In the front seat of Manning’s car, away from the rain hammering into my back and drowning out my thoughts, I considered the implications of what had just happened. They were, all told, pretty bleak. The death of a KGB officer on the eve of his defection would trigger the order for an immediate investigation from London. I could have handled that if it had been run by Manning, but Pritchard would be in the city in a matter of days, possibly even hours, and he would be much harder to fob off. Especially as I had disobeyed orders to come out here, had then insisted on meeting Slavin ahead of the scheduled time – and had been the only witness to his murder.
There was nothing I could do about any of that now. If I went underground – moved hotels, cut all contact with Manning – I might as well paint a cross on my back. Pritchard would have a pack of hounds sent over on Concorde. No, my only option was to carry on the pretence I was searching for the traitor, even if that meant Pritchard breathing down my neck and giving me even less room for manoeuvre. It was precisely the situation I’d wanted to avoid – and precisely what I’d warned Sasha would happen if he got Moscow to send a hitman into Lagos.
Now I had to find Anna. The Service knew she had recruited Radnya, so would almost certainly investigate her next. I knew she was somewhere in this city – probably even somewhere in this neighbourhood. Perhaps that house, there, with the jacaranda trees swaying in the wind. Perhaps she was in that villa, wrapped up in pleasant dreams, while I sat here with my shirt dripping and my fingers caked in blood as the minutes wound down until Pritchard’s plane landed.
I took the torch from the glove compartment and ran it over the assassin’s effects. I wasn’t expecting to find anything that would identify him: he’d been a professional. But there were clues. There were always clues.
The most obvious one was the word scrawled on the matchbox: ‘AEROFLOT’. My first thought was that it was a reminder to book his ticket back to Moscow: after all, even hitmen need to organize their travel arrangements. But why would he write that down? It wasn’t as if he would forget the name of the national airline.
Next thought: perhaps he had a contact at Aeroflot’s office here. That made more sense – it was a common KGB cover. But again, why make a note of it? Bad form and, again, it wouldn’t be too hard to remember.
I was missing something. I hadn’t been in the field in over five years, and it was taking me time to get back into the old ways of thinking. Too much time.
I picked up the Russian’s gun. It was a Tokarev TT. I had always thought it a brutish-looking weapon: unpainted and almost devoid of markings, it looked more like a cast of a pistol than the real thing. This one had been worn smooth with years of use, so that only one of the Cs in ‘CCCP’ arranged around the grip was still legible.
I emptied the chamber, because it had no manual safety and I didn’t want to blow my knees off, and asked myself why a KGB assassin would be carrying this gun. The TT hadn’t been produced in years – most KGB now used the Makarov. The army had continued to use it for a while, but I’d read a report just a few months ago saying that they had also abandoned it. Perhaps he had been in the army many years ago, and had kept the gun? I tried to remember his face, before its features had been contorted by pain. Late twenties – no older than that. So too young to have been issued with a TT even if he had been in the army. Perhaps someone he knew had been in the army and had given it to him. Or he had it for other reasons – like I had my Luger.
I wasn’t getting anywhere. My thoughts turned to Slavin – were there any clues there? He had started to say something about Anna before the shots had interrupted him. ‘But she has nothing to…’ What? Nothing to do with this? Nothing to gain? Nothing to lose?
The shots. There was a clue. The first had gone through Slavin’s windpipe; the second had nearly taken off my ear. But why had he wasted valuable seconds shooting at me? Simply because I was a witness to murder – or because I was his second target?
A chill went through me. Had Sasha ordered me ‘dispatched’, too?
I would have to make a move soon. I lit a cigarette with one of the dead man’s matches. As I made to put the box in my pocket, I noticed that his scribbled ‘eh’ looked more like a stylized ‘ehf’. That didn’t help me much: so I knew he hadn’t been an especially literate assassin. But then I saw that two other letters also looked wrong.
I flicked the torch across the surface again.
He hadn’t written them down incorrectly – I’d misread them. The word wasn’t ‘АЭРОФΛОТ’, but ‘АФРОСПОТ’. I was so used to seeing the name of the airline in Section reports that my mind had automatically taken in a similar-looking word and jumped to the wrong conclusion.
So what the hell was ‘Afrospot’?
*
At the Yacht Club, the party had moved into the bar. Manning was deep in discussion with his wife and Sandy: West Africa, no doubt, was winning again. When he caught sight of me, he nearly tripped over himself running over.
‘Bloody hell!’ he said. ‘What happened? Did you get caught in the rain?’
‘No,’ I said. ‘I decided to take a shower and forgot to undress.’
He coughed into his hand. ‘Did Slavin show?’
I took him by the arm and led him down a corridor and into the men’s changing rooms. I gave the place the once over, glancing into the WCs and the shower stalls to make sure nobody else was there. Once I was satisfied we were alone, I turned to Manning.
‘Slavin made contact about half an hour ago,’ I said.
‘Did he have any information about the woman?’
‘I don’t know. Someone put a bullet through the back of his neck before I could find out.’
It took an instant for the words to penetrate, and then his face crumpled and his eyes lost their spark.
‘Christ,’ he said. ‘That’s rather a blow.’
‘Yes,’ I said. ‘It is, rather.’ I wondered if he was so comfortable out here that he’d forgotten what our game was about, or if he was just worried about Pritchard’s reaction, and was seeing his pension float away. I walked over to a basin and washed some of the mud off my hands and face.
‘Did you see the shooter?’ Manning asked.
I took a towel off a nearby peg and dried myself. ‘Not clearly. He got away very fast.’
‘Ah. Pity.’ He picked up a piece of tarpaulin peeking out from beneath one of the benches and stood it up against the wall. ‘Terrible mess some people make,’ he said. ‘I’ll have to raise it at the next meeting.’ Then he looked up at me, as if he had suddenly remembered that his role in the Yacht Club was of secondary importance to a dead Russian. ‘The office called,’ he said. ‘London cabled to say that Henry’s flight lands at oh-eight-hundred tomorrow.’
On the drive over from Ikoyi, I’d held, somewhere at the back of my mind, the hope that Pritchard might not be able to make it out here for a few more days. Now it was settled: I now had less than eight hours before he arrived and started asking questions – and all I had to go on was a word scribbled on a matchbox.
Manning was shuffling his feet, anxious to get back to his drink.
‘I’ll meet you at the airport at half-seven,’ I told him. ‘But tell me something – does the phrase “Afrospot” mean anything to you?’
He considered it for a moment, then shook his head. ‘Perhaps a local brand of pimple cream?’ He chuckled, pleased with himself.
‘Did you notice the woman I was talking to earlier on?’
He grimaced. ‘Yes, I saw her,’ he said. ‘But don’t you think you should leave the love life for later, old chap? Go back to your hotel, have a good night’s sleep, and we’ll sort all this out come morning.’
I counted out ten beats, timing them to a dripping tap somewhere behind me, letting Manning understand that I was not interested in talking sex, or rugby, or my father, and that this would be the last time I wasted valuable seconds on him. He coughed after the seventh beat, and I relieved him of the tension.
‘Did you notice if she left?’
‘I saw her setting out for the hard about ten minutes ago. Might still be there.’
‘The hard?’
‘Um – near the jetty – take a right and you’ll see the path leading down to it.’
‘Thank you,’ I said, and headed for the door.
‘What about my car?’ Manning called after me. ‘Sandy’s already giving another couple a lift, and I’m not sure Marjorie and I will squeeze in.’
‘I’ll let you know in a couple of minutes,’ I shouted back.
*
I checked the bar just in case, but she wasn’t there, so I hooked my jacket over my head and headed outside. The chairs had been stacked up in columns and a steward was doing the rounds of the tables with a tray, picking up bottles and glasses and bowls while the rain blew against him.
I found Isabelle in a lifejacket, tethering her boat to a pole.
‘Didn’t fancy another swim, then?’ I said.
She looked up, startled, and then smiled a little wearily as she put the voice to the face.
‘You didn’t say you had your own boat,’ I said.
‘I didn’t have the chance. You left. Anyway, you have to be a regular sailor to be a member of the club. They don’t…’
‘Allow social members. I remember.’
‘Are you angry with me?’
‘Angry? What gives you that idea?’
‘You left very quickly. As though I had said something wrong.’ She finished tying the knot and looked up, her gaze challenging me.
‘You didn’t say anything wrong,’ I said. ‘I had a meeting to go to. An interview.’
‘At this time?’
‘I’m back now.’
‘Do you expect me to bow down at your feet?’
So she was going to play it that way. ‘Look,’ I said. ‘I’m sorry.’
She didn’t answer.
‘Have you ever heard of something called Afrospot?’
She stared at me for a few moments, and then gave a sudden, astonished laugh. ‘You want to take me there?’
‘No,’ I said, ‘I just want to know what it is.’
She jumped into the boat, and I thought for a moment that she was going to unmoor it and sail off. But instead she removed the lifejacket, then lifted one of the seats and took out a black hand-towel and a pair of boots.
‘It is a nightclub,’ she said, raising her arms and wriggling into the centre of the towel, which it transpired was a dress. ‘In Ebute Metta.’
‘Is that in Lagos?’
She nodded. ‘About half an hour away by car. Do you have a car?’
I glanced up at the bar, and saw Manning standing at the window, looking worried. ‘Yes. What road do I need to take?’
She smiled, and pointedly looked me up and down. ‘They’ll never let you in, mon vieux. Not without me.’ And she jumped out of the boat.