The One a Month Man (19 page)

Carla was standing on the beach with binoculars pressed to her eyes. She heard our running footsteps and turned, but only briefly.

‘Where are they?’ I said, as we joined Carla, who pointed out to sea.

A speedboat was cutting a soapy swath through the
transparent
, turquoise southern Atlantic, a frothy trail in its wake.

‘The boat was just throttling away from that jetty when I got here,’ said Carla. ‘
Lambert
at the controls, Laura behind him.’

‘Still with the gun to his head?’ I asked.

‘Oh, yeah. The brain-mincing Magnum was still in her hand; still tickling the hairs of his neck.’

I looked at the tiny jetty; no other boat was moored there. Neither did the jetty appear to belong to any property; there was no house nearby, as far as I could see.

‘Where do you suppose they’re going?’ I said.

Carla shrugged, keeping her US Army-issue binoculars pinned on the speedboat. ‘Apparently not Paradise Island, which is to our right. They’re arcing left, heading sort of
north-west
.’

‘Towards Florida?’ Sarah suggested.

‘That direction, yes, but they’ll never make it in
that
thing. Couldn’t possibly carry enough gas.’

Just then the throttle cut back, with the speedboat about a half-mile from shore.

‘They might have run out of juice already,’ Carla surmised, wishfully. ‘No power at all now. They’re drifting. Oh, shit!’

‘What now?’ I demanded, cogently, not able to follow the action without binoculars.

‘She’s drawn a knife.’

‘A knife!’ I intoned, mystified. ‘What about the gun?’

‘She’s transferred the gun to her left hand. The knife’s in her right hand, Jesus! I don’t get any of this. No sense in this at all. How many weapons does she need?’ The question was
rhetorical
. ‘It’s a flick-knife; gangland weapon.’ Then, as an aside, ‘Where the hell are the cops? They should be here by now. Probably coming on skateboards!’

‘What’s the guy doing now?’ I said.

‘Filling his pants, I guess. She’s edging towards him. He’s backing off as much as he can, without toppling overboard. Now she’s lashed out.’

‘With the knife?’ I said, eagerly.

‘Yeah. She’s cut him. On the hand. The hand he put up to shield his face. He’s clasping his hand, trying to wrap a
handkerchief
around it.’

I didn’t understand this at all. ‘And what’s
she
doing?’

‘Seems to be just standing there, watching.’

‘Not using the knife any more?’ said Sarah.

‘No, she’s thrown it overboard. This is weird.’

Police-car sirens were wailing in the distance, still some way off.

‘Do they have a fix on us?’ I asked, alluding to the cops.

‘They have a car reg,’ said Carla. ‘They’ll find us soon enough.’

‘Anything new happening on the boat?’ I said.

‘You bet! Now she’s waving the gun in his face. He’s shaking his head. I wish I could lip-read. Guessing, I’d say he’s still pleading to be spared:
Please don’t do it
!’

The sirens were much closer now; could be no further away than half a mile.

‘Jeese!’ exclaimed Carla. ‘He’s jumped!’

‘Over the side?’ I said, stupidly.

‘Yeah. Fully clothed. Shirt, slacks, shoes. He’s splashing around. He doesn’t look much of a swimmer. But now she’s tossed him a lifebelt! This is bizarre. She forces him over the side, then throws him a lifeline.’ She turned to us distrustfully, her stare fierce and challenging, as if we must somehow be a party to this comic opera.

Now it was my turn to shrug helplessly.

Carla returned to her watching brief. ‘She’s restarted the engine.’

‘So it hadn’t run out of fuel,’ Sarah commented, needlessly.

Carla made no reply, instead saying. ‘She’s steering away from him. Abandoning him. Heading back to shore, this way. Now she’s gotten rid of something else over the side. Could be a gun.’

I scratched my head, trying to fathom the significance of what I was being fed. ‘What’s
he
doing?’

‘Holding on to the ring. Staying afloat. He should be OK. The ocean’s as flat as a living-room carpet, even that far out. The cops can have a rescue launch out to him in no time at all.’

The speedboat, with Laura standing erect at the controls, wasn’t speeding now. Behind us, the pounding footsteps on the stones announced the belated arrival of uniformed cops, led by a sergeant.

Carla handed me the binoculars while she spoke with the four officers. Out of the corner of an eye, I could see Carla jabbing a finger seawards, towards the spot where Pope,
Lambert
to her, had plunged into the water.

Brushing Carla aside, the sergeant marched to me, demanding, ‘Gimme! Let me have a look.’ Before I had a chance to react, he snatched the binoculars. Moments later, he
said, ‘I can see a speedboat, but that’s all. The boat’s making for here, it seems to me. Just one person on board, a woman. No man. No one out there in the water, as far as I can see.’

‘Let me show you,’ said Carla, retrieving her binoculars and pointing them towards the distant point where Pope had been clinging to a lifebelt. ‘That’s strange,’ she muttered, after a moment of panning the area of her magnified focus. ‘I’ve got the lifebelt in my sights, but …’

‘Show me,’ said the sergeant. ‘Let me see.’

Carla returned the binoculars to the sergeant and helped guide his trajectory of vision so that he was focusing on the appropriate patch of water.

‘OK, got it,’ he said. ‘Got the lifebelt. Nothing else, though.’ He began scanning a wider area. ‘No. Definitely no one in the water out there.’

‘I
really
don’t get it,’ said Carla. ‘He had a firm hold on the lifebelt. He was secure. No rough water. You can see what it’s like. Calmer than in a teacup. All he had to do was wait.’

To his men, the sergeant said, ‘I’m going to commandeer the speedboat. One of you come with me. I want the two staying behind to start taking statements. Bottom this out as quickly as possible. It’s fishy. And all fish stink!’

The speedboat was just buffeting the jetty as the sergeant finished giving orders to his men.

‘This your boat?’ said the sergeant, as he hopped on to the craft’s bow.

‘No, it’s rented,’ said Laura, unperturbed, her eyes shooting instant recognition towards me and Sarah; no signals of surprise or alarm.

‘I’m confiscating it,’ the sergeant stated, peremptorily.

‘Be my guest,’ said Laura.

‘Was there a man with you?’

‘There was.’

‘Where is he now?’

‘Out there somewhere,’ Laura said, temperately, peering towards the horizon, gesturing vaguely.

‘How did he get in the ocean?

‘He jumped.’

‘Why?’

‘You’d better ask him.’

‘You’ve a lot of explaining to do, lady.’

‘Don’t you think you should stop talking and go pull him out?’

Just before launching the speedboat, the sergeant called from his mobile for police launches to join the search for Pope.

For a moment the throaty roar of the speedboat’s finely tuned engine was deafening; not until it was some two hundred yards from the shore was there any point in our trying to be heard.

Laura sidled up to me, smirking, to say, ‘You took your time.’

‘What’s that supposed to mean?’ I replied. She was playing with us, I could tell. I had a feeling that we were dancing to her tune, and not just today, though we weren’t in step and she was almost disappointed with us.

‘I knew you’d be here,’ she said, as the two Bahamian cops looked on, bemused. ‘I’m not talking about being at this
particular
spot. It was given that it wouldn’t take you long to have me sussed; in fact, I was counting on it. As soon as you’d blown my cover and knew how I really earned my mortgage money, I figured you’d anticipate I’d find a way of going after that piece of shit. Although we worked for the same agency, it didn’t make us colleagues. I owed him no loyalty. The Disciples worked for one man, but even they had a Judas among them. Well,
our
Judas is already in hell with the
original
, take my word for it. You reasoned I’d easily be able to find out where Pope had been posted. But did you really believe you could follow me without my knowing? If you did, that was
rather arrogant of you, don’t you think? I actually went out of my way to make it easy for you. I had to really work at being artless. In fact, I began to worry you’d miss the flight I boarded at JFK for Nassau.’

Switching to Carla, Laura said, ‘I guess you’re a PI
these
two
have wasted money on?

Carla, hands on hips, shades pushed up to her head, assumed the combative posture you’d expect from a screen cowboy just before drawing a gun from its holster for a High Noon showdown. ‘Is someone going to explain what’s going on here; what I’m missing?’

‘That’s what
we
intend to find out,’ interjected one of the cops, before Sarah or I had a chance to answer.

Two hours must have passed before the speedboat returned, by which time a flotilla of small boats, of all descriptions, had gathered in the area where the search had been concentrated.

The sergeant, now grim-faced, with his peaked cap pushed back and tilted upwards, came towards us along the jetty, while his acolyte tied up the boat.

‘OK, we found him,’ he said, hands gripping his hips, using his eyes as rapiers to aim at we four civilians. ‘Forget what I just said, which was an exaggeration; a
gross
exaggeration. To be accurate, I should have said we recovered
bits
of him. One arm, a leg, part of a disembowelled torso, and a head detached from its neck.’

‘Well, he was in one piece when he leapt over the side,’ said Laura, not a shade of shock on her face, not a flicker of horror in her eyes or a tremor in her voice.

‘Could he have got chewed up by the speedboat’s
high-powered
motor?’ said Sarah, lagging a little.

‘Not a chance,’ said the sergeant. ‘There’s no mystery about the cause of death. When a shark fancies a club sandwich, it is a messy eater. No table manners whatsoever.’

Sarah was the only one among us to blanch.

‘From what you say, it seems like the shark spat out quite a bit of him, suggesting the beast had good taste!’ said Laura.

T
he four of us were detained overnight in the Nassau Central Police Station. We were interviewed separately and kept in different cells, so it wasn’t until the dust had settled and most issues had been sorted that we were able to compare notes.

As for my part, I recognized that now was not the time for further cloak-and-dagger mischief. Now was the moment for candour and co-operation; prevarication wasn’t an option. I explained that I was a senior Scotland Yard detective. So, too, was Sarah, though not quite as senior.

‘Prove it,’ said my interviewer, a perfectly reasonable request from a dour Bahamian uniformed officer, in his mid-thirties, I’d say, who toyed with his polished baton on the desk as if itching to use it for something more than mere show.

So prove it I did.

Bushy eyebrows raised, he examined my police ID as if he had been forced to pick up dog poo with his bare hands.

‘Could be a forgery,’ he observed, as if inciting me to react disproportionately.

Naturally, I didn’t bite. ‘Of course it
could
be,’ I replied. ‘But it isn’t. Check me out.’

‘Oh, we shall,’ he promised, digging deep for menace. ‘I suppose you have a passport?’

I eased my passport from my jacket, which was folded haphazardly in my lap.

He journeyed through the pages like a slow reader with myopic eyesight, holding the document close to his humourless face.

Finally, he said, ‘We’ll keep this.’

‘Your prerogative,’ I said.

My compliance was clearly not to his liking. I sensed he was seeking confrontation, something he probably enjoyed. Especially with foreigners. And most especially with foreign cops whom he imagined as uppity, considering themselves superior, a charge to which I could honestly plead not guilty.

‘OK,’ he said, reclining in his chair, kicking his black-booted feet on to the desk and constructing a tent with his fingers, ‘what’s the story?’
What’s the story
? seemed to be the cliché of the month in cop circles.

He made
story
sound as if he was asking for a fable.

For the next fifteen minutes, I regaled him with a synoptic version of our reason for being in Nassau; in a nutshell, we had information leading us to believe that a suspect for a series of murders and other serious crimes in the UK many years ago was in his country.

‘So why didn’t you liaise with us?’

A valid question; tricky too. One I’d prepared for but still hadn’t come up with a response that would satisfy me if I’d been on the other side of the desk.

‘I don’t think you’ll like the answer,’ I said, trying a smile of camaraderie that bounced back like a worthless cheque.

‘I’m sure I won’t,’ he agreed.

This was hard labour without gas and oxygen for pain relief.

‘I didn’t want to take the chance of a screw-up.’ This he took as an insult, which at least demonstrated that he was smarter than I’d been taking him for. ‘I’m not being rude,’ I added, which was true, but wasn’t something he wished to believe, so obviously he didn’t. ‘The more people and different forces who knew about the operation, the greater the chance of a leak or a
cock-up; you know, treading on each other’s toes or getting killed by
friendly
fire.’

‘
We
don’t have cock-ups,’ he said. ‘None of our fire is friendly.
We
run a tight ship.
We
don’t have leaks.’

‘You’re very lucky, then,’ I said. ‘I envy you.’ God! Thank heaven I wasn’t a diplomat. I couldn’t do this diplomacy dance every day for a living.

His next question concerned Carla. How did she fit into the jigsaw? When I told him, he was even more irked.

‘So you thought a single private eye could do a better job than a whole team of professional Bahamian police officers?’

I was in more mire of my own making. ‘As I said, I didn’t want too many people involved,’ I explained, weakly. ‘I didn’t want it going arse-up.’

‘And
this
is what Scotland Yard calls getting it right?’

‘Well, it seems after thirty years we finally got our man.’

‘No, the shark did.’

Nice one
! I thought, according credit where it was due.

More awkward than anything was trying to explain how Laura fitted into this imbroglio.

‘So now we have the CIA!’ he said, derisively. ‘The private detective follows the CIA, who follows Richard Pope, though Carla has been told his name is Dickie Lambert, who also happens to be CIA. Do, please, correct me if I’m mistaken.’

‘You’re not mistaken,’ I said. I would have been the first to admit that this saga sounded like a storyline of an old corny
Carry On
movie farce. However, it soon became apparent that CIA carried far more weight in the Bahamas than did Scotland Yard.

By midnight, the Bahamas’ chief constable had taken charge, liaising closely with the islands’ governor. Laura was soon the focal point. Carla, apparently, described exactly everything she’d witnessed from the time Pope was abducted.

Laura simply went into semi-denial. Yes, she did have a gun
and forced Pope to drive to the jetty, where the speedboat was moored. She’d hired the boat over the phone from her hotel room, paying for it by credit card and asking for it to be left at the out-of-town mooring, just off the coastal road, where she’d collect it. Her intention, she said, was to ‘scare the shit’ out of Pope, so that he would confess to his crimes. She had made him drive to the moored speedboat and, at gunpoint, had compelled him to steer the high-powered craft into deep water. She denied having a knife and cutting Pope’s hand.

In her statement, she said, ‘Anyone who says I had a knife and used it on Pope is mistaken. How could they possibly be sure of what they saw from such a distance? I was trying to terrify the bastard into confessing. It’s true I wanted him to fear I might blow off his head if he wasn’t forthcoming, but I wouldn’t have harmed him, not intentionally. Instead, he panicked and dived overboard, reckoning on being able to swim ashore, but
forgetting
how far out we’d gone. I threw him a lifeline and left him to sort out his own salvation, confident he’d be rescued, even if he was dangling in the water a couple of hours.’

Of course there were as many holes in her story as a
torpedoed
battleship. For a start, she wasn’t taping the conversation, so if Pope had confessed, how could she possibly prove that he’d come clean? CIA didn’t make those kinds of elementary mistakes. And why had she disposed of the gun? ‘Because it was no longer required?’ she told her sceptical interviewing officer.

In the days I had been in the Bahamas, I had read stories in the
Nassau Tribune
of Tiger sharks spotted in considerable numbers off the beaches, in the shallows. Two swimmers had been attacked in one day; both were lucky and had escaped with
relatively
minor wounds. Lifeguards had warned tourists to stay out of the sea and stick to hotel pools until an ‘all-clear’ was given. The reason for Laura arming herself with a gun
and
a knife was suddenly so transparent to me. The gun forced Pope into
compliance; the knife drew blood, which served as an open
invitation
to afternoon tea for all sharks in the neighbourhood. Laura didn’t have to kill Pope because she knew that the natural world would do the job for her. Having him arrested would have been a pointless exercise; the CIA machinery would have gone into overdrive and Pope would have disappeared yet again – perhaps to behind a desk at HQ, where he would have been forever untouchable. The scales of justice in this case had been balanced by nature.

While we were detained, talks were going on between legal advisors to the Bahamas’ chief constable and their counterparts in London and Washington.

At 9 a.m., without breakfast, a drink, or even the opportunity for a wash and brush-up, Sarah, Laura and myself were ushered from our holding cells into vehicles and driven, at speed, to the airport. Laura went in a blacked-out limo; Sarah and I slummed it in a bone-shaker van. We were handcuffed together and forbidden to communicate to one another. At the airport, we were kept in the van until Laura had been escorted on to a Washington-bound flight. As soon as that aircraft was on the runway, we were unshackled and led to a Miami flight that was already boarding. Tickets had been purchased on our behalf that would take us through to London, connecting in Miami that evening for Heathrow. Scotland Yard would be billed –
something
else for Commander Pomfrey to be thrilled about.

Next morning, when we landed at Heathrow around 8.40 a.m., two officers from the Metropolitan Police Commissioner’s office were waiting to hurry us straight to the Yard.

Pomfrey was pacing. Pomfrey was popping indigestion tablets like a junkie. Pomfrey was red with rage. ‘You’ve broken every rule in the book. You’re mavericks who have lost your marbles. You not only went AWOL, but flitted around the world on Yard plastic, as if it were a magic carpet. Theoretically, you’re
guilty of misusing public money, in addition to a million other criminal and professional offences.’

‘Something of an exaggeration,’ I unwisely ventured.

‘Zip it!’ Pomfrey roared. Eyeballing Sarah, he said, ‘I’m surprised at you.’

‘Why, sir?’

‘For allowing this unprincipled, irresponsible, undisciplined reprobate to lead you astray.’

‘We’re partners,’ she said, stoutly.

‘Parsnips, more like!’ he fumed. ‘Fucking parsnip-heads! Thick and … and …’ He didn’t know where he was going with this and that made him even more irascible. ‘A disgrace! Both of you.’

We were slumped in chairs, while he promenaded. I had a two-day growth of beard and hadn’t washed since I last shaved. I was also still dressed for Nassau. Fortunately, the weather was mild in London. On the overnight flight from Miami, I’d splashed on some aftershave that was provided in the toilets and at Heathrow I’d swilled my face with cold water, but still I considered myself a wreck of titanic proportions. By
comparison
, Sarah looked as if she’d just stepped out of a beauty salon following meticulous grooming. Nature could be very unfair.

One of Pomfrey’s male brown-tongues sat muted in a corner, taking notes. I assumed a tape recorder wasn’t being used so that all Pomfrey’s expletives and banality wouldn’t be recorded and a summary of the meeting could be outrageously edited.

‘Well, what have you to say for yourselves?’ he demanded, looking down at me.

‘We closed a case that no one else could in three decades,’ I replied, flatly. ‘More kudos for the Yard.’

‘Is that
all
you can say?’

In six little words Pomfrey had given a remarkable insight into the psyche of the police hierarchy.

Sarah looked at me, I looked at her, and I really thought that
we were both about to crease up; the only reason we didn’t, I’m certain, is because we were both so bombed.

‘Well, this
is
what’s going to happen,’ Pomfrey motored on, once more parading, silver buttons gleaming, starched white collar biting into his roseate neck, buffed black shoes reflecting the immaculate cut of his funereal-black uniform. ‘Neither of you will make any statement to the media. In fact, when you vacate my office, you’ll immediately commence two weeks’ leave.

‘I shall be issuing a statement to the effect that two Scotland Yard detectives have brought closure to a series of murders that terrorized the city of Oxford three decades ago. I shall further say that having been traced to the Bahamas, the guilty party died while attempting to escape; that he fell into the sea from a rented boat and was killed by a shark or sharks. The report will be as skeletal and sketchy as possible. Some ’papers doubtlessly will despatch reporters to the Bahamas to sniff around, to put meat on the bone, but they won’t get far. The private dick you hired at an exorbitant daily rate has been warned she’ll lose her licence and Bahamian work permit should she utter a word, so she’s silenced.

‘The CIA wanted their agent back – the one of the two still living. She’ll be grounded for the rest of her career, but not booted out, so I’m told. They don’t want her mouthing to the media about any black ops she or Pope had been a part of, which could happen if charges were brought against her.

‘The Bahamas police were pleased to see the back of the lot of you, something with which I can fully empathize. A foreign serial killer had gone to the sharks and the Bahamian authorities didn’t relish a stand-off with the Americans. The Bahamas economy is tied like a joined twin to the US, so politics played well for all you lucky sods.

‘Of course, the pair of you are finished with Oxford. When you return from leave, your futures will depend on me. We’re
not getting rid of you only because, as loose cannons, out of the fold, you’d be more of a headache than in and on a tight leash. Understood?’

The diatribe had been directed solely at me, not Sarah, so I answered for us both. ‘Understood.’

‘You’re sure?’

Pomfrey wanted blood.

‘Sure.’

‘Out, then! On your way! Oh, one more thing – a suggestion this time rather than an order.’

Makes a change
, I thought, but said, ‘Yes?’

‘Get a bath and make yourself look like a member of the human race, even if you’re not.’

Half an hour later, just as we were about to hop on a
double-decker
, Sharkey came through on my mobile. ‘Brave man, Mike. Great job! Sometimes gambling does pay! Ignore the brass, but you’ll always do that without any encouragement from me. Tina’s been informed about the outcome and sends her thanks. She said what a coincidence that Pope should have met his end in the Bahamas at the same time that her partner was there on risk management business for her company! She has no idea that you and Sarah were there too. Let’s keep it that way.’ Before I could conjure up a suitable riposte, he was gone.

‘Who was that?’ said Sarah.

‘Oh, nobody really,’ I replied, abstractly. ‘Just someone I once knew from what now seems a very distant past.’