EBOLOWA 15

15

 

Monday: Cameroon, the road to Calabar

 

Harry had stayed too long in the hotel bar after Ricard left and the combination of his mood and hang-over made him feel like hell.  He was caught in a double bind: he felt like shit and was still irked by Candace finding Nkumbé's photo.  He couldn’t help resenting it: cracking a case was the bit that made up for all the rest and Candace’s triumphant tone had reminded him of Lazlo leaning over his shoulder to make the winning move at chess.  It used to drive him wild, which back then was fair enough, but this was later and he should’ve been able to handle it.

Jean on the desk gave him a couple of aspirin and he drank too much black coffee.  By the time he got to Kumba he was thirsty and yearning for a long cold shower.  On the edge of town he stopped at a Total station and watched as a guy in a blue overall laboured over an ancient hand pump.  Harry waited for him to wipe off the windscreen with a dirty cloth before walking back to pay.

“Business tight?” he asked.

The guy wrung his hands.  “Very bad.  Prices up every day.”

“This your place?”

The guy shook his head.  The whites of his eyes were yellow and bloodshot.  Sweat stood out on his forehead and he looked all in.

“You don’t look too good.”

He let out a deep sigh.  “Bad fever,” he said.  “Very bad.”

“You should be in bed,” Harry said stating the obvious and feeling ridiculous.

“They would kill me dead.”

"Here he is."  A shining black Merc swept into the forecourt kicking up dust and the sick guy gave Harry a mournful sidelong look.  “New model every year.”

Harry waved and left.  A short way down the road he passed a guy selling coke from a bucket of ice and Harry stopped to buy one.  He asked about the Calabar road.

“Not good,” the man said as he flipped open the bottle.  “It’s a dirt track.”

“I thought Calabar was a big port.“

“It is, but Biafran War killed the connection.  Now it’s just the back door for the oil mafia.  Don’t take it.”

“I’ve got to,” Harry said.  “It’s the only way to the Hi Life Bar.“

The man clapped his hands and did a couple of dance steps in the dust, “I know it!  The place used to really jump.”  His feet quietened down and the grin faded, “but it’s dead now, that’s what I heard.  Like the road.”  He looked at Harry as if he was making a big mistake.  “Those guys don’t like strangers.” 

“Thanks for the warning.”  He drank the rest of the coke and bought another and got back into the car.  Down the road a way he could see what the guy meant: the further he went the more the jungle was taking it back.  Dark clouds were gathering and the air was so tight it felt ready to snap - - and then it did with a blinding flash and a clap of thunder that rebounded on the car’s thin roof.  A splatter of rain hit the windshield followed by a sheet of water like somebody was emptying out a colossal bucket.  The wipers couldn’t cope and he slowed down and looked for Castile’s track, but all he could see was the jungle wall.

The rain got heavier and he’d slowed to a crawl when a white car leapt out into the middle of the road.  He braked and wrenched at the wheel but the car started to skid.  The white car spun round and he took his foot off the brake and swerved into the gap between it and jungle wall.  It wasn’t wide enough and he braced himself as the high-pitched screech of metal cut through the steady bass of rain drumming on the roof.  The wheel twisted in his hands.  His wrists and shoulders jarred and the hood bounced up as the car lurched into a tree and died.

His forehead stung and blood was running into his eye.  He brushed it away and scrambled out of the passenger’s door.  Through the curtain of water he caught sight of the white car careering away.  He cursed and smacked the wheel: he was miles from anywhere and hadn’t seen a soul since Kumba. He tried the engine and it caught on the second shot and sounded okay.  He slammed the gearstick into reverse and eased out the clutch.  The wheels spun but then gripped and popped and suddenly he was out on the level and looking down a dark track.  It had to be Castile’s place: an aperture as tight as a tunnel with only a hint of light at the other end.

The rain had stopped and sunlight cut though the foliage, filling the track with steamy mist.  He drove carefully forwards until the jungle gave way to a clearing about a hundred yards across.  The trees had been felled leaving thick stumps with weeds and jungle shrubs taking their place.  A troop of monkeys emerged from the rain arguing about something pretty serious.  On the far side there was a single-storey shack with a pick-up and it took Harry a second to realise that smoke was coming from a half-open shutter and it was getting thicker. 

He accelerated across the clearing and pulled up, ducking under the smoke and sprinting over to the door.  It gave a bit but then jammed up against something soft and heavy, like a body.  No wonder the white car had been going like a bat out of hell.  He stepped back and rammed his shoulder into it, forcing it enough for him to squeeze through.

Inside was filled with hot smoke but he could just make out a body lying face down on and half hidden behind the door.  The partition wall quivered with heat.  He grabbed the man’s jacket and pulled.  The fabric oozed between his fingers but he managed to haul the body half way through the door.  Flames crackled through the roof and the stench of scorched flesh filled his nostrils.  Blood pounded in his ears as he pulled and wrestled the body all the way out and dragged it clear.  He collapsed and gulped at the fresh air while the clouded sky spun crazily above him.  He got up just as the shack’s roof caved in with a whoosh of scalding air. 

He turned the body over.  Victor Castile was recognisable as much from his build as from what remained of his face.  His jacket was soaked with blood and his right arm had been shattered at the elbow and hung at a crazy angle.  His eyes had been savaged and his mouth was wide open in a silent bellow of pain.  Below the waist was worse.  His cut-offs were a tattered mess of frenzied butchery and someone had wrought a terrible vengeance on his genitals. 

Harry looked away and stared across to the track.  The clearing was cloaked in an eerie silence: the monkeys had gone quiet and the fire was just a heap of smouldering ashes.  He looked up for vultures like in the movies but the sky was empty and the only sound came from an excited buzz of insects.  One of Castile’s eye sockets was crawling with a thick mass like a pirate’s patch.  Harry found a tarpaulin in the pick-up and was just about to throw it over the body when he noticed a screwed-up ball of paper caught up in the Frenchman’s collar.  Flattened out, it turned into a topless blond waving a handgun at the camera.  Another ball from Castile’s gaping mouth revealed a woman in boudoir lingerie and standing astride a steel pipe.

Harry went through the Frenchman’s pockets and found a bunch of keys, a pocketbook, and a thick envelope.  The wallet was stuffed with cards for night clubs including the young Scots’ Douala favourite, Le Frigat.  The envelope was full of press cuttings without a topless girl in sight, just columns of text with an occasional photo of middle-aged men in suits like Pierre Messmer, the French Prime Minister.  Harry skimmed various headlines on the oil crisis and French plans to go nuclear and was about to put the cuttings back when he caught sight of one dealing with a feud raging in the French Secret Service between the old guard and Pompidou’s new broom.  Midway through was a photo of Annie Fayol’s revolutionary friend, Dr Félix Moumié.

Questions crowded his mind before caution kicked in.  It wasn’t his case and he was a long way from home, and anyway it was always a bad idea being the first on a crime scene, especially a homicide.  He threw the tarp over the body and drove back down the track with Stokes’ words ringing in his ears: if you get to the Hi Life you’ve gone too far.

 

*   *   *   *   *   *

 

     The Hi Life had seen better times.  The wooden steps up to the double doors were splintered and a gutter was hanging loose.  The bar was empty except for a young guy wiping off the tables.

     “I need to call the police,” Harry said “Your neighbour is dead.“

     The barman froze, his cloth poised above the metal table. “Monsieur Castile?”

     “Yes, murdered.  Where’s the phone?”  The man seemed paralyzed.  “It’s urgent.”

“I’ll get Madame.”

The barman disappeared through a curtain of plastic ribbons next to a poster of a man with a beaming woman leaning against him.  She had a baby in her arms and was surrounded by smiling children with the slogan “Guinness Gives You Strength”.  The ribbons swirled again and a woman swept in dressed in a full-length traditional gown in indigo blue, a high turban to match and huge gold hoops.  The fierce look in her eye suggested she’d been dragged away on a fool’s errand.  Harry wiped his hand on his pants. 

     “I’m Harry Kaplan.  I need to call the police - - your neighbour’s been murdered.”

     She declined his hand.  “You sure it’s him?”

     “Yes.  The killer is on the road to Kumba in a white car.” 

“He deserves a medal.”

“That’s for the court to decide.”  He made a move towards the office.  “Please.”

“Wait a minute.”  She unlocked the door of a room hardly big enough for the desk and filing cabinet.  The phone was an old black model like the one they’d had in Budapest.  It was padlocked and it took her a long minute to find the right key.

     “His body is out there in the sun - - “

“It can cook to a crisp for all I care,“ she said, pulling the lock free. “Dial 999, the old British system.”

The phone rang in stretched solemn tones but nobody answered.  He glanced at her.

“Let it ring,” she said, sitting down heavily on a small office chair.  “They’ll answer.”

They did: a booming voice told him that he was through to the Kumba Police Station but it sounded more like a club.

“I want to report a homicide - - “

“What?  I can’t hear - -“

“Murder,” he shouted, “A man’s been murdered, Victor Castile - - “

“Castile?”

“Yes.  His killer is getting away.“

The loud music in the background was suddenly muffled as if a hand had been placed over the mouthpiece.  Harry could make out a shout for quiet and then the music cut out.  The man came back to him.

“You are serious? Victor Castile?” 

“Yes.  I’m calling from the Hi Life Bar.“

“Wait - -”  The phone clattered down.

“Inspector Takere speaking.”  It was a different voice, slightly high-pitched with an accent as crisp as David Niven’s.  The background quietened to a hush.  “You say Victor Castile is dead?”

“That’s right.  Out at his place.  The killer is driving a white car, heading your way.“

“Are you a friend of his?”

“Never met him in my life.  I just pulled him out of the fire.  He’d been butchered.”

“Good riddance,” said the woman across the room.

“Did you get the number of the car?”

“No, it was raining too hard.”

“Don’t worry.  I’ll meet you there.”

The line went dead and Harry looked at the woman.  “Sounded like a party, but an Inspector Takere is on his way.”

“His farewell, last day on the force,” she said and laughed, a deep gurgle of pleasure.  “Castile dead!  He wouldn’t miss it for the world.“

“You didn’t like your neighbour much.”

“Nobody did.”  She snorted.  “People will be fighting to dance on his grave.”

“What’s he done to get so popular?”

She looked at him goggle-eyed, “ask the Inspector.”  She shook her head and rocked from side to side.  It sounded as if she was singing.  “We should’ve killed him years ago.”

“Whoever did made him suffer.” 

“Good for them.  I saw the car, a brand new Hertz hire car - - “

“We should tell the Inspector - - ”

She snapped the lock back in place. “You already made your call.”

“If you say so.”  He looked at his hands.  “Any chance of getting cleaned up?”

“Not in my bathroom,” she said with a shudder that shook her gold hoops.  “There’s a tap outside.” 

She waved him down the corridor as if she was sweeping up and he picked his way past crates of Fanta and casks of Guinness.  Outside the air was fresh and cool and he took a deep breath and looked around.  There was a rough wooden privy at the end of a worn path with a black bird sitting on the roof like a sentry.  On his left a faucet was dripping into a heavy porcelain sink stamped with a blue logo of a lion and crown and the words “Made in Great Britain”.  It seemed an apt comment on empire, fading but somehow indelible.

He washed his hands and arms and scooped water over his head.  It ran through his hair and down his face and stained the sink a muddy red.