The Big Killing (35 page)

'What did you settle on?'

'I'm a reasonable man.'

'You didn't kill him?'

'No point.'

'Too useful? Like me.'

'Like you used to be, Bruce, but not any more. You're a pain in the ass. You see, I buy my expensive tape and I find it don't include a special offer I was expecting and that's really got me pissed, you see. So now all you gotta do is tell me what you done with the fuckin' audio tape. The one you shoulda given to Red a few days back when he asked you, and kept your nose out of my goddam business.'

'Eugene had an attitude problem.'

'Red's like a lot of jigs. He's good at one thing. He can kill people if they're standing in front of him and he's told where to point. You ask him to do anything else an' he can't do it, can't think on his feet. He's a jig. That's what they're like. You musta been out here long enough to know that.'

'But he's one that won't talk.'

'No, he won't, 'cos I keep his family sweet. Thirty bucks a month buys you a lotta loyalty in Liberia. Now, let's have the tape, fuckbrain.'

'Your language has got a little less biblical, Al. What happened to all that stuff you were trying to interest me in?'

Trzinski enjoyed that. He laughed and rubbed the bristles of his crew cut up the back of his head, finding some folds of skin he liked feeling. He looked across the yard at the flames under the vats.

'What's goin' on out there?'

'It's sheanut boiling, that's all.'

'You weren't giving me any shit with all that sheanut stuff,' he said, staring across at the vats until I began to see a nasty idea creeping into his head.

'Let's go,' he said. 'Let's go have a look at the sheanut boiling.'

The noise of the water roaring and the sheanut pinging against the metal of the vats was loud enough for Trzinski to have to get up close to me and let me know what sweating Omaha beef smelt like.

'I seen something like this in Vietnam,' he said. 'Now you get in that cage there, see, and keep still.'

I stood in the cage which came up to the top of my thighs. Trzinski pulled out a length of plastic and cuffed me to the frame.

'Now then, let's start again, and I don't want you gettin' smart with me, understand. Where's Jimmy Wilson's goddam audio tape?'

'It's out of my hands now, and yours. There's nothing you can do about it ... Colonel Al.'

Trzinski's fist, the one with the gun in it, thumped into the side of my head and I slumped to the side of the cage on my knees.

'Shut your mouth, you little piece o' shit!' he roared. 'I'll be the fuckin' judge of that. You just tell me where it is. I wanna know where my trouble's comin' from if I'm gonna take the stand like good ol' Olly North did.'

'What's in it for me?'

'I shoot you, don't boil you to death.'

'Don't claw out my guts.'

He reached behind him and took the metal claw out of his back pocket.

'You won't feel it.'

'Why the claw, Al?'

'Kinda things jigs do to each other, ain't it?'

'What were you doing in Man?'

'You're playing for time, Bruce. It won't work.'

He put the gun in his pocket, went over to the crane and pulled on the rope, taking me up into the air. He tied the rope off and swung the crane around so that I was hanging in the steam coming off the sheanut. He climbed up on to the scaffolding and stood on the wooden planking of the walkway between the two vats and lined the cage up over the water and took his gun out again and looked at it.

'What's it to be, Bruce?'

'Just tell me what happened in Man, and I'll tell you who's got the tape.'

'Look, I know you're all upset. I heard your diamond man got himself killed and all that. But I've got a war that needs stopping and that's a helluva lot more important than individuals. Now shut the fuck up about Man and tell me where you put the tape.'

I pulled myself up on to my feet again. I was getting worried about the depth of David's sleeping patterns. I couldn't see a damn thing up here in the steam with the sweat pouring down my face into my eyes.

Trzinski eased the rope off a couple of notches so that the bottom of the cage was below the surface of the water and I could feel the heat pooling around my shoes.

'What's it to be?' he asked, clicking the safety off. 'You won't feel a thing.'

'What did Borema tell you, Al? After you burned his face off?'

'He gave me a few names. Some of Talbot's finance guys. Been down in Danané talking it through with them.'

'So why did you shoot Ron? The guy was on his way out, why the hell did you...?'

He didn't answer because the wooden planking bucked underneath him, lifting him two feet into the air and knocking him sideways. His arms and legs reached out for something, anything, his body twisting, his eyes and mouth wide open but no sound coming out. His feet kicked out in a strange spasm, as you'd expect a hanging man would do trying to regain the floor. Then he was in the steam and he must have realized it was the end and fitted the .38 into his mouth. He hit the water. There was an explosion and a dark black mess spurted from the steam.

David sprang up on to the scaffolding, straightened the plank, swung the cage back over the ground and lowered it.

'You tellin' me you no need protection, Mr Bruce.'

'I know, David, I need plenty.'

'You needin' more than plenty.'

Wednesday 6th November

It was first light, just before 6.00 on a cloudless morning. I sat in the kitchen with a cup of coffee painted with something stronger than milk. Dotte was standing at the door, looking across the compound at the sheanut cage which David had lifted out of the vat. Trzinski was lying across the top of it, a fist-sized wound in the back of his head and his face and arms red-raw.

I went to the office to call the police and the phone rang. It was Howard Corben.

'They just came through with the autopsy on Malahide. They reckon he died between five and six in the morning, the
gardien
too. They haven't done the driver yet. Trzinski...'

'Trzinski's dead. Shot himself.'

'Wow. Couldn't have happened to a nicer guy. Did he suffer?'

'Not a lot.'

'You can't win 'em all.'

'What took you so long?'

'The autopsy. I don't know what the matter is with these people around here, but they didn't get started on it until four this morning. The fuck they start then, I don't know. That's Africa, a very surprising place. It took me most of yesterday to find out what happened to Trzinski. Thought the guy must have disappeared up his own asshole and I should start looking for that. I checked all the police posts and found the guy had gone to Man; I even found out he'd been drinking in the hotel bar at Les Cascades, but I couldn't make out how he left. Then somebody at the police post to the airport told me that there'd been a military plane there on Monday. So I went down there, did some asking around and found Trzinski hitched a ride on it. It left eight-thirty Monday evening.'

'Monday evening?'

'That's what I said, Bruce.'

'Before Ron Collins got shot, before Malahide got ripped open by the Leopard?'

'The fuck you telling me for, I just told you.'

I slammed the phone down. Things were clicking in my head. I slumped in the chair behind the desk and sat for a full ten minutes, counting things off, linking information that I thought Trzinski had to information that only one other person could have had. Very complicated but well-oiled combinations slotted into position and they opened up a single door. I phoned Les Cascades and asked for Martin Fall.

'Did you find the body?'

'That's an awesomely terrible opening line, Bruce.'

'I'm not so cheerful. I've got a dead Trzinski in my back yard. Shot himself.'

'Christ.'

'Did you?'

'Yes. Some village women found it twenty miles downstream. They took it into Toulépleu yesterday morning. The police packed it in ice and sent it up to Danané. It's in the hospital morgue in Man now. They'll get the release papers this afternoon. If the weather holds I should be out of here by evening.'

'We never sorted out the money.'

'Keep it. You deserve it.'

I exchanged some small-talk about more work and Anne. We hung up. I phoned the Hotel Kedjona to ask about flights to Man. The next one was tomorrow. I opened up a map. It was 700 kilometres to Man on the main roads and just over 400 kilometres across country. It was 6.10 a.m. To get to Man on the main roads could take anything from 10 to 14 hours, across country it could be better or a hell of a lot worse. Dotte appeared in the doorway.

'I've got to get to Man,' I said. 'Where can I get a car?'

'Le Mont Korhogo Hotel. They're not cheap. What's happened?'

'People tell you to look further than the end of your nose,' I said, ruminating over the map. 'But not always to check under it first.'

'Is this about your diamond trader?'

'I thought Trzinski had Ron Collins taken out but there was something that didn't fit. We couldn't figure it out. They killed Ron on his way out, after I'd given the rebels the diamonds. If Trzinski was involved, he'd have shot me going in so that the rebels didn't get the diamonds. The rebels would have killed Ron. The arms would stop moving across the Ivory Coast. Trzinski wins. It didn't happen like that, it happened exactly how it should have done. It was something to do with money coming
from
the rebels, not going
to
them.'

'Which means?'

'It means the guy I was working for set me up and now I'm going down to Man to talk to him about it.'

'You're driving?'

'There're no flights.'

'Did you sleep?'

'Not much.'

'You're not going to make it on your own with your leg like that. I'll come with you, share the driving.'

'What about Katrina?'

'She'll come too.'

'It could be dangerous.'

'We'll stay out of it. Go and hire the car. I'll put some food and drink together.'

I went out into the compound, glad that I hadn't called the police and then had to spend three days with them plodding through it all. Standing at the foot of the steps up to the verandah were two men, small but formed with the very latest genetic technology. They both wore white shirts and company ties, suit trousers, the jackets folded over their arms, a briefcase in the free hand and a holdall each at their feet. They had straight black hair, wire-framed spectacles and they were standing out in the hot morning sunshine without a pimple of sweat between them. 'Medway-san?' they asked.

'Hanamaki-san, Yuzawa-san?' I asked, thinking: Christ alive.

They head-butted the air, catching me on the hop. Hanamaki pointed over to the cage with Trzinski lying on top and Yuzawa asked: 'Industliar accident?'

The car I was driving was a brand-new Toyota Land Cruiser which had cost me 240,000 CFA, nearly $1,000, for three days' hire and it was worth every bit of that. It chewed up those dusty back roads between Korhogo and Mankono, spewing it out behind in a towering cloud that ensured a reception committee in each village. Men, women and children lined the road, the kids yelling:
'Toure-e-e. Toure-e-e. Cadeaux-cadeaux.'
Chickens came from miles around, timing their sprints from hundreds of yards off to see if they could sustain some terrible injury and claim compensation. Cattle battled towards us like the phalanx of a distant army looking for conversation.

Then we hit the mud, 150 kilometres from Man just outside'Séguéla. The Land Cruiser sucked it in and trowelled it out, so hungry it would have been a shame to deny it. It took us just under eleven hours to get to Man, with one puncture and a fifteen-minute stop for food and painkillers.

I slept for six of those hours, curled in the open boot. Katrina didn't sleep at all. She glued herself to the seat and stared out of the window, the grey charcoal smudges under her eyes growing darker.

Dotte opened up—a scarf tied around her head, sunglasses on, she laughed and looked as if she was on her way to marry Cary Grant. She reached back now and again to squeeze Katrina's leg. Katrina didn't turn a hair.

We drove straight to the airport outside Man, the sun still just there but getting ready for the sharp drop into darkness. I limped through the terminal, trying to get some mobility into my stiff knee, and saw the Lear jet that Martin Fall had hired with Collins and Driberg money. It was 200 yards from the terminal on its own stretch of new tarmac as if it was a VIP and got carpeting in its own lounge.

There were ten people in the terminal, including the ground staff and cleaners. The only customers were a longhaired white guy sitting with his arm on his rucksack, picking and smoothing his ratty moustache, and three Ivorians in western-style suits who talked as if they were outbidding each other at an auction.

Dusk came. Night fell. I went back out to the car and took an adjustable spanner out of the tool box supplied, thinking if Martin was flying he wouldn't be armed. Not that that made any difference when the guy could kill in his sleep with two fingers.

Katrina had finally slumped across the back seat, exhausted. She slept, her hands pulled into her chest, as if she was keeping something from us. I sat with Dotte outside under the trees and told her about the juju, about last night's visit—Katrina half naked and talking about Kurt like that. Dotte listened, impassive, and all the animation that had crept into her body during the day drained out of her.

A taxi turned into the airport entrance, its lights slashing over the car. Dotte was as still as if her core had turned to ice. The taxi pulled up in front of the terminal and Martin Fall got out and stood at the back of the car, sorting through some currency and waiting for the driver to open the boot and take the cases out. He paid the driver, who wanted to take the cases inside, but Martin told him to leave them. I gripped Dotte by the arm, pulled her to the car and pushed her across the front seats.

I walked over to the terminal. The taxi pulled away and Martin folded his wallet and slipped it into the lightweight jacket he was wearing.