Blood is Dirt

2

Bagado didn’t show for the evening sitting-around session. He had a sick daughter and a wife who’d had to take to the streets selling live chickens from a calabash. Life was getting hard for him. All the money he earned went straight out into the extended family, and worse than that-there just wasn’t enough for his brain to chew on.

If I hadn’t heard from Napier Briggs by the close of business I was going to go round to the Hotel du Lac and try and necklock him into being a client, even a nonpaying client. Maybe we could do something on a commission basis for him like those ambulance-chasing lawyers do. Us, desperate? Forget it.

I turned the light out to save on electricity and hobbled out on to the balcony to see if I could hook any other passing suckers who’d want help from a couple of strapped PIs working from a stripped-down cell in a dog-poo coloured apartment block at the epicentre of Cotonou’s pollution.

I hobbled because I’d had gout. A bad bout of it, but I was coming out the other end. Sympathy had been low on the ground-with lepers on the street it tended to be. I tried telling people it was the purine in anchovies and sardines rather than a weekly intake of a bottle of … what’s the point, you wouldn’t believe me anyway.

I sniffed the air over Cotonou and caught the usual gagging mix of sea breath, rubbish, drains, grilled kebabs all wrapped in a heady concoction of diesel and two-stroke fumes. Yeah, the bicycles have gone and we’ve been overrun by a million mopeds. Marxism is finished.

We had the Francophonie conference here at the end of last year and they stripped the place down, repainted it, repaired the roads and introduced mobile phones. In three months the Beninois became capitalists.

The transition wasn’t completed without pain. The economy, in the jaws of the free market, was given a kick in the pants by the French who devalued the CFA franc by a hundred per cent to one hundred CFA to one French franc. The whimpering is still going on. Imports are hellishly expensive, trips to France are out, supporting kids in school in Europe is painful; on the other hand, exports are cheap. But who gives a damn about that if the wife can’t afford twelve metres of Dutch Wax African print to adorn her body? No one.

I dragged myself back inside and called Heike-my English/German girlfriend, the one who towed me out of the desert all those years ago, the one who works as a latterday saint for a German NGO1 aid agency – to see if my priapic driver Moses’s blood-test results had come through. He’d been sick for a month and a half and my toe had been through hell on the brake pedal. Heike had persuaded him to go and see a doctor last week and it had been like a child’s first day at school.

The receptionist told me that Heike had left the office, and the blood tests hadn’t come through.

I sat in the dark and listened to the radio playing Africando from the tailor’s shack across the street until it seemed like the time to close up for the night and get down to the Hotel du Lac to see if Napier was in pieces yet and needed gluing.

It was a thick, hot night and the stench in the stairwell from the overflowing sceptic tank added a ripeness that had the mosquitoes dancing for blood. I hacked through it and folded myself into my battered Peugeot estate which was so old and decrepit that I’d quite often been mistaken for a bush taxi on the open road.

The mopeds were out in force and their blue exhaust had been changed into a sickly orange by the streetlighting. People were sitting on the first-floor verandah of the redecorated La Caravelle cafe. They were drinking and trying to stay alive in the small pockets of air still available. Some Lebanese lads with baseball caps on back to front hung over the balcony rail looking at a couple of policemen wrestling with a Nigerian street hawker. A huge diesel locomotive, pushing a line of open wagons, honked and grumbled between the stationary cars and trucks on its way across the lagoon. I turned left, overtook it without disappearing into the usual two-foot-deep Peugeot trap, and crossed the lagoon. The dayglo sign of the Hotel du Lac was easily visible from the bridge, as was the scaffolding on its side. I turned right past the Hotel Pacific, which seemed a long way from home, and parked up behind the hotel. The mosquitoes were screaming out here and I was all over myself like a flea-ridden dog.

I walked by the pool and down the steps to the well-lit bar in the front. There were hunched people in there and a po-faced barman scraping foam off the pressions with a throat spatula.

‘Looking for me?’ asked Napier, jiggling something amber in my face from his side-saddle position on his bar stool. He nearly launched himself on to the floor and was only saved by the boniness of his elbow on the lip of the bar.

‘This isn’t one of my usual haunts.’

‘You’re a drinking man then?’

‘It has been known.’

‘What’ll it be?’

‘A beer.’

‘One of these to chase?’

‘I’ve never said no.’

The barman settled the drinks and I backed up on to a stool. A woman eyed us coolly from the other side of the bar.

‘I told her to fuck off before she even got her bum up on the stool,’ said Napier.

‘You’re learning, but it pays to be polite here. It’s the French in them.’

‘Couldn’t get any life into the old boy even if I wanted to.’

‘Anxious,’ I said, and we drank.

‘No,’ said Napier, squeezing his lips with his fist. ‘Fucking petrified.’

‘Petrified?’

“Swat I said.’

‘Have you heard something?’

‘What’s it to you?

‘I’m sitting next to you in a bar. That’s what people do. Tell each other what’s on their minds.’

‘What’s on your mind?’

‘Money. I want to make some.’

‘Out of me?’

‘If there’s any to be made.’

‘Do you mind getting killed?’

‘It’s not high on my list of goals.’

‘You have goals?’

‘No, it was just something to say.’

‘I had goals,’ he said, sniffing at his Scotch and then taking a pull of beer.

‘What happened?’

‘I scored too many in my own net.’

‘Don’t get maudlin on me, Napier.’

‘I thought we could say what was on our minds.’

‘You cheated. You were going to tell me why you were petrified. You lost some money. That’s worrying but it doesn’t make you scared. You asked me if I minded getting killed. Who’s going to kill me if I stick my nose in?’

Napier waggled his finger at the barman. Two more grandes pressions arrived and two more Red Labels. He lit a Camel. The phone rang in the hotel.

‘Gardez l'écoute,’ said the receptionist.

A short fat fellow came into the bar from the hotel and held up a finger. ‘M. Napier. Téléphone.’

Napier squirmed off his stool and leaned back for his cigarettes in case it was a long one.

‘Keep my beer warm,’ he said, and let me know how drunk he was by pinballing his way out of our tight corner before getting on the straight and narrow.

He was back in ten minutes, looking frisky and not half as drunk as he had been. He hopped up on to the bar stool and clapped me on the back. I didn’t like the turnaround in mood, especially as it looked as if it was going to involve me.

‘Still wanna make some money, Bruce?’

‘Not if I’ve got to lay down my life for it,’ I said.

‘You can’t take it with you, Napier, remember that.’

‘Sure I do,’ he said and socked back the chaser. ‘That was them on the phone.’

‘Who’s them?’

‘They said there’s been a mistake.’

‘That’s big of them. Who’s they?’

‘They said they want to give me my money back.’

‘Why should they suddenly want to do a thing like that?’

‘I don’t know …’ he said, without letting his confidence falter, before he remembered not to lie. Pressure.’

‘Tell me about the kind of person who can exert that kind of pressure.’

‘Well, you know, like you say, you meet people. You tell them what’s on your mind. Sometimes they help you. Sometimes they don’t even have to be asked. You coming?’

‘Napier, you’re going to have to tell me what you’re talking about.’

‘I want you to hold my hand.’

‘That’s not …’

‘I’ll give you five. No. I’ll give you ten thousand … dollars.’

‘What’s wrong with your hand?’

‘Nothing you’re going to catch.’

‘I don’t know about that,’ I said, and drained the first grande pression and started in on the second. ‘Let’s get this straight. The gang that stole your money from your UK bank account have called you here in your luxurious Beninois hotel and have volunteered to give you your money back. In cash. In dollars.’

He nodded.

Ten hours ago you came into my office so frazzled you wouldn’t even tell me their shoe size. Half an hour ago you tell me you’re petrified … seem to think your death is required in all this. Ten minutes ago you get a phone call and you’ve kissed and made up. Now you want me to hold your hand out there in the dark. What annoys me, Napier, what you have to tell me right now is-do I look that much of a sucker?’

He nodded.

‘You’re on your own,’ I said, and stood up to finish the beer.

‘No, no, Bruce. Sorry. I didn’t mean that. What I meant was that if I start telling you what it’s all about we’re going to be here until six in the morning and the meeting is at nine tonight. There just isn’t the time to fill you in. You’ve got twenty minutes to say “yes” and get me there. But look, what I can tell you is that the person gave me a name. The name of a very powerful man who has guaranteed the handover and my personal safety.’

‘What about mine?’

‘Yours too.’

‘What the hell do you need me for?’

‘How do you get a moped taxi to stop in this town?’

‘You shout kekeno. It’s Fon for “stop”.’

‘Now you don’t want me to get on the back of a moped with two million dollars in a suitcase, do you?’

‘I’m your chauffeur,’ I said, getting it. Napier laughed.

‘If you like.’

Since when have you paid your chauffeur ten thousand bucks for a night’s work?’

‘As a matter of fact this is the first time,’ he said, and socked back the chaser.

What’s the name of your guarantor?’

‘You don’t need to know and you don’t want to know.’

‘Maybe I’d like to know. See if he’s on my party list. Get an invitation to him for my next one. If he’s this powerful I could use him in my business.’

Napier got another Camel under way and used his thumb to get an imaginary plank out of his own eye.

‘The less you know about this the better. You help me. You take your money. We never see each other again.’ ‘Just as we were getting beyond the small-talk stage, getting to know each other a bit …’

‘Nobody knows me, Bruce, least of all myself. Time’s short. Are you in or out?’

‘Where’s the meet?’

‘Are you in or out?’

‘Why do you think I’m asking?’

‘That’s not a yes and it’s not a no.’

‘It means if we’re meeting in a private room in the Sheraton it’s a “yes''. If we’re meeting in an empty warehouse in the industrial zone it’s a big “no''. There are places to do these kind of things. I did one of these out in the bush in the Côte d’Ivoire and nearly found myself as dead as the guy I was supposed to be meeting.’

‘In a coconut grove opposite the Hotel Croix du Sud. They tell me there’s a bit of beach there where people go for picnics at the weekend.’

‘Harmless enough during the day.’

‘But you need your hand held at night.’

‘This is not a good idea, Napier,’ I said. ‘What if I say no.’

‘Nothing’s going to stop me going out there to take a look.’

‘You’re a bastard.’

‘Am I?’ he asked, innocent as cherry blossom.

‘You’re the one who said you wanted to make some money out of my … out of me, if it could be made.’

‘That’s right. I’m upfront about what I want. You, on the other hand, won’t tell me a damn thing and then you corner me into feeling responsible for you … a white man in West Africa with …’

‘You’re not doing it for free,’ he said, and smiled. Now that his face wasn’t a chiselled mess of fear and worry I could see what got him into a lot of trouble and what probably got him a lot of women too – a little-boy look. I dropped the chaser down the hatch and we went out to the car. I fitted the keys into the ignition and thought ten thousand dollars could solve a lot of problems and then stopped myself in case the next time I looked in the mirror I’d find Napier staring back at me.

‘I don’t suppose you’ve got a gun, have you?’ he asked.

Firing a piece of lead into human flesh, watching a man drop with a gut shot, seeing his life crawling away from him, takes something that I haven’t got. And you-if I remember rightly, Napier Briggs-got spooked from seeing a dead sheep in the car park, got the vom from seeing a little offal on the pavement. I don’t think you’re in any frame of mind to be going around pointing guns at people.’

We drove back across the lagoon, up the main drag past the remains of the evening fish market and past the port which was lit up with ships being worked and loaded trucks queuing to get out on the road. The ship’s agents offices were dark and quiet on either side of the Boulevard de la Marina. We continued up past the Hotel du Port, the Présidence, the Hotel Croix du Sud and the huge expanse of cocotiers between the road and the sea. Napier watched it all go.

‘Where are we going?’ he asked.

I took a left before the conference centre on to a short causeway out to the new Novotel and parked up in its floodlit car park. The flags of all nations snapped in the sea breeze, their ropes pinged against the metal poles.

‘The Croix du Sud was back …’

‘Your two million dollars is out there,’ I said, pointing across him back towards the port. About three hundred metres.’

‘You’re still going with me … aren’t you?’

‘Now that we’re away from the bar, the beers and the chasers, now that you can see how black it is out there in the cocotiers, now that you can hear the sea and the wind, I thought I’d give you a chance to think about whether you reckon there’s somebody standing out in the middle of that lot with two million in a suitcase.’

Napier looked to where I’d been pointing. In the bright lights of the Novotel car park I saw the sweat start out on his forehead. He wiped a finger across his brow and dabbed the palms of his hands on his trousers. His tongue came out to try and put some lick on his lips.

‘Where’s this guarantor you’ve just spoken to on the phone?’

‘Lagos,’ he said, turning back, his mind drifting off to a time when this was all over and he was on a flight back to Paris with his cash in the overhead.

‘Why don’t we drive in there?’ he asked, the light bulb coming on in his head.

‘We could, but there’s only one way in and one way out and once we’re in there we’re stuck in the car, an easy sedentary target. If we’re on the hoof we can leg it through those palm trees and there’s nobody who’d be able to get a clear shot at you through that lot.’

They were good words to use, ‘target', ‘leg it', ‘shot', but they didn’t infect his judgement with a germ of terror. He sat in silence, staring into the dash, mouth open, jaw tense, gunning himself up.

‘You don’t think this is a funny place to hand over two million dollars?’

‘No,’ he said, pinching the septum of his nose, thinking about something else now, and then making up his mind about it.

‘If anything goes wrong out there, Bruce, you should … you will get a visit from my associate.’

‘The nonexec one you didn’t tell us anything about?’

‘That one,’ he said.

‘She’s my daughter. The company put her through an MBA, that’s all. She runs her own business, nothing to do with me.’

‘She have a name?’

‘Selina,’ he said.

‘Well, I hope I never get to meet her.’

‘No,’ he said, turning to the window where he set about filtering all the doubt out of his mind while his eyes drank in the blackness of the wind-rattled coconut palms.

He started out of the car. I grabbed his arm.

‘No talking. Quiet as possible. If they’re out there they’ll know we’ve arrived. The first person to talk is me and’ – I whipped the Camel out of his mouth and tossed it out of the window–

‘no smoking.’

We walked to the edge of the tarmac. The security guards at the gate had their backs to us. We dropped off the raised car park and trotted into the coconut palms. We waited a few minutes until our eyes were used to the dark and walked on. The ground was firm between the palms. It wasn’t long before we found the patch of beaten earth and a rough table where the city people came to drink beer and breathe air with a dash of the sea in it.

I sat on the ground with my back to a coconut palm and watched Napier in almost no light at all sitting on his hands on the table under a palm-leaf lean-to trying to forget about smoking Camels. We sat there for more than half an hour. The wind whistled up quite a few false alarms for us but in the end nobody showed. A little before a quarter to ten I stood up and whacked the back of my jeans.

‘I’ve got to take a piss,’ I said. All the beer I’d drunk sat like a medicine ball in my lap. Napier hissed.

A car, with its headlights on full beam, rippled across the coconut palms and silhouetted two figures on the pavement. The car slowed and stopped. The lights died. One of the figures bent to window height. There was a discussion. The door opened and the figure who’d done the talking got in.

‘It’s a pick-up, Napier. This is a smart part of town. Girls come here to get taken for a ride by men in Mercedes. That could have been you if they’d showed.’

I walked off to the edge of the palms about thirty or forty metres and kicked a hole in the sand.

‘Maybe they didn’t show because of you,’ he said to the back of my head.

‘I didn’t crash, I was invited, remember. You cleared me with your big man. And anyway, I’m going now. I’ve got dinner. You want to stay, you can find your own way back.’

I urinated for at least two minutes. I closed my eyes to the relief spreading through me. The wind got up and blew with some force through the palms and their leaves clacked together like empty scabbards. I walked back to the table shivering, suddenly cold and clammy in the salty breeze.

‘Napier,’ I called, seeing he’d moved from the table. I looked around for the red glow of a cigarette butt, knowing he wouldn’t have been able to hang on. I made a 180-degree sweep of the coconut grove. The Hotel Croix du Sud’s gate lights winked on the other side of the boulevard, the aura of the new conference centre lit the night sky, the Novotel and its car park looked as if they were out in a sea of black, but there was no Napier. I shouted his name. The breeze took it off me and shuttled it through the trunks of the palms, but nothing came back.

Just like that-he’d gone.

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