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“You will know, sir, that I am here to investigate the murder four days ago of Governor Sir Marston Moberley.”
Livingstone’s smile dropped, and he shook his head. “A dreadful thing,” he rumbled. “We were all deeply shocked. A fine, fine man.”
“I’m afraid I have to ask you what you were doing and where you were at five P.M. on Tuesday evening.”
“I was here, Mr. Hannah, here among my friends, who will vouch for me. I was working on a speech to the Smallholders Association for the next day.”
“And your associates, they were here? All here?”
“Every one of them. It was close to sundown. We had all retired for the day. Here, inside the compound.”
“Your associates—are they Barclayans?” asked Dillon.
Hannah shot him a glance of irritation; the man had promised to say nothing.
Livingstone beamed. “Ah, no, I fear not. I and my fellow Barclayans have so little experience of organizing an election campaign, I felt I needed some administrative help.” He gestured and beamed again, a reasonable man among reasonable men. “The preparing of speeches, posters, pamphlets, public meetings. My associates are from the Bahamas. You wish to see their passports? They were all examined when they arrived.”
Hannah waved the necessity away. Behind Mr. Livingstone, Mr. Brown had lit a large cigar.
“Would you have any idea, Mr. Livingstone, who might have killed the Governor?” asked Hannah.
The fat man’s smile dropped again, and he adopted a mien of great seriousness. “Mr. Hannah, the Governor was helping us all on the road to our independence, to our final freedom from the British Empire. According to the policy of London. There was not the slightest motive for me or any of my associates to wish to harm him.”
Behind him, Mr. Brown held his cigar to one side, and with the much-elongated nail of his little finger, he flicked an inch of ash from the tip so that the ash fell to the floor. The burning ember never touched the flesh of his finger.
McCready knew he had seen that gesture somewhere before. “Will you be holding any public meetings today?” he asked quietly.
Livingstone’s small black eyes switched toward him. “Yes, at twelve I am addressing my brothers and sisters of the fishing community on the docks,” he said.
“Yesterday there was a disturbance when Mr. Johnson addressed people in Parliament Square,” said Dillon.
Livingstone showed no pleasure in the ruining of his rival’s meeting. “A single heckler,” he snapped.
“Heckling is also part of the democratic process,” observed Dillon.
Livingstone stared at him, expressionless for once. Behind the creased jowls, he was angry. McCready re
alized he had seen that expression before; on the face of Idi Amin of Uganda, when he had been contradicted.
Hannah glowered at Dillon and rose. “I won’t take up any more of your time, Mr. Livingstone,” he said.
The politician, exuding jollity again, escorted them to the door. Two more gray safari suits saw them off the premises. Different men. That made seven of them, including the one at the upstairs window. All were pure Negroid except Mr. Brown, who was much paler, a quadroon, the only one who dared smoke without asking, the man in charge of the other six.
“I would be grateful,” said Hannah in the car, “if you would leave the questioning to me.”
“Sorry,” said Dillon. “Strange man, didn’t you think? I wonder where he spent the years between leaving here as a teenager and returning six months ago.”
“No idea,” said Hannah. It was only later, in London, when he was thinking things over, that he would wonder at Dillon’s remark about Livingstone leaving Sunshine as a teenager. It was Missy Coltrane who had told him, Desmond Hannah, that. Dillon had not been there.
At half-past nine, they arrived at the gates of Marcus Johnson’s estate on the northern flank of Sawbones Hill.
Johnson’s style was completely different from Livingstone’s. He was clearly a wealthy man. An assistant in psychedelic beach shirt and black glasses opened the wrought-iron gates to the drive and let the Jaguar proceed up the raked gravel to the front door. Two gardeners were at work, tending the lawns, flower beds, and earthenware jars of bright geraniums.
The house was a spacious, two-story building with a roof of green glazed tiles, every block and stick of it imported. The three Englishmen alighted in front of a pillared Colonial portico and were led inside. They followed their guide, a second brightly shirted “assistant,” across a reception area floored in marble slabs and furnished with European and Spanish-American antiques. Rugs from Bokhara and Kashan splashed the cream marble.
Marcus Johnson received them on a marble verandah scattered with white rattan chairs. Below the verandah lay the garden and tonsured lawns running to an eight-foot wall. Beyond the wall lay the coast road, which was one thing Johnson could not buy to give himself direct access to the sea. On the waters of Teach Bay, beyond the wall, was the stone jetty he had built. Next to it bobbed a Riva 40 speedboat. With long-range tanks, the Riva could reach the Bahamas at speed.
Where Horatio Livingstone was fat and creased, Marcus Johnson was slim and elegant. He wore an impeccable cream silk suit. The cast of his features indicated he was at least half white, and McCready wondered if he had known his father. Probably not. He had come from poverty in the Barclays as a boy, been brought up by his mother in a shack. His dark brown hair had been artificially straightened, from curly to wavy. Four heavy gold rings adorned his hands, and the teeth in the flashing smile were perfect.