Patty clamped her hands over her mouth as if to restrain impolite laughter.
“Would you kindly get off my bed?”
She did, and just stood there.
“And out of my room?”
“Are you getting up?”
“It’s only seven, as I said before.”
“Come on. If there’s a safari walk at eight—”
Melrose planned on taking his time dressing; he intended to miss that lot.
She stood there like a cement figure in a garden.
“You’re still in my half of the room.”
“I know. I’m talking to you.”
“Well, go into your half and talk through the partition. Go on, go.” He waved her away.
They passed the Attaboys leaving the lodge as he and Patty were walking toward it.
Mildred Attaboy had to stop them to grip Patty’s shoulder. “You poor dear child! We heard about your appalling encounter with the lion!”
“Leopard,” said Patty. “It wasn’t so appalling.”
“But of course it was!” insisted Mrs. Attaboy, who hadn’t witnessed it and therefore could judge. “A big cat pouncing on you!”
“It wasn’t me it pounced on, it was him it did.” Patty nodded toward Melrose.
Melrose could have done with fewer pronouns, but the Attaboys apparently caught the drift, and without a consoling nod or word to Melrose simply moved on.
They served themselves breakfast from a selection of dishes: eggs—scrambled, fried, poached and omeleted in ways Melrose didn’t investigate—and sausages that he also skipped, choosing instead a few rashers of bacon and some toast.
Patty’s plate bulged with pancakes that she took to the table and then went back for a pitcher of syrup and a few pats of butter. She shoved the butter between the pancakes in strategic positions and poured a cross of syrup over the stack. She dug in.
“A leopard encounter really does wonders for the appetite, doesn’t it?”
She took the question as rhetorical and didn’t bother with it.
Trish Van der Moot interrupted their breakfast to inform Melrose there was another call from Scotland Yard.
Melrose was delighted that, whatever the nature of this call, he could turn it into an ironclad excuse for avoiding the walking safari.
“He’s an Inspector Buhari—Benjamin Buhari. Tanzanian police. And according to Kione, he’s the brother of this Banerjee.”
“Right. The brother?”
“Yes. The Banerjees have been acting as foster parents to Buhari’s daughter since her mother walked out. The mother was a European. Swedish, Danish—Kione wasn’t sure. She left him when the girl was very small. Buhari’s an inspector in a district called—” A silence as papers were being shuffled in New Scotland Yard. “Longido.”
Melrose set down the phone to inspect his map, picked it up again. “I don’t see the name.”
Another paper shuffle. “Near Arusha. That’s near the Merelani Hills.”
“Am I supposed to know these hills?”
“Where tanzanite is mined. The only place where tanzanite is mined. It’s about a five-square-mile area.”
“Arusha’s in Tanzania.”
“No kidding. But I do wonder, why would a Tanzanian police inspector be asking Kione for men?”
“I think Kione was simply being helpful. Why don’t you just have this shooter arrested?” said Melrose. “Have Kione take him in. Or you lot. Let Scotland Yard arrest him. He certainly faces extradition.”
“We have no more evidence than we had four days ago.” Jury sighed. “What we have is a trail of near-sightings—”
“What? You’re not calling Patty Haigh’s a ‘near-sighting,’ for God’s sake!”
“You keep thinking she’s an eyewitness. She isn’t. Her ID depends on what came down the line. First from Parsons, then the three kids at Waterloo, then this boy Aero, who then told Patty Haigh. Look, a tall black man gets out of a cab at Waterloo, his progress is then noted by one kid after another until his car gets to Heathrow and two other kids take it up. Think about that. A half dozen kids are keeping visual tabs on a tall black guy in a gray overcoat making his way through Waterloo and then to Heathrow’s Terminal Three. Now we may be convinced these kids have eyes as sharp as knives and minds to go along with them, but any half-decent defense team could tear that story to shreds.”
“Richard, we know he did it. Parsons saw the whole thing—”
“Half-saw. Not even Robbie Parsons is one hundred percent certain he could identify Banerjee. Remember, he shattered the mirror and shot out the cab’s radio. Only when he paid his fare—which is something I can’t get over—did Robbie get a glance at his face.
“No,” Jury went on, “I don’t think Banerjee should be approached until we’ve got more than we have now. And I also want to know his connection to Leonard Zane. But that’s not the only reason.” Jury was silent for a few moments. “I’m not so sure this fellow is the main … Well, let’s just say, there’s more going on here and in more complex relationships than we thought. I know it all looks completely transparent, as open-and-shut as any murder could be, but …” He paused again. “You there?”
“Of course. Sorry.” Melrose was trying to hold the map with his free hand. Arusha wasn’t actually that far. He saw a road that connected with the main Nairobi road. “Ye gods, Tanzania? That means passports.”
“You didn’t bring one?”
Ha-ha. “Patty Haigh has been agitating to go to Zanzibar—”
Jury said emphatically, “Patty Haigh will not be going with you. You’re going to put her on a plane back to London.”
Melrose looked at the phone receiver as if it were speaking in tongues before putting it back to his ear. Dream on, Richard. “You do not know Patty Haigh, Superintendent.”
“For God’s sake. You’re flummoxed by a ten-year-old?”
Melrose refused to comment on the flummoxing. He said, “Arusha, huh? It’s not far from the border. I’ll take a drive there. Thank the Lord I’ve got my Porsche.”
Jury was silent for a moment. “In the middle of Kenya, in the middle of lions, leopards, tigers and cheetahs—”
“There are no tigers.”
“Well, you’d know, wouldn’t you? You’ve got your Porsche.”
“I really don’t think that’s a good idea, Lord Ardry,” said Trish Van der Moot, anxiously. “You should take one of our vehicles, the Range Rover. Lumbai or Montre could drive you.”
“You’re probably right about the car, Mrs. Van der Moot. The Range Rover would be far better, but the distance is not remarkable and I’d prefer to drive myself.”
“Do you shoot?”
“Do I shoot what? You mean a rifle? Yes, quite a lot.”
Quite a little. He heard Patty make a sound in her throat.
“There are wild animals out there.”
Good Lord, she could say that after the previous night? Patty made another sound in her throat and Melrose stepped on her foot.
He told her she would not be going and waited.
Patty looked at him for a few moments and turned and stomped out of the lodge.
When he got to their tent, she was tossing stuff into her backpack, including rhinestone-framed glasses, notebook, pen and money roll, which she first counted.
Reclining on his bed, Melrose watched this for two minutes and said, “What are you doing?”
“Packing.” She shoved in a pair of jeans.
“Just for overnight? Or the rest of your life?”
“A couple days. In case.” She picked her passport from the top of the dresser.
“You’re not going with me. Superintendent Jury gave strict orders you were—”
She cocked her head. “Who said with you? Zanzibar.”
Melrose shot up. “Now you just listen, Patty—”
She stood quite still, wig in hand, listening.
Was he supposed to say more? The “just listen” carried with it understood co
mmands.
Hearing only silence, Patty dropped in the wig and zipped up the backpack.
“And just how are you—?” Was he really going to ask something as stupid as How are you going to get there? No. “Do you take bribes?”
“Depends.”
“Say, could I get you to go to London for maybe two thousand quid?”
She looked off, thinking or not, he couldn’t tell.
He raised it: “Five?”
“It’s not the money. I’ll just never get another chance to go to Zanzibar.”
Another chance? “I don’t see your chance right now.”
“It’s only like an hour and a half to fly.” It was, to her, mere logistics. “There are a lot of flights.”
“What would keep you from taking off for Zanzibar? Meaning, what bribe besides money?”
She just looked at him.
He shook his head. “No. No, you cannot go with me to Tanzania.”
An hour later, Patty Haigh had her binoculars, her camera, her smart-phone, two Coca-Colas and a thermos of tea, and was sitting in the Range Rover.
But to his credit, Melrose felt he had attempted to do what Jury insisted upon—by way of cajoling, threats and bribes, and stopping just short of beatings. So he had given in, first extracting a promise that she would stay within view and would not hector him about detours to Zanzibar. He reminded her that the purpose of the trip was to visit the Merelani Hills tanzanite mines and also to find out what they could about her great friend B.B. (Before he finds you, Melrose did not chillingly add.)
She promised.
It had all the conviction of assurance from a leopard that, yes, of course, he could play with her cub.
Kenya and Tanzania
Nov. 7, Thursday afternoon
28
They had been driving along the A104 for two hours.
“Will we ever come to anything?”
Patty was studying her map. “Tanzania, maybe.”
“Thank you.”
“Or the Indian Ocean.”
The country grew increasingly hilly. They saw road signs pointing to the Tsavo National Park. “My God, this country has a lot of national parks. Are we still on the A104?”
“Yes. I’m hungry. Can’t we stop somewhere?”
“I’m sure we’ll pass a Little Chef soon.”
In another few miles, Patty said, “There’s a town. Namanga? That’s what we’re looking for, isn’t it?”
Namanga was a dumpy place, with a lot of what in the U.S. would be called tract houses. There were a multitude of shacks selling various drinks and snacks. They passed, or would have passed had Patty not dragged at his sleeve, Joe-Dan’s Bar and Grill, a much larger wooden shack, with a porch and a number of vehicles pulled up round it.
“We might as well never have left home,” said Melrose.
“Maybe they do fish and chips.”
“You’re vegetarian,” he said, opening the car door.
“Except for fish and chips.”
The restaurant was half full of customers of various ethnicities—European khakis, truck drivers’ billed caps, tribal dress. There were two empty stools at the bar so they climbed onto them. Joe-Dan, if this were he, was a broad-faced, friendly-looking Kenyan who did not do fish and chips.
He said, “How about nice ostrich burger?”
Patty said, “I’m sorry. I’m a vegetarian.”
He smiled even more broadly. “All right. I will make you nice veg-nut-burger.” He set down Melrose’s beer and went to make the nut burger.
“Tell me,” said Melrose, when Joe-Dan put the burger before Patty. “I know there’s a huge national park around here, but I was wondering if there was any mining going on?”
“Of course. This is the neo-belt. All kinds of mining.”
As if they should know the neo-belt. “Gemstones?”
Joe-Dan nodded. “Rubies, emeralds, sapphires, tanzanite, tourma—”
Melrose interrupted the catalog. “Are these large mining companies?”
“No. Mostly very small.”
“Are they all legal?”
Joe-Dan laughed. “Nothing is all legal, is it?”
“But no diamonds,” said Patty knowledgeably.
“No. But there’s tsavorite. Some rarer than emeralds, except it’s hard to get one more than a carat or two. But there’s lots of mining of it.” Joe-Dan wiped the bar.
“We’re looking for Longido. And then for Merelani. The hills.”
“Oh, not far. Twenty-five or -six kilometers. Half hour to drive.” Joe-Dan brought out a map. “Here.” He pointed to a dot on the map in Tanzania, then trailed his finger past Arusha, much larger, and to Merelani. “That’s only about ten kilometers from Arusha. The road is good for a few kilometers, afterward, very rough.”
Finishing beer and burger, they thanked him, slipped off their stools and made for the car and the Tanzanian border.
* * *
“This isn’t a very pretty town,” observed Patty as they drove along the dusty street between stacks of low buildings that in the UK would have probably been euphemistically called “housing estates” for those in Social.
“It wouldn’t be, seeing as it’s a border town with all of its consequent traffic.”
Melrose found it interesting that Kenya and Tanzania seemed to be sharing the same border patrol facility. The Kenyan inspector emerged from one door, the Tanzanian out of the door on the opposite side. Neither looked at Melrose or Patty with any particular interest beyond asking for documents. They were more interested in the Range Rover that, Melrose would have thought, was a fairly common vehicle over here, pricey though it was. They were waved on—or, rather, away—as if Kenya could hardly wait to be rid of them, and Tanzania didn’t much want them.
In Longido, in front of the police station, several light-uniformed policeman were deep into the inspection of two automobiles, bending over the trunks. There was little activity otherwise, until Patty provided it by punching Melrose and saying, “That’s him. There.”
“You mean looking at the cars? Where?”
“No, no. Just came out of the door of the station.” Patty hunkered down in her seat.
It was indeed the same policeman who’d walked into Kione’s office. Tall, elegant, authoritative-looking, his gaze hovered over the unfamiliar Range Rover, which was not surprising as there was otherwise not much new to be seen in Longido.
Melrose grabbed the blanket from the backseat and tossed it over Patty. “On the floor.”
But Banerjee—assuming this was he—did not move toward the car.
Buhari—wasn’t that the name Jury had given him? It was certainly not Banerjee, or Kione would have said something. He didn’t think he’d take this opportunity to find out. “Let’s get out of here,’ he said, as quietly as possible starting the car and slowly backing away from the station, then just as slowly driving away down the narrow street and following the first sign that said Arusha.
As it had an international airport, Arusha was a good-size, well-populated town. Certainly one advantage was that the cellular service was greatly improved. There was another call from Jury.
“This official in Dar es Salaam? I told him you had extensive holdings in gemstones and were interested in developing one or more of these boutique mines—”
“You didn’t really say boutique, did you?” Melrose snickered.
“Yes. To differentiate it from the big operation. Of course you wouldn’t be going into a mine; you’d be trying to gather information, in the guise of a rich peer with nothing better to do with his millions than invest in mining and in such a way that the Tanzanian government would be swell with it. Garnering taxes, et cetera.”
“As to the ‘et cetera,’ what are you talking about? Meaning what would I be talking to them about?”
“What you’ll talk to them about is your intention to mechanize things. Not on the order of the big operations like TanzaniteOne, but definitely using cutting-edge methods.
Superior equipment and much-improved safety measures. My objective here is to get information about Leonard Zane’s own mine output.”
“But I can hardly go into his mine, can I? He wouldn’t—”
Jury sighed. “Of course you won’t be going into Zane’s own mine. But this is Merelani, I mean all of Block D where the independent licensed mines are. They’re all sort of razor-wired off, but the workers—”
“Razor wire? That’s what I’m supposed to go through?”
There was dead silence on the other end. Speaking into it, Melrose said, “Sorry. Go on.”
“You’re very good at ferreting out information. I’ve observed this over the years. Why else would I use you?”
The first half of this observation had Melrose lighting up a self-congratulatory cigarette; the second half had him chucking the cigarette out the window. “‘Use me’?”
“I didn’t mean it that way; I meant in the sense of being ‘useful.’ Which you are. So, these miners and the people who run the mines probably know a lot of what’s going on in the surrounding mines. Wouldn’t you imagine the competition is fierce? Not to mention the corruption. I want to know what’s coming out of Zane’s blue seams. I think it’s more than he’s displaying in this gallery. He could be smuggling the stuff, and I’m wondering if this Tanzanian police inspector is in his service.”
“We’ve—I mean I’ve—seen him; he was in Longido. What do you want me to do?”
Jury was silent for a few moments. He said, “I still want you to see these mines. Wait. Is Patty Haigh on her way to Heathrow?”
“Eventually. Bye.”
Melrose threw the car into gear. The road, as Joe-Dan had said, was quite good beginning at a sign that announced they were entering an area maintained by the Tanzanite Foundation. For several kilometers it was graded, but then it simply stopped. As if the Foundation had suddenly run out of money and left the driver to take his chances. It was a horrible road. He would have thought that the Foundation, which must have been rolling in money, could have forked over a little more for the benefit of the poor souls who had to travel its dust-clouded surface daily.
The Knowledge: A Richard Jury Mystery (Richard Jury Mysteries) Page 20