Someone Like You Read online

  ‘Jack,’ she said, the next time Sergeant Noonan went by. ‘Would you mind giving me a drink?’

  ‘Sure I’ll give you a drink. You mean this whisky?’

  ‘Yes, please. But just a small one. It might make me feel better.’

  He handed her the glass.

  ‘Why don’t you have one yourself,’ she said. ‘You must be awfully tired. Please do. You’ve been very good to me.’

  ‘Well,’ he answered. ‘It’s not strictly allowed, but I might take just a drop to keep me going.’

  One by one the others came in and were persuaded to take a little nip of whisky. They stood around rather awkwardly with the drinks in their hands, uncomfortable in her presence, trying to say consoling things to her. Sergeant Noonan wandered into the kitchen, came out quickly and said, ‘Look, Mrs Maloney. You know that oven of yours is still on, and the meat still inside.’

  ‘Oh dear me!’ she cried. ‘So it is!’

  ‘I better turn it off for you, hadn’t I?’

  ‘Will you do that, Jack. Thank you so much.’

  When the sergeant returned the second time, she looked at him with her large, dark, tearful eyes. ‘Jack Noonan,’ she said.

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘Would you do me a small favour – you and these others?’

  ‘We can try, Mrs Maloney.’

  ‘Well,’ she said. ‘Here you all are, and good friends of dear Patrick’s too, and helping to catch the man who killed him. You must be terrible hungry by now because it’s long past your supper time, and I know Patrick would never forgive me, God bless his soul, if I allowed you to remain in his house without offering you decent hospitality. Why don’t you eat up that lamb that’s in the oven? It’ll be cooked just right by now.’

  ‘Wouldn’t dream of it,’ Sergeant Noonan said.

  ‘Please,’ she begged. ‘Please eat it. Personally I couldn’t touch a thing, certainly not what’s been in the house when he was here. But it’s all right for you. It’d be a favour to me if you’d eat it up. Then you can go on with your work again afterwards.’

  There was a good deal of hesitating among the four policemen, but they were clearly hungry, and in the end they were persuaded to go into the kitchen and help themselves. The woman stayed where she was, listening to them through the open door, and she could hear them speaking among themselves, their voices thick and sloppy because their mouths were full of meat.

  ‘Have some more, Charlie?’

  ‘No. Better not finish it.’

  ‘She wants us to finish it. She said so. Be doing her a favour.’

  ‘Okay then. Give me some more.’

  ‘That’s the hell of a big club the guy must’ve used to hit poor Patrick,’ one of them was saying. ‘The doc says his skull was smashed all to pieces just like from a sledge-hammer.’

  ‘That’s why it ought to be easy to find.’

  ‘Exactly what I say.’

  ‘Whoever done it, they’re not going to be carrying a thing like that around with them longer than they need.’

  One of them belched.

  ‘Personally, I think it’s right here on the premises.’

  ‘Probably right under our very noses. What you think, Jack?’

  And in the other room, Mary Maloney began to giggle.

  Man from the South

  It was getting on towards six o’clock so I thought I’d buy myself a beer and go out and sit in a deckchair by the swimming pool and have a little evening sun.

  I went to the bar and got the beer and carried it outside and wandered down the garden towards the pool.

  It was a fine garden with lawns and beds of azaleas and tall coconut palms, and the wind was blowing strongly through the tops of the palm trees, making the leaves hiss and crackle as though they were on fire. I could see the clusters of big brown nuts hanging down underneath the leaves.

  There were plenty of deck-chairs around the swimming pool and there were white tables and huge brightly coloured umbrellas and sunburned men and women sitting around in bathing suits. In the pool itself there were three or four girls and about a dozen boys, all splashing about and making a lot of noise and throwing a large rubber ball at one another.

  I stood watching them. The girls were English girls from the hotel. The boys I didn’t know about, but they sounded American, and I thought they were probably naval cadets who’d come ashore from the U.S. naval training vessel which had arrived in harbour that morning.

  I went over and sat down under a yellow umbrella where there were four empty seats, and I poured my beer and settled back comfortably with a cigarette.

  It was very pleasant sitting there in the sunshine with beer and cigarette. It was pleasant to sit and watch the bathers splashing about in the green water.

  The American sailors were getting on nicely with the English girls. They’d reached the stage where they were diving under the water and tipping them up by their legs.

  Just then I noticed a small, oldish man walking briskly around the edge of the pool. He was immaculately dressed in a white suit and he walked very quickly with little bouncing strides, pushing himself high up on to his toes with each step. He had on a large creamy Panama hat, and he came bouncing along the side of the pool, looking at the people and the chairs.

  He stopped beside me and smiled, showing two rows of very small, uneven teeth, slightly tarnished. I smiled back.

  ‘Excuse pleess, but may I sit here?’

  ‘Certainly,’ I said. ‘Go ahead.’

  He bobbed around to the back of the chair and inspected it for safety, then he sat down and crossed his legs. His white buckskin shoes had little holes punched all over them for ventilation.

  ‘A fine evening,’ he said. ‘They are all evenings fine here in Jamaica.’ I couldn’t tell if the accent were Italian or Spanish, but I felt fairly sure he was some sort of a South American. And old too, when you saw him close. Probably around sixty-eight or seventy.

  ‘Yes,’ I said. ‘It is wonderful here, isn’t it.’

  ‘And who, might I ask, are all dese? Dese is no hotel people.’ He was pointing at the bathers in the pool.

  ‘I think they’re American sailors,’ I told him. ‘They’re Americans who are learning to be sailors.’

  ‘Of course dey are Americans. Who else in de world is going to make as much noise as dat? You are not American no?’

  ‘No,’ I said. ‘I am not.’

  Suddenly one of the American cadets was standing in front of us. He was dripping wet from the pool and one of the English girls was standing there with him.

  ‘Are these chairs taken?’ he said.

  ‘No,’ I answered.

  ‘Mind if I sit down?’

  ‘Go ahead.’

  ‘Thanks,’ he said. He had a towel in his hand and when he sat down he unrolled it and produced a pack of cigarettes and a lighter. He offered the cigarettes to the girl and she refused; then he offered them to me and I took one. The little man said, ‘Tank you, no, but I tink I have a cigar.’ He pulled out a crocodile case and got himself a cigar, then he produced a knife which had a small scissors in it and he snipped the end off the cigar.

  ‘Here, let me give you a light.’ The American boy held up his lighter.

  ‘Dat will not work in dis wind.’

  ‘Sure it’ll work. It always works.’

  The little man removed his unlighted cigar from his mouth, cocked his head on one side and looked at the boy.

  ‘All-ways?’ he said slowly.

  ‘Sure, it never fails. Not with me anyway.’

  The little man’s head was still cocked over on one side and he was still watching the boy. ‘Well, well. So you say dis famous lighter it never fails. Iss dat you say?’

  ‘Sure,’ the boy said. ‘That’s right.’ He was about nineteen or twenty with a long freckled face and a rather sharp birdlike nose. His chest was not very sunburned and there were freckles there too, and a few wisps of pale-reddish hair. He was holding the lighter in h