The dancing face, p.21
The Dancing Face, page 21
The telephone rang. As he recognized the voice on the tape his irritation returned, and he was just about to reach out and switch the machine off when it struck him that he had nothing to lose by listening.
‘I have something you want,’ Rodney’s voice murmured. ‘This is a new ball game. If you want it you talk to me. You think she’s got it, but she don’t. This time you don’t talk to me, you buggered, all right?’
Okigbo picked up the phone.
‘I don’t understand. Who are you? What are you talking about?’
‘You know what I’m talking about,’ Rodney said, ‘and you know who I am. If you want that thing you deal with me. You understand that?’
Okigbo’s instinct was to tell the boy to get lost, but there was something about Rodney’s voice which struck him as more self-confident and knowing than when they’d spoken previously. Besides, if the boy knew about his dealings with Justine it meant that he must have some contact with her, and this implied that he must know something about the whereabouts of the mask, even if he didn’t have it in his possession.
‘What do you want?’
On the other end of the line Rodney gave a self-satisfied chuckle.
‘Not on the phone. Meet me later on.’
The meeting place Rodney dictated turned out to be Waterloo Bridge, the spot where Okigbo had met Justine a few hours earlier. Okigbo found this disturbing, because it demonstrated that Rodney felt confident enough to play with him, jerk him around by showing up on the same stretch of pavement where he’d recently suffered so much abuse. To make matters worse, there was no one waiting on the bridge when he stepped out of the car. It was nearly midnight, and the pavement was more or less deserted except for the occasional straggler. The view now had a fairy-tale quality. The surface of the river looked like a still dark mirror, reflecting the glowing strings of light on the path down below. Across the water Big Ben hovered, its pale round face luminous as the full moon.
On any other occasion the radiant quality of the landscape might have held Okigbo’s attention, but at this particular moment it seemed to be a mere distraction. He turned his back on the river, searching the shadows at the end of the bridge. He had instructed Chris to drive past at ten-minute intervals, and he’d hardly set foot on the empty pavement before he decided to get into the car and leave when the chauffeur made his first circuit.
He was looking at his watch when he heard the footsteps and saw the boy walking towards him. Okigbo recognized him at once, not so much because of any distinguishing features he could pick out, but because Rodney represented a type which he had already identified from the voice on the phone and fixed in his mind. As it happened, Rodney’s appearance was exactly as Okigbo had pictured it. He wore a long black overcoat and thick-soled white sneakers. His head was shaved close to the scalp, giving him an air of bullet-headed aggression. As he came nearer the look he gave Okigbo was scowling, angry. Okigbo smiled warmly and held out his hand.
‘Rodney?’ he asked.
Rodney kept his hands in his pockets.
‘This is business,’ he said.
Okigbo put on a disappointed manner and let his hand drop. That is precisely why I’m smiling, you fool, he thought.
‘What do you want?’ he asked.
‘Money,’ Rodney told him.
He watched the African closely. He had waited on the steps below for half an hour before the big black BMW arrived and before that he’d made a couple of tours round the bridge, so he was fairly certain that the African was alone and unaccompanied, as he’d requested. On the other hand, he knew how tricky these guys could be. As he climbed on to the bridge he’d found himself wishing that he had let Baz in on the rest of it, but the truth was that either he could handle this on his own or it couldn’t be done. Besides, splitting the duns cut the profits down so much that it was hardly worth the risk.
‘What for?’ the African asked.
He was still smiling. No reason why not, Rodney thought. The guy was a millionaire. Thief so much money from his own people he could afford to smile. Rodney took one hand out of his pocket and gave the African the photograph.
Okigbo studied it closely. It was a photograph of the Dancing Face, almost identical to the one Justine had sent him, with the same newspaper propped against the mask, and, as far as he could make out, taken with the same camera.
‘What’s this?’ he asked.
Rodney made an impatient sound. ‘Cha. Talk sense, man.’
‘This doesn’t prove anything,’ Okigbo said. ‘What do you expect me to do?’
‘I want thirty grand,’ Rodney told him.
He had calculated the sum carefully. It would pay off his debt to Top Cat, and it would allow him to resume his career as a student without the penury which had forced him to these lengths. Once he had the money, he thought, he’d be free and clear. After this his life would take a clean upward course.
‘Thirty thousand pounds is a lot of money,’ Okigbo replied, ‘and this is not proof. You could have found this or you could have stolen it.’
He held out the photograph disdainfully, between the tips of two fingers. Rodney waved it aside.
‘You keep it. In a coupla months you can look at it if you want to remember what the real thing looked like.’
Okigbo smiled appreciatively. This was one of the very few things he admired about the blacks in Britain and the USA. They possessed, almost invariably, he thought, a kind of verbal speed and dexterity, which had allowed them to take the language and produce a network of idioms which were recognizably their own. He noted, too, that the boy’s accent had changed. Now he sounded like any other well-spoken Londoner.
‘I want to believe you,’ Okigbo spread his hands in a gesture of sincerity, ‘but all this is very sudden. First one person says they have it, then another. I don’t even know how you’re connected with all this. Before I can believe you, I need to know what’s going on.’
Rodney felt himself relaxing a little to match Okigbo’s accommodating manner. He’d expected that explaining what was going on would be part of the deal, and he could live with that, as long as the guy finished up by forwarding the duns.
‘I helped Gus capture the mask. It was my idea really.’ This was an embellishment that somehow he couldn’t avoid adding, and the African gave a little nod, as if noting its significance. ‘But Gus’s woman phoned me. She said that his plan was crazy, and she told me about you and how you were financing the whole deal.’
Okigbo nodded again. Damn her, he thought. Aloud, he confined himself to a polite murmur. ‘Good.’
Rodney’s face creased up and he pointed his finger, his manner suddenly intense and angry.
‘I was supposed to be his partner and Gus never told me, man. Nothing about the money side of things or how much he was getting. You’re a millionaire, right? I knew he was keeping a lot for himself.’
Okigbo kept his face straight. He had the suspicion that if he told Rodney how small the sum of money that he’d given Gus was, the boy would refuse to believe it.
‘Surely he paid you,’ he said, pretending astonishment. ‘We budgeted for your assistance.’
‘Peanuts,’ Rodney exclaimed. ‘Fucking peanuts, man. That’s why I went in with her. We never sussed that Gus would send it out of town, like he didn’t trust us. Then he had the accident and the brother showed up. She just called me late that night and gave me an address, told me to go and pick it up.’
‘Ah.’ Okigbo was feeling a surge of respect for Justine. She had betrayed both Gus and himself, and she had almost got away with it. ‘And now she has it?’
‘No, man,’ Rodney said. ‘Listen to me. I took it away from her. If you want it you have to deal with me. Thirty grand is the price.’
Okigbo paused for a few seconds. He frowned, pretending to consider the situation. He believed Rodney because it all fitted, and listening to the boy he could barely conceal his pleasure at how well things had begun to fall out.
‘What guarantee do I have that this isn’t a trick?’
‘Talk sense, man,’ Rodney said again. ‘I bring the mask. You bring the money. We exchange. Goodnight campers.’
Okigbo smiled openly now.
‘That sounds reasonable,’ he said.
Chapter Twenty-Two
It was still rush hour, and the motorway was crowded. Osman drove faster than usual, switching lanes and overtaking with a recklessness which, at any other time, would have made Danny cringe with terror. On this occasion, however, Osman’s driving fitted with Danny’s mood, and he hardly noticed the speed. All the way to London he kept trying to ring Justine on the mobile. When the machine answered he cut the connection. He felt desolate, angry and sad and betrayed, all at the same time.
‘What are you going to say to her?’ Osman asked.
Danny shrugged his shoulders.
‘I don’t know.’
They’d been through this sequence repeatedly. Once it was clear that Justine had been lying about her relationship with Okigbo, it had occurred to all of them that she also must have been deceiving Gus too. The other thing about which they were all certain was that the Dancing Face was now in Justine’s possession. The knowledge lay inside Danny’s chest like a stone, weighing on him, dragging his mind down into strange new depths, and the idea which made him shiver when he thought of it was that Gus’s accident had been set up in some way by Justine.
If that was how it was, he thought furiously, he would find a way to make her pay for it.
The oddest part of all this, the part which made Danny feel sick and guilty, was the fact that, in spite of what he was thinking about Justine, she still inspired in him a secret and furtive desire, and now he sensed that ever since they met he had cherished a bright little nugget of hope about his prospects with her.
When they arrived outside her flat he experienced such a feeling of sick dread that if Osman had suggested waiting or had driven off again he wouldn’t have objected. Instead, he threw open the door as soon as the van came to a halt and, without a word to Osman, he got out and raced across the pavement. He gave the bell an angry stab with his finger and, after a couple of minutes, when no one appeared, he did it again.
‘Nobody in,’ Osman said behind him.
They retreated to the pavement and looked at the windows. In Justine’s flat the curtains were drawn and there were lights shining behind them.
‘She can’t have gone far,’ Danny muttered. ‘We’ll wait.’
They got back in the van. Danny sat with his back to Osman staring at the windows. In his imagination, he saw her sitting opposite him in the candlelit restaurant where they had met. While they talked he had kept recognizing emotions and mannerisms that were like his own, and he’d understood immediately why Gus had been in love with her. Perhaps, he told himself, she had kept quiet about knowing Okigbo because she wanted to reject her background. Perhaps she’d wanted to avoid the prospect of anyone identifying her with the class of men who started wars and burned villages. He almost began to say this to Osman, then stopped himself, because he suspected that when he tried to put this idea into words it would sound stupid.
Across the road a door opened. A man came out. There was something familiar about the way he moved. Then the light gleamed on his head before he shut the door behind him. For a moment Danny thought he must have been mistaken, and he was still trying to make up his mind when the man walked along the pavement and got into a white Escort. In the back window a red light glowed as he switched on the engine.
‘See that guy just got into the Escort?’ Danny asked Osman.
‘What about him?’
‘I think that’s one of the guys who fronted me up at Gus’s flat. Rodney, he said his name was.’
The Escort pulled away and sped past them. In the glow of the streetlamps Danny saw the driver clearly.
‘That’s him.’
‘So they’re all in on it,’ Osman said. ‘They stitched Gus right up, you know.’
Danny didn’t answer. He was angry with himself again. At the point when Rodney emerged he had been trying to find excuses for Justine.
Osman shifted restlessly.
‘I reckon she’s in there.’ He chuckled. ‘Maybe she’s in bed recovering.’
He made an obscene gesture with his fist.
‘Shut the fuck up,’ Danny shouted.
He flung the door of the van open and jumped out. He didn’t look back, although he wondered for an instant whether he’d offended Osman. Then it struck him that he didn’t care. Oz should have known better than to say something like that, he thought furiously.
He gave Justine’s bell a long ring, then when she didn’t answer he rang the bell above. When the entryphone squawked, ‘Who is it?’ he said, ‘Justine.’ ‘She’s the bottom bell,’ the voice said. Danny stuck his finger on the next button, and this time when he said ‘Justine’, he added hurriedly that he knew she was in but that her bell didn’t seem to be working. There was a moment’s hesitation, then a buzzer sounded and he pushed the door open.
There was another bell beside the door of the flat and when he pressed it he could hear an echoing chime. Osman pushed past him and put his ear to the door.
‘I can hear something,’ he said. ‘There’s somebody in there.’
The thought that Justine had been entertaining Rodney and was now refusing to open the door to him infuriated Danny. He pressed his ear against the door and listened. There was a sort of bumping sound he couldn’t identify. Then he heard a muffled howl.
Osman had heard it too. As they listened they heard it again, and again.
‘Move,’ Osman said.
He stepped back to give himself room in the narrow corridor, then launched himself in a stiff-legged kick, slamming his heel against the lock. It didn’t start to give until the third kick, then they both hurled themselves against the door until it sprang open with a crash.
Danny spotted Justine immediately. At first the fact that she was lying on the floor and almost naked made him think that she must be dead, but that couldn’t be true, he realized in a flash, because her eyes moved as she looked at him over her shoulder, which was turned away in what seemed like a futile attempt to hide her body.
‘Justine,’ a woman’s voice called out from the top of the stairs. ‘Justine, are you all right?’
Danny guessed immediately that, having let them in, she’d heard the door being smashed and started worrying. Quickly, he bent down, untied the gag which covered Justine’s mouth and pulled it away from her face. She coughed and her mouth worked silently.
‘Justine,’ the voice from upstairs called out again.
There was a moment of silence, then Justine seemed to gather herself together and shouted back.
‘I’m all right. The door stuck. Sorry about the noise.’
Silence again, then they heard footsteps retreating. Osman laughed.
‘There’s a dressing gown in the bathroom,’ Justine said. ‘Can you give it to me?’
In the circumstances her voice sounded remarkably calm and controlled.
‘Are you all right?’ Danny asked her.
‘Apart from the fact that I’ve got my hands tied behind my back, my feet are stuck to the wall and there’s man I’ve never seen before leering at me,’ she said, ‘I’m fine. Now can you get me my fucking dressing gown?’
‘I’ll get it,’ Osman said. He was grinning, and Danny could hear him laughing all the way into the bathroom.
‘What happened?’ Danny asked her.
She looked away, not answering for a couple of seconds. When she spoke her face was still turned away from him.
‘Untie me, can’t you?’ She paused. ‘No. There’s a pair of scissors in the kitchen. Just cut it.’
Danny went into the kitchen, found the scissors, and came back. Osman was draping the dressing gown over Justine. Neither of them spoke. Danny bent down, fumbling under the cloth, and, trying to conceal his disturbance when he felt the heat of her body, cut her bonds with a few awkward strokes. Justine stretched her arms out under the dressing gown, raised her head and looked at her feet.
‘Can you scrape me off this wall?’
‘I suppose so,’ Danny said uncertainly.
Behind him Osman clicked his tongue impatiently. ‘Get her to tell you what happened,’ he said.
Justine turned her head to look at him.
‘Who are you?’
‘This is Osman,’ Danny told her. ‘He’s my friend.’
‘Now we’ve had the introductions,’ Osman said, ‘what about that guy Rodney? What was he doing here? Why’d he do this to you?’
‘It’s none of your business,’ Justine replied. ‘Look. Either help me get loose or get out of my flat.’
