She stood up and closed the door in his face. Her heart was pounding with fear.
When she emerged he was sitting with a glass of beer in his hand.
'Do you feel better?'
'I'm fine. I suppose I might have eaten something I shouldn't.'
'If you'd been here for a few weeks I'd have asked questions about headaches and high temperatures.'
'I haven't got malaria.'
'Not yet. But if I remember rightly you haven't been taking any preventative medicines?'
'You are right.'
'How was the trip to Inhaca?'
'How do you know I've been there?'
'Somebody saw you.'
'Who knew who I was?'
'Who knew who you were.'
'I ate and slept and swam. And I also met a man who paints pictures.'
'Dolphins? Big-breasted women dancing in rows? He's a strange fellow who's been washed up on Inhaca. Fascinating life story.'
'I liked him. He'd painted a picture with Henrik in it, his face among many other faces.'
'The pictures I've seen in which he tries to depict living people have seldom been up to much. He's not a genuine artist, he doesn't have a shred of talent.'
Louise was annoyed by his dismissive tone.
'I've seen worse. And I've met a lot of artists who have been applauded for their pretensions rather than the talent they don't possess.'
'Naturally, my judgements on what is good art can't compare with those of a classically trained archaeologist. As an adviser to the country's Ministry of Health, what I normally discuss is anything but art.'
'What do you talk about?'
'The fact that there aren't any clean sheets in Mozambique hospitals, if indeed there are any sheets at all. It's very regrettable. Even more regrettable is that year after year we provide them with money to buy sheets, but it all disappears, both the money and the sheets, into the bottomless pockets of corrupt officials and politicians.'
'Why don't you protest?'
'I'd lose my job and be sent home. I try to make sure that the wages paid to officials are raised – they are unbelievably low – so that the motivation for corruption is no longer there.'
'Aren't two pairs of hands needed for corruption to take place?'
'Of course. There are many hands keen to dig into the millions paid out in the form of aid. Both givers and takers.'
His mobile rang. He answered abruptly in Portuguese and switched it off.
'I'm afraid I shall have to leave you on your own this evening. I am required to attend a reception at the German Embassy. Germany pays for a large part of health care in Mozambique.'
'I can manage.'
'Make sure you lock yourself in. It will probably be very late when I get back home.'
'Why are you so cynical? As you make no effort to conceal it, I don't hesitate to ask.'
'Cynicism is a defence mechanism. Reality appears in a slightly milder light through the filter of cynicism. Otherwise it would be easy to lose one's grip and let everything sink to the bottom.'
'What bottom?'
'There is no bottom. There are a lot of people who maintain in dead earnest that the future of the African continent is already in the past. All there is in store is an endless series of painful experiences for those who have the misfortune to be born here. Who really cares about the future of Africa? Apart from those with special interests, be they South African diamonds, Angolan oil or Nigerian football players.'
'Is that what you think?'
'Yes and no. Yes, when it comes to the continent itself. Africa is a place you would prefer not to have to deal with because it's obvious it's in such a mess. No, because it simply isn't possible to banish a whole continent to stand in the punishment corner. The best-case scenario is that international aid can keep the continent's head above water until they themselves can find some way of standing on their own feet. Here, if anywhere in the world, the wheel needs to be invented all over again.'
He stood up.
'I must get changed. But I'd be pleased to continue our conversation later. Have you found anything or anybody who can help you with your quest?'
'I keep finding something new all the time.'
He eyed her thoughtfully, nodded and headed upstairs. She could hear him taking a shower. After a quarter of an hour he came back down again.
'Perhaps I said too much? I'm not really cynical, but I am honest. There's nothing that can discourage people as much as honesty. We live in an age of mendacity.'
'Perhaps that means that the image one has of this continent isn't true?'
'Let's hope you're right.'
'I found two emails that Henrik had sent from your computer. Although I think in fact that you had written one of them. Why did you do that?'
Håkansson eyed her non-committally.
'Why should I have faked a letter from Henrik?'
'I don't know. To confuse me, perhaps.'
'Why should I do that?'
'I don't know.'
'You're mistaken. If it weren't for the fact that Henrik is dead, I'd throw you out.'
'I'm only trying to understand.'
'There's nothing to understand. I don't fake other people's letters. Let's forget about it.'
Håkansson went into the kitchen. She heard a clicking sound, then a door being closed and locked. He came back, left the house and closed the front door. His car started, the gate was opened and closed again. She was alone. She went upstairs and sat down in front of the computer, but she did not switch it on. She could not face it.
The door to Håkansson's bedroom was ajar. She opened it wider with her foot. His clothes lay in a heap on the floor. There was a television set in front of the king-sized bed, a chair overladen with books and magazines, a bureau with a fall front and a large wall mirror. She sat down on the edge of the bed and tried to imagine that she was Lucinda. Then she stood up and walked over to the bureau. She could remember a similar one from her childhood. Artur had shown it to her when they were visiting one of his elderly relatives, a lumberjack who had celebrated his ninetieth birthday when she was very small. She could picture it in her mind's eye. She picked up some of the books lying on Lars Håkansson's bureau. Most of them were about health care in Third World countries. Perhaps she had been unfair to Håkansson. What did she really know about him? Perhaps he was a hard-working aid worker and not a cynical observer?
She went to her own room and lay down. As soon as she felt up to it she would prepare a meal. Africa tired her out.
All the time, Umbi's face came gliding towards her through the darkness.
She woke up with a start. She'd dreamt she had been in the old people's home where the ninety-year-old with the shaking hands lived, a human wreck after a long, hard life as a lumberjack.
She could see the whole scene clearly. She had been six or seven at the time.
The bureau was standing by one of the walls in his room. Standing on top of it was a framed photograph of people from a different age. They could have been his parents.
Artur had opened the fall front and pulled out one of the drawers. Then he had turned it round and showed her the secret compartment, a drawer that could be opened from the other direction.
She stood up and went back to Håkansson's bedroom. It had been the drawer highest up on the left-hand side. She pulled it out and turned it round: nothing. She felt embarrassed at the fact that her dream had fooled her. Even so, she took out the other drawers as well.
The last one had the hidden compartment. Inside the compartment were some notebooks. She leafed through until she reached a page dated yesterday. She stared incredulously at what was written there. An 'L', and then 'XX'. It could hardly mean anything other than the fact that she had been to Xai-Xai. But he had not known that she was going to go there.
She leafed back a few pages and found another note. 'CH Maputo'. That could mean that Christian Holloway had been in Maputo. But Lars Håkansson had maintained that he was
unacquainted with him.
She put the notebook back in and replaced the drawer. The guards in the street outside had fallen silent. She started walking round the house, checking that doors and windows were closed and the bars in place.
There was a little room behind the kitchen where the laundry was dried and ironed. She tried the window. The catch was off. And the bars were not closed. She slid the bars into the closed position, and recognised the noise they made. She opened them again. The same noise. At first she failed to remember why she recognised the sound. But then the penny dropped. She had heard it when Håkansson had gone into the kitchen just before leaving.
He told me to lock up, she thought, but the last thing he did was leave a window open. So that somebody could climb in?'
She panicked. Perhaps because she was so agitated, she could no longer distinguish between reality and her imagination. But even if she was misinterpreting everything that happened and was exaggerating the danger, she did not dare to stay. She switched on every light in the house and gathered up her clothes. Hands shaking, she unlocked all the locks on the front door, and then the wroughtiron gate. It was like breaking out of prison using a warder's keys. The security guard was asleep when she emerged into the street. He woke up with a start and helped her to put her bags onto the back seat of her hired car.
She drove straight to the Hotel Polana where she had stayed the first couple of nights in Maputo. She carried her bags upstairs herself, despite the friendly protests from the receptionist. Once installed in her room, she sat down on the edge of her bed, trembling.
Perhaps she was wrong, seeing shadows where she ought to have seen people, links that were really coincidences. But it had all become too much.
She remained sitting on the bed until she had calmed down. She went back to reception and established that the first flight to Johannesburg left Mozambique at seven o'clock the next morning. The receptionist helped her to book a seat. After eating she returned to her room and stood by the window, gazing down at the empty swimming pool. I don't know what it is I'm seeing, she thought. I'm in the middle of something, but I don't know what it is. Only when I get away from here will I start to understand what it was that drove Henrik to his death.
She hoped desperately that Aron was still alive. One day he would turn up again.
She drove to the airport shortly before five in the morning. She put her keys in the box provided for rented cars, collected her ticket and was just about to pass through security when she noticed a woman standing outside the terminal entrance, smoking. It was the girl who worked in the bar with Lucinda. Louise had never heard the girl's name, but was certain it was her.
She had been going to leave the country without first speaking to Lucinda. She felt ashamed.
Louise went up to the girl, who recognised her. Louise asked in English if she could take a message to Lucinda for her. The girl nodded. Louise tore a page out of her diary and wrote: I'm leaving. But I'm not one of those who just disappear. You'll be hearing from me.
She folded the paper and gave it to the girl, who was examining her nails.
'Where are you going?'
'To Johannesburg.'
'I wish it was me. But it isn't. Lucinda will get the message this evening.'
She passed through the security checks. Through a window she could see the enormous aircraft waiting for boarding.
I think I'm beginning to sense something about the reality of this continent. Brutal forces grow out of all the poverty and spread without meeting any opposition. Poor Chinese peasants and their equally poor brothers and sisters in Africa are treated like rats. Was that what Henrik had realised? I still don't know what happens in the secret world that Christian Holloway has created. But I have a few pieces. I shall find more. As long as I don't give up. As long as I don't lose heart.
She was one of the last passengers to board the flight. The aircraft thundered down the runway and took off. The last thing she saw before they were engulfed by the thin clouds was small fishing boats with bulging sails heading for land.
CHAPTER 20
Twenty-three hours later Louise landed at Venizelos airport just outside Athens. The approach was over the sea. Pireus and Athens and all the chaotic jumble of streets and houses rose up to greet her.
When she left there, she had felt very happy. Now she was returning with her life in ruins, haunted by events she did not understand. Inside her head was a teeming mass of details that had so far eluded her ability to link together and interpret.
What was she returning to? An excavation of graves that she no longer had any responsibility for. She would pay whatever she owed in rent to Mitsos, pack her few belongings, and bid farewell to whoever was still around before the dig closed down for the winter.
Perhaps she should also pay a visit to Vassilis in his accountant's office? But then again, what did she have to say to him? What did she have to say to anybody?
She had flown with Olympic Airways, and treated herself to business class. During the long flight through the night she had enjoyed two seats to herself. When she had flown south, she thought she could see fires burning far below in the darkness. One of them was Umbi's fire, the last one he ever lit. Also hidden in the darkness were the people who had silenced him.
She knew now, she was certain of it: Umbi died because he had spoken to her. She would never be able to accept sole responsibility for what had happened, but if he had not come to see her he might well still have been alive.
Could she be sure of that? It was a question that haunted her dreams as she tried to sleep in the comfortable Olympic Airways seat. Umbi was dead. His eyes were staring out into the unknown, past her own. She would never be able to see that look again. Nor would she ever know what he wanted to tell her.
At the airport she suddenly felt an urge to let the dig at Argolis wait, book herself in to a hotel, perhaps the Grande Bretagne at Syntagma, and just disappear into the teeming crowds of people. Spend a day or two there, force time to stand still so that she could find her way back to herself.
But she rented a car and drove along the newly-built motorway towards Peloponnisos and Argolis. It was still warm, autumn was no nearer now than when she had left. The road meandered through the dry hills, the white rocks protruded like pieces of bone between tufts of brown grass and stunted trees.
As she approached Argolis it struck her that she was no longer scared. She had managed to shake off her pursuers and leave them behind in the African darkness.
She wondered if Lucinda had received her message, and what she thought. And Lars Håkansson? She put her foot down and increased speed. She hated the man, even if she could not accuse him, naturally, of being involved in the events that had led to Henrik's death. He was a man she had no desire to have in her vicinity.
She turned off at a service station that also had a restaurant. She had been there before, with Vassilis, her patient but somewhat nonchalant lover. He had collected her from the airport. She had been in Rome to participate in a dreary conference on the discovery of ancient books and manuscripts in the desert sands of Mali. The discoveries had been sensational, but the seminars sleepinducing, with far too many speakers and hopeless organisation. Vassilis had met her plane, and they had drunk coffee here together.
She had spent that night with him. It now seemed just as distant as anything she had experienced in her childhood.
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