Absolution Read online

Red Shirt’s mouth opened, as if he was about to speak. Just then, Grace emerged from the kitchen. Blood dripped from her chin onto her white uniform. She held a tyre iron in one hand. Before Clay could move, she stepped up behind Red Shirt and swung at him with both hands. She was a strong woman, but Red Shirt was quick, and a lot bigger. In one movement, he flung the boy away to the floor, twisted and parried the blow with a forearm to the back of her raised elbow. The iron glanced off the side of his head just as he drove his blade into her body.

  Grace staggered back into the wall, the knife buried in her chest, a look of disbelief on her face. Joseph was on the floor, his hands wrapped around his neck. Blood streamed from between his fingers. A constricted gurgle emerged from his throat. Red Shirt grabbed the tire iron, charged towards the door, swinging wildly. Clay ducked, let him go, moved to the boy.

  He pushed the boy’s hands from the wound. The knife had gone deep, sliced through the oesophagus, the carotid artery. The opened cartilage glistened white. Blood pulsed. He’d seen wounds like this before – during the war, and since. He knew there was nothing he could do. He went to Grace. She was sitting with her back to the wall, breathing hard, holding the knife handle between her hands. Blood covered the front of her white uniform. The blade had gone in between two ribs, penetrated deep.

  He had a full medical kit on Flame, but there wasn’t time to get it. He ran to the kitchen, flung open drawers and cupboards, scattering the contents, searching for anything he could use to staunch the bleeding. Outside, the roar of the jet boat starting, backing away. He grabbed a couple of towels, ran back to Grace. She was still breathing. He wrapped the towels around the knife, left the weapon in place. He had to get her to a hospital. The nearest was in Stone Town. At full speed with Flame’s little diesel engine, two hours away.

  She reached her hand to his face. ‘Joseph,’ she said, a whisper.

  Clay closed his eyes.

  ‘Why?’ she said. Blood frothed from her mouth. Tears streamed from her eyes.

  What answer was there? What could he tell a dying woman who’d just witnessed her own son’s murder? What explanation, for any of it? Should he tell her that it was his fault, that they’d simply been caught in one of death’s coincidences, those random tragedies that seemed the only constant in life. Would it help her to know, in these last few moments, that the minute she’d befriended him, she had inadvertently increased the probability of her own demise a hundredfold, a thousand, and that the longer he’d stayed, the worse her chances had become. And now that her son lay dying at her feet, was there any point in telling her how sorry he was – for being so self-indulgent, for allowing himself the luxury of a connection with another human being, for letting some warmth into his life?

  ‘I’m sorry,’ was all he could say. Tears blurred his vision. He wiped them away, secured the towels, tried to help her up. He would try to get her to hospital. Even though he knew she would be dead in minutes, he would try. What else was there? Just sit there and let her go, passive, accepting of fate? He would try. That was all life was: a futile and inevitably unsuccessful battle against death.

  She moaned, hung limp in his arms. Her eyes were closed.

  He swung her into his arms. ‘Here we go, Grace,’ he said, starting for the door.

  Joseph lay open-eyed in a pool of blood, the afternoon sun slanting across the hardwood floor, across his motionless body. Dreadlock groaned nearby. Clay stopped, looked down at the man, Grace heavy in his arms. She’d stopped breathing. He lay her down, put his mouth to hers and inflated her lungs. Blood filled his mouth. He spat, tried again. Her lungs were flooded. He touched her neck, felt for a pulse. She was gone.

  Clay slumped to the floor. He sat there a long time, eyes closed, his mind blank as a starless desert night.

  Dreadlock’s groans brought him back. The man was dragging himself towards the door, unable to stand, pushing himself along with his one good leg, his shattered arm hanging limp.

  Clay stood, picked up Dreadlock’s knife, crouched beside him, ran the blade across the guy’s face. ‘Tell me everything,’ he said, ‘and I won’t cut your throat.’

  Dreadlock stared up at him, wading through the pain.

  Clay pushed the point of the blade into his neck. Blood welled up around the steel. ‘Now.’

  ‘Contract,’ Dreadlock blurted. ‘Some baas from the mainland. Give we two grand, US. Come here kill you. Two more we bring you body living.’

  ‘How did they know I was here?’

  ‘Me no know. He no say much.’

  ‘Who was he? Where was he from?’

  ‘White man. White African. No name.’

  Clay swore. ‘Where is he now?’

  ‘Some rich hotel out de’ Stone Town.’

  ‘And your friend. What’s his name?’

  The man shook his head, closed his eyes. Clay pushed the knife in.

  Dreadlock yelped. ‘They call him name Big J.’

  Clay pulled back the knife, wiped the blood on his shorts. As he did, he heard a gasp. It had come from behind the couch. Clay stood, listened. A moment later, another gasp, a sob.

  ‘Zuz,’ he said. ‘Is that you, sweetie?’

  The girl emerged from behind the couch. She stood surveying the scene, eyes strained wide, her mouth hanging open as if in mid-scream. He could see the deep red of her tongue and the white of her lower teeth and the rictus black of her throat. She was shaking.

  ‘Zuz,’ he said. ‘Close your eyes, sweetheart. Don’t look.’

  The girl did as she was told.

  Clay crouched back down next to Dreadlock, looked into the man’s eyes. He placed the point of the knife’s blade over the man’s heart. Rain thundered on the sheet-metal roof.

  Dreadlock stared up at him, shaking his head from side to side. ‘Please,’ he gasped. ‘I never hurt no one.’

  27th October 1997. Paris, France. 12:30 hrs

  I spent all morning with Inspector Marchand. She took me to an industrial estate on the outskirts of the city, near Crétail. We sat in her car and looked out through the rain-blurred windows at the charred remains of an automobile. It had been driven into the yard at night and set alight. She said that the engine block registration plate had been filed clean and the number plates removed. Everything inside the car had been incinerated. It was, I already knew, a professional job.

  Then she passed me something. It was a piece of paper, a grocery-store receipt. Read it, she said. I did. Where did you find this? I asked her. And what does this have to do with the car? But I already knew. She had found it yesterday, not far from the car. Two litres of milk, a kilo of coffee beans, some asparagus, yoghurt. It was from our local store and was dated five days ago. It was my receipt. And that, out there, was what was left of our silver Peugeot 406.

  There were no bodies in the car, she said. But not far away we found this. She passed me a sealed plastic evidence bag. Do you recognise it? I turned the bag over and over in my hands, not believing what I was seeing. It was one of Eugène’s t-shirts, the one with the little Canadian beavers on the front. Hamid brought it back from Montreal for him last year. I could not speak. I just sat there staring at the shirt, at the brown stains across the neck and sleeve. That is blood, she said.

  And there was this, not far away, she said, handing me another evidence bag. It was the jacket from Hamid’s blue suit. It was torn at the shoulder and chest, stained with dirt and blood. We are going to test the blood from both items, she said. DNA evidence can be very useful in these cases.

  We drove back to the police station in silence. When we arrived, we went to a small café nearby and had a coffee together. Inspector Marchand was suitably respectful and sympathetic, treating me as a friend would in such a situation. Then she started asking me about Hamid and our relationship. She was very adept, but I cannot help feeling that she knows more than she appears to. Does she know about my past, about the person I once was? Perhaps she is testing me. The questions came.

  Had Hamid and
I been having problems?

  Everyone has problems, I replied, letting my irritation show, knowing where she was taking this.

  Had we fought recently, argued – about Eugène perhaps?

  No, I replied. No more than usual.

  And then sharply, did I own a gun?

  No, I said. I do not. I hate guns.

  Have you been trained in the use of guns or other weapons? she asked.

  No, I replied.

  It was only partially a lie. I was trained, but as you know, Claymore, I was never very good with weapons, and I always despised them. The only time I was ordered to kill someone, in Yemen in 1994, I failed. You were there. You saw it. And in the end, of course, I was glad that I failed. I was an observer, a researcher, an analyst, not a field agent. The Directorate was never the right place for me. I know that now. Leaving and becoming a proper journalist (not just using it as a cover) was one of the best things I ever did.

  One of them.

  Inspector Marchand ruminated on this a while, sipped her coffee, glanced out into the street one too many times. Then finally, she came out with it.

  We haven’t found any bodies, she said, but we are treating this as a murder investigation. Where was I on the day Hamid and Eugène disappeared?

  23:45 hrs

  I went back to the crèche this afternoon. Something I had glimpsed there, on my earlier visit, stuck in my mind. I spoke again to the manageress, explained that Hamid and Eugène were missing. She was very sympathetic. I asked to look at the sign-in book again. And there it was. Why had I not noticed it before? On the day they disappeared, Hamid returned to collect Eugène at 13:05, well over an hour before the normal time. Looking back through the record, there were a number of similar early pick-ups, and yet Hamid had never mentioned any of this to me, nor had they returned home early. I asked the manageress if she could confirm this. She excused herself a moment, and then returned with one of the young women who works with the children. Her name was, coincidentally, Eugenie. Yes, she said. She remembered seeing Hamid strap Eugène into the back of a silver Peugeot and drive away a little after one o’clock that day. And then she looked at me in a strange way, almost in pity. But Madame, she said. Do you not remember? I stood, nonplussed, staring at her. You were there, she said, sitting in the car. You looked at me and waved. I told the same thing to the police.

  * 3 *

  What It Meant To Be Alive

  Clay rowed the bodies out to Flame.

  The rain had stopped. One by one he lifted Grace and Joseph aboard, then carried them below and laid each on a berth. He stood in the gangway and looked at the corpses. He’d wrapped them in bedsheets and tied their ankles and around their arms and chests with rope, and now they lay, pale and still, in the rising moonlight. He looked at them for a long time – queen and prince in their floating sarcophagus, ready for their final journey into eternity.

  Then he rowed back to the house. Zuz was waiting on the beach as he’d instructed, her little travel case packed and clutched to her chest. She had a mobile phone in her hand. As Clay approached she held it out for him.

  ‘Where did you get this?’ he asked. Grace didn’t have a mobile. The mobile system was still very new in Zanzibar, and only the most well off had their own phones.

  Zuz pointed at the house.

  ‘One of the men?’

  Zuz blanched, nodded.

  Clay pocketed the phone. He rowed her out to the boat and sat her in the cockpit, where she couldn’t see the bodies of her brother and her mother. And then he went back for Dreadlock.

  By the time they reached Stone Town, the sky was lightening over the Indian Ocean. Cloud billowed in the distance, dark anvils of cumulonimbus – more rain coming. Clay dropped anchor in five fathoms of water, south of the gardens and the white façade and clock tower of the House of Wonders and the old fort, away from the pier and the little notched fishing harbour. He shut down the engine, let Flame swing on the breeze.

  Clay left Dreadlock in the cockpit, tied, as he’d been all night, to the starboard main cleat, and went forward to check on Zuz. He opened the forward hatch and peered down into the berth. She was still asleep, snuggled under the blankets. He closed the hatch, went below and made a pot of coffee.

  ‘Here’s the deal,’ Clay said, freeing Dreadlock’s good hand and passing him a mug of steaming coffee. ‘You help me find your friend, Big J, and the guy who hired you, and in return I’ll let you live.’

  Dreadlock mumbled into the tape covering his mouth.

  ‘Just nod if you understand.’

  Dreadlock nodded vigorously.

  Clay took the Glock G21 from the pocket of his jacket and balanced it on his knee so the other man could see it. ‘Cross me, that arm will be the last thing you’ll be worrying about. Understand?’

  More nodding, eyes wider now.

  Clay yanked the tape from Dreadlock’s mouth. Dreadlock winced in pain, but managed not to spill any of the coffee. They drank.

  When Dreadlock had finished his coffee, Clay pulled a sling from its package and started positioning it around the man’s broken arm. ‘Help me,’ he said, ‘and I won’t turn you in to the police. Do it well, and I’ll give you ten grand.’

  Dreadlock grunted as Clay tightened the sling. ‘US dollars?’ he said, trying to keep his jaw still.

  Clay pulled a wad of US one-hundred-dollar notes from his pocket and riffled the bills with his stump.

  Dreadlock stared at the money a moment, mouth open, then looked up at Clay. ‘Kill him, then,’ he said, trying not to move his jaw. ‘If me help you and you no kill him, me dead.’

  Clay nodded, peeled off ten notes, pushed them into the man’s good hand. Then he pulled out the mobile phone Zuz had found. ‘This yours?’

  Dreadlock shook his head. ‘Big J.’

  ‘Can you unlock it?’

  Dreadlock nodded.

  ‘Good. Can you find the guy who hired you – the white African?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Do it. Tell him that you have my body, that you brought it over on my boat. Tell him you want to meet on the shore, over there.’ Clay raised his stump and pointed to a clutch of palms near a small beach beyond the point.

  ‘If he still here, Big J already tell him what de fuck happened.’ Dreadlock raised his hand to his jaw, worked the broken hinge, winced.

  Clay put his British passport on the cockpit seat. ‘Tell him you found this. Read him my passport number. Tell him I brought you back to the boat, but you managed to grab my gun and shoot me. Tell him your buddy Big J ran when the fight started, that now you want the money for yourself.’

  Dreadlock sat staring at the money in his hands; in this part of the world, a year’s wages – ten. ‘Him kill me,’ he said after a time. He moved his head from side to side. ‘No. Him kill me.’

  Clay raised the G21, chambered a round. ‘That’s fine, then. I’ll do it myself.’ He started to depress the trigger.

  ‘Wait,’ said Dreadlock, sweat blooming in the big pores ranked across the bridge of his nose.

  ‘Decide.’

  Dreadlock dropped his head. ‘Okay.’

  ‘Tell him one hour. On the beach.’ Clay put his passport on the cockpit seat.

  Dreadlock fumbled with the phone, thumbed the keypad, raised it to his ear.

  ‘English,’ said Clay, pointing the gun at Dreadlock’s forehead.

  Dreadlock closed his eyes, nodded.

  Clay heard the phone ring, click. A conversation ensued.

  Dreadlock killed the call, dialled another number. It rang, connected. A voice on the other end, a distinctive Free State accent – South African. Dreadlock nodded to Clay, spoke, stuck to the script. After a moment, he picked up Clay’s passport, opened it to the picture page, read out the passport number, listened a moment and then killed the line.

  ‘He come one hour,’ said Dreadlock.

  Clay retied Dreadlock and went forward to check on Zuz. When he opened the hatch, she looked up at him
.

  ‘I’m going into town for a while,’ he said. ‘I need you to stay here. Don’t leave this cabin. Do you understand?’

  She nodded, blinking in the light streaming into the little cabin.

  They rowed to shore, pulled the dinghy up onto the sand, walked into a palm thicket. From here they could see along the beach towards the docks and the town, but were well hidden.

  Clay handed Dreadlock a 9 mm Beretta.

  The look of surprise on Dreadlock’s face was almost comical.

  ‘There’s one round in the magazine,’ said Clay. ‘If you decide to use it, make it count.’ Clay pulled the G21 from his jacket pocket to emphasise the point.

  Dreadlock took the weapon, examined it a moment, looked up at Clay. Possibilities whirled in the dark spaces behind his retinae.

  ‘Don’t think about it too much,’ said Clay. ‘You’ll hurt yourself. Now go and sit out there, where he can see you, and wait.’

  Dreadlock hunched his shoulders, trudged out to the beach and sat on the dinghy’s gunwale.

  Clay didn’t have a plan, not really. Ever since fleeing South Africa – again, for the second time in his life – he’d been operating on impulse. Part of it, by now, was simply instinct, the inbuilt impetus to survive, to kill when necessary, to adapt, to run. After losing any hope of ever being with Rania again, there had been no guiding objective, no deeper meaning. Each dawn was simply another sunrise, every gloaming just the start of another sleepless night.

  Until Zuz had emerged from behind the couch, he’d been set on driving the knife into Dreadlock’s heart. Then, in the channel, still an hour out of Stone Town, he’d readied the Glock and was about to put a bullet into the bastard’s head when he’d heard Zuz calling him from the forward berth, where he’d locked her so she couldn’t get into the main cabin and see the bodies. He’d had a vague idea about making sure Grace and Joseph got a proper burial, that Zuz should be seen safely to her grandmother’s care. That, somehow, justice be done. That had been about it.