I asked after Soumba and nobody answered, a little hostility rankling on the back of the woodsmoke coming in my direction. Two young women who'd been pounding yam stopped and looked at the white man. A kid with his finger in his belly button leaned against the thigh of a seated mama who was holding a small baby in swaddling.
'Où est Soumba?' I tried again.
A tall, slim young woman in a smart African print suit, of red and green cloth with a European-style cut, appeared at the door of the main house. She had gold sandals on and turned a heavy bronze wristlet on her left forearm. I introduced myself and followed her into the house, which had nothing in it except a red spray-painted slogan of the FPI opposition party on a blackened wall.
'Trouble?' I asked in French.
'The Ivory Coast is not yet a democracy.'
'Your men have been taken?' She nodded. I decided to make it quick. 'You know Kurt?' She nodded again. 'He's dead. Murdered last week.' No reaction. 'You were lovers, weren't you?' She shrugged. Tougher lines needed. 'I found a juju under his mattress.'
'It wasn't mine,' she said as a matter of fact, barely opening her mouth.
'Whose was it, then?'
'Ask the whore.'
'Which whore?'
She batted me away with her hand and walked off towards the wall with the slogan.
'I finished with Kurt some time ago,' she said. 'When did you last see him?'
'I saw him every day. He stood outside the gates there, looking in. He was a lost man. I told him he would be. Too weak.'
'Too weak or too poor?' I said, and she shot me a look that took most of the back of my head off.
'I don't have to speak to you, M. Medway.'
'You're wearing nice clothes. Good cloth. Good tailor.'
'I'm not bought, like you think African girls are bought.'
'How are you bought? Cadeau-cadeau?' I asked, needling to get an answer. It incensed her and she came at me with her arms flailing. She caught me on the side of the head with the bronze wristlet, but I got hold of her arms and held her close so that our noses nearly touched. 'The juju, Soumba?'
'It wasn't mine. He had his own juju. He didn't need any from me.'
'What does that mean?'
'He was already spoilt, broken.'
I let her go, pushing her away and shook my head to try and get the things to stop popping in there. She held on to her arms, looking over her shoulder at me, not so cocky, but not burnt out either.
'Ask the whore,' she said.
'Which whore?'
'The white whore,' she said.
I drove back to the compound; Katrina was at the gates, down on her haunches with a group of local kids. She was talking to them in their own language and they were looking at the words coming out of her mouth as if she was spewing pure silk.
Bagado was still sleeping; Dotte was having breakfast.
'Where've you been?' she asked.
'I went to see Soumba.'
'How did you know about her?'
'Kofi told me, said she might know something about the juju.'
'Did she?'
'She said ask the whore.'
'That's it?'
'The white whore.'
'She never liked me.'
'You knew each other?'
'Of each other.'
'That's quite some hate she's stoking.'
'I controlled the money. Kurt wouldn't have been nice about me.'
'So what about the juju?'
'I haven't got anything to say about the juju.'
'Why did she call you a whore?'
'It's her way of trashing me,' she said, and sat at the table, close to me, staring in. 'What's going on in there, Bruce?'
'I don't know. I'm confused. Maybe I'm worried about the Leopard, about this kidnap business, getting strange thoughts about them,' I lied.
'Don't think about it. Just like you don't have to think about the juju. It could have been anyone. And anyway, I thought you'd found Eugene.'
'Yes, but not who he was working for.'
'Are we going to do these books?'
'I have to call B.B., make things look good.'
She threw me a bunch of keys. I unlocked the office and the phone lock and dialled B.B. a dozen times before I got through. As usual he had his hand resting on the phone, waiting for it to ring.
'Yairs?'
'Bruce.'
'Where you been?'
'Around and about. I've had some police trouble.'
'I see,' he said, slurping his drink. 'Now den, Bruise, de replacemarn, he comin'.'
'That's good.'
'You no like de wok?'
'I was just thinking of you having to pay my daily rate...'
'Shut up de bloddy daily rate! Bloddy ting. I no pay't. You no done bloddy not'ing earn you bloddy daily rate. You drife me mad ... f-f-furious ... you sayin' dis ting!' he roared. I held the phone off my ear and he grumbled around until he got a cigarette going and smoothed out.
'Now den. De replacemarn. His name John Smith—from Newcastle.'
'He's a Geordie, you mean?'
'I don' know what bloddy Geordie ting is.'
'That's what they're called, people who come from Newcastle. You said he didn't speak French, they don't even speak English up there.'
'I see,' he said, his brain ticking.
'What?'
'I was jus' tinking. You say correck. I no understand a bloddy word he say.'
'You won't, unless you're a Geordie,' I said. 'You said he was cheap?'
'T'ousand parn a month plus expenses.'
'He probably used to be a shipbuilder.'
'Yairs. How you know dese tings?'
'All the shipyards are closing up there.'
'I see.'
'They're good people, though. Hard workers and you never know, maybe the locals here will take to speaking Geordie. When's he coming?'
'Arrive Abidjan'T'ursday British Airways. You meet him?'
'I'll meet him. What about the Japanese?'
'I don't know where dey gone.'
'I'm going through the books now.'
'You put de monny in de accoun'?'
'Yes,' I lied, and he put the phone down.
Dotte and I started on the books. They were a disaster. It was a relief to get a call from Sean Malahide telling me to be in Man by 10.00 p.m. that evening at the latest. The Air Ivoire rep in the Hotel Kedjana organized a ticket for me on the midday flight to Bouaké and on to Man. There was going to be a three-hour wait at Bouaké, but it had to be better than the bus.
By the time I left for the airport there was over one million CFA unaccounted for. This was the period before Dotte took over and there was still another month of that to go. No wonder Soumba didn't take to Dotte, and no wonder she slammed the door shut on Kurt. The only thing—if I'd been Soumba, I'd have taken Dotte out with the juju, not Kurt.
Bagado took me to the airport. I told him about Soumba. He stared over the top of the steering wheel without blinking.
'Why is this juju troubling you?' asked Bagado. 'It's black magic. What's it got to do with anything?'
'It worked.'
'You think that whoever planted the juju told the Leopard to follow Kurt from Kantari's.'
'It's possible.'
'Dotte?'
'You really don't like her, do you?'
'It's not a question of like. You're either in her orbit or not. You're either attracted to her or not. You are, I'm not. She only operates with those who are.'
'You think she's manipulating me?'
'She's working on you. You have your little talks. Maybe she's seen something she wants to exploit. A weakness or two.'
'Don't drag me into that fight again,' I said. 'Just tell me what Dotte's motive is for serving up Kurt? She said he was a broken man. Soumba said the same. Why bother to have him killed?'
'She was desperate enough to contact the Danish Embassy when he disappeared. Does she strike you as a desperate woman?'
/> 'Kofi told me he took Katrina with him.'
'Kurt was punishing Dotte.'
'There's plenty of history there for that kind of thing.'
'Why don't you tell me some of it.'
'You wouldn't want to hear it, and anyway, there's not enough to want to kill the man. Just personal stuff.'
'Intimate?'
'Is that a word or a question?'
'You know.'
'Yeah, and I'm not answering.'
We pulled up outside the airport. Bagado got out and sat on the bonnet with his arms folded.
'You be careful now, with those Liberians,' he said.
'Dotte didn't sleep in her bed last night,' I said, thinking I was throwing Bagado a bone. It didn't deflect his attention for a moment.
'Did you ask her where she was?'
'No.'
'Ask yourself why you didn't, and you don't need to tell me the answer.'
'We still haven't spoken to Borema to see if there's a connection to Ron.'
'My day is already planned,' said Bagado.
Chapter 27
The mountains of Man had been rained on most of the night and the clouds still hung around their shoulders. I took a taxi from the airport just as night was falling and checked in at Les Cascades. Martin Fall was already installed. I cleaned up and went to his room. He'd been lying on the bed in a polo shirt and blue jeans with a weak whisky on the go, reading a stack of old Ivoire Soirs.
'What's this, then?' I asked.
'Always do my homework, Bruce. It's automatic. Read the papers wherever you go, find out what's crackling.'
'What is?'
'Multi-party election fever. But it looks like a put-up job to me. I can't see the old man standing down. You?'
'It's a step in the right direction. He won't see out his next term anyway. Too old.'
'There's some international observers staying here. They say the old man'll get in by a hair. They all know.'
'What else?'
'The Leopard seems to be all the rage. They said on the news the police'd caught him. Eugene Gilbert.'
'The police are making a pre-election splash. They've caught the Leopard's shooter but not the man himself.'
'You're on top of it, Bruce.'
'You could say that. I gave them Eugene Gilbert, but he wouldn't tell me who he worked for.'
'Got any ideas?'
'Some.'
'There's a diamond dealer who's been kidnapped too. How did that get out?'
'People talk when there's money around.'
'The rest is cocoa and coffee. They like their football here. Very disappointed in the Nigerian referee, they were—very disappointed.'
'I don't watch it myself.'
'I went to Brentford last week.'
'You don't still watch them, for Christ's sake.'
'The Bs? Course I do. They're on a roll.'
'They won?'
'Yeah. I heard a new chant too.' Martin started singing to the tune of 'Guantanamera':
"One referee, there's only one referee,
Two-o-o-o linesmen
But only one referee-e-e-e."
'And you know the great thing about it was that when the ref heard them, he got a spring in his step. He thought, "They like me". You ever heard of a crowd liking a ref?'
'You're very ... what's the word ... chirpy, Martin. You're very chirpy.'
'You, I notice, aren't. The rainy season getting you down. A drink, perhaps?'
'Never known you so slow on the uptake, Martin. How's Anne?'
'She's great.'
Martin poured me a drink. I needed something to get me through his energy blast. He was looking good. Still in fighting condition, probably did more press-ups in a day then I'd done in the last decade. Still had all his hair, very black it was, too. Maybe he dyed it. It gave him a narrow forehead, though, made him look a bit thick, not much room to fit the brains in. He once told me he'd never read a book. I think he was just showing off, letting me know he was different. He had a whole library full of them, all hand-tooled by Moroccan craftsmen and gloriously bound in scivotex. What did I care if he read or not? He handed me a whisky, the water held like a question mark. The muscles ridged in his forearm under the dark hair and he still had triceps up by the sleeve of his shirt instead of blancmange. I shook my head at the water.
'You're looking fit, Martin.'
'I work out. Everybody does. Even Anne. You?'
'It's not the climate for it. You can lose three pounds reading a book.'
'I wouldn't know,' he said, dropping it on me again. 'Have you got the diamonds?'
'I was wondering when you'd get to it.' He handed me a metal tube, the sort you'd expect to find a top-grade Havana in. I unscrewed it and pulled out a length of soft pimpled plastic, the diamonds set in the pimples.
'How'd you get them into the country?'
'Tochas express, as they say in the business.'
'Who's Tochas?' I asked, stuffing the plastic back into the tube.
'Tochas means "anal".'
'I see,' I said, giving him back his tube, concerned by its warmth.
'What do you know about this Malahide chappy?'
I told Martin about the logging, the money in Burkina, the Libyan arms from Ouagadougou, the way Malahide creamed off a truckload to send to the IRA. I gave him my 'Malahide as the Leopard' theory, from the package I was supposed to hand over to Kurt Nielsen, down to the skin hanging in the Irishman's living room.
'So, as well as dealing with the man who probably set Ron up, we could find ourselves exchanging glances with someone who's arranged to have maybe five men killed and their guts torn out. He might have even gone for the hands-on approach with some of them.'
'I'm looking forward to snuggling up to him,' said Martin. 'He's not so lovely.'
'What's in the package?'
'A tape of a conversation between two men which shows some American involvement in the handing over of the Liberian president to the people who tortured him for twelve hours and then killed him.'
'Where's the tape?'
'In a bank vault in Abidjan,' I lied, for no other reason than to keep the numbers who knew about it down to a minimum.
'Well, let's call Malahide,' he said. 'Get this thing over with.'
'I assume the Ivorians have agreed to unfreeze the assets and let the arms through,' I said. 'How do the Americans feel about that?'
'It's not been written down anywhere, Bruce.'
By 8.00 p.m. we were standing in Malahide's sitting room, with Martin fingering the leopard skin and Sean telling him that it was real. I went on to the balcony and tried to iron out my goose flesh, smooth my hackles.
'What's in the chest?' I heard Martin asking.
'That's just the box it came in,' said Sean, who joined me out on the verandah and helped himself to a tumbler of Bushmills. 'What can you see out there tonight, Bruce?'
'The stars are still stuck in the night, Sean. If that's what you're asking.'
'What about some more Yeats, Bruce? You got any more up your proddy sleeve?'
'"The unpurged images of day recede;
The Emperor's drunken soldiers are abed."'
'Wishful thinking. Is your friend Martin a man of letters?'
'He tells me he's not, but he might be lying for effect.' Martin came out from the living room and sat down in front of an empty glass. Malahide poured him a length of Bushmills.
'D'you like poetry, Martin?' asked Malahide, direct, a man who'd lived on his own in Africa a long time, not feeling the need for social timing; let's get down to it—who are you, are you all right? Martin knew the answer. He didn't give a damn about poetry. I saw him struggle with propriety for a moment and then toss it away, strangled.
'I try to avoid it,' he said. 'It messes up the head.'
'I've always thought it clarified things,' said Sean.
'I'm not an abstract man, Mr Malahide,' said Martin. 'I like tangible things.'
'Yes. I can see that.
You're a professional. A soldier, maybe. A man to be careful of.'
Martin liked that, even though he knew it was pure Irish flannel coming his way. I wasn't so keen. Malahide was the man to be careful of around here—Irish trickster. And out came the Yeats on cue to annoy the ex-soldier.
'"The darkness drops again but now I know
That twenty centuries of stony sleep
Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,
And what—"'
'That's as maybe,' Martin cut in. 'Perhaps we should concentrate on the situation in hand. We have a man kidnapped and it's time to get him out.'
'Yes, yes, yes,' said Malahide. 'All in good time. I said to get here by ten but there's nothing to be done till three. Company's rare out here. I thought we could have a drink, some chat, some crack. Get to know each other.'
Malahide buried his top lip into his Bushmills and sucked hard. Some tense moments passed when it could have gone either way and then Martin decided it.
'Is there any reason why we should?' he asked.
Malahide looked at him for a full minute in a silence broken only by the twinkling of the stars in the black velvet night.
'You're not in your office now, Mr Fall. You're sitting round my table drinking my whisky. You don't want to be civil, you can leave. This matter only concerns Mr Medway here. He is the man who will make the exchange. If you think you are going to have any part to play in this, think again. Anybody who goes down to that river tonight apart from Mr Medway will get himself and Mr Collins killed. We are not dealing with very understanding fellows. Am I clear?'
'We're getting there,' said Martin.
'My driver, Kwame, will take Mr Medway to Danané. Outside the town on the road from Man is a hotel called the Tia Etienne. He'll wait there at one-thirty for further instructions. I don't know where the exchange will take place. They'll string a liana bridge across the Nipoué somewhere. It'll only take them a few hours. Your contact will take you to the bridge. It'll be off that road between Danané and Toulépleu. That's all I can say about the location. When you get to the bridge your contact will take you across. There'll be a tent on the other side and someone to check the value of the diamonds. When they're satisfied they'll release Mr Collins and you walk back with him across the bridge. Kwame will take you back to Les Cascades. D'you have any questions?' Malahide tipped his drink back and refilled it, not offering any more, annoyed.