‘Pack your case, Zuz. Don’t leave anything behind.’
Clay opened the priest hole and pulled out the Glock, two extra magazines and a roll of US one-hundred-dollar bills. Then he secured all the portholes, turned off the gas, disconnected the battery and padlocked the sail locker. He went above deck and secured the boom, tightened the vang and set a kedge to the anchor to keep the chain low on the seabed.
He waited in the cockpit until Zuz emerged, blinking in the morning sun, her little case tucked under one arm. She had brushed her hair back into a ponytail and put on eyeshadow and lipstick.
‘Aren’t you a little young for makeup?’ said Clay.
Zuz sent him a sidelong glance, the edges of her mouth turned down, her eyes narrowed.
Clay closed the main hatchway, double locked it. He sat in the cockpit and turned on the mobile phone, unlocking it using the code he’d seen Dreadlock punch in. The battery was almost dead.
‘What are you doing?’ said Zuz.
‘Giving us an edge,’ he said. ‘What is the emergency number here?’
She told him. He dialled the number. A woman answered. He asked for the police. The woman asked him to wait. Clouds drifted overhead. The line clicked. The battery was almost gone. A man answered. Police, he said. Clay spoke: I am the person who called in the murders on Chumbe Island two days ago, and who alerted you to the meeting of the culprits on the beach yesterday. You have two local men in custody, one shot through the chest, the other suffering from stab wounds. They are the killers. The other witness, the daughter of the woman killed, will come forward. But there is a third man responsible. White South African, tall, well built, fair, nose pushed to one side of his face. Sunburn. Not a tourist. He is trying to kill me. He is trying to kill her.
The phone died. Clay tossed it into the sea.
‘As soon as I leave you with your grandmother, go to the police station with her. Tell them everything.’
‘What about you?’
‘I am going to help the police. I will make sure you are safe, Zuz. I promise.’
She smiled a little half-smile. ‘And then?’
‘And then I’m going to buy as much food as I can carry and I’m going to sail far away.’
‘Where?’
‘India,’ he lied. ‘Australia maybe. As far as there is.’
Zuz dropped her head. ‘And I will never see you again.’
Clay pulled the dinghy alongside. ‘Let’s go, sweetie.’
They rowed to the beach, tied the dinghy to the trunk of a palm well past the high-water mark and started inland through low reef-rock scrub.
Zuz reached for his hand, took it in hers. ‘You are going to kill them, aren’t you?’ said Zuz. ‘I saw what you did to that man at our house.’
Clay pulled his hand away, kept walking.
They reached a road, started walking north through scrub fields and smallhold farms, plots of yam and cassava, then, as they neared the outskirts of Nungwi, roadside stalls piled with fruit, makeshift garages wedged between the trunks of coconut palms and thick-waisted baobab, their owners peering out at them from under the shade of palm-frond shelters.
‘Everyone is looking at us,’ said Zuz, trudging along the frayed and crumbling tarmac at the road’s edge.
‘That’s why this is the only way,’ said Clay.
Zuz shook her head, kept walking.
After a while a dala-dala came along. Clay waved it down and they climbed into the back with the other half-dozen passengers – women with kids. The smaller children smiled at Clay, reached out to touch him, but Zuz scolded them away.
Soon they were in Nungwi proper. Clay paid the fare, a few shillings, and they continued on foot, Zuz leading him through the narrow stone streets of the old fishing village, now rashed over with the new, plastic fluorescence of tourism.
They stopped outside a small bakery. The street was lined with two-storey grey reef-rock buildings, shuttered and strung with wires and vines. Zuz pointed to a second-floor balcony on the other side of the street, four doors down.
‘There,’ she said. ‘That’s her house. She lives upstairs. That’s her shop underneath.’
Clay looked her in the eyes. ‘Stay here,’ he said.
‘Where are you going?’
‘Stay here. If you hear anything, run.’
‘Anything like what?’
‘Screaming, gunshots.’
Her mouth opened so that he could see the red underside of her bottom lip.
‘I’ll only be a minute. If it’s clear, I’ll wave from the balcony. Come straight up. If we get separated, meet me at the place the dala-dala dropped us. Understand?’
This time she nodded, stayed quiet.
Clay set off down the street.
‘Wait.’
Clay turned back to face her.
‘Her name is Geraldine. My mother’s mother.’
Clay kept going. He reached the shop, found the stairway and started up the rough stone steps, breathing in the cool air, the odours of tropic mould and the warm, turgid transpirations of close living. Halfway up the stairs he stopped, pulled the G21 from his waistband, checked the mag and chambered a round. He stood a moment, back against the sweating pores of the wall. He felt his chest expand against the stone as he tried to steady his breathing.
He wasn’t sure what he was expecting, but he wasn’t going to take any chances. The door was locked. From inside, the sound of a radio playing, the twittering of birds. He followed the hallway to the back of the building. An unlocked door led to a fire escape. Narrow wooden balconies shaded by a slouching pergola of rusting corrugated sheet metal. Pots of geraniums and herbs edged the railing. Clay clambered across to the balcony, palmed the Glock. He was outside the flat now, pressed up against the wall. He could hear the radio, the birds. And now, wood creaking, footsteps approaching.
Clay pushed open the door, stepped inside, pistol raised.
An old woman stood facing him. She was dressed in a long, patterned nightdress and wore thick-rimmed spectacles. In her right hand was a birdcage. Three yellow-and-green budgerigars twittered on the perch. The woman stared at Clay, at the gun. For a moment Clay thought she was going to scream, but she supressed it, gathered herself.
‘That is quite unnecessary, young man,’ she said. ‘My money is in the sitting room, in the roll-top desk.’ She placed the cage on the table, moved to the stove, lit the gas, put a kettle over the flames. ‘Tea?’ she asked.
Clay moved past her without answering, scanned the front room, the small bedroom. She was alone. There was no phone that he could see in the flat. He pushed the G21 into the waistband of his trousers at the small of his back, opened the door that led to the front balcony.
‘Geraldine,’ he called. ‘Can you come here, please, ma’am?’
The old woman appeared, stood in the kitchen doorway, one hand clutching the frame. ‘In the desk,’ she said, pointing. ‘There.’
‘Come here, please. I don’t want your money.’
She hesitated.
‘Don’t worry,’ Clay said. ‘I won’t hurt you. I’m a friend.’
‘Friends normally use the front door,’ she said.
Clay held out his hand. ‘Please. There is something I need you to see. Outside.’
The woman shuffled towards him, clearly wary. Clay stood back to let her pass. She walked out onto the balcony.
‘On the street to your left, outside the bakery.’
The woman stepped to the railing and peered down into the street. Grey cloud scuttled across a blue sky. Thunder rumbled in the distance.
‘Is there anything in particular I should be looking for, young man?’
‘Your granddaughter, ma’am.’
‘You must have mistaken me for someone else. I know how difficult it is for you white folk.’
Clay stepped out onto the balcony, looked down into the street.
Zuz was gone.