a safe place. They don’t, for instance, want dead British shipbrokers with their mouths cut off lying face down across the railway tracks. Bondougou has to make a show of getting things done. The Cotonou force is short of the right kind of manpower and, for a change, they have money to spend. I am one of the most experienced people in Benin.’
Bondougou was right. The Togolese capital, Lome, had been an important centre of the business community in West Africa. It was a free port with hard currency, good restaurants, smart hotels and a congenial atmosphere. It had also been the largest exporter of gold along this coast and it didn’t even have a goldmine. There’d been political problems, multiparty democracy riots and one day the army had opened fire indiscriminately on a crowd of civilians and hundreds had been killed or injured. In the three days after the incident three hundred and fifty thousand people left Togo for Benin. Lome was a ghost town now, the people who remained imposed their own curfew. All the business was in Cotonou, which was itself a free port and had hard currency, too, but more important, the army didn’t feel the need to impose its authority on the civilian government, something that had happened in Nigeria. There, the elections had been annulled, pressure applied on the press, and key figures put under house arrest. On top of that there were strikes, petrol shortages, piles of stinking refuse in the streets and the odd corpse. The locals were getting very restless.
Bondougou needed policemen in Benin, good ones, who could handle big numbers and get the politicians off his back. The only thing he’d never liked about Bagado was that the man didn’t have a corrupt cell in his body. That made Bondougou nervous. He didn’t know where Bagado was coming from and he could never rely on him to keep his mouth shut at the right time.
‘Has Bondougou told you your duties?’
‘In outline. Nothing specific.’
‘But we know there’s no such thing as a gift from Bondougou. Did you talk about Napier Briggs?’
‘No. He started off playing the patriotic card. He teased me about working for the white man. He told me I had more important things to do for my country. He called me un caniche Parisien. A Parisian poodle. He made it sound as if I’d thrown it all in for the money. I felt like showing him our accounts. I felt like reminding him why I lost my job in the first place. It made me very, what’s that word Brian used, you know, my detective friend in London … narked. That was it. He go’ me bloody narked.’ Bagado finished with a perfect glottal stop in his imitation South London accent.
‘Bondougou is a …’
‘We know what Bondougou is.’
‘Bondougou is the biggest bastard in the Gulf of Guinea. You go work for him again and you know where you’ll end up …’
‘The same place as last time.’
‘Uh-uh, Bagado, no way, not the shitheap this time. You won’t just get fired this time …’
Bagado nodded. The tyres roared on the hot tarmac, which glistened in the sun as if glass had been shattered across it. He passed a hand over the dusting of white in his hair – tired of all this.
‘He’s giving me no choice,’ he said.
‘You’re going back to him?’
‘If I don’t, we’re finished. That was his last card, Bruce – he’ll close us down, strip you of your carte de séjour and have you deported.’
A dog slunk across the road and I braked. The tyres squealed in the heat and women walking with their heads loaded into the sky shot off the road into the bush followed by their children who maintained line like chicks after a hen. The car kicked up a jib of dust from the edge of the road. The women stopped and turned, their necks straining under their loads to see if anybody had been hit.
‘Christ, Bagado, what did I ever do to him?’
‘You know me, that’s enough.’
‘This is it then?’
‘What?’
‘The last job.’
‘Until …’
‘… until they find Bondougou down a storm drain. The pies he’s got his fingers in are very hot.’
‘Yes. It might not be so long.’
‘Then it’ll be Commandant Bagado, maybe, and we’ll all have to bow and scrape.’
‘Kiss the hem of my mac.’
‘I’d rather worship the ground you walk on, if that’s OK.’
‘You don’t sound very annoyed.’
‘Oh, I am, Bagado. I am. But what can a poor boy do?’
We drove on in silence. The car fuller now with that and the unsaid thing still there. Another half hour passed.
‘What did you make of the Napier Briggs thing?’ I asked.
‘It looked like a warning to me. Don’t see, don’t hear, don’t speak.’
‘To who?’
‘Anybody that’s got half a mind to be nosy.’
‘From who?’
‘A big man. Probably the guarantor you talked about who said it would be fine to go out into the cocotiers and pick up two million dollars of an evening … What the hell were you thinking of, Bruce?’ said Bagado, suddenly annoyed.
‘I’ll tell you exactly what I was thinking of, and I’m not proud of it.’
‘Ten thousand dollars?’
‘You got it in one, Bagado. You’re wasted here, you should be a criminal psychologist.’
‘Criminal?’ he asked the inside of the car.’ I suppose it bloody nearly was, what you did.’
He looked off out the window and shook his head. We drove on in silence. The unsaid thing still inside me, bigger than a full set of luggage.
‘Has Heike spoken to you?’ I asked, unable to bear listening to the roar of the road any longer.
‘Aha!’ said Bagado.’ No.’
‘What was the “Aha!” a but?’
‘Nearly an hour and a half for you to get it out.’
‘What?’
What’s been on your mind since first thing this morning. You’re improving.’
‘I am?’
‘A year ago you’d have waited until nightfall and the third whisky.’
‘I’ve given up whisky.’
‘During the week.’
‘It hasn’t helped.’
‘Take it up again.’
‘The gout’s still niggling.’
‘I don’t suppose you know that there’s almost no incidence of gout in Scotland.’
‘You’re kidding.’
‘They don’t think whisky brings it on. Beer, red wine, port’s more the thing.’
‘What about the purine?’
‘The purine?’
‘All the Arbroath smokies, the oak-smoked kippers, the tinned pilchards, the wild salmon leaping up the glens – all that purine.’
‘What’s that got to do with it?’
‘Purine brings on gout.’
‘And you think …?’ Bagado roared and then settled back.’ You better go back on the whisy before the rest of your brain packs in.’
I gave him a bit of slab-faced silence after that. He didn’t