Darkness

by David Fletcher

  ‘Well…’

  ‘Or that they would have told you if he’d simply been ordered to drop the investigation?’

  Dan bridled at this last suggestion.

  ‘That’s crazy. I met those guys in the embassy. They were very helpful…’

  ‘Very helpful or very sympathetic?’

  ‘Well, they couldn’t conduct an investigation themselves. It was Morocco.’

  ‘But they could very easily have monitored the investigation, and known very well what Azoulay was up to, and why he… appeared to ease off.’

  ‘That’s all bollocks. Why wouldn’t they have told me if they suspected something fishy was going on? And quite simply, why wouldn’t they have wanted to know the identity of whoever planted that bomb? It just doesn’t make sense.’

  ‘No, it doesn’t, does it? Especially as I can tell you that, without a shadow of doubt, Azoulay was told to drop the investigation, and on top of that, Her Britannic Majesty’s Government knew he was told to drop it and whatever they’ve tried to do themselves has hit a stone wall. The Moroccans are not, my dear friend, our closest ally.’

  ‘But…’

  ‘I don’t know. Whatever you’re going to ask me, I don’t know. I don’t know why the Moroccans just want to forget the bombing. I don’t know how much effort we, the Brits, are still putting in – but I suspect it’s not very much – and I would be amazed if they get anywhere. And I don’t know when this whole issue will be consigned to an archive, but I suspect very soon.’

  Dan was trying to assimilate all this information – and the fact that Quentin had sought little information from him, and nothing at all that would help him in opening up a “new line of enquiry”, and certainly nothing that would get him any nearer to finding out who killed his wife. He was beginning to think that this interview was all a ruse. And he decided to say so.

  ‘Look,’ he started, ‘I have no idea what you really want, but all you seem to have done is question my trust in quite a few people who I think deserve my trust. And then you make these frankly incredible claims about Azoulay and the Moroccans. And… well, I think I’ve had just about enough…’

  ‘If I’m telling the truth, Dan, what would you do?’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Would you let the issue drop?’

  ‘The issue!’

  ‘Sorry. I will willingly rephrase that. Would you let the killers get away with it? Would you accept that you could never do anything yourself?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘So what would you do?’

  ‘Oh, come on. This is crazy. I shouldn’t have…’

  ‘What would you do?’

  Dan looked into Quentin’s glacial eyes.

  ‘Anything,’ he said. ‘Anything it took.’

  Quentin smiled.

  ‘Yes, I think you would. And I also think that while I haven’t been here very long, I’ve loaded you with far too much and far too quickly. But it was difficult to do otherwise. So please forgive me. And please also think about what I’ve said, so that when I contact you again next week we can pick up where we’ve left off and discuss how we… how we go about tracking down your wife’s killers. Which, I assure you Dan, is still my intention. You have my word on it.’

  Dan soon found himself with the iron in his hand again. Quentin had now gone and he was waiting for the iron to heat up enough to be used on the last shirt. And he was thinking. He was thinking about what Quentin had said and about whether he could believe anything he had said – and if so, what this might mean for his currently moribund search for Kim’s killers.

  He even began to think that Quentin might not be a real journalist. However, it was not until the following week, when Quentin made contact again as promised, that he actually discovered he wasn’t. Instead, he discovered, he was a recruiter…

  twenty-eight

  Dan felt hungry. It wasn’t surprising. He was existing on a meagre diet of energy bars, and they made barely a dent in his hunger. However, what was uppermost in his mind this early morning was not the need for food but the need to feel clean. He hadn’t washed himself properly since he’d left Ngaga and he now felt horribly soiled. It almost amused him how he was able to cope with an unfamiliar situation and even able to deal with deadly hazards such as venomous snakes, but he could not shake off what was a central demand of his culture: regular cleansing. He was conditioned, he decided, to keep his body spick and span, and by not doing so he was seriously neglecting his duties. Quite simply, he was letting himself down.

  He could no longer ignore it. Nor could he ignore the fact that he was now standing at the head of a series of rapids, and at the edge of these rapids were a number of pools, natural bathtubs full of clear unruffled water, any one of which would make an ideal spot for some restorative ablutions. He was very tempted but at the same time very hesitant. He had no wish to be taken off-guard and no wish to encounter whatever might live in those pools. None of them was large enough to accommodate a crocodile and, in any event, he could not imagine that crocodiles would come anywhere near these rapids. It just wasn’t their sort of place. However, he really wasn’t sure what else might live in and around the pools, and he had a strong suspicion that the combination of crevices, and what would be increasingly warm rocks, might prove irresistible to any number of snakes. Furthermore, some of these snakes might not be quite as sluggish as a viper, and some of them might be natural water snakes.

  Ultimately, however, culture won out over caution, and Dan stripped off and then lowered himself into one of the smaller pools. Indeed, it was so tiny and so shallow that he reckoned it could not contain any real threat. It would, however, provide him with just enough water for a satisfying rinse and the sense that he had done right by his body. And it did. He proceeded to give himself just enough of a wash to ease his guilt and to make him feel as though he’d had a proper freshening up – even though he had no soap and no shampoo, and he still looked and smelled like a tramp.

  That didn’t matter. He had no company this morning and he wasn’t expecting company for the whole of the day. No, all he was expecting was a fairly demanding trudge through the forest, a trudge that would begin in earnest just as soon as he’d found that little river that joined the Lodié from the north. That might not be that easy. As he looked down the course of the rapids, he could see that there was no obvious path and, where the rapids ended and the Lodié resumed its languid progress, the riverside vegetation encroached on the river itself. That could provide a really serious challenge, he thought, and he even contemplated recovering his canoe and manhandling it past the rapids in order that he could then employ it once again. However, he decided against this. There really was no path to follow, and whatever route he took past the rapids would be difficult even if unencumbered. With a canoe to manhandle, it would be daunting. Furthermore, he wouldn’t have been told to leave the canoe at the top of the rapids if that wasn’t the best thing to do. Which might mean, he deduced, that the little river he sought was very close, and certainly close enough to obviate the need for further river-borne transport.

  He was right. When he’d finally scrambled down past the rapids, he hadn’t gone more than twenty metres through a stand of thick riverside vegetation when the unnamed river he was seeking appeared before him. And it had to be “his” river. It was actually quite broad, possibly as wide as twenty feet, but it was very shallow and, in reality, more a wide stream than a river. Dan was delighted, not just with this waterway’s early emergence but also with its modest depth. It really was so shallow that he would have no trouble at all in using it as a path. It would be just like that river that ran past Lango, where the whole party of visitors had waded along its course with not quite the greatest of ease but without any great trouble at all. In fact, this river was even shallower than the one at Lango, and it held out the prospect of a distinctly manageable day of walking. And that
was even taking account of the absence of his water-resilient trainers. Dan was now wearing a pair of just standard trainers. These, he concluded, would just have to do…

  Inevitably, they didn’t feel particularly comfortable once they were soaked. Dan discovered this within minutes of setting off up the river. He also discovered that the bed of the river was littered with assorted obstructions and literal pitfalls. The obstructions were in the shape of half-hidden tree roots and little clumps of rocks, and the pitfalls were where various creatures had succeeded in excavating cavities in the riverbed sand. These slowed his progress quite considerably. A broken ankle or a broken leg, he recognised, could each be difficult to deal with, and he wanted to avoid either outcome, even if it meant picking his way along the river very gingerly indeed. This he did, right up until the river’s course led him around a bend to reveal a much-narrowed channel, completely overhung with a tangle of branches. His “easy” path had suddenly turned into a difficult passage, and one that looked so difficult that he wondered whether he could use it at all.

  It took him very little time to decide that he had no choice. If he tried to skirt the watercourse, he would find the going even more of a challenge and he would quickly lose his way. He would have to stay in the river and thread his way through all the obstacles both above and below the water – and just hope that he managed.

  It was hard. There were stretches of the river where the obstacles were few, and he had little trouble at all. However, these alternated with more demanding stretches where the overhanging vegetation provided not just an obstruction but also the threat of real injury. He might easily be stabbed by a vicious thorn or bitten by one of the many tree-living ants. Negotiating these elements of the passage proved particularly arduous and completely exhausting. Dan began to feel quite demoralised and not a little concerned. He might, he thought, just grind to a stop.

  Just after noon he did stop. It was where a huge fallen tree had torn a hole in the forest canopy, and where Dan could find some much-needed respite from what had become the oppressive embrace of just too much vegetation. Rainforests, he knew, had wonderful open tracts within their midst where one could walk easily and relish a feeling of space. But along this waterway, it was not like that at all. The trees grew close together and entwined together, and even the air found it difficult to move. So, finding this chink in the ubiquity of the greenery all around was more than welcome, and Dan decided he would rest here until the hottest part of the day had come and gone. Indeed, he might even risk a nap. He had heard nothing on his river walk so far that had caused him alarm, and he was reasonably sure that nothing would arrive to cause him any grief. In any event, he did feel really tired and he doubted he could stay awake.

  He was dozing in less than five minutes. He had found a bare patch of ground next to the trunk of the fallen tree, and when he lay down there he had soon found his eyes closing, and they remained closed for two hours. When they then opened, they first caught sight of a rather large millipede on his right leg. But that was soon brushed away, and Dan found no evidence of having been visited by any other creatures as he’d slept. He did, however, notice something else, and this was that he still felt really tired. This could just have been the result of the rigours of the day and those of the days before, but it didn’t quite feel like that…

  However, no matter how fatigued he felt, he knew he had to carry on. He had to get himself back into that little river and make his way further along its course. Within minutes he was doing just that, and soon after plunging back into the water he remembered something, and this was that he hadn’t bothered to eat anything during his midday pause. And that was because he’d not felt hungry. His earlier hunger had somehow diminished during the morning and was now not there at all. It had disappeared entirely.

  It might mean nothing, he thought. Both the tiredness and the not wanting food. But there again, it might mean everything.

  He knew he would soon find out. Just as he knew that he had to carry on plodding up this river. And there were still four hours of light to do just that…

  twenty-nine

  Toby was standing in Peter’s office. As always, he looked as though he had dressed himself in the dark and had never in his life made the acquaintance of a mirror. Peter was sitting behind his desk and was looking at a piece of paper that Toby had just delivered. Neither of them spoke until Peter finally raised his eyes from the document and addressed Toby.

  ‘What do you think?’ he said.

  ‘Well, Fido doesn’t make mistakes, does he?’

  ‘No more than you do,’ observed Peter.

  Toby’s eyebrows rose and he looked uncharacteristically uncomfortable – for just a second. Then he went on.

  ‘Well, Fido got a good report back from the minder. Our guy did everything that was asked of him, and I see no reason…’

  ‘…to doubt your first impressions or to think that anything will have gone wrong.’

  Toby grinned.

  ‘Yeah, something like that. And anyway, chief, there are just no contraindications. So we’ve got no choice really. We’ve got to assume it’s still a go.’

  Peter sighed.

  ‘I know,’ he said. ‘It’s just…’

  ‘…that requesting a jam is quite a big deal,’ finished Toby. ‘And you like to anguish about it a bit.’

  Peter regarded the shambles before him and hesitated before he responded to Toby’s acute observation. Sometimes he felt as though Toby could see into his mind.

  ‘Yes. You’re right. A decision’s not a proper decision unless it’s been anguished over for a while. Although, of course, that’s something you minions may never understand. After all, it’s only us boss-types that have to make any worthwhile decisions anyway.’

  Toby chortled. He was meant to. And he was also meant to respond.

  ‘Yeah. Well, thanks for that pointer on management angst, but hadn’t we better get things moving?’

  Peter suddenly looked glum.

  ‘Yes, we should. Flippancy can defer things only so long.’

  And as he was making this observation, he was picking up a pen. Soon he was using it to append his signature to the document. Then he handed the signed document to Toby.

  ‘You know…’

  ‘…it needs three other signatures.’

  ‘Of course you know,’ observed Peter. ‘I’d be shocked if you didn’t.’

  Toby smiled.

  ‘And I’d be shocked if this doesn’t all come together. It has to. Toby says it does, and Toby’s rarely wrong.’

  ‘I think you mean “never bloody wrong”. However, I’ll overlook that slip-up for now – but only on the condition that you clear off and do what needs to be done. Immediately. After all, I have lots of boss-type things that need my attention.’

  Toby began to back out of Peter’s office, bowing as he went, and then delivering one parting shot to his “superior”.

  ‘Thank you for your wisdom,’ he said.

  And then he was gone, and Peter was left thinking how levity and even a degree of irreverence so much helped all of them to get through their day. Even if it was just a matter of sanctioning a request and not making a decision that was literally a matter of life or death, a little serving of frivolousness certainly helped. In fact, without it, much of what they had to do would be almost impossible to bear. It also helped, of course, to have people like Toby…

  thirty

  The first thing that occurred to Dan on this new day was that he wasn’t being bothered by sweat bees. On his canoe trip this absence of these irritants hadn’t been unexpected, but why hadn’t they accompanied him on his trek up this stream? Why hadn’t they made what was a real trial an absolute misery? Was it because they could sense something? Was it that they knew he might be suffering from something? It wasn’t really likely. He knew that. But at the same time, he could think of no oth
er explanation. And then he thought that musing idly about the non-appearance of a flying insect was hardly a worthwhile use of his time, and that instead he should be preparing himself for another hike along the stream before it became simply too hot to move.

  He therefore began this preparation, which first entailed his checking his body for bites and for the presence of any unwanted visitors who might have set up home on him overnight. He had, after all, collapsed with exhaustion the previous evening, having not even made a choice as to where to collapse. Now he could see that it had been at the very side of the stream, half in and half out of a clump of reeds, and fortuitously on a little patch of Gabon that was reasonably dry. His clothes were barely damp. They did, however, harbour a couple of millipedes, but pleasingly nothing that had found its way inside his clothes to attack his skin. For this he was very grateful, and no less so for a long drink of water from his remaining water bottle – which was then left no more than half full. He knew he would soon have to resort to drinking from the stream. However, the thought bothered him not in the least. Neither did the fact that he was still not hungry. It was no more than he expected.

  He also expected to feel tired. In fact, he felt so tired – and so drained – that just checking his rucksack was something of an effort. So too was admitting to himself that his preparations for his hike were now concluded and that it was time for him to lift himself into the vertical and make his way further along the waterway.

  The lifting he managed without too much difficulty, but when he came to use his legs for more than just standing on, he became aware of just how weak he’d become. As he walked into the waters of the stream, they wobbled, and he half expected them to give way beneath him. They didn’t, but he felt it might be wise to delay his planned journey for just a few minutes and to use those minutes to breakfast on one of his three remaining energy bars. He had no appetite whatsoever, but clearly his body needed at least a token injection of fuel, and possibly a little more time to reconcile itself to having to move. He therefore plonked himself down on a convenient log and rummaged through his rucksack to locate the required nourishment. This he ate slowly and more than a little reluctantly. He no more wanted it than he would have wanted a bar of clay. Although the clay, he thought, might not have required quite so much chewing.