‘And the other half?’
‘American,’ he said, stroking his neck. ‘My fadder like them white girls. You know them aid workers. He fuck one, she havin’ me then leavin’ me with my fadder when she go back to the States. They don’t like white girls comin’ back home with little black piccaninny under they arms.’
‘You staying out here in Grand Bassam?’
He thought about that for a moment, shook a hanky out and polished his face round and round getting slower.
‘We in the Hotel La Croisette on the front.’
‘You don’t like Abidjan?’
‘They nervous in Abidjan. I like keepin’ calm.’
‘You mean you don’t want to get seen, a man your size in that shirt.’
‘Time for lunch,’ he said, looking at his watch. ‘We no chop yet…you?’
I shook my head. He turned and walked to the hole in the wall with surprising speed, Kwabena just in front of him. He took the big man’s arm to support himself going down the rubble pile.
‘Bon appétit,’ he said over his shoulder. ‘We call you.’ No need to bother about me now. No need to buy me lunch. No need to work on me any more. Someone calls you a clever man, it’s always because he’s cleverer.
From the hole in the wall I watched George swing open the Cadillac’s heavy door and get into the driver’s seat. Kwabena opened the back door. Fat Paul sat on the edge of the seat while Kwabena stirruped his hands. Fat Paul put his foot in them and pushed himself across the back seat into some cushions arranged against the other door. George waited with his hand on the ignition until Kwabena was sitting next to him. The engine roared and then bubbled. The car moved off.
The flat blue-grey lagoon lay stagnant in the afternoon heat. There were no boats out. Two men lay under some palmleaf thatch down by the water, sleeping. A car started, off in the buildings behind me somewhere, and I leaned against the broken wall and thought about how neatly I’d been stitched.
I replayed Fat Paul buying me lunch, opening the package, showing me the contents, resealing it, being open, frank, talking me through it, gaining my trust, letting me think he was a bit of an idiot, letting me bargain him up for a payoff he was never going to have to make. He’d got himself into an all-win situation. If I’d been killed he’d have known he had a problem. I didn’t get killed, he still knew he had a problem and he could use me to clear it up. Saved himself some money, too.
I picked up Moses at the Polyclinique. He’d lost his hang-dog look and was waving his prescription at me as if it was a winning lottery ticket.
‘No money,’ I said, and his face crashed.
‘I still pissing glass, Mr Bruce.’
‘I’m sure you are. Don’t drink anything,’ I said. ‘We might get some money this afternoon. Mebbe you shouldn’t have given the girl the two thousand she giving you trouble down there.’
‘Two thousand CFA don’t catch for this thing,’ he said, shaking the paper, ‘and I don’t know she giving me trouble down there. I know, mebbe I beat her doing this thing.’
‘She looked as if she could give you a beating, you ask me.’
‘Mebbe you right, Mr Bruce. She stroooong woman.’
We parked up in the Novotel garage. Moses gave me his prescription and I told him to come and see me first thing in the morning. I asked reception to put Fat Paul’s new sealed package in the hotel safe and went up to my room, double-locked the door and flaked out on the bed. I dreamt, no doubt something meaningful which would catch up with me later, and just as an unanswered ringing had begun to annoy me, I woke up with the phone on the other side of the bed, insisting. Somebody had filled my mouth with those things the dentist puts in to soak up the goo, but it didn’t matter because it was B.B. on the line and he was speaking through a mouthful of four bananas.
‘You tek your time,’ he said.
‘I was sleeping.’
‘It three in de afternoon.’
‘All this leisure tires me out.’
‘I see…’ he said, swallowing something that must have been the size and furriness of a tennis ball because it took him several goes and left him out of breath. ‘Ra-ra-ra-ra Mary!’ he stammered at a roar to the maid and I heard the slip, slap, slop of her arrival at his side. ‘Drink,’ he said. He put the receiver on his stomach and I heard some subterranean noises that would have made a potholer rush for the surface.
‘What you doing in the Novotel?’
‘I’m staying here.’
‘For your own accoun'?’
‘Unless you want to pay?’ I said, hearing that line fizz through his brain.
‘I not payin’ for dat!’ he roared. ‘Gah! You tinking for one…’
‘B.B., calm down. I’m paying.’
‘Mebbe you pay me de monny you owe me ‘fore you go stayin’ in de Novotel.’
‘You’ll get it, and when you do I’m up to my daily rate, remember.’
‘Bloddy daily rate! Bloddy ting! You teef man wid your daily rate!’
‘What do you want, B.B.?’ I asked, measuring out the syllables. B.B. bubbled some more, chewed over his anger and spat it out like gristle.
‘First ting,’ he belched. ‘You go, you go tomorrow. Kurt, he gone. He not dere. I don’ know where he gone. De wife, she say he still dere. I aks to spik to him. She say he always out. You go, you find de problem. You still haf de Kurt passport detail?’ he asked, knowing I still had it from the last time he’d asked me. He coughed a quantity of phlegm into his mouth and I felt him search for his hanky. ‘Second ting,’ he said, spitting the oyster, ‘you go to Danish Embassy?’
‘Not yet.’
‘What you doin’ all day?’
‘I’ve got a tight schedule.’
‘Mebbe you try wokking in de day like rest of us. Sleep at night, you know.’
‘I’ll make a note of that.’
‘You go to Danish Embassy this afternoon; this Kurt man a criminal, I know it. T’ird ting, de Japanese, dey come.’
‘Which Japanese?’
‘De company dat buy de sheanut. Dey have de croshing plant in Japan.’
‘I know, but what are their names?’
‘My God, dis difficult ting. Har-ra-ra-ra-ra…’
‘Was that one or both of them?’
‘No, de udder one is, Ka-ka-ka-ka-ka…’
‘Fax me.’
‘You tinking correck.’
‘What about money?’
‘Wait de monny!’ he shouted, irritated. ‘De Japanese…you show dem round, show dem de operascharn, you give dem good time, tek plenty whisky. Kurt wife, she help make some food tings an’ such. OK?’
‘Fine. The money for this?’
‘You always aksing de monny!’
‘I haven’t got any and it often slips your mind.’
‘Is there anything left in Korhogo?’