A Darkening Stain (19 page)

I was glad of the driver's arrogance. He purred back to Cotonou without ever taking it above forty m.p.h. I followed with no lights on until we hit the city and I could join the anonymous peloton of a thousand other mopeds.

We went past the Dan Tokpa, over the Nouveau Pont and joined the main Porto Novo road, direction Nigeria. I'd have followed them all the way to Lagos if I'd had to, but they came off at PK 12 and went up to a cheap and unfinished beach hotel called Le Paradis. The driver dropped Daniel off with a small holdall, turned the Merc and floated back past me on his way to a cheaper joint.

I parked the Yamaha and took a peek in the empty concrete
bar. Daniel was at the foot of the stairs swinging a room key and ordering some food and drink from a solitary barman, asking him to bring it up to his room. Daniel went up the stairs taking slow nonchalant steps, a little celebratory bounce on each one, the fear forgotten, pleased with himself now.

The barman went into the kitchen leaving the grim neon-lit bar empty. In reception, room eight was the only missing key. I gave it five minutes and went up to the first floor. I found room eight along an untiled corridor with electric wire hanging from the ceiling between the lights. I knocked on the door. Daniel opened it so cool and happy he didn't even bother to check it wasn't his dinner. He was already stripped and heading across the dark blue tiles to the bathroom, a towel round his waist. I padded up behind him and gave his head a slight change in direction so that it hit the corner of a built-in louvre-doored wardrobe. He dropped to his knees, shouting, both hands over his eyebrow. I grabbed him by the back of his neck and slammed him forward so that his head cracked through the wardrobe door and he came to rest with his windpipe crimped against the louvre slats, unconscious and choking. I yanked him out and massaged his throat. I went through his clothes and found my roll of 200,000 CFA amongst another 100,000 or so and a bunch of niara. I was tempted to cover my expenses from the remainder, but got a little flash of Heike and Bagado giving me a finger-wagging. I checked the holdall, which was even juicieir the CFA all blocked off, five million of it, getting on for $10,000 and the revolver on top. I hauled Daniel away from the wardrobe, dragged him over to the bed. I ripped his towel off, soaked it in cold water and cleaned his face up, which was covered in blood, the eyebrow bleeding like a stuck pig's throat. He started moaning and I got up and closed the door to the room, locked it.

I dabbed his face some more and got him up on to the bed. I sat on the other twin bed and waited for him to stop making a fuss, the guy with a head of glass to let a few louvre slats knock him out. He wasn't happy coming back into a world of red
flooded pain, which pleased me. His black skin was tinged green too, so I got him a bucket from the bathroom and he puked his headache up.

‘A few questions, Danny, before I leave you to your dinner.'

He focused on me and modestly covered his genitals with a hand. Blood leaked through the fingers of his other hand from the eyebrow. I leaned forward with the towel. He flinched. I tossed the towel at him.

‘You're in this business, aren't you? I can see from the money,' I said, nodding down at the holdall.

‘What business?'

‘Don't make it too slow, Daniel, or your level of suffering's going to angle up sharply. You understand? Now, you're in the business of procuring young girls, isn't that right?'

He nodded.

‘Those girls I saw tonight, were they your girls?'

‘Not any more.'

‘Explain.'

‘I buy them from the villages. Take them to Cotonou. Sell them.'

‘You sell them to the woman?'

‘No, no, she jus' run the place.'

‘You know these schoolgirls...'

‘You and schoolgirls. You sick in the head...'

I inched off the bed and slapped him hard, twice, with the front and back of my hand. He drivelled and sank back on to the pillow.

‘You're forgetting you're the asshole pimp, Daniel. You're the one peddling little girls into a life of misery and pain. You keep your opinions to yourself and answer my questions and I might not be inclined to leave you pulped in the bath, because, I tell you, with what I've got humped up inside me I could do a lot worse than that.'

He put the cold towel compress to his face, shivering with twitchy fear, the room sauna-hot.

‘You know who sell me the girls?' he asked, quietly.

‘Who?'

‘The parents,' he said. ‘You like that?'

‘And I suppose you tell the parents that their daughters are going to short happy lives of torn pudenda and diseases? Don't justify your shitty life to me.'

‘I'm jus' tellin' you...'

‘Tell me something else. These schoolgirls who've gone missing off the streets of Cotonou over the last few weeks. Eight girls, seven still alive, one found dead on the sand bar in the lagoon. You know what I'm talking about?'

He nodded. There was a knock at the door, his dinner arriving.

‘
Ça peut rester dehors
,' I shouted, and I heard the tray go down on the floor and the flip-flops retreat. ‘Now tell me what you know about the schoolgirls.'

‘You know,' he said, taking the towel away from his face for a moment, to see if the blood still ran free, ‘you know you a dead man.'

I probably was too, but I was so crazed I didn't care, not a trace of ice in my veins, not the slightest tremor in my gut. I just leaned over to him and slapped him again, a downward stroke that fattened his lip nicely.

‘Someone told me that the other day, Daniel, and he's six foot under concrete now with most of his face blown off. People are telling me all the time how they're going to hang me by the gizzard and feed my entrails to the dogs but, look, I'm still here, still here with the task of slapping you about until you tell me something sensible. Now get on with it, my hands don't need this much work.'

I could see he was confused. The beating he'd taken and a lot of English he didn't want to understand. I calmed myself down and a couple of things occurred to me. The first was that Daniel was a middle man, low down in the chain, the boy not
having any presence of mind at all. That meant a boss in Benin for him to report to, and, probably, a Mr Big in Lagos above it all. I saw how I could give him a problem, a big problem which, with any luck, would get him killed well before the cross-hairs landed on me. The other thing that came to mind was the first squirming wriggle of an idea like an elite sperm heading for the egg. The only problem, I didn't understand it—my mind operating faster than my brain. I shrugged it away. Daniel flinched.

‘Who do you work for, Daniel?'

No answer.

‘Who do you pay the money to, Daniel?'

‘He comin' soon. Bring you some trouble.'

‘I don't know anybody who doesn't bring me trouble. What's he do with the money you give him?'

‘He tek it to Lagos.'

‘Who in Lagos?'

‘I don' know.'

I opened up the holdall and took out the revolver. It really was an antique with a hammer and everything. Daniel froze. I placed the nozzle of the gun on the back of his hand covering his genitals.

‘I don't know how to work these things too well but I know it's something to do with pulling back the hammer.'

I eased it back.

‘But you know, Daniel, I had trigger thumbs when I was a kid. Doctor said it might weaken them.'

‘Madame Sokode,' he said, quickly so that he could pretend he hadn't.

‘Tell me where I can find her,' I said, and brought the revolver back into my hands where I examined it further. Daniel gave me an address. ‘Talk to me about Madame Sokode.'

‘I don't know her,' he whined. ‘I jus' take the orders, pay the money.'

‘You do anything else for her?'

‘What you mean?'

‘Maybe you do drugs too. You got five million CFA in the bag. That's money.'

‘I don' do drugs. That's Lagos business. I only work in Benin.'

‘What about these schoolgirls? What do you know about them?'

He shook his head.

‘Is Madame Sokode involved?'

No answer.

I leaned over him like a bad sky and gave him a look down the pipe of the revolver. I hit him with the heel of my free hand in the forehead and his head cracked back against the wall. Once, twice, three times.

‘I don't think you know how angry I am, Daniel,' I said and eased back the hammer again. He started blubbing. ‘Where are they keeping the schoolgirls?'

‘I don't know. On the lagoon. I don't know the place.'

‘Where are the girls going?'

‘Lagos.'

‘Are they going to be sold in Lagos?' I said, sitting back down.

‘They already bought.'

‘What sort of money do they fetch?'

‘Thirty, forty thousand dollar.'

‘That's a hell of a lot more than five hundred thousand CFA.'

‘If they virgin. Genuine...'

‘Sounds like good business, Daniel. What sort of people can afford that kind of money?'

‘Big people,' he nodded.

‘When are they going to move the girls?'

‘I don' know the time. It soon. But I don' know the time.'

‘Do they need more girls?'

He shook his head.

‘You think this is good business, Daniel? Taking girls off the street and selling them to die?'

His eyes slitted at that. Revenge already in there. Don't get moral with those that don't have it unless you want a lapful of spite. My translation.

‘You got any children?' I asked, standing up and pacing away from him, suddenly nervous about the money man due tonight. He didn't answer me but I knew he had them. I picked up the holdall and took out three blocks of CFA and tucked them down the front of my chinos. I threw the holdall down by the side of the bed. Daniel was blinking fast, wondering if he was coming to his time and thinking if he wasn't, how he was going to explain that all the money hadn't been stolen.

‘Keep your kids indoors, Danny,' I said. ‘Now stand up and turn around.'

I got him to the end of the bed. It was hard because he thought that this was it and his legs wouldn't work properly and there were tears. I tapped him on the head and he dropped on to the bed and bounced. I made sure he could breathe. I brought his dinner in from outside, scraped it down the toilet and poured the drink after it and put the tray on the table.

It wasn't until I got back on the scooter that I realized I still hadn't found out who'd sent him, a question that fidgeted on my mind all the way back to Cotonou.

Wednesday 24th July, Cotonou.

 

It was just after midnight when I dragged myself back up the stairs to the house, having put the money and the revolver in the usual hiding place in Moses's ground-floor flat. Bagado was lying asleep curled up with his head on the front step. My first thought—where was Heike?

I let myself in and went for the answering machine. No messages. Bagado came in and shut the door, still not looking good, thin, wasted. I checked the bedroom, knowing she wasn't there.

‘She's not here,' said Bagado.

‘You know where she is?'

‘I've been out there since ten.'

I went back to the answering machine. Still no messages. Panic crept in and made its house. I flipped through the address book by the phone. Then I smiled. Heike getting back at me for not phoning her last night. That didn't work though. Not in her nature, and gone midnight was stretching the tease. I leafed through the book past Gerhard Lehrner, Heike's boss, to Traudi Linke, a work colleague, an insomniac vegan who read Brecht and ate carrots until she snatched an hour of sleep between four and five in the morning.

I dialled the number. Traudi picked up the phone, breezy, fresh from a couple of hours with
Mutter Courage.
Her voice went flat when she heard it was me. We didn't get along. Something to do with my ostentatiously wearing shoe leather in her company and telling her that vegetables have families too.

‘Have you seen Heike tonight?' I asked.

‘Have you been fighting again?' she replied, a barbed question guaranteed to snag my dander.

‘She left this morning. She hasn't come home. No messages.'

‘She went for a drink with Gerhard after work. That's all I know,' she said. ‘And you shouldn't fight with her in that condition, you know? If she has a miscarriage...'

‘Thanks, Traudi.'

The phone went down on me hard. I called Gerhard, not an enjoyable call to have to make, as he'd been holding a candle for Heike since he took up his post and the news would definitely boost. The phone rang for ever until I was blinded by irrational jealousy and panic, livid if she was there, mad if she wasn't. Gerhard finally answered. He'd clearly been in a deep, possibly booze-induced, sleep.

‘Gerhard. Bruce. Do you know where Heike is?'

‘Heike? She left hours ago.'

‘From your place?' I asked, unable to resist the question.

‘We were drinking in the Beaurivage. She said she was going back to Cotonou. That was seven, eight o'clock, something like that.'

I dumped the phone. Blind panic leading by a full lap now. Bagado took the phone and dialled a number in Porto Novo. He spoke rapidly in a mixture of Fon and French, giving Heike's car description and registration. He got nothing back, no accident report, no sighting. He did the same with Cotonou and got the same response.

Then it hit me. The final admission of the truth, of the irrefutable evidence, like giving up on rechecking your pockets looking for the wallet you knew had been stolen all along. Marnier's voice came back to me.

‘He will
make
you go.'

I dialled Franconelli's number in Lagos. The usual hard-boiled Italian answered. I gave my name and waited, thinking, damn Franconelli and his bloody respect. I should have known
he'd think up a suitable punishment for my refusal to come, bundling me off the street too easy.