A Darkening Stain

by Robert Wilson

  ‘We have to show them something. We have to encourage them.’

  ‘This is a very dirty business,’ said Marnier. ‘I don’t like this business at all. I’m only doing this business because of our long-standing friendship, all the work we’ve done together over the years. You’re feeling very exposed at the moment. Delicate, I think you said. My position isn’t easy either. It’s time for them to suffer with us to get what they want.’

  Bondougou rubbed his face again, trying to buff some sense in there, shake this white man up, get him to do what he wanted him to do. Marnier relished his smoke and tapped the table with his claw hand.

  ‘I understand you took in Bruce Medway last night.’

  ‘Oh yes?’

  ‘Carole was there when your men turned up. Have you charged him?’

  ‘No. We’ve released him. Insufficient evidence.’

  ‘What did he do?’

  ‘Killed a man.’

  ‘No,’ said Marnier, shaking his head. ‘That man couldn’t kill anyone.’

  ‘How do you know?’ asked Bondougou, interested for a moment.

  ‘He hasn’t got the power. Believe me, I know.’

  Marnier the bloody expert.

  A horn sounded from the street.

  ‘That’s Carole,’ said Marnier.

  Bondougou stood and came round to Marnier’s side of the table. He leaned down and spoke very quietly to his good ear.

  ‘They’re safe?’

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘Are they still here in Cotonou?’

  ‘No, no, no. They’re out on the lagoon now.’

  ‘No more accidents,’ he said, and the horn sounded again.

  ‘No,’ said Marnier, standing up. ‘Let’s go down.’

  ‘I think we should show them something,’ said Bondougou, blocking his way, last-ditch attempt.

  ‘It’s their turn,’ said Marnier, putting a hand on Bondougou’s shoulder, turning him in a friendly way to the door.

  They left the room. I straightened up, found that I’d been crouching with the tension. I wiped the sweat off my face with my shoulders. The pressure was up, the air heavy and close.

  Carole came into the room, kicked off her pumps and sat down on the sofa with her legs tucked up underneath her, the sheath dress just managing to hang on in there around her buttocks.

  ‘He said he released him,’ said Marnier, closing the door.

  ‘He wasn’t there.’

  ‘A pity. I was looking forward to that. Where did you go?’

  ‘The Sheraton,’ she said. ‘I’ll have a whisky.’

  ‘Did you meet anybody?’ asked Marnier, his voice thickening, the curiosity not idle.

  ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘Did you get anything from Bondougou?’

  ‘Tell me.’

  ‘You didn’t get anything from Bondougou.’

  ‘It takes time in Africa. You can’t push. You have to nudge. Now tell me about...’

  ‘The whisky first.’

  Marnier handed her a drink and dropped himself in the armchair in front of her.

  ‘Tell me,’ he said again.

  ‘I’m fed up with waiting.’

  ‘Then you shouldn’t be in Africa. Waiting here is a way of life. Now tell me what happened at the Sheraton.’

  ‘Well, he didn’t look much in the bar.’

  ‘He? Who? What nationality?’

  ‘American. They always go for me. They like to see a girl who keeps her body in shape.’

  ‘How old?’

  ‘Oh, this one was quite young. I shouldn’t think he was long out of college. He was with an older guy who left and went to bed.’

  ‘You said he didn’t look much in the bar. What does that mean?’

  ‘He looked inexperienced.’

  ‘But when you got him upstairs...’ Marnier beckoned her with his hand.

  Carole rolled her eyes and twisted in her seat. She hooked a leg over one arm of her chair and ran her nails down the inside of her thigh to the black lace panties pulled tight over her crotch. She slipped a finger in under the material. Marnier nodded, sat back and closed his eyes.

  ‘What happened when you got him upstairs?’

  ‘It wasn’t what happened, it’s what he had.’

  ‘Yes?’ said Marnier, placing his hands on his knees.

  ‘He had the biggest balls I’ve ever seen on a man.’

  ‘Really?’

  ‘Yes, really. But the extraordinary thing ... was the quantity he produced every time he came.’

  ‘You mean he could produce the same amount each time?’

  ‘It went all over ... in my hair too which...’

  ‘You’re lying,’ said Marnier, his eyes snapping open.

  The glass stilled at Carole’s swollen little lips, her finger came out from behind the rim of her panties.

  ‘You’re lying,’ said Marnier again.

  She crossed her legs and took a gulp of whisky.

  ‘I might be.’

  Marnier pounded the arm of his chair with his fist.

  I left them in their lonely, frustrated little room and drove back home, seeing the geometry of the relationships a little more clearly. Marnier and Bondougou had had a mutually satisfying business relationship over the years. Marnier was an expert on the movement of human cargo. Bondougou had persuaded him to do this nasty little trick but Marnier wanted a reward. The Nigerian construction contract. Big money. If Madame Sokode was the buyer of the schoolgirls then Bondougou must ‘do’ for her and her people in Benin. Daniel was killed because he couldn’t supply a believable reason for the partly stolen money. Bondougou covered for the organization—he saw there was strong evidence pointing to me in the Daniel killing, saw that he could solve a murder and remove a potential troublemaker. But Franconelli was important to him too. He had to let me go to find Marnier but Marnier was vital to him on the schoolgirl deal with Madame Sokode. Only Marnier knew where the schoolgirls were. Bondougou didn’t want Marnier found too quickly, so he sent Daniel’s boss and minder round to slow me up. Daniel must have told them about me but if I’d been him I’d have omitted the fact that I’d told the white man about Madame Sokode. That would be a definite bullet in the head. He must have just concentrated on the money. So the two small advantages I had at the moment were that Bondougou didn’t know that I’d found out that Marnier was the schoolgirl kidnapper, nor did he know that I had my foot in Madame Sokode’s door ... but was it the right door?

  Chapter 25

  I bought a bottle of Red Label from a stall on Sekou Touré and went back home. I registered that there was a call for me on the answering machine and steadied myself because I was entertaining the wild hope that it was Heike. I prowled the house looking for a sign from her. The place was absurdly neat and tidy. Everything had been cleared away after the police tossed it. Everything apart from a small collection on a forgotten and empty set of shelves at the end of the dining room table. Your heart doesn’t get broken by these sort of things, it gets squeezed tight so that each beat is a dim tremble in the fist of unbearable emotions.

  Everything I’d ever given Heike was in a small pile on the lowest shelf. The hairpin from Abomey, a ring from Ghana, some bangles I’d bought in Burkina, an amber necklace from God knows where ... It wasn’t going to be Heike on the answering machine.

  I cracked the Red Label, poured myself a glass and hit the ‘play’ button. Die told me to call him. I dialled his Lagos number and added another finger to my glass.

  ‘It’s me,’ I said.

  ‘OK,’ he said, and roared something in Armenian over his shoulder. The silence was stunned. A door closed. ‘I have it.’

  ‘On Madame Sokode?’

  ‘She runs prostitution rings in Nigeria and Benin. She took the business over from her mother when she died. Her mother used it to get favours from men with influence to expand her drinks distribution business. Madame Sokode sold the drinks business and went into construction, like I told you. She still n
eeds those favours from the big men ... even more so.’

  ‘Why even more so?’

  ‘She wants to get into government work. Very big money.’

  ‘How do you know about the brothels, Die?’

  Silence.

  ‘I’ve heard she’s got white girls,’ he said. ‘Eastern Bloc girls from the Ukraine, Czechoslovakia, Rumania...’

  ‘I know what the Eastern Bloc is, Die. But is your information reliable?’

  ‘Believe me, it’s reliable.’

  ‘Do you know any of these white girls?’

  ‘What? Me? No, no, no,’ he said.

  Dic’s delicate problem. He whores around. I drank the bottom two fingers of my Red Label, hoping it would speed up my understanding of such delicate matters.

  ‘Do you know somebody who knows any of these girls. Preferably one that speaks English ... my Ukrainian’s not been aired for a while.’

  ‘I don’t think so,’ he said. ‘It’s not easy to talk to people about this kind of thing. And these girls, they’re ... you know ... they’re looked after.’

  There’s only so much of Die’s choirboy act I was going to swallow.

  ‘How many children did you say you’ve got?’

  ‘I told you. Eight.’

  ‘You love them?’

  ‘Of course I do.’

  ‘How old are they?’

  ‘The boys are eighteen, sixteen, twelve and seven. The girls are fourteen, nine, eight and seven. The seven-year-olds are twins.’

  ‘I wouldn’t have guessed that, Dic.’

  ‘How could you?’

  ‘Now listen to me. My information is that one of Madame Sokode’s brothels is going to take delivery of seven schoolgirls between the ages of nine and six. There were eight of them but one was killed. She tried to escape and they killed her. These girls are all virgins who’ve been kidnapped off the streets of Cotonou and are going to be sold into prostitution. You understand what I’m saying, Die?’

  Silence. Something ticked on the line. My phone bill racking up.

  ‘I understand,’ he said finally.

  ‘Now, do you think you could get me a talk with one of these white girls that a friend of a friend of yours knows?’

  More silence while Die contemplated the ravine.

  ‘I think I can,’ he jumped.

  ‘You’re a good man, Die. Call me.’

  ‘I think I might be a stupid man,’ he said, and hung up.

  I paced the house, picked up Heike’s hairpin, sniffed it, caught her smell from it, put it down and breathed back that full, rich past, looked into that dry endless plain of the future. More Red Label. You never get gout from drinking whisky. Who said that? It’d better be somebody reliable. I had to see Madame Sokode again. No more social calls though. No more talking about people she hated, drinking Black Label on Lake Parquet. I had to go with something and I had to see her in the office. It was safer there. I called Marnier on his mobile.

  ‘You’re still here,’ I said, the words coming out in a single drunken blurt.

  ‘Where should I go?’

  ‘How about as far away from Franconelli as you can get?’

  ‘I have nothing to fear from Franconelli,’ he said. ‘I heard you saw him.’

  ‘I’m sure Carole filled you in.’

  ‘I’m sorry about that, but ... you’re alive.’

  ‘Maybe it’s not much of a life any more.’

  ‘Like I said to Michel...’

  ‘... you make your choices...’ I said, in a bored-shitless voice.

  ‘... and then you must be man enough to live with them,’ he said, and then as an afterthought, ‘He smokes too much grass.’

  ‘And I hear that’s only good for knocking out your short-term memory.’

  Marnier laughed.

  ‘It means you have no new ones and the old ones are very distant,’ he said.

  ‘I’m reassured. Now, Jean-Luc, I’d like my bonus if that’s OK with you. I think I deserve it.’

  ‘You do, you do,’ he said. ‘I have it for you.’

  ‘Can we meet?’

  ‘I’ll send Carole for you tomorrow. Eleven o’clock.’

  ‘Come to the house. There’s a bit of a siege on at my office.’

  We hung up. I stripped and lay down on the bed which didn’t smell of Heike because the sheets were clean. I got up, walked around the house in the dark, naked, drank more Red Label, half the bottle down, gnawed at the plan developing in my head and got close to doing some praying until I asked myself the same question Marnier had asked Bondougou. Which one? The thunder or the light? By four in the morning I’d exhausted myself and knew I’d be facing real pain in the morning. There was barely an inch in the Red Label bottle.

  Saturday 27th July, Cotonou.

  I woke having had the full mercury transfusion. My limbs were unliftable. I opened a gummed eye which shrank from the light like a live oyster to a squeeze of lemon. I levered myself up, held my hands out. Pure Parkinson’s. The bird fluttered in my chest again. I felt very white, and sick enough to vomit my heels up. I picked up the Red Label bottle with the inch, no top on it. The neck rattled on my teeth until I bit it quiet. I drank. My leg muscles twitched and my guts chupped like a cauldron of curry. Tears streamed down my face with no emotion behind them. I lurched into the dining room and slammed the bottle on the table. My hair fell over my face and my body trembled with an embryonic sob. I turned to the bathroom. Helen stood by the kitchen door looking at me with those heavy-lidded, sad eyes of hers.

  ‘I’m prayin’ to the Lord for you, Mr Bruce.’

  ‘Thanks, Helen, I need all the help I can get.’

  ‘I brought dis for you fom my church,’ she said, handing me a leaflet. ‘It tellin’ you ’bout de evil of strong dring, how you can deliver yoursel’ fom de dark to de light.’

  ‘I see,’ I said. ‘Do you mind if I take a shower first?’

  She sidestepped me deftly, like an experienced girl who’d seen the leer before the lunge. I got under the shower and hung on to the walls.

  The whisky did its work. I smoothed out, popped a couple of Tylenol 500 and managed some wry smiles at myself in the shaving mirror. By eleven I was as bright as a bush baby and the horn from Carole’s car didn’t feel anything like a cold cleaver down the spine. I took a bottle of cold Possotomé mineral water, the only thing Bagado had put in the fridge, and went down.

  The heat outside was crushing. Carole was wearing a cobalt-blue boob tube and a miniskirt. We set off without a word and drove deep into the Dan Tokpa market where we parked. I followed the spinal rift in her muscled back as she weaved through the crowded wooden stalls. We arrived at a wooden shed, a booze shop. Marnier was sitting at the back, fanning himself with a triangle of raffia on a stick. He nodded to Carole, who passed a hand over the small of my back, down the crack of my arse and up to my crotch while the other hand worked my flanks. She gave my balls a measured squeeze and released me.

  ‘He’s clean,’ she said.

  Marnier barked something at her in French—argot, which I didn’t understand. She shrugged and sat outside the front on a low wooden stool. Marnier was pouring with sweat in the airless shed.

  ‘You don’t trust me, Jean-Luc?’ I asked, sipping the Possotomé, giving it to Marnier to swig.

  ‘Not when you’re fresh from Franconelli. He’s a very persuasive man.’

  ‘He’s got plenty of people to do his killing for him and a lot better...’

  ‘But no one who can get close,’ he cut in, showing me his edge early on.

  I took a seat on a crate of Cutty Sark, my shirt patching dark already.

  ‘It worked well,’ said Marnier. ‘Couldn’t have been better.’

  ‘The lie?’

  ‘With Heike there. Perfect.’

  ‘Let’s not talk about it.’

  ‘Was she very hurt?’

  ‘What do you think, Jean-Luc?’

  ‘And Franconelli. Did he tell you?’

>   ‘He told me something.’

  ‘You see. He can’t tell you. What did he say?’

  ‘He said half that gold of yours is his.’

  Marnier shook his head.

  ‘Did he tell you he wanted it back ... his gold?’

  ‘As a matter of fact, he didn’t.’

  ‘You see.’

  ‘It was a bad lie. He was tired. He wanted me out of the room.’

  ‘Is he sick?’

  ‘Not so you’d notice. His temper doesn’t do his heart much good.’

  ‘Dying in agony from inoperable cancer would be too kind for him.’

  ‘Shall we talk about the gold?’

  ‘Your bonus.’

  ‘Not just yet,’ I said. ‘I’ve got a buyer for you. For the whole lot. That’s if you’re interested in selling.’

  Marnier shrugged the merchant’s professional shrug. I waited.

  ‘I was going to courier it to Zurich,’ he said, ‘but if you can get me a good price ... Where would it have to be delivered? Here?’

  ‘Nigeria.’

  ‘I’m not going to Nigeria with it.’

  ‘Under no circumstances?’

  ‘The price would have to be the very top of the market.’

  ‘Of course it would.’

  Jean-Luc checked me for sarcasm and turned back to his one and only fan.

  ‘It would take me some time too. I don’t know anybody to help me across the border on that side.’

  ‘What can you get for it in Zurich?’

  ‘Three-sixty dollars an ounce.’

  ‘How many ounces?’

  ‘Two thousand two hundred and thirty-six. Close on eight hundred and five thousand dollars.’

  ‘I thought you said it was nearly a million.’

  ‘It is ... nearly.’

  ‘How much do you want to take it to Nigeria?’

  ‘Forget it. It’s too dangerous. I could lose everything.’

  ‘Don’t they ask a few more questions these days in Zurich? About gold, about money that passes through their hands.’

  Marnier looked at me out of the corner of his head.

  ‘I heard gold was a sensitive issue over there at the moment. You know, with the hoo-haa about the Nazi stuff and the American government report due out. Maybe it’s not so easy to fly it in ... no receipts and all that. They’re very touchy about handling hot stuff, drug stuff, any stuff...’