“Yeah, we’ll talk again then,” I said, and she laughed out loud.
The next three days I had a lot of time to think for I was allowed no visitors until the official inquest had been conducted. Daly had a constable on guard outside my room, and I was left in no doubt that I stood accused of murder most vile.
My room was cool and airy with a good view down across the lawns to the tall dark-leafed banyan trees, and beyond them the massive stone walls of the fort with the cannon upon the battlements. The food was good, plenty of fish and fruit, and Sister May and I were becoming good, if not intimate, friends. She even smuggled in a bottle of Chivas Regal which we kept in the bedpan. From her I heard how the whole island was agog with the cargo that Wave Dancer had brought into Grand Harbour. She told me they buried Materson and Guthrie on the second day in the old cemetery. A corpse doesn’t keep so well in those latitudes.
In those three days I decided that the bundle I had dropped off Big Gull Island would stay there. I guessed that from now on there would be a lot of eyes watching me, and I was at a complete disadvantage. I didn’t know who the watchers were and I didn’t know why. I would keep down off the skyline until I worked out where the next bullet was likely to come from. I didn’t like the game. They could deal me out and I would stick to the action I could call and handle.
I thought a lot about Jimmy North also, and every time I felt myself grieving unnecessarily I tried to tell myself that he was a stranger, that he had meant nothing to me, but it didn’t work. This is a weakness of mine which I must always guard against. I become too readily emotionally bound up with other people. I try to walk alone, avoiding involvement, and after years of practice I have achieved some success. It is seldom these days that anyone can penetrate my armour the way Jimmy North did.
By the third day I was feeling much stronger. I could lift myself into a sitting position without assistance and with only a moderate degree of pain.
They held the official inquest in my hospital room. It was a closed session, attended only by the heads of the legislative, judicial and executive branches of St. Mary’s government.
The President himself, dressed as always in black with a crisp white shirt and a halo of snowy wool around his bald pate, chaired the meeting. judge Harkness, tall and thin and sunburned to dark brown, assisted him - while Inspector Daly represented the executive.
The President’s first concern was for my comfort and wellbeing.
I was one of his boys.
“You be sure you don’t tire yourself now, Mister Harry. Anything you want you just ask, hear? We have only come here to hear your version, but I want to tell you now not to worry. There is nothing going to happen to you.”
Inspector Daly looked pained, seeing his prisoner declared innocent before his trial began.
So I told my story again, with the President making helpful or admiring comments whenever I paused for breath, and when I finished he shook his head with wonder.
“All I can say, Mister Harry, is there are not many men would have had the strength and courage to do what you did against those gangsters, is that right, gentlemen?”
judge Harkness agreed heartily, but Inspector Daly said nothing.
“And they were gangsters too,” he went on. “We sent their fingerprints to London and we heard today that those men came here under false names, and that both of them have got police records at Scotland Yard. Gangsters, both of them.” The President looked at judge Harkness. “Any questions, Judge?”
“I don’t think so, Mr. President.”
“Good.” The President nodded happily. “What about you, Inspector?” And Daly produced a typewritten list. The President made no effort to hide his irritation.
“Mister Fletcher is still a very sick man, Inspector. I hope your questions are really important.”
Inspector Daly hesitated and the President went on brusquely, “Good, well then we are all agreed. The verdict is death by misadventure. Mister Fletcher acted in selfdefence, and is hereby discharged from any guilt. No criminal charges will be brought against him.” He turned to the shorthand recorder in the corner. “Have you got that? Type it out and send a copy to my office for signature.” He stood up and came to my bedside. “Now you get better soon, Mister Harry. I expect you for dinner at Government House soon as you are well enough. My secretary will send you a formal invitation. I want to hear the whole story again.”
Next time I appear before a judicial body, as I surely shall, I hope for the same consideration. Having been officially declared innocent I was allowed visitors.
Chubby and Mrs. Chubby came together dressed in their standard number one rig. Mrs. Chubby had baked one of her splendid banana cakes, knowing my weakness for them.
Chubby was torn by relief at seeing me still alive and outrage at what I had done to Wave Dancer. He scowled at me fiercely as he started giving me a large slice of his mind.
“Ain’t never going to get that deck clean again. It soaked right in, man. That damned old carbine of yours really chewed up the cabin bulkhead. Me and Angelo been working three days at it now, and it still needs a few more days.”
“Sorry, Chubby, next time I shoot somebody I’m going to make them stand by the rail first.” I knew that when Chubby had finished repairing the woodwork the damage would not be detectable.
“When you coming out anyway? Plenty of big fish working out there on the stream, Harry.”
“I be out pretty soon, Chubby. One week tops.”
Chubby sniffed. “Did hear that Fred Coker wired all your parties for rest of the season - told them you were hurt bad and switched their bookings to Mister Coleman.”
I lost my temper then. “You tell Fred Coker to get his black arse up here soonest,” I shouted.
Dick Coleman had a deal with the Hilton Hotel. They had financed the purchase of two big game fishing boats, which Coleman crewed with a pair of imported skippers. Neither of his boats caught much fish, they didn’t have the feel of it. He had a lot of difficulty getting charters, and I guessed Fred Coker had been handsomely compensated to switch my bookings to him. Coker arrived the following morning.
“Mister Harry, Doctor Macnab told me you wouldn’t be able to fish again this season. I couldn’t let my parties down, they fly six thousand miles to find you in a hospital bed. I couldn’t do that - I got my reputation to think of.”
“Mr. Coker, your reputation smells like one of those stiffs you got tucked away in the back room,” I told him, and he smiled at me blandly from behind his goldrimmed spectacles, but he was right of course, it would be a long time still before I could take Dancer out after the big billfish.
“Now don’t you fuss yourself, Mister Harry. Soon as you better I will arrange a few lucrative charters for you.”
He was talking about the night run again, his commission on a single run could go as high as seven hundred and fifty dollars. I could handle that even in my present beatenup condition, it involved merely conning Dancer in and out again - just as long as we didn’t run into trouble.
“Forget it, Mr. Coker. I told you from now on I fish, that’s all” and he nodded and smiled and went on as though I had not spoken.
“Had persistent inquiries from one of your old clients! “Body?
Box?” I demanded. Body was the illegal carrying to or from the African mainland of human beings, fleeing politicians with the goon squad after them - or on the other hand aspiring politicians trying for radical change in the regime. Boxes usually contained lethal hardware and it was a one-way traffic. In the old days they called it gunk running.
Coker shook his head and said, “Five, six,” - from the old nursery rhyme: “Five, six. Pick up sticks.” In this context sticks were tusks of ivory. A massive, highly organized poaching operation was systematically wiping out the African elephant from the game reserves and tribal lands of East Africa. The Orient was an insatiable and high- priced market for the ivory. A fast boat and a good skipper were needed to get the valuable cargo out of an estuary mouth, through the dangerous inshore waters, out to where one of the big ocean-going dhows waited on the stream of the Mozambique.
“Mr. Coker,” I told him wearily. “I’m sure your mother never even knew your father’s name.” “It was Edward, Mister Harry,“he smiled carefully. “I told the client that the going rate was up. What with inflation and the price of diesel fuel.”
“How much?”
