Bait

by Nick Brownlee

  Chapter Fifty-Seven

  Nyami had talked long into the night, reticently at first but then spilling out names and dates with such enthusiasm that Jouma had had to slow him down in case his words were not caught clearly on the tape machine in front of him. When he had finished, it was nearly dawn and four cassette tapes were full. Only then had he slept.

  When Jouma roused him upon his return from his meeting with Jake Moore, it was shortly before 10 a.m. Nyami and Jemima listened as Jouma told him what he had arranged, at which point the disgraced sergeant - who had glumly assumed he was going to spend the rest of his life behind bars - burst into tears.

  Now it was 11 a.m. and, as he and his wife boarded the rusting hulk of The Arturet, knapsack dangling over the shoulder of his cheap jerkin, Nyami’s expression still mirrored an ongoing internal conflict between bewilderment, fear and relief. He looked like a small child accompanying his mother on his first day at school.

  Jouma watched from the dockside as Aristophenedes, who could not have been more welcoming if his passengers were the king and queen of Greece themselves, greeted his passengers at the top of the gangplank. Nyami glanced back one more time before the Greek skipper’s muscular arm clamped around his bony shoulders and led him away out of sight. In two days, he and Jemima would be in Somalia. There - well, there it was entirely up to them whether they thrived or wilted on the vine.

  As he turned away and began walking along the quay towards his car, Jouma reflected that at least he had given Nyami a chance. And in many people’s eyes that was more than the sergeant deserved for his treachery.

  He got into his car and headed for police headquarters on Mama Ngina Drive, suspecting that this would be the last upbeat moment he would enjoy in a day that promised to be long, fraught and possibly his last on this earth.

  Chapter Fifty-Eight

  The luminous dial on Jake’s watch told him they had been travelling for two hours, the smooth ride indicating that they were most probably headed inland on one of Kenya’s few main arterial roads worthy of the name. It would be ironic, he thought bitterly, if they were at this very moment speeding through Mazeras township on the Nairobi highway. Maybe Tug and his goons would stop to let him pick up the secondhand ship-to-shore radio from the address Harry had given him.

  The road surface was one blessing, but there was little else to cheer him up. The heat in the metal-lined container in which he sat was proof that the vent in the roof was next to useless and that if he didn’t get out soon he would run the risk of suffocation. His clothes were sodden with sweat, the material chafing against his skin as he constantly shifted against the sides of the van in an effort to get comfortable. He didn’t want to have to kick open the doors and dive out of a moving vehicle, but pretty soon he would have no choice.

  After a while he must have dozed off, because when he snapped awake again the van was slowing to a halt. As the engine rattled and died, Jake hunched down behind the bulkhead again, his body tensed and ready for the moment the doors swung open. Against two guys with AK-47s, the element of surprise was just about all he had - and even then he didn’t fancy his chances. He might be able to tackle one, but two would be stretching it, and he doubted Tug was unarmed. He also doubted whether being a casual drinking acquaintance would cut much ice with the psychopathic South African. But instead he heard the cab doors slam and the sound of voices retreating into the distance.

  He waited for a few moments, in case Viljoen or one of the gunmen were still in the van. Then, fumbling in the dark, he found the inside bolt handle and fired open the lock. Bright-white light flooded the interior, blinding him, and he tumbled inelegantly out of the back of the van and on to the dirt. He scrambled under the vehicle on his belly, expecting at any second to hear shouts of alarm and the crash of automatic weapons being cocked. But there was nothing, save the tick of the cooling engine and the chafing of cicadas.

  The truck was parked outside a remote roadhouse, fifty yards from a two-lane highway that sliced through featureless bush landscape towards a hazy range of hills in the far distance. The building was jarringly sophisticated considering it was the only one for miles around, with a crisply whitewashed adobe façade, a thatched roof and a row of broad picture windows tinted against the glare of the sun. The two Africans were lounging in the shade outside, smoking cigarettes. They appeared to be unarmed. Viljoen, he assumed, was inside. But was he feeding his face or taking a leak? The difference could be crucial.

  For now Jake had to take some decisive action.

  He knew he was only marginally less vulnerable under the van as he had been in it. He also had no idea where he was. Apart from the roadhouse and the hills in the distance, the only other landmark worthy of note was the highway.

  And somehow he needed to get a message to Jouma.

  Christ - how had this happened? The plan had been so simple: observe Viljoen, then relay his report to the inspector by phone from Flamingo Creek at the end of the day. It was the kind of job that shouldn’t tax a rookie special constable, let alone a former detective sergeant in the Flying Squad. Yet somehow, whether through bravado or sheer pig-headed stupidity, he had ended up taking an unscheduled road trip into the Kenyan wilderness. And what made matters worse, there wasn’t a sniff of a contingency plan. As he had sheepishly explained to Jouma, he didn’t even have a cell phone.

  It was Keystone Cops time all right - except as far as Jake was concerned there was nothing remotely funny about it.

  Yet just maybe . . .

  Running alongside the road were telegraph poles supporting thick loops of cable. Where the highway met the dirt track leading to the roadhouse, a line of cable branched off to a junction box on the other side of the building. As he eased himself carefully out from under the van, Jake prayed that the box meant what he thought it did.

  Keeping low and out of sight of the Africans behind a row of parked cars, he ran to the far end of the roadhouse, then crept along the wall beneath the windows. At the corner he turned and at that moment he could have punched the air as he saw that the box was indeed connected to a glass and metal phone kiosk situated at the rear of the building, beside a flyblown garbage dumpster and a door which presumably led to the kitchens.

  He ran to it, then stopped and stared in disbelief: the receiver dangled uselessly on its wire and the phone casing swung open where the machine had been raided for its stock of shillings.

  There was only one option open to him now if he wanted to keep tabs on Viljoen, and that was to get back into the van. But as he reached the corner of the building Jake saw to his dismay that the two Africans were already sauntering back across the car park towards the vehicle. He saw one of them stare with a puzzled expression at the open rear doors, then shrug and kick them shut. A few moments later, Viljoen emerged purposefully from the diner, zipping up his flies and tightening his belt, and the three men climbed back into the cab. The engine started up first time and the truck swept back on to the highway and sped away in the direction of the hills.

  Jake hurried into the car park. There were three vehicles parked in an erratic line; two of them he immediately dismissed - a flatbed truck containing crates full of chickens and an Austin Allegro with one flat tyre. He ran across to the third, a busted-up Ford with a sign on the roof that said KAGONI SCHOOL OF MOTORING. It was unlocked. Jake slid into the driving seat and in a second had rived the ignition housing free. A moment later the two connector wires crackled and the car coughed into life. But he had only gone a few yards when every light on the dashboard came on and the Ford wheezed to a standstill.

  Shit! He grabbed the two connectors and frantically sparked them together, but the engine resolutely refused to bite.

  ‘You are the repairman?’

  He looked up to find a tall academic-looking African standing by the car.

  ‘You are the repairman?’ the man asked again, poking his head through the open passenger window. ‘My name is Johnstone Kagoni of the Kagoni School of Motoring. I
called for a repairman four hours ago.’

  Ignoring him, Jake got out of the car and ran to the highway. A black SUV was approaching fast, kicking up a huge dust cloud as it headed towards the hills. He flagged it frantically but in a second it was gone. Suddenly bone-weary and defeated, Jake trudged towards the roadhouse. There was no way he was going to catch Viljoen now. He might as well go and spend the last of his money on a couple of ice-cold beers. Some fucking policeman he was. He could almost hear Albie Moore’s crowing laughter from the smoke-filled vault of the Low Lights Tavern.

  Jake turned and took one last look at Viljoen’s van disappearing into the heat haze - and was surprised to see the SUV racing back along the highway towards him. His surprise turned to astonishment when it swept into the dirt car park and he saw Martha Bentley behind the wheel.

  Chapter Fifty-Nine

  Superintendent Teshete sat in his high-backed leather chair behind his expansive mahogany desk in his office with its view over the Indian Ocean. When Jouma entered the office, he crushed a cigarette into an onyx ashtray on the desk and stood sharply, his knuckles hard against the polished surface of the desk.

  ‘Where the devil have you been, Daniel?’ he demanded. ‘I have been trying to contact you for almost twenty-four hours. Where is Nyami? Why did you release him? And on whose authority?’

  ‘May I sit down, sir?’ Jouma said.

  Teshete, knocked off his stride, waved at a chair. Jouma sat and primly crossed his spindly legs. It was barely thirty-six hours since he had last sat in this chair, but it seemed like a lifetime.

  ‘In answer to your first question, sir, the reason you have not been able to contact me is that I have been at a safe house, conducting a long and detailed interview with Sergeant Nyami.’

  ‘A safe house?’ Teshete spluttered.

  Jouma bowed his head sheepishly. ‘In truth, the apartment of my sister-in-law.’

  ‘What on earth for?’

  ‘For the simple reason that I felt the location was less hazardous to Nyami’s health than the cells here.’

  ‘You are making no sense, Inspector! Where is Nyami now?’

  ‘He is safe, sir. And so is his wife.’

  Teshete reached for his cigarettes and lit one with a gold-plated Zippo. ‘You had better start explaining yourself, Daniel. You know better than anyone else that Nyami is in big trouble. Failing to carry out his duty. Receiving bribes. These are very serious charges. ’

  ‘I am aware of that, sir. His failure to act in Michael Kili’s office is a matter of record. And I can confirm that, during the course of the last three years, Nyami received in total two hundred and fourteen US dollars in bribes.’

  Teshete flipped his ash nonchalantly. ‘How can you be so precise?’

  ‘Because Jacob Omu kept detailed records of every shilling he paid on Michael Kili’s behalf to Coast Province CID detectives.’

  ‘I see,’ Teshete said coolly. ‘And where did you find these detailed records of Omu’s?’

  ‘They were in a briefcase which he was intending to smuggle out of the country, along with himself, following the murder of Michael Kili. An understandable insurance measure when one considers the information they contained. Though unfortunately not enough to prevent Omu from being murdered himself. ’

  ‘Omu committed suicide,’ said Teshete. ‘He hanged himself from his hospital bed.’

  ‘No, sir,’ Jouma said. ‘He was silenced. Just as Sergeant Nyami would have been silenced had I not removed him from his prison cell.’

  ‘Silenced? By whom?’

  ‘By you, sir.’

  Teshete’s eyes bulged. ‘Are you mad, Jouma? Have you lost your mind? Do you know what you are saying?’

  ‘Not you personally, sir. But you gave the order for Omu to be exterminated. You, after all, had the most to lose, being the greatest beneficiary of Kili’s bribe money.’

  Teshete crushed out his half-smoked cigarette and toyed with the still-burning ember in the ashtray. ‘I take it you have Omu’s documents.’

  ‘Yes, sir. And taped testimony from Nyami. They, too, are in a safe place.’

  ‘And I take it you have informed Police Criminal Investigation Officer Iraki.’

  ‘No, sir. Not yet. But I have made provision for all the information to be passed to him should anything untoward happen to me while I complete my investigations.’

  ‘It seems you have it all worked out, Daniel.’

  Jouma shook his head. ‘No, sir. All I have is evidence. Names. Dates. Figures. I will never be able to work out why.’

  Teshete smiled sadly. ‘Always thinking, aren’t you? You should have been a philosopher instead of a policeman.’ He steepled his fingers. ‘So what is it that you want? Money? That can be arranged.’

  ‘No, sir. Money does not interest me.’ Jouma chuckled. ‘Maybe that is why Kili never bothered to offer me any.’

  ‘Then what, Daniel?’

  ‘What I want is unimportant. What happens next is not up to me, it is up to the people whose names are on Omu’s list. Only they can make the choice.’

  ‘You do not leave these ... people much of a choice,’ Teshete said, as he stood and walked two paces to the window.

  Jouma shrugged. ‘I have found that in life, sir, there is always a choice.’

  Chapter Sixty

  It was one of Patrick’s more gung-ho traits that even in Manhattan he always left the keys to his car in the ignition.

  ‘If it gets stolen then I can get another one with the insurance money,’ he explained. ‘But it costs two thousand bucks in New York to repair a hotwired ignition.’

  Martha had never understood the logic of that - but, as she started up the BMW and sped away from the Tamarind restaurant, she was glad that his old habits had travelled across the Atlantic with him. Bastard. He could blame jetlag as much as he wanted, but what he had said to her in the restaurant was unforgivable. Leaving the sonofabitch stranded in Mombasa and facing a monumental taxi fare would give him time to consider the error of his ways.

  She dodged through the maelstrom of downtown Mombasa and headed north on the Malindi highway. It took her a while to find the turn-off for Flamingo Creek, and longer to find Jake’s boatyard. A feeling of desolation swept over her when she discovered that the workshop was locked up, and that Yellowfin wasn’t at anchor. For the first time since she arrived in Mombasa, the first time ever maybe, Martha Bentley felt completely alone in the world. Her father was dead; Patrick was as good as dead after what he’d done - and Jake Moore, the only person she could think of to confide in, was nowhere to be found.

  Then she’d met one of the locals, who’d said that if Jake wasn’t out at sea then he would most likely be at a bar called Suki Lo’s, and, yes, he would take her there as long as she promised to buy him a beer and a bourbon chaser.

  ‘Jake? No, Jake no here,’ said the woman behind the bar, a hard-faced Oriental with rotten teeth who Martha took to be Suki Lo. ‘But if you see him tell him I wan’ my fuckin’ car back!’

  Suki said she thought Jake had gone to Mombasa, but she couldn’t be sure. If he had, though, then there had to be a good reason, because Jake hated the city like the plague.

  ‘Does he have a cell phone?’ Martha asked.

  Suki shook her head.

  ‘I wouldn’t worry, darling,’ said the local who had brought her to the bar. ‘If Jake’s driving Suki’s old heap, then he’s in no danger of going missing.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘’Cos you could see that lime-green piece of Jap shit from the moon,’ the local cackled.

  ‘Fuck you, John,’ Suki said. She looked at Martha. ‘You wan’ some noodles, honey?’ she asked.

  But Martha was already heading for the door.

  It took her ten minutes to get back on to the highway. Turning south, she headed for Mombasa for another ten until, with a whoop, she saw what she was looking for: a luminous-green Honda parked on a dirt side road next to a sign which said: WELCO
ME TO CROC WORLD.

  The old lag in the bar was right. Suki Lo’s car was unmissable. It had stood out like a beacon as she passed it on her way to Flamingo Creek.

  ‘So you win the Girl Guides’ badge for persistence,’ Jake said. ‘But I still don’t understand how the hell you found me.’

  ‘I asked a kid working at the croc park. He was shit scared. Seemed to think I was from Customs or something. He said the Boss Man had headed off in a van with some guys with guns about two hours earlier. I figured you wouldn’t have wanted to miss the fun.’

  ‘They could have been heading anywhere.’

  ‘The kid said he overheard them talking about the Tanzanian border. I took a calculated risk and headed the only way I know. Looks like it paid off. So now that I’ve saved your butt, maybe you can tell me what’s going on.’

  Jake told her what he knew, which wasn’t much. Then he peered through the BMW’s tinted windscreen at the featureless countryside that surrounded them on all sides.

  ‘So where are we now?’

  ‘The border’s about ten miles from here.’

  The van was a mile ahead, its dust cloud shimmering against the concrete road surface. As long as the road remained straight, there was no need to get any closer - and the highway showed no indication of deviating from its path towards the Tanzanian border. It reminded Jake of those interminable Interstates in the American Midwest that you could drive along for a whole day without seeing so much as a kink in the road.

  ‘Can you get a signal on your phone?’ he asked.

  ‘Barely.’

  ‘Let me have it.’

  Jake rummaged in his pocket for the scrap of paper on which Harry had scribbled the address of the secondhand-radio dealer in Mazeras. It all seemed such a long time ago now. Scrawled on the bottom in his own handwriting was the number of Jouma’s cell phone. He dialled it, hoping that the signal would last out - and that Jouma would figure out how to answer the call.