'They think I shot them with a gun.'
'Ah-haaa!' said David, clocking something he hadn't considered. 'But you no do it. You no kill the men.'
'No' I said, and he sat back satisfied and the tension drained from his body.
Half an hour slipped by, with David telling me a lot of things I didn't need to know about his brother's petrol station in Kumasi. I kept him going with some grunts and an occasional 'Ah-haaa'. The jailer came and found us sitting next to each other with David counting off gallons of petrol and pints of oil on his massive hands. He called his mate to come and look. They took me away, with David shouting after me, 'I beg you, Mr Bruce, I beg you! Release me! Release me!'
They took me up to the first floor of the building along a strip-lit corridor and into a room with the same lighting. The dark-green carpeting on the floor overlapped some pipes which were four inches off the floor around the gloss-painted light-green walls. There were police-academy photographs on three walls and, on the fourth, a picture of the President which was hung behind a uniformed man sitting at an important desk with green leather inlay. A mug on his desk for pens had the Prince of Wales crest and 'Ich dien' underneath, which worried me.
'Je suis le Commissaire Gbondogo,' he said, and waved the other policemen out of the room. 'Or would you rather speak in English?'
He nodded me into a chair and continued in English while flicking through my passport.
'An unfortunate situation, I think, is how you English would describe your predicament.'
'I hope you're not talking about our capacity for understatement.'
'Alas, Mr Medway, I am.'
'Alas? Where did you learn this outstanding English?' I asked, going for the bootlicking option, given Gbondogo's opening gambit.
'At school. From the radio. I've always had a good ear,' he said, flipping the passport on to the desk and leaning back, hands clasped across a flat stomach. 'A very good ear, and not just for languages.' He let that hang in the air like battle smoke and it had hardly cleared before he was coming over the top at me—bayonets fixed.
'We have some statements here about your activities, and not just on the night of Monday, twenty-eighth October. We have a statement from a policeman in Tiegba, and from a barman too. You were seen there on the night of Sunday, twenty-seventh October behaving suspiciously.' He slowed down. 'Changing the number plates on your car. Removing the internal light. You left Tiegba at eight-fifteen p.m. A body was found not far from the Lagune Ebrié. The autopsy says death occurred around eight-thirty p.m. The body was in the same state as the ones found in the Hotel La Croisette. We have a statement from the hotel manager saying that you were there on the night of Monday, twenty-eighth October at about seven-fifteen p.m. A full explanation is required. And Mr Medway, my ear is well tuned to lies in all languages.'
Commissaire Gbondogo was not a man to be fooled with and worse, he didn't look like a man who corrupted easily. He was small, wiry, intelligent and ruthless. I told him everything from the top and the only detail I missed out on was the package. I still maintained that Fat Paul hadn't given it to me. I had to hold on to my nerve when I asked him if Leif Andersen had called and he kept his laser eyes fixed on my eyebrows and shook his head.
It was just as well I spilled it clean out because the gun appeared from a drawer in his desk on cue. I got a bit of confidence together by the end and, to see if he was going to show a chink for me to fit through, I told him that the Tortiya police had ripped us off, but not by how much, just in case he turned out cheaper. He didn't flinch. I stopped talking and we sat in silence, a long one, of maybe five minutes.
'Eugene Amos Gilbert has not been found in the lagoon,' was all he said before a single blast from the phone made him pounce forward and wrench it to his ear. He stood up and took the phone with him over to the window and murmured in French to it, while looking at the night and our reflections in the glass. After five minutes he stuck the receiver to the phone, repositioned it on the desk and sat down.
'I don't think I've come across such a serious situation with a member of the expatriate community since I was made commissaire five years ago...'
'Was that Leif Andersen who just called?'
His eyes blinked once and I knew my chance was coming.
'It is the lies in your earlier statements which particularly disgust me and the fact that you are in possession of an illegal firearm. Both charges carry heavy jail sentences and punitive fines...'
'Perhaps we could come to an arrangement...' I said, and stopped when I felt Gbondogo's look open up my forehead. 'It's just that I know what Eugene Amos Gilbert looks like and you need to find him.'
'That is true,' he conceded, thawing now that he knew I wasn't so insensitive as to mention money at such an early stage of the negotiations. We kicked around various elements of my story, me concentrating on the positive things like Leif Andersen and the timing, and he emphasizing the gun and the statements.
'I think perhaps we are close to some sort of agreement,' he said, with no evidence for saying it. 'You will find Eugene Amos Gilbert and bring him to me. However, because of your earlier ... mendacity'—he enjoyed that one so much he had to repeat it—'because of the disgraceful mendacity of these statements I do not believe you can be trusted.'
'What about bail?'
'Bail?'
'Bail and a fine, perhaps.'
'Yes...' he said, and assumed the gravity of a judge—one which looked very low and immovable. 'A fine of seven hundred and fifty thousand and bail set at five hundred thousand. I think that is fair.'
'I was thinking more of a two hundred and fifty thousand fine and the same bail.'
'Out of the question. The charges are too serious.'
'I'll deliver Eugene Amos Gilbert within the next ten days.'
'A fine of five hundred thousand and bail set at two hundred and fifty thousand. Bail refundable when you deliver Gilbert.'
We haggled over this for some time and Gbondogo wouldn't budge off the 500,000 fine which, I assumed, was going straight into his pocket. I still needed to save face in the negotiation but couldn't move him off the money. I came up with a solution which startled him. I asked for the release of my ex-cellmate, David. He buzzed someone on his switchboard and a sergeant appeared at the door. They spoke in their own language and the sergeant was dispatched.
'The charge is not serious. He has already been beaten. It is done.'
It was 7.45 p.m. by the time we went downstairs and Ron hadn't curdled on me so badly that we'd separated. He was waiting at the front desk. We went into the compound and he produced the 750,000. We shook hands and the commissaire laid down his cards.
'Leif Andersen confirmed your story, so did the gardien of the Novotel garage and the hotel reception. The autopsy put the three deaths at somewhere between three p.m. and five p.m. We have found the hire car you used from which we extracted a .38 bullet from the head rest and noticed the replacement window. We have not had it confirmed by ballistics yet that the bullet came from the gun in your possession but I expect that to be the case. We are not looking for a white man for these murders. They bear all the hallmarks of tribal killings. We think they may be Krahn people. Let me assure you, Mr Medway, that had you been suspected of the killings, no amount of this would be sufficient.'
'I'm glad to hear it,' I said, feeling as if I'd paid a lot more than I'd have had to with the facts.
He gave us a click of his heels and a brief salute and retreated into the darkness, appearing briefly in the yellow-lit doorway of the'Sûreté, the bag in his armpit.
Ron and I had just opened the doors to the Peugeot when there was a roar from the steps where the commissaire had just disappeared and David came running across the compound. He clasped me to him.
'My brother,' he said. 'You are my brother.'
Something which I didn't think many people were going to believe.
Chapter 14
Ron looked at me across the car roof once David had let me go and disappe
ared into the night.
'You paid that guy three thousand dollars to...'
'Don't tell me, I should have had you on the negotiating team.'
'...to get out of jail?'
'The corruption, you mean? Public servants don't always get paid on time. He's probably an important person in his village or tribe. He's got responsibilities. It's expensive being a big man. He just uses his position to do a little ripping off to bolster funds. It's not as if he's raping the country or anything.'
'He is. He's just doing it slowly.'
'Maybe he learnt how to do it from us. The colonial powers did some ripping off in their time.'
'We put a hell of a lot back in. Schools, hospitals, infrastructure...'
'Somebody'll do the balance sheet one day. Who got what for how much. It'll be interesting. Now can I have a shower?'
We got in the car. Ron reached into a back seat for a newspaper.
'I found this. You've got equal billing with Sunday's election.' I straightened out the lvoire Soir and read the middle-page headline:
LE MASSACRE DU LéOPARD;
ENCIRE QUATRE CADAVRES!
'They love it,' said Ron.
'Elections don't sell newspapers around here. The President's for life. Did you hear that guy from the opposition on the World Service? No, you wouldn't have. He said something like, "People want to see what an opposition leader looks like. They just want to touch me, see if I'm real." Now, "the Leopard" and four more bodies, that's real. Something they can get their teeth into. Are you fixed up with Rademakers?'
'At eight-thirty—it's still on. You going to come?'
'What's going to happen?'
'You get to see one and a half million dollars in CFA, I buy you a meal and we settle our accounts.'
'Are you telling me the haji takes it out in cash?'
'He's not sticking it in the bank. He turns up with a couple of big guys and drives off with it. That's what Rademakers says.'
'You don't go running off into the night with your diamonds, do you?'
'You're kidding. Rademakers gets them out to Antwerp whichever way he wants.'
'What does that mean?'
'If he sends them back officially he has to show money paying for them. If he sends them back black then he'll make on the money.'
'You've lost me.'
'Rademakers raises the money, the CFA, from local businessmen here who want dollars outside Ivory Coast. Because they want the dollars they give a discount on the CFA. I pay Rademakers in dollars in Belgium. He makes on the discount. Otherwise it all goes through the banks and shit and he buys at standard rates of exchange. Got it?'
'What happens to you?'
'I go to Angola. I was going to a tender in Sierra but they cancelled it, so I've got the weekend off here and I fly to Luanda on Monday and back home Wednesday.'
'Tel Aviv Friday.'
'Looks like it.'
'OK. Let's go to the Novotel. I need to get the smell of that jail out of my throat.'
I showered and changed and drank a beer from the mini-bar and took a call from Martin Fall who didn't want to know if I was still alive, he only cared about Ron. I told him we were meeting Rademakers in half an hour and after that, as far as I was concerned, now that the Sierra trip was off, my assignment was over. I was not going to play Ping-Pong with Ron at the Novotel all weekend until he flew off to Angola.
'You didn't get along?' asked Martin.
'If you stripped away the money, the fancy clothes, the fast cars and gave him six months' rehabilitation in the real world he'd be OK...'
'OK for a spoilt, arrogant, narcissistic little fucker,' said Martin, 'and that's what his dad called him.'
'You got anything else for me? Same money, better casting.'
'Take him to Rademakers and you're home free. We'll sort out the money business later.'
I went down to the lobby. Ron was waiting for me in the bar. We drove to Avenue Chardy, still in Plateau, and parked in the street and gave a gardien some money to look after the car. The street was empty of cars and people. We crossed it and went down a narrow alley between two buildings which opened out into a private car park behind some apartment blocks. The exit to the car park, which was further down Avenue Chardy, was chained off. A man lay on a piece of cardboard near the chain with his arm over his eyes and a knee crooked.
It was hotter in the car park than in the open street. The air was locked in, and the heat was still coming up off the tarmac. We went through a green door in one of the apartment buildings and up a concrete stairway through one floor and then another. We came out on the third and walked along an open balcony with a view down over the car park. We turned right down a dark corridor with a single bell light halfway up the wall on the right. Five yards down the corridor lights came on as we broke the unseen beam of a sensor. There was a video camera high above the door. Ron pressed the buzzer, the door clicked open and we went into an airless anteroom of bare concrete walls and a rough untiled floor. There was a large steel door in front of us which looked as if it might have taken some lifting to get it hung right.
The door opened automatically with the sound of some heavy steel bolts shunting out of the wall. It was helped on its way by a small grey-haired man in his early seventies with thick rimless lenses for specs on his nose. His eyes looked huge behind them, like aquarium fish. He had a white beard and a moustache which joined on his very pale face. He wore a lightweight powder-blue suit, a white shirt and a yellow shantung silk tie. We all shook hands. His were small and snappy, good for drawing innards from small birds. He put one of his small hands on Ron's back and guided him into the office, which consisted of two rooms divided by a glass partition. I closed the door.
The office was cool and noiseless. The furniture was dark and wooden, apart from a sofa which was made of something probably called leatherette. On one wall there was a reproduction Magritte, of the stiff in the bowler with a Granny Smith in his face. Two very big men in giant blue polo shirts and jeans stood on one side of the partition and looked through the glass at the haji, the one with a generation's worth of children, who was sitting on a chair I couldn't see. His legs were spread wide under his white robe and his white slippered feet tapped the oatmeal carpet with no rhythm. A white cylindrical hat sat on Rademakers's desk, as did a closed Samsonite suitcase. Behind the desk was an open safe with a metal box in it. We did another round of handshaking. Nobody said a word. The reverence for money and mineral wealth demanded religious respect.
Rademakers introduced Ron to a chair in front of a table with an electric balance, a light and a blotter on it. The haji got to his feet and reached down into a three-foot pocket which ended by his ankle and produced a white packet which he put in front of Ron.
I sat on the sofa and slid around on whatever it was that the horrible thing was covered in. There was a video screen, wall-mounted, high in a corner and visible from Rademakers's chair, which was now dark but showed a red light on the consul so that he knew his technology was working. On the wall in the other office, just visible between the two heavies, was another repro Magritte, the one of a smoking pipe and the legend 'Ceci n'est pas une pipe', which looked as if it was asking for trouble.
Ron sorted through the diamonds, weighing some of them and checking them off against a notebook he'd taken out of his breast pocket. Rademakers sat behind his desk and stroked a pad with nothing written on it. He smiled at the haji, whose expression didn't change. I asked him what it was with the Magrittes.
'He's Belgian,' he explained, rather than give me two hours on twentieth-century surrealism, I supposed.
Ron did a final count, swivelled on his chair and nodded to Rademakers, who stood and opened the Samsonite case and turned it towards the haji. The card on top of the money said 476,656,000 CFA. The heavies' necks didn't look so fat suddenly. They were straining to see the money through the partition. We'd been there twenty-five minutes.
I crossed a leg and the sofa blew a raspberry,
drawing attention to myself. I resisted blaming the sofa but looked up at the video screen which was still dark. There followed a fraction of a second when we were all transfixed, silent, tense like deer who've just caught the whiff of something that isn't other deer. Then the room seemed to suck itself in tight and with a short, powerful thump, which knocked Ron on to his arse and drove what felt like a sharp spike through my head, the thick steel door to the office popped out of its frame. It stood for a full second and then fell forward, shattering the glass partition, whose aluminium frame was torn away from the ceiling and crashed over the two heavies in the other office. The one nearest the door took the full force of it against the corner of his head and was out before he hit the ground. The other ducked instinctively but a full glass panel still broke over his head and a shard cut him deep across the side of his neck. From the quantity of blood that hit the ceiling it must have severed his carotid.
The noise was still going on in my head when three Africans in black T-shirts and jeans appeared in the room. The muscles and tendons in their arms stood out, their hands clenched around a variety of small firearms. One man stood by the empty door frame and checked out the two heavies under the glass partition, the other two came into the room. The larger man swept the room with a machine pistol which looked as if it could empty enough bullets per second to saw Rademakers's desk in half. The other man kept his pistol, fitted with a suppressor, firmly aimed at Ron.
'Nobody moves,' said the man from the door in an American accent. The one holding Ron in his sights saw the white packet on the table and pressed it. He opened it up with one hand, checked the contents and slipped it into his pocket. Ron crawled towards him, not using his head.
'Freeze,' said the man from the door, not shouting, just saying it.
The man with the diamonds grabbed Ron by the collar so that he had to scrabble forwards. Ron landed on his face in front of the man by the door. The one with the machine pistol closed the Samsonite suitcase. The haji stood up.
'Siddown,' said the man from the door. The haji kept moving.