Nemesis (32 page)

‘
Baksheesh
?’ Harry screamed down the phone. ‘What the hell is
baksheesh
?’

‘Slush fund,’ Øystein said. ‘No one lifts a finger in this damned country without slush.’

‘Fuck!’ Harry kicked the table in front of the mirror. The telephone slid off the table and the receiver was tugged out of his hand.

‘Hello? Are you there, Harry?’ the phone on the floor crackled. Harry felt like leaving it where it was. Going away. Or putting on a Metallica record at full blast. One of the old ones.

‘Don’t go to pieces now, Harry!’ the voice squeaked.

Harry bent down with a straight neck and picked up the receiver. ‘Sorry, Øystein. How much did you say they wanted?’

‘Twenty thousand Egyptian. Forty thousand Norwegian. Then I’ll get the client served on a silver platter, they said.’

‘They’re screwing us, Øystein.’

‘Of course they are. Do we want the client or not?’

‘Money’s on its way. Make sure you get a receipt, OK?’

Harry lay in bed staring at the ceiling as he waited for the triple dose of painkillers to kick in. The last thing he saw before tumbling into the darkness was a boy sitting up above, dangling his legs and looking down at him.

F
RED
B
AUGESTAD HAD A HANGOVER
. H
E WAS THIRTY-ONE
years old, divorced and worked on Statfjord B oil rig as a roughneck. It was hard work and there was not a sniff of beer while he was on the job, but the money was great, there was a TV in your room, gourmet food and best of all: three weeks on, four weeks off. Some travelled home to their wives and gawped at the walls, some drove taxis or built houses so as not to go mad with boredom and some did what Fred did: went to a hot country and tried to drink themselves to death. Now and again, he wrote a postcard to Karmøy, his daughter, or ‘the baby’ as he still called her even though she was ten. Or was it eleven? Anyway, that was the only contact he still had with the Continental mainland, and that was enough. The last time he had spoken with his father, he had complained about Fred’s mother being arrested for pinching biscuits from Rimi supermarket again. ‘I pray for her,’ his father had said and wondered if Fred had a Norwegian Bible with him where he was. ‘The Book is as indispensable as breakfast, Dad,’ Fred had answered. Which was true, as Fred never ate before lunch when he was in d’Ajuda. Unless you consider
caipirinhas
food. Which was a question of definition since
he poured at least four spoonfuls of sugar in every cocktail. Fred Baugestad drank
caipirinhas
because they were genuinely bad. In Europe the drink had an undeservedly good reputation as it was made with rum or vodka instead of
cachaça –
the raw bitter Brazilian
aguardente
distilled from sugar cane, which made the drinking of
caipirinhas
the penitent act Fred claimed it was meant to be. Both Fred’s grandfathers had been alcoholics, and with that kind of genetic make-up he thought it was best to err on the safe side and drink something which was so bad he could never become dependent on it.

Today he had dragged himself to Muhammed’s at twelve and taken an espresso and brandy before slowly walking back in the quivering heat along the narrow pitted gravel track between the small, low, relatively white houses. The house he and Roger rented was one of the less white houses. The plaster was chipped, and inside, the grey untreated walls were so permeated by the damp wind blowing in off the Atlantic that you could taste the pungent wall smell by sticking out your tongue. But then, why would you do that, Fred mused. The house was good enough. Three bedrooms, two mattresses, one refrigerator and one stove. Plus a sofa and a tabletop on two Leca blocks in the room they defined as the sitting room since it had an almost square hole in the wall which they called a window. True enough, they should have cleaned up a bit more often – the kitchen was infested with yellow fire ants capable of a terrifying bite – but Fred didn’t often go there after the refrigerator was moved to the sitting room. He was lying on the sofa planning his next move of the day when Roger came in.

‘Where have you been?’ Fred asked.

‘At the chemist in Porto,’ Roger said with a smile which went right the way round his broad, blotchy head. ‘You won’t fucking believe what they sell over the counter there. You can get things you can’t even get a prescription for in Norway.’ He emptied the contents of a plastic bag and began to read the labels aloud.

‘Three milligrams of Benzodiazepine. Two milligrams of Flunitrazepam. Shit, we’re practically talking Rohypnol!’

Fred didn’t answer.

‘Bad?’ Roger effervesced. ‘Haven’t you had anything to eat yet?’

‘
Não.
Just a coffee at Muhammed’s. By the way, there was some mysterious guy in there asking Muhammed about Lev.’

Roger’s head shot up from the pharmaceutical items. ‘About Lev? What did he look like?’

‘Tall. Blond. Blue eyes. Sounded Norwegian.’

‘Fuck me, don’t frighten me like that, Fred.’ Roger resumed his reading.

‘What do you mean?’

‘Let me put it this way. If he’d been tall, dark and thin, it would have been time to leave d’Ajuda. And the western hemisphere for that matter. Did he look like a cop?’

‘What do cops look like?’

‘They . . . forget it, oil man.’

‘He looked like a boozer. I know what they look like.’

‘OK. May be a pal of Lev’s. Shall we help him?’

Fred shook his head. ‘Lev said he lives here totally in . . . incog . . . something Latin meaning secret. Muhammed pretended he’d never heard of Lev. The guy will find Lev if Lev wants him to.’

‘I was kidding. Where is Lev, incidentally? I haven’t seen him for several weeks.’

‘Last I heard, he was going to Norway,’ Fred said, slowly raising his head.

‘Maybe he robbed a bank and got caught,’ Roger said and smiled at the thought. Not because he wanted Lev to be caught, but because the thought of robbing banks always made him smile. He himself had done it three times, and it had given him a big kick every time. Fair enough, they were caught the first two times, but the third time they did everything right. When he described the coup, he usually omitted to mention the lucky circumstance that the surveillance cameras had been temporarily out of service, but nevertheless the rewards had allowed him to enjoy his otium – and from time to time his opium – here in d’Ajuda.

The beautiful little village lay to the south of Porto Seguro and until recently had housed the Continent’s largest collection of wanted individuals south of Bogotá. It had begun in the seventies when d’Ajuda became a rallying point for hippies and travellers who lived off gambling and selling home-made jewellery and body decorations in Europe during the summer months. They meant welcome extra income for d’Ajuda and, by and large, didn’t bother anyone, so the two Brazilian families who in principle owned all the trade and industry in the village came to an understanding with the local Chief of Police, as a result of which a blind eye was turned to the smoking of marijuana on the beach, in cafés, in the growing number of bars and, as time went on, in the streets and anywhere at all.

There was one problem, however: the fines given to tourists for smoking marijuana and breaking other rather unknown laws were, as in other places, an important source of income for the police, who were paid a pittance by the state. So that the lucrative tourist business and the police could coexist in harmony, the two families had to provide the police with alternative secure earnings. This started with an American sociologist and his Argentinian boyfriend, who were responsible for the local production and sale of marijuana, being forced to pay a commission to the Chief of Police for protection and a guaranteed monopoly – in other words potential competitors were promptly arrested and delivered to the federal police with all due pomp and ceremony. Money trickled into the pockets of the few local police officers and everything was hunky-dory until three Mexicans offered to pay a higher commission, and one Sunday morning the American and the Argentinian were delivered to the federal police with all due pomp and ceremony in the market square in front of the post office. Nevertheless, the efficient market-regulated system for the buying and selling of protection continued to flourish, and soon d’Ajuda was full of wanted criminals from all corners of the world who could be sure of a relatively safe existence for a price way below what they would have to pay in Pattaya or many other places. However, in the eighties this beautiful and hitherto
almost untouched jewel of nature with long beaches, red sunsets and excellent marijuana was discovered by the tourist vultures – the backpackers. They streamed to d’Ajuda in large numbers, with a determination to consume, which meant that the two families in the town had to reassess the economic viability of d’Ajuda as a camp for fugitives from the law. As the snug, dark bars were converted into diving equipment hire shops, and the café where the locals had danced their lambada in the old way began to arrange ‘Wild-Wild-Moon party’ nights, the police had to undertake lightning raids on the small white houses with increasing frequency and drive the wildly protesting captives off to the square. But it was still safer for a lawbreaker to be in d’Ajuda than in many other places in the world, even though paranoia had crept under everyone’s skin, not just Roger’s.

That was why there was also room for a man like Muhammed Ali in d’Ajuda’s food chain. The main justification for his existence was that he had a strategic observation post in the square where the bus from Porto Seguro had its terminus. From behind the counter in his open
ahwa
Muhammed had a full view of everything that happened in d’Ajuda’s sole, sun-baked, cobblestoned
plaza
. When new buses arrived he stopped serving coffee and putting Brazilian tobacco – a poor replacement for his home-grown
m’aasil
– in the hookah, in order to check over the new arrivals and spot possible police officers or bounty hunters. If his unerring nose placed anyone in the former category, he immediately sounded the alarm. The alarm was a kind of subscription arrangement whereby those who paid the monthly charge were phoned or had a message pinned to their door by the small, fleet-footed Paulinho. Muhammed also had a personal reason for keeping an eye on incoming buses. When he and Rosalita fled from her husband and Rio, he hadn’t a moment’s doubt what awaited them if the spurned party found out where they were. You could have simple murders carried out for a couple of hundred
dollars if you went to the
favelas
of Rio or São Paulo, but even an experienced professional hit man didn’t take more than two to three thousand dollars plus expenses for a search-and-destroy job, and it had been a buyers’ market for the last ten years. On top of that, there was a bulk discount for couples.

Sometimes people Muhammed had marked out as bounty hunters walked straight into his
ahwa
. For appearance’s sake, they ordered a coffee, and at a suitable point down the coffee cup, they asked the inevitable question: Do-you-know-where-my-friend-such-and-such-lives? or Do-you-know-the-man-in-this-picture? I-owe-him-some-money. In such cases, Muhammed received a supplementary fee if his stock answer (‘I saw him take the bus to Porto Seguro with a big suitcase two days ago,
senhor
’) resulted in the bounty hunter leaving again on the first bus.

When the tall, blond man in the creased linen suit, with the white bandage around his neck, put a bag and a Playstation carrier bag on the counter, wiped the sweat off his brow and ordered a coffee in English, Muhammed could smell a few extra
reais
on top of the fixed fee. It wasn’t the man who aroused his instincts, though; it was the woman with him. She might just as well have written
POLICE
across her forehead.

Harry scanned the bar. Apart from him, Beate and the Arab behind the counter, there were three people in the café. Two backpackers and a tourist of the more down-at-heel variety, apparently nursing a serious hangover. Harry’s neck was killing him. He looked at his watch. It was twenty hours since they had left Oslo. Oleg had rung, the Tetris record was beaten and Harry had managed to buy a Namco G-Con 45 at the computer-game shop in Heathrow before flying on to Recife. They had taken a propeller plane to Porto Seguro. Outside the airport he had negotiated what was probably a crazy price with a taxi driver, who drove them to a ferry to take them to the d’Ajuda side where a bus jolted them the last few kilometres.

It was twenty-four hours since he had been sitting in the visitors’ room explaining to Raskol that he needed another 40,000 kroner for the Egyptians. Raskol had explained to him that Muhammed Ali’s
ahwa
wasn’t in Porto Seguro but a village nearby.

‘D’Ajuda,’ Raskol had said with a big smile. ‘I know a couple of boys living there.’

The Arab looked at Beate, who shook her head, before putting the cup of coffee in front of Harry. It was strong and bitter.

‘Muhammed,’ Harry said and saw the man behind the counter stiffen. ‘You are Muhammed, right?’

The Arab swallowed. ‘Who’s asking?’

‘A friend.’ Harry put his right hand inside his jacket and saw the panic on the dark-skinned face. ‘Lev’s little brother is trying to get hold of him.’ Harry pulled out one of the photographs Beate had found at Trond’s and put it on the counter.

Muhammed closed his eyes for a second. His lips seemed to be mumbling a silent prayer of gratitude.

The photograph showed two boys. The taller of the two was wearing a red quilted jacket. He was laughing and had put a friendly arm around the other one, who smiled shyly at the camera.

‘I don’t know whether Lev has mentioned his little brother,’ Harry said. ‘His name’s Trond.’

Muhammed picked up the photograph and studied it.

‘Hm,’ he said, scratching his beard. ‘I’ve never seen either of them. And I’ve never heard of anyone called Lev, either. I know most people around here.’

He gave the photograph to Harry, who returned it to his inside pocket and drained the coffee cup. ‘We have to find a place to stay, Muhammed. Then we’ll be back. Have a little think in the meantime.’