by Yaba Badoe
‘You ain’t got a chance in a million of helping anyone!’ Lizzie snarls. ‘You’re out of practice, Redwood. Wasn’t it you said that these contraptions change quicker than the blink of an eye?’
‘It’s like riding a bicycle, my dear. Once you know how, it never goes away. And maybe I’m not as out of practice as you think.’
To my horror, Lizzie shrieks and does a Cat. By which I mean she tugs at her hair. Pulls out a clump of pink, gazes at it bemused, and then yells in despair. Behaves badly Big Time. Doesn’t stop Redwood, though, doesn’t take that mad gleam out of his eyes. No, sir! Spurs him on ’cause he roars, lets out a whoop of delight, and he’s off.
Quick as a flash, he sucks out the photos and numbers from Barrel Man’s phone and sends them to an old girlfriend of Carlos’s. Maria works for a tittle-tattle tabloid in Seville, a newspaper in which nothing’s too scurrilous to print. Indeed, the bigger the scandal, the better.
Carlos calls Maria, explains what she’ll soon find in her mailbox. Who the photographs belong to. Rustles up the name of a friend of Maria’s – Henrique – who Maria claims can give Carlos the lowdown of who’s who in the police force in Cádiz. Who stinks, who’s clean, who’s on the Captain’s payroll and who wouldn’t touch him with a bargepole.
Carlos talks to Henrique while Redwood, the fanatical glow still on his face, finds out more about Federico Angel de Menendez.
‘See that shine in Redwood’s eyes?’ Scarlett whispers in my ear. ‘That’s what my father’s looks like when he’s on a high-stakes roll. Could bite him in the bum and he wouldn’t know.’
I reconsider my family yet again. Do Old Ones everywhere try to shield their Young Ones from what they fear most in the world? Are they always driven by dread in case what overwhelmed them may undo us as well? No computers, no phones, ’cause in his heart of hearts, Redwood’s a dedicated screen rat?
Cobra squeezes my hand as Redwood enters the home page of the police force of Cádiz. Rummages around until he has to enter a password to retrieve individual police files. Tries variations of a theme and soon all of us – except Lizzie – are leaning in, willing him on. Rolls the dice again. A third time. Fourth time lucky, I suppose, ’cause – hey presto! – he’s in.
‘Your friend Menendez received a commendation for bravery last year,’ Redwood tells us. ‘Looks like the real thing. Does he check out with Henrique, Carlos?’
Carlos nods.
‘Now,’ Redwood says, looking me straight in the eye, ‘Wolf-man, Grey Eyes, whatever you call him. Would you recognise him if you saw him again, kid?’
Mama Rose hovering behind me, pulls me away. ‘No, Redwood,’ she says. ‘You’ve done enough!’
‘Man kidnaps our young ’uns, tries to traffic ’em, traffics other folks’ kids and you want me to let him be? I shall be careful, Rosie, won’t leave any trace of where I am. Do you trust me, Carlos?’
Carlos gives his consent.
Pictures and words bounce on to the screen. Redwood lunges at the keyboard again as his body, hunched over the contraption relaxes with concentration. Stab, stab, lunge!
‘Gotcha!’ Redwood presses a key and an emblem of a globe framed by olive leaves, a sword behind, scales of justice below, appears.
‘INTERPOL.’ Cobra reads the word out loud and before I can blink, Redwood’s performing the same trick Grey Eyes showed us a day before. Photographs flood the screen.
‘Describe him to me,’ Redwood says.
Before I draw breath, Cobra rattles off a description of Grey Eyes: ‘White, German male. Around five foot eight. Heavy set.’
‘He’s got grey eyes,’ I add. ‘And his name’s Wolf.’
Reams of photographs appear.
‘Any other distinguishing features?’
I close my eyes and Grey Eyes’s jowly face surfaces. Distinguishing features, I say to myself, inspecting the flushed, open pores of his sweaty profile. Distinguishing features. ‘Yes, on the right side of his chin are tiny pockmarks. But there’s something else, Redwood. The tip of the little finger of his left hand is a nail short of a full finger. Sliced off most probably.’
Redwood taps in the information, and suddenly there he is. Grey Eyes a bit younger, less jowly, perhaps, but much the same. ‘He’s on their radar already. Wolfgang Richter. Trades in people and children. Served jail time in Hamburg and then disappeared. What’s the address where he stashed you kids?’
Cobra tells Redwood, who carefully copies Grey Eyes’s photo from the screen, types in his address in Cádiz, and then sends it to Maria in Seville.
Redwood turns the computer off and snaps it shut. ‘There you are. In a day or so those scumbags of yours will be dealt with in the court of public opinion. And if you’re lucky, Menendez and his black-boots will be on to them as well. Are you satisfied now?’
I smile in gratitude at Redwood.
‘Thank you,’ says Scarlett.
Cat grunts, then says: ‘You did what you had to, Redwood. Doesn’t mean I’m going to stay. Can only speak for myself, but I’m keeping my options wide open. All of ’em.’
‘All of ’em?’ Mama Rose replies. ‘In that case, there’s a chance you won’t go away and turn my hair grey before my time. What would I do without you, child?’ Mama Rose fingers the curve of Cat’s cheek, and in that brief moment of tenderness, Cat closes her eyes. Opens them with a sigh, and Mama Rose bustles us out of the study.
‘Time you young ones got some rest,’ she says. Then, as an afterthought, she adds: ‘Redwood and Lizzie, I want a word with both of you.’
We leave ’em to it.
Later that evening in the pigeonnier, Scarlett recovers the scrap of paper on which she wrote the numbers from Barrel Man’s phone and gives it to me with her phone. The screen lights up as I begin tapping in Isaka’s number. Cobra’s hand slams on my shoulder. Spins me around and says: ‘We’ve done enough, Sante. It’s over! The end!’
I shake my head, shrug him off, and mutter: ‘Not!’
Cobra tries to grab the phone. I chuck it to Scarlett, who throws it to Cat. Cat laughs while Scarlett, a kiss-me-lick-me smile on her lips, watches as Cobra says, very slowly – as if I’m on the crazy side of stupid – what Redwood said earlier: ‘With that friend of Carlos’s on their case, those young ones are going to be safe, Sante. There’s no need for us to meddle any further.’
‘No need for you, perhaps,’ I reply. ‘But us girls are of the same mind on this. We’re leaving early tomorrow morning before the Old Ones can stop us.’
Did I taste a splash of mango on my tongue before I spoke? Don’t think so.
Cobra greens glitter. ‘You’re not telling the Old Ones you’re going?’
Cat twizzles her nose, lifts an eyebrow in disdain, and chuckles: ‘Tell ’em? Can’t speak for you, but we’re not morons, Cobra!’
‘You’re worse than morons!’ he says. ‘The three of you have lost what little brain you were born with!’
Cat lobs the phone into my hand and, before Cobra can stop me, I tap in Isaka’s number. Phone purrs in my ear and to my surprise, Isaka replies as though he was expecting my call.
Tells us where to meet him.
Tells us how best to prepare for the Captain tomorrow. Turns out, tomorrow’s his birthday. With a bit of luck, a fair wind behind us, and Isaka’s help, we’re going to deliver a present that he’ll never forget. And neither, it seems, will Cobra. Looking every bit as venomous as the serpent he was named after, he turns away from me and makes up our bed.
25
About an hour after midnight, when I’m deep in sleep, the dream comes to me with a ferocity that gnaws into my bones. This time, instead of the cargo of lost souls, Scarlett looms large in the entrails of the boat.
She’s trapped, floundering. We all are, everyone, including me. No longer a baby swaddled in a sea chest, a miracle at the heart of the dream, I’m Sante Williams, circus performer, fourteen years old. Old enough to know that a dream’s just a dream, even though this one�
�s got me so tightly clamped in its jaws, I can’t move. Hands and feet heavy as mud, all I’m able to do is stand and stare as Scarlett’s freckles glimmer, then fade. She looks straight through me, disbelief on her face, as she says in my voice: ‘Where am I? What am I doing here?’
I’ve been on this boat many times before. But for a moment I can’t make out if I’m seeing the wreckage through Scarlett’s eyes or my own, while all around us the Young Ones at Grey Eyes’ party stumble as the boat is rammed a second time.
Voices ricochet as timbers splinter. Boat creaks, then the curve of the hull cracks open. Torrents of water gush in and Scarlett, her face glazed with terror, screams. Water rises and Scarlett’s distress at the sudden rush of sea sluicing underfoot overwhelms me, releasing the paralysis in my limbs.
An overhead rafter falters, then falls. On it, a coil of rope unfurls and slithers.
I inch forwards and as the sea swills about us, lapping at my thighs, I stretch out, fling one end of the rope to Scarlett, and then pull her towards me.
‘Scarlett, stay with me,’ I cry, uttering words that sound vaguely familiar but I sense aren’t my own. ‘Stay with me!’
Words spoken by someone else a lifetime ago; not my words, then whose? Time folds in on itself, echoing the past; and as it does, I haul Scarlett into my arms.
I’ve endured fragments of this dream over and over again. Woken frightened and confused. Felt the dream seize me; shake me about, and yet this time it feels hobbled, twisted somehow. So different, I freeze as a growing sense of unease chills my blood. Fear slices through me as I realise that someone else behaved as I’m doing, and did exactly what I’ve just done. Someone before me, and it didn’t work, ’cause right at the end of it all a life was severed, a human heart broken.
Memories pulse within me, and as the dream speaks, I remember. What I’m summoning are scenes that Isaka and Mamadou lived through. Scenes I gleaned from Isaka in Cádiz. Which means, if I’m right, within seconds the water around us will rise to my chest. And each time the trawler is rammed, Scarlett’s fingers will slip and slide, before one of us is hurled into the sea.
‘Hold on, Scarlett,’ I whisper and a jumble of noise crackles as I recall what happens next: the wind will howl and broken bodies tossed by waves will be swallowed into the deep.
Boom! The hull is hit again. Sea surges about my chest, my neck.
‘Move your legs, Scarlett. Keep afloat.’
Teeth chattering, she clings to my waist. Then, eyes fixed in horror, her feet start to paddle. Both of us slip-sliding away.
Far off in a distant land, feathers brush over my face, and Priss hisses in my ear.
Someone shakes me, tries to wake me. But the dream has me in its teeth and refuses to let go.
Scarlett or me? Who will it be?
‘Wake up, Sante. Wake up!’
Cobra’s persistence prises the dream open and I surface into real time, gulping for air. Eyelids lift and there he is; breath warm against my breath, cheek close to mine. ‘You were dreaming again,’ he says.
Half-asleep, I pull away, muttering Scarlett’s name. Cobra tries to soothe me, but with the nightmare still riding me, I get up, overwhelmed by a need to go walkabout with Priss.
*
Within quarter of an hour we’re out on Carlos’s land. Shadows flecked by the light of the moon hover about us. They flicker and form, then seconds later, obliterated by a swirling cloak of darkness, they glint on blades of grass and the leaves of trees. It’s three o’clock in the morning and the dream’s steering me, even though I’m straddled bareback on Taj Mahal, with Cobra behind me. Overhead, Priss, an inky smudge of movement in the sky, is on the lookout for her next kill.
I barely mumble: ‘This time the dream was different, Cobra.’
‘How was it different?’
Walkabout isn’t walkabout when there’s someone else with me. Cobra insisted on coming ’cause my distress when he woke me frightened him. I kept muttering Scarlett’s name, telling her to hold on to me, never let me go. His fingers cool on my feverish brow, Cobra calmed me. But the moment my trembling ceased, the future lurched into view. In those few seconds between action and reflection, the dream coiled around me, and a lump of dread heavy as granite, settled in my gut.
A dream’s just a dream, I know, but some of ’em talk to me, warn me when something bad is about to happen.
All the same, I don’t want to talk to Cobra about it, ’cause when I’m as jittery as I am today, words confuse me. While instinct, sharp and strong as Priss’s beak, I know I can trust. If I were rambling alone with Taj and Priss, I reckon more likely than not, I’d tease out the true meaning of the dream, and what’s about to happen, in a twinkling.
As it is, that lump of dread trails me like a bloodhound puppy. Snuffles around Taj’s ankles, jumps up, tries to lick my hand. Won’t let me go, no matter how sternly I point a finger at it and say: ‘Down, dog! Stay!’ Might as well jab a finger at the wind and tell it to stop blowing.
I jump down from Taj, nuzzle my nose against his, and Priss, gliding on the crest of a breeze, flexes her wings. An owl hoots from a juniper tree. Priss hisses in reply and I pause to listen to their banter. The owl calls; Priss responds and then disappears in the darkling sky.
‘How was the dream different?’ Cobra asks again. He slides down, walks beside me, and I wish I were bold and canny enough to shake him off without hurting his feelings.
‘Dream was about Scarlett,’ I tell him. ‘Same boat as always, but this time Scarlett was trapped. Tried to save her but in the end I realised that only one of us would survive.’
‘Figures,’ Cobra replies. ‘Girl’s as unpredictable as a firecracker and every bit as dangerous, but Cat and you can’t seem to get enough of her.’
I nod, caught in a dilemma of what my head wants me to do and what my heart’s telling me is true. Head, heart, then there’s Cobra.
‘You know I’m right, Sante. That girl’s got inside you, same as she’s got inside Cat. Most probably did the same with Miguel, but bit off more gristle than she could chew.’
‘That’s where you’re wrong, Cobra. As far as Scarlett’s concerned, being right isn’t what matters.’
A warm southerly breeze ruffles the grassland beyond Carlos’s meadow as we stride through it. I paddle my fingers in clumps of wild rosemary and thyme, brush my legs against ’em, and a sharp, tangy scent hits my nostrils. I keep walking till my head begins to clear, and my eyes adjust.
I take a deep breath of rosemary-spiked air, then cluck and call Priss. Talons dangling, she swoops to the gauntlet on my hand.
‘Priss,’ I say. ‘Priss, you’re going to stay here today, you hear? You’re to stay with Taj and Midget Man. You’re not to come looking for me, not to follow me ’cause I’ll be back before nightfall.’
I talk to my bird and that bloodhound pup yap, yap, yaps.
Priss spreads her wings, steadies me, while Cobra says: ‘After everything I said last night, you’re still going to go through with it?’
I try to dazzle him with a daredevil grin. But instead of pandering to me, his greens root out every morsel of uncertainty within my dream-soaked self. Cobra weighs me up, and the granite in my gut grows heavier and heavier, till I can’t help but close my eyes to hide the quivering inside me.
Soon as I’m able to look at him again, I touch his shoulder: ‘You don’t have to come with us, Cobra. I can ride Redwood’s bike and with luck on our side, we’ll be back before the Old Ones miss us.’
Cobra curses under his breath, then says loud and clear, so even the most stubbornly stupid soul such as mine can hear: ‘Your dream just told you what you know already, Sante. Scarlett could be the death of you, and you’re still going?’
‘I don’t have a choice,’ I tell him.
‘Of course you do! It’s your life! You can do whatever you want!’
I shake my head. If there’s one thing I’ve learned since opening my sea-chest cradle, it’s that those wh
o saved my life did so for a reason. They have a stake in me now and they’re claiming what’s due to them.
‘I don’t have choice, Cobra,’ I tell him again. And it’s then, as I stiffen my back and brush my tears away, that he decides to ride with me.
26
The restless dead never stop talking. For years they’ve held me captive with dreams that bleed into my waking hours. And for as long as I can remember, even when I didn’t fully grasp what was going on, they’ve whispered to me. Now, true as the sea is blue and salt is white, they’re guiding me. I feel the tug of gold on my wrist and rub it for luck. Bangle tingles and I begin to appreciate what I didn’t before: my father foresaw the dangers ahead of me and my feelings today – powerless, fragile as a snail without its shell.
I raise his gift to my mouth and as soon as it grazes my lips, I hear my mother’s voice saying: ‘Walk good, Asantewaa! Walk in step with our ancestors.’ My heartbeat quickens.
Once this is over, I swear on Priss’s feathers and everything I hold dear, that I shall lay the unquiet dead to rest. I shall cover my ears to their cries, seal their lips with a final goodbye, and make them leave me for ever. But how? That’s the question.
These are my thoughts as we hurtle back to Cádiz the way we came; Cobra and me in the lead on Redwood’s motorbike, Cat and Scarlett on the pizza-delivery scooter. I think to clear my head, keep the yapping puppy at bay. Think; then focus on what lies in front of me. When I’ve exhausted every combination of what could possibly go wrong, and there’s not much left to be anxious about, I let go and enjoy the ride.
After last night’s storm there’s a twinge of autumn in the air, a faint chill that makes me hold Cobra closer. My head against his back, the swell and sweep of the landscape drains the last dregs of tension from me and scatters it to the wind. I notice, to my relief, as an osprey flaunts its wings in the pearly grey sky, that there’s not a flicker of Priss in sight – not a hiss or a whimper – just the noisy chatter of a dawn chorus.
We weave through lanes, up the steep incline of craggy hills, until wending downhill we hit the motorway to the city. The sun brightens, and as dawn somersaults into day, Redwood’s motor, wheels spinning, propels us along the fast lane to Cádiz.
