I, obviously, looked fresh enough. I’d stopped drinking when I saw what the champagne had done to Marcella’s mouth, so I didn’t have a craggy canyon migraine. I’d even refused whisky and had opted for the Perrier with a hint of lark song. The virtue was pouring off me as I’m sure Graydon could have pulled out some golden elixir, hand-distilled by ancient crofters from water drawn at the highest point of the river Livet.
Selina and I had been offered a job. Well, the chief had given us space in his office on one of the four floors he occupied in Elephant House on Lagos Island. Ben Agu and Franconelli had independently talked things through with the chief and the chief had come to the momentous decision that although they were doing their best to sell commodities there wasn’t anybody in his organization with the first idea about them. Ben Agu had told me on the quiet that this, their only foreign-currency earner, was actually losing them money. The other businesses generated niara, which was crashing through the floors and gaining momentum.
Bof and Ben were flowerpot men. They knew how to run a business but they didn’t know a lot about international trade, and they were low on top-level European contacts. Napier must have fitted in like a dream. Selina and I had turned up gift-wrapped for the party. Not only did we have the London office and the African know-how, we were new faces, and not ugly ones. There’s nothing an expatriate community craves more than fresh blood. They’re like an isolated desert tribe who need their blood-lines strengthened with new genes.
Night fell. The wall lights came on in the garden. Franconelli and the chief talked football. The chief was still enraged at the Nigerian team being pulled by the military from the Africa Nations Cup after they got petulant over South African flak on the environmental activists’ executions. Graydon stifled yawns. Gryf and I stood out of the great man’s aura and talked inland waterways of Great Britain, a special interest of Gryf’s.
Abruptly, the chief decided to leave. His wife, who’d been out for three hours, was instantly awake and delighted. We all shook hands and did some mock pleading. Graydon was looking dangerously bored. He eyed Gryf, and I saw some mischief flit behind his glassy pupils. He put an arm round him and they walked the chief back up to the house.
Franconelli and I were alone in the garden apart from his man who, now sitting behind the swing sofa, wore trousers that didn’t ride over his lumpy ankle. This was no country for jackets so it was the only way to pack.
Franconelli twitched his eyebrows. I went over but didn’t feel chummy enough to join him on the swing. I sat on a stool opposite him. He flung a hand over the back of the sofa and rubbed his stomach with the other and ruminated.
‘You don’t drink,’ he said in a slight American accent. ‘It’s good. Stay sharp, right?’
I didn’t want to ruin my chances of having a drink in his company again so I came clean.
‘I’m off it. Malaria and alcohol don’t mix.’
‘There’s a lot of it about this time of year,’ he said, giving me a pained look which I didn’t understand. ‘You known Graydon long?’
Now he’d taken the tortoiseshell sun bins off, his face had lost a lot of its glamour. Around his eyes was charcoal black as if the man hadn’t slept all the way through in years. There was some shrewdness there too which he probably liked to keep out of mixed company on a sunny day and there was sadness as if he felt sorry for all those wives whose husbands had gone for short walks and never returned. That was Franconelli’s mix, a strange one—power and pity.
‘Met him today for the first time,’ I said.
‘Oh, right,’ he said, and gave his fingers a gimme twitch. The help put a baton in his hand and Franconelli unscrewed a Havana cigar. ‘Don’t smoke?’ he asked, and rammed a hand down his pocket for a clipper. He took a divot out of the end.
‘I’m not a health freak, Mr Franconelli.’
He grunted and lit up and blew out plumes of smoke that smelled like an expensive saddle shop.
‘You’re different,’ he said. ‘You’re not like these other assholes. You don’t fight for the caviare, you don’t do champagne, you don’t chase the black tail on offer. You’re not a fruit, are you?’ I didn’t pick up all of the last question. Was he admiring my restraint on the desserts? I thought I’d hold on the smartass reply. He shrugged away the silence. ‘No, ‘course you’re not,’ he said. ‘You came with Selina. Nice-looking girl. This the first time you met Graydon... so how come you’re here?’
‘I know Gale. We were in London the same time, years ago.’
‘You know Marcella too. I saw you...’
‘Never met her before in my life.’
‘She’s a whore,’ he said brutally. ‘Big trouble. She likes black guys. Gryf should keep her in line. So you looked up Gale and she invited you?’
That’s it.’
Female laughter hopped over the wall. Franconelli leaned over to an ashtray and rested his cigar. I needed rescuing. I didn’t like playing whelk to Franconelli’s winkling.
‘Selina’s a great girl,’ he said, rubbing his hands together. ‘How long you and her been together?’
‘How do you mean, Mr Franconelli?’ I stalled.
‘You work with her, right?’
‘I didn’t know if you were asking a personal question.’
He picked up his cigar again and took a huge drag and I suddenly had a feeling about what he was asking.
‘You and Selina...’
‘We work together,’ I teased.
‘That don’t...’
‘I’ve never been big on office love, Mr Franconelli. Bad for the concentration.’
‘Right.’
The guy fancied her. Double her age and the guy wanted her. His man over the back of the swing was shaking his head as if he couldn’t believe his boss was saying these things. Franconelli’s head turned. Selina and Gale stumbled into the garden, arm in arm, giggling.
‘Graydon said you guys were out here not dancing,’ said Gale.
Franconelli sat back and set his swing going. There was a grunt from his man as he knocked him off his perch. The boss smiled. I smiled back.
‘I haven’t been able to dance since Louis Prima,’ said Franconelli.
‘Oh come on, Roberto! Highlife, juju, fuji, Afrobeat, King Sunny Ade,’ she said, and gave us a pirouette, slow and full of rhythm with her arms stretched above her head.
‘You got it, Gale,’ he said. ‘Me? I was born with lead in my feet. Can’t move like these Africans can.’
‘Come on, Bruce,’ she said, grabbing my hand. ‘Talk to him in his lingo, Selina, get him moving.’
We left the walled garden and rounded the shrubbery to the pool glowing blue in the black of the lawn. All the downstairs lights were on and the windows were shaking with sound.
‘Your neighbours must love you.’
‘They’re inside,’ she said, and pushed me in the bushes.
‘Come off it, Gale.’
‘Trouble,’ she said. ‘Look.’
Out of the French windows came Gryf holding Marcella by the hair. He threw her down the steps to the pool. She ended up on all fours, a tear in her gold sheath, screaming.
‘This is too much, Gale...’
‘Shut up, Bruce,’ she said. ‘It’s a domestic. You wanna go play knight to the damsel, you’ll wake up next Christmas with an ice bag for a brain.’
Gryf skipped down the steps and hauled Marcella up by the back of her dress, which split in two and came off. She was naked underneath. Graydon appeared at the French windows with his hands in his pockets.
‘It’s time to stop this shit,’ I said, and barged past Gale to the pool.
‘Asshole,’ she whispered after me.
Gryf slapped Marcella across the buttocks. She crashed forward through the tables and chairs which slowed him down so she could get to her feet. He hit her with a back-hander across the face and she fell through more furniture.
‘Gryf!’ I roared, but he was hurling chairs into the pool. Marcella made it t
o the grass and ran down the garden. Gryf yelled at the furniture. I spun him round by his shoulder. He was sweating and smiling. There was light foam at the corners of his mouth.
‘Come on, Gryf,’ I said.
He took a swing at me. I ducked and he ended up facing the pool. I jammed my hands into his kidneys, ran him forward and sent him sprinting into the water. There was a tremendous crash as the water parted and then caved in over Gryf. Tables and chairs were knocked over by the quantity of water that exited from the pool and Gryf, after some moments, burst on to the surface like a harpooned whale.
Gale was up the steps now and talking to Graydon who was shaking his head in amazement. I picked up Marcella’s dress and handed it to Gale and told her she’d need some safety pins. Graydon was humming with blow.
‘Christ,’ he said, ‘Gryf damn near emptied the goddamn pool.’
He turned, walked off down the hall and took a right, going the other way to his study to avoid the dancing in the living room.
‘Gryf saw one of Graydon’s videos?’ I asked Gale.
‘Ben and Marcella last weekend,’ she said. ‘You learn something if you hang around long enough. We’re all silk and diamonds on the surface and blood and dirt underneath.’
‘Maybe it’s time to go home.’
‘Sure, but you’re back here tomorrow for lunch. It’s all arranged with Selina. Just the four of us this time. I can’t take any more of this shit. Where’d Marcella go?’
‘She’s off down the garden hiding from Air Piggy.’
I went back to the walled garden to pick up Selina. Gryf was out of the pool, staggering around the lawn with several kilos of water soaked into his underpants. He was calling for Marcella, saying he was sorry, telling her it was OK for her to come out now.
Franconelli’s bodyguard was standing outside the garden smoking a cigarette. I went to go past him and he put a hand in my chest.
‘I like it,’ he said, and slapped me on the back.
Franconelli offered us a lift. I turned it down. He insisted, said Carlo would take us. He had some business with Graydon. He called Carlo in and talked to him in a dialect that sounded like Portuguese rather than Italian. We shook hands. Selina kissed him on both cheeks.
We didn’t talk on the way back to Y-Kays and went straight up to our rooms. Carlo’s car didn’t leave immediately so I took a squint in reception. He was dashing the girl some niara bills.
An hour later I was halfway through my second solitary whisky when I got the knock. Selina was dressed for bed—I mean sleeping, not the other. I pointed her over to the whisky and she ignored it.
‘That was pretty wild,’ she said.
‘If you like that kind of thing.’
‘How many times have I heard that us Generation Xers just don’t know how to have a good time?’
‘It takes a lot of experience, Selina. It might look easy, all that stuff, but there’s years gone into it.’
‘A generation.’
‘How’d it go your side?’
‘I spent some time with Franconelli, or Roberto as he likes to be called.’
‘I noticed.’
‘Meaning?’
‘He’s operating on some ancient code of chivalry... he asked me if it was OK to pursue you.’
‘What the hell have you got...?’
‘He thought we were an item. Didn’t want to tread on my sensitive parts. I was relieved. I thought he wanted to know how long we’d been working together. We never covered all that stuff. How long is it?’
‘Don’t ask me.’
‘He also sent Carlo with us to check out we were in separate rooms. I’ve just seen him dashing the girl downstairs.’
‘Jesus. These people,’ she said. ‘That’s what it was like with my ex. You don’t marry the man, you marry the whole family and everyone’s got an opinion. The women twitter in back rooms about underwear and sauces while the guys sit in the front room and talk about whacking people out.’
‘Even fashion designers?’
‘They’re the worst. They don’t car-bomb you. They just terminate careers, pull out the plug on companies. Fuck people over. That’s why that anti-corruption purge, Operation Clean Hands, was so successful. They were falling over themselves to rat on each other.’
‘OK, calm down. Have a drink, for God’s sake. Tell me how you worked it with Franconelli.’
‘Like all women do, Bruce. I listened to him, I flattered him, I hung on his every word. He might look like a tough guy but he’s vulnerable, which is why he plays it close and keeps it clean and likes others to keep it clean. Nothing excessive. He liked you, said you knew how to behave.’
‘Did he talk about Graydon and the chief?’
‘Only in passing. We were talking more personally.’
‘How’s he vulnerable?’
‘His wife died four years ago, and then only just last year his daughter.’
‘Out here?’
‘The daughter got malaria which went cerebral and she didn’t pull out of it. The wife died in a head-on collision with a truck.’
‘Happens all the time. They’re crazy bastards on the roads. How old was the daughter?’
‘Franconelli did that all the time. Talked about one thing and then asked a question about something totally different.’
‘It’s catching.’
‘She was twenty-five. Same age as his wife when he married her.’
‘Same age as...’
‘We know.’
‘You going to see him?’
‘I’m invited to dinner tomorrow night.’
‘He didn’t invite me.’
‘He likes you but not that much.’
Chapter 20
Lagos. Monday 26th February.
Over breakfast I told Selina about the connection between the containers shipped out on the Paphos Star containing toxic waste and the two haulage companies Seriki Haulage and Awaya Transportation. I linked in the sweet-natured welcome I received at the former with the information from Companies House about the two managing directors Ben Agu and Bof Nwanu. I mentioned their relationship to Chief Babba Seko. I asked her about Quarshie and drew a blank. I gave her Quarshie’s lesson in Nigerian politics. She got very excited. I cemented the story in by telling her that Bagado’s investigation had shown that Quarshie’s car was used to abduct Napier and that Bondougou, who’d masterminded the trashing of Bagado’s career, was now effectively blocking any communication between Cotonou and Lagos.
‘Chief Babba Seko killed my father.’
‘It looks like it. There are some links, like the toxic waste, but they aren’t direct. Babba Seko doesn’t own those haulage companies. We don’t know the owner of the land in Western Nigeria where the waste was dumped. Your father was a pal of Quarshie’s, but does Quarshie know Babba Seko?’
‘Well, I’m there. Agu and Nwanu are close enough to the chief to be him.’
‘We’ll do some work for the chief, we’ll get into his business, his office and then we’ll find the link.’
‘And then we’ll sting him.’
‘Sting him?’
‘The police aren’t going to do anything about it so we will,’ she said. ‘I don’t kill people, and I don’t think you do either. So we’ll do the next best thing. Whack them in the bank balance.’
‘Hold on a minute,’ I said. ‘I don’t remember that bit of my contract.’
‘There’s got to be retribution, Bruce.’
‘I don’t remember you saying that I was going to be involved in handing it out.’
‘I smell milk.’
‘Burning?’
‘No. You. Skimmed milk. Virtually not milk at all.’
‘Come on, Selina. I’ve got to live here. You get your justice and fly away. I live in Cotonou... and there’s Heike to think about too.’
Silence.
‘Maybe there’s a way of stinging him and serving him up,’ she said.
‘I’m listening.’
; ‘I don’t know it yet. I don’t know who I’m dealing with. I mean, I’ve got a good idea but I’d like to get a bit closer... Could we get a newspaper to take the story? Find a rag supporting another candidate...’
‘Army. The army was out on the toxic-waste site. Bagado reckons the labourers were lifers. Nobody would touch it.’
‘Unless they weren’t actually army.’
‘How long’s it going to take you to prove that?’
‘OK, we just don’t tell them about the army.’
‘Do you know how many newspaper editors are in prison? This is the “climate of fear” you’ve always heard about and never been in. They’re not going to print it just because you’re white. Go take a look at Kirikiri Prison. From the outside, that’s all you need. It’s a big stinking rat trap of a deterrent. It’s not Ford Open Prison with newspapers, afternoon tea and racing on the telly. They’ll check you and your story out.’
‘Ideas, Bruce. I’m trying to save your ass, remember.’
‘Let’s nail him down first, then you can smother him in honey and leave him for the ants.’
I was glad I hadn’t shown my real talent at the party. We came out of Y-Kays and it was as if the day had taken both barrels of a shotgun in the chest. The air was dead and heavier than a corpse. We took a taxi which nudged its way forward on bald tyres and made my feet feel sore. We crossed Five Cowrie Creek and Selina saw her first body. Obscene and bloated, it bobbed like a tractor-tyre inner tube in the harbour. People stopped on the bridge to look.
We joined the Lagos Island traffic jam and didn’t move for an hour. The pollution doubled. The sluggish heart of the city, this diseased muscle fed by furred and hardened arteries thick with lead-poisoned blood, stopped.
We paid the cabbie and walked to Elephant House. The lifts were working but there was a crowd waiting for them with the desperation of account holders in a banking crash. We went up to the sixth floor in a silence crammed with human desolation, the unspoken mantra singing in their heads ‘We are the lucky ones, we are the chosen.’