And so, with the stars bright and land gone over the horizon, they tied Grace and Joseph together and shackled the big spare CQR anchor to them and wrapped three fathoms of chain around their legs and positioned the bodies on the stern. Then Zuz spoke some words of her own choosing, and Clay promised Grace and Joseph that he would look after Zuz, and they let them pass over the side.
Clay and Zuz stood a long time, watching the phosphorescent wake stream down into the depths, the wind pushing them gradually further away until the glowing scar healed and was gone. After, Clay opened a bottle of whisky and poured two glasses, adding water to one. He sat with Zuz in the cockpit under a following breeze and drank the whisky as the stars disappeared and day came.
‘She loved you,’ said Zuz, trying the whisky and putting her glass on the cockpit seat.
Clay said nothing. If he had been stronger, he would have left weeks ago. Then none of this would have happened. But he wasn’t, and he didn’t, and it had.
‘She told me about you,’ said Zuz.
Clay faced the girl, asked the question with his gaze.
‘She said she was curing you.’
‘Curing me?’
‘She said you had a disease – a bad spirit inside you. That you were too weak to fight it and that she was pulling it from you. She said it was difficult and would take a long time.’
Clay stared at the girl, the perfect reflections of her mother there in the dark irises.
‘She said that after it was gone, you would be free.’
Grace had never mentioned any of this.
‘I know what you and my mummy did together. I saw you.’
Clay looked away, said nothing.
‘Did you love her?’
‘Yes,’ he lied.
‘She wanted to have a baby with you.’
‘Zuz.’
‘She told me.’
‘Zuz, stop.’
‘Joseph worshipped you.’ She pulled her knees to her chest, wrapped her arms around her shins. Tears bloomed in her eyes. ‘I hated you at first. Now I don’t.’
‘I’m going to take you to your grandmother,’ said Clay, checking the mainsail trim. ‘She can look after you.’
‘You said you were going to look after me.’
‘I will.’
‘How?’
‘By taking you to your grandmother’s.’
‘I want to come with you.’
‘She lives in Nungwi, at the top of the island, doesn’t she?’
‘I said, I want to come with you. I don’t want to live with my grandmother.’
‘You can’t come with me,’ said Clay.
‘Why not?’
Clay stood at the helm, unable to speak.
‘In a year, I can be your wife.’ The starlight caught her eyes. ‘We can have a baby together.’
‘No,’ said Clay. ‘Absolutely not.’
‘You don’t love me,’ she whispered. ‘It was my fault those men came, and now my mother and brother are dead, and you don’t love me, and I am all alone.’ The words came as sobs, wrenched from somewhere deep inside. Tears poured down her face, each a crystalline tragedy.
‘It wasn’t because of you, Zuz.’
She buried her face between her knees.
‘And you’re not alone,’ he said. ‘You have your grandmother.’
Clay let her cry, checked the compass, listened to the sound the hull made through the water.
After a time, she looked up, wiped her face with her hands. ‘Where are you going to go?’ she said.
‘I don’t know. Away from here.’
‘And those men, will they follow you?’
‘Yes.’
‘And try to kill you?’
‘Yes. That’s why you can’t come with me.’
‘Why do they want to kill you?’
He looked her straight in the eyes. ‘Because, Zuz, I am not afraid.’
She gazed back at him. ‘They want you to be afraid, though?’
Clay nodded. ‘They want everyone to be afraid.’
‘I’m like you,’ she said. ‘I am not afraid.’
‘I know you’re not.’
‘When I’m with you, I feel brave. That’s why I want to come with you.’
‘You’re going to your grandmother’s, Zuz. We’re on the way now. That’s the way it has to be. You’re going to have to be brave by yourself.’
By first light, Flame was lying at anchor just outside the reef edge on the north-western coast of Zanzibar.
Zuz had argued the whole way, as day edged night from the sky and the land breeze brought the scents of the island: cloves, cinnamon, the deep inhalations of wood smoke and cardamom. This was the chemistry of her home, the land of her ancestors. This was where she belonged. But the girl, who was in the process of becoming a woman, would not relent. If he sent her back, she said, the men who had come to kill him would come after her. One was dead, but the other was not. And the white man was still there, she was sure. If Clay left her with her grandmother, they would soon find her. They probably had already, and were waiting there for them even now. No, she said. She had seen their faces, seen what they had done. She was a witness to murder. They would kill her, as they had her mother and brother. And if he went with her, to protect her, they would kill him too. It was stupid to go back, dangerous. She loved him and she didn’t want to put him in danger again. This wasn’t about fear, she said. She wasn’t afraid. But it was stupid to die if you could live.
Finally, though, she’d relented. Not from the force of any arguments Clay had offered. He had remained mute, guiding Flame through the night, following the edge of the broad reef system that fringed the island’s northern shore. It was exhaustion took her. Now she lay curled under a blanket in the same berth that only hours before had been occupied by her mother’s corpse.
Clay checked the anchor, paid out more chain, glassed the shore with the binoculars.
Of course, he knew that all she’d said was true. It was always this way. Faced with two bad options, there was no choice at all. He’d tried running, and this was where it had led him. If he’d stayed in South Africa, Grace and Joseph would still be alive, and Zuz would have had before her the prospect of a normal life – or as normal as an economically disadvantaged fourteen-year-old African-Arab girl could expect to have in 1997 in East Africa, or anywhere else for that matter. A few more years of school, then an early marriage, to a decent husband perhaps; five or six children before she was thirty, a few years of happiness maybe. And if he ran again – ran now? Took Zuz with him as she wanted? It might work for a while. They could keep to the smallest towns, come ashore only when they absolutely had to. He could keep her out of sight. But sooner, not later, questions would be asked. They would be too conspicuous – a thirty-seven-year old white man with an already-beautiful black teenage girl. She without a passport, he without any proof of guardianship. And conspicuous meant vulnerable.
No. Never again would he allow someone else to be hurt because of him.
29th October 1997. Paris, France. 23:40 hrs
Assistant Inspector Marchand came by again this morning, early, before I left for work. She said that they have had dog teams searching the area near where our car was found, but so far, nothing else has turned up. They have now spoken to eyewitnesses, who have confirmed that our car entered the main gate of the industrial park during the evening of 23rd October. The witnesses have provided sworn statements that the car was occupied by one man, a woman, and a child in a car seat.
She asked me if they could collect DNA samples. I signed a consent form, and then her people took a blood sample from me, and hair and skin samples from Hamid’s hairbrush and Eugène’s pillow.
I still have not heard back from my friend at the Directorate. I am afraid to call him lest I rouse suspicions. All the calls are monitored. I went to the office today, not because I thought I would get some work done, but simply to get out of the apartment. Everyone at the bureau knows about Hamid�
��s disappearance. They were all very sympathetic and my editor was supportive as usual, telling me to take whatever time I needed and pledging the agency’s resources to help in the search.
I cannot help feeling that I am being steadily boxed in. As the days go by and the reality of what has happened crystallises inside me, everything makes less and less sense. There seems no logic to it. Hamid picks Eugène up from the crèche that day, an hour or so early, and then is seen entering an industrial park (of all places!) in eastern Paris nearly eight hours later, with a strange woman. What happened in those intervening hours? Where did they go? I know the police think it was me in the car. My editor told me they were at the office yesterday interviewing colleagues about my whereabouts that day. I left a bit later than I usually do, and did some shopping on the way, but then went straight to our flat. I did not phone in the missing person’s report until the next day. So I have no alibi for the time of the supposed murders. I know that the police think I killed them, that I hid the bodies and burned the car. I have read and written enough about the horrific things that family members do to each other to understand why the police believe this.
No bodies have been found. Is that why they haven’t charged me yet? Are there no other suspects? And who is this other woman?
Are they really dead? No, I cannot believe it. No. Anything but that. Anything. My mind spins like a leaf in a hurricane.
Tonight, I called Hope in Cyprus. I took the metro to my favourite restaurant, sat alone, picked at my food, and then called her from a phone box on the street. I have no doubt that the police have wire-tapped the line to our flat and are monitoring my mobile. Hope is doing well. Little Kypros – she and Jean-Marie call him Kip – is growing fast. He’ll be big and healthy like his father. Her work on the new national park in Agamas is going well, despite the continual frustrations of dealing with government. Jean-Marie (I still, after all this time, cannot bring myself to call him Crowbar) left suddenly two days ago on a job. He did not tell her where he was going, or for what. He never does. Hope says that he is planning to get out soon – once he finishes up a couple of key projects he is working on. That is what he calls them – ‘projects’. They do not need the money, not after everything that happened in Cyprus. I know she worries. She knows that he loves what he does, and that I do not approve, but we both owe him our lives, and I know she loves him and he her. Some of the most improbable couples seem to have the best relationships. Some, not all.
Then I told Hope everything. I suppose I just needed someone to talk to. She has become a very close friend. We have been through a lot together. She offered to help, as I knew she would. I had to stop her from flying out here straightaway. It is good to have a few friends in this world upon whom one can depend utterly.
I asked her if she had heard from you. I thought perhaps you might have checked in with her, knowing about the two of you and what you share, but she had heard nothing, not since Maputo. No one has. Not even Crowbar. That was more than nine months ago. It was, she said, as if you had decided to renounce man-and womankind. That was how she said it, Claymore: man-and womankind. After the way I have treated you, I do not blame you.
Wherever you are, I pray to Allah to protect you and help you to forgive yourself, and forgive me.
I need your help, Claymore. That was the last thing I said to Hope: When you speak to Jean-Marie, tell him I am in trouble and that I need Claymore’s help.
* 6 *
Thunder in the Distance
‘Pack your case, Zuz. Don’t leave anything behind.’
Clay opened the priest hole and pulled out the Glock, two extra magazines and a roll of US one-hundred-dollar bills. Then he secured all the portholes, turned off the gas, disconnected the battery and padlocked the sail locker. He went above deck and secured the boom, tightened the vang and set a kedge to the anchor to keep the chain low on the seabed.
He waited in the cockpit until Zuz emerged, blinking in the morning sun, her little case tucked under one arm. She had brushed her hair back into a ponytail and put on eyeshadow and lipstick.
‘Aren’t you a little young for makeup?’ said Clay.
Zuz sent him a sidelong glance, the edges of her mouth turned down, her eyes narrowed.
Clay closed the main hatchway, double locked it. He sat in the cockpit and turned on the mobile phone, unlocking it using the code he’d seen Dreadlock punch in. The battery was almost dead.
‘What are you doing?’ said Zuz.
‘Giving us an edge,’ he said. ‘What is the emergency number here?’
She told him. He dialled the number. A woman answered. He asked for the police. The woman asked him to wait. Clouds drifted overhead. The line clicked. The battery was almost gone. A man answered. Police, he said. Clay spoke: I am the person who called in the murders on Chumbe Island two days ago, and who alerted you to the meeting of the culprits on the beach yesterday. You have two local men in custody, one shot through the chest, the other suffering from stab wounds. They are the killers. The other witness, the daughter of the woman killed, will come forward. But there is a third man responsible. White South African, tall, well built, fair, nose pushed to one side of his face. Sunburn. Not a tourist. He is trying to kill me. He is trying to kill her.
The phone died. Clay tossed it into the sea.
‘As soon as I leave you with your grandmother, go to the police station with her. Tell them everything.’
‘What about you?’
‘I am going to help the police. I will make sure you are safe, Zuz. I promise.’
She smiled a little half-smile. ‘And then?’
‘And then I’m going to buy as much food as I can carry and I’m going to sail far away.’
‘Where?’
‘India,’ he lied. ‘Australia maybe. As far as there is.’
Zuz dropped her head. ‘And I will never see you again.’
Clay pulled the dinghy alongside. ‘Let’s go, sweetie.’
They rowed to the beach, tied the dinghy to the trunk of a palm well past the high-water mark and started inland through low reef-rock scrub.
Zuz reached for his hand, took it in hers. ‘You are going to kill them, aren’t you?’ said Zuz. ‘I saw what you did to that man at our house.’
Clay pulled his hand away, kept walking.
They reached a road, started walking north through scrub fields and smallhold farms, plots of yam and cassava, then, as they neared the outskirts of Nungwi, roadside stalls piled with fruit, makeshift garages wedged between the trunks of coconut palms and thick-waisted baobab, their owners peering out at them from under the shade of palm-frond shelters.
‘Everyone is looking at us,’ said Zuz, trudging along the frayed and crumbling tarmac at the road’s edge.
‘That’s why this is the only way,’ said Clay.
Zuz shook her head, kept walking.
After a while a dala-dala came along. Clay waved it down and they climbed into the back with the other half-dozen passengers – women with kids. The smaller children smiled at Clay, reached out to touch him, but Zuz scolded them away.
Soon they were in Nungwi proper. Clay paid the fare, a few shillings, and they continued on foot, Zuz leading him through the narrow stone streets of the old fishing village, now rashed over with the new, plastic fluorescence of tourism.
They stopped outside a small bakery. The street was lined with two-storey grey reef-rock buildings, shuttered and strung with wires and vines. Zuz pointed to a second-floor balcony on the other side of the street, four doors down.
‘There,’ she said. ‘That’s her house. She lives upstairs. That’s her shop underneath.’
Clay looked her in the eyes. ‘Stay here,’ he said.
‘Where are you going?’
‘Stay here. If you hear anything, run.’
‘Anything like what?’
‘Screaming, gunshots.’
Her mouth opened so that he could see the red underside of her bottom lip.
‘I�
��ll only be a minute. If it’s clear, I’ll wave from the balcony. Come straight up. If we get separated, meet me at the place the dala-dala dropped us. Understand?’
This time she nodded, stayed quiet.
Clay set off down the street.
‘Wait.’
Clay turned back to face her.
‘Her name is Geraldine. My mother’s mother.’
Clay kept going. He reached the shop, found the stairway and started up the rough stone steps, breathing in the cool air, the odours of tropic mould and the warm, turgid transpirations of close living. Halfway up the stairs he stopped, pulled the G21 from his waistband, checked the mag and chambered a round. He stood a moment, back against the sweating pores of the wall. He felt his chest expand against the stone as he tried to steady his breathing.
He wasn’t sure what he was expecting, but he wasn’t going to take any chances. The door was locked. From inside, the sound of a radio playing, the twittering of birds. He followed the hallway to the back of the building. An unlocked door led to a fire escape. Narrow wooden balconies shaded by a slouching pergola of rusting corrugated sheet metal. Pots of geraniums and herbs edged the railing. Clay clambered across to the balcony, palmed the Glock. He was outside the flat now, pressed up against the wall. He could hear the radio, the birds. And now, wood creaking, footsteps approaching.
Clay pushed open the door, stepped inside, pistol raised.
An old woman stood facing him. She was dressed in a long, patterned nightdress and wore thick-rimmed spectacles. In her right hand was a birdcage. Three yellow-and-green budgerigars twittered on the perch. The woman stared at Clay, at the gun. For a moment Clay thought she was going to scream, but she supressed it, gathered herself.
‘That is quite unnecessary, young man,’ she said. ‘My money is in the sitting room, in the roll-top desk.’ She placed the cage on the table, moved to the stove, lit the gas, put a kettle over the flames. ‘Tea?’ she asked.
Clay moved past her without answering, scanned the front room, the small bedroom. She was alone. There was no phone that he could see in the flat. He pushed the G21 into the waistband of his trousers at the small of his back, opened the door that led to the front balcony.
Absolution Page 5