‘I’m on my own,’ Ben said, which seemed to be a good enough reply. Not that anyone cared. The consensus was that, a week after the event, the crash flight story had completely burned itself out and there was nothing left to hang around for. All that remained was the bitter rancour that a lot of people obviously felt for Nick Chapman. Frank Lopez of the Prensa Latina News Agency out of Havana shook his head in disgust at the mention of his name. ‘How anyone let a screw-up like that behind the controls of a fucking aircraft is beyond me.’
Doyle gulped his beer and nodded in agreement. ‘Total wacko,’ he grated. ‘The daughter too. Dope head, what I heard. The moment daddy decides to check out taking a bunch of innocent lives with him, she goes and throws herself under the nearest goddamn car. I mean, that is one fucked-up family.’ Doyle and a couple of the others laughed uproariously at the idea.
Ben’s fist clenched around his beer glass and he glanced downwards to hide the spark of anger in his eyes. After a pause he asked, as casually as possible, ‘Anyone get the name of the air traffic guy who talked to Chapman on the radio?’
Doyle looked blank. Lopez clicked his fingers, trying to remember. The one called Tibbets got there first. ‘Drummond,’ he said. ‘The guy’s name is Bob Drummond.’
‘That’s it,’ Lopez said. ‘But forget it, amigo. He won’t talk to you. Nobody wants to talk about nothing any more. It’s yesterday’s news.’
‘That’s the kind I like best,’ Ben said, and they all found that very amusing too.
CHAPTER EIGHT
Long before the reporters finally staggered away from the hotel bar to start packing their bags for home, Ben was at the wheel of the Wrangler, blasting the two miles south-east back out of George Town towards Owen Roberts International airport, with the top down and the warm tropical breeze in his hair. He passed rows of stately white beachside homes. Yacht clubs and marinas. A colourful-looking bar and grill restaurant with a signpost on its terrace proclaiming ‘RELAX! YOU ARE ON CAYMAN TIME’.
He left the Jeep in the main airport car park and headed for the air traffic control building a little way from the terminaclass="underline" a squat white tower topped by a dark glass hexagonal observation centre bristling with antennas and dishes. A couple of security guards were hanging around the entrance — one white, portly, middle-aged, the other black with some seriously impressive dreadlocks that looked incongruous with his uniform. They were sharing a joke over a cigarette and leaning against the wire fence with their backs to Ben, so that he slipped through unnoticed. He pushed through a set of glass doors and found himself in a busy reception area where a harried-looking guy of about seventy was manning the desk and talking on two phones at once.
Ben walked up to the desk and asked him if Bob Drummond was working there today. The old guy gave him an exasperated look and pointed down the corridor to Ben’s right. ‘You’ll have to talk to Maud in personnel. It’s the third door. Yeah, Barry? Did you fax through those reports yet? Then where the hell are they?’
Ben left him to his apoplexy and wandered down the corridor. At the third door he paused, knocked and went inside a tiny office dominated by a broad desk and an even broader heavyset woman packed tightly into a swivel chair and wearing a name tag that said ‘Maud Biggs’. The smile he flashed at her met with a leaden stare.
‘Hi, I was wondering if Bob Drummond is working here today?’ he asked. Maud shook her head without a flicker of expression. Ben clicked his tongue. ‘That’s a pity. I’m an old friend of Bob’s and he said that anytime I was on the island I should drop in and see him. But I lost his home address. You couldn’t help me out with that, could you?’
Maud’s face remained immobile, but at the mention of anything to do with clerical files her eyes darted involuntarily towards the filing cabinet to her left. Reflex action, like a dog salivating at the mention of food. Lagging by about half a second, her conscious mind kicked in and she shook her head severely. ‘We don’t give out details of employees to anyone.’
‘All right, I’ll level with you,’ Ben said, beckoning her close. ‘My name’s Jerome Ryerson. I’m with the Lotto,’ he added with a conspiratorial grin, and flashed his tatty old British Armed Forces ID card at her, too fast for her narrow-set eyes to focus on it, and keeping his thumb over the emblem. ‘I’m here to tell Bob that he just won twelve million dollars,’ he went on, and Maud’s eyes opened wide. ‘The only address we have for him is this one and I urgently need him to sign his claim form. I don’t think he’d want to miss out, do you?’
Maud was still gazing at him in heavy-browed stupefaction when another woman appeared in the office doorway. ‘Maud, can you help me? The damn thing’s frozen up again. Do I need to enter that reference code before the sixteen-digit number, or after it?’
Maud levered herself out of her chair and waddled to the rescue, shooting a bewildered look at Ben and muttering at him to wait there. While the two women were hunched over the computer in the office across the corridor, Ben went straight over to the filing cabinet, glided open the drawer labelled ‘PERSONNEL A — M’ and flicked through the index cards to D for Drummond. Finding the one he wanted, he managed to stuff it under his shirt just in time before Maud came waddling back into the room.
‘What was that about twelve million dollars?’ she said, frowning.
Ben waved his mobile phone at her. ‘Sorry, there’s been a mistake. Head office just called. Looks like we do have the address after all. Thanks for your time.’
He waited until he was safely back in the Jeep before he examined Drummond’s file. The photo showed a beefy-looking guy in his late thirties, cropped brown hair, bad skin, droopy moustache. Ben scanned quickly through his resumé. Drummond had joined the Cayman Air Authority Navigation Services Regulation Unit back in ’94 as a general assistant before gaining promotion four years later to the Approach Control team at Owen Roberts. His home address was on Shamrock Road, in the district of Bodden Town, a few miles to the east.
The road skirted the south side of the island and took Ben into a suburban residential neighbourhood where he quickly found Drummond’s nondescript little townhouse just off the street. There was a Ford Taurus parked in the drive, behind a blue van with ‘Bodden Town Cleaning Services’ emblazoned on the side.
Ben pulled up by the kerb and walked over to the house. The front door was ajar, and he heard a woman’s voice from inside. He knocked and pushed the door open a couple more inches to see a tiny grey-haired woman with a severe expression screeching orders at a pair of guys in overalls the same blue as the van. She stopped in mid-command and turned to glare at Ben.
‘Mrs Drummond?’ he asked.
‘You gotta be kidding me — Mrs Drummond,’ she snorted. ‘Who’re you?’
‘I was looking for Bob.’
‘Get in line. You find him, you tell that worthless piece of shit he owes me three months’ back-rent. And he needn’t try coming back to get his stuff. I’ve cleaned the place out.’
‘When did you last see him?’
‘Five, six days ago. I was coming over here to see him about the money when I saw him take off with these two guys in a car.’
‘Friends of his?’ Ben said.
‘I never saw them before, but I live across the other side of the island. You one of them debt collectors? Or a cop?’