Chapter 32
Nevis is a pizza oven. I walk smack into the heat at the plane doors, and my pasty London skin is starting to sizzle almost before we reach the terminal.
Indoors is a long queue; slow-moving, which gives me time to slather myself in Nivea.
Em and I shuffle and yawn along. You would probably think we were any young couple, clearly doing well for themselves despite my scruffiness – maybe she’s a high-powered lawyer with a boyfriend she hasn’t shaken off since uni.
Or maybe we’re just taking a long-term loan from the bank of Mum and Dad.
All sorts of nice alternative lives offer themselves up.
But actually we’re here chasing a dead man and his money, trying to untangle what the hell he was doing before we get caught ourselves.
I suspect a lot of people might find that glamorous.
From my current desk in the Information Suite of one of south London’s premier prisons, I can tell you: this stuff often feels more glamorous at a distance.
For any musical theatre fans reading, Alexander Hamilton was born here too. Another man who knew a bit about dodgy dealing in high society.
As we near the front of the queue, the nerves hit me again. I clasp Em’s hand. ‘I think we’re going to get caught.’
‘Don’t be daft, Al. Everyone feels like that when they’re approaching security.’
‘Yes, but most people are travelling under their own names.’
Too late. We’re at the front. Em goes to the man who calls her, not looking back. I’m up next. A man in a booth lazily gestures me over.
‘Hi there, I’m—’
‘Papers.’
I hand over my passport and arrival form, and shut up. Rule 16 again: Give people no more than they need.
He looks through the paperwork, glances up at me, looks down again.
‘You staying just one night?’
‘A conference.’
‘What kind of conference?’
‘… Hats.’
He glances up again, and gives me a searching look, as if I’m taking the piss. I wish I had been. ‘Hats’ was the only word that came to mind. Eventually, he sighs, thumbs to a free page in the passport and stamps it.
‘All right.’
And I’ve been waved on, and Em’s here, and we glide past the baggage carousel and through customs without anyone giving us even a first glance, and out into the sizzling heat of a Carib spring. Almost too easy.
If we get through this without arrest, imprisonment or being killed, and I manage to restore Freddy’s passport, there may come a day when he’s looking through and reminiscing about all the places he’s been, only to find a stamp for the sun-kissed paradise of Nevis.
The mystery will – I hope – haunt him for the rest of his life.
My dwindling cash supplies bought us a medium wedge of the local dollars at Heathrow, so we get a cab to the hotel we’ve picked.
Em wanted a resort; I said that would make us more conspicuous if we were only staying one night; she said it would be more conspicuous if we stayed at a hotel with no Westerners in it, and she also pointed out that a resort would be a lot more fun.
I said this was ridiculous reasoning, that nobody goes to a luxury hotel for one night, and that this was serious business and we’d have no time for fun. Case closed.
Fifteen minutes later, our cab arrives at the St Agnes Club and Resort, a five-star slab of luxury on the coast. The hotel takes up almost the entirety of a little spit of land running into the ocean, with beaches on both the windy Caribbean side and the sheltered cove opposite it.
I’m not sure what the original St Agnes would have thought of the offerings here: couples’ massage; Hobie Cat lessons; six restaurants with themes including ‘Thai Explosion’, ‘Classic Diner’ and ‘Global Melange’. I hope she would have approved.
By the time we’re checked in and have been golf-carted over to our room (containing a single king-size bed, which neither of us comments on), I feel like we’re already running short of time.
The flight got us in soon after noon, thanks to the time difference; it’s 5 p.m. in the UK but still lunchtime here.
And we only have until our flight takes off tomorrow evening to get what we need out of Davy’s in-house offshorer.
I go to the window and open the translucent curtains. If you’re reading this in the UK, perhaps on a cold autumn night while rain batters the windows and a chill creeps down the chimney, picture the most ridiculously agreeable beach setting you could imagine. This one’s on me.
The sand is an invisible white. The only objects interrupting the sweep down to the gentle sea are a few tastefully spaced loungers, shaded by huge umbrellas.
Further along are some simple bamboo cabanas, protected from the sun by billowing cream veils.
To our left, a waistcoated waiter is walking along the beach with a tray containing two daft pink drinks, complete with swizzle sticks.
Overhead, the sun is a single unwinking eye.
On the right, a lone cormorant is wheeling around, as if it’s been hired specifically to tick the ‘nature’ box.
Most guests are sprawled on their sunbeds; a few are bobbing around in the water.
Even at a distance, I can guess the clientele: wealthy older couples, their grown-up children they recommended the place to, maybe an Instagrammer or two changing bikinis every twenty minutes and asking their boyfriend to shoot them in a range of semi-decent poses so they can harvest enough content to pay for the trip.
‘Why the hell did we just book one night?’ I find myself saying.
‘Because it isn’t fair to leave Jonny and Elle back in London, being threatened with arrest or murder, while we piss about on holiday?’
I concede the point, and we head back to reception, to book a cab into town.
The main town in Nevis is tiny. I shouldn’t be surprised; the island’s entire population is only about ten thousand. It’s pretty quiet at this time of the afternoon, too. As we get out of the cab, we stick out like two sore thumbs.
Marshall Rivers’ office is on the upper floor of a two-storey building just off the main street running through the centre of town.
Next door to it on the ground floor is a bar, with a fan lazily chopping the hot air, and a barman staring out at the street, motionless.
He looks like he’s auditioning for a Hopper painting.
Depending how you look at it, our plan is either ‘na?ve’ or ‘timeless’.
Em is going to winkle Rivers out of his office and into the bar to discuss a private and urgent business matter.
She’ll keep him talking while I get in, find the files identifying the real owners of all Davy’s client companies, and get out.
I’ll stroll past the bar to indicate to Em that I’ve got the goods.
We’ll take separate cabs back to the hotel, dine on the balcony, and fly home tomorrow night. It’s so easy.
There are contingencies. If Rivers’ office is occupied by more than one person, Em will gesture to me to cancel as she passes by.
If he’s set up unusually heavy security as they leave, she’ll do the same.
If she’s unable to get him out, we’ll come back tonight and find the stuff then.
If I get in and the kit Jonny provided me with doesn’t work … I’ll think of something else.
Now we’re up close, it feels a trifle inadequate, but we’re here now, and it’s not like we can try this over and over.
‘Ready?’
‘Of course.’ Em shakes her hair out, crosses the street, and presses a button by the building’s door. From my position I watch as she listens at the intercom, speaks into it, then pushes at the door and heads in. I retreat to the corner, far enough away to avoid attention, and wait.
Five minutes pass. Have you ever needed to look inconspicuous on a street corner, especially when you left your phone four thousand miles away? It’s hard. There’s a reason people resorted to leaning on lamp posts and whistling back in the old days.
Finally the door opens and Em reappears, followed by an extremely elderly local guy.
He’s smarter than I expected: a suit in this heat is no joke.
He’s dressed like an old blues musician, broad lapels and tall turn-ups, and is shuffling a little as they head across the street towards the bar.
Em has hoisted her hair into a messy bun, which is good news.
Hair up means head on up, we agreed. Great. They disappear into the bar.
The door from the street to Rivers’ office is unlocked. It opens onto a pastel corridor, paint peeling. To the right there’s a door to another office, Beulah Brothers Law in gold lettering. Not for the first time this week, I ask myself what I’m doing here. Davy, you’re leading us a right dance.
Considering this is a brass-plate operation, I find it disproportionately funny that Old Man Rivers’ office is labelled with an actual brass plate: Marshall Rivers Solutions Associated. I knock, for safety. No reply. I get out my kit only to find … the door isn’t even locked. Good grief.
It’s about seventeen seconds since I was on the street. This is a new PB.
The office is as you might expect. It’s swelteringly hot, poorly lit, with cracks in the paint from floor to ceiling. There’s a filing cabinet in the corner, a desk, and a vintage computer monitor. In the other corner there’s a tiny kitchenette, not much more than a sink and fridge.
At the back of the room is a small balcony looking out onto the yard. The shutters are open, and a flimsy curtain is drifting in the breeze.
I pull Jonny’s bit of kit from my pocket.
Em and I named it the Frankenstick. It’s a rat king of about fifteen different ports, plugs, dongles, you name it, all bundled and funnelled at the other end into a tiny thumb drive.
It should work on any computer in the world, he said.
As long as I can get into the computer, whichever connection fits should be able to siphon off the information we need.
Oh, my. It’s old, this machine. It makes the steam-powered computer I’m writing this document on look like next year’s MacBook Omega.
I move the mouse across a Seinfeld mouse mat, and the screen brightens.
It’s flickering black and green, and showing an ancient programme, one I don’t even recognise.
Was this something called DOS? I feel like I’ve just discovered the Rosetta Stone. I’m a bit lost.
From the desk surface, Jerry Seinfeld mocks me with his eyes.
All right, forget the screen for the moment.
Find the connection. I get under the desk and look at the back of the computer tower.
It’s roughly the size and shape of the obelisk from 2001.
And as I study the back, I realise with mounting panic that it doesn’t have any of the connections Jonny predicted.
Not one. There’s nothing. I go through every port he gave me once, then again. Nothing fits. What the hell?
OK. In this eventuality, Al will … work something else out. I get up, brush the dust from my knees, go to the filing cabinet, and open a drawer.
Cardboard folders. Hundreds of them. Far too many for me to go through.
As I start rifling, I find that each one contains a single neatly labelled floppy disk.
What sort of nutjob is Marshall Rivers? There’s reason in the filing system, I’m sure, but when I pull out the first one, it’s just 0001, then a name that begins with F.
There’s no guide I can see to where the Harcourt disc is.
And if it’s on the computer, I have no idea how to get to it.
A door slams below. Shit. OK, stay calm. Could just be someone in the downstairs office, of course.
I move to the door, open it a crack, and listen: shuffling shoes, hauling themselves from step to step. They sound like Mr Rivers looked. I ease the door shut.
Rivers is slow on his feet, so I’d guess I have a minute before he’s back in the room. Maybe eighty seconds tops.
I look around me. Over on the kitchenette, there’s a roll of bin bags.
As he opens his door, Mr Rivers smiles to himself.
The young woman had an interesting cover story, and it’s rare for anyone to be sent directly these days, budgets being what they are, but she was so clearly from a law-enforcement agency that it was practically insulting.
He told her what he told all the others when they came with their flimsy stories: sorry, but I can’t help you hide your money.
Nobody’s allowed to just approach Mr Rivers, not without a rock-solid introduction from one of his three matchmakers.
It’s simply too much fuss to break the rules for one person, because then you’d have to break them for everyone, and Mr Rivers has done quite enough rule-breaking for one life.
As he opens the door, he looks round at his comfortable old office, and smiles.
Nice to be taken out for a drink by a pretty young woman, though.
And he got wise to the trick and came back before anyone could get in and do any damage.
A couple more hours of work and he’ll head back to the bar for a sundowner.
He ejects the floppy disk that was in his machine, goes to the filing cabinet, opens the second drawer, and stares down in dismay.
Behind him, a gentle breeze blows from the open balcony door. And I am out on the street, hailing a cab to take me back to the St Agnes Club and Resort.