Leeward Read online

  Copyright © 2014 D. Edward Bradley

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission from the author except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

  This edition is published by arrangement with D. Edward Bradley

  First electronic edition

  LEEWARD

  ISBN 978-1-77168-030-1

  Published in Canada with international distribution.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Cover Design: Michelle Halket

  Cover Photography: Courtesy & Copyright photoxpress: chrisharvey

  For RB

  Leeward

  PROLOGUE

  On the last Sunday in May 1979, Anna Kristina Andersson, a junior reporter with a leading Swedish newspaper, had just returned home after working late at the office. On a normal evening she would have had dinner with her fiancé, Bengt, who was a photojournalist with the same paper. They were to be married soon, but tonight she was alone. At the moment he was on assignment covering the civil war in El Salvador.

  Anna Kristina took her job seriously, and always taped the daily TV news on her video recorder if she was out. Before settling down to watch this evening’s broadcast, she retrieved a bottle of white wine from the fridge, poured herself a glass, and took it to the living room. While the tape was rewinding, she tied back her long blonde hair into a ponytail, and nestled amongst the oversized cushions on the couch.

  Incidents in El Salvador always made Anna Kristina somewhat apprehensive, but nothing had happened there for over a week, and Bengt was due back on Wednesday. So it was with a sinking feeling in the pit of her stomach that she heard the anchorman say, “Earlier today, on the outskirts of San Salvador, a newspaper photographer whose identity has not been released was brutally murdered by rebel soldiers. We have a report from our correspondent.”

  She told herself that there were dozens of photographers in that city, and watched as the correspondent appeared on the screen against a background of palm trees. He had been interviewing some civilians in their garden, when he and his crew were astonished to see a young European with a press camera approaching a nearby rebel checkpoint. The scene cut from the correspondent to a man walking down a street, his back to the camera. A moment later he turned his head and glanced over his shoulder, as if to make sure there was no one following. Even before the camera zoomed in, there was no doubt that it was Bengt. Anna Kristina was transfixed as he continued on his way. The commentator was silent. When Bengt got to the checkpoint, he handed what looked like identification papers to one of the guards. The man glanced at them, then pulled out his pistol and fired at point blank range. The sound of the shot was just audible. Bengt flew backwards onto the road, then the soldier shot him again, in the head. His body jerked and was still. Anna Kristina blacked out, the wine glass in her hand falling to the floor.

  ***

  The Pan American Airways Boeing 747 was forty-two minutes out of London’s Heathrow Airport bound for New York, and the border between England and Scotland had just slipped past 35,000 feet below. The aircraft had been at cruising altitude for about fifteen minutes, and drinks were being served. Suddenly, there was a muffled thump from deep in the bowels of the fuselage. Within seconds, huge strips of its aluminum skin peeled away, releasing the cabin pressure explosively. Pieces of flying metal ripped through hydraulic control lines, then an enormous mass of flame engulfed the huge jet. The nose of the 747 dropped as it began its plunge to the ground far below.

  An hour or so later, and several thousand miles away in the US, Judge Marvin Winchester arrived home after a lousy day in his Boston courtroom. The last case had been sloppily prepared and badly presented by the District Attorney’s Office. As he opened the front door of his house, he resolved to forget his problems. His wife, Miriam, was due back soon, and would revive his spirits. She had been away for three weeks, and that was three weeks too long.

  The Judge went to the spacious kitchen where his housekeeper had left the light on. A note on the table directed him to a cold dinner in the fridge. While he set the table and poured a glass of beer, he listened to the news on the radio. A correspondent with a Scots accent was in the process of describing what appeared to be a terrible plane crash. PanAm Flight 103 from London to New York had fallen from the sky in a flaming mass onto a town in Scotland, obliterating several houses and doubtless killing all the passengers and crew. It took a few seconds for the Judge to realize that Flight 103 was the one that Miriam had caught.

  CHAPTER ONE

  Leeward Estate Hotel, St. Barbe’s, The West Indies

  The sun had set, and it was dark, and Bobbie Calluna was as restless as any seven-year-old with nothing to do. Her parents were busy talking grown-up stuff, something mysterious about money. They didn’t even notice when she slipped away. She wandered round the big artificial pond beyond the lawn in front of the hotel. Nasty, night-flying bugs followed her, some of them biting. She stopped to scratch her leg, then sat on a garden seat beneath one of the two lights set at each end of the oval sheet of water. They were made of wrought iron like old English street lamps, but weren’t very bright, and the shadows beneath the two sea grape trees behind the seat were pitch black. For the past few days, Bobbie had been anxious to look in the pond; someone said that fairies danced on its surface once it got dark. She waited patiently. Even though it was night, it was still hot and sticky, maybe too hot for the fairies. She stretched and glanced at her watch; it was almost eight o’clock.

  Bobbie stiffened. There was a sound from the deep shadows beneath the sea grape tree some fifteen feet behind her, like a faint hiss. Was it a bat? But the tree had long since borne its clusters of fruit, and the big bats that fed on them were gone. There it was again, but this time it sounded like scratching, and went on for several seconds. Then she smelt something; the odor was sickly and putrid. There was no one in sight, and Bobbie began to tremble and decided it was time to leave. She jumped to her feet. There was a muffled snort from beneath the sea grape, and that did it. She ran and ran as fast as her legs could work, down the crazy paving that circled the pond, then off to the left through the dark shrubbery toward the lawn. Would some monstrous thing suddenly leap out in front of her? But nothing appeared from behind the black patches of vegetation. When she reached the hundred-foot expanse of grass in front of the car park, she began to lose her breath and had to slow down a little. There was a panting sound from close behind. It seemed almost on top of her. Not daring to look, she started to scream and scream and scream. She felt sure she would be thrown to the ground, but there at last was the front door, brightly lit, and open. Once inside, she turned. On the edge of the lawn, where the light from the car park was dim, a huge four-legged creature loped purposefully away and melted into the darkness down the driveway.

  Instant chaos erupted.

  Meg Calluna rushed through the hall. “Bobbie! Bobbie! What on earth’s the matter?”

  Her husband, Peter, exploded out of his office by the reception desk, banging the door against the stop as he flung it open. Jenny, an off-duty maid who lived in, almost fell down the stairs. Bobbie was shaking uncontrollably and flung herself into her mother’s arms. She couldn’t speak.

  “Darling, what is it?” Meg stroked Bobbie’s hair, feeling the slim body quivering. “You’re terrified.”

  But she didn’t get an answer. At the back of the house, Bobbie’s little dog, Tonto, started to make an incredible racket—yapping, howling, screaming, trying d
esperately to jump out of his enclosure. Bobbie pushed herself from her mother, rushed through the lounge and kitchen, and ran out the back door. The entrance to the dog’s enclosure was a simple wooden affair with a latch, and Bobbie opened it, crouching and holding out her arms for the puppy. Tonto leaped wildly into the air, but instead of jumping into the arms of his mistress, he flew clear over her head and shot across a small lawn, yapping as he went. On the other side there was a large diamond-shaped maze, its eight-foot tall hedges of English Yew and Australian Pine forming an almost impenetrable barrier. The puppy disappeared into the black maw of the entrance.

  Peter and Meg Calluna came out of the back door.

  “Tonto! Tonto!” Bobbie’s voice was strident. “Come back!”

  But Tonto took no notice, and his yapping rose to a crescendo as he moved further away through the labyrinth of walkways. Five seconds later there was a sudden silence, then a distant scuffling, then nothing, just the wind rustling the fronds of the palm tree by the maze entrance.

  “He’s gone!” screamed Bobbie. “Something awful’s happened to him! I know it!”

  Meg tried to calm her, but Bobbie began to cry.

  “Come into the house while I get hold of Rodney, then we’ll all try and find him.”

  “I’m scared,” sobbed Bobbie. “There’s something terrible out there. It’s huge.”

  Meg held Bobbie’s hand tightly. “How about we all go and have a nice cool drink and you can tell us about it. Dad and Rodney will get Tonto back for you.”

  While Peter and Rodney Barker, the gardener, quickly searched the maze and then went further afield, Bobbie and Meg waited on the kitchen patio. Bobbie paced between the two tables used for breakfast by the family, and Meg sipped something with a dash of gin in it. Calls for Tonto from the two searchers receded up the hillside, where their flashlights flickered intermittently amongst the trees and shrubs. The slow minutes stretched into half an hour before they saw the lights returning down the hill.

  “Do you think they found him?” Bobbie tried hard not to cry again, but couldn’t suppress a whimper and a sniff.

  “We’ll just have to hope,” replied Meg. Ten minutes later it was obvious that Peter and Rodney weren’t bringing back Tonto.

  Bobbie ran to the two men as they walked across the lawn. “Daddy, he’s still in the maze. He suddenly stopped barking and that’s when the thing got him.” She pulled a handkerchief from her shorts’ pocket and wiped her eyes, then grabbed a flashlight from her father. “I’m going to find him! I don’t care if it gets me too!”

  “We’ll all go.” Meg stood.

  “If we’re goin’ to try the maze again, we should each take a separate section.” Rodney’s deep voice seemed to calm Bobbie. “We couldn’t do a proper job before.”

  The maze was divided into four quadrants, all interconnected. Only one had a path leading to the center, which contained a small garden with wooden seats. At the very heart of the maze there was a strange hinged flagstone, which covered an ancient dugout, its purpose long forgotten.

  Bobbie said she wanted Rodney to take her there, and grabbed his hand. “You’re bigger than Mum and Dad. I need you in case we have to kill the monster.”

  And so the big burly black man was dragged, flashlight in hand, across the lawn to the maze entrance. Peter and Meg followed some distance behind. It was Bobbie who heard a tiny whine as they zigzagged toward the center.

  “Tonto,” Bobbie’s thin voice sounded muffled to her parents with so much vegetation between them.

  “Quiet,” whispered Rodney.

  This time, there was a faint yelp.

  They found the puppy cowering under one of the two seats, almost out of sight. Rodney shone the light, and Bobbie had to pull him out by his collar.

  “Gently,” cautioned Rodney. “He might be hurt. You take the light and I’ll check him over.”

  But when Bobbie loosened her grip for a moment, Tonto broke free and retreated under the seat again.

  By this time Meg and Peter had arrived. There was no doubt about it, the puppy was as frightened as his mistress had been earlier.

  “I’m beginning to wonder if there wasn’t something out there after all.” Peter watched Bobbie cuddling the shivering animal after they had pulled him out a second time. “Let’s get back. Come in for a beer, Rodney, and we’ll see if we can figure out who might have a weird pet that could be skulking around at night.”

  Quite a few people in the nearby village of Saddles had dogs, but as far as Rodney Barker could recall, they were mostly small. The majority of villagers were poor, and small dogs can exist on scraps. The only person he knew of with a large dog was Mrs. Robinson next door. After the death of her husband, she had retired to the small stone residence about three hundred yards southeast of the Leeward Estate Hotel. She purchased a Doberman for protection, but it was common knowledge that the dog had never been trained, and was friendly toward just about everyone in the area. Meg phoned her and found, as predicted, that Ruffles—“What a name for a Doberman,” Bobbie had once said—was sound asleep. Eventually everyone at Leeward retired for the night, and Tonto was allowed to stay with Bobbie since he was still almost catatonic.

  CHAPTER TWO

  Interstate 3, New Hampshire, USA

  About two weeks before Bobbie Calluna’s adventure, Interstate 3 was shimmering in the heat of a July afternoon. Easing his car over to the right-hand lane, Jon Moresby decided to forego his usual fix of FM rock music, and found a classical station to soothe his hangover. He put behind him the disappointments of the last few days. He had to.

  Suddenly a vehicle appeared directly ahead. His thoughts had wandered. Had he been speeding? The small Pontiac seemed to fishtail very slightly, then it veered erratically from the outside lane to the shoulder, careening from side to side with increasing violence. Jon braked hard, tires screeching. As he did so, the car in front lifted onto its right-hand wheels just before making contact with the guard rail. The passenger side slammed into the metal sheeting, trailing sparks and jagged bits of chrome. From fifty feet behind, Jon watched in horror. As if in slow motion the car slid to a stop, paused, then tipped back on all four wheels.

  It was early evening. The ward at Concord General was pretty quiet, and a crusty duty nurse had insisted Jon put on a hospital gown over his bloodstained shirt. A faint odor of gasoline still lingered on his skin. What if there’d been an explosion? It didn’t bear thinking about.

  He gazed down at the still unconscious young woman he had pulled from the wreck, her cheek grazed and caked with dried blood. The slightness of her frame made her seem vulnerable, and gave no indication of the strength she had shown as they staggered away from the smoldering car. He decided that she was the most attractive girl he had come across in a long while, but perhaps it was just the adrenaline rush; he didn’t usually date black girls.

  Josie opened her eyes to see a man with untidy, pale brown hair watching her from the corner of the room.

  “Thank God you’ve come round,” he said. “I was beginning to get worried.”

  “How long was I out?” Josie winced; it hurt her face to speak. She wondered briefly at the English accent.

  “Almost an hour. I’m supposed to ring the bell when you’re awake.”

  Josie smiled as best she could. “I guess I owe you. Christ, I thought I’d had it when the car door wouldn’t open and I smelt gas.”

  “Here’s the doctor, so I’d better go. I understand your father’s driving up from Boston. He should arrive any minute.”

  “I’d like to call you as soon as I’m out of here.”

  “I’ll look forward to it. The name is Jon, Jon Moresby.” Jon backed awkwardly out the door.

  “Josie Winchester? There’s someone to see you,” announced the doctor.

  Judge Marvin Winchester kissed his daughter gently, and held her hand as he listened to her story.

  Boston, Massachusetts

  Dinner with the Winchesters—Jon ant
icipated the evening with some trepidation as he drove through a fashionable suburb not far from the ocean. After all, it wasn’t every day you dined with a judge. He turned his car into the wide, tree-lined street where the family’s imposing residence was located, and soon found himself pressing the doorbell.

  Josie looked stunning. “Hi, Jon! Come on in. My father’s in the living room.” She took his hand and led him across a large, dimly lit hall.

  He was greeted by a tall, well-built man. His graying hair and beard contrasted with a black complexion to give him a daunting appearance, but this belied his real nature, and Jon felt at ease almost immediately. At this point he didn’t know that the Judge was a widower.

  The conversation over dinner was about Josie’s accident at first, but then it changed to small talk over coffee.

  “Your accent is definitely English,” commented Josie.

  “I’m originally from England but I lived in Scotland for a while,” Jon answered. “I’m at Tuft’s on an exchange scheme, doing my Master’s. As a matter of fact my real home is with my aunt and uncle in the Caribbean. They run a small hotel on the island of St. Barbe’s.”

  “That’s a new one on me. What’s it like?”

  “Pretty tiny actually, less than twenty miles long. Have you been to the Caribbean?”

  “Our family went to Jamaica, but that was years ago.”

  “St. Barbe’s is way off to the East, not far from St. Kitts and Antigua. You’d love it. It has a bit of everything, like rain forest, reefs and beaches, and even vervet monkeys in the hills.”

  “It sounds very romantic.”

  Josie decided to tell Jon about her mother. Somehow, the absence of a Mrs. Winchester always had to be explained to new acquaintances at an early opportunity. It was always difficult, and always seemed to be the wrong time.

  “We sort of have a sad connection. You see my Mom was on a PanAm flight from London when it crashed in Scotland.”