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Errol posed an intellectual problem because, despite being a Marxist and believing in the dictatorship of the proletariat, he proved himself astonishingly adept at being a manservant. He obeyed orders without question, even in the kitchen.
The Colonel’s oven was ridiculously unequal to the task of preparing food for a thousand people, but luckily Errol had foreseen this, and he handed three of the four hundred dollars to a catering firm who laid out five long grills in the Maroon village and set to work preparing goat with rice, jerk chicken in flatbread and bananas in canned milk. He paid his musician friends ten dollars each and spent the rest on dominoes and new batteries for Walker’s boombox. By seven o’clock, the party was in full swing, an untold number of strangers had gatecrashed, and people were dancing and sitting on the ground playing 5s and 3s. All ages were represented and looked happy and relaxed. It was nothing like the party Ruby had been to in Kingston. She and Vilma were entirely forgiven whatever they’d once done, and there was a general assumption that they were rich, encouraged by Errol: which only increased his paradoxicality.
Inside the Colonel’s house, a traditional bush doctor tended Walker by administering roots and herbs and negotiating with African spirits. The patient didn’t seem to be doing as badly as expected. Vilma surmised that maybe she’d sucked out more of the poison than she’d originally thought.
At ten, the caterers packed up and left. The musicians carried on for another hour, then everyone went home, like it was a children’s party and the parents had arrived.
“I’m whacked,” Vilma said, as the last of the villagers said goodnight. “Any idea where we’re meant to sleep?”
“Probably on the floor next to Walker,” Ruby replied.
“Figures. I guess we’ll be looking after him in shifts. Not that there’s much we can do. Carry on with the drugs, keep his temperature down, keep talking to him.”
When they went inside, he was sitting up on the edge of the bed. He watched them come in without smiling, rubbed the back of his neck, lowered his head to look at the floor, and raised it again to resume watching them. “I understand you’ve been to a party,” he said dully.
“Sorry we didn’t invite you,” Vilma replied.
“Who are you, anyway?”
“Vilma Cuesta,” Ruby said. “My friend.”
“Don’t sound like you come from round here. You Haitian?”
“Cuban,” Vilma replied.
He smiled and shook his head. “Oh boy, Ruby, you’re in trouble when your bosses find out you’ve been partying with a commie.”
“What makes you think I’m a communist?” Vilma replied. “Why can’t I be a boat person?”
“You wouldn’t be up here if one of you wasn’t in trouble,” he replied. “The best explanation I can think of is that Ruby’s taken up with a friend of Errol. You met Errol?”
“He brought us here,” Ruby said.
“He’s a communist,” Walker said. “Sorry to break it to you like this, but I’m guessing it’s not news.” He rubbed the back of his neck again. “Makes me like you more, Ruby, not less. You’re still hot by the way. You’ve even got a hot friend.”
“Look, let’s stop wise-guying each other,” Ruby said. “You wouldn’t be here if you weren’t in trouble. We’re all in trouble. Let’s see if we can’t help each other out.”
“I suppose you want to interrogate me,” he said. “Find out how much I know.”
“Know about what?” she said.
“About the thing you want to find out about.”
Vilma slapped him hard in the face. “I don’t like the way you’re talking to my friend, Panty Waist. Listen to me. I know all about your little Miami Black Star rag. How about I wire your boss and tell him he’s hiring someone who ran for his sorry life when Mike Manley got shot at? Not like Ruby here. She saved his life. And guess what? Afterwards, he gave her a glass of lemonade and a cream bun and a big kiss. What have you ever done, except hide in the shadow of your oh-so-scary gangster uncle? Now stop wise-cracking and act like a grown up!”
“I didn’t run away,” he said, rubbing his cheek. “I was apprehended by the CIA.”
She sat down on the sofa. “That’s more like it.”
He gave a hard sigh to dispel the shock. “I wouldn’t have run away, Ruby. I may not have been straight with you, but I’m not a coward.”
“How did you get away from the CIA?” she asked.
“After Manley was shot at, all hell broke loose. Two middle-aged white guys were never going to be able to manhandle a black man through that crowd, knives coming out of nowhere for all kinds of reasons. I didn’t even have to struggle free. They did the sensible thing. They opted to survive and let me go.”
“What’s your relation to the real Josiah Collins?” Ruby asked.
“I saw him get murdered. In New Kingston, the fourth night of my arrival. I’d been drinking with a few friends and I was walking to the bus. My mom lives up in Armour Pen. I took a short cut down a back alley. That’s when I saw it.”
“Who killed him?” Vilma said. “I’m assuming it was your uncle.”
“Not unless it was one of his hired hands, but I’m pretty sure it wasn’t. The killer was white and he didn’t look the sort to be doing someone else’s dirty work. Besides, my uncle says not.”
“Describe the perpetrator,” Ruby said.
“Middle-aged. Smart, refined appearance. He and Collins didn’t look like they’d just met. They looked ... relaxed in each other’s company. Don’t get me wrong: they weren’t laughing or anything. But they did seem like they were having a sensible business discussion about stocks or shares, or something civilised.”
“And when you’d witnessed the murder?” Vilma asked.
“I’d have intervened to stop it if I’d had time, but it came out of nowhere. The white guy just pulled a gun with a silencer. He fired point-blank at the black guy’s chest. No warning. Collins obviously wasn’t expecting it.”
“What did you do afterwards?” Ruby persisted.
“I could have run away. It was pretty deserted. No one saw me, I’m pretty sure of that, and even if they had, they probably couldn’t trace me. People get murdered in Jamaica all the time and the police hardly ever get to the bottom of it. However, I thought the shot guy might still have some life in him. I’ve been brought up to help those in trouble. This was almost a literal Good Samaritan situation. I went over to see if I could save him. No way. He was dead when I reached him.”
“And then?” Vilma said.
“I’m a journalist and I guess my curiosity just got the better of me. A very professional killing and not a robbery. Like I said, I didn’t think the police would crack it. But there had to be a story in there somewhere.”
“So you went through his pockets,” Ruby said. “I’m not judging you, just trying to picture the timeline. What did you find?”
“US passport and a set of instructions regarding you. Specifically, where you were staying. Snuck in past the dogs. I’m a journalist: I’m good at getting in places I oughtn’t to be. Anyway, I thought I’d do a little spying on you before I went in. Looked in your room. Gun. Money. Then I heard you talking to the proprietress on the landing. Overheard your job description. Guessed Collins was in the same line of work, and that you’d lead me to whatever it was Collins was killed for. Some El Dorado of news. Hell, I might even be able to protect you along the way. That way, we both win.”
“And yet the CIA came to apprehend you only seven and a half hours later,” Ruby said.
He laughed. “Seven hours? I thought it was longer than that.”
“It definitely seemed longer,” she replied. “No, you came to get me at 2 am. If you’re telling the truth, the CIA arrived at 9.30 am. That’s seven and a half hours.”
“What Ruby’s getting at,” Vilma said, “is, how do you think they knew they had an impersonator on the loose?”
“It’s more than that,” Ruby said. “It’s how did they know it was you? When we went into the football stadium that day, you told everyone you were with The Miami Black Star. That was a legitimate entrée. How did they know you’d taken Collins’s place? What made them think anyone had?”
“I thought you’d told them,” he replied. “That’s why I wasn’t overly concerned to get back together with you, hot though you are.”
She nodded. “I can see how that might work as an assumption. Somewhere between leaving the Duke that night and my arrival in Spanish Town, one of our agents makes contact with me and tells me Collins is dead.”
“I tried to take you somewhere you wouldn’t have contacts and not let you out of my sight. I also tried to ensure Collins’s body stayed hidden for a while.”
“By dumping it in a bin,” Vilma said. “A bit disrespectful, surely?”
“If I was going to pretend to be him, I had to get his corpse out of sight,” he replied. “There weren’t that many alternatives. I didn’t have a spade to give him a decent burial.”
“We’re missing the point,” Ruby said. “The point is, someone must have revealed what happened to Collins and that you were impersonating him. It wasn’t me. So who was it?”
“This is the last of your questions I’m answering,” he replied. “Then it’s my turn.”
Ruby and Vilma exchanged glances. “Fair enough,” Ruby said.
“I honestly don’t know who revealed it. Or rather, I do. It was you.”
“If I wanted to turn you over to the CIA,” she went on, “why aren’t they here now?”
He chuckled. “Because, as we’ve already established, you’re in some sort of trouble with vivacious Vilma, and you can’t drop me in it without dropping yourself in it at the same time. Now are you going to tell me about that? Because I’ve been upfront with you, and you did say we were going to help each other.”
“Okay,” she said. “But I need to warn you at the outset that you’re not going to like it. Brace yourself. The hotel where we met has burned to the ground.”
“Er, what?”
She described her reunion with Vilma, her return to the Duke and encounter with William Hebblethwaite, her escape from the police the next day and her arrival in the village. He sat motionless, looking at the ground for so long, she almost thought he was asleep. Vilma went into the kitchen to make coffee.
“Shit, we’re dead,” he said eventually. “I wish I’d never asked. The only silver lining is that you’re in a hell of a lot more trouble than me. They’ll probably pin Collins’s death on me and send me to the electric chair. They’ll pin four deaths on you and send – oh, wait up, we’re both in exactly the same amount of trouble.”
Vilma returned with three coffees on a tray. “We need to find Collins’s murderer.”
“Yeah,” Walker replied, as one might respond to ‘we need to find a unicorn’. “Can I ask you a question, Ruby, before we both die? There’s one thing I’d like to get straight in my head.” He didn’t sound friendly.
“You might as well,” she said. “It’s not like I’m going anywhere.”
“Where are the guns coming in? Do you know that?”
“What guns do you mean?”
“I thought we’d passed the point where we’re hiding stuff from each other. Everyone in the PNP knows the Americans, and probably the Brits, are flooding the country with weapons in order to destabilise it. It’s what I came to this country to investigate. When I realised you and Collins were spies, I thought I’d hit the jackpot. I thought you’d lead me to the landing-place.”
“I don’t know.”
He frowned. “You don’t know weapons are coming in, or you don’t know where? Or both?”
“I don’t know where. Vilma told me they were coming in, but that’s not something I can do anything about.”
“You could go to the papers and tell them.”
“What papers?”
“The Guardian? The one you’re supposed to work for?”
“Since one: I’ve never been to Jamaica before, and two: MI6 can easily deny ever having met me, why would The Guardian listen? Even if it did, their journalists would have to prove it, and given that Jamaica-news doesn’t sell papers in England, why would they go to all that effort? No, things would proceed as they always do, along the least troublesome path. I’d be labelled ‘Potty Miss Parker’ and put in an institution for the remainder of my days. Believe me, they’d find ways.”
“So what exactly was your role in Jamaica?”
“I was to monitor the degree of chaos on the ground and warn the British High Commission if it looked like going too far.”
He clicked his tongue. “How sleazy.”
She shrugged. “It’s a job, and I was trapped.”
“You’re a black woman,” he said. “Does that mean nothing to you?” He turned to Vilma. “And you: helping her. Have you no pride? This is a predominantly black nation. For the last eight years, it’s done its utmost to rise from the cesspit of slavery’s long, bitter legacy, and now a bunch of white guys is trying to put it back there, and you’re helping them?”
“I don’t see it like that,” Ruby said.
“How do you see it then?” Walker went on bitterly. “Give me the benefit of your wisdom, sister.”
“There isn’t any ‘black’ that rises above the current mess the world’s in. It’s fantasy. There are just people. I’m British first, black afterwards.”
He scoffed. “Bet your employers don’t think that.”
“I don’t care what my employers think,” she replied.
“You will,” he said, “when you’re old and washed up. One day, you’ll wonder why the opportunities didn’t come your way.”
“No, I won’t. I’ll know full well that racism did it. I know that now.”
“Oh, I get it. You’re one of those clever dudes who says, ‘Racism’s not my problem, it’s the problem of the racist’. Yeah, well, good luck with that.”
“I’m not saying we shouldn’t fight racism. But black power’s not the way forward.”
“Who mentioned ‘black power’?”
“What banner are you fighting under?”
“Okay, yes, that of the black man. But so what? I am a black man. Why shouldn’t I fight under my own banner? And before you call me out, I’m using ‘man’ in the old sense. Both sexes.”
“Is that not black power?” she asked. “That’s a genuine question.”
He rolled his eyes. “Labels. Okay, yes, maybe it is. So what?”
“I may not have been to Jamaica before, but I have been to Africa. I’ve seen plenty of evil black men and women and plenty of good whites.”
“What’s your conclusion then? Keep things the way they are? Because, baby, that ain’t working.”
“Of course I don’t want to keep things the way they are. But I can fight for justice without referencing any colour skin at all. Or haven’t you noticed that people come in all colours? All we need to fight for is the rule of a law in which human rights are embedded, and a fully independent judiciary.”
“Yeah, it’s that simple.”
“Why wouldn’t it be?”
“Because laws have to be interpreted, dumbass. And judges will interpret them according to their backgrounds. And their backgrounds will be determined by the ruling ideology and what counts as ‘education’ in that society. Which are one and the same thing. Before you can have a truly independent judiciary, you need to break the back of the prevailing dogmas and prejudices. Re-write what counts as ‘common sense’. White judges will always interpret any laws to favour white citizens. Sorry, not always. That’s too strong. But on the whole. Mostly. And that’s not good enough. It’s not good enough for me, and it oughtn’t to be good enough for you. Because it’s not just about you. It’s about our children and our children’s children.”
Ruby swallowed. She didn’t have a follow-up to this. She knew he was wrong, but she didn’t know how. She’d know tomorrow. She was tired now.
“I’m not well,” he said. “I need to lie down now, see if I can get better. I look forward to working with you, Ruby. I really do. While I’m asleep, I’d be grateful if you could think about where those weapons might be landing.”
