“You’re clean sure enough,” Joby admitted. “But bein’ clean don’ mean there ain’t nothin’ can happen to you all the same. Mebbe you’s okay with the cops an’ mebbe not so okay with some other people.”
“You’re trying to discourage me.”
“I’m lookin’ at things the way they are.”
“It still adds up to a lot of plain discouragement.”
“An’ you still aim to go an’ tell the cops?”
“I still aim to do that,” Fletcher said.
Joby shrugged resignedly. “Okay then. We may as well head for home.”
Joby took his boat up to a pier on the east side of Jamestown harbour and said he would wait there until Fletcher had completed his business with the police. It was then mid-afternoon and the town was sweltering in the sun; white walls reflecting the glare, tarmac softening in the heat, an odour of petrol exhaust and ripe fruit hanging in the air.
It was a ten-minute walk from the waterfront to police headquarters, a plain, architecturally undistinguished, four-storey building with a large car-park in front and a few palm-trees giving a bit of shade here and there, Fletcher walked across the car-park and up the steps to the main entrance. He had never previously been inside the place and he was not at all sure he ever wanted to be inside it again; it made him nervous. Perfectly innocent though he knew himself to be, in these surroundings he could not avoid a sense of guilt; it was almost as though he had come to confess to a crime rather than to report one committed by someone else, some person or persons unknown.
There was a counter on the right of the entrance hall, with a couple of policemen behind it hammering laboriously away at typewriters and another one, with sergeant’s stripes
on his sleeves, using a telephone. They were all black and looked well fed; they were wearing short-sleeved green shirts and green trousers, and they had leather belts with holstered revolvers and handcuffs attached to them. The fact that the island police was an armed force gave Fletcher no feeling of confidence at all; he had a grave suspicion of all armed police. Though if it came to the point, practically all the police in the world were armed except the British; and the way things were going, even they might be compelled to come to it before so very much longer. There was violence everywhere, and how else could you deal with the armed criminal than by taking up arms also?
He went over to the counter and waited patiently while the sergeant finished his telephone conversation, and tried not to look like a criminal.
“Yeah,” the sergeant said; “sure we’ll do that. That’s what we’re here for … No; no need to worry … Well, I can’t promise that; now how could I? We’re not supermen … You thought we were? That’s nice.” He chuckled cosily, enjoying the joke with whoever it was on the other end of the line, and there was still some of the smile remaining on his face when he put the telephone down and turned to deal with Fletcher.
“Some guys,” he said, “they think we can work miracles. Get their car stolen in the morning; expect it back as good as new so’s they can drive out to Mariana Bay for the evening. Supermen!” He gave another chuckle, then cut it off abruptly. “Yes, sir; and what can we do for you?”
“I want to report a sunken boat,” Fletcher said.
The sergeant gave him a long, hard look. Then he said slowly, as if to get the matter entirely clear: “You want to report a sunken boat?”
“And a killing.”
“And a killing?” The sergeant was not smiling now. He looked as if he had never smiled in his life.
“Five killings,” Fletcher said.
The sergeant was frowning. The two typewriters had stopped clattering. The two other policemen had turned on their chairs and were looking at Fletcher.
“Five?”
“Yes,” Fletcher said. “Five men shot through the head.”
The sergeant gave a sigh; the sigh of a man who feels that his patience is being sorely tried. “And where are these five men who’ve been shot through the head?”
“In the sunken boat.”
“You saw them?”
“Yes.”
“What were you doing when you saw them?”
“Skin-diving.”
“Where?”
“To the east of the island; a few miles out. I was looking for an old ship that was torpedoed in the last war.”
It was apparent that the sergeant knew about the ship. For the first time since the start of the conversation he ceased to give the impression of someone who believed that he was dealing with a lunatic.
“Did you find the ship?”
“Yes.”
“And a boat, too?”
“Yes. The boat was lying on the bottom with the ship, but it hadn’t been there long. The dead men were all in the cabin.”
“But you don’t think they’d been drowned?”
“Not unless somebody shot them afterwards.”
“And you don’t think that’s likely?”
“Do you?”
“No,” the sergeant said; “I don’t.” He gave Fletcher another long, hard look, as though trying to make up his mind as to whether or not he was being told a cock-and-bull story; then he said: “Wait here. I’ll be back in a minute.”
He came out from behind the counter and walked away down a corridor. Fletcher waited. The two other policemen had not yet started again on their typing; they were still looking at him. He knew that if he made any kind of move to leave the building they would be on to him like a flash. He made no move; he just stood there feeling uncomfortable and hoping that the sergeant would soon come back.
In fact it was less than a minute that he had to wait. The sergeant returned accompanied by an older man with three stars on his shoulder straps. This man was thinner and his hair was beginning to go grey. He had a disillusioned air, as though he no longer expected anything good to come to him, and least of all from Fletcher. He introduced himself as Captain Green and began by getting Fletcher’s name for the record; which was something the sergeant had omitted to do.
“I take it that you’re here on holiday, Mr. Fletcher?”
“Not exactly,” Fletcher said. “I’m here to write a book.” He saw the captain’s head give a slight jerk and his eyes narrowed a shade, as though he had heard an incriminating admission. Perhaps it had been an unwise thing to say. “I’m lodging with Mr. and Mrs. Joby Thomas in Port Morgan.”
“And you’ve found five dead men?”
“Yes.”
“You’d better come into this room over here and tell me all about it, if you don’t mind, Mr. Fletcher.”
“I don’t mind,” Fletcher said. “That’s what I’m here for.”
The sergeant came with them. It was a plain square room with a table and two chairs. Fletcher sat on one chair and the captain sat on the other, facing him across the table. The sergeant stood by the door. Fletcher felt more like a criminal under interrogation every minute.
“Now,” Captain Green said, “let’s have it from the beginning. All of it.”
Fletcher gave him all of it from the beginning. The captain listened intently, putting in a question now and then. Fletcher told him everything except the bit about taking photographs of the dead men and the boat. He could not have said why he omitted that part, but he did.
When he had finished Captain Green sat for a while in silence, as if turning it all over in his own mind. Then he got up suddenly, pushing the chair noisily back and nearly oversetting it.
“Wait here,” he said. It seemed to be one of the favoured orders. They all seemed to think that, given half a chance, Fletcher would run away and never come back. Which was rather ridiculous really, seeing that he had come there entirely voluntarily.
“Don’t worry,” he said. “I’ll wait.” But in fact he was the one who was beginning to worry. He could not have explained why; it was just a feeling he had, a feeling that he was indeed becoming involved in something he might have been well advised not to become involved in; something which could have a far deeper significance than he or Joby had supposed. Maybe he ought to have paid more
heed to that first instinct to keep his mouth firmly shut. But it was too late now; he had opened it and the wheels had been set in motion.
Captain Green left the sergeant to keep an eye on him and make sure that he really did wait there. Whether he accepted Fletcher’s word or not, he was taking no chances. The sergeant stayed by the door, saying nothing. Fletcher shifted uneasily on his chair and tried to think of something to say, because the silence was getting on his nerves. But nothing came up: the sergeant and he had nothing in common, nothing to discuss, except possibly the subject of mass homicide.
Finally he cleared his throat and said: “Do you know where he’s gone?”
“No,” the sergeant said.
Which effectively put an end to that conversation.
Some five or ten minutes had passed when the door opened again and Captain Green came in.
He said: “Colonel Vincent would like to see you, Mr. Fletcher. If you’ll just come with me.”
Fletcher, reflecting that he seemed to be making a rapid rise through the ranks of the police and that the information he had brought was undoubtedly being treated as a matter of importance, got up and followed Captain Green out of the room. The captain led the way along a corridor, up a flight of concrete stairs, and along another corridor until they came to a door marked in gilt lettering: “Colonel Arthur W. Vincent.” Captain Green tapped lightly on the door with his knuckles, a voice on the other side mumbled something that might have been an invitation to enter, and they went in. Green closed the door gently behind them.
“Mr. Fletcher, sir.”
It was a fairly large room with a lot of window space along one side. There were some solid chairs and a solid mahogany desk and a street map of Jamestown hanging on the wall on the right. There were some red-topped pins stuck in the map at various points, which might have been marking the scenes of crimes or trouble spots, or anything else if it came to that.
Colonel Arthur W. Vincent was sitting at the desk with a pen in his hand and a sheaf of papers in front of him. He was a little dried-up strip of a man with skin the colour of cold ashes. He did not look like a high-ranking police officer; he was wearing a rumpled brown cotton suit and he looked more like an office clerk or possibly the proprietor of a fifth-rate used-car saleyard. He had the keen, calculating, slightly shifty eye of a used-car salesman, and Fletcher’s immediate impression was that Colonel Vincent was not a man he would have trusted with half an ounce of boiled sweets—or fourteen grammes if you were using the metric system of weights and measures.
“Ah!” Vincent said; and he gave a smile that revealed some gold fillings in his teeth and looked about as genuine as a bottle of Japanese Scotch whisky. “So you are Mr. Fletcher. Please sit down.” He flipped a couple of bony fingers in the general direction of one of the solid chairs, and Fletcher walked over to it and sat down. Captain Green remained standing.
“I understand,” Vincent said, “that you came to report finding a sunken boat.”
“And five dead men.”
“Yes.” There was a sibilant hiss as Vincent spoke the word, as though he had held on to the final letter as long
as possible, reluctant to let it escape. “Five men shot through the head. Is that correct?”
“It is.”
Vincent was playing with the pen, setting it up on end, allowing it to fall almost to the desk, and then catching it just before it could do so. It was rather like a cat playing with a mouse.
“Mr. Fletcher,” he said, “why were you diving out there? In that particular place.”
“I told the captain—”
“And now I should like you to tell me. You don’t mind?”
“Why should I mind?”
“Exactly. Why should you?”
“I was looking for the ship.”
“Oh, the ship. Yes, of course. And you found the ship, and the boat was there also?”
“Yes.”
“Why did you want to find the ship?”
“No particular reason. Just curiosity; nothing more.”
“You had been told about it?”
“Yes, of course. How else would I have known it was there?”
“How else indeed. And who told you?”
“Mr. Thomas.”
“Mr. Thomas, with whom you are lodging?” Colonel Vincent was very correct in his grammar.
“Yes.”
“And it was Mr. Thomas who took you out in his boat?”
“It was.”
“Do you do much skin-diving, Mr. Fletcher?”
“I don’t know what you’d call much. I do a fair amount of it.”
“I understand you are a writer,” Vincent said.
“Well, yes, I am.” Fletcher failed to see the point of all these questions. What possible bearing could such personal details have on the matter of the five dead men in the sunken boat? “But I don’t see—”
“Had the search for the ship anything to do with your writing?”
“No, not really.”
“This book that you told Captain Green you came here to write—what is it about?”
“I don’t know.”
Vincent let the pen fall and trapped it under his right hand as though arresting it in the act. “You don’t know?”
Fletcher was faintly embarrassed. “That is to say, I haven’t actually started on it yet. I’m still casting about for a subject.”
“And how long have you been here?”
“About six months.”
“Six months and you still haven’t found a subject! Isn’t that taking rather a long time?”
“Perhaps. But I still don’t see what this has to do with—”
“What kind of a writer are you, Mr. Fletcher?”
“How do you mean—what kind?”
Vincent picked up the pen and rolled it between his fingers. “I mean would you, for instance, describe yourself as a political writer?”
Fletcher began to see what Vincent was getting at. But he still could not see why. Why should his political views have any bearing on the subject of the five dead men?
“The fact is,” he said, “I’m not really a writer at all. That is, not yet. I mean I haven’t written anything so far. Nothing that’s been published.”
Colonel Vincent looked as though he found that rather hard to believe. “Are you telling me that it’s not your profession?”
“Not at the moment. It could be—some time in the future. You understand?”
“So what do you do for a living?”
“Nothing just now. I had some money left me.”
“Very nice,” Vincent said, a trifle sardonically. “That sounds an easy kind of life. It must have been a lot of money.”
“Not as much as you might think. I may have to start looking for a job before very long.”
“You should get on with writing that book, Mr. Fletcher,” Vincent said.
Fletcher nodded. “I might just do that. After all, I’ve got something to write about now, haven’t I?”
Vincent gave him a sharp look. “What do you mean by that?”