‘Roffey’s world-building power is on every page…exhilarating’
GUARDIAN
SAFIYA SINCLAIR
SARAH WINMAN
FURTHER PRAISE FOR PASSIONTIDE
‘Vital, enraging and brilliant. I loved it’
Sarah Winman
‘Passiontide is a resounding testament to the rebellious spirit and bravery of Caribbean women . . . By the end of this book, I was ready to join the revolution’
Safiya Sinclair
‘A tale that is both deeply personal and universally resonant . . . A compelling and unforgettable read’
Glamour
‘A state-of-the-island novel . . . It dramatises a full-throated campaign for change’
Guardian
‘A thrilling read, I loved it’
Sadie Jones
‘A vital novel . . . Fiery, funny and ferociously feminist’
Diana Evans
‘An exhilarating fantasy’
Lindsey Hilsum, TLS
‘A heartfelt novel filled with solidarity, love, joy’
Courttia Newland
‘Monique Roffey is a trailblazer of Caribbean literature’
Breanne Mc Ivor
‘Compelling . . . Passiontide is suspense-filled, and simmering with anger’
Mail on Sunday
‘The spirit of carnival itself is in the writing. A powerful and electrifying novel’
Jason Allen-Paisant
‘Extraordinary . . . It pulsates with the rebel spirit of women’
Hannah Lowe
‘Roffey lures you into her mesmerising world and spins an intricate, human story you can’t wait to unravel’
Amanda Smyth
‘An irresistible storyteller with a poetic touch’
Louisa Young
‘A pacy novel . . . a love letter to the islands’ women’ Literary Review
‘Raw and beautiful and in your face, this novel is a liberating read’
Julia Alvarez
‘The best book I have read in years. It’s so wonderful: so rich, inspiring, funny, moving’
Rosie Boycott
‘Beguiling . . . The maelstrom of daily Caribbean life swirls [within the novel]: grief, corruption, outrage, violence, excitement, friendship, love’
Claire Adam
‘Riveting. The novel captivates readers from its opening pages to its compelling conclusion’
Roger Robinson
‘This is a badass novel for a feminist generation’
Gabrielle Hosein
‘Bold and audacious . . . Devastating’ Trinidad Express
‘Propulsive . . . Passiontide is a revolutionary unforgetting: a sharp, sizzling declaration of “no more” that resounds’
Shivanee Ramlochan
‘Roffey masters the building sense of tension and scale as the women’s protest gathers strength’ Service95 Recommends
MONIQUE ROFFEY
Monique Roffey was born in Port of Spain, Trinidad, and lives in London. She is the author of seven novels and a memoir. The Mermaid of Black Conch won the Costa Book of the Year and the Costa Novel Award and was shortlisted for the Rathbones Folio Prize and the Goldsmiths Prize. Her other highly acclaimed books include Archipelago, which won the OCM Bocas Prize for Caribbean Literature, The White Woman on the Green Bicycle and House of Ashes. In addition to her work as an environmental activist, she is a professor of contemporary fiction at Manchester Metropolitan University.
ALSO BY MONIQUE ROFFEY
Fiction
Sun Dog
The White Woman on the Green Bicycle
Archipelago
House of Ashes
The Tryst
The Mermaid of Black Conch
Non-Fiction
With the Kisses of His Mouth
MONIQUE ROFFEY
Passiontide
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This is a work of fiction. It is inspired by a true event but is a re-imagining of what happened following that event. All characters, their actions and conversations are fictitious and the product of the author’s imagination.
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for all the others
‘. . . we seek beyond history for a new and more possible meeting.’
Audre Lorde
‘All things are by nature void, They are not born or destroyed . . .’
The Heart Sutra
‘So leave me alone.’
Calypso Rose
1. Holy Tree
When carnival was over, Port Isabella, St Colibri. Some time ago.
The man left quickly, like a rat, left me behind. Running away, after the slashing slashing. My neck hurts, that bite, teeth biting me hard. ‘Sora!’ I shout but no sound comes. My throat was hurt, choked. I’m looking down from above and also curled up on the ground, down in the garbage, bottles and cans, cardboard boxes. Tree roots like rivers, mounds of trash, oh, no, not there. Carnival Tuesday, my costume still on. Pale nest of arms and legs; jewels in my headband. I wanted to take the costume home. Nausea surges up, ashes of the attack. ‘No, no, no!’ Me, oating, looking down at my body amongst the smashed-up cannonball fruit, a holy tree. ‘Sora!’ I cannot be dead yet. Please. I’m not ready. I want to fall back down again, please, play steel pan again. Get me down! Somebody come, fetch me. Go back down, Sora. Go home. Far away, laughter; las lap parties, people liming, dancing. Breathe, breathe. Am I already all that’s left?
no port ever innocent
Inspector Cuthbert Loveday peered out across the valley of rooftops towards the misted blue of the gulf. Sky bright bright already even so early. Light so light it hurt his eyes to look out the window, even through the narrow slats of the blind. Sun already dripping down like a re and another carnival done. Everything calm. Quiet. All of it like earthquake weather.
Morning after.
Everybody sleeping.
Angelica sleeping too, one leg hanging off the bed, her backside naked to the world . . . and to wake her up for more sexing meant more effort than he could give right then and anyway he hadda get home soon, before the wife get vex an cuss. He ipped the slats closed, lit a cigarette. A knot in the pit of his stomach; a faraway dread he barely heeded these days. He was okay. He always would be, and yet, tap, tap, tap, at his back, like someone always trying to get in.
His work phone vibrated softly on the ledge, the incoming number ashed the unit’s new Duty Sergeant, Alwyn Ryen.
‘Yeah, Alwyn. What’s up?’
‘We get a call from some workers, out cleaning up. They nd a dead woman. On the savannah. Under a tree.’
‘A tree?’
‘Yes, boss. Apparently.’
‘Which tree?’
‘That big tree, nuh. The cannonball tree opposite the school. On the western side of the savannah.’
‘Oho.’
It have two of them strange trees on the savannah, this one he knew well, like a giant, by the water pump station.
‘Curled up, nuh. Like she asleep, or so they saying.’
‘Shit, dead?’
‘Yes, sir.’
‘Dead dead?’
‘Boss, yes. They thinking is one of them women you does see in the pansides, from Japan. You know. Real cute.’
‘Them boys is saying that?’
‘Apparently, yeah. An she have purple hair.’
‘What? You sure she not just unconscious? From too much liquor. You sure she dead?’
‘She dead, sir. Strangled, they saying, and bitten.’
‘Bitten?’
‘Yes, on she neck. Seem like some mad man bite and strangle she dead right there.’
‘You sure she ent get bitten on she ass?’ And he laughed to himself.
In his car, Loveday pressed two painkillers into his palm and knocked them back with some warm bottled water. These days he going to bed with a headache and not sleeping it off. Headache still there in the morning. Dead women not going away either; his job with female homicides a constant thorn in his side, given all the gang-related homicides on the island. Maybe the whole damn place have the same not-going-away headaches he have. Every now and then he gure he could pack up, take the wife and kids,
move south and resettle. Deep south, down by the long beaches, the caves full of blue crabs, a simple life. Where he was happiest, as a boy. Get some quiet, sorry-ass police job. And then he remember that place have it own problems.
Angelica’s small apartment, six hundred feet above sea level. The cruise down was steep and winding. From the west, a breeze coming in like a kiss. Beyoncé’s Hold Up on the radio, and he sang along. Women could be ‘jealous’ and ‘crazy’, yes, too often. He glanced left and took in a long sight he always liked to see: the whole city of Port Isabella lay at and wide; busy with galvanised rooftops, silver and red. He knew it like a map, like the back of his own st, each road, each main artery, each side street; he could even name which gang lord, which second in command, lived where. The view from up here always made him feel calm and anxious, equally. This city not at all easy, not even today; rst day of Lent and the day after the bacchanal stop. Sea: enormous and blue and innocent, and then port – no port ever innocent – and then city again and most of the city still dormant, for now. Down, down, to the savannah and the place of this nex dead woman. Cannonball tree. Yeah, he knew the one. He kept singing ‘jealous’ and ‘crazy’. He saw Beyoncé in the video, a magni cent golden gown, long, owing hair, smashing up cars with a baseball bat, like them cars were she man’s car. Yeah, women could be so: true fact.
what you dreaming about?
Loveday saw the body before he came close: a young, pale-skinned woman lookin like she only asleep, in truth, curled up under a tree in her pretty mas costume. A bad sight, man; the wrong part was she sleeping amongst the stinkin nasty carnival refuse and the jumble of fallen brown cannon balls.
Steupse.
Nobody at the morgue, the forensics team likely all sleeping carnival off. Forrester probably out of the country. People avoided the of ce after carnival. It not an of cial holiday but people home. A group of city workers stood close to the tree. Men in green overalls and rubber boots. They looked quiet, gazing downwards. Savannah already scorched from an early dry season; everything looking dry and brown. The workers had come to make a start on cleaning up. They stood back as he approached.
‘So, so, so,’ he hailed them.
As he drew closer, his stomach pitched, unexpectedly. She was small. This one, bam, right there. Okay. Already he knew what he knew when dead women were left so, like this: displayed in a public space. Often, but not always, dead from someone she knew. He stood above her, gazed down. Purple hair, yes. This woman curled up in a C, amongst the smashed brown balls on the ground. Like a miniature Wonder Woman in her bikini and headdress and boots. A sharp stench of urine wafting up from the ground. The tree probably like a latrine over carnival.
He took out his notebook, wrote:
1) Intimate Partner Violence? Possible? Crawl there, die so?
2) CCTV tape, from the camera across the road?
He looked around. A crime scene always mysterious. Clues everywhere and yet many answers to gure out. Flies buzzed all over her. He squatted down on his haunches and waved to shoo them. He peered closer.
Skin already greying. Pallor mortis setting in. Not long she dead. Not possible for longer than twelve hours, max.
Red ants crawled in a ne line, across one hip.
Yeah: real dead.
Shit.
Just when he thought carnival pass without a dead. Her bikini costume still neat neat, like it stuck on with glue. Green jewels at her forehead, xed to a band like a crown. Her costume still intact.
He wrote:
3) Costume intact.
4) Rape? Looking unlikely.
Why you go and dead so? Eh? Yuh boyfriend do this? Eh?
Steupse. Nice lil chicky.
‘Alluyuh nd her like this?’
‘Yes, boss,’ one of the workers replied.
‘Anyone touch her?’
‘No, boss.’
‘You sure of that?’
‘Boss, we just nd her, an hour ago. We leave her so and our manager call de police.’
‘Which one of you found her?’
‘Me,’ said a tall, stringy-looking red man.
‘You’ll need to make a statement to Sergeant Ryen at some point.’
‘Sure, boss.’
‘What’s your name?’
‘Rudi.’
‘Rudi?’
‘Rudi Mackenzie, boss.’
Loveday gazed around, this time searching the horizons of the savannah; like the killer might still be loitering. Sometimes they did. Always good to check they not hiding in plain sight. To the left, the famous boulevard of trees planted by colonials long ago so the trams could pass through. At night, the whole place one big dark patch of ground cover for any thief or murderer. The killer could escape easy, get himself well away from here in minutes.
‘You found her curled up?’
‘Yes.’
‘You sure you ent touch her? No one arrange her like this?’
‘What? Me? Nah.’
The man looked solemn, almost moved to tears.
‘Okay, good. Thank you.’
The cannonball tree was vast. He peered upwards at the trunk, up into its wild mess of fruit and massive arms. All kinda cannonball-shaped fruit was all tangled up and dangling down in spirals. Like small bodies were caught up in some type of trap. Not so close to the road. She wouldn’t have been easily spotted by anyone driving past the night before. One wrist was cuffed with a carnival band ID bracelet. One word on it: QUEST. He took out his cell phone and snapped some photographs of the bracelet, the number on it. Blood had dried and caked round her mouth. Mascara had clotted around her eyes. Coral lipstick still drawn on.
And yes, there, a bite mark on the left side of her neck. High up. Or half a bite mark. Brown bruises all over her neck, too. He snapped close ups. Forrester would take photos later, in the morgue, but he always wanted his own. What kind of animal would bite anyone so, eh? Nothing he’d seen before. Like a vampire bat went for her. A love bite? Had this started with consent? Again, his stomach pitched, damn it, and a lump jammed up in his throat.
The men were still gazing down at her.
‘Stand back, please,’ he said, but he knew why they couldn’t tear themselves away. Alive, it was plain enough to see she was a certain class of woman, out of their league. Dead, she right there. They were standing way too close.
Loveday coughed to clear his throat. Reluctantly, they stood back. Sergeant Ryen, the new man in the unit, usually only at the desk, taking calls, was standing around, looking awkward. Skeleton staff on the day after carnival so he here, keepin his distance. Like he scared or shamed to see the sight of a pretty young woman lying dead on the ground. He knew a good portion of local men beat they wife, they outside woman, even they chilren, but few men ever got to see a sight like this. Pretty foreign woman. Dead like a dog.
5) Yeah, maybe from one of them big pansides, in truth.
He’d check around. A dozen or so little Japanese chickys come every year for carnival. Cute and ladylike in the front row of many of the big pansides. Play as good as any local man.
Loveday took latex gloves from his pocket, snapped them on. He touched her with the back of his hand.
Still warm.
He pulled back her long purple hair. Lacerations, across her chest. The lunatic had also attacked her with a cutlass . . . or
something, and then used his hands to choke her dead? Bite mark, a body arranged. No rape. All of this unusual.
‘You brought tape?’ he said to Ryen. He nodded.
‘Well, what you doing standing around like some mook. Go an fuckin get it. Tape off all around here. We gonna need forensics, right now.’
‘They at home, boss.’
‘Not anymore. Do as I say. Call them. Get them here. Get them on the phone and let me talk to whoever on duty at the Forensics Centre today, we need a team down here now. We need the whole area taped off. She gonna have to go straight in a cold locker.’
Loveday stood up and peeled off his gloves. The workers were like they still didn’t want to leave. ‘Thank you,’ he said. ‘You can go now.’
‘Shouldn’t we ask them to stay?’ asked Sergeant Ryen.
‘Why?’
‘They’re witnesses, they found her. They might have DNA an thing on them.’
‘DNA on the workers? Where you read about this? In some handbook?’
‘They have contaminated the crime scene.’
‘Crime scene? Contaminated? Are you mad? Look around. What do you see? Eh?’
Sergeant Ryen looked around.
‘Eh? Tell me.’
‘I see a dead woman. Under a tree.’
‘And what else?’
Sergeant Ryen’s eyes burnt with shame. Ryen was just another inappropriate man for this unit. Homicide not for him. He soft. A country bookie.
Loveday sucked his teeth. OMWEN , Of ce for Murdered
Women, turned out to be a bad situation, in truth: he an inspector, high-level policeman, crack shot an thing. What he doing out here, a man on the ground, taking call outs? And dealing with one setta rookies with not one brain cell in they head.
‘The whole fuckin place is contaminated. See? Carnival, man. The whole place stink. She lying down dead in one setta man’s piss. Rubbish everywhere. See?’
‘But, boss . . . these men could easily still have DNA on them, from the killer. We should bag their clothes. At the very least.’
Loveday could box the man down for his stupidness.
‘The man who found her, Mr Mackenzie. Take a statement from him. Okay? Get the manager’s phone number too. Let forensics deal with DNA . That’s not your job. For now, go and get the fuckin tape. Stop anyone else from coming close. Before you contaminate my ass.’
He gave Ryen a look from hell and Ryen moved off towards the police vehicle parked not far off. To the workers he said, ‘Except for Mr Mackenzie, you can all go, okay? We will get your details from your manager and we will take more witness testimonies if we need them. We’ll be in touch.’
The men still seemed unhappy to leave. They staring down at the ground, at the heap of woman. Like they want to pick her up, move her, hide the pitiful sight of her. Purple hair and tiny green bikini. Like someone famous lay dead there under the tree, early that morning, when the whole city was hung over, when Lent had started and the churches packed all day, with granny and tantie and alluh dem in they hat and thing. When not one person on the island had any time for this. Another dead woman. A nex headache arrive and started to gnaw in the back of his skull. His phone buzzed again. Roberta, his wife, and he sent the call to voicemail. He’d promised her a day with the kids. Her family were coming over for a BBQ .
Ryen was returning with the police tape.
Loveday peered down at the young woman. Shit. Foreign women were a frikkin liability, especially at carnival time; didn’t know their way around. They come. Beat some pan. Drink some rum. Wine up on the hard cock of some local man. Only a matter of time one wind up dead like this.
Loveday took more photographs on his phone, ID ing her for the costume, her boots. He knew the QUEST band leader from all his press, Jon Arnold, an ex-chef who ran a fancy restaurant in town. Her hair. Strange. Dyed for carnival? It would mark her out. Maybe even make her more of a target.
In his notebook he wrote:
6) Japanese? Korean? American? Check the big pansides, ASAP.
7) Meteors? East Stars?
8) Identi cation? Send men to the QUEST mas camp HQ .
9) Bring Jon Arnold in for some routine questions. Jon would have this woman’s name and address on his computer les. From there:
10) Haul in any boyfriend, then her friends.
Random ‘stranger homicides’ did happen in this city, but rarely to foreign women. Men, here, killed women they knew and lived with, mostly. Almost a rule. But this woman lookin foreign and that would be hell on a plate. (NB : call the Commissioner. He always need to know this level of thing.)
Loveday lit a cigarette and looked out over the waste land of the savannah. A foreigner. Heat in his ass.
He studied her bitten neck. That feeling of dreadness swam back again, knotted itself tight and tugged. Tap, tap, tap. She
looking like she was only asleep, like she was only lying there, dreaming. What you dreaming about, Miss? Eh? He watched Sergeant Ryen busting some tape, sealing off the area, and he cussed under his breath. In all his years as a homicide cop, he knew the city of Port Isabella was a hard place. Hard like New York and maybe even Mumbai put together. Hard like Mexico City and different to downtown Kingston, Jamaica. Port Isabella was its own place. Named after that great Spanish Queen of long ago, an all the horrors of bygone years, named after her ‘conquest’. Isabella had brought her terrors here, yes. Bad queen. Bad city. The city quiet quiet for now; always so when carnival done, quiet like in prayer.
Dead now. That life now all over. How can anyone kill off someone else? End a life. How? Can they ever nd out who murdered me? All a blur. Slashing, slashing and rough words. A homeless man found me rst. Dead a few hours by then. I watched him staring, looking for food, money? He touched me, touched my arm, poke, poke. No money for you, sir. He checked to see if I had a purse. ‘Leave me alone!’ No sound. Always loved that tree on the savannah, the ‘nagalinga tree’, its other name, looks like the sal tree, a temple tree. Sacred, owers resemble the divine cobra’s hood that sheltered the Buddha as he meditated. I crawled there, afterwards, hands and knees. Half dead already, wanting to fall asleep close to this tree so it would shelter me. Pain in my neck still there, my throat. Homeless man backed away and ran, from the sight of me, murdered. Then, the workmen came running.
teamwork
Peridot Hurley had texted Sora four times with no reply. Not like her. And she hadn’t shown up at the las lap party like she said she would the night before. Not like her, either. Four of them were now at island homeowners, waiting for her to join them. One taxi boat had already left. It was 9 am, morning after carnival done, and the place would soon be busy.
‘I’m worried,’ said Peridot. ‘This ent like her at all. She would text us back.’
‘Maybe she loss her phone,’ said Mark.
‘She could still get a message to us.’
‘I saw her last night. She was with Henrique. I saw her liming at the panyard. They were going to get something to eat and he was walking her home.’
‘Have you called him?’
‘Yes. He not answering his phone either. Maybe they together.’
Peridot felt a seizure of hot pain in her chest. Sora didn’t like Henrique in that way, or so she’d said.
‘You really think they together?’
‘Well he making tracks behind her all since she arrived.’
‘That doh mean anything. She doh like him “like that”. Sora would call us. Let us know. She wanted to come today. I arranged this trip for her. She’s never been down the islands.’
‘Nah, I feel she with Henrique.’
‘She doh like Henrique in that way. How many times I have to say it? Now I worried.’
‘Well, what do you want to do?’
‘I not going. You go. I’m going to her apartment. You sure you saw her last night?’
‘Yes.’
‘What time?’
‘Around six.’
‘With Henrique?’
‘Yes.’
‘I must have called her around eight pm. She texted back she was coming to Sandra’s party.’
‘Look, she ne,’ Mark assured.
‘I doh think so.’
A second taxi boat was pulling up. The driver was manoeuvring his boat backwards, towards the jetty. Bettina and Karen were foreign women too, English. Down for carnival, staying with family friends. They didn’t know Sora.
‘Why don’t you go with them,’ Peridot suggested, a sudden t of bad feeling sweeping through her. She should go back. Check up on Sora. She knew where the keys to her apartment were kept. ‘Go. Have a good day.’
‘You not coming?’
‘Nah.’
‘Really?’
‘Ah feeling bad.’
‘You sure?’
‘This not like her. Is, you know . . . wrong.’ Peridot smiled limply at the two very sunburnt English women. Both women had played mas in QUEST and both had turned beetroot over the last two days; she’d promised her aunt she would look after them;
both had that post-carnival face, a mixture of happy fatigue and openness. They were going to a house in Agnes Bay where a small lime would be gathering. Her stomach was beginning to turn sour.
‘You take my Aunt’s friends. I’ll be in touch. I’m going back into town to nd Sora. I’ll come back with her. Okay?’
By the time Dr Jason Forrester had even heard of the foreign homicide, it was lunchtime and the body had been put in a locker where the temperature was too low; she was more or less frozen. The arses never thought to text or call him. Loveday knew he lived close, but Loveday had blocked him as often as he could, over the years. Loveday liked to be the boss of this particular specialist unit and saw no foreign white man as any kind of authority. Impossible, then, to know the time of this young woman’s death.
Forrester slid the body on the trolley out into the mortuary room. She’d been found curled, foetus-like, or so they said. Likely, she’d crawled to the tree to die. All mammals do this. Basic self-protection after trauma. And she was still warm, they said. At least they made some notes. These were written and signed by a Sergeant Ryen, someone new. Loveday often wouldn’t share his notes or said he hadn’t taken any. Lies. Police procedure on the island was often vague, at best, and generally ineffective, with a tiny fraction of homicides ever solved. At least they’d managed to uncurl her before they slid her in the locker. Now, naked under the sheet, she appeared clinically, formally dead, and sadly, very young. Pretty and murdered. A diplomatic scandal if she was indeed foreign, and he wondered if he still had it in him to care.
Desiree, one of his young lab assistants, came in and inched. Strange. Desiree was always so calm and self-contained, with an
almost reverent way with the deceased, had some kind of vocation for working with the dead.
‘They froze her, can you believe it?’
‘Dem police is stupid. An she lookin so familiar. You know who she is?’
‘No.’
‘You know what I mean?’
Most of the dead that came in were unknown to him; rare to see someone he knew or might know on the trolley. But something about her was familiar.
‘Yes.’
‘Some man bite she?’
‘Looks like it.’
He realised his assistant and the woman on the trolley were about the same age. Desiree, with her cloud of wild black curls, bright dark eyes, was very much alive, though.
‘You don’t need to help me with this.’
‘Is okay,’ she said. ‘I’ll go fetch my coat.’
All his assistants were young, three of them female, most of them with some basic nursing experience under their belts. Good pay, regular hours. He hadn’t expected any of them to last, but they had. None had any formal training in forensic pathology and he’d shared his knowledge as best he could. Desiree was the most gifted of the three women. A natural, hands-on doctor in another life. Her granny had been a healer, she’d often said. Used herbs and bush medicines, some from her garden.
‘Mr Forrester, I just hearing about her on the news.’
‘Yeah, it’s gonna be a big story.’
‘They saying she a pan player, from Japan, I hearing from friends on WhatsApp.’
‘Nothing has been con rmed yet.’
‘Das why she lookin familiar.’
‘Maybe.’
‘Yeah, boy, I feel I know her.’
Later, when the body thawed, he began his work with Desiree at his side. Her injuries were plain enough, even to an amateur observer. The thumb prints on her neck were almost visible, the killer had used that much force. Strangulation. The man, and it had to be a man, given the injuries, was left-handed, too, from the direction of the marks. Maybe the prints could be lifted. Strangulators, known as the dumbest of murderers, because they often left behind a calling card that got them caught: their own prints on the corpse.
‘He strangle her,’ said Desiree.
‘Yes.’
‘If that ever happen to me, boy, I would ght like a devil.’
This caught him unawares and he sti ed a gasp.
‘Don’t . . .’ and he stopped himself. What? Get yourself killed? ‘Okay, let’s begin with the external ID .’
‘Okay.’
‘Age?’
‘I’m thinking early twenties.’
‘Me too.’
‘Gender?’
‘Female.’
‘Ethnicity?’
‘Like they saying, she could be Japanese.’
‘We don’t know for certain.’
‘When will we know?’
‘Hopefully by the end of the day, or tomorrow. Loveday’s team is on the case.’
For a few moments, they gazed at her. Yes. She was familiar. Like family. A small island. Everyone here was connected to everyone
else, even her. A young pan player who came to the island regularly, for years, would be connected too. If that’s who she was.
‘Let’s take her measurements. Here,’ and he passed her the tape measure.
Together they measured her lengthwise, then her arms, legs, width across her hips. His head swirled as he gazed down at the naked limbs. This was happening more often. His sight blurred. He stopped, steadied himself. He took a deep breath.
‘Look, can you see these lacerations to her chest?’
‘Yes.’
‘And one to the left forearm? See? When I checked earlier, I found no blood or obvious signs of tissue under her nails. Sometimes you can see blood. Looks like she barely tried to ght her killer off.’
‘Jesus, Lord.’ Desiree sucked her teeth.
‘Of course, we’ll know more when her bloodwork and DNA test is back.’
He’d self-diagnosed his own PTSD years ago. You can’t examine hundreds of dead bodies a year and not get sick.
‘Maybe he’d been that quick,’ he continued. ‘You know? Jumped on her from behind. It was dark. The bite mark on her neck shows his front upper teeth are missing. See?’
Desiree nodded. ‘Yeah, I seein it. Like she get bite by a soucoyant.’
‘Yes, or a . . . man, a killer with no upper front teeth.’
But he’d still taken a bite of the apple. Half a rosette of tiny indents on her neck. Perhaps even a trophy of some sort. A mouthful of esh. A toothless murderer. His victim discarded there, under that tree of all trees. Every man who ran the savannah at dusk had pissed under it, at least once, including himself. A friendly monster of a tree, one he’d often marvelled at when he rst arrived and walked the savannah: nests of fruit hung from its
branches which could be coconuts sprouting, except from the wrong tree. Heavily scented, crimson owers sometimes bloomed and fell down its trunk in a spangled mess.
‘Here,’ he said, and passed Desiree the small tub of Vicks. Desiree smeared some under her nose. They’d do the internal together. He usually did this alone. Cutting, sawing, the weighing of organs. But Desiree had asked him; she wanted to learn.
‘You sure you want to do this?’
‘How else I go study?’ she said.
‘Okay.’
‘This is a job,’ she said. ‘Why I can’t do it, too? You think I fraid death? Nah. I laid out mih Aunty body when she dead. Straighten out she bones. Death is natural. Women does always take care of they dead. Always. Is a woman’s job, yuh know. I good.’
He could feel his blood pressure plummet, a lightness in his head.
‘Excellent.’
‘But she? She could never be local,’ she said.
‘Why?’
‘Local women are more careful. They do walk the savannah, all early o’clock and at dusk. All ve, six o’clock in the evening. You does see women running and walking, in twos, but not when it dark. Not alone in a costume like that. No. Poor woman.’
This woman wasn’t ‘poor’, not in the other sense of the word, not if indeed she was a Japanese pan player. If that was the case, she’d own here, likely a long-haul ight; brought her own steel pan with her, maybe. Paid her own way, probably, self-funded her trip, perhaps, maybe for multiple years. This was a woman who’d time and money to invest in a culture far away from her own. Many came every year. Now she was dead.
Forrester had seen many murdered women in this city. All their faces had blurred into one. Port Isabella was dominated by two
large gangs, Rasta Town and the Mullahs. He’d seen men tortured with hot irons for a PIN , men slashed with broken glass bottles and barbed wire for transgressing gang rules, men decapitated, men shot with every kind of weapon, from handguns to militarygrade weapons, none of which were made on the island. Women were murdered, too, in all of this; some women were killed in reprisals and revenge. But most? Most killings of women were different. Women here, like anywhere, mostly got killed for being women.
From a shelf, he took his small tape recorder and clicked it on and placed it on the gurney.
‘Here,’ he said, handing the camera to Desiree. ‘You take the pictures today.’ He gave her the Nikon he’d bought himself when he rst arrived. The government had refused to pay for it, to pay for anything he actually needed. As Desiree took the photos, her face became placid; quietly, she went to an almost serene state. But Forrester felt a fresh churning in his stomach. When would he say ‘enough’? He began to speak her injuries into the mic as Desiree snapped away. Teamwork. He felt grateful he wasn’t alone, and awful that he was in the company of two young women. He must stop. Try something else. Landscape gardening, or tour guiding back in the UK , anything.
‘Bite mark – upper left neck, upper row of teeth missing.’ Snap.
‘Pressure bruises, thorax.’ Snap.
Cold in the locker. Cold, cold. Our bodies just a home for each of us to live inside. Measure me, scrape under my nails. Neck bitten. DNA there, surely. Catch him from that bite? Take photographs. Snap, snap. Cut me open, weigh my heart. How much did that weigh? I couldn’t read the notes the young woman scribbled. Desiree. ‘Autopsy’. Bag me up, zip me shut. Skin like concrete now. A frozen me. ‘Form is emptiness, emptiness form,’ said the Buddha’s arahants. People will say I was a ‘silly foreign woman’. No. I am – was, a musician. I travelled across the world by plane, to play steel pan. We all come to play pan. Music was my life. We didn’t come without a lot of admiration for the pannists of St Colibri. I bought my own tenor pan in St Colibri years ago, two others since then. Local pannists respected us. Steel pan can be a life. Pan music was, was, a great love.
ah wine up in any fête
Sharleen Sellier was chatting to her faithful pot hound, Peanut, in her pickup truck on the beach road home, when her boss called about a white woman found murdered on the savannah that morning. Could she come in? Then go check around near the crime scene? Speak to people, get some comments. Forensics tent up on the savannah, the place crawling with men in hazmat suits, small parties of onlookers passing by. Already it was all over the radio.
‘How did you not hear about this?’ Larry growled. Larry had no life. He was in the St Colibri Guardian of ce all hours and even now, on the day after carnival. How he’d stayed married was beyond her. He was a good man, though. One of the few who didn’t play around. She checked her watch. It was only 2 pm. She’d gone to the beach early, met a couple of friends there, was escaping as a long line of oncoming cars now queued for the same beach road.
‘I was at the beach.’
‘Well, I want you to come in. We need you to cover this.’
‘The crime reporters can’t do it?’
‘They already on it.’
‘So why me too? I booked today off. Can’t it wait til tomorrow?’
‘You is Woman’s Affairs Editor, so no. And now it lookin like she foreign, one bacchanal will start if das true. We need you on it now. Is a story which could break big any minute.’
‘American?’
‘No idea.’
‘A tourist?’
‘No of cial press brie ng, yet. It’s all leaking out. Some workers found her this morning when they went to clean up. What I’m hearing from my sources is that she was found under that big cannonball tree opposite the school. Strangled. Can you believe that? Wearing a costume from QUEST. And that she has purple hair.’
‘Christ. Loveday handling it?’
‘No. They ying in a squad from Scotland Yard.’
‘Holy crap.’
‘I’m kidding. Of course Loveday handling it.’
‘Shit. Then the case already cold.’
‘That doh matter. We need you on it too. Can you be here in an hour?’
Sharleen checked her watch. If she hit the gas she could y home, bathe, feed the dog. Rustle some leftovers together for her son Marlon who was likely still sleeping. Get out again, then drive into town, just.
‘Okay, ah comin.’
‘Good.’
‘Just get here. I’ll have more info by then.’
She hit the accelerator and Peanut poked his head out of the window, smiling into the oncoming wind, ears streaming behind him. She punched the number for her good friend Tara and put the phone on speaker on the dashboard.
‘Ayyyy, Sellier,’ came Tara’s clean, crisp voice. ‘What going on? Why aren’t you at church? We seein you, later?’
‘Ha. Ha. Nah, das why I calling. I just get ordered into the of ce.’
‘Why?’
‘The editor wants me to cover this murder.’
‘Which murder?’
‘You haven’t heard about it, either?’
‘Gurl, I still in bed.’
‘Some white woman dead on the savannah. Murdered.’
‘Shit.’
‘Apparently, yeah. It all over the radio already.’
‘Well, ent hear nothing. I asleep, here. Nestled up with Janelle.’
‘Lucky you. Send her my love.’
‘Where on the savannah?’
‘Under the cannonball tree, the one near the water pump station.’
‘That tree? Whaaaaa . . .’
‘Yeah, that tree.’
‘Look, sorry not to see you later. Keep me in the loop, okay?’
‘Will do.’
‘Talk again soon.’
‘Yeah.’
Sharleen rummaged with one hand in her bag, found the end of an old joint and lit it with the car’s power outlet. Wow. Like a white elephant get shot. She could smell the political scandal brewing already. Nobody here, high up, give too much of a damn about all the other women murdered. Black women? Indian women? Poor women? Working class? Nobody care. Street walkers and sex workers? Nah. Single women, teenagers. Mothers? No one doing much about it. OMWEN a joke. Women disappear, and then get found dead, again, and again. No one seem to bat an eye. Everybody numb. Or maybe somebody’s family kick up a fuss. Maybe. On Facebook, people cuss and criticise. Tara and her NGO , Inaru, put out a press statement, the feminists at the university make a lot of noise on social media. A nex protest group get organise. Women’s groups here active long time; each will send out a statement too. The women’s movement here strong; they get the Sexual Offences Act passed, the Domestic Violence Bill passed, but that
still not enough. Social media storm happen. A funeral. It might make the news. News at Seven O’Clock. A few pages of news at best. Or a ash front page on one or two of the dailies. Then it all goes away, again. Few men get prosecuted, let alone charged. Gangs bribing police, so police not dealing with gang-related deaths, let alone women getting killed; they just extra deaths.
Jon Arnold rocked back in his chair at the station downtown and smiled his broad smile. Arnold was a man with natural con dence, a man who’d built himself from nothing into a man of considerable wealth, a carnival band, a couple of well-known fusion-Caribbean cuisine restaurants in town that a trendy crowd liked. He was wild looking, a real mixed-up Creole, a massive fro of tight ginger curls and a spray of freckles across his nose. His skin was red and his teeth were huge and his voice loud and baritone. He was a woman’s man, lean for his fty-something years, and talk was he only ate his steak raw. Loveday had showed him the photos he’d taken on his phone. Jon looked genuinely shocked, initially, a good sign, but had recovered himself quickly.
(Note to self: JA not the killer.)
‘Them Japanese girls are the sweetest girls,’ he said to Loveday. ‘They give everybody ah wine up in any fête, an a hug up, they lots of fun to be around. I sorry to hear about this. Yeah, man. I knew her well.’
Loveday nodded. ‘Yeah, I sorry too.’
‘Sora was a ne player, came here every year for many years. She woulda been in the country for weeks, all of them y in early, so they can get on board from the start, yuh know?’
