The Tropical Issue Read online

  One of them seemed to be a taxi driver, slowly lowering what I hoped was orange juice. Beside him, sure enough, lolled Raymond, his yellow hair all fuzzed in the heat like crimped yak, wearing a safari jacket and shorts over nothing.

  His expression when he looked up was relaxed. Then it tightened, as if he was missing his armour. ‘Miss Geddes,’ he said.

  ‘Where’s Lenny?’ said Johnson.

  There was an opened newspaper between me and the third person, who couldn’t therefore be Lenny, especially as the paper was written in French.

  The third person, not putting the paper down, said, ‘Oh everybody, listen,’ and began quoting, in French. I got it later, and copied it out.

  ‘Terry,’ murmura Jacinda, ‘tu ne crois pas qu’il serait possible qu’on se marie avant ton depart . . . un mariage secret, je veux dire? Personne n’aurait besoin de le savoir sauf nous . . . mais je serais . . . je serais ta femme.’

  The third person read it all out, over-acting something shocking.

  It was a woman. Behind the shaking paper, I couldn’t see her, but I knew her voice. I looked, shocked, at Johnson.

  ‘Barbara Cartland,’ he offered.

  The paper came down and it wasn’t Barbara Cartland. It was the Hon. Maggie, in black Vidal haircut, moon glasses and a tie-top and green pants over nothing.

  The Hon. Maggie, who had got herself asked by the Owner to help Lenny sail from Madeira. Lenny, Raymond and pals. Lenny, Raymond, and Maggie, switched from photographers and in hot pursuit of bums in bifocal glasses.

  A West Indian Rum Daisy consists of gomme syrup, curacao, lemon juice, soda water, and a hell of a lot of rum.

  I had two, and sat sulking while Maggie read out all our horoscopes. I was Taureau and Johnson was Poisson, which he sure bloody was.

  I was still sulking when Raymond and Maggie went off with the driver to buy extra food for Natalie’s dinner party. The taxi, when I looked into it, was full already with what they had bought that morning, consisting mainly of rum and a crate, I bet, of French duty-free perfume.

  I had lost interest in Johnson. He was a block ahead, talking about volcanoes, when he noticed I wasn’t with him. I had almost got into Albert’s when he got back to me and wheeled me round. He said, ‘What’s your favourite scent?’

  I haven’t got one, but I know what the most expensive one is. I told him.

  ‘Got it on board,’ he said. ‘Present from Bessie. Come on. Policy talks.’

  I didn’t believe him, but I trailed beside him, receiving a lecture on eruptions, all the way to the sea. It was still boiling hot and his glasses, I was glad to see, were steamed up.

  Some charter company people, who seemed to be pals of his, had whistled Lenny over from Dolly, and the white Avenger launch I remembered so well was floating at their dock. Dolly’s other boat was tied up beside it, waiting for what Johnson referred to as the Rum Babas.

  He could, of course, afford to be calm about Maggie, considering Raymond’s particular leanings. He was apparently calm about the taxi driver as well.

  Lenny handed me into the launch and out of it like a picket letting somebody through for his hankie. As I got shown to a cabin to tidy up, I heard Johnson say, ‘Absolutely no whisky, boss. Miss Geddes will vouch for me.’

  Although it didn’t show, he’d had one daisy more than I’d had. I remembered the empty chloride and Lady Emerson’s house. If he had a problem, it was none of my business. My business was to pin Kim-Jim’s murder on Roger van Diemen, without getting let down by drunks.

  The cabin was finely fitted and fresh and comfortable, and designed by the same hand that painted that picture. Before I left it, Lenny tapped on the door and brought in, with Mr Johnson’s compliments, a thing like an Easter Egg containing about fifty quids’ worth of the scent I had mentioned.

  I looked at it, waiting for the rabbit or ten knotted handkerchiefs but it stayed looking like fifty quids’ worth of perfume. Lenny, breathing over me, undamped his teeth again and snarled, ‘And, Miss Geddes, if I can just mention . . .’

  I wasn’t surprised. I know when aggro is coming. I stared at him. I don’t believe Ferdy when he says my hair counterattacks like a cockatoo’s, but I felt it begin to stand up.

  But whatever Lenny was going to mention, it never came. Johnson called his name once, quite nicely, from the saloon, but with a note behind it that sent Lenny’s feet to the door, never mind lifting his hair.

  I got to the saloon myself, and accepted a seat on the same handsome settee that I’d sat on in my bathing-suit in Madeira, and remarked that the perfume was great.

  I didn’t know what else to do. A Gay Yacht loaded with bottles of all known makes of perfume is something again.

  ‘Never without it,’ said Johnson. ‘Comes in handy as bribes for their girlfriends and mothers. Will a fish salad do? Raymond and Maggie are eating on shore.’

  A mind-reader is something else also. Raymond and Maggie.

  ‘I wish,’ said Johnson, ‘that you’d let me call you Rita. My name, unfortunately, is just Johnson.’

  He took a look at my expression and added cheerfully, ‘I’m sorry. Awkward to have the same wavelength. But useful at times. Let’s have a glass of wine, to please Lenny, and talk about Roger van Diemen.’

  He had hauled off his tie, and slung his jacket aside. His arms were brown, and his throat inside his shirt. We weren’t on the same wavelength really. I’m not that much of a fool. He was clever. And my thoughts are easy to read.

  A great team. An open book and a lush.

  And he read me thinking that, too. I saw him.

  We had our meal outside, under the awning, while the yacht rocked to her anchor and the sunlit water sent dazzling lights everywhere.

  We talked for thirty minutes. Or Johnson talked, while I had two helpings of cold crab with palm heart salad, and fresh pineapple with cream, and coffee with Poorer and Fewer, and two glasses of wine.

  What he said made me thankful that Natalie hadn’t delayed our trip any longer.

  His tour of Coombe’s finished and his investigation complete, Roger van Diemen was now in Barbados.

  The signs were that his report was in the hands of his boss. And the chances were that the next thing that would happen would be the meeting to launch the new dope ring.

  Eating, I kept my eyes down and my thoughts, I hoped, to myself.

  Barbados. An English-speaking island, not a French one, and about a hundred miles or more to the south. Natalie and I had slept there last night, after the long flight from London. We had slept there, and Roger van Diemen was somewhere on the same island.

  Johnson said, ‘So what I don’t want you to do, is go after Roger yourself. He’ll know I’m around, and you’re around in the area, but if we show no special interest, he’ll keep out of our way.

  ‘This time, I’m sure he won’t trouble you, and I don’t think he’ll be anxious to dash from the islands. If he moves, it will be because he’s been told where to go for the meeting.

  ‘My guess,’ said Johnson, ‘is that the people he’s working for will meet him where he is, in Barbados. It’s the busiest island, with a huge through-put of casual traffic. And a nuclear bomb could go off in Bridgetown without anyone hearing, never mind noticing, once Caurry-fista has started.’

  ‘Caurry-fista,’ I repeated. Barbados is full of descended Scots. I didn’t know they had left-handed processions.

  ‘Rita. Carifesta,’ said Johnson. ‘The Caribbean Festival of Creative Arts. A two-week regular binge of Euro-Creole culture shared by thirty countries in and around the Caribbean, and hosted this year by Barbados.

  ‘Jazz and folk music. Books and poetry and handicrafts. Drama, ballet, films and cooking. Carnival. Fighting. There will be syringes in every gutter and everyone will be bananas. Roger and his pals will hold their billion-dollar meeting, and we shall tape it.’

  The Lone Ranger and Tonto. ‘You and me?’ I said. He’d had more wine than I thought.

  �
�Not if I can help it,’ he said. ‘That stuff you’ve brought is meant to keep you out of trouble, not get you into it. You did collect it?’

  I nodded. He meant my fishing-tackle case, which was sitting in the Bakoua Beach Hotel with a Bakoua straw hat on top of it.

  I don’t know how he got the wavelength that time, but he suddenly said, ‘By the way. What colour is your hair under that dye?’

  I thought everyone knew. ‘White,’ I said. Naturally.

  ‘Naturally,’ he said. He had picked an expensive pipe out of a rack of expensive pipes and was filling it. ‘This doesn’t worry you? Or sailing?’

  ‘No,’ I said. ‘On the film I did with Kim-Jim, everyone was sick except me. You didn’t say what happens after the meeting. You bug it, you indemnify Roger van Diemen and his boss, and you arrest them?’

  ‘Identify,’ Johnson said automatically. The pipe had caught, and he was shaking the match out.

  ‘Well now, that’s another matter. Remember Charlie Chan. The Thin Man. Fu Manchu, come to that. To arrest people, you need evidence. To catch them actually handling some dope would be nice. But whether we pull it off all in one move or not, it’ll be simple once we know who we’re dealing with.’

  There was too much smoke about. I didn’t trust it. I said, ‘Would they buy dope so soon? Before the Coombe scheme has started?’

  ‘If it’s on offer. They’ll have some other outlets. They’ll need a cash flow to set this up as well. A worldwide network of fruit- and drug-stores takes some financing,’ said Johnson.

  I thought it would be nice if he went on talking. ‘And where would they get it from? South America?’

  ‘Colombia, or points north and east,’ Johnson said. ‘Most of it comes in the first place from there.’

  ‘By boat?’

  ‘More often by plane, up to now. Small planes usually aimed at the American market. Straight to Florida, with a refuelling stop somewhere halfway.

  ‘Unfortunately for the smugglers, it’s getting too risky. One or two rings are still operating, but the rest are casting about for other ways. Hence the Coombe idea.’

  I said, ‘Aren’t planes searched?’

  ‘Airport staff can be bribed. The Pipers and Cessnas may not even go to an airstrip, but crash land on a beach. A written-off plane hardly makes a dent in the profits in this business. Unless you’re talking in loads of nothings, there’s no point in all this trouble.’

  ‘And that’s what the Van Damned guy is in it for?’ I said.

  ‘Perhaps,’ said Johnson. ‘They may be blackmailing him too. That’s very common.’

  ‘And when you catch them all retarded, you expect him to confess? To killing Kim-Jim?’

  ‘Red-handed,’ said Johnson.

  ‘I don’t care what it is,’ I said. ‘Will you make him confess? And if he doesn’t, how will you prove that he did it?’

  ‘I will repeat the promise I made you in London,’ said Johnson. ‘Whether he confesses or not, I will personally pursue the murderer of Mr Curtis and see that he receives the fate that he deserves. Word of a Necrosis Officer.’

  ‘Narcotics,’ I said.

  ‘There you are,’ said Johnson.

  He looked pleased.

  I thought. I said, ‘What was that about sailing?’

  ‘I was coming to that,’ Johnson said. ‘But let’s see first where we’ve got to. Point one, there’s a meeting coming off soon we want to know about. You’re not involved. Keep clear of it.

  ‘Point two, as a result of that meeting, there may be some hanging about waiting for a drug consignment. If they’ve bought the stuff already, they’ll want to shift it quick to raise funds to run the new scheme with.

  ‘Like the meeting, we don’t know what island they’ll pick, but Dolly’s very well tricked out with radio, and she has every excuse to wander about. After the meeting, I hope to know where to wander to.’

  ‘And never mind the Rotary Club of St Lucia?’ I said.

  ‘The Rotary Club of St Lucia,’ Johnson said, ‘is the flagship of my plans, as you would hear if you stopped interrupting.

  ‘Three, I have a floating engagement to speak in St Lucia, which is a mere twenty-five miles south of here, and from which I can fly in an hour to Barbados. Therefore I am setting sail for St Lucia tomorrow.’

  ‘Josephine was born on St Lucia,’ I said.

  ‘So she was,’ said Johnson. ‘Although a Martiniquaise, I am told, would dispute it.’

  I said, ‘Natalie meant to go there. With Ferdy.’

  ‘So I should expect,’ Johnson said. ‘But Ferdy, unfortunately, is snapping Birds of Paradise in Tobago. For you, I understand.’

  ‘With the Toboggans,’ I said.

  ‘Actually,’ said Johnson, ‘the Tobagonians. Don’t let’s get into a rut. Do you think Natalie would agree to come sailing with me to St Lucia?’

  ‘Yes,’ I said. ‘And if you promise to paint her, she’ll marry you.’

  Johnson coughed. ‘I don’t think,’ he said, ‘I could risk upsetting Raymond. Which reminds me. He’ll be back soon, and there is something I want to show you. But meanwhile, can I rely on you? If Natalie comes, you’ll come and protect me from her?’

  It was, of course, the only way he could be sure I wouldn’t muck up his programme for Roger.

  I said, ‘If you’ll protect me from Raymond and Lenny.’

  It was the only real flash of Owner of the day.

  The bifocals turned full on me. ‘If either of them shows you one shred less than the fullest courtesy,’ Johnson said, ‘you will report it to me, and I shall keel-haul him. And that means . . . Oh, never mind.’

  I knew. It was a Newcastle boating song. But I didn’t bother mentioning it.

  Chapter 14

  Exactly as Johnson planned, we set sail, all six of us, for St Lucia on Dolly next morning.

  He may not have had to marry Natalie, but the appearance of that terrific painting had done wonders for their relationship. If she wasn’t angling to get her portrait painted, she would never have turned up for dinner the night before in the one-shouldered Italian silk that was one of her most impressive dresses.

  She had decided to sail on Dolly even before she climbed the companionway and found the saloon all done in orchids and candlelight, and the British Consul there, with his wife, and someone grand from the Prefecture.

  Lenny, in a white jacket, served herb soup and lobster and souffle, while Raymond in a tuxedo poured French wine as commanded by a gentlemanly Johnson in ditto.

  I wore culottes and this jacket with epaulettes on it. Maggie wore a bikini under a crinkle gauze top with a neck-ring. The crinkle gauze lasted until we had digested our dinners. Then we all went overboard for a swim, bathing-suits in all sizes being provided by Dolly and stored, I shouldn’t be surprised, next to the scent stocks.

  During the meal Natalie talked about this cockfight she’d seen, and the ruins at St Pierre, where the volcano killed everyone except this guy who was sitting in jail, and who made a fortune afterwards appearing in circuses; which goes to show it’s an ill eruption, as Johnson said.

  And about waterfalls and tree ferns and stuff in the rainforest, which gets four hundred inches of rain a year, putting it upsides with Glasgow and making it hell for the cameras.

  And, of course, about Josephine, whose mascara, I could see, was going to look like the tree ferns unless I was careful.

  While we had our coffee, Johnson hired a boatload of Martins to sing us Beguines from the water. There were cigars and stuff.

  About then, when we were all pretty mellow, he started using Natalie’s first name.

  He was already calling me Rita. He had said his name was Johnson, but I didn’t call him anything while the others were there. Maybe there were some wavelengths of his that reached me, at that.

  Natalie loved it. She kissed Johnson’s cheek, and delivered a small speech, and threw some orchids across to the Martins, with a bunch of ten-franc notes taped on to them. She h
ad style, had Natalie Sheridan.

  We left Dolly at midnight and were back on board eight hours later, with our bits of luggage.

  By nine we were sailing. My Bakoua straw hat toppled off when the mainsail went up, and Natalie and I were encouraged to go below, where I oiled her gorgeous skin round her perfect bikini, and then larded myself all round my swimsuit.

  Every now and then the bottles would slide one way or the other, and you could hear a lot of rattling and running footsteps up on deck, where Lenny and Raymond and Maggie were doing what Johnson told them.

  Real, genuine Owner stuff, I can tell you. He lay back in the cockpit with the gear lever under his fingers, and never raised his voice once. He didn’t have to. He owned the bloody ship.

  She was beautiful. I’d got used, now, to the way she looked below.

  Johnson’s own bedroom, the master stateroom, was at the back of the ship.

  I’d only seen glimpses of it. There were two beds in it. Everything was fitted and padded and carpeted, and there was a bathroom off. You got to it from the cockpit, which was this sunk-level sitting-place in the open air. It was lined with cushion-topped lockers, and the wheel and the gear lever were there.

  Tiller, Johnson says.

  There were also a lot of dials for the engine, which was under the floorboards, and which you could turn on, Johnson said, if you were late for a date and the wind was wrong.

  From the cockpit, you went down steps, past more lockers, to the saloon, which was for eating and lounging in. Flowers, cushions, books, a radio, a stereo: even a telly let into the panelling by the bar. A table that folded out, for a dinner party. Another table that let down for maps and charts.

  Everything was hand-finished, and there was a lot of brass about in the way of clocks and barometers, shining like gold. There were fitted cupboards and lockers everywhere, and hidden lighting, and a thick carpet with toning curtains and cushions, all done in wasteful, fadeable blues.

  The two long deep-cushioned seats could be made into bunks, and you could hang hammocks for two people more. There was a toilet, off one corner, with an actual bath in it.