Domino Island: The unpublished thriller by the master of the genre

Evidently Salton had caught it from both sides. The Prime Minster, the Honourable Walden P. Conyers, responded smoothly: ‘It has been brought to my notice by the Department of Immigration that Mr Salton has not given up his American citizenship. He would be advised to do so before complaining about those enlightened foreign companies who have done so much to bring prosperity to this island.’

On the other side, a left-winger snarled acidly about two-faced millionaires who wrote wishy-washy liberal speeches while sipping martinis on the terraces of their expensive villas as their well-paid overseers were grinding the faces of the native poor. That sounded familiar, as did the call for instant revolution by the down-trodden proletariat.

I flicked through some more recent editions and came to a big splash story, emblazoned with a full-page picture of Salton. He must have been a really big wheel for his death to have made the commotion it did. The first thing I felt was the sense of shock that permeated the initial accounts; it seemed as though the reporter couldn’t really believe what he was writing. Then the accusations began to fly, each wilder than the last, while riots broke out on the streets and the police had their hands full.

It was hard to reconcile these accounts of civil unrest with the well-oiled gentility I’d seen outside on Cardew Street, but I soon found out the reason. The inquest had quietened things down considerably and the rioting stopped on the day that Dr Winstanley stood in the witness box and announced that Salton had died of natural causes. When asked if he was sure about that, he replied stiffly that he had performed the post-mortem examination himself and he was quite certain.

Mrs Salton gave evidence that her husband had had heart trouble six months earlier. This was corroborated by Dr Collins, his personal physician. When Mrs Salton was asked if her husband habitually went out by himself in a small dinghy, she replied that after his heart attack she had asked him not to continue this practice, but that he had not given up sailing alone.

The verdict, as Jolly had informed me back in London, was death by natural causes.

Salton’s funeral was attended by all the island dignitaries and a few thousand of the common people. Conyers made a speech, sickening in its hypocrisy, in which he mourned the loss of a noble fellow-countryman. After that, Salton pretty much dropped out of the news except for an occasional reference, usually in the financial pages, concerning the activities of his companies. No one can be forgotten quicker than a dead man.

I turned back to the obituary and was making a few notes when I became aware that someone had come into the room. I looked up and saw a podgy, balding man watching me intently. He blinked rapidly behind thick-rimmed glasses and said, ‘Interesting reading?’

‘For those who find it interesting,’ I said. A tautology is a good way of evading an issue; that’s something I’ve learned from listening to too many politicians.

‘You’re an off-islander,’ he said abruptly. ‘You’ve not been here long.’

I leaned back in the chair. ‘How do you know?’

‘No tan. Just out from England?’

I looked at him thoughtfully. ‘Yes. I’m interested in local conditions.’

‘By reading about a dead man?’ His voice was flat but the irony was not lost. ‘Taking notes, too.’

‘Is it illegal?’

He suddenly smiled. ‘I guess not. My name’s Jackson.’ He waved his hand. ‘I get into the habit of asking too many questions. I work here.’

‘A reporter?’

‘Sort of.’ He gestured at Salton’s obituary. ‘I wrote that.’

‘You write well,’ I said politely.

‘You’re a liar,’ said Jackson without rancour. ‘If I did I wouldn’t be in this crummy place. What’s the interest in Salton?’

‘You do ask questions,’ I said.

Unapologetically he said, ‘It’s my job. You don’t have to answer. I can find out another way if I have to.’

‘You didn’t come in by accident and find me here.’

He grinned. ‘Mary Josephine tipped me off. The girl at the desk. We like to know who checks our files. It’s routine.’ He paused. ‘Sometimes it even pays off. Not often, though.’

All that was quite possibly true. I said cautiously, ‘Well, Mr Jackson, if you were interested in the future of the late Mr Salton’s companies, wouldn’t you be interested in knowing how he died?’

‘I guess so.’ He looked at my notebook. ‘You don’t have to take notes. I’ll give you a copy of anything you want.’

‘In exchange for what?’

‘No strings,’ he said. ‘It’s in the public domain. But if you turn anything up – anything unusual – I’d be glad to know.’

I smiled at him. ‘I don’t think my principals would like publicity. Is anything unusual likely to turn up?’

Jackson shrugged. ‘If a guy turns over enough stones he’s sure to find something nasty some place.’

‘And you think there’s something nasty to be found by looking under Mr Salton’s stones. That’s very interesting. What sort of a man was Salton?’

‘No worse than any other son-of-a-bitch.’

My eyebrows rose. ‘You didn’t like him?’

‘He was a gold-plated bastard.’

I glanced down at the obituary. ‘You’re a better writer than you think, Mr Jackson. It doesn’t show here.’

‘Company policy,’ said Jackson. ‘Mrs Salton owns the Chronicle.’

That was a new one on me but I didn’t let him know that. I said, ‘If you talk like this to strangers you’re not likely to be on the payroll much longer. How do you know I’m not a friend of Mrs Salton’s?’

‘You’re not her friend,’ said Jackson. ‘You’re an insurance investigator. We’ve been expecting you to show up, Mr Ogilvie.’

He had the wrong man but the right occupation and I wondered how that had come about. I decided to let him have his cheap triumph for the time being and said evenly, ‘So?’

‘So she’s sticking your people for a lot of dough. You wouldn’t be human if you admitted to liking her for it.’

I looked down at the obituary. ‘Granting there’s a certain amount of bias here, Salton still doesn’t measure up to your personal description of him. What about the two hospitals he built, the university foundation, the low-cost housing? Those are facts.’

‘Sure,’ said Jackson. ‘He’s been buying votes. Was successful at it, too. A very popular guy. You should have seen his funeral.’

‘I’ve seen the photographs,’ I said.

‘That cheap housing was a surefire vote-catcher.’ Jackson leaned forward and rested his hands on the table. ‘Have you any idea of the cost of housing on this island? You’ll be damned lucky to get away with £10 a square foot. So he cut a lot of corners – he built cheap and he built nasty and he didn’t sell a single goddamn house he built.’

‘I don’t understand. If he didn’t sell any houses, where did he make his profit?’ I thought of Costello and the three millions and wondered if his ears were burning.

‘He didn’t,’ said Jackson. ‘He was losing like crazy. He rented those houses and the return was completely uneconomic. But it gave him a solid vote.’

‘He must have been rich,’ I commented. ‘That’s an expensive route to politics.’

‘He had a lot of dough,’ conceded Jackson. ‘But not that much. Mr Black was behind him with a slush fund.’

I sighed. ‘And who is Mr Black?’

Jackson stared at me. ‘Don’t you know anything about what goes on here? You’d better learn fast. Gerry Negrini is Mr Big in the casino crowd.’

‘Negrini?’

‘Negrini – Mr Black, get it?’

‘Oh, I see. But where do casinos come into it?’

‘Negrini represents certain New York and Chicago interests who are bucking Las Vegas and Reno.’

I still couldn’t see the connection. ‘But why should he support a liberal like Salton?’ I tapped the file. ‘I’ve read Salton’s speeches.’

‘You need a crash course in local politics,’ said Jackson earnestly. He was getting into his stride, teaching this dumb foreigner how things worked around here, and I wasn’t about to stop the flow. ‘Look, Mr Ogilvie, this island is wide open and a buck moves faster here than any other place in the world. Mr Black and his boys have got the whole thing sewn up – they’ve put Campanilla on the map for the jet set and all the well-heeled suckers who go for gambling.’

He hesitated. There was evidently more to come.

‘But there’s another angle. The bankers and the big corporations have also got it made here, and they don’t like gambling and the associations that go with it. They don’t want the off-shore trust funds confused with the spin of a roulette wheel. That’s bad for business.’

‘I can see their point.’

‘So they made sure they had their own man – Conyers. He was their boy, and he had his instructions: get the election out of the way and then crack down on the gambling. Mr Black had to pick an opposition leader and he picked Salton.’

‘Salton? But he’d only been back on the island five minutes.’

Jackson shrugged. ‘You can make a lot of noise in five minutes, Mr Ogilvie. Especially with someone like that behind you.’

‘So the cheap housing was just an expensive red herring.’

‘Make no mistake about it: if Salton had lived he’d almost certainly have been the next Prime Minister.’ Jackson waved airily at the file. ‘But all that flapdoodle in his speeches was for the suckers. You can bet that as soon as he got into power those house rents would have been raised pretty swiftly.’

He was on a roll so I kept up the masquerade. ‘I’ve been reading the account of the inquest. Do you believe Salton died of natural causes?’

Jackson sat down opposite me at the table and leaned back: he looked like he was settling in for the duration. ‘Winstanley is a doddering old fool at the best of times but even if he was the best pathologist in the world I doubt he could have made much of what was left of Salton.’ He grimaced. ‘I saw the body when he was brought in.’

‘He’d been out there for days, hadn’t he? Wasn’t anyone looking for him? Didn’t Mrs Salton raise the alarm?’

‘Which of those questions would you like me to answer?’ said Jackson. There was more than a hint of condescension in his voice. ‘No. The first anyone knew about it was when the body was found.’ He stared at me. ‘Don’t you find that strange?’

‘She must have had an explanation that was acceptable to the police.’

‘The police?’ Jackson snorted. ‘They’re in Conyers’s pocket, from Commissioner Barstow down to the last man on the beat.’

‘That’s an interesting take, Mr Jackson. In fact, you’ve raised a lot of interesting points.’

‘Glad to be of help, Mr Ogilvie,’ he said genially. ‘You’ll be visiting Mrs Salton?’

‘Probably tomorrow.’

‘You’d better telephone first,’ he advised. ‘No one gets to El Cerco without an invitation.’

‘Have you got a telephone directory?’

He grinned. ‘You won’t find the number in there. It’s unlisted.’ He picked up my notebook and scribbled in it. ‘That’ll find her.’

As I stood up to go, I asked casually, ‘How did you know I was Ogilvie?’

‘I have a pipeline into the Department of Immigration at the airport. I knew that Western and Continental Insurance would be sending a man so I put out the word.’

So that was how Ogilvie had been tagged. ‘That’s all very well, but how did you know I was Ogilvie? It’s not tattooed on my forehead.’

‘Hell, I knew you’d be coming in here to check the files so I had Mary Josephine tip me off. Then there was this.’ He lifted my notebook and grinned at me. Stamped on its cover in gilt were the words Western and Continental Insurance Co. Ltd. ‘I didn’t need to be Sherlock Holmes.’

‘No,’ I agreed. ‘You didn’t.’ I took the notebook from him and put it away.

Jackson heaved himself to his feet and said, ‘I’d be very much obliged if you let me know anything you turn up, Mr Ogilvie.’

‘I don’t think I will,’ I said. ‘You see, I told the truth when I said I was only interested in Mr Salton’s companies in a business way. I have no connection with this insurance company beyond having taken out a policy with them, and my name is not Ogilvie – it’s Kemp.’ I smiled. ‘The notebook was a handout. Western and Continental lash them out to all their clients.’

Jackson’s eyes flickered. ‘I don’t believe you,’ he said flatly.

I took out my passport and handed it to him. William Kemp, business consultant. ‘But thanks for the tutorial. It was most interesting.’

Jackson seemed to have had the wind knocked out of him as I took back the passport and pocketed it. He said, ‘Hell, anyone can make a mistake – and you went along with it.’

I nodded. ‘I go along with most things as long as it suits me, Mr Jackson.’ I walked to the door and turned. ‘By the way, I will be seeing Mrs Salton tomorrow. I’ll give her your regards.’

‘Hey, Mr Kemp, you won’t tell her … I mean … you won’t repeat what I’ve said?’ He was shaken right down to his liver and obviously terrified of losing his job.

I smiled. ‘I’ll reserve judgement on that – as long as it suits me.’ I gave him a curt nod and walked out of the room, leaving a shocked man. I don’t know who he thought I was, but I reckoned I’d given him enough of a fright to keep his nose out of my affairs.

I went back to the Royal Caribbean and telephoned Ogilvie. It was a long time before he answered and when he did his voice was grumpy. ‘Kemp here,’ I said.

‘You’ve woken me up,’ he complained. ‘I’m dead on my feet.’

I knew how he felt. Air travel is tiring and my time sense was shot to pieces because of the transatlantic flight. ‘Just something for you to do tomorrow,’ I said. ‘Go to the Chronicle office in Cardew Street and ask to see the back issues for the last month. You’ll find a lot of interesting stuff about Salton.’

‘What’s the point if you’ve already done it?’

‘You’ll probably be contacted by a creep called Jackson. Don’t try to hide who you are, but if he asks about me you’re ignorant. Jackson is a bit hard to take, but disguise your finer feelings and get pally with him. He’ll like you better if he thinks you’re here to torpedo Mrs Salton’s claim.’

‘Well, aren’t we?’

‘Don’t be cynical,’ I said, and put down the telephone. If Jackson wanted to meet Ogilvie, who was I to stand in his way? Besides, there was always a chance his loose lips might give the company man something else we could work with.

I took out my notebook, checked the number Jackson had given me, and dialled. The call was answered immediately and a slurred Campanillan voice said, ‘The Salton residence.’

‘I’d like to speak to Mrs Salton,’ I said. ‘My name is Kemp.’

‘What would it be about?’

‘If she wants you to know she’ll tell you.’ I never have liked the nosy and over-protective underling.

There was a pause, some brief heavy breathing and then a rattle as the handset was laid down. Presently there was another rattle and a cool voice said, ‘Jill Salton speaking.’

‘My name is Kemp – William Kemp. Your uncle, Lord Hosmer, asked me to call and present his condolences.’ He hadn’t, but it made a good story.

‘I see,’ she said. ‘Do you want to come here?’

‘If that’s all right with you. I’m free tomorrow, if it’s convenient.’

‘Would the morning suit you? Say at eleven?’

‘That would be fine, Mrs Salton.’

‘Very well, I’ll expect you then. Good day, Mr Kemp.’ There was a click and the connection was cut.

I called down to reception and made arrangements for hiring a car, to be ready in front of the hotel at nine the following morning.

Then I got undressed and fell asleep as though I’d been sandbagged.

IV

At nine-fifteen next morning I was threading my way out of San Martin in a fire-engine-red Ford Mustang with an automatic shift that I didn’t like. I prefer to change gear in a car when I want to, and not when a set of cogs thinks I should. Maybe I’m old-fashioned.

The road took me out along the coast for a way and through the outskirts of what was evidently a high-life area. Large and expensive-looking houses were set discreetly away from the road, some of them surrounded by high walls, and there were some plushy hotels with turquoise swimming pools of all shapes except rectangular. Those of the pools that I could see were surrounded by acres of bare skin, all tanning nicely. Here and there, uniformed waiters scurried around the poolsides with the first rum-and-coconut-milk of the day. La dolce vita, Caribbean-style.

I drove slowly, taking it all in. Even at this hour the sun was uncomfortably hot and the air pressed heavily on the open-top Mustang. Presently the road turned away from the sea and began to climb into a hilly and wooded area. The ambiance changed and the air cooled a little as I went inland. There were fewer white faces and more black, fewer bikinis and more cotton shifts, less concrete and glass and more corrugated iron. The tourists stuck close to the sea.

The landscape seemed poorly adaptable for agriculture. A thin soil clung to the bones of the hills but there were naked outcrops of limestone showing where the ground had eroded. Most of the afforested land was covered by a growth of spindly trees, which couldn’t be of any economic significance, but occasional clearings opened up in which crops were apparently grown.

Nearly every clearing had its shacks – usually of the ubiquitous corrugated iron, although beaten-out kerosene tins were also to be seen. Around each shack were the children, meagrely dressed and grinning impudently as they waved at the car and shouted in shrill voices. I passed though a succession of villages, all with rudimentary church and classroom. The churches were marginally better built than the classrooms, which tended towards the shanty school of architecture, each with its dusty, pathetic area of playground.

As I came over the central ridge of the island, I pulled off the road and looked north towards the distant glint of the sea. Close by, a couple of Campanillans were hoeing a field and planting some sort of crop. I got out of the car and walked over to them. ‘Am I on the right way to El Cerco?’

They stopped and looked at me, then the bigger one said, ‘That’s right, man.’ His face was beaded with sweat. ‘Just keep going.’

‘Thanks.’ I looked at the ground by his feet. ‘What are you planting?’

‘Corn.’ He paused. ‘You’d call it maize.’ His accent wasn’t the usual Campanillan drawl; he enunciated each consonant clearly. He didn’t sound like your average peasant.

‘It’s hot,’ I said, and took out a packet of fat, imported American cigarettes that I’d picked up on the plane.

He gave me a pitying smile. ‘Not hot yet. Still winter.’

I tapped out a cigarette, then offered him the packet. ‘Smoke?’

He hesitated, then said, ‘Thanks, man,’ and took a cigarette. The other man, older and with a seamed, lived-in face, ducked his head as he took one with gnarled fingers.

I took out my lighter and we lit up. ‘This is a very nice island.’

The younger man stabbed his mattock into the ground with a sudden violence that made the muscles writhe in his brawny arm. ‘Some think so.’

‘But not you?’

‘Would you like it if you were me, mister?’ he asked.

I looked around at the arid field and shook my head. ‘Probably not.’

He blew out a plume of smoke. ‘You going to El Cerco? The Salton place?’

‘That’s right.’

‘If you see Mrs Salton, you tell her McKittrick said hello.’

‘Are you McKittrick?’

He nodded. ‘Tell her I was sorry about Mr Salton.’

‘I’ll tell her,’ I said. ‘Do you know her well?’

He laughed. ‘She probably won’t remember me.’ He took the cigarette and delicately nipped away the coal before dropping the stub into his shirt pocket. ‘People forget.’ He tugged the mattock out of the dust. ‘This isn’t getting the corn planted.’

‘I’ll pass on your message,’ I said.

McKittrick made no answer but turned his back and bent to draw a furrow in the ground. I hesitated for a moment and then went back to the car.

I knew immediately what Jackson had meant about invitations when I arrived at El Cerco. I looked at the strong, meshed cyclone fence set on steel posts and at the two men at the gate. They wore what might or might not have been a uniform and, although they didn’t seem to carry guns, they looked as though they should have done. One stayed by the gate; the other came up to the car and bent to look at me.

‘My name is Kemp,’ I said. ‘Mrs Salton is expecting me.’

He straightened up, consulted a sheet of paper which he took from his pocket, and nodded. ‘You’re expected at the beach, Mr Kemp. The boat is waiting for you.’ He waved at the other man, who opened the gate.

What boat?

I found out about two hundred yards down the road the other side of the gate, where the asphalt curved into a bend giving a view over the sea. El Cerco was breathtaking. The natural coral formation was a perfect circle about three-quarters of a mile in diameter. Outside, the steady trade wind heaped up waves which crashed on to the coral, sending up spouts of foam, but inside that magic circle the water was smooth and calm.

Right in the centre was a small island, not more than a hundred yards across, and on it was a building, a many-planed structure that curved and nestled close to the ground on which it was built. It seemed as though David Salton had created his own Shangri-la. It was a pity he wasn’t around to enjoy it.

I drove on down the road, which descended steeply in a series of hairpin bends until it came to the edge of the lagoon. There was another house here and a row of garages with a big boathouse at the water’s edge. A man was waiting for me. He waved the car into a garage and when I came out he said, ‘This way, Mr Kemp,’ and led me to a jetty where a fast-looking motor launch was moored. Less than five minutes later I stepped ashore on the island in the middle of El Cerco.

An elderly servant stood in attendance. He had grey hair and wore a white coat – a typical Caribbean waiter. When he spoke I thought I recognised the voice I had heard on the telephone when I called the previous day. He said, ‘This way, Mr Kemp … sir.’ There was just the right pause to make the insolence detectable but not enough to complain about. I grinned at the thought that the staff didn’t like being ticked off by strangers.

The house had been designed by a master architect, so arranged that at times it was difficult to tell whether one was inside or outside. Lush tropical plants were everywhere and there were streams and fountains and the constant glint of light on pools. Most noticeably, the house was pleasantly cool in the steadily increasing heat.

We came into a quiet room and the old servant said softly, ‘Mr Kemp, ma’am.’

She rose from a chair. ‘Thank you, John.’

There was a man standing behind her but I ignored him because she was enough to fill the view. She was less than thirty, long of limb and with flaming red hair, green eyes and the kind of perfect complexion that goes with that combination. She was not at all what I had imagined as the widow of David Salton, fifty-two-year-old building tycoon.

A lot of thoughts chased through my mind very quickly but, out of the helter-skelter, two stayed with me. The first was that a woman like Jill Salton would be a handful for any man. Physical beauty is like a magnet and any husband married to this one could expect to be fighting off the competition with a club.

The second thought was that under no circumstance in law can a murderer benefit by inheritance from the person murdered.

Now why should I have thought that?