Elue was trembling with rage. ‘What’s this meaning?’
‘I’m lost.’
He swung his baton. It caught an overhanging branch and slipped from him. The torches were too weak for them to see the abandoned buildings alongside, overgrown with bushes since Utoma’s death, but the stymied dogs finally began to bark. I wondered if Badu—if I—had killed the inspector general by default after all, by starving him to death. Then a hoarse voice I did not recognise bleated above the tumult of dogs and scared policemen. Elue let me go and backtracked through his milling men. I slipped back several paces until I was knee-deep in the creek.
The voice energized the weary policemen once again. There was a flurry of activity. Shots rang out, cries of ‘Badu,’ ‘Rabbit,’ ‘Careful,’ and ‘Fool!’ I had delivered the greatest policing coup in Nigerian history to an inadvertent Elue, and his sycophantic instincts were sound.
He had already stripped off his trousers to clothe his boss, but despite his girth, he was too lean for his jacket to be of much use, even for the starved Pitani. He ran around in his boxers looking for the fattest of his policemen to strip. Presently, Charles Pitani emerged in all his shrunken grandeur. He had inspected hundreds of parades in his life, but the filthy, exultant band of policemen, with a commanding sergeant in underwear, was clearly the sweetest his eyes had ever seen.
I backed further away, into an amphibious curtain of mangrove roots. The main body of policemen stood between me and Kreektown, which was less than a kilometre away; it might as well have been a world away, for I had burned my boats. I shut my eyes as Elue shouted my name, his voice an exultant threat. I heard the yelp of tired dogs. I edged deeper into the creek. My heart pounded. Then a shadow separated itself from the trees. He wore the string vest of the roughboys, and rubber boots came up to his knees. He was armed: machete in a waist sheath and automatic rifle on shoulders. He was shiny with sweat, and I realised he had been following us all night.
‘You fit swim?’
I nodded silently.
He pointed across the stream. ‘Adevo dey wait you.’
I looked across the creek. It was nearly dawn. The opposite bank was still in darkness, but the middle section had no tree cover and the moonlight glinted off the surface of the creek. When I looked back there were two others with him. He made a dive gesture with his hand, and they melted into the trees once again.
I shed my shirt and sank into the creek, breast-stroking away from the shoreline toward where the creek was deeper. Suddenly, the flaccid night was stretched to garrotte tautness by the excited barking of dogs. I had not been silent enough. I felt like the last Menai, bedding down for eternity in a watery tomb as I took a gulp and dived. There were shots, then I was kicking, stroking deeper and deeper.
I had not swum the Agui since it drowned my parents; I had not swum any river or pool. Yet when this moment came, I dived without a thought into waters that had lately drowned a grieving Jonszer. I stroked, blind, into the creek. As an eleven-year-old I used to swim across the creek regularly but had never done so underwater. My lungs were larger now—and my reasons more desperate. As soon as I was underwater, I changed direction, swimming with the current that emptied into the Atlantic. I came up two minutes later, downstream from the poultry shed but on the same side of the creek. I treaded water and refreshed my lungs. It was exhilarating to be in the water again, and the adrenaline rush masked the pain from my torture. I took my bearings, reassured by the fainter barking, and dived again. This time, I made for the farther bank.
I lay panting on the sandbank for an age, until the red tint of my eyesight returned to normal. I heard the rustle and sat up moments before Amana reached me. She hugged me fiercely, while I tried to bite down the pain from my bruises.
‘Why did you bring them here?’
I panted wordlessly.
‘You’re human after all. Come.’
Exhaustion arrived with a vengeance, and I fought to retain consciousness, missing my shirt and shoes badly. I stumbled after her for 150 metres up a narrow footpath until we gained a crowded clearing. Perhaps a dozen faces from Ma’Calico’s were there. The iroko herself stood, hulking over a fire. Her eyes were warm for the first time in our acquaintance. And there was something like capitulation in her lips, although I would be stretching things to call it a smile.
Adevo was there too. He pushed a bundled-up robe into my hands.
I pulled it on gratefully, too breathless for the profuse thanks that were due. It smelled of kaushe soup and singed hide, not a particularly unpleasant combination of things to smell of, just then. I followed Adevo to the fire, where several Sontik villagers from Kreektown snatched a communal meal, looking far more cheerful than refugees had a cause to be.
‘Eat,’ he commanded, as he turned away, phone to ear. It was a welcome order.
We were on a narrow spit of land between two creeks, and a ceaseless stream of people hurried past the clearing, carrying property toward speedboats on the far bank.
‘Small man devil,’ said Fati proudly, beaming at me. She gave me a chunk of venison.
‘He will kill elephant and carry in head pan,’ agreed a face from Ma’Calico’s, putting a can of warm beer in my hand.
‘But he didn’t kill that snake, Pitani,’ grumbled Ma’Calico, keeping things in perspective. There was the silence of mastication, as roast tubers and a small antelope were quickly shared. I struggled to keep my eyes open.
Furious shots rang out from across the Agui. I looked up as Korba Adevo chuckled. ‘I’ve collected all their trucks and motorcycles!’
‘And we burned down my hotel,’ added Ma’Calico. ‘Everything we couldn’t carry, we burned to the ground.’
‘What?’ I was stunned.
‘They would have locked me up and demolished it anyway,’ she explained.
‘As for,’ said Adevo. He sucked his teeth morosely. ‘Farmers burn their farms after harvest. It grows faster next time.’
‘Mouth!’ said Ma’Calico. ‘Oya, bring petrol, let’s burn your boats also!’ There was bravado in her voice; there was also pride in the hands she lifted to the fire. ‘This is my hotel. Anywhere I plant it, it will grow.’
‘Amen,’ agreed Fati. ‘Is a big delta. We will find another town.’
Ma’Calico hesitated. Her eyes bore through me in a return to form. ‘You should have killed that snake.’
I was taken aback by her venom. ‘There’s been enough blood already.’
‘He’s a snake,’ she insisted. Now that she was liberated from her job, she was sounding more schoolmistress than local hotelier. ‘They have destroyed our country. I don’t mind burning my business, but you kill a snake before he bites you, that’s nature’s law. You should have killed him.’ She rose and lumbered away.
There were grunts of assent from around the fire.
‘If you said, I could have finished him for you,’ complained Adevo, ‘but me, I don’t like poke-nosing into another man’s business. Drink.’
I did. I leaned over to Amana. ‘Mata Nimito?’
‘He’s okay, Tobin took him.’ She gave me a large envelope. ‘He said I should give you this.’ She held my eyes in a steady gaze. ‘He told me about Humphrey Chow. Are we going to him?’
It was easier, at that point, merely to nod.
There was some excitement in the shadows; when I looked, I saw a figure emerge and approach the fires. When he was close enough, Amana jumped to her feet. There was a grin on her face, and she pulled me up to meet him. She took his hand in a fervent handshake.
‘Thanks for coming.’
He was unsmiling, guarded. ‘You said it was a matter of life and death . . . and I met the whole place burning . . .’
‘That’s how they welcomed me too, Dr. Maleek. Fire is a Kreektown tradition.’ She lowered her voice soberly. ‘I couldn’t get you to break my mother’s confidence, Doc. Can you keep my own secrets?’
He shrugged ungraciously. ‘So long as . . .’
‘Zanda,’ she cut in as I struggled to keep upright, ‘You said you needed help. This is Dr. Maleek.’
‘Thanks. I just need painkillers and sleep right now,’ I began.
‘No, he’s a psychiatrist,’ she explained. ‘Dr. Maleek, Zanda also likes to call himself Badu.’
His brows furrowed. ‘Badu . . . as in “Badu?”’
What I saw in his eyes was another variation of Sergeant Elue’s incredulity earlier that day—the gap between my spineless reality and the Badu of urban legend. I’m not sure why it got to me this time. Perhaps it was the absence of guns. To the southeast, a flare stack belched explosively. From behind my eyes, stars also exploded, and I think I stumbled forward, slipping deeper into sleep than I had ever fallen before.
SLEEPCATASTROPHES
Kreektown | April, 2000
Etie Nomsok
Sisi Mari
Gaius Kroma
Clema Dadie
Salia Kakandu
Haji Megima
Baby Megima
Births
Nil
Extant Menai population: 350 (NPC estimates)
CHARLES PITANI
Abuja | 19th March, 2005
I wake before her. I stay in bed with my eyes closed till she dresses and leaves home.
This life is a bitch. I am gone for a week, and her wardrobe has expanded and expanded until my own clothes are in a Ghana-mus’-go in the bathroom. Buys designer black with my money to prepare for my own burial. And a cow and bags of rice in the backyard for the funeral jollof . . . is that the first thing? When they haven’t even seen my corpse?
It’s not her fault. I have moved all my money abroad now. If this thing takes my head she has to start all over again . . .
Yes, I let her go. Talking is not what I want to do now. Now is time for action. I get up and shower. I am hacking and spitting like a pregnant woman. It is this smell of chicken shit that I can’t get out of my nose. But that is neither here nor there.
I don’t shave. I want something sharp on my body, to resemble the broken bottles all over my mind.
There’s a new housegirl too. Downstairs in the bar, I take her. She is better than the last one. Oga, please, don’t, she whispers, but her free hand holds the door shut. Yet when it is over, the siren that was blowing is still blowing.
I leave the TV on, but I don’t answer the telephone. That’s the compromise I have made. At least I am not totally out of touch. Every newscast has something about me. That’s their business. Last time I pass the phone, I see the housegirl has recorded seventy-four messages on the notepad. They can wait.
There are things you think you have passed in life, then gbam! They are looking at you face to face! Suspension? A whole inspector general of police? Okay. They can keep their job for now. I have enough personal police work on my hands. So many people have offered me the video. Each time, it is just as I suspected: another fool trying to make quick money. This country is terrible. They’ve paid dearly for their greed, but that is neither here nor there. I am still a prisoner of that Badu bastard, as long as that video is out there somewhere. Maybe this is what he planned. To have my own business partners execute me themselves. But I will get him first.
Unless my name is not Charles Pitani.
There is food on the table and I am hungry. Until I see the chicken in the stew. I don’t know if I can ever eat chicken again after my experience in that poultry shed. There was a dead man in a cane chair. I watched Badu bury the man in the room and tie me on the same bloody chair! The smell of dead men and rotten eggs and chicken is now the same for me.
Being suspended has its advantages: it opens your eyes to alternatives. With fifty thousand policemen my deputy could not find Badu. With my money and my motivation, I have much better alternatives. And I am going to get that Badu, if it is the last thing I do.
Especially if it’s the last thing I do.
‘You’ve got to watch your liver, Charles.’
I turned. I tried to fake a smile but nothing happened. This disaster has frozen my face like panla, but that is neither here nor there. Jude Fijaro is the last person I want to see now. ‘How did you get in?’
‘That’s not very friendly. You won’t take my phone calls and I come in person and you won’t even offer me a brandy.’
I walked across and parted the curtains; the gates were unmanned! Did they withdraw my security staff? That my deputy is a viper. He uses the files on my desk to take my job from under my feet, and he won’t even leave me an ordinary gateman detail. I turned. The light opened up the large room, but Fijaro filled it with his poisonous personality. He was dressed in his usual white brocade. He wore that smile of his that was not really a smile, that sat on his face like a painful wound. By the time I came back from the window to shake his hand, I was smiling like him. ‘Welcome. Coke or rocks?’
‘None.’
I poured him a brandy and he sat down. He had not shaved either.
He did not waste any time. ‘Am I safe?’ he asked.
‘I don’t know.’
‘What kind of answer is that?’
‘I don’t know! Please! I hope you haven’t come to add to my problems. I’ve just spent the worst week of my life—’
Fijaro pushed himself up. The brandy spilled on his brocade and my carpet. He did not notice. He came over very fast. I hope he gets physical—no, I pray the fat balloon gets physical today, because I am angry enough to give him the surprise of his life. But he only came to kneel beside me with an elbow on my armrest and to whisper angrily in my ear, ‘And I’m still in the middle of the worst week of my life! Am I safe?’
He has watched too much Nollywood. Through the brandy on his breath, I can smell fear and an unwashed mouth.
‘By the grace of God.’
‘Let’s leave God out of this! Did you talk? Did he video you like Omakasa?’
I feel a spasm in my crotch. Every time I think about the video, it is the same.
Fijaro saw my face and did not need an answer. He slid away on the carpet, spilling more brandy. ‘Mo gbe! Mo gbe!’
I’ve never seen him like this, even though he’s a hard drinker and a worse curser. When he’s drunk he likes for us to call him Judas. If I was not in such shit myself, I would be enjoying his pain.
By the time he reached the sofa he had recovered. He set the brandy down on the glass coffee table and dried his fingers with a handkerchief. He sat down properly. ‘Okay. What exactly did you say?’
Idiot. Thinks he’s in court. ‘They drugged me. I can’t remember exactly.’
‘They? Are we talking about Badu here or a committee of kidnappers?’
‘You think only one man could have done this to me? This was an organised gang!’
‘They didn’t drug Omakasa,’ he said suspiciously. ‘I saw the video. The judge was confessing with his full senses.’
‘I’m a trained policeman, I’m not Omakasa,’ I said angrily. A text had come that evening a week ago as I left Force Headquarters. It was from Fernandez, a name I vaguely remembered, and asked whether the balance of my money was seven or seventeen thousand dollars. It gave a hotel room where I could send an aide to pick it up. As if that was the sort of errand one ever sent aides on. Especially where both deal and balance were so uncertain.
The hotel was on my way home, and my convoy pulled in there. Armed escorts waited at the entrance of the hotel. My armed aides stood guard at the entrance to the room.
Room 32 was opened for me by a uniformed housekeeper whose trolley stood just inside the room. As I walked past him, the door closed behind me and I was karate-chopped on the back of the neck. When I dropped to my knees, a steel hand clamped a damp towel over my face. I remember being paralysed, before losing consciousness.
I must have been carried past my aides stuffed in a laundry trolley! And dumped in a boot in the car park! Right under the eyes of my idiotic escorts!
I am homicidal with shame, but that is neither here nor there.
Fijaro poured himself another brandy, neat. He took a gulp. Quality brandy was always wasted on people like him. ‘Did you . . . did you . . . ?’
‘Yes?’
‘Did you mention my name?’
‘Yes.’
He hissed like a snake. ‘Where’s the video?’
There was something in my throat. When I finished coughing, he was still glaring at me.
‘What?’ I asked.
‘I said, “Where’s the bloody video?”’
‘I’m not sure there is one.’
‘Why?’
‘If there is, it would be out by now, wouldn’t it? This is what we call the modus operandi. With Omakasa it was out within—’
‘You’re not Omakasa.’
‘I know, I’m talking about the modus operandi now. This is Policing 101. With Omakasa it was out in twenty-four hours. That means—’
‘Drop this modus operandi baloney; I’m not a recruit in your freaking Police College. All I want to know is whether there was a tape of your confession or not!’
‘His video recorder was—’
‘He? Or they? Where’s our “organised gang” now?’
I gave him a sidelong glare. ‘They had a video recorder all right, but the battery was dead or something. Because if not, by their modus—’
‘What are you going to do, Charles? Sit here moping in your living room till they arrest Badu? Is he going to repeat what you told him in court? Is this how my daughter in Cambridge will hear her daddy’s name on BBC?’
‘Don’t worry, Badu will never go to court. My mercenaries are coming.’
He looked at me for a very long time, then he swore. ‘Iro. Airy baloney. That Zanda wimp whose picture is circulating could not have done this to you and Omakasa. That’s not Badu. All the men in your force could not catch Badu. Your white boys are just coming to eat your money. I have to go into damage limitation now, Charles. For all I know, the video could be uploading on the Internet right now.’ He shivered and snapped his fingers. ‘Hah! Mo gbe! Tell me everything you said. I have to know what to expect.’
The Extinction of Menai Page 15