Heavy Duty Trouble (The Brethren Trilogy) (48 page)

I pulled off my sodden boiler suit and quickly ran my head, arms and feet under the shower, scrubbing vigorously to get rid of any obvious signs. I was surprised to find my hair sticky with blood and rubbed it furiously, trying to get it clean.

By now it was nearly ten o’clock. Out on the balcony I threw the clothes I had been wearing into one of the bags. Finally in went the bits and pieces, the scrubbing brush, the extension lead, the mask and the gloves.

I towelled myself down, dressed and looked out the front of the apartments. It all seemed fine. There weren’t too many cars in the car park and as normal the
 
askaris
 
seemed to be asleep on the step down from the hard standing. The little row of
 
dukas
 
were shutting up for the night and as ever there were groups of two and three people picking their way around the puddles as they wandered away.

I decided I would leave it for half an hour or so to let the
 
duka
 
owners go home.

I made myself a cup of coffee and thought about it as I drank. I wanted the trip to the pen to be over as quickly as possible and I now had a lot of fairly heavy bin bags sitting out on the balcony. Getting them down the stairs would take a while, as would coming in and out of the building.

I tied the top of each one shut and looked out over the balcony. If I carried them down I could put them behind the water tank, between it and the fence. They would be out of sight there while I fetched and carried from the apartment or from there to the pen.

I just brought the last of the bags downstairs when I realised I had been a complete idiot. I had forgotten the matches. So it was back upstairs, to open the grille, open the door, collect the box, close the door, close the grille and head back downstairs. I was just about to go out through the back grille when I heard a clanking behind me. It was Mr
 
Chavda, coming out for his evening stroll.

He was a pleasant enough old stick. I liked him. He did like a bit of a chat though. Especially with
 
wazungu
 
because then he could indulge in a bit of a moan about the
 
wananchi
.

‘Bloody Africans, no civilisation, no culture, they are just always so noisy. I hear from Dinesh that you have been over to complain to the apartments next door. I’ve been over to complain as well before. No consideration.’

We stood there in the hallway for a few minutes. I winced inwardly but nodded when he said he had been going to go across to complain about the banging earlier on but he hadn’t been able to work out where it was coming from. It was only a couple of minutes talking to him but it felt like an hour, just one of those times when you want to get on and do things and you feel time ticking away. At last he said goodnight and walked off around the corner.

The moon was out, a pair of crescent horns sticking up over the top of the trees, and as I stepped away from the pool of yellow light and its dancing moths at the exit from the stairwell, there was a delicious blue silvery sheen which belied the velvet warmth of the night. I started to transfer the bags across to the pen. I kept my head down and walked, did not run. The
 
askaris
 
were lying on the steps, asleep on their long coats. The last thing I wanted just at the moment was for one of them to wake up and volunteer to help. As I carried the second set across Daisy came snuffling up.

‘Go on, shoo,’ I hissed. She stopped, looking up at me, hesitant. Normally I was friendly. ‘Go on, off with you.’ I swung the bag at her. It was so big and heavy and slow it was never going to connect, it was more an indication and she backed off, almost shrugged her shoulders, and trotted on by me towards the back of the apartments.

I walked across the car park and out of the gate towards the pen, thinking, It’s absolutely normal, nothing to worry about, nothing to notice, just a
 
mzungu
 
putting out rubbish. I lifted the first bag up and dumped it on the pile, then the second to join the other black bin bags sitting there. Just a few more to go, I thought, as I wandered back.

As I came round to the water tank for the last time I could see something moving. So that was where she was off to.

‘Shoo Daisy, shoo. Go on get out of it.’ I was waving my arms as I came up to the tank. She darted off the other way before I got close. I picked up the last two bags and tramped back towards the pen.

The pile of rubbish was quite high now and stank to high heaven of rotting food and veg. I put one of the bags down in order to use both hands to lift the other one on to the top of the pile. I brought my hand underneath it, lifted it to chest height and then up and on to the pile.

I turned and stooped to pick up the last bag and grabbing the neck with my right hand, as I lifted it up from the ground I straightened and swung my left-hand underneath to repeat the operation. The underside was wet and slimy.

I looked down, this was odd. I had done this with all the other bags. Had I put it in a puddle or something? I lifted the bag to chest height and there, staring me in the face, was a huge tear in the bag. The wet sliminess was blood. For a moment I was frozen with panic. All I could think was, Christ, Christ, Daisy, it had to be Daisy. She had been round by the tank.

I could dump this in the pen but if I had dropped anything on the way from the water tank, had I just left a trail of blood between here and there? It was dark. I couldn’t tell. I forced myself to think calmly as I shoved the bag on to the top of the pile.

Between the tank and the corner of the block I had come across the grass. I had walked on the paved path just along the side of the block and then had cut straight across the grass in the middle as the most direct route to the gate. So the only places I could have dripped blood where it might be seen would be on the path and across the car park. But the car park was sufficiently dusty and dirty with tyre tracks and oil stains that nobody would notice anything, so that was OK. I lifted the torn edge of the bag and peered quickly inside. Daisy had obviously been after something, had she got anything? If she had pulled something out could other things have fallen? I knew she had a den in amongst some old water tanks dumped in the back corner of the site. I would never find her there now in the darkness, but as I walked back I would just have to check the ground to see if there was anything obvious, check the back of the apartments around the water tank and just trust to luck.

The first thing to do was just to get this away before anybody caught me. I chose a likely looking selection in the corner nearest to me and another on the far side. I glanced around but there didn’t seem to be anyone in sight. I fumbled with the matchbox. The first two sticks broke and I muttered, bloody shitty matches, to myself, they were Kharatasi of course. The next one struck and I had to duck to avoid being burnt as the paper in the bin bags took with a whoosh of flame.

I stepped sideways around the corner of the pen to be out of the direct light from the fire as it roared into life and then walked smartly, but carefully, back through the gate. I tried to trace the route I had taken with the bags, my eyes on the ground. I crossed the car park. I couldn’t see anything; down the steps on to the grass, it was hopeless here. Behind me flames were just starting to dance over the top of the wall of the pen, the flickering light casting shadows from the parked cars across the field. The moonlight was bright but the light of the flames and the dancing shadows made it difficult to see. I had been carrying that last bag in my left hand so as I had come around the side of the building it would have been the one nearest the wall and would have been directly over the paved surface whereas the other would have been over the grass. I stopped at the corner of the building and looked. It was far enough away here that moonlight ruled again. I couldn’t see anything. There was nothing which looked obvious. I would just have to wait for daylight.

The girls arrived back about twenty minutes later.

‘Hope you’re feeling better,’ Clare said, as I opened the door to Sam. ‘You missed a good night.’

‘Yes, we went to Rooftops, did the barbecue,’ said Sam looking pained.

‘Looks like somebody is putting on a show here,’ said Clare, nodding at the raging fire which could now be seen blazing in the pen as we turned and looked through the sitting room and out of the balcony windows. ‘They don’t usually burn it at night, it’s a bit spectacular though, isn’t it?’

I turned and we all looked out at it for a moment. It really had caught, it was roaring now, all furnace oranges, reds and bright yellows, as flames licked up into the sky while puffs of exploding sparks crackled and snapped as a stream of hot red embers and sparks rushed up in to the night air with the hot billowing smoke.

‘Yes,’ I said, ‘it is spectacular. I’ve been standing here watching it.’

Dangerous things happen in Africa.

People disappear.

Everybody knows that.

But as an outsider, Paul thinks he is safe, even from the secret police, whatever he starts to find, or wherever it leads; despite the turmoil leading up to the country’s first multi party election and with a diamond fuelled civil war raging in the failed state just across the border.

But when Paul finds himself and his friends trapped holding a potentially deadly secret as the country begins to implode, what will he be prepared to do to protect himself and those around him in order to escape?

ISBN 978–0–9561615–0–5

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