. Haverstock took the dead man’s shoulders, and Chief Inspector Jones took his feet. With some difficulty they maneuvered the still-limp body up the stairs, across the sitting room, past the office, and out into the hall. Lady Moberley put her head around the corner of her bedroom door, glanced over the banisters as her late husband went across the hall, uttered a series of “oh-oh-oh-ohs,” and retired again.

They realized in the hall that they could not carry Sir Marston all the way to the docks. The trunk of the Jaguar was considered for a moment, but it was rejected as being too small and not very seemly.

A police Land-Rover turned out to be the answer. Space was made in the back, and the former Governor was eased inside. Even with his shoulders against the rear of the front seats, his legs hung over the tailgate. Dr. Jones pushed them inside and closed the rear door. Sir Marston slumped, head forward, like someone returning from a very long and very liquid party.

With Inspector Jones at the wheel and Lieutenant Haverstock beside him, the Land-Rover drove down to the docks, followed by most of the population of Port Plaisance. There Sir Marston was laid out with greater ceremony in the ice house, where the temperature was well below zero.

Her Majesty’s late Governor of the Barclay Islands spent his first night in the afterworld sandwiched between a large martin and a very fine blackfin tuna. In the morning the expression on all three faces was much the same.

Dawn, of course, came five hours earlier in London than in Sunshine. At seven o’clock, when the first fingers of the new day were touching the roofs of Westminster Abbey, Detective Chief Superintendent Hannah was closeted with Commander Braithwaite in the latter’s office in New Scotland Yard.

“You take off just before twelve on the scheduled BA flight from Heathrow for Nassau,” said the Commander. “Tickets in first class are being arranged. The flight was full—it has meant easing another couple off the plane.”

“And the team?” asked Hannah. “Will they be in club or economy?”

“Ah, the team, yes. Fact is, Des, they’re being provided in Nassau. The Foreign Office is arranging it.”

Desmond Hannah smelled a large rat. He was fifty-one, an old-fashioned thief-taker who had worked his way rung by rung up the ladder from bobby on the beat—testing door locks on the streets of London, helping old ladies cross the road, and directing tourists—to the rank of Chief Superintendent. He had one year to go before retirement from the Force and was probably destined like so many of his kind to accept a less stressful job as a senior security officer for a major corporation.

He knew he would never make Commander rank, not now, and four years earlier he had been seconded to the Murder Squad of the Serious Crimes Branch of the Specialist Operations Division, a slot known as the elephants’ graveyard. You went in a hefty bull, and you came out a pile of bones.

But he liked things to be done right. On any assignment, even an overseas one, a Murder Squad detective could expect a backup team of at least four: a scene-of-crime officer, or SOCO, at least a sergeant; a lab liaison sergeant; a photographer; and a fingerprint man. The forensic aspect could be crucial, and usually was.

“I want them from here, Bill.”

“Can’t be done, Des. I’m afraid the Foreign Office is calling the shots on this one. They’re paying for it all, according to the Home Office. And it seems they’re penny-pinching. The High Commission in Nassau has arranged for the Bahamian Police to provide the forensic backup. I’m sure they’re very good.”

“Post-mortem? They doing that, too?”

“No,” said Commander Braithwaite reassuringly, “we’re sending Ian West out to Nassau for that. The body’s still on the island. As soon as you’ve had a look, get it shipped back to Nassau in a stiff-bag. Ian will be following you twenty-four hours later. By the time he gets to Nassau, you should have got the body to Nassau in time for him to go to work.”

Hannah grunted. He was slightly mollified. At least in Dr. Ian West, he would have one of the best forensic pathologists in the world.

“Why can’t Ian come to this Sunshine place and do the PM there?” he asked.

“They don’t have a mortuary on Sunshine,” the Commander explained patiently.

“So where’s the body?”

“I don’t know.”

“Hell, it’ll be half decomposed by the time I get there,” said Hannah. He could not have known that at that hour Sir Marston was not half decomposed. He was rock solid. Dr. West could not have gotten a chisel into him.

“I want ballistics done here,” he said. “If I get the bullet or bullets back, I want Alan to have them. The bullets could tie up the whole thing.”

“All right,” conceded the Commander. “Tell the High Commission people we need them back here in the diplomatic bag. Now, why don’t you get a decent breakfast? The car will be here for you at nine. Your Detective Inspector will have the murder bag. He’ll meet you at the car.

“What about the press?” asked Hannah as he left.

“Full cry, I’m afraid. It’s not in the papers yet. The news only broke in the small hours. But all the wire services have run it. God knows where they got it so fast. There may be a few reptiles at the airport trying to get on the same flight.”

Just before nine, Desmond Hannah appeared with his suitcase in the inner courtyard, where a Rover was waiting for him, a uniformed sergeant at the wheel. He looked around for Harry Wetherall, the Detective Inspector with whom he had worked for three years. He was nowhere to be seen. A pink-faced young man of about thirty came hurrying up. He carried a murder bag, a small suitcase that contained a variety of swabs, cloths, capsules, vials, plastic bags, scrapers, bottles, tweezers, and probes—the basic tools of the trade for discovering, removing, and retaining clues.

“Mr. Hannah?” said the young man.

“Who are you?”

“DI Parker, sir.”

“Where’s Wetherall?”

“He’s ill, I’m afraid. Asian flu or something. The Reserve Office asked me to step in. Always keep my passport in my drawer just in case. It’s awfully good to be working with you.”

Blast Wetherall! thought Hannah. Damn his eyes!

They rode out to Heathrow largely in silence. At least, Hannah was silent. Parker (“It’s Peter, really”) expatiated on his knowledge of the Caribbean. He had been there twice, with Club Med.

“Have you ever been to the Caribbean, sir?” he asked.

“No,” said Hannah, and lapsed back into silence.

At Heathrow, he and Parker were expected. Passport examination was a formality. The murder bag did not pass through the X-ray scanners, where it would have caused much interest. Instead, an official led the pair around the formalities and straight to the first class lounge.

The press was indeed in evidence, though Hannah did not see them until he was aboard the aircraft. Two organizations with money to spend had persuaded booked passengers to vacate their seats and take a later flight. Others were trying to get on the two Miami flights of the morning, while their head offices arranged charter planes from Miami into Sunshine. Camera teams from BBC TV, Independent TV News, and British Satellite Broadcasting were heading for the Barclays, spearheaded by their reporters. Reporter-photographer teams from five major newspapers were also in the melee.

In the lounge, Hannah was approached by a panting young sprog who introduced himself as being from the Foreign Office. He had a large file.

“We’ve put together some background briefing for you,” he said, handing over the file. “Geography, economy, population of the Barclays, that sort of thing. And, of course, a background on the present political situation.”

Hannah’s heart sank. A nice domestic murder would probably have cleared itself up in a few days. But if this was
political
… They were called for their flight.

After takeoff the irrepressible Parker took champagne from the stewardess and answered questions about himself with great pleasure. He was twenty-nine—young for a DI—and was married to a real estate agent called Elaine. They lived in the new and fashionable Dockland area, quite close to Canary Wharf. His own passion was a Morgan 4+4 sports car, but Elaine drove a Ford Escort GTI.

“Convertible, of course,” said Parker.

“Of course,” murmured Hannah. I’ve got a dinky on my hands, he thought. Dual-income-no-kids. A high-flyer.