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An hour later, a dot appeared on the horizon. It grew to the recognisable outline of a mountain, then loomed larger until it was the only thing in that direction. As usual, arriving seemed to take a lot longer than it should, even after the shore seemed within hailing distance. The first frisson that ran through the passengers slowly dissipated in the apparent eternity.
When they finally disembarked, Mordred felt stiff, hungry and in need of a shower. Luckily, his taxi was waiting. At the end of the wooden jetty stood a 1957 Chevrolet whose driver – a thin man of about thirty in a black T-shirt and shades - held up a ‘Jonas Eagleton’ sign.
Saint Martha’s was very different to the Caymans. The volcano completely dominated the skyline, yet left a long low-lying mantle round its base. There were even, supposedly, some good beaches here, albeit of dark grey rather than white sand. ‘Myrrhbearers Point’, where everyone went ashore, was a hamlet of bars, restaurants, stores in magnolia colours and boats for hire.
The taxi was about a hundred yards up the jetty. Mordred put his suitcase down, extended its handle and wheeled it, waiting for the right moment to greet the driver. Not that it should be necessary. As far as he could tell, he was the only passenger here under retirement age.
The driver put his notice away, removed his sunglasses and nodded to Mordred. Not in a friendly way, but then this wasn’t a pleasure trip. He was here to issue a warning about protesters. Maybe some of the islanders had heard a human storm was on the way, and were feeling grim about it. That was usually how it worked: people just across the horizon listened to the news, got talking, and blew it up out of all proportion. Then just stood there, looking grim.
He was about to offer the customary handshake and introduction when he noticed an old woman sitting against one of the wooden posts either side of the jetty entrance. She had a piece of card in her lap onto which people had tossed coins. She didn’t look at Mordred. She was ragged and emaciated, almost stereotypical.
Anyone who travelled a lot got used to this sort of thing. You can’t take the problems of the world on yourself was so obvious nowadays it didn’t even merit a mention in the guidebooks. At best, you’d give her a few coins and move on, telling yourself that if everyone did the same as you she’d eat properly for the rest of her life. Unless she was being pimped as a beggar, or wasn’t the genuine article, or... the permutations were infinite. Mordred parked his suitcase and was about to get his wallet when it struck him. Look around you.
There wasn’t another beggar in sight. And this wasn’t that sort of location. He knew from his reading that there was full employment and something like a welfare system on Saint Martha’s. Maybe she was the local eccentric. Maybe she was lost.
He’d stopped long enough to make not giving her something awkward. He knelt down and asked her name. She didn’t reply.
It would probably be best to take her to the police station, ask about her there. But what counted as such a thing round here? There had been nothing about it in Brian’s files. Strange, because where you had tourists and a workforce, you needed laws, and where there were laws, you needed law enforcement and a judiciary.
But then he remembered. You don’t want to get on the wrong side of the owner, otherwise you may not be allowed back.
Of course. It made sense now. Saint Martha’s was a monarchy with Decristoforo as sovereign, judge and jury. To the extent that there was a police force, it was probably a private army. In such setups, difference was usually incomprehensible and outsiders were either despatched or ostracised. Suddenly, he felt very alone. Probably not as much as her, though. Assuming she hadn’t passed that point years ago.
“Let me buy you something to eat,” he told her. “There’s a restaurant across the road.”
She raised her head and looked at him blankly. The taxi driver came over, looking amused. He took the suitcase and put it in the boot.
Mordred took her hand. “Where do you live? Do you have relatives on the island? Would you like me to give you a lift home?”
No response. He tried saying the same things again in Spanish, then Portuguese, but her expression didn’t change. He obviously had her attention though. She was looking into him somehow, as if she’d lost something and his eyes contained the key to finding it.
Then she pulled out a gun and stood up as deftly as an eighteen year-old. She took a pace backwards to stop him making a lunge.
“Get in the car,” she said.
It took him a moment to realise what had happened; how completely he’d been caught off guard. He didn’t know whether to put his hands up or not. It was all so surreal he had to suppress a laugh. The taxi driver was holding the door for him. He accepted the gun and Mordred got on the back seat with him.
The old woman got into the driving seat and pulled out quickly into the road.
Best thing in these sorts of situations was always to talk. Calmly. About neutral topics. Show them you were a human being. Sometimes people found it more difficult to kill a human being. If you kept schtum, you were just a bit of meat, and they could imbue you with all sorts of undesirable traits. You were the guy next door who’d once slighted them; you were the unreasonable official; you were their boss. Mute, you were anybody.
“I was actually asked if I wanted to bring a gun with me,” he began, hardly knowing what he was saying until he actually heard the words come out of his mouth, “and I told them I didn’t want one. I thought everyone here would be friendly. I mean, we are neighbours, Saint Martha’s and the Caymans. Yes, okay, you’ve a whopping great volcano on your island, and we haven’t, and I can understand that making you a bit jealous, but actually pulling a revolver on me is an over-reaction. I only came here to help.”
The man with the gun smiled. “Look, we know who you are,” he said in a Lancashire accent, “so cut the crap. You’re John Mordred, British spy, not Jonas Eagleton, Cayman Islands policeman.”
How the hell did they find that out? Irrelevant. He had to think quickly. “True, but I still came in peace.”
“Oh, sure.”
“Do you mind me asking how you discovered my real identity?”
“You’re not in much of a position to ask anything, pal.”
“There’s no harm in my trying,” Mordred said. “In any case, you might as well tell me. It’s not like I’m going to escape or anything.”
“No you’re bloody well not. We’re going to kill you.”
“Do you believe in Hell?”
“What?”
“Just a question. I mean, I don’t actually myself, but there might be such a place, no one really knows. I’m sure Saint Martha accepted it. All I’m saying is, if you kill me, it’ll make it much more likely you’ll go there. If it exists, that is. Your skin peeling off, flames all over the place, red hot pokers on every part of your body, and, dear me, it’ll never ever end.” He chuckled. “Don’t get me wrong, though, it probably doesn’t exist. You should be all right. Probably.”
“Is there something wrong with you?”
“Before I die, five words. Good luck in the afterlife, I’ll be waiting. Sorry, eight. That is, counting ‘I’ll’ as one word, not two as in, ‘I will’.”
He could see the old woman looking at him in the rear view.
“You’ll probably be all right,” he told her. “You’re just the driver. Still adds up to quite a long time in Purgatory, but you’ll get out in the end. Mind you, two hundred years is a long time, isn’t it? Not that I would imagine there’s the slightest truth in it. No, death’s the end, that’s what I think. But I don’t know for certain. I don’t suppose anyone can. I’ve always erred on the side of caution personally, for that very reason.” He chuckled again. “Mind you, who am I to talk? I’m just the local dead guy. ”
He grabbed the gun, twisting it into the upholstery. He head-butted the man holding it then punched him twice in the face and head-butted him again, harder this time. Best to use every last ounce height and bulk offered in a situation like this. The old woman started screaming. The car was going all over the road now and braking in jerks. Suddenly, Mordred had the gun. He opened the door and thrust the driver out, then put the barrel to the old woman’s head. Highly uncharacteristic behaviour, all of it, but nice to know he still had it in him when the chips were down. She brought the car under control again and slowed down.
“The Sunshine Suite Hotel, please,” he said. “And while you’re driving, think of the number of years I’ve just saved you in purgatory.”
He caught her eyes in the rear view again. Terror. He felt almost sorry for her now, but then she had just collaborated in a plot to murder him. No time to give in to sentiment.
They arrived at the hotel four minutes later. He ordered her out of the car, and took the keys off her. Then the shock hit him and he lost his temper.
“Aren’t you ashamed of yourself?” he said. “I actually tried to help you back there. I offered you a meal at a restaurant or a lift home!” He sounded ridiculous, even to himself, but he couldn’t stop. “When people like you do things like that, it makes people like me more wary. Sooner or later we’ll all end up in a world where no one ever helps anyone. Is that what you want?”
God, he was actually shouting. He sounded like Mr Suburbia, chairman of the neighbourhood watch. To complete the idiocy, he should really repeat it in Spanish and Portuguese. He rolled his eyes and almost laughed at himself.
“And yes, I may be a spy,” he said, “but that doesn’t mean I deserve to die. I can still be a nice guy, someone who tries to help old ladies down on their luck!”
She began to cry, probably because she was scared. Maybe she thought he was yelling as a prelude to shooting her. Maybe it was her version of trying to look human. A few people had stopped to look at them from afar.
Time to get a grip. Best keep the gun. Looked like Brian might be right about that, after all. He got in the car, slammed the door and drove off.
He had no idea where he was going. Okay, so he was a known quantity. Probably the best thing to do now was get off the island. Slow down, too.
He tried ringing police HQ in George Town, but there was no signal. There had to have been one sometime, otherwise Brian wouldn’t have told him he had a direct line. He’d also said that if they hadn’t heard from him in twenty-four hours, they’d know something was wrong. And that it wasn’t in Decristoforo’s interests to harm him.
Some hope.
What if this whole thing was a setup, with Brian behind it? He remembered the odd feeling he’d had in Thames House that maybe someone in the building was trying to get rid of him.
No, it couldn’t be that.
Could it?
If so, it was probably best to put it out of his mind. That way madness lay. Moles coming at you from all directions, waving their trowels and leaving little mud hills in your back garden.
Likely, he wasn’t welcome because the owner didn’t want him here. Decristoforo did run the island, by all accounts. Something like an abduction and a murder probably couldn’t happen without his authorisation. And he had – supposedly - been informed in advance of Mordred’s arrival.
It all added up, which meant there was no chance of taking the next boat out. That possibility would already have been foreclosed.
Hey-ho. Attack was the best form of defence, so attack he must. He took the nearest road up the mountain and when he reached the expected dead-end, pulled off into the undergrowth. Might as well leave his suitcase where it was. He wouldn’t be needing it anytime soon and as things were, carrying it was impossible. He tore five leafy branches from the surrounding trees, combined them with two armfuls of dead foliage, and concealed the car. Maybe he could come back for everything later, but if not, so be it.
He took one of the maps of Saint Martha’s Rock from the inside pocket of his jacket. With almost half the landmass spread out in a spectacular vista beneath him, it was fairly easy to work out where he was.
And where Peter Decristoforo was. Where he needed to go. He knelt down against the car and said The Lord’s Prayer and asked God to help his parents cope if he was killed. He wished he’d found something out about Saint Martha before he’d come here, but no use crying over spilt milk. He asked her to protect him anyway. He said thanks for his life so far.
Next up, the gun. Once they discovered where he was, it was unlikely he’d be able to shoot his way out. In which case, attempting to do so seemed pointless. Also, what if he lost his temper, like he had with the old woman? He might end up murdering someone. Even once he got to Decristoforo Mansion, it’d probably come down to either talking his way in or not getting in at all. Decristoforo almost certainly had soldiers to spare. The gift of the gab had saved him once today. He shouldn’t despise it. No, he should probably leave the gun in the car, or better still, bury it.
Wait a minute. Who was he kidding? The truth was, it was the same old handicap. Cowardice, maybe, or some sort of idealistic sickness – he’d never found the correct name for it. Suddenly, he could see Saint Martha and Satan, just in front of him.
“The trouble is,” Satan said, “he’s got this saint-complex. Put it like this: if his parents were here, they’d say ‘take the gun’; his sisters, ditto; Brian, Alec, his other colleagues, Ruby Parker, ditto. I could go on. But no: he’s got to be a saint.”
“The rewards are so great, though,” Saint Martha said.
“For who? Not for his parents. They’ll be devastated.”
“How many years has this planet been around? They’ll be distraught for, like, fifteen, twenty years. That’s nothing. Anyway, they know as well as he does that it’s better to suffer wrong than do wrong.”
Satan shrugged. “It’s not like he’s never killed anyone before. He has. Which makes him a hypocrite in my books.”
“There’s a difference between killing someone you know will go on to kill others and just killing someone because he or she happens to be threatening you.”
“He doesn’t even know there is an afterlife. What’s he doing it for? Because he can’t do any other, that’s the truth. He’s the victim of your ideology.”
“Not all ‘ideologies’ are false.”
“Is yours?”
She smiled. “I don’t know. He doesn’t think so.”
They dissolved. Bloody hell, another consideration: who knew what wild animals were lurking out there? Rich people liked large and varied menageries, that was common knowledge. Lion, tigers, cheetahs, bears, whatever Decristoforo thought would amuse his guests and deter trespassers. There could be anything.
If he met a Grisly in the woods, however, he wouldn’t necessarily have to kill it. Firing in the air would make it retreat. The flip side was he’d give his position away. Providing he kept moving, that needn’t be a problem. The key was to make a bee-line for the boss. No detours.
He hadn’t actually seen the gun used yet – even during the struggle, it hadn’t gone off - which raised the question, how many wild animals could he meet before he ran out of bullets? He needed to ration them. He pulled some of the branches away from the car and retrieved the gun from the front seat.
As soon as he picked it up he knew something was wrong. Very wrong. Or maybe right ... He suddenly felt light-headed enough not to know which.
This wasn’t a real gun. It was a replica.
Which meant ... what? That the taxi driver had brought the wrong revolver along?
That didn’t seem very likely.
More probably, they’d only meant to scare him. But then, why not scare him with a real gun?
One thing was sure: the moment he met a lion now, he was a goner.
Hang on, he’d just asked Saint Martha for her help, and now this! Okay, the sun was getting to him. He sat down on the driver’s seat with his feet on the forest floor, and tried to weigh up the implications.
There was nothing else for it. He had to get this car out of the forest and back on the road as soon as possible. He had a room with an en suite waiting for him at the Sunshine Suite Hotel.
His mind stopped reeling and the truth dawned like an epiphany. Lord, if I must die, let it be no more than fifteen minutes after I’ve been in the shower.
