The Spanish Hawk (1969) (3 page)

“Five men shot through the head, all together in the cabin of a motor-boat ten fathoms down. That’s a good basis for a plot, wouldn’t you say?”

“Mr. Fletcher,” Vincent said, “let me give you a word of advice. Leave that plot alone. Touch that and you could be in trouble. It’s not your business; it’s ours. Leave it to us. Don’t you think that would be best?”

“Perhaps so. It was just a thought.”

“Let it stay just a thought.”

“Are you warning me?” Fletcher asked.

Vincent smiled, and there were those gold-filled teeth
flashing again like danger signals. “I’m advising you—as a friend.”

Fletcher reflected that if he ever became so short of friends he needed Colonel Arthur W. Vincent for one, he would really be down to the bedrock; but he did not say so, did not even hint as much; because Vincent might have been offended, and the last thing he wanted to do was to give offence to this little man with his ash-grey face and his probing eyes. Vincent as a friend might not be all that was to be desired, but as an enemy he could be deadly poison.

“In that case,” he said, “I’ll take the advice.”

“That would be wise.”

“Are you going to fish the bodies up?”

“We’ll do all that is necessary. Don’t worry; you’ve done your part and now we’ll do ours.”

“You don’t want me any more, then?”

“If we do we’ll get in touch.”

It seemed to be the end of the interview. Fletcher stood up.

“By the way,” Vincent said, “you didn’t get a look at the name on the boat, I suppose?”

Fletcher paused. “Well, yes, as a matter of fact I did. It was rather a funny name.”

“Funny?”

“Unusual.”

“Ah!”

“It was
Halcón
Español,
which I believe means ‘Spanish Hawk’.”

“Yes,” Vincent said, “that is unusual. But I should not have called it funny. No, certainly not funny. Good-bye, Mr. Fletcher. And don’t talk about this.”

“Who would I talk to?” Fletcher said.

Vincent nodded. “Ah, who indeed!”

Fletcher left the building wondering just why Colonel Vincent should have found the name of the boat unusual but certainly not funny, and why he should have thought it necessary to give that warning not to talk about it.

But no answers floated to the surface.

Joby was dozing in his boat when Fletcher got back to the pier, but he woke up quickly as Fletcher stepped down into the cockpit.

“Began to think they’d arrested you.”

“I had that feeling myself once or twice.”

“So what’s happening?”

“I’m leaving it to them. A man named Arthur W. Vincent has it in hand. He’s a colonel of police.”

“I know,” Joby said.

Fletcher was surprised. “You know him?”

“Not personally,” Joby said. “I know about him; everybody in Jamestown does. He’s Clayton Rodgers’s right hand man, and there’s some that say he’s a bigger bastard than Rodgers himself. Though personally I’d need to have proof of that before I’d believe it possible.”

Fletcher was even more surprised. He had never heard Joby quite so outspoken on the subject of President Clayton Rodgers, and it was the kind of talk that could make bad trouble for the speaker if ever it got to the wrong ears. So it just showed how much Joby had come to trust him.

It was, of course, no news to Fletcher that there were plenty of people on the island who would have been only
too pleased to see President Rodgers in his coffin, and there were probably a lot who would have been perfectly willing to put him there if only they could have got near enough to him to do something about it. But Rodgers was not an easy man to assassinate; he had the power that goes with absolute rule and complete control of the police. He also had his own private army of thugs known as the Leopards.

Clayton Rodgers was a big, fat, jovial man of forty who had studied law in the United States. He had come to power by a clever manipulation of the ballot box, which had finally left the democratic machinery in a desperately run-down condition and the President firmly established as a highly autocratic head of state. In office he had continued to consolidate his position with considerable backing from the U.S. Treasury, the flow of dollars from which had been skilfully guided into those channels most favoured by the President himself and which critics considered not altogether to the benefit of the islanders as a whole.

It was said moreover that the C.I.A. kept a sharp eye on affairs and were happy to lend support to President Rodgers for fear that if he should fall the alternative might be communism on the Cuban model. To the C.I.A. virtual dictatorship by a right-wing head of state was infinitely preferable to a left-wing government, however benevolent. And of course there were many who benefited from the existing state of things. Tourists—mainly Americans—were a rich source of income; and tourists had an unfortunate habit of avoiding places where the political climate was unsettled and shots were likely to be fired in the streets. Those who made money out of the tourist industry didn’t, as a general rule, give a damn what happened to those others who were out of work and near starvation. Joby Thomas himself of course
profited from the American visitors, but apparently this fact did not make him an uncritical supporter of the President.

He started the engine and got the boat moving away from the pier and out into the bay. The shores of the bay were shaped like a horseshoe, with Jamestown on the inner curve. Port Morgan, where Joby lived, was near the tip of the eastern prong of the horseshoe and had once been a haunt of buccaneers, and later a naval dockyard. It had been prosperous in those days, but there were no buccaneers now and the dockyard was quietly decaying, as indeed the whole place seemed to be.

From Jamestown to Port Morgan across the bay was a distance of about a mile and a half, but by road, round the curve of the shore, it was nearly three times as far. People who did not own cars—and that included the greater part of the Port Morgan population—used the ferry whenever they wished to visit Jamestown; it cost a little more than walking but it was far less tiring.

On the trip back to base
Snow
Queen
passed a cruise liner coming in. Passengers lining the rails waved a greeting; Fletcher and Joby waved back.

“More visitors for the Island Paradise,” Fletcher said. It was the term they used in the travel brochures.

Joby grunted. “Paradise for some. Hell for others.”

“Well, at least you’re making out none too badly.”

“That’s true,” Joby said. “But I know lots that don’t do so good.”

“And you think things could be better?”

“I know they could. There’s a bag of money not bein’ used the way it ought to be. There’s a pack of people in high places linin’ their pockets and sayin’ to hell with the poor guys.”

“And Clayton Rodgers is one of them?”

“Clayton Rodgers is the chief one. He’s sittin’ on top of the whole rotten system. This here island’s just a playground for the rich and idle that come here to have a good time. The way things are goin’, we’ll soon be nothin’ but a gang of waiters an’ pimps an’ beggars—mostly beggars.”

“Now hold on, Joby. That’s putting it a bit strong.”

“Not too strong, it ain’t.”

“I’ve never heard you sounding off like this before.”

“Mebbe ’cause I don’ often let go. Mos’ times I keep it bottled up. Sometimes you gotta take the cork out.”

“And in your book I suppose I rate as one of the rich and idle?”

Joby gave a sudden grin, as though the dark mood had been thrust aside. “I never said that. I wouldn’t call you a real rich guy; you’d be livin’ it up in one of them fancy hotels if you was. Mebbe a bit idle sure enough, but you’ll get over that, I guess.”

“When the money’s gone?”

“Yeah, when the money’s gone. What you plannin’ to do then?”

“There’s the book.”

“You ain’t never started on no book yet. You think you’ll ever make a livin’ that way? Honest now, do you?”

“No,” Fletcher said; “to be perfectly honest, I don’t. But it’s a nice dream.”

“Nobody ever got rich dreamin’,” Joby said. “Not as I recall.”

The boat chugged on across the bay. Behind them was Jamestown, and beyond Jamestown the hills were green with vegetation. It was a fertile island set in a warm blue sea; it should have been, as the advertisements described it,
a paradise; but, as Joby had said, it was a paradise only for some—for the tourists who came with money in their pockets and for the lucky few who grabbed that money. For those who lived in the shanty towns in homes made from old packing-cases, flattened-out oil-drums, rusty corrugated iron and tarred paper, with only the most primitive of sanitation and drainage, and perhaps a long walk to fetch water from a stand-pipe, there was little enough hint of paradise.

“Some day somebody’s gotta do somethin’,” Joby said. “Some day.”

They came up to the Port Morgan jetty, which seemed to be in some need of repair; a lot of the timbers were rotting and the whole structure was leaning slightly to one side, as though it had been given a strong push from which it had never recovered. Away on the left were the crumbling buildings of the old dockyard, weeds growing through the broken concrete and the tendrils of creepers winding themselves round the cracked pillars and rusting iron. On the right was the wide sweep of the headland, the silvery white sand and the fringe of palm-trees, all bending in one direction like spectators at a football match trying to get a sight of the ball.

There were some kids on the jetty; it was a favourite place for kids: you could watch the ships come in; you could fish; you could make chalk marks on the boards and play intricate children’s games. They were not really supposed to be there, but if they were driven away they came back; in the end nobody bothered to drive them away any more.

Fletcher and Joby pushed their way through the crowd, Fletcher carrying his camera and part of the skin-diving
gear, Joby carrying the rest. Joby’s bungalow was about a quarter of a mile from the jetty. There was a drainage ditch in front of it, and you had to go over a footbridge made of two planks and then along ten yards of pathway with bushes growing on each side. There was a bit of garden at the back with a rough fence round it, and there were yams and sweet corn and melons, some small orange trees and a couple of coconut palms with a hammock slung between them. The bungalow was nothing much; it had been built with sections of an old army hut, and it had a tarred felt roof which Joby had to keep patching because the rain would find a way in. But even at that it was better than most of the dwellings in Port Morgan, and it had running water and electricity, besides being large enough to provide a room for Fletcher without overcrowding the family.

Joby’s children, Willie and Millie, who were four-year-old twins, came running to meet him, and they had to be picked up and made a fuss of both by Joby and Fletcher before either of the men could go into the house. Paulina was in the kitchen preparing a meal. She was really beautiful, and Fletcher had told Joby so on more than one occasion. It pleased Joby to hear compliments about his wife, and Fletcher believed that he had relayed the remarks to Paulina herself: it could have been why she was always so pleasant towards him; or maybe that was just her nature.

Joby took two cans of beer out of the refrigerator, which was one of the few luxuries in the house. At least Joby called it a luxury, though in that climate it might have been considered a necessity. He opened the cans and handed one to Fletcher.

“You could have glasses,” Paulina said. “They’re free.”

“No need,” Joby said. “Tastes better from the can.”

She looked at Fletcher. “You find what you were looking for out there?”

“Yes,” Fletcher said; “we found it.”

“Found somethin’ else besides,” Joby said.

Fletcher remembered Vincent’s warning not to talk about it, but what the hell; Joby was bound to tell Paulina anyway. The twins had gone out into the garden and were playing with the hammock; he could see them from the kitchen window.

“There was a boat,” he said.

Paulina listened to the story and he could see that she was worried by it.

“I wish you hadn’t found it,” she said.

Joby gave a laugh, making light of the matter. “Now you’re goin’ to say it’s unlucky. I know.”

“It could be. A thing like that; it’s best not to get mixed up in it.”

“We’re not mixed up in it,” Fletcher said. But he knew they were.

She knew it too. “You have to be mixed up in it if you found the bodies. And who killed them? Who were they? Why were they killed?”

“That’s for the police to find out.”

The mention of the police hardly seemed to reassure her. “I wish you hadn’t told them. Nobody need have known. Nobody saw you diving, did they?”

“No.”

“Then you didn’t have to tell anybody. Who would have known?”

“That’s what I told him,” Joby said.

Paulina shot a swift glance at him. “So you think he
shouldn’t have gone to the police? You think that, too?”

Joby looked uncomfortable. “Well, I’m not sayin’ that.”

“You don’t have to. I know.”

“Anyway,” Fletcher told her, “there’s no need for you to worry about it. If there’s going to be any trouble, I’m the one who’ll be involved. I’m the one who found the boat. But why should there be trouble? All I’ve done is report a crime. I’m in the clear.”

“Maybe it’s not enough to be in the clear. Not when you’re standing so close. I still say I wish you hadn’t found the boat.”

“Well, it’s done now.”

“Yes,” she said; “it’s done now. All we can do is hope nothing bad comes from it.”

“Nothing will,” Fletcher said. But he was not feeling very confident about it; in fact he was not feeling confident at all.

In the evening he went to see Dharam Singh. Dharam Singh and his family, which consisted of his wife, his five children, his sister and his widowed mother-in-law, occupied the ground floor of a house in what might have been described as the main street of Port Morgan. It was an old house and had been built in more prosperous times. It had a shabby grandeur, like an aristocrat who had come down in the world; there were chipped Doric pillars supporting the porch, rusty iron balconies attached to the upper windows and cracked stucco on the walls. If you looked closely at the roof you could see where one or two tiles were missing and the guttering had fallen away.

The upper floor was let to three sisters who earned a
living in ways that Dharam Singh chose not to mention. It was a condition of the agreement, so Fletcher gathered from what Singh had told him, that the sisters should never use the front door, but should gain access to their rooms by way of a back staircase which came down into the kitchen. The result of this arrangement was that, especially in the evening, there was a fairly constant stream of male visitors passing through the kitchen and up the back stairs. Mrs. Singh ignored them; if she had work to do in the kitchen she got on with it and responded to any friendly greeting on the part of a visitor with nothing more than a frigid glance, as if to indicate that she had no connection whatever with the ladies overhead.

Dharam Singh was a photographer, a small thin man with liquid brown eyes and an ingratiating smile. He did a small amount of business in Port Morgan, but earned more as a roving cameraman and freelance contributor to newspapers and magazines in various countries. He seemed to have a nose for the newsworthy event and an undoubted eye for a good picture. With his professional earnings and the rent for the upper floor, which was always promptly paid, he appeared to be managing very nicely in spite of the size of the family he had to support.

It was about eight o’clock when Fletcher arrived at Dharam Singh’s house, and the street was only poorly lighted by an electric standard lamp here and there. As Fletcher stood under the porch and gave a pull on the iron handle that operated a bell inside the house he caught a glimpse of a man slipping down the alleyway which led to the back door. The upper windows were brightly outlined against the darkness of the wall and he could hear the sound of music of the pop variety, from which he gathered that
the sisters’ tastes in that line were strictly non-classical.

The door was opened by Dharam Singh himself, and immediately he recognised Fletcher his face creased into a smile of welcome.