Instruments Of Darkness (13 page)

    Rue du Commerce joined the coast road. The beach was empty. There was no sign of life at the Hotel Sarakawa. Maybe it looked a bit drawn with all those rich people inside, worrying. There were ships outside the port stuck in the silver water of the late afternoon. The port was dead. I took a diversion past the flour mill. It was closed. A huge number of small birds covered the trees in the compound. The noise they made tore at the afternoon air like cat's claws down glass.

    There were a few more road blocks than usual on the way to the Togo/Benin border. The soldiers were tired and they weren't looking to give me trouble. At the border, I gave an immigration officer 2000 CFA to have a look at his ledger, but didn't find Kershaw's name in it. It cost me another 2000 CFA to look in the card holder's ledger for frequent travellers. I found Kershaw's name quicker than I expected because it was an entry detail for the day of 23rd September: an entry into Togo. His exit had been on 22nd September. He had left for Benin on Sunday and come back to Togo on Monday. I looked through up to the last detail. Kershaw hadn't left again through this border.

    I thought about going back and checking the Ghana border, but it was probably closed following the afternoon's rioting. I thought about going to the airport and finding out if he had skipped the country, but B.B. said he didn't have enough money and no credit card. I thought about a lot of things and got myself out of them every time. I wanted to check out Kershaw's flat in Cotonou and I wanted to see Heike tonight.

    It was no cooler in Benin. There were people though. They moved slowly, some not at all. There were food stalls but nobody had any appetite. I waited in the border compound for the Customs inspection. A goat was doing little by way of self-promotion. It bleated constantly at such a pitch that it made despair sound like a relatively comforting state to be in. The Customs man gave me a release paper without looking.

    Outside the compound, through a break in the stalls, a goat was strung upside down between two posts and two men were flaying it while its mate looked on, tethered to death. That was the bleating. The two men worked with the attentiveness of caring barbers. One of the men finished flaying, took two strides to the goat and straddled it. With a quick jerk of the right shoulder came silence. It was like a burglar alarm being killed in a London street after a long weekend."

    Twenty miles further on, a policeman asked to see my fire extinguisher. Three other policemen sat in a palm leaf thatched shed chewing cola nuts under hooded eyes. One spat some white pulp out into the dust and another chased some gunk around his mouth with his tongue. I've never owned a fire extinguisher - one in a long line of negative achievements. I gave the policeman 500 CFA and the others rubbed their thumbs and forefingers together. It took another 1000 CFA to lift the barrier.

    The front tyre burst on the other side of Ouidah. In two minutes, I was joined by a group of children who taunted me with makeshift frames which had dead spatchcocked bush rats in them. They looked like road kills. When I didn't buy them they thought I was being fussy about the meat so they pushed forward a boy who held a fistful of dead partridges with bloodied beaks and slack necks.

    In Cotonou, the sky ahead weighed a ton and could barely get itself over the rooftops. The bright, low sun behind me produced a sickly orange light against the massive black clouds shouldering their way over the town. The ugly block where Kershaw had his apartment appeared on my right, one large blank wall shone in the unhealthy light while the front, in the shade, looked dirtier than a pit head.

    I parked in an empty car park outside the block. There was nobody around. A piece of cardboard on the pavement looked as if someone had been lying there next to whatever they'd been selling. The apartments looked unlived in, although there was some ragged clothing hanging out to dry on the top floor. Maybe Kershaw had just thrown in the towel when he saw this place.

    The block looked like one in a housing estate in Belfast, except there weren't drifts of used syringes in the stairwell of the ground floor. It was an all-concrete affair and it bore the stains of the rainy season in long dribble marks below the windows. The paintwork that existed was a faded hospital green. I wouldn't have spent any time here, especially if I could paint.

    I walked up to the third floor. The stairs were dark and mean and in another city would have been crowded with boys with no-sleeve T-shirts whetting their flick knives on the concrete. Some ambient noise would have helped. A radio, a child crying, a row developing, even a scream - even the sound of someone sharpening an axe followed by a scream would have been better than hard silence. The sixth sense, which people in horror films never have, was not encouraging.

    On the third floor was Flat 3B. I listened at the door of 3A; there was the sound of dust building up on tiled floors. The door to 3B was not quite shut and it opened with a push on well-oiled hinges. The pre-storm pressure was building, which didn't help the atmosphere. The heat was thick and still. I wasn't embarrassed to find myself sweating. Only I knew it was cold.

    The flat was dark. There was a short hallway into a living/dining room. The blinds were drawn and so were some unlined mustard-coloured curtains. To my right was the dining room table with no chairs. Off the dining area was the kitchen. To my left was a sofa and two armchairs. They were cheap, just wooden frames and foam rubber covered with the same mustard material as the curtains. In front of me were three doors.

    The room on the right contained two broken chairs. The next room was a bathroom with quite a few tiles missing from the walls which were stacked in the corner. One recently fallen had shattered in the shower tray. The third room had a little more light in it and a bed and two chairs, but did not contain Kershaw hanging from the ceiling rose.

    The mattress on the bed had a green flowery pattern. In the middle, there was a big stain of the sort found on old mattresses in student digs. Kneeling at the corner closest to me, I saw a stain that was the rust colour of dried blood. Then there was a noise behind me which I'd heard before, but never live. It sent something dancing up my spine and rushing over my scalp. It was the sound of an old-fashioned revolver being cocked.

    An African voice, in perfect English, asked, 'Mr Kershaw?'

    'No,' I said. 'Bruce Medway.'

    'Can you put your hands slowly on to your head, please?' It was a very polite and relaxing voice, considering it had a gun.

    The barrel of the gun was cold on the back of my neck. A black hand came over my shoulder and felt my chest. It lifted my fat, super-large British passport out of my shirt pocket.

    'Please stand up and turn around, Mr Medway,' the voice said.

    I turned and stood to face an African man who came up to my shoulder. He was dressed in a dark blue raincoat, a white shirt and a pair of dark blue trousers. He had no gun, but his hand was held in the shape of one. He opened one side of his mouth and gave a perfect imitation of a revolver being uncocked. He pulled a thimble off the end of his finger and put it in his pocket.

    'My name is Bagado,' he said. 'I am a police detective.' He produced an ID card from his pocket which he held in front of my face.

    'You thought I was Kershaw?'

    'No. I just don't like the expression "Freeze motherfucker".'

    'You're looking for him.'

    'It would be interesting if he turned up.'

    'It's getting to the point, Mr Bagado, where it might be easier to count the people who aren't looking for Steven Kershaw.'

    'Is it?' he said. 'May I ask why
you
are looking for him?'

    'Because he hasn't called his boss for a week, and I'm being paid to find him.'

    'A comparatively bland reason, Mr Medway.'

    'Bland?'

    'A woman was found dead in this room on that bed.'

    'Dead as in murdered?'

    'Possibly.'

    'How?'

    'Strangled.'

    'Self-strangulation is difficult.'

    'You'd be surprised.'

    I remembered the newspaper article I had read in the port. 'Françoise Perec?'

    Bagado raised an eyebrow and frowned with the other.

    'The tourist?'

    Bagado raised the frowning eyebrow to join the other.

    'A sex session that went too far?'

    'That was the way the newspaper chose to report it. Our journalists learn their skills from Europe. She was found on the bed naked and strangled. Her wrists and ankles were very badly torn and indicated that she had been bound with leather which she had strained against. She had been beaten severely with a whip on the back of her legs, her buttocks, her back and shoulders. So severely that blood had been drawn. There was evidence of vaginal and anal penetration and of electricity having been applied to those areas and her nipples. She had been strangled with a rope made from hemp, and from the marks it has been deduced that she came close to death by strangulation several times. All evidence of this… "session"… has been removed.'

    Bagado delivered the report on Françoise Perec with little emotion, his voice was as tired as his eyes. He stared unblinking at the bed. He was a good-looking man, difficult to know how old, his skin, like most

    Africans', gave no clues. He had a light dusting of grey on his hair as if he'd dabbed it on a ceiling still wet with paint. His forehead was strong; it wasn't rounded but had defined surfaces and between the frontal lobes there was a vertical ridge which ran from his hairline and petered out just before two creases above the bridge of a strong, sharp nose. His face was lean and you could see the muscles working; this gave an impression of forcefulness which his tired brown eyes didn't. He had a severe mouth, it was wide and thin-lipped, it didn't look as if it did a lot of talking but when it did it got listened to. He had a cleft in his chin with a small scar in it and his jawline was clear and sharp right up to below his ear. His muscular neck indicated that his body would have the same whipcord tautness of his face. He looked like the sort of man who knew and saw things that a lot of other men didn't.

    'I have worked in Paris and London, Mr Medway. I have been in hotel rooms which looked like abattoirs. I have seen worse than the suffering of Françoise Perec.'

    'Isn't it easier to carry a gun rather than sound like one?' I asked.

    'It is. However, I cannot afford one.'

    'You must practise a lot.'

    'I learnt it from a fellow in London who held me hostage for forty-eight hours. Every fifteen minutes he would cock his revolver, hold it to my head and say: "BOOM! The nigger dies", then he would uncock it. It is a noise that has stayed with me.'

    'Your English is very… superior.'

    'I have a Nigerian mother, and my father was Beninois. I speak both English and French.'

    'Do you know anything about Françoise Perec, Mr Bagado?'

    'I think it is your turn to tell me something, Mr Medway.'

    'I know where your evidence is,' I said, showing him the photograph of Kershaw.

    'That would be very useful,' he said, turning the photograph over. 'Are you, may I ask, a private dick, Mr Medway?' The word 'dick' sound like a dart hitting a board.

    'I'm an odd job man. I do things for people. Sometimes I'm asked to find missing persons. I am being paid to find Kershaw and to run the business he was supposed to be running.'

    'Which was?'

    'Sheanut.'

    Bagado gave back the photograph of Kershaw and chewed the fleshy part of his thumb.

    'Where is this evidence?' he asked.

    'Lomé.' I told Bagado what was in the bag in the house in Lomé. He nodded and frowned.

    'Why are you here, when he is obviously there?' he asked.

    There was a thump of wind around the block of flats. The door of the apartment slammed shut. We both started and walked into the dining room and Bagado pulled up the blinds. It was dark. A cardboard sheet was sliding down the street, propelled by the wind and chased by a young girl with sputnik hair. A line of coconut palms bent at an absurd angle and shook their heads like rock stars who can't sing. The dust swirled in mini tornadoes which crossed the street and thrashed through the high bushes of the houses opposite. There was the sound of a tennis ball hitting the window. It was the first drop and was followed by a moment of tension before the rain crashed down. The road turned to a river. The rain, buffeted by the wind, lashed the cars, trees and houses. It was suddenly cold.

    There was a clap of thunder which sounded as if it had cleaved the apartment block in two and a flash of lightning rendered Bagado a negative of himself.

    'That seemed quite close,' said Bagado.

    'I wasn't counting.'

    We gave up talking because the rain didn't like being interrupted. It came down in a solid sheet of water with the noise of a snare drum crescendo. We lost sight of the houses across the street and the car below. It continued like this for ten minutes, with Bagado resting his forehead against the glass and me with my arms folded, leaning against the window frame.

    The rain eased. My car became visible. The thunder boomed in another quarter. The rain moved off after it but the darkness remained. Night had fallen during the, storm. It was half past six.

    'A lot of people think storms portentous,' Bagado said, still looking out of the window. 'In Africa it just means it's the rainy season. It's a lot more sinister when it doesn't rain.'

    'I'm relieved.'

    'Which is as it should be.'

    'Do you drink whisky, Mr Bagado?'

    'When someone has the decency to buy me one. Whisky, like guns, is beyond my means.'

    Bagado locked the flat. There was six inches of water at the bottom of the stairs and a rat doing side stroke in it. We drove through Cotonou with wet feet and tide marks up our trouser legs.