Recoil (9 page)

‘It’s like the drapes have been drawn for eight years. Miss Silke travels a lot, as I said, and comes back here in between. She does her charity work, which Mr Stefan sneers at but tolerates, and he is away on business so much that he sees more of Shanghai than he does of Switzerland.’

I lifted the sandwich and held it out for him to admire. ‘Giuseppe, my friend, the great British sarnie. Want to get amongst it? Better than all that fancy gear you conjure up down here.’

He threw up his hands in mock horror and I headed for the stairs.

3

I was squeaking my way back along the hallway as Stefan came out of the large sitting room that led off it. I sometimes wondered if he had the whole place bugged.

‘So, how did you enjoy lunch?’ His accent was German, with a hint of Middle Eastern rug trader – quite a feat for a little Italian guy to pull off. His expression, as ever, was bored, with more than a hint of ‘You still here, you gold-digging, freeloading lump of English shit?’

I followed him back into the large, impersonal sitting room with its floor-to-ceiling windows overlooking the lake and two enormous red sofas that faced each other across a wooden coffee-table big enough to sleep two. ‘We didn’t manage to meet up.’

Stefan spent most of his time in this room. Giuseppe spent most of his in the one adjacent, with his ear to the large dividing doors. I wondered if he was there right now.

‘No, I can imagine.’ He turned his back to study the drinks table. ‘I saw her when she left this morning.’

How could I respond to that without admitting we’d had a row? I couldn’t, and he knew it. Everything he ever said to me was designed to put me on the back foot. When we first met he even got my name wrong deliberately. Maybe that was how he’d made it to the top of his shitheap.

He looked back. ‘Where is she now?’

‘Still at work.’ I peered at my watch. Fucking hell, ten to seven. Where had she got to? It wasn’t as if Lugano got gridlocked in the rush-hour. And, anyway, she was on a moped.

He tutted. ‘This volunteering thing, it’s such a . . .’ He let it hang while he took the top off the whisky decanter, as if inviting me to say something he could later use in evidence.

‘Credit to her? Worthwhile thing to do?’

He poured the thirty-year-old single malt into a glass. ‘Waste of time. Finance and business, that’s how you effect change.’

The top went back on the decanter and the decanter went back on its tray. Lucky I didn’t like the shit; I wasn’t going to be offered any.

He picked up the glass and took an appreciative sniff. ‘I will show you what changes the world.’ He shook his head disdainfully. It was hard to tell which he was sneering at more, the thought of people doing something for others for free, or my Branston doorstep.

He removed a slim leather wallet from his jacket, and produced an all-black credit card. He flicked it up and down between his forefinger and thumb as if I was supposed to salivate or burst into applause. This card wasn’t the kind that plebs like me used. I had seen one or two before: they were for the
über
-rich. Thicker than the run-of-the-mill, they incorporated a swipe fingerprint identifier and a small LCD display. ‘This is what matters, Nick.’

Once he had swiped his finger over the identifier, the LCD displayed six numbers that tumbled like lines of matrix. They settled to show a six-figure code. A password generator at the bank would sync with Stefan’s card. It would change every day, maybe with every transaction.

‘I can cash five million dollars with this one piece of plastic. That is what the world is all about. The bottom line.’

He gave it an admiring glance before it went back into his pocket. No wonder he felt superior – if I tried to take out more than a couple of hundred dollars a day I got referred to my branch.

‘Still.’ He studied me over the top of his glass as it headed for his lips. ‘At least she’s using the seven years of expensive medical education I paid for.’ He watched my face carefully. He knew full well that this was the first I’d heard of it.

I couldn’t pick him up on it. How could I admit I didn’t know such fundamental stuff? My mobile vibrated in my pocket. I pulled it out and stared at the text.

wont make it home tonight – work – really sorry – ill email
.

I waved the phone at Stefan. ‘She sends her love.’

His lip curled. ‘I see.’ He took a sip. ‘So, you think she will be back, do you? You really think you know her that well?’

‘She’s just working late.’

He scoffed. ‘Welcome to the wonderful world of Silke. You two clearly had a – what shall we call it? – an exchange of views this morning, and now she doesn’t come home. Well, fancy that. I’ve had this for thirty years. She’s gone again to God knows where.’ He turned to look out of the window. ‘I wanted her to do law here, then work with me in my companies, so she went and did medicine at Cambridge instead. She finished at Cambridge, and did she start practising? No, she went travelling.’ He faced me. ‘Something doesn’t go the way Silke wants, she runs away. That’s how she’s always been. A leopard doesn’t change its spots. So, excuse my scepticism, but if I were you I wouldn’t expect to see her any time soon.’

I waved the phone again. ‘She’s working.’

‘If you say so.’ He took a long sip. ‘Do say if she’s not coming back. Giuseppe will have you driven down the hill to a bus stop tonight. Or maybe the
autostrada
. You seem quite proficient in securing free rides.’ He looked me up and down. ‘I don’t imagine it will take you long to pack.’

Fuck him. He was the least of my problems right now.

I walked out and headed for her room, taking the stairs two at a time as I tapped her number into my mobile.

4

All I got was voicemail.

‘It’s Nick, I’m sorry too. Please call me. I miss you.’

For the first time in years I cared enough about someone to feel upset. Had she really gone? Didn’t she like me any more?

I logged on to Hotmail. Nothing yet.

I picked up my mobile again and dialled the Mercy Flight office. I knew the guy on the desk. We’d bumped into each other a few times when I’d picked her up after work. On the phone, he’d always gob off in French till he realized who I was, then switch to fluent English at the drop of a hat. Silky could do the same. German, French, English, Italian. It was all the same to her.

I got Étienne’s voice, but it was only on answerphone. My French wasn’t great. In fact, it was virtually non-existent, but I got the drift. The office wouldn’t be open again until nine a.m.

Fuck that. Maybe she really was working; maybe they’d turned the phones to voicemail. Étienne often did when he was busy. I grabbed my bomber jacket and headed downstairs.

It was cold on the moped as I weaved in and out of the evening traffic, but I felt a whole lot warmer when I swung intoVia Zurigo and saw that the lights were still on in Do Good Land.

I rang the doorbell. Nothing happened. I rangagain, longer this time, until Étienne appeared behind the glass door. He looked tired, but more than that – surprised.

‘Silke still here?’

His brow furrowed even more. ‘She left three or four hours ago.’

‘Where to?’

‘You don’t know?’

‘Course I fucking don’t. I wouldn’t be here, would I?’

He started to look really worried. I didn’t want that: he was one of the good guys.

‘I’m sorry, mate. I’m a bit confused. Where’s she gone?’

Maybe Étienne had seen this before. Did I know anything about her?

‘Come on through. Let me get you some coffee.’

We walked past the battered sofa and coffee-table they called Reception and along a corridor into an open-plan area. One corner was piled with boxes. I perched on the edge of a desk. Appeal posters were pinned to the wall in front of me. The photographs and shoutlines gave me the same uncomfortable feeling I’d had earlier, by the lake, every time I saw them.

Over a close-up of a young girl’s face, her eyes staring and empty:

Ester is 8 years old. Yesterday she walked 30 kms

to our clinic. For water? For food? For medicine?

No, for rape counselling
.

Over a similarly bleak shot of a young boy staring into the camera:

Byron is 9 years old. Yesterday he had to kill two

people in his own home. Burglars? Kidnappers?

Armed intruders? No, his parents
.

There were another couple of desks with telephones, and that was about it.

‘We run on a shoestring. We get the cash towhere it’s needed.’ Étienne lifted a jug from a coffee machine. ‘But the coffee’s pretty good. Well, usually. I mean, it’s late, and—’

‘Where is she, Étienne?’

He nodded at one of the posters. A medic was bandaging a stump where a small African boy’s hand should have been. ‘Tim runs the camp in DRC, near the Rwanda border. Silke’s been working on his aid campaign. She organized everything, even wrote the posters.’ He smiled. ‘You must be proud of her.’

‘Yes. Very.’ Fuck, she’d probably told me all this stuff and it had gone in one ear and straight out the other.

Étienne stared at the posters, lost in another world. ‘Tim’s operating in impossible conditions. I expect she told you – in the last twelve months alone there’ve been two thousand cases of rape, mutilation and summary execution, just in Ituri province. That’s where our camp is.’

His hand shook as he poured the coffee. It might be outrageous stuff but these guys had to be conditioned to get past that shit to operate. Things must be grim out there if they’d got to him like this.

‘I was out there myself a month ago. When we took our mobile clinic to places where there were roads, we passed burned-out houses, one village after another completely destroyed and abandoned. It was terrible.’

His hand shook more as he thought about what he had seen. ‘She talks about you a lot, Nick.’

‘That’s nice. But where is she?’ I’d already got there, but I needed to hear it confirmed.

‘She’s on our relief plane to Kinshasa.’ He shifted his gaze from the posters at last. ‘Today was the tipping point. On top of everything else, there was an earthquake, just a minor one but it’s devastated the village we’re based in. Tim’s overrun. We’ve never heard him sound so desperate.’ He put down his cup. ‘She felt she couldn’t stand by while—’

‘Where did they fly from?’

‘Geneva. A charter, non-stop to Kinshasa, with as much aid as we could buy. It’s emptied the bank account. Then it’s trucks east to the road head and after that on foot.’

‘They must have a radio or something – sat phone?’

‘Sat phones are a luxury we can’t afford . . . There’s one at the camp, but—’

‘When will she get there? Are they part of a relief convoy from Kinshasa?’

‘Tim phones us every couple of days, or if there’s an emergency – which is most of the time at the moment.’ He tore the top sheet off a memo pad and scribbled a number.

I counted twelve digits. It must be an Iridium.

‘Please don’t use this unless you absolutely have to. They’re swamped by casualties. I’m sure she’ll contact you as soon as she can.’

‘You’re right.’ I swigged the dregs and put the cup down on the desk. ‘But will you ask Tim to remind her anyway?’

He nodded.

‘And I need the exact location of this camp, mate. You got a map reference or the name of the village?’

Étienne didn’t ask why I wanted to know so much as he wrote down the details. Just as well because I wasn’t going to tell him. How could I, when I wasn’t sure myself?

He walked me to the door. We shook, and he kept his grip as he looked me in the eye. ‘Nick, I’m not going to bullshit you. It’s a horrible, dangerous place. I’m still having nightmares, but she obviously felt she had to go. All I can say is our camps have never been attacked. Let’s keep our fingers crossed and pray it stays that way.’

5

Fuck praying.

I rode the moped back uphill like a man possessed. I needed to get to the house and throw my stuff together and –
fuck
– do what, exactly? Were there planes or trains this time of night? To where? How the fuck would I get myself into the middle of the jungle and find that poxy village? I didn’t even know where I wanted to go. All I knew was that I was going to get her out of that shit-hole and find out one way or another if she would marry me. It wasn’t brain surgery.

Maybe Stefan could do something. Maybe he had some way of contacting her I didn’t know about. Maybe he controlled her bank account and credit cards – maybe he could threaten to cut her off if she didn’t turn straight round. I mean, there wasn’t much love lost between them, but even so, he wouldn’t want her risking her life for what he’d see as a bunch of worthless natives. No, why would he do anything now? Everyone else seemed to know but me: she’d always been like this. Maybe he already knew. Fuck it, who cared? I didn’t need anything from him.