Eden Legacy (9 page)

But how to take advantage of it without getting caught?

There was no time to fetch Davit—not that he’d be any help at this kind of work anyway. He checked his pocket to make sure he’d brought his camera-phone
with him, for he’d need to take some footage to keep Ilya happy, then he hurried back to the camping store, concocting a plan on the hoof. He bought a six-inch hunting knife with a serrated blade, a day-pack, a baseball cap and the groundsheet for a tent. He packed his book and map into the day-pack, slung it on his back. He removed the groundsheet from its packaging, flapped it out and draped it over his left shoulder, the quicker to deploy. He checked his reflection in a shop window, tugged the peak of his baseball cap down over his eyes as he walked across the street to lean against a wall from which he could monitor the bank’s front doors.

Then he set himself to wait for Knox to come back out.

There had been times, these past few months, when Davit Kipshidze had seriously considered killing himself. Perversely, he’d been okay in jail in Greece. Back then, he’d had hope. After all, the Nergadzes had vowed to spring him and bring him home. Since they’d made good on their promise, however, he’d slowly come to realise that his old life was forever lost to him, and he
hated
the one that had taken its place. He was a gregarious man by nature, he needed friends and family around. But the police were watching his friends and family in case he showed up, so he couldn’t risk seeing them any more, for their sake as much as his. He therefore sat
alone for days on end in his cramped first-floor apartment, watching TV and listening nervously to cars and the chatter of pedestrians passing by outside.

Lounging on the porch of his beach hut, he stared out over shimmering white sand down to the gentle breakers of the sea. How good sunshine felt after a long winter. How good it felt not to fear the knock upon his door.

Claudia appeared around the edge of his cabin, carrying clean sheets and a broom. She smiled at him as she went inside to strip and change his bed. He stood and went to watch. The view of the sea was nice, but it couldn’t compete with a young and pretty woman. ‘So how come you speak such good English?’ he asked.

She looked around. ‘I live with nice American family,’ she beamed. She held up her right hand, splayed her fingers. ‘Five years.’

‘In America?’ he frowned.

‘In Tulear,’ she told him. ‘A big town south of here. They have this big, big house there for all the children who have no mothers and fathers.’

‘An orphanage?’

‘Yes. An orphanage.’

‘I’m so sorry,’ he told her.

‘Why sorry?’ she frowned. ‘It nice there. They church people, they very kind, they always have food.’ She nodded at happy memories. ‘I like it there very much.’

‘So why leave?’

She pulled a mock-sad face. ‘I grow old. Many children need a home, not enough beds.’ She looked a little guilelessly up at him. ‘Now everything is work, work, work.’

‘Is that right?’ he laughed.

She laughed too, stuck her tongue out. She had slightly crooked upper front teeth, he noticed, that overlapped just fractionally, like the ankles of a coy bride on her wedding night. His chest went a little warm. He’d missed it sorely, these past two years, the company of a pretty woman.

She finished making his bed then picked up her broom and began to sweep out the cabin. She flicked a little sand at his feet, then again, harder, giving him another of her enchanting smiles, so that he couldn’t possibly take offence. He played along, holding up his hands in mock surrender as he retreated before her assault. She followed him out on to the porch, flicking more sand as she came. He broke into a jig, like in the movies when the baddie with the six-shooter makes the hapless victim dance. It made her laugh so hard that she had to cover her mouth with her hand. She leant forward to sweep beneath the porch bench. Her singlet drooped as she did so, revealing the tattered bra within, tantalising glimpses of flesh and shadow. She looked up and caught him staring, grinned happily.

‘Claudia,’ called out the old man from the hotel compound. ‘Claudia!’

‘I go now,’ she said. ‘I see you later, yes?’

‘I hope so.’ He leaned on the porch rail to watch her leave, and was glad to see her put a little extra swish in her stride, just for him.

Knox jogged down the bank’s front steps, exasperated by the absurd paperwork required just to change some euros. But it was done at last. Now for some supplies. He walked across town to a small but lively market, a riot of colourful clothing and sparkling costume jewellery, with produce spread out on rickety wooden tables: yellow-brown bananas, orange-green mandarins, plum tomatoes not quite ripe, clumps of garlic and onions, stubby carrots, creamy white manioc, coconuts both hairy and husked, clutched fists of lettuce, pumpkins, papaya, glistening steel bowls of rice and beans.

The brilliant sun in the unpolluted sky gave the slightly eerie impression of being underwater. Greasy tables of zebu steaks buzzed with fat sapphire-and-emerald flies. Salted sardines glittered like spilled chests of silver coins. A crone sat astride two wicker baskets of orange-red crabs, thrusting her bamboo cane into the writhing intestinal mass, irritating pincers until they snapped and clenched the cane so tightly she could lift them out and shake
them off into a bucket. He bought fish, rice and other supplies to eat that night in case they didn’t reach Eden by sunset, added some biscuits and bottled water.

Time to get back to the pirogue. He took a moment to get his bearings. He could see a line of palm trees above some shacks to his right, their fronds swept back like hippies walking into the wind. That had to mark the shore. He set off towards them before catching a glimpse of the beach down the far end of a narrow alley between two lines of huts. He turned and ambled along it, utterly oblivious of the man following a dozen paces behind.

Tulear’s Commissariat Centrale de Police was a yellow two-storey building near the centre of town, its front pockmarked like a war zone. Rebecca asked for Chief of Police Andriama at the desk, and a young man in jeans and a brilliant white short-sleeved shirt took her upstairs to his office and grandly threw open the door. A breeze from the open windows riffled loose papers on the desk, forcing Andriama to slap them down before they scattered. He noticed Rebecca at the same moment, however, and seemed to forget about his papers, springing to his feet and coming over to welcome her, taking her hand in both of his, stroking it like a pet hamster. ‘At
your service, madame,’ he beamed, exposing blackened stubs of teeth rotted almost down to the gums. ‘How may I help?’

‘I’m Rebecca Kirkpatrick,’ she told him. ‘I’m here about my father and sister.’

‘Ah. Yes. Of course.’ He instantly let go of her hand, assumed a more sober expression. ‘Such terrible news. Sit. Please sit.’ Like so many Malagasy, he was a cocktail of races: short and wiry like a Polynesian, dark-skinned as an East African, yet with the satin black hair of a Chinese. ‘Such a good man, your father,’ he sighed. ‘Such a good friend to Madagascar. And your sister, too. So young. So pretty. Such a terrible loss.’

‘Loss?’ Rebecca’s heart clenched.

‘Forgive me,’ he said. ‘But surely you appreciate the situation—’

‘Are you giving up already?’

‘Certainly not. We’re doing all we can.’

‘And that is?’

‘My officers have been to your father’s house and the local villages. They have spoken to many, many people, including two fishermen who saw your father’s boat outside the reefs.’ He pulled a face. ‘At least, that’s what they say, but you know the people up there, they’ll say anything to please. After that, nothing until evening when the South Africans found your father’s boat drifting and abandoned. I have copies of their statements, if you want to see?’

‘Please.’

He rummaged through his drawers, produced some poor-quality photocopies of several hand-written pages that she flicked through while he talked. ‘There were some traces of blood on the guard rail and on the deck,’ he said. ‘The university is testing it at this moment. Most likely your father’s or your sister’s, but unless we can check it somehow to make sure …’ He drifted meaningfully to a halt.

She squinted at him. ‘You want me to get you their blood-type information?’

‘Your father and sister run a clinic up at Eden, don’t they? I’m sure they’ll have records.’

‘I’ll have a look. In the meantime, perhaps you could continue telling me about your search. The helicopters. The boats.’

He smiled politely. ‘You must understand something, Miss Kirkpatrick. Madagascar is a poor country. Tulear is its poorest region. Even at the best of times, our resources are strained. This is far from the best of times. Besides, whatever has happened to your father and sister, it is almost certainly not a police matter.’

There was a knock on the door at that moment, and a middle-aged man with lustrous black hair poked in his head. His face lit up when he saw Rebecca. He was Mustafa Habib, he told her, advancing uninvited into the room, an excellent friend of her father’s. Rebecca wouldn’t
remember him herself, but he’d known her as a child. She did remember him, as it happened; an import–export trader who’d procured obscure equipment for her father. When she told him so, his eyes gleamed with pleasure. He took a card from his wallet. ‘If there’s anything I can do. Anything at all.’ He coughed diffidently. ‘I know this is indelicate, but I must say it all the same. Unfortunate personal experience taught me how painful it can be to arrange …
sensitive
matters in foreign countries. If you should need any help at all, it would be a privilege. Your family has done so much for our country.’

‘Thank you.’

‘You have transport? A driver?’

‘Yes.’

‘A place to stay? My own home is of course humble, but you would honour us with your—’

‘I’ll be staying at Pierre’s.’ There was little she could achieve in Eden tonight, and she was anxious to meet her nephew, make sure he was safe. ‘Then home tomorrow.’

‘Of course.’

She turned back to Andriama. ‘You were telling me how my father’s disappearance wasn’t of interest to you.’

Andriama sighed. ‘All I said was that it’s probably not a police matter. Our coast here is treacherous, all these tides and currents and reefs. When you were younger, you must have seen for yourself the occasional freak wave. They can come out of even the calmest seas and catch the
most experienced fishermen by surprise. Why not your father and your sister?’

‘So you’re not even considering kidnap or robbery?’

‘Of course we consider such things. But your father was not wealthy enough to kidnap, and sensible kidnappers would surely have taken hostage either your father or your sister, so that the other could be free to put the ransom together. Anyway, wouldn’t we have had a demand by now? As for robbery, your father and sister were well known and loved along the coast. Everybody knew they’d share what they had for the asking. It would have been
fady
to rob them. You know
fady?
Forbidden.’

‘I know
fady
.’

‘Besides, what kind of thieves would let a valuable boat simply drift away? No. Robbery makes no sense. It was an accident. A tragic accident.’

‘You’ve given up,’ she said.

‘I’m being realistic.’

‘They’re not dead.’

Andriama assumed an expression of sadness. ‘I pray that you are right,’ he told her. ‘Truly, I do. But I fear the evidence is—’

Rebecca patted her heart. ‘They’re not dead,’ she told him. ‘And I’m going to find them.’

Boris popped the buckle of his new knife’s sheath as he followed Knox down the alley, gripped it firmly by its hilt. The feel of it brought back vividly his first time, nearly twenty years ago now, as a young farm-worker seeking general vengeance for the rape and murder of his mother, one of the many atrocities of Georgia’s brutal civil war, but the only one that had mattered to him. They’d been waiting in ambush beneath a thin line of trees for an approaching patrol. He remembered still lining his man up in his sights, the way he’d fallen in the snow, the inhuman sounds he’d made as he’d struggled against his fate, reaching out a beseeching arm for the comrades who’d already turned and fled. Bullets had been too precious to waste, so Boris had drawn his knife as he advanced upon his man. It had been so obvious that he was dying, however, that he’d just stood there watching with his companions until it was over; and, afterwards, he’d been struck most by his own detachment, his lack of feeling anything at all.

Some fence-posts had collapsed ahead, brought down by the weight of a makeshift fly-tip that had spilled out into the alley, stinking and buzzing with flies. Boris couldn’t have asked for anything better. Getting this kind of operation right depended on knowing exactly what you intended to do. He therefore rehearsed it in his mind
like a high-jumper before starting his run-up: left hand over Knox’s mouth to keep him quiet, right hand sawing through his throat. Then heave him up and over the flytip, take some pictures with his camera-phone before covering him with his groundsheet, kicking rubbish over him. With luck, even if his disappearance provoked a search, it would be a day or more before he was found. Plenty of time to fetch Davit and make their escape.

He quickened his pace, turned the knife around in his hand, the better to carve through Knox’s throat. He was just two paces behind him when a pair of girls playing tag ran shrieking into the end of the alley ahead. They saw Knox and Boris, shrieked gleefully some more, turned and fled. Knox must have seen the flicker in their eyes; he glanced around and saw Boris so close behind that it made him start. ‘Christ!’ he said. ‘I didn’t realise you were there.’

Just for a moment, Boris considered going for it anyway, but then he remembered that this man had bested Mikhail Nergadze in single combat—Mikhail Nergadze, the only person who’d ever truly put the fear of God into Boris. He hesitated just a blink, but it was enough, his opportunity was gone. He hid his knife against his wrist, offered an apologetic smile, then walked on by, out on to the beach, cursing his bad luck, wondering when next he’d have so good a chance to take his revenge and make himself rich.