I needed more help from Colin.
“Jimmy finished his first job,” I said. “Very satisfactory it was too, so you can expect an invoice from him. Secondly, there is, or was, a small pharmaceutical manufacturer in Beirut, a French-owned company that lost its French production engineer last year. Can you put a name to the company and the engineer? Better still, can you find a photo of him?”
Sometimes it’s easy to forget time differences, and I sensed I’d just woken Colin up, but I hadn’t finished with my list of ideas. “Have you had any recent contact with Nagi in Cairo?”
Nagi was our Egyptian equivalent to Jimmy Banda except that they were totally different characters. There was a long silence as I waited and imagined him immersed in his winter thickness duvet. “Are you there?” I asked.
“I was waiting for a fourth request. You know what time it is?”
Of course, I knew the time, but he was always telling me that duty took precedence over pleasures of whatever sort. “When can I expect a reply?” I asked.
“Replies as follows,” he said. “Regarding Jimmy - yes, OK, but I won’t hold my breath for his invoice. For an accountant, he really needs to speed up his own invoicing. Second. The missing French fellow. I’ll ask Simone in Paris about that. Third. I haven’t heard from Nagi for months, but that doesn’t mean he’s not operating. He gets nervous since he broke away from the Egyptian security forces. He’s careful what he takes on.”
I knew that, of course. I said I’d wait for his reports and wished him sweet dreams.
“Sweet dreams?” he yelled. “You know damn well I won’t be able to get back to sleep again. You know where I am?”
“Tucked up in bed?” I suggested.
“To hell I am. I’m on the camp bed beneath the desk in my office.”
***
It was time for Anna to eat again, and we were sitting at another roadside food stall when my phone bleeped with a message.“Jimmy the ferret wants me to call back,” I told Anna.
When I called him, he was paying for fuel at a fuel station. “How much?” I heard him say. “You spilled most of it on the ground. I need a discount. I visit this place too often. Yes, I know I’ve got a fuel leak but…”
“Jimmy!” I shouted.
“Ah, yes. Mr Franklin. I want to tell you I called Shah Medical’s accountant this morning,”
That had not been part of the plan, but I’m a patient man. Jimmy, on the other hand, was not being as patient with the fuel attendant.
“I will deduct one hundred shillings. You must be more careful in the future, mzee…Hello? Mr Franklin? Yes, I called Shah Medical’s accountant this morning. I told him I was from Kenya Revenue Authority, and that I needed information on the numbers of employees they had. If he could just tell me on the phone, KRA inspectors wouldn’t need to call around. They employ sixteen.”
“Good work, Jimmy,” I said.
“Then I asked him if Mr Jomo was still their sales manager. Jomo is an old school friend, Mr Franklin. He said yes, but that Jomo is only working for another three weeks because they no longer need a salesman…just a moment Mr Franklin. Two thousand shillings?
Where is your petrol made, mzee, China? I will go somewhere else
next time…sorry, Mr Franklin. So, I met Jomo for beer last night. We told jokes, but Jomo was not wanting to joke too much. He has a wife and four children. Are you there, Mr Franklin?”
“Yes.”
“Jomo told me a lot, Mr Franklin. You got plenty more British pounds to pay invoice?”
“We can ask the bank, Jimmy.”
“OK, I tell you all this before you pay. In advance. This is my way ….
just a moment, Mr Franklin. I need to stop the car . . . OK, I have now stopped. Well, Jomo is a very upset man because he spent fifteen years helping to build Mr Shah’s business. According to Jomo, the Frenchman called Dom told the staff they are to change everything and start testing some new medicine for infections. So, they do not need a salesman now. Instead, they want to expand to Uganda, Tanzania, and Sudan. Jomo doesn’t like French people. He can’t understand the accent and…one moment, Mr Franklin…so I bought more beers and enough for a lady and one condom. Jomo was very depressed last night…Can you hear me, Mr Franklin?
“But before Jomo was ready for the lady, he saw Dom going into the Flamingo Club, but Jomo was too impatient for the lady. So, I left and waited outside the Flamingo Club for two hours until Dom came out.
I took a photo, and I followed him to an apartment block. I have his address. And there’s one more thing, Mr Franklin. Jomo says the Shah Medicals headquarters is in Cairo - that’s in Egypt. Everything comes from Cairo. The big boss is in Cairo and so is Mr O’Brian.”
It was difficult to follow Jimmy’s talk but this was good detective work. Jimmy had his own style, but he excelled at this sort of thing, and he still hadn’t finished.
“And another thing, Mr Franklin. I’ve got a part-time job at Shah Medicals.”
“You’ve got what?”
“A part-time job at Shah Medicals… two hours every Tuesday and Thursday evening, and it’s after Luther Jasman has finished work so no one will recognise me.”
“How in God’s name did you manage that?”
“I can’t hear you, Mr Franklin. I think it’s better if you phone tomorrow.”
“OK,” I said, “but please, Jimmy, don’t forget - mum’s the word.”
“Confidentiality is our corporate policy, Mr Franklin,” he replied and switched off.
***
The next call was from Colin. “The name of the French guy who disappeared from Beirut is Dominique Lunneau.”I punched the air. This was Jimmy’s Frenchman called Dom
“He was in charge of production at a company called Steri-Tech in Tripoli in the north of Lebanon.”
“Have you got a photo?”
“Not a good one, but it’s on its way. And as for Nagi in Cairo, He’s expecting a call from you.”
I smiled to myself and looked at Anna. While I was on my laptop, she would mostly sit, reading on the bed. It was our third day in the same hotel room, but she seemed content. For me, hotels are both a home and an office. For Anna, I wasn’t sure if she liked it and felt a strange longing to take her away from the hotel, away from Bangkok, away from what had become a routine of sleep, phone, and internet interspersed with eating. We’d talked a lot, but there were still gaps in my understanding of her. What’s more, I’d been in a similar situation before.
Some women can come and go with no hard feelings. Like me, I suppose, they seem to accept that life can get a bit lonely sometimes, so they take whatever they need and move on. I wasn’t sure if Anna was like the others, and it’s easy to make mistakes.
I decided to go to Cairo and from there I could easily nip down to Kenya and meet Jimmy.
Besides Anna, the other problem bothering me was what to do with information afterwards. Usually, I’d report to the client, give them what I had and leave it to them to involve law enforcement or to deal with things in their own way. The decision was theirs. My job was finished. But with Virex and Charles Brady appearing so nervous of making decisions, things looked different.
To me, right now, Shah Medicals, Al Zafar, Livingstone Pharmaceuticals, Mohamed Kader, and GOB looked untouchable.
Things would run off them like water off a duck’s back. As for Solomon, things depended on exactly what he was up to. He could turn out just as slippery and I had no idea where he was.
I eventually told Anna I needed to fly to Cairo in the morning but:
“OK,” she said. “You go. I’ll go back to my apartment.”
I didn’t sleep much that night.