Domino Island. Desmond Bagley

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СКАЧАТЬ perturbed. I was to investigate the situation directly and personally and not to rely on any of my minions; I was to investigate the situation and report to him immediately, if not before; I was to proceed to Campanilla starting, if possible, yesterday, and what was I waiting for?

      Yes, sir; yes, sir; three bags full, sir.

      There was one question I really wanted to ask: what angle should I take? Did he want me to look for a reason to invalidate the claim – in which case Jill Salton, niece to the chairman, would be justifiably annoyed? Or should I work the other side of the street and let the company catch a £500,000 draught? But that’s not a question to put lightly to the chief executive of an insurance company. Hosmer was neatly impaled on the horns of a dilemma and it would be tactless to embarrass him by asking awkward questions which should properly be put to an underling, who would instead look at the entrails of a chicken at dead of night and interpret the Great Man’s mind.

      So I went back to friend Jolly and put the awkward question to him.

      He was affronted. ‘You’re to find out the truth, Kemp,’ he said pompously.

      Ken Costello was a much happier man. Although he juggled hundreds of millions of pounds, he didn’t let the awesomeness of it worry him unduly. He was a big, boisterous extrovert given to practical joking in the infantile Stock Exchange manner and equipped with an enormous fund of dirty stories also culled from former colleagues on the trading floor. When I walked into his office he lifted an enquiring eyebrow.

      ‘Salton,’ I said.

      ‘Ha!’ His eyes rolled. ‘Is Jolly worried?’

      ‘More to the point, are you?’

      He shrugged. ‘Not much – yet.’

      I sat down. ‘Okay, I’m listening.’

      Costello leaned back in his chair and adopted the cheerful air of a tolerant college tutor happily indoctrinating his students. ‘Campanilla is snowballing,’ he said. ‘More particularly, there’s a building boom. They’re putting up hotels so fast that if your bedroom isn’t built when you check in, you still sleep sound that night. Money is flowing like champagne and caviar has become a staple food. That’s what happens when the palsied hand of the British Raj is shrugged off.’

      ‘Never mind the economics lecture,’ I said acidly. ‘Where did Salton come in?’

      ‘He was a property man through and through – that’s how he made his fortune in America. He got himself some nice tracts of land and started to cover them with ticky-tacky. He needed development capital, which we supplied. End of story.’

      ‘It is for Salton. What about you – how safe is your money now?’

      ‘Reasonably safe. Salton wasn’t a fly-by-nighter, and he was building for the locals, not the speculative stuff for middling-rich, middle-class immigrants who want a place in the sun to retire to. Although it wouldn’t have been altogether a bad thing if he’d tried that. We wouldn’t have touched it, though.’

      ‘Who runs things now that Salton is dead?’

      ‘That is a bit worrying,’ admitted Costello. ‘He was always a loner – kept things very much in his own hands – although he had a good manager, a man called Idle.’

      ‘My God,’ I said. ‘That name doesn’t sound too promising.’

      Costello chuckled. ‘It isn’t as bad as it sounds. I took the trouble to look it up. It’s from the Welsh, Ithel, meaning “Lord Bountiful”.’

      ‘Could be worse.’

      He grinned. ‘Idle, Mrs Salton and a firm of lawyers are running the show now. They’re not doing too badly so far.’

      ‘How far? When did Salton die?’

      ‘The boat was discovered two weeks ago. You going out there?’

      ‘The chairman insists. What fuels this economic miracle on Campanilla?’

      ‘Much as I regret to say,’ said Costello, not looking regretful at all, ‘it’s gambling. Of course, there are a lot of other angles, too. Campanilla has turned itself into an off-shore financial paradise with a set of fiscal laws that make the Cayman Islands look positively restrictive. You’ve heard of Bay Street in Nassau?’

      ‘The mecca of the Bahamas.’

      ‘Capital is leaving there so fast that the bankers are catching pneumonia from the draught. Campanilla has its very own version: Cardew Street.’

      ‘And you put three million of the company’s money into Cardew Street?’ I said.

      ‘Safe as houses, dear boy,’ said Costello. ‘As long as they were Salton’s houses.’

      II

      Eight hours later I was on a 747 taking off from Heathrow and heading for Campanilla by way of Miami. I travelled first-class, of course; it was written into my service agreement with the company. Somewhere behind me, in the back of this flying barn and jostled by the common ruck of economy flight passengers, was Owen Ogilvie, the official representative of Western and Continental Insurance Co. Ltd. To an eye untainted by suspicion, he was the company man sent out to enquire into the death of David Salton. He would do the expected and leave me to a quiet and restful anonymity.

      Jolly disapproved of my service agreement; it offended his sense of the fitness of things. There was nothing he could do about it though, since I negotiated directly with the board.

      During the flight I studied Salton’s policies. They were all fairly standard and with no trick clauses and I couldn’t see how Jolly could weasel his way out of paying. Whether Salton had died naturally, been murdered or committed suicide, the payment would have to be made. All that was at issue was the timescale and the most that Jolly could extract would be the interest on £500,000 for two years – say £90,000, or thereabouts.

      Not finding much there, I went up to the bar which the airline thoughtfully provides for those of the jet set who can afford first-class passage. I took with me a handbook on Campanilla, which the efficient Mrs Hadley had dug up from somewhere. It offered interesting reading over a drink.

      The highlights of this Caribbean jewel appeared to be the climate, the swimming, the sailing, the fishing, the cuisine and the tax structure. Especially the tax structure. The main feature of the tax structure was that there wasn’t much of it. If the United States was the Empire State Building, then Campanilla was a marquee – all roof with nothing much to hold it up, and vulnerable to financial gales.

      I examined the historical section. Campanilla was originally Spanish, colonised in the sixteenth century. The British took over in 1710 during one of the fast shuffles of the War of the Spanish Succession and stayed until the twentieth century, when to have colonies offended world opinion. During this period it was called Bell Island but, on attaining independence, it reverted to the Spanish name of Campanilla. Probably some public relations geek thought it a more exotic and fitting name for a tropical paradise.

      The fold-out map at the back of the handbook showed that the island really was bell-shaped. The lower rim of the bell was scooped out in a huge bay and the clapper was formed СКАЧАТЬ