It was Larry Brown’s third night at the Quincy Hotel in Washington and Senator Mary Collis’s PA, Collette, had called him three times for more information. The trouble was that he was running out of anything that was more than unsubstantiated suspicion. At that rate, he risked being dismissed as a conspiracy theorist at best and a nutcase at worst.
He’d called Colin, but all Colin would say was “Hang in there, Larry.
Mark’s flying back right now with a lot more. We’ll schedule a conference call.”
I arrived in London, made my way directly to the Asher & Asher office in Edgeware Road, and the first thing I heard as climbed the stairs was Colin’s voice.
“Talk of the devil. If I’m not mistaken, I can hear his fairy footsteps on the stairs. You want to hold on while he gathers his breath? He’s not as young as he was.”
I dropped my bag on the landing, said “Hi” to Ching who was sitting with her headphones on while talking to someone, somewhere in Chinese mandarin, and walked past her to the room that’s always littered with old sandwich wrappers and booby-trapped with wires that Colin called his office. “Yeh, it’s him. The traveller returns. Give me five, Larry, and I’ll call you back.”
I suppose it was good to be back. I didn’t expect to be here very long, but now and again, I need to remind myself what my back-up office looks like. Describing it as too small is an understatement. Colin spun around in his chair.
“You’ve aged, “I told him. “And put on more weight.”
“How nice to see you,” he replied. He didn’t get up but shook my hand. “Your hand’s wet,” he said. “Where have you been?”
“It’s raining outside. Didn’t you know.”
“Is it?” he said. “It’s like summer in here.”
“It’s hotter than Bangkok.”
“I like heat and humidity. Blood, sweat, and tears is our new company motto. Did I forget to tell you? Sit down. Take the weight off your feet.”
“There’s no space and no chair.”
“Then perch on the edge of the desk and listen because I’ve got some bad news. I’ve also got some better news but I’ll give you the bad first.”
“Jimmy?”
“You guessed, huh?”
I couldn’t help it, but my face automatically screwed up. Somehow, I’d been expecting it. “Tell me,” I said.
Jimmy’s problems had started while I was still at the airport in Nairobi where he’d described the paperwork, he’d got from the freight forwarder. It was eventually to become critical evidence, but that’s when Jimmy’s trouble started.
He had returned to his car and was putting the key in the lock when he felt a heavy hand on his shoulder. When Jimmy turned, the first thing he saw was the long sleeve of a dark green shirt that he’d seen earlier.
Jimmy was about to get his first real close-up of Dominique Lunneau As he looked at the face, the Algerian or Tunisian features were obvious. There was a fine black stubble on Lunneau’s lightly tanned face, an incongruous-looking earring in his left ear and his hair had a slight curl with grey streaks. Close up, he looked about forty, but it was what Jimmy felt and saw in the other hand, half covered by the long green sleeves, that bothered him. The gun that he had seen through the keyhole in Lunneau’s office door was now in Lunneau’s hand and was digging into Jimmy’s ribs.
Jimmy had parked his car on the road outside, not in the wired-off area that was Ace Logistics’ car park, and for a moment, there was silence as Lunneau looked up and down the road, as if checking if anyone was watching. It seemed not.
Jimmy stood perfectly still as the gun was pressed further and further between his ribs. When it became almost unbearable, Lunneau spoke.
“I don’t like people following me, OK? There is no one around, and it’ll only take me one second to shoot you and three more seconds to put your dead body in my car. Move.”
Lunneau pointed to the car behind - the Toyota that Jimmy had followed earlier, the car that had already held two bodies. “Get in.”
Jimmy did as he was told. Lunneau, still pointing the gun at Jimmy through the open door. He then opened the driver’s door, shut the rear door, and got in the driver’s seat. Then he turned around and pointed the gun directly at Jimmy’s head. “Now,” he said, “who are you? And what’s the name of that white friend of yours?”
Jimmy said nothing but looked down the barrel of the short pistol. It clicked, and Lunneau’s finger pressed on the trigger. Jimmy, thinking his time was up, closed his eyes and tried thinking of the beach in Mombasa, but nothing happened. When he opened his eyes, the gun was only two inches away, but Lunneau was now holding a phone in his free hand. He spoke into it. “Got him. He’s in the car. Come here now. I’m outside Ace.”
Jimmy wondered if he could make a run for it, but it didn’t look promising. If anything, the gun was now touching his forehead, but he also wanted to say something. It wasn’t in his nature to stay silent for too long.
“I ask again. Who the fuck are you?”
Jimmy said nothing.
“OK, put your hand inside your shirt pocket and remove the phone.”
With the gun now making a dent in his forehead, Jimmy decided to complied knowing it would be a giveaway. He knew I had warned him about mobile phones and the information lying on them. It was why I constantly changed mine, but it was too late now. He took out his phone, and Lunneau grabbed it.
“Now take out the wallet from your back pocket.”
“Oh, my aunt,” thought Jimmy. “Now he’ll see everything.” But with the gun poking him in the right eye, he leaned forward to access the back pocket of his trousers, pulled on the wallet that contained nearly all his personal details, and handed that over as well.
“OK,” Lunneau said. “Now put on the seat belt.”
Jimmy obeyed.
“Now twist it and put it around your neck. Jimmy had seen this done in a movie once, and knew what to do. He also knew what had happened next in the movie.”
“Give me the buckle.”
Jimmy tugged on the seat belt that was now around his neck and handed it over. With his free hand, Lunneau twisted it a few more
times and then pushed it into the socket of the front passenger seat.
Then he tugged on it, almost choking Jimmy. “Now lie down facing the back of the car.”
Jimmy, already feeling like an oven-ready chicken, pulled up his long legs, put his feet onto the seat, and rolled over.
It was then that he heard and felt what seemed like the shattering of his own skull. For a second, he thought he’d been shot. But then it happened again, louder this time, and Jimmy lost consciousness.
When he came to, he found he was still at the back seat of the Toyota with the seat belt around his neck, but he was now in a sitting position with his aching head hanging forward on his chest. His hands and his feet were held together with a rope. Jimmy couldn’t move. If he had, he’d probably have strangled himself, but as his brain slowly began to function again, he could also feel a coldness coming from a crack somewhere in his skull. He wanted to touch it, but couldn’t. So, he just lay there wondering how deep it was.
In the front seat, where Lunneau had been, sat a man he’d never seen before. He was peering around the headrest with a grin on his face, and the same gun was again pointing at Jimmy’s head. The man was not a North African like Lunneau but an Arab. Jimmy could not have placed him on a map, but he could now place him as the man who’d driven the van away from the Shah Medicals site the night before. He wasn’t one of the Pakistanis after all. Either way, Jimmy didn’t like his sense of humour.
“So, Mr Jimmy Banda. Accountant and part-time office cleaner. You are very lucky that I am a doctor. Do you need some paracetamol?”
“No, thank you,” Jimmy muttered.
“That’s good to hear. Doctors always overprescribe. That is because they have a duty to keep people alive, you see. Even when there is no longer any will to live left in the patient, they are still required by law to do something. And because people now live so long, doctors are overworked. Is it any wonder they prescribe drugs without knowing exactly what they’re treating? But they don’t have time to think any longer, you see. The queues at their doors just get longer and longer.”
“Yes,” Jimmy said, hoping that a conversation about medical ethics might yield something positive. But as he couldn’t think of anything more to say, he repeated himself. “Yes,” he said again.
The mysterious doctor was playing with the gun. One minute, it pointed straight at Jimmy’s head; the next, it pointed out of the car window. And so, Jimmy tried to look out of the window, although his vision was nowhere near as good as it had been that morning. But he could tell they were no longer outside the Ace Logistics building. In fact, Jimmy had no idea where he was. There were short thorn trees all around the car, and the ground looked red and dusty and full of potholes. Lions probably prowled here along with the vultures that fed off rubbish tips. A small round hut with a corrugated roof was just visible through the trees. Unfortunately, though, no other humans were close by.
“Where are we?” Jimmy asked, thinking it best to adopt a friendly tone with his doctor.
“Somewhere quiet. But if you want to go back to your office or go home, then you’ll need to tell me something very quickly as I haven’t got long. I am very busy, and we are expecting an epidemic.”
There was a short pause. The man’s grin disappeared, and the tone of his voice suddenly changed. “So,” he said, “I understand you are not just an accountant, Mr Banda. You are also a private detective. Am I right? You have a nice office. Louise was very cooperative when I spoke to her.”
Jimmy’s interest in the view outside the car window ceased.
“Now, before I lose my temper, Mr Banda, tell me something. Who is this man you phoned? The number is entered twice on your phone—
once in the name of Franklin, the next as Mr D. But it is the same number. You phoned him just before my colleague apprehended you.
This man then tried to phone you several times and then sent you a text. In the text, he says he’s flying to London and will get Colin to phone you. He signed off as MD, which is strange because in my profession, MD means doctor of medicine. Who is MD?”
“I don’t know,” said Jimmy.
“Well, I think I do,” said the doctor. “Because the other man, Colin, called from a company called Asher and Asher in London and spoke to Louise in your office to ask if she knew where you were. I think we’ll know sooner rather than later who he is, Mr Banda. It’ll be very easy to hunt him down.”
Happy-go-lucky Jimmy, trussed up at the back seat of a Toyota with two gashes in his head and a gun in front of his eyes, was in no mood for any humour. But he tried it, nevertheless. “So, are you on safari, Doctor?”
“No, Mr Banda. But we don’t really need you, do we? You are like so many millions of others - superfluous.”
Jimmy stared at the grinning face of the man still peering around the side of the driver’s headrest. He was still grinning as Jimmy conjured one last vision of the beach in Mombasa and his beautiful wife of twenty years who he had always called Auntie Bahati.