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  Harry shrugged. ‘Who knows?’

  ‘We don’t know for sure that’s what happened,’ Jake said, but his words were greeted by a harsh cackle of cynical laughter from the other end of the bar.

  A man in a khaki shirt and a greasy Peugeot cycling cap sat nursing an open rum bottle.

  ‘Martha B was a fine boat - but she was fifty years old,’ the man said in clipped South African tones.

  ‘Good evening, Tug,’ Harry said without conviction. ‘Are you well?’

  ‘As well as can be expected, Harry,’ the man said, splashing three fingers of liquor into his glass and raising it in salute. ‘To absent friends, eh? Absent fucking friends.’

  Tug Viljoen could have been anywhere between forty and sixty, but his deeply etched, leathered face made it difficult to tell. Behind his back Suki’s regulars reckoned he looked like one of the mouldy old crocodiles he kept in his reptile park up near the Mombasa highway, but he always reminded Jake of the Tasmanian Devil cartoon character of his youth - a squat, powerful torso supported by unfeasibly spindly legs, and with a similarly wild look in his eyes.

  ‘Yeah, Martha B was a bloody fine boat in her day,’ Viljoen growled. ‘But, when Dennis bought her, she was rotting away in a dry dock. I kept telling him he should get a new boat, but he treated her like a vintage car.’ He drained the glass and immediately refilled it. ‘Trouble is, vintage cars aren’t as robust as new ones. Martha B was designed for rich pissartists to go cruising up and down the coast, not for belting the shit out of for fifteen, twenty hours a day chasing marlin. The parts get old, they get worn. Pipes can start to leak. All it takes is a spark, or some drunken fuck to drop his cigarette end between the boards and . . . kaboom!’

  ‘Aren’t you a ray of fucking sunshine?’ Jake said.

  Viljoen swiped his mouth with the back of his hand, revealing an ugly stitchwork of scar tissue on the underside of his arm.

  ‘Just being realistic, son,’ he said. ‘Used to happen regular round here. Long before you pair of English conquistadors arrived. Speaking of which, how old is that bucket of yours?’

  ‘Fifteen years.’

  ‘Hah! Then you want to think about getting a new one before it’s too late.’

  ‘We’d need to think about robbing a bank first,’ Harry admitted.

  Viljoen stared at him for a moment, then laughed gruffly and turned back to the already half-empty rum bottle.

  ‘Anyway,’ Harry continued, ‘as Jake said, we still don’t know what’s happened to Dennis. And, knowing that old bastard, there’s still every chance he might be found drifting on a plank of wood.’

  ‘You really think that?’ Viljoen said sceptically.

  ‘Always look on the bright side, Tug.’

  ‘Bright side?’ Viljoen said. ‘I don’t recall seeing one of them round here recently.’

  Day Two

  Chapter Five

  The reward for professional diligence, Detective Inspector Daniel Jouma of the Coast Province CID reflected, was a sore head from bashing it against brick walls. And, right now, he had a splitting headache that was not being helped by Detective Sergeant Nyami’s tea.

  ‘How did you make this?’ Jouma demanded, pointing at the insipid white liquid in the cup on his desk.

  Nyami glanced up from the sports pages of The Daily Nation and furrowed his brow. ‘With a teabag.’

  ‘Details, Nyami,’ Jouma demanded.

  ‘I put hot water in the cup, then added a teabag and milk. How else do you make tea?’

  ‘And for how long was the teabag in the cup?’

  Nyami sighed theatrically and flung the newspaper on his desk. ‘I don’t know!’

  ‘One minute? Two minutes?’ Jouma stared at Nyami. The sergeant’s eyes fell. ‘Ah! Less than one minute! Thirty seconds? Forty-five?’

  ‘I do not remember,’ Nyami mumbled.

  Jouma stood and carried the cup across to a tiny sink fixed to a wall in the corner of the office. ‘Sergeant Nyami, I firmly believe that tea only becomes tea when the bag is allowed to infuse in hot water for a minimum of two minutes. Otherwise, it is not tea - it is slightly stained hot water. This—’ he held the teacup between his finger and thumb ‘—is slightly stained hot water.’

  Jouma dismissively poured the contents of the cup down the plughole, then turned on the tap. There was an ominous clunking sound, before the tap juddered twice and spat filthy brown water into the sink. The inspector felt a sudden overwhelming pressure above his eyes. Some days it was advisable to remain in bed rather than experience a day like the one he was having. It was not even three o’clock in the afternoon, but already it seemed the day had lasted a hundred years.

  That morning Jouma had spent three interminable and frustrating hours waiting for a case to be called at the law court in downtown Mombasa, only for it to be adjourned in less than twenty seconds. Upon his return to Police Headquarters on Mama Ngina Drive shortly before midday, he had found Agnes Malewe and her son sitting on a wooden bench in the corridor outside the office he shared with Nyami.

  ‘Who is that woman in the corridor?’ he had asked the sergeant, who was slumped at his desk, reading a magazine and eating a jam sandwich.

  Nyami did not look up. ‘She is still there?’ he grunted. ‘I told her to go home an hour ago.’

  ‘Who is she?’

  ‘Her name is Agnes Malewe.’

  ‘Why is she sitting in the corridor?’

  Nyami shrugged. ‘Those idiots at Likoni Station sent her here. Now she refuses to leave.’

  Jouma went across to Nyami’s desk and snatched the half-eaten sandwich from the sergeant’s fingers. ‘What does she want?’

  ‘She says her husband did not come home yesterday. ’

  ‘Who is her husband?’

  Nyami looked at his boss as if he was a simpleton. ‘George Malewe.’

  Jouma groaned inwardly. George Malewe was a lowlife from Mombasa Old Town. His speciality was stealing wallets, cameras and phones from gullible tourists, before returning them to their grateful owners in return for tips far in excess of what he could get by selling them. Not that George saw any of the money, of course. Almost all of his earnings went directly to Michael Kili, the gang boss who controlled the port and the Old Town. George Malewe was a big-time loser. Until that moment, Jouma had not known he had a wife.

  ‘Then he is drunk somewhere,’ he said. ‘The docks most probably. You know what George Malewe is like.’

  Nyami whipped back his sandwich. ‘That’s what I told her. But she refuses to accept it. She says he should have been back yesterday.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘It was their son’s birthday.’

  Jouma rubbed his face with his hand. ‘Tell her to come in,’ he sighed.

  Agnes Malewe was perhaps nineteen years old. She sat primly and defiantly in a chair on the other side of Jouma’s desk, her three-year-old son sitting cross-legged at her feet.

  ‘My husband has been slain, Inspector,’ she stated matter-of-factly. ‘Of that I am sure.’

  Jouma leaned forwards across his desk and smiled. ‘Mrs Malewe. Just because your husband failed to turn up for your son’s birthday does not mean he is dead.’

  ‘Slain, Inspector Jouma,’ Agnes said forcefully. ‘It is the only possible explanation for his behaviour.’

  ‘Perhaps he is visiting friends. Perhaps he will have returned by the time you get home.’

  Agnes shook her head. ‘My husband never misses Benjamin’s birthday.’

  Jouma leaned back in his chair. ‘Well, Mrs Malewe, I’m afraid there is not a great deal I can do, other than ask Sergeant Nyami to help you fill in a missing persons report.’

  ‘I see,’ Agnes said curtly, standing up from her chair. ‘Then I bid you good day, Inspector.’ She tapped Benjamin on the head, and together the pair of them left the office.

  At twelve forty-five, Jouma had been flicking through the overnight crime sheet - thirteen robberies, two abductions, two suspecte
d arsons, a streaker on Moi Avenue and a chicken thief in Likoni - when the telephone rang. It was an internal call from his superior, Superintendent Teshete.

  ‘Daniel,’ Teshete said, in a perfectly reasonable voice that Jouma knew from long experience meant trouble, ‘I have a Mrs Malewe with me here in my office. I understand you sent her to see me?’

  Jouma’s heart sank even as he marvelled at the girl’s persistence. ‘Not exactly, sir.’

  ‘I see. Well, Daniel, Mrs Malewe is quite insistent that one of our detectives looks into the disappearance of her husband.’

  Jouma could imagine the insincere smile that Teshete would be flashing Agnes Malewe at that very moment.

  ‘Her husband is George Malewe, sir.’

  A pause. ‘I am aware of that, Daniel. But I am sure that you will be able to make some initial enquiries into the matter now. Just to put Mrs Malewe’s mind at rest. To reassure her that she doesn’t have to pay a visit to Provincial Criminal Investigation Officer Iraki.’

  Police Criminal Investigation Officer Iraki was Teshete’s immediate boss. Jouma put down the receiver and picked up his jacket.

  So it was that, at one-fifteen, when he had a million and one better things to do with his time, Jouma had found himself threading his 1984 Fiat Panda through the traffic-choked thoroughfares of Mombasa Old Town, tooting the horn at the thronging vehicles and pedestrians, and ignoring the disgruntled protestations of Sergeant Nyami, who sat with his arms folded in the passenger seat beside him.

  ‘You know that this is a waste of time,’ Nyami said for the third time since they’d left the police station.

  Jouma nodded. ‘Perhaps - but it is our duty to make enquiries.’

  ‘Pah!’ Nyami snorted. ‘You take too much notice of Teshete. And too much notice of that hysterical woman. She would have gone home eventually. If George Malewe is dead, then he will be doing us all a favour.’

  ‘Sergeant Nyami,’ Jouma said, wagging an admonishing finger, ‘I accept that George Malewe is not a model Kenyan citizen. Nevertheless, he has a wife and a son who have a right to know what has become of him.’

  As he spoke, Jouma hoped he sounded more convincing than he actually felt. In truth, he felt like the very worst sort of hypocrite.

  Fifteen minutes later, they were in the upstairs office of an Old Town strip joint called the Baobab Club, for an unscheduled audience with a twenty-three-year-old gangster named Michael Kili.

  With his pointed face and dead eyes, Kili reminded Jouma of a shark. Were he ever to smile, the detective imagined he would see scraps of flesh hanging between the gangster’s teeth.

  But Kili was not smiling. He was sitting in a battered armchair behind a leather-topped desk, fingers steepled under his chin, face impassive behind expensive wraparound shades. There was a sofa and some wooden chairs against the wall, but they were not offered. Instead, Jouma and Nyami were made to stand before the desk like two naughty schoolboys in the headmaster’s study. A shaven-headed bodyguard filled the doorframe, twitching with aggression.

  How you must be enjoying this, Michael, Jouma thought. How it must please you to have me standing before you, awaiting your benediction. How many years has it been since our paths first crossed? Ten? Twelve? You were such a clever boy. You could have achieved so much. But here we are. You in your chair and me standing before you. You must think you have the world in your hands. You must think that becoming God was so easy.

  ‘We are making enquiries into a missing person,’ Jouma announced with as much authority as he could muster. ‘His name is George Malewe.’

  ‘Mr Kili does not know of anyone by that name.’

  The speaker was a thin bespectacled man wearing a plain white cotton khanzu robe and a kofia on his head. He stood attentively at Kili’s left shoulder, like a carved giraffe bookend from one of the trinket stalls on Digo Road.

  ‘I understand Mr Malewe was one of your employees, ’ Jouma continued, his words directed at the gangster behind the desk. Jouma saw himself in Kili’s mirror lenses: a small impossibly deformed figure.

  ‘Mr Kili does not employ anyone of that name.’

  Jouma flashed the bespectacled man a withering glance. ‘You seem to be very well informed about what Mr Kili does and does not know. Who, might I ask, are you?’

  ‘My name is Jacob Omu. I am Mr Kili’s representative, ’ the man said calmly.

  Kili’s representative? Jouma thought. It was indeed a strange and troubled world when murderous thugs employed agents to do their talking for them.

  ‘Then perhaps you would be good enough to tell Mr Kili that this is a routine enquiry and Mombasa CID would be very grateful for any information he might have regarding the whereabouts of Mr Malewe,’ Jouma said.

  ‘Mr Kili has no information that would assist you.’

  ‘Then would you be good enough to tell Mr Kili that a CID investigation into the illegal practices carried out in this area is long overdue, and that any such investigation would inevitably bring Mr Kili’s activities under the most painstaking scrutiny.’

  Omu smiled. ‘Are you threatening Mr Kili?’

  Jouma smiled back. ‘Does Mr Kili have any reason to feel threatened?’

  Omu shook his head. ‘Certainly not, Inspector.’

  Jouma stared at Kili. No, he thought. He most probably didn’t. There were more than enough Mombasa police officers and civic officials receiving regular backhanders from Michael Kili for him not to be worried about any investigation into his affairs. It had ever been thus in this city. Only the faces changed.

  The detective reached into the breast pocket of his jacket and removed a card, which he placed on the desk. He addressed Kili. ‘This is my telephone number. I would be grateful if either you - or your representative - would give me a call if you hear anything about Mr Malewe.’

  Kili slowly reached across and picked up the card. He handed it to Omu without looking at it. Omu handed it back to Jouma.

  ‘Mr Kili does not know of anyone by that name,’ he repeated.

  Jouma looked at the face of the Mombasa gangster, and as he did so Kili slowly removed his sunglasses. The small cold eyes seemed to glitter.

  I had rather be a doorkeeper in the house of my God, Jouma thought, than to dwell in the tents of wickedness. His headache was starting to throb and something told him it was only going to get worse before it got better.

  Chapter Six

  At that moment, in another part of Mombasa, the man known as the Arab stuck the end of a sharpened twig between two of his upper-right molars and twisted it until a fingernail-sized morsel of chewed lamb flew from his mouth and landed in the dirt at Harry Philliskirk’s feet.

  ‘What is this?’ he said, holding up a thin sheaf of dollar bills.

  ‘Think of it as an instalment,’ Harry said. ‘A gesture of goodwill until full payment can be resolved.’

  ‘This is neither of those things, Mr Philliskirk,’ the Arab said matter-of-factly. ‘This is an insult.’ He opened his fat fingers and the bills fluttered to the ground.

  ‘Abdul,’ Harry said placatingly, scooping up the money, ‘surely our credit with you is good enough to see us through this temporary cash-flow problem?’

  The Arab removed the stick from his teeth and spat derisively on the ground. ‘Credit! It is always credit with people like you! What is credit but a convenient way of not paying your debts?’

  Standing beside Harry, Jake shrugged. ‘Abdul, you know what business has been like since—’

  The Arab sat forward in his deckchair and cocked his head expectantly. ‘Since, Mr Moore? Since what?’ He waved his stick dismissively. ‘Don’t expect my heart to bleed for you because a few thousand madmen in the Rift Valley decided to kill each other over a crooked election. I am interested only in business. I don’t give a fuck about anyone else’s problems. Yours or theirs.’

  In the open compound of the fuel depot, the heat was oppressive. The Arab knew this, which was why he was sitting in the shade of a ca
nvas awning strung between two diesel sumps while the two Englishmen were standing out in the sun. As if to emphasise their discomfort, the Arab reached down for a cold can of Coke and brought it to his wet lips with relish.

  ‘When I first came to this country, one of the first things I saw was a dead body on the Mombasa highway,’ he said. ‘It was flat as unleavened bread, the trucks and the cars just driving over it as if it was a dog. Later, I discovered that the body had been there for nearly two days because the police in Mombasa and Malindi couldn’t decide under whose jurisdiction it lay. It was at that point I realised that my business here would be a success.’

  The Arab shifted in his seat and scratched his backside with the stick. ‘This country is not like yours or mine, gentlemen,’ he continued. ‘It lies somewhere in the middle, and what happens here is not controlled by either the east or the west. Here you must make your own destiny - or be crushed flat beneath the wheels of progress. Do you understand what I am saying?’

  ‘Does that mean you’ll give us more time?’ Harry asked.

  ‘You have five days,’ the Arab said. ‘At twelve per cent interest per day.’

  ‘Fuck the Arab, that’s what I say!’ Harry said, weaving through the potholed suburbs of Mombasa in his twenty-year-old Land Rover. ‘He thinks he’s the Sultan of Oman. We’ll just have to teach him the real meaning of a market economy, that’s all.’

  ‘And how do you propose to do that?’ Jake said.

  ‘The Arab isn’t the only diesel supplier in Mombasa.’

  ‘He’s the only one who’ll give us credit,’ Jake pointed out. ‘Even if it is at twelve per cent.’

  ‘I’ll think of something,’ Harry said.

  ‘Then you’d better make it fast - or else start learning how to make sails.’

  Or how to catch fish . . .

  That morning, head throbbing from what had turned into an impromptu and lengthy wake for Dennis Bentley in Suki Lo’s the previous night, Jake had stared out from Yellowfin’s flying bridge and wondered if even that fundamental requirement of running a game-fishing business had deserted him. Since just after dawn, they had been chugging in figure-eights in the area east of Kilifi where the tuna schools normally congregated, but without a single bite. Now they were heading home. The Ernies from Düsseldorf who had paid three hundred bucks for this abortive half-day excursion sat in ugly brooding silence in the cabin below. Of course, the Indian Ocean was a big place and big fish were capricious. But Jake knew that was no excuse. There were old salts who drank at Suki Lo’s who claimed to be able to sense shoals by the strength of the current or the colour of the sea, but these days most skippers preferred hi-tech sonar systems to voodoo. At the very least they had functioning radios so that they could communicate with each other to find out where the fish were.