Instruments Of Darkness (24 page)

    I was on the bearded guy in a matter of seconds and caught him by the arm which had a maroon Qantas bag over the shoulder and hopped him to the restaurant steps.

    'What's going on?' he said in an Australian accent.

    'I'm sorry, sir. My name is Zeger Van Harten; I work for KLM.'

    'I'm not flying with KLM.'

    'But we want you to. It's part of our new publicity programme. We establish that all the check-ins are closed and then we choose at random somebody to be our guest for lunch.'

    'All the check-ins are closed?'

    'Yes, sir,' I said. He looked around and I swayed in front of him.

    'Well, you know, I don't mind if I do,' he said, holding out his hand. 'Mike Pocklington.'

    'Pleased to meet you, Mike. You're Australian, aren't you?'

    'That's a pretty good English accent you've got there, Zeger.'

    'Thank you,' I said, hoping I didn't have to demonstrate my Dutch.

    Once I got him in there and we were sitting in front of a perfect
steak, frites, salade
with a bottle of cold Beaujolais, he relaxed a little more than I expected him to and we had an interesting conversation about Australian Aboriginal and African animist religions. There was a sweaty moment during the second bottle of Beaujolais and a slice of brie when a badged KLM rep walked past and Mike, the red veins cracking on his nose, took the opportunity to thank the staff. I smiled and managed to convey with my eyebrows only, that my companion was on the fourth day of a seven-day bender.

    I paid the bill and asked Mike what he was going to do in Lagos.

    'Lagos?' he said. 'I'm going to Ouagadougou, mate.'

    I've never liked eating alone and I've got a butter mountain of generosity in my soul but I found myself hard-pressed to smile when I found the Ougadougou flight didn't take off until 16.15.

    'What were you doing here at quarter to one, Mike? Three and a half hours before your flight, and where's your luggage?'

    He patted his Qantas bag and blinked at me through the haze of red wine that shimmered off his nose. 'I get nervous, I don't like getting bumped off, I have to find out what plane it is, I have to get a seat near the emergency exit, I have to go to the toilet, everything has to be right

    I patted his shoulder and walked away from him before I stiffed him into a baggage trolley.

Chapter 20

    The Nigerian Airways girl confirmed that Bagado had got the flight and the last passenger had never showed. There was a return flight that evening and another tomorrow morning, early. Back in Arrivals, the KLM flight had an ETA of four o'clock. I sat down next to the woman fanning herself with the postcard and dozed on my Beaujolais pillow for an hour.

    At four o'clock, I went to the car. The covert surveillance team had been as good as their word and not slashed the tyres, although since they'd scarpered the car had let itself go and taken on the over-relaxed air of a couch potato. I took a couple of old fan belts out of the front seat well, cleaned the tray beneath the glove compartment of old bulbs and petrol filters and thumped the upholstery. I found a piece of paper on the back seat, shook the red dust off it and with the intestine of an old biro wrote 'KERSHAW' on it.

    I took the photographs out of the glove compartment and flicked through them until I got to the one remaining photo of Kershaw with Armen Kasparian. Kershaw had his arm around Armen's neck in a mock lock and Armen was supporting himself on Kershaw's stomach. They were standing in front of the right-hand half of the painting of the girl with the bowl of fruit and both were laughing. I folded them away and threw them back in the glove.

    The Customs officials were enjoying themselves going through wealthy people's bags and occasionally held up items which the passengers would rather not have had on public display. At half past four, a woman with shoulder-length brown hair, already lank from the heat, approached me and held out her hand.

    Catherine, or Kate, as she preferred, was unhealthily slim. Her arms were all tendons and sinew with dog- bone elbows and wrists. Her small, sharp breasts jutted through the faded material of her shrunken T-shirt like two teepees and her baggy jeans with their nail-tearing grip on her hip bones looked as if they were about to disgrace her. This was a woman who had lost a lot of weight in a short time.

    Her skin colour was muddy, an old tan overlaid with London grey and pricked with half an hour of tropical heat. Her skull was evident around her eye sockets, her cheekbones sending scimitar blades off to her ears and her hatchet-sharp nose had nostrils that winced under the strain. Her mouth had full lips, incongruous amongst all the edges, but she had a pleasant smile if you ignored the nicotine-stained teeth and a tongue still with its travel coat on.

    I took her bag and walked her to the car. We left the airport with my head aching, but feeling comfortable with the self-possession of the woman sitting next to me who smoked with her elbow on the window ledge and her hand held out into the oncoming breeze.

    'This is my first time in Africa,' she said, her lips kissing the filter of her cigarette.

    'It's a bit different over this side.'

    'I was going to ask you. Where are the animals? Where are the thorn trees? Where are those tall red natives standing on one leg with big holes in their ears drinking cow's blood and milk cocktails?'

    'I saw an elephant in Nigeria once and some Yahoo baboons, there are thorn trees in the sub-Sahara, but I've never seen a Masai anywhere near here.'

    'It's not as dirty as I expected.'

    'It tries a bit harder when it rains.'

    'So does London.'

    'How is it?'

    'Well, you know, property is falling, businesses are folding, school standards are dropping, hospitals are closing, crime is rising, homelessness is getting worse and the "green shoots of recovery" are supposed to be protruding, but they don't like it.'

    'Any good news?'

    'The banks are suffering, and I bought you some Marmite - already open, I'm afraid. It's all I could think of in the time. Is that OK?'

    'Inspired.' My last visitor had bought me custard powder. I hated it, he loved it. He was the kind of kid who bought his mother a football for her birthday.

    I took her the most scenic route possible across the lagoon and through town to the coast road. The town was quiet, still a little bruised after the rioting, and with a Sunday suicide feel to it. We hit the sea and Kate's polluted spirits rose as she saw the spangled water, kids playing football and palms applauding shabbily in the breeze. She asked if she could go and see the house and her husband's work. 'Those kids playing football reminded me. Steve described a painting to me, one with two boys on the beach playing with a lemon.'

    She didn't want to take a shower and change first, so a few minutes later we pulled up outside the house. Before we went in, I gave her the photograph of Armen and her husband. She looked at it and something strange happened to her face. She started to-smile and then stiffened as if she'd had a backhander across the cheek instead of a caress. She asked to keep it. I shrugged, got out of the car and opened the gate for her. Kate fingered the ducks and tortoise knocker. I opened the side door to the house but Kate carried on into the garden.

    She looked at the pool. The parrot whistled her up and she crossed the lawn to the aviary. He put his beak through the chicken wire and with one eye dared Kate to scratch it, which she did. The parrot said something along the lines of 'Sniggedy', which neither of us understood, but it prompted Kate to talk.

    'I told you we weren't close, which was true. In the last three or four months before he went away, I didn't see much of him, but we spoke on the phone. We've been married for twenty years,' she said, pulling her finger away from the nut-cracking beak just in time. 'I miss him.'

    We walked back to the house, the parrot giving us the bird. 'He couldn't get over losing it all. Everything he'd worked for gone. I told him it didn't matter. I'm not a great one for the luxuries of life. But he thought he'd failed me. He didn't believe me that it didn't matter. He left me and came down here. He'd done some business in Africa. I suppose coming here, he didn't feel like such a failure. You know, success is rammed down your throat everyday in England. You read the Sunday newspapers and you think everybody's made it except you.

    'Then he asked me to send the art materials down. He sounded positive. He'd picked up the job, which meant he could move out of the hotel. And he got inspired to paint again. He used to paint when we first got married, portraits, mostly of me. Not good enough to sell, but I liked them. Then he got involved in work and that was the end of it. Until Africa…'

    She went upstairs and looked at the paintings on her own while I fed and watered the parrot. Afterwards, I sat down next to the woman and child wood carving and thought about cold beer. She came down half an hour later and sat on the sofa opposite me. The sun was on its way down but it was hot, and fresh from England, Kate was wilting like a snapped-off house plant. She looked like someone who needed a cold beer and I went into the kitchen and split a big Eku into two glasses. She took two large gulps from her frosted glass which started tears in her eyes and I went back and picked up the kitchen paper roll and put it next to her. She put her glass down and tore off three feet and buried her face in it.

    'What do we do?' she asked.

    'Do you want to go through this now?' I said, unprepared for what I had to do. I shuffled around for easy ways into what was going to be a difficult discussion. Kate just nodded, picked up the beer and sipped it.

    'We're going to identify the body tomorrow morning at the hospital morgue. I've no idea what the police are going to say to you. I don't even know what verdict they will record. I'm fairly sure they haven't done any investigation and knowing Africa they'll just want a little bribe and get everything out of the way with as little trouble as possible. But I don't know. I think it's best you get all the facts so whatever they say you're not going to get any surprises, because if they think they can roll you, we could be here for months.'

    She put her glass between her knees and pulled a pack of cigarettes from a carton of twenty which she stashed back in her large handbag. She lit up and held the glass between the fingertips of both hands. The smoke curled up over the rim of the glass and Kate stared down at the white frothy head of her beer.

    I started with what B.B. had said about Kershaw. When I mentioned B.B.'s opinion about Kershaw's fondness for talking to women, Kate flinched, but no more than I'd expected. I moved on to Charlie, told her about the bar and how Kershaw was seen frequenting it with a number of different women. Kate tensed, the skin seemed tighter across her cheekbones and the wrinkles around her eyes smoothed out. The tendons in the back of her hands stood out and each metacarpal with them. I moved on to Nina Sorvino and felt the sweat trickling over each vertebra on its way down my back as I came closer to the point.

    'And?' asked Kate.

    'She ditched him, she says, because he was into bondage and sado-masochism.'

    Kate's spine stretched about a foot with indignation and she sat bolt upright, her eyes slashing through the smoke that hung in the purple light between us. Her top lip tightened against her teeth and began to go white.

    'Is this woman reliable?'

    'I don't think so, but I'm not sure.'

    'Is she a tart?'

    'No.'

    'Who the hell is she that she can say these things about my husband to you?'

    'I'm telling you what's happened and what's been said. Let me finish. It'll make other things clear.'

    She sat back in the sofa with her pointed chin on her evident sternum and looked at me from under her forehead, her eyes barely visible.

    'A woman called Françoise Perec was found dead in your husband's flat in Cotonou. She was tortured and murdered, we think on Monday morning. Your husband died here, we think in the evening. The bag containing the instruments used to kill Françoise Perec was found upstairs. The police have it now.'

    Kate Kershaw didn't say anything to that. There wasn't a lot to be said, apart from something like 'Jesus Christ'. Her smoking rate went up to forty drags a minute and I broke another Eku out of the fridge. I took her upstairs and opened up the chest of drawers. She peered in gingerly and reared away from the hideous pornography.

    'Your husband's prints are on these magazines. They were also on the whip handle which the police took away.'

    'Mr Medway,' she said, having called me Bruce up until now. 'Do you think the person who painted these pictures could hurt anybody?'

    'No, I don't. Although there are plenty of people who would tell you that sex isn't logical and that Africa can have a strange effect on people.'

    This earned me a steady look from her that demanded an explanation.

    'I'm saying your husband's been framed.'

    'How do you know?'

    'I know he was murdered.'

    'Do you have any proof?'

    'When I pulled him out of the pool there was no water in his lungs.'

    She sat down on the bed. The light in the room was deep purple and then suddenly it was night. I switched the light on. Kate took a golf ball of tissue out of her pocket, unravelled it and blew her nose.

    'This is Africa, Kate,' I said. 'Things happen differently here. The police are being controlled. There was no investigation here and there was a cover-up of the Françoise Perec killing in Cotonou. It's possible when we go to the morgue you'll find that you'll be required to sign release papers that indicate your husband died from drowning and that he committed suicide. This is not true but if you kick up a fuss about the autopsy and try going to the British Embassy for help you'll find a lot of obstacles, not least of which is some damning evidence. It'll take a long time and you'll need money. I am trying to find out what happened to Françoise Perec and your husband, but people are not being very helpful.'