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Hannah gave orders to have a van made ready to bring the body to the airstrip at four. Bannister, who would return to the High Commission there along with the body, left with Inspector Jones to supervise the arrangements. Then Hannah went to meet his new guests.
The man called Frank Dillon introduced himself and explained his chance vacation on the island and his equally chance meeting over lunch with the American. He produced his letter of introduction, and Hannah studied it with little pleasure. Bannister from the official High Commission in Nassau was one thing; a London-based official who happened to be taking an away-from-it-all holiday in the middle of a murder hunt was as likely as a vegetarian tiger. Then he met the American, who admitted that he was another detective.
Hannah’s attitude changed, however, as Dillon narrated Favaro’s story.
“You have a picture of this man Mendes?” he asked finally.
“No, not with me.”
“Could one be obtained from police files in Miami?”
“Yes, sir. I could have it wired to your people in Nassau.”
“You do that,” said Hannah. He glanced at his watch. “I’ll have a search of all passport records made, going back three months. See if there’s a name of Mendes or any other Hispanic name entering the island. Now, you must excuse me—I have to see the body onto the plane for Nassau.”
“Are you by any chance thinking of talking to the candidates?” asked McCready as they left.
“Yes,” said Hannah, “first thing in the morning. While I’m waiting for the post-mortem report to come through.”
“Would you mind if I came along?” asked McCready. “I promise not to say a thing. But after all, they are both ... political, are they not?”
“All right,” said Hannah reluctantly. He wondered whom this Frank Dillon really worked for.
On the way to the airstrip, Hannah noticed that the first of his posters were being affixed to spaces on walls where room could be found for them between the posters on behalf of the two candidates. There was so much paper being stuck over Port Plaisance, the place was getting plastered in it.
The official posters, prepared by the local printer under the auspices of Inspector Jones and paid for with Government House money, offered a reward of one thousand U.S. dollars to anyone reporting seeing someone in the alley behind the wall of the Government House garden at approximately five P.M. on Tuesday evening.
A thousand American dollars was a stunning sum for the ordinary people of Port Plaisance. It should bring someone out—someone who had seen something, or some person. And in Sunshine everybody knew everybody.
At the airstrip Hannah saw to the loading of the body, accompanied by Bannister and the four men of the Bahamian forensic team. Bannister would see that the entire volume of their scrapings and samples went on the evening flight to London, to be collected at dawn by a squad car from Scotland Yard and taken to the Home Office’s forensic laboratory in Lambeth. He had few hopes it would turn up much; it was the second bullet he wanted, and Dr. West would retrieve that for him when he opened the body in Nassau that night.
Because he was at the airstrip, Hannah missed the Johnson rally in Parliament Square that afternoon. So did the press corps, who having covered the start of the rally, saw the police convoy driving past and followed it out to the airstrip.
McCready did not miss the rally. He was on the verandah of the Quarter Deck Hotel at the time.
A desultory crowd of about two hundred had gathered to hear their philanthropic benefactor address them. McCready noticed half a dozen men in brightly colored beach shirts and dark glasses mingling with the crowd, handing out small pieces of paper and flags on sticks. The flags were in the candidate’s blue and white colors. The pieces of paper were dollar bills.
At precisely ten past three, a white Ford Fairlane—certainly the biggest car on the island—swept into the square and up to the speaking platform. Mr. Marcus Johnson leaped out and ascended the steps. He held up his hands in a boxer’s victory salute. Led by the bright-shirted ones, there was a round of applause. Some flags waved. In minutes, Marcus Johnson was into his speech.
“And I promise you, my friends, and you are all my friends”—the dentifrice smile flashed from the bronze face—“when we are finally free, a wave of prosperity will come to these islands. There will be work—in the hotels, in the new marina, in the bars and cafés, in the new industries for the processing of fish from the sea for sale on the mainland—from all these things, prosperity will flow. And it will flow into your pockets, my friends, not into the hands of men far away in London—”
He was using a bullhorn to reach everyone in the square. The interruption came from a man who did not need a bullhorn. The deep bass came from the other side of the square, but it came over the sound of the politician.
“Johnson!” roared Walter Drake. “We do not want you here! Why don’t you go back where you came from, and take your Yardies with you?”
Suddenly there was silence. The stunned crowd waited for the sky to fall. No one had ever interrupted Marcus Johnson before.
But the sky did not fall. Without a word, Johnson put down his megaphone and jumped into his car. At a word from him, it sped off, pursued by a second car containing his group of helpers.
“Who is that?” McCready asked the waiter on the verandah.
“Reverend Drake, sir
,” said the waiter. He seemed awestruck, even rather frightened.
McCready was thoughtful. He had heard a voice used like that somewhere before, and he tried to recall where. Then he placed it; during his National Service thirty years earlier, at Catterick Camp in Yorkshire. On a parade ground. He went to his room and made a secure call to Miami.
Reverend Walter Drake took his beating in silence. There were four of them, and they came for him that night as he left his church and walked home. They used baseball bats and their feet. They hit hard, whipping the wooden staves down onto the man on the ground. When they were finished, they left him. He might have been dead. They would not have minded. But he was not.