Circle of Bones - Kling Christine - Страница 27

Diggory walked ahead several steps then turned. “Noticed? What are you talking about?”

“Your little hobby. This time, it surprised me, though. They said she hanged herself by accident, playing sex games. Sound familiar?”

Diggory chuckled. “Was it our people? The ones who did Thatcher?”

Caliban resumed walking and caught up to him. “You and I are the only ones on the island, Thor.”

“I see. Then maybe she was playing sex games.”

“Hmm. I suppose. The whole thing made me a bit curious, you see.”“Really?” Diggory stopped walking and looked at the other man, raising one dark eyebrow. “Are you interested in those sorts of games, Caliban?”

The older man looked away, shaking his head from side to side. They had arrived at the place where the dirt path ended. To continue up the hill, they would have to pick their way across an outcropping of jagged limestone rock. The surf thundered against the rocks to their left. Caliban turned back to face him, his mouth smiling, his eyes not. “After you?” he said.

Diggory did not hesitate for even a fraction of a second. He plunged forward stepping carefully from rock to rock, his arms outstretched like a tightrope walker. The rocks were covered with algae because, Diggory knew, the tide was at dead low.

“There’s something else, Thor,” Caliban said and Diggory was surprised that the voice was right behind him. The older man was having no trouble keeping up. “It’s about the woman sailor.”

That nearly stopped him. “What about her?” Diggory chose the rocks he stepped on with great care, inching the two of them closer to the tide line.

“Her name is Marguerite Riley.” A fine mist floated over them from the waves crashing to their left and white foam swirled around the rocks at their feet. “Does that name mean anything to you, Thor?”

This time he did stop — without warning. He turned and saw Caliban almost lose his balance as he tried to refrain from running into the younger man. Diggory kept on pivoting out and around and simultaneously he heard the pop of the other man’s gun and saw the barrel pointing skyward as Caliban struggled for balance. Diggory’s own hand flew out of his pocket. The sap came down hard on the back of the silver-haired skull, and the big man collapsed into a pool of receding foam.

Diggory looked around to see if there were any witnesses, but he saw no one on the isolated peninsula of rock. The beach was more than half a mile away and hidden behind several sculptured rock spires.  He bent to the other man and felt for a pulse. Beneath his fingers, the warm skin on the man’s neck throbbed with life. The half-opened eyes suggested it would be a long time before he regained consciousness. Diggory went through Caliban’s pockets removing the secure satellite phone. He retrieved the gun from a pool of water. He left the wallet.

Sliding his fingers into the silver hair, Diggory gazed at the face in his hands. It was a handsome face with a strong chin like his own. He could not see the weakness, but it was there or it would not have been so easy for him. He wrapped his hands around the neck, then fought the urge to squeeze. No, that would not look like an accident. Dig grabbed the ears in both his hands, lifted the head stretching the neck to its limit and then slammed the head down on a sharp pinnacle of black limestone. He heard the bone crunch and saw the blood seeping down the slime-covered rock. He checked his watch. The tide would turn in the next few minutes and soon these rocks would be covered with water.

Diggory stood, cocked his head to one side and looked down at the crumpled form. Already, the man looked smaller as though some part of him were now gone. Dig sighed and shook his head. “These rocks are slippery, you know,” he said aloud. Then he turned, and smiling, he leaped from rock to rock back toward his car.

CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

Fort Napoleon

Iles des Saintes

March 26, 2008

3:20 p.m.

Riley stepped into the weeds on the side of the road as a bus lumbered up the hill engulfing her in a cloud of hot diesel fumes. She turned her head to the side and held her breath for a few seconds but kept on walking. A French family with two morose-looking teenage girls stood on the other side of the road, hands on their hips, wheezing and coughing in the cloud of exhaust. Aside from a single man who was several switchbacks behind them, they were the only ones attempting the climb on foot. Riley was pleased to note that she was more than half-way up the hill to Fort Napoleon, and she didn’t even feel winded. The daily exercises and morning swims had paid off.

The island of Terre de Haut, the largest of the eight small islands that make up the archipelago known as Les Saintes, wasn’t all that large. Three miles long and less than half a mile wide, with only the one village, Bourges des Saintes, it was small enough that Riley figured if Bob was there, she’d run into him eventually. She’d started at the dinghy dock shortly after her noon arrival and roamed the streets of the quaint little town, looking in the doors of restaurants and doing a quick turn around the touristy souvenir shops, chatting with other yachties, bringing the conversation around to this guy she had met in Deshaies who had a tattoo on his collarbone, shaggy brown hair, built like a wrestler. No luck. In the bakery, she’d lingered a little longer admiring the pastries and breathing in the smell of the fresh baguettes, querying the teenaged girl behind the counter about this cute American guy, but she was met with a blank stare.  On the beach, the local wooden racing sloops with bright, candy-colored hulls and yellow, green and blue sails were the object of many a tourist’s camera, but while Riley had scoured the beach for over an hour, she’d not seen a glimpse of the one tourist she sought: Bob.

So, her next goal had been to search the fort. All afternoon the buses had picked up the hordes of tourists who jammed the square as they hurried off the ferries from the main island. With their cameras at the ready, they rode up the many switchbacks that led to Fort Napoleon with its commanding view of the channel between Les Saintes and Vieux Fort on Guadeloupe, as well as the other smaller Fort Josephine (named for Napoleon’s wife) on Ilet a Cabrit.

Nearer the top, the road widened a bit where the tour buses stopped, turned and disgorged their cargo. At the front of a tiny clapboard shack, Riley bought an orange Fanta and stopped to watch the mobs. The French family passed her, continuing on up the hill, but the other intrepid hiker, the man who had been far behind her, stopped at the lookout point just beneath her to admire the view.

She’d only noticed him because she felt a camaraderie with the others who had climbed up the long hot hill — even with the two French sisters who had complained the whole way using language so vulgar it shocked Riley — and because she thought, judging from his ratty-looking shorts, red tank top, and green Crocs, that he looked like an American. She could tell from the charcoal color of his skin and the texture of his ponytail that he was of mixed race, but there was something in the way he carried himself that screamed Yank — not French — in spite of the shells in the braids on either side of his face. She’d waited for the fellow because she wanted to congratulate him on the climb, but after ten minutes, she gave up.

The elderly woman in the ticket kiosk had nodded her head in the direction of a group of people and told her the tour was starting tout de suite. Taking her change, Riley thanked the woman but headed off past the pot-bellied guard. She preferred to explore the fort on her own.

Keeping to the paths, she climbed past the door to the sod-covered ammunition bunker and on to the highest part of the bluff. The point jutted out here forming one half of the protected bay off Bourges des Saintes. Out here in front of the fort, the cliff plunged down to the open sea. The view of the channel was her reward. Off to her right, on the other side of the point was another sheltered bay where a lone commercial fishing boat lay at anchor. The boat was an odd one for these waters with her dark blue hull and her tall outriggers. She looked more suited for Louisiana or the Gulf Coast. While Riley watched, the tiny figure of a man came on deck and launched a rubber dinghy. It looked more like a beach toy than a real boat. He climbed into it and began to row to shore. She thought it odd that such a big boat wouldn’t have a better dinghy — something at least with an outboard on it — for getting to shore.