A Woman Involved. John Davis Gordon

6

      It was dark when he got back to the hotel. He was so happy he did not know what to do with himself. Gone, gone were the cautions he had given himself – he was in love! He went upstairs, to his room. Out onto his balcony. He filled his breast with balmy air and stretched out his arms to the night, and to her. Then there was a knock on his door.

      He whirled around. He knew it was her. He strode to the door and flung it open joyfully.

      He stared. Two black policemen stood there.

      ‘You come with us, Mr Morgan.’

      His heart was suddenly hammering. ‘What on earth for?’

      One of the policemen put his hand on his shoulder. ‘Do you come quietly, man, or do we drag you out in front of everybody?’ The other policeman pushed past him, into the room. He snatched up Morgan’s bag.

      ‘What the hell –’ Morgan lunged at him. The first man seized his wrist and glared into his eyes. For an instant Morgan was about to lash out at them; then furious common sense came back. He shook his wrist free.

      ‘Very well! We’ll find out what this is about!’

      He strode down the corridor between them, his face like thunder.

      Down the stairs, into the lobby. They went through the front doors, out into the drive.

      A police car was waiting.

      He strode furiously into the police station.

      A room led off the charge office. One constable went into it, with Morgan’s bag. Morgan waited, seething. The constable reappeared at the door and beckoned. Morgan strode through.

      A black inspector sat behind the desk, the bag on it. Morgan said furiously: ‘I demand to know what the hell this is about!’

      The inspector put his hand into the bag, and slowly pulled out a black plastic package. It had a rubber band wrapped around it. He held it out. ‘What is this?’

      Morgan stared at it. He had never set eyes on it before.

      ‘I’ve no idea!’

      ‘Open it.’

      Morgan snatched it from him. He ripped open the plastic bag. Inside was a plastic box. He snatched it out and opened the lid.

      Inside was fine white powder. He stared at it, aghast.

      ‘You bastards,’ he whispered.

      The Officer said, ‘I think that’s cocaine, Mr Morgan. About half a kilo. Worth a lot of money.’

      ‘You bastards planted that stuff on me!’

      The officer said: ‘Your fingerprints are on the box.’

      ‘You’ve just made me touch the box and put my fingerprints on it!’

      The officer took the box, and carefully replaced the lid. He nodded to the constables.

      Morgan spun around, his fists bunched, as the constables bounded at him and seized each arm.

      They shoved him in a cell. He paced up and down. Then a voice said: ‘Morgan? …’

      He spun around.

      He recognized him immediately, from a photograph Anna had shown him years ago. It was Max Hapsburg who was on the other side of the bars, heavier in the face, with greying temples. Morgan stared at him, then whispered furiously: ‘What have you done with her? If you lay a finger on her, I’ll kill you one day.’

      Max said quietly: ‘No need for such gallantry. She is safe and sound and as free as the air. And she wants nothing whatsoever to do with you.’ His eyes had not left Morgan’s.

      Morgan clenched his fist. ‘I demand to see a lawyer. I’m going to blow this story sky-high.’

      ‘I don’t think you’ll do that. I doubt anybody will believe a man who was found in possession of half a kilo of cocaine.’ He held up a finger, and went on softly, his big eyes unwavering: ‘But what you are going to do is stay away from my wife …’ He took a controlled, angry breath. ‘Now, you’re going to get off this island, Morgan. In a moment you’re going to find this door to be inexplicably unlocked. And you’re going to escape from lawful custody. There’s a taxi outside. And at the airport is a plane, flying to Miami in an hour. You’re going to board that plane, Morgan. If you don’t, you’ll be re-arrested, and put on trial for possession of drugs. And from Miami you’ll fly back to England. And …’ His big Greek eyes widened: ‘You will never … never set foot on the island of Grenada again. And you will never contact my wife again. Because if you do …’ He pointed at the office down the corridor, ‘The police have evidence to extradite you back from England to face trial here. And you’ll go to jail for the rest of your life.’

      He glared; then turned and strode away.

Part Two

7

      When Jonathan Morgan, nicknamed Jack, was eight years old, his mother, for whom everything British was unquestionably best, had insisted that he learn boxing, though the family could ill afford the additional cost on top of the exorbitant fees for the excellent public school she insisted he attend. It was essential, she said, that an English gentleman could put up his dukes and defend himself in an efficient and sportsmanlike manner. So, every Wednesday and Saturday, Jonathan Morgan went along to the school gymnasium to get himself terrorized by other little boys whose demented mothers felt the same as his. He had little natural aptitude for fisticuffs, but this biweekly ordeal soon developed a certain cunning in the unhappy young sportsman, a strategy that went like this: Come charging murderously out of your corner like a bull at a gate and knock the living shit out of the other little boy before he hurts you. Render him hors de combat, then he can’t hit you. This strategy back-fired because he won all his bouts, he was put on the school team, and term after term, year after year, he had to be terrorized by boys from other good public schools at boxing tournaments, extravaganzas of bloodshed and brain-damage which the mothers attended with great pride. By the time he left school he had been unbeaten champion for two years, had hated every minute of it, and he vowed never to fight again. But he brought the same bull-at-a-gate strategy to his university days. Jack Morgan was not a born sportsman, but he earned his rugby blue with suicidal tackling and fanatical fitness, and his cricket blue with sledge-hammer batting. He was brighter than most, certainly, but not sufficiently so to explain his sparkling results: he earned his Bachelor of Science degree cum laude only by unrelenting hard, hard work. And when he chose the Royal Navy as his career, he tackled the gruelling Marine training courses with the same grim determination, and passed with flying colours; but when it came to settling down in the service he knew that he was not a warrior at heart: he was an academic, and he applied to join Submarines. It is more restful down there. It was nice to use just his head, and no brawn. And when, at the age of thirty-five, he was thrown out of the Royal Navy, or ‘compulsorily retired’, as a result of The Cocaine Affair, he had refused a commission in the Sultan of Oman’s navy and declined to join the lucrative company of former SAS and Special Boat boys who undertake contracts for highly paid derring-do for which they have been so well trained by Her Majesty, even though he badly needed the money. Instead he sold his house, commuted his pension, bought a second-hand freight-ship and doggedly began a precarious civilian career in merchant shipping.

      It was a small freighter, only six thousand tons, in good condition but only profitable because Jack Morgan was both owner and master and he lived permanently aboard, ate from the ship’s stores and had no wife. The only other asset he owned was a little farm in the mountains of France which he had never even seen and which he had been forced to accept as payment of Makepeace’s debts when that scatterbrain had decided that being a shipping tycoon was dead boring after the Special