The Mammoth Book Best International Crime Read online

  Then the wet season had arrived. He would never forget that first time. He had gone to sleep listening to the first rain one night, and when he awoke in the late morning of the next day, and looked out at the plains, it was as though a mad painter had gone amok on the greyish-yellow canvas. In the course of a day or two, the plains had been transformed into a rolling landscape of strong smells, and a psychedelic display of colour and of insects which had buzzed low over the carpet of petals and the growing, brown river.

  And so he had thought, what could be better than this?

  Six months after his arrival he had sent a letter to Ken. He waited six months for an answer, and receiving none, wrote one more. He had ended his monologue the following year with a Christmas card, and, having heard through the grapevine that Ken had not managed to find anything meaningful to do in London, an offer of permanent employment on the farm.

  He had not expected an answer, and had not received one. Until three years had passed.

  Ken liked almost everything about cocaine. He liked the way it affected him, the people around him liked the effect it had on him, he was never hung over from it, and he saw no signs of becoming addicted to it. The only thing he didn’t like about it was the cost.That was why, after a financial crisis caused by two terrible weeks at the dog races, he went over to the poor man’s alternative – amphetamines.Then a flighty female acquaintance, an ugly, surprisingly dumb, health freak, whom he had only slept with a couple of times because he had hoped he could get her to loan him some of her father’s money, had told him that amphetamines were synthetic drugs. And that the human body could never completely break down synthetic drugs. This meant that when one had taken amphetamines one would always have the by-products in one’s body.Those were two words Ken hated – always and never – so he had stopped immediately. He had sworn never to take anything but healthy, organic drugs, like cocaine, and had had to admit to himself that he needed money. In a hurry.

  His chance came one day, when he had gone to visit an old colleague from the City, with the intention of freshening up the friendship, so that the next time they met he could ask to borrow money. They had been in the colleague’s office. Just for the fun of it, his ex-colleague had shown Ken an illegal bet on the World Cup final in football, between France and Brazil. A couple of big stockbrokers had been doing some bookmaking, using coded pages on the Reuters’ monitors. When the ex-colleague had gone to make more tea, and forgotten to log out, Ken had been quick to act. He had closed his eyes, pictured Ronaldo’s dinosaur thighs, typed in his own name and address, keyed over to the wager box, closed his eyes one more time, imagined Brazil’s yellow-clothed heroes raising the trophy, and typed one million pounds sterling. Enter. He had held his breath while he waited for an answer, knowing that his name was not registered, and that his bet was too high, but also that in the world of Reuters, people traded every second for ten times that amount without anyone asking who sat at the other end of the line. He had thought that he had had a chance. And then a message was returned: “CONFIRMED”.

  Had Ronaldo not, that very same night, had an epileptic episode brought on by the excessive use of his Playstation, Ken might not have had to worry about his future cocaine financing nor, as things developed, his immediate health. Two days later, however, early in the morning, in this case sometime before eleven a.m., the doorbell had rung. Outside stood a man wearing a black suit, sunglasses and carrying a baseball bat. He had explained to Ken the unpleasant consequences that would result if Ken did not manage to have one million pounds sterling ready within fourteen days.

  Four days later, late in July, Stan Abbot had received a telegram acknowledging the Christmas greetings, accepting the job offer and asking him to meet his son at the airport in Gaborone, in five days. He had included a bank account number where the money for the tickets could be wired, as soon as possible. Stan had been very pleased about everything, except that he would have to go to Gaborone again.

  Ken looked at his wrist-watch, a Weiler watch, which, with its South African gold and Swiss precision, was ticking towards judgment day.

  The day had begun as all the other twenty-six had. Ken had woken up wondering where in the hell he was and why. He had remembered the why first. Money. This should have made him think of his creditors in London, but instead made him think of the white powder, a woman he didn’t seem to have such a platonic, non-committed relationship to anymore. The symptoms were classic, but in his opinion, the irritation and sweats, could just as easily have been blamed on this God-forsaken place that was full of poisonous creeping things, insects that were everywhere, and Negroes who lacked respect.They seemed to have forgotten who had colonized, and tried to civilize the place. However, the depressions had been something new. The hours that suddenly became a dark place where he lost contact with his surroundings, even the floor seemed to disappear and he fell into a bottomless hole. All he could do was wait until they passed.

  “Snake hunt,” his father had said at breakfast.

  Ken had tried to seem interested, he really had. Like when his father had shown him the test tubes with the serum and with their codes and blue plastic caps, and the tubes with poison that had their own codes and red plastic caps. Or was it the other way around? He had had a problem concentrating as well, and when his thoughts had sailed away, and his pen stopped taking notes, his father had just looked at him grumpily, not commenting on his lack of note-taking.

  They had driven for a half-hour, on something that vaguely resembled a road, through alternating scenery. There was the dense, green, bush-like vegetation, the half-metre deep mud puddle, and the dried out moonscape. At one place, that to Ken seemed chosen totally at random, his father had stopped the car and jumped out, taking with him three cloth sacks and a long pole with a wire loop on the end.

  “Put these on.” His father had tossed him a pair of swimming goggles.

  Ken had looked at him in confusion.

  “Spitting cobra. Nerve poison. They can hit you in the eye from a distance of eight metres.”

  They had begun to search. Not on the ground, but up in the trees.

  “Watch the birds,” his father had said. “If you hear them screeching, or see them hopping from branch to branch, you can be quite certain that there is a boomslang or a green mamba nearby.”

  “I don’t think . . .”

  “Hush! Do you hear those clicking sounds? Those are polecats hunting. Come on!” His father had run towards the sounds with Ken dawdling after, against his will. He had suddenly stopped, giving the signal that Ken should approach carefully.There on a large flat stone lay a two-metre long, black beast sunning itself. His father had snuck around the stone until he was directly behind it, manoeuvered the pole above the stone and carefully drawn the wire loop over the snake’s narrow, but distinctive, head. He had then tightened it. The snake had thrashed about and opened up in a life-threatening yawn, showing the light red colouring inside its mouth.

  “Can you see that the venom fangs are in the front of the mouth?” his father had yelled enthusiastically.

  “Yeah?”

  “So what do we have here?”

  “Please, father, let’s get finished first. I’m nervous about this.”

  He had released the snake into the bag that Ken had held open.

  “Black mambo,” his father had said while shading his eyes as he squinted up into the trees.

  Whatever, Ken had thought and shivered when he felt the snake writhing in the sack.

  After one half-hour in the blazing sun, Ken decided to take a cigarette break. He had stood with his back against one of the trees his father had tried to teach him the name of, and had begun to think about the rifle in the car, and that this was probably as good a chance as he was ever going to get, when he heard his father’s scream. It had not actually been a scream, but more of a short bark, but Ken had known what had happened right away. Perhaps because he had dreamt it, thought about it, or just unconsciously hoped for it. He had put
out his cigarette on the tree trunk. If he was very lucky, this might just save him a lot of trouble.

  He had shaded his eyes, and there, over by the river bank, he had seen his father’s back, hunched over in the waist-high, stiff grass.

  “Damn! Ken, I’ve been bit, and I didn’t get a chance to see what kind of snake it was! Help me to look for it!”

  “I’m coming.”

  His father had hesitated a moment, maybe because of the tone of his son’s answer.

  Ken had vaguely remembered something his father had said that if you weren’t able to identify the snake, you had a choice between forty different serums, and that if you tried the seemingly safe solution of injecting all of them, you would die quicker from the serum than from the poison. He had also remembered something his father had said about not stamping hard when looking for snakes, because they felt the vibrations through the ground and took off. Ken had stamped as hard as he could.

  “I’ve got it!” his father had yelled as he dove down into the grass. Another sentence to remember: the risk of being bitten again is less than not knowing what bit you.

  Ken had silently cursed.

  Poor bastard, Ken had thought as he watched his father swing the sack, again and again, against the tree trunk. He had not been thinking about the snake, nor about his father. A picture of the man in his doorway, holding the baseball bat, had appeared in his mind again. He had been thinking about Ken Abott.

  His father had sunk down beside the tree trunk by the time Ken had gotten to him. His skin was grey and his breathing was coming in heaving gasps.

  “You can check what it is,” he had whispered and tossed the sack to him. Ken had coughed in the dust that whirled up from the dry ground, opened the sack and reluctantly stuck his hand down into it.

  “Don’t . . .” his father managed to say.

  Ken had felt the rough, dry scaly skin against his palm. He had touched more of them than he liked to think about over the last few weeks. This one seemed no different. Not until it occurred to him that the oscillations he had felt under the scales came from muscles, and that the animal was not dead. Nowhere near dead. He had screamed, more from fear than from pain, when the fangs had broken through the skin of his arm. He had drawn his arm up, seen two circular punctures just under his elbow, and screamed again. Quick as lightning, he put his mouth to the wound and feverishly began to suck.

  “Stop that.” His father’s voice had been weak and disappointed. “That only helps in films about the wild west. I’ve told you that before.”

  “Yes, but . . .”

  “And the other thing I have told you, is that you never put your hand into a sack with snakes in it, whether you think they are dead or not.You turn the sack upside-down and make sure your legs are out of the way. Always.”

  “Always” and “never” in the same preachy sentence. Not strange that Ken had repressed it.

  “Empty the sack.” The snake had fallen to the ground with a soft thud and coiled up, paralysed by the sunlight.

  “Well, what do you think, Ken? Cape cobra?”

  Ken hadn’t answered, just stared, wide-eyed, at the snake.

  “Sand snake? Gabon viper?”

  The hyper-sensitive tongue had slid out of the snake’s mouth, and in a second had oriented the snake using taste and smell.

  “Don’t let it get away, Ken.”

  But Ken had let it get away. He had had neither the energy or the nerve to touch a snake again, let alone the one that had just shortened his expected lifetime to twenty-six years.

  “Shit!” his father had said.

  “You’re kidding!” Ken had answered. “You saw it just as well as I did, and you know all the snakes in God damned Africa by heart. Don’t tell me you don’t know . . .”

  “Of course I know which snake it was,” his father had said, and looked at Ken with an expression on his face Ken hadn’t been able to read. “And that’s why I said ‘shit’. Hurry up and get the brown bag from the car.”

  “But shouldn’t we get back to . . .”

  “That was an Egyptian cobra. Our central nervous systems would be paralysed before we got even halfway. Now, do what I say.”

  Ken had finally reacted and come back with a large doctor bag made of brown buffalo skin.

  “Open it,” his father had said. “Quickly”. His body had twisted, his mouth open as though he wasn’t able to get enough air.

  “I feel all right, father, why . . .”

  “Because I got the first bite. It contained five times the amount of poison in the second one. It means I have approximately one half-hour, and you have two and a half. What do you see?”

  “There are a bunch of tubes fastened to the sides in here.”

  “We always bring the serums for the snake poisons we know we don’t have time to go back for. Egyptian cobra, did you find it?”

  Ken’s eyes had rushed across the labels on the tubes.

  “Here it is, father.”

  “I have to have it right away. Hopefully, I’ll be clear-headed enough to point out the way back, while we drive, and we’ll make it back to the farm, with time to spare, before you start to have problems. You’ll find the syringes laying in the bottom.You know what to do, son.”

  Ken stuck the tip of the needle in just above the bite marks. He breathed deeply through his nose as he slowly pressed the plunger down. He watched the yellow liquid until there were about two-thirds of it left.Then he drew back the plunger a little, withdrew the needle and followed the same procedure a little farther up.

  “How does it feel?” Ken asked.

  “Sad,” his father whispered. His chin had sunk down onto his chest.

  Ken pulled the needle out and used a ball of cotton to dry off a little blood from the needle marks on his arm.

  “Well. If it is any comfort, it hurt like hell,” he said, and looked at his watch. “Comfort for the last few minutes you have left to live, old man.”

  His father lifted his head with great effort.

  “Why, Ken? In the name of God, why?”

  Ken sat himself down beside his father and put an arm around his shoulders.

  “Why? Why do you think? For the same reason I have carried around that rifle, waiting for a situation to arise, where I could blame a shooting accident, a misfire or whatever you call it. Money, father. Money.”

  Stan’s head tipped forward again. “So, that’s why you came? To collect your inheritance?”

  Ken patted his father on the back with his good arm. A pulsing, half-paralyzing pain had begun to spread itself around the bite and the needle marks on the other arm.

  “I read a discouraging article about the older generation in the Guardian. Do you know what the life expectancy is for middle-class men, between the ages of fifty and fifty-five, who have never had heart trouble or cancer? Ninety-two years. I have a few creditors who are not willing to wait that long, father. But I believe it will calm them down immensely, when I, as sole heir, arrive home with your death certificate.”

  “You could just have asked for the money.”

  “A million pounds? There are limits for even my shamelessness, father.”

  Ken laughed out loud, and the sound was immediately answered from the other side of the river, where a pack of grey-brown hyenas had appeared and were watching them curiously. Ken shuddered instinctively.

  “Where did they come from?”

  “They can smell it,” said Stan.

  “Smell? You haven’t started to smell, yet.”

  “Dead.They recognize it in the air. I’ve seen it before.”

  “Well.They are ugly, they are dumb, and they are on the other side of the river. I hate them.”

  “That’s because they are our moral superiors.” Ken looked at his father, shocked, while he continued, “Without choice, lacking morality, you probably think. But if choice means being able to force one’s nature, and morality involves wanting to, why are we so unhappy?” Stan Abott lifted his head again and
smiled sadly. “It’s because we convince ourselves that we could have done things differently.We believe we are creatures with souls and that we have the ability to do something other than that which, in the end, would benefit ourselves. But we can’t. The proof is that we are here, that we continue to exist. We eat our parents, or our children, when we must, not because of hate, but because of a love of life.Yet we still believe we will burn in hell for it. And maybe we will. That’s why a cobra is morally superior to us, when it decides to eat its offspring. It doesn’t feel even an instant of shame, because there is no sin, just a burning will to live. You understand. Your only saviour is yourself, and you are saved only by doing what you have to, to survive.”

  Ken should have answered, but a sudden pain in his chest took his breath away.

  “Something wrong?” his father asked.

  “I . . .”

  “Have pain in your chest,” said his father, with a normal voice, now. “That’s how it starts.”

  “Starts? What . . .”

  “Egyptian cobra. You should remember. We went through it all.”

  “But . . .”

  “Nerve poison. First there’s burning pain around the bite, which gradually spreads to the rest of the body.The skin around the bite becomes discoloured. The arms and legs swell, and this is followed by sleepiness. Now, towards the end there’s increased heart rate, runny eyes and mouth, and paralysis of the throat, something that makes it hard to talk and breathe.The final stage occurs when the poison paralyses the heart and lungs, and you die. It can take hours and is extremely painful.”

  “Father!”

  “You sound surprised, son. Weren’t you paying attention during your lessons?”

  “But you . . . you seem much . . . better.”

  “No, you must not have been paying much attention,” said his father with a thoughtful expression. “Otherwise, you would have seen the difference between an Egyptian cobra and an African stone python.”

  “African stone python?”

  “Aggressive and unpleasant, but not poisonous.” His father straightened himself up and limbered up his neck. “You’re right, I’m totally fine, but how are you? Can you feel your throat beginning to close, son? In a little while you’ll begin to cramp up, not something to look forward to . . .”