"Thank you, Mustafa," Woodrow yelled, meaning bugger off.
But Mustafa stood firm, commanding Woodrow with his eyes to read it. All right, damn you, stay where you are. You can't read English anyway. Can't speak it either. He unfolded the paper. Electronic type. No signature.
Dear Sir,
I have in my possession a copy of the letter that you wrote to Mrs. Tessa Quayle inviting her to elope with you. Mustafa will bring you to me. Please tell nobody and come at once, or I shall be forced to dispose of it elsewhere.
No signature.
* * *
With one burst of the riot police's water cannon, it seemed to Woodrow, he had been drenched cold sober. A man on his way to the scaffold thinks of a multitude of things at once and Woodrow, for all that he had a skinful of his own tax-free whisky inside him, was no exception. He suspected that the transaction between Mustafa and himself had not escaped Gloria's attention and he was right: she would never again take her eyes off him at a party. So he threw her a reassuring wave across the room, mouthed something to suggest "no problem" and set himself submissively in Mustafa's wake. As he did so, he caught Ghita's gaze full beam for the first time this evening and found it calculating.
Meanwhile, he was speculating hard about the identity of his blackmailer and associating him with the presence of the Blue Boys. His argument went as follows. The Blue Boys had at some point searched the Quayles' house and discovered what Woodrow himself had failed to find. One of their number had kept the letter in his pocket until he saw an opportunity to exploit it. That opportunity had now arisen.
A second possibility occurred to him pretty well simultaneously, which was that Rob or Lesley or both, having been removed from a high-profile murder case against their will, had decided to cash in. But why here and now, for Christ's sake? Somewhere in this mix he also included Tim Donohue, but that was because Woodrow regarded him as an active if senile nonbeliever. Only this evening, seated with his beady wife Maud in the darkest corner of the tent, Donohue had, in Woodrow's opinion, maintained a malign and untrusting presence.
Meanwhile Woodrow was taking intimate note of the physical things around him, rather in the way he might look for emergency doors when an aeroplane hits turbulence: the inadequately driven tent pegs and slack guy ropes — my God, the smallest breeze could blow the whole thing over! — the mud-caked coconut matting along the tented corridor — somebody could slip on that and sue me! — the unguarded open doorway to the lower ground — bloody burglars could have emptied the whole house and we'd never have been the wiser.
Skirting the edges of the kitchen, he was disconcerted by the number of unauthorized camp followers who had converged on his house in the hope of a few leftovers from the buffet, and were sitting around like Rembrandt groups in the glow of a hurricane lamp. Must be a dozen of them, more, he reckoned indignantly. Plus about twenty children camping on the floor. Well, six, anyway. He was equally incensed by the sight of the Blue Boys themselves, sodden with sleep and drink at the kitchen table, their jackets and pistols draped over the backs of their chairs. Their condition, however, persuaded him that they were unlikely to be the authors of the letter that he was still clutching, folded, in his hand.
Leaving the kitchen by the back stairs, Mustafa led the way by hand torch up to the hall, and so to the front door. Philip and Harry! Woodrow remembered in sudden terror. God in heaven, if they should see me now. But what would they see? Their father in a dinner jacket with his black tie loose around his neck. Why should they suppose it was loosened for the hangman? Besides — he remembered now — Gloria had farmed the boys out to friends for the night. She had seen enough diplomatic children at dances and couldn't be doing with any of it for Philip and Harry.
Mustafa was holding the front door open, waving his torch at the drive. Woodrow stepped outside. It was pitch dark. For romantic effect, Gloria had had the outside lights switched off, relying on rows of candles in sandbags, which had for the most part mysteriously gone out. Talk to Philip, who had recently taken up domestic sabotage as a pastime. It was a fine night but Woodrow wasn't in a mood to study stars. Mustafa was skimming toward the gate like a will-o'-the-wisp, beckoning him forward with his torch. The Baluhya gateman opened the gates while his extended family observed Woodrow with their usual intense interest. Cars were parked on both sides of the road, their minders dozing on the verge or murmuring to each other over little flames. Mercedes with drivers, Mercedes with minders, Mercedes with Alsatian dogs in them, and the usual crowd of tribespeople with nothing to do but watch life pass them by. The din from the band was as bloody awful out here as it was in the marquee. Woodrow wouldn't be surprised if he got a couple of formal complaints tomorrow. Those Belgian shippers in number 12 will slap a writ on you the moment your dog farts in their airspace.
Mustafa had stopped at Ghita's car. Woodrow knew it well. Had watched it often from the safety of his office window, usually with a glass in his hand. It was a tiny Japanese thing, so small and low that when she wriggled into it, he could imagine her putting on her swimsuit. But why are we stopping here? his gaze was demanding of Mustafa. What's Ghita's car got to do with me being blackmailed? He began to work out what he was worth in terms of ready cash. Would they want hundreds? Thousands? Tens of thousands? He'd have to borrow from Gloria, but what could he dream up for an excuse? Well, it was only money. Ghita's car was parked as far from a streetlamp as possible. The lamps were out with the power cut, but you never knew when they might come on. He worked out that he had around eighty pounds in Kenyan shillings on him. How much silence would that buy? He began thinking in terms of negotiation. What sanctions did he have as the purchaser? What guarantee would there be that the fellow didn't come back in six months or six years? Get on to Pellegrin, he thought, in a burst of gallows humor: ask old Bernard to get the toothpaste back in the tube.
Unless.
Drowning, Woodrow reached for the craziest straw of them all.
Ghita!
Ghita stole the letter! Or, more likely, Tessa gave it to her for safekeeping! Ghita sent Mustafa to haul me out of the party, and she's about to punish me for what happened at Elena's. And look, there she is! In the driver's seat, waiting for me! She slipped round the back of the house and she's sitting in the car, my subordinate, waiting to blackmail me!
His spirits soared, if only for a second. If it's Ghita, we can do business. I can outgun her anytime. Maybe more than business. Her desire to hurt me is only the reverse side of different, more constructive desires.
But it wasn't Ghita. Whoever the figure was or wasn't, it was unmistakably male. Ghita's driver, then? Her regular boyfriend, come to take her home after the dance so that nobody else gets her? The passenger door stood open. Under Mustafa's impassive gaze, Woodrow lowered himself into the car. Not like wriggling into his swimsuit, not for Woodrow. More like getting into a bumper car with Philip at the fair. Mustafa closed the door after him. The car rocked, the man in the driver's seat made no movement. He was dressed the way some urban Africans dress, Saint Moritz-style in defiance of the heat, in a dark quilted anorak and woolen skullcap low over the brow. Was the fellow black or white? Woodrow breathed in, but caught no sweet scent of Africa.
"Nice music, Sandy," Justin said quietly, reaching out an arm to start the engine.
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
Woodrow sat at a carved desk of rainforest teak priced at five thousand U.S. dollars. He was hunched sideways, one elbow on a silver-framed blotter, which cost less. The glow of a single candle glistened on his sweated, sullen face. From the ceiling above him mirrored stalactites reflected the same candle flame to infinity. Justin stood across the room from him in the darkness, leaning against the door, much as Woodrow had leaned against Justin's door on the day he brought him the news of Tessa's death. His hands were squeezed behind his back. Presumably he wanted no trouble from them. Woodrow was studying the shadows thrown onto the walls by the candlelight. He could make out elephants, giraffes, gazelles, rhinos rampant and rhinos couchant. The shadows on the wall opposite were all birds. Roosting birds, waterbirds with long necks, birds of prey with smaller birds in their talons, giant singing birds perched on tree trunks with musical boxes inside them, price on application. The house was in a wooded side street. Nobody drove past it. Nobody tapped on the window to find out why a half-drunk white man in a dinner jacket with his tie untied was talking to a candle in Mr. Ahmad Khan's African and Oriental Art Emporium, on a leafy hillside five minutes' drive from Muthaiga at half past midnight.