Dear Beneficiary (24 page)

We clambered into the boat with our bags and untied it from the mooring. The rope was heavy and difficult to unknot with shaking hands and the knowledge we had to get away as quickly as we could. We didn't know how long it would be before our absence would be noticed. I picked up the oars and managed to get us from the edge of the water, pushing and pulling on the oars until we were in the middle of the stream.

As much as I attempted to get us to go in a straight line, we kept going round in circles. I tried using one paddle only but that made things worse. Then I tried going forward, then backwards and both directions using both paddles, but I just rocked us about until I thought we were going to capsize.

I was exhausted, and wished I'd gone on that team-building weekend with the magistrates three years ago. They'd all learned to canoe, apart from Caroline Sharp who had to be airlifted to hospital after capsizing and getting her hair caught in some weeds. She was under the water for over three minutes before the rest of them worked out she wasn't showing off.

‘Where are you going, you bloody women?!'

It was Chike and John, running along the pathway. I supposed they must have been alerted to our escape when I'd tried the car engine. I froze. I had no energy left to do anything, and felt as helpless as a rabbit in a trap. My life was going to come to an end without any chance to choose my funeral song.

‘Give me the bleedin' oars,' shouted Tracey. ‘We won't get far with you faffing about like a blue-arsed fly.'

She grabbed the oars and set off at a good pace, and soon we were heading down the water. Chike and John ran along the bank, shouting things we couldn't make out but guessed weren't too polite. I thought I heard the word ‘guns', and was pleased we'd managed to get rid of them. I wasn't sure we'd escape so easily a second time.

Tracey's bat wings flapped vigorously with the effort, and her bust heaved up and down as her pectoral muscles worked tirelessly to move us along. I admitted privately to being impressed.

‘I wish you'd told me you had such skills,' I said. ‘It would have made me feel so much better.'

‘Wha?' said Tracey, as she puffed heavily. ‘I really must give up fags, for good this time. I can hardly breathe.'

Another shout came from the waterside and I saw a bicycle bumping along the pathway after us. John was riding it, while Chike sat on the handlebars, thankfully hindering progress since his attention to his body mass index was somewhat slack.

‘Keep going, Tracey, you're doing brilliantly,' I said, encouraging her as best I could. ‘I think we're losing them.'

There wasn't much light – only that coming from the few settlements along the way – so it was easy to keep to the shadows. The water stretched for some distance but we could see a shoreline with lights and buildings up ahead. Every time we thought we would be able to see where we were going the darkness came over us, but we could still keep tabs on the men, who were struggling to keep up. Judging by the coughing I heard, John's lungs were in a worse state than Tracey's.

Tracey was flagging, but I could just make out the bike, which was further away than before. John's legs were sticking out at right angles, as the bike bumped along what was obviously very rocky ground. Next we heard a thud as the bike hit something, followed by a cry and a loud splash. Chike had flown off the handlebars and into the water. John lay on the ground clutching his leg.

‘Come here, you bloody English whores!' John shouted, clambering into a crouching position. ‘We'll find you, you'll see.'

The shouting diminished in volume as Tracey rowed further away from the camp and towards the light. She certainly put some power behind her efforts, and it was only a few minutes before I looked back and could see the opposite edge of the lake and a jetty. Chike and Fasina's outlines could be seen, and I imagined them scratching their heads in frustration as they saw us making our getaway. I thought I saw Chike smack Fasina round the head, and could swear I heard him whimper.

I resisted the urge to breathe a sigh of relief until I knew we were far enough away not to be caught again. Even if they got in a car to follow us it would take them some time.

Tracey relaxed and let the oars drop for a while, as she rubbed her upper arms and stretched out her back. ‘I wonder what they would do if they caught up with us?' she said, pulling her hair about in an attempt to get the sweaty bits out of her eyes.

‘I dread to think, but I don't suppose either of us would like it very much,' I answered.

It took just over half an hour to reach the main road where we'd first come from the day we were picked up by Fasina, and I was relieved there was an obvious mooring place and signs of activity, despite it being the early hours of the morning.

‘Let's park up,' said Tracey, and I didn't bother to correct her. I couldn't care less about her vocabulary, as I'd decided she was something of a heroine. Left to me, we'd be spinning ourselves back into the hands of our captors.

We climbed out of the boat, up the muddy and overgrown bank and onto a concrete square that doubled as a mooring and a car park. We could see a number of vehicles and instinctively tried them all until we found a very old Vauxhall Chevette that had been left unlocked.

‘Well, it ain't automatic,' said Tracey, smiling. She bent down into the driver's footwell and found a handle, which she pulled firmly. The bonnet flew open and she made her way to the engine. Within a couple of minutes the car was running and we were clambering in.

‘It won't have a steering lock, being so old,' Tracey added. ‘Otherwise we'd have to go in a straight line everywhere!'

The car was easy to drive and had over half a tank of petrol. I wondered how far that would get us. We'd decided to try and find our way to the University of Nigeria.

‘I'm not sure which way to go,' I said to Tracey, who was busy rifling through the glove box.

‘Look what I've found,' she said. ‘It's a satnav.'

I didn't know what she was talking about.

‘A what?' I asked.

‘A satnav. It shows you where to go'

I could have done with that for Mr Gamble and that policeman
, I thought.

‘Let's fire it up and see if it works,' she said.

Tracey found the cigarette lighter socket and plugged in a series of leads. She seemed to know what she was doing, which I suspected was down to some kind of misspent middle age. What else was she capable of, this dark horse of a woman I'd completely underestimated?

‘Posh Git's got one of these. It takes you all over, without needing to know where yer going,' she said. ‘Just hope it's got the university on it.'

Tracey pressed different pictures on the front of the machine that looked like a small TV and suddenly the thing spoke to us in English.

‘You have reached your destination,' it said in a voice sounding remarkably like John Cleese.

‘Well, it obviously isn't much use, otherwise it would know this is the last place I want to be,' I said to her.

‘Hang on, hun. We need to programme it first.'

She investigated the screen and found the university.

‘According to this, we are eighteen miles away, which should only take thirty minutes. We need to go to the end of this road and take a right, and then it's almost straight all the way there.'

I was stunned by Tracey's competence with the funny map thing, although I worried about driving a car that didn't have the ignition key in it. I surprised myself that I was more concerned about that than the fact it was stolen.

‘That's a marvellous invention. Why didn't I ever know about it?' I asked her.

‘Expect that husband of yours didn't want you knowing the way anywhere. You know what men are like with women and maps,' she said.

We drove for forty-five minutes. The map machine had taken us to a derelict farmhouse, down three dead ends and to a closed petrol station. When it told us to get out of the car and walk, I decided it didn't know what it was doing.

‘I think we are going to need to get some help,' I said. ‘We could be driving around for ever if we take any notice of this thing.'

We drove round a bend and saw a bright orange light with a picture of a bed on it, claiming to offer twenty-four-hour bed and breakfast facilities.

‘Why don't we stop there for a bit,' I suggested. ‘Even if we find the university, no one is going to be there at this time of the morning.'

I looked around and Tracey was asleep, with bits of twig, bracken and leaves poking out of her hair, probably from when we got out of the boat and had to clamber through the some hedges on the shore.

I followed the signs to the bed and breakfast, and after about three miles came across a roadside café with a number of men sitting around tables, playing Scrabble, despite the fact it was still only just past breakfast time. They looked up as our car kangaroo-ed into the car park, where it stalled. Not having a key, I decided to leave it where it was. I didn't want to go in alone to ask about accommodation, so I woke Tracey up to come with me.

‘We could just sleep in the car,' she said, as she took in the puzzled faces of the seven men of varying ages, all looking in our direction.

A reception area in the corner looked like one of the booths you get in fairgrounds, to change notes into coins. A big woman with bulging eyes and huge hooped earrings sucked her teeth at us and lifted her jaw slightly as if to ask us what we wanted. The men were silent, other than the occasional sound of sucking on their rolled up cigarettes.

‘Urm, I'm just wondering if it would be possible, maybe, somehow, to have a room for the night?' I said, offering up some of the nairas I'd taken from Chike's room in our first attempt to escape. Strangely, he hadn't noticed their disappearance.

The woman registered no emotion as she scanned Tracey and me before finally handing us a key.

‘One room only. First floor,' she said, as she grabbed all the cash I offered and shoved it down her cleavage.

‘And could we please have access to a telephone?' I asked, aware that I should contact my family to tell them I was safe.

‘I'll see what I can do,' the woman replied, looking Tracey up and down with what appeared to be some amusement.

‘Ta, mate,' said Tracey, seemingly oblivious to the atmosphere. ‘Any chance of anything to eat?'

The woman behind the counter nodded over to the other corner, where a very small man was seated. He might have been a dwarf or midget, as he could barely be seen above the serving area. When he stood up you could only see his hat.

‘Ladies, what would be your pleasure?' he said in a very posh English accent. It took us by surprise because although we knew he'd gone behind the counter we didn't expect him to speak to us with so much authority. We couldn't quite see where the voice was coming from until he clambered up on a stool, rendering him almost man-sized.

‘I suppose a bacon sandwich is out of the question?' said Tracey. The man rubbed his eyes and looked a bit puzzled. He offered us a choice of a meat kebab with a selection of dips or fries. We decided on both, my normal concerns about saturated fats being thrown to the wind. When he took just one of the naira notes and offered us change, I realised how much the big woman had taken for our room. It had better be worth it.

It tasted delicious, and I asked the small man what he'd flavoured the meat with. He told me it was Suya spice, a Nigerian mix of peanuts, ginger and other ingredients he failed to name. I made a mental note to pick some up before going home, now that going home seemed like a possibility.

Once we'd eaten we took our bags up to our room. We walked through a long corridor past a kitchen and then up some rickety old stairs, almost too narrow to pass when carrying a bag. It was so narrow Tracey could use both her elbows at once to help her up the steepest bits. The key was redundant, as we pushed the door open to reveal a double sofa bed that had seen better days, a few blankets and a sink in one corner featuring a dripping tap. A bare light bulb hung from a ceiling that was occupied by a number of cockroaches, dangling menacingly as if waiting for some occupants they could terrorise and possibly eat.

‘Not the best place I've ever stayed,' said Tracey, looking around the room. ‘Yuck, have you seen those bastards,' she added, pointing to the insects above the bed.

She got out one of her large shoes and started beating them into submission, so they ran into dark corners where they could no longer be seen.

‘I hate them things. What's the point of them? I'm all for nature and that, but cockroaches and wasps are totally pointless. Try telling me they ain't.'

I wasn't going to try and tell her anything, although I suspect there is a use for them. David Attenborough would probably say so, anyway.

We were both tired, and thankfully used to sharing bed space and blankets, so made the best of what was on offer, pledging to get away as soon as we'd had some sleep. When we couldn't nod off for fear of attack, we took it in turns to keep an eye out for insects and anything else marauding about our room.

After about three hours or so we must have been tired enough to drop off because we were both woken at the same time by the woman from reception sitting on our bed.

‘Who are you?' she said, when we stopped panicking. ‘There are people looking for you.'

It took a while for us to register what was going on. We'd been in a deep sleep, despite our surroundings, and neither of us could immediately recall where we were.

‘You need to get out of here, and quickly. There are two men here, saying you must go back with them. I know about them and they are not nice to foreign people,' she added.

‘What do they look like?' I asked the woman, who had adopted a far nicer attitude to us than she did when we first came in.