Instruments Of Darkness (37 page)

    'Sunday before last.'

    'Where?'

    'In Cotonou.'

    'In the flat?'

    'That's right.'

    'In the kitchen making tea?' she sneered.

    'Leave off, Kate.'

    'In the living room over G and T?'

    'Christ.'

    'Or looking at each other's sunburn in the bedroom.'

    'Don't tell me - "I'd fuck a frog if it stopped hopping",' sneered Kershaw.

    'I will, you would, and you have. Now let's have it,' said Kate.

    'We left Lomé Sunday and got to Cotonou before dark. I needed something from the office so we go straight there. We get in the office and I got a clean shirt so I changed. Then I leave her on her own while I go for a piss. I come back and I see her going through the desk. I watch her for a bit, make a noise, you know, and let her get away with it.

    'We go back to the flat. I get her into bed.' Kershaw lifted himself up off the desk with his arms straight and the desk groaned. Kate, who was still holding the back of my chair, tensed. The chair didn't like it and nor did Clifford who was getting fed up with the Kershaws' slap-happy attitude towards his furniture.

    'Keep going,' said Kate.

    'I can tell she's not into it so I know she's found something in the desk. I slap her about a bit and try and get her to talk. She starts fighting back so I have to hit her hard and put her out. I tie her down and call Clifford in Lomé. He flies in the next morning and does a number on her and she says she knows who I am, that she's been tracking the
Naoki Maru
and she knows that I'm interested in it as well.

    'She only found two things while I was having a piss. A passport photo of me when I was a bit heavier with a moustache and a piece of paper in my dirty shirt with the ETA of the
Naoki Maru
written on it. She was good, was Françoise.

    'It was afterwards when I was asking Cliff what we do with the body that he hits on the idea of framing Gildas as me for the Perec girl's killing.' Clifford twitched at this point, as if there was something not quite straight about Kershaw's story, but let it ride. Steve's mouth motored on. 'He calls the Cotonou police and tells his mate there that a friend of his has had a problem with a girl and can he do a clean-up job on it while he gets his friend out of the country.'

    'How much did that cost you, Clifford?' I asked.

    'Ten thousand bucks,' said Clifford, still as a lizard.

    'So we pack up the gear in my bag. Clifford flies on to Lagos for a meeting and I drive back to Lomé. We get together in the evening and Clifford gives me the bondage mags to plant in my chest of drawers.'

    'No wonder you're CEO of a bank, Clifford,' I said, and Clifford stared down at his fascinating blotter.

    'You don't look like a killer, Clifford,' I said.

    Clifford's eyes might have looked at me but I couldn't tell.

    'She had information that could have blown a deal. We had to find out what it was and we had to ensure our own safety,' he said as if he was reading a corporate manual.

    'What part did you like, Clifford, the killing or the hurting.'

    He went back to whatever his blotter was telling him and rubbed a finger over one of his lapis-lazuli cufflinks.

    Steve was glad to have the heat off him for a while but I didn't want him sitting back just yet.

    'What about Gildas's dick, so that Kate could identify him.'

    'Oh, he
had
him as well,' snorted Kate.

    'He painted in the nude. Spent most of the day naked. Only dressed for meal times so he wouldn't frighten the maid.'

    'You killed her as well.'

    'I haven't finished with Gildas yet.'

    'It's time to go,' said Clifford from so far back down his throat I thought he was talking in his sleep.

    'We want to hear the happy ending,' said Kate.

    'So I get the mags off Cliff.'

    'Clifford, Steve, Cliff-ford.'

    'Yeah. I get the mags, go back to the house and he's lying on his bed, naked as usual. I smother him with his pillow.'

    'One of your specialities, Steve?' I said, looking at Clifford who'd let a frown crease his brow for a second.

    'As a matter of fact, it is. You were getting a bit nosey so I thought a little scare job was in order.'

    'You had the keys.'

    'I did.'

    'You dropped Charlie's card.'

    'That too,' he said, raising his eyebrows for more questions.

    'Jack lifted that for you?'

    'About the only thing he did do for us that didn't get us up to our hairlines in shit,' said Clifford. 'The guy had no fucking sense of responsibility.'

    'Are you finished?' asked Kershaw. 'So, Gildas is on the bed. The maid arrives. I tell her he's got malaria and he's not eating. She makes something for me and I start thinking what I've got to do. It's a rush job now. I mean, I knew I was going to dump Gildas in the pool. It hadn't been cleaned for years and there was no chlorine in it. It was full of bugs, and in this heat there wouldn't be much left of him after a few days. Plus, if he was underwater it would keep the pong down. But what about the maid? I didn't want the maid dead on the premises, did I?'

    'Hell of a problem, Steve,' I said.

    'Right. The maid cleans up and goes off to read her Bible and I start to get Gildas ready before the rigor mortis sets in. I get him into my clothes and stick my wallet and watch on him.'

    'I liked the A A membership card.'

    'That was there, was it? Lovely job.'

    'You an alcy?' croaked Clifford.

    'Automobile Association.'

    'Jesus,' said Clifford, sinking back into his chair and swivelling it to face the other way.

    'I wiped off the mags and put his prints on them and did the same with the whip handle and crocodile clip. I pushed his hands in his trousers so that if the rigor mortis came out early his arms wouldn't float up. I tied the rope around his ankles and left some spare for the urn. I got all his stuff together and shoved it in his suitcase.

    'I called Clifford to see if he could come up with any ideas for the maid. He told me he had to go out to dinner and I should put her under and bring her to the house. I had some smack with me so I give her a shot and she's out. Then I put on a pair of surgical gloves that Clifford gave me and clean the house from top to bottom. Biggest shag of my life, that was. Then I paint my name on to Gildas's paintings.'

    'Why didn't you drown him in the bath?' I asked, coming back to it, looking at Clifford. 'He'd have had water in his lungs then.'

    Clifford reacted again, looking across at Kershaw this time, interested.

    'It would never've looked good enough,' he said, and continued without missing a beat. 'About midnight I took the maid to Clifford's. We kept her drugged the next day but we still don't know what we're going to do with her. Then on the Wednesday night, Clifford's out to dinner and a minister tells him that some dead bodies had been found in the lagoon, shot in the back of the head. Clifford calls me from the dinner. So I shoot the maid, put her in the back seat of the car and drive to a quiet part of one of the lagoons and slip her in. There was nobody about. They must have heard of the death squads and stayed in to watch telly. I found out the next day that the bodies were all over the place so the maid fitted in nicely.'

    'At least you didn't kill the other twenty people in the lagoon just to make it look good.'

    'You'll like this,' said Kershaw. 'I dumped Gildas's clothes in a part of town which looked as if they could use them.'

    'Somebody got something out of this,' said Kate.

    'I've always given to charity,' he snapped.

    'Narc. Anon?'

    'Save the Children.'

    'You're going to tell me you can paint next.'

    'I can. That's how we met,' he said, looking at Kate.

    'You called it painting. I called it lying on the floor out of your brains on hash in Morocco,' said Kate.

    Steve pulled out a phial on a necklace from inside his sweatshirt. He unscrewed the top, which had a little spoon attached, crossed his black, slick legs and snorted a dab of coke from off the end of it.

    'Where are you from, Clifford?' I asked, just to give Steve some time to feel cocky with the coke.

    'What's it to you?'

    'I'm doing a thesis on American regional accents.'

    'It'd give me a thrill to read that.'

    'It's not New York?'

    'Illinois,' he said, shaking his head.

    'Chicago?'

    'Rockford,' he said. 'Look, guys, I hate to break this up but we've got a lot to do tonight and I suggest we get it on the road.'

    Steve smiled to himself and took another dab of coke on the end of his spoon and snorted it up the other nostril. I decided the time was right for Kershaw to get back to work.

    'You must have supplied that stuff to Nina Sorvino,' I said.

    Nothing happened except a little time dragged past. There was no significant movement. Kate's already white knuckles whitened to the bone on the back of the chair. Kershaw's crossed legs tightened. Clifford's white shirt creaked. Apart from that, the ceiling seemed to get lower and the walls closer. The pressure of people not saying anything thickened the air and the fan had a job cutting through it.

Chapter 31

    The cicadas sensed that they had a part to play in this and brought in a whole new chorus so that there wasn't a moment's silence. Four tired people looked at each other, no longer careful to disguise their irritability. Clifford sat forward, the shadows of the fan blades slapping over' his grey head. Something sharp, hard and cold was coming in my direction from Kershaw who was getting the same from his wife. Kate was close to tearing the back of the chair off. Clifford had some anxious body language but it was difficult to tell about what. Maybe it was his furniture, maybe he just wanted to get to work.

    'Nina's snorting enough of that stuff to get the snow ploughs out,' I said. 'And topping it off with enough downers to leave a big gap in her weekend. Any reason for this, Steve? She shouldn't be doing that kind of thing, especially if she's preg-'

    The chair cracked and I came off it fist-balled and fast. Steve was faster. He flipped himself off the desk and buried his knuckles in my bruised belly. Air hissed out of every orifice and I hit the floor like a truckload of logs.

    I was making a big fuss down there on the carpet, cycling my legs, hoping to remind myself how to breathe. Nobody took any notice. Their words flashed above my head while I contributed some constipated heaving noises until a crack of air slid into a lung and gave me something to hold on to.

    Breathing crawled back like a wounded soldier from no-man's-land. I flopped around and got myself on to all fours and hung my head. Kershaw was a few feet from me and I decided it was time the cocky Londoner found out what it was like to have a meaty shoulder in his diaphragm.

    'Don't even think about it/ said Clifford.

    My left eye swivelled to see Clifford leaning over the desk with the rifle in one hand, the barrel a foot from my cheek. Jack's brains exiting from the back of his head was still a clean print in my current stock of ugly clips. I stood up. I didn't bother to listen to the Kershaws, who sounded like any married couple having a fight in the kitchen at a cocktail party. I sat in the chair which had a wobble in its back legs like mine. The Kershaws finished their exchange of diplomatic gifts and split. I was nearly halfway there.

    Clifford laid the rifle across the desk, the barrel pointing at me. Kate lit a cigarette which Clifford thought about requesting her not to, until he saw her sharp, irritated breasts daring him. From my angle I could see how pointed her elbow was and I liked the idea of it finding its way into her husband's gut.

    'I'm not a pro, as you'd put it, Steve,' I said. 'I'm a greenhorn when it comes to nailing crims. Never done it. Don't have the psycho's brain. Dead in the head for clues and motives. I thought the whole business was Charlie's. I thought Charlie told Nina.'

    'Shut it!' roared Kershaw. It was good to know Nina was such a sensitive spot.

    'I thought Charlie told Nina to feed me about your taste in bondage. But now I can see that's what you were into all the time. You had to be, didn't you, Steve, or did you?'

    Kershaw picked up my gun and took two steps towards me.

    'I'm going to do it now, you big fuck,' he said, and Clifford stood up, concerned at the future mess on his carpet. Kate came between us, and, biting her bottom lip with her front teeth, floored Kershaw with a swift dig in the solar plexus. That elbow must have been honed on a whetstone of pure spite because it didn't stop until it got to his spine. Kershaw's eyes came out on stalks, his tongue wagged like a gargoyle's and he kissed the carpet like the best Muslim in the mosque.

    'Carry on,' said Kate, picking up the gun by the barrel and holding it by her side.

    'When I realized Charlie was in the clear, I started thinking about Nina. When I saw Steve's name was missing off the paintings in the photographs, I knew that he set the whole thing up with Nina's help. The first time I spoke to her she told me he was a pervert, but at that stage nobody knew how Perec had been killed. Nina was prepping me for when I found out. That means that either Steve was a pervert or Nina was in on it from the beginning. Which?'

    'Both,' said Kate.

    'Why was Nina in on it from the beginning, Steve? Don't get up, I'll answer for you. Nina's pregnant, she told me on Sunday. I thought it was yours but you were dead. Then I thought it might be Charlie's and he didn't want it, or Nina was trying to persuade Charlie that he was responsible. Then I followed Nina and got lucky when she went to get her test. I didn't understand why the first person she called was Elizabeth Harvey but things have got a little clearer in the last hour.