The high-stacked, bruised clouds of the storm building over Ghana were moving towards me. It would be raining by nightfall. I thought about going out in that storm and doing something for nothing for Fat Paul and that drew me to the secrets of the mini-bar, which I opened but only checked. I needed to be steady for what Fat Paul might have in mind.
I stared at the carpet, waiting for the phone, and had one of those existential lurches when I saw myself – a big man, getting drunk to hold himself together on a small bed in a hotel room in Africa, fresh from a meeting with another drunken bum and about to do something criminal for a vindictive slob. For a moment, I seemed to be on the brink of an explanation for the mystery and absurdity of my situation. Then the god controlling those moments of insight decided I’d be better off without the self-knowledge. A fluorescent light started flickering, pitched at an epileptic-fit-inducing frequency. I turned it off and lay down, relieved that I didn’t have to run down to the bar and tell all the other people deadening themselves to reality that I’d cracked it and we could all relax.
I woke up with the rain on the window and it dark outside and in the room. It was just before six o’clock. I phoned reception – no calls. I made sure they knew I was in 307, having moved me from 205 – still no calls. I took a bottle of mineral water out of the mini-bar and sat in the white light from the chamber and drank it until my teeth hurt. I kicked the door shut and lay back down on the bed in the dark, light coming in under the door.
I was missing something which wasn’t home but felt like it ten times over. Hotel rooms did this to me. I thought of individuals sitting in concrete boxes stacked on top of each other and the human condition got lonelier. I’d fallen for two women before Heike, one of them was now married to Martin Fall. I’ve been disappointed just as much as anybody closing in on forty has. I’d always bounced back, though. It might take a few months of rolling into the cold side of the bed before I’d get used to sleeping in the middle again, but I could always get used to being on my own. This time I wasn’t bouncing back, I was slipping further down the black hole. I was missing Heike more than an amputee missed a leg and people could see it, smell it, and feel it.
Some footage came into my head, black-and-white stuff, a little quick and faltering like an old home movie. Heike was sitting on the floor of my living room in my house in Cotonou, Benin. She wore her big white dress, her legs were crossed and covered by the dress, her long bare arms rested on her knees. She had a cigarette going in one of her large, almost manly, hands and in the other she held a glass with her little finger sticking out. Her hair, as usual, was pinned up any old how so that every loose strand said: ‘kiss this nape'. She sat there and occupied herself smoking and drinking and not saying anything and her completeness brought on a terrible ache, and I shut the film down and drifted off into a lumpy sleep.
I woke up and looked around the darkness in the room, thinking there was a bat flying around expertly missing walls and furniture. I turned on the neon and it blasted the room with light and dark until I’d fumbled around for the light switch by the door. It was 6.30 p.m. The rain still gusted against the window outside and thunder rumbled off in a corner somewhere. The phone went and I tore it off its cradle.
‘I thought you said you weren’t all African…’
‘…This is Leif Andersen, Mr Medway.’
‘Sorry, I was expecting somebody else. Have you got anything for me?’
There was a long crash, one that went on for fifteen, twenty seconds, of falling crockery followed by a roar of approval from down the phone.
‘Are you eating Greek tonight?’ I asked.
‘I’m in a place called Maison des Anciens Combatants in Plateau.’
‘War Heroes in Plate Crash.’
‘I’m sorry?’
‘Nothing, Mr Andersen. You called. Did the Danish police come through with an ID?’
‘Not yet. The Ivorian police came through with something. They’ve found our Kurt Nielsen down by the Ebrié lagoon about eighty kilometres outside Abidjan. In the pineapple plantations off the road down to Tiegba.’
‘They found him, what, walking around, taking a leak, out of his head…?’
‘Dead, Mr Medway. Strangled with a wire garrotte.’
‘Was he a floater?’
‘I’m not sure…’
‘Was he in the lagoon?’
‘No, he was in a Toyota Land Cruiser.’
‘His own?’
‘It belonged to M. Kantari in Korhogo. He reported it stolen this morning. The report made its way down through Bouaké and Yamoussoukro to Abidjan by this afternoon.’
‘Have you seen the body?’
‘No.’
‘How do they know it’s Nielsen?’
‘He had his passport on him. That’s why they called us.’
‘Did they find anything else?’
‘No, but if they did and it was valuable we wouldn’t hear about it.’
‘Well, Mr Andersen, thanks for your help…’
‘One thing more, Mr Medway. We need positive identification of the body.’
‘I never knew him.’
‘No, but Mrs Nielsen, or Dotte Wamberg, did and we have been unable to contact her.’
‘You want a phone number?’
‘We have one, but first of all there’s no answer and second, these things are better done in person.’
‘What about someone from the Danish Embassy?’
‘There’s no one available. We’ve informed the local police, but they cannot be relied on.’
‘I can’t guarantee I’ll get there tomorrow. You know how things are.’
‘He’s in the hospital morgue. He’s not going anywhere.’
‘Well, I won’t put it like that to Dotte Wamberg.’
‘You’re a sensitive man, Mr Medway, I can tell.’
‘How?’
‘Anybody who drinks Aquavit in the afternoon understands.’
‘I thought it was because I was a drunk.’
‘What does that make me, Mr Medway?’
‘You get diplomatic immunity.’
Andersen laughed. ‘Another thing for you that you should keep to yourself. Kurt Nielsen’s stomach had been ripped open by a set of metal leopard claws. I think they found someone called James Wilson in the lagoon here in Abidjan the other day. He had the same problem. Cheers,’ he said, and put down the phone.
I phoned reception again – still no calls,
