Copyright

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First published in Great Britain by HarperCollinsPublishers 2019

Copyright © Brockhurst Publications Limited 2019

Cover design: www.mulcaheydesign.com © HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd 2020

Cover images: Front cover © Julio Viard/Alamy (aircraft), Folio Images/Alamy (man)

Desmond Bagley asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.

A catalogue copy of this book is available from the British Library.

This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins.

Source ISBN: 978-0008333010

Ebook Edition © April 2020 ISBN: 9780008333027

Version: 2020-04-07

CURATOR’S NOTE

Desmond Bagley’s novel Running Blind has a brilliantly gripping opening sentence: To be encumbered with a corpse is to be in a difficult position, especially when the corpse is without benefit of death certificate. As a teenager introduced to this master thriller writer by my older brothers, I was hooked. The Golden Keel, Bagley’s debut novel, came next on my reading list, quickly followed by The Enemy, Landslide and the rest of his exhilarating output. My hunger for more was only stopped by the untimely death of the author in 1983.

Ever since, Desmond Bagley – or Simon, as he was known to family and friends – has been woven into my life in a variety of strange ways. Years after his death, I struck up an email correspondence with his remarkable widow Joan, who completed a couple of his unfinished manuscripts for posthumous publication, before she died in 1999. The baton was passed to Joan’s sister and brother-in-law, Lecia and Peter Foston, with whom I have had the pleasure of developing a delightful friendship over two decades.

Meanwhile, I hassled Bagley’s publisher, David Brawn of HarperCollins, with a view to writing a biography (the brief book-cover rubric hardly does his extraordinary story justice). I wrote a two-part screen adaptation of The Tightrope Men, entitled simply Tightrope – which has yet to be made, if any producers are looking in. I followed with enthusiasm Nigel Alefounder, whose website desmondbagley.co.uk reveals the fine work he has done over many years to keep the Bagley flame alive.

My heartfelt thanks and appreciation for their commitment and support go to all these people and more – including, of course, my own ‘Joan’, Tricia, to whom this book is dedicated.

And then came the discovery of a ‘new’ Bagley manuscript among his papers, written in 1972 and subsequently archived in Boston, Massachusetts. Investigative researcher Philip Eastwood – who hosts the website thebagleybrief.com – found the novel there in the form of a typed first draft with extensive handwritten annotations by the author and his original editor, Bob Knittel. In addition, correspondence between the two showed in some detail the plans Bagley had for a second draft.

I couldn’t be more thrilled and honoured to have been invited by David Brawn to implement those plans. Permissions and assistance have been very kindly forthcoming from the trustees of the Bagley estate, the Howard Gotlieb Archival Research Center in Boston, and Sam Matthews and Leishia-Jade Finigan of Moore Stephens in Guernsey, without whose co-operation this book would not have seen the light of day.

What follows is, unquestionably, a Desmond Bagley novel. The emendations may be mine; the brilliance is his.

Michael Davies

Dedication

For Tricia – who else?

The island of Campanilla

Contents

Cover

Title Page

Copyright

Curator’s Note

Dedication

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Afterword

Domino Island: A History

Keep Reading …

Desmond Bagley

Michael Davies

Philip Eastwood

By the same Author

About the Publisher

ONE
I

I was late into the office that morning and Mrs Hadley, the receptionist, told me that Jolly wanted to see me. ‘It’s urgent,’ she said. ‘He’s been ringing like a fire alarm.’

Jolly might have been his name, but jolly he certainly was not. He was a thin, dyspeptic man with a face like a prune and a nature as sour as a lemon. He had a way of authorising the payment of claims as though the money was coming out of his own pocket, which was probably not a bad trait for a man in his job.

He looked up as I walked in and said irascibly, ‘Where the devil have you been? I’ve been trying to find you for hours.’

I did not have to account to Jolly for the way I spent my time so I ignored that and said, ‘What’s your problem?’

‘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.’

‘Never mind the economics lecture,’ I said acidly. ‘Where did Salton come in?’

‘He was a property man through and through – that’s how he made his fortune in America. He got himself some nice tracts of land and started to cover them with ticky-tacky. He needed development capital, which we supplied. End of story.’

‘It is for Salton. What about you – how safe is your money now?’

‘Reasonably safe. Salton wasn’t a fly-by-nighter, and he was building for the locals, not the speculative stuff for middling-rich, middle-class immigrants who want a place in the sun to retire to. Although it wouldn’t have been altogether a bad thing if he’d tried that. We wouldn’t have touched it, though.’

‘Who runs things now that Salton is dead?’

‘That is a bit worrying,’ admitted Costello. ‘He was always a loner – kept things very much in his own hands – although he had a good manager, a man called Idle.’

‘My God,’ I said. ‘That name doesn’t sound too promising.’

Costello chuckled. ‘It isn’t as bad as it sounds. I took the trouble to look it up. It’s from the Welsh, Ithel, meaning “Lord Bountiful”.’

‘Could be worse.’

He grinned. ‘Idle, Mrs Salton and a firm of lawyers are running the show now. They’re not doing too badly so far.’

‘How far? When did Salton die?’

‘The boat was discovered two weeks ago. You going out there?’

‘The chairman insists. What fuels this economic miracle on Campanilla?’

‘Much as I regret to say,’ said Costello, not looking regretful at all, ‘it’s gambling. Of course, there are a lot of other angles, too. Campanilla has turned itself into an off-shore financial paradise with a set of fiscal laws that make the Cayman Islands look positively restrictive. You’ve heard of Bay Street in Nassau?’

‘The mecca of the Bahamas.’

‘Capital is leaving there so fast that the bankers are catching pneumonia from the draught. Campanilla has its very own version: Cardew Street.’

‘And you put three million of the company’s money into Cardew Street?’ I said.

‘Safe as houses, dear boy,’ said Costello. ‘As long as they were Salton’s houses.’

II

Eight hours later I was on a 747 taking off from Heathrow and heading for Campanilla by way of Miami. I travelled first-class, of course; it was written into my service agreement with the company. Somewhere behind me, in the back of this flying barn and jostled by the common ruck of economy flight passengers, was Owen Ogilvie, the official representative of Western and Continental Insurance Co. Ltd. To an eye untainted by suspicion, he was the company man sent out to enquire into the death of David Salton. He would do the expected and leave me to a quiet and restful anonymity.

Jolly disapproved of my service agreement; it offended his sense of the fitness of things. There was nothing he could do about it though, since I negotiated directly with the board.

During the flight I studied Salton’s policies. They were all fairly standard and with no trick clauses and I couldn’t see how Jolly could weasel his way out of paying. Whether Salton had died naturally, been murdered or committed suicide, the payment would have to be made. All that was at issue was the timescale and the most that Jolly could extract would be the interest on £500,000 for two years – say £90,000, or thereabouts.

Not finding much there, I went up to the bar which the airline thoughtfully provides for those of the jet set who can afford first-class passage. I took with me a handbook on Campanilla, which the efficient Mrs Hadley had dug up from somewhere. It offered interesting reading over a drink.

The highlights of this Caribbean jewel appeared to be the climate, the swimming, the sailing, the fishing, the cuisine and the tax structure. Especially the tax structure. The main feature of the tax structure was that there wasn’t much of it. If the United States was the Empire State Building, then Campanilla was a marquee – all roof with nothing much to hold it up, and vulnerable to financial gales.

I examined the historical section. Campanilla was originally Spanish, colonised in the sixteenth century. The British took over in 1710 during one of the fast shuffles of the War of the Spanish Succession and stayed until the twentieth century, when to have colonies offended world opinion. During this period it was called Bell Island but, on attaining independence, it reverted to the Spanish name of Campanilla. Probably some public relations geek thought it a more exotic and fitting name for a tropical paradise.

The fold-out map at the back of the handbook showed that the island really was bell-shaped. The lower rim of the bell was scooped out in a huge bay and the clapper was formed by Buque Island, separated from the main island by Pascua Channel. Opposite Buque Island was the capital of San Martin. Two misshapen peninsulas on opposite coasts represented the trunnions by which the bell would be hung. Northwards, at the top of the ‘bell’, was a coral formation, almost atoll-like, forming a perfect ring called El Cerco, which represented the ring to which the bell rope would be attached. Nature was imitating art in a big way.

Further study was profitless so I slept.

III

My hotel in San Martin grandly called itself the Royal Caribbean. It was new, which just goes to show that there is no one more royalist than a good republican. The foyer was lined with one-armed bandits which, on inspection, proved to be fuelled by silver dollars. All around could be heard the cadences of American speech from the guests and the slurred English of the Campanillans who worked there.

On my way in from Benning, the island’s international airport, two things had struck me: the smell of prosperity and the oppression of the heat. Both were almost tangible. San Martin, a clean and well-scrubbed town, was fringed on the skyline with cranes as new high-rise buildings went up. The traffic in the streets was heavy – flashy American cars driving incongruously on the left, British-style. The shops in the main streets were opulent and the crowds thronging the pavements were, on the whole, well-dressed. As for the heat, it had hit me like a wall as soon as I stepped off the plane. Even at this time of year, it was enough to make a pallid Englishman gasp.

I checked in at the hotel, showered off the stickiness, and went down again to sniff some more atmosphere. On the way out I stopped at the desk, and asked, ‘I suppose you have a newspaper here?’

‘Yes, sir; the Chronicle. You can buy a copy at the news stand there.’

‘Where is the Chronicle office?’

‘Cardew Street, sir. Two blocks along and turn right.’

There is nothing like reading the local paper for picking up a quick feel of a place. A newspaper is a tribal noticeboard which tells you what people are doing and, to a certain extent, thinking and saying. I’m a behaviourist myself and take more notice of what people do rather than what they say. The old saw ‘actions speak louder than words’ is truer than most proverbs, and I wanted to find out what people had been doing round about the time Salton had died.

I walked along the street in the hot sun and stopped at the first men’s outfitters I came to. I bought a light, linen suit more in tune with the climate than the one I was wearing, and paid for it by credit card, which was accepted without question. I wore the new suit and asked that the old one be sent to the hotel. Then I carried on towards the Chronicle office.

It looked and smelled like newspaper offices all over the world, a composite of library paste, newsprint, ink and suppressed tension. A press rumbled somewhere in the bowels of the building. When I asked to see the back file for the previous month, I was shown into a glass-walled office and seated in front of a scarred deal table. Presently the file was put before me. On its front was a pasted notice promising unimaginable punishments for anyone criminal enough to clip items from the pages.

I opened it and took a random sampling. Prices were high generally and food prices exceptionally so. The price of housing made me blink a little. Cigarettes, liquor and petrol were cheaper than in England but clothing was more expensive. That I already knew; the cost of my linen suit had been damn near the Savile Row level and the quality not a tenth as good.

I turned to the employment columns and did a quick rundown of wage levels. What I found didn’t look good: while prices rose above North American levels, wages were lower than European, which didn’t leave much scope for gracious living on the part of the working populace.

This was reflected in the political pages. It seemed there was an election coming up in a month or so and the government party appeared beleaguered. A small extreme left-wing party made up for shortage of numbers by a lot of noise, and a larger and more central opposition party threatened reform when it came to power. Meanwhile the Prime Minister made soothing sounds and concessions.

Pretty soon the name of Salton popped up, making a pugnacious speech against the ruling party:

‘This toadying government must stop licking the boots of foreigners for the sake of private profit. There must be an end to cheap concessions by which foreign gangsters can make their fortunes while our schools are understaffed. There must be an end to the pernicious system whereby foreign companies can filter untold millions of dollars through our country at no cost to themselves, while our own hospitals are neglected. There must be an end to the continual rise in prices at a time when the wage structure is depressed. I promise the Prime Minister that he will know the true mind of Campanilla during the forthcoming election, despite the activities of his hired bully boys.’

Evidently Salton had caught it from both sides. The Prime Minster, the Honourable Walden P. Conyers, responded smoothly: ‘It has been brought to my notice by the Department of Immigration that Mr Salton has not given up his American citizenship. He would be advised to do so before complaining about those enlightened foreign companies who have done so much to bring prosperity to this island.’

On the other side, a left-winger snarled acidly about two-faced millionaires who wrote wishy-washy liberal speeches while sipping martinis on the terraces of their expensive villas as their well-paid overseers were grinding the faces of the native poor. That sounded familiar, as did the call for instant revolution by the down-trodden proletariat.

I flicked through some more recent editions and came to a big splash story, emblazoned with a full-page picture of Salton. He must have been a really big wheel for his death to have made the commotion it did. The first thing I felt was the sense of shock that permeated the initial accounts; it seemed as though the reporter couldn’t really believe what he was writing. Then the accusations began to fly, each wilder than the last, while riots broke out on the streets and the police had their hands full.

It was hard to reconcile these accounts of civil unrest with the well-oiled gentility I’d seen outside on Cardew Street, but I soon found out the reason. The inquest had quietened things down considerably and the rioting stopped on the day that Dr Winstanley stood in the witness box and announced that Salton had died of natural causes. When asked if he was sure about that, he replied stiffly that he had performed the post-mortem examination himself and he was quite certain.

Mrs Salton gave evidence that her husband had had heart trouble six months earlier. This was corroborated by Dr Collins, his personal physician. When Mrs Salton was asked if her husband habitually went out by himself in a small dinghy, she replied that after his heart attack she had asked him not to continue this practice, but that he had not given up sailing alone.

The verdict, as Jolly had informed me back in London, was death by natural causes.

Salton’s funeral was attended by all the island dignitaries and a few thousand of the common people. Conyers made a speech, sickening in its hypocrisy, in which he mourned the loss of a noble fellow-countryman. After that, Salton pretty much dropped out of the news except for an occasional reference, usually in the financial pages, concerning the activities of his companies. No one can be forgotten quicker than a dead man.

I turned back to the obituary and was making a few notes when I became aware that someone had come into the room. I looked up and saw a podgy, balding man watching me intently. He blinked rapidly behind thick-rimmed glasses and said, ‘Interesting reading?’

‘For those who find it interesting,’ I said. A tautology is a good way of evading an issue; that’s something I’ve learned from listening to too many politicians.

‘You’re an off-islander,’ he said abruptly. ‘You’ve not been here long.’

I leaned back in the chair. ‘How do you know?’

‘No tan. Just out from England?’

I looked at him thoughtfully. ‘Yes. I’m interested in local conditions.’

‘By reading about a dead man?’ His voice was flat but the irony was not lost. ‘Taking notes, too.’

‘Is it illegal?’

He suddenly smiled. ‘I guess not. My name’s Jackson.’ He waved his hand. ‘I get into the habit of asking too many questions. I work here.’

‘A reporter?’

‘Sort of.’ He gestured at Salton’s obituary. ‘I wrote that.’

‘You write well,’ I said politely.

‘You’re a liar,’ said Jackson without rancour. ‘If I did I wouldn’t be in this crummy place. What’s the interest in Salton?’

‘You do ask questions,’ I said.

Unapologetically he said, ‘It’s my job. You don’t have to answer. I can find out another way if I have to.’

‘You didn’t come in by accident and find me here.’

He grinned. ‘Mary Josephine tipped me off. The girl at the desk. We like to know who checks our files. It’s routine.’ He paused. ‘Sometimes it even pays off. Not often, though.’

All that was quite possibly true. I said cautiously, ‘Well, Mr Jackson, if you were interested in the future of the late Mr Salton’s companies, wouldn’t you be interested in knowing how he died?’

‘I guess so.’ He looked at my notebook. ‘You don’t have to take notes. I’ll give you a copy of anything you want.’

‘In exchange for what?’

‘No strings,’ he said. ‘It’s in the public domain. But if you turn anything up – anything unusual – I’d be glad to know.’

I smiled at him. ‘I don’t think my principals would like publicity. Is anything unusual likely to turn up?’

Jackson shrugged. ‘If a guy turns over enough stones he’s sure to find something nasty some place.’

‘And you think there’s something nasty to be found by looking under Mr Salton’s stones. That’s very interesting. What sort of a man was Salton?’

‘No worse than any other son-of-a-bitch.’

My eyebrows rose. ‘You didn’t like him?’

‘He was a gold-plated bastard.’

I glanced down at the obituary. ‘You’re a better writer than you think, Mr Jackson. It doesn’t show here.’

‘Company policy,’ said Jackson. ‘Mrs Salton owns the Chronicle.’

That was a new one on me but I didn’t let him know that. I said, ‘If you talk like this to strangers you’re not likely to be on the payroll much longer. How do you know I’m not a friend of Mrs Salton’s?’

‘You’re not her friend,’ said Jackson. ‘You’re an insurance investigator. We’ve been expecting you to show up, Mr Ogilvie.’

He had the wrong man but the right occupation and I wondered how that had come about. I decided to let him have his cheap triumph for the time being and said evenly, ‘So?’

‘So she’s sticking your people for a lot of dough. You wouldn’t be human if you admitted to liking her for it.’

I looked down at the obituary. ‘Granting there’s a certain amount of bias here, Salton still doesn’t measure up to your personal description of him. What about the two hospitals he built, the university foundation, the low-cost housing? Those are facts.’

‘Sure,’ said Jackson. ‘He’s been buying votes. Was successful at it, too. A very popular guy. You should have seen his funeral.’

‘I’ve seen the photographs,’ I said.

‘That cheap housing was a surefire vote-catcher.’ Jackson leaned forward and rested his hands on the table. ‘Have you any idea of the cost of housing on this island? You’ll be damned lucky to get away with £10 a square foot. So he cut a lot of corners – he built cheap and he built nasty and he didn’t sell a single goddamn house he built.’

‘I don’t understand. If he didn’t sell any houses, where did he make his profit?’ I thought of Costello and the three millions and wondered if his ears were burning.

‘He didn’t,’ said Jackson. ‘He was losing like crazy. He rented those houses and the return was completely uneconomic. But it gave him a solid vote.’

‘He must have been rich,’ I commented. ‘That’s an expensive route to politics.’

‘He had a lot of dough,’ conceded Jackson. ‘But not that much. Mr Black was behind him with a slush fund.’

I sighed. ‘And who is Mr Black?’

Jackson stared at me. ‘Don’t you know anything about what goes on here? You’d better learn fast. Gerry Negrini is Mr Big in the casino crowd.’

‘Negrini?’

‘Negrini – Mr Black, get it?’

‘Oh, I see. But where do casinos come into it?’

‘Negrini represents certain New York and Chicago interests who are bucking Las Vegas and Reno.’

I still couldn’t see the connection. ‘But why should he support a liberal like Salton?’ I tapped the file. ‘I’ve read Salton’s speeches.’

‘You need a crash course in local politics,’ said Jackson earnestly. He was getting into his stride, teaching this dumb foreigner how things worked around here, and I wasn’t about to stop the flow. ‘Look, Mr Ogilvie, this island is wide open and a buck moves faster here than any other place in the world. Mr Black and his boys have got the whole thing sewn up – they’ve put Campanilla on the map for the jet set and all the well-heeled suckers who go for gambling.’

He hesitated. There was evidently more to come.

‘But there’s another angle. The bankers and the big corporations have also got it made here, and they don’t like gambling and the associations that go with it. They don’t want the off-shore trust funds confused with the spin of a roulette wheel. That’s bad for business.’

‘I can see their point.’

‘So they made sure they had their own man – Conyers. He was their boy, and he had his instructions: get the election out of the way and then crack down on the gambling. Mr Black had to pick an opposition leader and he picked Salton.’

‘Salton? But he’d only been back on the island five minutes.’

Jackson shrugged. ‘You can make a lot of noise in five minutes, Mr Ogilvie. Especially with someone like that behind you.’

‘So the cheap housing was just an expensive red herring.’

‘Make no mistake about it: if Salton had lived he’d almost certainly have been the next Prime Minister.’ Jackson waved airily at the file. ‘But all that flapdoodle in his speeches was for the suckers. You can bet that as soon as he got into power those house rents would have been raised pretty swiftly.’

He was on a roll so I kept up the masquerade. ‘I’ve been reading the account of the inquest. Do you believe Salton died of natural causes?’

Jackson sat down opposite me at the table and leaned back: he looked like he was settling in for the duration. ‘Winstanley is a doddering old fool at the best of times but even if he was the best pathologist in the world I doubt he could have made much of what was left of Salton.’ He grimaced. ‘I saw the body when he was brought in.’

‘He’d been out there for days, hadn’t he? Wasn’t anyone looking for him? Didn’t Mrs Salton raise the alarm?’

‘Which of those questions would you like me to answer?’ said Jackson. There was more than a hint of condescension in his voice. ‘No. The first anyone knew about it was when the body was found.’ He stared at me. ‘Don’t you find that strange?’

‘She must have had an explanation that was acceptable to the police.’

‘The police?’ Jackson snorted. ‘They’re in Conyers’s pocket, from Commissioner Barstow down to the last man on the beat.’

‘That’s an interesting take, Mr Jackson. In fact, you’ve raised a lot of interesting points.’

‘Glad to be of help, Mr Ogilvie,’ he said genially. ‘You’ll be visiting Mrs Salton?’

‘Probably tomorrow.’

‘You’d better telephone first,’ he advised. ‘No one gets to El Cerco without an invitation.’

‘Have you got a telephone directory?’

He grinned. ‘You won’t find the number in there. It’s unlisted.’ He picked up my notebook and scribbled in it. ‘That’ll find her.’

As I stood up to go, I asked casually, ‘How did you know I was Ogilvie?’

‘I have a pipeline into the Department of Immigration at the airport. I knew that Western and Continental Insurance would be sending a man so I put out the word.’

So that was how Ogilvie had been tagged. ‘That’s all very well, but how did you know I was Ogilvie? It’s not tattooed on my forehead.’

‘Hell, I knew you’d be coming in here to check the files so I had Mary Josephine tip me off. Then there was this.’ He lifted my notebook and grinned at me. Stamped on its cover in gilt were the words Western and Continental Insurance Co. Ltd. ‘I didn’t need to be Sherlock Holmes.’

‘No,’ I agreed. ‘You didn’t.’ I took the notebook from him and put it away.

Jackson heaved himself to his feet and said, ‘I’d be very much obliged if you let me know anything you turn up, Mr Ogilvie.’

‘I don’t think I will,’ I said. ‘You see, I told the truth when I said I was only interested in Mr Salton’s companies in a business way. I have no connection with this insurance company beyond having taken out a policy with them, and my name is not Ogilvie – it’s Kemp.’ I smiled. ‘The notebook was a handout. Western and Continental lash them out to all their clients.’

Jackson’s eyes flickered. ‘I don’t believe you,’ he said flatly.

I took out my passport and handed it to him. William Kemp, business consultant. ‘But thanks for the tutorial. It was most interesting.’

Jackson seemed to have had the wind knocked out of him as I took back the passport and pocketed it. He said, ‘Hell, anyone can make a mistake – and you went along with it.’

I nodded. ‘I go along with most things as long as it suits me, Mr Jackson.’ I walked to the door and turned. ‘By the way, I will be seeing Mrs Salton tomorrow. I’ll give her your regards.’

‘Hey, Mr Kemp, you won’t tell her … I mean … you won’t repeat what I’ve said?’ He was shaken right down to his liver and obviously terrified of losing his job.

I smiled. ‘I’ll reserve judgement on that – as long as it suits me.’ I gave him a curt nod and walked out of the room, leaving a shocked man. I don’t know who he thought I was, but I reckoned I’d given him enough of a fright to keep his nose out of my affairs.

I went back to the Royal Caribbean and telephoned Ogilvie. It was a long time before he answered and when he did his voice was grumpy. ‘Kemp here,’ I said.

‘You’ve woken me up,’ he complained. ‘I’m dead on my feet.’

I knew how he felt. Air travel is tiring and my time sense was shot to pieces because of the transatlantic flight. ‘Just something for you to do tomorrow,’ I said. ‘Go to the Chronicle office in Cardew Street and ask to see the back issues for the last month. You’ll find a lot of interesting stuff about Salton.’

‘What’s the point if you’ve already done it?’

‘You’ll probably be contacted by a creep called Jackson. Don’t try to hide who you are, but if he asks about me you’re ignorant. Jackson is a bit hard to take, but disguise your finer feelings and get pally with him. He’ll like you better if he thinks you’re here to torpedo Mrs Salton’s claim.’

‘Well, aren’t we?’

‘Don’t be cynical,’ I said, and put down the telephone. If Jackson wanted to meet Ogilvie, who was I to stand in his way? Besides, there was always a chance his loose lips might give the company man something else we could work with.

I took out my notebook, checked the number Jackson had given me, and dialled. The call was answered immediately and a slurred Campanillan voice said, ‘The Salton residence.’

‘I’d like to speak to Mrs Salton,’ I said. ‘My name is Kemp.’

‘What would it be about?’

‘If she wants you to know she’ll tell you.’ I never have liked the nosy and over-protective underling.

There was a pause, some brief heavy breathing and then a rattle as the handset was laid down. Presently there was another rattle and a cool voice said, ‘Jill Salton speaking.’

‘My name is Kemp – William Kemp. Your uncle, Lord Hosmer, asked me to call and present his condolences.’ He hadn’t, but it made a good story.

‘I see,’ she said. ‘Do you want to come here?’

‘If that’s all right with you. I’m free tomorrow, if it’s convenient.’

‘Would the morning suit you? Say at eleven?’

‘That would be fine, Mrs Salton.’

‘Very well, I’ll expect you then. Good day, Mr Kemp.’ There was a click and the connection was cut.

I called down to reception and made arrangements for hiring a car, to be ready in front of the hotel at nine the following morning.

Then I got undressed and fell asleep as though I’d been sandbagged.

IV

At nine-fifteen next morning I was threading my way out of San Martin in a fire-engine-red Ford Mustang with an automatic shift that I didn’t like. I prefer to change gear in a car when I want to, and not when a set of cogs thinks I should. Maybe I’m old-fashioned.

The road took me out along the coast for a way and through the outskirts of what was evidently a high-life area. Large and expensive-looking houses were set discreetly away from the road, some of them surrounded by high walls, and there were some plushy hotels with turquoise swimming pools of all shapes except rectangular. Those of the pools that I could see were surrounded by acres of bare skin, all tanning nicely. Here and there, uniformed waiters scurried around the poolsides with the first rum-and-coconut-milk of the day. La dolce vita, Caribbean-style.

I drove slowly, taking it all in. Even at this hour the sun was uncomfortably hot and the air pressed heavily on the open-top Mustang. Presently the road turned away from the sea and began to climb into a hilly and wooded area. The ambiance changed and the air cooled a little as I went inland. There were fewer white faces and more black, fewer bikinis and more cotton shifts, less concrete and glass and more corrugated iron. The tourists stuck close to the sea.

The landscape seemed poorly adaptable for agriculture. A thin soil clung to the bones of the hills but there were naked outcrops of limestone showing where the ground had eroded. Most of the afforested land was covered by a growth of spindly trees, which couldn’t be of any economic significance, but occasional clearings opened up in which crops were apparently grown.

Nearly every clearing had its shacks – usually of the ubiquitous corrugated iron, although beaten-out kerosene tins were also to be seen. Around each shack were the children, meagrely dressed and grinning impudently as they waved at the car and shouted in shrill voices. I passed though a succession of villages, all with rudimentary church and classroom. The churches were marginally better built than the classrooms, which tended towards the shanty school of architecture, each with its dusty, pathetic area of playground.

As I came over the central ridge of the island, I pulled off the road and looked north towards the distant glint of the sea. Close by, a couple of Campanillans were hoeing a field and planting some sort of crop. I got out of the car and walked over to them. ‘Am I on the right way to El Cerco?’

They stopped and looked at me, then the bigger one said, ‘That’s right, man.’ His face was beaded with sweat. ‘Just keep going.’

‘Thanks.’ I looked at the ground by his feet. ‘What are you planting?’

‘Corn.’ He paused. ‘You’d call it maize.’ His accent wasn’t the usual Campanillan drawl; he enunciated each consonant clearly. He didn’t sound like your average peasant.

‘It’s hot,’ I said, and took out a packet of fat, imported American cigarettes that I’d picked up on the plane.

He gave me a pitying smile. ‘Not hot yet. Still winter.’

I tapped out a cigarette, then offered him the packet. ‘Smoke?’

He hesitated, then said, ‘Thanks, man,’ and took a cigarette. The other man, older and with a seamed, lived-in face, ducked his head as he took one with gnarled fingers.

I took out my lighter and we lit up. ‘This is a very nice island.’

The younger man stabbed his mattock into the ground with a sudden violence that made the muscles writhe in his brawny arm. ‘Some think so.’

‘But not you?’

‘Would you like it if you were me, mister?’ he asked.

I looked around at the arid field and shook my head. ‘Probably not.’

He blew out a plume of smoke. ‘You going to El Cerco? The Salton place?’

‘That’s right.’

‘If you see Mrs Salton, you tell her McKittrick said hello.’

‘Are you McKittrick?’

He nodded. ‘Tell her I was sorry about Mr Salton.’

‘I’ll tell her,’ I said. ‘Do you know her well?’

He laughed. ‘She probably won’t remember me.’ He took the cigarette and delicately nipped away the coal before dropping the stub into his shirt pocket. ‘People forget.’ He tugged the mattock out of the dust. ‘This isn’t getting the corn planted.’

‘I’ll pass on your message,’ I said.

McKittrick made no answer but turned his back and bent to draw a furrow in the ground. I hesitated for a moment and then went back to the car.

I knew immediately what Jackson had meant about invitations when I arrived at El Cerco. I looked at the strong, meshed cyclone fence set on steel posts and at the two men at the gate. They wore what might or might not have been a uniform and, although they didn’t seem to carry guns, they looked as though they should have done. One stayed by the gate; the other came up to the car and bent to look at me.

‘My name is Kemp,’ I said. ‘Mrs Salton is expecting me.’

He straightened up, consulted a sheet of paper which he took from his pocket, and nodded. ‘You’re expected at the beach, Mr Kemp. The boat is waiting for you.’ He waved at the other man, who opened the gate.

What boat?

I found out about two hundred yards down the road the other side of the gate, where the asphalt curved into a bend giving a view over the sea. El Cerco was breathtaking. The natural coral formation was a perfect circle about three-quarters of a mile in diameter. Outside, the steady trade wind heaped up waves which crashed on to the coral, sending up spouts of foam, but inside that magic circle the water was smooth and calm.

Right in the centre was a small island, not more than a hundred yards across, and on it was a building, a many-planed structure that curved and nestled close to the ground on which it was built. It seemed as though David Salton had created his own Shangri-la. It was a pity he wasn’t around to enjoy it.

I drove on down the road, which descended steeply in a series of hairpin bends until it came to the edge of the lagoon. There was another house here and a row of garages with a big boathouse at the water’s edge. A man was waiting for me. He waved the car into a garage and when I came out he said, ‘This way, Mr Kemp,’ and led me to a jetty where a fast-looking motor launch was moored. Less than five minutes later I stepped ashore on the island in the middle of El Cerco.

An elderly servant stood in attendance. He had grey hair and wore a white coat – a typical Caribbean waiter. When he spoke I thought I recognised the voice I had heard on the telephone when I called the previous day. He said, ‘This way, Mr Kemp … sir.’ There was just the right pause to make the insolence detectable but not enough to complain about. I grinned at the thought that the staff didn’t like being ticked off by strangers.

The house had been designed by a master architect, so arranged that at times it was difficult to tell whether one was inside or outside. Lush tropical plants were everywhere and there were streams and fountains and the constant glint of light on pools. Most noticeably, the house was pleasantly cool in the steadily increasing heat.

We came into a quiet room and the old servant said softly, ‘Mr Kemp, ma’am.’

She rose from a chair. ‘Thank you, John.’

There was a man standing behind her but I ignored him because she was enough to fill the view. She was less than thirty, long of limb and with flaming red hair, green eyes and the kind of perfect complexion that goes with that combination. She was not at all what I had imagined as the widow of David Salton, fifty-two-year-old building tycoon.

A lot of thoughts chased through my mind very quickly but, out of the helter-skelter, two stayed with me. The first was that a woman like Jill Salton would be a handful for any man. Physical beauty is like a magnet and any husband married to this one could expect to be fighting off the competition with a club.

The second thought was that under no circumstance in law can a murderer benefit by inheritance from the person murdered.

Now why should I have thought that?

TWO
I

‘Mr Kemp, glad to meet you,’ said Mrs Salton. She showed no sign of being aware of my goggle-eyed reaction; perhaps to her it was standard from the human male. Her grip was pleasantly firm. ‘This is Mr Stern.’

Reluctantly I shifted my gaze. Stern was a tall man somewhere in his mid-thirties. His features had the handsome regularity of a second-rank movie star. First-rank stars don’t need it – just look at John Wayne. He smiled genially and stepped forward to shake my hand. I let him crush my fingers and looked expectantly at Mrs Salton. ‘Mr Stern is my lawyer,’ she said.

I allowed a twitch of an eyebrow to betray surprise as I was manoeuvred to a seat. Stern caught it and laughed. ‘I invited myself over,’ he said. ‘Mrs Salton happened to mention your proposed visit when she telephoned me yesterday. I thought it advisable to be on hand.’

‘To hear Lord Hosmer’s expressions of regret?’ I said ironically.

‘Oh, come now,’ said Stern. ‘The chairman of Western and Continental didn’t send a man across the Atlantic just for that. Besides, he has already spoken to Mrs Salton on the telephone.’

She was sitting opposite me, her hands in her lap smoothing the hem of the simple black dress she wore, and her eyes were downcast. I said, ‘Will you accept my regrets, Mrs Salton? I’ve heard your husband spoken of highly.’

‘Thank you, Mr Kemp,’ she said quietly, and looked up. ‘Can I offer you anything? We were just about to have coffee.’

‘Coffee would be very nice.’

Stern was about to say something when John trundled a loaded tea trolley into the room. He had to do something with his open mouth so he said innocuously, ‘Did you have a good flight?’

‘As good as they ever are, I suppose.’

We stuck to trivialities while John was serving the coffee, and I studied Mrs Salton appraisingly. She was a very still woman and appeared to have no mannerisms of gesture, her voice was quiet and restful – educated and English – and I thought it would be most relaxing to spend time in her company. Her beauty did not come out of a Max Factor bottle but stemmed from good bone structure and sheer animal health.

John departed and Stern waited until he was out of earshot before he asked, ‘Can we assume that the insurance claim will be met expeditiously?’

I studied him with interest. He seemed to be as jittery as Mrs Salton was placid, and he couldn’t wait to bring up the subject. ‘It will be handled as quickly as circumstances allow.’

He frowned. ‘Do you mean that the circumstances are unusual?’

‘I mean that the company, as yet, knows very little about the circumstances. There are one or two points to be clarified. That’s why I’m here, rather than a loss adjuster.’

‘I don’t follow.’

‘I’m an independent consultant,’ I said. ‘Rather different remit, you see.’

‘What remit?’ he demanded, almost aggressively.

I ignored the question and looked again at Mrs Salton, who was sitting watchfully with no expression at all on her face. I said, ‘What was Mr Salton’s departure point when he took the boat out that final time?’

She stirred. ‘He sailed from here.’

‘The boat was found four days later drifting off Buque Island – that’s the other side of Campanilla. A long way.’

‘That was gone into at the inquest,’ said Stern. ‘The wind direction and the current drift accounted for it satisfactorily.’

‘Maybe, but I was looking at the sea as I came here. In whichever direction I looked there was a boat. There are a lot of yachts here and four days is a long time. It seems odd that Mr Salton’s boat wasn’t discovered earlier.’

‘A matter of chance,’ said Stern. ‘And boats don’t approach each other too closely anyway. Even at a hundred yards you couldn’t tell …’ He looked at Mrs Salton and stopped.

‘But Mr Salton was missing for four days. Didn’t anyone worry about that?’

Stern started to speak but Mrs Salton interrupted. ‘I’ll explain. I didn’t know David was missing.’ She paused. ‘My husband and I had a quarrel – a rather bad one. He left the house in a fit of temper and went across to the main island. We have an airstrip there where we keep a plane.’

She must have noticed my reaction to this exemplar of the super-rich, because she added, ‘My husband had many interests in the United States and it was convenient to run our own aircraft.’

I straightened out the expression on my face. ‘Did he pilot it himself?’

‘No. We have a pilot and an engineer. Shortly after David left here, the plane took off. I didn’t think much of it at the time but when David didn’t come back I went across to the airstrip. The plane wasn’t there, of course, and I couldn’t find Philips, the engineer. I went to see Mrs Haslam, the pilot’s wife – Haslam and Philips both have houses on the estate. She said she had seen Haslam talking to my husband and they got into the plane. I assumed he had flown to the United States.’

‘Just like that? Without packing a suitcase?’

‘It wasn’t necessary,’ she said. ‘He maintains a wardrobe in the apartment in New York.’

‘What was he wearing when he left?’

She considered. ‘A polo shirt, shorts and sandals.’

It was winter in the northern hemisphere. While the heat was borderline unbearable in the Caribbean, the snow could be drifting up to three feet thick in the streets of New York. This was straining my credulity a bit too far. I said, ‘He went to New York in midwinter in a polo shirt, shorts and sandals. Is that what you’re telling me, Mrs Salton?’

She smiled slightly. ‘There was nothing odd about it, Mr Kemp. In flying long distances one can never be sure of ground conditions at the destination. Lightweight and heavy-weight business suits were always carried in the aircraft, together with shirts and other accessories.’

Millionaires are different from other people.

I accepted that and said, ‘But he didn’t go to New York, did he?’

‘I didn’t know that at the time. Look, it was a matter of dignity for me: I was waiting for him to call. But after two days I caved in and telephoned the apartment in New York. There was no answer so I telephoned the offices of his New York holding company. He hadn’t been there.’

‘So you contacted the police.’

She shook her head. ‘I wasn’t worried then – not in that way. I think I was more annoyed than anything else. There I was, all set to apologise, and I couldn’t find him. Next day the plane came back.’

‘That would be the third day?’

‘Yes. That’s when Haslam told me David hadn’t been on the flight to the States. They talked together on the plane but David got off again before it took off.’

‘Why did the plane go to the States, Mrs Salton?’

‘It was due back at the manufacturer for a routine service.’

‘I see. So what did you do?’

‘I was very worried. David had just walked out of the house and if he hadn’t gone to the States, then where was he? He certainly couldn’t lose himself on Campanilla – he was too well known. I didn’t know what to do. In the end I telephoned the police.’

Stern broke in. ‘She also telephoned me.’

‘Before or after contacting the police?’

Mrs Salton’s lips compressed slightly and Stern said evenly, ‘She wanted my advice. I told her to get in touch with the police immediately.’

‘I telephoned Commissioner Barstow,’ she said.

Another millionaire touch: if you want something, go right to the top. I said, ‘He sent someone to find out what was happening?’

‘He came himself.’

Of course. Let a millionaire vanish and the chief cop would arrive in a sprint. ‘What was his reaction?’

Stern said, ‘What you’d expect. His first thought was that David had been kidnapped. He alerted all his men and they began to investigate.’

‘There was a lot of talk that went on and on that evening. Some of Barstow’s plain-clothes men even attached a tape recorder to the telephone in case any kidnappers got in touch.’ There was a note of weariness in Mrs Salton’s voice – perhaps an echo of the weariness of that night. ‘I had a headache and went to my room to rest and I was looking across the water towards the mainland when I suddenly thought of the boat. It’s kept in a boathouse over there.’

I nodded. ‘I’ve seen the boathouse.’

‘I told Barstow and he had the boathouse checked. The boat wasn’t there.’ She paused, then said, ‘It was exactly midnight.’

‘So your husband’s body was discovered as a result of a sea search?’

‘No,’ she said. ‘A fisherman out of Hogtown discovered the boat early next morning and towed it into San Martin.’

I thought about it for a while. Stern fidgeted in the silence but Mrs Salton was as composed as ever. It all seemed to hang together and explained why there had been no hue and cry as soon as Salton went missing. Perhaps it hung together too well, but suspicion is an occupational disease in my trade. I said, ‘What do you think really happened, Mrs Salton?’

‘Substantially what was said at the inquest. I think that David was very angry when he left here, and to cool down he took the boat out. I think he had a heart attack and died at sea.’

‘What was your quarrel about?’

Stern jerked himself erect. Mrs Salton said, ‘It was about a personal matter which I don’t care to go into.’

Stern subsided, but not much. I said carefully, ‘So your husband was very angry – angry enough that you weren’t surprised he’d flown to the States, apparently in a fit of pique?’

She looked down at the back of her hands. ‘He was very upset,’ she said in a low voice.

‘Upset enough to take his own life?’

‘Don’t answer that,’ said Stern sharply. He glared at me and said frostily, ‘That’s a most improper question.’

‘Under the circumstances I think not.’

‘I’ll answer it,’ said Mrs Salton. ‘My husband would never commit suicide, Mr Kemp. He was not that kind of man.’

‘The idea of David Salton committing suicide is laughable to anyone who knew him,’ said Stern.

‘I had to ask the question,’ I said. ‘I’m sorry if it distressed you in any way.’

‘I understand, Mr Kemp,’ she said. ‘You must do your job.’ The way she said it made me wish I had a different job.

‘Strictly speaking, it’s not my affair,’ I said, and Stern stared at me in surprise. ‘A Mr Ogilvie is dealing with the matter of the claim. I’ll see him and pass on the information you’ve given me so that you won’t have to go through all this again. I expect he’ll be coming to see you quite soon but if you wish he can deal through Mr Stern.’

‘He certainly must deal through me,’ said Stern. ‘But what are you here for?’

‘Oh, I’m here on an entirely different matter,’ I said blandly. ‘I’m representing Mr Costello, the company’s investment analyst. Not unnaturally, he is interested in the future of Salton Estates Ltd.’

‘What has Western and Continental got to do with Salton Estates?’ asked Mrs Salton.

‘They invested money in the firm,’ I said. ‘Over three million pounds.’

‘Eight million dollars,’ said Stern. ‘Mr Salton tended to think in dollars. He lived over there a long time.’

I watched the frown mar Mrs Salton’s lovely face. ‘Didn’t you know about your husband’s business affairs?’

‘Some,’ she said. ‘But I didn’t think he’d borrow that much. It was a loan? He always said he’d never give away a piece of the action.’

I suppressed a smile at the uncharacteristic slang in the well-modulated English tone. ‘Yes, it was a long-term loan at two per cent over bank rate. He’s been paying the interest regularly – that comes to £288,000 a year. He was due to begin paying off the principal in a couple of years’ time.’

‘I didn’t know,’ she said.

‘It was just an ordinary business deal,’ said Stern.

I shrugged. ‘Mr Salton may have been a very good businessman but he appears to have played a lone hand. Now that he’s … no longer around, Mr Costello is wondering if Salton Estates will continue to be run along the lines laid down by Mr Salton.’ I smiled in what I hoped looked like sympathy. ‘It’s not that we’re very worried but we’d just like to make sure.’

‘And how are you going to make sure?’ asked Stern. He seemed unaccountably hostile.

‘I’d like to run my eye over the books – check the cash flow, the reserves, things like that.’

‘Are you empowered to do that?’

I leaned back in my chair. ‘If you think I’m not then I suggest you telephone Lord Hosmer immediately.’

‘Of course you can look at the books,’ said Mrs Salton. ‘As far as I know Salton Estates is doing marvellously.’ She glanced at Stern. ‘Maybe you could take Mr Kemp to the office this afternoon, introduce him to Martin Idle.’

Stern nodded curtly. ‘Very well.’

‘Meanwhile, perhaps you’d care to stay for lunch, Mr Kemp?’

‘Thank you,’ I said politely.

The house had a series of internal courts or rooms without roofs – the atrium of Roman architecture, modified for the Caribbean – and we had lunch in one of these. Over the crawfish I remembered the man from the dusty cornfield and said, ‘I met someone who sends you his regards – a Mr McKittrick.’

Mrs Salton seemed confused. ‘McKittrick?’

‘Tall, well-built.’

Her brow cleared. ‘Oh, Doctor McKittrick.’

I sampled the nutty-flavoured white flesh of the crawfish. ‘He didn’t look like a doctor to me. When I saw him he was planting corn.’

Mrs Salton smiled. ‘Dr McKittrick has unorthodox ideas of what constitutes medical practice.’

‘Very unorthodox,’ said Stern. ‘He’s a troublemaker.’

‘I haven’t seen Jake McKittrick for nearly two years,’ said Mrs Salton.

‘He said he was sorry to hear of what happened to your husband.’

‘Sorry?’ said Stern. ‘I’d have thought he’d be cheering.’

‘Just because he and David had a quarrel doesn’t mean …’ She stopped, then said, ‘I must drop him a line.’

‘I wouldn’t,’ said Stern. ‘The elections are coming up. As your lawyer I advise you to put nothing in writing to Jacob McKittrick. It could be misinterpreted – no matter what you write.’

I waited for Mrs Salton to reply but she said nothing, apparently content to drop the issue. I added McKittrick’s name to the list on my mental file and dropped another stone into the conversational pool. ‘A man called Jackson gave me some interesting information on local affairs. You may know him, Mrs Salton. An American on the staff of the Chronicle.’

‘On the staff? He’s the editor.’

Jackson may have been miles away on the other side of the island, but he was still capable of pulling surprises.

‘He told me you own the Chronicle.’

‘I suppose I do, now that David is dead.’

‘Don Jackson’s a sound man,’ pronounced Stern. ‘A very good editor.’

And a very good backstabber, I thought. It was not news to me that a newspaperman’s personal politics need have no relationship to the political views of the paper for which he works – it’s probably why journalists have a reputation for cynicism – but Jackson’s naked hostility towards Salton and his wife seemed to be different and based on something other than politics. I sensed that if Western and Continental torpedoed Mrs Salton’s claim, then Jackson would be very pleased. He was a dog in the manger and there must be a reason.

Stern glanced at his watch. ‘I have to be getting back.’

I suddenly changed my mind about investigating Salton Estates that afternoon. I wanted a chance to talk to Mrs Salton without Stern in the way – he was a repressive influence. ‘I’d like to talk to Haslam while I’m here,’ I said. ‘If I get it all wrapped up it will save Mr Ogilvie a journey.’

‘He’s available,’ said Mrs Salton. ‘The plane’s not been used since …’ She stood up. ‘I’ll talk to him.’

She went away and Stern said, ‘It seems to me that Western and Continental are being unduly zealous, Mr Kemp. I should have thought that the inquest made the situation quite clear.’

I smiled at him. ‘Inquests have been known to be wrong. As I’m sure you know, insurance companies are regarded as fair game by a lot of otherwise legally-minded people. To cheat an insurance company is viewed as a minor infringement, like smuggling an extra bottle of booze through Customs. So they tend to be zealous as a matter of routine.’

Stern nodded acceptance. ‘I suppose you’re right. And you have your job to do – whatever that is. But if you’re not coming to San Martin with me now, when do you want to look at the books?’

‘Maybe tomorrow. I’ll phone first.’

Mrs Salton came back. ‘You can see Haslam any time.’

‘No time like the present,’ said Stern jovially. ‘You can cross to the mainland with me. I’d like to have a word with you on the way.’

So my plan was stymied, and Stern and I crossed to the mainland together. Whatever word he’d wanted to have with me I never found out because he didn’t tell me. I concluded that the sole aim of his manoeuvres was to make sure that I was never alone with Mrs Salton. I could have been wrong, but that was the way it worked out.

II

Haslam lived in a neat little house next to the airstrip. He was a tall, spare Canadian with not enough meat on his bones for his height. His eyes were a faded blue, networked around with the wrinkles of middle age, so that he gave the impression of being worried about something. Maybe he was.

His wife was a frizzy blonde, pouchy under the eyes and burnt nearly black from too much sun so that her hair made a startling contrast to her leathery skin. And she showed a lot of skin.

I found them sitting beside a small swimming pool behind the house. Haslam stood up as I approached. ‘Mr Kemp?’

‘Yes,’ I said.

‘Mrs Salton said you’d be coming. She told me to tell you anything you want to know.’

Haslam’s wife looked up at me and indicated a jug on the deck table beside her. ‘Drink, Mr Kemp? Margarita.’

I felt the mid-afternoon sun searing my scalp and the roof of my mouth was dry. ‘It would be appreciated.’

She got to her feet. ‘I’ll go get a glass while you talk business with Jim. Then we can all have another drink.’

She appeared to have had too many already – the perils of a sedentary life in paradise, perhaps. I said, ‘I’ll be wanting to speak to you, too, Mrs Haslam.’

She lifted her eyebrows. ‘Okay. Be back soon.’ She tottered unsteadily towards the house.

I turned to Haslam and took the cane chair he indicated. ‘Suppose you tell me everything that happened just before Mr Salton died.’

He shrugged. ‘I can’t tell you any more than I’ve told already.’

‘Humour me,’ I said. ‘I’m a stranger round here.’

So he told me, and there was nothing in his account that was any different from that of Mrs Salton. While he was speaking, his wife came back with a glass and a refilled jug, sat by the pool and poured me a drink, as well as one for herself. Haslam was not drinking. I sipped my margarita while listening to him and discovered that Mrs Haslam was uncomfortably heavy with the tequila.

At last he finished. ‘That’s all I know, Mr Kemp.’

From the airstrip came the sudden howl of a jet engine winding up. I said, ‘What’s happening over there?’

‘Les Philips is testing the engines. I’m taking her up this afternoon.’

‘Oh, where are you going?’

‘No place. Just around. There are a lot of moving parts in an airplane, Mr Kemp, and if they’re left alone they get sticky. An airplane needs exercise, same as a man. She’s not been up since … since we came back from the States.’

‘How long will you be gone?’

‘Maybe an hour.’

I said, ‘I wanted to look at the plane. Maybe I’ll come with you.’

He hesitated. ‘That’s all right with me, but maybe I’d better check with Mrs Salton.’ He broke into an embarrassed laugh. ‘It’s her airplane. I’m just the hired driver.’

‘Well, why don’t you ask her if it’s all right?’

‘Sure, I’ll do that.’ He got up and walked towards the house.

Mrs Haslam reached for the jug and refilled her glass. ‘You wanna ask me somethin’?’ She was drinking too fast and her voice was slurred.

‘Yes,’ I said. ‘On the day that Mrs Salton came up here to ask if you’d seen her husband, you told her that your husband and Mr Salton had gone into the plane and then the plane took off. Isn’t that what you said?’

She looked at me owlishly. ‘Sure, that’s what I said.’

‘But it wasn’t so. Why did you say it?’

‘It was so, too. You making me a liar, Mr Kemp?’

‘I’m just trying to get things straightened out,’ I said.

‘It happened like I said. Mr Salton got into the airplane with Jim. The plane took off.’ She looked up. ‘But I wasn’t looking at that airplane the whole damn time.’

I said carefully, ‘You mean that Mr Salton might have left the aircraft without you seeing him, before it took off?’

‘Sure.’ She drank from her glass and a dribble of liquid ran from the corner of her mouth down her chin. She dabbed it with the back of a paw.

‘But when it became clear that Mr Salton was missing, didn’t it occur to you to tell someone?’

She shook her head muzzily. ‘I didn’t know David Salton was missing. And if Mrs Salton thought he was, then she kept her troubles to herself.’

That fitted. I couldn’t see Mrs Salton confiding in a woman like this, the addled wife of her husband’s employee. Haslam called from the house. I said, ‘Excuse me,’ to Mrs Haslam and went across.

‘Mrs Salton would like to talk with you,’ he said, and led me inside the house to the telephone.

I picked it up. ‘Kemp here.’

Her voice was cool and pleasant. ‘After your flight would you like to come back to the house and make use of the pool?’

‘That would be very nice.’ I paused. ‘I have no trunks with me.’

She sounded amused. ‘I think we can find something for you. In about an hour, then.’

I put down the telephone and went back to Haslam. ‘Would you like to go right away?’ he asked.

‘If you’re ready,’ I said.

He nodded abruptly and went back to the pool. He had a few words with his wife and then came back. I fell into step with him and we walked across the airstrip towards the distant hangar. He was silent and seemed to be brooding about something. At last he said, ‘Bette … my wife … She’s not usually like that. It’s just that she’s upset.’

‘About Mr Salton?’

He shrugged. ‘In a way. She’s worried about me.’

‘I don’t see that you can be blamed for anything,’ I said.

Haslam stopped in mid-stride and turned to me. ‘It’s not that. She’s worried about my job. Mrs Salton doesn’t use the airplane much – it was his baby – and Bette thinks I may be out of a job pretty soon. She may be right, at that.’

‘Did you like working for Mr Salton?’

‘Hell, yes. He was a real nice guy. Very considerate, not like some bosses I’ve had. Wherever we went – and we went to some weird places – he always saw that the aircrew were okay before he went about his business.’

We began to walk again, and I said, ‘How many in the crew?’

‘There’s me as pilot, and Les Philips. He’s the engineer and does the routine ground servicing but he has his pilot’s ticket too, so he comes along as co-pilot. I do the navigating. House servants are on board as stewards – one or two, depending on the number of passengers. And there was usually Mr Salton’s secretary.’

‘Who was?’

‘Mrs Forsyth.’

‘Is she around here now?’

Haslam shook his head. ‘She used to live here at El Cerco but she’s now working with Mr Idle in San Martin.’

I thought of the rambling house on the island in the lagoon. ‘Does Mrs Salton now live entirely alone in the house? I mean, apart from servants.’

Haslam looked at me consideringly for a moment, then said briefly, ‘I wouldn’t know.’

We’d been walking for several minutes and it suddenly struck me that this was an indecently large airstrip to accommodate a relatively small plane. I asked Haslam about it.

‘I thought the same thing when I first came here. What you have to remember is that it wasn’t built by Mr Salton. The strip predates that lagoon house by many years.’

That surprised me. The northern tip of the island was remote by any standards, and it seemed unlikely that anyone would put a random airstrip – especially one as big as this – so far away from the island’s residential centres.

‘It was actually built by you Brits in the war,’ said Haslam. ‘Transport station for most of the Caribbean. The Yanks had squadrons here too. After they all shipped out, it was used occasionally for local traffic. But then Mr Salton bought it up when he moved back to the island. Now it’s just his plane that flies out of here.’

‘How long is the runway?’

‘Pretty long. Six thousand and two feet, if you want to be exact. They could run commercial flights from here just as easily as from Benning, if ever they decided to develop this end of the island. But I guess with Mr Salton gone, that’s not going to happen any time soon.’

I smiled wryly. ‘Oh, I’m not sure about that. I know a man in London who’s very interested in keeping Mr Salton’s investment plans alive.’

We turned the corner of the hangar and I saw the aircraft: a Lear executive jet, about half a million dollars’ worth of luxurious machinery. Its purpose was to transport a busy man about his empire. But the man was dead and his wife apparently not air-minded. No wonder Haslam looked worried: it was odds-on that Mrs Salton would cash in this white elephant and divert the proceeds to something more useful.

He introduced me to Philips, a short, stocky man with a London accent – not Cockney, but unmistakeably metropolitan. We exchanged brief greetings and then Philips engaged Haslam in a technical conversation. I stood looking at the plane for a while, then butted in. ‘Do you mind if I go aboard?’

‘That’s okay,’ said Haslam. ‘Just don’t smoke while we’re on the ground.’

I climbed the boarding ladder and entered the fuselage to find a flying office complete with all modern conveniences, most of them built-in. There were two desks, one with an electronic calculator and a recording machine, the other fitted with a typewriter, another tape recorder and a photocopier. I guessed that was Mrs Forsyth’s post. I opened a filing cabinet nearby; it was empty.

I moved aft and opened a door in a bulkhead. There was a corridor leading to the tail. I went along it and found myself in the galley, gleaming in stainless steel. I checked a cupboard at random and found what would have been a well-stocked cocktail cabinet had there been any bottles in it. Of course, if the aircraft had been due to go back to the manufacturers, the booze would have been tactfully removed.

The galley was spotless but there was not a scrap of food in it. Even the refrigerator was empty. I pulled down a flap and found myself looking into a microwave oven. After another glance around I decided there wasn’t anything for me here so I went forward again along the corridor.

There was a door on the starboard side which led into a sleeping cabin with accommodation for two. The beds were narrow but comfortable, as I found by testing, and they were made up ready for use. I slid open a wardrobe door and found three suits in various weights of cloth. When I checked the pockets I found nothing, not even a shred of lint. Whoever valeted Salton knew their job.

I drew a blank in the dressing table too. Neatly folded double-cuff shirts, underwear, ties, shoes, socks and nothing much else. All clean and tidy. But there was something missing and I couldn’t put my finger on what it was.

When I got back to the main cabin, Haslam was climbing aboard. ‘What do you think of it?’ he asked.

‘Where’s the ticker tape and the teletype?’ I asked jokingly.

He grinned. ‘It wasn’t for the want of trying.’

Something clicked. ‘There’s something else missing,’ I said. ‘There are shirts back there but no cufflinks; ties but no tiepins.’

‘Mr Salton’s personal jewellery is kept in the safe,’ said Haslam.

‘A safe? I’d like to see inside that. Can you open it?’ He hesitated, so I said, ‘It’s all right, you won’t get into trouble. And you can breathe down my neck.’

The safe was well hidden under the floor. It had a good combination lock and if you’d wanted to extract the whole contraption you’d have had to take the plane apart to do it. Haslam opened it and stood aside. I said, ‘How come you have the combination?’

‘There’s currency of different sorts in there,’ he said. ‘At most airfields we can operate on credit, but at some of the smaller ones – particularly in South America – we have to pay cash for gas, servicing and airfield charges. Sometimes Mr Salton wasn’t aboard, so he gave me the combination.’

That sounded reasonable. I dug into the safe and produced several sheafs of foreign currency – American dollars, Brazilian cruzeiros, Ecuadorian sucres, Bolivian pesos, Peruvian soles and so on. It was quite a wad, even if it did look like Monopoly money. There were no Campanillan pounds but then those wouldn’t be needed.

There were several objects in protective wallets: two cigarette lighters, one of gold and the other of what appeared to be stainless steel but was probably platinum, and two cigarette cases likewise. Four sets of cufflinks and four tiepins, two signet rings and an American silver dollar with a hole bored through it – a good luck piece?

Nothing else.

I put it all back then looked at Haslam. ‘Was all this stuff here when you took the plane back to the manufacturer?’

The expression on his face was a mixture of shock and surprise. ‘You know, no one even thought of it. Mr Salton didn’t mention it and it never occurred to me.’ He smiled ruefully. ‘I guess we’ve got to thinking of it as part of the standard equipment of the airplane – like the radio, say. Mr Salton’s clothes weren’t taken off, either.’

‘But the alcohol was,’ I said.

Haslam shrugged. ‘The galley is cleaned out as a matter of course after every flight.’

When I stopped to think about the kind of man I was investigating, it all sounded completely logical. The very rich are not just folks like the rest of us. One of the super-rich once said in surprise, ‘You know, a man with five million dollars can live just as though he were a rich man.’ That’s pretty high-level philosophy.

‘Anything else, Mr Kemp?’

‘No,’ I said. ‘Not for the moment.’

Haslam went forward to join Philips in the cockpit or the flight deck or whatever fancy name they give it in planes that size. I sat down and began to go through drawers. I didn’t really expect to find anything, but old habits die hard. There’s a curious fascination about going through a man’s effects, delving into the minutiae of his life – not that there was much to find about Salton because the cupboard was bare apart from blank stationery, office knick-knacks and the like. Everything personal had been cleared out, presumably by the efficient Mrs Forsyth.

Presently the plane began to move. We taxied up the runway and then turned. A loudspeaker over my head crackled and Haslam said, ‘Fasten your seatbelt, Mr Kemp.’

I snapped the seatbelt closed and the plane roared off, climbing rapidly. It levelled off and the warning lights went out. Haslam said over the speaker, ‘Okay, Mr Kemp, you can come forward if you want to.’

I found Philips at the controls and Haslam chatting to someone on the radio. He signed off and I said, ‘Who were you talking to?’

‘Air traffic control at Benning Airport.’

‘Do you have to do that, even on a flight like this?’

‘They like to know what’s in the air,’ he said. ‘It’s mostly for the benefit of the missile tracking station at Fort Edward. We’re down-range of Cape Canaveral and they don’t like unforeseen blips on their radar.’ He put his hands on the controls. ‘I’ll take her, Les.’

I studied Philips. ‘You’re a long way from home, Mr Philips.’

He half-turned in his seat so as to face me and somehow combined the movement with a shrug. ‘If you’re in the flying business you get around.’

‘Have you been working for Mr Salton long?’

‘Three years.’

‘Me too,’ said Haslam. ‘Ever since he moved back to Campanilla permanently.’

We chatted for a while. Both Haslam and Philips seemed depressed by the death of Salton and their depression seemed to be an amalgam of worry about their jobs and a genuine regret for the death of their employer: they had both liked Salton and thought him a good boss.

We flew a triangular course and came back to El Cerco flying low over the lagoon. By then I was back in the cabin with my belt fastened for landing, and I had a good view of the house on the tiny island.

I could even see the swimming pool and a diving board on which was a tiny figure that must have been Mrs Salton. As the plane went over, she dived and I caught the splash as she hit the water. Then the plane had passed and I lost sight of her.

Back on the runway I said to Haslam, ‘Thanks for the flip.’

‘Did you find everything you wanted to know?’ he asked.

I grinned at him. ‘Who does?’ I nodded pleasantly and walked away.

He called out, ‘Okay, Les, let’s get the bird back into the nest.’ I turned and looked back to find him staring at me. I waved and he waved back, then I turned the corner of the hangar and looked out over El Cerco.

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