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Mount Pleasant, Kingston, Jamaica. 7am 14 October 1980.
A new black sedan stood parked in a cul-de-sac just off the main road to Saint Mary Parish. On the back seat, Glenford Weddermon sat alone, right by the window, looking out. The other side was vacant, reserved for his interviewee. Forty, with cornrow hair and designer stubble, Weddermon wore a grey suit and tie and black brogues: his work clothes. He looked and felt bored, as usual during even brief periods of inactivity. Beside him lay two business magazines, a copy of The Gleaner and a pocket calculator.
Another, much smaller, car pulled into the road and came to a halt before the sedan, so close that both their bonnets almost touched. A white man stepped out, about five years older than Weddermon with hooded eyes and swept back thinning hair. David Shaw, corrupt policeman, part-time gun-runner, all round good guy. He walked briskly over with a document wallet in his hand and got onto the back seat of the sedan. The two men shook hands.
“Saw your picture in the paper,” Glenford said. “Understand them girls got away, though.”
“That’s what I’m here to speak to you about,” Shaw said.
“I’m listening.”
“One of those ‘girls’ is a British agent, and - ”
“How do you know that?”
“We have contact with the High Commission, obviously, especially when one of their agents goes rogue.”
“Agent? She’s – what? – a secret agent? A spy?”
“That’s right.”
Glenford did a double-take. “The British have sent a black secret agent over here, and it’s a woman?”
“Correct.”
He hooted and slapped his leg. “Oh, man, they crazy! Talk about one step forward and one step back! They finally do something for the black man, and it’s a woman? They hire a woman?”
“Yes, I know it’s difficult to believe, but - ”
“They crazy!”
“Yes, well - ”
“I mean, yes, I know they got the Queen Victoria and now they got the Elizabeth Two and that, but man. For certain, you’ve got to draw the line somewhere, yes? Was James Bond a woman? No.”
“That’s very true.”
“So what’s up, David?”
“Well, this woman secret agent, she was in the house we had surrounded yesterday - ”
“How she get away?”
“What?”
“I say, how she get away, her being a woman?”
“Well, she had help from a lot of men.”
“Aaaah. Right.”
“I’ll come to the point. She may be onto us. She may be out to stop the guns coming in. Or you getting them. The British High Commission say she’s not like any ordinary woman you’ve ever met. She’s very dangerous, and no one should underestimate her.”
“Sure, sure.”
Shaw opened the document wallet and took out a wad of A4 Xeroxes showing Ruby Parker’s face from the front and from the side. “This is what she looks like. Give these to your men and tell them to watch out for her. Stop her. However you like.”
“These prison photos?”
“No, I don’t think so. I don’t know. The High Commission gave them to us.” He took out a second wad of photocopies. Another white face, this time male, much older, front only. “This man may or may not be with her. He recently took leave from work, and the BHC says he arrived in Jamaica two nights ago. Again, distribute then as widely as you can, and instruct your people to look out for him. He too could be dangerous. He’s almost certainly here to help Ruby Parker. He’s also ... gone rogue, you see.”
“What the British telling you all this for?”
“Because they sent Ruby Parker over here with one mission – she was supposed to look after the Prime Minister – and now she’s adopted another. It’s become a police matter. More importantly - though, of course, they can’t know this - she’s out to stop us.”
“How the hell she find out about us?”
“You’re not going to like this, Glenford.”
“Tell me anyways.”
“Okay, well, it appears she bumped into your nephew, a Mr Andrew Walker. We think she may have learned about it from him.”
“From Andrew?”
“Apparently.”
“But Andrew don’t know nothing about it!”
“He’s a journalist, Glenford. And it appears he does.”
“And she and he - ?”
“I’m afraid to say they’re probably working together.”
“Oh, no.”
“Oh, yes.”
“No.”
“Yes, I’m afraid so.”
A motorbike bearing two men came round the corner at speed. Glenford recognised it as one of his, probably an urgent message. It slowed to a halt and the rider dismounted. His passenger, a tall, gangly man of about thirty, sat looking sullen. A Maroon, by the looks of him. Glenford wound down his window to receive the message.
“Boss,” the rider said, “this man from the village where your nephew’s staying. He got something urgent to tell you.”
The Marina Hotel, Port Royal Main Road, Kingston. 7am 14 October 1980.
At precisely the time Roger Parton got into the sedan to speak to Glenford Weddermon, the man pictured in his second wad of Xeroxes ascended a set of carpeted stairs in a mid-range hotel near Kingston Airport. He hadn’t checked in at reception because he wanted his visit to be a surprise. Since arriving on the island, he’d switched hotels three times, once in the middle of the night. Maybe he was paranoid, but he thought not.
He stopped on the second floor. Six doors alternated on this corridor, each looking like it could do with a new coat of paint. Number 24. He hoped he wasn’t too late. He held his hat against his chest and knocked. He’d dressed as respectably as possible for this encounter, in a new-ish suit, tie and brogues. He probably looked like a travelling salesman, except that hotels like this one didn’t usually accommodate that class of visitor.
The door opened an inch and a middle-aged lady peered out. “Can I help you?”
“Camilla Hebblethwaite?”
“Do I know you?”
“Permit me to introduce myself. I’m Jack Maddison, a former colleague of your brother’s.”
“Of Roger’s? He’s not here, and I don’t know where he is.”
“I didn’t come to see him. I’m here to talk about a guest at your hotel, the Duke of Albemarle, before it burned down. A ‘Miss Ruby Parker’.”
She went to close the door on him, but he put his foot in the gap. “Before Roger burned it down,” he said.
Her demeanour changed and she looked timorous. He’d calculated that once he mentioned he worked alongside Parton, she wouldn’t ask any tiresome ‘how do you know’ questions, or challenge him to prove it. She knew her brother was a spy, and she knew spies could see through walls.
“You’d better come in,” she said. “In fact, yes, you’re welcome. Come in. What did you say your name was again?”
“Jack Maddison.”
Her attitude had undergone such a complete turnabout – from reluctance to timidity and now to a kind of forced conviviality – that for a moment, he thought it might be a trap, and that Parton might have anticipated him. But no. Her body language wasn’t right for that. On the other hand, she might be about to attack him herself. Better maintain his distance.
There were two chairs in the room – one for sitting at a dressing table, the other a cheap armchair with a straight back. Apart from that, there was a single bed and a view. A row of guest houses across the road obscured the harbour.
“Please,” she said, indicating the armchair. She sat opposite him and picked up a packet of cigarettes from the table. “Want one?”
“They’re not really my brand,” he said, “but okay.”
“I was trying to give up, but I’ve had a relapse.”
She took out her lighter. They each exhaled smoke in the sort of even and apparently purposeful stream that might give you the illusion of being relaxed and in control.
“What do you want to ask?” she said.
“What exactly do you think happened before the fire?”
She chortled bitterly. “That’s for the police to decide.”
“But you must have a theory of your own,” he persisted gently.
“The police won’t go with what I think. They won’t even go with what happened. They’ll go with what you people tell them to. Ruby Parker killed four people then set fire to the building to cover her tracks.”
“Is that so impossible?”
“She’s a professional, like you, and like Roger. If she was to shoot four people, she wouldn’t need arson to cover her tracks. She wouldn’t leave any tracks in the first place. But of course, as you made clear earlier, you already know about the arson. Let’s stop playing games. What do you want?”
“Why did Roger think it would be a good idea?”
“He wasn’t trying to help Ruby Parker, that’s for sure. No, William – my husband – was up to something down there. Lots of documents, mostly records of business dealings in a kind of industrial-espionage-proof shorthand. Or that’s what he told me. I didn’t enquire too closely, as a matter of policy.”
“Why would Roger send Miss Parker to your hotel if there were sensitive documents there? The sort you have to set fire to, in order to stop the police getting? Because that’s what it amounts to, doesn’t it?”
“Because he and William were in league, and looking back, I think the plan was that William should kill her. At the very least, he should keep an eye on her, frustrate her designs. It’s easier to do that if she’s daily to hand.”
“Do you think she killed your husband?”
“Someone must have. But somehow I doubt it.”
“What makes you say that?”
“On the first night Ruby Parker was here, Marcus and my daughter took her to the north coast for a bit of sightseeing. On the way back, they were attacked by a truckload of JLP gangsters. Ruby Parker saved them. But she didn’t kill anyone. She just held them at gunpoint, made them repair the damage they’d done, then sent them on their way with a good talking-to. They emerged without a scratch. Now that doesn’t sound like the modus operandi of a remorseless murderer.”
“Are you saying you think William killed the three Jamaicans?”
She stubbed her cigarette out and reached for another. “Well done, Mr Maddison. We’re getting there.”
“Why?”
“Because they were helping Ruby Parker look for her gun and money, I assume. Or possibly, he just lured them down there and shot them. He had a very good motive. He wanted Cedric out of the way.”
“One of the two boys? Why?”
“Because he and my daughter were husband and wife, and he couldn’t stand the idea. He’d made them promise to keep it a secret till the family could announce it ‘in style’, as he laughably put it. Mr and Mrs Hebblethwaite are pleased to announce the marriage of their daughter to an unemployed servant’s son. In reality, he was hoping it would fall apart. I guess he thought he could pin the murders on Ruby Parker. Or maybe he just wasn’t bothered what Cynthia thought any more. If she did kill him – which, as I’ve said, I doubt - he probably had it coming.”
“Where is your daughter now?”
“Florida. Distraught, naturally. I’m going to join her for a long while, till she starts coming to terms with it, then I’ll probably come back here. Jamaican I am, and Jamaican I intend to remain.”
“I believe we share a mutual friend.”
“Oh?”
“Lawrence Poynter and I used to work together.”
She seemed momentarily lost for words. “Oh. Oh, I – Have you seen him since you arrived in the island?”
“Briefly. I have to keep a low profile. I’m rather a pariah in MI6 at the moment.”
“That’s interesting. Why?”
“For taking the side of an innocent woman. One I strongly believe to be innocent.”
“You may or may not know that Lawrence and I are having an affair. I’ve no need to hide it now, and, since it’s already been decided that Ruby Parker will take the blame for William’s murder, I’m not remotely implicated. We’ll probably get married once Cynthia’s back in one piece.”
He leaned back and decided to change tack. “Mrs Hebblethwaite, how well do you and your brother get on?”
She clearly noticed the digression and adjusted accordingly. “Brother-sister relationships aren’t usually about ‘getting on’. They’re about mutual tolerance.”
“He seems to have decided that all four murders were committed in cold blood and that Ruby Parker ought to stand trial for them.”
“If he’s made his mind up, as you say, then that’s probably what will happen.”
“Yet we know it’s false. Don’t we?”
She sighed irritably. “Mr Maddison, if you want something from me, please get to the point. I’m not prepared to join you in a private investigation, if that’s what you’re asking. I’ve just lost my husband, three of my friends, my son-in-law, my home, and quite possibly, my daughter’s sanity. I haven’t the time, the energy, or even the inclination to come to Ruby Parker’s rescue. Anyway, if she’s as clever as I recall, she’ll probably come up with something. I’d get ready to be surprised, if I were you.”
“The point then, since you insist. Are you hiding anything?”
She looked frightened. “Me? How?”
“I think your husband and your brother were collaborating in something illegal, and I think that’s why your brother burned the hotel down. He knew William had incriminating documents in the cellar; given enough time and manpower, he could possibly have retrieved them, but he didn’t know whether there were others lying about elsewhere in the building. After all, William died suddenly, before he had chance to put his affairs in order. Hence he decided to torch the whole lot. The question is, do you know what was down there?”
“I’ve told you: no.”
“Do you know where, in Kingston, he worked?”
“New Kingston, at the Caxton’s Shipping offices. They opened in 1975 to take advantage of the new container terminal in the harbour. They do good business.”
“When he died, did they forward any of his effects to you?”
“I suppose that would have been normal, but I’m not sure they’d have known where to send them. It would only have been work things.”
“If you were to give me written permission, I might be able to retrieve them for you.”
“Thereby incriminating my brother. Assuming you’re right.”
“If your brother is involved in something illegal, then he may drag you down with him. And Cynthia too. Once the police discover what he’s up to, they may ‘remember’ that the arson attack on the Duke wasn’t as straightforward as it seemed. If they don’t, I will. I’ve already had two unofficial conversations with the fire investigators. They’re willing to go with the official version for the sake of a quiet life, but they’re not prepared to defend it tooth and claw.”
She stubbed her second cigarette out. “So you’re blackmailing me.”
“I’m asking you to defend an innocent woman. I appreciate what you’ve been through, but you’re hardly entitled to take the moral high ground on the basis that my methods inconvenience you.”
She ground her teeth. “I’ll do as you ask, then, but if you’re right, I should imagine my brother will have got there first. If he’s threatened, you don’t imagine he’ll leave a stone unturned, do you?”
“He’d make it much easier for himself if he got your written authorisation. Unless he’s been to you and asked for that, I think we can safely assume that he’s overlooked this particular stone. So we’d better move as quickly as possible. Are you ready to go now?”
Her eyes glazed over as if nothing mattered any more, certainly not the superficial distinction between going on an errand or staying put.
“Why not?” she said wearily.
