Bahama Crisis

Fifteen

Robinson gave us about three hours together. It was difficult to judge time because neither of us had a watch and all I could do was to estimate the hour by the angle of the sun. I think we had three hours before there was a rattle at the door and the Texan came in, gun first.

He stepped sideways, as before, and Robinson came in with another man who could have been the Texan’s brother and possibly was. He was armed with a pistol. Robinson surveyed us and said benignly, ‘So nice to see young people getting together again. I hope you have acquainted your husband with the issue at hand, Mrs Mangan.’

‘She doesn’t know what the hell you want,’ I said. ‘And neither do I. This is bloody ridiculous.’

‘Well, we’ll talk about that later,’ he said. ‘I’m afraid I must part you lovebirds. Come along, Mrs Mangan.’

Debbie looked appealingly at me, but I shook my head gently. ‘You’d better go.’ I could see the man’s finger tightening on the trigger of the shotgun.

And so she was taken from me and escorted from the room by the man with the pistol. ‘We won’t starve you,’ said Robinson. ‘That should be an earnest of my good intentions — should you doubt them.’

He stood aside and a woman came in with a tray which she exchanged for the breakfast tray. She was a worn woman with sagging breasts and hands gnarled and twisted with rheumatics. I pointed to the pitcher and basin on the other side of the room. ‘What about some fresh water?’

‘I see no reason why not. What about it, Leroy?’

The Texan said, ‘Belle, git th’ water.’

She took the pitcher and basin outside, and I had a couple more names, for what they were worth. Robinson looked at the tray from which steam rose gently. ‘Not the best of cuisine, I’m afraid, but edible... edible. And it’s very much a case of fingers being made before forks. I think you’ll need the water.’

I said, ‘What about coming to the point?’

He wagged a finger at me. ‘Later... I said later. There is something which I must think over rather carefully. There’s really plenty of time, my dear chap.’

Belle came back, put the basin on the table and stood the pitcher in it. When she left Robinson said, ‘Bon appetit,’ and backed out, followed by Leroy.

The meal was fish or, rather, wet cotton wadding mixed with spiky bones. I ate with my fingers and the flesh tasted of mud. When I had eaten rather less than my fill, but could stomach no more, I walked over to the water pitcher and was about to pour water into the basin to wash my slimy hands when I stopped and looked at it thoughtfully. I did not pour the water but dabbled my hands in the pitcher, then wiped them dry on my jeans.

The pitcher held more than two gallons. That, plus the weight of the pitcher itself, would be about twenty-five pounds. I was beginning to get ideas. I went back to the bed, spread butter on a thick slice of bread, and munched while looking at the pitcher, hoping it would tell me what to do. The first faint tendrils of an idea began to burgeon.

Robinson came back about two hours later with his usual bodyguard, and Leroy took his position just to the left of the door. Robinson closed the door and leaned on it. ‘I’m sorry to learn of your marital troubles, Mr Mangan,’ he said suavely. ‘But from what I heard I gather you are on your way to solving them.’ He smiled at my startled expression. ‘Oh, yes, I listened to your conversation with your wife with great interest.’

I cursed silently. Ramon Rodriguez had shown me what could be done with bugs, and I might have known that Robinson would have the place wired. ‘So you’re a voyeur, too,’ I said acidly.

He sniggered. ‘I even recorded your love-play. Though not my main interest it was very entertaining. If set to music it could hit the top twenty.’

‘You bastard!’

‘Now, now,’ he said chidingly. ‘That’s not the way to speak when you’re at the wrong end of a gun. Let us come to more serious matters — the case of Jack Kayles. I noted when listening to the tape that you showed interest when your wife mentioned his name. My interest is in how you tracked him down. I would dearly like to know the answer to that.’

I said nothing but just looked at him, and he clicked his tongue. ‘I advise you to be cooperative,’ he said. ‘In your own interest — and that of your wife.’

‘I’ll answer that if you tell me why he killed my family.’

Robinson regarded me thoughtfully. ‘No harm in that, I suppose. He killed your family because he is a stupid man; how stupid I am only now beginning to find out. In fact, it is essential that I now find the measure of his stupidity, and that is why you are here.’

He took a pace forward and stood with his hands in his pockets. ‘Kayles was supposed to sail from the Bahamas to Miami in his own boat. There was a deadline, but Kayles was having problems — something technical to do with boats.’ Robinson waved the technicality aside. ‘At any rate he found he could not meet the deadline. When he heard that a skipper needed a crewman to help take a boat to Miami the next day he jumped at the chance. Do you follow me?’

‘So far.’

‘Now, Kayles was carrying something with him, something important.’ Robinson waved his hand airily. ‘There is no necessity for you to know what it was. As I say, he is stupid and he let your skipper find it, so Kayles killed him with the knife he invariably carries. His intention was to conveniently lose that poor black man overboard but, unfortunately, the killing was seen by your little girl and then...’ He sighed and shrugged. ‘...then one thing led to another. Now, Mr Mangan, I don’t mind telling you that I was very angry about this — very angry, indeed. It was a grievous setback to my plans. Disposing of your boat was a great problem, to begin with.’

‘You son of a bitch,’ I said bitterly. ‘You’re talking about my wife, my daughter and my friend.’ I stuck my finger out at him. ‘And you’ve no need to be coy about what Kayles was carrying. It was a consignment of cocaine.’

Robinson stared at me. ‘Dear me! You do jump to conclusions. Now, I wonder...’ He broke off and looked up at the roof, deep in thought. After a while his gaze returned to me. ‘Well, we can take that up later, can’t we? I’ve answered your question, Mangan. Now answer mine. How did you trace the idiot?’

I saw no reason not to answer, but I was becoming increasingly chilled. If Robinson saw no reason not to gossip about three murders then it meant that he thought he was talking to a dead man, or a man as good as dead. I said, ‘I had a photograph of him,’ and explained how it had come about.

‘Ah!’ said Robinson. ‘So it was the little girl’s camera. That really worried Kayles. He was pretty sure she had taken his photograph, but he couldn’t find the camera on your boat. Of course, it was a big boat and he couldn’t search every nook and cranny, but it still worried him. So he solved his problem — as he thought — by sinking your boat, camera and all. But it wasn’t there, was it? You had it. I suppose you gave the photograph to the police.’

‘There’ll be a copy of it in every police office in the Bahamas,’ I said grimly.

‘Oh dear!’ said Robinson. ‘That’s bad, very bad. Isn’t it, Leroy?’

Leroy grunted, but said nothing. The shotgun aimed at me had not quivered by as much as a millimetre.

Robinson took his hands from his pockets and clasped them in front of him. ‘Well, to return to the main thrust of our conversation. You tracked Kayles to the Jumentos. How did you do that? I must know.’

‘By his boat.’

‘But it was disguised.’

‘Not well enough.’

‘I see. I told you the man is an idiot. Well, the idiot escaped and reported back to me. He told me a strange story which I found hard to credit. He told me that you knew all my plans. Now, isn’t that odd?’

‘Remarkable, considering that I don’t know who the hell you are.’

‘I thought so, too, but Kayles was most circumstantial. Out it all came, information which even he was not supposed to know about — and all quite accurate.’

‘And I told him all this?’ I said blankly.

‘Not quite. He eavesdropped while you were talking to the man, Ford. I must say I was quite perturbed; so much so that I acted hastily, which is uncharacteristic of me. I ordered your death, Mr Mangan, but you fortuitously escaped.’ Robinson shrugged. ‘However, the four Americans were quite a bonus — I believe the Securities and Exchange Commission is causing quite a stir on Wall Street.’

‘The four Am...’ I broke off. ‘You caused that crash? You killed Bill Pinder?’

Robinson raised an eyebrow. ‘Pinder?’ he enquired.

‘The pilot, damn you!’

‘Oh, the pilot,’ he said uninterestedly. ‘Well, by then I had time to think more clearly. I needed to interrogate you in a place of my own choosing — and so here you are. It would have been difficult getting near to you on Grand Bahama; for one thing, you were tending to live in Commissioner Perigord’s pocket. But that worried me for other reasons; I want to know how much information you have passed on to him. I must know, because that will influence my future actions.’

‘I don’t know what you’re talking about,’ I said, wishing I did.

‘I will give you time to think about it; to think and remember. But first I will do you a favour.’ He turned and opened the door, saying to Leroy, ‘Watch him.’

A couple of minutes later the pistol carrier came in. He jerked his head at Leroy. ‘He wants you.’ Leroy went out and I was left facing the muzzle of a pistol instead of a shotgun. Not a great improvement.

Presently Robinson came back. He looked at me sitting on the bed, and said, ‘Come to the window and see what I have for you.’

‘The only favour I want from you is to release my wife.’

‘I’m afraid not,’ he said. ‘Not for the moment. But come here, Mangan, and watch.’

I joined him at the window and the man with the pistol moved directly behind me, standing about six feet away. There was nothing to be seen outside that was new, just the trees and hot sunlight. Then Leroy came into view with another man. They were both laughing.

‘Kayles!’ I said hoarsely.

‘Yes, Kayles,’ said Robinson.

Leroy was still carrying the shotgun. He stooped to tie the lace of his shoe, gesturing for Kayles to carry on. He let Kayles get ten feet ahead and then shot him in the back from his kneeling position. He shot again, the two reports coming so closely together that they sounded as one, and Kayles pitched forward violently to lie in a crumpled heap.

‘There,’ said Robinson. ‘The murderer of your family has been executed.’

I looked at Kayles and saw that Robinson was right — buckshot does terrible things to a man’s body. Kayles had been ripped open and his spine blown out. A pool of blood was soaking into the sandy earth.

It had happened so suddenly and unexpectedly that I was numbed. Leroy walked to Kayles’s body and stirred it with his foot, then he reloaded the shotgun and walked back the way he had come and so out of sight.

‘It was not done entirely for your benefit,’ said Robinson. ‘From being an asset Kayles had become a liability. Anyone connected with me who has his photograph on the walls of police stations is dangerous.’ He paused. ‘Of course, in a sense the demonstration was for your benefit. An example — it could happen to you.’

I looked out at the body of Kayles and said, ‘I think you’re quite mad.’

‘Not mad — just careful. Now you are going to tell me what I want to know. How did you get wind of what I am up to, and how much have you told Perigord?’

‘I’ve told the police nothing, except about Kayles,’ I said. ‘I know nothing at all about what other crazy ideas you might have. I know nothing about you, and I wish I knew less.’

‘So do I believe you?’ he mused. ‘I think not. I can’t trust you to be honest with me. So what to do about it? I could operate on you with a blunt knife, but you could be stubborn. You could even know nothing, as you say, so the exercise would be futile. Even if your wife saw the operation with the blunt knife there would be no profit in it. You see, I believe she knows nothing and so torturing you could not induce her to speak the truth. In fact, anything she might say I would discount as a lie to save you.’

I said nothing. My mouth was dry and parched because I knew what was coming and dreaded it.

Robinson spoke in tones of remote objectivity, building up his ramshackle structure of crazy logic. ‘No,’ he said. ‘We can discard that, so what is left? Mrs Mangan is left, of course. Judging from the touching scene of reconciliation this morning it is quite possible that you still have an attachment for her. So, we operate on Mrs Mangan with a blunt knife — or its equivalent. Women have soft bodies, Mr Mangan. I think you will speak truly of what you know.’

I nearly went for him then and there, but the gunman said sharply, ‘Don’t!’ and I recoiled from the gun.

‘You son of a bitch!’ I said, raging. ‘You utter bastard!’

Robinson waved his hand. ‘No compliments, I beg of you. You will have time to think of this — to sleep on it. I regret we can waste no more good food on you. But that is all for the best — the digestion of food draws blood from the brain and impedes the thought processes. I want you in a condition in which you think hard and straight, Mr Mangan. I will ask you more questions tomorrow.’

He went out, followed by the gunman, and the door closed and clicked locked, leaving me in such despair as I had never known in my life.