‘The beggar!’ Gaby shrieked. Mojo floored the brakes. The kid on the skateboard disappeared under the hood ornament that had once been one of those plastic lions rampant that the middle-class with no taste put on their gate posts. ‘Oh Christ, you’ve hit him.’
The kid’s face rose over the top of the radiator grille. He was standing on his two feet. He was smiling. In his hands was a pump action shotgun. He threw himself flat on the hood, blew both barrels through the windscreen. Noise. Glass. Blood. Gaby screamed, thinking she was dead. The blood and meat sprayed over her right side were not hers.
The skateboard kid rolled off the hood to cover. A Lambretta engine squealed. There were two shotgun blasts from the back of the pickni. The scooter dashed past. The girl on the back had produced a pistol grip shotgun from her backpack. She reloaded as her driver turned the scooter for another pass. The Lambretta circled the pickni, pumping shot after shot after shot into the gun position. The rear window streamed blood on both sides. Missaluba extricated her Kalashnikov from the footwell and threw open the door. The Lambretta driver kicked it closed as she sped past. Missaluba barely avoided losing fingers and face.
A big blue Plymouth convertible drew up alongside. In it were men with Afro haircuts and big guns. The driver and passenger covered Missaluba while the men in the back seat jumped out and hauled her down on to the concrete. The skateboard kid and the shotgun girl from the Lambretta pulled Mojo’s faceless body out of the truck and dragged Gaby over the blood-slick vinyl and shoved her into the rear seat of the Plymouth. A man in the skinniest tank top Gaby had ever seen frisked her. He tutted and shook his head at the calibre of her ammunition, like a Christian Brother teacher finding a vibrator in a schoolbag. Disapproving, but impressed. Missaluba and Faraway were kneeling by the side of the pickni. The skateboard kid and the Lambretta girl pressed shotgun muzzles to the backs of their skulls.
‘Take her,’ said the front seat passenger, a bald-headed man with a drooping moustache, round shades and a long leather coat. The Lambretta girl kicked Missaluba in the kidneys and quickly cuffed her hands with plastic cable grip. She went into the trunk of the big blue Plymouth.
‘What about him?’ the skateboard kid asked. He wanted to shoot Faraway. He wanted to shoot him very much. He wanted to blow his head up like an exploded melon, spraying red flesh and black seeds of wisdom.
‘Leave him,’ the leather coat said. ‘He is tribe. We go. Now.’
The skateboard kid flipped up his board, caught it with one hand and jumped into the back of the car beside Gaby. The Plymouth smoked away from the shattered pickni. There was blood, glass, and shotgun cartridges all over City Hall Way, and Faraway standing in the middle of them in his bright orange colour-of-the-day jacket. The Lambretta picked up its passenger and wove off through the traffic.
The man with the bald head and the drooping moustache in the leather coat turned in his seat to Gaby.
‘Good morning Ms McAslan. Sheriff Haran’s regards, and he wishes you to come with us discuss your account.’
60
They took her up the front stairs. At some time a bullet had killed one of the neon waterfalls flanking the door. The bouncer did not stand outside any more, but scrutinized the street from a metal slit.
The balcony bar smelled of sweat, stale cigarettes and the high-end tang that remains when the characteristic chemicals of expensive perfumes neutralize each other. The main ceiling lights were on. You could see the cigarette burns on the carpet. Down in the white tiled pit, rows of shower heads sprayed steaming water over twenty naked men languidly soaping each other. Gaby wondered, as she always had, where the Cascade Club bought its water.
Haran was on his throne in his glass-floored office at the top of the stairs marked ‘private’ in two languages. Leathercoat and the Skateboard Kid sat Gaby in a chair facing him and stood by the door. They did not think she might try to escape. They just wanted to look scary. Haran had one of them give her a moist wipe to clean the blood and brain off her face. When her condition no longer nauseated him, he spoke.
‘I’m disappointed. Really. I have to hear from others that you are back in my country. Gaby, I would have thought you would have called on your old friend and ally before now.’
‘You killed those Black Simbas. You fucking murdered them. They never stood a chance.’
Haran sat back in his ebony throne and contemplated the woman before him.
‘We are at war, Gaby. You yourself have realized this, by choosing sides.’
Gaby turned in her chair to accuse the Skateboard Kid.
‘He wanted to shoot Faraway. He wanted to blow his fucking head apart.’
‘He is tribe,’ Leathercoat said. ‘I would not let him do it.’
‘But it was exceedingly unmannerly of him,’ Haran said. ‘My own tribal brother. Flesh of my flesh. Would you like me to have him killed, by means of apology?’
He would, she knew. It would be a cheap price for Gaby’s moral anguish.
‘I don’t want any more killing. I’m sick of killing and dying, do you understand? I’m sick of it always being the easy option.’
‘There, Simeon,’ Haran said. ‘Now you owe the m’zungu your life.’
‘What do you want, Haran?’
‘Always to the point, Gaby. Very well. The posses are finished. The East African teleport is in tatters. The network of agents, operatives and enforcers has collapsed. There is no demand for the commodity I supply any more. Therefore, according to the laws of economics, I should relocate my industry to a place where materials and markets are plentiful.’
‘You want out.’
‘I speak to you without shame or guilt. I want out. I will get out.’
‘So you’re leaving Mombi to face the shit.’
‘Mombi thinks there is a place for the likes of us in the new Kenya. I have always lacked her patriotic fervour. Perhaps I lack her vision too. But what I know is that there is no place for Haran in this new nation. I will get out. You will get me out.’
‘You blow people away in the middle of City Hall Way on the long shot that I can somehow take you out as hand luggage? Sick joke, Haran.’
He rippled his fingers. Gaby could hear the joints cracking.
‘Excuse me if I do not laugh, Gaby. The news agencies have been getting their local people exit visas from the UN. I believe it should still be possible to make a late application directly to East Africa Command.’
‘If you know so much about it, then you’ll know it’s impossible without an affidavit from the station chief.’
‘Gaby, I have refrained from mentioning this so far, but I feel I have to remind you that you were forced to leave this country with your affairs unsettled. You will recall the considerable investment I put into opening the way for you to break the Unit 12 story; an investment for which I do not think it is unreasonable to expect a return.’
‘You’re calling in your marker.’
‘You owe me, Gaby. I anticipated there would be a problem with obtaining a new visa, so I will settle for a visa that has already been issued to someone else.’
‘Now you are joking.’
‘Shall I show you how my sense of humour works? I believe I shall.’ Haran nodded to Leathercoat. He and the Skateboard Kid left the glass-floored room. They were gone some minutes. Haran sat unmoving, looking at Gaby over the tips of his touching fingers. If Gaby had had a cigarette, she would have stubbed it out in his eye socket. When she heard the enforcers’ feet on the stairs, they sounded heavy, burdened.