Gently Sinking by Alan Hunter Page A

another matter.’
    ‘Him being white.’
    Sharkey shook his head. ‘I don’t hate white folks,’ he said. ‘You got that notion, you just change it. We’s a mixed-up world, all us people, and it ain’t no use to take exception. But I don’t like my sister living around with a man whose boots I have to lick.’
    ‘Did she know your attitude?’
    ‘She knew that.’
    ‘There were rows?’
    ‘Yeh. Plenty.’
    ‘How did she take the death of your brother?’
    ‘Not too damn hard man,’ Sharkey said.
    He flicked at the sweat growing on his face.
    ‘Maybe she didn’t know Sonny too well,’ he said. ‘Back home she lived with Mother’s folk a lot, that’s Montego way across from Kingston. Me, I around brought him up after Father went off to the Caymans, some place. We had it planned. He was through A-levels. He was coming here to study economics.’
    ‘He a mighty fine boy,’ Sarah Sunshine snuffled. ‘That boy was clever. He going somewhere.’
    ‘He could play most any instrument,’ Sharkey said. ‘He could teach me things. That was Sonny.’
    ‘But your sister did break with Blackburn,’ Gently said.
    ‘Sure, she broke with him,’ Sharkey said. ‘But I don’t know, man, she’d have broken anyway, she never did stop with any man long. Come and go, that’s my sister. She got a thing in her head about a career. I guess Tommy was helping her along that way, fixing auditions, that sort. Only she didn’t make it yet.’
    ‘Did she have a row with him?’
    ‘She didn’t flip big, just looked him straight in the eye and told him.’
    ‘What about you?’
    ‘Maybe I flipped.’
    ‘Threatened him, perhaps?’
    Sharkey looked away.
    ‘You got an idea about me, man,’ he said. ‘Ain’t nothing I can say is going to make any difference. Only you’s wrong, so wrong. I just ain’t a violent man.’
    ‘Did you threaten him?’
    ‘I opened my big mouth. Same way I opened it to you just now.’
    ‘You said you’d kill him.’
    ‘I said that.’
    ‘He’s dead.’
    ‘Yeh,’ Sharkey said.
    He fixed his dark eyes on Gently’s.
    ‘I want you to get this straight,’ he said. ‘You say I hated him. Maybe so. But there’s surely more than one kind of hate. I didn’t hate Tommy so I would do him some injury, so I felt about him that he wasn’t human. When I said I’d kill him that was showing him my feelings. I didn’t mean I’d take his life. He knew that.’
    ‘Though he was responsible for Sonny’s death,’ Gently said.
    ‘But man, I wasn’t sure of it,’ Sharkey said. ‘Tommy swore the ship was okay, they surveyed it some place every year. He say the captain wouldn’t sail her if he didn’t know she is okay.’
    ‘That captain would have sailed anything,’ Gently said.
    ‘But I was not blaming Tommy altogether,’ Sharkey said.
    ‘Oh man, he knew,’ Sarah Sunshine said. ‘That’s all a lot of lies he was saying, you man.’
    They turned to her. She stood shivering, big-eyed, still clutching the sandwich-knife tight.
    ‘You woman, be quiet,’ Sharkey said. ‘You don’t know Tommy was saying a lot of lies.’
    ‘I do know that,’ Sarah Sunshine said. ‘Tommy knew a long time that ship is no good.’
    ‘How you know that?’
    ‘I just do hear things.’
    ‘Who you hear?’
    ‘It was Freddy,’ she said.
    ‘Freddy,’ Gently said. ‘You mean Frederick Grey, Mrs Sunshine?’
    ‘That’s who I mean,’ Sarah Sunshine said defiantly. ‘I hear him talk about that to Ozzie.’
    ‘You heard him say Blackburn knew the ship was defective?’
    ‘I hear him say Tommy knew a long time. I hear him say Tommy try to get more insurance, but the insurance people not going to play.’
    ‘When did you hear that?’
    ‘Oh, sometime I hear it. After it all came out in the papers. Freddy and Ozzie are standing at the counter. Maybe they don’t know I’m listening.’
    ‘You woman,’ Sharkey said. ‘Why you not tell me?’
    ‘You man,’ she said. ‘I don’t want you to