Yet some did, and the rumours persisted. Scotland Yard, called in to examine the material, publicly declared it “baseless and a bit sad” and declined to forward it to the Crown Prosecution Service. But the lawyers for the dead couple, far from throwing in the sponge, resorted to Parliament. A Scottish MP, also a lawyer, was suborned, and tabled an innocuous parliamentary question of the Foreign Secretary concerning the health of the African continent at large. The Foreign Secretary batted it away with his customary grace, only to find himself grappling with a supplementary that went for the jugular.
Q: Has the Foreign Secretary knowledge of any written representations made to his department during the last twelve months by the late, tragically murdered Mrs Tessa Quayle?
A: I require notice of that question.
Q: Is that a “no” I’m hearing?
A: I have no knowledge of such representations made during her lifetime.
Q: Then she wrote to you posthumously, perhaps? (laughter)
In the written and verbal exchanges that followed, the Foreign Secretary first denied all knowledge of the documents, then protested that in view of pending legal actions they were sub judice. After “further extensive and costly research” he finally admitted to having “discovered” the documents, only to conclude that they had received all the attention they merited, then or now, “having regard for the disturbed mental condition of the writer.” Imprudently, he added that the documents were classified.
Q: Does the Foreign Office regularly classify writings of people of disturbed mental condition? (laughter)
A: In cases where such writings could cause embarrassment to innocent third parties, yes.
Q: Or to the Foreign Office, perhaps?
A: I am thinking of the needless pain that could be inflicted on the deceased’s close relatives.
Q: Then be at peace. Mrs Quayle had no close relatives.
A: These are not however the only interests I am obliged to consider.
Q: Thank you. I think I have heard the answer I was waiting for.
Next day a formal request for the release of the Quayle papers was presented to the Foreign Office and backed by an application to the High Court. Simultaneously, and surely not by coincidence, a parallel initiative was mounted in Brussels by lawyers for friends and family of the late Dr Arnold Bluhm. During the preliminary hearing, a racially varied crowd of mischief makers dressed in symbolic white coats paraded for television cameras outside the Brussels Palace of Justice and brandished placards bearing the slogan “Nous Accusons.” The nuisance was quickly dealt with. A string of cross-petitions by the Belgian lawyers ensured that the case would run for years. However, it was now common knowledge that the company in question was none other than Karel Vita Hudson.
“Up there, that’s the Lokomorinyang range,” Captain McKenzie informs Justin over the intercom. “Gold and oil. Kenya and Sudan been fighting about it for well on a hundred years. Old maps give it to the Sudan, new ones give it to Kenya. I reckon somebody slipped the cartographer a backhander.”
Captain McKenzie is one of those tactful men who knows exactly when to be irrelevant. His chosen plane this time is a Beech Baron with twin engines. Justin sits beside him in the co-pilot’s seat, listening without hearing, now to Captain McKenzie, now to the banter of other pilots in the vicinity: “How are we today, Mac? Are we above the cloud level or below?”—“Where the hell are you, man?”—“A mile to your right and a thousand feet below you. What’s happened to your eyesight?” They are flying over flat brown slabs of rock, darkening into blue. The clouds are thick above them. Vivid red patches appear where the sun breaks through to strike the rock. The foothills ahead of them are tousled and untidy. A road appears like a vein among the muscles of the rock.
“Cape Town to Cairo,” McKenzie says laconically. “Don’t try it.”
“I won’t,” Justin promises dutifully.
McKenzie banks the plane and descends, following its path. The road becomes a valley road, weaving along a ridge of snaking hills.
“Road to the right there, that’s the road Arnold and Tessa took, Loki to Lodwar. Great if you don’t mind bandits.”
Coming awake, Justin peers deeply into the pale mist ahead of him, and sees Arnold and Tessa in their jeep with dust on their faces and the box of disks bobbing between them on the bench seat. A river has joined the Cairo road. It is called the Tagua, McKenzie says, and its source is high up in the Tagua mountains. The Taguas are eleven thousand feet high. Justin politely acknowledges this information. The sun goes in, the hills turn blue-black, menacing and separate, Tessa and Arnold vanish. The landscape is again godless, not a man or beast in any direction.
“Sudanese tribesmen come down from the Mogila range,” McKenzie says. “In their jungle they wear nothing. Coming south they get all shy, wear these little bits of cloth. And boy, can they run!”
Justin gives a polite smile as brown treeless mountains rise crooked and half buried from the khaki earth. Behind them he makes out the blue haze of a lake.
“Is that Turkana?”
“Don’t swim in it. Not unless you’re very fast. Fresh water. Great amethysts. Friendly crocodiles.”
Flocks of goat and sheep appear below them, then a village and a compound.
“Turkana tribesmen,” McKenzie says. “Big shoot-out last year over livestock thefts. Best to steer clear of ’em.”
“I shall,” Justin promises.
McKenzie looks squarely at him, a prolonged, interrogative stare. “Not the only people to steer clear of, they tell me.”
“No, indeed,” Justin agrees.
“Couple of hours, we could be in Nairobi.”
Justin shakes his head.
“Want me to stretch a point and take you over the border to Kampala? We’ve got fuel.”
“You’re very kind.”
The road reappears, sandy and deserted. The plane reacts violently, nosing left and right like a plunging horse, as if nature is telling it to go back.
“Worst winds for miles around,” McKenzie says. “Region’s famous for ’em.”
The town of Lodwar lies below them, set small among coneshaped black hills, none more than a couple of hundred feet high. It looks neat and purposeful, with tin roofs, a tarmac airstrip and a school.
“No industry,” McKenzie says. “Great market for cows, donkeys and camels if you’re interested in buying.”
“I’m not,” says Justin with a smile.
“One hospital, one school, lot of army. Lodwar’s the security centre for the whole area. Soldiers spend most of their time in the Apoi hills, chasing bandits to no effect. Bandits from Sudan, bandits from Uganda, bandits from Somalia. A real nice catchment area for bandits. Cattle-thieving is the local sport,” McKenzie recites, back in his role of tour guide. “The Mandango steal cattle, dance for two weeks till another tribe steals them back.”
“How far from Lodwar to the lake?” asks Justin.
“Give or take, fifty kilometres. Go to Kalokol. There’s a fishing lodge there. Ask for a boatman called Mickie. His boy’s Abraham. Abraham’s all right as long as he’s with Mickie, poison on his own.”
“Thanks.”
Conversation ends. McKenzie overflies the airstrip, waving his wing-tips to signal his intent to land. He climbs again and returns. Suddenly they are on the ground. There is nothing more to say except, once more, thanks.
“If you need me, find someone who can call me on the radio,” McKenzie says as they stand sweltering on the airstrip. “If I can’t help you, there’s a guy called Martin, runs the Nairobi School of Flying. Flying for thirty years. Trained in Perth and Oxford. Mention my name.”
Thanks, says Justin again and, in his anxiety to be courteous, writes it down.
“Want to borrow my flight bag?” McKenzie asks, making a gesture with the black briefcase in his right hand. “Long-barrelled target pistol, if you’re interested. Gives you a chance at forty yards.”
“Oh, I’d be no good at te
n,” Justin exclaims, with the kind of self-effacing laugh that dates from his days before Tessa.
“And this is Justice,” McKenzie says, introducing a grizzled philosopher in a tattered T-shirt and green sandals who has appeared from nowhere. “Justice is your driver. Justin, meet Justice. Justice, meet Justin. Justice has a gentleman called Ezra who will be riding point with him. Anything more I can do for you?”
Justin draws a thick envelope from the pocket of his bush jacket. “I’d like you please to post this for me when you’re next in Nairobi. Just the ordinary mail will do fine. She’s not a girlfriend. She’s my lawyer’s aunt.”
“Tonight soon enough?”
“Tonight would be splendid.”
“Take care then,” says McKenzie, slipping the envelope into his flight bag.
“Indeed I will,” says Justin, and this time manages not to tell McKenzie he’s been very kind.
The lake was white and grey and silver and the overhead sun made black and white stripes of Mickie’s fishing boat, black in the shadow of the canopy, white and pitiless where the sun shone freely on the woodwork, white on the skin of the fresh water that popped and bubbled with the rising fish, white on the misted grey mountains that arched their backs under the sun’s heat, white where it struck the black faces of old Mickie and his young companion the poisonous Abraham—a sneering, secretly angry child, McKenzie was quite right—who for some unfathomable reason spoke German and not English, so that the conversation, what there was of it, was three-cornered: German to Abraham, English to old Mickie and their own version of kiSwahili when they spoke between themselves. White also whenever Justin looked at Tessa, which was often, perched tomboy-style on the ship’s prow where she was determined to sit despite the crocodiles, with one hand for the boat the way her father had taught her and Arnold never far away in case she slipped. On the boat’s radio an English-language cookery programme was extolling the virtues of sun-dried tomatoes.
At first it had been difficult for Justin to explain his destination in any language. They might never have heard of Allia Bay. Allia Bay didn’t interest them in the least. Old Mickie wanted to take him due south-east to Wolfgang’s Oasis where he belonged, and the poisonous Abraham had hotly seconded the motion: the Oasis was where Wazungu stayed, it was the first hotel in the region, famous for its film stars and rock stars and millionaires, the Oasis without a doubt was where Justin was heading, whether he knew it or not. It was only when Justin drew a small photograph of Tessa from his wallet—a passport photograph, nothing that had been defiled by the newspapers—that the purpose of his mission became clear to them, and they became quiet and uneasy. So Justin wished to visit the place where Noah and the Mzungu woman were murdered? Abraham demanded.
Yes, please.
Was Justin then aware that many police and journalists had visited this place, that everything that could be found there had been found, also that Lodwar police and the Nairobi flying squad had separately and together decreed the place to be a forbidden area to tourists, sightseers, trophy-hunters and anybody else who had no business there? Abraham persisted.
Justin was not, but his intention remained the same, and he was prepared to pay generously to see it fulfilled.
Or that the place was well known to be haunted, and had been even before Noah and the Mzungu were murdered?—but with much less conviction, now that the financial side was settled.
Justin vowed he had no fear of ghosts.
At first in deference to the gloomy nature of their errand, the old man and his helper had adopted a melancholy pose, and it took all Tessa’s determined good spirits to bounce them out of it. But as usual, with the help of a string of witty comments from the prow, she succeeded. The presence of other fishing boats further up the sky was also a help. She called out to them—what have you caught?—and they called back to her—this many red fish, this many blue, this many rainbow. And so infectious was her enthusiasm that Justin soon persuaded Mickie and Abraham to put a line out themselves, which also had the effect of diverting their curiosity into more productive paths.
“You are all right, sir?” Mickie asked him, from quite close, peering like an old doctor into his eyes.
“I’m fine. Fine. Just fine.”
“I think you have a fever, sir. Why don’t you relax under the canopy and let me bring you some cold drink.” “Fine. We both will.”
“Thank you, sir. I have to attend to the boat.”
Justin sits under the canopy, using the ice from his glass to cool his neck and forehead while he rides with the motion of the boat. It is an odd company they have brought with them, he has to admit, but then Tessa is absolutely wanton when it comes to extending invitations, and really one just has to bite one’s lip and double the number one first thought of. Good to see Porter here, and you too, Veronica, and your baby Rosie always a pleasure, no—no objections there. And Tessa always seems to get that bit more out of Rosie than anybody else can. But Bernard and Celly Pellegrin a total mistake, darling, and how absolutely typical of Bernard to include three rackets, not just one, in his beastly tennis kit. As for the Woodrows—honestly, it’s time you overcame your laudable but misplaced conviction that even the most unpromising among us have hearts of gold, and you’re the one to prove it to them. And for God’s sake stop peeking at me as if you’re about to make love to me at any moment. Sandy’s going half crazy from looking down your shirt front as it is.
“What is it?” Justin asked sharply.
At first he thought it was Mustafa. Gradually he realised that Mickie had taken a fistful of his shirt above his right shoulder blade and was shaking it to wake him.
“We’ve arrived, sir, on the eastern shore. We are close to the place where the tragedy happened.”
“How far?”
“To walk, ten minutes, sir. We will accompany you.”
“That’s not necessary.”
“It is most necessary, sir.”
“Was fehlt dir?” Abraham asked, over Mickie’s shoulder.
“Nichts. Nothing. I’m fine. You’ve both been very kind.”
“Drink some more water, sir,” Mickie said, holding a fresh glass to him.
They make quite a column, clambering over the slabs of lava rock here at the cradle of civilisation, Justin has to admit. “Never realised there were so many civilised chaps around,” he tells Tessa, doing his English bloody fool act, and Tessa laughs for him, that silent laugh she does when she smiles delightedly and shakes and generally does all the right things but no sound issues. Gloria leads the way, well, she would. With that royal British stride of hers and those elbows she can outmarch the lot of us. Pellegrin bitching, which is also normal. His wife Celly saying she can’t take the heat, what’s new? Rosie Coleridge on her dad’s back, having a good sing in Tessa’s honour—how on earth did we all fit into the boat?
Mickie had stopped, one hand held lightly on Justin’s arm. Abraham was standing close behind him.
“This is the place where your wife passed away, sir,” said Mickie softly.
But he need not have bothered because Justin knew exactly— even if he didn’t know how Mickie had deduced that he was Tessa’s husband, but perhaps Justin had informed him of this fact in his sleep. He had seen the place in photographs, in the gloom of the lower ground and in his dreams. Here ran what looked like a dried river bed. Over there stood the sad little heap of stones erected by Ghita and her friends. Around it—but spreading in all directions, alas—lay the junk that was these days inseparable from any well-publicised event: discarded film cassettes and boxes, cigarette packets, plastic bottles and paper plates. Higher up—maybe thirty or so yards up the white rock slope—ran the dust road where the long wheelbase safari truck had pulled alongside Tessa’s jeep and shot its wheel off, sending the jeep careering down this same slope with Tessa’s murderers in hot pursuit with their pangas and guns and whatever else they were carrying. And over there—Mickie was silently pointing them out with his gnarled old finger—were
the blue smears of the Oasis four-track’s paintwork left on the rock face as it slid into the gully. And the rock face, unlike the black volcanic rock surrounding it, was white as a gravestone. And perhaps the brown stains on it were indeed blood, as Mickie was suggesting. But when Justin examined them, he concluded they might as well be lichen. Otherwise he observed little of interest to the observant gardener, beyond yellow spear grass and a row of doum palms that as usual looked as though they had been planted by the municipality. A few euphorbia shrubs—well, naturally—making themselves a precarious living among chunks of black basalt. And a spectral white Commiphora tree—when were they ever in leaf?—its spindly branches stretched to either side of it like the wings of a moth. He selected a basalt boulder and sat on it. He felt light-headed, but lucid. Mickie handed him a water bottle and Justin took a pull from it, screwed the top back on and set it at his feet.
“I’d like to be alone for a little while, Mickie,” he said. “Why don’t you and Abraham go and catch a fish and I’ll call to you from the shore when I’m done?”
“We would prefer to wait for you with the boat, sir.”
“Why not fish?”
“We would prefer to remain here with you. You have a fever.”
“It’s going now. Just a couple of hours.” He looked at his watch. It was four in the afternoon. “When’s dusk?”
“At seven o’clock, sir.”
“Fine. Well, you can have me at dusk. If I need anything I’ll call.” And more firmly, “I want to be alone, Mickie. That’s what I came here for.”