Easy Motion Tourist (22 page)

Ibrahim had not slept in over twenty-four hours. He was tired, he was irritable, and now he was getting frustrated.

An officer had called to tell him that going to the homes of the two criminals had yielded no arrests. It was possible that they had been tipped off. The plan had been to detain their family members to draw them out. He wondered just how many of his officers took bribes.

So far, all he had was Chucks, who clearly knew nothing of the girl’s murder, and the two names the crook had given up. He had never heard of them. On another day that wouldn’t have mattered: being in possession of the stolen vehicle involved in the crime would have been enough to charge Chucks with the murder and parade him to the press as an example of the police doing their job of apprehending criminals – ritual killers included. But this was different. This had made it onto CNN and that damned British journalist had witnessed it. He had also witnessed the murder of a detainee. That’s what he would call it when he reported it: Nigerian Police Kill Defenceless Suspect in Cell. It wouldn’t matter that the boy was a member of a notorious gang of armed robbers and possibly a killer himself. Armed robbery carries the death penalty in Nigeria. The boy would have been executed anyway, but that wouldn’t matter to Mr Guy Collins of the BBC.

What was Amaka’s part in all this? She was going to make him regret being so nice to her and giving her so much freedom.

There was also the small matter of the police commissioner who kept calling for updates. Does the man even sleep?

Thank God he had one more lead to follow. He called his station and left instructions for the men of operation Fire-for-Fire to be ready to move when he returned. A convoy of armoured vehicles arrived on Catch-Fire’s street, lights flashing, sirens screaming, and tyres screeching. They blocked off the road by parking zigzag across it. The men took positions behind their vehicles and aimed their guns at the building.

Ibrahim had a bulletproof vest over his shirt. He had armed himself with an Uzi sub-machine gun and the men awaited his command.

A generator was humming in the background. The air smelt of carbide. Spent shells lay scattered on the road, and two dead bodies were sprawled in the doorway of the building. At their feet, two black dogs sat as if guarding the carnage.

The beasts growled at the men, stood, and barked, digging their front paws into the ground and pulling their muscular bodies backwards ready to charge.

Ibrahim pointed to Hot-Temper then to the dogs. The sergeant fired two shots from his Kalashnikov.

Ibrahim held his hand out for a megaphone. ‘This is the Nigeria Police. Come out with your hands on your heads and you will not be hurt. This is your first and final warning.’

One of the dogs whimpered on its back and kicked the air with its hind leg. Ibrahim handed back the megaphone and cocked his Uzi. He fired off a bust of bullets punching holes into the dead bodies on the ground and making them jolt like they still had life in them.

Moments later, the door opened. The men got ready to shoot. A girl walked out with her hands raised above her head. She was young, barefoot, and wearing hot pants and a black bra. Sweat had glued strands of her hair to her forehead and neck. She slowly walked towards the men. Others followed behind her.

‘What is this?’ Ibrahim said. Where were the gunmen? Was this a whorehouse? Had they come to the wrong address?

‘To your knees,’ Hot-Temper said, gesturing with the barrel of his gun. Officers surrounded them.

Ibrahim waved and Hot-Temper led the men into the house.

‘What happened here?’ Ibrahim asked the girls. Nobody answered. He tried to make eye contact but they looked away. One girl had clearly been crying. A cloth, wet with blood, was wrapped around her hand. He pointed to her. ‘You, stand up. Come here.’

The girl shifted her weight from one knee to the other then turned her gaze the other way.

‘Bring her.’

Two officers slung their rifles back and stepped through the throng of girls to fetch her. The rest of the girls stood up and surrounded their friend. They ignored the guns now held with renewed vigour to their faces. On the command to ‘stay down,’ they began to protest in a dialect none of the men understood.

‘Leave them,’ Ibrahim said. Other officers were already handing their guns to colleagues to go join in quelling the riot.

Ibrahim handed his Uzi to an officer beside him. He undid the Velcro straps on his body armour and pulled the heavy suit off his head. The officer took it. With the girls still watching, he removed the pistol in his holster and handed it to the officer, then spread his hands and stepped closer to them. ‘Ladies, the police
are your friends. We are only here to help. I am only concerned because she’s wounded. Is anybody else wounded?’

‘We are fine,’ one of the girls said.

‘What is your name?’

‘Cecilia.’

The other girls watched her. They let her speak for them.

‘OK, Cecilia, what happened here tonight? Who did all this?’

‘Armed robbers.’

‘Armed robbers? What did they steal?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘Where are you from, Cecilia?’

‘From Lagos.’

‘I don’t think so. I think you are from Togo. Do you have papers to live in Nigeria?’

She eyed him, hissed, and looked away.

‘I can arrange papers for you, and your friends.’

‘We no need papers, we are not illegal. We are from Lagos.’

‘Is that right? Where in Lagos are you from?’

‘Surulere, here.’

‘And who is the President of Nigeria?’

With the corner of her eyes, she scanned him from his toes to his eyes then back to his toes, like a confident wrestler sizing up a mismatched opponent. She let out a long loud hiss, crossed her arms over her breasts and looked away.

‘Cecilia, I just want to talk to that girl. I don’t have any problem with you. I just want to talk to her then I’ll leave with my men.’

‘What do you want to ask her?’

‘I would like to ask her myself.’

She looked at him, taking him all in with a single roll of her eyeballs.

‘Please,’ Ibrahim said.

She turned to the girls. ‘Joy. Come.’

Joy stepped out of the protection of her friends. She stopped by Cecilia and looked at her feet.

‘Joy, are you OK?’ Ibrahim asked.

‘Yes, sir.’

‘Joy, we are here to help you. Who did this to you?’

‘I don’t know, sir.’

‘Do you know Catch-Fire?’

She looked at Cecilia who shook her head.

‘Is he dead? Did they kill him?’

Her eyes turned cloudy and she began to sniff.

Ibrahim stepped forward and put his arms around her, careful not to touch her bandaged arm. He held her to his chest and patted her on the back. ‘It is OK,’ he said, ‘it is OK.’

‘It is Chief.’ She began to say. Cecilia stepped forward but the officers quickly grabbed her and dragged her away.

Ibrahim held Joy’s hand and walked with her away from the other girls. Cecilia shouted something in their language. Joy turned to look back but Ibrahim gently encouraged her on with his arm. Two officers followed them holding their guns ready, their eyes darting around.

‘Tell me what happened.’

Tears fell down the girl’s cheeks. He pulled out his handkerchief and dabbed her face. ‘It is OK. I am here. Everything will be OK. Who is Chief?’

‘Chief, he sent his boys to kill our oga. They came with many men and they started to shoot everybody.’

‘Catch-Fire, is that your oga?’

‘Yes, sir.’

‘Where is he now?’

‘They took him away.’

‘Why did Chief send people to kill him?’

She looked back at the rest of the girls. Cecilia was struggling with two officers trying to force her to her knees. The other girls stayed down under the guns trained on them. ‘Oga said it is because of their business.’

‘What business?’

‘They do human ritual business together.’

Ibrahim paused and took a deep breath. ‘Do you know the Chief’s name?’ he asked.

‘Yes. His name is Chief Amadi. Chief Ebenezer Amadi.’

He stopped walking and stared at her. Her hands flew up to shield her face. He looked back at the officers following them. Perhaps they hadn’t heard her.

‘I’m not going to hurt you,’ he said. He checked on the officers. ‘You and your friends must leave Lagos tonight. If anybody asks you, you don’t know any Catch-Fire or any Chief Amadi. Do you understand? If you don’t want to be arrested and deported, you must leave Lagos tonight. OK?’

I was nodding, pretending to understand what a sloshed older friend of Gabriel was saying when Amaka placed her hands on my shoulders from behind and said ‘Time to leave.’ It was almost midnight. Had she found the man she came for? I wanted to tell her about my conversation with Gabriel but I decided against it. In silence, we found her car and in silence, she drove us back to VI.

She pulled up in front of the hotel lobby and left the engine idling. It hurt that she wasn’t staying. I didn’t get out.

‘Aunty Baby called,’ she said. ‘The meeting has been set for two p.m. I’ll pick you up at one thirty.’

‘What do you hope to achieve by meeting him? You don’t even know if he’s the killer.’

‘I already told you. He was on my ‘Don’t Go With’ list, and then yesterday a girl calls because her girlfriend hasn’t returned. And whose plate number does she give me? His. It’s too much of a coincidence.’

‘Fair enough, but do you expect him to simply confess to you?’

‘No. I’m not stupid. I have a plan.’

‘What’s your plan?’

‘I need to get close to him first.’

‘That’s your plan? To get close to him? Then what?’

‘It’s late, Guy, I need to get some sleep.’

Perhaps it was better to wait until the morning to try to change her mind. I considered leaning over to kiss her goodnight. She wasn’t even looking at me. I got out of the car and shut the door.

I crawled under the duvet. We had not let the cleaners in so the sheets still smelt of her perfume. I pulled a pillow into my arms and hugged it.

I was slowly shutting down. Flavio’s words kept repeating in my head: ‘Girls like a man who has a talent. What is your talent?’ I did have one talent, or maybe it’s more of a skill. I was a darn good researcher. I could find enough material off the web to flesh out any story I was working on. I had perfected the skill at work when deadlines loomed after boozy nights. In the morning, I was going to dig deeper into this ritual killing thing. I was going to learn as much as there was to learn and I was going to impress her with the story I would write. In the space between waking and sleeping, with the latter gaining in the tussle, a thought flourished unchallenged, and emboldened itself into a truth: what if Amaka had only slept with me to get me to do her bidding?

My mind, slowly shutting down, dwelled on this. I thought everything over: how her towel slipped, the kiss in the elevator, how we ended up in bed, what she said afterwards, how she said it. How she wouldn’t let me kiss her in public at News Café, how she dropped me off knowing that I would be here waiting to take instructions from her in the morning…

I woke up to my head throbbing with a light hangover and then recalled the night’s drinking session with Gabriel. I’d bought a packet of maximum-strength Ibuprofen at Heathrow. The thought of searching my bags for it made my head hurt even more. I made myself a coffee and checked the time. Twelve thirty. I still had
an hour before she turned up. I powered up my laptop and lit a cigarette. She would find me working on her story and see how seriously I was taking it.

Habitually, I opened up my emails. The ten latest messages were from my boss. I’d forgotten all about him. The last message was ten minutes old. I read the subject header in his voice: ‘Where the hell are you?’

As I opened it, I felt a familiar anxiety that reminded me of my working day back in London. The Walrus was not the most pleasant of men. There was no telling what would set off his temper. Not replying to his emails within minutes was one of the triggers. At least I was not in the open-plan office where he had reduced many colleagues to tears. What was the worst he could do over the internet?

The first sentence was, as I expected, a prologue to justify what would come next: ‘Guy, this is the twentieth email I have sent to you in the past twelve hours that you have chosen to ignore.’ I didn’t bother reading further. I picked up the phone by the bed, dialled zero, and asked the operator to put an international call through.

‘Hello?’ the Walrus said.

‘This is Guy.’ I braced for the assault.

‘Guy. Where the hell have you been? What happened to your phone? Where are you calling from?’

‘I’m at the hotel.’

‘I called the hotel. They said you checked out. What the fuck is going on?’

‘I lost my phone.’

‘You lost your phone? And it did not occur to you to get a new one or send an email to the office?’

‘I was going to do that just now.’

‘So, what the hell have you been doing? Sitting on your arse? Do you know how much it costs to have you out there? I spoke to your guide, Ade. He’s been trying to get in touch with you. Have you spoken to him?’

I’d forgotten about him. ‘No.’

‘When he couldn’t get in touch with you, he was intelligent enough to call me.’

‘He’s been in Abuja since I arrived,’ I said.

‘He’s back in Lagos but how would you know if you’ve made yourself incommunicado?’ He was doing the thing he did in the office when he spoke slowly as if talking to an imbecile whose brain could not process normal speech.

‘I’ve been working on a story.’

‘What story? Ade told me there is no story. The election is going to be free and fair. UN observers are going to be all over it. There’s not going to be any rigging and no riots, so there’s no story, just boring stuff. He also said he can’t guarantee your safety; I can’t blame him if it’s going to be like having a kid running wild in the circus. I’ve hired him to cover the damn thing. As far as I’m concerned your assignment is over. Sally will arrange your flight for tonight. She’ll send you the details. Check your email and be on that flight. This has been a bloody waste of money.’ He ended the call.

I had called his mobile thus denying him the joy of slamming the phone down on me. I wondered if I should give it a few minutes then call him back. I couldn’t leave Nigeria. Not now. But if I wasn’t on that flight, I might not have a job to go back to. I couldn’t afford that either.

I looked through the rest of my emails and saw that Mel had
sent me something. I realised it was the longest time I’d gone without thinking about her since our break-up. I double clicked and questioned my sense of expectation. It was a group email, something about saving London’s Africa Centre. I studied the other people copied in; their email addresses all started with G.

Someone knocked. It had to be Amaka. I closed one eye to look through the peephole all the same. She walked in, taller in black stilettos. She was in a black leather skirt that rode high above her knees and a bare-shoulder purple silk top with straps so thin you could hardly see them.

‘Hi,’ she said. She went to my computer and started typing. ‘He wants to meet over lunch. I’ve been doing some digging around. It appears more than one girl has gone missing with him.’

‘How did you find out?’ Had she slept at all?

‘I called some older girls. But that’s not all, I also talked to some business contacts I bumped into at the party – people who know him. I told them I was raising money for my charity and someone had recommended him.’

‘And what did they say?’

‘Nobody knows how he made his money. He’s been trying to join Ikoyi Club for a while but they’ve always snubbed him.’

‘I thought Aunty Baby said he was a member?’

‘Well, he isn’t. To join, a number of members must recommend you and you have to be above a certain level at work, be director of a listed company, be above a certain rank in the armed forces, something like that. They’re very careful who they take. No one knows what he does for a living or how he became so rich, so no one is willing to risk their reputation recommending him. He goes to the club often, though, posing as a member. He probably has friends who are members who sign him in.’

‘But you still have no evidence that he was involved in the girl’s murder.’

‘I don’t but he’s obviously into something illegal. It could be drugs, he could be laundering money from some people, it could be anything. A bank MD I spoke to tried to convince me not to see him.’

I wanted to tell her that Gabriel shared the MD’s sentiments. ‘Why?’

‘Well, he just said the man is not right for my charity. He was uneasy when I said I was meeting him today.’

‘Maybe we shouldn’t go, then. I mean, that sounds like a warning.’

‘And that is precisely why I am going. The MD is a traditional chief as well. He’s involved in the occult. I’m thinking he might know something about him and that might be the reason he doesn’t like the idea of me mixing with him. These people know each other.’

‘Occult? You mean another ritual killer?’

‘Oh no,’ she laughed. ‘He’s a member of the Ogboni. It’s more like a fraternity. It’s a Yoruba traditional secret society, a bit like the Freemasons. People say they practice black magic but I wouldn’t know. The fact that he didn’t want me to associate with Amadi makes me even more suspicious.’

‘I really don’t like this, Amaka.’

‘You don’t have to. Listen, I’ve just changed my email password to your name, Guy Collins, one word. I always email myself all the information I get. My database, pictures, movie clips, it’s all in there. I’ve left my webmail open.’

‘Why are you telling me this?’

‘I’ve always thought that someone else should have access to it. Just in case.’

‘In case what?’

‘Just in case. Anyway, you need the information to write your article. I have to go now. Stay in the room, I might need to reach you on the phone.’

‘Where are you going?’

‘I told you, to have lunch with him.’

‘I thought we were going together?’

‘It’s better that I go alone.’

‘Dressed like that?’

She glanced at me. ‘What do you mean? What are you insinuating?’

‘Nothing, Amaka. Look, I really don’t think this is a good idea. At least let me come with you.’

‘I have to do this alone. Your part is to tell the story. And besides, nobody must be able to link us to one another. Do you understand?’

‘But what do you expect to achieve by going to see him?’

‘I told you, I don’t know. We’ll just have to wait and see.’

She got up to leave. I watched her walking away and decided I had to tell her how I felt. I caught up with her and held her by the arm. ‘Amaka, I don’t want you to go because I care for you.’

She stopped but she did not turn round. ‘You care for me?’

‘Yes. I do. I really do.’

‘And why would that be?’

I didn’t have an answer. ‘I just do. And I don’t want to see you get hurt.’

‘Hurt? By who, you or the person I’m going to see?’

‘You know what I mean, Amaka. I think you’re really in over your head with this one. You don’t have to do this. This man might be dangerous. Amaka, what I’m trying to say is…’ The
timing was wrong. ‘Look, I don’t know how I got involved in this mess but all I know is that there are evil people out there and this guy might be one of them.’

She turned her head sideways and looked at me from the corner of her eye. ‘You got involved in this mess, as you put it, because you went out looking for black pussy, remember? Well, congratulations, you’ve had one. Don’t tell me you care for me. You don’t know me and I don’t know you. You will return to your girlfriend in England, and then what?’

I shook my head. ‘Amaka, it’s not like that.’

She turned to face me. ‘No? And how is it? Tell me? How is it? All I am to you is some black adventure. I know your type. You people come here thinking you can just tell a girl that you care for her and she’ll melt into your arms – as if you’re doing her some kind of favour. I don’t want to regret what happened between us. Please, don’t make me.’

She left, leaving me stunned. Where did all that come from? I knew I shouldn’t have told her about Melissa, but what the hell? I couldn’t worry about that now though, because more importantly she had just left to go and meet a potential killer. I had to do something.

I went through my inbox searching for an email. I found it and used the phone in the room to call the number I knew it would contain.

‘Hello? Ade? It’s me, Guy.’

‘Guy? You are still in Nigeria?’

‘Yes. I’m at the hotel. I need to see you now.’

He asked for my room number.

‘Don’t leave the room,’ he said. ‘I’m coming now.’

I wondered how much I would have to tell him.