Clay rowed the bodies out to Flame.
The rain had stopped. One by one he lifted Grace and Joseph aboard, then carried them below and laid each on a berth. He stood in the gangway and looked at the corpses. He’d wrapped them in bedsheets and tied their ankles and around their arms and chests with rope, and now they lay, pale and still, in the rising moonlight. He looked at them for a long time – queen and prince in their floating sarcophagus, ready for their final journey into eternity.
Then he rowed back to the house. Zuz was waiting on the beach as he’d instructed, her little travel case packed and clutched to her chest. She had a mobile phone in her hand. As Clay approached she held it out for him.
‘Where did you get this?’ he asked. Grace didn’t have a mobile. The mobile system was still very new in Zanzibar, and only the most well off had their own phones.
Zuz pointed at the house.
‘One of the men?’
Zuz blanched, nodded.
Clay pocketed the phone. He rowed her out to the boat and sat her in the cockpit, where she couldn’t see the bodies of her brother and her mother. And then he went back for Dreadlock.
By the time they reached Stone Town, the sky was lightening over the Indian Ocean. Cloud billowed in the distance, dark anvils of cumulonimbus – more rain coming. Clay dropped anchor in five fathoms of water, south of the gardens and the white façade and clock tower of the House of Wonders and the old fort, away from the pier and the little notched fishing harbour. He shut down the engine, let Flame swing on the breeze.
Clay left Dreadlock in the cockpit, tied, as he’d been all night, to the starboard main cleat, and went forward to check on Zuz. He opened the forward hatch and peered down into the berth. She was still asleep, snuggled under the blankets. He closed the hatch, went below and made a pot of coffee.
‘Here’s the deal,’ Clay said, freeing Dreadlock’s good hand and passing him a mug of steaming coffee. ‘You help me find your friend, Big J, and the guy who hired you, and in return I’ll let you live.’
Dreadlock mumbled into the tape covering his mouth.
‘Just nod if you understand.’
Dreadlock nodded vigorously.
Clay took the Glock G21 from the pocket of his jacket and balanced it on his knee so the other man could see it. ‘Cross me, that arm will be the last thing you’ll be worrying about. Understand?’
More nodding, eyes wider now.
Clay yanked the tape from Dreadlock’s mouth. Dreadlock winced in pain, but managed not to spill any of the coffee. They drank.
When Dreadlock had finished his coffee, Clay pulled a sling from its package and started positioning it around the man’s broken arm. ‘Help me,’ he said, ‘and I won’t turn you in to the police. Do it well, and I’ll give you ten grand.’
Dreadlock grunted as Clay tightened the sling. ‘US dollars?’ he said, trying to keep his jaw still.
Clay pulled a wad of US one-hundred-dollar notes from his pocket and riffled the bills with his stump.
Dreadlock stared at the money a moment, mouth open, then looked up at Clay. ‘Kill him, then,’ he said, trying not to move his jaw. ‘If me help you and you no kill him, me dead.’
Clay nodded, peeled off ten notes, pushed them into the man’s good hand. Then he pulled out the mobile phone Zuz had found. ‘This yours?’
Dreadlock shook his head. ‘Big J.’
‘Can you unlock it?’
Dreadlock nodded.
‘Good. Can you find the guy who hired you – the white African?’
‘Yes.’
‘Do it. Tell him that you have my body, that you brought it over on my boat. Tell him you want to meet on the shore, over there.’ Clay raised his stump and pointed to a clutch of palms near a small beach beyond the point.
‘If he still here, Big J already tell him what de fuck happened.’ Dreadlock raised his hand to his jaw, worked the broken hinge, winced.
Clay put his British passport on the cockpit seat. ‘Tell him you found this. Read him my passport number. Tell him I brought you back to the boat, but you managed to grab my gun and shoot me. Tell him your buddy Big J ran when the fight started, that now you want the money for yourself.’
Dreadlock sat staring at the money in his hands; in this part of the world, a year’s wages – ten. ‘Him kill me,’ he said after a time. He moved his head from side to side. ‘No. Him kill me.’
Clay raised the G21, chambered a round. ‘That’s fine, then. I’ll do it myself.’ He started to depress the trigger.
‘Wait,’ said Dreadlock, sweat blooming in the big pores ranked across the bridge of his nose.
‘Decide.’
Dreadlock dropped his head. ‘Okay.’
‘Tell him one hour. On the beach.’ Clay put his passport on the cockpit seat.
Dreadlock fumbled with the phone, thumbed the keypad, raised it to his ear.
‘English,’ said Clay, pointing the gun at Dreadlock’s forehead.
Dreadlock closed his eyes, nodded.
Clay heard the phone ring, click. A conversation ensued.
Dreadlock killed the call, dialled another number. It rang, connected. A voice on the other end, a distinctive Free State accent – South African. Dreadlock nodded to Clay, spoke, stuck to the script. After a moment, he picked up Clay’s passport, opened it to the picture page, read out the passport number, listened a moment and then killed the line.
‘He come one hour,’ said Dreadlock.
Clay retied Dreadlock and went forward to check on Zuz. When he opened the hatch, she looked up at him.
‘I’m going into town for a while,’ he said. ‘I need you to stay here. Don’t leave this cabin. Do you understand?’
She nodded, blinking in the light streaming into the little cabin.
They rowed to shore, pulled the dinghy up onto the sand, walked into a palm thicket. From here they could see along the beach towards the docks and the town, but were well hidden.
Clay handed Dreadlock a 9 mm Beretta.
The look of surprise on Dreadlock’s face was almost comical.
‘There’s one round in the magazine,’ said Clay. ‘If you decide to use it, make it count.’ Clay pulled the G21 from his jacket pocket to emphasise the point.
Dreadlock took the weapon, examined it a moment, looked up at Clay. Possibilities whirled in the dark spaces behind his retinae.
‘Don’t think about it too much,’ said Clay. ‘You’ll hurt yourself. Now go and sit out there, where he can see you, and wait.’
Dreadlock hunched his shoulders, trudged out to the beach and sat on the dinghy’s gunwale.
Clay didn’t have a plan, not really. Ever since fleeing South Africa – again, for the second time in his life – he’d been operating on impulse. Part of it, by now, was simply instinct, the inbuilt impetus to survive, to kill when necessary, to adapt, to run. After losing any hope of ever being with Rania again, there had been no guiding objective, no deeper meaning. Each dawn was simply another sunrise, every gloaming just the start of another sleepless night.
Until Zuz had emerged from behind the couch, he’d been set on driving the knife into Dreadlock’s heart. Then, in the channel, still an hour out of Stone Town, he’d readied the Glock and was about to put a bullet into the bastard’s head when he’d heard Zuz calling him from the forward berth, where he’d locked her so she couldn’t get into the main cabin and see the bodies. He’d had a vague idea about making sure Grace and Joseph got a proper burial, that Zuz should be seen safely to her grandmother’s care. That, somehow, justice be done. That had been about it.
‘Shit.’ Dreadlock stood, pushed the Beretta into his waistband.
Clay looked down the beach. Two men were approaching. One was tall, fair, built like a rugby forward. The other was Red Shirt – Big J.
‘They kill me,’ whispered Dreadlock.
‘No, they won’t,’ said Clay.
‘What I do?’ Dreadlock’s voice wavered, cracked. It sounded like he was going to piss himself.
‘Just wait,’ said Clay. ‘Let them get close. Tell them you’ve got my body out on the boat. Show them my gun.’
Dreadlock shuffled his feet in the sand, raised his good arm, waved.
Clay moved deeper into the trees, crouched low, screwed a silencer onto the G21.
Big J and the white man stopped ten metres from the dinghy.
‘Where is he?’ said the white man. He had a big voice, a strong Boer accent. The bridge of his nose had been pushed sharply to one side of his face, as if the last time it had been broken he hadn’t bothered to recentre it.
Dreadlock pointed to Flame.
‘Why didn’t you bring him in?’ said Big J.
‘You run,’ said Dreadlock. ‘Leave me there.’
‘I thought you were dead,’ said Big J, glancing at the Boer. ‘I did.’
Dreadlock hunched his shoulders, pulled out the Beretta. ‘He broke my arm. But I got his gun.’
‘Well done,’ said the Boer. ‘Is that his boat?’
Dreadlock looked towards Flame, nodded. ‘My money?’
‘You’ll get it when I see him,’ said the Boer.
‘Why him get money?’ said Dreadlock. ‘Him no do fuck all.’
‘My boat,’ said Big J. ‘My contract. You work for me, idiot.’
‘You leave me die.’
‘Shut up, both of you,’ said the Boer.
‘What the fuck?’ said Big J, pointing at Flame.
‘What?’ said the Boer.
‘Look at that,’ said Big J.
Clay’s insides lurched, tumbled.
Zuz was up on deck, walking towards the cockpit, her nightdress fluttering in the rising sea breeze.