Orkney Twilight (33 page)

The day after the funeral, everyone was hanging around the house aimlessly. The phone rang as Sam brushed past it on the way to the kitchen to make another cup of coffee. She picked it up without thinking. It was Tom. Just the sound of his voice put her on edge, her brain searching for a way of cutting him off quickly while she politely said hello.

‘I have to talk to you,’ he said.

‘Okay. I’ll call you back later. I’m about to go out,’ she lied effortlessly.

‘Sam. It’s important.’

‘This afternoon. I’ll call you then.’

‘Listen. I’ve found out about Shinkolobwe.’

The name gave her a start, a painful reminder of her unfinished business. She checked over her shoulder, heard Liz clanking about, busy in the kitchen.

‘I know about Shinkolobwe,’ she said. ‘Shinkolobwe is a mine in Zaire. Katanga.’

‘Yes, but do you know what kind of mine it is?’

She dug the fingers of her free hand into her thigh. ‘Tell me then,’ she said. ‘What kind of mine is it?’

‘Uranium.’

Uranium. Her legs suddenly felt heavy, tingly. She collapsed on to the floor, back against the wall, the receiver pressed to her ear.

‘It was the world’s richest bloody deposit of uranium,’ Tom continued. ‘Shinkolobwe is the mine that supplied the uranium for the Manhattan Project, which developed the Hiroshima and Nagasaki atom bombs. But it’s officially closed,’ he added. ‘It’s been abandoned.’

An abandoned uranium mine. No wonder it wasn’t marked in the atlas.

‘I asked this mate of my mum’s – weirdy-beardy, department of development studies, specializes in Africa – his eyes just lit up when I mentioned the name. Set him off. Shinkolobwe is a hell-hole of capitalist history. A magnet for the darkest forces of the colonial endeavour. A conspiracy theorist’s wet dream.’

She clicked her tongue impatiently ‘So when was it closed?’

‘In 1963. Zaire was called the Congo then. Shinkolobwe was owned by a Belgian mining company. When the Congo was given independence from the Belgians in 1960, Katanga declared itself an independent republic. The Belgians who owned the mines there financed a puppet regime so they could carry on mining. And the Katanga army that defended them was run by a bunch of European mercenaries.’

Jesus. Jim and Don Chance. 1960. Shinkolobwe. That was where Jim had parted from Chance in 1960, he had said. She tried to trace his course in her mind, remember what he had told her, piece the fragments together. Gun-running. He had been transporting weapons across southern Africa. He must have delivered the guns to the Katanga army. But then he had been shocked by the conditions in Shinkolobwe, argued with the foreman, had his toes shot off and decided he’d had enough. He wasn’t prepared to fight the Belgians’ battle. He had seen the bigger, bleaker picture, had already acquired too many mercenary scars. Backed away from the precipice. Her hands were sweaty. She wiped her palms on her trousers.

‘So what happened after 1960?’

‘A lot of fighting. And assassinations. UN Secretary Generals dead. Prime Ministers bumped off. Anybody and everybody was involved apparently. MI6. CIA. KGB.’

‘Shit.’

‘Exactly. But, despite the West’s efforts to keep control of the area, presumably to keep it out of the hands of the Soviets who were backing the Congolese, the Belgians were forced out and Katanga was reunited with the rest of the Congo. The Belgians filled the mineshafts with concrete before they left. 1963. Mobutu became President in 1971. That’s when the Congo’s name was changed to Zaire. The state took ownership of the mines. And Katanga’s name was changed to Shaba.’

Shaba? Shaba Security Limited. The torn receipt in the manila envelope must have come from Shinkolobwe. Black dots started dancing in front of her eyes. She rubbed the back of her neck. Trying to clear her head, make sense of it all.

‘Sam?’

‘So Shinkolobwe is still closed?’ she demanded.

‘Officially. Heavily guarded by security companies supposedly. But, according to my mum’s mate, people have carried on mining anyway. Illegally. The locals just go into the mines because they don’t know the risks. Or don’t care because they are so desperate for cash. They dig the stuff out by hand, would you believe, carry it out in sacks. Presumably if they survive the mines, they die horribly a few years later. Apparently uranium is found in copper ore, and that’s how it’s smuggled out of the country. Every now and then some border guard decides to run a Geiger counter over a copper consignment and the needle goes ballistic.’

Christ. What had Jim said? Chance had been back to Shinkolobwe. To do what? Providing security services: turning a blind eye, oiling palms, greasing wheels. Enabling illegal uranium mining perhaps? For a cut of the profits. Backhanders. She inhaled, attempting to fill her lungs. Her chest was too tight. She tried breathing through her nose. It wasn’t helping. She opened her mouth wide. No oxygen.

‘Sam, are you still there?’

‘Yes.’ Just.

‘There’s more.’

‘More?’

‘This mate of my mum’s said he’d heard from one of his academic contacts in Kinshasa that there were rumours of some sort of massacre there a few months ago.’

‘Massacre? What kind of massacre?’

‘The story is that the locals who were going into the mine were fed up with the size of the bribes that the security guards were demanding. So some of them got together and organized a deputation to confront the guards, there was an argument, and the guards shot the lot of them. A Danish demographer was doing some research on maternal mortality in the area. But all the villagers wanted to talk about was the deaths of the men at the mine. So this researcher reported the story to an official at the Danish Embassy and it seems as if somebody there has decided to try and follow it up.’

Sam stared into space, her brain racing.

‘Sam. Why do you think Jim asked us whether we knew where Shinkolobwe was?’

She was glad he couldn’t see her reddening face. ‘He was probably just showing off. Demonstrating his superior knowledge of geography.’

‘Why don’t you ask him about it?’

‘I can’t.’

‘He brought it up. He mentioned it. So why can’t you ask?’

‘Because he’s…’ She stopped. She didn’t want to tell Tom about Jim’s death, didn’t want to prolong the conversation.

‘Look,’ she said, ‘thanks for telling me all this. It’s very interesting. But I’ve got to go now.’

‘Sam. Is there some connection between Shinkolobwe and something that happened in Orkney while we were there?’

‘I doubt it very much. I really do have to go now. Thanks for phoning. I’ll call you.’

She slammed the receiver down, sat there on the floor, turning Tom’s question over in her mind. She tried to recall Jim’s exact words about Shinkolobwe on the train coming back from Orkney. When Chance told him that he had been back to Shinkolobwe, he hadn’t thought it was significant. And then oddly enough, he had said, something turned up in Orkney that made him think about Shinkolobwe again. A funny connection. A funny connection with what? With the Watcher and Intelligence plans to fix the miners’ strike perhaps? And what had turned up in Orkney? The manila envelope of course. She pushed herself up from the floor and ran to her bedroom.

She ferreted under the bed, removed the shoebox, extracted the manila envelope and emptied its contents on the floor. She wiped her mouth with the back of her hand, concentrated, trying to comprehend all the links in the chain. She started shuffling the pieces around on the floor. On her right-hand side she placed the receipt for electrical wire, the list of bomb-making parts, the hand-drawn map of the station, the photocopy of the passport for Anthony Baines. Those were the papers, she reckoned, that gave away information about Intelligence and the strike. On her left she put the torn receipt from Shaba Security Limited, subsidiary of – whatever the missing word was – Asset Management. That piece of paper, she now knew, came from Shinkolobwe. How did it get into the envelope? How was it connected to Intelligence and the miners’ strike?

She held her palm over the papers as if she were divining their hidden meanings. She shut her eyes. Opened them again. Reached for the passport photocopy. This was, she reckoned, fake ID for a man who was working with the Watcher and Intelligence, possibly as some kind of provocateur. Was he also, somehow, connected with Shinkolobwe? Was he the critical link? There was, she realized now, only one way she could find out. She would have to ask Anne Greenaway. She gathered up the pieces, stuffed them back in the envelope and placed the envelope in the side pocket of her Laurence Corner cargo trousers. She rummaged in the shoebox, glanced at Anne Greenaway’s address on the purple envelope – 24 Milton House, Brixton. She would go to Brixton and talk to Anne Greenaway. And then she would work out what to do with the envelope.

She grabbed her coat, put her hand on the door handle, caught sight of the fading burn mark on her forearm, grimaced. She must be crazy to be doing this, messing with the professionals – the wet-workers, the hitmen. Her brain churned, searching for any shred of information that might help her make it through the day. Ruth’s whispered words to her at the funeral floated into her head; Jim had left her a number. She dived across the room, fished around in the shoebox once more and retrieved the scrap Tom had found under Jim’s bed in Nethergate. She glanced at the scribbled London phone number and added it to her pocket.

Liz was in the kitchen, standing by the sink, rubbing her hands vigorously under a gushing tap. As Sam entered, her mother’s eyes darted sideways towards the holiday brochure lying open on the counter.

‘Greek Islands,’ Liz said. ‘I’m thinking of going with Roger in September after you’ve gone up to college.’

Sam put one elbow on the counter, flicked casually through the pages, perusing the descriptions of the exquisite villas with their windows opening on to the Aegean. She could feel Liz watching her, nervously trying to gauge her reaction. The song of a thrush drifted in through the open kitchen window.

‘Mum,’ Sam said. ‘You know all that stuff about chucking dust on the grave. You don’t think there was a bit of a message there, do you?’

‘What?’

‘Was there a message for Roger in the dust-throwing? “I will show you fear.” Jim getting in the final word to the Professor of English Literature.’

Liz opened her mouth, a protesting oh, and closed it again. ‘Don’t be ridiculous.’ She gave her hands one last rinse, shook them dry. ‘The dust. That was just Jim and his weird relationship with religion.’

‘I don’t think he had a weird relationship with religion,’ Sam replied. ‘He had spiritual beliefs about the world; he just didn’t think much of the church. Not the Catholic Church at least.’

‘Well, the dust was just one of Jim’s idiosyncratic gestures.’ Liz waved her hand dismissively.

Sam stared pointedly at the holiday brochure in front of her. ‘Why did you stick with Jim?’ she asked. ‘Why didn’t you leave him?’

‘Relationships are complicated.’ Liz was talking to the cooker. ‘They’re not like your beloved cryptic crosswords. You can’t just work them out by parsing all the clues. The thing is; I fell in love with Jim. He was the man I wanted to marry. But it wasn’t easy. His job made it difficult from the start. He was never there anyway, and when he was at home, he wasn’t always pleasant company. I often felt that he was married to his job, to the bloody Commander. But sometimes you just have to stick things out. For the sake of the family.’ She paused, twisted her wedding ring. ‘I’m not sure he turned out to be the man I thought I’d married.’

Sam said nothing. The thrush twittered.

Liz shouted suddenly. ‘God knows what he got up to when he was on his fucking secret missions.’

Sam suddenly felt awkward, uncertain what to say. Now she had provoked it, she didn’t want to have this discussion, didn’t want to get into the nitty-gritty of her parents’ relationship.

She gabbled. ‘I think he always thought he was doing things for the public good. He just wanted to repair the world.’ She immediately regretted saying anything, realized she sounded completely ridiculous. Trite. She had no idea why she was defending Jim anyway.

‘Repair the world,’ Liz repeated scornfully.

‘
Tikkun olam
,’ Sam said.

‘
Tikkun
what?’

‘
Tikkun
… oh, never mind.’

She gazed out of the window, watched the fat thrush yanking away at a worm wedged in between the roots of the Bramley. Somewhere in the distance Liz was venting.

‘Well maybe he thought he was doing things for the public good. And in the beginning, when I met him, when he was in uniform, he probably was. But at some point he threw his lot in with the Commander, who seemed to believe that there were no limits to what could be done in the name of national security.’

Sam wasn’t really listening. She felt herself drifting off, a momentary emptiness, the disquieting sense of non-existence she had felt when she watched Jim with Anne in the café in Orkney. Liz was still spewing over.

‘And in the end, only he can know whether he made the right decision, whether the information he acquired was worth the price. Because no one else will ever be able to prove what he did or did not do; how many people he might or might not have protected. But what makes me really cross, what I find really upsetting, is that our lives were thrown into the deal. We were taken for granted. Back-up services for Jim. Our family didn’t matter. Nobody asked us if we wanted to sign up to be a silent support unit for their secret fucking operations. Our souls were just an invisible part of his contract, his totally gender-blind bloody Faustian pact.’ She paused. Leaned on the kitchen counter, eyed the fridge pensively. ‘Now that’s an interesting angle on Marlowe’s Faustus. Because, of course, Marlowe was rumoured to be a spy for the Elizabethan state…’

Sam inhaled slowly, turned to leave.

‘Where are you going anyway?’ Liz demanded.

‘Brixton.’

‘Why?’ said Liz.

Because, she wanted to say, I want to find out about my father. I want to make one last effort to work out what he was doing, what he believed, whose side he was on. I want to have a final attempt at finding out about his true identity. Because if I don’t know who he was, how can I know about myself?