A Dark Redemption

by Stav Sherez

  ‘I did what I could to make up for that day. I went back to university, stopped wanting to be a lawyer and studied the region, its history and politics. I wanted to understand what had happened to us and I discovered very quickly that it was happening to everyone in Acholiland. I began travelling back there, collecting information, rumours, lists of the dead. I did what I could but I knew it would never be enough.’

  Carrigan looked at his shoes, the mud and cracked leather. ‘It’s hard to see how your perfect life went so wrong.’

  ‘Everything goes wrong in the end, Jack, you know that. All our perfect lives unravel at some point. The world would be a very different place if things went to plan. That stupid, fucking Grace.’ Ben let out a long stream of air, coughed into his hand, the gun shaking in his grip. ‘I was helping the country come to terms with itself. My book, the TV show – people were finally waking up to what was going on in Uganda then Grace Okello comes along and ruins it all.’

  ‘How did you even find out about her?’ Carrigan wondered whether they’d missed a vital clue. A link between Ben and Grace that could have prevented the bloodletting of the last few days.

  ‘I stumbled upon the abstract for her thesis. I have to keep up with what’s happening in the field and it’s normally the same old stuff, so it was a surprise, a bad one, when I saw Grace stating she would uncover the real killers of the aid workers. I immediately requested any articles she’d written from the British Library. The next day I had copies of three pieces she’d submitted in the last year.

  ‘All of them were about Ngomo and the Black-Throated Wind. I quickly read through the first two and realised that Grace was getting her information from somewhere other than books. I knew all the literature about the region but her articles contained facts and details I’d never seen before.

  ‘She had a source, someone close to the ground during the early nineties. It was the only explanation. I remembered the video camera that day, the soldier taking home movies – and I knew something had to be done.

  ‘It was easy for me to get her address from SOAS and, my God, when I saw where she lived, whose patch it was, I knew everything that happened was meant to have happened and that none of us ever had a choice once you took that road.

  ‘Bayanga was one of my field assistants during those research trips back to Uganda. He’d been a child soldier, kidnapped by Ngomo when he was very young and rescued a few years later by a group of Dominicans. We’d got back in touch a couple of years ago when he first emigrated here and he was the one I called when I finished reading Grace’s articles. I told him she had a source and that this source must have been a high-ranking lieutenant in Ngomo’s army. That was enough for Bayanga, given his history with Ngomo. He was never meant to kill her.’ Ben was using the gun to stress and punctuate every word. ‘It was the source I was after, cut that off and you solve the problem.’

  ‘You should have seen Grace,’ Carrigan said. ‘You should have seen what he did to her.’

  ‘Believe me, Jack, I never wanted that. I guess when he found out who it was the temptation was too great for him. But filming it – filming it was a stroke of genius. The poetic justice of Ngomo seeing his daughter die the way the parents of those aid workers had, knowing that the whole world was watching . . .’

  The door to the chapel crashed open, the sound like a thunder-crack rippling across the nave. Jack turned round but it was only the wind, leaves spiralling through the empty church. The gun pressed up against his skull. ‘You think I won’t shoot you. I know it’s what you’re counting on but think how far I would go to protect my family.’

  ‘You’ve achieved just the opposite,’ Carrigan replied, his mouth dry and bitter.

  Ben laughed. ‘Really? Ursula called yesterday to say she’s been released without charge and you’ve just brought the one piece of evidence that can link me to Bayanga. I should thank you, really – I’d forgotten it even existed.’ He took the photo and held it in front of him, from his other pocket he produced a lighter. Jack turned and saw the photo catch and blaze. He watched it crumple and blacken in Ben’s hand, then fall to the floor. ‘This is about protecting my family, that’s all it ever was – you need to understand that. I couldn’t protect David but I will not fail my daughters. I made my decision, now it’s your turn.’

  The smell of burning chemicals filled Jack’s nostrils as Ben continued. ‘Think about it, Jack – let Bayanga take the fall and we go back to our normal lives. Sit and drink and talk about old times every couple of weeks.’

  ‘And what about Grace?’

  ‘She was just a fucking PR woman for her war-criminal father; she’s just as guilty as he was.’

  ‘That wasn’t your decision to make.’

  Ben pushed the barrel deeper into the back of Jack’s skull. ‘Why is justice so important to you? You seem to care more about the law than you do about your friends.’

  Jack turned quickly, his eyes meeting Ben’s. ‘Why do you think?’ he replied, barely able to keep his voice steady. ‘You were there that day. You know why it’s so fucking important.’

  Ben shook his head. ‘I’m giving you a choice, that’s more than I ever had. Leave it alone, Bayanga’s dead, there’s nothing left to gain by taking this further. Everything can go back to normal.’

  Carrigan thought about evenings spent with Ben, the river rushing by outside, the invisible presence of Ursula always somewhere behind the door, and then he shook the thoughts away and flashed back to that day in Masindi, the soldiers beating the man by the side of the road, the expression on David’s face.

  ‘No.’

  ‘No?’ Ben said. ‘What do you mean no? You can make this go away, you can finish what you started.’

  ‘It’ll never be finished. There’ll always be a tape floating around somewhere, another witness who suddenly remembers.’

  For a moment it seemed as if he’d got through to him and then Ben finished the rest of the bottle, span the gun round in his hand and, in one clean strike, smashed it against the side of Jack’s head.

  Carrigan fell to his knees, his head swimming, nausea engulfing him, fingers pressed against the cold wet floor.

  Ben got up and slowly approached him. He stood still over Carrigan for a moment and then he pointed the pistol at the back of Jack’s head and clicked off the safety. ‘I’ll give you a few seconds to pray, if that’s what you need to do.’

  Jack opened his mouth but the words wouldn’t come. He searched frantically for them but his vision swam with images of Louise, her hair fluttering in the wind, arms outstretched, Geneva out on the London streets, his mother strapped to a bed, white walls and white corridors reaching for ever. ‘Just get it over with.’

  And then, as he stared down at the mud-caked floor and waited for the bullet, the words began to come to him, a rushing torrent of half-remembered prayers and childhood hymns, too many words for his head to contain, and when it felt like he couldn’t hold them in any longer he opened his mouth and they came cascading out, an avalanche of words, and then he heard one voice rising above the maelstrom, one single voice – her voice – cutting cleanly through the rain and babble in his head.

  ‘Put the gun down and step away. Do it now!’

  Jack looked up and saw Ben’s face frozen in the harsh glare of the spotlight. Ben was saying something but all Carrigan could hear was the roaring of his own heart.

  They sat on a mourner’s bench outside the chapel. Geneva passed Carrigan a blanket and helped drape it around him.

  ‘How did you know I’d be here?’ He stared at her wet hair, the way it curled around her ears, noticing for the first time how her forehead creased when she smiled.

  Geneva moved closer to him, at the same time watching the two local constables reading Ben his rights. ‘I managed to find out David’s full name, remembered you’d said he was buried in his father’s churchyard. A quick bit of research and here I am.’

  ‘And here you are,’ Carrigan repeated, staring out at
the deluged land in front of him. He tried to explain to her what had happened in Ngomo’s camp, Ben’s story, but it seemed she had one more surprise in store for him.

  ‘I know,’ she answered softly. ‘Marqueson told me.’

  Jack stared at her, not quite sure he’d heard right. ‘Marqueson?’

  ‘How do you think Ngomo managed to get asylum?’ She leant forward and brushed some dirt off his cheek. ‘The Foreign Office have known for years what happened to the three of you. Ngomo told them everything and they gave him asylum to keep him quiet, so that the story would never leak out. They were protecting your reputation . . . and their own, obviously.’

  Carrigan wrapped himself in the blanket, his teeth chattering. ‘Thank you . . . I . . .’

  She put a finger to his lips and shook her head. ‘Enough for now. Get some rest.’

  He sat and watched as she got up and conferred with the constables. Then he placed the wet blanket on the ground beside him, turned, and headed for the promontory. He walked slowly, the mud and rain making the world appear drab and drained, and then he stopped, distrustful of his own senses. He blinked the rain from his eyes, trying to comprehend the scene in front of him, but it was almost a thing beyond comprehension.

  A river ran where previously there had been only a footpath. He saw the new channel carved by the deluge, the thick brown water hurtling towards the sea, and then he noticed the voyagers journeying on this stream – a flotilla of dead flowers, soft toys, and birthday cards whose messages the rain had obliterated. He stood there for a long time entranced by this spectacle, the rain’s strange cargo uprooted from their graveside vigils and borne upon the flashing water, a silent army of remembrance rushing irresistibly towards the darkness.

  Acknowledgements

  Lesley Thorne, whose constant faith and unerring instincts guided this book towards what it should be.

  Sally Riley, Leah Middleton, and everyone at Aitken Alexander.

  Angus Cargill for his belief in me and his skill in seeing what was needed and what wasn’t.

  The wonderful team of Alex Holroyd, Katherine Armstrong, Miles Poynton, and everyone at Faber & Faber.

  Trevor Horwood for driving me crazy with his superlative copy-editing.

  Robert Clough for suggesting the idea for the title in the most unlikely of circumstances.

  Francis Phillips for generously lending me her pseudonym.

  Nick Stone, Damian Thompson, Milo Yiannopoulos, Matt Thorne, Richard Thomas, John Williams, Willy Vlautin, Andrew Benbow, Luke Coppen and the team at the Catholic Herald, Lee Child, Dreda Say Mitchell, Portia (now means now!), Ali Karim, Mike Stotter, Mike Ripley, Richard Reynolds, Paul Dunn, Melanie Rickey, Jim Butler, Helen and Kerry, James Sallis, George Miller, and Will Oldham for telling me his Burundi story.

  My parents.

  And last, but certainly not least, the readers who’ve kept with me all these years . . . thank you.

  By the same author

  The Devil’s Playground

  The Black Monastery

  About the Author

  Stav Sherez is a freelance journalist and the author of two previous novels. The Devil's Playground (2004), his debut, was described by James Sallis as ‘altogether extraordinary‚ it introduces a major new talent’‚ and his second novel The Black Monastery (2009), was described as ‘dynamite fiction’ in the Independent and ‘spectacular’ by Laura Wilson in the Guardian.

  First published in 2012

  by Faber and Faber Ltd

  Bloomsbury House

  74–77 Great Russell Street

  London WC1B 3DA

  This ebook edition first published in 2012

  All rights reserved

  © Stav Sherez, 2012

  The right of Stav Sherez to be identified as author of this work has been asserted in accordance with Section 77 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988

  This ebook is copyright material and must not be copied, reproduced, transferred, distributed, leased, licensed or publicly performed or used in any way except as specifically permitted in writing by the publishers, as allowed under the terms and conditions under which it was purchased or as strictly permitted by applicable copyright law. Any unauthorised distribution or use of this text may be a direct infringement of the author’s and publisher’s rights, and those responsible may be liable in law accordingly

  ISBN 978–0–571–28205–0