Dear Beneficiary (33 page)

I picked at the edges of my clothes, a loose cotton skirt and a sleeveless silk T-shirt, (chosen to deal with any outcome) until I got there.

Darius's house was beautiful. It was square, painted dark pink on all its smooth outer walls, and had a large veranda at the front. All the upstairs rooms had balconies, decorated by nature's own growth of jasmine, miniature roses and other, unfamiliar, shrubs. I couldn't help but think of
Romeo and Juliet
, even though when I tried to remember the quotes from my school days my memory failed me.

He opened the door as soon as the car parked in the crescent driveway. I mentally took a picture of the vision, capturing the moment for my future pleasure. He wore a lemon-coloured shirt and white linen trousers, showing his colour to its richest advantage. His feet were bare, and as I got closer I could see that, as ever, his nails were immaculate.

‘So there you are,' he said, turning to one side and gesturing with his arm for me to enter his home.

My feet wobbled on the uneven gravel of the pathway, and it was all my lungs could do to draw breath. He caught my arm and helped me across the threshold.

‘I've cooked goat meat stew with Nigerian fried rice, all to be washed down with local palm wine,' he said, as if we'd never been apart.

I looked around nervously for signs of a female –
that
female – and could see no trace of any other guest. As he led me to the kitchen, I could hear music coming from a room to the side of the vast hall, which I guessed was the living room.

The table was laid for two, and I wanted to jump up and down and punch the air. Such displays are not in my nature, so I concluded I'd spent rather too long with Tracey.

‘Oh, just the two of us?' I said.

‘Who else would I want with me, now I know you are in the country?' Darius said. He looked shy, which I thought was unusual for him.

The palm wine tasted not unlike watered-down port. I was glad of it, as it had a calming effect.

After some polite conversation about the food and Darius's home, which I found out he'd owned for three years and renovated with the help of his brothers-in-law, he took hold of my hand across the table.

‘I've missed you, Cynthia,' he said. The way he looked at me suggested he meant every word. His eyes watered and he held on to my hand so tightly I thought he'd break the tiny bones between my wrist and finger joints.

‘I've missed you, too,' I said, hardly daring to believe that Darius might still be interested in me. Hope was on standby, ready for a part to play in this unfolding scenario.

He moved his chair to face me and took hold of my other hand. I was glad to note he'd loosened his grip.

‘Why are you here? How did you get yourself into so much trouble?' he asked.

The questions seemed separate, even though in his mind he probably considered them connected.

‘I came to see you and help you. You didn't expect me to just forget about you, did you? I was worried about your situation, and what with your father and everything …' I told him, gulping down the rising expectation of a reunion.

‘What situation?' he asked, knotting together his eyebrows quizzically. ‘I was waiting for you to contact me. I gave you my card but heard nothing. I assumed you'd lost interest.'

If only he knew how much interest I had in him
, I thought.

I explained about the messages and how I had seen them as him wanting my help. As the misunderstanding unfolded, we both cried and laughed at the same time.

‘I thought you considered me too young and silly to bother with. I can't believe you came out here for me. If only I'd known that,' he said, choking back emotion.

‘And I thought you would want to seek out a younger woman and get married, maybe have a family,' I replied. ‘Maybe with Chinaza?'

Darius laughed.

‘Goodness, no. That's the last thing I want. She's very clever, but far too high maintenance. Daddy's little rich girl. Not my type at all.'

I grinned to myself, and mentally notched up a feeling of superiority over youth.

‘So what
is
your type?' I asked, fishing heavily for the compliment I immediately received.

‘Surely you know the answer to that, Cynthia?' he said as he fell to his knees and kissed my hands, allowing his lips to trace the edges of my arms and tease them with their generosity. Whatever it is that rises in a woman to make her want a man had hitched a fast ride in the lift to the top of my passion tower.

He stood and pulled my arms to get me to stand, kissing me full on the lips and allowing his tongue to investigate the nerve endings of mine, setting them alight with desire and longing.

I never thought we'd be here again, enjoying each other as lovers.
How did we get it so wrong?

Darius picked me up as a giant might pick up a small child and carried me upstairs to his bedroom, and laid me down gently on the vast bed. He unbuttoned his shirt and dropped it to the floor before pulling off my top and stopping to admire what he saw.

‘You've lost weight,' he said. ‘I shall have to feed you up.'

I watched him as closely as I could without staring, hoping my mouth wouldn't drop open in awe as he removed the linen trousers, revealing the fact he was wearing nothing underneath. His lasting interest in me was apparent as he kneeled down to remove my skirt, in doing so allowing his right hand to explore my breasts. He sat in front of me and pulled me into the sitting position, giving freedom to his hands to remove my bra. He dropped his head to take my nipples into his mouth, rolling them gently with the softness of his tongue. They felt like they were on a string to the pit of my abdomen, pulling more tightly until I was crying for his attention.

‘I've been thinking about you every night,' he muttered, as he moved down my body, taking time to reacquaint himself with my flesh, assaulting it with nips and nibbles until he pushed his knees between my legs to part them. I was still wearing my knickers but he pushed them to the side, pulling the material tightly against my clitoris to add another dimension to his ministrations.

We were lost in ourselves. Tearing off what was left of my underwear, the bedcover held us gently in its weave as we moved against it together, riding the waves of physical pleasure and unity.

It had been so long, yet we were pulled together instantly by that moment of ecstasy, as we both leapt over the mountain of desire and into the pool of satisfaction. We were at one.

Darius held me closely, as if he didn't want to let me go. I felt so safe, and as he stroked my hair, the CD that had been playing earlier jumped back into life.

‘So here's to you, Mrs Robinson,' it sang out from downstairs, with Darius following up the next line with: ‘And I love you more than you will ever know.'

It was bliss.

CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

Once we'd exhausted our physical desires for the evening, we opened a bottle of wine Darius had brought back from the airport the day he left England. He said he'd been keeping it for a special occasion, and there could be no better reason than I was in his house.

He told me again how they'd found and arrested Chike and Fasina. They'd traced the camp using a number of bits of information from the messages they'd sent my family, and some sightings. A number of locals had come forward in response to press calls for information, saying they'd seen two white women being driven to the settlement area. It is still sufficiently unusual to see white people in the poorer parts of the city for it to attract attention.

‘We're fairly confident they will get a very long sentence,' said Darius, after we dressed and settled ourselves in the front room downstairs, where Darius brought in the food he'd prepared earlier. The extra cooking time meant the meat was particularly tender. I thought it was probably the best meal I'd ever had in my life.

‘Have they kidnapped women before?' I asked, sipping the palm wine from an oversized crystal glass.

‘We don't think so. But they haven't taken ordinary tourists before either. This gang usually concentrates on business people, working abroad and with the backing of big companies who have to look after their needs. If they don't, no one wants to volunteer to work in Nigeria long-term.'

Darius offered coffee and went into the kitchen, from where I could hear the clanking of cutlery and china. In his absence I looked around the sparsely furnished room and took note of the selection of books, mostly non-fiction, and a number of small, framed photographs of young women and children. I guessed them to be of his sisters and their families. There was also a picture of an elderly black couple I assumed would be his parents – reminding me to ask about their health.

Darius came back into the room and handed me a large blue coffee cup, the type and shape found in the nicer cafeterias in London. I took a sip and immediately made a face when I tasted it.

‘I remembered you took coffee white but should've warned you, it's goat's milk,' said Darius, who was drinking his coffee black. ‘I can't touch it since I've been back from England. It has a peculiar taste now.'

I followed him into the kitchen where he made another coffee, black this time, and I asked how his mother was. He replied she was stable after being prescribed new drugs.

‘My parents are elderly so are bound to get worries,' he said, while I tried to work out how much older than me they could be. Possibly twenty years, although that would make them late parents.

As if reading my thoughts, Darius said: ‘I was the youngest of eight. They kept trying until they got a boy! I've been surrounded by older women all my life,' he said, laughing and looking at me with devilish eyes. ‘Maybe that is why I'm so comfortable with you,' he added, leaning forward to kiss the end of my nose.

Darius wanted to tell me even more about the rescue mission, particularly now he was fuelled by the fact my predicament was precipitated by my concern for him. I had the impression he wanted to make amends for my experiences and wanted me to be sure every effort was made to find and release us.

‘It was all over really quickly,' he explained. ‘One of the officers from the raid team told us they'd got all four of the men they knew to be directly involved in your kidnapping, but there was no sign of any other people in the camp.'

There had, however, been signs of captivity, such as padlocks and mattresses, along with eggshells and banana skins. They'd also found a bottle of Chanel N°5 perfume. ‘We thought that might be relevant,' Darius said. ‘It didn't seem likely it would belong to one of the gang.'

‘It's mine,' I said. ‘The guards kept most of our luggage in their shacks.'

‘Well, it's not the sort of thing you'd expect a Nigerian gangster to have as a bedside accompaniment. Anyway, we were pleased to get our men, but worried about the whereabouts of the hostages, namely you two,' said Darius. ‘We didn't know at that stage whether you'd been taken somewhere else, hurt or even murdered.'

I flinched at the thought.

‘Murdered? What for? Surely they wouldn't have done that to us?'

‘Well, they don't normally kill their victims, but as they've never taken tourists before, we weren't sure how they'd react if they couldn't get any money from you,' he said.

I heard it was the guards who revealed we had escaped.

Darius added: ‘Two of those we caught refused to say anything, even when they were pistol whipped. They refused to give any information about hostages. However, they've been fast-tracked into court, where the charges will include fraud, false imprisonment and kidnap, plus anything else we can add to the mix,' said Darius.

I was very impressed by everything he was saying, and felt so very warm in his presence. I felt safe, nurtured and cared-for in a delicate and sedate manner.

I wanted to ask about other women, and whether he'd been with anyone else since me. I pushed my antics with Gowon to the back of my mind but couldn't help thinking Darius must have had lustful thoughts towards someone, if not Chinaza. Just thinking about her and her beauty made me want to will her into a very big hole, or for her to evaporate like a snowman in a heat wave, so he could never look at her again. I called on my angels and made a pact to really, really believe in God if only he'd get rid of her and anyone else who might turn the head of this heavenly man in any direction but mine.

Darius outlined how the legal formalities would work in the court, and they sounded very similar to my own experiences on the magistrates' bench. Prosecution followed by defence, although this would be in front of a judge with legal training, not a selection of middle-class wives of bankers.

‘I suspect there will be a lot of press there, as they will like to hear how you coped with the scammers. They will want to write stories about how you never know who you are going to meet on the internet.'

‘Or on Advanced Driving courses,' I said, looking at him in a way I hoped made him realise I wanted him to make love to me again, right there and then.

CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

The court was full. Chike and Fasina were handcuffed in the dock, looking solemnly straight ahead. Various officials moved around the rows of sturdy wooden seats, whispering in hushed tones and passing on pieces of information to each other in an important fashion.

A bell sounded, then a clerk stood and told the court to stand. Everyone who wasn't already standing stood up, while a rotund man of about seventy years old, complete with gown and wig, entered the room and told them to sit.

‘Not you,' he bellowed at the two defendants, who hadn't acknowledged each other at all.

‘Are you Chike Buhari and Fasina Amaechi of Manita Territory?'

Neither of them responded.

‘Speak up,' said the judge. ‘I can't hear you,' he went on, impatiently.

‘Yes,' muttered Fasina, while Chike set his mouth into a hard line and lifted his chin in defiance. Both were wearing dark green cotton jumpsuits – the uniform of the holding prison they'd been bailed to.