The Far Side of the Sun (25 page)

‘What about the murder of the man who died on the beach?’ She was aware of his frown. ‘Everyone is talking about it.’

‘So I hear.’

‘Have they found out anything about Morrell?’

‘No.’ He shook his head. ‘No, not yet. With no passport and no wallet, he’s difficult to trace but…⁠’ He stopped. He clearly felt he’d said enough.

‘Any ideas on who the killer might be?’ She made it sound like idle curiosity.

‘Not yet.’

Neither giving anything away.

‘As a matter of interest,’ she said, ‘I heard gossip about a robbery the other day.’

‘Oh?’

‘Of gold coins. Have you heard anything?’

She wondered if he could see the word
liar
branded on her forehead.

‘No, nothing has been reported.’

‘Just idle gossip, I expect.’ She flicked a hand through the air to dismiss it and just caught the edge of his shoulder. She swore to herself it was an accident.

He swivelled in his seat, so that his whole body was turned to face her. ‘Mrs Sanford, it’s too hot to sit like this any longer. Would you care to come inside my house for a cool drink?’ He smiled easily, a light-hearted curve of his lips, as though he was happy either way. It was up to her.

Ella turned her head. Away from him. Away from his house. For a full thirty seconds she didn’t speak. When she finally turned back to him, her smile and her voice were too bright.

‘Not today, I’m afraid. I have things to do. Maybe some other time.’

‘Of course,’ he said.

He started the car, and the purr of its engine was the only sound inside the car. They drove home in silence.

For two hot days and two stormy nights Flynn scarcely left Dodie’s side. He brought her breakfasts of mango and cornbread, in the evening fried up chicken and rice on a tiny temperamental stove. She hardly strayed from the mattress despite the sweltering heat in the shack and gradually she felt her battered muscles start to heal.

Mama Keel came to call and looked her over, pronouncing her a tough young goose, and after that visit the women up the street drifted in through the open door with a dish of scallops and a heap of banana fritters. Flynn sat on the front step with them in the shade of a squat pine, rolling cigarettes and passing round a beer while she dozed.

Each morning and each evening he massaged her back. Her head was hot and her thoughts seemed to wade through wet sand, leaving strange unrecognisable shapes behind them, but when his fingers touched her skin and Mama’s ointment glided over the curves and ridges of her back, her mind cleared. They didn’t talk, not while he worked on her. Sometimes he hummed softly to himself, something from Dixie or an old hoedown tune, nothing that she would have expected from him.

She closed her eyes and learned about him quietly through his fingers. Discovering the strength and kindness in him, the patience and the understanding. She wondered about his history and what world of danger and violence he had descended from. Sometimes she slept and his hands accompanied her into her dreams, as though a part of him had burrowed under her skin and would not let go.

Once, just once, when he lifted the weight of her tangled hair off her neck, smoothing its knots out with his fingers, he leaned down and she could feel his breath warm on her shoulder blade as he brushed his lips over the nape of her neck. Not a kiss, nothing so brash. But a blending of his skin with hers.

She wanted to thank him. But her tongue lay too heavy in her mouth.

When Dodie woke, it was night. The kind of night that was so warm and silky that she could touch the dense blackness with her fingertips. She had no idea what the time was, but she could feel that her body had turned some kind of corner. The throbbing in her head was down to little more than a discontented murmur and she could flex her back without too much pain. Carefully she sat up, wearing a loose cotton nightshirt that was one of Mama’s.

Faintly she could hear Flynn’s breathing. It dawned on her that he must be sleeping on the earthen floor, a place not suited to human bones. She eased her feet off the mattress and sat like that while she waited for the moon to rise. An hour, maybe two, during which her mind picked its way through the maze of events that had occurred since the night she found Mr Morrell bleeding in the dirt.

When the floor turned white in the gleam of moonlight, Dodie abandoned the mattress and moved over to the figure of Flynn. He was stretched out on his side, one arm flung out in front of him as though fending something off and his head resting on a folded towel. His skin possessed a metallic sheen and a sudden fear that he might be dead made her fingers seek out his cheek.

Instantly Flynn’s hand snapped around her wrist.

‘Flynn, it’s me.’

‘Dodie?’ He blinked himself awake.

‘Sshh,’ she whispered.

‘I didn’t mean to harm you.’

‘I know.’

She lay down on the floor beside him, her head sharing his towel. Her hand lay on his bare chest and she could feel the force of his heartbeat. What was it like, she wondered, to be this man? One who must watch his every breath. One who hugged God knows what secrets to himself. One who possessed the bravery to launch himself into a fight against two hard-bitten hoodlums for her sake, and who could reduce them to gutter-trash, as he called it, and seem to think nothing of it. Yet at the same time he was a man who would lay his hands on her naked back with the gentle touch of a nurse and not once make her feel that it was inappropriate.

She wrapped an arm around his waist and he pulled her to him.

‘When it’s light,’ she said quietly, ‘I need to speak to Sir Harry Oakes.’

He didn’t reply.

She waited a long time, but eventually she slept.

‘Don’t let him bully you.’

I don’t intend to,’ Dodie said firmly.

‘Good.’

Dodie and Flynn were standing together outside an impressive mahogany door. They were on a gallery that overlooked a sumptuous foyer. She had never been inside the British Colonial Hotel before. She had heard tales about its splendour but nothing quite prepared her. The building was a huge seven-storey construction that had replaced the original wooden hotel burnt down in 1922, and it struck her that it was as arrogant and bombastic as its owner, Sir Harry Oakes. Its central tower dominated the façade, its walls a flushed sandy colour and its roof a swathe of bold red tiles. But inside, the extravagant foyer, with its coral and white marble and wide stairs, was magnificent. The whole place intimidated her. Flynn had vanished from the Bain Town shack early that morning and returned an hour later to say Sir Harry had agreed to see her.

‘Why?’ she’d asked.

‘Because he’s curious.’

‘About me?’

‘Yes.’

‘A week ago if you’d told me a multi-millionaire was curious about me, I’d have crawled under a stone, now I take it in my stride. Things have changed.’

She was tearing strips off a triggerfish for their breakfast.

‘I don’t want you to change,’ he said.

She laughed. ‘Too late for that.’

‘Be careful,’ he said. ‘Of the changes coming.’

‘What can I do for you, Miss Wyatt?’

He was bigger than she remembered. Or was it the office that made him bigger? From the vast map of the world on one wall to the aerial photograph of New Providence Island on the other, Sir Harry Oakes was a man who did everything on a large scale. Even his philanthropy. His generosity to Bahamian good causes existed on a million-dollar scale. On a shelf sat an array of bulky chunks of rock glittering with quartzite and malachite, as reminders of his prospecting past and indicators to others of their owner’s ability to succeed, to wrest from this world whatever he wanted.

She extended her hand and it was swallowed up by his thick fingers, his grip fierce.

‘I’d like to ask you a few questions,’ she said.

‘Sit down, Miss Wyatt.’

She sat in a finely carved chair in front of his grand oak desk. He took his seat opposite, rested his elbows on the leather surface of the desk and inspected her closely. She could see he didn’t trust her.

But she didn’t trust him either.

‘And what do these questions concern, Miss Wyatt? I thought you were here to accept my offer of a job.’

It was a lie. They both knew that.

‘Our mutual associate, Mr Hudson, did not say what you wanted to discuss with me. I agreed to see you because he thought I would be interested in what you have to say. So, come on, young lady, spit it out.’

‘I’m sure you know that I am the person who found Mr Morrell after he’d been stabbed.’

‘Yes, of course I do, Miss Wyatt. What is your point?’

‘I believe he came to see you that night.’

‘Is that what Mr Morrell told you?’

She didn’t hesitate. ‘Yes.’

‘That’s not what you told the police.’

‘No.’

The hard line of his mouth shifted a fraction into what might have been a smile. ‘A wise move.’ He picked up a pen and tapped it sharply against a metal inkwell like a bell tolling. ‘Because it’s not true and you would have found yourself in court before you could even pick your nose, young lady.’

‘Sir Harry, I’m not interested in your business dealings with Mr Morrell.’

‘So what is it you are so damned keen to stick your nose in, then?’

‘I want to know who killed him. Any suggestions?’

Oakes gave a snort. ‘You’ve got a damned nerve.’

‘Between us, Sir Harry. That’s all. No police or lawyers.’

He had insisted on seeing her alone. Not even Flynn present. She wasn’t sure why, unless it was to threaten her. She had prepared herself for that, holding on to the words,
Don’t let him bully you
and to the certainty that Flynn was prowling on the other side of the door.

‘All I’m after,’ she said reasonably, ‘is the name of anyone you think may have wanted to attack Morrell and…⁠’ she paused, a pulse starting up as she saw anger in Sir Harry’s eyes, ‘and a reason why they would want to do so.’

He rose to his feet, his bulk towering over her and the desk. ‘Get out of here. I don’t know what the fuck this man Morrell told you but it’s not true. Do you hear? He didn’t come to see me that night. So get out of here and don’t come back.’

Dodie immediately walked to the door. She felt powerless in the face of his denials. She wasn’t good at calling a person a liar to their face. At the door she turned and said, ‘I shall take my story to the police then.’

‘You’re bluffing,’ he sneered. ‘I have checked you out. Don’t think I haven’t. You are already known to them as a filthy troublemaker who makes false accusations against men who cross you.’

‘That’s not true.’ But she felt the sting of shame. ‘They may take more note when I tell them about the gold coin Mr Morrell gave me.’

‘That has no connection with me and you can’t prove it has.’

It was stalemate. They both recognised it. Slowly Dodie walked back to her chair and sat down.

‘Now, Sir Harry, let us talk amicably.’

The big fist swept a glass ashtray off the desk. ‘So it’s blackmail you’re after,’ he growled. ‘I should have known.’ He yanked a cheque book from a drawer and waved it at her.

‘No!’ Dodie heard her voice rise. ‘I don’t want your money. What I want is for whoever killed him to pay for it.’

Whatever it was he heard in her voice, he put down the cheque book and in silence he started to pace the room, to roam its corners. Dodie watched him warily, but she caught a sense of his frustration, of how the confines of an office were galling to an outdoors man who had lived and breathed in wide-open spaces for so many years. He was wearing a well-worn khaki short-sleeved shirt and trousers and old open sandals, bringing his past with him for all to see, whereas most people, herself included, kept their past firmly tucked away in closed cupboards.

Finally he came to a halt in front of her. The bluster had gone and in its place there was a sadness to him. ‘Why should you care?’ he asked. ‘Morrell was nothing to you.’

‘You’re wrong. When you clasp a man’s hand while he fights for his life, when you hold him in your arms as he takes his last breath, he becomes more to you than nothing. Much more. I failed him then. Now I want to do right by him. I
will
find his killer. With or without your help.’

Sir Harry nodded slowly. ‘It’s revenge you want. Not justice.’ A faint smile loosened his lips. ‘I don’t blame you. Revenge I understand. I have taken my fair share of it in my life. I’ve been known to ruin guys who have crossed me.’

‘Did Morrell cross you?’

‘Good God, no. He and I go way back. To the days when I had no dough and was scouring the wastelands of the world for gold. Johnnie Morrell was a good friend to me at a time when friends were damned hard to come by.’

That came as a shock. ‘I didn’t know.’

He leaned down over her, his face hard. ‘There’s a lot you don’t know, Miss Wyatt.’

‘Is that why you gave him the two gold Napoleons? As a mark of friendship?’

‘What I want to know is where the hell the rest of them are.’

‘The rest of them?’