The Claw

Again the hesitation, and now the static and the way the man was speaking into the mouthpiece told him it was a long distance call. It sounded, he thought miserably, like Nigeria. 'Dr Hetherington told me that the talisman you took back to England was stolen from you,' the other said.

'So?'

A longer pause. 'Have you any children?'

Was he accusing Anna of stealing the claw? For a moment Alan felt protective of her, until he remembered how inappropriate that was. 'I have one daughter,' he said, appalled how guilty and hopeless saying that made him feel.

'Is she safe?'

'What do you mean?'

The voice repeated it, slowly and clearly. 'Is she safe?'

All at once Alan understood that they both knew what that meant. 'No,' he said in a voice he hardly recognized as his.

'And you've been having dreams you can't explain.'

Alan thought of the dream of hunting Anna, the fleshless man with the spidery eyes, the resolution that had been too terrible to remember when he awoke. 'How do you know all this?' he said when he could.

'Because I think I am responsible for what is happening to you.'

Alan's fist clenched until the receiver groaned. 'Where are you?'

'Lagos.'

'Called up to gloat, have you?' Alan managed not to shout, for fear of waking Liz and Anna. It wasn't consideration, he realized now: he was simply afraid to face them.

'No, Mr Knight. I want to help you. I did my best to help David Marlowe, but I was too late.'

'You helped him, did you!' Alan swallowed his bitter laughter before it carried upstairs. 'My God, you certainly have some results to show for it, don't you! And now you want to do the same to me!'

'Mr Knight, Marlowe was ray good friend. I worked with him and knew him well. I saw what was happening to him and told him to get rid of the cause however he could. That is why he gave the talisman to you.'

'Getting rid of it didn't help him much, did it?' Alan hissed.

'No, not at all. I told you, I was too late.' The voice was subdued now. 'For you there is still time. Now I know better what has to be done.'

'Why should you want to help me? I don't even know who you are.'

'Isaac Banjo, translator at the University of Lagos.' He caught his breath audibly. 'I want to help because of what I have already done. I have daughters of my own.'

'How can you help me?'

'First you must come here. I give you my word that it is necessary. These are not issues that can be discussed at a distance, particularly on a line like this.'

Good God, he was talking telecommunications now! 'You're really asking me to come all the way to Nigeria?'

'Yes, on the first available flight. What else can you do?'

Dismayingly, that made sense. 'Just to talk?'

'To do what you must to regain yourself. That can only be done here.'

Alan had to believe him; he was the only person in the world who seemed to be offering hope. At least Anna couldn't be in danger from her father at that distance and besides, he wanted to come face to face with the man responsible for what had happened to him. 'All right,' he said.

He copied down the numbers where the translator could be reached, he told him he would let him know when he would be arriving at Ikeja, and felt he was doing all this in a dream. Before the end he had to shout over a crossed line. When he put down the receiver, wondering if he had any right to hope, he realized Liz and Anna were awake.

He went up at once, to get it over with. He stood outside the bedroom door and was tempted to listen to their murmured conversation, to hear what they were saying about him. That made him so frightened of himself that he knocked hastily and went in.

Anna was in the double bed. She looked small and vulnerable. Liz was standing beside her, and turned to stare at him, her eyes utterly unwelcoming. 'Look, I have to go away,' he said.

'Yes, I think you better had.'

She managed to make him sound both outcast and unreasonable to be leaving. He couldn't argue, he could tell her anything except that he was going back to Nigeria. He closed the door with a gentleness that made him want to weep. It wasn't Liz's attitude that sent him to the phone to find out how soon he could leave for Nigeria, it was the way Anna had hidden behind her mother as soon as he'd entered the room.

Twenty

Isaac Banjo was a tall Yoruba in a spotless white linen suit. His eyes were warm and sympathetic, his handshake felt like a promise of friendship and help, and Alan had to be content with that while Isaac deflected the touts who were clamouring to carry Alan's bags or And him a taxi and led him out of the airport, through the uproar of passengers squabbling with bored airline clerks and with one another. Alan was glad to be organized so efficiently, not least because it put off the time when he would have to talk.

Isaac stowed the bags in the boot of his dusty car and gave Alan an encouraging look, and then there was no talking once he manoeuvred onto the road to Lagos. Misshapen buses bounced over the potholes, battered taxis dodged through the traffic, their wing mirrors turned end up to give their drivers more room to scrape by, and that was all there was until Lagos closed in. Then they were hours in the go-slow, the city's daily eighteen-hour traffic jam. Today was an even day of the week, when only cars with even-numbered plates were allowed onto the island, yet the go-slow seemed even more sluggish. Hawkers came to the windows of the car with Swiss watches and Japanese radios, customs road blocks further on held up the traffic. By the time the car crossed the bridge to Ikeja, it was growing dark.

Isaac's house had a view of the lagoon between the larger houses. He drove his dilapidated odd-numbered car out of the garage so that it would be available tomorrow. Still they couldn't talk, for Isaac's plump motherly wife had made them a stew and insisted they get it inside them at once, his two bright-eyed daughters wanted to show Alan their schoolwork afterward and pleaded with him to read them a story in bed. He did, though he felt close to weeping. That Isaac trusted him with his daughters seemed to give him back too much of himself too soon, too painfully.

When at last they were alone in Isaac's study, which contained books in so many languages Alan gave up counting, he asked the question which had been building up inside him ever since they'd met. 'Just why do you feel so responsible for me?'

'Because of what happened to Marlowe.' Isaac handed him an imported whisky and poured one for himself. 'I saw what the talisman did to him. He wasn't always as you saw him, as he became. I don't know of a father who was more loving. I think there's no doubt that he killed himself in order to save his daughter from him.'

'After he'd taken me for a fool and given me the claw.'

'For a long time he believed he couldn't get rid of it. He must have been so drunk at the party that he gave it to you on impulse.'

'It didn't look much like a sudden decision to me.'

Isaac gazed sadly at him. 'You're right,' he said, forsaking the Yoruba deviousness. 'He must have been looking for an opportunity. I'd told him that if the talisman was preying so much on his mind, he ought to get rid of it however he could. You see why I must help you.'

Alan couldn't hate him. He almost wished he could, so as to have a tangible enemy. 'Did he know you had a daughter?' Isaac said. 'I can't believe he would have given it to you if he had thought so.'

Alan remembered Marlowe's complaint that he had to bring his family with him to Nigeria – remembered saying that he hadn't got that problem. At last he saw what all that had meant. 'No, I don't think he did,' he admitted, touched that Isaac was anxious only to defend his dead friend, not Isaac himself.

'Then I am more to blame. If you shit in the road,' he said, quoting a Yoruba proverb, 'you'll find flies when you come back.' He stood up abruptly. 'I managed to persuade the police to let me copy what's left of his notes. They may help you understand.'