False Nine

15

There are two things that strike you as your plane comes in to land on the Caribbean island of Antigua. The first is how small the island is. It’s not much bigger than the city of Birmingham. The second is how like an emerald the green of the land is against the lapis-lazuli blue of the sea which seems to extend forever so that you can hardly tell where the sky ends and the sea begins. Darker blue patches of coral reefs surround the island like submerged thunderclouds and almost every inch of the meandering coast is gilded with the sand of some perfect beach. Nearer to the ground there are more houses than you anticipated and these are mostly white as if a green coat had been studded with the shiny buttons of some eco-minded pearly king. And then there is the airport, as pink as candyfloss with the name of the island helpfully spelled out in large green letters under the seven arches of the building’s roof which resemble alphabetical trains sitting in a railway siding, awaiting dispatch to various parts of the island. But this is the last time on Antigua you ever stop to think about something so urgent as a train because as soon as you are off the plane life drops a rusty gear or two. Enveloped by warmth and confronted everywhere by almost fluorescent smiles, you even blink more slowly as if you’d just had a hit on a big spliff and were trying to remember your own name and something like a name actually mattered. Nothing on Antigua seems to matter all that much. There’s not even a drink-driving law which — in spite of the many wines I’d sampled in Club Class — hardly mattered either since the hotel had sent a man with a car to drive me to a jetty, and from there by boat to an even smaller, more exclusive island where there were no cars at all. I might have normally baulked at seventy-five bucks, US, for a ten minute airport transfer but already I was feeling as laid-back as the fellow with cornrows in his hair who drove the boat. Besides, that’s the thing about travelling on someone else’s dollar: suddenly everything seems quite simple; only the best will do. If you ever win the lottery then come straight here; that’s the Euromillions lottery, not the smaller, British one; two weeks at the Jumby Bay won’t leave you much change from a British lottery win.

As I arrived in Antigua’s airport a photographer took my picture which irritated me as I had hoped to remain as anonymous as possible. I hardly wanted to talk to anyone about being hoodwinked in Shanghai or, as the Sun had put it, Manson’s Chinese Fake-Away, which I have to admit was rather good.

But I was keen to talk to almost anyone about Jérôme Dumas. I decided to get started right away, and by the time the boat guy picked me up to take me to Jumby Bay, I’d already asked questions of the airport police and my driver. I thought the sooner I found out what had become of the guy the sooner I could get back to looking for a proper job in football. And there was something about the boat guy I liked which encouraged me to think he might be a bit more forthcoming than the cops and the chauffeur.

‘Welcome to Jumby Bay,’ he said. ‘The island is named after a local word meaning playful spirit. It comprises just forty guest rooms and suites and a collection of villas and estate homes owned by a group of people who are all committed to protecting the environment and several endangered species that still live on the island such as the hawksbill turtle, the white egret, and the Persian black-headed sheep. Everything in Jumby Bay is su-stain-able.’

He said it like I should watch out where I put my dirty hands and feet but clearly he liked to talk and I hoped it might not be too much to expect if, having helped me with my luggage, and then into the boat, he also helped me with some information that hadn’t been fished out of the resort’s guest brochure like the local red mullet.

‘It’s a long way from home, isn’t it? The Persian sheep, I mean. How did it get here, anyway?’

‘I don’t know, boss.’

‘Christopher Columbus, I suppose,’ I said, answering my own question. ‘Along with horses and syphilis.’

‘I suppose you must be right.’ The boatman laughed and then clapped his big hands. ‘All these years I’ve been saying it, and I never asked myself what a Persian sheep be doing here in the Caribbean.’

‘And a black-headed one, too,’ I said. ‘There seems to have been a bit of a theme going on here.’

‘Hell, yes. You’re right.’

‘When you think about it, everyone is a guest here. People brought over from Africa to cut the sugar cane — like you and me — a few Europeans, and the Persian black-headed sheep. And the tourists, of course. Strikes me as the people who were first here — the real native Antiguans — are probably long gone.’

‘Never thought of it that way. But I guess you’re right, boss. Where you from? London?’

‘That’s right. What’s your name?

‘Everton.’

‘Like the football club?’

‘That’s right.’

‘You like football? I assume your father did. With a name like Everton.’

‘He did, that’s true. He was from Liverpool. But me, I support Tottenham Hotspur.’

‘I’m not sure that answers my question, but never mind. I guess it’s lucky your dad didn’t support Queen’s Park Rangers.’

Everton grinned a big grin.

‘Listen, Everton. I’ve come to Antigua to look for a guy named Jérôme Dumas. He was a guest here at the Jumby Bay over Christmas and New Year. A footballer from France. He’s about twenty-two years old, has studs in his ears that look like diamond panther heads and a stupid big watch on his wrist like my one, probably.’

Everton nodded. ‘This is the guy the police was looking for, right? The Paris Saint-Germain footballer who’s gone missing.’

‘That’s right.’

‘Sure, I remember him. Big gold Rolex Submariner. Lots of gold chains and rings. He got all the best Louis Vuitton luggage. Same as Bono. Give me a pretty good tip for carrying it all, too. Nice fellow. French, you say? Figured him for something else. Reminded me of that other fellow, Mario Balotelli. They say he’s Italian, but it’s hard to tell these days where a fellow is from. Me, I’m from Jamaica, originally. But ain’t no work there. Just trouble. Couldn’t figure him renting such a big villa at Jumby Bay given that he was on his own. Couldn’t figure you out neither, until you told me what you was doing here. Most guys like you and him come with a nice girl. He didn’t look like the type who was into reading and playing chess with hisself.’

‘Did the island cops speak to you?’

‘Naw. They spoke to the concierge, the hotel manager, and to the ladies who cleaned his villa. But not me.’

‘What do you think happened to him?’

‘Only a hundred thousand people on Antigua, boss. It ain’t so easy to disappear in a little place like this. Even if you is black. Man with Louis Vuitton bags and diamond earrings is like a neon sign on this island, boss. He tends to stand out in the crowd.’

‘The police say he checked out of Jumby Bay and went straight to the airport.’

‘That’s true. I took him there myself. Even carried his bags into the airport building. But he never got on the plane to London.’

‘And they didn’t speak to you?’

‘Like I say, they is a joke.’

‘So how was he?’

‘He was all right, boss. Didn’t seem troubled or nothing. Said he was on his way to play football in Barcelona but that he was going to be training hard because he put some weight on while he was here. I told him that this wasn’t unusual, the food at Jumby being so good. Hey, make sure you try the restaurant at the Estate House while you’re here, boss. Is Italian cooking. And probably the best in Antigua.’

‘You talked?’

‘Sure we talked. Talked a lot. He said how much he’d enjoyed himself. The usual. He said he was looking forward to coming back again.’

‘He’d been here before? You said “again”.’

‘Yeah, I reckon he was here about a year ago. Something must have happened at the airport, I reckon.’

‘Like what?’

‘No idea. Like I say, he seemed fine. I walked him and his luggage into the terminal myself. I left him and his trolley at the newsagent. Reading a newspaper.’

‘That’s odd.’

‘What is?’

‘Well, most people buy a paper after they’ve checked in. Can you remember which paper it was? Something French? Libération? Something to do with football. L’Equipe, perhaps?’

‘Might have been. Whatever it was he didn’t look very happy.’

‘I see. What did he do — while he was at Jumby Bay?’

‘Ain’t much to do ‘cept lie in the sun, swim, use the spa, watch TV. Jumby Bay is quiet. People come here to get away from it all.’

‘What about the main island? Is that quiet, too?’

‘They like to party big time there, for sure.’

‘So maybe that’s where he spent his time. I expect the police will be able to tell me.’

‘The RPF?’ Everton laughed. ‘The RPF don’t know shit about nothing.’

The RPFAB was the Royal Police Force of Antigua and Barbuda. I’d sent them some emails and an inspector from the Criminal Investigations Department was expecting me at their headquarters in the island capital of St John’s the next day, but I was keen to get Everton’s opinion of their competence, or lack of it.

‘You don’t think much of them.’

‘The RPF couldn’t find their own balls in a bird bath, boss.’

‘Is there much crime here?’

‘More than our prime minister would have people believe. But if you keeps away from Gray’s Farm on the west side of St John’s at night I reckon you be safe enough. Most folks on the island call that place the Ghetto. It be where you go to score some weed, find a hooker, get yourself shot maybe.’

I nodded. Yep, I thought, that might be just the place someone like Jérôme Dumas would go.

‘As a matter of fact, there was a murder on the island while Mr Dumas was here.’

‘Oh?’

‘Local DJ called Jewel Movement got hisself killed on his boat. They arrested the guy who did it, mind. Caught him red-handed. Even the RPF couldn’t fail to catch him. By all accounts they found him with the body. Dead man’s blood all over him. According to the cops, the case is cut and dried. Which is just the way the cops like it, of course. I never yet met a policeman who wanted to go looking for a pineapple when he already got a peach.’

‘Cops are the same the world over, I guess.’

‘Damn right. I wouldn’t be surprised if they hang him for it, too.’

‘You still hang people here?’

‘When we’re allowed to, by your English courts. Legal system here allows these bastards to appeal to something called the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council. Whatever that is. You ask me, it’s a lot of do-gooders who don’t know shit about Antigua.’

I smiled. ‘You know the Leeward Islands well, Everton?’

‘Like the back of me hand, boss. Got my own boat. I like to go fishing sometimes. When I’m not watching Asot Arcade Parham play football.’ He shrugged. ‘That’s a local side. Pretty good by island standards. Like they’re top of the Antigua Premier Division. But not Spurs standard, you know?’

I nodded. ‘Tell me something. How easy is it to get from Antigua to Guadeloupe?’

‘LIAT — that’s the local airline — they operate a flight most days from St John’s to Pointe-à-Pitre. A short hop. Half-hour at most. Cost you maybe eighty bucks.’

‘If Jérôme Dumas did decide to leave the island, then I’m thinking a boat would be the best way to do it, undetected.’

‘Oh sure. All sorts of folk come and go by boat, especially at night. Weed smugglers, mostly. Like DJ Jewel Movement. Word is he moved a bit of grass hisself, sometimes. But why Guadeloupe? Barbuda is nearer. And British, too. You don’t have to show your passport there when you land.’

‘Because Jérôme Dumas is originally from Guadeloupe.’

‘Gotcha. Well now. Ain’t no ferry service from here down to there, boss. But I could take you there on my next day off, no problem. Off the books, as it were. Guadeloupe is only a few hours’ sailing away.’

‘All right. It’s a deal. And ask around St John’s, will you? Discreetly. See if you can find out if anyone else with a boat might have performed a similarly clandestine ferry service for Jérôme Dumas.’

‘Tongues sure wag better when the nose smells cash, boss.’

‘True.’ I handed over a couple of hundred East Caribbean dollars. ‘See how much talk you can get with that, Everton. And keep the rest for yourself.’

Everton throttled back and let the boat drift towards the little wooden jetty where several porters were awaiting our arrival in what resembled a largish birdcage. A little red golf cart took me up to the main part of the hotel where I swiftly checked in and went to my suite, which lay on the other side of an antique gate and at the end of a small private courtyard surrounded with palm trees overlooking the sea. There was an outdoor garden full of frangipani flowers with a rain shower and a tub. It was hard to believe that I was being paid, handsomely, to be here. I sipped my welcome cocktail, switched on the TV and settled down to find out what sports channels they had on cable. You do the important things first, right?