Robert Karjel - My Name is N

‘They’re all crooks. How long have I got?’

‘Ages. Ten minutes?’

I hung up. The gardien came in with the best thing of the morning and I gave him a tip to go and buy his bouille, the wet sugary bird food they like to eat for breakfast. I gave him some extra to go and find a girl to clean the office up properly too. I drank coffee and fluffed eating the croissant badly so it was all over me when Polly called back.

‘That was quick,’ I said.

‘Only because we’ve been working the ship for Marnier’s company, loading cotton seed.’

‘The Kluezbork II?’

‘You’ve heard?’

‘I was on it yesterday afternoon.’

‘They think the crew did it and they were going to throw them to the sharks when they got out to sea.’

‘That’s not logical, Polly.’

‘That’s the rumour.’

Bagado’s machine working already.

‘You got anything sensible or interesting on Marnier?’

‘He imports veg oil in drums and bottles it here in Cotonou to sell locally. He exports cotton seed and fibre. Somebody said he’s done cashew but I don’t remember the name La Côte Oueste. I’ve heard he does business out of Lomé and Abidjan too. That’s it.’

‘Well, that all sounds very legal to me.’

‘He doesn’t have to be a crook.’

‘The people I know he’s dealing with say he does,’ I said. ‘Anyway, thanks. When’s your birthday?’

‘You missed it.’

‘I’ll make it up to you, Polly.’

‘Don’t call me Polly, that’ll do.’

‘You’re lucky you’re not pretty.’

‘That’s not what the girls say in the New York, New York club.’

‘It’s dark in the New York, New York, and you’re black.’

‘Au revoir, M. Bru.’

I got in the car in a sweat from the coffee and headed east to cross the lagoon to Akpakpa and the industrial zone where Marnier’s company had their offices, about four kilometres out on the Porto Novo road. Bagado’s car was sitting beside a large puddle near the Ancien Pont, and there was a big crowd streaming down the bank to one side of the bridge. I parked up and went with the flow. I knew it was bad because some wailing had started up towards the front and people were crowding on the bridge looking down at the water’s edge, the Catholics among them crossing themselves.

An ambulance arrived and reversed down the bank. I followed it in and broke through the police cordon to find Bagado standing alone by a small skiff with sails made out of polypropylene sacks. His hands were jammed down into his mac pockets, stretching it tight across his back. His body language was grim. I drew alongside. His jaw muscle, working over some high-density anxiety, popped out of the side of his cheek.

His head turned five degrees to me and then went back to the skiff. In the belly of the boat, blown up to the point where the brown school pinafore was stretched taut, was the decomposing, fish-ravaged body of what I assumed was one of the missing schoolgirls. On the ground by the skiff, with his head between his knees, was the boat’s owner. His skin was grey and there was a patch of vomit between his heels.

‘He found her up on the sand bar. She was on her way out to the Gulf and the sharks and we wouldn’t have known anything more about her,’ said Bagado.

‘Where’s Bondougou?’

‘He’s coming. You’d better get out of here. This crowd could go off any minute.’

‘You’d better get going too, Bagado.’

‘I just want to look at this a moment. Hone my wrath.’

I worked my way back through the jostling crowd. Younger men at the back were beginning to get excited. They had sticks and rocks and their fists were jabbing the air. Some of them were hawkers from the traffic lights, looking to break up the boredom of their day with a bit of blood-letting. I got into my car and crawled across the bridge, pedestrians pounded on the roof.

La Côte Oueste Sari wasn’t difficult to find. The gardien let me in through a gate that could handle plenty of trouble should it come along. He pointed me up to some offices flanking the warehouse where I could see a bottling plant not in use. Most of the offices had their blinds down, but I found one with a glass door and beyond it a white woman in a short, tight red skirt, black vest and red high heels with little leather bows on the back. She had her back to the door and was spraying a huge umbrella plant. She was stretching up with one leg bent at the knee as if she was hoping that there was somebody else in the office to take notice. The air was freeze-dried inside and I didn’t disturb the woman’s work by coming in. She persisted with the disapproving atomizer – tsk, tsk – tsk, tsk.

‘Bonjour,’ I said

She span round faster than if she’d been caught with her hands in the till and went over on one of her high heels. She fell back into a plump black leather chair which swallowed her with a gasp. The atomizer, which I could now see was a water pistol, was pointing at me.

‘You don’t frighten me with that,’ I said to her in French.

She laughed badly, as if there was plenty needed tightening up in the nerves department.

‘You scared me,’ she said, putting the pistol down. ‘I didn’t hear you come in.’

‘You don’t look as if you’ve got a weak heart.’

‘I don’t,’ she said, and went behind the desk.

To keep herself in that trim she must have had the heart of a steeplechaser. Her body had a fat percentage in the single figures and it looked as if it was monitored that way. She must have had a set of scales with the grams marked off and a red line for anything over fifty kilos.

Her face was as taut as a jockey’s, the muscles evident under the stretched skin. She had a small mouth, very small. It couldn’t have used up more than an inch. It looked as if it was going to be very economical. She put a set of long red talons through her short bleach-blonde hair and kicked herself away from the desk on a castered chair. She crossed her legs, keeping her eyes on mine, seeing where they went, and leaned back, showing me the workings of her abdominals under the spray-on vest.

‘I’ve come to see Jean-Luc. Is he here?’

‘You should have called,’ she said.

‘Does that mean he isn’t?’

She blinked once, slowly, and breathed in through her nose as if that was some kind of a reply.

‘Does that mean I need an appointment?’ I asked.

A little tongue came out of the little mouth and nipped back in again.

‘I’m doing all the work here,’ I said, ‘and you’re the one behind the desk.’

‘What do you want to see him about?’

‘Veg oil.’

‘You don’t need to see him to buy veg oil. I can sell you that.’

‘I’m not buying, I’m selling.’

‘He’s not buying,’ she said. ‘I know.’

‘I wouldn’t mind hearing that from him.’

‘I speak with his voice.’

‘Since the operation,’ I said.

She frowned.

‘Une petite blague,’ I said.

‘Très petite,’ she confirmed.

‘Are you his managing director, then?’ I asked. ‘You didn’t give me your card or tell me your name.’

‘Carole,’ she said, and as an afterthought, ‘Marnier.’

‘You must be his wife.’

‘I could be his sister, his half sister or his sister-in-law.’

‘If he had a brother…which he doesn’t,’ I guessed.

The knot of muscle at the back of her neck keeping her shoulders braced loosened about a millimetre.

‘You didn’t say your name.’

‘Bruce Medway.’

‘No card?’

‘No,’ I said, getting some of my own economy going.

She uncrossed her muscly legs, pulled herself back up to the desk and tucked herself in tight underneath it.