Guardian

by Dan Gleed

  Which left their supine prisoner, head and neck now caked with drying blood, and the first signs of returning consciousness beginning to animate his face. A suitable object for Foley’s legendary wrath. The superintendent was as much feared by his own men as he was loathed by the local criminal fraternity. His reputation was second to none when it came to extracting information and it was rumoured several prisoners had died under his ministrations, especially once they had nothing left to tell. So when Foley turned the man over with the toe of his boot and ordered a start on softening him up, no one thought to object. Even when the ragged and tormented shrieking began to penetrate the thick walls they still kept at it, working their victim over from head to foot with all the studied indifference of those long used to getting what they wanted. Just a light beading of sweat to mark out the men whose enjoyment of the process spurred them to ever-greater efforts. The irony of policemen aping the very behaviour for which they were hoping to prosecute Ahmed completely passing them by.

  But while Foley was hated for his cruel indifference, such feelings paled into insignificance beside the terror felt by those who worked for the Prince. Not for nothing was he recognised as the very personification of avenging malice. If even a hint of treachery reached Ahmed’s ears, his reputation alone was enough to drive strong men to suicide, rather than face the lifelong threat of the unknown behind every pair of eyes, every street corner. The Arab racketeer never gave up, never turned aside from his patient tracking of the object of his wrath until, eventually, there was no place left to hide. And Kijone, his long-time valet and now rapidly swelling object of wrath, was more aware of this than most. So he had no option but silence. All he could hope for was a merciful death before they either forced him to talk, or crippled him for life. And he almost got his wish. A blow to the side of his face delivered with too much enthusiasm, too much masochistic delight, split his skull, broke his cheekbone and sprayed blood and teeth over the surrounding floor. Foley turned away in disgust, convinced the blow had ended all hope of progress, angry with the over-zealous fool who had brought the interrogation to such an abrupt end, before even a word had been extracted from his only possible source of information. A finger jerked savagely in the direction of the offender ensured Foley’s sergeant would soon visit the Superintendent’s displeasure on the miscreant.

  “Call in a team to dump the body and clean up. We have work to do.” And with that, Foley strode out of the room and down to his waiting car.

  ***

  Jill had no idea who could be calling so late, but she took the precaution of sending Roz out of the room before moving closer to the chained and bolted door. “Who is it?”

  “Superintendent Foley. You can open up, Mrs Joubert, it’s alright.”

  Momentarily rooted to the spot, Jill felt the hair on the nape of her neck rise. There was just something about Foley, his voice and mannerisms that made her skin crawl, but she knew it was pointless denying him entry, so with an arched eyebrow in the general direction of Roz’s disappearing back, she threw the bolts, drew back the chain and let him in. Foley stepped swiftly over the threshold, his gaze sweeping the room, senses missing nothing as he noted the two glasses and the fading swirl of a perfume Jill wasn’t wearing. Turning, he contemplated her for a moment with some pleasure, mentally removing the flowing silk dress and imagining what he would do with the full breasts and slim hips.

  “I thought you would want to know we’ve had a good look in Ahmed’s house, but found nothing. He’s disappeared, cleaned the place out. No servants, no papers, no evidence, nothing. So there’s little I can do beyond opening a formal enquiry into the shooting and, of course, your husband will have to explain exactly what he was doing there in the first place.” He let the import of his words sink in, pleased with her reaction, because he could tell his presence was unnerving her. Not just his presence, but something more. She was hiding something, he was certain, and not just the woman who had obviously left the room in a hurry. He made no assumptions, but why the secrecy? What was he missing?

  Listening from behind the flimsy door, Roz could hear Foley quizzing Jill. He was obviously suspicious of something and now he was asking her who else was in the house. With a start she realised he might even demand to be shown around and if he gave kitchen staff the third degree, he would be on to her immediately. She knew there was no chance of Jill giving her away, but she was equally aware that her only prospect of finding and protecting me lay in remaining free and able to reach me before Foley did. And that meant staying out of sight. Having so recently heard Jill wax lyrical on the subject of the ‘odious little creep’, she was even more afraid of what would happen if and when the police caught up with me.

  If Ahmed’s white house was empty tonight, she decided, she might as well start there, because there was nothing else to go on and it was just possible the police had missed something. Moving carefully away from the door, Roz made her way to the back of the house and out to the stables. She prayed silently that the house fans would cover the sound of the Jeep engine as she turned it over and was relieved when it started first pull. It didn’t take long to clear Kwetu and soon she was well underway, weaving a path across town to the white house, where she parked a street away, trying not to arouse suspicion. The large gates were standing open when she arrived, creating a forlorn and abandoned look, obviously ignored by the police team in their haste to leave. Even against the glimmer of white walls, the courtyard beyond was a black and forbidding void. Summoning all her courage, Roz slipped quietly between the gates and, staring hard, tried to penetrate the enveloping darkness. At least her night vision was good, so it didn’t take long to locate the darker shadow of a door. Once inside, she snapped on a torch and, filtering the light with one hand to prevent the beam from betraying her presence, she began to carefully climb the stairs. In her soft sandals little sound betrayed her progress and her pulse was just beginning to drop back below a hundred, when a deep groan somewhere up ahead froze her dead in her tracks.

  The sound, which carried a mixture of desperation and almost animal pain, trailed away in the surrounding darkness, taking with it any hope of controlling her heart rate. But the strains of anguish overlaying that single cry echoed in her mind, the perpetrator’s obvious torment dissipating her fear, until once more she could pick up the pace and move quickly on upwards. This time, she didn’t worry about noise and soon her bobbing light picked up the outline of a man spread-eagled on the floor, black, sticky blood oozing from his head and face, spreading in streamers across the boards. Whoever it was lay still, only his eyes giving any indication of life, as they turned slowly towards her, the whites glittering briefly in the torch glow. Swiftly, Roz knelt beside him, biting back the nausea and cradling his head with her hand while she reached for a handkerchief in the hope of staunching the slow trickle of blood from his nose, ears and mouth. There seemed little she could do for him, but spotting a carafe of water on a low table, she eased his head up and tried to pour a little of the liquid into his mouth. Which only caused him to cough and splutter horribly and, in fright, she swapped to simply dowsing the handkerchief and wiping his blood-spattered skin. Slowly, he regained a little composure, but his swift, shallow breathing gave little hope he would ever recover. Grateful eyes stared up at her and, speaking gently in Kiswahili, she tried to soothe him. She could see more clearly now and could trace the dreadful swelling across the side of his face, reaching up to his skull, where a suspicious depression explained why he was in such dire straits. Even with her lack of experience, she knew he was dying and, looking into his eyes, she could discern his own realisation there too. But there was nothing effective she could do. Nothing useful she could say. Nevertheless, unwilling to remain passive in the face of his slow passing, she rocked him gently in her lap and, for want of something to say, began to tell him why she was there. Who she was looking for. Describing me in detail.

  After a while, her words dried up and in the silence, she simply stroked the car
etaker’s swollen face. Tears began to fall, wetting the drying runnels of blood. She wasn’t sure how long she had been kneeling there, but into the silence a voice whispered and, with a start, she realised he was speaking to her, the man whose name she didn’t even know.

  “The young man you seek, he was here. Ahmed has sold him to Abdel-Aziz, the slave trader, and he was taken a few days ago. He is on a slaving dhow and he will sail first to Somalia and then probably Yemen. You can easily recognise the dhow by the bright copper post just in front of the main mast. No other dhow in these parts has such a post. It’s where Abdel-Aziz ties the slaves he wants to whip. If you hurry, you may find him. They will call at Malindi to take on water.”

  Barely able to believe her ears, Roz looked down at him, whispering her thanks. As she did so, his eyes clouded and his head rolled slightly towards her, seeming to nestle closer into her lap and she felt the warm breath spill out of him for the last time. Looking at this nameless African, she felt a great wave of compassion reaching out to him and from somewhere within her childhood memories, a half-forgotten prayer fell from her lips. It was such a miserable ending, she thought. Who knew how long he had been lying there in pain, unnoticed and unmissed. Was that the way everyone went in the end? Sordidly, slipping away into nothingness – a lifetime spent in doing what, going where? She hadn’t known him and now she never would. He had passed unremarked and, for all she knew, unremarkable. Looking at him, the enormity of her situation beginning to dawn on her, she felt the tears slide more freely down her cheeks and as she stared down her eyes lost focus, her mind fled to memories of me, and her body suddenly longed for the comforting touch of my hand (oh, the opportunities lost through my stubbornness). And in the midst of her reverie, gaining ground from tiny seed to full-grown thought, the knowledge of where I might be finally burst into her consciousness and despite the desperate circumstances she now knew me to be in, the agony and fear that had been threatening to overwhelm her receded like a tide on the ebb. At last, there was a real chance she would find me. As gently as she could, she slid the cooling, lifeless head to the floor and closed his eyes. There was nothing further to be done and she was far too practical to waste time wondering if she should go for help. One word to the police that she had been there and it would only be a matter of time before they made it their business to find out why. Besides, she thought suddenly and with surprising perspicacity, what if it was the police, under the command of that awful man, who had done this?

  Chapter 35

  Reaching the edge of town from where the narrow ribbon of tarmac trailed away behind her and only murram lay ahead, Roz put her foot down as hard as she dared, driving into the soft velvet of the moonlit darkness stretching out ahead. At last, there was a definite purpose behind her movement. Driving hard, she could hope to reach Malindi in four to five hours, even if she was slowed by the usually tardy hand operated cable ferries that spanned the creeks. And the unpleasantness of the road, which she could already taste in the dust sucked through the open sides of the Jeep, wasn’t likely to impede progress either. Added to which, the thought of going back to her beloved haunts was enough to lift her spirits in a way they had not been aroused for weeks.

  For a brief while, as she drove back through the narrow streets of Mombasa, Roz had vacillated over whether or not to call Jill. To let her know what she had found. But the more she thought about it, the more she realised her friend had enough to cope with and what Jill didn’t know, Jill didn’t have to keep secret. Thoughts of the dead man she had left behind bothered her too, but soon they were pushed aside as she gave her mind over to calculating the ship’s likely progress. When exactly had it put to sea? What was the wind like out there? How long would a dhow need to replenish food and water for crew and cargo? She couldn’t imagine it would be long, or that it would take many days to make passage to Malindi. However, she eventually stopped fretting, accepting she would either be in time or she wouldn’t. And if she wasn’t, she really didn’t know what she would do. But then, when she thought about it, she didn’t know what she would do if she was in time. And anyway, assuming the dhow did show up, how would she reach it? There were usually at least half a dozen dhows in the port area coming and going about their business as they scurried up and down the coast, and Roz knew that none of them would welcome an infidel woman on board. So it really wasn’t worth worrying about. She would just have to drive until she reached civilisation, enlist some help and ease down to Port Malindi to see what would happen from there. At least she knew where she could get breakfast and where she would find a welcome.

  Chapter 36

  In the sunless hold the days and nights rapidly melded into each other as the heavy dhow wallowed its ungainly way northwards. It rolled like a pig and the stench of the mounting volume of human excrement merely thickened the already foetid air of our cramped prison. It hadn’t taken me long to give up on the struggle to keep clear of the surging bilge water with its nameless contents but, much more importantly, I was determined, desperate, to gain some respite from the lurching, staggering gait of the lateen-rigged vessel. Ungainly and heavy, the old slaver slammed into, or rolled over, rather than with, the long ocean breakers hunching themselves into towering slopes as they were forced up by the slowly shelving shoreline. It didn’t matter where you were on the eastern seaboard, from several miles off-shore the floor of the ocean bed angled steadily up towards the jagged coral banks and creamy beaches of the brooding coastline. So, for the most part, my fellow sufferers sat in sullen, unresponsive silence, simply staring towards the only source of light that streamed down through the open hatch. Hopeless it might have seemed but, despite everything, I was just as unready to give up as my newfound ally, Adam.

  Between us, we had managed to persuade the crew that letting the prisoners go up, a few at a time, to the rope-cluttered deck, would be good for the health of the ship. In any case, those few precious minutes exposed to salt-laden air that tasted like a rare wine as it was sucked greedily down into our overwrought lungs was worth any and every effort. Even the harsh glare of the sun slitting our eyes as it glittered off a thousand facets of the deep-blue jewel on which we floated, gave welcome assurance that the Hell below was not the only reality.

  And it wasn’t long before the two of us, ears cocked warily towards the hatch, were raking quietly and earnestly over the information we had gleaned about the crew. We debated endlessly around the option of jumping overboard, but were always forced to face the inescapable – even if we survived the ubiquitous sharks and managed to stay afloat long enough to reach land, there were very few breaks in the reef stretching hundreds of miles to north and south of our supposed position. One raking wave tumbling us across the razor-sharp coral, not to mention the serried ranks of long-spined sea urchins, would be enough to abruptly terminate any foolhardy venture. In the end we had to reluctantly agree that going overboard was tantamount to committing suicide which, to some of our fellow prisoners at least, might well have held some attraction. But neither of us was yet ready to concede defeat or bring others into our confidence. The more who knew we were even contemplating escape, the more chance someone would buy themselves a short-lived respite in exchange for the information. As it was, I was taken aback by the latent hostility still being shown towards me, despite all my efforts on their behalf. Being white obviously had its drawbacks. Still, of one thing I was certain: the crew’s demeanour showed they were confident there was nothing to fear from their slaves. No particular watch was kept and even when batches of us were allowed on deck, little was done to restrain or police us. I could only presume these slavers had never faced organised rebellion. A status quo I had every intention of changing.

  And to that end, I remember outlining a recklessly simple plan to Adam, merely trying to gauge his reaction. “We can’t swim for it, so there’s only one other option. We have to seize the ship. We’ve only seen one guard topside, and he’s armed with a rifle. Both times we’ve been up he’s been sitting by t
he starboard rail, keeping in the shade from the sail, and I could swear he was asleep last time. Apart from him, we’ve only seen a half-dozen or so crew, plus the one at the stern behind the steering oar, who looks like he could be the owner, judging by the way he’s dressed. We must assume he’s armed as well, so I couldn’t deal with both of them at the same time. To have any chance, there have to be at least two of us involved and none of this other lot looks as if they would know which way is up, no matter what the stakes. Which means, either you go for the owner, or I’m the one who has to hope he can’t shoot straight. I know I’m getting weaker with each day’s passing, so I’m going to try to persuade them to let us up on deck when they come to feed us this evening, just before sunset. Then, if there’s still only one guard, I’m going to have a go at him. Adam, I don’t know about you, but I don’t think we can afford to wait another day. So, just let me have a few seconds without interference and with luck I can dump the guard overboard. If we pick the right time, darkness should at least work in our favour if it comes to a shooting match. I’m serious, Adam. I’ll do it anyway, but, if you’ll help, we have a real chance of pulling it off. That rifle is the key. Get it and there’s a likelihood we’ll succeed. Believe me, I’m a good shot and I won’t hesitate to kill. They’ll know we’re desperate, especially when we free the other slaves, and we’ll demand they take us in through the next break in the reef, or I’ll threaten to shoot them one at a time and, if the worst comes to the worst, take a chance we can sail this thing on our own. At a guess, we must be somewhere near Malindi by now. So what do you say? Are you with me?”