On 17 July 2007, Tim’s brother, Ébano, was alone at the research station, busy putting up a sign saying Belem Health Project above the entrance to the garden, when a branco walked past the barracks and continued in his direction. Two days previously, Tim and Storm had travelled to a conference in Conakry and they had asked Ébano to keep an eye on the place in their absence, but they had forgotten to tell him they were expecting a VIP. For a moment Ébano watched the man coming towards him with confusion before he climbed down, wiped his hands on his trousers and held it out to the stranger. The man asked for Kristian Storm and Ébano told him that Tim and Storm were away. ‘Oh, what a shame. I’m only here for three days and I’d hoped to meet Storm. We’re old colleagues,’ the man explained. ‘My name is Pedro, and you are?’ Before Ébano had time to say anything, Pedro had walked through the gate and continued across the research station’s small courtyard garden. Ébano hurried after him. Pedro wanted to know all sorts of things. Where did they store the blood samples and which chest freezers were protected against power cuts? Which statistical analysis programs did Storm use and how did he store the empirical data? Ébano could remember most of what Tim had told him and answered the questions to the best of his ability.
‘So you’re not a member of the academic staff?’ Pedro asked. He sounded surprised.
‘No,’ Ébano said. ‘But my brother went to university in London and works for Kristian Storm. Tim Salomon. Do you know him?’
‘Tim Salomon? Yes, of course. He’s a bright guy,’ Pedro said, and continued, ‘But you seem like a bright guy, too. Why didn’t you go to university?’
‘Tim was the best in our school,’ Ébano said, ‘so he got a scholarship.’
‘Aha,’ Pedro said, and invited Ébano to the A Pérola restaurant. Ébano could pick whatever he liked from the menu, and when he had eaten his way through several courses and drunk a fair amount of imported beer, the branco asked, ‘What do you dream about? If you could have anything you wanted?’
‘Dream about?’ Ébano said, and mulled it over. ‘My own cashew plantation. A big one with lots of workers. I’m good at cultivating the soil. But it’ll be a long time before I’ll be able to afford it.’
‘Why don’t you ask your brother for help? I imagine he makes good money at the research station. Or does he just rake it in and leave you to struggle?’
‘Oh, no,’ Ébano said, and burst out laughing at the branco’s misconception. ‘Tim is a good man. He helps me whenever he can. Like now, with the sign I was putting up today. He gave me seven hundred CFA francs for the carpenter, but said I could keep the rest if I could find it cheaper. Tim has never let me down.’
Pedro asked if Ébano fancied making some extra money. Ébano said that he did.
‘I’ll pay you a hundred and fifty thousand CFA francs every month,’ Pedro said.
A hundred and fifty thousand CFA francs every month! It was an unimaginable sum for a plantation worker.
But once Ébano heard what Pedro wanted him to do, he turned the offer down. He didn’t like Kristian Storm all that much, but even so . . . No. Besides, Storm did a lot of good for the Guinean community.
‘Oh, like what?’ Pedro was clearly surprised. Ébano explained how Storm had discovered that one of the vaccines recommended by the WHO was harmful, and that he was now doing everything in his power to save the lives of Guinean children.
‘That’s a whole lot of nonsense,’ Pedro said amicably. ‘I’ve been following Storm’s work for years and I know that he’s barking up the wrong tree. The WHO saves millions of lives, and only a blind fanatic like Storm would claim otherwise. Incidentally, not that many people take Storm seriously, these days, you know. That was actually what I came here to talk to him about, one friend to another. Storm needs to start watching his otherwise excellent professional reputation.’ Pedro suddenly looked worried. ‘Is your brother a bit naïve? Yes, forgive me for asking, but I think it would be a real shame for him to waste his considerable talent. But you must do what you think is right, of course. I imagine there are others in Bissau who would like to earn a hundred and fifty thousand CFA francs a month.’ Pedro winked at Ébano and handed him his card. ‘Anyway, why don’t you think it over?’
Pedro ordered another couple of beers and asked for the bill. Ébano’s head was spinning.
*
Six months later, in January 2008, Ébano was asked if he would like to work full-time as security man, bodyguard and caretaker at the Belem Health Project. Storm had hired a new statistician, Berit Dahl Mogensen, and she had threatened to fly straight back to Denmark if Storm did not improve security immediately. Ébano took the job and Storm had a small porter’s lodge built for him near the main entrance to the station. Silas had drowned before Christmas and Tim was devastated. That was the price you paid for making friends with the brancos.
Being Berit’s bodyguard was hard work. Every day Ébano followed at her heels and every night he had to make sure that the place was safe and locked up. At the same time he had to learn lots of other tasks: cleaning, shredding paper, putting new documents in binders and making sure that the cisterns of the toilets at the research station were full and that all storerooms were well stocked. For doing all that he was paid 125,000 CFA francs per month.
Ébano complained to Tim, but Tim got angry and said that Storm paid his people well and, more importantly, on time every month, in contrast to the Guinea-Bissau government. As far as Tim was aware, the local doctors had not been paid for over two months now and they made only 75,000 CFA francs a month. But Ébano was welcome to look for another job, Tim had said, sounding annoyed on Storm’s behalf.
Ébano got angry. He hated being patronised by his younger brother, who had been lucky enough to have a full scholarship to London fall into his lap. How dare he side with the brancos against his own brother who had worked his arse off, first in the plantations and now as Storm’s errand boy? Besides, Tim made much more money than Ébano, so it was easy for him to be blasé. However, in contrast to Ébano, Tim never spent any of his money because he didn’t drink and he never went out. All he cared about was his research and trying to impress Storm. Ébano, on the other hand, was desperate for cash. He wanted to buy his own plantation and build something up, something that would support him rather than him having to toil for others.
That night Ébano rummaged around his belongings and found the white man’s business card. Their collaboration began soon afterwards. Easy little jobs, almost innocent.
One week Ébano was told to disconnect the chest freezers for four hours; the next week he started a fire in the garage when the cars were out. One day he got a luxury assignment: he had to pretend to be a professor at Universidade Colinas de Boé and join the board of a Japanese pharmaceutical company. Ébano was sorely tempted to show Tim his smart leather briefcase with the letter confirming his appointment, with the name Sixan Pharmaceuticals embossed on the first page. Why study for years if it was this easy to become a professor and join the board of a pharmaceutical company?
An ugly, pockmarked Senegalese man, who refused to give his name, communicated Pedro’s various jobs to Ébano, but it took Ébano only half an hour to discover that this man’s name was Ibrahima N’Doye and that he was the hired muscle for the American Representative Office in Bairro de Penha. Underestimating Ébano had been a mistake.
Ébano had been working for Pedro just a few months when he had enough money to buy a small plot of land. He showed it to Tim with a wide grin. Tim wanted to know how he had got the money and Ébano said he had saved up. Tim flung his arms around his big brother and told him he was proud of him. Ha, Ébano thought. It was the easiest money he had ever made. He didn’t even have moral scruples when he let Ibrahima N’Doye into the research station to attack Berit in the living room. Ébano sat outside the house playing dice with the neighbouring security guards while the attack happened; besides, Ibrahima N’Doye had promise not to hurt Berit.
When Berit flew back to Denmark, Storm asked Ébano to travel with him to the province to help him collect data and Ébano was too scared to say no. First, Tim had said that Storm was very pleased with him and planned to give him bigger and more interesting jobs if he handled this one well, and second, Ibrahima N’Doye had given him orders from Pedro to go with Storm without ‘fucking anything up’. N’Doye emphasised his words by pressing a knife against Ébano’s throat. It would appear that Ébano’s predecessor had ‘fucked up’. The incompetent fool had been so indiscreet that first Silas and later Berit had become suspicious.
‘And that’s why neither Silas nor that other fool is alive any more. Do you understand, buro? And Berit should thank her lucky stars that she left of her own accord.’
N’Doye’s revelations shocked Ébano. He had never really liked Silas, but Silas had been a good friend of Tim, and Ébano started to wonder if he should come clean with his brother.
But the days passed and he said nothing, partly because he was reluctant to give up his well-paid work for Pedro but also because it was impossible to get through to Tim once they had left to carry out the survey. Tim and Storm spent all their time engrossed in discussion about why the child mortality rate in the Dulombi-Boe area was so low, lower even than in Denmark. They simply could not understand it. Ébano could understand it perfectly well because every night, when the others were asleep, he changed the entries in the medical records. It took him only five minutes.
*
In the autumn of 2009, when Ébano had worked at the Belem Health Project for eighteen months, Storm returned to Bissau to carry out what he called the ‘the absolutely final survey trip’. Once more, Ibrahima N’Doye ordered Ébano to accompany his boss to the Dulombi-Boe area, and Ébano did so, but again unwillingly. The rainy season was nearly over and Ébano needed to plant his land. Instead he was faced with the prospect of several months in the back of beyond with Storm and Tim, and matters did not improve when Tim had to leave the survey prematurely when he was offered a place on a PhD course at Yale University. Suddenly Ébano found himself alone with Storm. Storm, who went to bed early, Storm who never touched a drop of alcohol, Storm who had nothing on his mind other than his medical records, yet was still so dumb that he failed to spot the sabotage Ébano had managed to carry out with something as simple as an eraser. The days passed at a snail’s pace and for once Ébano had to agree with Storm: it would absolutely have to be the last survey.
When the team finally returned to Bissau in the middle of February, Ébano was both exhausted and desperate. None of his schemes had got him anywhere near the medical records for even ten seconds. Storm had slept with them, taken them to the lavatory and kept them constantly within his reach. When Ibrahima N’Doye came to pay Ébano and wanted to know how things had gone, Ébano lied and said that everything had gone according to plan and that the medical records had been destroyed. There was nothing for Pedro to worry about.
One week later, Storm flew back to Copenhagen, and three weeks later, all hell broke loose.
Ébano was reading in his porter’s lodge when Ibrahima N’Doye opened the door and brandished a knife at him. Ébano was taller and stronger than Ibrahima N’Doye, but Ibrahima still inflicted a deep cut across Ébano’s stomach.
Pedro had heard rumours that Kristian Storm had made it to Copenhagen with a complete data set and had been given the green light for a publication that could ruin everything. ‘Do you understand, tarpasêro? Ruin everything.’
Soon afterwards, Pedro ordered Ébano to Denmark. Ibrahima N’Doye organised his passport, ticket and visa; the latter was granted on the basis of an invitation from Stanford University, which requested the presence of Professor Ébano at a conference on human trafficking in Copenhagen on 16 March.
‘Tell me, how long can I expect to be away?’ Ébano asked.
‘That depends on how quickly you do your job,’ Ibrahima said.
‘Yes, but it says here I’m not flying back until June.’
‘That’s because Pedro doesn’t trust you, Ébano. But as soon as Pedro is happy, you can go home.’
Ébano thought about his fields. If he did not start planting soon, the trees would not grow sufficiently robust before the next rainy season started. ‘I won’t stay there for three months,’ he insisted. ‘I’m telling you.’
‘You don’t have a choice, tarpasêro.’ Ibrahima took out his flick knife and started playing with it, but without opening it.
‘What am I meant to do in Copenhagen?’ Ébano said.
‘We’ll tell you later. It’s easy,’ Ibrahima said.
‘How much will you pay me?’ Ébano asked.
Ibrahima grinned. ‘Since when do you get paid for clearing up your own mess? But you know Pedro. If he’s happy, he’ll pay you well.’
‘And if I refuse to go?’ Ébano said.
‘Then I will stick my knife a little deeper into you,’ Ibrahima said, and plunged the closed weapon into Ébano’s stomach before he left.
*
In the transfer hall at Lisbon airport, a stranger came up to Ébano and handed him an envelope with instructions for the job Pedro wanted him to do. Ébano almost panicked when he realised that the job was killing Storm and making it look like suicide. There was a note in Danish in the envelope, which Ébano was meant to leave by the body. In addition, both the original medical records and Storm’s computers with potential copies must be destroyed. The envelope also contained three thousand Danish kroner in cash and a reversed-charges telephone number, which he could ring in an emergency. When the job was done, Ébano would be sent an electronic ticket so he could get back to Guinea-Bissau.
It was freezing cold when Ébano arrived in Denmark and he had to spend five hundred kroner on a thick jacket. How would he make Pedro’s cash last? On the first night he tried sleeping on a bench to save money, but it was no good. He would be ill unless he slept indoors. He found the Guinean community club in Copenhagen, three smoky rooms in Mysundegade. The Guineans welcomed him warmly, especially when Ébano explained that he was a professor from the university in Bissau and had come to Denmark to work with the world-famous immunologist Kristian Storm – did they know him? They did not, but they were very impressed. Most educated Guineans had to start again when they came to Denmark, the oldest Guinean told him, taking jobs in abattoirs, even though they were bookkeepers, or clean public toilets, although they were bakers.
‘You do us great honour, nha ermon,’ they said, and Ébano glowed with pride.
*
Ébano found a hotel near the Guinean club that he could afford. It was called Hotel Nebo. After giving the receptionist his passport to put in the hotel safe, he was about to pay with Pedro’s cash, but instead he handed her a credit card he had found in Tim’s desk drawer in Bissau, just to see if it worked. It did, and suddenly he had plenty of cash. That same evening, he dined out for over five hundred kroner on his younger brother’s credit card and the next day he hired a car. He showed them Tim’s international driving licence, which he had found with the credit card. Again everything went smoothly. The car was brilliant and Ébano enjoyed driving it around Copenhagen. It was warm and comfortable and it even had tinted windows so he could sit inside it undisturbed and watch life in Denmark. Ébano turned up the radio and thought about his future. Maybe he would even be able to build a house on his land with the money Pedro would pay him.
Ébano began by observing Storm’s daily routines. Every morning at nine o’clock Storm would park his bicycle outside the Institute of Biology and, after a chat with a caretaker, he would disappear inside the building. Then the world’s dullest day would start for Ébano, who had a full view of the institute from a parking bay diagonally opposite. Except for fetching his lunch from the refectory around noon, Storm would appear to spend all his time in his office, which overlooked the University Park, and he did not leave until the lights in the other windows had long been switched off.
Ébano spent the endless hours in the car wondering if Tim was even aware that he had left Bissau. They had not had much contact while Tim had been doing his PhD course at Yale, so Ébano did not think so. This was how it had become whenever Tim was abroad. He would forget all about Ébano. Come to think of it, Tim had emailed him only twice, once to apologise for his untimely departure from the Dulombi-Boe survey and to hear if it had been completed without any problems, and again to let him know that a parcel containing spare parts was on its way from Denmark and that Ébano was to give it to the engineer who was coming to look at a defective cooling system. That was all. When Tim was home, it was another story. Then he would constantly give Ébano jobs to do.
The problem wasn’t that Ébano minded helping Tim, because he always had done. He had made sure Tim didn’t get beaten up at school and talked him into coming with him on dangerous adventures so he didn’t completely lose the respect of the other boys. When Tim returned from London with his fancy education, Ébano had even introduced him to his friends and got his brother a job at a cashew plantation. Ébano wanted to help Tim. But he no longer wanted to help Storm: the more he thought of it, the more he was convinced that Storm exploited both of them.
What was the likelihood that Ébano would ever get interesting work that matched his intelligence? It was just something Storm had made Tim believe in order to make Ébano work even harder. And what was the likelihood that Tim would ever get a senior position as a scientist? Tim would always be second-in-command, if not to Storm, then to the next white scientist who showed up backed by money from a rich country. Pedro had called Tim naïve, but Ébano was not like his brother.
Finally, the light was turned off in Storm’s office and shortly afterwards Ébano saw Storm fumble with his bicycle lights. It was dark and deserted outside the faculty and Ébano was angry. He could easily have killed Storm there and then, but he had been ordered to make it look like suicide. At that moment, Storm leaped onto his bicycle and disappeared across the large car park.
When an exhausted, furious and frustrated Ébano returned to Hotel Nebo, the receptionist wanted a word with him. His credit card had been declined, the receptionist said, so they needed another card or cash as security.
‘No problem,’ Ébano said. ‘I have another card upstairs in my room. I’ll just go and get it.’
Back in his room he quickly packed his few belongings. Denmark was insanely expensive and he had just two hundred kroner left of the three thousand Pedro had given him. He did not know what to do without Tim’s credit card. He opened the window. His room was on the first floor, so it was a long way down to the dark, narrow courtyard. Fortunately, there was a shed in the adjacent courtyard, and when Ébano had sat on the windowsill for a while to steel his nerves, he pushed off. He landed hard on the edge of the shed. He scrambled across the roof and leaped down into the neighbouring courtyard. Someone shouted, but he did not turn; a few seconds later he had scaled an iron gate and was heading down a side street, away from Hotel Nebo. He had got away – but his passport was still in the hotel safe. How would he now get back to Bissau?
He walked to the Guinean club in Mysundegade where he was instantly invited inside by the men who were still hanging out there. ‘Tell us about your research,’ one of the men said, when Ébano had been given a cup of coffee. Ébano told them and they listened with awe. It turned out that in fact one remembered Kristian Storm because a relative of his had taken part in one of the very first surveys back in 2004, and Ébano smiled and said he had better be going because his first lecture was at eight o’clock the following morning. ‘Tell me, where are you staying?’ the oldest man wanted to know and Ébano replied that he was at Hotel Nebo, but that the university was looking for more permanent accommodation for him because it looked likely that he would be staying in Denmark for a while. The old man said that he was always welcome to stay with him, and Ébano nearly accepted, but checked himself. The men must never know that he had lied.
He slept in the back of his car that night. The next morning he woke up, achy and miserable. He had to get Pedro to send him a new passport because he wanted to go home to Guinea-Bissau now.
He drove from Vesterbro to the university, parked the car across from the Institute of Biology and began his wait. He nodded off several times, but so what? Storm wasn’t doing anything but sit in his office; it was enough to drive anyone crazy. As evening approached, the faculty gradually became deserted and Ébano saw the lights in the wing facing the park go out one by one.
All the time, he kept thinking that Storm was a conman who exploited Guinea-Bissau. He hadn’t fully understood what Pedro had told him about the vaccines, but Storm got his money from Denmark and any idiot knew that Danish money was worth far more than the Guinean currency. Even so, Storm had always paid both him and Tim according to Guinean standards. Storm must have pocketed the difference himself – it was obvious now. And what was his lousy excuse? That he saved thousands of children from dying from vaccines. But that was a lie. Ébano and Tim’s mother had been one of thirteen children and seven of them never made it past their fifth birthday because the vaccines had only just been introduced to their country. Their mother had told them this and that was the reason she had always made sure that Ébano and his brothers and sisters were vaccinated at the health centre. What Storm was doing was a crime and, thanks to the ignorant governments of absurdly wealthy countries, he was becoming filthy rich in the process.
With that thought in his mind, Ébano put on a pair of rubber gloves and grabbed the plastic bag with the rope he had bought. Then he found the entrance to the Department of Immunology. It was almost eight o’clock and the Institute of Biology lay in silent darkness. First he would get that business with Storm out of the way and then he would destroy the records, both the Guinean medical records in the box and the information on Storm’s computer. He was shaking now.
When Ébano suddenly appeared in the doorway to his office, Storm looked shocked. For a moment, he had no idea what was going on.
‘Ébano! What on earth . . .? Has something happened? What’s wrong?’ Ébano closed the door behind him, and Storm took fright. Everything happened very quickly. Storm reached for the telephone, but Ébano made it to his desk in two quick strides. He twisted Storm’s arm hard behind his back and grabbed the plastic bag with the rope.
‘Whoever is paying you,’ Storm cried out in desperation, ‘I’ll pay you three times as much.’
Storm’s words made Ébano see red. Why did white men always think they could buy Guineans? He tipped the rope out onto the floor and put the plastic bag over Storm’s head. It took three minutes and it felt like three hours.
Afterwards he felt completely empty and needed time to recover. He looked at the pictures on Storm’s wall, and when he discovered the photograph of Storm between Silas and Tim, rage welled in him again. Tim had been too trusting and Storm had tricked him well and good. Ébano snatched the photograph and flung it onto the floor.
Ébano spotted a Guinean pano on the wall and took it down. This would be much better than the rope. It was a symbol that would make people think that Storm had committed suicide by hanging himself in a traditional cloth from the country he had exploited. Storm was tall but lean, and Ébano managed to string him up, in a noose he made from the pano, without much effort. Then he left the note on the desk. He panicked when he couldn’t see the medical records, but then he spotted them: the familiar box was on the floor under Storm’s desk. He followed the instruction from Lisbon to the letter and deleted first all the data on Storm’s PC tower and then on his laptop. When that was done, he opened the door and listened out, but the department was quiet. His orders were to destroy the medical records, but how? At that moment he noticed a shredder, like the one Storm had in Bissau. It was in a room across the corridor with two photocopiers and shelves of office stationery. Ébano entered the printer room and closed the door behind him. The shredder was terribly loud, but it took him less than two minutes to destroy the medical records. The paper strips disappeared into a bag and out of Ébano’s life.
By now he was desperate to leave and it was not until he was outside in the dark area in front of the institute that he was finally able to breathe properly. He chucked the rest of the pano and the unused rope into a nearby bin, but had second thoughts and fished them out again. No evidence, Ibrahima had said.
In the days that followed, Ébano called the reversed-charges number he had been given several times, but every time a recorded message informed him that the call had been declined. Over the weekend, Ébano’s desperation grew. He needed a new passport and a new plane ticket so that he could fly home.
On Sunday afternoon he went to the Guinean club in Mysundegade where a cleaner told him that no one ever visited on a Sunday. Ébano was tempted to ask if he could please come in anyway, but was too scared. Everything was going down the toilet. By now he should have returned the hire car, but he couldn’t do that since the credit card had been declined and he ended up parking the car in a deserted street far from the city centre. He used it only for sleeping in because it was just a matter of time before the police started looking for it. He had practically no money left and it was not until Monday when people started frequenting the Guinean club again that he had a proper meal because one of the men invited him home for supper.
On Wednesday morning Ébano finally got hold of Pedro.
‘Why the hell do you keep calling me?’ Pedro rebuked him. ‘Don’t you know it’s important to lie low for at least a week? Until everything calms down. Stay put, you idiot. And you really are an idiot. I told you to destroy the medical records, not leave them to be found in the university basement six days later. I know that the Guinean police are useless, but Danish police officers aren’t imbeciles, so there’s a real risk that the medical records are now lying in neat strips at a police station.’
‘How do you know?’ Ébano exclaimed.
‘Because I called the Department of Immunology to express my condolences at the death of Kristian Storm,’ Pedro said, ‘and I learned that the medical records had been found in a recycling container in the basement. I also learned that Marie Skov, Kristian Storm’s fellow author, has been on sick leave all year and hasn’t been seen at the faculty since she defended her master’s last September. So how the hell do you know that Storm didn’t send her a copy of his data? I want you to find Marie Skov’s computer.’
‘But how do I do that?’
But Pedro had already hung up and Ébano had not even had time to say that he needed a new passport.
Ébano was reluctant to return to the Faculty of Natural History, but fortunately the secretary at the Department of Immunology was away, so Ébano was directed to a secretariat in a completely different building, far away from Storm’s office. Here he introduced himself as Tim Salomon and got Marie Skov’s address and telephone number without any problems.
Afterwards he sat on a bench and suddenly missed Tim terribly. It had been great when Tim had returned from his studies in London, proud and optimistic, but nothing had worked out the way Ébano had imagined. And now here he was. All alone.
He had to track down Marie Skov, but how would he find out if she had Storm’s data? And how would he get his hands on it? This was risky. He had never met her in Bissau, and he knew nothing about her. What if she lived with a towering Viking husband and four giant dogs on Ingeborgvej? Ébano was terrified of dogs.
Then it occurred to him to send her a section of Storm’s pano in the shape of a noose. Marie Skov would almost certainly put the two pano fragments together, get the message and keep her mouth shut. Ébano took the pano and tore off another strip. He found a post office and posted the pano noose. He called Pedro the same day to tell him what he had done, but Pedro didn’t answer his call on the Thursday or the Friday.
On Friday evening Ébano was hanging around a shawarma bar near Copenhagen Central Railway Station where he ate scraps of food that people had abandoned on the tables outside. Eventually the owner noticed him and Ébano slunk away. Suddenly he spotted Tim in a crowd on the pavement. It really was him! He walked past Ébano and he was holding hands with a girl who must be Guinean, as far as Ébano could make out from the bright yellow scarf peeking out behind Tim. Ébano’s heart skipped a beat. Tim must have wondered what had happened to his brother. Tim had decided to look for him. Bring him home. Everything would be all right now. But Tim didn’t see him. He had eyes only for the girl – he was completely mesmerised by her. And she wasn’t Guinean at all, Ébano could see that now, but white, and she had no eyebrows. Ébano felt dazed as he watched them disappear down the street.
That same night, he made his way to Marie Skov’s home and forced his way into the house through a window in the basement. He was starving and in the kitchen he ate meatballs and sausages from the fridge before he searched high and low for copies of the medical records, but found nothing. Neither did he find Marie Skov’s laptop. Finally, out of sheer desperation, he tried setting fire to the house by lighting some cardboard boxes in the garage, but he could not make them burn properly. Before he drove away, he smashed two windows of the 4×4 vehicle parked outside.
Five days in hell followed. Pedro didn’t answer his phone and Ébano wandered from phone booth to phone booth. He had run out of money and was forced to beg in the street and steal food wherever he could. The only place he was met with kindness was the Guinean club in Mysundegade where he stopped by every night to say hello. His clothes needed washing, as did he, but the men there did not seem to notice. They were always welcoming and one of them even asked Ébano if he would like to meet a grandchild, who wanted to be a nuclear physicist and study in London. Wasn’t that where Ébano had studied? Ébano said that he would love that.
Tuesday afternoon Pedro finally picked up the phone and was suddenly very obliging. Of course he would get Ébano a new passport. Things had calmed down, he said, and the case had been filed as suicide. As soon as Ébano had got hold of Marie Skov’s copies of the medical records, he could fly home. Ébano argued that he had searched her house, but that the medical records were not there. ‘Oh,’ Pedro said, ‘but you did find her laptop, didn’t you?’ Ébano did not dare do other than tell him the truth. Suddenly Pedro no longer sounded quite so friendly. He said that Marie Skov had been in contact with Terrence Wilson, the editor of Science, and convinced him that she had a copy of the medical records and that, as a result, Wilson would have to give her some column inches for his next issue.
‘So go back to her house and search it properly. Steal her handbag, find her laptop, whatever it takes. And when you have done that,’ he added, ‘you can come home. Your money is already waiting for you in Bissau. Ten million CFA francs in an envelope, which will be handed to you the moment you land.’
‘Ten million?’ Ébano could not believe his ears.
‘Yes, because you’ve done a really great job, Ébano,’ Pedro said warmly.
*
Ébano returned to Ingeborgvej for a second time and parked a short distance from Marie Skov’s house. At first glance it looked empty and Ébano could not see the expensive car anywhere. Then he spotted a woman inside the house. A cleaner, he realised, as he came closer and saw that she was dusting. Ébano rang the doorbell and forced his way into the hall when she opened the door. He introduced himself using Tim’s name and title and said he was meeting Marie.
‘I don’t see how that can be,’ the cleaner said, ‘because Marie has moved out.’
Ébano was about to force his way further inside the house when someone appeared on the steps behind him. It was the postman and the cleaner said something to him in Danish in a shrill voice. The postman told Ébano kindly, but firmly, to leave. Ébano had no reason to stay, anyway, because he had had time to see the address on a large envelope lying on a chest of drawers in the hallway. Marie Skov, it said. Randersgade 76, 2100 Copenhagen Ø.
Ébano drove straight to Randersgade and parked opposite Marie Skov’s stairwell. Suddenly he was overcome by exhaustion and sorely tempted to give up. He had imagined this trip to be a nice easy earner, but now he had spent more than two weeks in Denmark. And he was freezing cold.
He had to rest, just one or two hours in the car, so he could think straight and make plans.
He had just settled down on the back seat when he spotted the girl Tim had been engrossed in outside the railway station last Friday. It was definitely her. Same petite build, same bright yellow scarf. She emerged from Marie Skov’s stairwell and stopped momentarily to press buttons on her phone. Then she slipped the mobile into her pocket and, if it hadn’t been for the car’s tinted windows, he would have been discovered because she looked straight at him. Then she disappeared down the street with rapid footsteps.
The girl with the yellow scarf was Marie Skov. Tim’s girlfriend.
It knocked him for six.
Ébano drove down Randersgade and parked further down the street. Then he slumped over the wheel. If he killed Tim’s girlfriend, he and Tim could no longer be brothers. He would have to spy on Marie, just like he had spied on Storm, and snatch the medical records one day when she was not at home.
Ébano watched Marie’s block all Thursday. He could not find anywhere to park and ended up sitting on the bottom step of number 93, from where he had a clear view of Marie Skov’s front door. It was not until a young guy demanded to know what Ébano was doing there that he had to abandon his observation post. At that moment a parking space became available on the corner of Randersgade and Ébano fetched and parked the car so he could watch the entrance from the back seat without being seen. Absolutely nothing happened. A couple of times he saw Marie look out of the window, but she never left her flat. Late in the afternoon, Ébano suddenly spotted the 4×4 whose windows he had smashed less than a week ago. The glass had been replaced, but he was still convinced that it was the same car. Ébano craned his neck and saw a small boy jump out of the 4×4 and disappear into Marie Skov’s stairwell.
One hour later Ébano had to stretch his legs and get something to eat. He was lucky and found a supermarket nearby with fruit and vegetables displayed outside; he stole some apples and oranges. When he was back in the car, he saw Marie in the window again, glancing anxiously up and down the street. When it started to grow dark, he gave up. He would have to come back the next day and hope that she was going out. He didn’t want to hurt her, but he was losing patience. All he could think of was getting home to Bissau.
He drove back to Vesterbro and parked close to the Guinean club, his mood now much improved at the prospect of a bite to eat and a good chat with his own people.
‘Professor Ébano,’ the old man said, stretching out his arms. ‘Welcome.’ A pot had just been put on the table and Ébano ate hungrily from the plate, which was put in front of him. The old man cleared his throat. ‘Professor Ébano, your brother has been here several times today asking after you. We told him that you were staying at Hotel Nebo and he went there to look for you. Since then he has been back twice, most recently an hour ago. He left you this note.’ The old man gave Ébano a piece of paper. ‘I hope it was all right that we told your brother where to find you.’
Ébano shook his head and got up.
‘Won’t you stay for a little while?’ the old man asked. Everyone was looking at him.
‘No, I have to go,’ Ébano said, and retreated backwards out of the club.
He ran back to the car as he read the note from Tim.
My brother, my friend, I have paid your bill at Hotel Nebo and I have your passport. I’m staying at First Hotel on Vesterbrogade 23. I’ll wait for you there. Love from your brother, Tim
Ébano clutched the note. My brother, my friend. Had Tim written this to entrap him? Suddenly Ébano had doubts. What if the police were waiting for him at the hotel? Had Tim taken sides and chosen Storm’s? Or did Ébano still have time to explain to Tim that he had been wrong? That Storm suffered from white man’s megalomania and was skimming off money that really belonged to Guinea-Bissau? Ébano wavered. He loved his brother, but he also loved his acquisitions. The plantation and the money to cultivate it. Then he caught sight of his own reflection in the tinted car windows. What had he really gained? A scrawny body and the beggar’s loss of dignity. He looked briefly into his own eyes. Then he walked to Vesterbrogade.
Ébano had barely knocked on the door to Tim’s hotel room before Tim tore it open. The two brothers stared at each other until Ébano averted his eyes. Then Tim dragged him into the room and slammed the door shut. ‘What the hell have you done?’ Tim screamed, and pushed Ébano into a chair.
‘Storm is using you,’ Ébano said. ‘He makes a fortune saying vaccines kill children, but it’s a big fat lie. Vaccines save lives and . . .’
Tim glared at Ébano in disbelief. ‘Yes, of course vaccines save lives,’ he shouted. ‘And Storm never ever claimed otherwise. Any idiot knows that vaccines are the most amazing thing to happen to global health. But we need the WHO to evaluate the DTP vaccine, yes, all vaccines. They have to admit that it’s possible that vaccines have non-specific effects, which we have to deal with.’
‘Storm is using you,’ Ébano tried again. ‘He—’
‘Don’t say another word,’ Tim interrupted, and flopped down on the edge of the hotel bed. Ébano had never seen him so furious and disappointed.
‘I know what you have done,’ Tim continued. ‘I got suspicious the moment I returned to Bissau and you weren’t there. But I refused to believe it. I kept telling myself that my brother wasn’t that heartless or that stupid. But when I kicked down the door to your house and found the contract between you and Sixan Pharmaceuticals in Tokyo and your visa papers for Denmark, my worst fears were confirmed. I pressed Nuno until he admitted that he had driven you to the airport. On the plane on my way to Denmark everything fell into place. You sabotaged our figures, you killed Silas, you took Storm from me—’
‘I didn’t kill Silas,’ Ébano objected, ‘that was the man who came before me.’
Tim ignored him. ‘You made quite an impression on our brothers in Mysundegade, eh? Ébano the brilliant professor, the clever boy from Bissau, their pride. You’re nothing but a killer, Ébano.’
Tim heaved a deep sigh.
Once again Ébano tried to explain to Tim what Storm had done to Guinea-Bissau, how he had defrauded Tim and lined his own pockets in the process. The words stumbled over each other, then petered out. Finally, there was silence in the cool hotel room.
Tim sat looking down at his hands and his face was tortured. ‘You deserve the greatest possible punishment,’ he said at length, and then he got up.