‘Which was?’
‘North Sea fishing. Drag-netting for herring, haddock and cod two hundred miles off the river Tyne. My old man was the skipper of a trawler. He had grand plans for me to take over from him one day.’
‘Why didn’t you?’
‘Because I didn’t like the idea of freezing my balls off for a living. And because I could see the way things were going. Quotas and restrictions. Cheap imports. The industry was fucked. I was twenty years old, and I knew I’d be on the scrapheap before I was thirty if I stayed where I was. The old man knew it too - he just didn’t want to admit it was over. Who would, with six generations breathing down your neck? So, I took the easy way out. I joined the police and headed down to London.’
‘That must have been hard on your dad.’
‘He accused me of betraying the family. We never spoke again. A year later he was dead. Fifty-two years old. They said it was cirrhosis, but I reckon he just gave up the ghost.’
‘Jesus.’
‘Fathers and sons, eh? What are they like? Sounds like you didn’t have the same problems with Dennis.’
‘Mom died when I was eleven years old,’ Martha said. ‘Dad loved me, but he knew he couldn’t raise me on his own. He sent me to live with Mom’s sister in Michigan. It broke my heart.’
‘But you never lost touch with him.’
‘We were always close. Dad made sure of that. That’s why—’ She paused, then shook her head. ‘You know, when I saw his boatyard the other day, I was so angry. Why didn’t he tell me about the trouble he was in? Why did he just let it slide without ever asking for help?’
‘Blokes are like that,’ Jake said. ‘God forbid we ever show any sign of weakness.’
But Martha shook her head. ‘The times I spent with him on Martha B were the happiest of my life. Dad never wanted the big bad world to spoil those memories.’
Martha turned and Jake saw that, behind the designer sunglasses, she was fighting back her emotions.
‘He was a good man and a good father, Jake,’ she said. ‘Now don’t you think I’ve got a right to know what he’d got himself involved in?’
Chapter Forty-Five
Tug Viljoen watched Harry limp slowly out of the office.
‘So? What do you think?’
Getty downed a whisky and ginger and pulled hard on a cigarette. ‘Think? Think about what?’
‘About Harry. Jesus H Christ, Captain - you’re jumpier than a barrel of monkeys today. What the fuck’s the matter?’
‘Did you take care of our little problem?’
‘Kili? Yeah.’
The hotel owner sighed. ‘Thank God. How?’
‘I killed him.’
Getty felt his ulcer switch to overdrive and it took a moment before he could be certain he was not about to throw up.
‘You OK, Captain?’ Viljoen asked. ‘You’ve gone grey.’
‘He’s going to hear about all this. I just know it.’
‘Who?’
‘The fucking Pope!’ Getty exclaimed. ‘Who do you think? Whitestone!’
‘So what?’ Viljoen said, unconcerned. ‘If I was Whitestone, I’d be impressed with our crisis-management skills.’
‘Impressed? Your crisis-management skills seem to consist of killing everyone.’
‘You worry too much, Captain. You’ll give yourself an ulcer. Now - what do you think of Harry?’
Getty rubbed his eyes wearily. ‘God, I don’t know. What do you think?’
‘I think he’s got a boat. And I know he needs the money. As you can see, I arranged for his creditor to give him a little chivvy along last night.’
‘Christ, Tug, I hope you’re right. We don’t want another Dennis Bentley on our hands. Not now.’
‘Dah! Dennis just had a crisis of confidence, that’s all. I wish you’d stop going on about him. Harry’s an Englishman.’ Viljoen chuckled. ‘You don’t get to run an empire without balls.’
Harry stood with his head resting on the cold marble of the toilet wall. Judging by the way it hurt when he pissed, and the blood flecks in his urine stream, the Arab’s henchman had landed rather more blows to his kidneys than he had thought.
As he zipped up his pants, he thought about Tug Viljoen and Conrad Getty, and how the pair of them were perfectly suited: the loudmouth thug and the oleaginous spiv. Under normal circumstances, he wouldn’t have given them the time of day.
But Harry was desperate. And they had offered him a way out.
One job. That was all. And, if the very thought of it made him feel sick to his stomach, he knew that at least afterwards their money worries would be over. Jake didn’t need to know about it. He would arrange for Jake to be somewhere else when the time came. The deception would be simple enough to organise.
He stepped out of the toilet and made his way along the corridor to Getty’s office. James Last was playing discreetly in the background and there was a cloying smell of lavender. Up ahead, a small black girl in a nylon housecoat emerged from a laundry cupboard with a large pile of sheets in her arms. She could not help but stare as he approached, and Harry wondered if she found him as grotesque to look at as he felt inside. He wanted to reach out to her, to tell her that he wasn’t really like this; but the girl averted her gaze and placed the sheets on a service trolley.
Back in the office, Viljoen and Getty ceased their conversation as Harry entered the room.
‘Well, Harry,’ Viljoen said. ‘What’s your answer?’
‘I suppose I don’t have a choice,’ Harry said. ‘I’ll do it.’
Chapter Forty-Six
Martha listened in silence as Jake told her what he knew about her father. When he had finished, she thanked him in a firm controlled voice.
‘For what?’
‘For being honest with me. It can’t have been easy for you.’
Jake rubbed a hand down his face. She was right. It hadn’t been easy. It was never easy telling someone their dead father appeared to be up to his neck in organised crime, and had, in all probability, been killed for it. The only saving grace was that Martha wasn’t stupid. She’d accessed the same bank statements as Jouma. And she’d already reached the same unpalatable conclusions.
‘You never answered my question,’ she said.
‘What question?’
‘How did you end up here?’
For a moment Jake thought about spinning her some yarn about taking a five-year sabbatical from the force. But he’d been honest with her so far; it seemed strangely pointless to start lying now.
‘I got shot.’
‘Jesus.’
‘There was a robbery. A security-van heist in East London. The Canning Town Firm, they called themselves. They’d done a few jobs and thought they were indestructible. But we’d been watching them for weeks. When the day came, we were waiting for them. It should have been straightforward, but things went wrong. One of them got away and took a load of people hostage in a post office. Ronnie Cavanagh, his name was. I was sent in to talk to him while the armed response unit got set up. But he was just a kid. Scared out of his wits. I was that far away from talking him down - but something spooked him. He saw one of the marksmen outside, I think. Shot a woman in the head. Then he shot me. Then we shot Ronnie.’
Jake lifted up his T-shirt to reveal a puckered scar on the right side of his abdomen.
‘I was lucky, I guess. Six weeks in hospital, but I survived. After that, though, I just didn’t have the stomach for it any more. They say it happens, but I never believed them. I was like Ronnie Cavanagh. You think you’re indestructible, until the day you find out you’re not.’
For a long time after Jake finished talking, the only sound was the insistent whup whup whup of Yellowfin’s twin diesels and the occasional fizz of surf against her bows.
Then Martha said, ‘And so here we all are in Kenya. The lost and the lonely. You must think I’m a nosy bitch, prying into your private life.’
‘You are!’ Jake laughed. ‘But, like
you said, it’s your job so don’t beat yourself up about it.’
‘Sometimes it’s good to have someone who listens.’
‘Is that so? So who listens to you when you’re in New York?’
‘Chico, my cat. And Patrick, I guess.’
‘Ah. The boyfriend.’
‘Patrick’s OK. A little self-absorbed, maybe - but he would probably say the same about me.’
‘Should I disapprove of this man?’
‘Now you sound like my father.’ She laughed.
‘What is he? Another high-flying lawyer?’
‘International bonds trader.’
‘Sounds grand.’
‘It is if you like spending most of your life at thirty thousand feet. In the last two months I think we’ve spent four nights together.’
‘Must be hard.’
She shrugged. ‘We both like our own space. That makes it easier.’
‘Trust me, staying single is easier,’ Jake said.
‘You never married?’
‘Could never get anyone to put up with me long enough to pop the question. So how did you meet, you and this international jetsetter?’
Martha laughed. ‘People don’t meet in New York, they collide. Most of the time they bounce off each other, but sometimes they stick around in orbit for a while. I met him at a party. I kind of liked his smile.’
‘His smile?’
She laughed again. ‘Yeah. Have you got a problem with that?’
But Jake did not reply. Not at first. Then, in a low firm voice, he said, ‘Get her up to full speed and keep her on this heading.’
Martha turned and looked beyond the stern rail, where a boat was smashing towards them from landward side, its massive engines spewing arcs of brilliant-white foam high into the air behind it.
Oh, God - not again! she thought, but her hand was steady as she started easing forward the throttles.
Jake was already sliding down the ladder to the cockpit.
‘Sammy, I want the booms in double quick. Then get up on the bridge.’
He looked back at the closing vessel one more time, then hurried into the cabin. As he did so, he heard Yellowfin’s diesels kick into life and he grabbed hold of a spar to stop himself toppling backwards. The surge, he knew, was deceptive. Yellowfin’s top speed was thirty knots; judging by its lines, the craft that was chasing them was a powerboat, and its top speed would be anything from seventy to a hundred. It would be on them in a flash.
There were stowage compartments under the cabin’s banquettes. Jake ripped off the panelling and rummaged frantically through emergency flares, spare life preservers and coils of fishing line until he finally found what he was looking for: a stainless-steel harpoon gun with a foot-long double-barbed projectile. The weapon was a one-shot, compressed-air model designed for spearing fish at a range of thirty feet - fucking useless against someone with a real gun, but other than throwing beer bottles it was the only defence they had.
‘Jake! It’s gaining on us!’
You don’t say . . .
Priming the compressed-air canister, Jake stepped out into the cockpit again.
The powerboat was now running parallel to Yellowfin, barely fifty yards off the starboard rail, and at this range Jake could see for the first time what a monster it was. From the tip of its streamlined prow to its three five-hundred-horsepower engines, the craft must have been more than forty feet in length. A Sonic 45ss.
There was a man behind the wheel and he was waving to attract their attention.
‘What should I do, Jake?’ Martha called down from the flying bridge.
‘Well, we’re not going to outrun him,’ Jake conceded. ‘Let’s see what he wants.’
But, as Martha throttled back and the Sonic closed in, he kept the harpoon gun gripped tightly and his finger poised on the trigger.
Yellowfin was idling now. The Sonic came alongside, the pilot skilfully manoeuvring it against the swell.
‘Good afternoon,’ he called out brightly. The accent was American, the smile as white as the boat’s paintwork. ‘The name’s Noonan. Patrick Noonan. I’m looking for Martha Bentley.’
Chapter Forty-Seven
Word of Jacob Omu’s demise had spread quickly among Mombasa’s lowlife scum, as Jouma expected it would. Accompanied by two uniformed constables he knew he could trust, he went to Omu’s apartment near the old harbour to find it had already been picked clean of every scrap of furniture and that the one remaining item, the leatherbound copy of the Koran, was being fought over by two men in beggars’ rags. When they saw the uniforms, they scattered like rats; one out of the window on to the rooftops, the other attempting to follow but hampered by a rolled-up rug under his arm. Jouma grabbed him by the scruff of the neck and dragged him back into the room.
‘Where is the briefcase?’ he demanded.
The beggar shook his head.
Jouma despised any form of physical violence, especially when it was carried out by a police officer on a suspect. But these were trying times, and the detective was not in the mood to be patient. His open palm connected with the side of the beggar’s thin face and a gobbet of saliva flew across the room.
‘The briefcase.’
Like a whipped dog, the beggar led the policemen down to the alleyway and beyond to the waterfront where half a dozen of his emaciated cronies were systematically stripping Omu’s speedboat of its upholstery and engine parts. They glanced up warily as Jouma passed, but felt sufficiently strong in number to ignore the detective and his two constables.
There was a narrow path connecting the tenement buildings. Further along was a rubble-strewn area where one of the buildings had either been demolished or collapsed of its own accord. Here, to Jouma’s astonishment, the beggars had established a sprawling shanty community of hovels, jerry-built from chunks of masonry, metal, plastic sheeting and anything else they had been able to scavenge. To Jouma, it looked like some hellish vision, a place of wild dogs and rats and inhabitants who were more feral than human. He felt their eyes on him as he picked his way around the spilled garbage, the excrement, the detritus of what was laughably called civilisation.
Presently, they came to what at first glance appeared to be a discarded metal door dumped at forty-five degrees against a pile of bricks and masonry blocks. But, when the beggar tugged on the handle, the door opened outwards to reveal a short flight of steps cut straight out of the earth.
My God, Jouma thought as he followed the beggar down into a foul-smelling tunnel illuminated by tallow candles jammed into crevices in the mud walls. This was not so much another level of society, but a different species altogether! A burrowing subterranean creature so despised by the world outside that it had retreated to the very bowels of the earth!
In fact, the tunnel soon opened out into a series of connected concrete chambers, and Jouma realised that they must be in what had once been the basement of the ruined tenement building. Here there was even feeble electric lighting, which proved that whatever these people had become they were still perfectly able to work a generator.
‘This way,’ the beggar said, and led Jouma followed by the constables through another door into a spacious room that, had it not been for the stench of rotten food, damp and human decay, could have almost passed for habitable. The stone floors were covered with scraps of carpet and rugs, and it was furnished with an eclectic selection of old car seats, sprung settees, cushions and even a glass-topped coffee table.
At the far side of the room, sitting cross-legged on an oversized armchair and flanked on either side by two scrawny bare-breasted women, was a boy. He could not have been more than thirteen years old, and he was wearing what looked suspiciously like one of Jacob Omu’s khanzu robes. The clothes were far too big for him and gave the boy a faintly comical appearance - but, compared to the rags worn by the rest of the encampment, his attire was the height of sartorial elegance.
The beggar and the boy communicated in a strange hybrid language that Jouma cou
ld not understand, then the beggar backed out of the room and closed the door behind him.
‘Tabo says I may have something you desire, policeman,’ the boy said in a voice that was harsh, almost sneering.
Jouma looked at him and with a shiver of revulsion realised that he had seen those fresh-faced features and heard that same derisive tone before, many years ago. Only then they had belonged to a boy called Michael Kili.
‘Give me the case,’ he said.
The boy smiled and lifted the slim leather case from the side of his chair. ‘You mean this?’
‘Yes.’
‘The dog who it belonged to is dead, I hear. And now his briefcase is mine.’
‘Was yours. Now it is mine.’
‘Why should I give it to you?’
Jouma sighed. ‘What is your name, boy?’
‘Steven. Steven Kisauni.’ The boy tossed his head arrogantly as he spoke.
‘You seem very young to be speaking with such assurance, Steven.’
Steven shrugged. ‘Age does not matter when you have power.’
He reached out to one of the women beside him and stroked her breast, his gaze never leaving Jouma’s.
‘Is that so?’
‘In the kingdom of the blind, the one-eyed man is king.’
Jouma nodded appreciatively. ‘This is true. But what makes you so special?’
‘Education.’ The boy smiled, tapping his forehead.
‘Education?’
‘I can both read and write. I learned at the orphanage in Likoni.’
‘That is very admirable. With such knowledge you could go far, instead of sitting in a pestilence-filled hole in the ground, surrounded by the very dregs of humanity.’
Steven laughed, a high-pitched bark of derision. ‘And do what? Become a policeman like you?’
‘It is surely preferable.’
‘I have power!’ the boy exclaimed.
‘So you say. But so do I - and my power is far greater than yours,’ Jouma said.
‘From what I hear, your power can be bought for a few dollars.’
‘Well, in that case, Steven Kisauni, you are not as educated as you think.’
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