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held up.’

      ‘What’s new?’

      ‘I lost someone.’

      ‘Someone you’d already found?’ asked Heike.

      ‘Worse. Someone who was right bang next to me.’

      ‘Jesus,’ she said, as sympathetically as possible. ‘They beamed him up?’

      ‘As if, Heike, as if. And who’s “they'', anyway?’

      She shrugged and concentrated on fitting a cigarette into her holder.

      ‘I drank your share of the wine,’ she said, lighting up.

      ‘I saw.’

      ‘I started on your birthday present too.’

      ‘The Black Label? Yeah, thanks. I mean for the present.’

      ‘Don’t mention it. How’s the foot?’

      ‘It’s OK. I haven’t thought about it.’

      ‘In the heat of the moment?’

      ‘Right.’

      Too scared?’

      ‘Maybe.’

      She sighed. A birthday treat. Most other times she’d have hardened up, cool as marble, no give at all until the whisky loosened off her throwing arm. Heike didn’t like my job, but it had nearly got her killed one time which was why she’d put me out to that kennel down the road. She kneaded my shoulder and turned me round. We kissed. My hand went up her bare back. She didn’t bother with a bra after her evening shower. I cupped a breast and ran a thumb over the nipple. She tensed and backed off.

      ‘Eat first. Shower. Then I’ve got another present for you. Two, in fact.’

      I finished off the tagine. Heike and I shared the second bottle of Bourgogne Aligote. I was about to join my Black Label but Heike pushed me off to the shower. I cleaned up and sat on the sofa in a towel. Heike dropped some ice into my glass and splashed another finger over the top.

      ‘Birthday treats,’ I said.

      She shrugged her eyebrows and sat behind her knees in a corner of the sofa. She sipped her Scotch and smoked at me.

      ‘What about these presents then?’

      ‘Gerhard wants to meet you,’ she said.

      ‘Who’s Gerhard?’

      ‘Bruce,’ she said, her voice taking on a serrated edge. I raised an eyebrow. She reined back. ‘Gerhard Lehrner. He’s my boss. The new one.’

      ‘That Gerhard. Right. The new one. I’m not used to hearing his name.’

      ‘How many Gerhards …?’ She stopped herself. ‘Forget it.’

      ‘Come here,’ I said, lunging at her.

      ‘Not yet,’ she said, inching her feet back.

      ‘Gerhard’s going to stay in the office tomorrow afternoon. He wants to talk to you about a job when there’s nobody else around,’ she said. The glass of Black Label stuck to my lips. I sat up straighter and looked her in the eye. No kidding.

      ‘You’ve been telling him about my charitable soul,’ I said.

      ‘How long did it take?’ She smiled. I stroked her big toenail. She twitched it away.

      ‘I didn’t tell him about your charitable soul, in fact. I told him what a complete bastard you are. And you know, he’s interested.’

      ‘He’s got some poor people need kicking.’

      She laughed this time. Appealed to her, that, a man with gout kicking a poor person. The suffering.

      ‘He’s got a job for Medway and Bagado Investigations. He’s looking for someone who can’t be fobbed off, who doesn’t have the word “no” in their language, who will run something to ground and go down the hole after it and …’

      ‘Above all, someone who’s …’

      ‘Cheap.’

      ‘Thanks for the write-up,’ I said, and took a measure off the Scotch.

      ‘He tells me it could be dangerous. So you better listen to what he has to say before you say yes.’

      ‘Well, there’s never been any harm in listening.’

      ‘Then why don’t you do it to me?’

      Our eyes connected. Our whisky glasses hit the table together. She stretched a foot out and undid my towel with her toes. She kicked it away and toyed with what she found underneath until I was gritting my teeth. She sat astride me, yanking her skirt up around her waist and took hold of me with a surprisingly cool palm. Watching herself as she did it she lowered herself with infinitesimal slowness until our lips drew level.

      ‘Better?’

      The tension went out of me and I sat back and let Heike do all the work.

      I woke up at 6.30 a.m. with too much light in the room because, in the urgency of the moment, closing curtains had been the last thing on our minds. Heike’s arm was across my chest and the phone was ringing. I was too content to answer it. It stopped.

      Heike’s hand slipped down below the sheet line and came across some eagerness she hadn’t expected which made her start and look me in the corner of the eye.

      ‘Is that for me?’

      ‘More presents.’

      She bit me hard on the shoulder so that I yelped. I rolled over her and she gripped my hips with her hands to steady me on. The phone started ringing again.

      ‘Shit,’ she said.

      I thrust, but she held me back. The phone banged on.

      ‘Come on,’ I said.

      ‘It’ll stop, for Christ’s sake.’

      ‘No. I can’t stand it.’

      I dropped on to my knees and waited. And waited. And waited.

      ‘Answer the damn thing and get back in here.’

      I stormed into the living room and yanked the phone to my ear.

      ‘Bagado here. Sorry to disturb you. He’s been found.’

      ‘Who?’

      Who do you think?’

      ‘I don’t know. Who are we looking for?’

      ‘Napier Briggs.’

      ‘Where is he, the bloody idiot?’

      ‘Down on the railway tracks. He’s dead, Bruce. Dead as the sleeper he’s lying on.’

       4

       Cotonou. Saturday 17th February.

      There’d been no harmattan this year. That cooling, drying wind, which made all the Africans miserable and me feel human for once in the year, never arrived. It stopped about 100 kilometres north of Cotonou and wouldn’t come any further. Some said it was the pollution, others that it was just a weak harmattan this year but most put it down to the devaluation – anything out of the ordinary just had to be.

      Now it should have settled down into the dry season before the April rains, but the weather, like the currency markets, the world economy and my left foot was a mess this year. Cotonou, and other cities along this stretch of coast, had been thumped about by short, savage night-time storms which had left it flat on its back, with no power and secreting fluids from orifices which should have been free and dry. The town got up groggy in the

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