Instruments Of Darkness (27 page)

    We were standing on the small patio with the three urns in front of the pool. Where the patio met the grass was a shallow trench a few inches wide, overgrown with grass. Bagado was standing at the corner where the missing urn, which was still in the middle of the lawn, should have been. He knelt down and ran his hand along the trench and he came up with something that looked like a credit card. He read it and handed it over. It was an expired Bloomingdale's store card in the name of C. Reggiani.

    'That was dropped between Thursday night and today,' said Bagado.

    'What happened to precision?'

    'What can
you
tell me about it?'

    'Nothing.'

    There's no rain marks on it, no mud. It was dropped after it rained on Thursday night and probably once it had dried on Friday.'

    'Did you check this trench after we'd found the body on Friday?'

    'I'm sure I did.'

    'So it could have been dropped on this visit or the one I had on Saturday night?'

    'Yes, but I don't like it,' he said, taking the card off me and putting it in his pocket. I knew he'd heard me when I'd mentioned Saturday night but he didn't have the energy to take me up on it. Bagado hadn't slept well and he looked as if he'd got to the age when he needed to.

    'I've bought some food,' he said, shrinking into his rumpled mac. I followed his stiff walk to the kitchen.

    Bagado produced the croissants from his paper bag and we leaned against the sideboard eating them and drinking coffee. In a tired and hoarse voice he told me he'd followed Charlie and Jack to the offices of AAICT in Ikeja, a Lagos suburb, where they had a meeting with Bof Awolowo and Madame Severnou. He knew this when the four of them came out of the offices and went for a late lunch in the Hotel Sheraton nearby.

    Bagado watched them order their food and then went back to the AAICT offices. The break-in hadn't required anything more than a penknife. He'd found a vacant lot behind the offices and an open door to a defunct central air-conditioning unit. He slipped the lock on the next door which let him up some stairs and into the main body of the office building. The offices were on three floors and Bof Awolowo's was on the top at the front. His office was open. It hadn't been so easy to find the relevant papers. Bagado hadn't been sure what he was looking for.

    'I found a contract between Carlo Reggiani and AAICT. He's bought five hundred tons of cotton fibre c.i.f. delivered Oporto Portugal. What's c.i.f.?'

    'Carriage, insurance and freight included. But Charlie wouldn't buy c.i.f. He's the kind of guy does his own shipping. He finds these Polish two thousand- tonners to do it for bunkers only.'

    'What's the price of cotton fibre per ton?,' asked Bagado.

    'About one thousand five hundred dollars f.o.b.'

    That's without freight?'

    'Right, free on board, the freight would be around sixty dollars per ton.'

    'The c.i.f. price in the contract was one thousand four hundred and twenty-five dollars per ton.'

    'Cheap.'

    'But not so cheap that you'd be suspicious.'

    'Unless you knew.'

    'Why do the deal on a Sunday?'

    'Not that unusual,' I said, 'except that they all met. last night at the party, apart from Madame Severnou.'

    'It could mean that they're nearly ready.'

    'Why not just do the deal here?'

    'Madame Severnou wanted to be there?'

    'Was there a ship's name on the contract?'

    'Osanyin.'

    Bagado had left the building with an hour and a half to go to the return flight to Lomé. He dropped in at the Sheraton in time to see Jack and Charlie getting in the back of Awolowo's dark-windowed Mercedes. He followed them to the airport where they boarded the plane, then took another taxi to the Apapa docks to look for the
Osanyin.

    'Why bother?'

    'It's an unusual name for a ship.'

    'What does it mean?'

    'Osanyin is the Yoruba god of medicine. I thought it might be a sick joke to move drugs on a ship called that.'

    'You found the ship?'

    'Yes, she'd just docked. Good-looking ship,' he nodded. 'New paintwork, Liberian flag

    'Did you get on board?'

    'I tried. They wouldn't let me on. They said my police badge was no good. They were aggressive.'

    Without my asking, a clip of the rusty
Naoki Maru
slid into my head and I got a frisson of excitement at the possibility.

    'Was the ship's generator working?'

    'There was an engine running. It didn't sound very healthy.'

    'Did you notice the lifting gear over the cargo holds?'

    'Why?'

    'There's a single hold at the back of the ship behind the bridge and living quarters. Did you notice whether the lifting gear over it was broken?'

    'I Wasn't looking at the lifting gear.'

    'If it was, then it was the
Naoki Maru.'

    Bagado pinched his nose at that and asked if we could check the position of the
Naoki Maru
and the ownership and registration of the
Osanyin
without drawing attention. I went into the living room and wrote the following fax message to a friend of mine in the shipping company I used to work for.

    Attn. Elwin Taylor

    Frm. Bruce Medway       Date 30/9

    Pls confirm with owners position of Vsl
Naoki Maru
14,000 dwt. Korean flag.

    Last known position 24/9 Cotonou to disch 7000 tons rice ex Thailand.

    Previous positions - Discharge containers Abidjan and Tema. Load Cashew Lomé

    Future positions - Lagos to discharge hi-fi.

    Pls confirm ownership and reg. of Vsl
Osanyin
Liberian Flag no further info.

    Keep Strictly P+C. Pls fax ASAP.

    Rgds BM.

    Today may be our last chance to see what's happening with the rice,' said Bagado as we watched the fax going through. 'If the
Osanyin
is the
Naoki Maru
then they wouldn't let her dock unless they were ready to load.'

    'Wrong. They're going to buy bunkers. The master would have run the bunkers down to zero to buy cheap fuel in Lagos. We've still got time. It'll take her two days to refuel if they pay the right people.'

    'We still have to go today. The
Osanyin
might not load but the cargo could be ready. We can't lose the rice. We have to know where it goes.'

    'There's one thing not clicking with me in all this. If there's drugs in the rice then Jack and Madame Severnou are partners. Why would Madame Severnou rip Jack off for fifty million?'

    'What kind of business ethics do you expect in a drugs deal?'

    'That's my point - I'd have thought they'd have to be straight, or people start getting killed.'

    'You said Jack didn't have the nerve to deal drugs. Maybe he doesn't, maybe Madame Severnou is stronger than him in the hierarchy of the deal. Maybe Jack's a temporary member of the team.'

    Bagado finished his coffee and brushed the flakes of croissant from his raincoat.

    'What I keep thinking about,' he said, 'is the Armenian's son and the maid. Why were they killed? The maid must have seen something. Fine. But Kasparian was five hundred miles away.'

    'Does there have to be a connection, apart from the fact that Kershaw could paint and Kasparian was interested in art?'

    'Just give me some ideas,' said Bagado. 'You can start with the art.'

    'I haven't got any ideas,' I said, irritated. 'I've got a dent in my head about half the depth of a gun barrel and my brain didn't get as much oxygen as it wanted to last night.'

    I told him about Saturday night's two visitors - Yvette and the mystery man who'd used the same terminology as last night's uninvited guest. I also told him about Nina Sorvino's Sunday morning performance.

    'If somebody's nervous enough to hit you, and Nina's frightened enough to warn you off and arrange for you to get another visit, then we must be getting warm.'

    'Nina's on the edge. She's strung out on drugs and booze. She's playing tough but she can't hold out much longer. I'm going to check her out this morning, see if she pays any visits before work. And you might like to know that the big man forced another appointment on me. He's anxious about the one million dollars he gave Kershaw to trade with, thinks it might have something to do with him ending up in the pool.'

    'A million dollars,' said Bagado twitching his head. 'That explains the cover-up.'

    'It might explain the seven hundred thousand dollars that Charlie's supposed to have gone down for trading gold,' I said. 'I went over to his place last night, see how he was under all that strain. He doesn't like me any more.'

    'You've been busy.'

    'The one person I don't understand in all of this is Yvette. She hangs around in the Sarakawa with her lady lover and some strange information about a dead person in a Cotonou apartment, she's teasing Charlie and she's tapping me for everything I've got and giving nothing back.'

    'Maybe she has a nose for money.'

    'She knows about Kershaw, she knows about Franchise Perec. Today, I'm going to find out if she knows anything about African art; my bet is she doesn't.'

    'You're sounding angry.'

    'I'm getting hacked off with people who take one look at me and think: "Here's someone we can bury in shit and tell him it's going to make him grow."'

    'I like the sound of you, Bruce. You're talking from your stomach.'

Chapter 23

    At ten past eight, I was sitting in my car two hundred yards down the road from Nina Sorvino's house with a view through some low palms of her red Citroen which was parked in her garage. At half past eight she got into the Citroen and left Kamina Village for downtown Lomé. If she was going to the Embassy she was taking the long way round.

    I tailed her to the Pharmacie pour Tous on the Route de Kpalimé which was as far from the Embassy as you could get and had a lab that did analysis. She walked in and came straight out with an envelope which she opened in her car. I followed her to the German Restaurant in the centre of town, where she went in and made a telephone call. She came out after five minutes and I went straight in and asked to use the phone while the owner asked me since when did he become the PTT. I hit the 'Redial' button and waited. The phone rang four times before it was picked up by Elizabeth Harvey, who gave her name.

    She had been very low down on my list of people that Nina Sorvino would call and I just managed to throw an American accent together and pass myself off as Sal Goblowski. I asked for her husband, who she told me was in his office and had been for the last hour. I went back to the house and passed the Embassy on the way. Nina Sorvino's car was there.

    Bagado was asleep upstairs on his bed with a three- month-old
Times
crossword on his chest. I showered and shaved and changed into my last set of clothes. I sat on the bed and stared at a beetle that had recently landed in an undiscovered world and was finding it hard going through the wisps of fuzz on the floor.

    One of the best teachers in my short academic life taught me English. She wanted me to write poetry, which goes to show that people can be good at some things and still have terrible judgement. She managed to persuade me that there were other ways of thinking than with your brain and from between your legs.

    Always go for the idea you don't know you have.

    Ah, right, I thought, assuming a standing start and coming up with a big blank.

    The idea that bobs into your consciousness and then slips away. That's the right idea for you.

    I was the poet from hell but I learnt how to think. Something had been nagging at me for the last twenty-four hours which was nothing to do with Nina Sorvino's pregnancy test. It had something to do with the photographs.

    I went to the car and took them out of the glove, went back upstairs and laid them all out on the bed. There were several photos of each piece of work, a wide shot then some close-ups. I compared them to the originals on the walls. I looked for any differences but they were shots of the finished paintings and there were no differences.

    Had it been something in the shot that I'd let Kate take away? I checked the negative but couldn't tell anything from it. I gathered the photographs and went back to the car and drove to a shop in the Rue du Commerce where I gave them the strip of negative for the two-shot of Kasparian and Kershaw and they said they could do it for me while I waited. They gave me prints of all five shots on the negative strip. I looked closely at the two-shot and the background which was the right-hand half of the girl with the fruit bowl. It didn't say anything to me. I put the main packet of photographs in the glove compartment. The five prints that had just been done, I kept in the map shelf under the steering wheel so that I could get at them if I felt the need. By this time it was half past ten and I had to get to the Sarakawa to pick up Kate Kershaw for the body identification.

    At reception they called Kate's room and while I waited I spoke to the guy I'd asked to look out for her. He told me that she'd left the hotel just after seven- thirty last night and hadn't come back until eleven o'clock. The taxi she had used stood in line in the car park and I found the driver sleeping at the wheel with his hand down his trousers. She had asked him to take her to a restaurant in town and he'd dropped her at the German place in the centre. She wasn't in there when he'd cruised past the open air restaurant on his way back to the Sarakawa.

    Kate appeared in reception and we drove to the hospital in silence. She wasn't looking chatty and I wasn't looking forward to smelling hospital again. The sterilized instruments, syringed medication, rattling trolleys, distraught relatives, the noise of nurses' starched uniforms knifing through the air and the occasional groan from the patient with the untreated gunshot wound who's been left in the corridor brought on an anticipation of nausea.