“You’re mad! You think that boat is still around? They’ll have got rid of Dream-focking-Baby long ago. They’ll have sunk her, so they will. They don’t want trouble, you fool, any more than the rest of us want trouble.”
I pushed the gun into the sweaty space at the small of my back, then let my shirt fall like a curtain over it. “You want me to post your letter?” I offered.
“You’re a lunatic.” McIllvanney was beginning to recover his equilibrium. He opened his window and shouted down at Bellybutton who was pretending to do some work on the pontoons, but in reality was ogling the lubricious Donna. “Hey, Bellybutton! If you ever see Nick Breakspear in this yard again, you run him off, you hear me? Run him off!”
Bellybutton and Donna both stared in surprise at the office window. McIllvanney, pleased with himself, slammed it shut, then glared at Stella, his secretary, who was standing in the doorway with a carton of milk. “And that goes for you, too,” he told her, “if you see this bastard in my yard again, call the police.”
“Yes, Mr McIllvanney.” Stella said nervously.
“Now you,” he pointed at me, “fock away off.”
“Give me my money first.” I did not dare ask him for the money I had earned on the Crowninshield charter, guessing that a sunken schooner had probably voided that contract, but I still wanted my slice from the proctologist and the lawyers.
McIllvanney scribbled me a cheque that he bad-temperedly threw across the desk. I smiled my thanks, then, obedient to his wishes, focked away off.
I went directly from McIllvanney’s office to the bank, determined to cash his cheque before perversity decided him to stop payment. With that precaution successfully accomplished I was left with the best part of a day to kill before I could catch a return ferry, so I found a public telephone that worked and dialled the Maggot’s number. I was half hoping that the big man would offer to fly me home to Straker’s Cay, but I also wanted reassurance that he had delivered Ellen safely to Addendum’s marina. Or perhaps I just wanted to talk to someone about Ellen; I had the disease of all lovers, the need to spread my happiness to whoever could be persuaded to listen.
But that was not to be the Maggot, for all I reached was his answering machine that first belched at me, then chuckled, then instructed me to lay the word down on him. I complied, saying that I would try to reach him later and would buy him a beer if he was free at lunchtime.
I then bought a copy of the Nassau Guardian and took it to a bar where, under the soft thump of a revolving ceiling fan, I sipped a pale beer and read about the new Health Clinic on Great Exuma, and about how the Combined Baptist Choirs of Great Abaco would be raising their voices to the Lord in a Concert of Praise on Sunday next, and how the dead body that had been discovered on the east coast of Andros had now been identified as that of an American tourist, Jackson Chatterton.
I stared at the newspaper. It was shaking, but whether it was my hand or the draught from the fan I could not tell.
The newspaper reported that Jackson Chatterton had drowned, and that his body had been in the water for some time before it was discovered. His remains had now been delivered into the care of the American authorities. It was a little filler of a story, a squib to take up space, but it left me quaking with horror.
Oh God, no, I prayed. No, please God. I closed my eyes very tight, but that did not help, so I opened them again and stared at the small story that was so very bland, and I supposed that Chatterton’s killers must have been waiting on the ferry, because they had surely assumed that all of us would be leaving Straker’s Cay on the next sailing after Thessy’s funeral. But instead they had only found Jackson, which meant they must still be looking for Ellen and me, and I remembered Warren Smedley’s warning, that I had treated so lightly, and I felt stark naked and very vulnerable in that hot, brightly painted bar; I looked frenetically around me, but there were only two men playing dominoes, a dog that was twitching in its flea-ridden sleep, and a barman who gave me a very odd look as though he suspected I was already drunk.
I tore the story from the newspaper and shoved it into my pocket. The gun was a cold hard lump in my back. I felt certain that everyone could see its obvious shape beneath my shirt. My heart was thumping. I was frightened. I was still having difficulty in coming to terms with the news.
Jackson Chatterton was dead. The big, stolid, angry, gentle man was dead. I remembered his childish delight in being photographed in front of the great seas that had been running before the storm, and I felt a surge of impotent anger at the men who had killed him, and doubtless they were the same men who would be trying to murder Ellen and me. They were not just taking revenge for the deaths of the two gunmen, but destroying all the witnesses to Thessy’s murder.
And suppose I was the only witness left alive? Suppose that Ellen had not sailed away? My blood was running cold with terror as I abandoned what was left of my beer and went into the sweltering street. There were no taxis. God damn it, there were no taxis! The street was crowded with cheerful American sailors, come ashore from one of the naval ships engaged in Exercise Stingray, and the sailors seemed to have taken all the cabs. I pushed through the crowds on the pavement, balefully watching for any face that watched me. I saw no one suspicious, but I did see a taxi suddenly swerve to drop three sailors outside a massage parlour, and I shouted at it, waved, then commandeered it by climbing inside.
I paid off the cab at the marina where Addendum had been moored, and from where Ellen should have sailed two days before. The marina’s gate was open and unguarded. Next to the gate was a small office, but, though its door was open and a small battered radio was playing rock music, the office was empty.
I ran down to the pontoons. I could see a score of monohulls, and the usual cluster of gleaming motor yachts, but there were no catamarans moored in the marina. I felt a surge of relief that Ellen was safe, for I knew our enemies would never find her if she was at sea, lost in or beyond the Gulf Stream and among the swarms of other pleasure craft; but then, just as I felt myself relaxing from the panic that had besieged me, I saw her.
I saw Addendum. The big white catamaran lay alongside the very last pontoon. Her name was painted in fake black oversize typescript across the transom of her starboard hull, and she had the forlorn air of abandonment.
The panic returned then, but I told myself there was still hope. There had to be hope, for I could not bear the thought of what I most feared. Perhaps Ellen was still provisioning the boat? I went to the end pontoon, then climbed aboard Addendum to discover that no one else had been aboard the big catamaran in days. Litter had blown from the marina’s yard to collect in a leeward corner of her capacious cockpit, while a spider had made a thick white web across the louvres of the padlocked cabin door. A dishrag had been hung to dry from the ensign-hooks on the signal halliard and the dishrag’s folds had stiffened to the consistency of dry chamois leather.
I dutifully rattled the cabin door, then peered through one of the windows into the vast cabin. It was empty. I went forrard and tried the forehatch, but that was as well secured as the main companion-way. A dry brown palm frond had been blown on to the netting which was rigged between the bows of the twin hulls. I crouched next to a Dorade ventilator box and put my fingers by its vents to feel the whisper of heated air coming from Addendum’s stifling interior. I sniffed the air, dreading that I might smell the awful stench of a body left to rot, but the exhausting air was merely musty. Ellen was not here and, so far as I could tell, she had never been here.
I heard a sudden blast of music, and I turned to see a workman wander out of one of the marina sheds. He was a Rastafarian, carrying a vast music box on one shoulder as he half danced and half shuffled his way across the yard.
“Hey!” I shouted at the man.
He stared at me in complete astonishment, as though I was an angel come down from paradise. Then he turned and stared towards the open gate before looking back to me, thus slowly convincing himself that I was real person who had ar
rived through the gate and not some heaven-sent apparition. “What are you doing, man?”
“Is this the Steinways’ boat?” I was trying to convince myself that there might be two catamarans called Addendum.
The man switched off the music. “That’s Barry Steinway’s boat. You a friend of his?”
I climbed on to the pontoon and walked slowly towards him. “Have you seen a girl on board Addendum? A pretty girl? She should have been here two days ago. She’s got red hair and good legs.”
He grinned at my last words, but shook his dreadlocks. “No, man. I ain’t seen no red girl.” He danced two self-absorbed and silent steps before offering me a toothless grin. “She real pretty?”
I took out a five-dollar bill. “She’s tall,” I said, “and sun-tanned, and she was supposed to be looking after the boat for the Steinways. She was going to sail it to Florida. Has she been here? Have there been any telephone messages for her? Her name’s Ellen.”
“I told you, man! I haven’t seen no girl!”
I gave him the five dollars, which he treated as a paltry reward for his ignorance, then I asked if I could use the telephone in the marina office. He gave me his grudging consent.
I dialled the Maggot. Once again I got the answering machine, but this time I left no message.
Ellen was gone. Jackson Chatterton was dead. Thessy was in his grave. And I was scared.
I hurried to the school where the Literacy Project had its office, and where I found the Project’s secretary to be a tall, light-skinned and grey-haired Bahamian woman who seemed bowed down by her insuperable problems. She introduced herself as Lillian Malleson and, assuming that I had come to talk about her troubles, immediately blamed them all on the television. “We can’t compete with it,” she said despairingly, “why did they ever invent it? That’s what I’d like to know. Why?”
Unable to answer her query, I explained my own; that I was looking for Ellen Skandinsky.
“She was here at the beginning of the week.” Lillian Malleson closed a window against the ear-splitting noise of the children in the school’s dusty playground. “I think it was Monday. She said she’d been on one of the out-islands for the weekend.”
“Did she say where she was going?”
Lillian Malleson frowned at me, almost as if she was noting my presence in her office for the first time. “You’re Nick?”
“Yes.”
“Ellen mentioned you. She likes you. Are you interested in the Project? We do need help.” She crossed the room and tugged open the humidity-swollen door of a tall cupboard, then stared with quiet sorrow at the heaps of reading primers that mouldered on the shelves. “None of them are any good.” She plucked a book at random and held it out for my inspection. “See for yourself.”
She had given me The Gospel Story Retold for Little Christians, the cover of which showed a group of golden-haired and blue-eyed children sitting at the feet of a very white-skinned and well-fed Christ. A couple of plump rabbits and a bluebird were also listening to the Gospel message. Lillian took the book from me. “This is supposed to compete with Miami Vice or The Cosby Show?” She tossed the book back in the cupboard, and brought out another called Our Furry Friends From Far Australia. “I think this one was donated by the British High Commission,” she said, “and, if I recall correctly, we’ve got a thousand copies. If you want to know something about koala bears or kangaroos then please feel free to take one of those books away, or even a thousand if you wish.” She went back to her table that was covered with a dreadful litter of letters, books, file cards and ashtrays. In pride of place, at the very centre of the desk’s muddle, was a very modern American telephone with an inbuilt message recorder. Lillian stared at the sleek instrument as though seeking inspiration. “I do remember Ellen saying she was sailing a boat somewhere,” she said suddenly, and reverting to the question I had put to her a few moments before. “Might she have said she was sailing a boat to Florida?”
I already knew that Ellen had not done that. “What about Great Inagua,” I asked instead. “Wasn’t she thinking of doing some work for you on Great Inagua? Perhaps that’s where she is?”
“I’m sure she’s not.” Lillian shook a cigarette from a packet. “I know I shouldn’t,” she said tiredly, “but my husband’s a doctor, and he does, and I think if Freeman can smoke, why can’t I? It isn’t a fair world when you think about it, is it?”
“Did someone else go to Great Inagua instead of Ellen?” I asked, but only after agreeing that it was not, indeed, a fair world.
“No one.” She lit her cigarette. “We didn’t have the money for the fare, you see. The salt company on the island offered to pay all our costs, but I’m not entirely sure I replied to their letter. Do you think I should write and remind them of their offer?” she asked me with great seriousness.
“Oh, yes,” I said with equal seriousness, “I think you should.” I paused. “Perhaps Ellen went with her own money?”
Lillian shook her head. “She didn’t take the questionnaire if she did, and there’s not much point in going there without the questionnaire. At least, I don’t think she took the questionnaire.” She went to an antique filing cabinet and dragged out a broken drawer. She puffed smoke as she hunted through the chaos of papers, while I looked round the lizard-haunted walls which were smothered with posters designed to teach the alphabet; ‘O is for Oliver, Asking for More, while P is for Puffer-Train, Making a Roar’; then Lillian found the Great Inagua file and mutely showed me that the United Nations Educational Scientific and Cultural Organisation Standard Literacy Attainment Questionnaire, English Language Edition, Number 34, published 1961, To Be Filled In With Indelible Ink ONLY, was still in the file. “It’s the only copy of the form that we have,” she said, “so Ellen can’t have taken another.”
I stared out of the window. Small children were swinging from a climbing frame that was thick with rust. “She’s disappeared, you see,” I explained bleakly.
Lillian’s shrug seemed to suggest that these things happened and that it was foolish to seek any explanation.
“If you see her,” I said, “would you please tell her to phone John Maggovertski?” I wrote down the Maggot’s telephone number, but I had a feeling that I was wasting my time, or perhaps it was just that I had been infected with the general air of hopelessness that pervaded the Literacy Project.
I asked if I could use the Project’s phone to make a local call, because I wanted to see if the Maggot had reached home, but it seemed the telephone was not working. “They sent an engineer last week,” Lillian Malleson said, “and he said this telephone is too modern.”
“So get another telephone?” I suggested.
“It was donated.” She stared at the splendid instrument. “It seems that it can be adapted to the system, but...” Her voice tailed away.
“The engineer couldn’t read the instructions?” I hazarded a guess.
She blinked at me. “If I see Ellen,” she said instead of answering me, “I’ll ask her to phone you.”
I thanked her, then went out into the playground of shrieking children. Ellen was gone.
Ellen was gone, but all I could do was go on looking for her. I could find no taxis near the school so I caught a bus that dropped me near the Straw Market, and I ran through the alleys and into the courtyard and up the stairs to Ellen’s small apartment. I thumped on her door.
There was no answer. A child cried across the courtyard and a goat bleated at the foot of the staircase. A woman screamed at a child, a dog howled in pain, and in the street a truck’s brakes hissed like an attacking puff-adder. The televisions in the various apartments were mostly tuned to an American talk show on which chainsaw-voiced women were screaming their opinions about the desirability of geriatric sex.
I kicked at Ellen’s door and only succeeded in chipping away some loose flakes of yellow paint.
I looked under the broken piece of balustrade where Ellen kept her spare key, but the key was not there, so instead
I tried to break down her door. The flimsy lock proved unexpectedly resilient and I bruised my right foot as I kicked and kicked again, but at last the lock broke and the door swung open.
I need not have bothered, for Ellen was long gone. Her bed was empty, her bathroom was empty, and there was nowhere else in the tiny flat to search for her. “Hell,” I said. The room was as untidy as ever, so I could not tell if anyone else had searched it, but it did not look as though there had been any kind of struggle in the room for the bed was made neatly enough and nothing had been overturned or spilt. Her father’s crucifix hung black and still against the wall through which the sounds of the neighbouring apartment came de-pressingly clearly. A plant on Ellen’s table was desperate for water and I fetched a glass from the bathroom. A cockroach scuttled across the floor and I slammed down my heel and squashed it with a lucky hit.
I looked in cupboards and drawers, not really certain what I was searching for, but unwilling just to stand in the room and give way to the threatening despair. I found a letter from Ellen’s mother in Rhode Island and I copied down the telephone number in the sudden hope that Ellen might have gone home.
I felt a flicker of hope because I found none of her precious writer’s notebooks, but that really meant nothing; Lillian Malleson had already confirmed to me that Ellen had done what she had told me she was going to do; namely fly to Freeport, collect her baggage from this apartment, say goodbye to the Literacy Project, then sail away. Except she had never reached the marina.
The despair was creeping up on me. I badly needed to talk to the Maggot. I turned in the tiny space of Ellen’s apartment, seeking any clue as to what might have happened to her, and finding none. I kicked at one of the boxes of African literacy leaflets in my frustration and the violence of the motion dislodged the gun from my waistband. It clattered harmlessly to the floor.