‘Bruce?’ she asked, and I felt a bad question coming. ‘Bagado called. He left a message on the answering machine while you were asleep.’
I was disappointed not to get the question. Sorry not to get a more intimate enquiry.
‘Did you hear me?’ she asked.
‘I heard you,’ I said, and lost her in the mist.
I called Bagado, who sounded burnt out, frayed at the edges. He wanted to speak to me, it had to be tonight and it had to be private. I said I’d be in the office in half an hour.
Chapter 14
I was examining a wood knot through the bottom of a whisky glass and contemplating the nature of infidelity, infidelity of the mind. Wasn’t there a president of the United States who said: ‘I’ve committed adultery many times in my mind but never in my body’? That must have cheered the First Lady no end. I had to amuse myself with this kind of thought to prevent the seepage of unhappiness, to try and cling on to that moment after Heike had told me she was pregnant.
Bagado barged into the office shortly after 11 p.m. He was clenched in his mac and stood in front of me, his forehead ridged and troughed with a deeper geological worry.
‘José-Marie is missing,’ he said.
‘Your daughter, José-Marie?’
‘The nine-year-old. She’s missing.’
‘Since when?’
‘Since four o’clock this afternoon. She didn’t come back from school,’ he said, knots tightening in his throat, the man unable to swallow, having to stroke his Adam’s apple to get the lump down.
‘Is this...?’ I started. ‘Look, you’d better sit down, old man. Get this out right. I’ll start work on it now. Don’t worry. But just take a seat for the moment.’
‘I can’t sit,’ he said, and began pacing the room. ‘Since we found the girl on the sand bar we’ve had reports of two other girls who’ve gone missing. A seven-year-old and a six-year-old ... again both schoolgirls, we think picked up on their way home. José-Marie is the third. I think that makes it eight in total. One dead, seven missing.’
‘Did you get anything from the autopsy on the girl off the sand bar?’
‘I haven’t seen the report, if that’s what you mean. I’m picking up crumbs from anybody prepared to drop them. I saw for myself that the flesh was eaten away from the underside of her forearms, the palms of her hands and around her knees.’
‘What does that mean?’
‘I think she climbed a wall topped with broken glass. The fish did the rest.’
‘Any signs of abuse?’
‘She’d been caned across the back and buttocks. I suspect to show the others that trying to escape would not be tolerated.’
‘Sexual abuse?’
‘No, thank God for that very small mercy.’
‘Cause of death?’
‘Strangulation.’
‘What with?’
‘Bare hands.’
‘Jesus Christ,’ I said. ‘Do you think they beat her and strangled her in front of the others?’
Bagado stood in the middle of the room and pinched the bridge of his nose, his eyes screwed tight to block out the horror.
‘I don’t know,’ he agonized.
‘Have you spoken to the parents?’
‘I’m not on the investigation team. I have been told to stay away from it.’
‘Bondougou?’
‘Still with a very close personal interest.’
‘Why haven’t the parents been storming the police station?’
‘They have. They sent the riot police out to break them up.’
‘What does that say to you?’
‘Powerful people.’
‘Why do you think they’re picking exclusively on schoolgirls? I mean, these are kids who will be missed. There must be plenty of street girls who could be taken...’
‘I think, Bruce,’ said Bagado, a tortured plexus on the other side of the desk, ‘I think it’s because they’re more likely to have their virginity intact. You know the fear of AIDS is very great, but the need for sex in Africa, as you’ve seen with Moses, is even greater. Politicians, businessmen, aach!... You know how it is, Bruce.’
‘La culture Africaine.’
‘And now it’s a dangerous culture.’
‘You don’t think these girls are going to be exported?’
‘I have no idea. I cannot get involved. I cannot even get my resignation accepted. I’m locked in.’
‘Drink this,’ I said, and filled a glass for him. ‘It’ll help you think because if I’m going to help you you’ve got to give me everything you’ve got and all the direction you can think of.’
Bagado tipped the glass back. I refilled my own and his. Bagado sat down, retreated into his mac and let the whisky do the work it knew best. I started to ask questions but Bagado held up his hand.
Now I wanted to talk. Talking was like walking for the mind. I didn’t have to think. When silence yawned the horrors started, the stitches of old wounds split, the pus leaked and the gangrenous stench of unhappiness flared my nostrils.
‘Bondougou’s purpose,’ said Bagado, just as I’d decided that drinking was as good as talking for the mind, ‘is not just to suppress this investigation and hundreds of others because of the bribes he receives for doing so. Although the money is an important factor, there’s something else that’s pushing him.’
‘He’s just a bad-ass, Bagado.’
‘He wants to break me, Brace. He wants to break me as a human being.’
I started in again but Bagado backed me off with his hand.
‘This is not ... and I’ve thought about it very carefully... This is not my own paranoia. When I first lost my job some years ago, or rather, when Bondougou sacked me, for telling the media about the unpleasant death of that young Frenchwoman, he knew that this should have made my life very difficult. I survived through your charity, leaving the Cotonou scene for a while to do that job in the Ivory Coast and then more work from you and, of course, Heike.’
‘Heike?’
‘She has been very generous too. So you see, he knows that he can’t break me financially. So what does he do? What is the worst that he can do?’
‘Break you professionally.’
‘Yes. But this isn’t just a professional’s job. In the best policemen, as my old English detective friend used to say, there is a moral drive.’
‘The good versus evil stuff.’
‘Exactly. So what’s the worst that Bondougou can do? The worst is that he can embrace me. Bring me back into the fold and then render me useless to watch the crusade trampled underfoot ... under the feet of his corruption. And you know ... I know, because you saw it on the Kluezbork II the other day... you know he is succeeding. These girls disappearing and now my daughter. This is breaking me, Bruce. I can feel myself cracking.’
He sat and reached his hand across the table. I took it. It was fragile, bony, each joint a sharp but tender pressure in my palm. He brought his other hand round and gripped the meat of my shoulder. He stared into my face with the eyes of a man who knew he was falling.
‘You’re still young and strong. Bruce. I’m getting to be an old man with all this. You have to help me but I’m not sure how much I can help you. I’m confused. I’ve lost that ability for straight, clean thought. It’s as if the wiring’s burnt out. I can only get so far ... and then I think of José-Marie. I’ve stopped being a policeman. Bondougou,’ he said to himself, letting me go, walking off around the room again, ‘Bondougou is winning.’
‘Are you telling me that you think that Bondougou was responsible for having José-Marie lifted?’
He stopped by to sweep up the glass and dash the contents down his throat, then he took two strides and hurled the glass against the wall with such force that diamonds of it rebounded and skittered under the desk.
‘That,’ he said, ‘is the extent of my powerlessness. Bagado, the great detective brain, is reduced to throwing glasses.’
He brushed his hand acros
s the larger and whiter dusting he had in the hair on the top of his head.
‘I’ve been walking in the Jonquet,’ he said, setting off again, crunching through the glass, ‘and I heard some Americans talking. Peace Corps workers. They are under pressure. The US government is cutting spending. You know how Americans can talk so that you wonder whether it’s English. These two were throwing up various situations: “win-win” and “lose-win”. At the time these things meant nothing to me. But now I see it. I am in a lose-lose.’
‘Lose-lose?’
‘You know that time we were heading north and I told you that Bondougou had recalled me to the force ... split us up? You told me not to go. You said I wouldn’t just end up on the shit heap this time. I wouldn’t just get fired. You were right. I underestimated your powers of perception.’
‘Part of the problem with being a good man is that it makes you predictable. Somebody said that to me once.’
‘He’s turning me ... turning me into something I couldn’t bear to be.’
Bagado opened the door, leaned his arm up against it.
‘When I said that about you not just getting fired, Bagado, I don’t think I was perceiving anything. I just didn’t want you to go. You’ve been important to me and since you’ve gone there’s been some falling apart.’
‘I know,’ he said. ‘I’ve seen it. Heike and I have talked. We’ve talked since she told you what I thought of you. She probably shouldn’t have done that, but I understand why she did. I also know you’re a good man and I know you will do the very best for me.’
‘I will, Bagado. But what’s this lose-lose business about?’
He sighed and I thought he might be about to tell me, but he lost his energy. The talk just went out of him and without a word he left. I went to the door, but he was off and away and down the stairs. I crunched out on to the balcony in time to see his shrinking frame melt into the shadows.
‘I know someone in the Jonquet, Bagado,’ I shouted down to him. ‘He’ll be able to help. I’ll find her.’
He waved at me without turning. He reached the streetlighting on Sekou Touré, looked left, turned right and was gone.
Chapter 15
I slumped back into my chair. Lose-lose. Lose-lose. I’d never seen Bagado so low, so helpless, so stifled. That quality about him, that quality of goodness had dimmed to a candle flicker in an ocean. His children were everything. What had he said to me that first time? More children than trousers, that was the way to be. But lose-lose ... what did that mean?
I stabbed the ‘play’ button on the answering machine, just to jog myself out of the lose-lose groove and got message after message from Bagado searching for me. Then a different voice. No name but an unmistakable inflection.
‘Call me.’
There was only one voice that could turn my bowels to water with a single amoebic order. Franconelli. It was 11.30 p.m. Too late. They were an hour ahead. It wouldn’t wash. I had to call him. Tomorrow would be suspiciously late. I dialled the number and got no reply for a long time until an answering machine kicked in. I left a message, thought I was home free but someone tore the phone off the hook and cut the tape.
‘Wait.’
Some brutal Italian followed and footsteps retreated. Seconds ticked into minutes, expensive minutes. I fingered the ‘fast forward’ button, wanting to zip myself through this patch of time, get out the other side of the nastiness. Then the phone was picked up.
‘Franconelli.’
‘Bruce Medway,’ I said, and felt the tension wrap round my throat. ‘What happened?’
It came out as a shout, overcompensating. I didn’t want to croak it. The static on the line roared back.
‘What happened?’ asked Franconelli, as if he hadn’t heard me ask it first.
‘What happened to Carlo and Gio? We had an arrangement. I organized a meeting with our friend. They didn’t turn up. I called the Hotel de la Plage when I got back. They checked out yesterday. So what happened?’
More static. Voices in the ether squabbled.
‘You’d better come to Lagos,’ he said. ‘Explain it to me.’
‘I can explain it now. I went out of my way to set this thing up for them. I kept them fully informed about where we were going. I admit I didn’t see them on the day. I wasn’t aware of being followed but when I tried to tell Carlo that he had to be discreet he gave me some shit about not telling him how to do his job, so I assumed he was out there. I did the job that was asked of me by our friend. I wait. Nothing happens. Carlo and Gio don’t show up. In the morning we leave. I get back to Cotonou for lunch. I call the hotel. Nothing, nada, rien du tout. I get some sleep and I’ve been trying to call you for the last hour. So that’s why I’m asking what happened. You don’t have to tell me. I don’t need to know. I just want you to be sure that I kept up my end of the deal.’
‘Come to Lagos.’
‘When?’
‘Now.’
‘I can’t.’
‘You can.’
‘I’ve got some important work to do ... for a friend of mine. His daughter...’
‘This is the most important thing.’
‘Does this mean you don’t know what’s happened to Gio and Carlo?’
‘You come to Lagos now and make everything clear.’
‘I’ve told you. I’m not being difficult but I can’t come right now, not immediately.’
‘No, Bruce. You will come now.’
‘I will come, but not yet.’
‘Now, you stronzzo, you will come NOW!’ he roared down the line.
‘Mr Franconelli...’
The line went dead. I put the phone down slowly. Round One. He was going to be back with something bigger, have me hauled off the street, maybe, and taken to Lagos in a boot. Lose some weight that way. Or perhaps he’d get Bondougou to do it. We’d see.
I went out on the street and stopped one of the stream of taxi motos in the sodium night light. He took me to the Jonquet and the bar L’Ouistiti.
The girls were still there in their red cave. They bristled and shimmered as I walked in, all tongues and eye contact. I strode through and past the moribund guard into Charbonnier’s inner sanctum. I buzzed myself in, the accountant giving me the swivel eye over his shoulder, and walked straight into the usual incense. Michel was sitting with his shins up against the edge of the desk, his joint held in prayer. I took the spliff off him and dowsed it in the tyre.
‘Are you moving in?’ he asked, fitting his legs under the table. ‘Marnier’s new boy.’
‘Is this his top job?’
He blinked at that, trying to compute whether he’d had enough toke to get over that depressing little thought.
‘I want to ask you something,’ I said.
‘Me?’
‘That’s why I’m taking it slowly, because I know how long you need to filter stuff through that sludge you’ve got between your ears.’
‘You know I don’t talk about Marnier.’
‘This isn’t about Marnier. It’s your other specialist subject. Sex.’
‘You want some? You didn’t have to come this far. It’s all at the front door.’
‘What if I wanted you to supply me with a virgin?’
He laughed.
‘They’re all virgins...’
I leaned over the desk and smacked him with the open palm of my hand across the side of his head hard enough so that he had to put a hand out to stop himself falling to the floor. He came back up looking more poisonous than a coral snake and I smacked him on the other side of his head, rocking him the other way. He wasn’t so quick to come back up.
‘I can do this all night,’ I said.
‘OK, OK, OK,’ he said. ‘You didn’t say it was urgent.’
‘Do you think I’d come into your burrow if it wasn’t?’
‘Comment?’ he asked holding his head in his hands, the bells ringing in his ears all the way from Chartres.
‘Where can I find a virgin? Une vraie vier
ge, Michel. None of your shop-soiled goods.’
‘You don’t look the type.’
‘What is the type?’
‘There are all types ... but you don’t have the look.’
‘Maybe it’s not for me.’
‘You’ll have to come back later.’
‘Give me the name of the supplier and tell me where I can find him.’
‘Impossible.’
I hit him three times, bounced him back and forth like the rubber man in the rage room. His eyes went. His ears were red and throbbing. The full carillon ringing in his bonce. I sat down and oozed some more threat at him. He tore off an old sheet from his desk calendar and wrote the name Wilfred Agbabu on the back.
‘Nigerian?’
‘An Igbo.’
‘Where?’
‘He has a friperie business across the other side of Sekou Touré and a warehouse up north of Dan Tokpa where he rebales the clothes.’
‘Where would he be now?’
‘The bars.’
‘Which?’
‘Work your way through the Jonquet, I don’t know.’
By 4.30 a.m. I looked and felt like a tranche of the stinking, black accumulation in the gutters and storm drains of the city. It hadn’t rained but the pressure had built and the jauntlness had gone out of the whores’ footwork. The dim yellow interiors of the bars down Rue des Cheminots barely lit the bruised purple night. Only God and the lucky voyeur knew what was going on out here.
I’d let 7000 CFA slip through my fingers trying to find Agbabu, but he was either very elusive or more likely a phantom. I thought I’d give it one last round, telling myself this was for José-Marie while the big emptiness in my guts tut-tutted that I just didn’t want to go home.
I trudged the bars. Names flitted, amalgamated. A la Tienne, La Grande Joie, Bar Ravi, Avec Entrain. All exhorted fun, but the faces on the street weren’t buying it or had bought too much of it. I drifted into a place called the Jouet Doux and got hit on the way in by 100 kilos of white man on the way out. I staggered back on to the pavement with my new friend hanging off my neck. I shook him off and he came at me, fists flailing, and I didn’t have to reach too deep to find the ugliness to hit him hard in the flab he had over his liver. He went down on all fours, gasping, muttering to himself in German.