Blood Is Dirt (25 page)

‘You sounded as if you knew what you were on about, sounded as if you'd done some thinking, sounded as if this wasn't the first time...'

‘Hey, Selina, back off. You're not the only one who's allowed ideas. I happen to have an office opposite a warehouse where once a month about five hundred tons of rice comes in and five hundred tons goes out. I'm curious. I'm not always crowded out with things to do. I go down to a friend of mine at an agent's in Cotonou and ask him about rice. He tells me how I can make three million dollars if I know the right people. He tells me because there's the outside chance that I'll bring him somebody who can help him do the deal. He tells me...'

Selina leaned over and shut me up with her lips on mine. She thrust her tongue in between my teeth, held my head and worked me over good.

‘Now shut up,' she said. ‘You're boring the shit out of me.'

‘Why did you have to go and do that?'

‘Kiss you, you mean?' she asked, and my eyes connected with the driver's in the rearview.

‘If that's what it was?'

‘Yeah,' she said. ‘A bit of a snog.'

‘More like a buccal sap.'

‘Romantic.'

‘Dental.'

‘Why don't we, you know,' she said, putting her hand on my knee, ‘just for fun. You don't have to tell Heike. I won't.'

‘Just keep taking the pills and you'll calm down.'

‘Fuck you.'

The driver's eyebrows went over a speed bump.

‘Why doesn't anything ever happen here?' she asked.

‘Waiting's the game in Africa.'

‘I don't mind waiting if there's something to do.'

‘Work on Franconelli,' I said. ‘He knows things. He likes you. He wants to fit you in.'

‘Between his sheets.'

‘Not interested?'

‘He's not the type to let a girl go on top.'

‘What about Graydon?'

She shot me a look which made the driver duck.

‘Graydon doesn't do anything... not with other people, anyway.'

‘Is that what Gale said?'

‘He's a spectator. Doesn't like to get his knees dirty.'

‘And Gale?'

‘Don't be sneaky, Bruce, it doesn't suit you.'

‘Nobody tells me anything. I have to find it all out for myself.'

‘That's your job.'

‘And what are you? My sleeping... client?'

‘I knew you wouldn't say “partner”. You're such a tease.'

The traffic eased up as we got on to Vic Island and the driver stunned himself by getting into second. Selina put her face on, which in the light breeze didn't slip straight off. The cab dropped us off and because Gale knew the day was dead on its feet there was a Nissan Patrol waiting to take us up the drive.

‘Did Robert Keshi, that NNPC guy, say anything to you?'

‘No,' she said, taking hold of my arm as she got out of the car.

‘He's an oil man. Your father knew him.'

‘I know.'

‘Did your father know a lot about oil?'

She stopped and we faced off.

‘Are you a brilliant actor or just very dumb?'

‘I like asking obvious questions.'

‘My father was a shipbroker specializing in chems, gas, clean and dirty. Less than fifteen per cent of his business was chems and gas. The rest was putting crude into Northern Europe and shipping clean out of the refineries.'

‘So it's all about oil?'

‘God, Bruce.'

‘Well, your father was a bit of an actor too.'

‘After Blair my father never let anyone near his business. Not even me.'

‘You learnt from him.'

‘Let me ask you a question,' she said. ‘Why do you think the chief has asked us to work for him?'

‘Make him some money. He's got an expensive patch coming up.'

‘You don't think Graydon and Franconelli could solve that problem. You don't think that what they've got going together is enough to keep the chief in Krug?'

‘I don't know whether the word “enough” is part of Babba Seko's vocab. In the oil-boom years when Bonny Light hit thirty-five dollars a barrel the president instigated a “clean hands” operation. They found people with ten
billion
dollars in their foreign accounts. Do you think they knew how much “enough” was?'

‘I think you ought to look at this as a bit of a game, Bruce. A game with three major pieces in it and a couple of little guys. Guess who we are?'

‘Let's have some lunch.'

Ali met us at the door and led us down the hall to the living room with the cream leather sofas. The house was closed off to the outside world and the air con was wintery. Sitting on the sofa was like reclining on a dead man. Ali took the drinks order. We sat in silence. The time ached past. The art on the wall did little to fill the mind. A huge white canvas with an off-white square, off centre, off the wall.

Graydon came in with a cashmere cardigan on over his polo shirt. His shoes squeaked on the tiles and annoyed him. He slumped in a sofa, rubbing his fingers and thumbs together and seemed to take aim at something over Selina's shoulder.

‘Central air con,' he said. ‘There's nothing we can do about it. Gale'll bring you some clothes. How did it go with the chief?'

‘He listened to what we had to say,' said Selina.

‘Amazing,' he said, hitching a trouser. ‘You must have been talking about soccer.'

‘Eric Cantona featured,' I said. Graydon glazed.

‘Ben there?' he asked.

‘Yes.'

‘That's OK. He does the detail. Ali!' he roared. ‘Perrier and nuts.'

‘Do you have any contacts in India or Thailand who could supply...'

‘Opium?'

We laughed nervously. Graydon didn't.

‘You know how it is, Graydon. Powerful people can lay their hands on almost anything in these countries.'

‘I've never been in India and I'm out of Thailand now. Try Franconelli, he's strong out there.'

‘What about the States?' I asked.

‘For what?'

‘Rice. Parboiled.'

‘Too expensive.'

‘Could you get a price for us out of the US Gulf or East Coast?'

Gale came in wearing a baggy white polo-neck. She threw us some jumpers. Lunch was served. We never got our drinks. We sat down to a chef's hat of crab soufflé, a rhombus of salmon in nectar, a cylinder of chateaubriand in mustard with a tower of julienned vegetables, an ingot of chocolate in what has to be called a
jus
or a
coulis
or you're dead. We drank Puligny Montrachet with the fish, Chateau Batailley with the meat and a Setubal with the sweet. Gale ate a corner off each dish and drank most of the Puligny Montrachet. Graydon didn't even touch the first three courses but ate three plates of chocolate. We talked about the sperm count of the Western male.

‘What's the point in outproducing when you can be out-reproduced in a few generations?' said Gale. ‘We're the suckers. The Africans are playing the long game.'

‘And the Chinese?' asked Graydon.

‘No women,' said Selina.

‘Takes two to tango, Gray,' tinkled Gale, which iced his Perrier over.

‘Plastics,' said Graydon.

‘Oestrogen in the plastics,' said Gale. ‘We'll be a world of women, hermaphrodites and homosexuals.'

‘Well, it'll make great TV,' said Graydon. ‘Shall we go to my office?'

Graydon left, Gale waved us out after him. We followed him into his carefully lit study, whose only natural light came from a single skylight high in the roof. A cabinet containing a collection of videos was open and Graydon slid it shut as he walked to his desk. He indicated that we should sit at a circular table away from the desk. Graydon picked up a newspaper off his desk and threw it in the bin. He sat and remained silent for some time. The gallery lighting in the room pointed up a singular cracked terracotta hand, an alabaster sandalled foot snapped off at the ankle, a set of marble genitals, and a hand, forearm and elbow emerging from a block of stone. The broken, the maimed and the incomplete. What did this say about Graydon's psyche?

‘Excuse me a moment,' said Graydon, and he got up and left the room.

‘Gray's not with it,' said Selina.

‘Hasn't had his toot yet. He'll be back,' I said. ‘Just listen at the door a minute.'

I opened up the video cabinet. Good old anally retentive Graydon had them in alphabetical order. Each video was initialled. I picked out the only D. B., thinking of David. There was no N. B. for Napier which was interesting. I put the video in Selina's handbag and retrieved the newspaper from the bin. I found it open at the same funeral page as Ben Agu's—sad old Quarshie. Selina clicked her fingers. I flicked through the newspaper. Graydon swept back in. Selina was inspecting the genitalia.

‘Whose lunch is this?'

Graydon roared.

‘Lunch!? Oh, yeah,' he said. ‘That was sold to me as a piece of a destroyed statue of Paris from Troy.'

‘No kidding.'

‘Well, maybe. It's all stolen and sold on. Shall we?' he asked, looking at me standing by his desk with his newspaper.

‘This guy Quarshie,' I said, ‘I've heard his name somewhere. Wasn't he at your party on Sunday?'

‘He was supposed to be. Goddam tragedy. The guy shot himself Friday morning.'

‘Oh, right. He was an engineer, wasn't he?'

‘Yeah, he did some plans for me for a floating jetty off the coast at Port Harcourt.'

I dropped the newspaper back into the bin and we all sat down at the circular table. In five minutes Graydon outlined a deal where Selina's company would buy 120,000 tons of Nigerian crude from a company based in the Caymans called Neruda. The interesting difference was that, although her company would take title to the product as soon as it was on board a ship she could charter herself, she wouldn't actually have to pay for it until it was delivered in Europe. She would take a commission on the shipping and she was guaranteed a minimum of fifty cents per ton on the oil. Graydon was giving her the opportunity to become an oil trader without putting up any money.

‘There are some obvious questions, Graydon.'

‘Well,' he said, ‘I don't want to do the work myself. I don't want to pay tax. I don't want the market to know what I'm doing. I want an established London-based business to do it. You're not in the oil business which gives me confidentiality, but you are in commodities which means you're not a schmuck.'

‘But why me, us?'

‘In business it's possible to be scientific, with people it isn't. I go for a feeling, an instinct. How can I ever know someone well enough to let them into my world? I can't. They can bullshit me with professionalism, they can slap me with their education, they can stun me with their CV I could run psychological tests and get a murderer. I could pay a consultant and he'd select the square pin for the asshole. I feel good about you. I'm giving you a single opportunity to see if you fit. If you do, we're richer. If you don't, it's only one deal and how many of them are there in a day?'

‘You're offering me...'

‘I know what I'm offering you,' he said. ‘But don't snatch. Think about it.'

The phone went. Graydon flopped behind his desk and picked it up.

‘Hi, José, hold the line a moment,' he said, and looked up. ‘That's all, folks. Gale'll see you out.'

Gale was in the living room with some coffee on the go and an ashtray full of butts at her side. She flicked violently through
Hello!
magazine as if she was hoping to come across herself.

‘Where'd they get all these assholes?' she asked.

‘It depresses me,' said Selina, looking over her shoulder, ‘but I can't resist seeing how they look. It's like porn.'

‘Yeah,' said Gale. ‘Fascinating
and
boring. How'd they come up with a formula like that?'

‘Hair salons,' said Selina.

‘How'd it go with Gray?' asked Gale.

‘He made us an offer. We're thinking about it.'

‘Nobody ever lost money on Gray's back,' she said. ‘Except me.'

We walked out to the car. The heat fell on us like a rapist, its hot tongue in every crevice.

‘You know,' said Gale, ‘the first time Napier turned up here Gray offered him a deal.'

‘Oh yeah,' I said. ‘Who introduced him?'

‘That foreign office guy. The one I reckon's a fruit. David. David Bartholomew.'

‘Well, maybe he has a weakness for blondes,' I said.

‘Then why didn't I get anything?' she asked.

We watched a clip of the D. B. video in the owner's apartment at Y-Kays. Selina sat with her legs crossed and foot nodding while I talked the owner out of hanging in there with us for the show. I fast-forwarded the tape for a minute. She tapped her cheek with her finger, waiting, impatient. I hit play.

‘Ooo, that looks painful,' she said.

David was trussed up on the bed, his left wrist tied to his right ankle and the right wrist to the left ankle. From the tangle of limbs another rope ran up to a choker around his neck so that every time he moved he cut the air flow to his windpipe. David's penis had been stretched tight and taped to a point just below his sternum. Ali was lying on the bed naked, stroking his large erection a few inches from David's face. David attempted to inch forward. Ali judged him too close and gave him a savage little kick in the testicles which sent David off into a paroxysm of strangulated pain. I stopped it. Selina was disappointed. I packed the video away and went to call David about his diplomatic bag.

In the evening a car picked Selina up and took her to Franconelli's for dinner. I took a taxi to the Peninsula restaurant, where I'd arranged to meet David. I'd expected it to be cooler after dark and sitting out seemed better than chilling off in the air con, but if anything it seemed hotter, closer, more airless and the fans weren't cutting it either. David and I drank lots of cold beer and worked our way through table napkins and excellent Chinese food.