Blood is Dirt. Robert Thomas Wilson

      

      ROBERT WILSON

      Blood is Dirt

       Copyright

      HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd 1 London Bridge Street London SE1 9GF

      This paperback edition 1998

      First published in Great Britain by HarperCollinsPublishers 1997

      Copyright © Robert Wilson 1997

      Robert Wilson asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work

      A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

      All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins ebooks.

      HarperCollinsPublishers has made every reasonable effort to ensure that any picture content and written content in this ebook has been included or removed in accordance with the contractual and technological constraints in operation at the time of publication

      Source ISBN: 9780006499756

      Ebook Edition © FEBRUARY 2011 ISBN: 9780007393886

      Version: 2019-01-03

      For Jane and my mother and in memory of João

      Contents

       Cover

       Title Page

Copyright

1

2

3

4

5

6

       7

       8

       9

       10

       11

       12

       13

       14

       15

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       18

       19

       20

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       About the author

       by the same author

       Praise for Robert Wilson

       About the Publisher

       1

       Cotonou, Benin. Friday 16th February.

      The sheep stood in the car park looking at its African owner with interest but no concern, which was a mistake. The animal had arrived from the market on a moped lying across the lap of its executioner whose sackful of knives was resting on the sheep’s back. He’d lifted the sheep off with a gentleness normally reserved for sick children. The sheep was no more than dazed at seeing life passing it by a little quicker than usual. The butcher tethered it to the bumper of a Land Rover and arranged his knives on the sack.

      A boy arrived in a sweat on a bicycle which he leaned against the wall. He ran into the building. His feet slapped on the tiles in the stairwell. A while later the feet came back down again. And a while after that someone wearing steel tips on their shoes followed. They appeared in the car park.

      The sheep looked from the owner to the boy and then to the very tall, athletic Lebanese with the steel tips who was about to be the new owner but with one drastic difference that the sheep had not, as yet, rumbled. The Lebanese inspected the sheep, drumming the fingers of one hand on his washboard stomach and using the other hand to spin his gold chain around his neck. He nodded.