4

The clear turquoise waters of the Caicos Bank gave way to the deep blue of the ocean trench which separated South Caicos from the Turk Islands. As usual, the eight-seater plane was full, mostly with men in suits. It was only about eighty miles from Providenciales to Grand Turk, but the three intermediate stopovers stretched the journey time to almost ninety minutes.

The pilot began his descent. Franklin looked down at the sea, wondering why he had bothered to make the trip. As far as he could tell the chances of getting any satisfaction from the commissioner were about as minimal as chances got.

But six whole days had now gone by since Nick’s disappearance, and he and Sibou had been unable to think of anything else. Making use of his SAS skills in clandestine observation, Franklin had spent several days and nights practically staking out the Arcilla villa, but had come up empty. The sister – whose name was Tamara – seemed to rise around noon, stare at the sea for most of the afternoon, and go out drinking in the evening, usually at the Club Med-Turkoise bar on Grace Bay. Once she had brought a man home with her, and perhaps had sex with him. If so, the encounter didn’t seem to have been mutually satisfactory. He had left at two in the morning, looking angry.

She was presumably in charge of the place, but the man who did what work there was to be done was a Jamaican named Freddie Bartholomew. He collected supplies, acted as a resident watchdog, and lived in one of the converted outbuildings. He did most of his drinking at home, usually with two other equally underemployed cronies. They looked like the sort of men who would be hired by someone expecting trouble. Two ferocious-looking Rottweilers only emphasized the atmosphere of potential siege.

Arcilla himself had not been seen on the island for at least a couple of weeks. Still, Franklin was convinced that the Cuban was responsible, one way or another, for Nick’s disappearance. The problem lay in finding a single shred of evidence to that effect. He had gone back to Oswald and asked him to find some pretext for searching Arcilla’s home but, not surprisingly, the policeman had refused. Franklin was told what he already knew – that there were no substantive grounds for obtaining a search warrant, and that where prominent citizens like Arcilla were concerned, Oswald was not going to act without such grounds. He was sorry about Franklin’s friend, but there was nothing more he could do. Some crimes just remained unsolved. It was the way of the world.

But it was not the way of his world, Franklin thought, to give up looking for a friend who had inexplicably vanished.

The police station was the taxi’s last stop. It lay behind the oldest building on the island, Guinep Lodge, which was being turned into a maritime museum. The adjoining building had not as yet been rebuilt following its torching on the last day of 1985. The unidentified arsonist’s intention had probably been the destruction of financial and other records, and the attack had spawned an official British government inquiry. Where the police were at the time had never been established. ‘Incorruptible’ was not a word which came easily to mind where the local force was concerned. At least not in those days.

Maybe things had changed, Franklin thought, as he pushed through the double doors of the police headquarters. There was no one visible, so he pressed the bell.

The commissioner himself appeared in a doorway.

‘Worrell Franklin?’ he asked.

Franklin nodded.

‘Come through,’ Missick said, lifting up the counter.

Franklin took a seat in the man’s office, which seemed unusually bare. There were no paintings, photographs or posters – just cream walls, an uncluttered desk and a bookcase full of what looked like bound reports.

‘Cigarette?’ Missick asked, pushing forward a carved wooden box full of Marlboro Lights.

‘No thanks.’

Missick lit one for himself. ‘So how can I help you?’ he asked, in a tone that suggested help was unlikely to materialize.

Franklin doggedly went through the story of Nick’s disappearance, and outlined his suspicions.

‘But there is no evidence linking Arcilla to your friend?’ Missick asked when he was finished.

‘He talked about him that evening.’

‘He probably talked about other people too. That hardly counts as evidence.’ Missick sucked in his lower lip and blew smoke down towards his desk. ‘I’m not saying you are wrong in your suspicions, but . . .’ He shrugged. ‘It’s not only that you have no evidence. You have no motive either.’

Franklin offered the notion that Arcilla needed a diver.

‘Divers are ten a penny in the islands. Why would he need to kidnap one?’ The commissioner took another drag on the cigarette and waved it around in the air. ‘People do not like to think they are mistaken about their friends, but have you considered the possibility that your friend staged this disappearance because he had a better offer from elsewhere? Maybe even an offer from Fidel Arcilla.’

‘That’s crazy,’ Franklin said, his voice rising. ‘If Nick had wanted to leave the clinic there was nothing stopping him. And the idea of him spreading chloroform around his room to deceive us is just crazy.’

Missick shrugged again. ‘Then I don’t know what to suggest. But you must see the situation from our point of view. A man has disappeared. There is no evidence that he was abducted, save perhaps a smell which has long since gone. Assuming he was abducted, there is no evidence linking him with Arcilla, save an apparently innocent piece of chit-chat in a bar. And in addition to that I find it very hard to imagine that he is being held captive anywhere in these islands. They are too small and too open and everyone knows what everyone else is doing. If your friend has been abducted, then I think he has passed outside my jurisdiction. Of course, I can pass on his details to my colleagues in the Bahamas and Haiti and the Dominican Republic, but unless he has used his passport to gain entry . . . ‘

‘His passport is still at the clinic.’

Missick shrugged for the third time. Three shrugs and out, Franklin thought to himself. He felt as helpless as he could remember. Only those long-gone Brixton summers spent worrying about his kid brother came even close.

Franklin got to his feet. He had been bound to try, but this trip had been as fruitless as he had expected.

He shook hands with Missick and left. There were two hours to burn before the return flight on the inter-island shuttle, so he decided to go and look for lunch somewhere on Front Street.

In the office he had just left Alden Missick was direct-dialling a number in Miami Beach and asking for ‘el jefe’, the boss.

Arcilla came on the line. ‘Qué pasa?’ he asked, almost playfully.

‘The man from the clinic – the Englishman – he has been here. But I think it was his last throw. I think he has realized that there is nowhere else for him to go.’

There was a short silence at the other end. ‘OK. Es bueno. But I want you to keep an eye on him, just in case.’

That evening Franklin and Sibou went out for an expensive meal at the Club Med-Turkoise. Tamara Arcilla arrived alone when they were halfway through the entrée, and was given a table no more than ten feet away. It was the first time Franklin had seen her up close, and the first time his wife had set eyes on her.

‘She’s beautiful enough,’ Sibou commented.

‘On the outside,’ Franklin added.

His wife gave him an amused look. ‘You’re not comfortable with the idea of a woman just picking up men for sex, are you?’

‘Not particularly.’

‘But men picking up women for sex is OK?’

‘No . . . well . . . it seems more natural that way round. And yes, I know, it shouldn’t. But it does.’ He stole another glance at the Cuban woman. Probably in her early thirties, she was slim, but not model-slim. There was an Hispanic lushness about her body, from the slightly rounded calves up past the prominent hips, narrow waist and full breasts. Her dark hair tangled down past her face, often hiding one dark eye from view. She was wearing a simple white dress and deep crimson lipstick.

She was beautiful, Franklin agreed. But not happy. She was eating the starter too slowly, drinking the wine too fast.

‘If you can tear your eyes away,’ Sibou was saying, ‘I’ve had an idea.’

‘What?’

‘Why not contact your old friends in the SAS?’

‘What could they do?’

‘I don’t know,’ Sibou admitted. She wanted to give him some hope, even if it only served to soften the blow. ‘I thought there was some unspoken rule about looking after your own,’ she said.

‘Up to a point, maybe. But it doesn’t apply to ex-members of the Regiment. And anyway, Nick was in the SBS, not the SAS.’

‘Have you got any contacts there?’

‘Not really.’ But maybe it wasn’t such a bad idea, Franklin thought. The Regimental CO at Hereford, whoever he was, might know someone in the Foreign Office. Might be owed a favour, or something like that. Maybe it was worth a shot . . .

‘Look,’ Sibou said, ‘your mother’s arriving tomorrow . . .’

‘You’re right,’ Franklin said with a smile. ‘I’ll give Joss Wynwood a call when we get home.’

‘There’s a name from the past,’ Sibou murmured.

Wynwood and Franklin had been the two junior members of the three-man SAS team sent to the Gambia in 1981 to help restore President Jawara to power after a left-wing coup. The final act of Franklin’s first trip to Africa had been to save a local doctor from being raped and killed by a local psychopath. The same doctor who was now eating a chicken salad across the table from him.

Franklin and Wynwood had seen active service again the following year, as members of a four-man reconnaissance patrol on the Falklands. Both had been present when Nick Russell and his SBS boys had stumbled into their observation post.

Since Franklin’s departure from the SAS in 1986 he had only seen Wynwood once, for a short drink in a London pub a couple of years later. Since then they had sent each other the occasional postcard, but that was all. Wynwood was still in the SAS, as far as Franklin knew. His last news of the Welshman, which had come via another old comrade, was of a promotion to senior sergeant of the Counter-Revolutionary Warfare Training Wing.

Back at the clinic an hour or so later, Franklin punched out the number on their bungalow phone, and listened to the ringing at the other end. Sibou had suggested waiting until morning, but there was no knowing where Wynwood would be during the day. At three in the morning he should be in bed.

‘Wynwood,’ the familiar voice said sleepily. In the background a female voice was asking who it was.

‘Joss, it’s Worrell Franklin.’

‘Well, that’s nice. I wait ten years for a call, and here it is – in the middle of the night.’

‘It’s urgent.’

‘I suppose you’ve run out of Weetabix.’

Franklin grinned. ‘Yeah. But that’s not the reason for this particular call.’

‘Shit. OK, let me take the phone through into the living room, so my friend here can get back to sleep.’

‘Your friend?’

‘We’ve been very friendly for some time now. We’ve even been thinking of honeymooning in the Turks and Caicos. At your expense, of course. How’s Sibou?’

‘Fine. She says hello.’

‘OK, I’m stretched out on the sofa now. You can tell me all about it. If I start snoring, shout.’

Franklin took a deep breath. ‘You remember Nick Russell?’

‘The SBS captain.’

‘Yep. He works here, or at least he did. He disappeared a week ago.’

‘He what?’

Franklin went through the whole story one more time.

‘Sounds bad,’ Wynwood said, after he had finished, ‘but how can I help?’

‘Who’s the CO at the moment?’

‘Barney Davies still. They’re putting him out to pasture soon, which’ll be a pity.’

‘You like him?’

‘Yep. He’s got a brain and a heart. Rare qualities in an Englishman.’

‘Good.’ Franklin found himself missing Wynwood’s company. It would be great to see him on Provo . . .

‘You want me to take this business to him,’ the Welshman was concluding.

‘I thought it would be worth a shot. Maybe he knows someone useful at the Foreign Office, or he can put some pressure on somewhere else. Maybe MI5, for fuck’s sake. This is still British territory, even if the money’s all American. London still has the final say, at least theoretically.’

‘I’ll do what I can, Frankie boyo. Now give me your number so I can get back to you.’

Franklin read out the endless digits. ‘Any idea when you can see him?’

‘Tomorrow. Or should I say this morning.’

‘Thanks, Joss. And I’m glad you’ve finally found a real friend,’ he added sardonically.

Seven hours later Wynwood was rapping on the office door of his Commanding Officer in the Stirling Lines barracks of 22 SAS Regiment. ‘Enter!’ came the cheerful reply from inside.

Lieutenant-Colonel Barney Davies was sitting behind his desk, a mug of tea in one hand and the Daily Mirror open in front of him. To one side sat a plate containing crumbs from a recently devoured rock cake. The CO smiled up at Wynwood, and gestured him into a seat. ‘I can’t believe these people,’ he said, looking down at the paper. ‘Isn’t there anyone in the royal family who thinks about something other than sex?’

‘The Queen Mum,’ Wynwood suggested.

‘Under forty, I meant.’

‘Prince Harry?’

Davies grinned. ‘I suppose you’re a republican,’ he said.

‘Certainly not,’ Wynwood said. ‘If Wales has to be ruled by foreigners, I’d rather it was Germans and Greeks than the English.’

‘Figures. So what can I do for you this morning?’

‘I’ve had a distress call from the Caribbean. You remember Worrell Franklin.’

‘Of course. It was a real loss to the Regiment when he called it a day.’ He grimaced. ‘We don’t have so many ethnic-minority members we can afford to lose them, particularly when they’re that good. And no,’ he added, seeing the look on Wynwood’s face, ‘I don’t think of the Welsh as an ethnic minority.’

Wynwood laughed.

‘So what sort of distress is Franklin involved in?’

Wynwood told him, and got much the same response from the CO as he himself had given Franklin.

‘I’ll call a few people, but I don’t hold out much hope,’ Davies said. ‘From what you say it looks as if checking out this Arcilla would involve tracking boats and helicopters across the Caribbean, not to mention investigating his businesses in the States. All of which would add up to a major operation, probably costing millions. No one in Whitehall is going to sanction that sort of expenditure just to find one missing ex-Marine.’

Wynwood looked glum. ‘I know,’ he said. ‘But I can understand how Frankie feels.’

‘So can I. I’ll do what I can.’

‘Thanks, boss.’

Once Wynwood had left, Davies ordered another mug of tea and thumbed through his unofficial list of useful official numbers, and noted several of them down. But the man who should be making most of the calls, Davies decided, was Russell’s ex-CO. He called up his opposite number in Poole, the officer currently commanding the Special Boat Squadron of the Royal Marines, Lieutenant-Colonel Neil Colhoun.

The two men had not run into each other for several years, but not from any design. They had first met during planning for the Falklands campaign, and Davies had taken an immediate liking to the Scot, despite his stereotypically dour exterior. The liking had deepened with the discovery that, lurking beneath the forbidding mask, there was a warm and affectionate man with an almost impish sense of humour.

‘Barney!’ the familiar voice answered. ‘So how’s the competition doing?’ he asked drily. ‘Still working on those press releases?’

It was a standing joke among the SBS that their brethren in the SAS were prone to glorying in the spotlight of publicity. Though this, with rare exceptions, was far from the truth, the SBS did tend to be more concerned with preserving their anonymity.

‘Paranoia is still rampant in Poole, eh?’ Davies riposted.

‘Aye. There’s a rumour going round that the navy’s going to be one of the prizes in the new National Lottery.’

‘No one would enter,’ Davies said.

Colhoun laughed. ‘What do you want?’ he asked.

Davies told him about Russell’s disappearance and Franklin’s call.

‘You say Franklin was one of your best,’ Colhoun said, all trace of flippancy gone. ‘Well, Nick Russell was one of ours. He did a brilliant job in Hong Kong for us. Too good, really. He found something that moved him more than soldiering.’

‘What was that?’ Davies asked.

‘Medicine. At least that’s the precise answer. But caring for people in the widest sense. He spent almost two years working undercover in the refugee camps there, both Chinese and Vietnamese. His cover was as a medic, of course, and the cover gradually became more important than what it was covering. Not that he did less than a perfect job in both respects, you understand. But once it was over, it was the caring he missed, not the intelligence work. And when your lad offered him a job which allowed him to do both, and carry on a love affair with the sea, then we’d lost him.’

‘Not the sort of man to just walk out on a job.’

‘No. So what’s next? The Foreign Office, I suppose.’ Colhoun sounded about as enthusiastic as Davies felt.

‘Brits missing abroad are their responsibility. And if you stress the former-hero angle, and find someone sympathetic, then maybe something will get done.’

‘Aye, but what? A polite request to the local police commissioner. This doesn’t sound like a situation where doing something will be cheap or easy.’

It was the same conclusion that Davies had reached himself. ‘We can only try,’ he said.

‘For us there is only the trying; the rest is not our business,’ Colhoun quoted.

‘Bill Shankly?’ Davies asked.

‘T. S. Eliot.’

‘It must be easier to find time to read on boats,’ Davies suggested. ‘How about we talk again this evening?’

‘Fine,’ Colhoun said. ‘We can share our experiences of rejection.’ He put the phone down and looked blankly into space for a moment, thinking about the last time he had seen the missing man. It had been at Russell’s farewell party in a Hong Kong restaurant, the night before he flew back to England.

He exhaled noisily, got up and walked across to the window. The autumn sun was shining on Poole harbour, the myriad boats bobbing at anchor in the sluggish sea. In his time as the Commanding Officer of the SBS Neil Colhoun had lost several men, most of them in actions which had never received any publicity. In some cases even their wives had not been told all the circumstances of death.

That was bad enough, but somehow it seemed even crueller to lose a man in such suspicious circumstances after he had left the SBS. There was no reason why men who had been through all the dangers implicit in such service should expect a quiet life thereafter, but it seemed like a fair arrangement to Colhoun. He went back to his desk and reached for the telephone.

For the next couple of hours he sought out potential sources of support in the Foreign Office, at the Admiralty, in the intelligence services, even at Scotland Yard, restricting himself to people who might be able to exert influence behind the scenes. Those capable of making a public stink – contacts in the press and politics – he decided to keep in reserve.

Everyone he spoke to was sympathetic, although in their voices he could hear echoes of his own pessimism. There was no point in exerting influence for its own sake – it had to be exerted in favour of some sort of action, and there was no chance of the Government sanctioning anything really meaningful. Not for one man.

By lunchtime Colhoun felt thoroughly depressed, and the feeling hung over him for the rest of the working day. It was only once he got back home, and found himself back in the usual mix of family problems – a sick dog, a tap that kept dripping, a son who wasn’t doing enough homework – that Nick Russell’s disappearance, and his own impotence in the face of it, was edged to the back of his mind.

He and Jenny were just sitting down to watch Between the Lines when the telephone rang. The caller announced himself as Robert Jacklin.

‘Yes?’ Colhoun said in an irritated tone, not recognizing the name.

‘Junior Minister at the Foreign Office,’ the man said smoothly. ‘The problem you called about today . . .’

Colhoun’s hopes rose. ‘Nick Russell.’

‘Yes . . .’

‘Have you heard anything?’

‘No. But there are . . . well, we would like you to attend a meeting tomorrow morning. Here in London, of course.’ He gave Colhoun the time and place, and then abruptly said goodbye.

The SBS boss went back to the TV, wondering what devious reason the Foreign Office might have for actually helping someone.