Black Mischief (33 page)

‘And fell to the bottom?' By now, Sonya had taken Sammy in her arms. He was warm and breathing gently.

‘No, Sonya. Barely five or six feet.There was a slab of rock down there. Bertie had him back up in seconds. As you see, we all got a bit wet. Spray mostly.'

She held her little wounded soldier tight, closed her eyes and prayed hard.

Frantic activity. While the women undressed the boys and dried them, Tom and Bertie broke camp and packed the vehicles. In ten minutes the engines were revved and the journey back down to the plain began. The boys, wrapped in heavy blankets, sat tight together in the back, except for Sammy who lay upright in his mother's arms. She had done the first aid. There was no more bleeding, no broken bones.

That same morning Alfred Ross had been doing a lot of reading. By eleven he was driving quietly from his hotel on the edge of the Nairobi city centre to the Highlands. He travelled alone in a second-hand, battered Range Rover, supplied at his request by his client. He was enjoying himself. Alfredo was always happy when a job involved a slow build-up. The bonus here was that he would be taking on a new identity, getting to practise a little acting, always a pleasure. He had not yet made up his mind whether it would be a professor of anthropology or a freelance newsman out on a special assignment. At times like this he always blessed his father for sending him to school in England. The accent alone was worth the investment. Up-market London seemed to inspire trust in a way that Brooklyn did not.

He enjoyed the brightness of the African light and was fascinated to observe his fellow travellers. At home he mostly used taxis or was driven by a chauffeur. Here the driving was erratic but relaxed. There were so many people on the red earth verges, most of them on the move. There were kids everywhere, on their way to school dressed in different coloured sweaters. Uchome had been right about the views, especially from the highest point of the climb.

‘Look out for the volcano to your left. Just beyond, you'll see the big lake.'

This Africa was full of life. No dozing at the wheel out here. Get the job done and stay away for a while. He knew that when he was finished, it would the first plane out. One day it might be different.

Once onto South Lake Road, he pulled over for a final check. Londiani. The finger post pointed down a track to his right. He considered walking to the farmhouse two hundred metres away. Its pitched roof peeped out from a tight circle of dark green trees. Beyond, the blue waters of the lake sparkled on that bright, warm morning.

A beat-up old car pulled in behind him. Alfredo had been too relaxed on his journey from the town centre. Yes, he had noticed a car behind him, but it was way back and, after all, they were both travelling on a public road. The three occupants had spotted him as he pulled out of the Amin filling station. Smart car, to them, single white driver. This could be interesting and profitable.

In his side mirror he watched them stepping out, three scruffily dressed skinny youths with the oversized basketball boots and the loose jeans. He had seen such characters everywhere he went in the world. He was fully alert now. He took something out of his pocket and held it under the flap of his coat. As they drew alongside, he rolled down the window and smiled affably.

‘Good morning, gentlemen. A nice, fine day for it.' As a schoolboy in England he had heard the locals use this expression many times, without ever knowing what the ‘it' meant.

The laid-back, lazy manner of the young men was no surprise, nor the passable attempt at the down-market Bronx accent.

‘So what have we here? Nice wheels, Mister Englishman. How much they cost you?'

‘I beg your pardon?'

The spokesman, and presumably the leader, leaned on the windowsill and checked out the interior of the Range Rover as he spoke. ‘Maybe you could give us a ride to Nairobi. Meeting with our business partners.' He grinned towards his companions. ‘Better yet, you step out and let me drive.'

Alfredo pleased them with his quick cooperation. He closed the door behind him and took a step backwards on the verge, not such a pleasing move. When they saw him standing in front of them, they could not resist a comment. Their surprise caused their man to forget the pseudo accent.

‘My, you're small for your age,' he chuckled. ‘You haven't escaped from some place?' The loony house up in Gilgil?'

‘I was just going to ask you the same question.'

The tension was mounting. There was something annoyingly arrogant in this little man. The tall companions behind the man of the mouth stepped forward and reached for their pockets. Too late. Three bangs later and they were screaming with the pain of their wounds. Their lives were in no danger. Alfredo, as usual, had selected his target areas carefully. Fearing another onslaught, they hobbled back to their vehicle, switched on and began a turn.

‘The hospital is that way!' Alfredo mocked, pointing towards Naivasha town.

He heard the shot almost simultaneously with feeling the burning sensation in his left upper arm. Flesh wound, just one level up from a graze, but there was blood. He was very, very annoyed with himself.

Alfredo removed his coat to check on his wound. As he did so, he heard the sound of footsteps of someone running up the driveway towards him. In seconds two men appeared calling out something in what he took to be Swahili. On seeing him, they switched to English.

‘Bwana, we are coming. We heard shots. You have had some trouble, yes?'

The brothers, Luka and Erik, night askaris at Londiani, had been on their way into town to visit family and to look around the matumba on the hunt for bargains. Thrown temporarily off balance, Alfredo suspected for a moment that these two were part of the attack squad. He soon realised that these tall, smartly dressed men were on his side. When they noticed blood that had saturated the arm of his white shirt, they scrunched their faces into a look of shared agony.

‘Bwana, so sorry, so sorry. Please, come to the house. The memsahibs are at home. They are very clever ladies. They will help.'

Erik, the brother who had not spoken, took a large blue handkerchief and held it out to this mzungo in distress.

‘I'm fine. Just a scratch. Come on, let me drive you down.'

It was a strange and unnerving situation for Alfredo. He was sitting in the kitchen of two of the women he had come to assess with a view to killing. He had seen their photographs and knew their names. Rafaella, the older McCall woman, was a surprise. The Italian accent had not been completely lost after her many years in Africa and she was a real beauty, a Veronese princess in exile.

‘I was not much more than a girl. My father and his friend had been out hunting for birds. It was the last time for Papa. Mama and I were in our kitchen, just like we are here, pulling little balls of lead out of the bottom of Tullio Capello with a tweezers. Papa was jumping up and down on his gun. Mama said, “Blame your eyes, Tonio, not the poor gun!”'

Alfredo was happy to be the quiet patient, listening to the kitchen talk. One awkward glance from the younger McCall woman put him on his guard. The question was about to be asked. She looked at him sideways, like a naughty schoolgirl about to be impertinent.

‘What exactly happened, Mister Ross? Shootings in broad daylight, that's a first around here.'

Alfredo smiled dismissively. ‘Please, Fred. It was my fault. It's my first time in Naivasha. As I came down the steps of the bank, a young man was leaning against my car, waiting for me. He was smartly dressed and polite.'

‘“Sir, I am applying for a position on one of the flower farms by the lake. If you are driving out of town, I could get down on the turn onto South Lake Road”. I didn't know the way so he guided me. Trying to be helpful, I took him further.

As we came to your entrance he pulled a gun and told me to hand over my wallet.'

‘Oh, no!'

‘Oh, yes. But there's always karate. Comes in handy sometimes. Too easy, really. Next thing we were out on the road with his gun on the tarmac. I picked it up and he ran back towards town. I fired a couple of shots into the road to encourage him.'

‘But your wound?'

‘Carelessness from me. As I grabbed it, well, I think I actually shot myself.'

A thoughtful silence on the women's side ended with Maura throwing up a bright idea.

‘Inspector Caroline or Hosea, Naivasha police, but honest ones, efficient ones.'

‘No, no. I'm an American citizen. Oh, yes, I know, the English accent. If we call in the police, there'll be a big fuss. And I think the kid has had rough justice served on him.'

From the bedroom window, there was another majestic view for Alfredo to enjoy. He had gladly accepted the order that he must lie down for a time, just in case of delayed shock. He watched the afternoon shadows as they gradually shifted across the plain. The only shock he experienced was that the turn of events had dulled the sharp edge of his plans. Two of his intended prey had been kind to him. This was useful. He wanted to observe, but he did not welcome the warm intimacy. For a time he questioned if his resolve might be undermined. Common sense and some simple reasoning soon helped him over this hurdle. These people meant nothing to him. In his time he had put away some attractive, undeserving victims. Conscience was not a part of his baggage. And his temporary employer was offering him a very big payout. There would be no problem when the time came.

The noise of activity outside roused him. He checked his watch. He must have been dozing in that armchair for at least an hour. From the window he saw two men and five women in conversation by the open doors of a newly arrived Japanese four-wheel drive. He knew the two McCall women and their maid Angela. One of the other two must have been the famous Rebecca. No exaggeration about her good looks even from up there. He felt sure that the second young woman was the one who must have troubled Rubai such a lot. He would check later. As for the men, easy, boss man McCall and the dreaded son, Tom. They were not a joyful group. That was obvious.

When he was introduced downstairs, he attracted little interest beyond the fact that he had been wounded on the road just outside the property. He soon worked out that the three young people had returned early from some trip into the hills. Some young kid had fallen into a river and knocked himself out. The animated conversation around the healing ceremony of the tea taken on the large open veranda presented him with the opportunity to observe without being noticed, except that, from time to time, the other young woman, ah, yes Lydia, gave him what his grandmother called ‘an old-fashioned look'. Another African beauty, the mud stains on her clothes gave her an extra attraction.

Stupid of him, but there in that comfortable atmosphere, he understood, for the first time, that he had tumbled into a family that was close-knit and caring. Pressed to stay for dinner, he was introduced to four new people. For a time he believed that they were two married couples until he picked up that the man, Briggs, was a widower and the woman next to him had recently lost her husband in a brutal murder he had read about in
The New York Times.
Sonya Mboya was a doctor and it was one of her kids who had fallen into the river.

When Hosea Kabari, the sergeant in the local police, arrived he brought his wife. That was a surprise. There was something striking about this Maria, yet another good-looker. But this one radiated an inner strength and possessed a poise he had rarely seen in any human being. Before they sat down, he had been persuaded to take off his shirt for this woman with the firm yet silky hands to examine his wounded arm. Her cool touch soothed the irritation. Perhaps they were right with their suggestion of a gift of healing powers. Even the doctor seemed to believe in the idea.

He gathered a lot of information that evening, perhaps too much. His memory was his notebook. It had logged in news about plans for a new hospital. He had discovered that this Tom and the singer would be back in New York before he was and raising funds for the project that would fade away with the passing of the dreamers who had thought it up. The plan was for them to be away for two weeks. He would make sure that they were back in less than one. They were taking the Nairobi whore with them, presumably to try to hide her from the boss. Should he tell Mister R that he had run the troublesome female who had bothered him so much? He registered a no on that tiny dilemma, without being able to give himself a satisfactory reason.

One intriguing but seemingly irrelevant piece of news that came out that evening concerned the injured kid, little Sammy. He was still unconscious when they returned to the Briggs place where this Sonya and her boys were staying. Mama was puzzling on her own dilemma. Should she risk taking him down to the city straight away or wait until morning?

Without warning and without explanation, Maria Kabari had turned up at Rusinga Farm.

‘I think I can help Sammy.'

Sonya showed no surprise. How could she have forgotten the hours that Maria had spent with Simon in the coolness of the private surgery in her brother's house? Maria had a gift and Sonya trusted her. Soon Sammy was with his brothers and Ewan out on the big field bordering the house where they were daring each other to see who would get closest to one of the waterbuck grazing quietly in the late afternoon. Sonya did not try to look for sensible reasons for yet another transformation.

red Ross left early. He had arranged with Alex that, next morning, Stephen Kamau would escort him around the flower farm.