Десмонд Бэгли - Bahama Crisis

From a side pocket of the jacket Perigord took a flat aluminium box. He opened it and there, nestling in cotton wool, were three glass ampoules filled with a yellowish liquid. He held it up. ‘Recognize them?’

‘They’re exactly like those I saw in Kayles’s boat,’ I said. ‘And like the broken one I found on the roof of the Sea Gardens Hotel. My bet is that he picked them up tonight when he went on his little sea trip. He wouldn’t want to carry those about too long, and they weren’t in his room when we searched it.’

He closed the box and stood up. ‘I think you’re beginning to make your case. Commissioner Deane will definitely want to see you tomorrow morning.’

I glanced at the clock. ‘This morning.’ I was feeling depressed. Later, when the body was removed on a stretcher I reflected gloomily that Carrasco had advanced his bloody cause as much in the manner of his death as in life. A shootout in the lobby of a hotel could scarcely be called an added attraction.

The morning brought news — bad and good.

When I got home I told Debbie what had happened because there was no way of keeping it from her; it was certain to be on the front page of the Freeport News and on the radio. She said incredulously, ‘Shot him!’

‘That’s right. Perigord shot him right there in the lobby of the Royal Palm. A hell of a way to impress the guests.’

‘And after he shot at you. Tom, you could have been killed.’

‘I haven’t a scratch on me.’ I said that lightly enough, but secretly I was pleased by Debbie’s solicitude which was more than she had shown after my encounter with Kayles in the Jumentos.

She was pale. ‘When will all this stop?’ Her voice trembled.

‘When we’ve caught up with Robinson. We’ll get there.’ I hoped I put enough conviction into my voice because right then I could not see a snowball’s chance in hell of doing it.

So I slept on it, but did not dream up any good ideas. In the morning, while shaving, I switched on the radio to listen to the news. As might have been predicted the big news was of the shooting of an unnamed man in the lobby of the Royal Palm by the gallant and heroic Deputy-Commissioner Perigord. It was intelligent of Perigord to keep Carrasco’s name out of it, but also futile; if Robinson was around to hear the story he would be shrewd enough to know who had been killed.

The bad news came with the second item on the radio. An oil tanker had blown up in Exuma Sound; an air reconnaissance found an oil slick already twenty miles long, and the betting was even on whether the oil would foul the beaches of Eleuthera or the Exuma Cays, depending on which way it drifted.

The Bahamas do not have much going for them. We have no minerals, poor agriculture because of the thin soil, and little industry. But what we do have we have made the most of in building a great tourist industry. We have the sea and sun and beaches with sand as white as snow — so we developed water sports; swimming, scuba-diving, sailing — and we needed oiled water and beaches as much as we needed Legionella pneumophila.

I could not understand what an oil tanker was doing in Exuma Sound, especially a 30,000 tonner. A ship that size could not possibly put into any port in any of the surrounding islands — she would draw far too much water. I detected the hand of Robinson somewhere; an unfounded notion to be sure, but this was another hammer blow to tourism in the Bahamas.

I dressed and breakfasted, kissed Debbie goodbye, and checked into my office before going on to see Perigord. Walker, my constant companion, had not much to say, being conscious of the fiasco of the previous night, and so he was as morose as I was depressed. At the office I gave him a job to do in order to take his mind off his supposed shortcomings. ‘Ring the Port Authority and find out all you can about the tanker that blew up last night. Say you’re enquiring on my behalf.’ Then I got down to looking at the morning mail.

At half past nine Billy Cunningham unexpectedly appeared. ‘What’s all this about a shoot-out at the OK Corral?’ he demanded without preamble.

‘How do you know about it?’

‘Steve Walker works for me,’ he said tersely. ‘He keeps me informed. Was Debbie involved in any way?’

‘Didn’t Walker tell you she wasn’t?’

‘I forgot to ask when he rang last night.’ Billy blew out his cheeks and sat down. ‘I haven’t told Jack about this, but he’s sure to find out. He’s not in good shape and bad news won’t do him any good. We’ve got to get this mess cleared up, Tom. What’s the pitch?’

‘If you’ve talked to Walker you know as much as I do. We’ve lost our only lead to Robinson.’ I held his eye. ‘Have you flown a thousand miles just to hold my hand?’

He shrugged. ‘Billy One is worried. He reckons we should get Debbie out of here, both for her own sake and Jack’s.’

‘She’s well enough protected,’ I said.

‘Protected!’ Billy snorted. ‘Steve Walker is pissed off with your cops; he tells me they’ve taken his guns. How can he protect her if his guys are unarmed?’

‘Perigord seems to be doing all right,’ I said. ‘And there’s an armed police officer at the house.’

‘Oh!’ said Billy. ‘I didn’t know that.’ He was silent for a moment. ‘How will you find Robinson now?’

‘I don’t know,’ I said, and we discussed the problem for a few minutes, then I checked the time. ‘I have an appointment with Perigord and his boss. Maybe they’ll come up with something.’

It was then that Rodriguez and the good news came in. ‘I’ve got something for you,’ he said, and skimmed a black-and-white photograph across the desk.

It was a good photograph, a damned good photograph. It showed Carrasco hopping over the bows of a dory which had its prow dug into a sandy beach. The picture was as sharp as a pin and his features showed up clearly. In the stern of the dory, holding on to the tiller bar of an outboard motor, was another man who was equally sharply delineated. I did not know him.

‘You took this last night?’ Rodriguez nodded. ‘You were crazy to use a flash. What did Carrasco do?’

‘He did nothing. And who said anything about a flash? That crazy I’m not.’

I stared at him then looked at the picture. ‘Then how...?’

He laughed and explained. The ‘gismo’ mentioned by Walker was a light amplifier, originally developed by the military for gunsights used at night but now much used by naturalists and others who wished to observe animals. ‘And for security operations,’ Rodriguez added. ‘You can take a pretty good picture using only starlight, but last night there was a new moon.’

I looked at the photograph again, then handed it to Billy. ‘All very nice, but it doesn’t get us very far. All that shows is Carrasco climbing from a boat on to a beach. We might get somewhere by looking for the man in the stern, but I doubt it. Anyway, I’ll give it to Perigord; maybe he can make something of it.’

‘I took more than one picture,’ said Rodriguez. ‘Take a look at this one — especially at the stern.’ Another photograph skimmed across the desk.

This picture showed the dory again which had turned and was heading out to sea. And it was a jackpot because, lettered across the stern, were the words: ‘Tender to Capistrano ’.

‘Bingo!’ I said. ‘You might have made up for losing Carrasco last night.’ I looked at Billy. ‘That’s something for you to do while I’m with Perigord. Ring around the marinas and try to trace Capistrano.’

Five minutes later I was in Perigord’s office. Also present was Commissioner Deane, a big, white Bahamian with a face the colour of mahogany, and the authority he radiated was like a blow in the face. I knew him, but not too well. We had been at school together in Nassau, but I had been a new boy when he was in his last year. I had followed him to Cambridge and he had gone on to the Middle Temple. Returning to the Bahamas he had joined the Police Force, an odd thing for a Bahamian barrister to do, because mostly they enter politics with the House of Assembly as prime target. He was reputed to be tough and abrasive.