The Deceiver (53 page)

Parker had gone straight from school to a red-brick university and gotten a degree, starting with PPE (politics, philosophy, and economics) and switching to law. He had joined the Metropolitan Police straight from there, and after the mandatory cadetship he had worked for a year in the outer suburbs before going on the Bramshill Police College Special Course. From there, he had spent four years in the Commissioner’s Force Planning Unit.

They were over County Cork when Hannah closed the Foreign Office file and asked gently, “And how many murder investigations have you been on?”

“Well, this is my first, actually. That’s why I was so pleased to be available this morning. But in my spare time I study criminology. I think it’s so important to understand the criminal mind.”

Desmond Hannah turned his face to the porthole in pure misery. He had a dead Governor, a pending election, a Bahamian forensic team, and a rookie DI who wanted to understand the criminal mind. After lunch, he dozed all the way to Nassau. He even managed to forget about the press. Until Nassau.

The Associated Press news bulletin of the previous evening had been too late to make the British newspapers in London, with their five-hour disadvantage, but it had been just in time to catch the
Miami Herald
before that paper was put to bed.

At seven in the morning, Sam McCready was sitting on his balcony sipping his first prebreakfast coffee of the day and gazing out over the azure sea when he heard the familiar rustle of the
Herald
coming under his door.

He padded across the room, took the paper, and returned to the balcony. The AP story was at the bottom of the front page, where a piece about a record-breaking lobster had been scrapped to make way for it. The story was just the AP dispatch, referring to unconfirmed reports. The headline said simply:
BRITISH GOVERNOR SLAIN?
McCready read it several times.

“How very naughty,” he murmured, and withdrew to the bathroom to get washed, shaved, and dressed. At nine, he dismissed his cab outside the British Consulate in Miami, went in, and made himself known—as Mr. Frank Dillon of the Foreign Office. He had to wait half an hour for the arrival of the Consul, then he got his private meeting. By ten, he had what he had come for, a secure line to the embassy in Washington. He spoke for twenty minutes to the Head of the SIS Station, a colleague he knew well from London days and with whom he had stayed the previous week while attending the CIA seminar.

The Washington-based colleague confirmed the story and added a few more details that had just arrived from London.

“I thought I might pop over,” said McCready.

“Not really our cup of tea, is it?” suggested the Head of Station.

“Probably not, but it might be worth a look. I’ll need to draw some funds, and I’ll need a communicator.”

“I’ll clear it with the Consul. Could you put him on the line?”

An hour later, McCready left the consulate with a wad of dollars, duly signed for, and an attaché case containing a portable telephone and an encrypter with a range that would enable him to make secure calls to the consulate in Miami and have them passed on to Washington.

He returned to the Sonesta Beach, packed, checked out, and called an air taxi company at the airport. They agreed on a two
P.M.
takeoff for the ninety-minute run to Sunshine.

Eddie Favaro was also up early. He had already decided there was only one place he could start—the game-fishing community down at the fishing quay. Wherever Julio Gomez had spent his vacation, a large part of it surely had been there.

Having no transport, he walked. It was not far. Almost every wall and tree he passed bore a poster urging the islanders to vote for one candidate or the other. The faces of both men—one big, round, and jolly, the other smooth, urbane, and paler in tone—beamed from the posters.

Some had been torn down or defaced, whether by children or by adherents to the other candidate, he could not tell. All had been professionally printed. On a warehouse wall near the docks was another message, crudely painted. It said,
WE WANT REFERENDUM.
As he passed, a black jeep carrying four men raced up.

The jeep screeched to a halt. The four men wore hard expressions, multicolored shirts, and wraparound black glasses that hid their eyes. Four black heads stared at the message, then swiveled toward Favaro as if he were responsible for it. Favaro shrugged as if to say, “Nothing to do with me.” The four impassive faces stared at him until he rounded a corner. Then he heard the jeep, revving hard, drive away.

At the fishing quay, groups of men were discussing the same news that had occupied those in the hotel lobby. He interrupted one group to ask who took visitors fishing. One of the men pointed farther down the quay to a man working on a boat.

Favaro crouched on the quay and made his inquiry. He showed the fisherman a picture of Julio Gomez.

The man shook his head. “Sure, he was here last week. But he go out with Jimmy Dobbs. That’s Jimmy’s boat over there, the
Gulf Lady
.”

There was nobody on the
Gulf Lady
. He leaned on a mooring post to wait. Like all cops, he knew the meaning of patience. Information gathered in a matter of seconds was for TV thrillers. In real life, you spent most of your time waiting. Jimmy Dobbs showed up at ten.

“Mr. Dobbs?”

“That’s me.”

“Hi—my name’s Eddie. I’m from Florida. This your boat?”

“Sure is. You here for the fishing?”

“That’s my game,” said Favaro. “Friend of mine recommended you.”

“That’s nice.”

“Julio Gomez. You remember him?”

The black man’s open, honest face clouded. He reached into the
Gulf Lady
and took a rod from a holder. He examined the jig lure and the hook for several seconds, then handed the rod to Favaro.

“You like yellowtail snapper? They some good snapper right under the dock. Down at the far end.”

Together they walked to the far end of the jetty, out of earshot of anyone else. Favaro wondered why.

Jimmy Dobbs took the rod back and cast expertly across the water. He reeled in slowly, letting the brightly colored jig wriggle and turn beneath the surface. A small blue runner made a dart for the lure and turned away.

“Julio Gomez dead,” Jimmy Dobbs said gravely.

“I know,” said Favaro. “I’d like to find out why. He fished with you a lot, I think.”

“Every year. He good man, nice guy.”

“He tell you what his job was in Miami?”

“Yep. Once.”

“You ever tell anyone else?”

“Nope. You a friend or a colleague?”

“Both, Jimmy. Tell me, when did you last see Julio?”

“Right here, Thursday evening. We’d been out all day. He booked me for Friday morning. Never showed up.”

“No,” said Favaro. “He was at the airstrip, trying to get a flight to Miami. In a hurry. He picked the wrong plane—blew up over the sea. Why did we have to walk down here to talk?”

Jimmy Dobbs hooked a two-pound horse-eye jack and handed the shivering rod to Favaro. The American reeled in. He was inexpert. The jack took some slack line and jumped the hook.

“They some bad people on these islands,” he said simply.

Favaro realized he could now identify an odor he had smelled in the town: It was fear. He knew about fear. No Miami cop is stranger to that unique aroma. Somehow, fear had now come to paradise.

“When he left you, he was a happy man?”

“Yep. One fine fish he was taking home for supper. He was happy. No problems.”

“Where did he go from here?”

Jimmy Dobbs looked surprised. “To Mrs. Macdonald’s, of course. He always stayed with her.”

Mrs. Macdonald was not at home. She was out shopping. Favaro decided to come back later. First, he would try the airport. He returned to Parliament Square. There were two taxis, but both drivers were at lunch. There was nothing he could do about it; he crossed the square to the Quarter Deck to eat and wait for them to come back. He took a verandah seat from where he could watch for the taxis. All around him was the same excited buzz that had pervaded breakfast—the talk being only of the murder of the Governor the previous evening.

“They sending a senior detective from Scotland Yard,” one of the group near Favaro announced.

Two men entered the bar. They were big, and they said not a word. The conversation died. The two men removed every poster proclaiming the candidacy of Marcus Johnson and put up different ones. The new posters said,
VOTE LIVINGSTONE, THE PEOPLE’S CANDIDATE.
When they had finished, they left.

The waiter came over and set down grilled fish and a beer.

“Who were they?” asked Favaro.

“Election helpers of Mr. Livingstone,” the waiter said expressionlessly.

“People seem to be frightened of them.”

“No, sah.”

The waiter turned away, eyes blank. Favaro had seen that expression in interrogation rooms at the Metro-Dade headquarters. Shutters come down behind the eyes. The message is, “There’s no one home.”

The jumbo carrying Superintendent Hannah and DI Parker touched down at Nassau at three
P.M.,
local time. A senior officer of the Bahamian Police boarded first, identified the two men from Scotland Yard, introduced himself, and welcomed them to Nassau. He escorted them out of the cabin before the other passengers, then down to a waiting Land-Rover. The first gust of warm, balmy air swept over Hannah. In his London clothes he felt sticky at once.

The Bahamian officer took their baggage checks and handed them to a constable, who would extract the two valises from the rest of the baggage. Hannah and Parker were driven straight to the VIP lounge. There they met the British Deputy High Commissioner, Mr. Longstreet, and a more junior staffer called Bannister.

“I’ll be coming to Sunshine with you,” said Bannister. “Some problem over there with the communications. It seems they can’t get the Governor’s safe open. I’ll fix a new set, so you can talk to the High Commission here on a direct radiotelephone link. Secure, of course. And of course, we’ll have to get the body back when the coroner releases it.”

He sounded brisk and efficient. Hannah liked that. He met the four men from the forensic team provided by the Bahamian Police as a courtesy. The conference took an hour.

Hannah looked down from the windows to the airport apron below. Thirty yards away, a chartered ten-seater was waiting to take him and his now-expanded party to Sunshine. Between the building and the airplane, two camera teams had been set up to catch the moment. He sighed.

When the final details had been settled, the group left the VIP lounge and headed downstairs. Microphones were thrust at him, notepads held ready.

“Mr. Hannah, are you confident of an early arrest?” “Will this turn out to be a political murder?” “Is Sir Marston’s death linked to the election campaign?”

He nodded and smiled but said nothing. Flanked by Bahamian constables, they all emerged from the building into the hot sunshine and headed for the aircraft. The TV cameras recorded it all. When the official party had boarded, the journalists raced away toward their own chartered planes, which had been obtained by the production of large wads of dollars or prechartered by the London offices. In an untidy gaggle the planes began to taxi for takeoff. It was four twenty-five.

At three-thirty, a small Cessna dropped its wings over Sunshine and turned for the final run-in to the grass airstrip.

“Pretty wild place!” the American pilot shouted to the man beside him. “Beautiful, but from way back! I mean, they don’t have nothing here!”

“Short on technology,” agreed Sam McCready. He looked through the prespex at the dusty strip coming towards them. To the left of the strip were three buildings: a corrugated-iron hangar, a low shed with a red tin roof (the reception building), and a white cube with the British flag flying above it—the police hut. Outside the reception shed, a figure in a short-sleeved beach shirt was talking to a man in boxer shorts and singlet. A car stood nearby. The palm trees rose on either side of the Cessna, and the small plane thumped onto the grit. The buildings flashed past as the pilot settled his nose-wheel and lifted his flaps. At the far end of the strip, he turned around and began to taxi back.

“Sure, I remember that plane. It was dreadful when I heard later that those poor people were dead.”

Favaro found the baggage porter who had loaded the Navajo Chief the previous Friday morning. His name was Ben, and he always loaded the baggage. It was his job. Like most of the islanders, he was free-and-easy, honest, and prepared to talk.

Favaro produced a photograph. “Did you notice this man?”

“Sure. He was asking the owner of the plane for a lift to Key West.”

“How do you know?”

“Standing right next to me,” said Ben.

“Did he seem worried, anxious, in a hurry?”

“So would you be, man! He done told the owner his wife called him and their kid was sick. The girl, she say that was real bad, they should help him. So the owner said he could ride with them to Key West.”

“Was there anyone else nearby?”

Ben thought for a while. “Only the other man helping load the luggage,” he said. “Employed by the owner, I think.”

“What did he look like, this other loader?”

“Never seen him before,” said Ben. “Black man, not from Sunshine. Bright-colored shirt, dark glasses. Didn’t say nothing.”

The Cessna rumbled up to the customs shed. Ben and Favaro shielded their eyes from the flying dust. Favaro saw a rumpled-looking man of medium build get out, take a suitcase and attaché case from the locker, stand back, wave to the pilot, and go into the shed.

Favaro was pensive as he studied the scene. Julio Gomez did not tell lies. But he had no wife and child. He must have been desperate to get on that flight and home to Miami. But why? Knowing his partner, Favaro was convinced that he had been under threat. The bomb was not for Klinger. It was for Gomez.

He thanked Ben and wandered back to the taxi that waited for him. As he climbed in, a British voice at his elbow said, “I know it’s a lot to ask, but could I hitch a ride into town? The cab rank seems to be empty.”