The Deceiver

a few seconds later Horatio Livingstone appeared. He was a large fat man, and his jowly face was wreathed in smiles. He exuded bonhomie.

“Gentlemen, gentlemen, what an honor. Please, be seated.”

He gestured for coffee and seated himself in a large chair. His small, button eyes flickered from one to the other of the three white faces before him. Two other men entered the room and seated themselves behind the candidate. Living­stone gestured to them.

“Two of my associates—Mr. Smith and Mr. Brown.”

The two inclined their heads but said nothing.

“Now, Mr. Hannah, what can I do for you?”

“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 realized 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.

He offered his guests a choice of Dom Perignon or Blue Mountain coffee. They chose coffee and sat down.

Desmond Hannah asked the same questions about the hour of five P.M. the previous Tuesday evening. The reply was the same.

“Addressing an enthusiastic crowd of well over a hundred people outside the Anglican church in Parliament Square, Mr. Hannah. At five o’clock I was just finishing my address. From there I drove straight back here.”

“And your ... entourage?” asked Hannah, borrowing Missy Coltrane’s word to describe the election campaign team in their bright shirts.

“All with me, to a man,” said Johnson. He waved a hand, and one of the bright-shirts topped up the coffee. McCready wondered why he had no local serving staff inside the house, although he would have Barclayan gardeners. Despite the subdued light inside the verandah, the bright-shirts never removed their wraparound dark glasses.

From Hannah’s point of view, the interlude was pleasant but fruitless. He had already been told by Chief Inspector Jones that the prosperity candidate had been on Parliament Square when the shots were fired at Government House. The Inspector himself had been on the steps of his own police station on the square, surveying the scene. He rose to leave.

“Do you have another public address scheduled for to­day?” asked Dillon.

“Yes, indeed. At two, on Parliament Square.”

“You were there yesterday at three. There was a distur­bance, I believe.”

Marcus Johnson was a much smoother operator than Liv­ingstone. No hint of temper. He shrugged.

“The Reverend Drake shouted some rude words. No mat­ter. I had finished my speech. Poor Drake—well intentioned, no doubt, but foolish. He wishes the Barclays to remain in the last century. But progress must come, Mr. Dillon, and with it prosperity. I have the most substantial development plans in mind for our dear