'When was that?'
'When we were together. The two of us on our own. Do you want to be my daddy?'
'I can't be your daddy.'
'Kurt was. You could be my daddy too. We could do things together, like Kurt and me did...' She faltered and coughed. 'I like you. You're funny.'
She made a noise like a kid pretending to fire a tommy gun and began clawing at her face and speaking in the local Senoufo language.
'We can do things together,' she said, desperate, 'like me and Kurt did. I can make you happy.'
'No, Katrina,' I said gently, moving towards her. 'Go back to your room now. Go to bed. Try and get some sleep.'
A startled, terrified look came into her eyes. She tried a grin, but it came over as a snarl, as a cat's hiss. Then she threw something which missed me but clicked against the window. She turned and ran. I heard the lock snick in her door. I turned the light on. Kurt's juju was lying on the floor below the window.
Chapter 30
I scooped up Kurt's juju in a dustpan, took it out to the vats and threw it on the fire. David was out there stacking wood. There was one cage, still hooked up to the crane but on the ground, empty.
'Is this the last load?' I asked.
'Yes, Mr Bruce, I go puttin' this wood on, then sleepin' small. Tek um out morning time.'
'When you sleeping tonight, you listen for me. I'm expecting trouble. Big trouble. Trouble with gun.'
'Something wrong this place, Mr Bruce,' he said. 'Everything wrong here. Is bad place.'
'I know. We're leaving. Soon.'
I went into the kitchen and poured a drink. There was a note on the table from this morning saying: 'Bagado called from Tortiya. Will call back.' I sipped the drink and left it on the table. I took the mattress and mosquito net out of my room and set them up on the half-lit verandah. I took the bottle and glass from the kitchen and sat on the concrete platform and leaned against the post. I drank without enjoying it, while some mosquitoes tuned in on my frequency and I got under the net and watched them nudging into it, whining, frustrated.
I've woken up in the dark before with something evil in the room, some red-eyed beast looking over me reminding me of the loneliness of the human condition, something you don't need at two in the morning with your hangover flinging weights around your head. I'd run film clips of the good things in life, a family holiday in Norfolk, the coolness of summer grass on my bare back, taking the foam off my father's beer—a treat that got me started on a lifelong affair. I tried the same trick now, running clips of Heike in her big dress, legs crossed underneath her, puffing on the cigarette holder, drinking, looking at me with those aquamarine eyes. Then wrapping her slim arms around my neck telling me she'd been waiting for hours. I always kept her waiting, and it was always for hours. Then stepping out of that dress, sitting astride me, feeling her soft breasts rising and falling against my chest and losing ourselves together in the hot African night. Like some kind of subliminal advertising, illicit frames cut into that world—Ron's face staring up at me, the blood on his chin and the flower growing on his chest, the skinned heads of the vultures in Fat Paul's hotel room, Malahide's torn gut and bulging eyes, Dotte's lost tears, and the frail, abused body of a little, mad girl.
The phone rang the bell on the outside of the house. Nobody answered it except me. It was Bagado.
'Where are you?'
'In the police station in Tortiya.'
'I've been there.'
'They're being very difficult.'
'Haven't you got enough money?'
'Not for the problem in hand,' he said, calmly. 'Borema's dead.'
'You found the body?'
'They're being very awkward.'
'I'll come down. It'll have to be tomorrow. I've got something on.'
'Listen to this. Between Wednesday, thirtieth October and Friday, first November, three and a half million dollars' worth of diamonds left Tortiya.'
'Sounds a lot.'
'They've never had it so good. There's hardly a diamond left in the place. Borema left with some clients and went down to Bouaké with them on the Friday. He didn't come back until Sunday. Then he turned up dead on Monday. A lot of his face had been burned away with hydrofluoric acid before he was strangled with a wire garrotte and...'
'...his stomach torn open by the Leopard.'
'Exactly. The diamond buyers were all from out of town. A place in the south, a port called San Pedro.'
'Samson Talbot using his Ivorian assets to buy diamonds. I thought they were still frozen then.'
'This is Africa, Bruce. Nothing stays frozen in this heat,' he said. 'How did it go with the Lib—'
The line went dead. I got back under the net. Sleep didn't come easy, lying there expecting a redneck with a leopard claw and a wire garrotte. I fell into it like a decabled lift plummeting ten floors before the emergency brakes left me hovering, in extreme tension, above an empty shaft. It wasn't exactly a relief to be woken up by Trzinski's snub-nosed .38 fitting itself into the hollow behind my right ear, but I didn't lash out wildly and get a crack in my jawline for the trouble. He was down on one knee staring over me, sweat pouring down his forehead, cheeks and neck.
'What're you doing sleeping out in the open like some jig?'
'Making it easy for you, Al, so you don't have to go trying all the rooms and waking everybody up and killing them too.'
'Walkies,' he said, pulling me up by the hair.
We faced each other on the verandah, the .38 in his bloodstained fist was pointed at my gut as he wiped his eyes with his spare hand, thinking about what he had to do. He shook his head and the sweat flicked off into the night.
'A hot night to be out working, Al.'
'Just one more job and I'm done.'
'Got your tape?'
'Yeah, and it didn't come cheap.'
'Didn't you use that negotiating tool you've got in your hand there?'
'Sure I did. Got the price down some.' He looked at the blood on his fist. 'Had to pull rank on Corporal Clegg. Beat up on those good looks of his a little more. Got himself a bit of a headache now. But I figured the colour of blood was the only thing'd help Kantari make up his mind.'
'What did you settle on?'
'I'm a reasonable man.'
'You didn't kill him?'
'No point.'
'Too useful? Like me.'
'Like you used to be, Bruce, but not any more. You're a pain in the ass. You see, I buy my expensive tape and I find it don't include a special offer I was expecting and that's really got me pissed, you see. So now all you gotta do is tell me what you done with the fuckin' audio tape. The one you shoulda given to Red a few days back when he asked you, and kept your nose out of my goddam business.'
'Eugene had an attitude problem.'
'Red's like a lot of jigs. He's good at one thing. He can kill people if they're standing in front of him and he's told where to point. You ask him to do anything else an' he can't do it, can't think on his feet. He's a jig. That's what they're like. You musta been out here long enough to know that.'
'But he's one that won't talk.'
'No, he won't, 'cos I keep his family sweet. Thirty bucks a month buys you a lotta loyalty in Liberia. Now, let's have the tape, fuckbrain.'
'Your language has got a little less biblical, Al. What happened to all that stuff you were trying to interest me in?'
Trzinski enjoyed that. He laughed and rubbed the bristles of his crew cut up the back of his head, finding some folds of skin he liked feeling. He looked across the yard at the flames under the vats.
'What's goin' on out there?'
'It's sheanut boiling, that's all.'
'You weren't giving me any shit with all that sheanut stuff,' he said, staring across at the vats until I began to see a nasty idea creeping into his head.
'Let's go,' he said. 'Let's go have a look at the sheanut boiling.'
The noise of the water roaring and the sheanut pinging against the metal of the vats was lo
ud enough for Trzinski to have to get up close to me and let me know what sweating Omaha beef smelt like.
'I seen something like this in Vietnam,' he said. 'Now you get in that cage there, see, and keep still.'
I stood in the cage which came up to the top of my thighs. Trzinski pulled out a length of plastic and cuffed me to the frame.
'Now then, let's start again, and I don't want you gettin' smart with me, understand. Where's Jimmy Wilson's goddam audio tape?'
'It's out of my hands now, and yours. There's nothing you can do about it ... Colonel Al.'
Trzinski's fist, the one with the gun in it, thumped into the side of my head and I slumped to the side of the cage on my knees.
'Shut your mouth, you little piece o' shit!' he roared. 'I'll be the fuckin' judge of that. You just tell me where it is. I wanna know where my trouble's comin' from if I'm gonna take the stand like good ol' Olly North did.'
'What's in it for me?'
'I shoot you, don't boil you to death.'
'Don't claw out my guts.'
He reached behind him and took the metal claw out of his back pocket.
'You won't feel it.'
'Why the claw, Al?'
'Kinda things jigs do to each other, ain't it?'
'What were you doing in Man?'
'You're playing for time, Bruce. It won't work.'
He put the gun in his pocket, went over to the crane and pulled on the rope, taking me up into the air. He tied the rope off and swung the crane around so that I was hanging in the steam coming off the sheanut. He climbed up on to the scaffolding and stood on the wooden planking of the walkway between the two vats and lined the cage up over the water and took his gun out again and looked at it.
'What's it to be, Bruce?'
'Just tell me what happened in Man, and I'll tell you who's got the tape.'
'Look, I know you're all upset. I heard your diamond man got himself killed and all that. But I've got a war that needs stopping and that's a helluva lot more important than individuals. Now shut the fuck up about Man and tell me where you put the tape.'
I pulled myself up on to my feet again. I was getting worried about the depth of David's sleeping patterns. I couldn't see a damn thing up here in the steam with the sweat pouring down my face into my eyes.
Trzinski eased the rope off a couple of notches so that the bottom of the cage was below the surface of the water and I could feel the heat pooling around my shoes.
'What's it to be?' he asked, clicking the safety off. 'You won't feel a thing.'
'What did Borema tell you, Al? After you burned his face off?'
'He gave me a few names. Some of Talbot's finance guys. Been down in Danané talking it through with them.'
'So why did you shoot Ron? The guy was on his way out, why the hell did you...?'
He didn't answer because the wooden planking bucked underneath him, lifting him two feet into the air and knocking him sideways. His arms and legs reached out for something, anything, his body twisting, his eyes and mouth wide open but no sound coming out. His feet kicked out in a strange spasm, as you'd expect a hanging man would do trying to regain the floor. Then he was in the steam and he must have realized it was the end and fitted the .38 into his mouth. He hit the water. There was an explosion and a dark black mess spurted from the steam.
David sprang up on to the scaffolding, straightened the plank, swung the cage back over the ground and lowered it.
'You tellin' me you no need protection, Mr Bruce.'
'I know, David, I need plenty.'
'You needin' more than plenty.'
Chapter 31
Wednesday 6th November
It was first light, just before 6.00 on a cloudless morning. I sat in the kitchen with a cup of coffee painted with something stronger than milk. Dotte was standing at the door, looking across the compound at the sheanut cage which David had lifted out of the vat. Trzinski was lying across the top of it, a fist-sized wound in the back of his head and his face and arms red-raw.
I went to the office to call the police and the phone rang. It was Howard Corben.
'They just came through with the autopsy on Malahide. They reckon he died between five and six in the morning, the gardien too. They haven't done the driver yet. Trzinski...'
'Trzinski's dead. Shot himself.'
'Wow. Couldn't have happened to a nicer guy. Did he suffer?'
'Not a lot.'
'You can't win 'em all.'
'What took you so long?'
'The autopsy. I don't know what the matter is with these people around here, but they didn't get started on it until four this morning. The fuck they start then, I don't know. That's Africa, a very surprising place. It took me most of yesterday to find out what happened to Trzinski. Thought the guy must have disappeared up his own asshole and I should start looking for that. I checked all the police posts and found the guy had gone to Man; I even found out he'd been drinking in the hotel bar at Les Cascades, but I couldn't make out how he left. Then somebody at the police post to the airport told me that there'd been a military plane there on Monday. So I went down there, did some asking around and found Trzinski hitched a ride on it. It left eight-thirty Monday evening.'
'Monday evening?'
'That's what I said, Bruce.'
'Before Ron Collins got shot, before Malahide got ripped open by the Leopard?'
'The fuck you telling me for, I just told you.'
I slammed the phone down. Things were clicking in my head. I slumped in the chair behind the desk and sat for a full ten minutes, counting things off, linking information that I thought Trzinski had to information that only one other person could have had. Very complicated but well-oiled combinations slotted into position and they opened up a single door. I phoned Les Cascades and asked for Martin Fall.
'Did you find the body?'
'That's an awesomely terrible opening line, Bruce.'
'I'm not so cheerful. I've got a dead Trzinski in my back yard. Shot himself.'
'Christ.'
'Did you?'
'Yes. Some village women found it twenty miles downstream. They took it into Toulépleu yesterday morning. The police packed it in ice and sent it up to Danané. It's in the hospital morgue in Man now. They'll get the release papers this afternoon. If the weather holds I should be out of here by evening.'
'We never sorted out the money.'
'Keep it. You deserve it.'
I exchanged some small-talk about more work and Anne. We hung up. I phoned the Hotel Kedjona to ask about flights to Man. The next one was tomorrow. I opened up a map. It was 700 kilometres to Man on the main roads and just over 400 kilometres across country. It was 6.10 a.m. To get to Man on the main roads could take anything from 10 to 14 hours, across country it could be better or a hell of a lot worse. Dotte appeared in the doorway.
'I've got to get to Man,' I said. 'Where can I get a car?'
'Le Mont Korhogo Hotel. They're not cheap. What's happened?'
'People tell you to look further than the end of your nose,' I said, ruminating over the map. 'But not always to check under it first.'
'Is this about your diamond trader?'
'I thought Trzinski had Ron Collins taken out but there was something that didn't fit. We couldn't figure it out. They killed Ron on his way out, after I'd given the rebels the diamonds. If Trzinski was involved, he'd have shot me going in so that the rebels didn't get the diamonds. The rebels would have killed Ron. The arms would stop moving across the Ivory Coast. Trzinski wins. It didn't happen like that, it happened exactly how it should have done. It was something to do with money coming from the rebels, not going to them.'
'Which means?'
'It means the guy I was working for set me up and now I'm going down to Man to talk to him about it.'
'You're driving?'
'There're no flights.'
'Did you sleep?'
'Not much.'
'You're not going to make it on your own with your leg l
ike that. I'll come with you, share the driving.'
'What about Katrina?'
'She'll come too.'
'It could be dangerous.'
'We'll stay out of it. Go and hire the car. I'll put some food and drink together.'
I went out into the compound, glad that I hadn't called the police and then had to spend three days with them plodding through it all. Standing at the foot of the steps up to the verandah were two men, small but formed with the very latest genetic technology. They both wore white shirts and company ties, suit trousers, the jackets folded over their arms, a briefcase in the free hand and a holdall each at their feet. They had straight black hair, wire-framed spectacles and they were standing out in the hot morning sunshine without a pimple of sweat between them. 'Medway-san?' they asked.
'Hanamaki-san, Yuzawa-san?' I asked, thinking: Christ alive.
They head-butted the air, catching me on the hop. Hanamaki pointed over to the cage with Trzinski lying on top and Yuzawa asked: 'Industliar accident?'
The car I was driving was a brand-new Toyota Land Cruiser which had cost me 240,000 CFA, nearly $1,000, for three days' hire and it was worth every bit of that. It chewed up those dusty back roads between Korhogo and Mankono, spewing it out behind in a towering cloud that ensured a reception committee in each village. Men, women and children lined the road, the kids yelling: 'Toure-e-e. Toure-e-e. Cadeaux-cadeaux.' Chickens came from miles around, timing their sprints from hundreds of yards off to see if they could sustain some terrible injury and claim compensation. Cattle battled towards us like the phalanx of a distant army looking for conversation.
Then we hit the mud, 150 kilometres from Man just outside'Séguéla. The Land Cruiser sucked it in and trowelled it out, so hungry it would have been a shame to deny it. It took us just under eleven hours to get to Man, with one puncture and a fifteen-minute stop for food and painkillers.
I slept for six of those hours, curled in the open boot. Katrina didn't sleep at all. She glued herself to the seat and stared out of the window, the grey charcoal smudges under her eyes growing darker.