Tom Cain - Dictator

As Carver was driven away to give Wendell Klerk his account of Zalika’s rescue, his mind turned to Justus Iluko. They’d said goodbye at Tete airport.

‘Thanks,’ Carver had said, ‘you know…’

He hadn’t spelled it out. Both men knew that Justus had saved his life. There was no need to make a big deal about it.

‘No problem,’ Justus had replied.

‘Keep in touch, yeah?’

‘Sure,’ the Malemban had said, though his smile suggested he thought it was pretty unlikely.

Carver had given him a contact number anyway, and Justus had responded with the address of his family farm. It hadn’t seemed significant at the time. But now, sitting in the limo riding into Cape Town from the airport, Carver realized he’d been given a chance to show his appreciation for everything Justus had done.

Carver’s first thought was simply to wire him a hundred grand in US dollars – just a fraction of his own fee for the job. But it didn’t take five seconds’ thought to realize that in a small rural community in Malemba that kind of money would cause as many problems as it solved. People would look on their newly rich neighbour with a festering mixture of envy, greed and resentment. Far better to give him, say, ten up front, but then set up a discreet trust fund for the children to make sure they got a good education. Justus would prefer that too: those kids meant everything to him. Carver made a mental note to call his banker as soon as he got back to Geneva.

Shortly after dawn, the first police arrived in Chitongo and set to work examining the building where Zalika Stratten had been held, the warehouse and its surroundings, and the area around the football pitch. A uniformed constable was picking his way through a group of four bodies, all lying within metres of one another, when he stopped and frowned as a fractional movement caught his eye. He got down on his knees next to a body and leaned over it, his head tilted so that one ear was just above the body’s mouth. Then he gasped, jumped back up to his feet and shouted out, ‘Doctor, doctor! Over here! One of them is still alive!’

The second time Wendell Klerk summoned Carver, he phrased it as an invitation: a weekend at Campden Hall, his estate in Suffolk, seventy miles north of London. ‘I’m having a few people over. I think you’d enjoy it,’ he said. ‘If there’s a better chef or a finer wine-cellar in any private home in England, I’ve yet to see them. And I’ve got a shooting set-up that’s second to none.’

Whatever the reason Klerk was so keen to see him, Carver didn’t think it had much to do with good company or fine wine. But the Mozambique assignment had given him a lot of respect for the man. In a business filled with double-crossing bastards, Klerk had told it straight, kept his word and paid in full when the job was done. That was a decade ago now, but there was no harm in at least listening to what he had to say.

‘Sounds good,’ Carver said.

‘Excellent. You still based in Geneva? I’ll send a plane to pick you up.’

The plane duly arrived one Friday afternoon in May, and a uniformed chauffeur driving a Bentley Arnage limousine collected Carver from the airport and drove him to Campden Hall. A butler opened a front door that nestled beneath the portico of classical Ionic columns that dominated the building’s Palladian facade. When Carver stepped into the marble-floored grand hall, from which a double staircase rose through the heart of the house, one of the most striking women he had ever seen in his life was waiting there to greet him.

She walked towards him with a click-clack of teetering patent black heels and a smile that proclaimed there was nothing, absolutely nothing in the whole wide world that could possibly delight her more than saying hello to Samuel Carver. Her glossy auburn hair floated around her shoulders like a slow-motion close-up in a shampoo commercial. Below the breasts that pressed against the soft cream silk of her blouse a broad black belt – patent, to match her shoes – emphasized the slenderness of her waist, while an apparently demure knee-length black pinstriped skirt was somehow cut to suggest every inch of the long, slender thighs sheathed in sheer black stockings that swayed beneath it.

‘Hello, I’m Alice, Mr Klerk’s personal assistant,’ she said.

Her voice was soft, pliant, almost submissive; but for a fleeting moment Carver caught a much sharper glint in her hazel eyes and the hint of an ironic twist to the corners of her mouth. Alice, he decided, knew precisely the effect she had on men and liked to play with it a little.

She paused, as if daring him to make some cheap crack about the nature of the assistance she offered, then went on: ‘Mr Klerk is so sorry he can’t be here to meet you himself. He’s tied up on a call. But if you follow me, I’ll do my best to make you feel at home.’

Alice turned and led the way across the hall, proving as she went that her rear view was almost as good as her front. She showed him into a richly decorated drawing room that, in a nod to long-gone imperial traditions, combined very English proportions and furniture with rugs, paintings and objects suggestive of wilder, distant lands.

‘Can I get you a drink, Mr Carver?’ Alice asked.

‘Scotch, please, Blue Label if you’ve got it.’

‘Of course. Ice? Soda water?’

‘No thanks, neat will do fine.’

She pressed a button on one of the side-tables and a second later the butler reappeared and was given Carver’s order.

‘Terence will bring your drink in a moment,’ Alice said as he departed. ‘I’ll go and see what Mr Klerk is getting up to. I’m sure he won’t want to keep you waiting.’

She left with what Carver felt certain was a deliberate twitch of her pinstriped backside just before the door closed behind her. Less than a minute later, Terence entered with a silver tray on which stood two whisky snifters, a full lead crystal decanter and a small glass jug of water with two more glasses. He placed the tray on a table and poured out a glass of whisky and another of water. Then he stepped to one side, saying nothing, giving no indication whatever of how he expected Carver to proceed.

Carver could tell that Terence, like so many servants, was a crashing snob. This was his way of testing Carver’s right to be served.

‘Thank you, Terence,’ said Carver, with charming condescension.

There weren’t many times he thanked his adoptive parents for sending him off to the overpriced, emotionally stunting, frequently abusive confines of an old-fashioned private boarding school, but this was one of them. He had at least been taught how to conduct himself properly, and, when his education failed to provide the correct solution to a social problem, to have the self-confidence to fake one.

Ignoring the snifter, Carver took a sip of water to clear his palate. Only then did he lift the glass of whisky, gently swirl the honey-coloured liquid and take a long, appreciative sniff of its smoky, floral aromas. Finally he lifted the glass and took a sip. ‘Perfect,’ he said, once he had savoured its complex flavours. ‘That will be all, thank you.’

Terence gave a fractional nod, acknowledging that Carver would now be treated as a gentleman rather than a mere hired hand, and disappeared once again.

Taking his whisky, Carver strolled across to the ornate marble fireplace that was the centrepiece of the room. It was flanked on either side by two mighty elephant’s tusks that stood almost to Carver’s full height.

Above the fireplace hung an oil painting at least five feet tall and wide enough to cover the entire chimney breast. It was a head-on portrait of a single bull elephant striding across the savannah. The artist had somehow perfectly captured not just its appearance, but its spirit. Carver could almost feel the earth tremble at the elephant’s approach, as though it might at any moment break free from the imprisonment of the picture and step right out into the room.