Two
Ten hours earlier, Alan Knight was thinking: My God, he's crazy. I'm being driven by a madman.
Though the expressway to the airport was slippery with rain, everyone was driving as if they couldn't leave Lagos behind soon enough. They still had miles to go, for here on the mainland Lagos sent its housing and industrial estates swarming toward the north. They'd passed the overcrowded bungalows of Ebute-Metta, but Mushin and Oshodi were still to come – if Alan ever got there, if the car hadn't left the road by then.
'I think we've got plenty of time before check-in,' he said, as casually as he could.
When Marlowe glanced at him, the car swerved. This is it, Alan thought numbly. I've done it now, I've made him crash. But Marlowe guided them back into the wake of the car ahead. 'Better let me judge the speed. We're liable to cause an accident if I try to go slow.'
True, many of the drivers were unused to high-speed roads. Alan had already seen three cars off the road today, one attended by an ambulance and two already rusting. All the same, he could see no reason for Marlowe to drive like this, glaring fiercely through the watery fan of the windscreen wiper, overtaking whenever he saw the hint of a gap. In his great red-haired hands the wheel looked like a toy, and Alan was afraid that Marlowe regarded it as such. He was beginning to wish he had taken a taxi, even though, after Frankfurt, Lagos had the most expensive taxis in the world.
How had he ended up with this lift at all? He remembered being invited to last night's party ('Mr Knight, you must come, everyone knows your books, they're dying to meet you') but very little of the party itself: a blur of people in pale thin suits or dresses or Yoruba robes, Nigerians laughing and shaking his hand for minutes, expatriates dark as mahogany, full of all the questions you were supposed to ask a writer. They might know of his books, but it seemed that nobody had read them. After hours of this sort of thing he'd found himself talking to Marlowe, the red-bearded giant he had noticed drinking and brooding all by himself in a corner. He couldn't recall what Marlowe had said – something about the hidden dangers of anthropology? – until suddenly Marlowe's eyes had brightened, for no reason that Alan could see. 'You're going to need a lift tomorrow,' Marlowe had said, and here it was.
The downpour was worsening. As they sped through Mushin – cheap houses crammed together fifteen to the acre, four people or more to a room – the rain made grey auras just above the roofs of cars, sloshed over windshields faster than wipers could wipe. Apart from craning forward to peer through the rain, Marlowe made no concession to the weather, even though once the back wheels began to slew.
All at once he began to talk, or at least to mutter to himself. 'I shouldn't have brought my family out here. You never know anything until it's too late.'
What had he said last night about families? Marlowe swerved the car into another gap, and Alan could only sit on his prickling hands and pray that the wheels held the road. He had a horrid suspicion that if Marlowe were distracted in any way, he might forget that he wasn't in England and relapse into driving on the left.
'It's like any other science,' Marlowe said – anthropology, Alan assumed. 'We have to learn that research isn't everything. We ought to stop sometimes and ask whether what we're finding out is likely to be beneficial. But we can't stop, we have to go on, it's a compulsion. We're no more in control of ourselves than the animals are.'
His hands were trembling on the wheel; the wheel itself was shaking. Alan turned away quickly and stared out as the stunted dense houses of Oshodi shot past, tin roofs steaming in a sudden lull in the rain. Just a few minutes to the airport, he thought desperately. Just a few minutes, and then in a few hours I'll be with Liz and Anna and we'll laugh about this. Though not about him, poor sod, whatever's the matter with him.
'Did I show you a photograph of Helen and my wife last night?' Marlowe was mumbling. 'I have to get her back to England, both of them. This country's no good for us.'
Alan could see the textile mills of Ikeja ahead. An airliner rose from the airport, slow as treacle. Though the car was rushing onward, spattering itself with mud, the airport seemed to be receding. But here was the approach road, thank God. Marlowe drove onto it without slowing, the back wheels screeching as he braked at last. It's a miracle, Alan thought. We've made it. He had never imagined he could be so grateful to see the perimeter fence and the guards.
The last raindrops were scurrying like insects down the wire mesh of the fence; the concrete pillars were piebald with drying. Though the guard's holster appeared to be sweating, he scarcely glanced into the cars before waving them on. Now that they had to proceed more slowly, Alan could relax; but it was odd that Marlowe seemed to be growing more tense. Perhaps it was a reaction after driving.
Metal roofs glittered in the car park. Marlowe eased the car into a space, turned off the engine, and sat gripping the wheel. All at once, as though he'd reached a decision, he opened the door and squeezed out. For the first time the large car felt spacious. 'We'd better get your luggage,' he said.
When Alan climbed out, Marlowe was standing by the boot to let a black car pass. As the car glided into a nearby space, he unlocked the boot and lifted out Alan's suitcase as though it weighed less than a handbag. Then he stood staring into the boot. 'Oh, good God, no,' he said.
'What's wrong?'
'I forgot to post a package. It had to go to London today. I'll never get to the post office in time.'
Alan had an idea of what he was expected to say, but after the drive he was wary. 'What is it?' he said.
'Just an artefact. I would have remembered except for meeting you and giving you a lift.'
However appalling the drive had been, it was over now, and Alan was sure he could write it into a story. 'I'll take it for you, if you like.'
'Oh, would you? That's extremely good of you. It would be a great weight off my mind.' Marlowe's voice was hollow, for he'd stooped to rummage around in the boot. As he emerged with the package, he unbent too soon and scraped the back of his neck on the metal edge of the lid of the boot. He seemed too preoccupied even to notice. 'Here you are,' he said.
It was a rectangular box sealed in brown paper, a package almost the length of a hand and a forearm, though it didn't look so large in Marlowe's hands. 'I should put it in your suitcase, just in case the Customs people think it looks odd,' Marlowe said. 'You know, the postal monopoly, that sort of thing. You can see it's all right from the label, can't you? The Foundation is highly respected, any anthropologist would tell you so.'
The Foundation for African Studies sounded perfectly legitimate – it was all this explanation that was making Alan nervous. He hid the package under his shirts and snapped the catches. Then he started. Someone was watching him: a tall man in a white suit, who was closing the boot of the black car that had passed a few minutes ago.
Before Alan could speak, Marlowe grabbed bis suitcase. 'Let me take that,' he said, and strode toward the airport building, long stacks of concrete sprouting the stone blossom of the control tower. The tall man had turned away; no doubt he hadn't been watching at all. Alan had written so much spy fiction that he sometimes felt he was living a spy story himself.
Marlowe didn't slow down until he reached the check-in desk. By the time Alan caught up with him he had already dumped the suitcase on the weighing platform. Breathlessly, Alan panted that he wanted to sit in the no-smoking area, before his case sailed away behind the scenes.
There was at least an hour to wait before boarding. Marlowe was mopping his forehead. 'Fancy a drink?' Alan said.