Instruments Of Darkness (17 page)

    'What about you, Bagado?'

    'I made my decision a long time ago, and anyway, I'm naturally curious. I have to know. Are you afraid of death?'

    'Only my own.'

    'Are you scared?'

    'Only the stupid aren't.'

    Bagado walked up to a wooden carving about five- foot high. It was of an old woman holding a child. The woman's hair flowed up out of her head like a solid flame - it was the natural grain of the wood. The figure had been carved to that unaltered phenomenon. He stood next to it and put his arm around it. The three of them accused me of something which I didn't like being accused of.

    'Charlie is an American,' I said, 'who runs a bar down the coast out of town, about a mile after the port off the Benin road. He told me to talk to an old girlfriend of Kershaw's called Nina Sorvino. She told me that Kershaw was into sadism and bondage which was why she ditched him.'

    I told Bagado all I knew about Charlie, Nina, Jack, B.B. and Madame Severnou, not leaving out that four days ago Kershaw had been seen by Charlie with a blonde French woman in his bar. I told him about

    Dama, and again about Yao and the big man behind Yao. Bagado stormed around the room with his hands in his pockets, walking faster and faster until I had finished and then he tore off his orbit and burst through the french windows and into the escape lane of the garden, where he slowed down just before the pool.

    'What is Charlie's surname?'

    'Reggiani.'

    'Italian?'

    'Tajikistani.'

    'What!'

    "Course it's bloody Italian.'

    'I never assume anything,' he said.

    'Well, you can assume that.'

    'Is or has there been a relationship between Nina and Charlie?'

    'Beyond friends and fellow Italian/Americans? I don't know.'

    'Somebody wants us to think that Kershaw killed Perec, came back here and killed himself.'

    'It seems more likely that somebody else killed Perec, framed Kershaw with the evidence and killed him to make it look like suicide.'

    'Charlie?'

    'Framing for Kershaw supplied by Nina.'

    'What's their relationship and their motive?'

    We shrugged at each other. Bagado wanted to follow the Charlie/Nina angle as well as Jack's rice.

    'What about Yao and his boss?' I asked.

    'That makes me very uncomfortable. He's not operating through legal channels, sending Yao around here, having you picked up, and then when we call the police they come and don't investigate. This whole business could start from him.'

    'Kershaw and Perec knew something about him?'

    'Maybe there's a link between the big man and Charlie and/or Mr Obuasi.'

    'That's not something we're going to find out very easily. He seems the careful type.'

    Bagado spent a few minutes staring at the front of my shirt and clicking his teeth with his thumbnail. I knew how he felt with all those ideas, facts, possibilities and theories stumbling about his brain. My head was like a full lift where life is on hold, where only those things in front of your face figure until someone gets off and gives you some space. Heike and Kershaw occupied my entire cerebral scope, the other things were part of the unseen pressure. Bagado's relentless mind landed.

    'I know you have a problem with a woman,' he said. 'I know the symptoms very well. I also have a problem with a woman. Françoise Perec. A woman who was tortured and murdered in a terrible way, in a way that makes me ashamed of my gender, in a way that makes me so angry and determined that nothing will stop me from bringing that man down. I will get him,' said Bagado, looking from under his brow and stabbing the air in front of him. 'I will get him. If we are going to work together I have to know that you have the same anger, the same determination. You have to find it in yourself. You have to find your stomach for this work. I know you don't want to disturb your quiet life. I understand you have a personal crisis, you have a distaste for rotting flesh, you fear the megalomania of power and money - all of which is right.

    'But forget them. You'll find time to straighten those things out. This evening. Tomorrow. The day after. There will be time. We can't move too quickly. Some big men are playing a game and I don't want to be a pawn in it. For now - get angry!'

    Bagado moved into the centre of the room and turned, sweeping his hand before him and with the face of a man stuffed full of pompous vanity said: 'We Africans love to speechify.' He laughed and I wiped the sweat from under my eyes.

    I called B.B. He picked up the phone during the first ringing tone.

    'Yairs?' he said, through his smoker's throat.

    'It's Bruce.'

    There was a noise on the line like an industrial grinder so I said I would call him back.

    'No, no, Bruise. It's me. I eat some groundnut.'

    'I've found Kershaw. He's dead.'

    There was an explosion of static which blew the phone off my head. B.B. fought for air. There was the sound of coughing and hoiking and then the phone clattered to the floor. I heard a struggle and the noise of spitting, then the phone was being pulled up by its line, knocking against the arm rest and the table.

    'B.B.?'

    'Yairs.'

    'Everything OK?'

    'Is OK. One of the red skins from the groundnut caught in my troat. You found Kershaw. Good. Let me spik to him.'

    'He's dead.'

    'Whaaat?'

    'We found him in the pool at the house in Lomé. The police have just taken away the body. He's in the hospital morgue.'

    B.B. was silent. The sweat trickled. The palms stood still in the garden. The heat leaned on the house.

    'My God. Is a terrible ting,' he said after some time. I heard him light a cigarette.

    'Still smoking?'

    'I no can stop. After you left, I call de Armenian friend who have de house in Lomé where you are now. He tell me terrible ting… my God… dis world.' I heard the smoke rasping down his congested tubes. 'You know I say dere's a problem in Ivory Coast. Dey kill his son.'

    'Who are "they"?'

    'I don't know. Is a car bomb. Dey tink political killing or someting like dat.'

    'I thought he was a businessman.'

    'Yairs. He is businessman. But de people want democracy, you know, free elecsharn. So dey kill de white man to put de pressure. You know, France get very angry, dey tell the Presidarn he haff to do someting or dey tek away de investmarn. Is a terrible ting… a dutty business… dutty.'

    B.B. agreed to call Kershaw's wife who, given the state of the corpse, would have to come over to identify the body. He told me to call Mrs Kershaw in the afternoon to get her flight details and to keep the fee to pay for her expenses in Lomé and to book a room at the Sarakawa. I took down her London number and asked

    B.B. to speak to his Armenian friend to find out where the maid lived, telling him Bagado would call later for the information. He said we should use the Armenian's house as our base and that we would talk about the sheanut business when Mrs Kershaw had left. He put the phone down without saying goodbye.

    Bagado was excited about the Armenian's son. 'There are too many people dying,' he said.

    'Bagado,' I said, 'Françoise Perec was found in Cotonou, Kershaw in Lomé, but in the last half hour you've stretched this investigation from Lagos to Abidjan and thrown in some drug trafficking. Where are the connections?'

    'There are none. This is not ordinary police work. Even if we did have the backing of the police they have nothing to help us. As it is, they are against us. They are being paid to cover up. The more people you pay the weaker you become. A material that's stretched has more holes in it. The wider our vision, the more chances we have to force a break from cover. This is how we have to operate. We have no authority and if we're seen to be making our own investigations we'll get ourselves killed.'

    'That's what the policeman told you?'

    'In his own way. Lots of smiling and laughing. It wouldn't take much. Lomé's become a dangerous place. Lunch?'

    'I'll watch.'

    'You'll eat.'

    We drove the short distance into the centre of town and parked up off the Rue du Commerce. We sat outside a stall and ordered grilled chicken and salad from a very big woman whose breasts were only marginally less astonishing than her bottom, which behaved like a couple of sacks of restless guinea fowl. The sweat poured down her face as she turned the chicken and she kept up a non-stop monologue which anybody could interrupt if they were man enough to have a go.

    Even away from the charcoal the day had built up a terrible heat. My clothes clung to me like a bore at a party. Bagado, still with his raincoat on, threw the occasional comment at the massive cook who roared with laughter, which set her breasts off into a playtex tremble which she had to still like kettle drums. Moses sat with his back to the table and was doing his best with a coquettish Ghanaian girl who was doing
her
best to ignore him.

    A man with long white robes and white cylindrical hat washed his hands from a bowl held by a young boy. He splashed the water on his face and ran his hand down again and again over his rubbery features, flicking the water off into the road each time. There weren't many people in the street. It was too hot. The women from the booze stalls lay in the shade of their displays and fingered the shawls over their heads, dozing.

    We ate. The food sat in my stomach and fizzed. Afterwards, we went back to the house and lay down. When the time came for me to call London, Bagado told me to be vague with Mrs Kershaw about the cause of her husband's death.

    Mrs Kershaw was glad to have someone to talk to. Her voice was panting and nervous and her brain was running faster than her mouth. Bagado was listening on a second earpiece. She gave me the flight details and started on an involved story about the body canister which I interrupted by telling her to make sure she had her jabs, birth and marriage certificates and some wedding photographs.

    'We weren't close any more,' she said after a pause that should have terminated the call. 'His financial problems changed him.'

    'What were the financial problems?'

    'He was a Name at Lloyd's. His syndicate lost a lot on the asbestosis claims. They took everything and the bank pulled out of his business. I'm living in a friend's flat in Clapham now. My husband used to work in Africa so he went there to get a job and save some money to start again.'

    'What was his business?'

    'Import/export. Is there some doubt? I mean, you're asking these questions as if it wasn't suicide.'

    'We don't know, Mrs Kershaw. The police have taken away your husband's body. It's possible that you'll have to answer some questions when you come to Lomé. You might as well be prepared.'

    'It'd be better face to face.'

    I agreed. She ran through her flight details. I gave her the name of the Hotel Sarakawa where she was going to be staying and she hung up.

    'If everybody in Africa with no money killed themselves,' said Bagado, 'we'd be left with a continent of corrupt officials. Imagine the horror. Only the vultures left.'

    'It's the First World's disease. Without money you lose your status, your dignity…'

    'Dignity?' asked Bagado. 'Money doesn't buy dignity.'

    'Anyway, she thinks he committed suicide.'

    'Does she?' he said, nodding. 'She didn't like your questions.'

    'She doesn't know me.'

    'It will be interesting to see her identify the body and how easily they release it. It should cost you some money.'

    It was time to get back to Cotonou. Bagado said he would stay in Lomé with Moses to find the maid and check on Charlie. I gave him some money for expenses and offered him part of my fee for finding Kershaw. He said he would split one day's fee with me and told me to give it to his wife.

    'What about transport?' I asked.

    'The taxis are on strike,' said Moses coming out of the kitchen.

    'You could

    'We'll give you a lift to the border,' said Bagado.

    'Thanks.'

    '"We",' he said. 'I mean, it's just a figure of speech, you understand.'

Chapter 15

    The trip from the border to Cotonou was in a Peugeot 504 estate with eight people and a driver, all of whom wanted to be next to a window because the car didn't have air conditioning, and even if it had it wouldn't have worked. The heat towered above us and the air it sent through the windows was like a warm, wet flannel. The smell the eight of us, two long baskets of live guinea fowl and a small bag of dried fish managed to generate would have made a hyena boke. In Cotonou, we fell out of the car and stumbled about with our hands up like survivors of a mortar attack.

    The heat and the pressure were stacked up high against the back end of the afternoon and everybody was ready for the storm to come and break them up. It did come, but it rolled overhead with dry rumbles of thunder and gusts of wind bringing foul smells but no rain.

    It didn't take long to walk to Bagado's house from the centre of town where the taxi had dropped me off. Bagado's wife was a tall, elegant woman who looked as if she never sweated. She invited me in and when I refused was glad not to press the point. She took the money, and by the way the muscles in her forearm stood out as she gripped the envelope, she was glad to accept it. She asked me to tell Bagado to call Michel and gave me a letter for him from his mother. I drifted off like a vagrant, wading through the afternoon stillness, the dust powdering my shoes.

    It was dark, hot and airless when I reached home. The lights were on, which meant a warm shower, cold beer and Heike. She sat at the table in a large, white, airy dress with a cold beer in front of her, smoking the cigarette cocked in her hand which she'd levered to her mouth on automatic. A glance said she was relaxed, a look that she was as tense as a tow cable. I acknowledged her with a palm held high and she waved me into the bathroom with her cigarette.