Desmond Bagley - Domino Island

‘A man called David Salton has died.’

That didn’t surprise me. People are always dying and you hear of the fact more often in an insurance office than in most other places. I sat down.

‘How much is he into you for?’

‘Half a million of personal insurance.’

That was enough to make even me wince: God knows what it was doing to Jolly’s ulcer.

‘What’s the snag?’

He tried – and failed – to suppress the look of pain on his face. ‘This one is all snag. Salton first came to us twenty-five years ago and took out £10,000 worth of insurance on his life. Over the years he built it up to a quarter-million. Just over a year ago he suddenly doubled it; the reason he gave was galloping inflation.’

‘So on the last quarter-million he only paid two premiums,’ I observed. I could see what was needling Jolly: the company was going to lose badly on this one. ‘How old was Salton?’

‘Fifty-two.’

‘Who gets the loot?’

‘I imagine it will be the widow,’ said Jolly. ‘The terms of his will aren’t known yet. The thing that bothers me is the way he died. He was found dead in a small boat fifteen miles from land.’

‘Alone?’

‘Yes.’

I looked past him out of the window at the snowflakes drifting from a leaden London sky. ‘I assume there was an inquest? What did the coroner say?’

‘Death from natural causes. The medical certificate states a heart attack.’ Jolly grimaced. ‘That might be debatable. The body was badly decomposed.’

‘Decomposed? How long had he been out there?’

‘Four days. But it wasn’t so much the time as the heat.’

I stared at Jolly. ‘What heat?’

‘Oh, it happened in the Caribbean,’ he said, as though I ought to have known. ‘Salton’s boat was found off the island of Campanilla – he lived there.’

I sighed. Jolly’s problem was making him incoherent. ‘What about starting at the beginning?’ I suggested. ‘And then tell me what you’d like me to do.’

The way Jolly told it, Salton was a native-born, white Campanillan. In his youth he emigrated to the United States, where he made his pile and took out US citizenship. His money had come from building houses for returned soldiers just after the war and he’d done very well at it. But he never forgot his roots and went back to Campanilla from time to time, buying some land on the island and building himself a home, which he used for holidays. About three years ago he’d moved back permanently and began to do a lot for the island community. He built a couple of hospitals, was the mainstay of higher education and had an interest in providing low-cost housing for the populace – something he’d become expert at in his Stateside days.

Then he died in a small boat at sea.

‘Campanilla is British, isn’t it?’

‘It was,’ said Jolly. ‘Not any more. After Harold Wilson’s “Bay of Piglets” PR disaster in Anguilla, we were all too happy to let them slip away. They even opted out of the Commonwealth.’ He looked me in the eye. ‘That’s one of the problems, of course.’

I didn’t really understand why that was a problem, but then I didn’t know anything of Campanilla. Jolly said, ‘Another problem is that the company invested money in Salton’s house-building schemes. Now he’s dead we want to make sure the money’s safe.’

Wheels within wheels. ‘How much?’

‘A little over three million. You’ll have to talk to Costello about that.’

I knew Ken Costello a little. He and Jolly were the proverbial two hands that didn’t let the other know what each was doing; Jolly was the insurance man and Costello the investment whizz-kid. They didn’t like one another much. While Jolly was a good company man, he wasn’t worried about Costello’s troubles. The half-million potential pay-out loomed larger in his mind than the shaky future of Costello’s three million. But there was something else gnawing at the back of my mind. I knew the company would still pay out in the event of suicide, but not until two years after the death. The idea was to deter any sudden impulse to leave the wife and kids in good financial shape. The realisation that you are worth more dead than alive can be positively unhinging to some men, but the two-year gap helped keep the door from falling off.

I said, ‘Was the usual suicide clause in Salton’s policies?’

Jolly looked hurt. ‘Of course,’ he said peevishly.

‘Then what’s biting you?’ As though I didn’t know.

He tented his fingers and looked magisterial. ‘I’m not too happy about that inquest. The law in these banana republics can be slipshod, to say the least of it.’

‘Do you suspect funny business?’

‘If there is any funny business we ought to know about it.’

‘And that’s where I come in. When do I leave?’

He gave me a knowing look and then smiled. Jolly’s infrequent smiles were unnerving. ‘You’d better wait until you’ve seen the chairman.’ He glanced at his watch. ‘You have an appointment with him at eleven.’

During my ten years offering expert consultation to this company, I had met the chairman exactly ten times and I’d already had my ration for the year. ‘What does he want?’

‘Ah!’ said Jolly, and smiled again. ‘Mrs Salton is the chairman’s niece.’

Lord Hosmer was perturbed. He waffled on for fifteen minutes without stopping, repeating himself many times, and it all boiled down to the fact that he was exceedingly and understandably perturbed. I was to investigate the situation directly and personally and not to rely on any of my minions; I was to investigate the situation and report to him immediately, if not before; I was to proceed to Campanilla starting, if possible, yesterday, and what was I waiting for?

Yes, sir; yes, sir; three bags full, sir.

There was one question I really wanted to ask: what angle should I take? Did he want me to look for a reason to invalidate the claim – in which case Jill Salton, niece to the chairman, would be justifiably annoyed? Or should I work the other side of the street and let the company catch a £500,000 draught? But that’s not a question to put lightly to the chief executive of an insurance company. Hosmer was neatly impaled on the horns of a dilemma and it would be tactless to embarrass him by asking awkward questions which should properly be put to an underling, who would instead look at the entrails of a chicken at dead of night and interpret the Great Man’s mind.

So I went back to friend Jolly and put the awkward question to him.

He was affronted. ‘You’re to find out the truth, Kemp,’ he said pompously.

Ken Costello was a much happier man. Although he juggled hundreds of millions of pounds, he didn’t let the awesomeness of it worry him unduly. He was a big, boisterous extrovert given to practical joking in the infantile Stock Exchange manner and equipped with an enormous fund of dirty stories also culled from former colleagues on the trading floor. When I walked into his office he lifted an enquiring eyebrow.

‘Salton,’ I said.

‘Ha!’ His eyes rolled. ‘Is Jolly worried?’

‘More to the point, are you?’

He shrugged. ‘Not much – yet.’

I sat down. ‘Okay, I’m listening.’

Costello leaned back in his chair and adopted the cheerful air of a tolerant college tutor happily indoctrinating his students. ‘Campanilla is snowballing,’ he said. ‘More particularly, there’s a building boom. They’re putting up hotels so fast that if your bedroom isn’t built when you check in, you still sleep sound that night. Money is flowing like champagne and caviar has become a staple food. That’s what happens when the palsied hand of the British Raj is shrugged off.’