EBOLOWA 25

25

Douala jail.

They were on the evening perimeter walk when it happened. 

He had just had an audience with the US chargée Chuck Logan, a fresh-faced young guy who could have been a Mormon in his polished brogue shoes and starched short-sleeved shirt.  He’d assured Harry that he was on the case and that affidavits from Takere, who was apparently mortified by Harry’s plight, and Hans Ouweneel were being lined up with a lawyer in town.  He hadn’t managed to contact the woman from the Hi Life Club yet but was still trying.  “She’s probably out dancing,“ Harry said and Logan had given him a blank look but promised it would only take a few days. 

"You get a sense of the place and how it works," Logan said as they shook hands but Harry had come away feeling preoccupied and let his mind wander and his guard drop.  Either way, he wasn’t ready and the big guy who had eyeballed in the morning hit him from behind.  He was thrown to the ground and the guy kicked him in the gut.  Harry grabbed his foot and twisted it and the guy stumbled over him into the barbed wire fence.  Harry knew about blind fury - - it had rescued him a couple of times in Vietnam - - and it flooded through him again.  Blind to fear, blind to the consequences of violence.  He thrashed out with his feet and caught the guy in the groin and rolled clear.  The big bastard was roaring with pain but his sidekick hit Harry in the ear with a piece of wood.  The pain popped inside his head and he lashed out. 

His elbow made contact and bone crunched under the impact, and the man fell away.  The big guy had recovered and Harry threw a straight right into his throat.  It stopped him for a moment but next thing Harry knew the guy was all over him.  He fell back and cracked the back of his head on the ground.  A huge hand hit him a glancing blow and a foot thumped into his side and almost winded him but he got his fingers into the big bastard’s eyes and pushed.  He felt the neck snap back and tried to kick himself free but the huge guy was crushing him.  A hand was pressing down on his face. He couldn’t breath.  He was losing it.  Darkness was closing in.

And then there was light.  Blinding his eyes.  Somebody was hauling the big guy off.  His lip was split, there was blood in his mouth and one eye was smarting.  There was a knife at his throat and somebody twisted his arm up behind him and frog-marched him across the compound to a small shack.  Dim light leaked from the door along with the surreal lyrics of “You Make Me Feel Brand New”.  Inside, the air was thick with stale beer, sweat and marijuana.  A bunch of men were playing poker but only one was winning, a very black guy in a stained sleeveless vest with grey stubble and an Australian bush-hat.  

“Hey Bwana!” the hat sneered and Harry waited, flexing his twisted arm. “You know what bwana means Chicago Man?”

     Harry shook his head: he didn’t but he was going to find out.

     “It’s Swahili for big boss, like Al Capone.  You know where they speak Swahili?”

     Harry waited to be told.

     “On the other side of Africa.”

     A couple of the poker players hummed like a chorus line.

     “That’s where I learnt English.”

The chorus line hummed louder.

“I was over there in the King’s African Rifles with Idi Amin and look at us now.  He’s President of Uganda and I’m doing time.”

     The poker players hooted and whistled and the hat pushed his chair back from the table with narrowed eyes and looked Harry over with malign calculation.

     “What’s your first name Chicago Man?”   

     “Harry.”

     “Okay, Harry.  You seen King Rat?”

     “Yeah.”  He had watched it on Nina’s colour TV: George Segal playing a canny POW in a Japanese camp.  She hadn’t liked it and they’d disagreed about antiheroes.  She never like ambiguity.

     “So you know who you’re talking to?”

     He nodded; there was one in every jail.  “I just don’t understand why.”

     The hat leant forwards with a mean look and banged the bottle.  Bubbles spewed out and a puddle spread across the table.

     “Because you killed our old friend Victor Castile.“

     Harry blinked.  He wasn’t thinking fast enough.  His eyes watered and his head felt as if it was split wide open.  His ribs ached and it hurt to breath.  He was dog-tired and couldn’t decide what to do: keep up the front of a Chicago hit man or come clean.  The chorus line had gone quiet, but all he could do was wait for the axe to fall.

The bush hat was shaking his head.  “They brought you all the way from Chicago!  I can’t believe it.”

Harry was dumped in a chair.  He touched his swollen lip and ran his tongue along the inside of his mouth. It tasted of blood.

“You look a mess.”  The hat was peering at him through the smoke.

“A couple of guys wanted to show me how tough they were.”

“Wear this.”  He threw Harry a blue denim cap with a big letter B stitched into it.  “Stands for Bamenda, my home town.  It’s what they call me in here.  They won’t bother you again.”

King Rat: Harry nodded and put the cap on.  It was a bit big but he wasn’t about to complain, least of all about the man’s softening demeanour.  The chorus line was humming along with the music.

“Thanks.”

“My pleasure, Harry.  I heard you choked Victor on his balls.  I like that.”

“They were actually paper balls.  And it wasn’t me.“

But Bamenda wasn’t listening.  “I’d have made the bastard eat them.  How much they pay you Harry?”  He flattened a newspaper on the table and stabbed at it with a thick finger.  “It doesn’t say here.”

“I told you I didn’t do it.”

“It says you did.”

“You always believe what they say in the papers?”

“I believe the football scores.”

“Exactly.  It would be stupid to fake them, but that -  ” Harry gestured at the headline.  “That’s all bullshit.  Castile was dead when I got there, killed by a guy in a Hertz hire car who doesn’t even get a mention.  How d’you account for that?”

Bamenda leant closer, his eyes widening.  “Then he‘s the one who deserves a medal!  A DSO like Idi, and bar.”  The chorus line hummed louder and the hat turned to a man with a metal bathtub at his feet.  “Give the Chicago man a beer from the bar!”

Harry grabbed the bottle and took a swig.  He put it down and wiped his mouth on the back of his hand.  “I thought you said Castile was a friend of yours.”

“Manner of speaking Harry, like we go a long way back, nearly twenty years.  Such a good friend that I tried to kill him.”  Bamenda raised his bottle and the chorus line followed his lead.  “Anyway, here’s to you or whoever you say killed the bastard.  Good health and long life.”

Harry wasn’t sure about drinking to a guy who’d helped to get him framed, but the cold beer cleared his mouth of the taste of blood. 

“Castile doesn’t seem too popular up where he lives,” he said.  “The way I heard it, people are going to be fighting to dance on his grave.”

“I’d be the first.“ Bamenda turned away to spit.  “Bastard - - I hope he died in pain.”

“He did.”

“I told you you did it, otherwise you wouldn’t know.”  He held out a big hand.  “I wanted to congratulate the man that did in person.”

“I’m a private investigator not a hired gun,” said Harry but shook the hand anyway.  “How come you tried to kill him?”

“He killed my brother, slit his throat in cold blood and then watched his family go up in flames, wife and babe-in-arms and three little kids.”  He banged the table and spat.  “My brother was the night watchman at the UPC head quarters in Bamenda and Castile was sent to burn the place down.  They thought the party leaders were meeting inside but it was only my brother’s family but Castile just went ahead anyhow.”  The chorus line had simmered down to a reverential hush.  “It took me two years to track him down, but then I messed it up and ended up in here.”  He slammed his fist down again and all the bottles jumped.  “They look after their own.”

“I heard he had friends in high places.”

“Fucking bastards.”   Bamenda stared off through the smoke. “If you’re a private eye like you say, what the hell did you want him for?”

“You heard of Annie Fayol?”

“Of course.”

“Well, I’m working for her sister.  She thinks Annie had a date the night she drowned - - ”

“She did.  It was Castile.“

“What?”  He was stunned.

“She was with him that night.”

“How d’you know?”

He tapped his nose and winked.  “My cousin saw him in her car.”

“Why didn’t he come forward?”  Harry asked but the question died as soon as he’d got it out.

“White man’s business,” Bamenda said and gave him a look horribly close to pity.  “He wasn’t going to get involved.”

The door flew open and a couple of inmates came in carrying a big black box between them.

“You hungry?”  Bamenda was smiling like a benign uncle.  “Groundnut stew, the best on the coast!”

Ouweneel’s baguette was a distant memory and Harry always enjoyed a midnight binge, especially if he’d had a beer or two.  The atmosphere in the shack was convivial and the aroma from the stew settled the question.  The man from the makeshift bar brought him another beer and a knife and fork and the guys with the box passed him an enamel bowl with two waxy white slices of cassava and a wedge of bright green spinach surrounded by chunks of meat deep in a rich brown gravy.  Somebody raised the volume on the hi-fi and the chorus line degenerated into a babble of enthusiasm for the simple pleasures of food and drink.

“Here’s to you,” called Bamenda, his bottle raised high like a salute, “good luck and good health.”

“To you too,” he shouted back and emptied a good third of his bottle.  His head was light and his sore lip and ribs forgotten.  The cassava was firm and the meat dissolved in his mouth with the smooth flavour of peanuts and a sharp kick of chilli.

“We had you spotted before you got here you know,” said Bamenda.  “Those jungle drums.”  He hooted with laughter and pulled a fat cigar from his pocket. He bit off the end and spat it out before lighting it from one of the candles on the table.  “You married Harry?”

He shook his head.

“You’re old enough.”

“Yeah.”  It was what Meche was always telling him.

“So what’s the problem?”

“It’s a long story - - “

“Without a punch line,“ Bamenda laughed and the chorus line hooted on cue.  A love story without a punch line was no kind of story at all.

“The job doesn’t help.”

“It’s not half as bad as being in jail.”  Bamenda clamped his teeth on his cigar and made a thrusting movement with his fist.  “Where there’s a will there’s a way.“

“Only if you’re King Rat - - “

“That’s what I’m saying.  Get to be King Rat.  Cut corners and pull strings.”

“There’s another King Rat I’m interested in,” said Harry, “the one that landed me in here.  You weren’t the only one to have me spotted.  I don’t know who it was or why but I’m going to find out - - “

“It was Takere.  Planted the gun in your car.”

“That’s not what it says in there.”  Harry pointed at the stained newspaper.

“We got other ways of getting the news,” said Bamenda leaning back to blow a smoke ring.  “I already told you about the jungle drums.”

“Yeah, well, the drums got it wrong this time.  Takere left the gun in my car all right, but he didn’t set me up and he sure as hell didn’t tell the gendarmes about it.   He never told them anything if he could help it.”

Bamenda nodded.  “I know him.  He would’ve nailed Castile years ago if it hadn’t been for Douala.”

“Exactly.  Whoever stitched me up has got enough clout to have the gendarmes jumping through hoops.”

“So you’d better watch your back.”  Bamenda paused and tapped the ash off his cigar before looking Harry in the eye.  “I told you Castile did dirty tricks for the French in the guerrilla war didn’t I?”

“Yeah.”

“Well, back then the guy in Government House, the High Commissioner, was called Messmer - - Pierre Messmer, climbed the slippery pole and currently Prime Minister of France.  Enough clout for you?”

Harry gaped. No wonder he was in the shit.  He’d stepped way out of his league and taken Candace with him.