The Deceiver

  Damn, thought Hannah. It must have gone clean over the wall. Or possibly it hit the house, but much higher up, near the guttering. In the morning Parker would have to start all over again, with ladders.

  Hannah thanked the doctor and put the phone down. The full written report would reach him by the scheduled flight the next day.

  Parker had now lost his four-man forensic team from the Bahamian Police, so he had to work alone the next day. Jefferson, the butler, aided by the gardener, held the ladder while the hapless Parker went up the house wall above the garden looking for the imprint of the second bullet. He went as high as the gutters, but he found nothing.

  Hannah took his breakfast, served by Jefferson, in the sitting room. Lady Moberley drifted in now and again, arranged the flowers, smiled vaguely, and drifted back out again. She seemed blithely unconcerned whether her late husband’s body, or what was left of it, was brought to Sunshine for burial or taken back to England. Hannah gained the impression that no one had cared much for Sir Marston Moberley, starting with his wife. Then he realized why she seemed so blithe. The vodka bottle was missing from the silver drinks tray. Lady Moberley was happy for the first time in years.

  Desmond Hannah was not. He was puzzled. The more the hunt for the bullet went on in vain, the more it seemed his instinct had been right. It was an inside job, the torn-off lock on the steel gate a ruse. Someone had descended the steps from the sitting room where he now sat and had circled the sitting Governor, who had then seen the gun and risen to his feet. After the shots, the assailant had found one of his bullets in the gravel by the wall and taken it. He had failed to find the other in the dusk and had ran off to hide the gun before any interruption came.

  Hannah finished his breakfast, went outside, and glanced at Parker up near the gutter.

  “Any luck?” he asked.

  “Not a sign,” Parker called down.

  Hannah walked back to the wall and stood with his back to the steel gate. The previous evening he had stood on a trestle and stared over the gate at the alley behind it. Between five and six, the alley was constantly busy. People taking a short cut from Port Plaisance to Shantytown used it; smallholders returning from the town to their scattered homes behind the trees used it. Nearly thirty people had passed up and down it within the hour. At no time was the alley completely empty. At one time there had been seven people walking down it, one way or the other. The killer simply could not have come in that way without being spotted. Why should Tuesday evening have been so different from any other? Someone must have seen, something.

  Yet no one had come forward in response to the posters. What islander would forgo a thousand American dollars? It was a fortune. So ... the killer had come from inside the house, as he had surmised.

  The grilled front door to Government House had been closed that evening at that hour. It was self-locking from the inside. Jefferson would have answered if anyone rang the bell. No one could just walk through the gates, across the gravel forecourt, through the front door, across the hall, through the sitting room, and down the steps to the garden. It was no casual intruder; the front door would have blocked them. The ground-floor windows were grilled, Spanish style. There was no other way in—unless an athlete had vaulted the garden wall and dropped to the grass. ... Possible.

  But how to get out again? Through the house? Then there was a very good chance of being seen. Back over the wall? It had been minutely searched for scrape marks, as of someone climbing, and there were glass shards along the top. Out through the steel gate, previously opened? Another good chance of being seen.

  No—it looked like an inside job. Oscar, the chauffeur, had vouched for Lady Moberley, who had been away at the children’s hospital. That left harmless, bumbling old Jefferson, or young Haverstock of the Queen’s Dragoon Guards.

  Was this another white society scandal like the Kenyan affair before the war, or the killing of Sir Harry Oakes? Was it a one-killer affair, or were they all in on it? What was their motive—hate, lust, greed, revenge, political terror, or the threat of a ruined career? And what about the dead Julio Gomez? Had he really seen a South American contract killer on Sunshine? If so, where on earth did Mendes fit in?

  Hannah stood with his back to the steel door, walked forward two paces, and dropped to his knees. He was still too high. He went on his stomach and propped his torso on his elbows, his eyes thirty inches above the grass. He stared at the point where Sir Marston would have been standing, having risen from his chair and taken one step forward. Then he was up and running.

  “Parker!” he yelled. “Get off that ladder and come down here!”

  Parker almost fell off, so loud was the shout. He had never seen the phlegmatic Hannah so disturbed. When he reached the terrace, he scampered down the steps to the garden.

  “Stand there,” said Hannah, pointing to a spot on the grass. “How tall are you?”

  “Five foot ten, sir.”

  “Not tall enough. Go to the library and get me some books. The Governor was six foot two. Jefferson, get me a broom.”

  Jefferson shrugged. If the white policeman wanted to sweep the patio, that was his business. He went for a broom.

  Hannah made Parker stand on four books on the spot where Sir Marston had stood. Crouching on the grass he aimed the broom handle like a rifle at Parker’s chest. The broom sloped upward at twenty degrees.

  “Step to one side.”

  Parker did so and fell off his books. Hannah stood up and walked to the steps that ran up the wall to the terrace, rising from left to right. It was still hanging on its wrought-iron bracket, as it had for three days and before that. The wire basket, packed with loam, cascaded brilliant geraniums. So thick were the clusters, one could hardly see the basket from which they came. As the forensic team worked on the wall, they had brushed the streaming flowers out of their faces.

  “Bring that basket down,” Hannah said to the gardener. “Parker, bring the murder bag. Jefferson get a bedsheet.”

  The gardener moaned as his work was strewn all over the bedsheet. One by one, Hannah extricated the flowers, tapping the loam clear of their roots before placing them on one side. When only the loam was left, he separated it into hand-size clods, using a spatula to break the clods into grains. And there it was.

  Not only had the bullet passed through the Governor intact, it had not even touched the wire frame of the basket. It had gone between two strands of wire and stopped dead in the middle of the loam. It was in perfect condition. Hannah used tweezers to drop it into a plastic bag, wrapped the bag, and dropped it into a screw-top jar. He rocked back on his ankles and rose.

  “Tonight, lad,” he told Parker, “you are going back to London. With this. Alan Mitchell will work through Sunday for me. I’ve got the bullet. Soon I’ll have the gun. Then I’ll have the killer.”

  There was nothing more he could do at Government House. He asked that Oscar be summoned to drive him back to the hotel. As he waited for the chauffeur, he stood at the windows of the sitting room looking out over the garden wall toward Port Plaisance, the nodding palms and the shimmering sea beyond. The island slumbered in the heat of midmorning. Slumbered—or brooded?

  This isn’t paradise, he thought. It’s a bloody powder keg.

  Chapter 5

  In the city of Kingston that morning, Sean Whittaker was having a remarkable reception. He had arrived late and gone straight to his apartment. Just after seven the next morning, the first call had come in. It was an American voice.

  “Morning, Mr. Whittaker. Hope I didn’t wake you.”

  “No, not at all. Who’s that?”

  “My name is Milton. Just Milton. I believe you have some photographs you might care to show me.”

  “That would depend on who I am showing them to,” said Whittaker.

  There was a low laugh down the line. “Why don’t we meet?”

  Milton arranged a rendezvous in a public place, and they met an hour later. The American did not look like the head of the
DEA field station in Kingston, as Whittaker had expected. His casual air was more that of a young academic from the university.

  “Forgive my saying so,” said Whittaker, “but could you establish any bona fides at all?”

  “Let’s use my car,” said Milton.

  They drove to the American Embassy. Milton had a headquarters office outside the embassy, but he was persona grata inside it as well. He flashed his identity card to the Marine guard at the desk inside, then led the way to a spare office.

  “All right,” said Whittaker, “you’re an American diplomat.”

  Milton did not correct him. He smiled and asked to see Whittaker’s pictures. He surveyed them all, but one held his attention.

  “Well, well,” he said. “So that’s where he is.”

  He opened his attaché case and produced a series of files, selecting one. The photograph on the first page of the dossier had been taken a few years earlier, with a long lens, apparently through an aperture in a curtain. But the man was the same as the man in the new photograph on his desk.

  “Want to know who he is?” he asked Whittaker. It was an unnecessary question. The British reporter compared the two photographs and nodded.

  “Okay, let’s start at the beginning,” said Milton, and he read out the contents of the file—not all of them, just enough. Whittaker took notes furiously.

  The DEA man was thorough. There were details of a business career, meetings held, bank accounts opened, operations run, aliases used, cargoes delivered, profits laundered. When he had finished, Whittaker sat back.

  “Phew,” he said. “Can I source this on you?”

  “I wouldn’t specify Mr. Milton,” said the American. “Highly placed sources within the DEA—that would do.”

  He escorted Whittaker back to the main entrance. On the steps he suggested, “Why don’t you go down to Kingston police headquarters with the rest of the pictures? You may find you are expected.”

  At the police building, the bemused Whittaker was shown up to the office of Commissioner Foster, who sat along in his big air-conditioned room overlooking downtown Kingston. After greeting Whittaker, the Commissioner pressed his intercom and asked Commander Gray to step in. The head of the Criminal Investigation Division joined them a few minutes later. He brought a sheaf of files.

  The two Jamaicans studied Whittaker’s pictures of the eight bodyguards in bright beach shirts. Despite the wraparound dark glasses, Commander Gray did not hesitate. Opening a series of files, he identified the men one after the other. Whittaker noted everything.

  “May I cite you two gentlemen as the source?” he asked.

  “Certainly,” said the Commissioner. “All have long criminal records. Three are wanted here as of now. You may quote me. We have nothing to hide. This meeting is on the record.”

  By midday, Whittaker had his story. He transmitted his pictures and text down the usual London link, took a long phone call from the news editor in London, and was assured of a good spread the following day. His expenses would not be queried—not for this one.

  In Miami, Sabrina Tennant had checked into the Sonesta Beach Hotel, as she had been advised the previous evening, and took a call just before eight on Saturday morning. The appointment was set for an office building in central Miami. It was not the headquarters of the CIA in Miami, but it was a safe building.

  She was shown to an office and met a man who led her to a TV screening room, where three of her videotapes were screened in front of two other men who sat in half darkness. They declined to introduce themselves and said nothing.

  After the screening, she was led back to the first office, served coffee, and left alone for a while. When the first officer rejoined her, he suggested she call him Bill, and he asked her for the still photographs that had been taken at the dockside political rally of the previous day.

  On the videos, the cameraman had not concentrated on the bodyguards of Horatio Livingstone, so they appeared only as peripheral figures. But in the stills they were in full-face shot. Bill opened a series of files and showed her other pictures of the same men.

  “This one,” he said, “the one by the van. What was he calling himself?”

  “Mr. Brown,” she said.

  Bill laughed. “Do you know the Spanish word for ‘brown?’ ” he asked.

  “No.”

  “It’s moreno—in this case, Hernan Moreno.”

  “Television is a visual medium,” she said. “Pictures tell a better story than words. Can I have these photos of yours for comparison with my own?”

  “I’ll have copies made for you,” said Bill, “and we’ll keep copies of yours.”

  Her cameraman had had to remain outside in the taxi. Covertly, he took a few pictures of the office building. It did not matter. He thought he was photographing CIA headquarters. He was not.

  When they got back to the Sonesta Beach, Sabrina Tennant spread the photos—hers and those unusually provided from secret CIA files—on a large table in the borrowed banquet room, while the cameraman shot moving film of them all. She did a stand-up piece against a backdrop of the banquet room wall and a picture of President Bush, borrowed from the manager. It would suffice to give the impression of an inner CIA sanctum.

  Later that morning, the pair found a deserted cove down a lane off U.S. Highway One and she did another piece, this time backed by white sand, waving palms, and a blue sea, a facsimile for a beach on Sunshine.

  At midday she set up her satellite link with London and beamed all her material to the BSB in London. She had a long talk with her news editor as the cutting-room staff began to put the feature together. When they had finished it was a fifteen-minute news story that looked as if Sabrina Tennant had gone to the Caribbean with only one idea in mind—the exposé.

  The editor rejigged the running order of the Sunday lunch-time edition of Countdown and called her back in Florida.

  “It’s a bloody cracker,” he said. “Well done, love.”

  McCready had been busy, too. He spent part of the morning on his portable telephone to London and part talking to Washington.

  In London he found the Director of the Special Air Service Regiment staying at the Duke of York’s Barracks in King’s Road, Chelsea. The leathery young general listened to McCready’s request.

  “As a matter of fact, I do,” he said. “I’ve got two of them lecturing at Fort Bragg at the moment. I’ll have to get clearance.”

  “No time,” said McCready. “Look are they owed leave?”

  “I suppose they are,” said the Director.

  “Fine. Then I’m offering them both three days of rest and recreation here in the sun. As my personal guests. What could be fairer than that?”

  “Sam,” said the Director, “you are a devious old bugger. I’ll see what I can do. But they’re on leave, Okay? Just sunbathing, nothing else.”

  “Perish the thought,” said McCready.

  With just seven days to go to Christmas, the citizens of Port Plaisance were preparing for the festive season that Saturday afternoon.

  Despite the heat, many shop windows were being decorated with depictions of robins, holly, Yule logs, and polystyrene snow. Very few of the islanders had even seen a robin or a holly bush, let alone snow, but the British Victorian tradition had long suggested that Jesus had been born surrounded by them all, so they duly formed part of the Christmas decorations.

  Outside the Anglican church, Mr. Quince, aided by a swarm of eager little girls, was decorating a tableau beneath a straw roof. A small plastic doll lay in the manger, and the children were placing figurines of oxen, sheep, donkeys, and shepherds.

  On the outskirts of town, Reverend Drake was conducting choir practice for his carol service. His deep bass voice was not up to scratch. Beneath his black shirt, his torso was swathed in Dr. Jones’s bandages to ease his sprung ribs, and his voice wheezed as if he were out of breath. His parishioners eyed each other meaningfully. Everyone knew what had happened to him on Thursday evening. Nothi
ng remained a secret in Port Plaisance for long.

  At three o’clock, a battered van drove into Parliament Square and stopped. From the driver’s seat emerged the enormous figure of Firestone. He went around to the rear, opened the door, and lifted Missy Coltrane out, invalid chair and all. Slowly, he wheeled her down Main Street to do her shopping. There were no press about. Most of them, bored, had gone swimming off Conch Point.

  Her progress was slow, being marked by innumerable greetings. She responded to each, hailing shopkeepers and passersby with their names, never forgetting one.

  “G’day, Missy Coltrane,” “Good day, Jasper,” “Good day, Simon,” “Good day, Emmanuel”—she asked after wives and children, congratulated a beaming father-to-be on his good fortune, sympathized with a case of a broken arm. She made her usual purchases, and the shopkeepers brought their wares to the door for her to examine.

  She paid from a small purse she kept in her lap, while from a larger handbag she dispensed a seemingly inexhaustible supply of small candies to the crowd of children who offered to carry her shopping bags in the hopes of a second ration.

  She bought fresh fruit and vegetables; kerosene for her lamps, matches, herbs, spices, meat, and oil. Her progress brought her through the shopping area to the quay, where she greeted the fishermen and bought two snapper and a wriggling lobster that had been preordered by the Quarter Deck Hotel. If Missy Coltrane wanted it, she got it. No argument. The Quarter Deck would get the prawns and the conch.

  As she returned to Parliament Square, she met Detective Chief Superintendent Hannah descending from the hotel steps. He was accompanied by Detective Parker and an American called Favaro. They were off to the airstrip to meet the four o’clock plane from Nassau.

  She greeted them all, although she had never seen two of them. Then Firestone lifted her up, placed her and her chair beside the groceries in the rear of the van, and drove off.

  “Who’s that?” asked Favaro.

  “An old lady who lives on a hill,” said Hannah.