A Darkening Stain

‘What?’

‘Not that it would have anything to do with Jean-Luc…necessarily. But you know how Africans like to make trouble because…well, trouble is money.’

‘What trouble?’

‘Five dead men.’

She didn’t blink for some time, her eyes glazing and pinking at the rims in the cold air. Her mouth formed a perfect ‘o’, lower case.

‘Five?’ she said, interrogatively.

‘Should there have been more?’

‘I don’t know what you’re saying…what you’re asking. Are you asking anything?’

‘I’m saying he needs some help with that…and I can give it to him.’

‘Help with what?’

‘Help with the five dead men and his cotton seed on the same ship.’

‘How do you know…?’

‘Of course, I’d have to see him personally on the subject.’

‘But…’

‘And you seem to be the only one who can…facilitate that.’

All the talk about the Kluezbork II had confused her. She didn’t seem to know about the dead stowaways, but she was aware of the cotton seed and that the repercussions could be expensive. I walked across to the window and parted the Venetian blinds with two fingers. The warehouse was very quiet, nobody in there at all.

‘And I’d still like to talk to him about veg oil, if that’s possible?’ I said, moving back round to her side of the desk.

She picked up the phone and dialled a Benin mobile phone number, one of the new ones which had come in since the Francophonie conference last year. I memorized the number.

She spoke in rapid French, with her little mouth kissing the mouthpiece. I heard nothing. Then she shut up and listened. After a minute she put the phone down and tapped the polished desk top with her red fingernails. She kicked off her shoe and I heard her foot rasping up and down a calf that hadn’t been razored recently.

‘You and Jean-Luc been married long?’ I asked.

She looked up into her head.

‘Four years,’ she said.

‘You like it in Africa?’

‘Very much.’

‘Where do you come from in France?’

‘Lille.’

‘The weather’s not so nice in Lille.’

‘Ça c’est vrai.’

I lowered myself into one of the black leather chairs. Carole kicked off her other shoe and wriggled her feet back to life after they’d been crammed to the points of her five-inch highs with their prissy little bows. The phone went off louder than a ref’s pea whistle. It jolted her. She snatched at it and listened and then held it out to me.

‘What the fuck do you want?’ asked a voice in English with barely a trace of French accent.

‘Nice English, Jean-Luc. Where’d you pick that up?’

‘I know who you are. Now what the hell do you want?’

‘To meet,’ I said. ‘I don’t want to talk on the phone.’

‘Too bad,’ he said. ‘I only talk on the phone. Who’re you working for?’

‘Myself.’

‘Bullshit. The kind of work you do, you don’t get off your ass unless somebody’s paying. So who’s paying?’

‘A man’s got to live even if he doesn’t have any clients.’

‘So what’s all this stuff about veg oil?’

‘OK, you’re right. I’m not interested in veg oil. I had to get started somewhere. Your wife wasn’t blowing your trumpet for you.’

‘With a mouth that size she doesn’t blow anything,’ he said crudely, and laughed with congested lungs, which set him off coughing.

‘Maybe you’d like to talk about the Kluezbork II.’

‘What’s that about?’

‘You know, Jean-Luc.’

‘Yeah, I know. What can you do about it?’

‘Those stowaways came in on one of your cotton seed stevedore shifts.’

‘And?’

‘You know how it works, Jean-Luc. You’re responsible. You’re the white man, for Christ’s sake. You’re as good as a monarch.’

‘OK. So you can get the ship out. How much?’

‘My fee is two hundred and fifty thousand CFA…upfront. Plus some grease to get things rolling. And if you’re going to be as shy as this you’re going to have to make provision for expenses.’

‘I have to be shy.’