head flew back and a brown liquid exploded from the socket that once held his eye, which seemed to have burst from the back of his head.
Then he toppled to the floor in his chair.
The short man fired another shot and then calmly walked out, smiling at me as he left. I think he even winked. The minibus was waiting for him outside. He hopped in and the engine roared into life and they were gone.
Everyone in the coffeehouse seemed frozen in time. It was years after a massive volcanic eruption and we had all turned to stone.
Nobody moved. Nobody said a word.
It was like we had all been shot dead.
Then suddenly we all surged back to life and people rushed over to the victim.
Centipede leaned over and took a good look.
‘He’s dead,’ he said, almost serenely, as if it was the most natural thing in the world.
I was still in my chair.
I was trying to work out how the man’s eye had burst out the back of his head. It had to be the bullet, but then I was convinced that I had seen an eyeball. That’s what I saw but my mind wouldn’t accept it. A little later there were sirens and the police arrived. They pushed the crowd away but told everyone to stay, explaining that they would take statements from all the witnesses.
Then a steel-blue Mercedes stopped at the door.
The local police chief stepped out of the car.
He was a stocky man with broad shoulders and short hair. Dressed in a black suit, he wore a disdainful expression on his face. Everyone made way for him as he stepped over to the body. He had hardly looked at the man before he said: ‘Anyone know this guy?’
He seemed a little disgusted. No one answered. Clearly no one wanted to get involved. But later Remzi told me that the victim was ‘one of Oleander’s men’.
‘Get a statement from everyone here,’ said the police chief.
It seemed like that was all he was going to do. As he made his way back to his car, he recognised me, or perhaps pretended to see me for the first time; I couldn’t be sure.
‘Are you the writer?’ he asked, imperiously.
So he knew who I was.
‘Yes,’ I said and he briskly sat down at my table.
‘Good material here for your books, don’t you think?’ he said.
‘Why was the man shot?’ I asked.
‘I don’t know. Mafia fighting over land. The dogs are always killing each other. We’ll find out soon enough.’
‘Seem to be a lot of murders around here.’
‘Not so many really. People exaggerate.’
‘Can’t you stop them?’
Slowly leaning back in his chair, he looked me carefully in the eye.
‘Now, I am responsible for public safety. Am I not?’
He was expecting an answer and so I had no choice but to say, ‘Yes, that’s right.’
‘That’s right,’ he said, nodding his head. ‘These people are animals, are they not?’ And this time he went on before I could answer. ‘Where do animals live? In the jungle. Isn’t that right? Yes, it is. This is a jungle. How do you keep order in the jungle? You can’t stop animals from killing one another, can you? You can’t. So then what’s my job? My job is to prevent the forest from going up in flames. Isn’t that right? To make sure people here are safe. Now can anyone harm the people here? No, they can’t. If they did, we would take care of them. Isn’t that right? No theft, no muggings, no harassment here. This is the world’s safest town. But yes, animals will keep killing each other. It’s the law of the jungle. Can you change the law? You can’t. Not even worth trying. If we tried to control them they’d just burn the jungle down. Would that be any better? No.’
I’d never heard a man describe his own corruption so eloquently, justify himself so completely.
I admired his brazenness. So much impudence required courage.
‘But of course you need to be careful when you’re surrounded by so many dogs. These beasts wouldn’t touch locals but they do disturb them. Isn’t that right? So be careful. I wouldn’t live the novel you set out to write.’
And he laughed heartily at his own insight.
‘Well, that’s that then,’ he said. ‘I’d better go and work out which animal is responsible for this. And remember what I told you.’
He got into his Mercedes and was gone.
The police took statements from everyone in the coffeehouse.
None of them had seen the killer. And no one knew the man who’d been shot.
All the statements were the same. Everyone said the same thing.
Then the prosecutor came and the statements were repeated to him and he had a quick look around before he left.
Not long after that an ambulance came for the body.
Then Centipede mopped the floor and everything went back to normal. No sign that a man had just died there.
As a child I was taught that death was a kind of majestic darkness and since then I always feared it. But now it seemed simple, even mundane.
The shooter took the crime so lightly that he winked at me just minutes after putting a bullet in someone’s eye. The man had died in an instant and three hours later there was no trace left of his death.
Was this death?
Was it that simple?
You’re sitting there reading the horse racing pages and some guy comes and blows your brains out.
A brain picturing galloping horses was suddenly splattered over the coffeehouse floor, sending imaginary horses racing through the grass. I could see the jockeys in colourful outfits riding on their backs. All of the hopes and schemes, frustrations and desires, jealousies and passions that had resided within the folds of that brain were then washed away with a bucket of water.
The sum of a man’s memory had been destroyed.
As the denizens of the coffeehouse excitedly rehashed their memories of the murder, I found myself wondering what images the bullet had pierced.
What images had been rent asunder?
Were the memories of people in that brain blown apart by that bullet? Which memory was lodged in that part of the brain? The memory of his mother, his wife, his lover, his child, his enemy?
I imagined the broken images of people crushed by that bullet.
When a man died an entire horde left this world with him; he didn’t die alone.
I was overwhelmed with the feeling of having witnessed a massacre. Not just the killing of one man.
I was horrified by the thought of the collected memories of his life being blasted away in a single moment.
Remzi sat down at my table with a glass of tea. ‘Dead and gone,’ he said.
‘The man’s actually dead,’ I said.
‘The sultan’s soon to be on the scene … He was one of their men. They won’t let this go.’
‘Do you know the shooter?’
‘No, those guys are just hit men. Not from around here.’
‘But then why did he come by minibus?’
Remzi smiled.
‘These hit men are too much. They’ll take someone out as long as you pay them. But then they take a minibus to the job. And they can never track down the minibus