Andrew Pepper - Kill-Devil and Water

‘I didn’t say that.’ Harper picked up the full glass of rum and drank it in a single gulp. ‘The dispute started at Ginger Hill because they reckon he’s a soft touch.’ His eyes were a little bloodshot and his accent was stronger now, too. ‘Like I said, Silas wasn’t the worst of them and neither is his son.’

Pyke took a sip of the next rum. Harper watched him, smiling. ‘But I heard Charles is looking to leave, sell up and join his fiancee in London, or at least that’s what his plans were before…’ Harper hesitated, suddenly not sure what to say. But there was a mischievous twinkle in his eyes. ‘In fact that’s who I thought you were, when you first walked through my door, asking questions about Pemberton and Mary Edgar.’

‘Who?’ Pyke asked, confused.

‘A potential buyer.’

‘A potential or a particular buyer?’

‘Malvern’s had lots of potential buyers over the past year and a half; all have pulled out. I’m told a gentleman from Antigua is expected here soon. I’m also told Malvern has high hopes for this one. He’s desperate to sell the estate. I have no idea how your news will affect his plans.’

Pyke turned this information over in his mind, while Harper ordered another round of drinks. ‘You know this buyer’s name?’ he asked when Harper returned, this time carrying four glasses of rum between his calloused fingers.

‘Not off the top of my head but I can find out. Why you ask?’

‘This buyer is expected here soon. And if he’s coming all the way from Antigua, it isn’t likely anyone’s actually met him, is it?’

‘Exactly what I was thinking.’

Later Pyke would wonder why the newspaperman had been so keen for him to do what they eventually agreed upon, but at the time they were both swept up on a giddy tide of rum.

‘What I still don’t understand is why, if Mary was killed in London, you came all this way to Jamaica.’

Pyke noticed Harper had just called her ‘Mary’ but didn’t comment. ‘I came for the sunshine.’ He upended the glass into his mouth and shuddered involuntarily. ‘And the rum.’

Harper’s bloodshot eyes contracted slightly and his smile curdled at the corners of his mouth. ‘You don’t look or act like a policeman. You should take that as a compliment, by the way.’

‘I’m not, but I was hired by a policeman to try to find out who killed Mary Edgar.’

‘Why?’

Pyke went to finish the latest of his rums. He closed his eyes and the dark, unfamiliar room began to spin. ‘It’s a long story, but I used to be a Bow Street Runner.’

‘A Bow Street Runner, eh?’ Harper said it as if he knew what a Bow Street Runner was. ‘So you ever had to kill another man?’ As he said it, he tried to grin but the effort was stillborn.

After Harper had guided him back to Mrs McAlister’s guest house on Seaboard Street, Pyke sat for a while on the veranda staring out at the ocean and listening to the waves breaking over the rocks. He felt more than pleasantly drunk, and as he sat there, listening to the cicadas and watching the stars dotted across the entire night sky, he almost didn’t know where he was, or what he was supposed to be doing. He also knew that sleep was beyond him and decided to walk, or stumble, along Seaboard Street as far as the courthouse. The men with torches who’d been there earlier had gone elsewhere but the man who’d been whipped, Isaac Webb, was still lying there chained to a rock. Pyke had a small bottle of rum that Harper had pressed into his hands when they’d left the hole, and he bent over Webb’s battered body and brought the bottle to his lips. The smell of the rum seemed to revive the man a little. Webb was lying on his front. His back, meanwhile, was criss-crossed with a lattice of raw and just about healed scars; clearly it wasn’t the first time he’d suffered such a punishment. He opened his mouth and Pyke wetted his lips with some of the rum. Just for a moment, he managed to lift up his head sufficiently to see who was doing this for him. He managed a smile and croaked, ‘T’anks, man.’ The smell of fresh blood, together with all the rum he’d consumed, made Pyke want to vomit. Pressing the bottle into Webb’s hand, Pyke stood up and looked around him, into the darkness. He noticed something move, someone; a group of people, in fact, edging towards him from the other side of the courthouse, their faces hidden by the darkness. It was only then that he remembered Harper’s warning and stepped away from Webb. He held up his hands, as though to distance himself from what had happened.

The first stone hit him squarely in the chest and after that Pyke remembered running; not in any particular direction and not to the relative safety of his guest house because the mob was blocking his path back along Seaboard Street. He just ran, and behind him he could hear shouts and the sound of people following him. He ran along one street and up another, where the row of houses came to an end. Then he followed the dirt track as it disappeared into a dense mass of unfamiliar trees and vines and went as far as the seashore, where he stopped and listened. Over his own panting he could hear the muffled sounds of his pursuers and saw that some of them were carrying machetes. Pyke quickly took off his boots and socks, pulled up his trousers and waded into the sea, navigating a path around a rocky promontory. The water was warm and the sand soft against his bare soles. He was sweating profusely but kept moving along the beach, and soon he couldn’t hear anything apart from the waves gently lapping against the sand and the mosquitoes buzzing in his ear. Using the moonlight to guide him, he followed the beach as far as it took him and stopped at a rocky peninsula. There was no one following him now, and everything was perfectly still. The chase had sobered him up a little but the rum had done something to his mind; shapes shifted in and out of focus. He felt disoriented. Up above him the sky was filled with more stars than he had ever seen before in his life. Staring up at them, Pyke thought about Felix and whether he would ever see his son again.

Pemberton’s office was located on the ground floor of a Georgian-style building on the corner of Victoria and Rodney Streets, across the track from the police station. The lower floor was built from stone and the upper floor from wood. The veranda, which ran along the front of the building, was supported by wooden columns and afforded the man who was sitting there a view across the ocean. Pyke called up, asking where he could find Michael Pemberton.

‘You’re looking at him,’ the man said, standing up and leaning against the wrought-iron railing. ‘And who might you be, sir?’ Even from a distance, Pyke could tell he cut an imposing figure; six and a half feet tall, broad, with well-developed shoulders, a wide neck and hairy, sunburnt forearms.

Pyke held his hand up to his face, to protect his eyes from the sun. ‘The name’s Montgomery Squires.’ He waited for it to have an effect; he didn’t have to wait for too long.

Pyke had just come from a sober lunch with Harper at which the newspaper proprietor had told him everything he’d managed to dig up about Squires, which wasn’t very much. It was early afternoon and another cloudless day, perhaps even hotter than it had been the day before, and Pyke felt dry-mouthed and irritable, both because of the heat and all the rum he’d consumed with Harper the previous night.

‘Squires, you say?’ Pemberton studied Pyke carefully from the veranda. His body was stiff with tension and his stare cold and suspicious. ‘We weren’t expecting you for at least another week.’

‘I caught an earlier ship and the winds were more favourable than I’d expected.’