Last Orders at Harrods

by Michael Holman

  Lucy unlocked the door to Pearson’s office, stuffed the envelope in her bag, and was about to leave when her mobile phone rang.

  It was Jonathan Punabantu. Could she call in to see him at State House? No, it could not wait. Cecil was in trouble . . . serious trouble.

  As she locked the office door behind her, Lucy felt her arm being tugged. It was the bureau chief of the Japan Television News Agency, as polite as ever.

  “Rucy, could you please tell me: where are the riots?”

  26

  “Women who pick the ripe dongo berries make lazy wifes”

  The Uhuru Day holiday was about to end, and Kuwisha was returning to its routine. The prostitutes were on the prowl again, stalking the city hotels. The four-wheel-drive vehicles would soon carry their owners back from the country and coastal resorts, back to their homes in Borrowdale and other suburbs. They were needed in their offices, pursuing their good causes. More had died in Kireba, where the cholera outbreak was now in full spate. But the scourge had now been officially acknowledged, and for the international press corps the story had lost its appeal. What is more, there were reports of a massacre of civilians near Kisangani, and a charter flight to the scene was to leave early the next day.

  At the city’s international airport, the tide was changing.

  The outgoing travellers who arrived as pink visitors were returning to Europe. They now sported tans, and wore safari chic: multi-pocketed trousers, and khaki waistcoats with epaulettes. Some flaunted their newly acquired words of Swahili. They ordered a last Tusker at the airport bar, “baridi sana”, very cold, and demonstrated their egalitarian principles by calling the bar steward bwana. Bored passengers looking for a final bargain wandered into the airport’s many souvenir shops, and wondered whether they should spend their last ngwee on a wooden giraffe, or a malachite rhino.

  Meanwhile, Kireba licked its wounds.

  Parts of the slum had been destroyed by rioting residents, by the police and by the army, although which of the three had done most damage was a moot point. At first glance, Harrods seemed to be one of the casualties. Yet although the bar’s appearance suggested the opposite, it was untouched by the rioters. Well before the mob advanced on the city, the steel doors of the two giant containers had been swung shut by a group of Mboya Boys, with the fridge, chairs and tables, and the stock of beers and soft drinks, all safely secured within.

  But to the casual observer, Harrods looked as if it had been attacked by an arsonist. Someone had piled several old car tyres against one of the containers, and set them alight. The thick oily smoke had left a film of soot on the container walls, and had made the Harrods sign all but illegible.

  The scene seemed utterly without hope. But to the sharp-eyed, and the indigent, there were pickings to be had.

  Titus Ntoto and Cyrus Rutere scoured the ruins of burnt out stalls along either side of the main track, the so-called ‘Uhuru Avenue’, where the food vendors, the watch repairers, the cobblers, the coffin makers, the tinkers, the tailors, and the traders were slowly putting their lives back together.

  The two youths were lounging near the Kireba clinic. They watched as a taxi approached, and parked at the point where the road ends and Kireba starts. A figure in a pinstriped suit emerged, peering at a scrap of paper. He spotted the boys. Taking care to ensure that his taxi driver stayed close behind him, the man in his mid-forties approached them, talking slowly and loudly.

  “I’m looking for” – he paused, and checked the paper, even though the address was now painfully well known to him – “Harrods International Bar (and Nightspot), on Uhuru Avenue.”

  The journey to Kuwisha had been without incident for Rupert Fanshawe, partner in the well known London law firm of Fanshawe and Fanshawe. After delays in getting a reply to their letters, and provoked by Furniver’s impertinent response when it eventually arrived, they had been driven to this last resort. Fanshawe and Fanshawe were determined to make an example of Charity Mupanga and Harrods International Bar (and Nightspot).

  Fanshawe and his partners had agreed: the only way of settling the dispute was for someone to fly to Kuwisha and have it out with that woman, Mupanga, and her incompetent lawyer.

  Some degree of third world experience for whoever made the journey was advisable, the partners felt. On the basis of Fanshawe’s recent fortnight in Mauritius, he was the obvious candidate. And he was due a spot of leave. Once the matter had been settled, said the senior partner, why not take a few days off at the coast?

  It turned out to be a tough assignment. Checking in at the city’s Intercontinental Hotel had been straightforward, but thereafter it had been “hell, sheer bloody hell,” as Fanshawe would tell his admiring colleagues on his return.

  “Africa,” he would say, rather like David Podmore, shaking his head sadly, and looking preoccupied by an impenetrable private grief brought about by horrors he had seen at first hand: “Africa.”

  It had all seemed clear enough when he studied the map of the city on the plane. It was a short walk from the Intercontinental Hotel to Uhuru Avenue, but there was a problem. Two problems, in fact, Fanshawe told the office.

  After covering the length of the potholed, palm-tree-lined route, and asking passers-by, Fanshawe had been unable to locate Harrods International Bar (and Nightspot).

  And as for the street children: “A bloody menace,” said Fanshawe. “Blighters should be in school.” Only when he asked one of the gang that was trailing him did he ascertain that the city had two Uhuru Avenues – one official, the other in Kireba. With much irritation and some unease, he hailed a taxi and gave fresh directions to the driver.

  “Leave the taxi at the clinic,” the boy had instructed him.

  “The place where the bar should usually be is very close. But there has been much rooting, much rooting.”

  Rooting? Rooting? Where the bar should “usually” be? What on earth did the boy mean, “usually”?

  Fanshawe had become increasingly unhappy. But the taxi driver seemed confident that he knew where Harrods was, although he seemed puzzled that the lawyer should want to go there. A bit of discipline, thought Fanshawe, that’s what is needed. Firmly, he repeated the address. He had flown 8,000 miles to find this bloody place, and he was not going to give up now.

  The two urchins who were watching the stranger as he looked around, his fear and bemusement almost palpable, conferred in Swahili:

  “You take the briefcase, I’ll snatch his watch” said Cyrus Rutere.

  Ntoto was about to agree, then thought again.

  “Just a minute,” he said to Cyrus, and approached the stranger.

  “Where are you from, sir?”

  “London,” snapped Rupert Fanshawe, and held his briefcase tighter. He looked around.

  “London,” he said again, more emphatically this time.

  His tone suggested that if he said it often enough and loudly enough, he would either be able to make sense of the squalor that surrounded him, or be magically transported back to his chambers in London, EC 4.

  Ntoto looked at Fanshawe speculatively and turned to his companion.

  “I think this is the man who is giving Mrs Charity all the trouble,” he said in Swahili.

  Cyrus looked around.

  “Where will we put him?” he asked.

  “Don’t be so stupid,” said Ntoto. “If we harm him, police will come from London to look for us. He is a European! No, we will pretend to help him, but we will make sure he does not find Mrs Charity.”

  He turned back to Fanshawe.

  “Please sir, tell me again the name of the place you are looking for. What is the street?”

  “Harrods International Bar (and Nightspot),” Fanshawe replied, with a touch of impatience. “Uhuru bloody Avenue.”

  Ntoto repeated the address, and made sympathetic clucking noises.

  “I am very sorry, sir. I have news that is very bad. Harrods is World Bank.”

  “World Bank? World Bank! I don’t want th
e bloody World Bank,” said Fanshawe. “I want this bar . . .”

  Ntoto turned to Cyrus.

  “You tell him.”

  “Sir,” Cyrus began diffidently. “Harrods Bar is World Bank. It is not working. It is finished.”

  “Finished? What the hell do you mean, finished?”

  He looked around desperately.

  “Is anyone here? Is there nobody I can talk to?”

  Just like the Mboya story, thought Ntoto, and suppressed the urge to giggle.

  “It is finished, sir. It was rooted.”

  “Rooted? Rooted? What do you mean, boy, rooted?” said Fanshawe, exasperated, starting to sweat in his pinstripe suit.

  Ntoto and Cyrus had a whispered exchange.

  “Is he stupid?” asked Cyrus.

  Ntoto tried again.

  “Sir, it was rooted. It was attacked and burnt by the rooters.”

  The penny dropped.

  “And where was it?”

  “We are standing near where it was, sir. It was run by my sister’s aunt, Mrs Charity Mupanga.”

  “That’s the woman,” said Fanshawe excitedly, “that’s her.”

  Ntoto gestured towards Harrods, and began to wail.

  “She was killed by the rooters, sir. She was like a mother to us.”

  Fanshawe looked around him, incredulity, relief and horror following each other across his face.

  “My God,” he exclaimed, “the bloody bunch of savages.”

  What a story he would have to tell back in London.

  “A-bunch-of-bloody-savages,” he said again, giving each word an angry emphasis. Killing their own kind! So this was black on black violence! Too bloody much! No wonder Africa was in such bad shape. Fanshawe fished in his pocket, and extracted two 100 ngwee notes. His job was nearly done.

  “Thank you, sir” said Ntoto.

  Fanshawe took the first few steps towards Harrods. Something unpleasant had attached itself to his left shoe, and the blood of a recently slaughtered goat dribbled into a nearby ditch. He studied his surroundings with distaste. “Like the Somme on a bad day,” he thought, and looked dubiously across the forty-odd metres that lay between him and Harrods. Fanshawe took a deep breath, and was about to make the journey, but Ntoto intervened.

  The boy tugged at his jacket.

  “It is still very dangerous,” he said, looking around with mock unease. “There are looters nearby, I am sure. We will escort you back to the hotel you are staying. It is very, very dangerous. More trouble is coming, for sure.”

  The pinstriped lawyer looked around. The awful smell of the place would cling to his suit for ages, and his stomach churned. Slivers of smoke were still rising from around the blackened containers that used to be Harrods. Why take the risk? He already had an extraordinary tale to tell when he got back to London. Fanshawe brushed aside Ntoto’s guiding hand.

  “For God’s sake,” he exclaimed irritably as Ntoto persisted.

  “Take your filthy fingers off me, boy!”

  The lawyer walked briskly to the waiting cab, parked near the clinic, followed by his driver. He hopped in. “I may look like a London gent,” he thought to himself, “but I’m not stupid.” The hotel staff had warned him about the hazards of city life. High on the list was the risk of being mugged by the marauding gangs of street kids.

  “I can manage,” he said confidently, winding up the window until it was an inch from the top, and locking the door.

  “Back to the hotel,” he ordered the driver.

  Ntoto moved round to the driver’s side. The man looked at him fearfully and contemplated a quick get-away. But the track was muddy, and the car could easily get stuck in the attempt. What was more, he recognised Ntoto, who could, should he choose, make life very unpleasant for him.

  Ntoto told him: “The white man is very frightened, and very stupid. He believes more trouble is coming. Tell him he is right. Take him to his hotel, and tell him he should collect his bags, quickly, and then drive him to the airport.”

  “Why should I do this?”

  Ntoto chuckled.

  “Because if you don’t, me and my friends, we will shit in your car. Every day.”

  He pulled out the notes Fanshawe had given him, gave the driver half, and stepped back as the taxi pulled away.

  Safely back in his room at the Intercontinental, Rupert Fanshawe was on the phone to London.

  “Absolutely ghastly. Bloody unspeakable. Didn’t get to meet that bugger Furniver. Rang his office, no reply. Either his phone doesn’t work. Or holidays, local holidays, gone native . . . what’s that? Harrods? Burnt to the bloody ground, destroyed, by the rioters. That Mupanga woman was killed. Yes – killed their own kind . . . Just before I arrived . . . Dangerous? A bit . . . but I kept my head down. Mauritius taught me a thing or two, when my hotel was caught up in that waiters’ strike. Damn nearly turned nasty. Yes, yes, I’m OK, really. Met these two local lads, gave me the full story. We can close the file on this one.”

  Fanshawe packed as he spoke, and took a stiffening gulp of the gin and tonic he had poured himself from the room’s minibar.

  “Entrez-nous, I’ve been tipped off. Local sources. And dips here say more trouble likely tonight. I’ll catch the next plane home, go to the coast another time . . . Can’t help feeling sorry for the two boys. Thick as short planks, but couldn’t have been more helpful. Related to her, apparently. Suggest we make a donation to what’s-her-name’s estate.”

  He rustled through the file.

  “Mupanga, that’s it, Charity Mupanga. Send it to her lawyer, that prick Furniver. Perhaps it can pay school fees for the lads. Whatever. We don’t want the story to get into the hands of the press, ’tho. We can make the payment conditional on silence, just in case . . . How much?”

  How much indeed?

  Fanshawe was feeling hugely relieved. The taxi driver was waiting outside, keen to get to the airport as soon as possible.

  “The taxi chappie’s wetting his pants,” Fanshawe chuckled. “Just as well I know how to look after myself . . . Bloody lucky to be getting out of this alive.”

  Fanshawe accepted the congratulations of the senior partner.

  “Couple of hundred pounds will do, but with a pretty stiff letter along with it,” said Fanshawe, and his colleague at the end of the line agreed.

  “Make it clear we’re peeved. Clear breach of trademark, and so on. Not much point in trying to recover costs. Place was a wreck, absolute shambles. As for the state of that poor woman . . . hacked to death, I gather.”

  The partner kept a respectful silence, and hoped that Fanshawe would not go into the details. His colleague had seen horrors that no decent man should ever see.

  “But we don’t want to give these people the wrong idea. We’re not a soft touch. Don’t want them coming back for more. Yes, a couple of hundred pounds will do.”

  It was only when checking out that Fanshawe realised that his wallet was missing.

  Edward Furniver had lost track of time.

  Judging by the noise, his office had been on the front line, though every ten minutes or so a Mboya Boy had shouted through the letterbox, assuring him that there was never any danger that the rioters would damage it. Not that Furniver cared – he had taken refuge in his computer, checking the loan accounts that he feared no longer mattered.

  At least his embarrassing itch had been efficiently dealt with, during his visit with Charity to the clinic. He had undressed behind a screen, re-emerged wearing an old dressing gown which Mercy had asked him to put on back to front, stretched out face down on the clinic’s rudimentary examination table, and apprehensively awaited the first probe.

  It was over in a minute.

  He felt no more than a slight squeeze, and had closed his eyes when Mercy tried to show him the result.

  Charity admonished him.

  “You men! You get embarrassed about foolish things, always. Just like David.”

  “I must tell you, Furniver,” she continued, as he
re-emerged from behind the screen, hitching up his trousers, “always make very sure that your underpants are properly ironed. Didn’t your friends at the Thumaiga Club tell you that? What do you men talk about?”

  Mercy looked at him sternly as she washed her hands, and joined in.

  “She is right, Furniver. Everyone knows this. Even those people at the club. They know it. You are lucky. If it had burst . . .”

  On the way back from the clinic, he and Charity had bumped into Mildred Kigali.

  “Furniver had a jipu in his butumba. Mercy removed it without bursting it,” Charity said proudly, while Furniver, embarrassed, looked at his feet.

  Mildred gave a whoop of delight and relief.

  “I will tell Mr Kigali. He will be very pleased,” and she hurried to break the news to Didymus, who had gone into a deep depression since his traumatic experience.

  “Did Kigali not iron your underpants?” Charity asked.

  Wasn’t this where I came in, Furniver asked himself? Jipus and underpants . . .

  Perhaps he should have defied the Mboya Boys, who had continued to provide a protective presence around the building, well after the rioters had passed on. He should have returned to Harrods, and stayed at the side of the woman he loved. But even the short journey to the bar could be dangerous, and his presence might well imperil Charity. At times like this, a white face could attract unwanted attention. So with heavy heart, he had stayed put.

  The knock on the door broke into Furniver’s downcast mood. It would not be Charity – she had a key. It could not be a looter, nor – an even worse prospect – a government soldier. Neither would have bothered to knock. The air-conditioner suddenly cut out, and within minutes Furniver had started to sweat.

  Not for him the genteel, tiny-beaded perspiration of Europe. Rather it was like the African storm that was now passing. Huge drops of sweat rolled off his forehead, spattered on to his desk, drenching his cotton shirt.

  Another knock. This time Furniver pulled himself out of his office chair, his trousers sticking to his thighs. He went downstairs, through the accounts room, past the table with three legs and the filing cabinet with a drawer missing. He reached the door just as the knock came for a third time, deferential, yet insistent.