Blood is Dirt. Robert Thomas Wilson

wrong with your hand?’

      ‘Nothing you’re going to catch.’

      ‘I don’t know about that,’ I said, and drained the first grande pression and started in on the second. ‘Let’s get this straight. The gang that stole your money from your UK bank account have called you here in your luxurious Beninois hotel and have volunteered to give you your money back. In cash. In dollars.’

      He nodded.

      Ten hours ago you came into my office so frazzled you wouldn’t even tell me their shoe size. Half an hour ago you tell me you’re petrified … seem to think your death is required in all this. Ten minutes ago you get a phone call and you’ve kissed and made up. Now you want me to hold your hand out there in the dark. What annoys me, Napier, what you have to tell me right now is-do I look that much of a sucker?’

      He nodded.

      ‘You’re on your own,’ I said, and stood up to finish the beer.

      ‘No, no, Bruce. Sorry. I didn’t mean that. What I meant was that if I start telling you what it’s all about we’re going to be here until six in the morning and the meeting is at nine tonight. There just isn’t the time to fill you in. You’ve got twenty minutes to say “yes” and get me there. But look, what I can tell you is that the person gave me a name. The name of a very powerful man who has guaranteed the handover and my personal safety.’

      ‘What about mine?’

      ‘Yours too.’

      ‘What the hell do you need me for?’

      ‘How do you get a moped taxi to stop in this town?’

      ‘You shout kekeno. It’s Fon for “stop”.’

      ‘Now you don’t want me to get on the back of a moped with two million dollars in a suitcase, do you?’

      ‘I’m your chauffeur,’ I said, getting it. Napier laughed.

      ‘If you like.’

      Since when have you paid your chauffeur ten thousand bucks for a night’s work?’

      ‘As a matter of fact this is the first time,’ he said, and socked back the chaser.

      What’s the name of your guarantor?’

      ‘You don’t need to know and you don’t want to know.’

      ‘Maybe I’d like to know. See if he’s on my party list. Get an invitation to him for my next one. If he’s this powerful I could use him in my business.’

      Napier got another Camel under way and used his thumb to get an imaginary plank out of his own eye.

      ‘The less you know about this the better. You help me. You take your money. We never see each other again.’ ‘Just as we were getting beyond the small-talk stage, getting to know each other a bit …’

      ‘Nobody knows me, Bruce, least of all myself. Time’s short. Are you in or out?’

      ‘Where’s the meet?’

      ‘Are you in or out?’

      ‘Why do you think I’m asking?’

      ‘That’s not a yes and it’s not a no.’

      ‘It means if we’re meeting in a private room in the Sheraton it’s a “yes''. If we’re meeting in an empty warehouse in the industrial zone it’s a big “no''. There are places to do these kind of things. I did one of these out in the bush in the Côte d’Ivoire and nearly found myself as dead as the guy I was supposed to be meeting.’

      ‘In a coconut grove opposite the Hotel Croix du Sud. They tell me there’s a bit of beach there where people go for picnics at the weekend.’

      ‘Harmless enough during the day.’

      ‘But you need your hand held at night.’

      ‘This is not a good idea, Napier,’ I said. ‘What if I say no.’

      ‘Nothing’s going to stop me going out there to take a look.’

      ‘You’re a bastard.’

      ‘Am I?’ he asked, innocent as cherry blossom.

      ‘You’re the one who said you wanted to make some money out of my … out of me, if it could be made.’

      ‘That’s right. I’m upfront about what I want. You, on the other hand, won’t tell me a damn thing and then you corner me into feeling responsible for you … a white man in West Africa with …’

      ‘You’re not doing it for free,’ he said, and smiled. Now that his face wasn’t a chiselled mess of fear and worry I could see what got him into a lot of trouble and what probably got him a lot of women too – a little-boy look. I dropped the chaser down the hatch and we went out to the car. I fitted the keys into the ignition and thought ten thousand dollars could solve a lot of problems and then stopped myself in case the next time I looked in the mirror I’d find Napier staring back at me.

      ‘I don’t suppose you’ve got a gun, have you?’ he asked.

      Firing a piece of lead into human flesh, watching a man drop with a gut shot, seeing his life crawling away from him, takes something that I haven’t got. And you-if I remember rightly, Napier Briggs-got spooked from seeing a dead sheep in the car park, got the vom from seeing a little offal on the pavement. I don’t think you’re in any frame of mind to be going around pointing guns at people.’

      We drove back across the lagoon, up the main drag past the remains of the evening fish market and past the port which was lit up with ships being worked and loaded trucks queuing to get out on the road. The ship’s agents offices were dark and quiet on either side of the Boulevard de la Marina. We continued up past the Hotel du Port, the Présidence, the Hotel Croix du Sud and the huge expanse of cocotiers between the road and the sea. Napier watched it all go.

      ‘Where are we going?’ he asked.

      I took a left before the conference centre on to a short causeway out to the new Novotel and parked up in its floodlit car park. The flags of all nations snapped in the sea breeze, their ropes pinged against the metal poles.

      ‘The Croix du Sud was back …’

      ‘Your two million dollars is out there,’ I said, pointing across him back towards the port. About three hundred metres.’

      ‘You’re still going with me … aren’t you?’

      ‘Now that we’re away from the bar, the beers and the chasers, now that you can see how black it is out there in the cocotiers, now that you can hear the sea and the wind, I thought I’d give you a chance to think about whether you reckon there’s somebody standing out in the middle of that lot with two million in a suitcase.’

      Napier looked to where I’d been pointing. In the bright lights of the Novotel car park I saw the sweat start out on his forehead. He wiped a finger across his brow and dabbed the palms of his hands on his trousers. His tongue came out to try and put some lick on his lips.

      ‘Where’s this guarantor you’ve just spoken to on the phone?’

      ‘Lagos,’ he said, turning back, his mind drifting off to a time when this was all over and he was on a flight back to Paris with his cash in the overhead.

      ‘Why don’t we drive in there?’ he asked, the light bulb coming on in his head.

      ‘We could, but there’s only one way in and one way out and once we’re in there we’re stuck in the car, an easy sedentary target. If we’re on the hoof we can leg it through those palm trees and there’s nobody who’d be able to get a clear shot at you through that lot.’

      They were good words to use, ‘target', ‘leg it', ‘shot', but they didn’t infect his judgement with a germ of terror.