Vicious Circle (39 page)

From his prison cell Carl followed with intense and partisan interest his father’s long-running petition to the Supreme Court in Washington DC to have Carl Peter Bannock removed from the list of beneficiaries to the Family Trust on the grounds that he was not blood related to the donor and that his conviction on a series of major felony charges had disqualified him. When the learned justices of the Supreme Court eventually rejected Henry Bannock’s motion unanimously, Carl knew that death alone could deny him his share of the Trust funds.

Carl and Johnny Congo hosted a discreet little celebratory party in death row, attended by Warden Merkowski and a number of young female escorts brought down from Huntsville for the occasion. Although Carl and Johnny Congo had years ago become lovers, they were quite happy to share their conjugal bed with one or two pretty girls or even young boys if these were available.

The Supreme Court judgement in his favour set Carl applying his mind seriously to the many remarkable conditions that his father had laid down in the Trust Deed of the Henry Bannock Family Trust.

Carl had developed an excellent memory during his years of study, and though he had not held a copy of the actual Trust Deed in his hands since the day he worked his way into his father’s strongroom, he had made detailed notes of its contents. All this time one particular provision that his father had written into the deed had tantalized Carl. The provision was that when there remained only a single living beneficiary, then the trustees of the Henry Bannock Family Trust must wind up the Trust and the entire remaining assets must be divided equally between a charity that Henry favoured and the sole surviving beneficiary, be it man or woman.

Carl decided that the time had come for him to take full advantage of this clause while he was still hidden from public view in the depths of the Holloway Correctional Unit, and while the concrete walls that imprisoned him would also act as a shield to deflect suspicion from him, and provide him with an unshakeable alibi.

Henry himself was invulnerable, but he was by now aging rapidly. At the rate that he lived his life he could not last very much longer. The word from Carl’s informants was that Henry was already beginning to falter. Carl knew that he had the Grim Reaper as his ally and he was prepared to wait.

Hazel and her young daughter Cayla were protected by the heavy mantle of majesty that Henry Bannock cast over all who surrounded him closely. Hazel and Cayla were not yet vulnerable. Their time would come once Henry was out of the way.

The same did not apply to his drunken mother, Marlene Imelda, whom he despised, nor did it apply to his half-sisters, whom he hated deeply and bitterly. They were directly responsible for his incarceration and the many wasted years of his life that he was being forced to spend behind concrete and steel barriers in the company of creatures more vile than any jungle beast.

Carl learned that the mental condition of his eldest sister Sacha had improved so dramatically after he had been imprisoned that her doctors had been able to discharge her from the Nine Elms clinic into the care of her mother. Sacha had gone to live with Marlene in the Cayman Islands. Mother and daughter had flourished in this new intimate relationship. Marlene was not cured of her dipsomania; however, charge of her firstborn daughter had given her the incentive she needed to become teetotal. She now devoted all her love and attention to Sacha, and Sacha responded gratifyingly.

When Henry Bannock married Hazel Nelson and Cayla was born, Bryoni decided to leave Forest Drive and move to the Caymans to be with her mother and her own sister. At this time Bryoni was not much younger than Hazel, her step-mother. Both girls had very strong and competitive personalities and they were both fiercely possessive of Henry Bannock. In different circumstances they would have probably become friends, but when baby Cayla was born the advantage swung heavily in Hazel’s favour. Now she was not only the new mistress of Forest Drive, but was also the mother of Henry’s youngest daughter. Henry was besotted with Hazel, and when she began to take an intense interest in the affairs of the Bannock Oil Corporation he encouraged her. Soon Henry elevated Hazel to the role of company director that Carl had vacated when he was convicted.

Hazel took her seat at the boardroom table at Henry’s right hand.

She became all things to Henry Bannock: lover, wife, mother of his child, business partner and boon companion.

On the other hand, Bryoni had no particular interest in the Bannock Oil Corporation. She had all the money she needed from the Family Trust, and she was not avaricious. She had few of the other talents that Hazel possessed in abundance and which made her so valuable and desirable to Bryoni’s father. Bryoni could not compete with her at any level. So she flew down to Grand Cayman in the Caribbean where Marlene and Sacha welcomed her with pathetic eagerness, and where she was able to serve a purpose that was both highly valued by the two people she loved dearly and totally fulfilling to Bryoni herself.

From Carl’s standpoint the move was also highly favourable. He now had three of the beneficiaries of the Family Trust removed from under the shield of his father and from the jurisdiction and protection of the government of the United States of America to an isolated island where they were a great deal more vulnerable and accessible to the attentions of the friends of Johnny Congo.

Carl laid his plans with great care and attention to detail. Congo was an enthusiastic participant in the enterprise. He had cocaine syndicate connections in Honduras and Colombia who were always interested in making a few extra dollars in more mundane side projects.

Johnny’s contact in Honduras was Señor Alonso Almanza. He based himself in the port of La Ceiba, where he kept two very fast forty-foot ocean-going speedboats. These were usually employed in nocturnally running white goods north to Mexico, Texas or Louisiana. However the US Coast Guard had recently become a trifle bothersome and so his fine boats were underutilized.

The distance from La Ceiba to the Cayman Islands was less than five-hundred nautical miles; an easy run for one of those big fast Chris-Craft.

‘Alonso is a good man, very trustworthy. He doesn’t mind a little wet work if the price is attractive. I think we could do a lot worse,’ Johnny Congo told Carl.

‘I like the sound of him, and his price is good. But, what about the initial survey? Do you have somebody on Grand Cayman who can do that for us?’

‘No problem, white boy.’ The nickname which had started out as deliberately pejorative had now become a term of endearment between them. ‘There is a realtor in George Town who once did a bit of work for me. He isn’t fussy. We just tell him we want to make an anonymous bid for a property on the island and that we need a full description of everything in it including the servants and occupants.’

‘Get on to him, Blackbird.’ Anybody else who called Johnny Congo that to his face would die prematurely and painfully. ‘Most of all we need to know about the security on the estate. If I know my daddy, and that I do, it will be tight. Obviously we must know which bedroom my mother sleeps in and where to find my two sisters. It’s a good bet their bedrooms will be close alongside their darling mama’s.’

Johnny’s contact on Grand Cayman was a retired Englishman named Trevor Jones who had decided to spend his autumnal years in a tropical island paradise. He had discovered to his chagrin that paradise comes at a price and his pension was not stretching as far as he had hoped. He took this lucrative assignment from Carl Bannock to heart. He uplifted from the government surveyor’s office a copy of the blueprint plans of The Moorings, the Bannocks’ beachfront home. Then he ran to earth a former chambermaid of Mrs Marlene Bannock who had been fired from her employment for stealing a pair of pearl earrings from Miss Sacha Bannock’s jewellery box. Her name was Gladys, and she had left The Moorings with a chip on her shoulder large enough to qualify as a log.

Together Gladys and Trevor Jones pored over the house plan. She showed him in which bedrooms the three members of the family slept and where the security guardroom was located. She knew the patrol routines of the guards. There were punch-clocks set up at various points on the property that kept the guards working to a strict timetable. The shifts changed precisely on the hour. So the movements of the security guards were predictable. Gladys was also able to provide a roster of the domestic staff. Most of these were not required to work on Sunday. They only returned to their duties after the weekend.

Gladys knew the exact location of every one of the numerous alarm sensors on the property. Naturally, the passwords had been changed after she was fired, but her common-law husband was still employed at The Moorings as a sous-chef. He willingly supplied her with the new passwords.

The gap through the coral reef was marked with light buoys and the channel to the anchorage in front of The Moorings was also buoyed. Jones went out in his little fishing skiff and took surreptitious soundings and made one or two other arrangements. At high spring tides the channel was a goodly three metres deep at the shallowest point, more than sufficient water for even one of the big Chris-Craft.

This entire package of information was sent to Johnny Congo. Its total cost to Carl was well under $4,000, which he considered excellent value.

The information was forwarded to Señor Alonso Almanza in La Ceiba with further detailed instructions and a bank transfer payment of $75,000 against a contract completion price of $250,000.

‘I’m going to tell you a little secret, Blackbird.’ Carl grinned at Johnny Congo. ‘If you have enough money, you can do anything you want, and have anything you want. Nobody is going to stop you.’

‘Right on, white boy!’ Johnny lifted his right hand and gave him a high five.

*

Twenty-eight days later Señor Almanza’s Chris-Craft
Pluma de Mar
used the light of the full moon to creep quietly through the gap in the reef into Old Man Bay on the north side of Grand Cayman. Her hull was painted matt black, so even by the light of the moon she was almost invisible. She had cleared La Ceiba at noon the previous day, and had timed her arrival precisely for a quarter to three on a Sunday morning; the witching hour when only highwaymen, werewolves and pirates should be abroad.

The
Pluma de Mar
carried a crew of eleven. They were dressed in black tracksuits and wore black head-hoods with cut-outs for their eyes and mouths. They tied up to one of the channel markers seventy metres off the beachfront of The Moorings. Trevor Jones had placed a tiny radio beacon on the marker to guide them in. Leaving one crewman on board to take care of the vessel, they launched an inflatable dingy and the battery-powered outboard engine carried them silently ashore.

They hit the beach at exactly three o’clock, when they knew that the security patrols would be gathered in the guard room changing shifts and drinking coffee. Two of the masked men ran ahead to bypass and disable the alarm sensors and clear the way for those who followed. When the assault team burst into the guard room they took the four men gathered there completely off-guard. Within minutes they had gagged and bound all of them with duct tape, and shut down the alarm system at the main control board.

Then they raced around the swimming pool and jemmied open the door into the main house. They knew exactly where they were headed, through the living rooms and up the main staircase to the bedroom suites. At the head of the stairs they split into three groups. Each group went quickly to the suite that they had been allocated. They rushed in while the occupants were still sleeping soundly. They hauled them out of their beds and bound their hands at the wrists with duct tape. Then they were dragged down the staircase and out onto the pool deck. The pool deck was discreetly screened by high walls and tropical vegetation to allow the Bannock women to indulge their penchant for nude sunbathing.

One of the gang produced a movie camera from his rucksack. He was a professional maker of hardcore pornographic films from Guadalajara in Mexico. In passable English he told the three terrified and weeping captives, ‘My name is Amaranthus. It is my pleasure to make a documentary film of you. Please take no notice of me and try not to look into the lens of my camera unless I ask you to.’ He stepped back and aimed his camera at them.

The gang leader took his place in front of them. ‘I am Miguel. You will do as I tell you, or I hurt you bad. Name?
Nombre?
’ he yelled at them, forcing each of the women in turn to announce her name for the benefit of Amaranthus and his camera. Sacha Jean was struck dumb with terror. Bryoni spoke up for her and gave her name.

‘She is my sister Sacha Jean Bannock. She is sick. Please don’t hurt her.’

Sacha fell to her knees and explosively soiled her pyjama bottoms. Miguel laughed and kicked her. ‘Filthy cow! Stand up!’ He kicked her again. Bryoni reached down with her trussed hands and helped Sacha back onto her feet.

The gang leader turned to Marlene and he produced a slip of paper from his zip pocket. ‘These are my orders.’ He read from it in his thick Hispanic accent. ‘Marlene Imelda Bannock. You are to be executed. Your death is to be witnessed by your daughters, Sacha Jean and Bryoni Lee. Your execution will be filmed for the benefit of all interested parties. Thereafter your daughters are to be imprisoned for life in a foreign country.’

Sacha’s legs collapsed under her again. Bryoni could not hold her and she fell to the marble coping that edged the pool. She rolled herself into a ball and wailed shrilly. She started banging her forehead on the marble with such force that one of her eyebrows split open and blood trickled down into her eyes. Bryoni knelt beside Sacha and tried to prevent her injuring herself further.

As three of the men dragged Marlene away she called back desperately. ‘Be brave, Sacha! Don’t cry, baby. Take care of her, Bryoni.’

They took Marlene down the pool steps and into the water. It was waist deep. Bright underwater floodlights lit the stage for Amaranthus, who knelt on the edge of the pool and filmed it all.