Shooting Script

In the cold neon light there was a little huddle of vehicles: ambulance, police jeep, motorcycles, and dark figures moving slowly around them, measuring, searching, conferring – probably telling each other that a shotgun would have been, heard up in the control tower.

I said: 'You've got a perfect place for a murder just outside: the road to Port Royal. There isn't a house on it for five miles. So why don't you throw him in the bushes or chuck him in the sea there? Why go to the risk of bringing him into the airport and dumping him in my jeep?'

He flicked another propeller and gave me a crafty look. 'Perhaps he wanted to throw suspicion on you – had you thought of that?'

I shook my head. 'I don't see that, either. If he knew my jeep was a safe place to hide the body, he'd have to know I was away for the night – in Colombia. So I'd have an alibi anyway.'

'Ah yes.' He flipped back through his notebook. 'An alibi which will be backed up by an American girl lawyer, who will be here shortly. An American – girl – lawyer.'

He made it sound like an insult. '

It had been a long, full day. I felt like yawning, thought about not, then went ahead and yawned in his face.

'You don't seem very interested! ' he barked. 'I thought this man was a friend of yours.'

I shrugged. 'I was teaching him to fly twins. I was making money out of him.'

The sergeant said: 'You had your aeroplane confiscated in Santo Bartolomeo the other day.'

The inspector jerked around. 'Where d'you hear this?'

The sergeant waved a long thin hand in a helpless gesture. 'I just heard it around, su'.'

The inspector glared, then turned back to me. 'So you didn't have an aeroplane any more at the time?'

'True. But at the time I was still in Barranquilla.'

'Ha.' He twizzled the model into a flat spin. 'Well, what d'you suggest?'

'That he was waiting for me last night. He'd wait by my jeep because that's the one place he couldn't miss me. Somebody shot him and stuffed him under the covers as the nearest hiding place.'

He smiled thinly. 'You're forgetting the noise, aren't you? Have you ever heard a shotgun?'

The sergeant said: 'He must have, sir. Fighter pilots train with shotguns and clay pigeons. Something about learning deflection shooting.'

The inspector jerked around again. 'I suppose you just heardthat around, too?'

The sergeant smiled apologetically.

I said: 'Maybe it wasn't a shotgun.'

'You really think so? I know doctors are wrong most of the time, but not even a doctor could get a shotgun wound wrong.'

I just shrugged again. I could perhaps have added something to his store of knowledge on the subject, but his sneer at J.B. had got me niggled. Andhe was supposed to be the detective around here; let him detect something. Or ask his sergeant.

I just said: 'It's still the simplest solution.'

'Possibly,' he conceded. 'But let's consider the motive. What can you offer?'

'From some hints he dropped, he'd got a sex Ufelike a tomcat with reheat. Maybe he picked on somebody whose husband owned a… a shotgun.'

'Yes' – he nodded – 'yes, that's possible. A planter, somebody who lives out of Kingston. Somebody who'd need a shotgun for the mongoose.'

Oddly, the mongoose is a pest in Jamaica. Somebody brought them in some time back – probably from India – to get rid of the snakes. They did that, then started on the chickens as a dessert.

'But,' the inspector added, 'why come out to the airport to ki U him?1 Because you couldn't have found him to kill him anywhere else in the last few days: he'd been up in Ochoríoswith Whitmore. And probably when Luiz drove him down last night, they stopped for a drink in Kingston – and at one of Diego's boozing-places, because Luiz wouldn't know Kingston. And if you were an angry husband, you could have been haunting Diego's favourite joints the last few days, waiting for him. Then all you had to do was trail him to the airport, wait until Luiz went back, come quietly up in the dark cargo shed, and – bang.

Still assuming it was a shotgun, of course.

I was getting tired, and he was still supposed to be the detective. 'I don't know.'

He smiled. Above us, in the control room, a loudspeaker echoed, and far off I heard the whistle of a Viscount on the approach. The ten-thirty from Miami.

The phone rang. The inspector snatched it up, grunted several times, put it down.

Then he stood up. 'Your witness is here, Mr Carr. Miss – ah – Penrose. And Mr Luiz Monterrey. I'll lead the way.'

We wound down the concrete stairs. J.B. and Luiz were waiting on the edge of the loading area, escorted by a small posse of uniformed police.

J.B. saw me and said immediately: 'If they're trying to involve you, Carr, you don't have to say a damn thing without a lawyer present. If you haven't got your own man, I probably know enough Jamaican law to help out.'

The inspector was staring at her as if she'd sprouted a forked tail and spat on Moriarty's Police Law into the bargain.

Before he could explode, I said: 'Skip that. Just tell the man where I was last night.'

'In Barranquilla,' she said crisply. 'If you don't like my word, you can check the hotel, the airport authorities, the guy we bought a plane off, and the charter pilot who flew us in. You want their names?'

'Later, perhaps later.' He cleared his throat, then turned to Luiz. 'And if you're Mr Monterrey, I believe you drove the dead man down last night?'

Luiz opened his mouth, but was drowned by the sound of the Viscount rolling up to the ramp behind him. When its engines died, he said: 'We came in by the back gate, past the flying club, at about seven. We had a drink in the terminal, then I left about half-past nine. I'd parked my car over there' – he nodded at the cargo pier – 'and he walked over with me, and said he'd wait a while. He still thought Señor Carrmight come in that night.'

'I see.' The inspector turned to me. 'Were you planning to come back last night?'

'If the plane had been in better shape, I might have. As it was…'

He nodded, then announced: 'I understand you all knew the dead man. So I will now ask you to make a formal identification. You may be called on to repeat diis at the coroner's inquest.'

Luiz and I started simultaneously to protest on J.B.'s behalf. But she cut us off: 'I've had dead clients before.'

The inspector marched us off across the bright cold concrete towards the group at the cargo shed.

When we were lined up outside the ambulance, the sergeant gave a couple of orders in the broad Jamaican he saved for talking to constables, and somebody opened the doors and put on the lights.

In turn, we stepped up inside, looked, stepped down. It was warm inside the ambulance and it smelt of something. When I got down, I could feel the cold sweat on my forehead.

The inspector said softly: 'I'd have thought you'd seen dead men before, Mr Carr – in Korea.'

'No. Pilots only kill them. You don't see them.'

He grunted, then raised his voice. 'Do you identify this man?'

J.B. said: 'That's the man I met as Diego Ingles.'

He frowned at her careful legal phrasing, then turned to me. I nodded. 'That's Ingles.'

Luiz said: 'Yes.'

A constable in a white motorcycle crash helmet handed over a bunch of papers. The inspector thumbed through them, picked out a small booklet. After a moment he said: 'I have a passport here, found on the dead man. The full name appears to be Diego Jiminez Ingles.'

I said: 'Say that again.'

He looked at me, surprised. 'Does this contradict anything you understood?'

Not now; not any longer. I should have remembered, of course; Spanish custom uses both father's and mother's family names – but it puts father first. The son of Juan Smith Jones is Roberto Smith Brown – it's the middle name that matters. I should have remembered.

'Jiminez,' I said slowly. 'Perhaps that changes your case for you a little, Inspector.'