Blood Is Dirt by Robert Wilson Read Free Book Online Page B

think
I
look strange?’
    â€˜Yes,’ said Gerhard, smiling and walking behind his desk to sit in his leather swivel chair, ‘I see your point.’
    Heike’s eyes remained wide open, two divots of concern on her forehead, looking good with no make-up, no perfume, just with an African pin I’d bought for her up in Abomey in her hair and a light tan. She softened her mouth into a smile and her teeth showed white against her dark lips with the defined cupid’s bow. Heike wasn’t a model beauty. She had too much intelligence and resilience in her features for that—you’d take your eye off the clothes—but I hadn’t met the guy who wouldn’t sit up straight for her.
    Bagado had released his face from his grasp now that the sex had subsided in the room and was staring at a wooden African head on Gerhard’s desk, being patient, which was one of his great strengths. Bagado and Heike had become good friends over the last few years. She’d conveniently forgotten how he’d led me off the winding path of my bread-and-butter business work and into the jungle of more sinister crimes. He wasn’t just my partner. He had a much higher status than that. He was a husband, a father and a totally honourable man. I was the lover, the bastard and as dependable as an island of weed in a mangrove swamp.
    Heike crossed her legs and cued Bagado.
    â€˜What do you want us to do, M Gerhard?’
    â€˜We respect Orishala,’ said Gerhard, ‘but we are not convinced. I want you to find out what is happening across the border. I can’t, and I don’t want to involve my own people. They have enough trouble in Benin. You will have to be discreet. You’ll have to come up with your own reasons for being over there. Anything that doesn’t bear the agency’s name. Talk to our people in Kétou if you like, they may have something to add.
Sie haben den Akten, bitte, Heike.’
    Heike gave him some files and he stood them on end and tapped the desk.
    â€˜Perhaps, first, we should talk about money,’ he said. ‘Unless, of course, you don’t want the job.’
    â€˜We’re interested,’ I said. ‘The money, well, the money’s got a little complicated since devaluation. We used to charge a hundred thousand CFA a day for the two of us.’ A wince shot across Gerhard’s brow like a snake across tarmac. ‘We’ve been finding it difficult to double our rate since devaluation. But that’s what we’d like to do. Two hundred thousand a day plus expenses.’
    â€˜Impossible,’ said Gerhard. ‘I can’t justify that. I have no budget for private investigations, you understand.’
    â€˜You have contingency, don’t you, Gerhard?’
    â€˜Yes, but you are asking me to pay more than three hundred dollars a day which is my budget for the Kétou station,
and
this is not our business. Our mandate is for Benin.’
    â€˜But it affects you.’
    â€˜Yes, but when the accountants ask, “What is this thousand dollars?” I have to give an answer within the mandate or I have to ask
my
boss in Berlin to... to... pacify the money men. I can’t do that very often in a year. I need to keep favours in reserve.’
    â€˜Don’t want to use them up early on?’
    â€˜Precisely.’
    â€˜What sort of money did you have in mind?’
    â€˜That
for the whole job... including expenses.’
    â€˜Two hundred thousand? You’ve got to be kidding. Three hundred and seventy-five dollars for the lot? It’ll cost seventy-five dollars to get up there and back. Three-day job. A hundred dollars a day. Fifty dollars each if we don’t eat, sleep or bribe anyone. That’s very little, Gerhard. That’s so little...’
    â€˜You might as well do it for free?’ he said, finding some cheek to slap me with.
    â€˜Not
that
little.’
    â€˜Two hundred and fifty