“The gentleman in question is one Mbomo Ziem, and according to our people down there he was in charge of liaising with the Danish international development office in connection with this Baka project and a couple of other aid initiatives in the area. However, he seems to have left the project, so Rose got hold of one Fabrice Pouka instead, who was able to tell her that the Baka project is still running, though it’s now in its final year. According to him it had all proceeded according to plan, apart from someone called Louis Fon coming close to sabotaging the whole effort at one point. Rose writes that the project was set up to help an endangered tribe of pygmies in the Dja jungle in southern Cameroon to sow banana plantations and cultivate the soil with the aim of growing new kinds of crops. Apparently all this had become necessary because poaching and things generally going to pot over the years had ruined their traditional ways of supporting themselves.”
Carl put the paper down on the desk in front of him.
“Is that all, then?” Assad asked. Carl knew what he meant. It sure wasn’t much she’d dug up during all that time she’d been away.
“Oh, hang on a minute. There’s something on the back here that she’s written by hand. LFon9876. I wonder what that means?”
“It looks like a Skype address.”
“Go in and ask her, will you?”
“Who? Me?”
Carl didn’t answer, which was reply enough in itself.
Five minutes later Assad stood before him once more, sweating.
“Ouch, Carl. She dipped me right in the acid bath again. But yes, she said it was a Skype address. Finding it out is what took her most of that time, but I won’t bother you with telling you how. She says she assumes the call will be answered at Louis Fon’s home address in the north of Cameroon. She has tried, but there was no one who answered.”
“So maybe it’s not in use anymore.”
“One can hear then that this is not your strong point, Carl. You can only call up a Skype number if the person you are calling has switched on their computer. And not only that, they have to be on hand to answer the call.”
“Yes, yes, I knew that. What I meant was…”
Assad beamed. “That’s a good one, Carl, but you can’t fool me. Let me show you. Come into my office and we’ll call from my computer. It’s all set up.”
In the cubbyhole, on top of the desk amid tea urns, glazed green incense stick holders, stacks of files, and a whole lot of other rubbish stood police HQ’s biggest computer screen, showing an image of the kind of gray-brown mud-built abode of which there were millions in the Middle East. Definitely not a place Carl would like spending his retirement. Nothing colorful, no plants, no veranda where a man could throw his feet up on the rail. Just a window and a door, and everything the color of shit.
“That your place, Assad?” he asked, pointing.
Assad smiled, shook his head and pressed a key. The image was gone.
“First we turn on the speakers, Carl. You sit down in front of the screen, then we open our Skype account. I’ll show you how. If they have a camera at the other end like we have, we should also be able to see each other.”
Half a minute passed and then they heard the blooping ringtone, an infuriating sound if ever there was one, Carl thought.
Assad just managed to say, “Give it a little time,” before sounds indicated something was happening at the other end.
Carl adjusted his headset, Assad gesticulating frantically to make sure he was ready. How ready did you have to be, for Chrissake?
And then the image of a young African woman’s face appeared in front of him, far too close, issuing a stream of words, none of which he understood. He said hello with the kind of British accent only an English teacher like the one he had up in his native north-Jutland peat bog near Brønderslev thirty years ago could imagine was grand.
“Allo?” the woman said in reply. Hardly much progress.
“Do they speak French in Cameroon?” he whispered to Assad.
Assad nodded.
“Do you?”
Assad shook his head.
Carl hung up.
–
It took half an hour before they managed to coax Rose into admitting that she actually spoke the language quite well. Moreover, she accepted their apologies in return for a certain amount of as yet unspecified favors.
In less than twenty seconds she had introduced herself. The woman at the other end drew back from the screen, revealing a room into which the sun poured from every angle.
“I’ll translate as we go along,” Rose explained, both to the woman and the two standing behind her.
It was clear that Louis Fon’s wife bore grief. She explained how difficult her situation had become during the five months since her husband disappeared, how she broke down in tears at the slightest thing.
“Everything was going so well for us. Louis had plenty of work, we wanted for nothing, and he was happy in his job. Beside me and our children, there was nothing he wanted more dearly than for the Baka to thrive and be prosperous.”
“What do you think happened?” Rose asked.
“I don’t know.” She shrugged all the way up to her ears as a pair of near-hairless dogs stuck their pointed snouts through the doorway behind her. “I thought at first the poachers had killed him, but now I think maybe it was someone else.”
“What makes you think he was killed, and who exactly do you suspect?”
“It is not something I think. Our Nganga says so. The birds’ claws have spoken. Louis is no longer with us.”
“I’m sorry to hear that. Who is Nganga? A medicine man? A witch doctor?”
“He is the guardian of our bodies and souls.”
The three of them exchanged glances. It was something that was unlikely to stand up in court.
“But then Louis’s parents gave me some money so I could travel to Dja and Somolomo and look for whatever might be left of him. It made Nganga very angry.”
“So you never found out what happened?”
She shook her head, at once indignant and distressed, yet still able to deliver a swift kick to one of the dogs as it ventured too close.
“A lot of strange things were going on down there. That was all I discovered. The pygmies were dissatisfied because the Baka project had come to a standstill. First they were promised crops and new plantations, then they were given money to wait, and then finally they ended up getting almost nothing at all. That was what they all told me. They were so angry at Louis and the Danes, and I guess I was, too. But after a while I received a little money from Denmark, which helped a bit.”
She leaned back, looking pensive.
“Ask her what she’s thinking now, Rose,” said Assad.
Rose nodded. She’d noticed it, too.
“You look like something’s on your mind. Did something occur to you that we should know?”
“Je ne sais pas. Maybe it is nothing, but it was strange, all the same.” She sat silent for a moment while Carl and the others marveled at how small the world had become. It was almost as if one could smell her cooking on the stove beside her, or reach out and touch her hair and lips. Carl half expected the floor of Assad’s cubbyhole to begin sprouting grass mats.
“I was thinking about how strange it was that the man who signed the papers saying I was entitled to compensation, now that Louis was gone, was in Somolomo the same day Louis disappeared. Some of the locals in Somolomo told me this.”
“The exact same day? A Dane?”
“Oui, oui. He must have been a Dane.”
“Can you remember his name?”
Another long pause during which the soul of Africa attempted to take possession of Assad’s ersatz Middle Eastern den. A pause where the woman seemed almost to have fallen into a trance from which she was unable to return.