‘Yes, but most people are travelling under their own names.’
Too late. We’re at the front. Em goes to the man who calls her, not looking back. I’m up next. A man in a booth lazily gestures me over.
‘Hi there, I’m—’
‘Papers.’
I hand over my passport and arrival form, and shut up. Rule 16 again:Give people no more than they need.
He looks through the paperwork, glances up at me, looks down again.
‘You staying just one night?’
‘A conference.’
‘What kind of conference?’
‘… Hats.’
He glances up again, and gives me a searching look, as if I’m taking the piss. I wish I had been. ‘Hats’ was the only word that came to mind. Eventually, he sighs, thumbs to a free page in the passport and stamps it.
‘All right.’
And I’ve been waved on, and Em’s here, and we glide past the baggage carousel and through customs without anyone giving us even a first glance, and out into the sizzling heat of a Carib spring. Almost too easy.
If we get through this without arrest, imprisonment or being killed, and I manage to restore Freddy’s passport, there may come a day when he’s looking through and reminiscing about all the places he’s been, only to find a stamp for the sun-kissed paradise of Nevis. The mystery will – I hope – haunt him for the rest of his life.
My dwindling cash supplies bought us a medium wedge of the local dollars at Heathrow, so we get a cab to the hotel we’ve picked. Em wanted a resort; I said that would make us more conspicuous if we were only staying one night; she said it would be more conspicuous if we stayed at a hotel withno Westerners in it, and she also pointed out that a resort would be a lot more fun. I said this was ridiculous reasoning, that nobody goes to a luxury hotel for one night, and that this was serious business and we’d have no time for fun. Case closed.
Fifteen minutes later, our cab arrives at the St Agnes Club and Resort, a five-star slab of luxury on the coast. The hotel takes up almost the entirety of a little spit of land running into the ocean, with beaches on both the windy Caribbean side and the sheltered cove opposite it. I’m not sure what the original St Agnes would have thought of the offerings here: couples’ massage; Hobie Cat lessons; six restaurants with themes including ‘Thai Explosion’, ‘Classic Diner’ and ‘Global Melange’. I hope she would have approved.
By the time we’re checked in and have been golf-carted over to our room (containing a single king-size bed, which neither of us comments on), I feel like we’re already running short of time. The flight got us in soon after noon, thanks to the time difference; it’s 5 p.m. in the UK but still lunchtime here. And we only have until our flight takes off tomorrow evening to get what we need out of Davy’s in-house offshorer.
I go to the window and open the translucent curtains. If you’re reading this in the UK, perhaps on a cold autumn night while rain batters the windows and a chill creeps down the chimney, picture the most ridiculously agreeable beach setting you could imagine. This one’s on me.
The sand is an invisible white. The only objects interrupting the sweep down to the gentle sea are a few tastefully spacedloungers, shaded by huge umbrellas. Further along are some simple bamboo cabanas, protected from the sun by billowing cream veils. To our left, a waistcoated waiter is walking along the beach with a tray containing two daft pink drinks, complete with swizzle sticks. Overhead, the sun is a single unwinking eye. On the right, a lone cormorant is wheeling around, as if it’s been hired specifically to tick the ‘nature’ box.
Most guests are sprawled on their sunbeds; a few are bobbing around in the water. Even at a distance, I can guess the clientele: wealthy older couples, their grown-up children they recommended the place to, maybe an Instagrammer or two changing bikinis every twenty minutes and asking their boyfriend to shoot them in a range of semi-decent poses so they can harvest enough content to pay for the trip.
‘Why the hell did we just book one night?’ I find myself saying.
‘Because it isn’t fair to leave Jonny and Elle back in London, being threatened with arrest or murder, while we piss about on holiday?’
I concede the point, and we head back to reception, to book a cab into town.
The main town in Nevis is tiny. I shouldn’t be surprised; the island’s entire population is only about ten thousand. It’s pretty quiet at this time of the afternoon, too. As we get out of the cab, we stick out like two sore thumbs.
Marshall Rivers’ office is on the upper floor of a two-storey building just off the main street running through the centre oftown. Next door to it on the ground floor is a bar, with a fan lazily chopping the hot air, and a barman staring out at the street, motionless. He looks like he’s auditioning for a Hopper painting.
Depending how you look at it, our plan is either ‘naïve’ or ‘timeless’. Em is going to winkle Rivers out of his office and into the bar to discuss a private and urgent business matter. She’ll keep him talking while I get in, find the files identifying the real owners of all Davy’s client companies, and get out. I’ll stroll past the bar to indicate to Em that I’ve got the goods. We’ll take separate cabs back to the hotel, dine on the balcony, and fly home tomorrow night. It’ssoeasy.
There are contingencies. If Rivers’ office is occupied by more than one person, Em will gesture to me to cancel as she passes by. If he’s set up unusually heavy security as they leave, she’ll do the same. If she’s unable to get him out, we’ll come back tonight and find the stuff then. If I get in and the kit Jonny provided me with doesn’t work … I’ll think of something else.
Now we’re up close, it feels a trifle inadequate, but we’re here now, and it’s not like we can try this over and over.
‘Ready?’
‘Of course.’ Em shakes her hair out, crosses the street, and presses a button by the building’s door. From my position I watch as she listens at the intercom, speaks into it, then pushes at the door and heads in. I retreat to the corner, far enough away to avoid attention, and wait.
