Heartman: A Missing Girl, A Broken Man, A Race Against Time Read Online Free

a visit to my uncle Gabe and aunt Pearl.
    Gabe and his wife, Pearl, lived on Banner Road, just three streets away from my place. Their rented Victorian-built double-bay home was the bolthole I’d run to when I found myself short of a few pounds or if I needed the taste of some home cooking. They’d lived in the house since Gabe had left the army, renting it from the same miserly landlord who owned my digs. Along with my sister Bernie back home, my cousin Victor and his parents were the only family I had. Gabe was my father’s brother and they looked a helluva lot like each other. My own papa had been dead for over twenty years, but Gabe and Pearl treated me like one of their own. Their front door was never locked, and I made my way up the three granite steps, which my aunt Pearl scrubbed every other day, and went inside without knocking.
    “Hey Gabe, Pearl, where you both at?” I shouted down the hallway.
    “Joseph, is that you, boss man?” Gabe called from his kitchen.
    “Sure is. Man, it is freezing out there.” I beat at my arms with my hands, the watery snowflakes falling from my coat onto the hard wood floor in my aunt Pearl’s hallway. I kicked off my shoes, the soles sodden from the sleet and ice, and I took off my hat and coat and hung them on the top of the banister at the foot of their stairs before finding the two of them sitting at their dining table.
    The old black Aga was thankfully throwing out some heat; a pot of cornmeal porridge bubbled gently away on the back. I pulled up a chair and drew it in towards the table, directing my wet feet at the warmth of the metal range. I patted at my stomach with the flat of my palm and stared over at my aunt’s breakfast pans. My hunger settled over the room like a shroud on a corpse.
    “There ain’t no need axing why you here at this time in the marning, I suppose you’ll be wantin’ me to cook you up some eggs?” my aunt Pearl asked me as she rose from her chair, already knowing what my reply would be.
    Her accent was deep, rich Bajan. Our language, to those not familiar with it, could sound stern and authoritarian, but to me its lilting tones were a gentle reminder of happier times from my childhood. My years with the Barbadian police force had clipped my own use of our mother tongue, the service preferring its men to replicate the speech of its British Metropolitan counterparts here in the UK.
    “You know I ain’t gonna say no to you, Pearl. Eggs sound good to me. How about you bringing me some of that fine cornmeal pap.” I rubbed my hands together in eager anticipation. I felt like a child again, eleven years old, sat around my mama’s table waiting to get fed. I forgot the cold and smelt the exotic aromas of the Caribbean rising from my aunt’s old metal cooking pan.
    Pearl dished me up a bowl of the steaming hot cereal, which she had sprinkled on top with cinnamon, and brought it over to me along with a spoon. Back home we called it “pap” because of its thick consistency. It looked like baby food, but thankfully didn’t taste like it. Pearl returned to her stove and cracked two hen’s eggs into a black iron skillet and gently began to fry them while I filled my face.
    “So what you gotta tell us, Joseph? You dressed real sharp, brother,” Gabe said, lifting his head outta his newspaper as he spoke to me. He was one of the few people who used my given name; Pearl, what was left of my family, and the few friends I had always called me JT.
    “I’ve been offered work, but I’m not sure if it’s fo’ me, Gabe. That’s why I came over; I wanted to run it by you.”
    “You did? When did you need me tell you to take a job? You sure as hell need the money, that’s fo’ damn sure.”
    “I’d be working fo’ a guy named Earl Linney.” I waited for Gabe’s reaction, unsure of how he’d take the news. Historically, Jamaicans looked upon the other, smaller Caribbean islands with disdain, calling our home in Barbados one of the