She's Leaving Home (29 page)

Okonkwo’s unshaven beard was graying and his eyes were red and tired. He sat at a desk with a tin of Brasso and a dark rag, buffing a ceremonial bronze spoon. Somewhere, a record player was playing Bach’s suites for cello.

“Good afternoon. I was expecting you,” said Mr. Okonkwo, putting down the rag.

Like the window, the shop itself was piled full of African carvings, boxes, stools and totems. There were masks everywhere, some hung on the walls, others piled untidily on the floor. A heavy looking black stool, seat curved in a gentle “U” shape, sat on a table. On top of it, a clay statue of a small boy, squatting.

“We’ve come about Ezeoke.”

“Yes. Of course you have.”

On the wall behind Okonkwo, Breen recognized the same poster as he had seen in Ezeoke’s house. There was another too:
Save Biafra
. A picture of a young boy looking up at the camera with dead eyes, stick-thin hands folded around his massively distended belly.

He picked up his rag again and started polishing. “Ezeoke told me the police were looking for him.”

“You’ve seen him?”

“He telephoned me. About an hour ago.”

“Where did he call from?”

“I asked. He would not say.”

“You should have called us right away,” said Tozer. “He’s a fugitive.”

The man shrugged. “I knew you would be here.”

“We could arrest you for withholding information,” Tozer continued. “You know he’s killed two people?”

“Two?” Okonkwo frowned. “I only heard he killed a policeman.”

“Why did he call you?” asked Breen.

“He called to confess. Oh, and to beg for money and for me to hide him.”

“And?”

“And what?”

“Did you offer to help him?”

“I told him to go fuck himself.”

Okonkwo spat onto the spoon, then continued buffing it.

“Why?”

“You have to understand. I loved Ezeoke like a brother. He was the most successful among us. But now I learn that he has lied to us and cheated us. I told him to go fuck himself.”

“What do you mean?”

“What I understand now is he never was one of us. He is just playing at being one of us. He never listened to us.” Okonkwo seemed to be staring at a single spot on the spoon. “He always thought he was better than the rest of us because he was raised in England.”

Breen looked around. The bookshelves were full of thick books with weighty titles:
Shakespeare Criticism 1919–1935, Hamlet and Oedipus, Ashanti and the Gold Coast, Tristes Tropiques.

“Cheated?” said Tozer.

“He has taken our money.”

“I don’t understand.”

“He called to say sorry. ‘I have lost sixty-two thousand pounds of your money. Please, Eddie. Save me. The police are after me.’ Go fuck yourself, Samuel Ezeoke.” He peered at the spoon and then put it down on the table.

“God,” said Tozer. “Sixty-two thousand pounds? Your money?”

“Not just my money. The committee’s money. All of us contributed. Expatriates over the world. Sam Ezeoke is our treasurer.”

“That’s a great deal of money for propaganda,” said Breen.

Okonkwo smiled.

“You gave him the money for Biafra and he embezzled it?” said Tozer.

“Oh, no, no, no. It is far worse than that. Embezzling it would at least have been an African thing to do. No. He lost it.”

“He was conned out of it,” said Breen.

Okonkwo banged the table loudly with the spoon. “Exactly.”

He stood, went to the front door and locked it, turning the sign that said
OPEN
round, so it faced the inside of the shop.

“There is nothing as dangerous as a man who imagines himself superior to the rest of us.”

“What is the money for?” asked Breen.

“What we were doing is not illegal.”

“What
were
you doing?”

“It is completely legal.”

“What is?”

Okonkwo spat into a dustbin. “How much do you know about Africa?”

“Very little.”

“You ruled us until eight years ago but you know nothing about us.” He smiled. “Our history and our culture mean nothing to you. You have heard of Rhodesia, I suppose?”

“Of course.”

“As a continent, we rarely agree with each other. However, one thing all black Africa agrees on is we hate Rhodesia. It is ruled by a white man. Ian Smith. And you have heard of him too?”

“Is he being lippy?” Tozer asked.

“Rhodesia supports Biafra. South Africa too. Ironic, don’t you think? White men in Africa suddenly find it convenient to support the cause of ethnic self-determination.”

“We’re in a hurry, Mr. Okonkwo,” said Tozer.

“Publicly we are raising money for propaganda. But we are also raising money to pay for mercenaries. Rhodesia supports us. Rhodesia supplies mercenaries.”

“So that party we went to. That was really raising money for mercenaries?” Tozer said.

“Yes.”

“Bloody hell.”

“Ezeoke is an idealist,” said Okonkwo. “From the start he has never liked the idea of us paying white men to fight our war.”

“You’re
not
an idealist, I take it?” said Breen.

Okonkwo opened a drawer and pulled out a small white stick, opened his mouth and dug it into a crevice between his teeth several times. “Of course I am. But the Rhodesians are the best mercenaries in Africa.”

The phone rang. Okonkwo ignored it. “We already have some Rhodesians in Biafra. The Federals are scared of them. We Africans have not had proper training. You English made sure of that. A few dozen properly trained men can run rings around a hundred Africans. And, with good reason, given what you have done to us, we Africans still fear white men more than our fellow black men.”

“You should answer the phone,” said Breen.

“It’s probably no one.”

“Pick it up.”

Okonkwo picked up the ringing phone. “Hello?”

He listened, then said, “I am closed, I am afraid. It will not be convenient. Try again in an hour.” He put the phone back down abruptly.

“Who was it?”

“Just a customer.”

Breen wondered if he was lying, but he could see nothing in his expression. “You were saying. Ezeoke doesn’t like the idea of giving money to Rhodesians.”

“Sam Ezeoke is a very passionate man. He wants Africans to show other Africans how we can create a noble postimperial era. We can control our own destiny. All we need is some guns. He does not understand the first thing about modern warfare.” He dug the stick between his teeth again. “The Rhodesian mercenaries are racist devils. But they are greedy racist devils. They are our racist devils. Sam has always argued against the rest of the committee. He believes in African solutions for an African continent.” Okonkwo sighed. “It turns out he had a better plan. One he didn’t want to tell us about because he thought we were not true Africanists. We had become corrupted. So he decided to use all our money to buy the arms himself. He met with an arms dealer. A supposed arms dealer.”

“Major Sullivan,” said Breen.

“Is that his name? I did not know this. You can always find a corrupt Englishman somewhere.”

“Major Sullivan?” said Tozer. “Oh God.”

“It’s my guess,” said Breen.

Okonkwo spat a wad of chewed stick into a dustbin at his feet. “You might expect me to hate this man for stealing our money,” he said. “I do not. The English are always the English. It is Ezeoke who I hate. I hate him for being stupid and not trusting his fellow Africans. It is the same with all these people, all these Pan-Africanists. Nkrumah. Nyerere. We Africans are all in this together. At least, we Africans are all in this together as long as you do it my way. And now look what happened.”

“Sullivan probably met Ezeoke through his daughter,” said Breen. “He was up to his eyeballs in debt. He may have strung Ezeoke a story about being able to get him guns.”

“I don’t know who he gave our money to. I don’t care. All I know is that he had our money. And all of it is gone. All of it.”

“Did you lose much?”

“Me. I did not have much. Two thousand pounds. I don’t care for myself. We all gave it freely. It was like a fever. ‘Take our money. Take all of it.’ Ezeoke gave the most, of course.”

“How many of you?”

“There are fifty-six of us. Some are rich. Others, like myself, are not. But we all gave what we could to the cause. And it’s all gone. Dogs eat shit, but it’s the goat that gets rotten teeth.”

“What?”

“An Igbo saying. It suffers a little in translation.”

“So what’s the connection with the girl?” Tozer asked Breen.

“What girl?” said Okonkwo.

“You said he wanted you to hide him?” asked Breen, ignoring his question.

“Yes.”

“And…?”

“Of course I refused. I am not a lawbreaker, Mr. Breen.”

Breen walked slowly around the shop. On one shelf, to the right of Okonkwo’s desk, there was a worn wooden board with two rows of little cups. There were beans in some of the cups and none in the others. Breen reached in and scooped up the beans and dropped them back into the cups, one by one. “If you were Ezeoke, where would you go now?”

“I am not Ezeoke.”

“If you were.”

“If I was Ezeoke I would go back to Biafra.”

“How?”

“I would go back to Biafra and let a Federal soldier put a bullet into my brain.”

A woman, head covered in a scarf against the cold, tried the door, rattling the handle.

“Go away,” said Okonkwo, waving his hand angrily. “I am closed. Can’t you see the sign?”

The woman disappeared down the street.

“Ezeoke told me it was only a matter of time before the Federal troops collapsed.”

Okonkwo laughed out loud. “We have lost Port Harcourt. We have lost Nsukka and Enugu, our capital. We are fighting from the bush. What does he think? This is some strategic retreat to weaken the enemy? Our only strategy is to prolong the war until the tide of opinion turns to our side.”

“But all those children are going to die,” said Tozer.

“It’s not us killing them. It is the Federals,” said Okonkwo.

“If you were Ezeoke, how would you go back?”

Okonkwo picked up his polish rag, poured some Brasso onto it and started polishing the metal spoon again. “The country is surrounded. The coast is cut off. There is only one way left to get there now.”

“By air?”

“Yes.”

“Who flies there?”

“Which airlines, do you mean?” Okonkwo laughed. “No airlines fly to Biafra. Only aid. And only from Portugal now. He would take a plane to Bissau. And from there to the island of São Tomé. That is where the French are flying their aid planes from.”

“So he’s probably trying to head to Portugal?”

“How could he get there? You are watching out for his house?”

“He wouldn’t dare go near there. There must be half the Met there,” said Tozer.

“What about the committee?” said Breen. “He must have some friends on the committee.”

“He has no friends on the committee,” said Okonkwo angrily. “Even before he stole our money, we had argued. He did not approve of our tactics. He is a traitor.” He put down the spoon, pulled another cloth from a drawer and dusted down his desk. “You should try the hospital. He could borrow money from a colleague.”

“Do you have any idea where he was when he phoned?”

“It was a phone box. He reversed the charges. He could have been anywhere.”

“Did you hear anything in the background that might have given you a clue?”

“It was in a street. There were cars. That is all.”

Breen stood silently in the shop for a minute, looking at the clutter around him. A white-faced wooden figure, standing like a toy soldier on a shelf. A chess set made of tiny wooden carvings of Africans.

“Maybe we should go to the hospital,” said Breen. “Take a look there.”

“You seriously think he’ll have gone back there, sir? It’ll be crawling with our lot.”

Breen looked at the poster that said
Save Biafra
. The same picture of a young boy who had starved to death for the cause.

It was dark when they left the shop and walked to the car.

“So. We going to the hospital now? I don’t think he’ll be there, sir, honest.”

Breen said, “Just get in the car.”

“What?”

“Drive up a little way and park somewhere out of sight.”

Avoiding a man walking past on the pavement, struggling with an enormous brass candelabra, they got in.

“Why, sir?”

“Act normally and just drive away a little bit.”

“Is he still watching us?”

“Probably. Don’t look. Just drive.”

Tozer did as he’d said, pulling up down an alleyway next to a launderette.

“What are we doing?” she asked, switching off the engine.

“Did you recognize the woman who knocked at the door of the shop?”

“No.”

“I think it may have been Mrs. Briggs. Her face was covered up with a scarf but she ran off the minute she saw us in there.”

“You think Ezeoke is in the shop? Hiding?” Tozer asked.

“I don’t know. Something’s going on.” It was a small road. People around eyed the police car, wondering what they were doing parked up in their street.

“But he said he hated Ezeoke.”

“Well he would, wouldn’t he?”

“Oh. I see what you mean. God.” She looked at Breen. “So what are we going to do?”

“The shop has a front and a back entrance. Did you see the corridor at the back? We’ll split up. You take the back. There’s a pub opposite Okonkwo’s shop. It should be open. I’ll call up the station from there. That way I can keep an eye on the front of the shop.”

“Great. You get to sit in the pub and I get to stand on the street.”

“You’re in uniform. You’ll be more conspicuous out front.”

“I suppose.” They walked back down the street towards Okonkwo’s store. Ten yards before the shop was Blenheim Crescent, which led down into an alleyway.

“That’s the back door to the shop there, isn’t it? I’ll be OK here.”

Breen said, “Don’t worry. The station will send people soon. If anyone moves, don’t follow. Just tell us who it is and which way they’re headed.”

“I’ve always wanted to do surveillance,” she said. “Like in the films.”