Age of Voodoo Read Online Free PDF Page A

fur.
    He wasn’t a pet, but over the past year Rikki—named after the Kipling story—had become a kind of companion for Lex, a silent little familiar. In the late 1800s mongooses had been introduced to Manzanilla by the Spanish in order to tackle the island’s chronic snake problem. The place had been infested with cascabel, fer-de-lance and bushmaster, so much so that death by snakebite accounted for at least twenty per cent of fatalities among the population. A hundred mongoose breeding pairs had been released in the interior, and by the turn of the twentieth century snakes were all but a thing of the past. Enough survived to give the mongooses something to hunt and eat, but they were no longer the omnipresent danger they had been.
    Lex welcomed Rikki’s presence on his property. It meant he never had to worry about where he set foot. He could walk around house and garden with no shoes on and be perfectly safe.
    Also, he felt an affinity with the mongoose. A ruthless, efficient killer. Specialty: getting rid of creatures no one wanted, the ugly ones with venom and fangs and a bad temper. Lex could identify with that.
    He finished his rum and drowsed for a while. The tumbler slipped from his grasp and clunked to the floor, rousing him briefly and sending Rikki racing for the shadows of the garden. He thought about going to bed, but the drowsiness overtook him again and he fell asleep right there on the verandah.
    His dreams were never peaceful. They were always about restless things. Beings that should be dead but weren’t. The faces of victims. Mouths that yawned at him, sometimes soundlessly, sometimes uttering words in languages he only half understood. Accusing. Insisting. Demanding to be remembered, to be taken into account.
    A few he recognised. The rest looked like strangers, even though he ought to know them.
    A roll-call of evil. Dictators. Tyrants. Terrorists. Mass-murderers.
    The deservedly dead. The righteous dead. Code Crimsons.
    Yet they would not leave him alone.
    Lex awoke, startled.
    His phone was ringing.
    If it was that bloody Seraphina again, already...
    But the caller ID said Wilberforce.
    “Wilb?”
    “Lex. Thank God. You got to come. I’m in deep shit. For real.”
    “Wilb, where are you?” Lex’s watch said 1.10AM.
    “Outside home, in my car. I just pulled up. There’s these men waiting for me out front. I wouldn’t have stopped if I’d seen them in time. Now they’ve spotted me, and I’m screwed. Please. Help. Quick.”
    “I’m on my way.”
    “Great. Just hurry, because—”
    There was the sound of voices other than Wilberforce’s, shouting, angry. A car door opening. A scuffle.
    Then the line went dead.
    Lex was on his feet, sprinting for the garage.

 

    FOUR
    THE GARFISH
     
     
    W ILBERFORCE LIVED ON the outskirts of Port Sebastian, Manzanilla’s capital, in an area that was only one step up from a shanty town. His house was a wooden cabin painted bright green, yellow and red, with a tin roof that groaned under the weight of a satellite dish and a solar-heated water tank.
    As Lex pulled up in his Subaru 4x4, he saw Wilberforce’s battered Mazda saloon parked outside. The driver’s door stood wide open. There was a car blocking Wilberforce’s driveway, a hulking Jeep Grand Cherokee tricked out with bull bars, running boards, chrome trim, rally headlamps and blacked-out windows. Few Manzanillans could afford a pimp ride like that, fewer still who weren’t involved in some kind of shady dealings.
    What the hell was Wilberforce mixed up in? How had he got on the wrong side of a gang of criminals?
    Contain the questions for now. Focus on the matter at hand.
    There was nobody about on the street, but lights shone in Wilberforce’s house. Lex left the Subaru, vaulted a low chainlink fence and padded across the front lawn. He listened out. From indoors came the sound of a raised voice. Lex couldn’t make out the words. Then the unmistakable smack of fist striking flesh, and