by Janet Kelly
The car was easy to drive and had over half a tank of petrol. I wondered how far that would get us. We’d decided to try and find our way to the University of Nigeria.
‘I’m not sure which way to go,’ I said to Tracey, who was busy rifling through the glove box.
‘Look what I’ve found,’ she said. ‘It’s a satnav.’
I didn’t know what she was talking about.
‘A what?’ I asked.
‘A satnav. It shows you where to go’
I could have done with that for Mr Gamble and that policeman, I thought.
‘Let’s fire it up and see if it works,’ she said.
Tracey found the cigarette lighter socket and plugged in a series of leads. She seemed to know what she was doing, which I suspected was down to some kind of misspent middle age. What else was she capable of, this dark horse of a woman I’d completely underestimated?
‘Posh Git’s got one of these. It takes you all over, without needing to know where yer going,’ she said. ‘Just hope it’s got the university on it.’
Tracey pressed different pictures on the front of the machine that looked like a small TV and suddenly the thing spoke to us in English.
‘You have reached your destination,’ it said in a voice sounding remarkably like John Cleese.
‘Well, it obviously isn’t much use, otherwise it would know this is the last place I want to be,’ I said to her.
‘Hang on, hun. We need to programme it first.’
She investigated the screen and found the university.
‘According to this, we are eighteen miles away, which should only take thirty minutes. We need to go to the end of this road and take a right, and then it’s almost straight all the way there.’
I was stunned by Tracey’s competence with the funny map thing, although I worried about driving a car that didn’t have the ignition key in it. I surprised myself that I was more concerned about that than the fact it was stolen.
‘That’s a marvellous invention. Why didn’t I ever know about it?’ I asked her.
‘Expect that husband of yours didn’t want you knowing the way anywhere. You know what men are like with women and maps,’ she said.
We drove for forty-five minutes. The map machine had taken us to a derelict farmhouse, down three dead ends and to a closed petrol station. When it told us to get out of the car and walk, I decided it didn’t know what it was doing.
‘I think we are going to need to get some help,’ I said. ‘We could be driving around for ever if we take any notice of this thing.’
We drove round a bend and saw a bright orange light with a picture of a bed on it, claiming to offer twenty-four-hour bed and breakfast facilities.
‘Why don’t we stop there for a bit,’ I suggested. ‘Even if we find the university, no one is going to be there at this time of the morning.’
I looked around and Tracey was asleep, with bits of twig, bracken and leaves poking out of her hair, probably from when we got out of the boat and had to clamber through the some hedges on the shore.
I followed the signs to the bed and breakfast, and after about three miles came across a roadside café with a number of men sitting around tables, playing Scrabble, despite the fact it was still only just past breakfast time. They looked up as our car kangaroo-ed into the car park, where it stalled. Not having a key, I decided to leave it where it was. I didn’t want to go in alone to ask about accommodation, so I woke Tracey up to come with me.
‘We could just sleep in the car,’ she said, as she took in the puzzled faces of the seven men of varying ages, all looking in our direction.
A reception area in the corner looked like one of the booths you get in fairgrounds, to change notes into coins. A big woman with bulging eyes and huge hooped earrings sucked her teeth at us and lifted her jaw slightly as if to ask us what we wanted. The men were silent, other than the occasional sound of sucking on their rolled up cigarettes.
‘Urm, I’m just wondering if it would be possible, maybe, somehow, to have a room for the night?’ I said, offering up some of the nairas I’d taken from Chike’s room in our first attempt to escape. Strangely, he hadn’t noticed their disappearance.
The woman registered no emotion as she scanned Tracey and me before finally handing us a key.
‘One room only. First floor,’ she said, as she grabbed all the cash I offered and shoved it down her cleavage.
‘And could we please have access to a telephone?’ I asked, aware that I should contact my family to tell them I was safe.
‘I’ll see what I can do,’ the woman replied, looking Tracey up and down with what appeared to be some amusement.
‘Ta, mate,’ said Tracey, seemingly oblivious to the atmosphere. ‘Any chance of anything to eat?’
The woman behind the counter nodded over to the other corner, where a very small man was seated. He might have been a dwarf or midget, as he could barely be seen above the serving area. When he stood up you could only see his hat.
‘Ladies, what would be your pleasure?’ he said in a very posh English accent. It took us by surprise because although we knew he’d gone behind the counter we didn’t expect him to speak to us with so much authority. We couldn’t quite see where the voice was coming from until he clambered up on a stool, rendering him almost man-sized.
‘I suppose a bacon sandwich is out of the question?’ said Tracey. The man rubbed his eyes and looked a bit puzzled. He offered us a choice of a meat kebab with a selection of dips or fries. We decided on both, my normal concerns about saturated fats being thrown to the wind. When he took just one of the naira notes and offered us change, I realised how much the big woman had taken for our room. It had better be worth it.
It tasted delicious, and I asked the small man what he’d flavoured the meat with. He told me it was Suya spice, a Nigerian mix of peanuts, ginger and other ingredients he failed to name. I made a mental note to pick some up before going home, now that going home seemed like a possibility.
Once we’d eaten we took our bags up to our room. We walked through a long corridor past a kitchen and then up some rickety old stairs, almost too narrow to pass when carrying a bag. It was so narrow Tracey could use both her elbows at once to help her up the steepest bits. The key was redundant, as we pushed the door open to reveal a double sofa bed that had seen better days, a few blankets and a sink in one corner featuring a dripping tap. A bare light bulb hung from a ceiling that was occupied by a number of cockroaches, dangling menacingly as if waiting for some occupants they could terrorise and possibly eat.
‘Not the best place I’ve ever stayed,’ said Tracey, looking around the room. ‘Yuck, have you seen those bastards,’ she added, pointing to the insects above the bed.
She got out one of her large shoes and started beating them into submission, so they ran into dark corners where they could no longer be seen.
‘I hate them things. What’s the point of them? I’m all for nature and that, but cockroaches and wasps are totally pointless. Try telling me they ain’t.’
I wasn’t going to try and tell her anything, although I suspect there is a use for them. David Attenborough would probably say so, anyway.
We were both tired, and thankfully used to sharing bed space and blankets, so made the best of what was on offer, pledging to get away as soon as we’d had some sleep. When we couldn’t nod off for fear of attack, we took it in turns to keep an eye out for insects and anything else marauding about our room.
After about three hours or so we must have been tired enough to drop off because we were both woken at the same time by the woman from reception sitting on our bed.
‘Who are you?’ she said, when we stopped panicking. ‘There are people looking for you.’
It took a while for us to register what was going on. We’d been in a deep sleep, despite our surroundings, and neither of us could immediately recall where we were.
‘You need to get out of here, and quickly. There are two men here, saying you
must go back with them. I know about them and they are not nice to foreign people,’ she added.
‘What do they look like?’ I asked the woman, who had adopted a far nicer attitude to us than she did when we first came in.
‘One is English, and limps. The other is Nigerian. I don’t know their names, but they are part of a gang who kidnap people for money. They have camps around here with very many hostages, although they don’t usually take women.’
‘Tits and bollocks,’ said Tracey, jumping up and rubbing her face. ‘Are we never going to get away from those bastards?’
‘Don’t worry, I have sent them away. Someone saw you coming in here but I said you wanted a taxi to the airport. They think you are on the way there now and have sent their men in that direction. If you go the other way, you’ll be fine.’
We explained briefly what had happened, and how we’d been taken hostage but had managed to escape. We also told her we wanted to get to the university so we could get in touch with the authorities.
‘Ah, now I think I remember. Your story was in the papers. I recognise you now, although you look younger in the photos,’ said the woman.
Well, we were, I thought.
‘They don’t like it when people get away, it upsets their egos. They said you escaped twice, so I’m in deep admiration of you both. However, the men have all their contacts on watch for two Englishwomen.’
I asked again about using the phone to call home and was told it wasn’t advised.
‘We don’t want these people to trace you or your family through your calls. We must get you away from them and into the hands of professionals. You must be very careful. You mean money to them and nothing else, so they’ll stop at nothing if they think they can profit.’
Tracey and I looked at each other and my heart pounded. I’d used as much strength as I could getting away the last time, so didn’t want to have to do it again. Thank goodness for British stoicism. It was going to come in very handy.
Tracey’s bottom lip quivered and she looked like she was going to cry. Her hormones had been quite manageable in the last day or two, and I hoped they weren’t going to let us down now. She’d also been buoyed by her feats at breaking into the padlock and car, not to mention her impressive rowing technique. I thought about nicknaming her Katherine Grainger, but wasn’t sure Tracey would get the connection with the Olympic athlete – it didn’t seem quite her thing. I hoped her unexpected displays of competence weren’t going to desert her now.
‘I’m so pissed off with this. I just wanna get married and stop all this running about,’ she said. It was a sentiment I agreed with, even though I might have expressed it differently, and without the marriage bit.
‘Please stay here,’ the woman said. ‘I will sort something out for you. Don’t go back to the car. You stole it from one of the men’s brothers, and he is very cross.’
She swayed out of our room and we could hear the stairs creak as she made her way down to the bottom. I tried to work out in my mind’s eye how someone with such wide hips could get down the narrow steps without getting stuck.
Tracey’s head was in her hands and she was sniffing, wiping her hand across her nose as she did so.
‘Please don’t cry,’ I said, placing my hand on her shoulder, although I wanted to cry too.
‘I ain’t crying,’ she answered. ‘I’m allergic to animal fur, so reckon there’s something lurking about. I haven’t been like this since me neighbour’s hamster escaped and got in under my floorboards.’
On cue, a large rat made its way from behind the sink, ran across the room and dropped down into a very small space between the door frame and the door.
When the woman came back into our room to tell us she’d managed to sort out transport to get us away in safety, she found Tracey and me with our arms wrapped round each other, standing on tiptoe on the bed.
If Tracey and I wanted to find any common denominator other than the fact we’d both been kidnapped, we’d found it in that room.
We both hated rats.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
Once we’d recovered our composure, we picked up our bags and made our way down to the kitchen, where the woman told us to wait. She’d shut the premises while she made a number of phone calls, and I didn’t feel so bad about the amount of money she’d taken from me when I saw how many customers she turned away.
‘I’ve found you a driver and he is reliable and trustworthy. Maybe you’d like to go to the airport or to the British embassy?’
‘I do really need to sort everything out,’ I said. ‘My family will want to know I’m safe.’
Tracey wailed that she wanted to see Baz as soon as possible, and I had to admit to being keen on tracing Darius. He’d infiltrated my being, and since thinking I’d seen him I was convinced it was only a matter of time before he found me.
But I thought the embassy was the proper place to go first. I was imagining my children all pitching in to get the ransom money together, selling everything they owned to ensure my return; or at least I hoped they would be doing something along those lines rather than resorting to Bobbie’s general apathy and unfounded belief that everything would always be all right.
Apart from that, our captors should be brought to justice. We needed to report what had happened and get them all punished. I pitied Gowon and Chiddy, though. They were only following orders so they could earn a living in a world that didn’t provide one very easily. As for Chike, he was clearly a sandwich short of a picnic, and in our legal system would be treated for insanity rather than given any type of sentence. John struck me as the type of person who would be able to wipe his hands clean of any criminal involvement. I thought that was probably the case for a lot of white people in Africa.
‘Can’t we just go to the university and do the embassy stuff when we’re there?’ said Tracey. ‘If Baz’s mum is there we can get her to sort everything out.’
I thought that was a fairly good compromise, and that maybe the university would be a better place to find a man who worked in technology. We’d been missing for a while, so another hour or two wasn’t going to make much difference, and maybe it would be better to have someone help us find our way around the Nigerian authorities as I hadn’t a clue where to start.
‘OK, let’s go to the university, but if Lady Osolase won’t or can’t help us then we must go to the authorities as the next priority. We need to make sure people know what has happened to us.’
The woman nodded her head and picked up her phone. After a number of conversations of varying degrees of loudness she managed to get things sorted for us.
‘My brother will take you. He is a professional driver and will chauffeur you for one hundred American dollars… if that amount is OK?’ she said, her eyes twinkling as if to suggest it had to be, or we’d be stuck washing dishes until we gave in.
It occurred to me that if this woman hadn’t gone through my case she wouldn’t know I had any American dollars. Thankfully, Chike’s stash was going to play a further part in our release. A fact I found most satisfying.
Her brother was well dressed, wearing a suit, white shirt and tie. His shoes were highly polished and he spoke with a refined accent, as if he’d spent his life in the colonies with a nanny and a butler.
‘I’m very pleased to meet you, ladies,’ he said when he arrived, nodding slightly with deference. ‘My name is Luter.’
I went to shake his hand but he turned away. After all our recent adventures I wasn’t sure we could trust him, but I felt we had no choice. I just hoped he wasn’t taking us straight back to the camp and the oh-so-familiar shack.
‘My car is waiting for you,’ he said, indicating our way out of the building through the back door. ‘Please, come with me. We can’t be too careful.’
‘Good luck with everything,’ said the woman. ‘Watch everyone and stay safe.’
She rubbed her fingers together, suggesting I needed to make a payment. I found one hundred dollars of Chike’s ca
sh and went to pass it to our driver, but the woman grabbed it and shoved it in her jacket pocket.
‘That is fine, now go,’ she said, being friendly but firm about the transaction. She could give Alan Sugar a good run for his money, that’s for sure.
Tracey and I clambered into the Volvo estate. I’d gone to sit in the front seat but Luter shook his head and opened the door behind his.
‘Thank you, kind sir,’ I said, hoping the friendly recognition of his helpfulness would keep us in good stead.
We explained where we wanted to go and he nodded, claiming he knew exactly where the university was and that it would only take twenty or thirty minutes to get there.
A very expensive taxi ride, I thought.
Tracey asked him if he had a girlfriend and he said he didn’t. I asked him if he lived round here and he said he did. He wasn’t overly talkative. I also noticed he was changing gear with the wrong hand. I screwed my nose up and conveyed my thoughts to Tracey, not wishing to alert him to any concerns.
‘Bleedin’ hell, Cynth. He’s only got one arm. Look!’ she whispered.
I looked over to the driving seat on the pretext of addressing a clothing issue and she was right. A plastic arm stayed inanimate on his knee while his other did the work of two. Apart from the occasional judder, it would have been difficult to tell his driving was compromised in any way.
‘Have you been driving for long?’ I asked, nervous about the answer.
Luter looked straight ahead, checking the rear-view occasionally and with concentration.
‘Ten years, on and off. I took a break for a while, after the accident.’
I was about to ask him about his accident and if it had been responsible for the loss of his limb, but he became distracted, checking the mirror more frequently and driving erratically – not because of any disability, but through a deliberate effort.
He drove along the road at a speed I considered to be far too high given his missing limb, although he coped with every bend and turn well.