Easy Motion Tourist

by Leye Adenle

  ‘I might have a job for them.’

  ‘Those boys? They cannot be trusted, Chief. See how they came here and caused trouble for no reason? We cannot be doing business with people like them. They will just be causing problems up and down. No, Chief. They are not good for business. They are too reckless.’

  ‘Yes. The job I need them for is very dangerous, they might not survive it. I’ve been looking for someone to use for the job. Not our business. Something else. You understand?’

  Catch-Fire knew that Knockout, at least, would retaliate. ‘They would be very good for that kind of job,’ he said.

  ‘Write their numbers down for me. What are their names?’

  ‘The big one is Go-Slow; I don’t know his real name. The midget, they call him Knockout but his real name is Kanayo.’

  He had just learned that tonight. He planned to make an anonymous call to the police to give them this tip.

  Amadi folded the sheet of paper on which Catch-Fire wrote down the names and numbers. He slipped the paper into his pocket then he lifted his brandy.

  ‘To more money.’

  ‘More money,’ Catch-Fire said. He searched the stool for his beer and raised the bottle to touch Chief Amadi’s glass. He took a sip from his bottle.

  ‘Chief, please, take one of these girls home. Any one.’

  ‘Another time, my friend. Another time.’

  ‘Or two, sir. Take two. I’m telling you, they are very good. And clean. No HIV. Take three.’

  ‘You tested them yourself?’

  ‘No, sir, ‘is not like that. I am not sleeping with all of them. Only one is my girlfriend and she is not even here. Any one you want, I promise you, only you will have her.’

  ‘You are not drinking your beer.’

  ‘It is warm. I will get another bottle. Please, sir, have more brandy.’

  ‘No, no, no, no. It is late. I really have to be going.’

  ‘Ah, Chief, you are angry with me because of those boys.’

  ‘Angry? Why? Finish your beer and see me off.’ Amadi stood up.

  ‘OK, sir.’ He downed the rest of the beer in one gulp.

  20

  The dark sky was just beginning to break into patches of grey when Go-Slow stopped in front of a bungalow on King George V Road in the heart of Lagos Island. Knockout got off the scooter and the criminals shook hands, agreeing to meet at Tarzan Jetty later that night.

  Knockout held his share of the spoils in a nylon bag that also contained, in wraps of paper and cellophane, the heart of the girl he had butchered. He watched his partner turn round on the whining machine before leaving the way they had come, then he turned to his house.

  He had inherited the building from his father who had inherited it from his own father, and so on for four generations. He had once shared it with two other brothers who had since secured the necessary forged papers to fool immigration in Nigeria and in Germany. He liked to think that most of the big families in Lagos still had family homes close to his in the shanties of Lagos Island – even if the once proud homes were now divided into rooms rented to the people the city didn’t care about.

  He walked down the side to the backyard where a wire fence stretched from his wall to the wall of the adjacent bungalow, five feet away. He undid the latch lock on the tiny gate and stepped into his back garden.

  ‘Whisky, Gaddafi.’

  Two pure-bred Dobermans ran up to him from their open cage and jostled for his fingers to rub through their black coats. Unlike many such breeds, they still had their tails. He was shocked when he discovered Dobermans aren’t born with stumps; he couldn’t understand how anyone could chop off a puppy’s tail shortly after birth. What kind of person would do that to a dog?

  Knockout unwrapped the parcel and tossed the meat at his dogs. He had been excited since the thought first occurred to him to feed his dogs a human heart. He watched the beasts nervously sniff at their meal, nudge it with their wet noses, look up at him unsure, then sniff again. The thrill built in him; he couldn’t wait to watch them feed on it. One dog snatched the meat and growled, clenching it in its jaws. The other fought for it and Knockout chuckled. Then his eyelids retracted as a thought landed in his head. Shit. Why didn’t he think of that before?

  He had to get the meat from the dogs. He dived into the tussle and quickly learned that dogs, in the end, would always be dogs.

  21

  The sky was brightening and cocks were crowing in the slum beyond the station, but Ibrahim was at his desk, waiting for the police commissioner’s next call, wondering what he would give as an update, and fighting the urge to send an officer to buy a packet of cigarettes.

  If he hadn’t called the commissioner in the first place, to boast about capturing the Iron Benders gang, the man would probably have continued sleeping and missed that damn report on CNN. The commissioner had also asked how it happened. Ibrahim started to explain how his boys had been out on patrol but the commissioner cut in with ‘How did you let this get on the news?’ As if Ibrahim could arrest every journalist in Lagos.

  A local report would have been bad enough. Pompous reporters would have asked rude questions, used long words, and blamed everything in the country on police corruption. Their real gripe would have been where the crime happened: Victoria Island, one of the few enclaves of relative safety in the city – an illusion that those who lived on the Island, and those who aspired to, guarded religiously.

  But it had gone international, and no doubt, the same way Nigerians are always ready to take issue with any foreigner who dares to insult their country, everyone who had a platform from which they could make noise would be fuming and raging at CNN’s ‘unfair’ portrayal of Nigeria. And he, Ibrahim, would be the grass under which two elephants battle; not because a murder was committed on his watch, but because he was the policeman meant to make sure that such things, when they do occur, do not tarnish the precious image of the island of the rich.

  There was also the body in the cell. Taking care of the carjacked woman was easy. She thanked him when he told her that all she had to do was sign a statement that he had written for her. In few words it said she was carjacked near CMS, she walked to the station to report the crime, she recognised one of her assailants in the cell and the suspect became violent and tried to escape. The woman signed the statement and he tore up the one she had originally written. A police car took her home.

  Amaka, on the other hand, would not be so easy to gag – if that was even possible. Ibrahim’s predecessor briefed him on her: ‘Be careful with that one. She’ll give you a lot of problems.’ He called her a ‘frustrated lesbian’ and the charity organisation she worked for, ‘a club for prostitutes.’

  When she first turned up at the station and said that a girl was raped while in detention there, Ibrahim called his predecessor and asked what to do. The man laughed and told him to find a lawyer.

  She walked into his office as if she was his boss. She introduced herself as the girl’s lawyer. He wanted to warn her that he knew all about her, but when she shook his hand and beamed that beautiful smile, he forgot she was the enemy.

  She was not the man-hating witch he’d expected. She appeared to be intelligent and she acted politely. She didn’t want to take the police to court; she just wanted the officer in question to pay the girl he had arrested in front of Y-Not. She agreed that it could hardly be called rape, as the woman offered sex for her freedom. But, she argued, since the girl shouldn’t have been arrested in the first place – for soliciting, which couldn’t be proved – she shouldn’t have had to bribe anyone to regain that freedom. The way she saw it, the officer owed her client for services rendered, or the Nigerian police had to answer a case of forced imprisonment and rape.

  She impressed him with the way she made her case, though he tried not to show it. She was blackmailing him to make a police officer pay a prostitute – too many crimes to list. But she was dangling before him a court case that made her offer seem gracious.

&n
bsp; Unlike his predecessor, he understood her. Here was a woman who used her knowledge, her charm, and anything at her disposal, to look after other women. She was like Mother Theresa to those girls.

  Several times, he asked for her number but she always turned him down. It had become a friendly game they played each time they met. If he were single, she would be the perfect wife for him. But why would such a sophisticated girl want to marry a common policeman? They would never have met, and even if they had, they would never have been friends. Yet, her line of work made her a constant visitor to his station and they were now friends, even if not close.

  Why did she have to come that night? Why didn’t she stay in his office when he told her too? She’d taken the British journalist to the Minister of Information. What happened in the cell would probably be discussed. What was she doing with the bloody minister, anyway? Maybe powerful men were her thing? Perhaps for all her charity work and seeking justice for all womankind, she was just like every other female. Maybe that was why she had never allowed them to talk seriously about seeing each other outside the station. Maybe he just wasn’t rich enough. Either that or she really was a lesbian.

  He picked up the phone: ‘Musa, come here.’

  ‘This is not Musa, sir. This is Oyebanji.’

  ‘Where is Musa?’

  ‘He has handed over to me, sir.’

  ‘Call him now. Tell him to come back.’ He slammed the receiver down. If he couldn’t go home, nobody could. He thought for a moment then he picked up the phone again. ‘Tell Musa to go to the Sheraton. The Minister of Information is staying there. I want to know when he leaves and who is with him when he does.’

  Five minutes later, Oyebanji called back. ‘Sir, Musa is not answering his phone, sir.’

  ‘What? OK. Ask Femi and… whoever is there, to come to my office now.’

  In a room at the back of the station, four shirtless officers, sweating and exhausted, fists sore, were interrogating a member of the Iron Benders gang.

  Hot-Temper stepped in front of the body of the boy who was hanging head-down from a broken ceiling fan to which his feet were tied using a watering hose.

  ‘Ol’ boy, you want to die for nothing?’

  The boy’s body swayed, dripping sweat and blood into a pool on the ground.

  ‘We already have information that one of the cars you snatched was the same one that you and your boys used to dump the girl that you killed. The madam you snatched the car from has come to report in this station tonight. Just tell us who sent you and we’ll let you go.’

  The boy did not respond. Hot-Temper sucker-punched his belly. He coughed blood and saliva.

  ‘Bring the ring boiler.’

  An officer who had been leaning against the wall unplugged the apparatus in his hand. It had a plastic handle with a power cord on one end, and the two ends of a thin metallic tube on the other. The tube, which was about the thickness of a pen, extended five inches from the handle and looped four times to form a coil at its furthest point. Through swollen eyes, the boy saw the glowing red coils dangling before his face. His body twisted like a snake held up by its tail.

  ‘Remove his trousers,’ Hot-Temper commanded.

  The policemen gripped the boy. With the tips of his thumb and index finger, Hot-Temper held the boy’s penis and inserted it into the hot coil. The boy’s scream reverberated through the building and the smell of burning flesh wafted through the room. He howled and writhed like a snared animal until his energy was spent and then he whimpered like a dog.

  Hot-Temper yanked the coil away, and with it, sizzling, seared skin.

  ‘Look at what you are making me do to you for nothing. I don’t want to punish a young boy like you. I know that other people sent you. Just tell me their names and all this will end. If you don’t tell me what I want to know, I will put your blucos back into this thing and plug it until you fry like suya.’

  The boy recalled the blood oath he swore when he joined the gang. He remembered the walk through a bush path. He smelt the wet soil. He felt the tickle of tall blades of grass brushing against his arms, leaving dew on his skin. All around him there was nothing but beautiful, open green land. He was standing in a clearing before the oiled wooden figures and bloody plucked feathers of the shrine. He tasted the dry blandness of his own blood mixed with the blood of the others as he sipped from the clay pot that sucked his tongue. He remembered the witch doctor’s warning: ‘You have vowed to keep each other’s secrets secret. Whoever breaks the promise made upon this ground shall be swallowed by the ground.’ He saw the decaying bodies of those who had sworn at the same shrine and went on to break their promises. They were left to rot unburied, scattered like refuse around the shrine, playthings of the gods. If he spoke now and broke the oath, he would die and he would become one of those shameful corpses whose souls would roam this earth as ghosts unable to find their way home. He would die.

  Hot-Temper opened Inspector Ibrahim’s door without knocking.

  ‘Sir, we have a name, sir.’

  ‘Really?’

  ‘Yes, sir, Chucks.’

  ‘Chucks? The same Chucks?’

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  Ibrahim leaned back in his chair. He had seen it happen all too often; a small-time crook gets ambitious and forces the police to come after him in spite of the bribes he has paid in the past. Chucks had been a reliable snitch who told on any criminal encroaching upon his operation. His scam was selling impounded motorcycles that he bought illegally from officers of the state’s traffic task force and passed on as imported second-hand goods. So, he had graduated to stolen vehicles?

  ‘Oga, let me take some boys and go and bring him, bulldog style.’

  Ibrahim thought about it. It was almost five in the morning. Matori, where Chucks lived, would have long woken up. If they tried to grab him bulldog style like Hot-Temper suggested, without a warrant, they could provoke a riot. It had happened before. Officers sent to get someone were barricaded by spare parts traders and Area boys. They didn’t allow the men to leave until they gave up on the armed robbery suspect they had gone to fetch. Besides, he could update the police commissioner with news of a suspect, and have another update later when they had the man. Why waste the two good updates on one? There was only one thing to do: wait until night when Matori would be quiet.

  ‘Who else knows?’

  ‘Knows what, sir?’

  ‘About Chucks?’

  ‘Just me and the officers interrogating the boy.’

  ‘Good. Don’t mention it to anyone. I want to see all of you now.’

  In a notepad on his desk he wrote ‘Operation Bulldog.’ He drew two lines under the words and added ‘The siege on Matori.’

  22

  Only a hunted spy sprinting through the gates of a friendly embassy would understand how I felt when we drove into Eko Hotel.

  I pointed out empty spaces but Amaka continued driving and pulled up far from the entrance. Her phone rang again. Who kept calling her? She had promised to explain everything once we got to the hotel. What could she possibly have to say? If she wasn’t working with the inspector then who was she? Why had she come to get me? What exactly did her charity do? Why did she lie about being sent by Ade?

  She answered her phone as she stepped out of the car. I couldn’t tell if she was speaking English. She walked with quick strides and was soon ahead of me, deep in conversation. Did it have something to do with me?

  In the early morning light I got a better look. She was tall: maybe five ten. She had a well-toned, yet feminine body. She worked out. She stood straight and walked in a no-nonsense manner that made her even sexier. Who was she?

  Climbing the steps leading to Eko Hotel’s open-plan lobby she put the phone down. Someone was on hold.

  ‘I’m sorry. I had to take that call,’ she said.

  ‘It’s all right,’ I said. I was embarrassed that she might have caught me looking at her bum. ‘You have to check out of your room now. I’ll get ano
ther room in my name for you to move into, for the moment’

  ‘Wait a minute. You still haven’t told me what all this is about.’

  ‘I’ll explain everything in the room. Please, we have to hurry up and get you into another room.’

  I saw her point. At her urging, we walked in separately. She met me at my room and together we packed my bags then I went downstairs to check out, leaving my suitcase behind. I made a show of walking out of the hotel with my laptop bag and a backpack. Then when I was sure nobody was watching, I walked back in from the other side and took the elevator up to her floor. I knocked, half expecting her to be gone with all my belongings but she smiled as if she was happy to see me. Maybe she had also been afraid I wouldn’t return.

  She had taken off her shoes.

  ‘Did you tip the man at the desk?’

  ‘Yes. Five thousand naira like you told me to.’

  ‘Good. He’ll remember you.’

  ‘You’ve done this before haven’t you?’

  ‘It may come as a surprise to you but I generally don’t spend my nights rescuing white boys from the police.’

  ‘OK, how long are you going to play that card?’

  She smiled again. She took my laptop bag from me and placed it on the table.

  ‘OK, let me explain.’

  As she spoke, she sat on the bed and lifted her legs onto the covers. She pulled a pillow under her arm and lay on it on her side, facing me.

  ‘Like I said, I work for a charity. We work with prostitutes. We give them counselling, financial support, shelter if they need it, medical aid, that sort of thing. Prostitution is illegal in Nigeria so nobody watches out for these girls. They are molested, extorted, short-changed, raped, killed, you name it. You saw something tonight, outside Ronnie’s bar?’

  I nodded. The terrible scene replayed itself in my mind. I pulled a chair up to the bed and sat facing her.

  ‘What you saw, it has happened before. Not like that, not so openly, but at its worst that’s exactly what we try to prevent. Many of the girls have my mobile number. Someone, one of them, called to tell me what happened. I went there and luckily for you, people saw you getting yourself arrested. That’s how I got to know about you. I knew you would need help so I came to find you.’