The Big Killing (36 page)

'Evening,' I said to the back of his head, keeping clear of him, knowing he could be quick and violent.

'Bruce?' he said, surprised and delighted.

'That's me. Don't tell me—I've grown. Let's go for a walk.'

Martin looked at his cases and selected one to bring with him. We walked with a couple of yards between our shoulders, across the tarmac, beyond the parked cars and into the trees. Martin was relaxed, confident. I wasn't.

'You're not going to do anything with that spanner you've got in your pocket,' he said, quietly so I'd believe him. 'I'll take it off you and fuck you with it before you get it out of your pocket.'

'That's nice,' I said. 'You're nice. This is nothing like that. Only a precaution.'

'I didn't think that phone call of yours was social. What happened? Did Trzinski come up with something? They told me he was in Man "talking" to one of Samson's financial guys.'

'Corben told me Trzinski left Man eight hours before Malahide had his guts torn out.'

'I see,' he said. 'You should have let me go, Bruce. Forgotten all about it, got on with your life. You know what's got to happen now.'

'Does it, Martin?'

'Oh yes, Bruce.'

'What happened to you, Martin, that you have to do this kind of shit?'

'It's a competitive market out there. You have to have an edge. Samson Talbot told me if I wanted to supply him with arms I had to supply him with money to buy them. Not all of it, but some. He's a businessman. He plays the game. You want to play, you have to put down your ante.'

'You didn't have to kill Ron.'

'I did if I wanted repeat business. Have to stop those arms coming across from Burkina, just like your friend Corben said. We're going to be Talbot's exclusive suppliers by ship through the ECOWAS naval blockade and by air when he's lengthened the runway at Gbarnga. Anyway, what do you care, you said yourself Ron was an arrogant shit.'

'I don't remember saying I'd like to kill him.'

'A side effect. It happens.'

'And Malahide, another side effect?'

'I didn't like him.'

'You hid that well.'

'It added to the confusion, too. Those Leopard killings. I got lucky when you linked that to Trzinski, and Corben said he was in town at the time. We're going to pick up Malahide's logging business, too. Samson was getting pissed off with him as well—he didn't like the poetry shit, either.'

'You said "we".'

'I did?'

'"
We're
going to pick up the logging business," you said.'

'Me and IMIT.'

'And the leopard claw? Where'd you get that?'

'It was in that chest at the foot of the leopard skin. There were two of them. When Malahide said it was the box they came in, I checked it. Two claws joined together with binder twine. I only went for the wire garrotte after I read about it in the
lvoire Soir;
as you know, I prefer to use my hands.'

'How did you get out of Malahide's place?'

'I had a taxi follow me up. Kwame was in the boot. I told the taxi to wait down the hill. I did the job.'

'That was the taxi we saw—the guy with the broken neck and the car a write-off?' He nodded. 'What's in the case?'

'Eight and a half million in diamonds. Five million dollars from the Ron Collins deal. The rest from the frozen CFA they had in Ivory Coast.'

'They've got the weapons, then?'

'Docked in Buchanan last night.'

Three hundred yards from the terminal building we stopped and faced each other. Some light came off the airport, not much, but enough to see the edges of Martin's face.

'Why me, Martin?'

'You're incompetent. Not as incompetent as I'd have liked. You got a lot further in than I intended, but one of my own people would have screwed it up for me good and proper.'

'That's bullshit. You could get your own people to be as thick as you liked. Why me?'

'Because you were there,' he said, and I could feel him shifting in the dark.

'Is it something private, Martin? Something there in your macho soul you don't want to talk about, maybe?'

'Fuck off, Bruce.'

'The book thing? The poetry shit? No, not even you are that pathetic. Kill a man because he's read a half-dozen books.'

Martin was on the boil now. The heat coming off him. The professional soldier who didn't like someone tinkering with his emotions. I hooked my finger through the spanner's handle.

'Shut your fucking mouth now, Bruce. It needs some rest. Always fucking yapping, that's you.'

'Anne. Maybe it's Anne. Does she talk about me? We were very close. Very close to getting married. We would have done if I'd been up to it. A beautiful woman. Intelligent and very affectionate. She'd have made a brilliant wife. I was a fool. A bloody fool to let her get anywhere near—'

'You little fucker. I've had you up to my fucking hairline. Bruce does this. Bruce does that. Bruce would never do that. Bruce always said. Bruce always knew fucking best. You don't know how many times I've had to listen to your fucking name.'

There was a noise off in the trees from the direction of the terminal. Martin turned his head. I slipped the spanner out and in one movement swung it up to his face and caught him with its heavy head right on the point of his chin. He grabbed at it, tearing it off my finger. He staggered, flung it off into the trees and then crouched, spacing his legs, trying to keep himself upright, shaking his head. I kicked him hard in the crotch. He caught hold of my ankle and twisted. I went with it and lashed out with my bad leg as I rolled over, catching him with my heel on the side of his head. The pain in my knee flashed blue-white in my brain. I prayed that Martin had gone down.

He was close to the ground but not on it. It must have been his training keeping him upright because the two blows I'd hit him with were enough to have made jellied eels of anyone's legs. He came at me again, catching his foot on something in the grass, the case. This time he went down on to his hands and knees. There was the clicking sound of a revolver being cocked and I thought for a wild moment it might be Bagado bringing out his one and only trick. Then Dotte's voice came from the dark.

'Hands on your head—you on the floor—hands on your head—face down, lie down, Martin, isn't it?' she said, coming out into the clearing. 'Tell him to lie down.' Martin didn't move. He was gathering himself. I inched back.

'Do as she says, Martin. She has a gun.'

He was panting, his head hanging over the case like an animal that's had to run hard for a kill, only to find others interested.

'Give me the gun, Dotte,' I said.

'Back away from him, Bruce.'

As I moved back, Martin let out a roar and came at me, locking his hands around my neck. I was ready for it and hit him hard in the diaphragm but his hands held on. His split lip, close to, spat blood on to me. There was a flash to my right, a loud explosion, then another. As the two bullets thudded into Martin's body I felt his hands jerk at my neck, trying to get some strength into them to do their work, but nothing came through and he dropped to his knees.

'Oh, Christ,' said Dotte.

Martin held on to his side under the armpit where the bullets had gone in. He slumped back on to his heels and this time when he coughed a huge black haemorrhage came up and a word like 'not' or 'shot' on the back of it. Then he fell to his left and was silent.

'I shot him.'

I knelt down at his side and felt for a neck pulse. Nothing.

'He's dead.'

'I killed him.'

'If you hadn't he'd have had us both.' Her chest was pumping up and down, the air hissing through her nose and mouth. The gun was pointing at me now.

'Dotte?'

'Pick up the case,' she said, her voice steady, on automatic. 'We've got to get out of here now.'

The gun was Trzinski's. She hid it in the back somewhere and rested Katrina's head on her lap as we went through the police posts to get out of the airport sector—Dotte using some of that cool she'd learnt going through Customs with ten kilos in the door panels. We headed south of Man to Duékoué and then east to Daloa.

There was thick forest on either side of the road and the night was a dense, palpable black, torn open by the Land Cruiser's headlights. Dotte's face flashed in the rearview as the oncoming traffic shot past—frame after frame—her head three-quarter profile, eyes unblinking, drinking in the blackness, not needing to see anything, enough pictures in her head.

It was about 200 kilometres to Daloa, the tension easing with each kilometre until we found ourselves exhausted and unable to go further. We pulled into the Roc Hôtel at 10.30 p.m. and took a couple of cheap clean rooms there. The owner grilled us two steaks and gave us drinkable Beaujolais. Katrina didn't eat. The bar/restaurant was still full after our meal. Dotte took Katrina to bed. I bought a bottle of whisky and put a call through to Bagado.

'You got out,' I said.

'No thanks to you. Where were you?'

'Man. I'm in Daloa now. Martin Fall's dead.'

I gave him a compressed account of what had happened. Bagado clicked his thumbnail against his teeth. He stopped twice; the time when Katrina came into my room, and when Dotte shot Martin Fall.

'The line went dead before I could tell you last night,' he said. 'I found out where Dotte was going at night. It was a house belonging to a Frenchman called François Marin. Does that name mean anything to you?'

'François Marin was on Corben's list. Trzinski knew him too. He mentioned him the first time I met him. Said he handled diamonds. Does he?'

'He does. But more than that—he handles information.'

The steak started crawling up my stomach wall. I felt sick with acid and onions in my mouth. I opened the whisky bottle and took the first two inches out of the neck.

'There's a motive now...'

'Don't say any more, Bagado. The woman just saved my life...'

'What did you say to me that time?'

'When?'

'When we first flew into Man, what did you say to me?'

I didn't respond.

'Famous last words,' he said.

'I'm
not involved
.'

'Aren't you? What are you going to do now? Walk away? Hold out your hand? What?'

'She didn't sell me to Trzinski.'

'How do you know? How did Red Gilbert know your name?'

'Fat Paul. Gilbert clipped off his fingers until he told him.'

'Is that what he said?'

'How did he know to come after me in the Novotel? My room number. He must have known my name.'

'When was the first time he used your name?' I didn't say anything. 'Persuade yourself, Bruce. You're the only one who can.'

I hung up, took another pull from the bottle, went to my room and tried for five minutes to get Martin Fall's briefcase open, without success. I stripped and showered and sat in my towel. Ten minutes and one and a half inches later there was a knock on the door. Dotte came in wearing a towelling robe. She was calm, with a strange lightness about her manner as if she'd popped a pill.

'How's Katrina?' I asked.

'Sleeping.'

'Do you think she's going to be all right?'

'She seems to be in shock.'

'What are you going to do with her?'

'Take her out on the first flight to Paris.'

'Paris is an expensive place.'

She shrugged.

'Can I have a glass of that?' she asked. I poured one for her. 'Do you mind if I smoke?' She took out a pack and a lighter. 'Go ahead.'

'I've taken a valium,' she said. 'It's helping.'

'Maybe you shouldn't drink.'

'One's OK.' She lit her cigarette, took two long drags on it and blew rings into my room, keeping her eyes on me all the time.

'Did you know someone in Korhogo called François Marin?' I asked.

'Yes, I did. He was about the only friend I had in Korhogo. He liked to stay up late and play jazz. I used to join him when I couldn't sleep. I didn't know you knew him?'

'I don't. I know
of
him.'

She sat next to me on the bed, the towelling robe falling open a little. She was naked underneath. She reached across me and stubbed the cigarette out that had only half an inch taken off it.

'Tastes bad,' she said, and registered that I'd felt her body on mine. Her eyes opened wide. I looked in at the fear, the excitement. 'I don't want to be on my own,' she said, a crack beginning to appear in her lightness. 'I can't sleep with what's in my head. Will you hold me for a moment?'

I put my arm around her shoulder. She fitted herself into my chest and then pushed up slowly, kissing my neck and jaw, until our lips touched. Hers were electric, mine, with questions all over them, itched. She took my hand and eased it under the lapel of the robe and shivered as my palm stroked across the erect nipple.

'Can we sleep together?' she asked. 'Just once?'

She stood up, letting the robe fall off by its own weight around her shoulders and on to her finger. I swallowed, keeping that red meat down. She hung the robe on a peg on the wall by the bed. Words, images, ideas crammed themselves into my head and closed off all speech. I didn't know who I was any more. She lay across the bed on her side, rolled forward on to her front and reached out for the towel around my waist. The shock of what I saw, looking down her back, just at the top of the cleft to her bottom, threw me hard against the headboard, my head cracking against the wall. Dotte, startled, scrambled to her feet, her arm across her breasts, panicked by the horror in my face.

'What is it?' she hissed.

I struggled to wipe that grimly lit clip from Fat Paul's porn video. The thick, brutal, black cock slicing through the cleft to that small, shuddering tattoo.

'The butterfly,' I said.

'It was Kurt's idea,' she said, the sex now out of the room, down the corridor and miles away. She put on the robe, knowing it, her hands in the pockets. 'What is it?'

'You said you knew
of
Kantari.'

'What's happened to you?' she asked, the fear bringing a growl into her voice.

'You knew
of
him,' I said, the anger at myself heating up my voice.