The secretary in the cold dark hallway up to his office buzzed me through. Al Hadji was sitting in magnificent blue robes behind the usual businessman’s ninety-cubic-foot desk, which he must have lowered through the roof, or built his office around it. We shook hands. He chucked his new mobile lovingly under the chin and offered coffee.
‘Is this business?’ he asked.
‘Do you know a guy called Jean-Luc Marnier?’
Bélijébi’s face stilled at the name. He nodded.
‘I know him,’ he said. ‘But if you don’t, it might be better for you to keep it that way.’
‘Does that mean he is a crook?’
Bélijébi didn’t answer.
‘When did you last see him?’ I asked.
‘Not for months.’
‘What’s his game?’
‘This is only talk, you understand. But the men I’ve heard this from are not idle gossipers.’
‘As long as you tell me more than he’s in import/export, I’ll listen.’
‘It’s what he imports and exports that’s important.’
‘Not just veg oil and cotton seed?’
‘No,’ he said, screwing a massive gold ring up and down a finger. ‘He exports people.’
The round pin finds the round hole.
‘There’s a long tradition of that kind of thing along this coast,’ I said. ‘Didn’t it all start from that place west of here, Ouidah? Some Brazilian supplying slavers with…’
‘Not slaves. These are paying customers. People paying to get an EC passport and passage.’
‘Full paperwork service supplied.’
‘I don’t know the details.’
‘Does he import anything interesting?’
‘I don’t know,’ he said, staring at the desk.
‘Is this something else I shouldn’t know about?’
‘I really don’t know,’ he said, not looking up.
‘Does Marnier have any friends, or just dissatisfied business associates?’
‘There’s a Frenchman who runs a bar down in the Jonquet zone. Michel Charbonnier. I think he’s supposed to be a friend but if you go and see him don’t use my name.’
‘That sort of bar?’
‘Are there any others down there?’
‘Does it have a name?’
‘L’ouistiti.’
‘What’s a ouistiti?’
‘A marmoset, I think you call it.’
‘How cute.’
‘You’ll see,’ he said, finishing his coffee, ‘if you can stay up that late without getting into trouble.’
I went back home with a baguette from the Gerbe d’ Or in the passenger seat and let Helen make me a salad. I was going to sleep out the afternoon, which was oppressive with more storm clouds building. I didn’t manage it. I ended up lying in bed thinking in very tight circles about Marnier.
If Bélijébi was hearing right, the five dead men on the Kluezbork II were Marnier’s stowaways – another good reason, alongside the Franconelli factor, for him to keep his face off the street and his wife on the hop. I was sure Marnier would want to hear my ‘inside’ on the Kluezbork II and I was equally certain that I was going to get to meet him, but that any face-to-face would be a big surprise, even bigger for me because I had no solution to his problem.
Bagado was also in this equation, which had the look of one of those differential jobs I never got the hang of in maths. He’d kiss me if I served up Marnier the marlin just as certainly as he would brickbat my balls if he found I’d slipped one past him, even if it was to save my own ass. And that, after all, was the nub as far as I was concerned – Marnier or me.
There was no question it was going to be Marnier, but I wanted a better feel for what Franconelli’s men had in mind and why. Now that I knew we weren’t dealing with a Simple Simon I had to get myself tutored up. At least I’d made contact with Marnier and had a mobile number for him, which could give me a quarter chance of squeezing more juice out of Carlo.
I left a message at the Hotel de la Plage for Carlo and Gio to meet me at the La Verdure restaurant/bar in downtown Cotonou. I certainly didn’t want them coming to the office now that I knew Marnier was out there keeping himself informed.
I slept a brain-damaged sleep and woke up with an eye glued shut and the realization that I hadn’t checked out Marnier’s home address. I had to do that before I went to the La Verdure. Get rid of all the obvious stuff first.
The home address that Carlo had given me was up in Cadjehoun, an area next to the smart Cocotiers district, which had gone through a rebuilding project to house minions for the Francophonie. I found Marnier’s house at the end of an afternoon darkening early with rain clouds. It wasn’t new and was built on the same principle as mine – servants’ quarters and a garage on the ground floor, and an apartment on the first. There was a chain across the short drive and a gardien’s stool positioned by the open gate. The gardens out front were in superb condition, with a variety of palms and shrubs getting high on the long rains. I parked, stepped over the chain and shouted for the gardien. Two ribbons of fresh tyre marks went into the empty garage, taking mud with them.
A young guy stripped to the waist and sweating appeared out of the shrubbery with a hoe in one hand and a heavy chopping machete in the other.
‘Le patron il est ici?’ I asked.
‘Il est parti depuis longtemps.’
‘Et la patronne?’
‘Il n’y a pas une patronne.’
Interesting.
‘Qu’est-ce que c’est la derniére fois que tu a vu le patron?’
‘Cinq ou six mois.’
‘Qui t’ a payé?’
‘Uhn?’
‘Tu n‘as été pas payé?’
Floored by that question he looked off into the garden. It was nearly night by now, with the storm brewing. I slipped him 500 CFA which he kept in his hand and looked at. A trickle of sweat slipped down his chest.
‘Le patron n’est jamais ici,’ he said.
‘Il habite oú maintenant?’
‘Je ne sais pas, monsieur. Vraiment.’
He tried to give me back the money. I told him to keep it and asked if I could take a look around. He didn’t like it but the money had complicated things. I went up the outside stairs and looked into the living room. In the failing light a basically furnished place revealed itself. The only expensive item a big TV and stereo system. I looked up on the roof and sure enough there was a large and expensive satellite dish. The place wasn’t abandoned and I was sure people had lived here until very recently. There were drinks and glasses out on a tray on a sideboard and a book with a bookmark in it on a pile of glossies on the coffee table. I should have come straight here once Carole had lost me. The alphas were coming up thick and fast on the stupidity tests.
I