Instruments Of Darkness (18 page)

    The taxi ride washed off easily but somehow an essence of it crept into a disused olfactory canal, so that in various lulls of the evening I was brought back sharply to my fellow travellers. A quarter of an hour later, I was sitting in a T-shirt and shorts in front of Heike, watching her plug another cigarette into her holder. I sipped a second beer after the first had shot over my larynx like a white water river. She looked as if she had done a lot of thinking, her brow had lines which pointed to the bridge of her nose.

    When Heike had nothing left to do - she'd got her cigarette going, dealt with her hair so that it was slightly worse than before, sipped her beer, taken the sweat off her top lip and flounced her dress a couple of times to get some through draught - she came up with a sigh. Then her face stilled and she flicked her ear a couple of times with her finger and shook her head, opening and closing her eyes. Then she opened and closed her mouth a few times and stretched her neck over to her right shoulder and hit herself twice on the left side of her head with the ball of her palm.

    'I've gone deaf,' she said.

    'Let me take a look.'

    'No.'

    'Look, I'll just…'

    'No,' she said, turning away from me and covering her ear.

    'I won't do anything; I'll just look.'

    'I don't want you going in there.'

    'I'll wipe my feet.'

    Her shoulders started to shake. She turned to face me, holding on to her ear and laughing. She was laughing so hard that no sound came out. Then she took a huge breath and there were tears in her eyes and she wasn't laughing any more. She dropped her elbows on to the table, stuck her fists into her forehead and cried into her beer. I rubbed the middle of her back between her shoulder blades and thought, now we're getting to it.

    'I don't know what I'm doing any more,' she said, and strode to the bathroom. She reappeared swallowing hard and leaned against the door jamb. She looked small in her dress.

    'For peace of mind,' she said, 'a person needs a job, a home and a lover. If you're missing one of those, life is tolerable, two and it's a pain, three and you end up like this.' She hit herself in the breast bone. 'I have a temporary home, a temporary job and a temporary lover. It's making a bloody mess of me.' She had two pockets on the front of her dress which she put her hands in and walked in a slow circle around the room.

    'You might be able to solve two of those by going back to Berlin.'

    'You overestimate yourself, Bruce.'

    'I don't think so. It's not easy to find people you like, let alone go to bed with or love.'

    'There are a lot more people in Germany.'

    'Choice complicates,' I said, and she shot me a look which I didn't understand. 'There's always the problem of unfinished business.'

    'We can't finish-unless we've started,' she said, looking at the floor.

    'It's difficult to get started with three hundred miles between us.'

    She stopped and looked at me sideways across her shoulder.

    'How did you feel when I said I was leaving?'

    'Bad.'

    'So did I.'

    'And that's not enough?'

    'No, because it's negative,' she said and resumed walking. She walked straight past me into the kitchen. 'Let's have a real drink, my blood's running slow.'

    She came back with the rest of the whisky from last night, a bowl of ice, two glasses and a bottle of cold water. She poured two whiskies, ignoring the ice and water, and handed me a glass. We banged them down and she kissed me, her lips stinging with whisky.

    'We know how to drink,' I said.

    'We know how to do a lot of things.'

    She poured more whiskies, with ice and water this time.

    'Two jobs have come up with the company that runs the project/ she said. 'One in Porto Novo, the other in Berlin.'

    'Last night it was Berlin. What is it this evening?'

    'Tomorrow evening I'm going to Porto Novo for a dinner, to meet the people I could end up working with. Sunday, I've got a conference about the project. If it all goes well they'll offer me first choice on either job. Three-year contract.'

    'They like you.'

    'If I choose Berlin, it's unlikely I'll get the opportunity to work in Africa again. If I choose Africa I'll find it difficult to get back into working in Europe.'

    'And?'

    She sat on the table and put her feet on the chair. 'It's easy to love someone for a weekend every two months.'

    'It's not so easy for two people our age to make up their minds. All that history.'

    'You're getting everything your own way.'

    'How's that?'

    'Uncomplicated bi-monthly sex.'

    'You want to complicate it?'

    'I want more.'

    'Then you have to come more often.'

    'Not sex.'

    Heike looked at her drink as if the ice might tell her something. No air came through the open-slatted windows. The cicadas were whistling. There were no lights outside, the darkness felt close, the noise made it closer. Heike's hair was dark with sweat on the back of her neck.

    'Why don't you get air conditioning?' she asked.

    'It's part of my campaign for real air. Why did you say you were going to Berlin last night?'

    'I was testing.'

    'Did I pass?'

    'Without honours.'

    'Do you think you can handle Germany now? You know, you all have to get up at the same time, go to work at the same time, lots of
Guten Morgen Herr
this and
Guten Tag Frau
that. Everything nice and organized, no margin for error, little margin for creativity; don't rock the boat, keep things predictable, keep things clean. You'll get married to some guy with a name like Horst, have two kids, Dieter and Ingrid, get divorced not because your husband's boring, but your life's too boring. Your only excitement will be when the Far Right fire bomb your offices because you're giving good German money to black people. And I'll have to sit here and wring what humour I can out of the fact that you married. A Man Called Horst.'

    'I take it you want me to stay?' she said.

    'Yes.'

    'Then say it.'

    'I want you to stay. I want you to take the job in Porto Novo and live here - with me.'

    Heike smiled one of those smiles she'd rather not have given away. She looked around her, drained her whisky, poured herself another one and did the same for me. She picked up her cigarette holder, pulled out the butt and fitted a new one and lit it.

    'What about these bedsheets of money and men with guns?' she asked.

    'You can't have everything. You'll enjoy a bit of excitement when you come back from the office.'

    The phone went. We looked at it and Heike stabbed at the noise with her cigarette. I swam over to it, through the thick, humid air.

    'Hot?' asked Bagado.

    'Enough,' I said.

    'How's my wife?'

    'Fine. She said: "Call Michel", and I've got a letter for you.'

    'How's your woman problem?'

    'Still there.'

    'All you have to do is listen.'

    After Bagado had dropped me at the border, he'd found that Charlie had been to Cotonou and returned to Lomé on the same day that Françoise Perec had been murdered. On the return journey, his car had passed through the border at the same time as ACR 4750, Kershaw's car.

    Bagado had spoken to B.B. about the Armenian's son when B.B. had called to give the maid's address. The Armenian had lived in Paris and had made a lot of money from a nut and bolt factory in Abidjan, which he'd spent on art. He had wanted to paint but lacked the talent and had become a patron and dealer instead. We didn't know what this meant, but it was the first sign of a connection between the young Armenian and Kershaw.

    He had found the maid's family in mourning. The maid had been one of the twenty-one bodies floating in the lagoon with bullet holes in the back of their heads. They confirmed that she had worked for a white man who painted a lot in a house near the Grande Marcé.

    He had staked out Charlie's compound and watched Jack and Nina Sorvino turn up on separate occasions in the late afternoon. Both had talked to Charlie in his house. Charlie was now in the Hotel Sarakawa having dinner with a woman that fitted the description of Yvette.

    Bagado had also called the police and had arranged the body identification in the hospital morgue for 11.00 on Monday morning.

    'There's nothing unusual about Charlie going to Cotonou,' I said. 'It's just a coincidence that it was on the same day…'

    'It's a pity there aren't degrees of coincidence. The Armenian's son, the maid, Charlie in Cotonou on the day of the murder. Jack and Nina going to see him.'

    'They've known each other a long time.'

    'Who's the woman he's having dinner with?'

    I told Bagado what I knew about Yvette.

    'How long has he known her?' he asked.

    'I don't know.'

    'Find out. Did you notice anything odd about those magazines in Kershaw's drawer?'

    'Apart from the obvious.'

    'This was obvious. They were American, priced in dollars only. Kershaw was British; why have American magazines?'

    'Perhaps they have more recherché tastes.'

    'But the British are the world experts. Haven't you heard the French expression
le vice anglais?'

    'What's that?'

    'Spanking, beating, the lash.'

    'My French teacher didn't cover that. I'll see you tomorrow.'

    Heike stood with an eyebrow raised and a sneering smile sneaking across her lips which finished with a grunt.

    'That didn't sound like business.'

    'It was. A different type.'

    'You used to have conversations about sugar and tyres.'

    'I've got involved in something else. I found a dead body this morning.'

    Heike didn't want to hear about that and she took hold of my shirt front to tell me. 'What are you playing at now, Bruce?' she said, shoving me backwards, some red creeping into her blue eyes. 'What the hell are you doing?'

    'I was asked to find somebody. He was dead. That's all,' I said, thinking - it's coming.

    'Then the job's finished,' she said, looking dangerous, a crescendo building. I didn't say anything. 'I've just told you I can't live with this kind of shit on my doorstep, you make a joke of it and seconds later I hear you're in the death business. I don't like it. And if the quarter of a brain you've still got was half working, you shouldn't like it either.' She thumped me in the chest with her free hand. There it is, I thought, the first one. 'You want me to live with you? I have to feel safe. I mean, not in immediate danger. Not listening for the gate all the time.'

    She let go of me and held her hands apart and looked at the space in between - warming up. That's not a big thing to ask, is it, Bruce? I'm not telling you to stop drinking, I'm not even saying you can't slob around watching football all day, I'm not asking you to put up some new shelves and buy a wardrobe, I'm not asking for triple locks, security fences, alarms, dogs. I'm just saying I can't come back after a day's work to sawn-off shotguns, a head in the freezer, millions of CFA in cash on the floor and brown bags full of a white powder that isn't sugar.'

    She stopped, looked up and off into the room somewhere. 'Am I nagging? Shit… I never thought it would happen. You've made me start nagging,' she said, and thumped me again, the second one.

    'Jesus!' I said grabbing her wrist. 'Who said he was headless?'

    'You know what I mean.' She hit me with her other hand and I grabbed that one too. She used her elbows and a knee.

    'The money was for rice, for Christ's sake. That's how much seven thousand tons of parboiled costs. There were no drugs. The heavies came round to frighten me, not to kill me. It was business, not Harvard school - Lagos school. I was asked to find somebody. It's happened before. It's just this time the somebody was dead. His wife's coming over on Sunday, she identifies the body on Monday and then finish. No heads in the freezer, only carpets on the floor and flowers on the table.'

    She fought her wrists out of my grip using a kick on the shins to help and slapped me around the shoulders until I wrapped both arms around her and she roared for a bit and then gave up. I let go and she lay down on some cushions on the floor and stared at the ceiling, breathing hard. I tried to take her hand. She batted me away.

    I went to the kitchen and warmed up some food that Helen had left for us. We sat down to eat, Heike calm now but not talking. It was too hot to eat. The food wouldn't go down so we drank two bottles of cold white wine before drifting back on to the whisky.

    Later we turned the lights off and sat in the ambient light from the street. Heike was talking now, coming back round to me, but wary.

    'It's not the job,' she said.

    'I know.'

    'But those kind of people don't care about anything. You know that. Except money.'

    'It's nearly over. Let's not talk about it now.'

    'You understand though?'

    'I've got the bruises.'

    We stripped and sat naked in front of a fan, drinking more whisky and as much cold water as we could stand, the sweat trickling down our backs, the fight further off now. I stroked her right nipple with the back of my hand. Heike looked across, lust and reluctance in the same face. She clambered over and sat astride me, easing herself down. The fan blew cool air between my legs, and up Heike's back as she rose and fell against me. The sweat poured down us, our skins slipped against each other's. We finished under the shower, Heike locking my neck in the crook of her elbow and crushing her mouth to mine.

    By two o'clock in the morning, we were lying on a sheet on the floor not moving at all, our hair damp and skin still slick with sweat. It was too hot to sleep and too loud to talk. We let the fan scan our bodies like a meticulous and accepted voyeur and had complicated thoughts which looked as if they were worth talking about, except there was no vocabulary for them. By four o'clock, we were dozing like dogs dreaming of rabbits and at first light we were nearly dead. I dreamt very clearly, but other people's dreams have always bored me. It finished with an urgent knocking sound that rang in my head.