The Far Side of the Sun (8 page)

Abruptly they were gone. The women vanished through the door and Dodie was left in the middle of the room. She turned towards the door that led to the street. She could leave now, still leave, and no one would notice if she hurried back out on to the street.

‘What can I do for you, miss?’

She swung round. Detective Sergeant Calder was leaning over her once more with concern.

‘That was quite a shock, wasn’t it? Can I get you some water?’ He briefly touched his chest as though to slow a galloping heart and Dodie’s eyes were drawn to the blood on his sleeve.

‘No, thank you.’ She had to push the next words off the end of her tongue. ‘I want to report a murder.’

The tiny interview room was full of stillness and heat. Dust motes drifted aimlessly across Dodie’s line of vision and she tried to focus on them, rather than on the expression in Calder’s grey eyes. It made her uneasy, that look of wariness contained between narrowed lids. It wasn’t what she expected.

This is what she’d expected: she would tell them about Mr Morrell. All of it. The policemen would listen attentively, then they would collect the – she could barely think the word – the
body
, and using whatever method it was that detectives used, they would find his killer, drag the culprit before a judge and jury, and then throw him in jail for life. She had even expected a little sympathy, like the two women received.

That was not what she got.

The moment she uttered the word
murder
, everything changed in the police station. The smiles vanished. People stepped away from her, as if she were unclean. Even Detective Calder with his blood-stained sleeve moved back, putting a No-Man’s-Land between them, and his shoulders seemed to lock into a rigid line.

He ushered her into an interview room that was windowless and fan-less, so that the heat steadily rose. She sat down and told him the story, while a young constable in the corner made notes. She kept it simple: I found Mr Morrell last night wounded in the alleyway, I took him to my home where I nursed him, but he died today. He told me to bury him in a hole somewhere, but I couldn’t bear to do it. At the last moment I changed my mind and came here to you. When she’d finished, the length of the silence in the room felt like a rope winding around her neck.

‘Miss Wyatt,’ the detective said in a considerate voice, ‘that must have been a deeply shocking experience for you. I’m sorry.’

Sorry for her? For Morrell? For the reputation of Nassau?

‘Yes.’ Even to her own ears it sounded guarded.

‘Why didn’t you call the police last night?’

‘I told you. Mr Morrell begged me not to inform anyone, not even the hospital. He said it was too dangerous.’

‘And you thought that was more important than saving his life?’

‘No, of course not.’

‘So why didn’t you contact us?’

‘I told you. He was frightened. He believed that whoever did this to him would come to finish the job.’

‘So you forced a wounded and bleeding man to walk through the streets of Nassau.’

‘He wanted me to get him away from there. He was frightened. I didn’t force him, I helped him.’

‘At the cost of his own life.’

‘I didn’t know he was going to die. I thought that…⁠’

That I could save him
.

Instead she said, ‘I thought that he was getting better after I stopped the bleeding. He improved and started to ask me questions about my life and he even admired my quilt on the wall. He was…⁠’ she looked directly at the detective seated opposite her, ‘interested. I didn’t think people who were dying would be so interested in others. I liked him.’

Calder nodded and glanced at the few notes he had jotted down on a lined pad in front of him. He squared it up with the edge of the table, tapped it thoughtfully with one finger, then pulled out a packet of Player’s cigarettes from his pocket. He offered her one, but she shook her head. He lit his own and exhaled a string of grey smoke that hung lifelessly in the humid air, and she wondered what was coming next.

‘I have some questions,’ he announced.

‘I’ve told you everything.’

The drumbeat of her own blood was loud in her ears.

‘Where is the body of Mr Morrell now?’

‘I told you.’ Why was he doing this? Making her repeat the facts over and over. ‘It’s in my house on the beach.’ She noticed her use of
it
instead of
he
.

‘May we have the key, please?’

She slapped her key on the table. ‘You have my address written down in front of you.’

He nodded. The constable in the corner shot to his feet, picked up the key and took it outside before returning to his gloomy corner. Oddly, during the brief interval in which she and the detective were alone, Calder studied her face and gave her something that was halfway towards a smile. She didn’t know what it meant. It turned something ice-cold inside her.

‘A few more questions,’ he told her. ‘What was Mr Morrell’s first name?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘You said he was American. Where did he come from?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘Was he here on business?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘You said he had no wallet or passport. So how did he get to be here on New Providence Island?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘What reason did his attacker have to stab him?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘Where was he staying?’

‘I don’t know.’

Detective Calder leaned back in his chair, tipping it onto its back legs, and smoke hung on his lips as though reluctant to leave him. He stubbed out his cigarette and gave her a blank stare. ‘You don’t know much, do you, Miss Wyatt?’

Bile slid into her throat. She had made no mention yet of the gold coins or the name Sanford or of Mama Keel’s medicine.

‘I’ve told you all I know,’ she said.

He tucked his hands under his armpits and his eyes focused on hers. ‘I do hope so.’

She didn’t look away. She opened her mouth to tell Calder that she needed that glass of water now, but suddenly it dawned on her that he believed she might be the one who stabbed Morrell in that dark alleyway. It had happened before. A girl taking a man home for sex and getting caught thieving from his wallet. A knife in his guts before he could beat her to a pulp.

She snapped her mouth shut. A layer of sweat glistened on her skin.
He thinks I killed Morrell
. She looked down at her hands.
I’m shaking
.

‘Now, Miss Wyatt, let’s start again,’ the detective said in a controlled voice. ‘From the beginning.’

How do you tell when a man is lying?

You look at the disconnect at the back of his eyes.

You watch for the telltale twitch at the sides of his mouth.

You listen to the change of pace as his words fall from his mouth.

Sometimes you have to work at it. But today it was easy. Flynn Hudson could tell the Englishman seated opposite him was lying through his pearly whites by the way the tips of his ears turned pink. A fleeting rush of blood. Blink and you’d miss it. It happened each time he said the words, ‘Believe me.’

‘Believe me, Hudson, Meyer Lansky is incandescent over in Miami. Not at all happy about this outcome. It’s a fiasco.’

‘Believe me, Hudson, I should have listened to Morrell. He didn’t want you to participate in this operation in the first place.’

Both lies.

Flynn yanked out a pouch of tobacco and took his time rolling himself a smoke. Johnnie Morrell was his friend and now he was dead. You don’t have a smoke with a buddy one day and call his death a
fiasco
the next. You just don’t do that. Not to friends. So to hell with this guy who spoke with a dainty British accent and talked as if he’d swallowed a dictionary for breakfast. He was calling himself Spencer. Another of his limey lies.

They were in a bar tucked away behind a seedy row of shops where locals came to drink beer and gripe about the soldiers getting first pick of the girls. The guy was wearing no tie and no jacket, which was clearly his idea of blending in, though the blade-sharp creases in his pants and the curve of distaste on his mouth didn’t exactly help with that plan. Half-moons of sweat had flared under his arms. They spoiled the look of his shirt. The light in the bar was dim, which suited Flynn just fine. It came as a relief to the eyes after the glare of the plate-glass sky outside. Around them there was a mix of skin colours, men who paid no heed to Spencer and himself because they had their own cares to drown in their beers. They didn’t need trouble from two strangers glaring at each other like a pair of fighting cocks.

Flynn lit the cigarette he’d been rolling and sent a barrage of smoke into the cloud of mosquitoes that had been stalking him. Johnnie Morrell should have been here with them, knocking back the rum and making with his wisecracks, giving this guy a hard time. Not lying in a hole, talking with the worms.

‘This is the big one,’ Morrell had whispered to him in the girl’s shack last night. ‘This will cut us loose.’

Yeah. Cut you loose from life, Johnnie
.

Flynn felt the sharp point of sorrow in his chest, like some bastard was taking a chisel to the inside of his ribs, and he grabbed a long swig of his beer to rinse it away.

‘Listen to me, Hudson.’ Spencer leaned forward, thought about putting his elbows on the table but changed his mind fast when he saw the sorry state of it. ‘I want some answers.’

Flynn didn’t blink.

‘Where’s the girl?’ Spencer demanded.

Flynn shrugged, as if she were of no importance. ‘She’s headed into town. She works in one of the laundries. She’s not a problem. You got anything on her?’

He was careful to keep his eyes rock-steady, his mouth and his voice under tight control. If you’re going to lie, do it properly. He’d seen her walk up the steps into the police station.

‘No. You’re certain she’s out of our hair?’ Spencer frowned.

‘Sure.’

‘How much does she know? What did Morrell tell her?’

‘Nothing.’

‘What makes you think that?’

His tone was nasty. Like most Englishmen Flynn had met, his teeth were bad and Flynn considered whether it would be a kindness to rearrange them for him.

‘I spoke to Morrell,’ he said instead, ‘when the girl left the shack. He’d told her nothing.’

‘
Don’t let them find her, Flynn. Please.’ Morrell’s face was whiter than the sheet on the bed and had the glassy look of a dead man in his eyes. ‘She’s fixing me up. I can stay hidden here, they’ll never find me. Just a few days. Don’t tell anyone about her.’

‘Sure, Johnnie. You get better and I’ll have a boat ready. We’ll wait till dark.’ He’d patted his friend’s arm and it was worse than touching seaweed, cold and slimy. ‘I’ll stay, Johnnie. Don’t worry. I’ve got your back covered.’

‘No, go. She’s on the edge. She’ll bolt to the police if there are two of us. Too dangerous. Come back tomorrow.’

Flynn didn’t let himself look at the blood that had soaked into the shirt and dripped on the floorboards in case he stopped believing in a tomorrow.

‘Okay. Sleep well, Johnnie. I’ll be nearby on the beach.’ He opened the door. ‘I’m not going nowhere without you, pal.’

A whisper stopped him. ‘I’ve told her nothing.’ Morrell’s eyes glittered darkly in the lamplight. ‘Don’t let them hurt her, kid.’

Flynn nodded and slid out into the darkness.

The English guy was tense and signalled to the barman for another scotch. He didn’t offer Flynn one. His eyes were small but focused, and the smell of success seeped from the gold cufflinks that winked at his wrists and from the signet ring on his pinky when he ran a palm over his smooth brown hair.

‘Morrell was a fool to get caught,’ Spencer said bitterly.

Flynn revealed nothing in his face but indifference.

‘Morrell was sent here,’ Spencer continued, emphasising each word, ‘in secret to do a deal. Right?’

‘Sure.’ Flynn gave a single nod.

‘And you were sent over from Miami by Meyer Lansky to watch his back. All nice and tidy. It’s what you’re good at, I’m told. Correct me if I’m missing something here.’

‘You’re not missing anything.’

Spencer jabbed a finger at Flynn. ‘Who did this? While you were sleeping on the job, who got close enough to stick a knife in Morrell’s guts?’

Flynn drew in a long silent breath, the stink of stale alcohol clinging to his nostrils. ‘That’s what I intend to find out,’ he said.

‘And the girl? Is she in on it?’

‘Forget the girl. She’s nobody.’

‘You’d better be right about that, Hudson,’ Spencer hissed.

Suddenly Flynn could not stand to breathe the same air with this guy any longer. He abandoned his beer and headed for the door, not bothering with the nicety of goodbyes.

‘Hey!’ Spencer called after him. ‘You had better be right about that girl, Hudson.’

Flynn pushed open the door. ‘Jackass,’ he muttered under his breath.

Outside a man trundling past with a barrow stacked high with sponges treated him to a smile that was warmer than he deserved. Sometimes it was easy to forget that there was a real world out there, where your biggest problem was the price you’d get in the busy sponge market that day.