Easy Motion Tourist (8 page)

‘Abi na this one?’

The woman turned away. Tears rolled down the fingers covering her face.

‘You mean, out of all these criminals we have arrested tonight you cannot identify the crooks that robbed you of your car?’

The woman shook her head.

‘You must be a criminal yourself. You have come to waste police time. Oya, join them. I will lock you up with them now-now.’

He swung his assault rifle round and held it in a battle stance, waving the nozzle at her to join the other detainees in the cell. His face had transformed into an uncompromising violent glare.

One of his comrades patted his shoulder. ‘Let her take another look,’ the man said. He turned to the women. ‘Madam, are you sure you can’t identify the boys who snatched your car? These boys here are very notorious; they have snatched many cars this night before we caught them. Take another look.’

She shook her head at the officer. Her eyes, now flowing with tears, pleaded with him.

‘She is a criminal. Let her join them,’ Hot-Temper said. His weapon, held at waist level, was pointed at her belly.

‘Give her some time. Madam, please, identify the boys who hijacked your car.’

Tears kept rolling from the woman’s eyes. She trembled as if she was going into a fit but she managed to take one hand away from her mouth and without looking, point at one of the gang members on the ground.

In a swift motion, Hot-Temper swung his gun up to point at the ceiling, cocked it in a flash, brought it down to his waist, and fired a single deafening shot into the head of the fingered man.

The smell of gunpowder filled the air. The woman let out a scream and collapsed. Someone shouted ‘Jesus.’ My cellmates moved closer to the wall. I stood, open-mouthed, unable to believe what I’d just witnessed. I think I shouted ‘fuck’ over and over again, but I couldn’t hear a thing; I was temporarily deaf from the bang. Hot-Temper was holding his gun aimed at his victim and quivering with laughter as if he had just played a practical joke. But it was no joke. The fellow’s head was splattered all over the cell floor: brain, blood and bits of skull.

‘What was that?’ Amaka said. She was crouched by Ibrahim’s desk. He was on the floor on his side. He stood up with his pistol in his hand.

‘Stay here,’ he said. Amaka followed him. Other officers were moving towards the sound of the shot, guns pointing the way. He entered the cell behind a bare-chested officer holding an AK-47 in a shooting pose.

‘What the fuck happened here?’ Inspector Ibrahim said, looking at Hot-Temper, the obvious culprit.

Hot-Temper, still sniggering, lost in his own delirium, said, ‘This boy is the one that robbed this woman today.’

‘And you shot him? Here? Why?’ He aimed at Hot-Temper’s head.

Hot-Temper stood grinning. Ibrahim kept the pistol pointed at his head, and with his other hand, he took the sergeant’s weapon.

‘Take him away.’

Amaka made her move. ‘I think Mr Collins should come with me now.’

Overwhelmed, he said, ‘OK.’

The woman took my hand. ‘Please, come with me.’

Who was she? Why was she was talking to me?

‘Mr Collins, I was sent to get you. We have to leave now.’ She tugged at my hand.

‘Stop,’ a voice commanded.

I walked even faster.

‘Stop.’

She stopped. The men in the corridor parted as he walked up to us, taking his time. Her grip tightened. The inspector came close until our eyes locked in contest: the hunter and the hunted, suddenly on the precipice. I would give in to the rage that had replaced my fear, at this moment. I would punch him, and Hot-Temper would use his gun on me. If I hit him hard enough, on the neck like my mate Roger had shown me in school, it would be worth it.

He placed his head beside mine. ‘This is not over,’ he said, just loud enough for only me to hear. ‘Try to mind your own business and perhaps we won’t have to meet again. Understand?’

Amaka shook my hand and shook it again. She placed her hand on my shoulder and pulled me away from his face. I relaxed the fist I’d formed and I left with her.

As we stepped out of the station, police officers watching us,
the interior of a black Volkswagen Jetta lit up and its tail lights flashed. She hurried to the car, opened the door for me, got into the driver’s seat, fired up the engine, and did a two point turn faster than I’d ever seen one done. Then she charged at the uneven ground and turned onto Ahmadu Bello without checking that the road was clear. The engine wailed. I didn’t realise we’d been driving up the wrong way until at the turning by the infamous glass building she pulled across onto the other side. She looked in the rear-view mirror as if she expected us to be followed.

Nothing made sense. Was I a free man now? I studied her side profile. She was concentrating on our getaway. Who was she? Who sent her to get me? Where was she taking me?

‘Did Ade send you?’ Maybe my absentee minder had tried to contact me at the hotel, found that I was missing, and launched a manhunt that somehow led to Inspector Ibrahim’s police station.

‘Yes.’

She answered too quickly.

‘Ade from the British High Commission?’

‘Yes.’

A chill crept over my skin.

‘Stop the car.’ I got ready to open the door and jump out.

‘What?’

‘You heard me. Stop the fucking car.’ I undid my seat belt and turned to her in a provocative manner. I would wrestle her for whatever weapon she had hidden under her skirt.

‘Why?’

‘You are not from Ade. He didn’t send you. Stop the fucking car or else.’ She was working with Inspector Ibrahim. They were kidnapping me after all.

‘Or else what? You want to go back there? You just witnessed a
policeman murder a detainee. You really want to go back there?’

She was right. But, who the hell was she? ‘Stop the car or tell me who you are.’ I felt slightly ashamed that I was ready to pounce and fight her if I had to.

‘My name is Amaka. I work for a charity that works with prostitutes. One of the girls I work with told me that a foreign journalist was arrested outside Ronnie’s. I came to get you out.’

It sounded rehearsed. ‘Why?’

‘I’ll explain everything later. First, we have to get to your hotel and check you into another room.’

‘Why?’

‘I lied to Ibrahim to get you out. He’ll soon figure out that I tricked him and he’ll come looking for you.’

I wasn’t convinced but she was driving towards Eko Hotel. Once there, I would call the British High Commission and be on the next flight out of Nigeria.

A black Toyota Land Cruiser rolled down Falomo Bridge and turned at the roundabout onto Awolowo Road. Knockout – a five-foot tall man whose dark leathery skin was stretched by his prominent chin and cheekbones – was driving. He had not found the controls to adjust the seat so he perched on the edge, his toes just grazing the pedals, and he watched out for police checkpoints.

Go-Slow, who at seven-foot tall dwarfed his companion, was kneeling backwards in the passenger seat. His feet, crossed, touched the windscreen and his back pressed into the ceiling. He was cleaning blood off the rear seats and the windows and the headrest. It was everywhere. He found a box of tissues on the dashboard and spread blood over the beige leather upholstery until the perfumed sheets broke into useless red clumps. He looked at the blood gathered under his nails and cursed. The night before, his wife had spent an hour giving him a manicure while he watched Arsenal being thrashed. She was right about Knockout: he would get them into trouble one day.

‘How far?’ Knockout said.

‘Just drive.’

Maybe he should strangle the fool himself and set the car on fire with his little body in it. He wanted them to ditch the car
but the moron wouldn’t listen. They had killed before, but what they just did was wrong and it was all because of that conversation they’d had a week ago with Catch-Fire.

When they learned that the bus stop pickpocket was spending dollar bills at beer parlours on Lagos Island, they remembered the money he owed them. They found his new home and he settled his debt in hundred dollar bills. He boasted of his new business that involved juju and human sacrifice and said he’d graduated beyond their ranks. Knockout spent a week ranting about Catch-Fire.

They’d met earlier that day at CMS and walked to Dolphin Estate where Knockout stood at the foot of a bridge, holding up a strip of mobile phone recharge cards, while Go-Slow hid with their guns in a nearby bush. A woman in a Land Cruiser stopped to buy recharge cards and Go-Slow got into the seat next to her. They threw her shoes into the bush, searched her handbag for her address, and said they would come for her if she went to the police.

They changed the number plates and drove to Sanusi Fafunwa because Knockout wanted to take a girl home. Before they parked, a woman was walking towards them, adjusting her red miniskirt, and rearranging her breasts inside her tight bra. She leaned into the window to haggle.

‘Two K,’ Knockout said.

‘Five,’ she said.

‘Three.’

‘Is it both of you?’

‘No. Just me.’

‘OK.’

She got into the back, shut the door, and pulled out a rusty revolver from her clutch bag.

‘Bastards. Drive.’

Her gang were waiting round the corner by the Law School. She waved the gun from one hoodlum to the other, wondering why they just stared at her. Then she gently placed the revolver on the seat and slowly raised her hands, unable to dodge this way or that way from the barrels of both their guns pointed at her belly.

Knockout jumped over his seat and started hitting her on the head with her own weapon. She shouted for help and Go-Slow put his big palm over her face, wrapped his other hand around her neck, and twisted.

Cars drove by and girls walked past but the tinted glass hid what was going on inside. Go-Slow unfolded his arms and her body slumped onto the seat.

Her shirt had torn and her breasts were exposed. Knockout’s face lit up. He pulled out a jack-knife from his knee-length boot and flicked the blade out in a move he had been practicing in front of his mirror. He tore off the rest of the girl’s shirt and brought his dagger down on her chest in a massive blow that punctured through flesh and bone. He wriggled the blade free and went at it again. Go-Slow, with the unblinking interest of someone stoned, watched, thinking that his partner might have snorted too much cocaine before they met. When Knockout held the girl’s warm heart in his hand, he expected him to take a bite from it but instead he said, ‘Let’s go and find that morafucker, Catch-Fire.’

The light of an electric torch flickered ahead. Knockout tapped his partner’s leg and shifted his foot from the accelerator to the brake. Go-Slow turned and saw the checkpoint. He sat back in his seat and cleaned his hands with the last tissue from the box.
It was no use. He wiped them on the bottom of his trousers then rolled up his sleeves and checked for spots of blood on his shirt.

The police had stopped a yellow Hummer ahead. A hand with a clenched fist reached out of the car’s window. A policeman took whatever was in it, put it into his own pocket and waved the Hummer on.

Knockout inched forward. He stopped between two worn tyres set on both sides of the road. The kerosene lamps that balanced on them had run out of fuel. He looked at Go-Slow’s shirt. He had taken off his own and noted with relief that blood had not seeped into the black vest underneath. He pulled the vest over the pistol in his belt then he pressed the button to roll down the tinted window.

An albino officer with transparent bristles on his cheeks peered into the car through the little gap Knockout had made. He pointed his torch at the driver’s face and Knockout held up his hand.

‘Ol’ boy, don’t shine that thing in my face,’ Knockout said.

The policeman withdrew his torch. The car was new and it was big, so the occupants could be men who would make trouble for him. He wanted to take a closer look at the driver’s face. He knew what big men look like and the man who had told him to take his torch away did not look like a big man. But in Ikoyi, anybody could be somebody. He placed his palm on the driver’s door and turned to search for his boss.

The higher-ranking officer was standing on the sidewalk, leaning on a Kalashnikov he used as a walking stick, watching his men work. The Hummer had yielded only fifty naira so he had sworn at the young constable who spoke to the driver, called him the ‘bastard son of a prostitute witch,’ and commanded his officers to make sure the jeep dropped ‘something big’. He told
them: ‘Make sure you check their fire extinguisher and blow it. If it is liquid type, it is illegal. Check their c-caution if the face don scratch. Check their spare tyre – poke it, if it is too soft. If they have laptop, ask for the receipt. If you find any file or any documents inside the car, ask them for release note wey dem take carry am commot office.’

The boss looked at the driver of the four-by-four.

‘What is the problem?’ Knockout said.

The policeman was waiting for his superior officer to nod or shake his head. ‘Oga, no problem, just take am easy.’

‘Are you mad? You are telling me to take it easy? You must be a fool.’

The officer took his hand from the car and stood almost at attention. He cast a glance back at his boss, who looked away.

‘Sorry sir,’ he said and waved them on.

When the checkpoint was out of sight, Go-Slow used the sides of his palms to scrape blood off the rear seats – it was everywhere. They had been lucky this time but there would be more checkpoints on the mainland and the police there wouldn’t be afraid of drivers with big cars. His eyes fell on Knockout’s discarded shirt in the rear footwell and he reached for it.