Sir Marston enjoyed the cool of the evening. His adjutant was somewhere inside his own quarters at the other end of the house; his wife was out on an errand visiting the local hospital; Jefferson, his chef/steward/butler, would be preparing dinner in the kitchen. Sir Marston sipped his whiskey with appreciation, then almost choked when his ears were assailed by the scream of rending steel. He turned. He had time to say, “I say, what on earth—Now look here—”
The roar of the first bullet shocked and stunned him. The slug went through a fold of loose fabric in the sleeve of his cotton shirt. It hammered into the coral-block wall of the house behind him and fell back onto the path, misshapen and twisted. The second hit him full in the heart.
Chapter 2
Despite the twin booms of the handgun from the garden, there was no immediate reaction from inside the house. Only two people were there at that hour.
Jefferson was belowstairs preparing a fruit punch for the evening meal—Lady Moberley was a teetotaler. He would say later that when the blender was switched on the noise filled the kitchen, and it must have been on when the shooting took place.
The Governor’s adjutant was Lieutenant Jeremy Haverstock, a downy-cheeked young subaltern seconded from the Queen’s Dragoon Guards. He was in his room at the far end of Government House with the window closed and the air conditioning at full blast. He was also, so he would say, playing his radio and listening to music from Radio Nassau. He, too, heard nothing.
By the time Jefferson came out into the garden to consult Sir Marston over some point concerning the preparation of the lamb cutlets, the assassin had clearly withdrawn through the steel gate and had gone. Jefferson arrived at the top of the steps leading down to the garden and saw his employer lying flat on his back, arms wide, as the second shot had thrown him, a dark blotch still spreading across the front of his dark-blue-cotton shirt.
At first, Jefferson thought his master had fainted, and he ran down to help him up. When he saw the hole in the chest more clearly, he stood back, disbelieving for a moment, then ran panic-stricken to fetch Lieutenant Haverstock. The young army officer arrived seconds later, still in his boxer shorts.
Haverstock did not panic. He examined the body without touching it, established that Sir Marston was extremely dead, and sat down in the ex-Governor’s chair to ponder what to do.
A previous commanding officer had written of Lieutenant Haverstock, “Wonderful breeding, not terribly bright,” as if he were a Cavalry horse rather than a Cavalry officer. But in the Cavalry they tend to have their priorities about right: A good horse is irreplaceable, while a subaltern is not.
Haverstock sat in the chair a few feet from the body and thought the matter through, while a wide-eyed Jefferson watched from the top of the stairs that led to the verandah. The subaltern decided that (a) he had a dead Governor on his hands, (b) someone had shot him and escaped, and (c) he should inform a higher authority. The problem was, the Governor was the highest authority, or had been. At this point, Lady Moberley came home.
Jefferson heard the crunch of the wheels of the official Jaguar limousine on the gravel of the front drive and rushed out through the hallway to intercept her. His breaking of the news was lucid, if not very tactful. He confronted her in the hall and said, “Oh, Lady, de Governor been shot. He dead.”
Lady Moberley hurried to the verandah to look down and was met by Haverstock coming up the steps. He assisted her to her bedroom and comforted her as she lay down. She seemed more bewildered than grief-stricken, as if worried lest the Foreign Office might now play merry hell with her husband’s career.
Having got her settled, Lieutenant Haverstock dispatched Jefferson to summon the island’s only doctor—who also happened to be the island’s only coroner—and Chief Inspector Jones, who was the doctor/coroner’s nephew. The lieutenant instructed the distraught butler to explain nothing to them, simply to ask each man to come urgently to Government House.
It was a fruitless request. Poor Jefferson told Inspector Jones the news in the hearing of three wide-eyed constables, and Dr. Caractacus Jones in front of his housekeeper. Like wildfire the news spread, even as the uncle and his nephew hurried to Government House.
While Jefferson was away, Lieutenant Haverstock pondered how to tell London. The residence had not been equipped with modern or secure communication systems. It had never been thought necessary to do so. Apart from the open phone line, the Governor’s messages had always gone to London via the much more substantial British High Commission in Nassau, the Bahamas. For this, an elderly C2 system was used. It sat on a side table in the Governor’s private office.
To look at, it was an ordinary Telex machine of the type known to, and dreaded by, foreign correspondents the world over. Connection was made to Nassau by tapping in the usual code and securing an acknowledgment from the other end. The Telex could then be switched to encrypted mode through a second box that sat beside the Telex machine. Any message sent would then appear “in clear” on the paper in front of the sender and would be automatically decoded at the Nassau end. In between the two points, it would be in code.
The trouble was, to operate the encoder, one had to insert corrugated disks according to the day of the month. These disks were kept in the Governor’s safe, which was locked. The dead man’s private secretary, Myrtle, had the combination of the safe, but she was away visiting her parents on Tortola in the Virgin Islands. During her absences, the Governor was wont to send his own messages. He too knew the safe’s combination; Haverstock did not.
Eventually, Haverstock simply rang the High Commission in Nassau via the telephone exchange and told them verbally. After twenty minutes, an incandescent First Secretary called him back for confirmation, listened to his explanation, and told him crisply to seal Government House and hold the fort until backup could arrive from Nassau or London. The First Secretary then radioed a top-secret and coded message to the Foreign Office in London. It was already six P.M. and dark in the Caribbean. It was eleven P.M. in London, and the message went to the night duty officer. He called a senior official of the Caribbean desk at his home in Chobham, and the wheels began to roll.
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.”