‘Tell you later. I’ll be okay. But you tell me what happened to you last night. How in hell did you manage to get away from the crabs? What went wrong with that bastard’s plan? All night long I could only think of you out there being slowly eaten to death. God, what a thing to have dreamed up! What happened?’
The girl was actually laughing. Bond looked sideways. The golden hair was tousled and the blue eyes were heavy with lack of sleep, but otherwise she might just be coming home from a midnight barbecue.
‘That man thought he knew everything. Silly old fool.’ She might have been talking about a stupid schoolteacher. ‘He’s much more impressed by the black crabs than I am. To begin with, I don’t mind any animal touching me, and anyway those crabs wouldn’t think of even nipping someone if they stay quite still and haven’t got an open sore or anything. The whole point is that they don’t really like meat. They live mostly on plants and things. If he was right and he did kill a black girl that way, either she had an open wound or she must have died of fright. He must have wanted to see if I’d stand it. Filthy old man. I only fainted down there at dinner because I knew he’d have something much worse for you.’
‘Well, I’m damned. I wish to heaven I’d known that. I thought of you being picked to pieces.’
The girl snorted. ‘Of course it wasn’t very nice having my clothes taken off and being tied down to pegs in the ground. But those black men didn’t dare touch me. They just made jokes and then went away. It wasn’t very comfortable out there on the rock, but I was thinking of you and how I could get at Doctor No and kill him. Then I heard the crabs beginning to run – that’s what we call it in Jamaica – and soon they came scurrying and rattling along – hundreds of them. I just lay still and thought of you. They walked round me and over me. I might have been a rock for all they cared. They tickled a bit. One annoyed me by trying to pull out a bit of my hair. But they don’t smell or anything, and I just waited for the early morning when they crawl into holes and go to sleep. I got quite fond of them. They were company. Then they got fewer and fewer and finally stopped coming and I could move. I pulled at all the pegs in turn and then concentrated on my right-hand one. In the end I got it out of the crack in the rock and the rest was easy. I got back to the buildings and began scouting about. I got into the machine shop near the garage and found this filthy old suit. Then the conveyor thing started up not far away and I thought about it and I guessed it must be taking the guano through the mountain. I knew you must be dead by then,’ the quiet voice was matter of fact, ‘so I thought I’d get to the conveyor somehow and get through the mountain and kill Doctor No. I took a screwdriver to do it with.’ She giggled. ‘When we ran into each other, I’d have stuck it into you only it was in my pocket and I couldn’t get to it. I found the door in the back of the machine shop and walked through and into the main tunnel. That’s all.’ She caressed the back of his neck. ‘I ran along watching my step and the next thing I knew was your head hitting me in the stomach.’ She giggled again. ‘Darling, I hope I didn’t hurt you too much when we were fighting. My nanny told me always to hit men there.’
Bond laughed. ‘She did, did she?’ He reached out and caught her by the hair and pulled her face to him. Her mouth felt its way round his cheek and locked itself against his.
The machine gave a sideways lurch. The kiss ended. They had hit the first mangrove roots at the entrance to the river.
20. SLAVE-TIME
‘YOU'RE QUITE sure of all this?’
The Acting Governor’s eyes were hunted, resentful. How could these things have been going on under his nose, in one of Jamaica’s dependencies? What would the Colonial Office have to say about it? He already saw the long, pale blue envelope marked ‘Personal. For Addressee Only’, and the foolscap page with those very wide margins: ‘The Secretary of State for the Colonies has instructed me to express to you his surprise …’
‘Yes, sir. Quite sure.’ Bond had no sympathy for the man. He hadn’t liked the reception he had had on his last visit to King’s House, nor the mean comments on Strangways and the girl. He liked the memory of them even less now that he knew his friend and the girl were at the bottom of the Mona Reservoir.
‘Er – well we mustn’t let any of this get out to the Press. You understand that? I’ll send my report in to the Secretary of State by the next bag. I’m sure I can rely on your …’
‘Excuse me, sir.’ The Brigadier in command of the Caribbean Defence Force was a modern young soldier of thirty-five. His military record was good enough for him to be unimpressed by relics from the Edwardian era of Colonial Governors, whom he collectively referred to as ‘feather-hatted fuddy-duddies’. ‘I think we can assume that Commander Bond is unlikely to communicate with anyone except his Department. And if I may say so, sir, I submit that we should take steps to clear up Crab Key without waiting for approval from London. I can provide a platoon ready to embark by this evening. H.M.S. Narvik came in yesterday. If the programme of receptions and cocktail parties for her could possibly be deferred for forty-eight hours or so …’ The Brigadier let his sarcasm hang in the air.
‘I agree with the Brigadier, sir.’ The voice of the Police Superintendent was edgy. Quick action might save him from a reprimand, but it would have to be quick. ‘And in any case I shall have to proceed immediately against the various Jamaicans who appear to be implicated. I’ll have to get the divers working at Mona. If this case is to be cleaned up we can’t afford to wait for London. As Mister – er – Commander Bond says, most of these negro gangsters will probably be in Cuba by now. Have to get in touch with my opposite number in Havana and catch up with them before they take to the hills or go underground. I think we ought to move at once, sir.’
There was silence in the cool shadowy room where the meeting was being held. On the ceiling above the massive mahogany conference table there was an unexpected dapple of sunlight. Bond guessed that it shone up through the slats of the jalousies from a fountain or a lily pond in the garden outside the tall windows. Far away there was the sound of tennis balls being knocked about. Distantly a young girl’s voice called, ‘Smooth. Your serve, Gladys.’ The Governor’s children? Secretaries? From one end of the room King George VI, from the other end the Queen, looked down the table with grace and good humour.
‘What do you think, Colonial Secretary?’ The Governor’s voice was hustled.
Bond listened to the first few words. He gathered that Pleydell-Smith agreed with the other two. He stopped listening. His mind drifted into a world of tennis courts and lily ponds and kings and queens, of London, of people being photographed with pigeons on their heads in Trafalgar Square, of the forsythia that would soon be blazing on the bypass roundabouts, of May, the treasured housekeeper in his flat off the King’s Road, getting up to brew herself a cup of tea (here it was eleven o’clock. It would be four o’clock in London), of the first tube trains beginning to run, shaking the ground beneath his cool, dark bedroom. Of the douce weather of England: the soft airs, the heat waves, the cold spells – ‘The only country where you can take a walk every day of the year’ – Chesterfield’s Letters? And then Bond thought of Crab Key, of the hot ugly wind beginning to blow, of the stink of the marsh gas from the mangrove swamps, the jagged grey, dead coral in whose holes the black crabs were now squatting, the black and red eyes moving swiftly on their stalks as a shadow – a cloud, a bird – broke their small horizons. Down in the bird colony the brown and white and pink birds would be stalking in the shallows, or fighting or nesting, while up on the guanera the cormorants would be streaming back from their breakfast to deposit their milligramme of rent to the landlord who would no longer be collecting. And where would the landlord be? The men from the S.S. Blanche would have dug him out. The body would have been examined for signs of life and then put somewhere. Would they have washed the yellow dust off