False Nine (16 page)
As I arrived in Antigua’s airport a photographer took my picture which irritated me as I had hoped to remain as anonymous as possible. I hardly wanted to talk to anyone about being hoodwinked in Shanghai or, as the
Sun
had put it,
Manson’s Chinese Fake-Away
, which I have to admit was rather good.
But I was keen to talk to almost anyone about Jérôme Dumas. I decided to get started right away, and by the time the boat guy picked me up to take me to Jumby Bay, I’d already asked questions of the airport police and my driver. I thought the sooner I found out what had become of the guy the sooner I could get back to looking for a proper job in football. And there was something about the boat guy I liked which encouraged me to think he might be a bit more forthcoming than the cops and the chauffeur.
‘Welcome to Jumby Bay,’ he said. ‘The island is named after a local word meaning playful spirit. It comprises just forty guest rooms and suites and a collection of villas and estate homes owned by a group of people who are all committed to protecting the environment and several endangered species that still live on the island such as the hawksbill turtle, the white egret, and the Persian black-headed sheep. Everything in Jumby Bay is
su-stain-able
.’
He said it like I should watch out where I put my dirty hands and feet but clearly he liked to talk and I hoped it might not be too much to expect if, having helped me with my luggage, and then into the boat, he also helped me with some information that hadn’t been fished out of the resort’s guest brochure like the local red mullet.
‘It’s a long way from home, isn’t it? The Persian sheep, I mean. How did it get here, anyway?’
‘I don’t know, boss.’
‘Christopher Columbus, I suppose,’ I said, answering my own question. ‘Along with horses and syphilis.’
‘I suppose you must be right.’ The boatman laughed and then clapped his big hands. ‘All these years I’ve been saying it, and I never asked myself what a Persian sheep be doing here in the Caribbean.’
‘And a black-headed one, too,’ I said. ‘There seems to have been a bit of a theme going on here.’
‘Hell, yes. You’re right.’
‘When you think about it, everyone is a guest here. People brought over from Africa to cut the sugar cane – like you and me – a few Europeans, and the Persian black-headed sheep. And the tourists, of course. Strikes me as the people who were first here – the real native Antiguans – are probably long gone.’
‘Never thought of it that way. But I guess you’re right, boss. Where you from? London?’
‘That’s right. What’s your name?
‘Everton.’
‘Like the football club?’
‘That’s right.’
‘You like football? I assume your father did. With a name like Everton.’
‘He did, that’s true. He was from Liverpool. But me, I support Tottenham Hotspur.’
‘I’m not sure that answers my question, but never mind. I guess it’s lucky your dad didn’t support Queen’s Park Rangers.’
Everton grinned a big grin.
‘Listen, Everton. I’ve come to Antigua to look for a guy named Jérôme Dumas. He was a guest here at the Jumby Bay over Christmas and New Year. A footballer from France. He’s about twenty-two years old, has studs in his ears that look like diamond panther heads and a stupid big watch on his wrist like my one, probably.’
Everton nodded. ‘This is the guy the police was looking for, right? The Paris Saint-Germain footballer who’s gone missing.’
‘That’s right.’
‘Sure, I remember him. Big gold Rolex Submariner. Lots of gold chains and rings. He got all the best Louis Vuitton luggage. Same as Bono. Give me a pretty good tip for carrying it all, too. Nice fellow. French, you say? Figured him for something else. Reminded me of that other fellow, Mario Balotelli. They say he’s Italian, but it’s hard to tell these days where a fellow is from. Me, I’m from Jamaica, originally. But ain’t no work there. Just trouble. Couldn’t figure him renting such a big villa at Jumby Bay given that he was on his own. Couldn’t figure you out neither, until you told me what you was doing here. Most guys like you and him come with a nice girl. He didn’t look like the type who was into reading and playing chess with hisself.’
‘Did the island cops speak to you?’
‘Naw. They spoke to the concierge, the hotel manager, and to the ladies who cleaned his villa. But not me.’
‘What do you think happened to him?’
‘Only a hundred thousand people on Antigua, boss. It ain’t so easy to disappear in a little place like this. Even if you is black. Man with Louis Vuitton bags and diamond earrings is like a neon sign on this island, boss. He tends to stand out in the crowd.’
‘The police say he checked out of Jumby Bay and went straight to the airport.’
‘That’s true. I took him there myself. Even carried his bags into the airport building. But he never got on the plane to London.’
‘And they didn’t speak to you?’
‘Like I say, they is a joke.’
‘So how was he?’
‘He was all right, boss. Didn’t seem troubled or nothing. Said he was on his way to play football in Barcelona but that he was going to be training hard because he put some weight on while he was here. I told him that this wasn’t unusual, the food at Jumby being so good. Hey, make sure you try the restaurant at the Estate House while you’re here, boss. Is Italian cooking. And probably the best in Antigua.’
‘You talked?’
‘Sure we talked. Talked a lot. He said how much he’d enjoyed himself. The usual. He said he was looking forward to coming back again.’
‘He’d been here before? You said “again”.’
‘Yeah, I reckon he was here about a year ago. Something must have happened at the airport, I reckon.’
‘Like what?’
‘No idea. Like I say, he seemed fine. I walked him and his luggage into the terminal myself. I left him and his trolley at the newsagent. Reading a newspaper.’
‘That’s odd.’
‘What is?’
‘Well, most people buy a paper after they’ve checked in. Can you remember which paper it was? Something French?
Libération
? Something to do with football.
L’Equipe
, perhaps?’
‘Might have been. Whatever it was he didn’t look very happy.’
‘I see. What did he do – while he was at Jumby Bay?’
‘Ain’t much
to
do ‘cept lie in the sun, swim, use the spa, watch TV. Jumby Bay is quiet. People come here to get away from it all.’
‘What about the main island? Is that quiet, too?’
‘They like to party big time there, for sure.’
‘So maybe that’s where he spent his time. I expect the police will be able to tell me.’
‘The RPF?’ Everton laughed. ‘The RPF don’t know shit about nothing.’
The RPFAB was the Royal Police Force of Antigua and Barbuda. I’d sent them some emails and an inspector from the Criminal Investigations Department was expecting me at their headquarters in the island capital of St John’s the next day, but I was keen to get Everton’s opinion of their competence, or lack of it.
‘You don’t think much of them.’
‘The RPF couldn’t find their own balls in a bird bath, boss.’
‘Is there much crime here?’
‘More than our prime minister would have people believe. But if you keeps away from Gray’s Farm on the west side of St John’s at night I reckon you be safe enough. Most folks on the island call that place the Ghetto. It be where you go to score some weed, find a hooker, get yourself shot maybe.’
I nodded. Yep, I thought, that might be just the place someone like Jérôme Dumas would go.
‘As a matter of fact, there was a murder on the island while Mr Dumas was here.’
‘Oh?’
‘Local DJ called Jewel Movement got hisself killed on his boat. They arrested the guy who did it, mind. Caught him red-handed. Even the RPF couldn’t fail to catch him. By all accounts they found him with the body. Dead man’s blood all over him. According to the cops, the case is cut and dried. Which is just the way the cops like it, of course. I never yet met a policeman who wanted to go looking for a pineapple when he already got a peach.’
‘Cops are the same the world over, I guess.’
‘Damn right. I wouldn’t be surprised if they hang him for it, too.’
‘You still hang people here?’
‘When we’re allowed to, by your English courts. Legal system here allows these bastards to appeal to something called the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council. Whatever that is. You ask me, it’s a lot of do-gooders who don’t know shit about Antigua.’
I smiled. ‘You know the Leeward Islands well, Everton?’
‘Like the back of me hand, boss. Got my own boat. I like to go fishing sometimes. When I’m not watching Asot Arcade Parham play football.’ He shrugged. ‘That’s a local side. Pretty good by island standards. Like they’re top of the Antigua Premier Division. But not Spurs standard, you know?’
I nodded. ‘Tell me something. How easy is it to get from Antigua to Guadeloupe?’
‘LIAT – that’s the local airline – they operate a flight most days from St John’s to Pointe-à-Pitre. A short hop. Half-hour at most. Cost you maybe eighty bucks.’
‘If Jérôme Dumas did decide to leave the island, then I’m thinking a boat would be the best way to do it, undetected.’
‘Oh sure. All sorts of folk come and go by boat, especially at night. Weed smugglers, mostly. Like DJ Jewel Movement. Word is he moved a bit of grass hisself, sometimes. But why Guadeloupe? Barbuda is nearer. And British, too. You don’t have to show your passport there when you land.’
‘Because Jérôme Dumas is originally from Guadeloupe.’
‘Gotcha. Well now. Ain’t no ferry service from here down to there, boss. But I could take you there on my next day off, no problem. Off the books, as it were. Guadeloupe is only a few hours’ sailing away.’
‘All right. It’s a deal. And ask around St John’s, will you? Discreetly. See if you can find out if anyone else with a boat might have performed a similarly clandestine ferry service for Jérôme Dumas.’
‘Tongues sure wag better when the nose smells cash, boss.’
‘True.’ I handed over a couple of hundred East Caribbean dollars. ‘See how much talk you can get with that, Everton. And keep the rest for yourself.’
Everton throttled back and let the boat drift towards the little wooden jetty where several porters were awaiting our arrival in what resembled a largish birdcage. A little red golf cart took me up to the main part of the hotel where I swiftly checked in and went to my suite, which lay on the other side of an antique gate and at the end of a small private courtyard surrounded with palm trees overlooking the sea. There was an outdoor garden full of frangipani flowers with a rain shower and a tub. It was hard to believe that I was being paid, handsomely, to be here. I sipped my welcome cocktail, switched on the TV and settled down to find out what sports channels they had on cable. You do the important things first, right?
The RPF police station in St John’s Newgate Street had seen better days but none of them I’ll warrant since the British had left. A yellowing concrete three-storey building with iron bars on the lower windows and a threadbare flag on a crooked white pole in the front courtyard, it looked more like a cheap motel with hot and cold running cockroaches. Close by was the Museum of Antigua and Barbuda but the police station itself might easily have been one of the museum’s more interesting exhibits. Everything in there seemed to move at an invisible pace, as if displayed in some dusty glass case. Just around the corner to the east was St John’s Cathedral and a girls’ high school and a few blocks to the west was the island’s deepwater harbour where cruise ships as big as office blocks from places as far afield as Mallorca and Norway were now docked. The girls’ school was on its break or its lunch hour. I knew that because through the open windows of the police station you could have heard the girls’ screaming and shouting back in Palma and Oslo.
I’d seen the police inspector handling Jérôme’s disappearance before – on Google Images. His name was Winchester White. There was a photograph of the island’s top-ranking security officials in a meeting about something and, in the picture, it looked a lot like he was asleep. Maybe it was just an unfortunate photograph but, speaking to Inspector White, I quickly gained the impression that he was looking forward to closing his eyes again the minute I’d left his office – not least because there was a large tin of Ovaltine behind his woolly head. He wore a neatly pressed khaki shirt and a pair of matching trousers. His dark, peaked cap lay on the desk in front of him as if he’d been begging for change. Except for the fact that Winchester White was black he looked like the district commissioner from an old
Tarzan
movie. I wouldn’t have been at all surprised if he’d had an officer’s swagger stick.
‘It’s not that my employers doubt the efficiency of the RPF,’ I said. ‘Not for a minute. It’s just that they feel they have to be seen to be doing something. In fact, the insurance company is insisting on it. I’m sure you understand how that works. Jérôme Dumas is extremely valuable to both Paris Saint-Germain and FC Barcelona. Not to mention a whole host of companies with whom Mr Dumas has important commercial arrangements to do with his image rights. My intention here is not to step on the RPF’s toes but, perhaps, to provide a different perspective on exactly what might have become of him. Please understand, I’m here to assist, not to obstruct.’
This sounded good; shit, it might even have been true. There are times when I even manage to convince myself. The UN Secretary General himself couldn’t have sounded more diplomatic.
‘It’s not the RPF,’ he said dully. ‘It’s the RPFAB.’
‘Right. Thank you.’
‘You’re forgetting Barbuda.’
‘No, I wasn’t. I was just giving you some shorthand. So that I didn’t waste your valuable time. But my mistake. I can see now that wasn’t really important.’
‘It’s important if you is from Barbuda,’ he said. ‘Like I am.’
There was a longish silence while the police inspector tasted the inside of his mouth and then scratched an almost invisible pimp moustache before a short coughing fit had him hawking something up, and going to the window to spit. As he moved I caught the strong smell of sweat on his body, like the sharply sour odour of a waxed jacket, and I began for the first time to consider something of the everyday, harsh reality of his life as a policeman on a little tropical island. Against the bright sun he almost disappeared for a moment, like a character on
Star Trek
,
before he strolled back to his swivel chair and sat down again amidst a cacophony of creaking wood, imitation leather and professional pride.