Black Rain Falling

by Jacob Ross

Genres: International Crime & Mystery

Synopsis

'Jacob Ross is a truly amazing writer. Black Rain Falling is an outstanding novel'
BERNARDINE EVARISTO, WINNER OF THE BOOKER PRIZE

Black Rain Falling is a stunning crime novel that asks how far one should go to protect those they love.

On the Caribbean island of Camaho, forensics expert Michael 'Digger' Digson is in deep trouble.

His fellow CID detective Miss Stanislaus kills a man in self-defence - their superiors believe it was murder, and Digger given just six weeks to prove his friend is innocent.

While the authorities bear down on them, Digger and Miss Stanislaus investigate a shocking roadside murder, the first tremors of a storm of crime and corruption that will break over Camaho at any moment.

'An outstanding crime novel'
THE TIMES

'Jacob Ross is a unique and thrilling new voice in crime fiction'
MARK BILLINGHAM

'Atmospheric and compelling drama'
Laura Wilson, GUARDIAN

'Sublime. A seminal, gripping read from a fantastic talent'
IRENOSEN OKOJIE

'Everything in this book seems different and fresh. Feels like the beginning of something new and thrilling in British crime fiction'
MORNING STAR

Release date: March 5, 2020

Publisher: Little, Brown Book Group

Print pages: 80000

Sample

One thing I learned from my two years fighting crime in Camaho – sometimes, to uphold the law, you need to break the fuckin rules.

Five days after I arrested a police officer for drink-driving and much worse, Miss Stanislaus, my partner in San Andrews CID, shot down Juba Hurst – the man who raped her as a child. The trouble I started was nothing compared to hers. And there was no way I was going to let her face the consequences on her own. That’s me, Michael Digger Digson. It is the way I’m wired.

I’d spent all Sunday in the north of the island with my friend, Caran, who headed a semi-military unit of four: three fellas and a woman named Toya Furore – Caran’s lieutenant. We called them the Bush Rangers. They had the gun skills and bush-craft of soldiers, the arresting powers of the police and the deductive skills of detectives.

Detective Superintendent Chilman, our old boss, had handpicked Caran and his crew to patrol the gloomy interior of the island. Fit, fast and armed, they’d stay out in the mountains for weeks if they had to, turfing out ganja growers, bush-meat hunters, murderers and the occasional jail-breaker who ran for the mists and high forests of Camaho. Caran’s Bush Rangers could navigate the island in their sleep. They were legends in the north of the island.

As usual I’d spent the first hour with Caran puzzling over what Detective Superintendent Chilman had done to us. The old fella, we decided, was a bagful of contradictions: he’d resigned from the Force a couple of years ago, but still came in to San Andrews CID to run our lives. He was a fulltime drunk with a brain that had no room for bullshit and a tongue that stung like a syringe. The old fella had spent thirty years in the Police Force and he despised his colleagues because they were so useless at tackling crime. In fact, the old fella believed they were the cause of the crime sometimes. Like that young Canadian tourist who was walking her dog on one of the isolated beaches on the western coast and got accosted and murdered by a youngfella that the police had arrested only a couple of hours earlier for assault. The superintendent who’d ordered the killer’s immediate release was a relative.

Chilman decided he’d had enough. He couldn’t change the Police Force, but he could create his own team ‘by any and all means necessary’. That meant breaking every recruitment rule.

He picked me up off the streets in San Andrews. I was nineteen, I’d just left school with no job – despite my qualifications – and no prospect of one. A street killing changed my luck. My crime was simply being there. Chilman spotted me on the sidewalk busy doing nothing. He arrested me and brought me to his office. Join the new CID unit he was forming or face time in jail, he said. And I knew he was not joking.

He picked up Chief Officer Malan on Grand Beach with a shopping bag of marijuana, peddling the stuff to tourists. Fourteen years in prison and an unlimited fine or full employment with perks and prospects was Chilman’s offer to Malan Greaves. And there was Spiderface, arrested with a bale of ganja in his boat. Spiderface gave the coast guard so much hell before they caught him that Chilman was impressed enough to reward him with gainful employment.

He must’ve said something different to Miss Stanislaus, his daughter. ‘Best brains on the island,’ he told us when he dumped the woman on the Department. Pet and Lisa – trainee admins in another department – were invited to lunch and never went back to their old jobs.

‘Fuckin blackmail,’ I’d shot at the old fella once, in a fit of irritation.

‘Talent spotting,’ he’d retorted. ‘Look at y’all record, Digson! One thousand police officers serving the island, sixteen stations throughout the parishes, and San Andrews CID got the best crime-busting record in Camaho two years running. No wonder the whole damn Police Force want to mash us up. Including the Justice Minister!’

I’d left Caran’s little house feeling good with the food Mary, his wife, had fed me. I was shaking my head and chuckling at his stories about the mysteries of Camaho’s forests: boiling springs that gushed from crevices in the rocks, voices he swore they heard on the wind up there in the mountains, the shadowy creatures they often glimpsed, and Princess Orchids that fed on the sap of forest trees and killed them. At the end of it he’d nudged me with an elbow. ‘Beautiful t’ings, Digger. Beautiful t’ings does kill.’

He’d directed his chin at his wife and grinned at her. Mary burst out laughing and tossed her kitchen towel in his face.

It was dusk by the time I came off the murderous mountain road of Grand Etang onto River Road, which would take me into San Andrews town. A line of vehicles stretched ahead of me as far as the old iron bridge that hung over the sea. Blaring horns and shouting a few yards ahead.

I pulled up on the side of the road, left my car and followed the noise. A man was pinned up against a Nissan minibus by a mob. The windscreen was a spiderweb of punched-in glass. The vehicle was skewed across the road with its engine running. About three yards ahead, a group of chattering teenagers were comparing phone footage of what looked like the mangled remains of a body. A slim-boned, detached arm with five copper bracelets told me it was a woman. About twenty-five, I guessed. The rest of the woman, I was told, was scattered along the stretch of road.

I walked into the crowd, raised my ID and ordered them to disperse. They shuffled back a couple of feet, with agitated voices.

I knew the fella. He was a constable from San Andrews Police Central, locked down to a desk job because of a prosthetic leg. There was a story floating in the Force about his wife and a lover she flaunted in his face.

Someone had already called the ambulance. No one phoned the police.

I called Recovery – a three-man unit that Detective Superintendent Chilman had created for situations such as these – fellas who would think nothing of eating their dinner with their plates sitting on a cadaver. They used to be gravediggers.

‘DC Digson here. This one is a scrape-up job. Four hours’ worth of work.’

I gave them the coordinates and turned to the officer. He was stinking of alcohol. ‘So what happen?’

People must have read my lips.

‘He knock down the woman, drivin’ drunk. He murder her. The woman got two lil children and . . . fucker drag she all de way from—’

I raised a cautioning hand at the speaker – a youngfella with his hair pulled out in tufts like a fluffy porcupine. His voice was lava-hot and raking.

‘You, Digshun, frum Shandrooz She-Eye-Dee, nuh so? I didn see ’er. I could’uv swear was, was a dog I hit, man.’

‘So, you run over a dog, and you keep driving?’

‘Naah, fella, I—’

‘Don’t fuckin “fella” me! Address me by my rank and name. You stinking drunk and you driving! You should be first to know is a criminal offence.’

I turned to face the crowd. ‘Who witnessed this?’

Four youths stepped forward with lit-up smart phones.

I took the handsets and stuffed them in my pocket. ‘Collect them tomorrow from San Andrews CID.’ I ignored their protests. ‘Anybody actually saw the accident?’

A man raised his hand – short, oily face, big eyes. I took his details.

I turned back to the officer. ‘If you dunno it yet, I arresting y’arse. I want jail for you. I want the maximum for you.’

‘O Gorsh, Digshun. I’z a officer too.’

‘That makes it worse!’ I handcuffed him and dragged him into my car.

By the time I got to San Andrews Central station, I was close to throwing up. My car stank of the officer. He’d clearly pissed himself and was a mumbling wreck on the back seat.

I dragged him out and carried him inside. I demanded the keys from the duty officer – a bug-eyed youngfella with a loose mouth, who dropped his gaze on the crumpled man then fixed my face. He looked confused, moved his lips as if he were about to say something, but then changed his mind. He followed me to the cell. I opened it, dumped Buso inside, then locked him in.

‘I’m DC Digson – people call me Digger,’ I told him. ‘San Andrews CID.’

‘Missa Digger, you sure—’

‘I more than sure. This officer just killed a woman. He said he mistook her for a dog. Look at him – drunk no arse and driving.’ I pocketed the keys.

The young man pointed at my pocket. I ignored him, pulled out my notebook and spent a few minutes writing. I tore out the page and held it out to him. ‘What’s your name?’

‘Kent, Sir.’

‘You new here, right?’ He nodded and took the page.

‘Make sure the Superintendent gets this,’ I said.

‘The, erm, keys, Missa Digger . . . ’ He was chewing his lower lip and throwing glances in the direction of the cells. A low hum came from down the corridor. A gargled hymn from Buso – ‘Rock of Ages’ . . .

‘I keeping the keys,’ I said and strode out of the building.

I was up at seven, a cup of hot cocoa in my hand, looking down from my veranda at the houses in Old Hope village spread across the hillside on which we lived. Directly ahead were the foothills, pulling my gaze all the way up to the Mardi Gras mountains – purple-dark in the early light. Last night’s accident was sitting on my mind.

At nine o’clock exactly I received a call from Staff Superintendent Gill of San Andrews Central Police Station. He demanded the keys to the cells in the building. Didn’t I know that a police officer never arrested another officer in public no matter what they did? And they certainly didn’t lock them up overnight and take away the keys. Where did I get my training? Who the hell did I think I was?

‘Detective Constable Digson, Sir! San Andrews CID!’ I retorted. ‘Two years serving, and I’m asking you to read the report I left with your duty officer before you start to insult me.’

‘That’s no excuse,’ he snapped. ‘I want the keys. When you bringing it in?’

‘When I ready,’ I replied and hung up.

I left my house at 11am, the jail keys in my pocket. I could smell the ocean from my place in Old Hope – the long cane valley that ran all the way down to the sea. Already the hills crackled with a strange high heat. All month it had been like this: dry, dusty, sapping; the air filled with the lament of suffering livestock that were hugging the shadows of the trees and hills. I could see the brown flooring of the forest receding all the way to the hilltops. With all that dryness a pusson felt afraid to strike a match, and I worried at the sight of smoke.

I took the long road to the office in San Andrews.

Chief Officer Malan called. I didn’t pick up.

Five minutes later, Office Admin, Pet, texted me: wh r u?

I didn’t reply.

The chief officer phoned again. I ignored him. Then Miss Stanislaus’s number popped up. ‘G’morning, Miss Stanislaus. How you?’

I imagined her at her desk in one of her glorious lilypatterned Monday-morning dresses, the window light on her hands and face, the phone poised delicately against an ear.

‘Count five,’ she said. It was her way of telling me she wanted to talk in private. Now, I could tell by the background noises that she’d stepped out of the office and was in the concrete courtyard.

‘Missa Digger, you askin for trouble?’ she said.

‘Nuh.’

‘Why you lock up de policefella?’

‘He killed a woman last night, Miss Stanislaus. Drunk driving, and he’s not getting away with it just because he’s an officer.’

‘I didn know,’ she said.

‘That’s because it is not on the news. San Andrews Central will bury it as usual.’

‘You plannin to fight them?’

‘That’s for the family of the victim to do. Ask Pet to get a lawyer who’s prepared to take the case on a no-win, no-fee basis – pro bono, they call that. I’ll give Pet the details when I get in.’

‘Send it now.’ Miss Stanislaus’s tone had changed.

I pulled up the car, consulted my notes and sent the details through my phone.

The whole department was there when I walked in, clearly waiting for me. DS Chilman sat near the door, his elbows on his knees, his mouth twisted in a tight worried knot. The two office admins, Pet and Lisa, were side by side, their desks facing the door. Chief Officer Malan had wheeled his chair out of his office. He sat straight-backed in a pressed blue shirt following my movements with steady, vicious eyes. An officer in uniform was on a chair next to him.

Miss Stanislaus, in a beautiful sea-green dress, looked relaxed at her desk, her gaze directed through the window at the marketplace below. For a moment, she rested those big brown eyes on my face and then turned back to the window.

‘What take you so long?’ Malan grated.

I lifted my shoulders and dropped them, pulled a chair and sat down. ‘What’s the upset?’

The chief officer exploded. ‘How you mean what’s the upset! That’s the best you kin do? You lock up an officer, take the key an’ walk! And you asking, what the upset is?’

‘What makes Officer Buso different from any other person out there in Camaho?’

‘Digger, you can’t go arresting officers, jusso. Y’all doing the same blasted job!’

‘Malan, you shouting. Chill! You didn answer my question. Answer it.’

He shot to his feet, pushed out a hand. ‘Gimme de keys!’

‘Nuh! Not yet. And get outta my face, Malan!’

DS Chilman cleared his throat – a wet, threatening sound. Malan retreated. Miss Stanislaus turned from the window to take us in with an irritated, sidewise look.

‘Answer my question,’ I said.

‘Where y’ever hear about police arresting police? Is de same Force. You want to start a civil war?’

A flush of anger ran through me. ‘A police officer stinking drunk and driving run into a woman on the roadside. Woman went to buy some milk for her two children. The youngest child is two years old. The other one is six. Officer lost control of the vehicle and hit her. He so drunk he say he thought it was a dog. Didn stop for half a mile. Recovery had to scrape her off the road. Put yourself in my place, Malan. What you would’ve done?’

‘Why you didn take him aside?’

‘For what?’

‘Nuff of this!’ Miss Stanislaus’s voice cut through. She pulled her handbag, plucked a tissue and began to fan her face.

‘I still say he deserve different treatment!’

‘Not from me,’ I said.

DS Chilman came to his feet. ‘Okay, Digson! So you upset! You not happy, what you got in mind?’

‘Like I say, the woman got two children left behind. Ain got no law in Camaho that exempt police. I prepared to make a statement on that woman’s behalf in court.’

‘It not going to go to court,’ Malan said.

Pet shook her head, then looked at Lisa with a wide-eyed, appalled expression. Pet hadn’t lost her cool yet, but I had no doubt that she was getting there.

Miss Stanislaus swung around to face Malan. ‘Scuse me, Missa Malan, you wrong! It got to go to court and if it don’ want to go to court, I going make it go to court.’

They locked eyes, a tight-lipped unflinching stare from Miss Stanislaus. Malan’s was dark-eyed and clenched. He could barely disguise his hostility towards Miss Stanislaus. He’d never recovered from her first day at the office when he tried to humiliate her. I’d never seen anything like the fury in those big brown eyes when she cut him down: told him about his womanising ways, the young wife he hid from the world and the child he’d anchored her at home with – all in a coupla minutes and without ever meeting him before. It shocked his arse to realise so much of his private life was in full view to a person who knew what to look for. It shocked me too. Made disciples of Pet and Lisa.

Chilman spread his palm in front of me, the rum-yellow eyes on mine. I pulled out the keys and dropped them in his hand.

He passed the keys to the officer from San Andrews Central.

In silence, we watched the young policeman leave.

DS Chilman gestured at the door. I followed him to the courtyard. He ran a hand over his salt-and-pepper head then looked into my face. ‘Common sense tell me to advise you to let this go. But I know you – you like a dog with a bad case of lockjaw. When you get your teeth into somefing, you won’t let go, not even if I make it an order. When you arrest Officer Buso, it was a snake that you pick up in your hand. He’s friends with the same kinda policeman who kill your mother. We still got a few left in the Force. And now they see what you done to Buso,’ he coughed into his hand, ‘they’ll be wondering if is them next. They going to have their eyes on you, Digson. Mebbe is time for people to know who your father is.’

‘Nuh!’

‘Okay.’ He pushed a dry-stick finger under my nose. ‘Then start wearing your blaastid piece. From now! That’s an order.’ He hitched up his trousers and headed for his car.

I stared down on the wide curve of the Carenage, cluttered with inter-island cargo boats. There were days when I could barely look down there. It was where, in ’99, a posse of renegade police officers, led by a man named Boko, murdered my mother and disappeared her body.

I heard Miss Stanislaus’s crisp footsteps behind me, then I smelled her lime-lavender-nutmeg perfume. She placed herself beside me, her sea-green dress complemented perfectly by matching shoes and handbag, her hair pulled back in a glossy bun. She had a hand inside her handbag, which could just as readily emerge with a tissue or that little Ruger revolver she loved. She called the gun Miss Betsy.

‘Missa Digger, how come you didn greet me when you come in?’

‘Sorry, Miss Stanislaus. How you?’

‘Too late,’ she sniffed. ‘What botherin you?’

Chief Officer Malan came out the office, jumped into his jeep and slammed the door. He gunned the engine, the vehicle shot out onto the road. I followed the yelp of his tyres as he took the corner further down the hill.

‘Let’s take some breeze,’ she said.

‘Something on your mind?’ I said.

She did not answer.

‘What’s going on, Miss Stanislaus?’

I thought it might be her daughter, Daphne – a thirteenyear-old mini version of Miss Stanislaus. They were the only two people whose voices I sometimes confused. They had the same bright gun-barrel stare, the same love of vivid colours, and a delicacy in their movements that hid the steel inside them.

I glanced at my watch: 1pm. ‘Let’s go eat something,’ I said.

I took her to Kathy’s Kitchen, one of those eating places in San Andrews town that you have to know existed in order to find it. No signs on the door, no menu. The woman served one meal a day and it was whatever she fancied cooking. It was always working people’s food. We walked into a small front room with a single fluorescent light. Floor carpeted with linoleum, five plastic tables – a pair of matching chairs pushed against each one. We sat before a bowl of calaloo soup with photos of Miss Kathy’s family staring down at us, deadeyed and unsmiling.

‘Tell me,’ I said.

She threw me a quick glance. Miss Stanislaus had those eyes you couldn’t help noticing. Bright, translucent brown, with a luminosity that seemed to come from inside. There were times when I thought I saw hints of that glint in her father’s, Chilman’s, too.

‘Still not sleeping?’ I said.

‘I awright, Missa Digger. Somefing I want to show you.’ She lifted her bag from her lap, rested it on the table. Miss Stanislaus eased out a newspaper cutting and slid it towards me.

The article was three days old. I remembered it. One Lena Maine from Kara Island, aged thirty-two, had walked into the sea and drowned.

‘Is Juba Hurst cause it,’ she said.

My heart sank.

She’d pushed the bowl of soup aside, was almost mumbling the words. ‘I been on the phone to people back home becuz it didn make no sense to me. Kara Islan woman know trouble from the time she born, and if she can’t fight trouble, other woman help her. She don’t kill ’erself. Look at the day it happen!’

I shook my head.

‘Saturday, not so? Juba Hurst come back from Vincen Islan every Sunday. Miss Lena kill ’erself the day befo becuz she can’t take it no more from him.’

‘Evidence, Miss Stanislaus . . . ’

‘Is what Dada, her gran’mother, tell me on the phone and I got no reason to doubt them. She say Juba come to her gran’daughter every Sunday night stinking like a grave. Lena don’t want im near her. People hear she bawlin like a cow and they dunno how to save her. Becuz if she don’ let im have his way, he say he kill her and her chil’ren—’

‘Miss Stanislaus,’ I said, ‘is ten years plus since Juba Hurst assault you, erm, sexually—’

‘I not talkin about that! You not listenin to me! Months I been sayin this to San Andrews CID – my own department dat I work in.’ She halted on that and shook her head, her face tight with outrage and disbelief. ‘I tellin y’all dat somefing bad happenin on Kara Islan and we got to tackle it. Right now, Missa Digger, Juba rule Kara Islan. Coupla years ago, he take over all my great-uncle, Koku, land. To make matters worse, nobody can’t find my great-uncle since Juba take his property. And nobody can’t go near that place ’ceptin some ole wimmen who don give a damn no more. Last three months, they been burnin down his place soon as he go off to Vincen Islan becuz they say is bad fings he dealin in.’

I looked at her dabbing at the side of her mouth, her other hand restless in her lap. My mind switched to Juba Hurst – suspected murderer and enforcer. Eight cases of serious assault against minors with intent to commit buggery, four attempted murders, fifteen threats to kill, twelve unlawful woundings, nine indecent assaults on a female, two reported cases of detention of a woman against her will – every one of those cases had been retracted a day or two before it went to court. I had my ears and eyes tuned in on that fella. The problem was, he lived on Kara Island and from what I heard, the few police over there were terrified of him. Without proof of some new crime to pin on Juba Hurst, we could not move.

The only jail time Juba did was for the abduction and rape of a fourteen-year-old schoolgirl on Kara Island. That schoolgirl was Miss Stanislaus. Happened a week after Chilman walked away from Miss Stanislaus and her mother and moved to Camaho. First daughter, and Chilman didn look back, not even when Juba left her with a child I saw her struggling to love.

I picked up Miss Stanislaus’s daughter Daphne from lateevening netball practice in San Andrews on Fridays and dropped her off at their little painted gate. A couple of weeks ago she remained in the car, her schoolbag on her knees. Daphne looked at the gate and then raised wide, entreating eyes at me. ‘Missa Digger, I can come stay with you – mebbe for a while?’

‘Not possible, Daph. Miss Stanislaus won’t allow it and I can’t either. What’s the problem?’

‘She don’ like me no more, Missa Digger. She won’t even talk to me, not even to—’

Daphne broke down.

I tapped out a text message to Miss Stanislaus: Daphne don’t want to come in. I taking her to Miss Iona house or mine. U got 2 mins 2 dcide.

My phone vibrated. Miss Stanislaus, soft-voiced, exhausted, was at the other end. ‘Send her in, Missa Digger. Fanks.’

I touched Miss Stanislaus’s arm. She pulled away, her eyes hot and fierce on mine. Then something in her crumbled and her voice dropped almost to a murmur. ‘I want y’all to believe me, Missa Digger. I – I dunno what to say to make you believe me.’

She sat staring past my head for a while, then drew breath. ‘Problem is, Missa Digger, now Miss Lena gone – Juba Hurst goin throw himself on some other woman, not so? He going find them wimmen who been burnin down his place and is what he won’t do to them. Gimme a reason why I should sit down here in Camaho and allow that to happen to my fam’ly.’

‘I didn know Lena was family,’ I said.

She threw me a sideways glare. ‘On Kara Islan, Missa Digger, everybody is fam’ly.’

She got up, dragged her bag towards her and strode out.

I parked at the side of the road and walked up the concrete path to my house. My body craved sleep; my limbs were heavy with it. I’d sat through most of the night in the office scrolling through scores of Googled pages, my mind full of Miss Stanislaus. I’d stopped at PTSD and was seized with a kind of terror when I took in what it said. Rape survivors have a harder time overcoming it than combat veterans.

And there was not always an end date.

They’d listed sleeplessness, depressive disorders and denial. Suicidal thoughts were there too, irritation and self-loathing, even anger. It crossed my mind that they hadn’t met a case like Miss Stanislaus. If they had, they would have added another: revenge. Not only that – in her case, they would have placed it top of the list. It was clear to me that Miss Stanislaus was not the kinda woman to forget an outrage against her body however long ago it was. She’d brought the rage with her when Chilman dumped her on San Andrews CID. All that indignation! Sometimes I saw her struggling to hold it back. There were days when she shrank at the slightest touch, grew dangerous and moody when news of a sexual assault reached our department.

I pushed those thoughts out of my head and played a game with myself. I pretended to be a private investigator entering my own house.

*

I climb three concrete steps, pull the bolt of the glass-fronted door and switch on the ceiling lights. I tiptoe past four Morris chairs and a sofa in the front room. Shelves line every wall, stacked with books that cover every aspect of the human body before and after death. Books on human bones cover the kitchen worktop. The thickest has a pencil in it: Osteometry: The Mathematics of the Human Form.

Two fridges. I pull open the door of the smaller one. Its shelves are crammed with bottled chemicals, the frozen larvae and pupae of arthropods and blowflies at every stage of their development. Old 35mm film canisters stuffed with soil samples, burrs and blades of grass. Human tissue in phials of formalin.

A music player sits in the far corner with stacks of CDs crowding it, mainly jazz, some Lovers’ Rock, a pile of Bump n Grind with Lycra-clad Jamaican rude-gals cocking fully loaded, G-stringed backsides at the camera. Downright provocative.

A spare room on my right with a skeletal iron bed jammed against the wall. A battalion of vintage-labelled rum bottles on the floor.

There is a furnished bedroom at the far end of the house. An ancient mahogany bed takes up more than half the space, with a single slatted wooden window about five feet above it. All the other windows in the house are glass. Hurricane house, obviously, built circa 1955, stripped of its Guyana wood, extended and strengthened with concrete, steel and Temple stone.

Expensive condoms of the super-sensitive variety on the side table. No evidence of cohabitation.

Conclusions so far: male occupant aged twenty-three or thereabouts, obsessed with death and human body parts. Possibly cannibalistic. Visiting relationship, if any. An unhealthy interest in rum cocktails and disgusting music.

I leave the wall of the living room for last. There are three photos. The first is of an old Indian woman sitting on wooden steps, the door behind her propped open by a length of wood. She is staring at the camera with the cocked chin of a warrior. The second is of a young Afro-Indian woman in her mid-twenties with a glorious head of untamed hair and a smile white and wide as a beach. I wonder what happened to that woman. A little boy is leaning against her thigh. His eyes are wide, his mouth half open.

The last is a framed newspaper photograph, pasted on a sheet of Bristol board. A tallish, not-too-bad-looking fella is standing beside a full-fleshed woman with big brown eyes – pretty like hell in her tie-dyed ocean-blue dress. A swarm of red and yellow coral fish populate the lovely garment. She stands like royalty beside the not-too-bad-lookin’ fella, an aquamarine handbag dangling from her elbow.

The caption reads: Michael ‘Digger’ Digson (left) and DC Kathleen Stanislaus (right) of San Andrews CID. The duo that cracked the Nathan case.

I concentrate on Miss Stanislaus’s eyes. Now, I see something there I didn’t notice before: a deep-down hurt, a simmering outrage. A sadness that makes me want to cry.

Friday, great columns of cloud were gathering over the eastern hills, dulling the day and releasing the occasional measly scattering of rain that only raised the humidity.

I took the airport road to work, driving through Coburn Valley – the gateway to the Drylands and the tourist south. I had a craving for raw cane juice and it was the only place to get it.

The seller had his own little mobile mill designed and built by himself. I’d handed him the money and turned back to my car when I felt eyes on me. I looked up quickly. A San Andrews Central Police jeep had stopped in the middle of the early-morning traffic. Vehicles edged past it, their drivers casting nervous glances in their rear-view mirrors. Three officers trying to stare me down. It was about Buso, of course, the drunken officer I’d locked up for running over a woman. I knew all three, their names usually got mentioned in the same breath. Skelo – because the bones of his skull were so pronounced. Machete – murderous, they said, when he lost his temper, which by all accounts he often did. Machete had his arm