'So we can go now?' asked Ron.
'I've telexed Abidjan,' said the chef. 'We have to wait for the reply.'
It was four o'clock in the morning when they locked us in the room next door with our bags. I still had Fat Paul's ring which the chef had forgotten about in the excitement over the two million CFA he'd just ripped off. I lay on the floor and wondered how long I was going to have to work for B.B. now that I'd lost his two million. With compound interest of Christ knows how many per cent it could be a life sentence, a better life sentence than an African prison—unless you knew B.B.
Ron turned the light off and lay down some yards away. We stared at the ceiling like a couple who've rowed heavily over dinner and are doing some light soul-searching, knowing they're going to make up but biding their time, eking out a little suffering.
'I fucked you up,' said Ron, which nearly sounded like an apology.
'I didn't exactly help myself.'
'If we hadn't come here you wouldn't be in this shit.'
'I'd have been in some other shit. It's nothing to do with you. It's planetary.'
'You believe in that crap?'
'No, I'm trying to make you feel better.'
'You think you can get out of this?' asked Ron. 'I notice you didn't say "we".'
'Hey, I didn't register as a diamond buyer, which is not what I'd call a big problem. I pay out some shekels in the morning and I'm out of here. I'm not up for triple murder plus mutilations and theft. That's what I call a big problem. That's why I'm asking you if you can get out of this ... OK?'
'OK. My answer is: If they don't find the gun.'
'What gun?'
The gun the hit man used to kill Fat Paul. It's under the front seat.'
Ron went completely silent, so that I could hear the leather of his boots creaking, the noise of a distant dog barking and the rain dripping off the roof outside.
'You had a heart attack, Ron?'
'No, I've got something on my mind. That's all.'
'Apart from the gun?'
'That's just taken up a big chunk of it, but yes, apart from the gun, which should have been in the lagoon in Abidjan and not under the front seat of your fucking car, there's something on my mind.'
Silence.
'You think maybe I did kill them and you're worried about sharing a floor with a mass murderer.'
'No, I think you covered that in there six times over. I'm satisfied ... even though you did lie about the gun.'
Some more silence.
'You don't mind keeping what it is to yourself? I mean, I've got a few things pressing on me at the moment, making my heart run a little quick.'
'It's not something that affects ... us.'
'Our new-found love for each other, you mean?'
'What I mean is, it's not important to our situation.'
'That's the only situation I'm prepared to think about right now.'
'It's something you should know.'
'You crack under torture, is that it?'
'I don't know, I've never been tortured.'
'Are you going to lance this boil or let it burst on its own?'
'I'm getting married.'
'Congratulations.'
'A week on Sunday.'
'That's great. Nice to have some good news. Sleep well on it.'
'I need to be back...'
'What's her name?'
'...by the middle of next week at least.'
'You going to tell me her name?'
'I have to get a flight to Tel Aviv by nineteen hundred hours on Friday week.'
'For Christ's sake tell me her name.'
'Anat.'
Pause.
'That's an interesting name. Her parents must have spent a long time thinking up a name like that. Amat. You mean, like amo, amas, amat. She loves.'
'With an "n" for November. Anat.'
'She's foreign, then?'
'Israeli,' he said. 'Most people who get married in Tel Aviv are Israeli.'
'Do you love this girl ... Anat?'
'Yes, I do.'
'That's good.'
'What do you mean?'
'I mean it wasn't the matchmaker's choice. You love her. It wasn't arranged.'
'No.'
'I'm very happy for you, Ron,' I said, rolling on to my side.
'Thanks.'
'Just don't tell anybody else about it, OK?'
'Fine.'
'We've got to look as if we've got all the time in the world.'
'Right.'
'Now I understand why you were so edgy.'
'I was edgy because of the bullet in the tyre, because you said you killed somebody, because there's a gun under the front seat of the car, because we're in jail in the middle of fucking nowhere, because...'
'Don't get out of your pram again, Ron.'
Ron shut up. I could hear him blinking. I could tell he was lying there on his back with his hands clasped behind his head looking at the ceiling with the nastiness all shut out and a warm feeling growing up him thinking about Anat. Thinking about life after he gets out of here. His future. A future that was going to be sweet.
'Have you got anybody, Bruce?'
I heard him but I didn't answer. The smell of wet earth came in under the door. The wind tapped at something metallic outside. One of the policemen snored in the corridor. It wasn't long before I found myself running down a long, wet and badly lit passageway, on my own, not scared, just running, but with no light at the end of it.
Chapter 13
Wednesday 30th October
I woke up on the back of a loud bang followed by the noise of splitting wood and turned to see a splinter of the jamb topple away and the door's hinges pop. The door fell on Ron's inert body and one of the big-bellied policemen, still with momentum, blundered over it and stopped himself against the far wall. 'Qu'est-ce qu'ily a?'
'Il a perdu la clef,' said a voice from the corridor.
'Fuck me,' said Ron, shrugging off the door.
'Ça va?' asked the policeman, leaning the door against the wall.
'Ça fucking va,' said Ron, on all fours, his long hair, a little greasier now, hanging in rats' tails off his head.
The chef came in, running a wet hand over his shorn head, and told us the phone lines were down and we were going to Bouaké. I asked him why we couldn't go to Korhogo, which was nearer, and he said the phone lines were down there too, and even if they weren't we'd still be going to Bouaké because that was the way it was going to be.
Outside it was a grey, misty morning with the sun just beginning to burn it off. Moses was loading the car, cold and miserable with his swollen eye just open. He said Borema had been released.
A big man in full purple robes and a cylindrical hat the size of a snare drum stood on the backs of his size-thirteen white pointed shoes by the open passenger door, whose panel had been replaced. In his hand he had the Coq Sportif carrier bag which had contained B.B.'s two million CFA. He was introduced as a local chief and we all shook hands. I brought up the subject of my money with him and pointed at the bag. He handed it to me. It had something thick and solid in it but not money. It was a book— Le Père Goriot by Balzac.
'C'est bon ca,' said the police chef. I put the book back in the carrier bag and gave it back to the chief.
'Non, non, non,' he said, and with inspired misunderstanding took the book out and handed me the carrier bag, as if I was a mud-hut native who'd die with gratitude to be given a bag like that. We got in the car along with an armed guard.
Moses drove with his good eye on the road while the chief sat next to him with his hat in his lap, moaning deliciously every now and then as if he was getting a gentle rub down from the money on his thigh.
'This is why we're going to Bouaké,' I said to Ron.
'Not the telex.'
'We're the big man's stretch limo for the day,' I said, and on cue the chief let out a long low moan as if he was getting it just where he wanted it.
We arrived in Bouaké
just after 1.00 p.m. The sun was shining but not so that I felt like kicking off my shoes and dancing around a pool with a daquiri. We dropped the chief outside the big hotel in town. He walked in there with Balzac held behind his back, looking around as if he might buy most things under his nose. Moses drove on to the police station and the chef went in.
Half an hour later the chef came back out and told us we were going to Abidjan. I said he'd had his money and it was time to say goodbye. Without bothering to turn round he told us that Ron was free to go but I had charges which had to be answered in Abidjan. I asked what the charges were, and he said he didn't know the exact wording but the Abidjan police wanted to talk to me about a triple murder.
We drove to Abidjan in the heat of the day. The chef's shorn head dropped on to his chest and he slept. The armed guard behind us dozed and jerked awake. Ron seemed to have lost some of his edges overnight. He was looking out of the window without sneering, looking at women with half a hundredweight of firewood on their heads, and babies on their backs, moving at a fair lick with their bare feet on the hot tarmac road.
'They're very resilient,' I said to him.
'Not just physically,' he said, which surprised me. 'Those women last night.'
'They knew we were trouble as soon as they saw Borema.'
'They let us in, fed us and took that beating without a squeak.'
'Women have a very hard life in Africa. They get used to trouble early on.'
'Trouble,' said Ron, nodding. 'That's the first time I've ever had trouble.'
'I thought you'd had some in Russia.'
'Passport, visa stuff. The business is all protected by the Moscow mob. You don't see anything. Just the odd guy standing in the corridor, looking as if he's eaten too many dumplings.'
'You must sense it, though,' I said, and his eyes flicked across at me, 'the ugliness. Like when you stay in cheap hotels, you always know the whorehouses.'
'I've never stayed in cheap hotels,' he said. 'I'm rich.'
'I forgot.'
'Sure you did.'
'You weren't talking like a jerk for a second.'
'I know I am one sometimes...'
'Sometimes?' Ron laughed.
'A lot of people want to get on my back,' he said. 'I protect myself.'
'Believe me, you're good. You must have spent your whole life at it.'
'Look, you can tell me about sleaze. You know about sleaze. Sleaze is your...'
'It's not all sleaze. Some of it's called "real life".'
'I don't know about that. Sleaze, I mean, any of it. I can tell you about diamonds, no problem.'
'I was impressed, Ron. I mean it. You don't have to tell me. Last night I was impressed. You're not a jerk when it...'
'Think of the diamond trade and think of Beauty and the Beast. I told you last night, I get all excited about the beauty of the stones. I meant it. But what it comes down to in the end is the beast. The one with green backs. And everybody wants my beast. I have to make sure the assholes stay over there. That's how I do it. Believe me, it doesn't discourage them. They still come back for more. They'd take anything for a slice.'
'You're trying to tell me—underneath all that you're not a jerk.'
'You're very...'
'Candid?' I asked. 'I don't need your business and I don't need your money. I don't even need your company. What can you tell me that's different? Diamonds. Diamonds and pennies. What else? You going to tell me how to get out of the shit?'
'I don't know how you stand it,' said Ron, trying to cuddle up now.
'It's not like this all the time,' I said, 'and this isn't really shit. Shit is when you don't have the money to get yourself out of it, and it is only money, Ron, after all. Small money. I mean, what're you going to clear on one and a half million dollars' worth of diamonds? Three, four, five per cent?'
'Two, two and a half.'
'Two and a half of one and a half million, that's...'
'Thirty-seven and a half.'
'Thanks. Glad to see they still teach mental arithmetic. Thirty-seven thousand five hundred dollars, less two thousand dollars for police expenses, less one thousand five hundred dollars for legitimate expenses, less something for Rademakers. Whichever way you look at it you're thirty up for the week.'
'And you?'
'Well, that's the nature of the poverty trap. Once you're down in it, it's hell to get out. You see the sky every now and again but you never get your knee over the lip. Nobody's ever told me about the poverty springboard—you?'
'We can talk about it.'
'What?'
'The money.'
'Forget it. It was bad luck. I'll work it out. I've got something in mind. Anyway, I don't think I could bear to have you negotiate me into a hole.'
Ron went back to looking out of the window and picking at his beard. Maybe his future wife was going to stop him doing that.
'You're worrying something to death in there, Ron. I think it's a better idea you drop it.'
'I'm twenty-seven years old. I'm getting married in a week. I've got a ton of money behind me. I know I'm going to have a very nice life.'
'Then sit back and enjoy it. There's plenty of people's lives you don't want. Mine, for instance. All that shit and sleaze. I can tell you about that if you've got some tears to spare.'
'I haven't done anything and I've never had to do anything.'
'Don't get morose on me, rich boy,' I said, and Ron grunted a laugh.
'I'm well protected from life. I didn't tell you, my father wanted to send a chaperon with me out here, make sure I wiped my arse properly.'
'I'm told it's not a talent men are renowned for,' I said.
'What it does is drive me fucking crazy. It makes me worse. It makes me more of an arrogant little fucker than...'
'You missed out "narcissistic",' I said, which disarmed him and he shook his head and laughed into the hot air coming through the window. One thing I didn't need to hear was a rich boy's hard-luck story.
'I'm two million CFA down. You?' I asked, getting back down to the business in hand.
'I haven't looked, but I guess the five hundred thousand's gone.'
'Have you got any other money?'
'Need my company now, Bruce?' he asked, finding that reservoir of cockiness again.
I asked him to do a few things for me when we got back to Abidjan. The first was to call Leif Andersen at the Danish Embassy and get him to call the Sûreté to confirm that I was with him from 4.00 p.m. until 5.00 p.m. on Monday and that he spoke to me at the Novotel at 6.30 p.m. later that same day. On the money side I asked him if he could get some off Rademakers and I'd sort him out from Martin Fall's float in the Novotel safe. I told him to bring four blocks of 250,000 CFA each. I had a feeling things might get difficult. People were going to get greedy and there could be more than one of them to cover. Ron was still on schedule to meet Rademakers and the haji at 8.30 p.m. It was nearly 2.00 p.m. by now. We'd be in Abidjan by 5.00 p.m. I told him to come to the'Sûreté at 7.30 p.m. with the money. I hoped I'd be ready for him.
We slept until we got to the'Sûreté in Abidjan at a few minutes after 5.00 p.m. I reminded Ron to be there at 7.30 p.m. He left without saying a word and I thought I might have trodden on him too hard, but then, you can never tread on someone like that too hard.
They took me down to the cells, which weren't air-conditioned and lacked mini-bars but had been cleaned at least three days ago. They put me in the only cell where the occupants weren't lying on the floor and in the only one with just one other inmate. He stood in the middle of the nine square feet and gave me a steady recidivistic look with a pair of hooded yellow eyes which should have been set in rubber in the middle of the road. His stare came off the top of a body which had worked hard for most of its life, including the struggle out of the womb. He had the body of a cane-cutter, or a truck-loader—not white collar, in fact, no collar at all. The jailer let me in and shut the door quickly. I edged around this statue to delinquency and slid
down the wall to the floor.
'T'as assassiné quelqu'un?' I asked.
His head turned slowly on his body, some complicated robotics going on in there, but he didn't answer.
'Did you kill someone?' I tried, and a huge smile opened up in his face which worried me that I might have triggered off a pleasant memory.
'Ingliss?'
'That's right,' I said, and held out a hand. 'Bruce.'
He took what I'd offered him into his own tarpaulin-skinned hand as if it was a fluffy chick. He patted it and let me have it back after a minute or two.
'David,' he said, 'from Ghana side. Kumasi.'
'Ashanti?'
'I'm ver' happy,' he said, which was a cheering turn-around. 'What d'you do? Kill someone?'
'Oh no, Mr Bruce. I drinkin' too much palm wine. Gettin' drunk and brekkin' things.'
'Just things or people too?'
'Mebbe people too. The police, when they come ... I throw them.' And he gave me an energetic action replay which left me thinking of policeman-shaped holes in walls. 'More police, they come ... they hittin' me with sticks. I brek the sticks!' he roared, showing me how those sticks went down to matchwood. 'More police, they come, mebbe twenty, mebbe more. They come runnin'. They get me down. They beat me,' he said, and showed me the back of his head which looked like a sack of conkers. 'I wek up in here, my head hurt no small.'
'That's quite a beating you took.'
'No, no, Mr Bruce. From the palm wine. The beatin', I no feel the beatin',' he said, shaking his hangover-free head and making me feel glad that I'd somehow pulled the thorn from his paw.
'What you doin' in here, Mr Bruce?' he asked, sitting down opposite me.
'They think I kill three people, mebbe four.'
David came forward, his eyes out on stalks and he let out a little squeak.
'They go see the error of their ways, Mr Bruce. You don' kill nobody with those hands. They too small for killin'.'