‘I want you out of there, you hear me, Cooper? No bull, no excuses, just you and Rosedale’s butt on a plane home, now!’
‘Listen, Granger…’
Cooper gritted his teeth as Granger cut him off mid-sentence. Holding the cell slightly away from his ear, he listened to the rant. The guy drove him crazy.
‘This is the last time, you understand me? You are not to be trusted… Just bring back the plane, just bring back the goddamn plane, that’s what I said and that’s all you needed to do, Cooper… But could you do that, could you? No, not you… You wanted to go and put the whole of the DRC to rights. You and Billy the Kid there. But now, now you have to listen to me, Cooper because I’m not warning you, oh no, I’m promising you that if you don’t get back on a plane, today, then I’m going to make sure that your investigation license gets revoked.’
Even though they had a good few thousand miles between them, Cooper kicked the ground, angry at the way Granger spoke to him. ‘Oh come on, Granger, you can’t do that.’
‘Oh yes I can. I can do what the hell I like, which seems to be what you’re doing. Maddie has told me a bit about what happened out there. And she doesn’t need to tell me much for me to guess the rest. You’re a disgrace, Cooper, a mess, and I have to wonder if there’s even going to be a job here when you get back. So I suggest if you do want to carry on working in this field, you get your sorry butts to Kigali and fly back home. Now!’
The line went dead with Rosedale staring hard at Cooper. He knew Rosedale was still pissed with him.
‘Don’t look back at me like that, Thomas. Granger’s got a point. You need to go home to your shrink. You need to get off those pills and get your head sorted. Whatever’s going on in there, only a doctor can help you. You’ve unravelled, Thomas, right in front of my goddamn eyes. I’ve seen crazy before, but you? You take crazy to a whole other level. You’ve lost the plot, baby. And I, for one, can’t wait to get on that plane and see the back of this place.’
Cooper rubbed his face. ‘Whatever you think of me, we’ve got a problem.’
‘No, Thomas, we haven’t. You have.’
Cooper was charged. Couldn’t hold back. ‘You know I’m not talking about me. I’m talking about what we saw. We’re this close to solving what’s going on. This close.’
‘It’s over. Our job was to find out about the plane. We have done and so it’s time to go back. You asked me to give you two days, which I did, and hell, Thomas, those two days nearly cost me my life. But now, it’s finished.’
Cooper felt a sudden adrenalin rush. A nervous energy. He couldn’t keep still. And he was certain it wasn’t just the pills. ‘It’s just begun, can’t you see that, Rosedale? We’re just beginning to get to the bottom of it.’
Rosedale shoved Cooper hard. Sent him backwards. ‘Bottom of what, Thomas? There is no bottom to get to. That’s not our job. Seriously, how much longer did you think you were planning to stay? A day? A week? A month? Can you see? There could be no end to this. And this place ain’t good for you. This is exactly what Maddie meant about you getting lost in a place.’
‘So you’re telling me you don’t want to find out what’s really going on here? Even now with the injection marks… Bemba? Charles? Donald Parker? Doesn’t the whole thing make you curious?’
‘Yeah, I guess it does but then a lot of things make me curious, but here’s the thing, I don’t go round trying to find the bottom of everything, especially when it’s nothing to do with me. If you did that with everything, you’d go crazy, and you’re a case in fact.’
‘But… ’
Rosedale raised his voice. Real loud. ‘No, Thomas. Stop trying to save the world, boy. You can’t. You can’t even save yourself, yet you want to try to solve the problems of the DRC. It’s tough, real tough to know there are people who have no power, no control over their lives, but that’s the way it is. We’ve done more than we were supposed to. Much more. And yeah, Bemba – or rather Simon Ballard – is as corrupt and dark as any man I know, and probably so is Charles and this Donald Parker. But there’s only two of us. We can’t do anything, even if we understood exactly what was going on. Look around you, Thomas, we’re in the middle of nobody cares. There’s no-one to help. This is the tragedy of this place. No police. No government to speak of. No real laws. So I’m telling you. Leave it, Thomas. Just know you tried, and no doubt tried harder than most people would ever do. But it’s time to let it go.’
Cooper knew he sounded desperate. No doubt he looked it too. ‘What about Emmanuel? Come on, Rosedale. You don’t think it’s strange he just disappeared? What about his family? Don’t you think they want to know where he is? It’s probably killing them not knowing. Every second of every day, just wondering what the hell happened.’
‘Jesus, Thomas, this isn’t about you.’
‘I know that. Don’t you think I know? But what about Zola? What about her grandson? You want me to walk away from that?’
‘Listen to me carefully. We’re going home, today, or at least I am, and that’s all there is to it.’