Dark Flight (21 page)

Stephen was watching a column of big black ants, using the rope as a walkway between the two trees. Then he spotted the red velvet spiders. They were crossing the narrow path that snaked through the tall stalks of dry elephant grass. Boniface made him wait until he checked the spiders out, then smiled an okay, his teeth orange from chewing kola nuts, and told him the swarming spiders meant the rains were on their way
.

Boniface pointed at the sky where thick dark clouds threatened on the horizon
.

‘Ruwa.’
Boniface grinned
. ‘Ruwa!’

Stephen knelt and carefully picked up a spider, cupping it in his hand. It played dead, while he stroked its soft velvety surface
.

The rain came that night. He sat on the verandah seat beside his mum and watched lightning dance in the sky. The wind blew into their faces, bringing the first smell of rain for seven months. Then the wind suddenly changed direction and the first big drops began to fall. Soon a wall of water was falling from the overhang, digging a trench through his mum’s zinnia patch. Stephen ran down the steps onto the drive, screaming and laughing, to dance in the muddy puddles
.

When he eventually looked back, his mum was talking to a man with scars on his face. Stephen stood perfectly still, feeling the rain drum on his head and run down his chest. He shivered, his temperature dropping with the watery onslaught and his growing fear
.

RHONA HAD DRUNK
three glasses of wine one after the other. She didn’t seek oblivion, only to take the edge off the memory of her time in the mortuary with Sara Menzies.

A parent should never bury a child, no matter what that child has done. It is an aberration of nature.

Sara had stood, her hand in Karen’s, as the cover was pulled back. Thankfully, she never saw below Malcolm’s neckline. As rigor had eased, his face had assumed a less tortured look. His eyes had been closed. He had been made pretty in death. His smooth skin betrayed his youth, and the angry young man was gone. Sara’s child, the son she loved, had been returned to her in death. Sara had looked down on the boy she had set out, in vain, to save.

Karen had displayed the stoic stance of someone who knew the truth. Bad memories had replaced any that were good, yet even she had buckled at the sight of her dead brother.

They had held one another up, these two women, without the man who had made the child in his own image. Rhona wondered if Sara had even informed
him. He was somewhere on the road, oblivious to what had happened to his family.

Rhona took up her favourite place at the kitchen window. The convent garden was in darkness, apart from the spotlight illuminating the Virgin Mary, blessing the world and all its sinners.

Where was Malcolm now, apart from a drawer in the mortuary? Was he at heaven’s gate, being turned away? Or was he apologising for his sins and being forgiven?

The wine was her refuge from the questions her brain couldn’t answer. In the space of five days, her world had changed. But she was alive and privileged and anything that happened to her was insignificant in comparison to what had happened to others. She thought of Bill, tortured by the thought of the illness and death of the woman who was his life. Sean, his father’s demise both a release and a curse. Stephen, alone and in danger, knowing his mother had been murdered. And Sara Menzies, living with the knowledge that her dead son was complicit in the death or torture of others.

Having a child meant carrying its sins on your shoulders along with your own.

Rhona didn’t hear the buzzer at first, lost as she was in her own troubled thoughts. When she did answer, McNab’s voice on the intercom was not one she anticipated or wanted to hear.

‘We need to talk,’ he said.

‘No we don’t.’

Rhona didn’t need to talk to anyone. She preferred
to stay mildly drunk and alone with her morbid thoughts.

McNab spoke again, more insistent this time. ‘The DS wants us to be the team sent to Kano.’

She buzzed him in, hearing the front door bang shut below.

He stood in her hall, hiding a smile at its familiarity.

Rhona led him through to the kitchen. He glanced at the open wine bottle on the table, but she didn’t offer him any.

‘I came to check if you were okay about us travelling together. If not, I’ll find some personal reason not to go.’

He was challenging her. If she said she didn’t like the idea, he would withdraw, but she would never hear the end of it. It was not in McNab’s nature to be magnanimous.

‘I have no problems with that.’ Rhona met him eye to eye.

‘Good. I’ll tell the DI.’

‘Bill sent you here?’ Now she was surprised, and not a little annoyed.

‘Not exactly.’ Even McNab wouldn’t be daft enough to lie about that. ‘But I had to be sure.’

They had reached a compromise. She sat down at the kitchen table, indicating that he should do the same. ‘I’ve whisky,’ she offered, ‘if you don’t like wine.’

She knew he didn’t drink wine and he knew she knew. A memory of a sex game they’d played involving whisky brought colour to her cheeks.

‘I’ll have a whisky,’ he said, pretending not to notice.

‘It’s next door.’ She stood, turning her back on him, glad of a moment to regain her composure.

There was a bottle of Bushmills Malt in the cabinet for special occasions. She fetched it with a suitable glass.

‘It’s Irish,’ she said unnecessarily.

McNab gave a wry smile. It should have annoyed her, but she felt herself soften. He had been ousted by an Irishman and was not about to complain about it.

She poured him a decent shot.

He raised his glass. ‘To past and future endeavours.’

It seemed churlish not to chink her glass to his.

They spoke of the case. McNab related what had happened with Larai, the interpreter. Rhona listened carefully, realising the importance of the woman’s knowledge.

‘If Carole’s husband decided she should be circumcised and she refused—’ Rhona said.

‘It would make her run, and take the boy with her.’

The thought of it horrified Rhona. ‘I don’t understand . . .’ she began.

‘What?’

‘Why men hate women so much.’

‘Well, if they’re not circumcised, they make a man impotent, scupper his chances of being a father and their clitoris can kill a baby boy if it touches his head during his birth.’

Rhona looked at McNab aghast.

‘So Larai told us. Or, to be more exact, so the Hausa tribe believes.’

‘How on earth did such an idea begin?’

He smiled wryly. ‘Fear of women and all they can do and all they are.’

His green eyes locked with hers. Rhona felt her stomach contract. He looked younger than Sean, his deep auburn hair cropped close to his head, a day’s stubble on his chin. There was a tense energy about him, like a tiger waiting to spring.

She stood up. ‘When do we leave?’

‘Tomorrow. Evening flight to Heathrow. Stay over in the airport hotel. Kano flight leaves early Sunday morning.’

‘It’s short notice.’

‘As far as Stephen’s life is concerned, not short enough.’

McNab had stayed no longer than it took to drink his whisky. When Rhona showed him out, he was cool and contained, but underneath, she knew, he was relishing the fact that they would be alone together, strangers in a strange land, with no one but themselves to rely on.

He handed her a pack of anti-malarial tablets.

‘One a day, starting tonight.’

‘I’ve been to Africa before,’ she said.

He raised an eyebrow. ‘Good. You’ll know what to do when we get there. Apparently it’s the beginning of the wet season, so pack for hot and humid.’

He stopped short of suggesting what forensic equipment she should take. Their African adventure had already captured McNab’s imagination.

Rhona’s sleep was disturbed by alcohol and vivid dreams, in which all her frantic efforts to get to the
airport were constantly thwarted. She dreamt of Liam, his Nigerian village always hidden despite her constant attempts to find it.

She was woken around midnight by the sound of Sean’s key in the lock. She heard the suitcase hit the hall floor and a strangled curse. He was home and tipsy, if not drunk.

Rhona waited in silence, incapable of facing him. Then she heard him whistling softly as he moved about the kitchen. The bottle of Bushmills and two glasses sat on the table and if he wasn’t too drunk he was bound to notice. She sat up, cursing herself silently for not clearing up after McNab’s departure.

Sean went on whistling. The tune was unfamiliar and sad.

Her need for him at that moment was as strong and painful as a kick in the groin. But she couldn’t go through.

He opened the bedroom door and stood, illuminated by the hall light.

Her eyes were half closed, but she saw him smile.

‘Beautiful one,’ he whispered.

She heard the shower come on and his gasp as the water hit his nakedness. When he finally crawled in beside her, his body was ice-cold.

‘I am cold but sober,’ he offered. ‘And I dearly want to fuck you.’

He slid downwards, licking her body in small gasps. He laid his face in her groin and breathed her in. When she did not open her legs, he pushed them apart, then lifted them up.

He played with her then, his entry a promise but not a reality until she begged him with a whispered please.

Afterwards he lay, his head on her stomach, nursing her feet as though they were his child. ‘I want to make a baby.’

His voice was muffled by her flesh but she had heard him. Rhona lay silent and apprehensive in the dark.

His voice slurred, ‘I want to have a child.’

She let him sleep, rising before dawn to look for her passport and start packing. He woke around lunchtime, finding her in the kitchen preparing some food.

He was naked, rubbing his hand through his hair, bemused by waking up at home again. He stood behind, pressing himself against her, his penis rising in expectation, his breath warming her neck.

It was not the right time, but she said it anyway: ‘How’s your wife?’

His body tensed. Rhona waited for shock to soften his prick.

‘What?’

‘Kitty Maguire. Your wife.’

It was a bad scene from a TV drama. Naked man, loving and aroused, confronted with the other woman.

Sean turned her around to face him. His cock, whether through anger or confusion, refused to give in and droop.

‘She called the flat to let me know you were married.’

Rhona wanted him to deny it, tell her it was lies. He didn’t.

‘Kitty always hopes we will get back together.’ He sounded both sad and sorry.

It wasn’t what Rhona expected or wanted. ‘So it’s true?’

Sean gave a small laugh. ‘It’s true.’

‘You never told me you were married.’

He came back right away. ‘You never told me you had a child. Not until you had to.’

Rhona wanted him to cover his nakedness, but he made no move to.

‘Kitty and I were married at seventeen. We were fucking one another and she was ashamed. She decided she was pregnant and, like any good Catholic boy, I married her. Except there wasn’t a baby, only a ring and a priest.’

‘So she trapped you?’

He shook his head. ‘I trapped her. I fucked her when I should have kept my cock in my pants, like my granny told me. Twenty years ago, where I come from, that was the crime.’

Rhona could think of nothing to say.

In awkward silence they moved separately around the flat, she packing and he unpacking, each thinking their own thoughts.

CHRISSY HESITATED ON
the steps. By nature, she made up her mind quickly and didn’t prevaricate. Not tonight. She wanted to see Sam, to at least try to explain her recent behaviour, but avoidance seemed the easier option. If Sam had given her the brush-off, she would have been insulted and hurt. Nothing in his treatment of her had been unkind or untrustworthy. He deserved the same.

This little internal speech sent her down the steps and into the club. Rhona had declined her offer of a drink to end a difficult day. A visit to the mortuary with Malchie’s mother had rendered Rhona incapable of being in any way sociable. She had gone home to take refuge in silence and a glass of wine, depriving Chrissy of an ally.

Chrissy stood at the inner door, listening for Sam’s piano. There was music playing, but it wasn’t Sam. A wave of disappointment swept over her. She had moved from thinking about seeing him to wanting to, and the realisation that he might not be there was suddenly painful.

A jolt of pleasure hit her when she spotted his dark head at the bar. He turned, sensing her presence, and
smiled. The smile was one of relief. He had expected her not to turn up. Chrissy felt saddened by the thought and not a little guilty.

Sam stood to welcome her, suddenly shy in her presence. Not for the first time, Chrissy realised how strange she must seem to him: strong willed, opinionated, sexually overt. Were there women like her in his culture?

Chrissy asked the barman for her usual, and Sam waited while she took a drink.

‘I did not think you would come,’ he said gently.

‘I said I would.’

‘I asked in Hausa.’

‘You’re a good teacher.’

The exchange was flirtatious, as though they had just met, never kissed and knew little about one another. Sam understood the game she was playing, distancing herself from the closeness they had enjoyed. At the point of breaking up, the last thing you want is to remember moments of intimacy.

‘It would have been unprofessional,’ she began, ‘for me to take a sample from you.’

‘I know.’ The tone of his voice suggested he was puzzled that she felt the need to explain. ‘I am a suspect.’

Chrissy avoided his gaze. ‘Everyone connected with the case is a suspect. That is the law.’

‘Ah, English law.’

She corrected him. ‘Scottish law. It’s different. We’re different.’

He smiled. ‘That, I do know.’

They lapsed into a more comfortable silence.

‘The death in Ashton Road?’ A shadow crossed his face. ‘It was something to do with . . .’