Whitestone reached for the remote control and switched off the TV. ‘Would you like a drink?’
Dzasokhov grunted and walked across to a picture window that overlooked Prinsengracht and the queue for the Anne Frank Museum. The windows were silvered from the outside, so it did not matter that his silk dressing gown hung open and his reddened genitals were exposed beneath an expanse of pale-white gut.
Whitestone filled a thumb-sized glass with chilled Stolichnaya. Dzasokhov drained it in a single throw and returned the glass for a refill.
‘They are all like that?’ Dzasokhov said, nodding towards the bedroom and wiping his mouth with the back of his hand.
‘I like to keep my standards high.’
‘I am impressed, Mr Whitestone. And I have many friends I know will be impressed too. I think we will be doing more business together.’
‘Maybe,’ Whitestone said. ‘Maybe not.’
Dzasokhov took another drink and looked at him curiously. ‘I don’t understand.’
‘I’m not over-keen on long-term contracts, Mr Dzasokhov. That’s how you get your name in the Yellow Pages.’
Dzasokhov laughed and moved away from the window, idly tightening the sash of his dressing gown with one hand.
‘You are right to be cautious, Mr Whitestone,’ he said. He crossed the room to a mahogany writing desk and flipped open a slim leather briefcase. ‘But at the same time it would be a pity to be so modest - especially when the service you provide is so unique.’
He handed Whitestone a plain white envelope. ‘A little extra thank-you for services rendered.’
Whitestone opened the envelope. Inside was a single sheet of paper with a series of numbers printed on it. He refolded the sheet and placed it back in the envelope. ‘This is very generous. But I cannot accept it.’
Dzasokhov puffed out his chest. ‘I believe in rewarding those who do good work for me. If it is not enough—’
‘I expect only the second half of my fee, as agreed. Like I said, Mr Dzasokhov, it’s not to my advantage to be beholden to anyone.’
For a moment, Dzasokhov appeared to be on the brink of losing his temper. But then he smiled and shrugged his shoulders. ‘It is an indication of how the world has changed when a Russian is being lectured about the benefits of commercial restraint by a capitalist.’ He laughed at his own joke and sat down on the sofa with his legs apart. ‘You know, I never did find out her name,’ he said, nodding once again at the closed bedroom door.
‘Is that important to you?’ Whitestone asked.
Dzasokhov thought for a moment. ‘No - I suppose it isn’t,’ he said. Then he laughed. ‘I suppose I can call her anything I want.’
Chapter Ten
That night a summer storm swept in from the east. In the shanty communities dotted along the Kenyan coastline, the locals had smelled the copperish tang on the dry air long before the first fat droplets of rain reached them. It was the signal for mothers to quickly round up their children while the old men packed away their backgammon boards and glanced up warily at the sky. Oxen, goats and other livestock were herded into wooden corrals or simply tied to the nearest tree.
As the first lightning ripped across the sky and the deafening thunder made the children scream, families headed for the strongest-built of the houses and huddled together for safety. They listened to the rain clattering against corrugated-iron roofs, and to the wind that threatened to lift those roofs into the sky with every venomous gust. To pass the time, they told stories. As usual, the stories that scared them the most were of the souls of the drowned dead, raised from their slumbers by the storms, that came ashore on nights like these looking for human souls to take back with them to the deep.
Day Four
Chapter Eleven
Margaret Tambo had lived through more storms than she cared to remember, and at the last count had seen fourteen of her houses blown away. But, at the age of seventy-two, she ascribed her longevity to the fact that every night she prayed to God that she might survive to see another day. For the last two years she had included her boar Mwitu in her prayers, because without Mwitu, and the few shillings she made by selling his potent semen, Margaret knew that not even the Good Lord could save her from destitution and death.
Margaret lived alone near Bara Hoyo beach, ten miles up the coast from Mombasa, in a shack built from breezeblocks left over from a half-built hotel and from the rusting metal hull of a fishing trawler that had run aground the previous summer.
The day after the storm, she woke at dawn with a feeling of utter dread. Despite her prayers the previous night, she knew that something very bad had happened.
Something very bad indeed.
As a rule she kept Mwitu tied to a rope that was fixed to a palm tree close to her shack. The rope was long enough for him to roam and forage, but lately the boar had been visibly irritated by his constraints. Margaret, while concerned about Mwitu’s stress levels and the effect it might have on his semen, dared not let him free. When she first smelled the storm approaching on the air the previous evening, she had fastened the rope tighter.
After seventy-two years, Margaret’s eyesight was little more than a smear, but as she stepped out of her house she did not need eyes to sense that the boar was gone. Normally, she could smell his pungent scent and hear his snorts. Today she heard only the sound of the breeze in the palm leaves and the crunch of the surf on the beach near by. Sure enough, as she approached his tree, she reached out and to her dismay felt that the rope hung slack, its fibres gnawed away.
Oh, Saviour, please spare the life of my Mwitu.
She called his name, her voice hoarse with worry. Nothing.
Margaret began to follow the outer rim of trees, increasingly concerned that the boar had escaped along the beach in the direction of the expensive tourist hotels at Kikambala. If he had, she knew all too well that he would most likely be shot dead by the guards who patrolled the private beaches. Slowly and arthritically, she made her way through the trees, her cries growing ever more desperate.
Suddenly, her heart leaped. There, no more than fifty yards away, was the unmistakable pot-bellied shape of the boar! Oh, thank you, Saviour, for thy mercy and wisdom! He was standing near the tree line, his snout buried in a pile of debris thrown high on to the beach by the force of the previous night’s storm, making grotesque snorting noises of satisfaction.
‘Mwitu!’ Margaret scolded. ‘What are you doing escaping like that and frightening your momma?’
The boar lazily lifted his head, and Margaret saw what she at first thought was a tuna carcass dangling from his mouth. But as she approached it became clear even with her blighted eyesight that the object was in fact a human leg, connected by a few scraps of skin and tendon to what remained of a human torso and a man’s head.
Chapter Twelve
The boatyards and marinas of Flamingo Creek were too far upriver to have been greatly affected by the previous night’s storm that had battered the coast, but that morning saw Jake, Harry and a handful of Suki Lo’s regulars manhandling fallen palm trees that were blocking the track along the south bank of the creek. The work was more self-serving than community minded: the trees had blocked all road access to and from Suki’s bar, and Suki was threatening to stay closed until they were moved. But, for the two Englishmen, keeping busy provided a welcome distraction from their empty bookings ledger.
‘Are you still pissed off with me, Harry?’ Jake asked.
Harry looked up from the rope he was tying to the trunk of a tree. ‘I wasn’t pissed off. But when you go gallivanting off like the Lone Ranger I get worried.’
‘You shouldn’t be. I’m a big boy.’
‘You were a big boy in London, too. Look what happened then.’
‘Adan Mohammed is not the Canning Town Firm,’ Jake said.
‘Yes. And isn’t hindsight a marvellous thing?’
That, Jake reflected, was debatable. He thought about a framed photograph tacked to the wall of the office ba
ck at the boatyard. Harry and Jake, standing together in Yellowfin’s cockpit, arms folded and big grins on their faces. A local kid had taken it on a cheap Instamatic. The kid had later stolen the camera, but back then they could afford to laugh about it, because it didn’t matter. Business was good. Life was good.
The photo had been taken the day they took delivery of Yellowfin from a secondhand-boat dealer in Ramisi. She was ten years old, with one rather careless owner judging by the scuffs and scrapes along her hull and the scabrous condition of her cabin; and her engine was so cooked she’d needed a tow to get her the last few miles along the coast and up the river. But she was beautiful in her own battered way, and both Harry and Jake immediately fell in love with her. For Harry, she represented the day Britannia Fishing Trips Ltd stopped being a pipe dream and finally became a reality. For Jake, it was nothing less than the start of a new life - one that had begun six months earlier with a small ad in the classified section of the Sunday Times one gloomy and rain-sodden English day.
Wanted: free-spirited soul to invest time, love and £20,000 of own money into marine venture in Africa. Experience preferred. Baggage, emotional or otherwise, optional.
With his pension and his compensation in his back pocket, Jake had the money all right. And the shrink at Scotland Yard would have probably argued that he had the emotional baggage too. He certainly had the experience - even his old man would attest to that. Jake was just fourteen years old when Albie took him to sea for the first time.
The old man’s boat was The Banchory Thistle, and she’d been trawling out of North Shields port for almost as long as Albie had been her skipper, which was twenty years. All those years being battered by the North Sea had left her looking like a boxer who had been in too many fights, but then all the Tyne fleet looked like that, and all the skippers looked like Albie and had done for centuries. Jake never bothered to wonder if he would have ended up the same had he followed his old man and the six generations of Moores before him on to the boats. He had seen those long-dead men in the sepia photographs, and the dark eyes staring out of their weatherbeaten faces were his own. So he knew that, when Albie first took him out on The Banchory at the age of fourteen, it was not to give him a taste of adventure - it was to show him his destiny.
Shortly before ten o’clock, a gleaming blue police car came bumping down the track from the direction of the highway and two uniformed officers climbed out. One of them identified himself as Chief Inspector Oliver Mugo of Malindi police. He was an imposing, broad-chested man of forty who stood nearly six feet tall in his patent-leather riding boots and who deliberately exaggerated his physique by wearing his police uniform one size too small and his belt three notches too tight. His head was shaved to the bone, but a luxuriant black moustache streaked with shafts of distinguished grey compensated for this. A single gold tooth completed the image of a man who meant business, and whose business relied heavily upon the careful cultivation of his own image.
‘Myself and Constable Lokuru are here on a visitation of reassurance,’ he said grandly, gesturing at the second officer whose tunic, in contrast to his own, appeared to be two sizes too big.
Jake and Harry exchanged glances, but Mugo was only just beginning.
‘You will be aware, I am sure, of the most unfortunate incident which took place recently involving a fishing-boat captain from Flamingo Creek named Mr Dennis Bentley?’
‘Dennis, yes,’ Harry said. Harry usually took the role of Flamingo Creek’s spokesman, usually when the boat tax officials from Mombasa came calling or the customs department decided to spring one of their periodical surprise visits.
Mugo beamed at him. ‘Well, it is my pleasure to reassure you and all of the fine residents of Flamingo Creek that the incident has been thoroughly investigated by detectives from Malindi police, under the strict auspices of myself, Chief Inspector Oliver Mugo.’
Jake narrowed his eyes. ‘That’s reassuring to know. And what are your conclusions so far?’
Mugo looked at him quizzically. ‘So far? No, you do not understand, sir. The case is solved.’
There was a collective murmur of surprise from Suki’s regulars.
‘Solved?’ Harry nodded approvingly. ‘That’s quick work, Chief Inspector.’
Mugo’s smile broadened. ‘We at Malindi police pride ourselves on the efficacious resolution of criminal matters to the satisfaction of all concerned!’
‘So what happened?’
‘It was a tragic accident,’ Mugo said with finality.
‘That’s it?’
The policeman regarded Jake with surprise, as if someone questioning his conclusions was a possibility he had never considered.
‘Our investigations have been thorough, Mr—’
‘Moore.’
‘So!’
‘Have you found Dennis’s body?’
Now Mugo’s eyes bulged. ‘It is highly unlikely that a body will be found after—’
‘What about wreckage? Have you had the wreckage analysed?’
‘Mr Moore, I appreciate your concerns, but you are not a policeman and are therefore not experienced in the techniques of detection. Rest assured that we at Malindi police have assessed all available information and that our conclusions are safe.’
Jake was about to say something, but Harry put a hand on his shoulder.
‘Thank you, Chief Inspector,’ he said obsequiously. ‘It’s a great comfort to know that you and your officers are looking after our interests.’
Mugo smiled primly and clicked the heels of his boots together.
‘Very well, gentlemen,’ he said. ‘I can see that you are busy. If there are any other matters which you feel may require our services, please do not hesitate to contact one of our experienced officers.’
With that, Mugo and Constable Lokuru climbed back into the squad car and were gone in a cloud of dust.
‘Unbelievable,’ Jake said.
‘Forget it, Jake,’ Harry said.
But when Jake looked at him, Harry knew from his expression that his partner intended to do nothing of the sort.
Chapter Thirteen
In the basement of Mombasa Hospital is a small, square, windowless room whose only light comes from three fluorescent tubes on the ceiling that, like the walls, is entirely covered in white tiles. The floor is unusual, consisting of a fine metal mesh resting on a concave concrete foundation. Embedded into the concrete is a network of broad ceramic channels, which in turn slope into a centrally positioned outlet. Above this drain, resting on the mesh, is a thin metal table with grooves and outlets of its own. When the room is to be used, a team of three hospital cleaning staff spend as long as it takes to ensure it is completely clean and sterilised. The job can be arduous sometimes; every piece of matter and dried fluid has to be scrubbed clean, even from the grouting on the ceramic tiles. But the cleaners know that, if Mr Christie sees even so much as a speck of dirt, they will all be fired on the spot.
Mr Christie frightens the cleaners. They sometimes joke under their breath as they scrub that even the dead bodies, the poor lifeless mizoga, are scared of him.
It is not just Mr Christie’s temper that scares them, though. It is the things that he does to the bodies in that white-tiled room. They have heard the English doctor has a huge collection of glinting knives with which he slices and cuts through flesh; that he saws through bones until they are powder; that he rips out organs with his bare hands and places them on silver plates. They have heard that, when Mr Christie is at work, the blood flows like a river along those ceramic channels.
They call him bweha - the Jackal.
Jouma knew of Christie’s reputation among the terrified cleaning staff of Mombasa Hospital, and, privately, he thought the pathologist thoroughly deserved it.
A tall stooped sallow-faced man of about his own age, Christie looked as if he left the gloomy basement mortuary each night and went home to sleep in a coffin. He was good at his job, of that there could be no doubt, but it unnerve
d Jouma to see Christie work. The Englishman seemed to have an almost complete disinterest in the fact that the body upon which he was working was once a living, breathing human being. Flesh and blood were merely impediments to be cut and drained away; hearts and brains - the very essence of a man - merely physical evidence with which to pinpoint cause of death.
Something else that bothered Jouma about Christie was his apparent immunity to horror. During their fifteen-year professional relationship, the detective had deposited some quite unspeakable-looking corpses on the pathologist’s narrow metal table, bodies that to Jouma no longer looked human, or indeed as if they had ever been human. Jouma had been around and seen many things, but it never ceased to amaze him quite how fragile a man was compared to metal, fire or savage animals.
To Christie, it was all in a day’s work.
The object on Christie’s table now had once been a human being, but, as he watched it being unzipped from the black rubber bodybag, it looked to Jouma like something you might find in the ashes several days after the Feast Day of St Zaccharius. He grimaced behind his mask and shifted further into the corner of the room, gripping a metal shelf for support.
Christie stood over the corpse and scratched the bridge of his nose with one rubber-gloved finger. ‘Where did you say it was found?’
‘On the beach at Bara Hoyo.’
‘When?’
‘This morning.’
‘Mmm.’ Christie scrutinised the remains, and offered Jouma a running commentary of his findings. ‘Negroid male, possibly aged thirty to forty. Skin shows signs of severe burning and also of prolonged exposure to salt water and marine life. The right thigh appears to have been eaten by an animal of some description.’
‘The woman who found the body has a wild boar,’ Jouma said.
‘Then we’re lucky there’s anything left at all,’ the pathologist remarked. He leaned over and carefully dabbed the torso with his finger. The rubber glove came back with a black stain. ‘There is also a coating of a viscous black residue, which would appear to be oil of some sort. Abdomen violently severed just above the pelvis, most of the lower internal organs missing; right and left arms severed; left leg missing; head and neck relatively intact. Do you know who it is?’
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