I was examining a wood knot through the bottom of a whisky glass and contemplating the nature of infidelity, infidelity of the mind. Wasn’t there a president of the United States who said: ‘I’ve committed adultery many times in my mind but never in my body’? That must have cheered the First Lady no end. I had to amuse myself with this kind of thought to prevent the seepage of unhappiness, to try and cling on to that moment after Heike had told me she was pregnant.
Bagado barged into the office shortly after 11 p.m. He was clenched in his mac and stood in front of me, his forehead ridged and troughed with a deeper geological worry.
‘José-Marie is missing,’ he said.
‘Your daughter, José-Marie?’
‘The nine-year-old. She’s missing.’
‘Since when?’
‘Since four o’clock this afternoon. She didn’t come back from school,’ he said, knots tightening in his throat, the man unable to swallow, having to stroke his Adam’s apple to get the lump down.
‘Is this...?’ I started. ‘Look, you’d better sit down, old man. Get this out right. I’ll start work on it now. Don’t worry. But just take a seat for the moment.’
‘I can’t sit,’ he said, and began pacing the room. ‘Since we found the girl on the sand bar we’ve had reports of two other girls who’ve gone missing. A seven-year-old and a six-year-old ... again both schoolgirls, we think picked up on their way home. José-Marie is the third. I think that makes it eight in total. One dead, seven missing.’
‘Did you get anything from the autopsy on the girl off the sand bar?’
‘I haven’t seen the report, if that’s what you mean. I’m picking up crumbs from anybody prepared to drop them. I saw for myself that the flesh was eaten away from the underside of her forearms, the palms of her hands and around her knees.’
‘What does that mean?’
‘I think she climbed a wall topped with broken glass. The fish did the rest.’
‘Any signs of abuse?’
‘She’d been caned across the back and buttocks. I suspect to show the others that trying to escape would not be tolerated.’
‘Sexual abuse?’
‘No, thank God for that very small mercy.’
‘Cause of death?’
‘Strangulation.’
‘What with?’
‘Bare hands.’
‘Jesus Christ,’ I said. ‘Do you think they beat her and strangled her in front of the others?’
Bagado stood in the middle of the room and pinched the bridge of his nose, his eyes screwed tight to block out the horror.
‘I don’t know,’ he agonized.
‘Have you spoken to the parents?’
‘I’m not on the investigation team. I have been told to stay away from it.’
‘Bondougou?’
‘Still with a very close personal interest.’
‘Why haven’t the parents been storming the police station?’
‘They have. They sent the riot police out to break them up.’
‘What does that say to you?’
‘Powerful people.’
‘Why do you think they’re picking exclusively on schoolgirls? I mean, these are kids who will be missed. There must be plenty of street girls who could be taken...’
‘I think, Bruce,’ said Bagado, a tortured plexus on the other side of the desk, ‘I think it’s because they’re more likely to have their virginity intact. You know the fear of AIDS is very great, but the need for sex in Africa, as you’ve seen with Moses, is even greater. Politicians, businessmen, aach!... You know how it is, Bruce.’
‘La culture Africaine.’
‘And now it’s a dangerous culture.’
‘You don’t think these girls are going to be exported?’
‘I have no idea. I cannot get involved. I cannot even get my resignation accepted. I’m locked in.’
‘Drink this,’ I said, and filled a glass for him. ‘It’ll help you think because if I’m going to help you you’ve got to give me everything you’ve got and all the direction you can think of.’
Bagado tipped the glass back. I refilled my own and his. Bagado sat down, retreated into his mac and let the whisky do the work it knew best. I started to ask questions but Bagado held up his hand.
Now I wanted to talk. Talking was like walking for the mind. I didn’t have to think. When silence yawned the horrors started, the stitches of old wounds split, the pus leaked and the gangrenous stench of unhappiness flared my nostrils.
‘Bondougou’s purpose,’ said Bagado, just as I’d decided that drinking was as good as talking for the mind, ‘is not just to suppress this investigation and hundreds of others because of the bribes he receives for doing so. Although the money is an important factor, there’s something else that’s pushing him.’
‘He’s just a bad-ass, Bagado.’
‘He wants to break me, Brace. He wants to break me as a human being.’
I started in again but Bagado backed me off with his hand.
‘This is not ... and I’ve thought about it very carefully... This is not my own paranoia. When I first lost my job some years ago, or rather, when Bondougou sacked me, for telling the media about the unpleasant death of that young Frenchwoman, he knew that this should have made my life very difficult. I survived through your charity, leaving the Cotonou scene for a while to do that job in the Ivory Coast and then more work from you and, of course, Heike.’
‘She has been very generous too. So you see, he knows that he can’t break me financially. So what does he do? What is the worst that he can do?’
‘Break you professionally.’
‘Yes. But this isn’t just a professional’s job. In the best policemen, as my old English detective friend used to say, there is a moral drive.’
‘The good versus evil stuff.’
‘Exactly. So what’s the worst that Bondougou can do? The worst is that he can embrace me. Bring me back into the fold and then render me useless to watch the crusade trampled underfoot ... under the feet of his corruption. And you know ... I know, because you saw it on the Kluezbork II the other day... you know he is succeeding. These girls disappearing and now my daughter. This is breaking me, Bruce. I can feel myself cracking.’
He sat and reached his hand across the table. I took it. It was fragile, bony, each joint a sharp but tender pressure in my palm. He brought his other hand round and gripped the meat of my shoulder. He stared into my face with the eyes of a man who knew he was falling.
‘You’re still young and strong. Bruce. I’m getting to be an old man with all this. You have to help me but I’m not sure how much I can help you. I’m confused. I’ve lost that ability for straight, clean thought. It’s as if the wiring’s burnt out. I can only get so far ... and then I think of José-Marie. I’ve stopped being a policeman. Bondougou,’ he said to himself, letting me go, walking off around the room again, ‘Bondougou is winning.’
‘Are you telling me that you think that Bondougou was responsible for having José-Marie lifted?’
He stopped by to sweep up the glass and dash the contents down his throat, then he took two strides and hurled the glass against the wall with such force that diamonds of it rebounded and skittered under the desk.
‘That,’ he said, ‘is the extent of my powerlessness. Bagado, the great detective brain, is reduced to throwing glasses.’
He brushed his hand across the larger and whiter dusting he had in the hair on the top of his head.
‘I’ve been walking in the Jonquet,’ he said, setting off again, crunching through the glass, ‘and I heard some Americans talking. Peace Corps workers. They are under pressure. The US government is cutting spending. You know how Americans can talk so that you wonder whether it’s English. These two were throwing up various situations: “win-win” and “lose-win”. At the time these things meant nothing to me. But now I see it. I am in a lose-lose.’
‘Lose-lose?’
‘You know that time we were heading north and I told you that Bondougou had recalled me to the force ... split us up? You told me not to go. You said I wouldn’t just end up on the shit heap this time. I wouldn’t just get fired. You were right. I underestimated your powers of perception.’
‘Part of the problem with being a good man is that it makes you predictable. Somebody said that to me once.’
‘He’s turning me ... turning me into something I couldn’t bear to be.’
Bagado opened the door, leaned his arm up against it.
‘When I said that about you not just getting fired, Bagado, I don’t think I was perceiving anything. I just didn’t want you to go. You’ve been important to me and since you’ve gone there’s been some falling apart.’
‘I know,’ he said. ‘I’ve seen it. Heike and I have talked. We’ve talked since she told you what I thought of you. She probably shouldn’t have done that, but I understand why she did. I also know you’re a good man and I know you will do the very best for me.’
‘I will, Bagado. But what’s this lose-lose business about?’
He sighed and I thought he might be about to tell me, but he lost his energy. The talk just went out of him and without a word he left. I went to the door, but he was off and away and down the stairs. I crunched out on to the balcony in time to see his shrinking frame melt into the shadows.
‘I know someone in the Jonquet, Bagado,’ I shouted down to him. ‘He’ll be able to help. I’ll find her.’
He waved at me without turning. He reached the streetlighting on Sekou Touré, looked left, turned right and was gone.