Blood Rites by Don Pendleton

Author:Don Pendleton
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Worldwide Library
Published: 2015-06-28T16:00:00+00:00

9

Passmore Town, Kingston

Sergeant Reckford stayed outside the cocaine plant and watched the cleanup crew. The corpses had already been removed, while wounded workers were conveyed to Kingston Public Hospital. The handful without open wounds, once they’d found their clothes and dressed themselves, were on their way to processing at the Elletson Road police station. Reckford hoped to interview them there, once they were booked.

Assuming the rash of killings slowed enough to give him time.

He’d given up on counting corpses. Reckford knew that only two of them, so far, would matter to his superiors, because the dead lawyers were affluent and shared their wealth with the politicians who controlled Jamaica’s destiny. Their families would clamor for results, and for revenge. He was already taking heat for failing to provide a list of suspects in the crimes.

“Looks like somebody’s doin’ us a favor, Sergeant,” a constable said in passing.

Reckford grunted, understanding how the man felt, still unwilling to endorse mass murder as a means of crime fighting. If that was all it took, why not dismiss the force and send in troops to scour Passmore Town and other districts like it, shooting anyone they caught out on the streets?

Corporal Walcott approached him, frowning at the sight of Reckford’s solemn face. “Did you hear what the girls were saying?” he inquired.

“What girls?”

“The workers here.”

“I haven’t seen them yet.”

“They claim the shooter was a white man. Crazy, eh?”

“What kind of white man?”

Walcott shrugged. “Who knows?”

“We need to make the rounds, find out if anybody else remembers seeing him.”

“You take it seriously?”

“Is there any reason I shouldn’t?”

“Well, there’s the notion of a white man here, in Dunkirk. And the girls were rattled, maybe high from all the cocaine dust floating around.”

“I’ll judge that when I’ve spoken to them. In the meantime, start making the rounds.”

“This neighborhood,” Walcott reminded him, “no one sees anything. We’re Babylon.”

“It doesn’t hurt to ask. They might give up a white man quicker than a yardie.”

“If you say so.”

“I’ve already said it.”

Sensing Reckford’s mood, the corporal retreated, saying, “Yes, sir. Right away.”

Alone once more, Reckford hitched up his trousers, thinking for the hundredth time that he should wear suspenders to keep his Browning Hi-Power pistol from dragging them down on the right. He’d only fired his pistol twice on duty, in a dozen years, and neither of the men he’d shot had died, though one had lost a testicle.

Bad luck.

He peered into the lab again, determined that the cleanup might go on for hours yet, and turned away. He needed to confront the cutting plant’s survivors, in particular the women who described a white man as the author of this latest mayhem. It was an anomaly demanding resolution, and it might lead to something larger than a simple turf war.

Might lead to trouble, if he didn’t handle the investigation tactfully.

Indeed, might even get him killed.

* * *

Tinson Pen Aerodrome, Kingston

THE FLIGHT FROM Ian Fleming International in Boscobel was running late. Such things were not unusual, particularly when the aircraft was a

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