Jake & Jouma 02; Burn Read online

  “Obviously Getty is our priority,” Bryson said, his easy smile masking the understatement. “But we’re keen to find out whatever we can. Anything you and Jake can tell us would be helpful.”

  Harry reached in a desk drawer and produced a bottle of Pusser’s rum. He took a long, throat-burning swill and thought about how he had been duped by Getty and his sidekick Tug Viljoen into becoming a courier in their vile human trade. “Of course,” he said.

  “When are you expecting him back?” McCrickerd asked.

  “Any time now. I’ll raise him on the ship-to-shore and find out where he is.”

  ♦

  The killer got out of the bath and dressed casually in jogging pants and T-shirt. Outside the room the temperature had cooled noticeably. Now, with the scent of tumbling frangipani rising up from the gardens below, it was positively pleasant – the perfect time for a stroll before supper.

  Having grabbed a small shoulder bag containing a digital camera, a notebook and a six-inch stiletto knife in a leather sheath, the killer went down to the hotel lobby and sought out the concierge.

  “I requested the hire of a motor scooter. I wondered if it was available?”

  The concierge beamed. “Of course! I will have it brought to the front door at once.”

  “You are very kind.” The killer pressed a ten-dollar bill into his hand.

  “You are going into Mombasa?”

  “No. I thought I’d stay local.”

  “Would you like a map showing locations of interest?”

  A pleasant smile. “No, thank you. There is only one place of interest I want to visit – and I know exactly where it is.”

  ∨ Burn ∧

  10

  Spurling Developments was the largest private construction company in east Africa, and its coastal depot was a vast, twenty-acre compound that had once been a quarry supplying the cement works in Mombasa. Inside, surrounded by three miles of ten-foot-high electrified fencing, were over a hundred construction vehicles, from forty-ton earthmovers to pile-driving machines that could hammer a steel pole thirty feet into bone-hard ground. There were office buildings, catering facilities, satellite dishes, cell-phone masts, electricity generators, oil and water tankers and, stacked up like shoeboxes, ten prefabricated cabins that housed the two hundred and fifty-strong army of men who were based there.

  It was, to all intents and purposes, a fully functioning town, with better facilities than any of the roadside slums within a forty-mile radius.

  The company’s chief operations manager was a Scotsman called Frank Walker. He was forty-two, small and wiry, with close-cropped gingery hair so pale as to be almost translucent when he removed his protective hard-hat. At that moment, even though he was sitting in an air-conditioned cabin, Walker reflected that wearing it would be advisable, such was the deluge of shit that had been tipped on him from on high that morning.

  “Where the fuck is Mathenge now, Tom?” he demanded.

  “In the tool room, Boss.”

  Sitting opposite him was a hulking, shaven-headed African called Tom Beye. The black polo shirt and steroid-boosted muscles immediately marked him out as a member of Spurling’s internal Security Division – but right now the look on his face was that of a child who had just been told off for pulling the legs off spiders.

  “I suppose I should be grateful he’s still alive,” Walker said under his breath.

  Beye stared at him with red-hazed eyeballs. His lids were hooded, his mouth slightly open. Walker shuddered. Jesus, but he was a scary one. He had seen some psycho nut jobs back in Glasgow, but nothing to match this bastard.

  “He 15 alive, isn’t he, Tom?”

  Beye nodded slowly, and Walker sighed with relief. It was the first piece of good news he had heard since the depot manager had called him at six that morning to report an incident involving one of his digger drivers. The driver, a half-wit by the name of Baptiste Mathenge, had got drunk at a roadside hostelry the previous night and decided to drive his Cat D10 crawler six miles back to the depot along the Mombasa highway with his lights off. Mathenge was lucky that he had not been stopped by the police. The old man he had inadvertently driven over in the dark had not been so fortunate. He had been found snarled up in the caterpillar tracks and, judging by the expression on what was left of his face, had died an excruciating death under eighty tons of steel. “I take it you’ve interviewed him about what happened?”

  “He remembers nothing,” Beye growled.

  “I bet he doesn’t,” Walker said.

  He was still annoyed that Beye had got to Mathenge first, and wondered just who had tipped off Security Division about the incident. Its members were not known for their interpersonal skills, nor did they pay much heed to disciplinary procedures. The speedo ofWalker’s company SUV had hovered at 100mph all the way north from Mombasa that morning because he knew that every second the hapless Mathenge spent in the company of Tom Beye increased his chances of severe injury or even death.

  “OK, I want you to get him cleaned up, given a month’s pay and sent on his way. Understand?”

  Beye frowned. “But –”

  “Just do it, Tom.”

  “But what if he…remembers?” Beye protested.

  “Trust me, he won’t.”

  No – after a run-in with Security Division, Baptiste Mathenge would regard the termination of his job with a month’s pay as akin to winning the lottery.

  “We should shut his mouth for good.”

  Walker put his head in his hands. “Jesus Christ, Tom! Do you ever fucking listen to a word I say?”

  Beye’s face slackened again. No, Walker thought, he would never understand. Beye acted solely on instinct, and in all cases his instinct was to smash skulls and not even bother asking questions later. The fact that life was so cheap in Kenya had its advantages sometimes – but it didn’t make it any more palatable. And there was still the problem of disposing of the old man’s body. The last thing Walker needed was a police inquiry into a missing person.

  Tom, of course, had his own solution. Even now he was convinced the remains should have been left on the highway for the early-morning pantechnicons to pulverise. He didn’t seem to understand that even here in Kenya there were pathologists who could tell the difference between the damage caused by rubber tyres and those made by steel caterpillar tracks.

  Instead, Walker ordered the remains taken to the plains far beyond the Vipingo Ridge, dowsed in kerosene and burned in a pit deep enough to prevent the charred bones being dug up by wild animals. It was the most effective, discreet and respectful solution – three words that did not appear in Tom Beye’s or Security Division’s vocabulary.

  “Right,” Walker said with finality. “We’ve wasted enough time. Let’s do what has to be done and then we can get on with some real work.”

  As he made his way across the dusty compound to his SUV, Walker removed his car keys and paused for a moment. Any big-game hunter would have immediately identified the two-inch-long brass cylinder attached to the key ring as a .300 Winchester Magnum cartridge. Walker kept it there for days like these – a reminder of those fleeting but idyllic times in his life when he could leave all his problems behind him; when he and Malachi, old man Spurling’s trusted game warden, would pack the Jeep with a few supplies and head off into the wilderness and not see another soul for days at a time.

  He got into his car and pulled on to the highway. It would take him thirty minutes to reach Mombasa and his office on the eighteenth floor of Spurling Developments’ headquarters on Nkrumah Road. From there he could see the Shimba Hills forty miles to the south. On a clear day he felt he could almost reach out and touch them. It was the one perk of a job he wished he’d never been given.

  ∨ Burn ∧

  11

  As he left the church and stepped outside into the heat of the day Jouma was lost in thought. Something stank to high heaven about the case of the missing nun, but he didn’t know what. And, now that he had been taken o
ff the case by Simba, he guessed that it would be up to Mwangi to find out. For now his priority was finding out why – and more to the point how – the late Lol Quarrie had fallen to his death.

  Even after thirty years, he reflected, the life of a detective was anything but dull.

  Just then he heard noise like the very gates of hell being opened, and he turned to see what appeared to be a garishly painted bus sputtering towards the village on grievously tortured axles. The inevitable crowd of children were joyously pursuing it until, a hundred yards from where Jouma had parked, the bus veered off into the trees and expired in a cloud of oily smoke. To his astonishment a steady stream of young people began climbing down from it, weighed down with rucksacks, pots and pans, musical instruments and other bags and accoutrements.

  Very deliberately, and knowing that he was acting against his own professional curiosity, the inspector turned away and set off along a narrow track which led from the church in the direction of the creek. He had too much on his plate as it was and, as long as the people on the bus weren’t here to rape and pillage the village of Jalawi, he was more than happy to mind his own business.

  Away to the south, clouds were gathering and the air was thick with the smell of burning vegetation as the villagers along the coast readied the ground for the rainy season. It was a smell that always reminded Jouma of his own childhood on the fertile plains beneath Mount Kenya. There had been a church in his village too – nothing as grand as this one; in fact, it was little more than a hut where once a month a priest from the Christian mission in Meru would conduct a service. But Father Steele was a kindly man who preached that God loved all His children equally and without prejudice. By contrast Jouma had the distinct impression that, while Brother Willem read from the same Scripture, he did not practise what he preached.

  A boy jumped out in front of him. He was wearing a pair of baggy shorts and a sky-blue football shirt with the word ROBINHO stencilled across the shoulders. He held up a green coconut in one thin hand. The other loosely gripped the handle of a machete.

  “You want? Very pleasant. Very refreshing!”

  Jouma smiled and nodded. “Asante sana.” The boy grinned back and, with one deft movement, sliced off the top of the coconut. Jouma took the fruit to his lips and drained it of its warm, sweet milk. He handed it back and this time the boy used the blade of his knife to shave off a finger-sized chunk of the tough outer husk. With this he expertly scooped the moist flesh of the coconut into strips.

  “Asante,” Jouma said, plucking a tender strip of white meat between his finger and thumb then dropping it into his mouth. It tasted delicious and indulgent, yet Jouma could remember a time when he had lived on little else. Such carefree days, Daniel.

  A boat was turning into the creek from the ocean. It was travelling fast upriver and did not slow as a figure dived from the stern rail and began swimming towards the shore. Jouma watched the vessel pass just fifty yards from where he stood, and saw the name Yellowfin painted on its bow.

  Jake?

  He smiled with recognition and lifted his arm to attract his friend’s attention – but up on the flying bridge the Englishman’s eyes were fixed directly ahead, his face a mask of grim concern, and in a moment the boat was gone.

  A boy emerged from the river, water sluicing from a body as lithe as a marlin’s. There was something familiar about him, but it took a few moments before Jouma realised who it was. Of course! Jake’s bait boy.

  “Sammy!”

  The boy looked up. There was a flicker of recognition, an unpleasant memory perhaps of smoky police interview rooms and a string of sympathetic doctors trying to ascertain the degree of psychological trauma he had suffered. Sammy’s kid brother had been murdered by one of Patrick Noonan’s men. Sammy himself had killed the man by firing a harpoon bolt through his head. What child should ever have to go through such an ordeal?

  “Inspector –?”

  “Jouma. Daniel Jouma. How are you?”

  “I am well, sir,” Sammy said respectfully, but there was something in his eyes that suggested otherwise. “But I must go now. My mother is waiting.”

  Jouma put a hand on his shoulder. “What is it, Sammy?”

  The boy sighed. “Mr Jake – he get some bad news on the boat radio. Very bad news indeed.”

  “Then you must tell me what it is,” Jouma said, concerned.

  When Sammy told him, the inspector reeled. Moments later he was hurrying past the church towards his car. As he drove as fast as he could along the dirt road, back towards the highway in order to get to the boatyard on the south side of the creek, he realised that Mwangi and Brother Willem would wonder where he had gone – but some things were more important than professional courtesy. His friend needed him. The priest and the rookie detective would just have to get along with each other a little longer.

  ∨ Burn ∧

  12

  The 10-seater Dauphin 365N, the fastest commercial helicopter in the world, lifted off from a private helipad at Mombasa Airport and immediately swung south in the direction of theTanzanian border. Twenty minutes later it landed in the grounds of a sprawling ranch house in the shadow of the Shimba Hills, sixty miles from the city. There was only one passenger. He was in his early twenties with a flop of fair hair hanging over piggy features and a body that had yet to shed the puppy fat of adolescence. Bobby Spurling did not wait for the rotors to stop spinning before he dashed over to a waiting Jeep driven by a tall, white-haired Masai ranger wearing bush fatigues.

  “Good afternoon, Mr Bobby. It is nice to see you again.”

  “Cut the crap, Malachi, and take me to my father,” Bobby said.

  The ranch was set in 33,000 acres of rolling grassland adjacent to the Shimba Hills National Reserve; and on days like this, with the rains tamping down the dust clouds on the plains, it was possible to see nearly a hundred miles. But Bobby Spurling did not care about the spectacular panorama. He had seen it a million times, and each time he cared for it less. He preferred to live in the city – even if that city was currently Johannesburg – because he liked to go to restaurants and nightclubs, because he enjoyed access to women and drugs, and because he would rather fucking die than spend the rest of his life festering in the sticks like his father. In fact, the only good thing about the ranch was that he’d had it valued in excess of nineteen million dollars only last week – a windfall he now hoped would be coming his way sooner rather than later.

  Money and land were not all Bobby stood to gain when Clay Spurling died. There was, of course, the small matter of Spurling Developments itself. And finally becoming the king, instead of the eternal heir to the fucking throne, was a prospect that sent a tingle down his spine.

  The Jeep swept round to the front of the sprawling house, with its ornamental tea bushes and imported turf lawn, but instead of stopping outside the colonnaded portico the driver kept going.

  “What the hell are you doing, Malachi?” Bobby demanded. “I want to see my father.”

  Malachi, his father’s longest-serving employee and the man who had looked after the Spurling reserve for nearly forty years, looked straight ahead. “Your father is waiting for you at the stables, Mr Bobby.”

  Bobby felt like someone had driven a fist into his guts. The stables’? His father was supposed to be on his fucking deathbed! Six months after his heart attack and God knew how many millions spent on life-saving treatments in clinics from Atlanta to Zurich, the old man had finally come home to die. Wasn’t that the whole point of his being invited here? Wasn’t this why he was being brought out of exile after eighteen long months?

  Unless one of the treatments had actually worked!

  No – the thought was just too appalling for words.

  The stable block was situated two miles from the house, along an interminably winding track which passed through an area of arid wasteland occupied only by desert rose plants. With their grotesquely swollen stems and twisted branches it seemed almost perverse that these plants sho
uld produce such an abundance of glorious red and pink flowers, yet entirely appropriate that their sap, roots and seeds should contain a toxin strong enough to kill a small army. As a small boy Bobby had always been ordered to keep away from them – not that he needed any encouragement. He hated the obscenely ugly plants and soon, when the ranch was his, he would take great pleasure in burning the whole fucking lot of them to the ground.

  The Jeep arrived at the stable block and Bobby climbed out. There were a dozen stables arranged in an L-shape around a dirt paddock. Beyond, on the slopes of the hill, his father had built gallops – almost three miles of loamy terrain in the middle of Africa that would not have looked out of place at Newmarket. There were those who had said it couldn’t be done: but then you didn’t build Kenya’s pre-eminent civil engineering company from scratch without knowing how to create something out of nothing.

  Clay Spurling, a short man with a shock of pearl-white hair, was standing at the far side of the paddock, deep in conversation with one of the stable lads. When he saw his father, Bobby was horrified. He had fully expected to confront a paper-skinned skeleton wheezing its final words from its deathbed. Instead, the old cunt was a picture of health! He had lost weight and in his polo shirt, jodhpurs and leather riding boots he looked as if he had just come in from playing a leisurely chukka. He was seventy-four years old, but to his son’s disgust he looked ten years younger.

  “Papa!”

  The old man looked up and fixed his son with piercing blue eyes. In that instant Bobby felt the old familiar symptoms of panic and inadequacy – sweating hands, palpitations – he always experienced in his father’s presence.

  Clay strode across the paddock.

  “Good trip?” he barked. “How’s Jo’burg?”