Of course, it was the ultimate indulgence. Friends, lovers, family, people you cared for. They tied you down, kept you dependent, made you vulnerable. And worse, they paid for their friendship with vulnerability. When someone wants to hurt you, they target those you love most.
There was no time to swim back to Flame. Grace’s house was a good three hundred metres along the shore. The jet boat was almost there now, slowing in the shallow water of the cove. Clay turned and made a straight line for the rocks of the isthmus, swimming hard. At the water’s edge, he pulled off his fins, mask and snorkel, and started barefoot through the rocks, breathing hard.
Red Shirt killed the engine and the boat drifted towards the little white beach in front of Grace’s house. Clay upped his pace, sprinting now along the sand footpath that skirted the tree line. A sheet of rain swept across the island. He could hear Red Shirt and Dreadlock talking as they waded from the boat, gained the beach and started up the rock-edged pathway to the house, still apparently unaware of his presence. Red Shirt knocked on the door.
At this time of day, Grace would still be at work, the children hunched over home-school lessons in the empty restaurant. Clay decided to keep to the trees, approach the house from the landward side, try to observe the intruders from close range. Rain sluiced from the palms, sheeted across the bay. He slowed, staying hidden. Red Shirt stood at the front door, knocked again. The door opened. Little Joseph, in shorts and a Manchester United t-shirt, stood in the doorway. Clay snatched a breath, stopped dead.
He could hear Red Shirt speaking to the boy, then Joseph calling for his mother. But before she could come to the door, Red Shirt grabbed the boy by the hand, spun him around and put a knife to his neck.
Clay’s heart lurched. From inside the house now, the sound of Grace screaming. Red Shirt kicked the door aside and disappeared inside. Dreadlock followed him, pulling a fighting knife from under his shirt.
Clay didn’t have a choice. There was no time. He ran straight for the front door, burst in.
The place wasn’t big. A sitting room at the front with a big couch and a little TV on a stand, a table by the door with an old-style rotary telephone on it – one of only two on the island. A doorway out back led to the kitchen and the children’s room. Clay stood in the doorway, dripping in his swimming shorts, unarmed. Red Shirt stood with Joseph clutched to his chest, the knife’s blade poised against the dark skin of the boy’s throat. A drop of blood kissed the steel. Grace was kneeling on the floor, tears in her eyes, her lower lip cracked and bleeding, her hands raised in supplication. Dreadlock stood above her, hand raised.
Both men turned to face him, what-the? expressions on their faces.
‘Looking for me, gents?’ said Clay.
‘It’s him,’ blurted Dreadlock, glancing at Clay’s stump.
‘Ja, it’s me,’ said Clay, raising his open hand, and stepping towards Red Shirt and the boy. ‘So how about we just talk about this. No need for any trouble.’
‘Oh, no trouble, baas,’ said Red Shirt, a grin cutting his face.
‘Give me the boy,’ said Clay, ‘and we can talk.’
‘Oh, but we don’t want to talk,’ said Red Shirt. ‘We here to deliver a message.’
Clay was within a long pace of Red Shirt and Joseph now. Dreadlock had moved away from Grace and was circling in towards Clay, crouching low, brandishing the knife in a right-handed dagger grip. Clay had a pretty good idea what the message was.
He had learned, many years before, that the only way to win is to take the initiative and keep it. Hit first, hit hard. That’s what Crowbar – his platoon leader during the war in Angola – had drilled into them from the first day of jump school. Later, in prison in Cyprus, it had kept him alive. Red Shirt was closer, but Joseph was vulnerable. The slightest mistake and the boy’s throat would be opened. Dreadlock was coming at Clay from the side. Red Shirt was looking at his partner, trying to communicate to him with his eyes.
Clay laughed, forced it out. ‘Why don’t you just tell him what you want him to do?’ he said, pushing a smile across his face. ‘Go ahead. I won’t listen.’
The two men sent perplexed glances at each other.
It was enough. Clay pivoted and burst low and to his left, caught Dreadlock’s knife arm in a vicious cross-body hammer blow, wrapping the stunned arm with his, and following a quarter-second later with a back-handed hammer fist to Dreadlock’s jaw. He felt the bone go, heard Dreadlock grunt and go slack. Then he stepped left, thrust out his hip and slammed Dreadlock to the floor, holding the outstretched knife arm as a pivot. Dreadlock tried to roll away, still clutching the knife, but Clay brought his left shin down onto the man’s head and leaned in, pinning him to the floor. Dreadlock grunted as his broken jaw deformed further. Then Clay slammed the back of Dreadlock’s straightened arm down across his knee. Dreadlock screamed in agony as his arm broke. Clay let the shattered limb fall to the floor, grabbed the knife, and twisted back upright. As he did he brought his right boot heel down hard onto Dreadlock’s outstretched knee.
It had all taken less than three seconds. Dreadlock lay whimpering on the floor. By now, Grace had managed to crawl away into the kitchen.
‘Now,’ said Clay, facing up to Red Shirt. ‘I’ll tell you what. You let the boy go, and you can deliver that message of yours. What do you say?’
Red Shirt was backing away now, towards the kitchen, his knife still at the boy’s throat. He looked scared.
Clay let Dreadlock’s knife clatter to the floor. ‘Look,’ he said, kicking it away. ‘I won’t hurt you. I know you’re doing this for someone. Whatever he’s paying you, I can pay you a lot more. I have cash, gold if you want it, out on the boat. Name your price. Please, just let the boy go.’
Red Shirt’s eyes widened, considering this perhaps. ‘How much?’
Rain hammered the roof.
‘Whatever you want,’ said Clay. ‘Name it. A hundred thousand?’
Red Shirt’s eyes widened. ‘Dollars?’ he said.
Clay nodded. ‘American.’
‘Cash?’
‘If that’s what you want.’
Red Shirt’s mouth opened, as if he was about to speak. Just then, Grace emerged from the kitchen. Blood dripped from her chin onto her white uniform. She held a tyre iron in one hand. Before Clay could move, she stepped up behind Red Shirt and swung at him with both hands. She was a strong woman, but Red Shirt was quick, and a lot bigger. In one movement, he flung the boy away to the floor, twisted and parried the blow with a forearm to the back of her raised elbow. The iron glanced off the side of his head just as he drove his blade into her body.
Grace staggered back into the wall, the knife buried in her chest, a look of disbelief on her face. Joseph was on the floor, his hands wrapped around his neck. Blood streamed from between his fingers. A constricted gurgle emerged from his throat. Red Shirt grabbed the tire iron, charged towards the door, swinging wildly. Clay ducked, let him go, moved to the boy.
He pushed the boy’s hands from the wound. The knife had gone deep, sliced through the oesophagus, the carotid artery. The opened cartilage glistened white. Blood pulsed. He’d seen wounds like this before – during the war, and since. He knew there was nothing he could do. He went to Grace. She was sitting with her back to the wall, breathing hard, holding the knife handle between her hands. Blood covered the front of her white uniform. The blade had gone in between two ribs, penetrated deep.
He had a full medical kit on Flame, but there wasn’t time to get it. He ran to the kitchen, flung open drawers and cupboards, scattering the contents, searching for anything he could use to staunch the bleeding. Outside, the roar of the jet boat starting, backing away. He grabbed a couple of towels, ran back to Grace. She was still breathing. He wrapped the towels around the knife, left the weapon in place. He had to get her to a hospital. The nearest was in Stone Town. At full speed with Flame’s little diesel engine, two hours away.
She reached her hand to his face. ‘Joseph,’ she said, a whisper.
Clay closed his eyes.
‘Why?’ she said. Blood frothed from her mouth. Tears streamed from her eyes.
What answer was there? What could he tell a dying woman who’d just witnessed her own son’s murder? What explanation, for any of it? Should he tell her that it was his fault, that they’d simply been caught in one of death’s coincidences, those random tragedies that seemed the only constant in life. Would it help her to know, in these last few moments, that the minute she’d befriended him, she had inadvertently increased the probability of her own demise a hundredfold, a thousand, and that the longer he’d stayed, the worse her chances had become. And now that her son lay dying at her feet, was there any point in telling her how sorry he was – for being so self-indulgent, for allowing himself the luxury of a connection with another human being, for letting some warmth into his life?
‘I’m sorry,’ was all he could say. Tears blurred his vision. He wiped them away, secured the towels, tried to help her up. He would try to get her to hospital. Even though he knew she would be dead in minutes, he would try. What else was there? Just sit there and let her go, passive, accepting of fate? He would try. That was all life was: a futile and inevitably unsuccessful battle against death.
She moaned, hung limp in his arms. Her eyes were closed.
He swung her into his arms. ‘Here we go, Grace,’ he said, starting for the door.
Joseph lay open-eyed in a pool of blood, the afternoon sun slanting across the hardwood floor, across his motionless body. Dreadlock groaned nearby. Clay stopped, looked down at the man, Grace heavy in his arms. She’d stopped breathing. He lay her down, put his mouth to hers and inflated her lungs. Blood filled his mouth. He spat, tried again. Her lungs were flooded. He touched her neck, felt for a pulse. She was gone.
Clay slumped to the floor. He sat there a long time, eyes closed, his mind blank as a starless desert night.
Dreadlock’s groans brought him back. The man was dragging himself towards the door, unable to stand, pushing himself along with his one good leg, his shattered arm hanging limp.
Clay stood, picked up Dreadlock’s knife, crouched beside him, ran the blade across the guy’s face. ‘Tell me everything,’ he said, ‘and I won’t cut your throat.’
Dreadlock stared up at him, wading through the pain.
Clay pushed the point of the blade into his neck. Blood welled up around the steel. ‘Now.’
‘Contract,’ Dreadlock blurted. ‘Some baas from the mainland. Give we two grand, US. Come here kill you. Two more we bring you body living.’
‘How did they know I was here?’
‘Me no know. He no say much.’
‘Who was he? Where was he from?’
‘White man. White African. No name.’
Clay swore. ‘Where is he now?’
‘Some rich hotel out de’ Stone Town.’
‘And your friend. What’s his name?’
The man shook his head, closed his eyes. Clay pushed the knife in.
Dreadlock yelped. ‘They call him name Big J.’
Clay pulled back the knife, wiped the blood on his shorts. As he did, he heard a gasp. It had come from behind the couch. Clay stood, listened. A moment later, another gasp, a sob.
‘Zuz,’ he said. ‘Is that you, sweetie?’
The girl emerged from behind the couch. She stood surveying the scene, eyes strained wide, her mouth hanging open as if in mid-scream. He could see the deep red of her tongue and the white of her lower teeth and the rictus black of her throat. She was shaking.
‘Zuz,’ he said. ‘Close your eyes, sweetheart. Don’t look.’
The girl did as she was told.
Clay crouched back down next to Dreadlock, looked into the man’s eyes. He placed the point of the knife’s blade over the man’s heart. Rain thundered on the sheet-metal roof.
Dreadlock stared up at him, shaking his head from side to side. ‘Please,’ he gasped. ‘I never hurt no one.’