the bedrooms. I saw something in the corner about a foot above the floor which stirred. It was a lizard and it moved to reveal the signature painted in tiny letters. It said, simply, 'Kershaw'. B.B. had said he sketched, which made him sound like a street caricaturist, but the man was an artist.
In the bedrooms, the walls were dedicated to people, mainly women, some naked with fruit, others wearing wraps of African print. In one room, two women occupied a wall each and looked across a third wall where two young boys played catch on a beach with a lemon.
Most of the wall was an aching blue sky with only the yellow fruit sailing through it to the wild outstretched arms of the catcher. In the back room, overlooking the garden, was an unfinished painting of a fisherman hauling on a boat line.
I went back into the master bedroom whose walls, I'd noticed before, were bare. A double bed with a carved wooden headboard was positioned in the centre of the room. The ceiling had been painted like a break in the clouds. Grey at the edges turning to gunsmoke, then yellow becoming an intense white light at the centre of the room where the single, bare light bulb hanging from a thin flex became a joke.
On the stretched white counterpane of the bed was an overnight bag. There was a Ghana Airways tag with Kershaw's name on it. I opened the bag and took out two white shirts, a pair of khaki chinos and a washbag. Underneath, was a pair of black lycra cycling shorts. Under them, what felt like a bunch of shoelaces. They stuck to my hand and fell through my fingers, They were strips of black leather encrusted with dried blood. I tipped the bag out on the bed. There was a horse whip, stained with dried blood, two lengths of insulated wire with crocodile clips. One of the clips had a flake of something caught in its teeth. There was also a piece of wood with two holes in it; a two-foot length of cord had been passed through the two holes and knotted. It was the kind of device where if you slipped the loop over someone's head and then twisted the wood, it would allow you a controlled strangulation of your victim.
I looked up at the ceiling and down at the bed. I walked out of the room, on to the gallery, and found the leopard staring at me from the painted forest with eyes that had already eaten. I was trying to square what I'd found in the bag with what was up on these walls and I couldn't. I went back to the case and the mess of equipment on the bed and repacked the contents as I had found them. I gave the house a cursory search. There was hardly any furniture in it apart from a wardrobe and a chest in the bedroom with a few clothes in the top drawers.
Yao had said Kershaw wasn't here, but I'd found that his bag was, and I had no idea why someone would want to leave a bag full of that kind of stuff out in the open. It hadn't passed me by that Yao was keen to get away. It could have been because he'd found what was in the bag, or because he'd left the bag there himself. Either reason was a good one for getting out of there.
I was feeling hot and sick by the time I got back in the car. I had tried talking to the young boy again, who was forthcoming but spoke nonsense. At one point, he had let out a noise like a far off cry (not uncommon from Africans of all ages) and I thought we might be getting somewhere, but he followed it by blubbering his lips. He saw that it was a response that puzzled me so he raised his eyebrows, opened out his palms and smiled. He was the lemon catcher in Kershaw's painting.
I went to see a friend of mine who was a sergeant in the Surete to see if any dead bodies had washed up on his desk. He told me there were lots of bodies found in the lagoon that morning, but no white bodies had been found anywhere in Lomé yet. He grinned at the word 'yet'. When I asked who was responsible for the bodies in the lagoon, he drew a finger over his lips and told me not
In the bedrooms, the walls were dedicated to people, mainly women, some naked with fruit, others wearing wraps of African print. In one room, two women occupied a wall each and looked across a third wall where two young boys played catch on a beach with a lemon.
Most of the wall was an aching blue sky with only the yellow fruit sailing through it to the wild outstretched arms of the catcher. In the back room, overlooking the garden, was an unfinished painting of a fisherman hauling on a boat line.
I went back into the master bedroom whose walls, I'd noticed before, were bare. A double bed with a carved wooden headboard was positioned in the centre of the room. The ceiling had been painted like a break in the clouds. Grey at the edges turning to gunsmoke, then yellow becoming an intense white light at the centre of the room where the single, bare light bulb hanging from a thin flex became a joke.
On the stretched white counterpane of the bed was an overnight bag. There was a Ghana Airways tag with Kershaw's name on it. I opened the bag and took out two white shirts, a pair of khaki chinos and a washbag. Underneath, was a pair of black lycra cycling shorts. Under them, what felt like a bunch of shoelaces. They stuck to my hand and fell through my fingers, They were strips of black leather encrusted with dried blood. I tipped the bag out on the bed. There was a horse whip, stained with dried blood, two lengths of insulated wire with crocodile clips. One of the clips had a flake of something caught in its teeth. There was also a piece of wood with two holes in it; a two-foot length of cord had been passed through the two holes and knotted. It was the kind of device where if you slipped the loop over someone's head and then twisted the wood, it would allow you a controlled strangulation of your victim.
I looked up at the ceiling and down at the bed. I walked out of the room, on to the gallery, and found the leopard staring at me from the painted forest with eyes that had already eaten. I was trying to square what I'd found in the bag with what was up on these walls and I couldn't. I went back to the case and the mess of equipment on the bed and repacked the contents as I had found them. I gave the house a cursory search. There was hardly any furniture in it apart from a wardrobe and a chest in the bedroom with a few clothes in the top drawers.
Yao had said Kershaw wasn't here, but I'd found that his bag was, and I had no idea why someone would want to leave a bag full of that kind of stuff out in the open. It hadn't passed me by that Yao was keen to get away. It could have been because he'd found what was in the bag, or because he'd left the bag there himself. Either reason was a good one for getting out of there.
I was feeling hot and sick by the time I got back in the car. I had tried talking to the young boy again, who was forthcoming but spoke nonsense. At one point, he had let out a noise like a far off cry (not uncommon from Africans of all ages) and I thought we might be getting somewhere, but he followed it by blubbering his lips. He saw that it was a response that puzzled me so he raised his eyebrows, opened out his palms and smiled. He was the lemon catcher in Kershaw's painting.
I went to see a friend of mine who was a sergeant in the Surete to see if any dead bodies had washed up on his desk. He told me there were lots of bodies found in the lagoon that morning, but no white bodies had been found anywhere in Lomé yet. He grinned at the word 'yet'. When I asked who was responsible for the bodies in the lagoon, he drew a finger over his lips and told me not
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