Chapter 16

Saturday 28th September

    The Hotel Le Benin looked refreshed as if it had just flown in from a short holiday in the Cote d'Azur. It had a smart, cool grandeur to it that night, with the lights trained on to its creamy facade. In the darkness of the gardens, I changed my shirt. Headlights cut through the night as cars swung round the circular driveway. Car doors opened and shut and shoes gritted on the loose surface. There was smoke and chat and the rustle of silk and folding money. The open air restaurant and bar was filling up but there was no Nina there, so I went into the air-conditioned lobby, which was freezing after the smothering heat of the evening, and wandered around like a paying guest.

    Seven o'clock came and went, as did seven-thirty. A young African girl came up to me and asked me if I liked dancing; I said yes and she left the hotel without a backward glance. The doorman came up to me and apologized.

    'These girls,' he said. 'Very… bad girls.'

    I thought about following and doing some bad dancing with her because I was getting chill from the air conditioning. Then I started thinking that something had happened to Nina as a quarter to eight assumed the position on the lobby clock.

    Boredom got its arm round my shoulder and pushed me into an African art boutique and I started playing a game of wari with the girl behind the counter who tore me to shreds. My mind wasn't on it. At least that was what I told myself.

    'You're pissed, right?' said Nina, in a low wary voice behind me.

    'I wish I was.'

    She was wearing a blue Chinese silk dress with a high collar and cut at the shoulders. Her hair was tied in a long plait which hung over her right shoulder and needed only six more inches to the top of her thigh. She said it took her an hour to do the plait which she thwacked me with on the arm. It was as solid as a dog's tail.

    We drove to the party which was being held in the US Cultural Centre opposite the Embassy. I was wondering whether to tell her about Kershaw, and decided that if she was a New Yorker she must be able to take just about anything, when she asked me if I'd found him. I told her and she didn't like it one bit. She had a lit cigarette in her mouth in less time than it took her to run the red light. She rolled down the window to get some air and all that came in was thick, heavy heat which covered her face like a gloved hand. She threw the cigarette out, rolled up the window and turned up the air conditioning.

    We arrived at the Cultural Centre in silence. Nina's jaw was shut tight so that the tendon sprang out by her ear. She had a wide look to her blinking eyes as if she was paranoid. She wasn't just upset about Kershaw, she was scared.

    'Nina?'

    'What?' she said, with a viciousness that came from speaking with her jaw shut. 'I'm upset, that's all. Haven't had an ex-boyfriend die on me before. You?'

    'No.'

    'Well, it's like this.' She dropped her head on to the steering wheel. 'Jesus. I'm sorry. I keep you waiting for an hour and then tear your throat out. I'm outa line.'

    We sat in the darkness, couples walked past on the way to the party. Nina looked out not seeing them and not blinking either.

    'Let's get a drink,' she said. I didn't drag my feet.

    We went into the party and immediately ran aground on some of Nina's colleagues who wouldn't let us get near a drink. The waiters with their trays of ready-made drinks sensed a couple of desperate people and kept well away from us. It must be something drummed into them early at waiting school. Nina broke free from the mob with the verbal equivalent of an elbow in the eye. We stood by a waiter, Nina holding him by his arm, and drank two drinks apiece from his tray and took a third. A hand came down on my shoulder and Jack took my arm and spoke in my ear: 'You won.'

    'How do you know?'

    'Everybody knows, but only I knew you found him.'

    'And now everybody knows that.'

    He was about to introduce me to a small but very attractive Asian woman with long shiny purple nails, but she sent out a complex message in social semaphore that brought Jack up short. He let go of my arm and followed the Asian woman to a far corner where he stood bent at the middle looking at the ground over her shoulder and made a good show of listening.

    Nina returned and introduced me to Elizabeth Harvey who, she explained, was English and married to a prominent banker in the US community. Mrs Harvey was tall enough on her high heels to look me straight in the eye, which she did while I remembered Jack's decadent bet. She had a glassy coolness to her and I felt as if she'd picked me up by the scruff and was inspecting me as she would a yobbish kitten. Her blonde hair was piled high on her head, a single string of pearls circled her neck. Her shoulders were bare and she was thin, so that her clavicles stood out, along with a few other bones that I hadn't seen on myself for a long time. I could just see the top of her raw silk dress which had a blue green sheen and showed that cleavage was not something she possessed. I didn't look any lower.

    She didn't seem too displeased with what she saw in me and she put me down and gave me a little stroke. She smiled with a small mouth whose lips looked as if they might be hard to kiss - not difficult, just not very yielding. Her eyes were very blue, too blue to be believable. She must have been wearing coloured contacts.

    'I hear you found a body,' she said, and showed me a set of perfect but very small teeth that pointed into her mouth so that if she got them into you, you might find it hard to get them out.

    'There've been a lot of them about lately,' I replied.

    'I wouldn't like to find one.'

    'I didn't enjoy it myself.'

    'Was it stiff?'

    'Yes, and hard, and bloated and it stank.' It was a hard line to take, but then, she had showed an interest and I saw no reason to hold back. She shivered.

    A tall man with grey hair which was swept back and curled above his red and white striped collar appeared at her side and took her elbow. He wore a light grey, lightweight suit and a tie that joined him to a club where people talked quietly while the world haemorrhaged money into their bank accounts. Mrs Harvey introduced me to her husband, Clifford Harvey, without taking her eyes off me. He didn't waste his time shaking my hand and behaved like someone who'd chipped neatly out of the rough and come to pick up his golf bag.

    'Darling,' said Mrs Harvey in a bright voice that could shatter crystal.

    Clifford held out his hand and we shook. He'd been to handshaking school. He threw the spare hand over his hair and it came to rest half on his neck and half on his cheek with the little finger in the corner of his mouth. His brow had the right concentration lines, his eyes had the alert tiredness of the hardworking, capable, corporate man.

    . 'Mr Medway found a body,' said Elizabeth Harvey. 'What was its name?'

    'Steven Kershaw.'

    'Who is Steven Kershaw?' drawled Clifford, as if he might be a potential client.

    'Was. He's dead now,' said his wife, blinking.

    'Who was he?' said Clifford, stringing out his already strung-out American accent to show his wife that her irritating little shots were coming right off the meat.

    'An Englishman who did some sheanut business out of Cotonou,' I said. 'I found him in the pool of a house a couple of hundred yards from here.'

    Clifford had heard all he wanted to hear. He gripped his wife's elbow and gave her a gentle shunt with his shoulder. She didn't budge. She was more interested in death than hanging off her husband at a party. After all, she was a Catholic and her whole life was invested in death.

    'You found him in a pool?' she asked.

    'With an urn attached to his feet.'

    'Was it suicide?'

    'It looked like it.'

    'Is this your job?' asked Clifford Harvey, amazed that people could earn a living doing this kind of thing.

    'Finding people, not necessarily dead ones. This is the first. I do other things too.'

    'You're a private eye,' said Clifford, who in his privileged life had probably run into some things other than bankers, but they'd only made a mess on his windscreen.

    'Not exactly. There's not much call for that kind of work on this coast. It's not what you'd call California.'

    'You gotta line in acute perception there, Mr…?'.

    'Medway, darling,' said Mrs Harvey, and I watched my name zip through his head once more without troubling his memory.

    Elizabeth Harvey had begun to look about her as if she was fresh off the deck of a sinking liner. Something had clicked inside her and she'd moved into another phase of her programme. She asked me if I was alone and I told her I had come with Nina who was off on the far side of the room talking to Charlie. Of course, she remembered that Nina had introduced us, so I asked her if she knew her. She didn't like that and her eyes popped open and she took a look down her nose at me of the sort that shoe-shine boys must get used to. Clifford was breathing pure steam into her ear and Elizabeth Harvey let herself be led away to meet the owner of an aluminium smelting plant.

    'What do you think?' asked Jack from behind my shoulder.

    'Very cool.'

    'Just right for these hot nights we've been having,' he said, giggling.

    'Maybe a little brittle.'

    'I can be careful.'

    'How does Clifford feel about it?'

    'These people only sleep together in the back of limousines after boring bankers' dinners.'

    'Does she know your reputation?'

    'She's too pure for that.'

    'Or too stupid.'

    'I'm the only one who's daring enough.'

    'The secret of your success.'

    Jack was rubbing his hands and looking around.

    'Nina Sorvino,' he said.

    'Forget it, Jack.'

    'Not me, you.'

    'I know.'

    Nina was still talking to Charlie, who was looking stone-faced at nothing in particular, in the middle of the room. He sipped his drink and turned his head slowly towards her. He said something. She turned and walked out of the room with her chin on her chest. A drink came into my hand and my empty was removed from the other. The service element of the party had improved now that I wasn't desperate. Jack lumbered off through the crowd towards Charlie and knocked the official photographer on the back on the way through. Charlie was having his face kissed by Yvette and it was having the same effect on him as a perfect punch on the point of the chin.

    Nina came back into the room, strode across to me and flung the plait around my neck, pulled me to her and kissed me on the mouth. A flash went off. Some people laughed. I pulled back. The plait was like a silk rope on the back of my neck. Nina held on to the other end.

    'You could strangle someone with that.'

    'I'd have to get very close to do it.'

    She let go of the plait and it slipped down my shoulder like a snake moving off. I wasn't feeling very comfortable about this manoeuvre of Nina's. Her kiss had sent a bolt of electricity straight down my spine. I had enough problems of my own without adding hers. She sniffed at me as if a little upset.

    'I'm only kidding,' she said. 'I've a reputation for being outrageous. I gotta keep it up.'

    'It's a big talent,' I said.

    'Are you for real, Bruce? Are you one of the few men who doesn't want a piece of Nina Sorvino.' She put one hand on her hip and flung the other around herself. 'He wants my tits, he wants my ass, he wants my pussy, he wants my mind, he wants my feet,' she said with a deep voice, 'but he's a bit weird.'

    'But nobody wants the whole Cadillac,' I finished.

    She sniffed again and I thought she was going to cry, but her head came up bright-eyed. 'I'm the spares department.'

    We whipped some drinks off a passing tray and looked around. Charlie was shaking hands with the massive Nigerian from AAICT who was held in position across his meaty shoulders by Jack, who seemed to be coming first in an international grinning league. Nina said his name was Bof Awolowo and that he'd made huge money in the seventies from the Nigerian oil boom. He'd somehow managed to squeeze out of Nigeria when they had the clampdown in the eighties.

    'He was a lot slimmer then,' she said. 'Now he's back and trying to be legit and getting big in politics. You can imagine, it's not ideology that's gettin' him there.'

    'You're impressed.'

    'He just wants to put himself in a position where he can rip his country off again.'

    'What's he like in business?'

    'I met an oil man from Port Harcourt who said: "His name sounds like a fart in a tub and that's all you get when you do a deal with him."'

    Awolowo's shoulders were shaking and the boom- boom of his laughter rebounded off the walls. His head rocked back and the creases multiplied in his neck. A waiter arrived with a tray and he turned to take a drink; the humour drained from his face and his eyes flickered.

    'Has Charlie worked with him?'

    'I don't know, but he likes a challenge.'

    'You know Jack?'

    'I never been to bed with him,' said Nina, giving me a sideways glance with slitty eyes and a mouth that should have had a cigar in the corner.

    'You're a rare breed.'

    'Maybe I'm gonna be extinct the way things are happening round here.'

    Nina was carried off by some Embassy people. A small, fat woman with sweat beading through the powder on her nose tapped my elbow and stared up at me. She held a heavily ringed hand with an orange juice in it towards me as if to chink glasses. We juggled our names around until the coaster stuck on the bottom of her glass fell off, then we knocked heads bending down. She was an American and lived in the Hotel Golfe in Abidjan. Her husband was head of Global Bank. She pointed him out. I didn't know whether I was supposed to say he looked nice. I asked her why she was living in a hotel and she told me that Abidjan was very dangerous and they hadn't found secure accommodation. I hadn't thought it was that bad, I said, and she put me right. She was worried about having her head cut off by a machete. I asked her where she came from in the States and she said New York; I mentioned that they had a hell of a lot more crazies in New York than they did in Abidjan and that was the end of it.

    Nina was half a mile away by now talking to a large sandy-haired fellow who was fingering her plait and murmuring things to her that might have been offers of money. She was leaning away but the plait moored her to him. I had some telepathic understanding with a waiter who could intuit when the ice in my glass had got to rattling point and would coast by with his tray at just the right speed and level to put a dead glass on and take a live one off.

    The official photographer was lining up the Harveys and a bunch of executives from the aluminium smelting plant. One of the team had enough drink inside him to think that he could put his hand on Elizabeth Harvey's bare shoulder. It wasn't there for long and when he took it off he checked it as if he'd lost some skin on cold metal.

    Yvette was doing something to the back of Charlie's neck and he had the uncertain look of a man who was thinking that maybe everybody around him could hear his heart beating in his ears as loud as he could. She was wearing a Fortuny-pleated silk cardigan in silver and its intimate rustle was devastating Charlie's hold on himself. He was swallowing a lot. It was a thick lustful swallow which sent whatever was coming up right back down to his loins. Awolowo and Jack had moved on so there was no audience to his restraint.

    Yvette whispered something in Charlie's ear. Her lips and tongue made contact with his lobe and his legs trembled in his trousers. She broke away from him, the Fortuny-pleated silk flared trousers she was wearing hushed the conversation where she walked. She reached me and folded the cardigan across herself.

    'They tell me you found a body this morning, Bruce,' she said, rolling my name on her tongue.

    'Why are women so interested in death?'

    'Sex and death is what it's all about. Power and money is for boys.'

    'A black widow speaks.'

    'That was Jasmin who said that, I've never killed a man… in cold blood,' she said, laughing in the back of her throat.

    'Remind me not to get involved.'

    She took a cigarette out of her purse, put one in her mouth and was about to light it when she remembered that she was in the American Cultural Centre and the marines were on passive smoking duty. She twiddled the unlit cigarette in her smoking fingers and tickled the gap in her teeth with her tongue.

    'This body,' she said. 'It belonged to Mr Kershaw. They tell me another body was found in Mr Kershaw's apartment in Cotonou. That body belonged to a woman.'

    'Who's they?'

    'I don't remember.'

    'You're not trying very hard.'

    'Was it suicide?'

    'I don't know.'

    'He drowned,' she said, neither as a fact nor a question.

    'I suppose it's not a normal way of killing yourself,' I said.

    'Suicide isn't normal and they say drowning is very nice.'

    'If you've had such a nice life that you don't mind it flashing before you.'

    'I see your point. An overdose of painkillers is perhaps more usual. How would you…?'

    'I wouldn't.'

    'How do you know?'

    'Suicide is for romantics,'

    'And "ruined" financiers/ she said. 'You are not a romantic?'

    'There's comfort in escape but no solutions.'

    'Perhaps you're more profound than you look?'

    'Which is how?' I said, wondering if her English stretched that far.

'Beau,' she said, stroking me with her violet eyes.

    'You are a romantic,' I said, taking a good slug of whisky while I thought about bottling whatever it was that was getting me all this attention.

    'I am,' she said, making her top lip shine with the tip of her tongue.

    'You should be careful.'

    'And why is that?'

    'You're opening yourself up to disappointment.'

    'Hi, Bruce,' said Charlie, appearing between us. 'What's goin' on. You two comparing notes on marriage again?'

    'We're talking about death, as usual,' said Yvette, smiling.

    'Americans never talk about death,' said Charlie.

    'You just spend a lot of money putting it off,' I said.

    'Let's go live some life at my place,' said Charlie, biting his bottom lip and taking Yvette's arm and leading her away.

    People were leaving. The tray floated past once more. At the door, Charlie detached himself from Yvette and she passed through first. Nina appeared in the doorway and blocked Charlie's path. Charlie warned her with his index finger and walked through her. By the time I got out, Nina was nowhere to be seen.

    She came out of a door down a corridor with her make-up in place. She told me she was tired and was going to go home. She was sniffing and blinking. We walked to the car, she opened the door, turned and held my face in both hands and kissed me hard. She got in, stared straight ahead, started the car, reversed out of the parking spot and drove off into the darkness with my overnight bag in her boot.

    A couple from the party told me Nina lived in Kamina Village in the north of Lomé. I walked the couple of hundred yards back to the Armenian's house in the dreadful heat and sweated whisky.