The Big Killing (15 page)

A gust of wind drove its shoulder into the side of the building and a couple of doors slammed shut. The
chef
said something to the youngest boy. Raindrops hit the roof like grape shot. The boy produced some hurricane lamps which he lit. He left the room and the generator cut and the lights went out. The rain roared on the roof, too loud for talk, and we stood in the half-lit room which flared on and off with blue-white lightning so that we could see the rain falling in a white wall outside.

The rain gave me ten minutes to think. One minute to sort out what I was going to say and the nine minutes mulling over the response permutations should they look under the driver's seat and find Eugene Amos Gilbert's silenced .38.

When the rain had eased off, the
chef
nodded at me and I told them how I came to be in Fat Paul's hotel room on Monday night. I even mentioned the vultures and how I'd beaten them out of the room to show that I was a nice guy with respect for the dead. The
chef
said it didn't explain the key. I told him I took the key when I first came into the hotel so that I could go up and check the room. If the key had been on the hook the woman would have said they were out and I'd have had no reason to go upstairs and see.

The shorn head thought about that and then asked me why the key was there in the first place if the people were in their room. I gave him the scenario of the empty hotel with Fat Paul's car outside, the killer finishing his work, locking the door and putting the key back on the hook. He didn't like it. He asked me why I hadn't made a statement to the police. I said that I didn't want to spend four hours in a police station when I had to drive to Korhogo the next day and anyway, the manager had the story. He produced Fat Paul's ring, the one with the scorpion on it.

'What's this?'

'A ring.'

'Yours?'

'Yes.'

He gave it to me to try on. It might have cut into Fat Paul's fingers but on mine there was a pencil width's difference.

'You've slimmed,' he said, smiling, so that I had to tell him about Eugene Amos Gilbert, also known as 'Red'. How we'd met in the hotel, how I'd disarmed him and seen his ID. How we'd fought in the basement and ended up on the bridge where we'd had another fight and he'd fallen in the water.

'Where's the gun?' asked the
chef,
which was a good and well-timed question and had me thinking that if they find that gun with my prints all over it and make the ballistic connection I'm on my way to a very long time in an Ivorian penal establishment.

'In the lagoon,' I said.

'And Eugene Amos Gilbert's ID?'

'In the lagoon. I gave it back to him.'

He asked for my timetable between three and six yesterday afternoon. I went over that and my story six or seven times until he'd got it absolutely straight. When the storm had passed and they restarted the generator, the neon lights came back on and after several hours of brutal light and step-by-step repetition my mind was like four eggs, scrambled. One of the other policemen typed it out, the guy needing a course badly, and not from the Pick 'n' Mix school. They had it off in triplicate and asked me to sign it. The same typist typed out the statement on the telex, the keys kicking and slapping and the tape spewing. I signed that too. As if this wasn't enough ugliness for one night I had another surprise when I asked the
chef
about the block of money in the Coq Sportif bag that was taken from my car. There were a lot of puzzled faces and muttering of 'Coq Sportif' and one of the boys left the room and came back shrugging.

'So we can go now?' asked Ron.

'I've telexed Abidjan,' said the
chef.
'We have to wait for the reply.'

It was four o'clock in the morning when they locked us in the room next door with our bags. I still had Fat Paul's ring which the
chef
had forgotten about in the excitement over the two million CFA he'd just ripped off. I lay on the floor and wondered how long I was going to have to work for B.B. now that I'd lost his two million. With compound interest of Christ knows how many per cent it could be a life sentence, a better life sentence than an African prison—unless you knew B.B.

Ron turned the light off and lay down some yards away. We stared at the ceiling like a couple who've rowed heavily over dinner and are doing some light soul-searching, knowing they're going to make up but biding their time, eking out a little suffering.

'I fucked you up,' said Ron, which nearly sounded like an apology.

'I didn't exactly help myself.'

'If we hadn't come here you wouldn't be in this shit.'

'I'd have been in some other shit. It's nothing to do with you. It's planetary.'

'You believe in that crap?'

'No, I'm trying to make you feel better.'

'You think you can get out of this?' asked Ron. 'I notice you didn't say "we".'

'Hey, I didn't register as a diamond buyer, which is not what I'd call a big problem. I pay out some shekels in the morning and I'm out of here. I'm not up for triple murder plus mutilations and theft.
That's
what I call a big problem.
That's
why I'm asking you if you can get out of this ... OK?'

'OK. My answer is: If they don't find the gun.'

'What gun?'

The gun the hit man used to kill Fat Paul. It's under the front seat.'

Ron went completely silent, so that I could hear the leather of his boots creaking, the noise of a distant dog barking and the rain dripping off the roof outside.

'You had a heart attack, Ron?'

'No, I've got something on my mind. That's all.'

'Apart from the gun?'

'That's just taken up a big chunk of it, but yes, apart from the gun, which should have been in the lagoon in Abidjan and not under the front seat of your fucking car, there's something on my mind.'

Silence.

'You think maybe I did kill them and you're worried about sharing a floor with a mass murderer.'

'No, I think you covered that in there six times over. I'm satisfied ... even though you did lie about the gun.'

Some more silence.

'You don't mind keeping what it is to yourself? I mean, I've got a few things pressing on me at the moment, making my heart run a little quick.'

'It's not something that affects ...
us
.'

'Our new-found love for each other, you mean?'

'What I mean is, it's not important to
our
situation.'

'That's the only situation I'm prepared to think about right now.'

'It's something you should know.'

'You crack under torture, is that it?'

'I don't know, I've never been tortured.'

'Are you going to lance this boil or let it burst on its own?'

'I'm getting married.'

'Congratulations.'

'A week on Sunday.'

'That's great. Nice to have some good news. Sleep well on it.'

'I need to be back...'

'What's her name?'

'...by the middle of next week at least.'

'You going to tell me her name?'

'I have to get a flight to Tel Aviv by nineteen hundred hours on Friday week.'

'For Christ's sake tell me her name.'

'Anat.'

Pause.

'That's an interesting name. Her parents must have spent a long time thinking up a name like that. Amat. You mean, like amo, amas, amat. She loves.'

'With an "n" for November. Anat.'

'She's foreign, then?'

'Israeli,' he said. 'Most people who get married in Tel Aviv are Israeli.'

'Do you love this girl ... Anat?'

'Yes, I do.'

'That's good.'

'What do you mean?'

'I mean it wasn't the matchmaker's choice. You love her. It wasn't arranged.'

'No.'

'I'm very happy for you, Ron,' I said, rolling on to my side.

'Thanks.'

'Just don't tell anybody else about it, OK?'

'Fine.'

'We've got to look as if we've got all the time in the world.'

'Right.'

'Now I understand why you were so edgy.'

'I was edgy because of the bullet in the tyre, because you said you killed somebody, because there's a gun under the front seat of the car, because we're in jail in the middle of fucking nowhere, because...'

'Don't get out of your pram again, Ron.'

Ron shut up. I could hear him blinking. I could tell he was lying there on his back with his hands clasped behind his head looking at the ceiling with the nastiness all shut out and a warm feeling growing up him thinking about Anat. Thinking about life after he gets out of here. His future. A future that was going to be sweet.

'Have you got anybody, Bruce?'

I heard him but I didn't answer. The smell of wet earth came in under the door. The wind tapped at something metallic outside. One of the policemen snored in the corridor. It wasn't long before I found myself running down a long, wet and badly lit passageway, on my own, not scared, just running, but with no light at the end of it.

Wednesday 30th October

I woke up on the back of a loud bang followed by the noise of splitting wood and turned to see a splinter of the jamb topple away and the door's hinges pop. The door fell on Ron's inert body and one of the big-bellied policemen, still with momentum, blundered over it and stopped himself against the far wall.
'Qu'est-ce qu'ily a?'

'Il a perdu la clef,'
said a voice from the corridor.

'Fuck me,' said Ron, shrugging off the door.

'Ça va?'
asked the policeman, leaning the door against the wall.

'Ça fucking
va
,' said Ron, on all fours, his long hair, a little greasier now, hanging in rats' tails off his head.

The
chef
came in, running a wet hand over his shorn head, and told us the phone lines were down and we were going to Bouaké. I asked him why we couldn't go to Korhogo, which was nearer, and he said the phone lines were down there too, and even if they weren't we'd still be going to Bouaké because that was the way it was going to be.

Outside it was a grey, misty morning with the sun just beginning to burn it off. Moses was loading the car, cold and miserable with his swollen eye just open. He said Borema had been released.

A big man in full purple robes and a cylindrical hat the size of a snare drum stood on the backs of his size-thirteen white pointed shoes by the open passenger door, whose panel had been replaced. In his hand he had the Coq Sportif carrier bag which had contained B.B.'s two million CFA. He was introduced as a local chief and we all shook hands. I brought up the subject of my money with him and pointed at the bag. He handed it to me. It had something thick and solid in it but not money. It was a book—
Le Père Goriot
by Balzac.

'C'est bon ca,'
said the police
chef.
I put the book back in the carrier bag and gave it back to the chief.

'Non, non, non,'
he said, and with inspired misunderstanding took the book out and handed me the carrier bag, as if I was a mud-hut native who'd die with gratitude to be given a bag like that. We got in the car along with an armed guard.

Moses drove with his good eye on the road while the chief sat next to him with his hat in his lap, moaning deliciously every now and then as if he was getting a gentle rub down from the money on his thigh.

'This is why we're going to Bouaké,' I said to Ron.

'Not the telex.'

'We're the big man's stretch limo for the day,' I said, and on cue the chief let out a long low moan as if he was getting it just where he wanted it.

We arrived in Bouaké just after 1.00 p.m. The sun was shining but not so that I felt like kicking off my shoes and dancing around a pool with a daquiri. We dropped the chief outside the big hotel in town. He walked in there with Balzac held behind his back, looking around as if he might buy most things under his nose. Moses drove on to the police station and the
chef
went in.

Half an hour later the
chef
came back out and told us we were going to Abidjan. I said he'd had his money and it was time to say goodbye. Without bothering to turn round he told us that Ron was free to go but I had charges which had to be answered in Abidjan. I asked what the charges were, and he said he didn't know the exact wording but the Abidjan police wanted to talk to me about a triple murder.

We drove to Abidjan in the heat of the day. The
chef
's shorn head dropped on to his chest and he slept. The armed guard behind us dozed and jerked awake. Ron seemed to have lost some of his edges overnight. He was looking out of the window without sneering, looking at women with half a hundredweight of firewood on their heads, and babies on their backs, moving at a fair lick with their bare feet on the hot tarmac road.

'They're very resilient,' I said to him.

'Not just physically,' he said, which surprised me. 'Those women last night.'

'They knew we were trouble as soon as they saw Borema.'

'They let us in, fed us and took that beating without a squeak.'

'Women have a very hard life in Africa. They get used to trouble early on.'

'Trouble,' said Ron, nodding. 'That's the first time I've ever had trouble.'

'I thought you'd had some in Russia.'

'Passport, visa stuff. The business is all protected by the Moscow mob. You don't see anything. Just the odd guy standing in the corridor, looking as if he's eaten too many dumplings.'

'You must sense it, though,' I said, and his eyes flicked across at me, 'the ugliness. Like when you stay in cheap hotels, you always know the whorehouses.'

'I've never stayed in cheap hotels,' he said. 'I'm rich.'

'I forgot.'

'Sure you did.'

'You weren't talking like a jerk for a second.'

'I know I am one sometimes...'

'Sometimes?' Ron laughed.

'A lot of people want to get on my back,' he said. 'I protect myself.'

'Believe me, you're good. You must have spent your whole life at it.'

'Look,
you
can tell me about sleaze. You
know
about sleaze.
Sleaze
is your...'