In Cold Blood by Mark Dawson Page B

before.”
    “Half before, half on arrival.”
    He spread his hands. “Then I cannot help you.”
    Beatrix called his bluff. “Fair enough.” She stood.
    He let her take three steps away from the bar before he called her back.
    “Very well. Three thousand now, two thousand on arrival. I am taking a very big risk, madam.”
    “Fine. How do we do it?”
    “I have a truck. I am taking a load of water tomorrow. Early morning. Can you travel then?”
    “Just tell me where to be.”
     
    BEATRIX WALKED back to the campsite. The night was hot, still and stifling, and there was an edge of incipient violence in the dark corners and rowdy bars. She stopped at a roadside shack for a meal of beans and rice and watched the Somali market alongside, still open, and it reminded her of a scene out of Aladdin. Children rode mule carts and hit the mules with long reeds to make them go faster. Goats chased each other. Women lay face down on prayer mats. A small crowd of kids collected around her and stood, staring at her eating as if it was something that they had never seen before. They stared unabashedly and did not avert their eyes when she looked at them. “Salaam,” she said. One of the children spoke pidgin English and introduced himself. She asked all of them their names and then the conversation fell silent. They scattered and left her to finish her meal alone.
    She set off again. A large UN truck with a canvas-covered back rumbled by and the same group of children appeared out of nowhere to chase after it. She was a little surprised that the Land Cruiser was where she had left it. She went into her tent, took out a bottle of water and her morphine and drank down another two pills. The ache was steady now, almost constant, and she knew that the exertion of the next few days would exacerbate it further.
    Nothing much that she could do about that.
    She arranged her mosquito net and tried to ignore the roaches that scuttled beneath the sides of the tent, looking for food.
    Sleep, when it came, was not particularly refreshing.

CHAPTER FIFTEEN
    BEATRIX WAS already awake when the early morning call to prayer began to sound over the malfunctioning loudspeakers at the mosque that served this part of the camp. She rose and found her way to the outdoor shower where she stayed under the cold water for longer than usual because she didn’t know when she would be able to do it again. The tattoo on her shoulder had healed nicely, the colours particularly vivid now that the inflammation had receded. She dressed in a pair of white trousers and a sleeveless t-shirt, hauled her rucksack onto her shoulder and quietly left the tents.
    Veins of light were just beginning to streak the royal blue sky and the temperature, for now at least, was cold.
    Bashir said that he knew a place where she could park the Land Cruiser safely. It was a recessed space between two tents and, he said, a dollar a day would see the locals keep an eye on it. Beatrix had no reason to doubt their probity and she was further reassured when she was hailed by an elderly crone who was sitting in the dust before the open awning of her tent. In truth, having the vehicle here and in one piece was useful, but not essential. She did not know whether she would exfiltrate through Kenya or whether she might, for example, head north to Ethiopia. She had determined to solve that particular problem as it played out.
    She was locking the Land Cruiser as a large, beaten-up truck wheezed up and parked alongside her.
    Bashir opened the door and jumped down.
    “Good morning,” he said.
    “Morning.”
    “Are you ready?”
    “Yes.”
    “Money, please.”
    She gave him two bundles of notes and he made a show of thumbing through them and counting.
    “Alright,” he said. “Three thousand. It is here. Two thousand later. But you are still sure? You want to do this?”
    “Can we just get going? I want to get over there as quickly as we can.”
    They drove off. The camp was quieter, resting,