A man, no more than two metres from my head, sighed and moved off.
The ground released me with the reluctance of setting concrete. A body check revealed that I hadn’t been shot. I was lying at the bottom of a two-foot-thick tree which should have my face imprint on its bark even now.
The lights remained shut down in the clearing. There was a small fire going where some silhouettes passed the time with each other. A truck double-declutched in the distance. I moved towards the noise and found the track and the ditch at the side of it. I remembered the camera. I was in no mood or state for heroism. The camera would have to stay lost.
The break in the forest where Bagado and I had first hit the road appeared and I went back in there but it was too dark. I sat down to wait for first light and propped my head up on a bolster of terrifying dreams which left me raw and jangling and asking for my mother.
By 6.30 a.m. I’d found the car with Bagado screwed up and tossed in the back. I lifted the boot and poked him. He came to, speaking Yiddish, and crawled out of the car and sat on the tail.
‘I was worried,’ he said, with a yawn wide enough to show me he hadn’t had any breakfast. ‘I was very worried.’
‘You should have seen it from my angle.’
‘Judging by your face I imagine it was somewhat sharp.’
‘Big and blunt. I ran into a tree.’
‘Best thing you could have done. This terrain isn’t built for men your size.’
‘I lost the camera.’
‘But you’re here. That’s the thing.’
‘What happened to you?’
‘I have a very strong sense of direction,’ he said, ‘and good eyes. I managed to hold on to one of the sample bottles.’
We ate the stale sweet pink bread and corned beef. I washed it down with a single slug whisky to two slugs water. The gout was subdued, not used to such contemptuous treatment. We drove back to Meko and straight out across the border to debrief Gerhard’s people in Kétou. They repaired my face. We had lunch, slept and drove back to Porto Novo.
We gave our report to Gerhard, who arranged for the contaminated water to be packaged in sample bottles and addressed it to a laboratory in Berlin. He paid us. We took the parcel to the DHL office in Cotonou and went back to the office. There were two messages on the answering machine.
The first was Colonel Adjeokuta from the 419 squad in Lagos. Bagado called him back and caught him leaving the office. I listened in on a separate earpiece. All he could give us on Chemiclean was what he’d found in his file. A single copy of a letter sent through to him anonymously with the receiver’s address blacked out. The postmark on the letter was the City of London. From the opening paragraph it was clear that the company that Chemiclean had mailed were specialists in the transportation of hazardous cargoes and Chemiclean were touting for business. They said they had a large tract of land in the Western State of Nigeria, close to the Benin border, where they had built a concrete bunker. They were offering this as storage space for pretreated toxic waste and inquiring of the company if they knew anybody in need of that kind of service. The colonel’s team were working on getting the name of the addressee of the letter and would be back in touch later.
‘Why didn’t you tell him what we’d just found in the Western State of Nigeria close to the Benin border?’ I asked.
‘My instinct told me to wait.’
‘Your instinct told you that your friend the colonel is in the army and those boys sealing off Akata village were army too?’
‘It could be very complicated for us to reveal our involvement at this early stage,’ said Bagado. ‘I’m also very tired.’
‘How do you feel about Napier Briggs now?’
‘I can understand why he was a very scared man.’
‘Not so scared that he couldn’t be tempted into the cocotiers for two million bucks.’
‘They knew Napier Briggs well enough,’ said Bagado, ‘and it didn’t take him too long to figure you out.’
‘I didn’t know what he was involved in at that point.’
Bagado gave me a look that let me know I was a pretty sorry specimen.
The second message was for me from David Bartholomew, the guy who worked in the British High Commission in Lagos and pushed the occasional no-hoper our way. I called him, Bagado on the earpiece this time, and we talked about nothing until I asked him why he’d left the message.
‘Just wanted a chat,’ he said, and Bagado cocked his head to one side which meant that David had told his first lie.
‘I thought you might be calling to ask after that guy you sent us.’
‘Which one was that?’
‘You mean you’ve sent us half a dozen in the last few weeks?’ I said. ‘Because they haven’t turned up.’
‘Did that Napier Briggs chap turn up?’
‘David, you might have a brain the size of a small block of flats, which is why you’re working for the Foreign Office in the British High Commission and I’m doing a poor job of kicking shit in the street, but for God’s sake credit me with something.’
‘I don’t follow.’
‘They haven’t given you an interrogation-techniques course in your entire time at the FO? Or did the only one you get consist of standing around in a room with a bunch of other guys all with gin and tonics in your hands.’
‘Gins and tonic, Bruce, and absolutely not, Scotch and soda in the evenings and pink gin at lunchtimes.’
‘I suppose that’s Scotches and soda...’
‘Well, it certainly wouldn’t be one. You’ve never been to an FO “do” if you think that.’
Bagado had his head on the table, a gentle snoring issuing from his nose.
‘Napier Briggs is dead,’ I said. Silence from the FO. ‘He was found on the railway tracks in Cotonou with his eyes squeezed out, two six-inch nails in his ears, his tongue ripped out and his mouth cut off.’
‘My God.’
‘You didn’t know he was running with such a fast crowd?’
‘He was just pathetic, like all those other ones who come to see me. I told him to go home. He said he couldn’t leave without the two million he’d lost. So I sent him to you.’
‘Why didn’t you send him to Colonel Adjeokuta?’
Bagado sat up and shook his head. I held up a hand.
‘I thought you’d rather have had the business.’
‘Thanks for thinking of my welfare, David. That must be a first for the FO thinking of a British citizen in distress.’
‘There’s no need to be like that,’ said David, getting a littie camp. He was a homosexual and could resort to that kind of thing with people he knew and if he needed to hide for a bit.
‘I thought you’d have heard about Napier by now. Didn’t the Honorary Consul call you, or was he doing a Graham Greene?’
‘Are you coming to Lagos sometime, Bruce?’ he asked, surfing my question.
‘I’ve got no need to at the moment... now that Napier Briggs is dead. If I do, I’ll call you.’
‘Or maybe I’ll come to Cotonou.’
‘You’ll be welcome.’
Bagado was pacing the room, hands in pockets, his processor whirring—his hard disk snickering.
‘We’ve got something here,’ he said. ‘It looks as if it’s flying higher than we thought. When you asked him about Adjeokuta why didn’t he just say that Mr Briggs didn’t want an investigation by the Nigerian authorities?’
‘Because...’
‘He obviously didn’t offer Mr Briggs the four-one-nine squad option in the first place. Why not?’
‘He wanted him out of there. He was a potential embarrassment?’
‘Could they have known about the toxic waste?’ asked Bagado. ‘What could the British government’s involvement be in a loser like Briggs?’
‘All the writing on the drums at the dump was Italian, but maybe it’s British waste, or there’s a British connection in there somewhere?’
‘It could, of course, just be
something private between your friend at the High Commission and Briggs.’
‘Anyway, we’re finished with Napier Briggs now. He was never even a client.’
‘You might be.’
‘Ah, yes. I forgot. You’re a policeman again.’
Chapter 8
By the time I’d dropped Bagado at home and climbed the steps up to my own house it was 8 p.m., but the lights were on, which promised cold beer.
I was about to open the door when I heard Heike and another woman, whose voice I didn’t recognize, talking. The other woman sounded English from the expressions she used but I could tell she’d spent some time in a foreign country. She was used to speaking to foreigners, choosing her words, even though Heike was completely bilingual. The woman was talking about a lover, or a husband maybe.
‘...there always had to be this ritual,’ she said. ‘We couldn’t just go to bed together and get on with it. The bedroom door had to be locked, the lights positioned, the mirrors in place. He would say things, strange things like, “You and me,” which made me look around the room, you know, relieved. I wasn’t allowed to say anything. I had to be wearing the right things. Normally black, occasionally red, but always the whole bit, suspenders, stockings. He spent a fortune on my underwear and there was always the other things...’
‘What other things?’
The woman paused.
‘Oh Christ,’ she said, not embarrassed, just remembering it all.
‘That bad?’
‘One word. I’ll give you one word.’
‘Go on then.’
‘Cufflinks.’
‘Cufflinks?’
‘Right.’
‘Cufflinks,’ said Heike, completely stunned, ‘are you sure you mean cufflinks?’
‘Oh shit,’ said the other woman, slapping the table, ‘of course I bloody don’t. Handcuffs. I mean handcuffs.’ They roared.
I opened the door. Heike was sitting on the floor in a big white calico dress propped up on a cushion facing me. The other woman I couldn’t see, apart from her size-nine bare feet hanging over the edge of the sofa. My bottle of Black Label was on the low table between them and it had taken quite a pounding. Heike was still laughing and blowing smoke into the ceiling. The other woman’s hand appeared on the back of the sofa. It was huge, as big as a man’s hand. I went to the sofa and looked down. A blonde-haired woman in her mid-twenties, who I’d never met before, looked back up at me, giggling.
‘The man with the cuff...’ she started, ready to hoot. ‘What happened to your face?’
‘You guys pissed or what?’ I asked. They forgot about my face and roared at me, which was all the answer I needed.
Heike stood up and skipped around the room to me. She put an arm around my neck and kissed my ear with whisky breath.
‘This,’ she said, pointing down at the sofa with her cigarette, ‘is Selina Aguia. Selina Aguia, this is Bruce Medway.’
‘He’s very pretty, isn’t he?’ she said, with mock seriousness. ‘Apart from the lump on his head.’
‘Not when you get to know him,’ said Heike, and they giggled some more.
‘I’ve got some catching up to do,’ I said. They weren’t listening. I went into the bedroom thinking of Selina, the associate/daughter, paying her visit as Napier said she would.
‘What happened to your face?’ Heike shouted after me.
‘I kissed a tree and the others got jealous.’
I had a shower and changed and drank half a litre of Eku straight from the bottle. In the living room they were back under control. Selina was sitting cross-legged on the sofa with her skirt up around her hips, cradling a glass of whisky in her lap where her knickers were in full view. A strap of the loose vest she was wearing had slipped off her shoulder and a torpedo breast was seeking the light. Heike was back on the cushion, fitting another cigarette into her holder. They were both still smouldering with laughter. I eased myself down on to a cushion at the head of the low table.
‘How long were you listening in for, Big Ears?’ asked Heike.
‘Oooo, ’bout half an hour,’ I said.
‘In that case I was lying,’ she said to Selina.
‘About him?’ she said. ‘Shame.’
‘All right, a couple of minutes,’ I said. ‘I heard the cufflinks line, that’s all.’
‘Then you’ll never know,’ said Selina, smiling up at me.
‘Was the ice frozen in the fridge yet?’ asked Heike.
‘I didn’t look.’
She went into the kitchen, trailing smoke. Selina went back to lying down on the sofa, her short skirt not doing the job it was supposed to. Heike came back in and dropped ice over Selina’s shoulder into her glass and topped up her own with more Scotch.
‘I’ll buy you another bottle,’ she said, running a still cold, wet hand through my hair.
‘Are we eating?’ I asked.
‘There’s nothing in,’ she said, ‘and Helen’s gone for the evening.’
‘I’ll take you out, both of you. Gerhard paid up.’
‘You finished the job?’
‘Yes. There was a toxic-waste dump north of the village contaminating the water supply. I’ve just DHLed the samples to Berlin for analysis.’
The smoke rolling in the air and the ice chinking in the glasses stilled into a brittle silence. I took a long pull of cold beer and positioned the bottle on a curling coaster on the table. Selina broke open a new packet of Camels and lit one up. Her head sagged and she hid behind the curtain of her long blonde hair. More silence. Heike brought her knees up to her chest.
‘If I’ve interrupted something,’ I said, ‘I’ll leave. No problem.’
Heike shook her head and said, ‘Selina is Napier Briggs’s daughter, she flew into Lagos last night from London and took the hop to Cotonou this morning.’
I started to say something. Selina put her hand up to stop me. Grief cracked her mouth, which was huge, and split her face like the beak of a foetal bird. Tears spilled. The saliva made her want to swallow but there was something big in the way It looked like anger to me, in rarefied form, which seemed capable of burning with very little oxygen. She didn’t speak, not with the fight going on in her throat. She crushed the cigarette into the ashtray and stood with a loud crack from the signet ring on her finger rapping the table. Heike stood with her.
‘You didn’t see him, Heike,’ she said. ‘You didn’t see what they did to him.’
She took three strides into the bathroom, the door banged behind her. I took a long pull of beer. Heike drained the whisky in her glass and hissed at the alcohol racking down her throat. She sucked on her cigarette holder which bubbled with the tar collecting in its stem. She looked steely.
‘I don’t know how she found us,’ I said, thinking this might be the problem.
‘I don’t mind that,’ said Heike, sharply. ‘I’m glad. I like her. She found your card in her father’s passport. She’s the persistent type.’
‘And what does toxic waste have to do with anything?’ I asked. Heike showed me her palms.
The bathroom door opened. Selina’s face was raw but repaired, her hair tied back in a ponytail, both straps of her vest up on her shoulders now. She was a good-looking woman, even amongst the wreckage. She leaned across the sofa and pulled another cigarette from the pack and lit it. She sucked on it with a wide straight mouth which had no cupid’s bow to the top lip and frowned with very dark, thick, straight eyebrows.
‘I’m sorry,’ she said. Heike and I drivelled nothing. ‘I’m going to have to cut this all off.’ She sat down, sheafing her ponytail. ‘I’d forgotten how hot it gets.’
‘You’ve been here before?’ I asked.
‘Not to Benin. Ivory Coast and Ghana.’
‘Business or travel?’
‘Buying palm oil and cocoa. I trade commodities.’
‘They say that can be volatile.’
‘If you’re greedy you can lose your shirt.’
‘I’ve heard it can
get worse than that.’
‘It can. But I don’t put all my chips on one number and pray. I’ve been in a lot of casinos, the Golden Nugget and the London Stock Exchange to name two. I don’t like them. I spread my risk. Lose some. Win more. Percentages and hedge. That should be the name of my company... but then I wouldn’t have any clients.’
‘What is the name of your company?’
‘Selina Aguia Limited,’ she said, smiling. ‘Boring but true.’
She took a slug of her drink and stretched her long tanned legs out on the sofa and smoked. She was tall, taller than Heike, maybe over six foot and big boned, strong like an athlete. Her arms were muscular, not as defined as they would have been if she’d pounded yam all her life, but they’d seen some work. The corner where her shoulder joined the pectoral had been sculpted and the stomach under the vest looked flat and board hard. She had a narrow back and big unsupported breasts which stood firm. And those hands. The wrists. She was a powerful woman—put her in a charcoal suit and some sharp shoes that were big enough and watch the directors of the board collapse.
‘There was something about the toxic waste...’ I started.
She swung her legs off the sofa, found her briefcase and took out a file which she handed to me. Written on the cardboard flap was: ‘Briggs/OTE/Chemiclean’.
‘That was all I could find in my father’s office. The short happy life of Napier Briggs. He thought he was on a roll.’
‘Was he the one who took you to all those casinos?’
‘Best thing he ever did,’ she nodded.
‘Another one of your father’s gambles?’ I asked, holding up the file.
‘Not all of it. The toxic waste was good business. I mean, it was bad and illegal but he made money out of it. The scam was the gamble.’
‘Is there a site for the dump mentioned in this file?’ I asked.
‘It says something about a traditional ruler who owns land in Western Nigeria. They’ve built a concrete bunker... something like that.’
‘This toxic-waste dump I’ve just seen...’ I held up a hand to stop her interrupting. ‘This toxic-waste dump which my partner and I have just uncovered, and got shot at by the army doing it, is located in Western Nigeria, just across the Benin border.’