Dark Flight (28 page)

‘It will make Naseem father a son.’

When Bill finally got through to the consulate, Henry Boswell sounded perturbed. He told Bill that Dr MacLeod and DC McNab had left early for the police headquarters in Bompai.

‘Dr MacLeod asked to speak with a Mrs Haruna. Abdul, my aide, has gone to try to locate the woman. I’ve heard nothing back from either party.’

‘Is that unusual?’

‘No.’ The consul weighed his words. ‘It’s just that Dr MacLeod found a fetish in her room this morning.’

‘What?’ Bill exploded.

‘A cross of bones. She said it was similar to one found at the scene of crime.’

Bill swore under his breath.

‘Ritualism is common here.’

‘Well, it isn’t common here.’ Bill regretted his harsh tone as soon as he uttered the words. It wasn’t the consul’s fault.

‘I told them to inform Adamu, their liaison officer. He will provide security.’

Somehow, that didn’t make Bill feel any better.

‘We have information that Stephen is in the Kano area,’ he told the consul, ‘possibly with Naseem’s family. We believe his life is in danger.’

‘I’ll do what I can.’

They had been sitting at the police roadblock for half an hour. Their escort jeep had driven to the front of the queue of vehicles and never returned.

McNab had waited long enough. ‘I’ll go and see what’s happening.’

The driver had given up running the engine and taken refuge under a roadside acacia bush. Even with all the doors open, the car was like a furnace. McNab and Rhona had deserted it and were standing in the shadow of a big truck whose driver was deep in conversation with theirs.

‘We’ve been warned about police roadblocks,’ Rhona said. ‘Leave it to the guards.’

‘The guards are shite. The first sign of trouble and they’ll run.’

Rhona peered up the row of traffic, shimmering in the noonday heat.

‘There’s a hut on the other side of the road a bit further up. It looks like it’s selling soft drinks.’

‘Okay, you go buy us a hot Fanta. I’ll check out the front of the queue.’

Rhona gave in. Preventing McNab doing what he wanted was never an easy option.

Women and children from the nearby villages had taken advantage of the blocked road and were wandering up and down with trays piled with overripe bananas and mangoes. Rhona bought a couple of mangoes and paid too much for them, much to the delight of the seller.

She crossed the dusty road and walked towards the hut. It was set back from the carriageway with a large mango tree out front. Crates of soft drinks, Coca-Cola and Fanta among them, were propped up in the shade. Rhona gestured to the crates, trying out the elementary Hausa phrases she’d studied on the plane. ‘
Biyu Fanta, don Alla
.’

The man gave her a grin that suggested her Hausa wasn’t up to much and fetched two bottles. When she asked, ‘How much?’ he thought for a moment then suggested a price at the top of the range. Rhona paid it without arguing. He looked disappointed. Haggling was half the fun of selling. He flipped off the bottle caps for her with studied expertise and gestured at a rough wooden bench in the nearby shade.

Rhona sat down and took a sip of hot Fanta.

The sweltering heat enveloped her like a heavy blanket, sweat trickling down her body under her clothes. Despite her fears for Stephen, the heat had made her thought processes sluggish and laborious.
She longed for a cold shower or, even better, a face full of the cold wind that gusted up University Avenue.

She turned, hearing a vehicle behind her, and saw a black four-by-four pulling up on the dusty ground to the rear of the shack.

Two men climbed out, one glancing over at her. There was something in that look that perturbed Rhona. Sly, and calculating, at the same time. The other man was in conversation with the vendor, who also threw a quick look over his shoulder at her.

She stood up, attempting to maintain an air of nonchalance. Hers was the only white face in the vicinity, which could explain their interest, but she wasn’t taking any chances.

She was only metres away when she registered the roar of the engine as the wheels skidded in reverse. When the vehicle swung alongside, she had almost reached the road.

Her brisk forward movement slammed her into its side. The collision sent the open bottles to the ground, the orange liquid spraying out. Rhona swung around, stunned, not sure whether to run forward or back.

Before she could regain her wits, the man on the passenger side was out and had a hold of her. Her screams were drowned out by the roar of the engine. If the stall owner saw her being dragged into the vehicle, he wasn’t about to intervene.

The four-by-four sprang forward, swerved around the shack and took off across country, bumping wildly on the rock-hard rutted ground.

As she was pushed down onto the car’s back seat, a sweaty hand clamped over her mouth, Rhona caught a last glimpse of the queue of cars beginning to move forward.

MCNAB’S MOUTH DROPPED
open. It was a scene he couldn’t have made up.

The three roadblock policemen, plus his own two security guards, were trying on sunglasses. The makeshift chair and table at the side of the road held a box filled to the brim with imitation Raybans. The lorry whose cargo it was, stood alongside, back open, the first in the queue of at least half a mile of backed-up vehicles.

McNab’s stupefaction quickly turned to anger.

‘What the hell do you think you’re doing?’

The
Baturi
voice brought all five heads around. Recognising him, the two guards looked surprised then awkward, but not, he thought, embarrassed. The other three glared at him with something resembling contempt.

The guards came swiftly towards him, their faces angry, and one shouted something in Hausa. Roughly translated McNab guessed it meant, ‘Shut the fuck up!’

They began bundling him towards the jeep. The sharp revving of an engine stopped them all in their tracks. A powerful black off-roader was crashing off
into the bush. At least someone had the sense to get off this baking road, McNab thought. The image of the escaping vehicle seemed to propel the roadblock policemen into action. The one in charge barked an order. The sunglasses were loaded on the truck, the barrier pulled up and the vehicles waved on.

The fashion show was over.

McNab strode back towards the car, seething with anger. He would lodge a complaint with John Adamu regarding his officers. He would ask the consul to complain to the head of police. He would . . .

He stopped short of his own vehicle, suddenly remembering Rhona. The driver was back inside the car. He’d drawn it onto the verge to allow the queue to pass. The doors were closed, the air conditioner back on. Rhona wasn’t inside.

McNab opened the front passenger door.

‘Where is madam?’

The driver shook his head. ‘I do not know.’

McNab glanced over at the shack. The brisk business it had done during the roadblock had dispersed. He could see one figure and it wasn’t Rhona.

‘Did she come back?’

‘No, sir.’

Where the hell did she go? Maybe she needed the toilet? McNab imagined Rhona heading for a clump of bushes. She wouldn’t want him searching there for her.

He walked slowly towards the shack. The owner, seeing him approach, began walking in the direction of the village compound a short distance into the bush.

‘Hey!’ McNab called.

The shout only made the man walk faster until the walk became a run. McNab took off after him, his heart thumping, sweat coursing down his face and chest. When he reached the compound, the opening in the high mud wall had been sealed with a thorny gate. Peering over, he saw only a couple of goats.

McNab was beside himself with anger and it wasn’t helping. Being a Glasgow detective held no sway here. The guard’s blank look spelt that out.

He tried again, keeping his tone even. ‘The man ran away from me. He knows something about Dr MacLeod.’

‘We have searched the compound. She is not there.’

‘I didn’t say she was. I said he knows what happened to her.’

‘He knows nothing.’

‘Then why did he run away?’

‘These are peasants, they are frightened of everything, especially
Baturi
who threaten them.’

McNab’s voice rose in exasperation. ‘I did not threaten him.’

The guard looked at him stonily. ‘We must report to our superior.’

McNab felt desperate. He couldn’t just drive away. ‘I will stay here and look.’

‘As you wish.’

The guard walked back to his jeep, where his colleague sat behind the wheel.

‘Who was in that black vehicle that drove away from the roadblock?’ McNab called.

But the jeep was already pulling away.

‘The black four-by-four!’ McNab shouted at their retreating backs.

The consulate car was parked at the deserted shack. The driver had taken up his favourite position, along the front seat. McNab didn’t have the Hausa words to rouse him into action. He sat down on a rough wooden bench nearby. The sweltering heat was crippling his thought processes. All around him the caked earth simmered. The incessant chirping of crickets had increased in frequency the hotter it got. The sound filled his head, adding to his inability to think.

He fetched a Fanta from the crate and snapped the lid off on the corner of the bench. It tasted like nothing he’d ever drunk before. Sickly sweet and hot. He gulped half the bottle before the sugar rush kicked in.

Fanta! She’d gone to buy Fanta. He stood up and tried to focus in the fierce rays of the sun. Assuming she had bought the bottles. What next?

He took his time, peering at the ground, looking for some mark of her presence. He walked towards where the car had been parked, then he saw the chink of reflected light.

The two open Fanta bottles lay close to the roadside. They were half empty, the spilt liquid soaked into the parched ground. He touched the rapidly drying damp spot with his finger.

She’d dropped both bottles here. Why?

The dry soil was churned up. There had been a struggle here. Big tyres had stamped their pattern in the dust.

The four-by-four!

He remembered the vehicle’s mad dash across country, then the sudden spring into action of the roadblock police when they saw it make off.

Whoever was in that vehicle took Rhona.

That’s what the roadblock was there for. To capture her. And the police had helped.

THE TWO-ROOMED BUNGALOW
was built with concrete blocks, painted white. It had window openings on all sides, shutters fastened back, the constant breeze from the reservoir blowing through. The two men who’d deposited her there hadn’t tied her up or locked her in. There was no reason to. The bungalow stood on a tiny island in the middle of a large expanse of water. The only way off was by boat or a very long swim.

After the men left, she’d raged around the house, then walked the short shoreline. Calmer, she’d eaten something and had a long drink of cool water from a hollowed-out gourd, but not before she smelt and tasted a little of the liquid in case they planned to drug her.

Flanked by two of her captors in the back of the vehicle, she’d tried to follow their route. After miles of open bush and numerous identical compounds of mud huts and staring locals, Rhona had practically given up.

Then she saw the long expanse of the grassy embankment of the dam, rising maybe forty metres above the river bed.

The vehicle had travelled downstream from it,
through acres of irrigated fields filled with maize tall enough to swallow them. When they reached the road atop the embankment, Rhona was stunned by the size and strange beauty of this artificial lake. She’d read about Tiga Dam in her rapid attempt at research before her journey here. The few pages of information on the internet spoke of drowned farmland and villages. No trees had been felled before the river valley was flooded, leaving strange skeletal limbs to rise from the water like white spectres, their underwater tangle a haven for breeding fish. And so, she’d read, the displaced farmers had become fishermen.

Concentrating on what little she knew about the place helped control the intermittent surges of fear and disorientation that threatened to swamp her. Her life had been threatened before now, but to be catapulted from her world into this, where none of the normal rules applied, had left her feeling more alone and out of her depth than ever before.

There seemed no point in struggling as she was transferred to the small motor boat. Any argument would have resulted in a beating. That had been made clear in the only English spoken on the journey. If she was going to have her wits about her, it was better to conserve her strength.

Standing outside the bungalow, her eyes shaded, she thought she could make out the line of the distant shore and the white shape of an occasional building. If there was a house on the island, it stood to reason there might be similar constructions on the shore. This bungalow wasn’t owned by local people. It must be
a weekend retreat for a well-to-do Kano resident. Someone who wanted her out of the way.

And they’d succeeded. There was nothing she could do on the tiny island but think. And it didn’t take Rhona long to work out how she’d ended up here. The roadblock had been a set-up. She had been kept there until the four-by-four turned up to collect her. And she could only assume that Adamu’s men were in on it.

Rhona pictured McNab’s return to the Peugeot. His concern when she wasn’t there. His search for her at the shack. She remembered the fear in the owner’s eyes. He had been warned to say nothing. If McNab hadn’t spotted the four-by-four taking off, then all he would find were the discarded Fanta bottles. Even if he had seen the black vehicle drive across the bush, he could hardly follow it over rough ground in the Peugeot estate. And something told her the police jeep would not take up that challenge.

McNab was already struggling with the heat and the culture shock. His temper would be even shorter when he realised how little influence he had here, despite being a policeman. What chance would he have of finding her?