Doing Dangerously Well (46 page)

“Yes, but Kolo was ugly. Very, very ugly. Killer then. Killer now.”

“So, is Kolo crazy?” Aminah’s excitement lifted her voice to stadium level. “Crazy like his mother?”

“Kolo na craze-craze.” The woman twisted her index finger on her forehead. “He dey craze like politician.”

Femi found it hard to trust the old woman’s account. She had either hidden the unbelievable truth for decades to protect Kolo or she had erected a formidable armour to protect herself against guilt. Why had she never told this story to anyone? Had her neglect of the boys compelled her to shift the blame onto an innocent Kolo? Had her mind, twisted by some hidden resentment, turned an innocent accident into a calculated murder? Had her attachment to his brother nurtured a hatred of Kolo for all these years after his death, a hatred that had finally led to betrayal?

“Thank you, ma.” Femi bowed low so that Aminah could not prolong her interrogation and the chief gave her permission to leave.

“Such a story!” the chief exclaimed.

“It’s hard to know what the truth is,” Femi ventured.

With few qualms about veracity, Aminah, a hardened journalist, reminded him of their purpose. “I beg, our job is not to worry about Kolo’s nightmares—we have our own. If she tells us this is fact, enh, well, it’s a fact.”

Rumour has its purposes, and in this case, its objective was to topple an autocrat. In this forgotten village, on the periphery of the flood’s thunderous rampage, they had found their instrument.

Back in Lagos, Femi hunted for the photograph of Kolo kneeling before the village chief. While sifting through papers, he came across a picture of his family and paused to breathe in the scent of the fading image: the fragrance took him home. He wiped his fingerprints off it, flattened its edges and, as he did so, noticed Kolo’s photograph underneath the pile. Reluctant to leave behind such an enveloping memory, he handed over the evidence of Kolo’s humiliation to Aminah, barely able to speak. “I thought this might be useful one day.”

“I’ll set it next to the article. I don’t need to mention there’s no link between the two.” Aminah smiled, cheered by the hidden perks of her profession. Readers always assume the worst when the powder keg of words and ostensibly related images are combined.

Mimi’s prediction came to pass. She found a note in Mary’s waste bin: Sinclair had dumped the minister for the environment. Within the month, the man was killed in a skiing accident in the Swiss Alps.

In the bitter cold of March, Barbara sat in her turret office in Ottawa, reading Mimi’s report with disbelief. Forlorn, she went to see Jane, perhaps the most formidable member of Drop of Life, but within wisdom’s close custody. Forgetting to knock, Barbara clumped into Jane’s office, near tears, plopped herself into an armchair and crossed her legs. Her sarong fell fully open, displaying large purple underpants.

With little option, Jane cut short her phone conversation.

Unable to look her boss in the eye, Barbara talked into her lap. “Mimi has now found proof of a chain of extermination
from Sinclair to my sister to Kolo. It has just culminated in the death of the minister for the environment.”

Fossilized for many moments, Jane locked Barbara into an evaluating gaze. “Your strategy was to expose complicity at all levels of the organization, regardless of rank. Give me the full details—I’ll get the media on it.”

Barbara hesitated. “Do we have to mention my sister? I mean, she may be a murderer, but she’s very fragile. I can’t even conceive of her life outside the corporation.”

“And what did you think people like that would be like? Look at the armature they construct in order to feel important.”

“I don’t think it’s just a hunger for importance, Jane.” Barbara tilted her head. “Killing helps her fit in. It makes her feel part of a unit.”

Vortices of wrinkles reformed into a gentle expression of concern as Jane at last warmed to her. “Barbara, she’s disposable. The unit operates on instability. And it’s also unaccountable for its actions. That combination promotes lawlessness.”

Barbara tipped her head in the opposite direction, listening to this ancient wisdom.

“All your sister has done is move from the confines of the family to its larger version, the corporation. And in the same way, she has no doubt battled for position, never questioning the underlying values, ethics or benefits of the institution. Am I right?”

Barbara sniffed in response.

The phone rang and Jane ignored it, opting instead to hold Barbara’s hand. “She’s just a serial killer,” Barbara pleaded. “Maybe we can overlook that.”

Jane squeezed Barbara’s hand. “The problem is she’s also a mass murderer, my dear. Brad has been able to track who was involved in the AWW and how they got financing for their armaments.”

“Yeah.” Barbara slumped into her Nigerian buba blouse. “She’s always trying to impress. She’s a Capricorn. She can’t help it.”

With a last pat of the hand, Jane offered words of encouragement. “You’ve done everything you can. Femi will be much safer from now on.”

At home, Barbara recounted her triumphs to a companion in brown slippers who waggled his foot in approval. Although he appeared outwardly calm, she was nevertheless conscious of Astro’s guilt at abandoning those other living things that depended on him—his fish, his plants, his seedlings. Having regained her stability, she suggested that he return to DC to make sure his dependents were safe. With much exhortation, he packed his plastic bags and left with the cat, realizing the time had now come to exchange it for his saxophone.

Once he had gone, Barbara forced herself to rifle through her photographs, each one prompting fresh recollections and deeper sorrows, trying to find the most flattering picture of Mary. At least she would go down in a blaze of glamour.

A
single photograph pushed Kolo to near nervous collapse. It depicted him kneeling in front of a village chief, begging him, according to the article, not to reveal that he had killed his own twin brother.

Emitting a short yelp, he tore through the other papers, then raced to his office in blind abandon, frenzied and beyond all comfort. Kolo peeked through the curtains to assess public reaction. In the far distance, he saw the army trying to hold back masses of screaming people, lashing them with whips.

He retreated to the garage, zigzagging through corridors so that the water could not engulf him, and pulled the trunk door closed, as if re-entering the womb. There he shot home several bolts.

Kolo wept, wailing into his Thai silk pillows, screaming for a saviour. Stubby fingers clutched the duvet, holding on as if it could embrace and console him, as if its warmth came from his brother’s arms.

The article triggered a host of recollections that became superimposed on all his other thoughts. He remembered a time when he had been loved, accepted and cherished, not only by his brother, but by his family and his clan. His brother’s love had felt as close as his skin, as warm as the blood in his body, as constant as his own heartbeat. He might have detached from his brother in the womb, but during the eight years of their shared childhood, and into his adult life, he had never felt unconnected to him. His love for himself and his love for his brother were as one.

For nine months, he had allowed the Inspector General of Police to evade his responsibilities and the killers to dawdle, no doubt in awe of the great Jegede. And, of course, picking up “clients” right, left and centre. Whether or not the time was propitious, Jegede now had to go. Only such an act could divert the public’s attention from Kolo’s humiliation. He would find someone else to pin the murder on, even if it had to be another of Lance Omeke’s clients.

One thing he knew: a rumour cannot be stopped. It requires no proof, has its own momentum and allows others to behave with unchecked malevolence. The village had considered him a murderer, had vilified and exiled him, as the whole country now would.

Hardly able to breathe, he put on his mask with its umbilical link to the oxygen tank, prey to the whims of both gasoline and pure oxygen, at the mercy of the tiniest spark.

The sprawling slum of Ajegunle sheltered Femi and his group. Crammed with workers from the world’s third-largest city, heaving with its detritus and fermenting toxic pollutants, it steamed with activity day and night. The stench from open drains and the asphyxiating fumes of burning tires settled within their pores.
They had no electricity, water or sanitation, and found no place to perform ablutions in private. Initially, Femi had rented space for a mat under an overpass, but eventually he and Igwe managed to hire a shack, sleeping in shifts with his followers.

With information from Barbara and assistance from Jane Singh’s black book, the vigorous efforts of Aminah and fellow journalists soon redirected responsibility for the bombing towards the AWW, and the public hesitated, then their opinion lurched towards a rapid resuscitation of Femi’s reputation. Photographs and heroic likenesses of him reappeared throughout the country. Though none had set eyes on him, barbers offered their clients the Femi Fusion, clothiers advertised Jegede Jeans and partiers danced to the Femi Funk. In market stalls around the country, T-shirts depicting Kolo bowing before Femi sold in the tens of thousands.

Six months after arriving in Lagos, a bearded Femi was finally able to wander through the streets to open a bank account—unusual in a cash economy but necessary should Barbara wish to transmit funds. Yussef offered to accompany him on this thankless task. They struggled onto a bus and pushed through the door, jamming themselves between other passengers, squeezing their flesh until it settled into the interstices of the heaving mass of flesh. Femi had to twist one leg around a man’s body until it rested on the man’s crotch, while his buttocks settled in the hollow of another man’s back. Another man’s torso was flattened against Femi’s stomach. Yussef was similarly confined, though, as a smaller man, he was more at the mercy of the swaying crush of blubber. Femi, towering over the crowd, breathed freely. Yussef appeared to be suffocating, his nose jammed into the armpit of a particularly feisty journeyman ostentatiously carrying a briefcase. Few on the bus could afford to bathe.

“Ah-ah!” the journeyman shouted to no one in particular. “This Kolo! What a rogue! What a ruffian!”

“He’s a termite!” another yelled. “That Femi Jegede will crush him like the insect he is!”

“He’s worried-oh!” someone else responded. “He’s shitting in his gold underpants. Femi will grind him up. This morning, Kolo’s driver came to pick me up in his white Mercedes-Benz. ‘What is that on the seat?’ I asked the guy. ‘What is that smell?’ My eyes were watering-oh. I could hardly see, the smell was so bad. ‘Enh,’ he said, ‘it’s shit. Kolo shit in his white Mercedes-Benz.’ ‘Joh—let me take the bus today,’ I said.”

The passengers erupted into furious laughter, heating up the air.

“Did his driver come with you?” came a bellow.

“Yes,” Femi squawked. “I came with him.”

The passengers once again exploded into loud guffaws.

Yussef motioned helplessly to Femi as they approached their stop. They managed to dislodge themselves from the steaming bodies and made their way to the chaos of the bank. There, a vast mass of people stood in haphazard lines, cursing at each other, small scuffles breaking out as some people from the back successfully bribed the cashiers for service.

“Femi,” Yussef confided as they stood in line. “Stay away from War and Lance.”

“Why?” Femi replied, looking over the heads to find a better spot. “They’re your friends, Yu.”

“We don’t know each other well,
sha,”
Yussef replied.

“Ah, yes—yours is a northern name. Did you come from the far north?”

“Yes. My brothers and sisters died there. The water was not clean. Even when we found clean water, our containers were dirty. Look at me—every disease has landed on my face.”
He laughed, his transparent, grey teeth a testament to his lack of nutrition.

“Nigeria is a very rich country-oh.” Femi shook his head. “Where does the money go?”

The woman in front of them turned around. “To the politicians, of course,” she barked, her hands on her vast hips. She scrutinized Yussef. “Ah, it’s true-oh. You’re very ugly. Look at that.” She made as if to confer with Femi.

“And you?” Femi snapped. “Are you a movie star? Look at your ugly mouth! Why don’t you close it so we can see daylight again?”

A small commotion broke out as the three argued and others jumped into the fray.

Once everything calmed down, Yussef spoke low to Femi behind a cupped hand, angry eyes focused on the back of the woman’s head. “Your life is in danger, brother. I am here to protect you. Kolo has sent killers to find you.”

“How do you know this?”

Yussef hesitated. “I met them in prison.”

“You were in prison?”

“Three years. A policeman murdered my father for protesting when Kolo took all the water from our well.” He picked furiously at a pimple. “So I killed him.”

Femi felt for this young man, who had had no chance to live a life that others take for granted. Even Yussef’s face, bursting with all manner of sores, could once have been handsome.