Текст книги "Kruger's Alp"

Автор книги: Christopher Hope

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Текущая страница: 14 (всего у книги 25 страниц)

Now I saw in my dream how Blanchaille and Van Vuuren, though unaware of it, talked and walked their way up the Strand, around Covent Garden and by degrees into Soho. And it was in Soho that they first noticed the black cab trailing along behind them and saw that it carried none other than their old mentor, Father Ignatius Lynch.

And Blanchaille remembered the famous black beret in the Airport Palace, and knew why it was there before him.

Stories abound concerning the conversation Blanchaille and Van Vuuren had with their old master at that strange meeting in Soho, once they had recovered from their astonishment. How they noted his tremendous excitement as well as his weariness. (This is hardly surprising when you consider the old man had achieved a lifetime’s dream in escaping from Africa, helped no doubt by the pistachio-flavoured banknotes he had borrowed from the money poor Ferreira had left Blanchaille.) Yet having made good his escape from Africa at last, why come looking for them? Lynch cut short such enquiries. In fact, as I saw in my dream, he did most of the talking, telling them for the last time that his time was short and he was not much longer for this world and as if to emphasise it, he kept the taxi waiting, meter ticking over. Indeed, he implied that they might not be much longer for this world either. He reminded them that they were babes abroad, that neither had ever been out of the country before except for their living history lessons he’d provided years before. He said they wouldn’t ever have known that they were now in Soho had he not told them, and grave dangers awaited them. All his talk was of death, while the meter ticked. And for once it seemed true, this expectation of his own end. He was smaller, thinner, more frail than they had ever seen him before. It was by a fragile, grinning, big-eared wraith that they were addressed in a Soho street.

He told them about the strange suicides of the brokers Lundquist, Kranz and Skellum, which he described as the most extraordinary acts of self-destruction since Mickey the Poet strangled himself with his own hands.

‘The broker Kranz died by hanging himself during a lunch given by the Woolgrowers’ Association of which, for obscure family reasons that need not detain us, he was a director. It had been a very good lunch apparently and they got down to coffee and liqueurs when Kranz himself was, in the words of one witness, “as merry as hell”. Setting off to the bathroom his last words were – again I have this from the family, “Keep the bottle coming around – I’m off for a splash”, and then walking, or rather weaving, happily from the room, a large brandy in hand, he disappeared. The glass of brandy, now drained, was found in a basin in the men’s lavatory and suspended from the window directly above the toilet, hanging by his own belt, was the unfortunate Kranz. It seems there were a number of puzzling bruises and contusions on the body for which no explanation could be found. Certainly it seems unlikely that Kranz could have injured himself like that, but the inquest finally decided that Kranz in his drunken state had probably clambered up on the seat of the lavatory and then onto the cistern itself, attaching the belt to a steel window frame. However, being drunk, he was clumsy and hadn’t tied the knots correctly and he fell, or so the story goes, perhaps he fell several times only to clamber up again, stubborn fellow that he was, and try again. Everyone agreed that he had shown quite remarkable determination.

‘Lundquist showed the same intensity of purpose as his colleague Kranz. For we must believe that this small man lifted his heavy executive chair, weighing half as much as he did, and using it as a kind of battering ram smashed a hole in the window large enough to pass through and so plunged to his death one hundred and fifty feet below. A wonderfully neat worker, too, this Lundquist. For although the body was badly broken, as you would expect after such a fall, it seems he had not been cut once by the wall of glass through which he had smashed in his feverish desire for extinction.

‘Of Skellum, the third suicide, it must be said that we have an act of self-destruction which deserves the palm. Here we had a man with a brilliant military record who was invalided out of the service suffering from shellshock. This was caused by a terrifying experience when the patrol he was leading was ambushed and lay under continual mortar fire for a full day and Skellum saw his companions killed beside him one by one. Not surprisingly this experience left him with an uncontrollable fear of sudden and violent explosions, a backfire, a slammed door, a firework, even a loud cough would reduce him to a state of gibbering terror. Yet this man so overcame his fear as to bounce into his office one morning bright and early, close the door, put a.38 pistol to his temple and blow his brains out, falling forward onto his desk, thereby unintentionally summoning his secretary who came in with her notebook thinking that her boss wanted to dictate some letters.

‘Now these dead brokers might have been remembered for nothing more than their suicides,’ Father Lynch concluded, ‘had it not been for the fact that each had seen Ferreira shortly before his death. Ferreira had revealed to them that their dealings in gold and industrial shares for ostensibly reputable clients, were really deals on behalf of dummy companies set up by the Ring. Kranz, Lundquist and Skellum had been dealing for the Ring. And it in turn had been dealing for the Hand of the Virgin, you will know that organisation of devout Catholic freemasons. Unfortunately the Ring felt entitled to a decent commission. And they forgot to mention it to the Hand.

‘The Bank of the Angels called in the accounts, checked them over – and had a convulsion. But the real culprits, the Ring, slipped out of reach of the Fingers by the simplest and time-honoured expedient in these matters, it blamed the brokers who had handled the deals. If there was money missing, the Italians were informed, then Kranz, Lundquist and Skellum were the guilty men. The Hand reached out. It reached for necks.

‘It was now that Ferreira called in the brokers. The only way the brokers could save themselves, Ferreira told them, was to cooperate with his enquiry. Give him details of the shares purchased, sums remitted, names of contacts. And naturally the brokers fell over themselves to comply with this request. They firmed up Ferreira’s case so tight you could have built battleships with the steel in it. And then Ferreira goes and gets murdered. Maybe the Azanian Kommando did it, maybe the Afrika Brigade – what did it matter to Kranz, Lundquist and Skellum? Did it matter what the writing on the wall really meant? To them its message was clear enough. It said “You next”. So they panicked. Who wouldn’t? They began off-loading shares, too many, too fast. Maybe they planned to skip? Or buy their way out of trouble – who knows? The market turned downwards. And there followed the sensational suicides. Truly, the only miracle left in our country these days is the wonderful and mysterious ways which men find to take their own lives. Of this, poor Mickey the Poet is the patron saint and initiating martyr. We can but pray that they find peace at last in another place, as we pray we all may do one day.’

‘And may we pray that the Regime, the Ring and the Hand one day roast in hell?’ demanded Van Vuuren, angrily.

‘Certainly we may pray for no such thing,’ came the prompt reply, ‘but we can always hope.’

And then Blanchaille asked him this question: ‘Father Lynch, you’ve cleared up one of the mysteries in this business. We know why share prices fell. But tell us – who killed Ferreira?’

‘Read the writing on the wall,’ replied the little priest. ‘You’re the policeman, remember, work it out.’

‘But we read the writing on the wall and it told us that either the Straf Kaffir Brigade got him – or the black radicals, the Azanian Strike Kommando No. 3. But a lot of other people could have had a motive. Like Bubé, or Minister Kuiker and Trudy Yssel, or the Israelis, or the Taiwanese, or the Ring, or the Hand or just about anybody who believed Ferreira knew enough to sink them and he intended to publish it…’

Lynch inclined his head. ‘Certainly, or it could have been the Papal Nuncio, or Himmelfarber, or the Bureau or the Nuwe Orde. So many suspects, so many motives. No good to go down that road. Perhaps the answer to at least part of the mystery is staring us in the face, providing we read the writing on the wall, providing we know how to read the writing. For has it not occurred to you that the letters ASK 3 might not have been left there by any of the persons or groups we have mentioned?’

‘I’m sorry,’ said Van Vuuren. ‘I don’t understand. If they didn’t write the letters, who did?’

‘Why Ferreira himself, of course,’ said Father Lynch.

Well you can imagine the impact of this revelation. They fell to whistling and clicking their tongues in admiration and Van Vuuren sufficiently forgot himself to utter a few choice oaths, of which ‘Well, I’ll be fucked’, is the only one I recall, and followed this with an apology.

And Lynch accepted their compliments with that curious little smile which made his jug-ears lift and the corners of his mouth twitch as they always did when he was pleased. ‘No, no! Merely part of the training of one who has read deeply in the history of the Church’s relations with the State, where murder cannot always be allowed to blight an otherwise intelligent, well-meaning policy. It is possible for martyrs, poets, inquisitors, poisoners, canon lawyers, bankers, cardinals to connive, plot, campaign to arrive at a mystery which will thrill the devout and balance the books. Well in this case, never mind the devout, and as I’ve told you before – examine the books. Have the courage to face what stares you in the face.’

Then Lynch read to them from his favourite book, withdrawing it from an inside pocket of his cassock with a fluid movement, Further Memoirs of a Boer President, the familiar bible, the mysterious tome edged with gold in a red leather cover.

In the mountains above and somewhat to the left of the town of Montreux we found the place we sought and kneeling down with my valet, Happé, supporting me, I gave thanks when I saw it; dead though its chambers now lie, still its voice, it shall live again when our people come, as over the years they shall assuredly come, sick for home, to this home from home…

Then Lynch warned them again that his time was short, and so was theirs. They were marked men and one of them, he could not say which, would not see another sunrise. And when they protested that he could not possibly know this for sure, he said nothing, just stepped back into his taxi and tapped on the glass and told the cabbie to drive on. When they ran after the cab as it gathered speed demanding to know how anyone would find them in London, he rolled down the window and asked them how they thought he had found them so easily. It would be no trouble to their enemies, they could find them whenever they liked simply by looking in the right place, just as one found characters in a book, simply by looking them up.

CHAPTER 14

Blanchaille looked at Soho with big eyes. Van Vuuren looked hardly at all, turning his gaze inward, as if he knew what was to come.

So they went, the priest and the policeman, the egg and spoon, through the little streets, this once great mixing place of European peoples, now all gone, leaving behind them only their tourists and their restaurants and a profusion of continental erotica. He looked at it with professional eyes, Blanchaille told himself, trying perhaps to explain his interest, as a centre dedicated to sin. It looked to him, Van Vuuren replied, like a dump – over-rated, over-priced, dull, tawdry and sad. Blanchaille stared at the hawkers, the barrow-boys, the suitcase salesmen. A fat man with one sleeve rolled up offering gold watches strapped to his arm like chain mail flashing in the sun, was trumpeting the bargains of a lifetime and waving the highly coloured guarantees like flags. Arab men with pot bellies and tight, flared tailored trousers walked around with their hands in their pockets, staring boldly at single women; a girl winked at him from a balcony; in the dull entrances of crumbling buildings he saw the name-plates of cheap cardboard inscribed in shaky ballpoint – MYRA, MODEL, WALK RIGHT UP. He peered through the bead curtains across the doorways of the ‘adult film parlours’ which gave them an oddly oriental look. A striptease club displayed pale cracked photographs, faded by infrequent suns, showing a female chorus line presenting their buttocks to a delirious audience. Blanchaille was ashamed to find himself hesitating fractionally, drawn as it were, downwards.

THE BARE PIT – SIX LOVELY LADIES IN FANTASTIC COMBINATIONS/DAY-NITE NUDES NON-STOP!!! Some had pound notes tacked to their pubic mounds. One carried a whip. Another was wearing nothing but an iron cross. Two oiled female wrestlers grappled in a miniature ring. A largish and very pale redhead was immersed, for some mysterious reason, in what looked like a giant goldfish bowl. But it was an empty black leather chair in the centre of the stage which looked truly obscene.

A burly and very black man blocked their path and invited them to step below and see for themselves the loveliest things in the universe, at the same time introducing himself to them as Minto, their guide to the pleasures of The Bare Pit. Van Vuuren attempted to brush him off but Minto was persistent and took his arm in what was clearly a very persuasive grip and, as Blanchaille realised when he saw pain succeed annoyance on the square handsome features, one that succeeded in its intentions.

‘Run, Blanchie, run!’ said Van Vuuren.

But there was another man, taller, very wiry, who declared himself to be Dudley from Malta, with a little black moustache and no less fierce a grip.

Of course Van Vuuren would have flattened them both, one, two, bang, bang, in his former life. Perhaps the clerical garb restrained him because he put up no struggle as they were marched downstairs.

It was dimly lit below stairs, a bar at one end and a stage at the other, the twenty or so rows of seats between furnished in red plush, redolent of ancient excitements of old men: of tobacco, sweat, aged underpants, hair oil, disappointed hope, stale beer, old socks, bitter anger, and various unidentifiable, recent stains. In the front row sat several large gentlemen.

Blanchaille remembered what he had read of such places, of the old men who came down here to watch women strip and masturbate beneath their plastic raincoats. One had read of such accounts since childhood, they were a part of the contemporary portrait of Britain, where all the people not on strike were on the dole, or on pension; where child murder was widely practised; few people bathed; income tax was 19/6d in the pound and nobody ate meat any longer. The Regime taught this in its schools. His French mother confirmed at least the last: ‘The roast beefs,’ as she used to call the English contemptuously, ‘have no roast beef any longer.’ Blanchaille’s mother had never been to England, but then that hardly mattered. England was a repository, a store of rumours of decline from which the world could draw at will for stories to frighten children. It had no other use but to remind one, horribly, of what your country might become if the Total Onslaught succeeded.

Minto and Dudley from Malta introduced Blanchaille to the proprietor, a small and stout individual with black hair gleaming lushly in the concealed lighting around the bar. He was called Momzie. Without hesitation he poured Blanchaille a Scotch and soda and patted the bar stool beside him. ‘May as well make yourself comfortable while those gentlemen over there have their little conversation with your friend.’

Minto and Dudley marched Van Vuuren up on to the stage. The props the girls used in their show were still there, the black leather chair, the wicked whip of grey rhino hide, the giant goldfish bowl of rather milky water, the wrestling ring. Van Vuuren was roped to the black leather chair.

‘I think these people intend to injure my friend,’ said Blanchaille.

‘I hire out this place when we’re not busy,’ Momzie said. ‘People want somewhere where they can have a quiet chat. It’s money up front and I don’t care who uses it as long as they watch their hours. I’ve got a show to run here and sometimes they’re inclined to overshoot.’

The men in the front row weren’t wearing plastic raincoats. They were young. They wore a variety of costume, sports jackets, tweeds and safari suits. One of them was a black man wearing a pale blue suit. They looked at Van Vuuren with special interest. From his seat on the stage he gazed defiantly back, but the footlights must have made it difficult to identify them at first.

‘I see it now,’ he said, ‘a deputation from my old Department; Brandt from Signals, Kritzinger from Interrogation, Breda from Surveillance, Kramer from Accounts – well, hell’s bells Jack! I never dreamt you were operational, or did you get promotion, or did they send you over to see the strippers for a Christmas treat, or something?’

‘You fucked out on us, Trev,’ said the man called Kramer from Accounts, ‘and now you’re tootling around England tricked out as a poncey priest. It’s not right, Trev.’

Now Van Vuuren noticed the black man in the pale blue suit. Even from where he sat at the bar between Minto and Dudley from Malta, his drink untouched, Blanchaille saw the horror on his face.

‘Oscar! What in Christ’s name are you doing here?’

The man in the blue suit stood up. ‘Things are complex,’ he said. ‘I could ask you the same question.’

‘But you guys sent for me. I’ve come home, Oscar. Tell them! Why didn’t you meet me at the airport?’

‘We didn’t expect you, Trevor.’

‘But damn it to hell, Oscar, I work for you.’

‘No, you work for us,’ said the shaven-headed man called Kritzinger from Interrogation.

Van Vuuren was straining at the ropes now. ‘What the hell is going on? Oscar what is someone from the ALF doing in this hole with these vultures from my Department? These guys shoot people like you, Oscar. Where is Kaiser? Does he know you’re here?’

Oscar nodded. ‘He sent me. He said to tell you hello —’

‘And goodbye,’ said Brandt from Signals.

The front row laughed heartily.

‘I want to see Kaiser,’ Van Vuuren demanded.

Oscar shook his head sorrowfully. ‘Kaiser isn’t in any condition to see you. He’s suffered a major set-back, has Kaiser. He won’t be dealing any more. From now on I’ll be dealing.’

‘And that means sitting down with these people?’

‘Like I said, Trevor, things are complex. I don’t expect you to understand because you don’t see the whole story. But on certain issues the Azanian Liberation Front and the Regime have common interests that override the struggle.’

‘Such as?’

‘The disappearance of Bubé, the strange disappearance of Gus Kuiker and Trudy Yssel, the murder of Ferreira.’

‘– the defection of security policemen,’ said Kramer from Accounts. ‘We’re going to piss on you, Trev, I promise you.’

‘The growing habit of certain people to whizz around the world like they owned the place. This threatens to destroy a delicate network of discussions, talks, negotiations, painfully achieved agreements between those who have the health of our country close to their hearts,’ said Brandt from Signals.

‘You fucked out on us, Trev,’ repeated Kramer from Accounts.

The big men in the row of seats laughed loudly.

‘The British have a great sense of humour,’ said Momzie.

‘Those people aren’t British,’ Blanchaille said. ‘They’re from my country, they’re South Africans.’

Momzie ignored him. ‘They like especially men dressed as women making jokes about foreigners. Speaking as a whole.’

‘It is true,’ said Dudley from Malta, ‘speaking as a whole, and speaking of the English now, the English love to laugh at all sorts. It is one of their greatest gifts. They laugh even at themselves.’

‘Yes,’ agreed Minto, ‘but what they don’t like is other people laughing at them.’

‘Even more hilarious do the English find than drag artists,’ said Dudley from Malta, incoherent with excitement, ‘speaking very much as a whole, are drag artists who make jokes about foreigners, Japs, frogs and whatnot.’

‘There is something the English find even funnier than that,’ said Minto defiantly.

‘No,’ said Momzie with heavy menace. ‘There is nothing they find funnier than that.’

‘Yes, yes,’ Minto persisted. ‘Yes there is and I know what it is!’

‘What is it?’ Momzie demanded. ‘And this better be good.’

Minto beamed. ‘They like even more than men dressed as women making jokes about foreigners, men dressed as women making jokes —’

‘For God’s sake get on with it!’ Dudley groaned.

‘Making jokes about foreigners… in lavatories!’ crowed Minto triumphantly.

They seemed to recognise the justice of this, but Momzie was not giving up yet. ‘Oh yes, how do you know?’

‘Saw it on TV.’

That clinched it. They all nodded. Clearly there was no further argument.

‘We watch a lot of television,’ said Momzie. ‘Ours is the best television service in the world.’

‘Have you watched any of our television?’ Minto asked.

But Blanchaille was watching Van Vuuren. ‘Please,’ he said, ‘those guys are going to hurt my friend.’

‘Balls,’ said Momzie. ‘We’re here, aren’t we. We’re here to see fair play.’

Van Vuuren had stopped struggling against the ropes. ‘I can’t believe I’m hearing this.’

‘You aren’t,’ the man called Oscar said bluntly. ‘This conversation never took place.’

Kramer came over the Momzie. ‘Do you have somewhere more private where we can continue our discussion. A cellar maybe?’

‘This is a cellar,’ said Momzie.

‘There’s the liquor store,’ said Dudley from Malta.

‘There’s not much room in there,’ said Minto.

‘Going to cost you extra,’ said Momzie.

The front row stood now, picked up the black leather chair and, in a procession which had a triumphant air about it, carried the prisoner from the stage. Blanchaille tried to intervene but Momzie produced an ugly little pistol from beneath the bar and hit him across the mouth. After that Blanchaille made no attempt to move but sat there watching the blood from his mouth dripping into his untouched whisky.

‘This place of mine is in heavy demand, being an easy walk from your Embassy,’ said Momzie proudly. He went on to tell the story of how he had recruited Minto and Dudley.

‘I met these guys when we were on a tour through the regions, or at least they were. They were walking a troop. What’s walking a troop? I hear you ask. It’s like taking a show on the road. You march a bunch of slags around the place from hotel to hotel and you nail a customer or two. He’s out there for a few days in the sun and isn’t with his wife and wishes he was, or is and wishes he wasn’t. It’s hard work and pretty thankless. You get girls who fuck around just for the hell of it. And some of them won’t keep accounts and they really begin to believe they are on holiday. They shoot off here and there and you spend half the day running after them like a fucking collie dog chasing sheep. I suppose you can’t blame them, the holiday atmosphere gets to the girls. I can tell you there’s nothing worse than a whore on holiday. These guys got so tired chasing after their pigeons they tried to lay it on me. Lay it on Momzie, shit that’s a joke! I read them like a book. I told them – look get out of the provinces, I mean regions, as we got to call them now, and come up to town. I need a bit of knuckle on the door, I said, and you want a bit of peace and quiet after years of pushing fanny around the place. So here we are, as happy as sandboys in The Bare Pit.’

‘This is the land of opportunity,’ said Dudley from Malta.

‘I’m proud to be British,’ said Minto.

One would like to draw a veil over subsequent proceedings. Alas, in dreams veils cannot be drawn.

And so I saw them carry the prisoner into the cellar, in the chair, like some mutant pope, and there they beat him, stamped on him, stabbed him. Though whether he died when they stabbed him or was dead when the knives went in, I cannot say. Also they pissed on him, as Kramer had sworn they would do, showing that he had not been speaking metaphorically. They actually, together or singly, urinated on him as he lay in his blood among the broken whisky bottles the fumes of which were suffocating in the small room and the air soon became fetid – which I agree is not really surprising when you remember that there were several strong men taking violent exercise in a small space; a crude, enthusiastic, messy, bludgeoning assault of boots, fists, bottles. It resembled nothing so much as the violence which passes for pleasure in the lower divisions of the rugby league. Even in this instance they reverted to type. They whooped, stamped, yelled. It was foul play. It was the foulest play imaginable. But it was damn good sport! Those who speak of rugby as a game believe they are making a joke. I can tell them they’ve seen neither the game or the joke – for neither is involved. What we are talking about are matters of life and death, not of who should live, or who should die, but who should decide! We are talking of sacred matters.

All this I saw through Blanchaille’s eyes. He watched the men come out of the liquor store, smelt the spirits on them and imagined in his naïvety that they had been drinking and this accounted for their strained, pale faces, their laboured breathing, the slightly giddy looks, and the stains on Oscar’s blue suit. He watched as the money was paid ‘for the hire of the hall’, as Momzie called it. A handful of small gold coins on the bar counter.

‘Who else but these guys pays in Krugerrands?’ he asked proudly, scooping up the hoard. ‘But then again, who better? Ain’t they got the market cornered?’

It was only when Dudley from Malta complained about the heat that they realised something had happened.

Minto went over and tried the handle.

The explosion blew off the door of the liquor store and carried away Minto, still attached to the handle. Momzie and Dudley from Malta screamed as they tried to beat back the flames with their jackets. The bottles of booze shattering like brilliant bombs. The body on the floor glowed like a lamp, and exploded, lighting up its own disfigurements, the smashed face, the knife wounds. A hot gust of alcohol, sweat and, yes, urine, hit them. And Blanchaille, finding himself unattended, took the dead man’s earlier advice and ran.