The Deceiver (63 page)

“One more chore, I believe, gentlemen,” said McCready, and strode back down the jetty toward the Jaguar, his gleaming white uniform cutting a swath through the crowd of onlookers.

The wrought-iron gates to the estate of Marcus Johnson were locked. Newson and Sinclair stepped out of the side door of their van and went straight over the wall without touching the top. Minutes later, from inside the estate, there came a soft
thunk
, as of the edge of a hard hand coming into contact with the human frame. The electric motor hummed, and the gates swung open.

Inside, and to the right, was a small hut with a control panel and telephone. Slumped on the floor was a man in bright beach shirt, his dark glasses crushed on the floor beside him. He was thrown into the last van with the two police sergeants. Newson and Sinclair slipped away across the lawns and were lost to view among the bushes.

Marcus Johnson was descending the tiled staircase toward the open-plan reception area when McCready strode in. He was pulling a silk bathrobe around himself.

“May I ask what the hell this means?” he demanded.

“Certainly,” said McCready. “Please read this.”

Johnson handed the warrant back.

“So? I have committed no offense. You break into my house—London will hear of this, Mr. Dillon. You will regret this morning’s work. I have lawyers.”

“Good,” said McCready. “You may well need them. Now, I want to interview your staff, Mr. Johnson—your election assistants, your associates. One has been kind enough to escort us to the door. Please bring him in.”

The two police sergeants picked up the gatekeeper, whom they had been supporting between them, and dropped him on a sofa.

“The other seven, if you please, Mr. Johnson, with their passports.”

Johnson crossed to an onyx telephone and picked it up. The line was dead. He put it down.

“I intend to summon the police,” he said.

“I am the police,” retorted Chief Inspector Jones. “Please do as the Governor asks.”

Johnson thought it over, then called upstairs. A head appeared at the upper banister. Johnson gave the order.

Two men in bright shirts emerged from the verandah and stood beside their master. Five more came down from the upper rooms. Several muffled female squeals were heard. There had apparently been a party going on.

Inspector Jones went around collecting their passports. The man on the sofa had his own removed from his back pocket.

McCready examined them all, one by one, shaking his head as he did so.

“They are not forgeries,” Johnson said with quiet assurance, “and as you see, all my associates entered Sunshine Island legally. The fact that they are of Jamaican nationality is irrelevant.”

“Not quite,” said McCready, “since all of them failed to declare that they have criminal records, contrary to Section Four, Subsection B-1, of the Immigration Act.”

Johnson looked dumbfounded, as well he might. McCready had just invented the whole thing.

“In fact,” he said evenly, “all these men are members of a criminal conspiracy known as the Yardbirds.”

The Yardbirds had started as street gangs in the slums of Kingston, taking their name from the backyard where they held sway. They began in protection racketeering and earned a reputation for vicious violence. Later, they developed into purveyors of hemp and the cocaine-derivative crack and went international. For short, they are known as Yardies.

One of the Jamaicans was standing near a wall against which a baseball bat was leaning. His hand slowly crept nearer to the bat.

Reverend Drake caught the movement. “Hallelujah, brother,” he said quietly, and hit him. Just once. Very hard. They teach many things in Baptist colleges, but the short-arm jab as a means of converting the ungodly is not one of them. The Jamaican rolled up his eyes and slid to the floor.

The incident acted as a signal. Four of the six remaining Yardies went for their waistbands beneath their beach shirts.

“Freeze! Hold it!”

Newson and Sinclair had waited until the upper floor was vacated, except for the girls, before coming in through the windows. Now they were on the upper landing, machine pistols covering the open area below. Hands froze in mid-movement.

“They daren’t fire,” snarled Johnson. “They’d hit you all.”

Favaro came across the marble floor in a roll and rose behind Marcus Johnson. He slid his left hand under the man’s throat and dug the barrel of the Colt into his kidneys.

“Maybe,” he said, “but you go first.”

“Your hands above your heads, if you please,” said McCready.

Johnson swallowed and nodded. The six Yardies raised their hands. They were ordered to walk to the wall and lean against it, hands high. The two police sergeants relieved them of their guns.

“I suppose,” snapped Johnson, “you will be calling me a Yardbird. I am a citizen of these islands, a respectable businessman.”

“No,” said McCready reasonably, “you’re not. You’re a cocaine dealer. That’s how you made your fortune. Running dope for the Medellin cartel. Since leaving these islands as a poor teenager, you’ve spent most of your time in Colombia, or setting up dummy companies in Europe and North America to launder cocaine money. And now, if you please, I would like to meet your Colombian chief executive, Señor Mendes.”

“Never heard of him. No such man,” said Johnson.

McCready thrust a photograph under his nose.

Johnson’s eyes nickered.

“This Señor Mendes, or whatever he is calling himself now.”

Johnson remained silent. McCready looked up and nodded to Newson and Sinclair. They had already seen the photograph. The soldiers disappeared. Minutes later, there were two short, rapid bursts of fire from the upper floor and a series of female screams.

Three Latin-looking women appeared at the top of the stairs and ran down. McCready ordered two of the constables to take them out to the lawn and guard them. Sinclair and Newson appeared, pushing a man in front of them. He was thin and sallow, with straight black hair. The sergeants pushed him down the stairs but stayed at the top.

“I could charge your Jamaicans with a variety of offenses under the law here,” McCready said to Johnson, “but in fact I have reserved nine seats on the afternoon plane to Nassau. I think you will find the Bahamian Police more than happy to escort you all to the Kingston flight. In Kingston you are expected. Search the house.”

The remaining local police did the search. They found two more prostitutes hiding under beds, further weapons, and a large amount of American dollars in an attaché case. In Johnson’s bedroom were a few ounces of white powder.

“Half a million dollars,” hissed Johnson to McCready. “Let me go, and it’s yours.”

McCready handed the attaché case to Reverend Drake. “Distribute it among the island’s charities,” he said. Drake nodded. “Burn the cocaine.”

One of the policemen took the packets and went outside to start a bonfire.

“Let’s go,” said McCready.

At four that afternoon the short-haul carrier from Nassau stood on the grass strip, its propellers whirling. The eight Yardbirds, all cuffed, were escorted aboard by two Bahamian Police sergeants, who had come to collect them. Marcus Johnson, his hands cuffed behind him, stood waiting to board.

“You may, after Kingston has extradited you to Miami, be able to get a message to Señor Ochoa, or Señor Escobar, or whoever it is for whom you work,” said McCready.

“Tell him that the taking-over of the Barclays through a proxy was a brilliant idea. To own the coast guards, customs, and police of the new state, to issue diplomatic passports at will, to have diplomatic luggage sent to the States, to build refineries and store depots here in complete freedom, to set up laundering banks with impunity—all extremely ingenious. And profitable, with the casinos for the high rollers, the bordellos …

“But if you can get the message through, tell him from me, it ain’t going to work. Not in these islands.”

Five minutes later, the boxlike frame of the short-haul lifted off, tilted its wings, and headed away toward the coast of Andros.

McCready walked over to a six-seat Cessna parked behind the hangar. Sergeants Newson and Sinclair were aboard, in the back row, their bag of “goodies” stashed by their feet, on their way back to Fort Bragg. In front of them sat Francisco Mendes, whose real Colombian name had turned out to be something else. His wrists were tied to the frame of his seat. He leaned out of the open door and spat onto the ground.

“You cannot extradite me,” he said in very good English. “You can arrest me and wait for the Americans to ask for extradition. That is all.”

“And that would take months,” said McCready. “My dear chap, you’re not being arrested, just expelled.” He turned to Eddie Favaro. “I hope you don’t mind giving his fellow a lift to Miami,” he said. “Of course, it could be that as you touch down, you will suddenly recognize him as someone wanted by the Metro-Dade force. After that, it’s up to Uncle Sam.”

They shook hands, and the Cessna ran up the grass strip, turned, paused, and put on full power. Seconds later it was out over the sea, turning northwest toward Florida.

McCready walked slowly back to the Jaguar, where Oscar waited. Time to go back to Government House, change, and hang the white uniform of Governor back in the wardrobe.

When he arrived, Detective Chief Superintendent Hannah was in Sir Marston Moberley’s office taking a call from London. McCready slipped upstairs and came down in his rumpled tropical suit. Hannah was hurrying out of the office, calling for Oscar and the Jaguar.

Alan Mitchell had worked until nine that Monday evening before he put through the call to Sunshine Island, where it was only four in the afternoon. Hannah took the call eagerly. He had spent the whole afternoon in the office waiting for the call.

“It’s remarkable,” said the ballistics expert. “One of the most extraordinary bullets I’ve ever examined. Certainly never seen one like it used in a murder before.”

“What’s odd about it?” asked Hannah.

“Well, the lead, to start with. It’s extremely old. Seventy years, at least. They haven’t made lead of that molecular consistency since the early 1920s. The same applies to the powder. Some tiny traces of it remained on the bullet. It was a chemical type introduced in 1912 and discontinued in the early 1920s.”

“But what about the gun?” insisted Hannah.

“That’s the point,” said the scientist in London. “The gun matches the ammunition used. The bullet has an absolutely unmistakable signature, like a fingerprint. Unique. It has exactly seven grooves, with a right-hand twist, left by the barrel of the revolver. No other handgun ever left those seven right-hand grooves. Remarkable, what?”

“Wonderful,” said Hannah. “Just one gun could have fired that shot? Excellent. Now, Alan, which gun?”

“Why, the Webley 4.55, of course. Nothing like it.”

Hannah was not an expert in handguns. He would not have known, at a glance, a Webley 4.55 from a Colt .44 Magnum. Not to look at, that is.

“Fine, Alan. Now tell me, what is so special about the Webley 4.55?”

“Its age. It’s a bloody antique. It was first issued in 1912, discontinued about 1920. It’s a revolver with an extremely long barrel, quite distinctive. They were never very popular because that extra-long barrel kept getting in the way. Accurate though, for the same reason. They were issued as service revolvers to British officers in the trenches in the First World War. Have you ever seen one?”

Hannah thanked him and replaced the receiver.

“Oh yes,” he breathed, “I’ve seen one.”

He was rushing across the hall when he saw that strange man Dillon from the Foreign Office.

“Use the phone if you like. It’s free,” he called, and climbed into the Jaguar.

When he was shown in, Missy Coltrane was in her wheelchair in the sitting room. She greeted him with a welcoming smile.

“Why, Mr. Hannah, how nice to see you again,” she said. “Won’t you sit down and take some tea?”

“Thank you, Lady Coltrane, I think I prefer to stand. I’m afraid I have some questions to ask you. Have you ever seen a handgun known as a Webley 4.55?”

“Why now, I don’t think I have,” she said meekly.

“I take leave to doubt that, ma’am. You have in fact got one. Your late husband’s old service revolver. In that trophy case over there. And I’m afraid I must take possession of it as vital evidence.”

He turned and walked to the glass-fronted trophy case. They were all there—the medals, the insignia, the citations, the cap badges. But they were rearranged. Behind some of them could be dimly discerned some oil smudges on the hessian, where another trophy had once hung.

Hannah turned back. “Where has it gone, Lady Coltrane?” he asked tightly.

“Dear Mr. Hannah, I’m sure I don’t know what you are talking about.”

He hated to lose a case, but he could feel this one slipping slowly away. The gun or a witness—he needed one or the other. Beyond the windows the blue sea was darkling in the fading light. Somewhere out there, deep in its unquestioning embrace, he knew lay a Webley 4.55. Oil smudges do not make a court case.

“It was there, Lady Coltrane. On Thursday, when I came to see you. It was there in the cabinet.”

“Why, Mr. Hannah, you must be mistaken. I have never seen any .. . Wembley.”

“Webley, Lady Coltrane. Wembley is where they play football.” He felt he was losing this match six-nil.

“Mr. Hannah, what exactly is it you suspect of me?” she asked.

“I don’t suspect, ma’am, I know. I know what happened. Proof is another matter. Last Tuesday, at about this hour, Firestone picked you and your chair up with those huge arms of his and placed you in the back of your van, as he did on Saturday for your shopping expedition. I had thought perhaps you never left this house, but with his help, of course, you can.

“He drove you down to the alley behind the Governor’s residence, set you down, and with his own hands tore the lock off the steel gate. I thought it might take a Land-Rover and chain to pull that lock off, but of course he could do it. I should have seen that when I met him. I missed it. Mea culpa.

“He pushed you through the open gate and left you. I believe you had the Webley in your lap. Antique it may have been, but it had been kept oiled over the years, and the ammunition was still inside it. With a short barrel you’d never have hit Sir Moberley, not even firing two-handed. But this Webley had a very long barrel, very accurate.