Chapter 14

    

    It was very hot in the middle of the lawn where Kershaw's body lay on a stretcher. A couple of policemen stood in the shade of a flame tree by the aviary with their hands over their mouths talking to each other. Kershaw's putrefying body filled the air with a sweet sulphurous stench that had instantly attracted a pair of vultures who stood on the wall looking at each other, and then looking down at the corpse. Moses stood with a handkerchief wrapped around his face and a long pole in his hands.

    When they'd first arrived, the vultures had landed on the lawn and had bounced around Moses like shadow boxers looking for a line in on their lunch. Moses had been deft with the stick and enjoyed himself hugely. The parrot, from his ringside seat, had urged Moses on with clicks and whistles and the odd squawk when the stick thudded into the solid breast of one or other of the vultures.

    I leaned against the french window inside the house trying to erase Kershaw's bloated, rotting, distorted features from my mind. The stench from the garden, the deprived vultures and the sheet-covered mound on the lawn ensured that the image was pin-sharp in my brain.

    Bagado had crawled around the pool and patio with his face and fingers at grass level, grooming for clues.

    He had produced a little forensic kit and fingerprinted the corpse and found that rigor mortis had come out of the body since we pulled it from the pool. In passing, he had said that rigor mortis lasted for up to four days, which meant that the earliest he could have been killed was Monday, the same day as Perec. He had checked the fingerprints against the whip handle and crocodile clip in the bag, the magazines in the chest and on the paint pots in the back room. They all matched. Then, to give himself a deadline, he had told me to make my call. I'd left a short message on the big man's answering machine, informing him about Kershaw's death and telling him to call this number. While Bagado had run around the house roaring in his own language like a touretter, triple-checking things that he'd already double-checked, a call came through telling me to inform the police. It had given me a number which I'd called.

    The arrival of the police had been a relief. Bagado had produced a passport that he'd found in another pocket of the bag, and was talking in French and Ewe, waving the passport in the faces of the six policemen who had formed a semicircle in front of him. They encouraged his narrative with a range of clicks, braying noises and high-pitched squeaks which shot their credibility to pieces. Several of them glanced with sly eyes at the plastic bag with Kershaw's wallet, watch and AA card which hung from Bagado's hand.

    On the few occasions that our paths had crossed during his final search, Bagado had told me he would do all the talking.

    'I know these people,' he said with a flat hand that blocked any dispute. He had also been vehement about not mentioning the absence of water in Kershaw's lungs. 'That could be a very serious error. We have no idea what game these people are playing. A slip like that and we could be face down in the lagoon breathing sewage.'

    At about eleven o'clock a senior policeman arrived who seemed to be wearing the same uniform he'd been issued with as a cadet. He put his arm around Bagado, like a big gorilla grabbing hold of its young, and steered him off into the garden where they talked with only the parrot in hearing distance. The police officer looked as if he didn't like wearing shoes, because he hobbled around the garden treating Bagado more as a walking frame than a fellow officer. In a short time they were back with the police officer, coughing from the smell in the garden. He gave some brutal commands and the junior policemen stampeded out of the house. Bagado and the policeman went upstairs, Bagado's back straining at every step as the policeman hauled himself up. They made it and the policeman held the banister, his face twisted with pain. They went into the master bedroom.

    In the garden, the junior policemen were being ordered to lift the stretcher and take it off down the side of the house to load into the ambulance. The vultures were looking at each other not believing this was happening to them. The police officer giving the orders was the same one running the road block after the riot on Thursday who'd taken me off to meet the big man. He saw me through the french windows and moved off with his men.

    There was some loud guffawing from upstairs and Bagado came out of the bedroom with Kershaw's bag in one hand and the policeman leaning on his shoulder. They made it to the bottom of the stairs where they shook hands, the policeman roared again at something that must have been said before, because Bagado hadn't said a word. Bagado gave him the bag and Kershaw's effects and the officer gave him his card and asked him to confirm a time for the body to be identified. The policeman turned and his face dropped as if he had lead in his cheeks.

    'What was all that about?' I asked.

    'The laughter? These people when they get their own way, they laugh at a blade of grass.'

    'What did you give him?'

    'Our integrity.'

    'Nothing serious, then.'

    'I just said we would keep our mouths shut.'

    'Does he want anything from us?'

    'He wants a very bland statement from me, nothing from you and Moses.'

    'You let him have your evidence.'

    'Only the things I don't want. This will never make court.'

    I told Bagado about the police officer from the road block and he told me what had happened with the Françoise Perec investigation in Cotonou. He had been stuck in a meeting and got to the apartment late. By the time he had arrived, the place had been hoovered and wiped down and the contents removed, apart from the furniture and the coffee filters. The body remained on the bed. The only constructive thing he had managed to do was to get the report into the Benin Soir, which he had done by pushing the 'sex session gone too far' theory, which the paper had liked. It meant that Françoise Perec's death was public knowledge, the French were furious and so was his superior officer.

    'He took my phone away and suspended me without pay. My boss is a man very strong on irony.'

    'The French will get to them in the-end.'

    'Yes, but too late. The investigation will reopen with nothing to go on. They will have no chance… but we will.'

    'We?'

    'You and I, Bruce.'

    I explained that I hadn't finished the job that I had been hired for, that I was supposed to run the sheanut business that Kershaw had been running, that I would have to organize identification of the body which, by the state of the corpse, Mrs Kershaw was going to have to do, that I would have to help her get the body released and out of the country. Bagado listened with a fraction of his brain while the rest of it worked with a ferocity that was showing in his face. His eyes twitched as he slotted other pieces of information next to the facts and theories that tore through his head like ribbons down a wind tunnel.

    'Who is your client?' he asked.

    'A Syrian businessman in Accra called B.B.'

    'B.B.? What is B.B.?'

    'It's his name. In full it's unpronounceable.'

    'How do you know him?'

    'Through Jack Obuasi, another client - an English/

    Ghanaian who lives here and who I do jobs for in Cotonou.'

    'Why can't he do his own jobs?'

    'Because he runs a lot of trade along this coast and he doesn't have the time to be in several places at once… and he's lazy.'

    'Did B.B. contact you directly?'

    'No. Wednesday morning, I turn up at Jack's with the money from a job. Jack takes a call and volunteers my services.'

    'Money from what job?'

    'Seven thousand tons of parboiled rice into Cotonou off a ship called the Naoki Maru.'

    'When?'

    'Tuesday.'

    'What did you do?'

    'I arranged the papers, received and counted the money. There was a problem.'

    'What was the problem?'

    The woman

    'Which woman?'

    'Madame Severnou.'

    'Mr Obuasi does business with Madame Severnou?' said Bagado with a voice that pounced.

    'Is that a problem?'

    'I wouldn't like to do business with Madame Severnou.'

    'Nor would I, but I have,' I said. 'What's so grubby about Madame Severnou?'

    'It's not entirely clear where Madame Severnou's money comes from.'

    'Meaning?'

    'Not very nice people have money that they can't put in banks so they send it to Madame Severnou's laundry.'

    'How dirty?'

    'Not just kick-backs and bribes.'

    'Drug money?'

    Bagado nodded. It was well known that Lagos was one of the main trans-shipment points for heroin from Asia and cocaine from South America going into Europe. The corruption was sufficient and the money big enough for the drugs to get in and there were enough unfortunate women prepared to fill their guts full of condoms to courier the drugs to London. Sometimes the condoms broke and the women died, sometimes Heathrow Customs decided to keep the women until they just 'had to go' and sometimes they got through.

    'Twenty per cent of the women in British jails are Nigerian drug mules,' said Bagado. 'They all work in the kitchens, and you know the pity of it? The pity of it is that the few pounds' jail pay they get every week they send home to their children. It's good money to them.'

    'How many's twenty per cent?'

    'About three hundred and fifty.'

    Three hundred and fifty women in jail for carrying maybe two to three kilos per head - more than a ton of heroin, and that was the stuff that didn't get in. The mule business was diversionary, gave the drug enforcement agencies plenty of work to process while the big shipments came in containers. None of it was small beer, not even the mules, and it was a better explanation of Madame Severnou's gorillas than Jack's.

    'What was the problem with Madame Severnou?' asked Bagado.

    The money for the rice was fifty million short and it wasn't part of the plan - not the one in Jack's head, anyway. He tried to cover up by telling me it was part commission payment and part a cotton-fibre deal, but I could tell he was pulling out flannel by the mile.'

    'Why?'

    'I don't know, but I do know he wanted me away from that rice deal. I was all ready to lean on Madame Severnou but Jack said no, and threw me the Kershaw job. Ever since then it's been "Come back to me"; "Let me know how things are going"; "Call me".'

    'You're getting the feel of it now,' said Bagado. 'I can see from your face that you're beginning to understand your duty.'

'My duty?'

    Bagado walked off down the room, across the squash court floorboards with his hands behind his back, one hand opening and closing with each step. He still had his raincoat on. He turned, walked back and stood in front of me looking into my chest. He cocked an eye up which locked on to my own.

    'Where did this rice come from?'

    'Thailand.'

    'Where is it going?'

    'Nigeria.'

    'Via Cotonou because of the rice ban?'

    I nodded.

    'How long will it take to get it across the border?'

    'Maximum twelve days - could be a lot less.'

    'We're going to take a look at this,' he said, dropping his head and moving off around the room again.

    'Jack's got too much money and too little nerve to start dealing drugs.'

    'There's no such thing as too much money to rich people. That's why they get richer. As for nerve, if you haven't got it, you're often too stupid to admit it to yourself, and anyway, you're thinking about the money too much to worry about your balls.'

    'What's it got to do with Kershaw?'

    'He worked in Cotonou.'

    'So do I.'

    'He was unlucky, maybe, like Françoise Perec.'

    Out in the garden, the urn lay on its side by the pool, the rope still attached. The parrot clung to the wire mesh at the front of the aviary with its feet and beak. It opened its wings, stretching, and flapped them once. The heat pressed down on the lawn. The stink of rotten flesh remained. I turned to Bagado.

    'You were going to tell me about my duty.'

    'Technically, your job is finished. You have found Kershaw.'

    'Thanks.'

    'Kershaw is dead. We know he's been killed. The officer with the bad feet isn't going to do anything for him, just as the Cotonou police aren't going to do anything for Françoise Perec.'

    'You're going to tell me about the duty you feel to these people as a policeman?'

    'No, as a human. There's not many of us left. I know this is nothing to do with you. I know the English have a fear of "getting involved" but you're already involved - Yao's boss has seen to that. I know that law and order should prevail so that you shouldn't have to get involved, but to use an English expression: "It's all fucked up." You are the only person who can do anything for these people. I am suspended. I have no money. Today, I don't even have socks.' Bagado lifted up his trouser legs and showed his bare ankles. Bagado saw me looking out into the garden squinting through the rank air.

    'Dead bodies,' said Bagado. 'You've never seen a dead body.'

    'Not in that condition.'

    'A layer of innocence gone,' said Bagado, flicking nothing with his forefinger out of the french windows. 'We lose them all the time.'

    That was a layer I wouldn't have minded hanging on to.'

    'And now it's gone. So you deal with it. We can only learn from experience, but she's a ruthless, barbaric bitch of a teacher.'

    'She?'

'Experience in French is feminine and most of what I know about myself, I've learnt through women.'

    'Where are you taking me, Bagado?'

    'Put it this way, I think you think you're unusual. An Englishman living in Africa doing this strange work of yours. An odd job man who looks for missing persons. It sounds unusual. Your friends in England poking around their computers in London must think it's unusual. But to me, it's ordinary. Where you live and what you do doesn't make a man extraordinary. It's what's in here,' he said, thumping his heart and tapping his temple. 'You might have something in there, but you're not showing it and until you do you're just another one of them.'

    'Is this what they teach you at the police academy?'

    'People murdered with extreme violence, money laundering, drugs, government and police corruption. A nasty combination. I can see why you

    'What about you, Bagado?'

    'I made my decision a long time ago, and anyway, I'm naturally curious. I have to know. Are you afraid of death?'

    'Only my own.'

    'Are you scared?'

    'Only the stupid aren't.'

    Bagado walked up to a wooden carving about five- foot high. It was of an old woman holding a child. The woman's hair flowed up out of her head like a solid flame - it was the natural grain of the wood. The figure had been carved to that unaltered phenomenon. He stood next to it and put his arm around it. The three of them accused me of something which I didn't like being accused of.

    'Charlie is an American,' I said, 'who runs a bar down the coast out of town, about a mile after the port off the Benin road. He told me to talk to an old girlfriend of Kershaw's called Nina Sorvino. She told me that Kershaw was into sadism and bondage which was why she ditched him.'

    I told Bagado all I knew about Charlie, Nina, Jack, B.B. and Madame Severnou, not leaving out that four days ago Kershaw had been seen by Charlie with a blonde French woman in his bar. I told him about

    Dama, and again about Yao and the big man behind Yao. Bagado stormed around the room with his hands in his pockets, walking faster and faster until I had finished and then he tore off his orbit and burst through the french windows and into the escape lane of the garden, where he slowed down just before the pool.

    'What is Charlie's surname?'

    'Reggiani.'

    'Italian?'

    'Tajikistani.'

    'What!'

    "Course it's bloody Italian.'

    'I never assume anything,' he said.

    'Well, you can assume that.'

    'Is or has there been a relationship between Nina and Charlie?'

    'Beyond friends and fellow Italian/Americans? I don't know.'

    'Somebody wants us to think that Kershaw killed Perec, came back here and killed himself.'

    'It seems more likely that somebody else killed Perec, framed Kershaw with the evidence and killed him to make it look like suicide.'

    'Charlie?'

    'Framing for Kershaw supplied by Nina.'

    'What's their relationship and their motive?'

    We shrugged at each other. Bagado wanted to follow the Charlie/Nina angle as well as Jack's rice.

    'What about Yao and his boss?' I asked.

    'That makes me very uncomfortable. He's not operating through legal channels, sending Yao around here, having you picked up, and then when we call the police they come and don't investigate. This whole business could start from him.'

    'Kershaw and Perec knew something about him?'

    'Maybe there's a link between the big man and Charlie and/or Mr Obuasi.'

    'That's not something we're going to find out very easily. He seems the careful type.'

    Bagado spent a few minutes staring at the front of my shirt and clicking his teeth with his thumbnail. I knew how he felt with all those ideas, facts, possibilities and theories stumbling about his brain. My head was like a full lift where life is on hold, where only those things in front of your face figure until someone gets off and gives you some space. Heike and Kershaw occupied my entire cerebral scope, the other things were part of the unseen pressure. Bagado's relentless mind landed.

    'I know you have a problem with a woman,' he said. 'I know the symptoms very well. I also have a problem with a woman. Françoise Perec. A woman who was tortured and murdered in a terrible way, in a way that makes me ashamed of my gender, in a way that makes me so angry and determined that nothing will stop me from bringing that man down. I will get him,' said Bagado, looking from under his brow and stabbing the air in front of him. 'I will get him. If we are going to work together I have to know that you have the same anger, the same determination. You have to find it in yourself. You have to find your stomach for this work. I know you don't want to disturb your quiet life. I understand you have a personal crisis, you have a distaste for rotting flesh, you fear the megalomania of power and money - all of which is right.

    'But forget them. You'll find time to straighten those things out. This evening. Tomorrow. The day after. There will be time. We can't move too quickly. Some big men are playing a game and I don't want to be a pawn in it. For now - get angry!'

    Bagado moved into the centre of the room and turned, sweeping his hand before him and with the face of a man stuffed full of pompous vanity said: 'We Africans love to speechify.' He laughed and I wiped the sweat from under my eyes.

    I called B.B. He picked up the phone during the first ringing tone.

    'Yairs?' he said, through his smoker's throat.

    'It's Bruce.'

    There was a noise on the line like an industrial grinder so I said I would call him back.

    'No, no, Bruise. It's me. I eat some groundnut.'

    'I've found Kershaw. He's dead.'

    There was an explosion of static which blew the phone off my head. B.B. fought for air. There was the sound of coughing and hoiking and then the phone clattered to the floor. I heard a struggle and the noise of spitting, then the phone was being pulled up by its line, knocking against the arm rest and the table.

    'B.B.?'

    'Yairs.'

    'Everything OK?'

    'Is OK. One of the red skins from the groundnut caught in my troat. You found Kershaw. Good. Let me spik to him.'

    'He's dead.'

    'Whaaat?'

    'We found him in the pool at the house in Lomé. The police have just taken away the body. He's in the hospital morgue.'

    B.B. was silent. The sweat trickled. The palms stood still in the garden. The heat leaned on the house.

    'My God. Is a terrible ting,' he said after some time. I heard him light a cigarette.

    'Still smoking?'

    'I no can stop. After you left, I call de Armenian friend who have de house in Lomé where you are now. He tell me terrible ting… my God… dis world.' I heard the smoke rasping down his congested tubes. 'You know I say dere's a problem in Ivory Coast. Dey kill his son.'

    'Who are "they"?'

    'I don't know. Is a car bomb. Dey tink political killing or someting like dat.'

    'I thought he was a businessman.'

    'Yairs. He is businessman. But de people want democracy, you know, free elecsharn. So dey kill de white man to put de pressure. You know, France get very angry, dey tell the Presidarn he haff to do someting or dey tek away de investmarn. Is a terrible ting… a dutty business… dutty.'

    B.B. agreed to call Kershaw's wife who, given the state of the corpse, would have to come over to identify the body. He told me to call Mrs Kershaw in the afternoon to get her flight details and to keep the fee to pay for her expenses in Lomé and to book a room at the Sarakawa. I took down her London number and asked

    B.B. to speak to his Armenian friend to find out where the maid lived, telling him Bagado would call later for the information. He said we should use the Armenian's house as our base and that we would talk about the sheanut business when Mrs Kershaw had left. He put the phone down without saying goodbye.

    Bagado was excited about the Armenian's son. 'There are too many people dying,' he said.

    'Bagado,' I said, 'Françoise Perec was found in Cotonou, Kershaw in Lomé, but in the last half hour you've stretched this investigation from Lagos to Abidjan and thrown in some drug trafficking. Where are the connections?'

    'There are none. This is not ordinary police work. Even if we did have the backing of the police they have nothing to help us. As it is, they are against us. They are being paid to cover up. The more people you pay the weaker you become. A material that's stretched has more holes in it. The wider our vision, the more chances we have to force a break from cover. This is how we have to operate. We have no authority and if we're seen to be making our own investigations we'll get ourselves killed.'

    'That's what the policeman told you?'

    'In his own way. Lots of smiling and laughing. It wouldn't take much. Lomé's become a dangerous place. Lunch?'

    'I'll watch.'

    'You'll eat.'

    We drove the short distance into the centre of town and parked up off the Rue du Commerce. We sat outside a stall and ordered grilled chicken and salad from a very big woman whose breasts were only marginally less astonishing than her bottom, which behaved like a couple of sacks of restless guinea fowl. The sweat poured down her face as she turned the chicken and she kept up a non-stop monologue which anybody could interrupt if they were man enough to have a go.

    Even away from the charcoal the day had built up a terrible heat. My clothes clung to me like a bore at a party. Bagado, still with his raincoat on, threw the occasional comment at the massive cook who roared with laughter, which set her breasts off into a playtex tremble which she had to still like kettle drums. Moses sat with his back to the table and was doing his best with a coquettish Ghanaian girl who was doing her best to ignore him.

    A man with long white robes and white cylindrical hat washed his hands from a bowl held by a young boy. He splashed the water on his face and ran his hand down again and again over his rubbery features, flicking the water off into the road each time. There weren't many people in the street. It was too hot. The women from the booze stalls lay in the shade of their displays and fingered the shawls over their heads, dozing.

    We ate. The food sat in my stomach and fizzed. Afterwards, we went back to the house and lay down. When the time came for me to call London, Bagado told me to be vague with Mrs Kershaw about the cause of her husband's death.

    Mrs Kershaw was glad to have someone to talk to. Her voice was panting and nervous and her brain was running faster than her mouth. Bagado was listening on a second earpiece. She gave me the flight details and started on an involved story about the body canister which I interrupted by telling her to make sure she had her jabs, birth and marriage certificates and some wedding photographs.

    'We weren't close any more,' she said after a pause that should have terminated the call. 'His financial problems changed him.'

    'What were the financial problems?'

    'He was a Name at Lloyd's. His syndicate lost a lot on the asbestosis claims. They took everything and the bank pulled out of his business. I'm living in a friend's flat in Clapham now. My husband used to work in Africa so he went there to get a job and save some money to start again.'

    'What was his business?'

    'Import/export. Is there some doubt? I mean, you're asking these questions as if it wasn't suicide.'

    'We don't know, Mrs Kershaw. The police have taken away your husband's body. It's possible that you'll have to answer some questions when you come to Lomé. You might as well be prepared.'

    'It'd be better face to face.'

    I agreed. She ran through her flight details. I gave her the name of the Hotel Sarakawa where she was going to be staying and she hung up.

    'If everybody in Africa with no money killed themselves,' said Bagado, 'we'd be left with a continent of corrupt officials. Imagine the horror. Only the vultures left.'

    'It's the First World's disease. Without money you lose your status, your dignity…'

    'Dignity?' asked Bagado. 'Money doesn't buy dignity.'

    'Anyway, she thinks he committed suicide.'

    'Does she?' he said, nodding. 'She didn't like your questions.'

    'She doesn't know me.'

    'It will be interesting to see her identify the body and how easily they release it. It should cost you some money.'

    It was time to get back to Cotonou. Bagado said he would stay in Lomé with Moses to find the maid and check on Charlie. I gave him some money for expenses and offered him part of my fee for finding Kershaw. He said he would split one day's fee with me and told me to give it to his wife.

    'What about transport?' I asked.

    'The taxis are on strike,' said Moses coming out of the kitchen.

    'You could

    'We'll give you a lift to the border,' said Bagado.

    'Thanks.'

    '"We",' he said. 'I mean, it's just a figure of speech, you understand.'