Bait

by Nick Brownlee

  Having left Teshete’s office, Jouma knew there was nothing else to do but wait. He had done his duty and events were now out of his hands. He left police headquarters and walked the short distance to Fort Jesus. There he sat on his favourite bench in the compound and stared at his cell phone as if it was some strange alien artifact.

  When it rang he nearly jumped out of his skin. Now which was the button Jake had told him to press?

  ‘Hello?’

  ‘Congratulations, Inspector,’ Jake said. ‘And welcome to the telecommunications revolution.’

  Five minutes later Jouma was running for his car.

  Jake had barely ended the call when the Transit pulled off the highway and on to a track leading to a collection of farm buildings a quarter of a mile from the road. Martha slowed as they passed the junction, then continued for another half-mile before swinging the BMW into the scrub where it was hidden from the road. Together they hurried on foot to where the flat terrain was slightly raised, giving them a clear view of the buildings - although not, frustratingly, what was going on there.

  They did not have long to wait until a second vehicle left the farm. It was a large truck with military-issue olive-green paintwork and a canvas rear canopy. It swung on to the highway and headed towards them. As it roared past on its way to the Tanzanian border, Jake saw that the driver was a middle-aged African with a cigarette drooping out of his mouth.

  ‘The delivery boy?’ he wondered out loud.

  ‘There goes Viljoen,’ Martha said, pointing down to the farm.

  The Transit was leaving now. They watched it bumping and skittering on the loose surface of the track. It rejoined the main road and set off in the direction it had come. Jake could see that it was sitting lower on its rear axle; whatever he had come here for, Viljoen had clearly taken delivery of his cargo.

  Chapter Sixty-One

  After thirty-three years in the police force, Daniel Jouma was not easily shocked, and he most certainly did not believe in witchcraft - but that was before he had stumbled upon what was hidden in Tug Viljoen’s caravan. Even now, as he gulped down lungfuls of stale jungle air, his legs still felt like jelly and his guts as if they had been turned upside down.

  My God, Jouma thought, what manner of evil was this?

  Croc World was deserted by the time he’d got there. In the yard, he had found the decomposing carcass of the crocodile hanging by its tail from a gibbet and identified it as the source of the foul odour that seemed to permeate the whole site. From there he had retraced his steps back to Viljoen’s caravan, where the stink of unwashed dishes, stale alcohol and overflowing ashtrays was almost as bad to the detective’s sensitive nose.

  Viljoen was clearly a man who took as much interest in the mechanics of running a business as he did in his own hygiene. As he poked around the caravan’s cupboards and cubbyholes, the only paperwork Jouma could find was a grubby ledger with a few columns of scrawled figures, and some loose receipts from goods suppliers in Malindi. There was nothing to explain his connection with Michael Kili. Jouma almost felt himself longing for the efficient book-keeping of Jacob Omu.

  Then he found the camera. It was stored in a padded bag and hidden in a recess under the floor. It rested on a slim manila folder that Jouma removed and emptied on to the banquette.

  It was then that he saw the photographs.

  The first was a close-up of a white face and, although the eyes were wide and the mouth open as if screaming, Jouma recognised it instantly from the mug shots circulating Mama Ngina Drive. Dennis Bentley, the missing boat owner.

  In the next picture, Bentley was still the subject, but from further away this time and photographed from above. He appeared to be sitting in a chair, like the one bolted to the back of Jake Moore’s boat. There was ocean behind him and - Jouma’s eyes narrowed as he peered closer at the picture.

  No, Bentley wasn’t just sitting in the chair: he was tied to it.

  Heart pounding now, Jouma skimmed to the next photograph. It was the same scene, but now a second person was present. He was scrawny, wearing shorts and a black baseball cap with some sort of white logo stitched to the front. He was standing beside the chair, smiling up at the camera. Another face he recognised.

  Well, well, Jouma thought grimly. George Malewe.

  There was a sourness at the back of Jouma’s throat as he saw that the pickpocket was holding a short-bladed gutting knife in his hand.

  He flipped to the next image.

  Malewe hunkered down in front of Dennis Bentley with his back to the camera.

  Malewe stood to one side now, arms covered in blood, proudly displaying his handiwork to the camera: a vivid pink and red incision across Dennis Bentley’s exposed white belly, and a pile of blueish-grey guts lying in a heap on the deck between Bentley’s knees.

  A close-up of Bentley’s upturned face, the sight-less eyes staring into the camera lens.

  The photographs slipped from Jouma’s fingers then and scattered like playing cards on the floor. He looked down at them with revulsion, and then at his own hands as if expecting to see the skin stained with Dennis Bentley’s blood.

  He could barely remember stumbling out of the caravan. Now he stood sucking in the air and trying to expunge the images that had burned themselves into his mind.

  Get the photographs, Daniel. You have to get the photographs.

  Shakily, he returned to Viljoen’s lair and scooped up the photographs. Then he hurried back outside.

  From the wilderness beyond the gates of Croc World, the shriek of birds suddenly alerted Jouma to the fact that a vehicle was approaching along the jungle road.

  Viljoen?

  After closing the caravan door, Jouma ran to the tar-paper sheds near by and watched unseen as a fattyred Porsche Cayenne swept at high speed through the gates and a tall thin figure leaped down from its elevated driving seat.

  Chapter Sixty-Two

  An hour after leaving the farmhouse, heading east along the highway, a road sign told them they were forty miles from Mombasa. Jake smiled grimly. If the van was heading for the city, then Jouma would be able to arrange a welcoming committee for it at the other end of the Makupa Causeway. All it would take was a call to the inspector’s new phone. But a mile later the van abruptly turned off the main drag and began heading north on a barely paved minor road.

  ‘Where are they going?’ Martha asked.

  ‘God knows,’ Jake said. ‘Some of these roads aren’t even on the map.’

  They had switched driving duties. Behind the wheel of the BMW, Jake used every last scrap of his police training to keep a discreet distance between the two vehicles, but as the road began to disintegrate and the traffic thinned he was forced to rely on the van’s dust cloud to hide them.

  Another hour passed. The terrain turned from arid wasteland to verdant coastal plane. Soon the thin blue strip of the ocean could be seen intermittently through the jungle on their right-hand side. The van turned right and joined a track that led towards the sea. At last they had reached the end of the road. Jake decided it was time to abandon the BMW and continue on foot.

  Using the spiked crowns of the sisal plants for cover, he and Martha followed the track until it spluttered and died at the entrance to a shallow cove. No more than a hundred yards away now, the van had stopped in the sand. Viljoen and the two Africans had climbed out of the cab.

  They were somewhere north of Mombasa, Jake was sure of that. But where? This was wild coastline, unfamiliar to him. But then that was the point. Whatever Viljoen was up to, he didn’t want prying eyes watching him.

  Half an hour passed. Nothing happened. The Africans smoked, Viljoen paced up and down at the edge of the surf. Then he stopped suddenly, his head cocked to one side.

  ‘You hear that?’ Jake whispered.

  A boat was approaching from around the headland; Jake couldn’t see it yet, but he recognised the engine noise the same way a parent can recognise their child’s voice in a crowd.

  Y
ellowfin? But Yellowfin was supposed to be moored at Flamingo Creek!

  He watched dumbfounded as the thirty-footer hove into view, its lines so familiar to him that he almost wanted to shout out to it. Up on the flying bridge he saw Sammy, the kid’s face rapt with concentration as he brought the boat about. Easy, son, Jake felt himself whispering. Watch out for the shallow draught. But then it struck him that Yellowfin was his boat, and if anyone was going to pilot it into hazardous shallows it should be him.

  Sammy was not alone, though. As the boat idled at the mouth of the cove, a figure emerged uncertainly from the cabin and peered across at the welcoming party.

  Jesus Christ. It was Harry!

  ‘You know that guy?’ Martha said.

  ‘Yeah,’ Jake said grimly. ‘But he’s supposed to be somewhere else right now.’

  A motor launch was tied to Yellowfin’s stern cleats, but it wasn’t the two-man vessel that Jake used. This was a broad-beamed model that could hold ten people comfortably. Having anchored the boat fifty yards offshore, Sammy shinned down to the cockpit and dragged the launch alongside with a boathook. Harry eased himself in and it only took a few seconds before the launch was nudging the sand.

  ‘Harry, my man!’ Viljoen exclaimed, striding across the beach to pump the tall Englishman’s hand vigorously. ‘Perfect timing!’

  He turned and snapped instructions to the Africans. After slinging their guns over their shoulders, the two men began unlocking the rear doors of the van.

  ‘What’s with the guns?’ Jake heard Harry ask.

  Viljoen grinned. ‘You can’t be too careful, Harry. It’s bandit country out there, and this is a valuable cargo.’

  The doors swung open. From where he was crouched, barely fifty yards away, Jake couldn’t see what the cargo was - but Harry could, and a sudden appalled expression appeared on his face.

  ‘What the hell is this, Tug?’ Harry said in a strangled voice.

  ‘The cargo,’ Viljoen told him matter-of-factly.

  ‘No.’ Harry took a step backwards, his hands raised defensively. ‘No, this is not what I agreed to. This is not what you said!’

  He began moving backwards towards the launch.

  The smile drained from Viljoen’s face. ‘Now, now, Harry. Let’s not be stupid about this.’

  In the next breath he said something in Swahili to the Africans, and Jake’s blood turned to ice as the two men levelled their weapons at Harry.

  Harry stared wide-eyed at the guns, as if not quite believing that they were pointing at him.

  ‘You told me it was hash, Tug. A shipment of hash.’

  ‘Yeah, well,’ Viljoen said, ‘I thought that might appeal to you. You being an aficionado.’

  One of the gunmen had come to the rear of the van now, and was shouting harsh commands at whatever - whoever - was inside. A moment later, Jake saw a tiny black foot appear, then another, and then he gasped as a figure dropped down on to the sand.

  It was an African girl, tiny, young, wearing a simple white cotton dress that was stained with sweat and God only knew what else. As she landed, blinking and whimpering against the harsh light, her thin legs gave way beneath her and she pitched forward pathetically on to her hands and knees.

  ‘My God,’ Martha murmured.

  But the girl was not alone in the back of the van. She was followed by a second girl, maybe a couple of years older, the swell of budding breasts visible beneath the flimsy material of her cotton shift. Then a third and a fourth climbed unsteadily down from the truck, wobbling uncertainly, their arms covering their eyes from the sunlight. Five, six - none of them more than fifteen years old, Jake guessed, all of them with the same fearful expression etched on their wide-eyed, unblemished faces. He thought about the heat and the darkness in the back of the van and could only imagine the discomfort and the terror that the girls must have endured on the long journey from the Tanzanian border.

  But still they kept coming. More and more until Jake counted twenty girls huddled together in a fragile circle, as if proximity to each other could somehow offer them protection from the men on the beach.

  ‘Get back to the car,’ Jake told Martha. ‘See if you can get a signal on your phone. We need to let Jouma know we’re still alive.’

  ‘What are you going to do?’

  ‘I’m going to find out where we are. And where Yellowfin is going.’

  When she had gone, Jake moved forwards through the sisals.

  ‘What do you think, Harry?’ he heard Viljoen crowing. The South African was standing next to the little girls, who recoiled from him as if he was some predatory animal. ‘Aren’t they beauties? I understand they’re known as bait by the cognoscenti in Europe.’

  ‘You can’t be serious,’ Harry said, his voice a hoarse whisper that barely carried on the breeze.

  Viljoen shrugged again. ‘I’ll admit they don’t do much for me - I prefer my manyanga with a bit more meat on their bones and a lot more experience in the sack. But that’s not the point, Harry. The point is, they do something for somebody, and that somebody is prepared to pay top dollar for the very best merchandise. They go for a hundred grand a pop in Europe, so I hear. Not that it’s any of my concern. My job’s just to arrange the transport of the merchandise. I’m small fry, really.’

  ‘You sick bastard. I’m having no part of this.’

  Jake winced as Viljoen struck Harry a fierce blow with the back of one bearlike hand. Harry staggered backwards and lost his footing on the sand.

  ‘You’re already part of this, Harry. Twenty-five grand, remember?’

  As he spoke, Jake knew that Viljoen would not hesitate to order his men to open fire if he felt Harry was standing in his way.

  ‘Get them into the launch, Harry,’ Viljoen said.

  Jesus, do it Harry! Just do what he says!

  ‘Go fuck yourself, Tug,’ Harry said.

  For a moment Viljoen said and did nothing. Then from the waistband of his shorts he produced a handgun, a sleek silver Glock that looked ludicrously out of place clutched in his pudgy fist. Without saying a word, he went over to where Harry was propped up on his elbows and fired once.

  The young girls screamed and from the trees fringing the cove it seemed like a thousand brightly coloured birds lifted into the air at the same time.

  ‘Next time I won’t miss,’ Viljoen said to Harry. ‘And after I’ve killed you I’ll kill the young kaffir on the boat. Except I’ll most probably take my time over him. So what’s it to be, Harry? What’s it to be?’

  Hidden down in the undergrowth, Jake Moore watched with cold detachment. His anger and his fear had gone. He was in a different place now. He knew what he had to do.

  Chapter Sixty-Three

  Were it not for the fact that he had not yet started coughing up blood, Conrad Getty could have sworn that his long-suffering ulcer had finally burst under the strain. It felt like someone had inserted a red-hot poker into his mouth and down into his stomach, taking particular care to singe the delicate tissues of his gullet on the way down.

  The glorified cart track he had just driven on hadn’t helped either. Even the suspension of his Cayenne had struggled to adjust to the ruts and potholes that littered the mile-long stretch from the main highway through the jungle to Croc World. How the fuck Viljoen had the audacity to call it a road was beyond him. It was no wonder his pox-ridden amusement park never had any visitors.

  Not that that was a problem any more. Oh no - because Sergeant Viljoen wasn’t coming back.

  The call had come through to his office at the hotel thirty minutes earlier, the crackles and twangs betraying the poor signal on Viljoen’s field radio.

  ‘Viljoen - where the hell are you? Why haven’t you called?’

  ‘There’s been a change of plan, Captain.’

  ‘What?’ The walls of the office suddenly closed in on him and for a moment Getty thought he was going to faint.

  ‘Don’t worry - I’ll make sure the transfer goes down. But then I’m
gone.’

  ‘Are you insane?’ Getty wailed. ‘Whitestone will kill us all if he finds out!’

  Harsh laughter buzzed down the line. ‘Don’t you see, Captain? He’s going to kill us anyway. We’re alive only as long as we’ve got his precious cargo. That’s why if you’ve got any sense you’ll come with me.’

  ‘But—’ Getty began, but at that moment he knew that Viljoen was right. ‘Where are you going?’

  Viljoen told him his plan. In a twisted way, it made perfect sense. A good soldier always made sure to have an escape route, Getty thought.

  ‘Christ almighty, Tug. Why didn’t you tell me this before?’

  ‘Because you’re weak, Captain. Because Whitestone would have found out. Now I suggest you get moving. It’ll take you at least three hours to get to the rendezvous.’

  ‘Right. Right. OK.’

  It was then that Viljoen had dropped the bombshell and sent Getty’s ulcer into agonising overdrive.

  ‘On your way I need you to stop off at Croc World,’ he said. ‘Something I need you to do for me.’

  As the hotel owner sped away from the Marlin Bay towards the mangrove forests, his eyes fixed on the rear-view mirror in case Whitestone had seen him leave, he cursed Tug Viljoen with every expletive he knew in English and Afrikaans.

  What Viljoen wanted was simple enough. But every minute Getty spent in this godforsaken hole was time that could be better spent getting the hell out of Kenya. Sweating profusely now, and with the pain in his stomach reaching epic proportions, he began sloshing petrol from a metal canister against the walls of Viljoen’s caravan.

  ‘Destroying evidence, Mr Getty?’

  Getty whirled round. Standing behind him was a small African in a suit. He was holding a manila file. There was something about him that was vaguely familiar, but the hotel owner’s brain was racing too hard to stop and figure out why.