The Far Side of the Sun Read Online Free Page A

Street with its quaint little curio shops that the colonials loved so much. It was lazing in the sun, its shutters bleached, its narrow pavement almost empty at this time of day when people took to their midday meals or their noon siestas. A woman riding a donkey plodded past and then it was quiet again.

‘Miss Wyatt!’

The man’s voice came from behind her. Dodie didn’t even turn. Her heart thumped but her legs bounded forward in immediate panic. She knew that voice, knew whose fists it belonged to. Before her mind worked out what was happening, she was running, but she could hear right behind her the heavy feet that had kicked her before, the ones that belonged to the person who liked to use her back as a punchbag.

This time he was ready for her and he was fast. He grasped her hair and yanked her back. She screamed and lashed out at his face but a black sedan swerved to a halt beside her. Its rear door burst open and she was thrown inside, her attacker jammed tight beside her, twisting an arm painfully behind her back and chuckling to himself as though he were playing with a puppy.

It was broad daylight. No one was kidnapped in broad daylight on a pleasant Nassau street. No one.

As the car drove on, pedestrians were going about their business, cars were passing. This was not possible. She screamed at the window. The driver turned casually in his seat and slapped her across the face so hard that she felt part of a tooth break loose.

‘Shut it, lady.’

A knife appeared in the meaty hand of her companion on the back seat and before she could start to reason with him, its blade had slid along the underside of her arm from her wrist all the way to her elbow. She watched in horror as a snake of crimson leapt into life and rippled down her pale flesh. It wasn’t deep, little more than a scratch, just a warning, but she had to fight back the anger that was absurdly for the fact that the blood was ruining her Arcadia Hotel dress.

‘Let me out.’

‘Shut up, bitch.’ One hand gripped her while the other held the knife.

‘Let me out or I’ll —’

‘Or you’ll what, you bloody whore?’

‘Fuck you, girl,’ the driver shouted and glanced over his shoulder.

She tried for the door handle with her free hand but was smacked in the middle of her back by a fist. She crumpled, terror gripping her lungs, but she found the strength to scream and curse at them, throwing them off balance, filling the car with noise, and she wiped her hand in her own blood, then smeared it on the window.

‘Shut the bitch up!’

The driver lost concentration. The car swerved and its brakes squealed. It bounced off the front wing of a pale convertible that was turning out of a side street, and in one brief second the shocked eyes of its woman driver saw what was going on behind the bloody window.

Before Dodie could draw breath, she was hurled out of the car on to the road.
     
    The woman picked Dodie up off the tarmac.

She drove her to the police station, stayed with her through the pointless questioning by a young officer – pointless because they all knew the men would never be found. They would fade from sight. Disappear to one of the hundreds of Out Islands.

‘Can’t you at least look for a dented black Plymouth sedan?’ the woman demanded.

‘We will make enquiries, madam, and put out a description. But we are hard-pressed for manpower right now.’

Two murders.

An attempted kidnapping.

The world’s press breathing down their necks.

The Bahamas was out of its depth.

Dodie recognised her now. This was that woman, but groomed and sleek and happy to scold a policeman for spelling her name wrong.

Matilda Latcham
.

Hector Latcham’s wife.

What a small town Nassau could be when it tried.
     
    ‘Dearest girl, you can’t possibly go back to work today in your state. Just look at you.’

‘I’m better now. Really I am.’ Dodie put down her glass. ‘I have to get back to work at the Arcadia.’

Tilly waved her