Haitian Graves : Ray Robertson Mystery

Vicki Delany

Description

RCMP sergeant Ray Robertson is serving with the United Nations in Haiti, a land of brilliant color and vibrant life, Vodou and vast above-ground cemeteries. Ray’s job is to train the local police and assist investigations. One call comes in from the home of a wealthy American businessman. The man came home to find his beautiful, young Haitian wife floating face down in the swimming pool. The American embassy and the Haitian police immediately arrest the gardener, and the case is closed. But Ray isn’t so sure, and he keeps digging. Until one night he finds himself in a Vodou-saturated cemetery, surrounded by above-ground tombs and elaborate statuary, confronting a killer with nothing left to lose.


This is the second in a series featuring RCMP sergeant Ray Robertson on his various postings overseas.

Sujets

• Policier & Thriller
• Policier
• Thriller
• International Mystery
• International Crime
• Policía Montada del Canadá
• Vudú
• Puerto Príncipe
• Haití
• ELL
• Teaching English as a foreign language
• English as a foreign or second language
• Detective
• Royal Canadian Mounted Police
• Haiti
• Mystery
• EAL
• Electronic Sports League
• Police
• Voodoo
• Gendarmerie royale du Canada
• Estonian Air
• Fiction
• Port-au-Prince

Informations

• Publié par: Orca Book Publishers
• Date de parution: 25 août 2015
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781459809000
• Langue: English

Extrait

HAITIAN GRAVES
HAITIAN GRAVES
VICKI DELANY

RAVEN BOOKS an imprint of O R C A B O O K P U B L I S H E R S
Copyright © 2015 Vicki Delany
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or by any information storage and retrieval system now known or to be invented, without permission in writing from the publisher.
Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication
Delany, Vicki, 1951–, author Haitian graves / Vicki Delany. (Rapid reads)
Issued in print and electronic formats. ISBN 978-1-4598-0898-0 (pbk.).— ISBN 978-1-4598-0899-7 (pdf ).— ISBN 978-1-4598-0900-0 (epub)
I. Title. II. Series: Rapid reads PS 8557. E 4239 H 35 2015 C 813'.6 C 2015-901550-2 C 2015-901551-0
First published in the United States, 2015 Library of Congress Control Number: 2015934284
Summary: In this work of crime fiction, RCMP Sergeant Ray Robertson is working with the United Nations in Haiti when he’s called to investigate the death of a Haitian woman. ( RL 3.0)

Orca Book Publishers is dedicated to preserving the environment and has printed this book on Forest Stewardship Council ® certified paper.
Orca Book Publishers gratefully acknowledges the support for its publishing programs provided by the following agencies: the Government of Canada through the Canada Book Fund and the Canada Council for the Arts, and the Province of British Columbia through the BC Arts Council and the Book Publishing Tax Credit.
Cover design by Jenn Playford Cover photography by Justin Ames
ORCA BOOK PUBLISHERS www.orcabook.com
Printed and bound in Canada.
18  17  16  15  •  4  3  2  1
For Karen, with many thanks for introducing me to Haiti.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
ONE
TWO
THREE
FOUR
FIVE
SIX
SEVEN
EIGHT
NINE
TEN
ONE
H aiti is all about color. Color and contrast. Masses of red, peach and white flowers twisting around barbed wire. Brightly painted houses in the crowded slums spilling down the hillside. Cheerful ribbons wound through schoolgirls’ hair as they walk through piles of garbage. The painted minibus taxis called tap-taps. Some of the tap-taps looking as though paint and rust are all that’s holding them together.
Right now I wasn’t admiring the colors of one particular tap-tap. I was hitting my horn and yelling at the driver to watch where the heck he was going. Haiti is also all about the noise.
I’ve driven in many third-world countries, but Haiti’s capital, Port-au-Prince, is built into a mountainside. That adds another dimension to the thrill of it all.
A deep chuckle came from the passenger seat. “At last you are getting the hang of driving in Haiti, mon ami, ” Agent Pierre Lamothe said.
I leaned on the horn again and yelled some of the Creole words I’d learned. The driver of the tap-tap wisely granted me an inch. I eased the truck into the gap.
The three cops crammed into the truck bed laughed.
My name’s Ray Robertson. In Canada I’m with the RCMP . In Haiti I’m attached to the UN . I’m a mentor and advisor to the pnh, the national police. A one-year posting.
How did a boy from the mountains of British Columbia get here? I like the challenges of UN policing. I like believing I can make a difference. Maybe even do some good. I was in South Sudan for a while. Then I heard they were looking for French speakers to come to Haiti. My mom’s from Quebec, and we spoke French as much as English when I was a kid.
I slammed on the brakes. I’d barely missed hitting a tall elegant woman in a crisply ironed white blouse and dark knee-length skirt. I didn’t like driving this ancient, rusty pickup. Not with three cops sitting in the back on creaky wooden benches. No seat belts, no springs, a paper-thin roof. A bad paint job that said we were the police. A light bar and sirens that sometimes worked.
One of the men shouted something to the woman. She ducked her head and hurried away. I rapped on the back window and yelled at them to leave her alone. Harassing women on the street didn’t inspire trust in the police service.
The men laughed again. Whether at the idea of respecting a woman or at my bad Creole, I didn’t know. I never knew what they were thinking.
Today I was in the Petion-Ville area. On patrol, teaching my men to keep a sharp eye out for potential crime. Petion-Ville is the nice part of Port-au-Prince. Large houses with maids and gardeners. Steel gates and armed guards. Swimming pools and lush gardens behind walls trimmed with barbed wire. But the roads are as pitted and choked with debris and garbage as anyplace else in Haiti. Here and there gaps appear in the walls, showing piles of crumbling rubble. Sometimes the rubble spills into the road. Maybe from houses that have never been finished. Maybe from buildings that fell during the 2010 earthquake. That quake killed some 200,000 people and flattened the center of the capital city.
On the way to the beach resorts on the north coast of the bay, a small cross is visible from the road. The cross marks the place where thousands of bodies were dumped. A desperate attempt to get rid of them before the heat of the tropics took its toll. A naked brown hill, unadorned by flowers, grass or trees. A hill full of the dead.
The same area where the dictator Duvalier dumped truckloads of his enemies back in the day. Or so they say.
We passed a rubble-strewn alley. I glanced down it, to make sure no cars were coming, and saw a man grab a girl’s arm and jerk her toward him. I was about to drive past when he lifted his hand and struck her, full in the face. She would have fallen had he not had a grip on her. I pulled the truck to a sudden halt.
“What?” Pierre asked.
“Let’s see what’s up.” I got out of the truck and headed into the alley. Pierre followed. The men in the back of the truck jumped down. People began to gather. In Haiti, I could always be counted on to draw a crowd.
“Problem here?” The girl was older than I’d first thought but still a child. Fourteen, sixteen, maybe. She wore a short, tight white skirt that hadn’t been clean for a long time. Her blue tank top hung in bags over her thin chest. The skin on her knees was scraped, and her face was streaked with dirt. Her skin was the color of midnight, and her black eyes were large, round and frightened. She was as scared of my uniform as she was of the man assaulting her. The man himself was pasty white, short, bald and running to fat. He wore clean jeans and a black T-shirt.
He glanced at the maple-leaf flag on the sleeve of my shirt. “No problem, officer,” he said in English. His accent was straight from the back streets of Glasgow. He didn’t let go of the girl’s arm.
“Looks like a problem to me,” I said.
“She tried to cheat me. I don’t like being cheated. Not by a baby whore.”
“Let go of her,” I said.
He looked at me for a long time. His grip tightened, and the girl whimpered. He gave her arm a twist and then let go. “Not worth it anyway.”
“Are you telling me you approached this underage female for prostitution?” I said.
“Who, me? Heck no, mate.” He turned to the Haitian cops. “She was going to take me to meet her older sister. Not that I’d do anything illegal, of course. I’m wanting to meet a nice lady to show me the city.”
One of my men laughed. I rounded on him. “You think breaking the law is funny?”
He blinked. “No, sir.”
The girl looked as though she wanted to bolt. But she was surrounded by six uniformed men and a crowd of curious onlookers.
“What’s your name?” I said to her.
“Chantale.”
“Chantale,” I said, keeping my voice low. “Do you have an older sister? Are your parents around? Who is taking care of you?”
She shrugged.
“Get lost,” I said to the Scotsman. “And don’t let me catch you looking for a tour guide again.”
He sneered and then sauntered off. Making sure I got his point, he high-fived some of the men watching us. One rat-faced fellow broke away from the crowd and followed him. No doubt another “tour guide” operator.
Prostitution is completely illegal in Haiti. Not that even the police care much about that. The earthquake killed entire families. Destroyed people’s livelihoods. Thousands of women found themselves alone. No home, no family, no money, no job. No hope. Sometimes you do what you have to, to survive. Due to the level of poverty, Haiti isn’t a popular destination for sex tourists. I was determined to do what I could to keep it that way. I’m a proud father of two beautiful daughters. It chills my blood sometimes when I think about what their lives would be like if they’d been born into a place like this, without my wife, Jenny, or me to protect them.
Chantale edged away. I was about to let her go when one of my men catcalled her. The onlookers laughed. Chantale lowered her head in shame.
“Pierre,” I said, “please ask Chantale not to leave.” I turned on the cop. “What the hell are you doing?”
“Just havin’ some fun, Ray. No harm done. Girl’s a whore.”
“She’s little more than a child. Or didn’t you notice?”
His two colleagues stepped back. They weren’t getting involved in this.
“Yeah.” He leered. “I noticed.”
I wanted to hit him. Instead, I thumbed my radio. I asked for a female officer ASAP . “Excitement’s over,” I shouted to the onlookers. “Be on your way. Officers, move these people along.”
My men walked into the crowd. Chantale watched me. She still looked more frightened of me than of the man who’d hit her. “It’s okay,” I said in my lousy Creole. “Where’s your mother?”
“Dead.”
“A lady is coming who will take you to a nice place.”
Most of the onlookers had gone about their business. A few remained. Chantale glanced at an older woman dressed in layers of swirling cloth. Not all the pimps were men. The woman gave me a long stare. Then she spat on the ground, turned and walked away.
I tried to chat with Chantale. To talk about simple everyday things. She watched me through those huge eyes. The only thing she said to me the entire tim