The Blood King Conspiracy (Matt Drake 2) by David Leadbeater Page B

Kingston, seated inside a rumbling, bouncing van. Like the reggae vans of Barbados, this thing was ancient, colourful and extremely noisy. Bob Marley tunes blasted from the music box. The only difference was they were alone on this journey, instead of being crammed in with forty other people on a fifteen-seater ride.
    The place they were looking for was called Stony Hill, now part of a warren of roads and housing on the edge of a no-man’s-land. The man they were looking for was Lionel Raychim, an engineer now retired, responsible for several of Jamaica’s main roads that formed the backbone of the island’s transport system.
    Rick’s Bar was located in a grubby corner of a cul-de-sac, a ramshackle place surrounded by stone buildings, the very focus of the sun’s baking heat.
    Drake paid the driver and headed for a door covered by American beer signs. Budweiser. Coors. Michelob . “Don’t worry,” he said, laying a consoling hand around Ben’s shoulders, “we’ll get you a glass of icy cold milk.”
    Rick’s Bar was surprisingly agreeable once the heat and the location were fastened away behind them. The meandering, dimly lit place was wood-panelled and decorated with a mind-boggling array of furnishings: from a pirate cutlass to a Jolly Roger flag that hung next to the green and black Jamaican flag, and from the often replicated picture of workers sitting along the girders of the Empire State Building, to standard bikini babes posing on an idyllic beach. Drake smiled. It was easy to imagine ole Rick tacking stuff on the walls here and there, anything he could get his hands on. The place smelled of beer, sweat and cooking meat.
    A family of English tourists, their legs and arms the colour of virgin paper, were finishing off a meal, not looking at their food but studying the locals as carefully and warily as they could. A drunk sat at the bar, head slumped and hair dangling in his own dinner.
    “Awesome,” Kennedy shook her head. “Let’s find Raychim and get back to civilisation.”
    “This ain’t so bad,” said Hayden looking a little hurt. “Small town girl - I grew up in a place with a bar like this. We can’t all have a Denny’s on the doorstep you know.”
    Kinimaka walked slap bang into a table, spilling a guy’s drink and waking up the drunk at the bar. The Hawaiian said: “Oops, sorry,” and skirted around, going red.
    “If that’d been me,” Ben commented, “there’d have been threats, fist shaking, maybe even a head-butt.”
    Drake glanced at him. “Not while I’m here, there wouldn’t.”
    They found a table and sat down, Kinimaka looking especially uncomfortable perched on an undersized chair. A waitress with jet-black curly hair and a dirty pinny came out from the back, spotted them, and hurried over.
    “Help you?” Her English was stilted and tuneful, but a million times better than any of their Jamaican.
    “I hope so,” Kennedy took the lead. “We’re looking for Buds, all round, and a chat with Lionel Raychim.”
    The waitress instantly looked suspicious. “Wha’ you need wit’ old man Ray?”
    “A history lesson,” said Kennedy laying some cash on the table. “He around today?”
    “Whoever y’ask prob’ly tol’ you he ‘round every day,” said the waitress studying them hard before seeming to come to a decision. “Jus’ wait.”
    She went to the bar, took her pinny off, then turned and disappeared around the side into another room. Drake surveyed the place, catching the eyes of Kennedy, Hayden and Kinimaka. They got the message, each abruptly sitting lighter and weighing their options.
    Around the corner came a tall, spare man with white hair, a white beard and wearing a white suit. Oddly, he still looked more tanned than the English family who gawped at him and surreptitiously reached for camera phones. Upon reaching their table he sat down, spirited the money away and shouted loudly for beer.
    His eyes met Drake’s. “What do you need?”
    Kennedy spoke