Passiontide: A Novel - Softcover

Roffey, Monique

Softcover

ISBN 10: 059368852X ISBN 13: 9780593688526

Publisher: Vintage, 2025

Synopsis

Finalist for the CARICON Prize

When a female musician is found murdered on a small tropical island, after a string of similar deaths, outraged local women take matters into their own hands.

The quiet calm of Ash Wednesday morning. Carnival is over. Everyone on the small island of St. Colibri is sleeping peacefully. Everyone except Sora Tanaka, a young pan player lying under the cannonball tree. Sora, a professional musician, had been visiting St. Colibri to take part in the island’s famous steel pan competition. But Sora isn’t asleep; she’s dead: brutally murdered, and still in her costume. And as the women of this island know all too well, Sora is far from the first woman to be killed, and she probably won’t be the last, either. In fact, the problem of women being killed on the island is so bad, there’s even a dedicated unit within the police department: OMWEN, the Office for Murdered Women, headed by Inspector Cuthbert Loveday. 

    In this powerful new rewriting of the detective novel, Sora’s death is the last straw and the beginning of something much larger, a "revolution" some are calling it. The event draws together four women who have never before seen each other as allies: a friend of the victim, the organizer of a sex workers’ collective, a local activist, and the prime minister’s wife. Tenderly, sometimes hilariously, Passiontide chronicles how these women join forces and find new ways to help one another.

About this title

About the Author

MONIQUE ROFFEY is Professor of Contemporary Fiction at Manchester Metropolitan University. She is the author of eight books, five of which are set in Trinidad and the Caribbean region. The Mermaid of Black Conch, her previous novel, won the Costa Book of the Year award. She co-founded Writers Rebel inside Extinction Rebellion. She was born in Port of Spain, Trinidad, and lives in the East End of London.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

I

The man left quickly, like a rat, left me behind. Running away, after the slashing slashing. My neck hurts, that bite, teeth biting me hard. “Sora!” I shout but no sound comes. My throat was hurt, choked. I’m looking down from above and also curled up on the ground, down in the garbage, bottles and cans, cardboard boxes. Tree roots like rivers, mounds of trash, oh, no, not there. Carnival Tuesday, my costume still on. Pale nest of arms and legs; jewels in my headband. I wanted to take the costume home. Nausea surges up, flashes of the attack. “No, no, no!” Me, floating, looking down at my body amongst the smashed-­up cannonball fruit, a holy tree. “Sora!” I cannot be dead yet. Please. I’m not ready. I want to fall back down again, please, play steel pan again. Get me down! Somebody come, fetch me. Go back down, Sora. Go home. Far away, laughter; las lap parties, people liming, dancing. Breathe, breathe. Am I already all that’s left?


NO PORT EVER INNOCENT

Inspector Cuthbert Loveday peered out across the valley of rooftops towards the misted blue of the gulf. Sky bright bright already even so early. Light so light it hurt his eyes to look out the window, even through the narrow slats of the blind. Sun already dripping down like a fire and another carnival done. Everything calm. Quiet. All of it like earthquake weather.

Morning after.

Everybody sleeping.

Angelica sleeping too, one leg hanging off the bed, her backside naked to the world . . . and to wake her up for more sexing meant more effort than he could give right then, and anyway he hadda get home soon, before the wife get vex an cuss. He flipped the slats closed, lit a cigarette. A knot in the pit of his stomach; a faraway dread he barely heeded these days. He was okay. He always would be, and yet, tap, tap, tap, at his back, like someone always trying to get in.

His work phone vibrated softly on the ledge, the incoming number flashed the unit’s new Duty Sergeant, Alwyn Ryen.

“Yeah, Alwyn. What’s up?”

“We get a call from some workers, out cleaning up. They find a dead woman. On the savannah. Under a tree.”

“A tree?”

“Yes, boss. Apparently.”

“Which tree?”

“That big tree, nuh. The cannonball tree opposite the school. On the western side of the savannah.”

“Oho.”

It have two of them strange trees on the savannah, this one he knew well, like a giant, by the water pump station.

“Curled up, nuh. Like she asleep, or so they saying.”

“Shit, dead?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Dead dead?”

“Boss, yes. They thinking is one of them women you does see in the pansides, from Japan. You know. Real cute.”

“Them boys is saying that?”

“Apparently, yeah. An she have purple hair.”

“What? You sure she not just unconscious? From too much liquor. You sure she dead?”

“She dead, sir. Strangled, they saying, and bitten.”

“Bitten?”

“Yes, on she neck. Seem like some mad man bite and strangle she dead right there.”

“You sure she ent get bitten on she ass?” And he laughed to himself.

“No. Someone bite she neck.”

“Holy Jesus, okay, okay . . . ah coming. Meet me there.”

In his car, Loveday pressed two painkillers into his palm and knocked them back with some warm bottled water. These days he going to bed with a headache and not sleeping it off. Headache still there in the morning. Dead women not going away, either; his job with female homicides a constant thorn in his side, given all the gang-­related homicides on the island. Maybe the whole damn place have the same not-­going-­away headaches he have. Every now and then he figure he could pack up, take the wife and kids, move south and resettle. Deep south, down by the long beaches, the caves full of blue crabs, a simple life. Where he was happiest, as a boy. Get some quiet, sorry-­ass police job. And then he remember that place have it own problems.

Angelica’s small apartment, six hundred feet above sea level. The cruise down was steep and winding. From the west, a breeze coming in like a kiss. Beyoncé’s “Hold Up” on the radio, and he sang along. Women could be “jealous” and “crazy,” yes, too often. He glanced left and took in a long sight he always liked to see: the whole city of Port Isabella lay flat and wide; busy with galvanised rooftops, silver and red. He knew it like a map, like the back of his own fist, each road, each main artery, each side street; he could even name which gang lord, which second in command, lived where. The view from up here always made him feel calm and anxious, equally. This city not at all easy, not even today; first day of Lent and the day after the bacchanal stop. Sea: enormous and blue and innocent, and then port—­no port ever innocent—­and then city again and most of the city still dormant, for now. Down, down, to the savannah and the place of this nex dead woman. Cannonball tree. Yeah, he knew the one. He kept singing “jealous” and “crazy.” He saw Beyoncé in the video, a magnificent golden gown, long, flowing hair, smashing up cars with a baseball bat, like them cars were she man’s car. Yeah, women could be so: true fact.


WHAT YOU DREAMING ABOUT?

Loveday saw the body before he came close: a young pale-­skinned woman lookin like she only asleep, in truth, curled up under a tree in her pretty mas costume. A bad sight, man; the wrong part was she sleeping amongst the stinkin nasty carnival refuse and the jumble of fallen brown cannonballs. Steupse.

Nobody at the morgue, the forensics team likely all sleeping carnival off. Forrester probably out of the country. People avoided the office after carnival. It not an official holiday but people home. A group of city workers stood close to the tree. Men in green overalls and rubber boots. They looked quiet, gazing downwards. Savannah already scorched from an early dry season; everything looking dry and brown. The workers had come to make a start on cleaning up. They stood back as he approached.

“So, so, so,” he hailed them.

As he drew closer, his stomach pitched, unexpectedly.

She was small. This one, bam, right there. Okay. Already he knew what he knew when dead women were left so, like this: displayed in a public space. Often, but not always, dead from someone she knew.

He stood above her, gazed down. Purple hair, yes. This woman curled up in a C, amongst the smashed brown balls on the ground. Like a miniature Wonder Woman in her bikini and headdress and boots. A sharp stench of urine wafting up from the ground. The tree probably like a latrine over carnival.

He took out his notebook, wrote:

1) Intimate Partner Violence? Possible? Crawl there, die so?

2) CCTV tape, from the camera across the road?

He looked around. A crime scene always mysterious. Clues everywhere and yet many answers to figure out. Flies buzzed all over her. He squatted down on his haunches and waved to shoo them. He peered closer.

Skin already greying. Pallor mortis setting in. Not long she dead. Not possible for longer than twelve hours, max.

Red ants crawled in a fine line, across one hip.

Yeah: real dead.

Shit.

Just when he thought carnival pass without a dead. Her bikini costume still neat neat, like it stuck on with glue. Green jewels at her forehead, fixed to a band like a crown. Her costume still intact. He wrote:

3) Costume intact.

4) Rape? Looking unlikely.

Why you go and dead so? Eh? Yuh boyfriend do this? Eh?

Steupse. Nice lil chicky.

“Alluyuh find her like this?”

“Yes, boss,” one of the workers replied.

“Anyone touch her?”

“No, boss.”

“You sure of that?”

“Boss, we just find her, an hour ago. We leave her so and our manager call de police.”

“Which one of you found her?”

“Me,” said a tall, stringy-­looking red man.

“You’ll need to make a statement to Sergeant Ryen at some point.”

“Sure, boss.”

“What’s your name?”

“Rudi.”

“Rudi?”

“Rudi Mackenzie, boss.”

Loveday gazed around, this time searching the horizons of the savannah, like the killer might still be loitering. Sometimes they did. Always good to check they not hiding in plain sight. To the left, the famous boulevard of trees planted by colonials long ago so the trams could pass through. At night, the whole place one big dark patch of ground cover for any thief or murderer. The killer could escape easy, get himself well away from here in minutes.

“You found her curled up?”

“Yes.”

“You sure you ent touch her? No one arrange her like this?”

“What? Me? Nah.”

The man looked solemn, almost moved to tears.

“Okay, good. Thank you.”

The cannonball tree was vast. He peered upwards at the trunk, up into its wild mess of fruit and massive arms. All kinda cannonball-­shaped fruit was all tangled up and dangling down in spirals. Like small bodies were caught up in some type of trap. Not so close to the road. She wouldn’t have been easily spotted by anyone driving past the night before. One wrist was cuffed with a carnival band ID bracelet. One word on it: QUEST. He took out his cell phone and snapped some photographs of the bracelet, the number on it. Blood had dried and caked round her mouth. Mascara had clotted around her eyes. Coral lipstick still drawn on. And yes, there, a bite mark on the left side of her neck. High up. Or half a bite mark. Brown bruises all over her neck, too. He snapped close ups. Forrester would take photos later, in the morgue, but he always wanted his own. What kind of animal would bite anyone so, eh? Nothing he’d seen before. Like a vampire bat went for her. A love bite? Had this started with consent? Again, his stomach pitched, damn it, and a lump jammed up in his throat.

The men were still gazing down at her.

Edition details

• Publisher: Vintage
• Publication date: 2025
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 059368852X
• ISBN 13: 9780593688526
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 368