Robert Wilson - Instruments of Darkness

‘And this after you’ve been in bed with a polecat all night,’ I said.

‘A lioness, Bruce, a bloody lioness,’ he said as if he was talking to someone in the neighbouring garden.

‘What the hell’s going on with her?’ he asked his stomach, which percolated some coffee through his intestines. He turned and walked back to the table by the lounger, squatted with a loud crack from both knees and poured himself some more coffee and filled a cup for me. He took a croissant from a plate and bit into it. His brain wasn’t getting the spark to turn itself over. He heaved himself on to the lounger.

‘I got the beef out of Tema, it’s on its way up to Bolgatanga,’ he said without thinking and blowing out flakes of croissant on to his hairless chest. I checked the coffee for insects. He was telling me things I didn’t need to know. Jack’s mobile phone rang. On automatic, he pulled up the aerial, clicked the switch to ‘Talk’, and then said nothing, but listened for some time, his eyebrows going over the jumps. I took a slug of the coffee which kicked into my nervous system. It was robusta and strong and bad for you if you’re the shaky type.

‘Can I think about it?’ Jack asked the phone, and then waited while he was told why he couldn’t. ‘I can help, but you have to let me talk…’ He held out a hand to me with eyes that said you can’t tell anyone anything these days. ‘I can’t. I haven’t got the time,’ which was a lie. ‘I have…No you don’t…’ He turned his back to me and I missed a snatch; he came back with some more croissant in his mouth. ‘I have to talk to him first.’ Pause. ‘Let me talk to him.’ Jack looked into the earpiece, pushed the aerial down and switched the phone to ‘Standby’.

‘Look,’ I said, ‘I’ll take this lot down to your man Jawa and then I’ll get back to Cotonou.’

‘What for?’ he asked.

‘If not the rice, Jack, the fifty million might be useful.’

‘I have to think about this.’

‘Did Moses call?’ I asked.

‘No,’ he said thinking elsewhere. ‘Moses didn’t call.’

I listened to the sound of Lomé getting itself together. Some women walked past the wall at the back of the house with piles of washing on their heads and babies on their backs who were sleeping on the rhythmical movement of their mothers’ hips. It seemed like a good place to be, rather than up here feeling seedy and bitter-mouthed from the coffee.

‘You’ve done business with her before,’ I said. ‘She’s always been straight with you, she’s always paid, it’s not as if you’re a one-off. So what’s going on?’ Jack nodded at each element with his chin on his praying hands. I looked at the top of his head. ‘Is it me?’

‘I don’t know,’ he said, looking up.

I stared into his blue eyes and all I saw was a big problem. The phone went in the house and Patience’s flip flops slapped across the tiles.

‘It’s Moses for Mister Bruce.’

‘Can she put it up here?’

‘Different line,’ said Jack, and I went down into the house.

Moses said the rice was being off-loaded and that nothing had been touched in the house. Heike tore the phone out of his hand. She was angry and spoke to me in barbed wire German which left my ear ragged and bleeding. She was in no mood to be apologized to. I didn’t try. The plastic split as her phone hit the cradle. I hauled myself back up to the verandah.

‘Africa. Africa. Africa,’ said Jack after Moses’s news.

‘I’ll drop the money at Jawa’s and go back.’

‘No,’ said Jack, holding up his hand. ‘She’s got the rice now. You won’t even get in the port. I’ll talk to her about the fifty million. I want you to do something else for me. My uncle in Accra needs some help in Cotonou.’

‘I didn’t know you had an uncle in Accra.’

‘I don’t. He’s a family friend, a Syrian multimillionaire. He did a lot of business with my father over the last forty years.’

‘Was that him before?’ I asked. Jack nodded. ‘What does he want?’

‘He needs someone he can trust in Cotonou and I’m volunteering you.’

‘I’ll give him a call.’

‘He wants to see you.’

‘What the hell for?’

‘He likes to see people he employs.’

‘I don’t want to go to Accra.’

‘It’s good money.’

‘To hell with the money. Heike’s in town and she’s bloody furious.’

‘You didn’t make her count the money?’

‘What the hell else was she going to do?’

Jack shook with high giggling laughter and drummed his fingers on his taut belly.

‘If you go now you’ll be back in Cotonou this evening.’

‘Ready for action,’ I said.

Jack ducked his head and turned his mouth down.

‘It’s a new client for you. He’ll pay you a lot better than anyone else around here.’

‘You mean his currency is money rather than promises.’

‘He does have money.’

‘Giving-type money or keeping-type money?’

‘Money-type money.’

‘I don’t care. I don’t want to go.’ I was searching for something. ‘I’ve got lunch with Madame Severnou.’

‘Lunch!’

‘Yeah, first course is a ground glass soufflé.’

‘You’re not going to lunch.’

‘No, and I’m not going to Accra either.’

‘I’ll get someone else. Fine. No problem.’ Jack was giving me the lion look now.

‘I owe Heike. We were counting until three in the morning.’

‘No problem. Forget it.’ Jack looked off into his neighbour’s garden again.

‘Jack,’ I said. ‘I’ll go as long as you promise never to say “no problem” to me.’

‘No problem,’ he said smiling. I didn’t laugh.

It was a game that had to be played. Jack knew I needed the money. I knew I needed the money. Jack knew that I owed him. But appearances have to be kept up. I also wanted to find out what was going on with Madame Severnou and I thought I might be able to catch Jack right now with the stabbing technique.

‘What’s going on, Jack?’

‘With what?’ he said.

‘Madame Severnou.’

Our eyes fixed; Jack’s were steady.

‘Croissant?’ he said, holding up the plate and shrugging.

‘I’ve got to get rid of this first,’ I said, pinching the fat on my stomach. Jack smiled and breathed out.

‘You have nothing to fear, Bruce,’ he said, standing up and slapping his wooden gut. We shook hands and clicked fingers Ghanaian style.

‘My uncle’s name is unpronounceable. Everybody calls him B.B. He lives on the airport side not far from the Shangri La Hotel. Ask for the Holy Church of Christ. His house is next door, on the left as you look at the church.’

I started down the spiral staircase, back into the garage.

‘By the way,’ added Jack, picking up the zapper, ‘he’s a little unusual for a millionaire.’

‘He gives people money for nothing?’ I said.

Jack laughed and the TV came on so I left him. I kept a few things in a room in Jack’s house. I had a shower and changed.

Patience accepted my dirty clothes which she dropped on the floor and walked off to go and be surly somewhere else. Jack was leaning over the balcony waiting for me.

‘What were the heavies like?’ he asked.

‘Big and heavy,’ I said, not feeling like telling him anything.

‘Did they have guns?’

‘Either that or very long arms.’ That impressed him.

‘You keep me informed,’ he said.

‘What about?’

‘About B.B. and things. You might need some help. He’s not so easy to deal with.’

‘Is anybody?’

‘Come and see me when you get back.’ I got in the car and drove down to Jawa’s compound near the DHL office in town.

Jawa’s boy let me into the garage underneath the office and disappeared. I filled up some cardboard boxes with the currency and went upstairs to Jawa’s office through several rooms of dead-eyed men counting huge quantities of money.