A Darkening Stain Read Free Page B

intelligent hands,’ I said. ‘I can see that.’
    â€˜Careful, Bruce. His English is not so good but he has a good ear for tone and if he thinks you don’t take him seriously he has a number of very short lessons he can give.’
    â€˜Look, Carlo, I’m not being difficult. You’ve just asked me to find a guy and in not so many words you’ve told me that when I find him you’re going to...’
    Carlo tapped me on the forehead with an envelope. I shut up. He laid the envelope on the desk.
    â€˜There’s some money in there and I put a little item in with it that I think you’ll find very interesting. I don’t think it’s something you’ll want to talk to Mr Franconelli about, but it should help you make your mind up. Now, you’ve got forty-eight hours to find Marnier. We’ll be staying in the Hotel de la Plage—walking distance, but don’t come and see us. Leave a message at the desk for us to call by or meet up someplace. OK?’
    Carlo let go of my shoulder and stood up. He opened up his can, sprayed me down with the spurting beer and emptied the foam over my head.
    â€˜Thanks for the beer.’
    â€˜Don’t mention it, Carlo,’ I said.
    They left the office.
    Fifteen minutes to trash my life, that was all it took. I turned the envelope over. It was stuck down. I felt the thickness of the money and couldn’t find the strength to open it just yet.
    Now Bagado and I both had our millstones and Bagado was going to have to tread water with his while I got out from under my own.

Chapter 3
    Heike wasn’t home. She’d taken to working late, getting all virtuous since she’d started on her health kick. She’d stopped smoking, which meant I didn’t have to listen to the tar bubbling in the stem of those plastic holders she used to use. She’d hung up her drinking waders too, except for the odd glass of wine at dinner. I’d always thought her beautiful even with her vices, maybe because of her vices, now, without them she was the same but just more so. The health aura seemed to bring out her intelligence too, or maybe she just remembered things when all the parking spaces weren’t taken up by hangovers. I confess, it was making me nervous having her out there in this condition.
    I waved at Helen, our cook, who was out on the balcony grilling chicken. I stripped and showered off Carlo’s beer shampoo. I tried not to think about Jean-Luc Marnier or Roberto Franconelli by thinking about my first night with Heike instead. How we’d met in the desert, she with her girlfriend in a live Hanomag truck, me on my own in a dead car being towed behind.
    We’d stopped and eaten dinner around a fire, it being brisk in the desert at night. She hadn’t said a word to me, the girlfriend did all the talking. Afterwards I went for a walk by myself to look at the stars, breathe in the emptiness and feel the African continent pulsating under my feet, thumping in my chest as if I had a bull’s heart.
    I thought I was on my own but then Heike was next to me. We exchanged looks but still no words and in a matter of moments we’d struggled and wrenched ourselves out of our disobedient clothes and were lying naked on the desert floor in a mad,
frantic embrace. Our limbs and genitals locked together, the live ground pumping something so exotic through us we shouted when we came. The girlfriend had heard the ruckus and was forced to ask shyly and from some way off whether Heike was all right. Heike had croaked something back at her which she must have heard before from cheap hotel rooms, backs of cars, dark garden ends, because the clear desert air carried her gooseberry weariness back to us.
    Having dispatched some of the nastiness, I wedged myself in amongst the floor cushions, stiffened myself with a gulp of Red Label and opened the envelope Carlo had given me. There was 250,000 CFA in it, $300, enough for 48