‘The Kazakh made you an offer because of your contacts? I don’t...’
‘Drink!’
Selina snapped it back. Another shudder and this time a cough. She tried to say something but no sound came out. Vassili leaned forward.
‘Pardon? F’ai pas compris.’
Selina’s short brosse haircut darkened at the roots with sweat. Trickles appeared and ran down her jaw.
‘Spicy,’ she said in a hoarse whisper.
Vassili grinned and opened the freezer. He pulled out a bottle so thick with ice that when he beat off the frost there was only a thin black line visible through it.
‘More old,’ he said and tapped the top with a small hammer. He poured a liquid as thick and dark as Black Strap Molasses.
‘Do not drink that,’ said Heike.
‘Men,’ I said.
‘More history,’ said Vassili.
‘Tell me,’ said Selina.
‘In nineteen seventy-nine Russia invaded Afghanistan. I was eighteen years old. Afghanistan on the border there so the army take lot of boys from Kazakhskaja, Uzbekskaja and Turkmenskaja. Very tow young boys in that part Russia, but not as tow the Afghan. They killing and torturing and is very dirty war. I get out. Run away. Desert. There were five of us. Two Kazakhs, two Uzbeks and me. The only way is forward thruff the enemy and into Pakistan. We go back to Russia—you can lose yourself there but you have no life. So we go to Peshawar. The two Uzbeks killed by bandits in the Khyber Pass. Me and the Kazakhs make money smuggling guns. I leave to Karachi. Take ship to Dar, Durban, Luanda. I end here. Cotonou. The first country where I speak the language.’
‘The Kazakh bastard deserted with you?’
‘Drink!’
Selina tipped back the glass, sucking in the still viscous liquid. There was a two-second delay then she dropped the glass and clutched her throat. The sweat sprang out of her face and all down her arms and legs. She dropped straight to the floor, landing on her backside. Vassili roared in Fon and the daughter came in with a beaker of thin yoghurt which he poured down Selina’s throat.
I picked her up and put her on the sofa. Vassili sent for more yoghurt and towels. She was crying now and clear snot ran in channels from her nose.
‘A tow bitch,’ I said. ‘And a stupid one.’
‘Fuck you,’ she mouthed.
The cuckoo gave us ten.
‘How the hell does he live with that thing?’ asked Heike.
‘For the wife,’ said Vassili, throwing a towel. ‘She like it.’
Selina pulled herself together, drank more yoghurt, towelled herself down, went to the door and spat out into the yard. Vassili returned the mature piri-piri to the freezer and pulled out some apricot.
‘Was I right?’ asked Selina.
‘Yes. The Kazakh was my friend.’
‘Was?’
‘No. Still my friend. I tell him friendly like. No deal. He offer me old things. Antiquities from Afghanistan too. Lovely. I buy some. It’s OK. But plutonium...’
We left soon after. Vassili gave us a calabash of yoghurt with some clingfilm over it. He said Selina was going to need it when she went pee-pee in the morning.
We dropped by the Milan and bought a pizza (no chillis) to take away. We drank cold beer and ate. Selina rolled herself a joint the size of a Havana cigar and smoked it with very little help from Heike or me. We’d got used to the African view of dope-smokers, that they were no-shirt losers, shoeless drifters, lower than Special Brew drinkers from back home.
At midnight Selina stood up and asked if we had any Ecstasy in the house. We shook our heads. She ran her hands over her breasts and hips and gave an impatient, exasperated jiggle.
‘I’ve got to go and get laid,’ she said, ‘unless you two are game?’
Chapter 16
Cotonou. Saturday 24th February.
‘Where are you going?’ asked Heike.
‘See Bagado,’ I said.
‘You’re going to leave me with her?’
‘She came back?’
‘I barricaded the door in case she got in with us.’
‘She’s...’
‘...an animal.’
‘I thought we were Generation “Excess” and they were just “X”.’
‘You think she’s always been like this?’
‘Maybe her father dying...’
‘I hope that’s it. You should have been in the back seat on the way to the Milan. More hands than Shiva on a Saturday night.’
‘I didn’t know you were...’
‘Because you were talking a load of shit to the driver.’
‘Next time...’
‘You’ll bring a bucket of cold water with you? I should be able to handle this on my own. I’m a middle-aged woman for Christ’s sake. But she’s so strong. She’s got wrists on her like a sculler.’
‘You’re not middle-aged yet.’
Heike slumped back on to the bed.
‘I’m not even half way through?’
‘You’ve got to hit forty to be middle-aged.’
‘What makes you think you’re going to live to eighty?’
‘Whisky.’
‘Selina’s ageing me. My vital organs feel like pensioners.’
‘My theory is—too much testosterone.’
‘Yes, I’ve heard girls inject themselves with the stuff—it makes them predatory and as thick as pig shit.’
‘Why’d they want to be as thick as pig shit?’
‘It’s a contraindication the drugs companies don’t tell them about.’
‘I’m taking Selina to Lagos today. Give you a breather.’
‘That well-known city of moral rectitude and Christian virtue?’
‘I’ll cufflink her to the bed.’
‘Wrong, Bruce.’
‘I’ll be good.’
‘Kiss me, you idiot.’
The late morning was hot by way of a change. I took a taxi moto to Bagado’s house. The courtyard, a large patch of beaten earth, half shaded by the spread of a mango tree, was full of people. His wife sat over an aluminium calabash of boiling oil while his eldest daughter gave the yam some stick. The middle girl, a real beauty called José-Marie, played with the boy, who’d taken to wearing shorts since I last saw him. He staggered up to me and pointed a finger and said: ‘Yovo.’* They learn young. The rest of them I didn’t know, and Bagado probably didn’t know some of them either. He did know that they were all his responsibility and that there’d be more now that he’d got his job back. I was shown into the living room where there were two armchairs and a sofa which looked as if they’d been scrapping all night. Bagado was sunk deep into one of the armchairs with his mac on as usual and his hands steepled. I sat on the central ridge of the sofa so that I didn’t disappear behind my knees.
There was a wooden table between us with four lace doilies and a china ashtray with the legend ‘I cum from Looe’ in the middle. The walls were scrubbed clean to an uneven colour between grey and brown. On one was an English clock with barometer attached which read ‘Storm’ permanently. Opposite Bagado was a reproduction Gauguin which he’d told me was called ‘Where do we come from? What are we? Where are we going?’. Questions I fought with daily and came out underneath.
The clock ticked. The family noise outside smothered now that the paterfamilias was in session.
‘I suppose you want a beer,’ said Bagado.
‘Not if you’ll starve.’
‘No, no. We have beer. Cashew?’
He roared a name. A threadbare curtain parted behind his head and a young man stepped into the room holding a tray with two glasses, an old whisky bottle full of cashew and a bowl.
‘We’ve been expecting you.’
The boy put down the tray, poured La Beninoise into two glasses and left.
‘That’s André. He wants to go to university.’
‘A nephew?’
‘No. His father died of cancer last year. I’ve taken him in. He’s a good boy. He will go to university
. You never went?’
‘I didn’t like school. Too many people telling you what to do.’
‘Followed the money. Thought it would buy you freedom. Mistake.’
‘Lectures, classes, tutorials, they didn’t appeal.’
‘Yes, well, none of us is free.’
‘Bad week with Bondougou?’
‘There’s never been a good week.’
‘Your Napier Briggs investigation?’
‘I was doing rather well. I know what happened now. I had a car located in all the right places. I had a Lagos registration, even a name, a suspect.’
‘You arrest him?’
‘He’s out of the country. I needed permission to link up with Lagos.’
‘Now Bondougou’s handling it?’
‘And I’m working on the drive-by shooting of a rice importer in the industrial zone.’
‘You going to give me that name?’
‘Emmanuel Quarshie, BSc. London.’
‘Did you know it when I hit you for the number?’
‘Of course.’
‘I could have used it.’
‘I didn’t want him to know. I wanted you to work out where Mr Briggs spent his time in Lagos. You’d have scared him.’
‘I did anyway. Had a little rush of psychosis at the end of a tough week.’
‘Did he talk?’
‘If you’re interested in Nigerian politics, which is not my kind of Muzak, yes, he talked. He implied that one of the presidential candidates lobbying the general tapped Briggs for some campaign funds. We didn’t get round to which one.’
‘You were interrupted?’
‘He’d called some home help before I turned up.’
‘Do you think it’s true?’
‘I had Napier down as a sardine swimming with shark. After Quarshie I started thinking he had some teeth. I thought if that toxic waste is the stuff Napier shipped then maybe he issued a little threat and if the shark was a presidential candidate and he saw a nasty exposé looming he’d have bitten back... hard.’
‘So he went into the cocotiers to pick up blackmail money?’
‘That’s why he wanted me with him.’
‘But you haven’t linked him to the toxic waste.’
‘Apart from the way I was getting trodden on in Lagos when I started sniffing around, no. But our friend Napier wasn’t a poor boy scrabbling in the gutter.’
‘Ah! There was a will?’
‘A safe-deposit-box key with a jackpot of US dollars seven mil.’
‘He’s not sounding like a four-one-niner any more.’
‘All that paperwork smells right. The scam letters and then the sting, but I’ve always wondered how the gang knew when to hit his account. Broking houses don’t often hold that kind of cash, and if they do they don’t hold it for long. It goes straight on to the overnight money markets before being passed on to the clients.’
‘He cheated his own clients?’
‘You don’t end up with seven million dollars in a Swiss box unless you’ve been a bad boy and you know a lot about being one.’
‘So he could have been going into the cocotiers to pick up his own money.’
‘There’s a lot we don’t know about Briggs, but I’m flying to Lagos with Selina tomorrow and we’re partying with the people he worked for. Maybe some clams’ll start opening. I’ll keep an ear open for Bondougou too.’
‘Do that. He’s nesting over there and I don’t know who with.’
I drank beer and popped cashew. Bagado sawed his chin and communed with Gauguin. The clock chimed twelve.
‘How did they get Briggs out of the cocotiers?’ I asked.
‘You want to know whether you should be embarrassed?’
‘I’m embarrassed, Bagado.’
‘I wish I could say you learned from your mistakes.’
‘Is this a knuckle rap?’
He shrugged.
‘Briggs was chloroformed. You must have left him alone for a few moments. They weren’t very subtle about their business.’
‘They didn’t have to be with the police on their side.’
‘I like your spirit, Bruce. Just listen. They bought a one-litre bottle of chloroform from the major supplier in Cotonou. I have a description of the buyer from the manager of the shop. The car they used must have been around some time on the Boulevard de la Marina because several of the girls out there saw it. Two of them went up to it. One of them talked to the driver. The other even remembered the registration number in case she saw it later on. A different girl saw Briggs thrown into the back of the car and watched while it took off and turned right just before the conference centre. They must have been playing gangsters in the car because we had no trouble finding their route to a derelict warehouse in Cadjehoun. One other passer-by even took the registration. You know we had that carjacking and street-shooting incident in Porto Novo last month? Citizens have been very vigilant since then.’
‘When did they dump the body?’
‘About three a.m. The car crossed the border to Badagri just after four fifteen.
‘How was he killed?’
‘Broken neck eventually.’
‘And they were all African? No whites involved.’
He nodded.
‘Nothing from the Land Office still?’ I asked.
‘I’m hopeful.’
I told him about the car, my beating at Seriki Haulage and the dead body of the driver. That brought him out of the chair and set him pacing around the room, flicking his teeth with his thumbnail. I gave him the haulage companies’ directors’ names, Ben Agu and Bof Nwanu. I ran him through my conversation with Quarshie.
‘He doesn’t say anything, does he?’ said Bagado.
‘Played for time until meals on wheels came.’
‘I keep thinking about the army—what they were doing around Akata village, keeping people out, protecting the waste dump...’
‘Making sure nobody ran away.’
‘That too. Those soldiers were nervous. They seemed scared, their guns always ready. Those workers must have been prisoners.’
‘Lifers looking for a half chance?’
‘If that’s true then what Quarshie is saying about presidential candidates feels right. What happened to you, the driver who was going to talk—it all fits.’
Bagado wrote down the names of the three presidential candidates in his notebook and said he’d do some digging on them.
‘If the level we’re operating at is as high as Quarshie makes out I’m headed for the meat grinder,’ I said. ‘They know who I am now.’
‘At one level. The lowest.’
‘Quarshie can’t be that low down.’
‘True. You’d better stay out of his way.’
‘He’ll talk. He’ll give some kind of description.’
‘First, you didn’t use your own name, and second, an African’s description of a white man is... you know... you all look the same. Like we do to you. Black curly hair, flat nose, brown eyes, dark skin... useless.’
‘That’s cheered me up, Bagado. The guy went to London University, for Christ’s sake, he’s used to white people.’
‘Doesn’t make any difference,’ he said, sweeping the room with a levelling hand.
‘I’m six foot four inches tall.’
‘And Quarshie?’
‘Short and stocky.’
‘Right, everybody looks tall to him.’
‘I will still be going to Lagos, Bagado. I’m not backing out. I’m being paid. Remember what you said about me to Bondougou.’
‘I think,’ said Bagado, stopping in the middle of the room, ‘I feel a speech coming on.’
‘Already?’
‘A small one. Your mettle needs strengthening. You’re lacking purpose.’
‘Did you ever think of going into the holy orders?’
‘As a matter of fact...’
‘Good career move. You’d be a star.’
‘Nigeria is a country that should be a s
howcase for Africa. Oil brought us the biggest financial opportunity of any country on the continent, and that includes the South African gold and diamond mines. There are one hundred million Nigerians and most of us are hard-working, intelligent and love life. And yet our country is a broken-down, polluted, utterly corrupted place with most of our oil wealth either going to numbered Swiss bank accounts or paying interest on the national debt. Are we going to stand silent while this country is taken over by a man who imports toxic waste, who has dealings with organized crime, who has people killed? I say no.
‘You maintain this stance, Bruce, that you are only interested in the money, but I don’t believe it. You’ve been in Africa for more than five years, you’ve never been back to Europe in that time...’
‘Never had the money.’
‘You’re African now whether you like it or not. You’re one of us.’
‘And I know my duty.’
‘Right.’
‘Let’s find out who we’re up against. If it’s a presidential candidate with access to army help and the mafia. Then we’ll have to see.’
‘Remember your client. Your precious client. Maybe she’ll decide something different. Her father was brutally murdered and revenge is a strong-burning fuel.’
‘Her appetite’s carnivorous too.’
‘All I ask, Bruce, is that you don’t do anything illegal. Not here in Benin.’
‘Thanks for the warning.’
‘I’m a policeman now.’
‘And I’m a Private Investigator.’
‘But you’ll still tell me things I need to know.’
‘If it doesn’t breach client confidentiality.’
‘I see.’
‘You’ve got to hand it to Bondougou,’ I said. ‘He knew what he was doing.’
Chapter 17
I was back home at 1 p.m. The flight left at 3 p.m. The door was locked to Selina’s room. Heike made a salad. I fried up a cheese omelette. We called Selina. No answer. We ate and made coffee.