like you.’
‘You like everybody.’
‘I didn’t like that Somalian bastard.’
‘He’s dead now.’
‘Ye-e-e-s,’ he said, as if he might have had something to do with it.
The madame was leaning on the end of the desk with her eyelids falling and her head jerking up when the door banged open and an African in full robes stood in the doorway and roared with laughter so that I looked around the busted furniture in the lobby for a punchline. She pulled off the same key and gave it to him. The girl didn’t even bother to look up but stood and set off out of the lobby. The man left a strong smell of cheap spirit behind him, as if he’d been drinking twelve-year-old aftershave. He gave us another roar from the passageway which didn’t sound so much like fun as stoking himself up for the big one.
‘You still there?’ asked Martin.
‘Where are you going to send the money to?’
‘You’re that short, are you?’
‘I am, yes, and it’s tricky to be somebody’s friend if you’re cadging drinks all night.’
‘There’s a Barclays in Abidjan, we’ll send it there. A couple of thousand, OK? Give us your passport number.’
I gave him the number.
‘I won’t be able to go to Sierra.’
‘You’ll find a way for three hundred a day.’
‘Maybe you’re right.’
‘That just about wraps it up then. Give us a call when it’s over.’
‘Or, if I have any problems.’
‘You won’t have any problems. It’s a piece of the proverbial. The easiest money you’ve ever made.’
‘Somebody else said that to me today.’
‘You’re on a roll, Bruce. Enjoy it. I’ll book you in the Novotel tomorrow night; you’re on expenses from then on in.’
‘You couldn’t open up that expense account today, could you?’
‘That’s a little unconventional, Bruce.’
‘I need to hire a car. Nothing to do with you. It’d be a help. Deduct it from my fee.’
‘You know what you need?’
‘No, but you’re going to tell me and don’t say “a proper job”.’
‘You need a credit card.’
‘One with credit on it, you mean?’
Silence from Martin Fall who knew that everybody was in debt but that there was always cash…somewhere.
‘I’m confused,’ he said after some moments. ‘I thought you were on holiday and had a couple of jobs.’
‘I am. I do. But no money.’
Martin said he’d have the expense account open in five minutes. We guffed around a bit more, I asked about Anne, and we hung up.
The door from the passageway opened, the handle hitting the wall hard, and the robed-up African moved through the lobby on the end of a typhoon. The girl came down the passageway doing up her wrap and looking frightened. The madame had come off her elbows on the end of the desk and was standing with her fists balled into where her waist probably was. She said something in her own language which woke the older prostitute, who recognized the tone. The three of them set to it.
I phoned the Novotel from the middle of the cat fight and booked a car for that afternoon. Then I realized what all the broken furniture was about. The madame reached into the pile and brought out a piece of board and gave the girl three hefty whacks on the bottom before I dropped the phone and took the board out of her hand. She turned on me with something in her eyes which I would have preferred to have been murder and I threatened her with the board.
‘You pay for girl!’ she shouted in French.
‘I don’t want the girl.’
‘He want the girl’ – she pointed out of the door – ‘but he drink too much, he see the goods, he try but he no pay. You pay.’
‘Why hit the girl?’
She blinked a few times at that because she wasn’t sure why she was hitting the girl. ‘You want to go hit him for me?’
I left money on the counter, which she rushed at, and got out of there leaving the madame pelting the older prostitute with drawbacks of the trade while the girl dropped on her haunches in the corner and cried.
It was 2.30 p.m. by the time I joined the Grand Bassam/Abidjan highway and drove past the handicraft shops, who could sell you a pot for more than you’d pay in Sèvres, and traditional healers, who could put a spell on a troublesome mother-in-law in Tashkent. It was a pleasant drive along the palm-treed coastline, past a seamless bidonville of stalls selling tat, bars, and hotels specializing in rooms by the hour. I skirted the end of the airport runway and high up above the departures hall was a team of vultures, their fingers spread at the end of their wings, circling in the thermals, grumbling at the low incidence of pilot error since computers came in.
After the airport the two-lane Grand Bassam road joined a fourteen-lane highway into downtown Abidjan. I drove through the suburbs of Koumassi and Marcory with the Manhattan-style skyline of the financial district called Plateau in front of me. You could forget you were in Africa if you concentrated on the skyscrapers but at Treichville I broke right and the buzz and hot stink of life in the African Abidjan brought me home. I crossed the lagoon, that separated the two continents, over the Pont Général de Gaulle.
Life hadn’t been so good in Abidjan recently. Before it was no different to being in any modern city; built around the lagoon the cityscape looked like Sydney and the facilities were much the same. Everything had been accessible on a well-larded expatriate salary and after work the residential districts of Cocody and Deux Plateaux were splashed with gold and silver lame and rang with crystal laughter. On the other side of those well-clipped hedges the locals were beginning to hit the ground with sticks while they listened to the President’s fading charisma. Then the power workers went on strike. Now there was no guarantee of getting ice in a whisky and cool air to sleep in.
The Ivorians, like all the people along this coast, wanted to run their own country with a bit of democracy. Now that the money had run out, the price of coffee and cocoa had dropped and the value of pineapples foundered, people had taken to thinking they could do no worse than have a crack at it themselves. The army had sensed a mood and had staged a rebellion and the air force had followed. In the confusion a lot of shops were emptied by people with no credit facilities but strong arms and big appetites.
Order was re-established after a few pay rises were promised but not with the same respect for the law
