‘Wait here,’ Kaja said, pushing her hair up into the peaked cap and ignoring the driver’s warning cries when she opened the door and slipped out.

She walked quickly up to the house. She had no naive preconceptions about the chances a white woman had in a town like Goma after nightfall, but right now darkness was her best friend.

She could make out the door with black lava boulders on either side, knew she had to hurry, she felt it coming, she would have to pre-empt it. She almost stumbled, rushed onwards, breathing through an open mouth. Then she was there. She placed her fingers on the door handle. Although the temperature had sunk surprisingly fast after the sun had set, sweat was streaming down between her shoulder blades and her breasts. She forced herself to press the handle down. Listened. It was so eerily quiet. As quiet as the time when…

Tears thickened like a viscous cement mix in her throat.

‘Come on,’ she whispered. ‘Not now.’

She closed her eyes. Concentrated on breathing. Emptied her brain of any thoughts. She would manage this now. Her thoughts slowed. Delete, delete. That’s the way. Just one tiny thought left, then she could open the door.

Harry woke with something yanking at the corner of his mouth. He opened his eyes. It was dark. He must have fainted. Then he became aware of the wire pulling at the ball that was still in his mouth. His heart started, accelerated, hammered away. He pushed his mouth up against the bolt, absolutely clear that none of this would help if someone opened the door.

A strip of light from outside struck the wall above him. The blood glistened. He guided his fingers into his mouth, placed them over the teeth in his lower jaw and pressed. The pain made everything go black for a second, but he felt his jaw give. It was dislocated! As he pressed his jaw down with one hand, he took the apple with the other and pulled.

He heard sounds outside the door. Fuck, fuck, fuck! He still couldn’t get the apple past his teeth. He pressed his jaw down further. The sound of bone and tissue crunching and tearing resonated as if it came from his ears. He might just be able to pull his jaw down so far on one side that he could get the apple out sideways, but there was a cheek in the way. He could see the door handle moving. There wasn’t time. No time. Time stopped here.

That last tiny thought. The Norwegian SMS. Gaten. Kirken. The street. The church. Harry didn’t use those endings. Gata. Kirka. That’s what he said. Kaja opened her eyes. What was it he had said on her veranda when they were talking about the title of the Fante book? He never texted. Because he didn’t want to lose his soul, because he preferred not to leave any traces when he disappeared. She had never received a single text from him. Not until now. He would have rung. This didn’t stack up; this was not her brain finding excuses not to open the door. This was a trap.

Kaja gently let go of the door handle. She felt a warm current of air on her neck. As though someone was breathing on her. She cancelled the ‘as though’ and turned.

There were two of them. Their faces melded into the darkness.

‘Looking for someone, lady?’

The feeling of deja vu struck her before she had answered. ‘Wrong door, that’s all.’

At that moment she heard a car start up; she turned and saw the rear lights of her taxi swaying along the street.

‘Don’t worry, lady,’ the voice said. ‘We paid him.’

She turned back and looked down. At the pistol pointing at her.

‘Let’s go.’

Kaja considered the alternatives. Didn’t take long. There weren’t any.

She walked ahead of them towards the two Range Rovers. The rear door of one swung open as they approached. She got in. It smelt of spiced aftershave and new leather. The door slammed behind her. He smiled. His teeth were large and white, the voice gentle, cheerful.

‘Hi, Kaja.’

Tony Leike was wearing a yellow-and-grey combat uniform. Holding a red mobile in his hand. Harry’s.

‘You were told to go straight in. What stopped you?’

She shrugged.

‘Fascinating,’ he said, angling his head.

‘What is?’

‘You don’t seem the slightest bit afraid.’

‘Why should I be?’

‘Because you’re going to die soon. Have you really not understood?’

Kaja’s throat constricted. Even though part of her brain was screaming this was an idle threat, that she was a police officer, he would never take the risk, it was unable to drown the other part, the one that said Tony Leike was sitting in front of her and knew exactly what the situation was. She and Harry were two kamikaze clods a long way from home, without authorisation, without backup, without a plan B. Without a hope.

Leike pressed a button and the window slid down.

‘Go and finish him off, then take him up there,’ he said to the two men, and the window slid back up.

‘I think it would have added a touch of class if you had opened the door,’ Leike said. ‘I sort of think we owe Harry a poetic death. Now, though, we’ll have to opt for a poetic farewell.’ He leaned forward and peered up at the sky. ‘Beautiful red colour, isn’t it?’ She could see it in his face now. Heard it. And her voice – the one that told the truth – told her. She really was going to die.

86

Calibre

Kinzonzi pointed to Van Boorst’s brick house and told Oudry to drive the Range Rover right to the door. He could see the light behind the curtains and remembered that Mister Tony had determined it was to be left on when they were not there. So that the white man could see what awaited him. Kinzonzi got out and waited for Oudry to pocket the car key and follow. The order was simple: kill him and take him there. It aroused no emotion. No fear, no pleasure, not even tension. It was a job.

Kinzonzi was nineteen years old. He had been a soldier since he was eleven. The PDLA, the People’s Democratic Liberation Army, had stormed his village. They had smashed his brother’s head with the stock of a Kalashnikov and raped his two sisters while forcing his father to watch. Afterwards the commander had said that if his father didn’t perform intercourse with his younger sister in front of them, they would kill Kinzonzi and his elder sister. But before the commander had finished his sentence, Kinzonzi’s father had impaled himself on one of their machetes. Their laughter had filled the air.

Before leaving, Kinzonzi had eaten the first decent meal he’d had for several months and was given a beret which the commander said was his uniform. Two months later he had a Kalashnikov and had shot his first human, a mother in a village who refused to hand over her blankets to the PDLA. He had been twelve when he queued with other soldiers to rape a young girl not far from where he had been recruited. When it was his turn it suddenly struck him that the girl could have been his sister, the age would have been right. But when he studied her face he saw that he could no longer remember their faces: Mum, Dad, his sisters. They were gone, erased from his memory.

Four months later, he and two comrades chopped the arms off the commander and watched him bleed to death, not out of revenge or hatred but because the CFF, the Congo Freedom Front, had promised to pay them better. For five years he had lived off what the CFF raids in the northern Kivu jungle brought in, but all the time they had had to watch out for other guerrillas, and the villages they came to had been so plundered by others over time that they could barely feed themselves. For a while the CFF had negotiated with the government army: disarmament for an amnesty and employment. But discussions broke down over wages.

Hungry and desperate, the CFF attacked a mining company extracting coltan, even though they were aware that mining companies had better weapons and soldiers than they did. Kinzonzi had never had any illusions that he would live a long life or that he would die any other way than fighting. So he hadn’t even blinked when he came round and found himself staring up the gun barrel of a white man speaking to him in a foreign language. Kinzonzi had just nodded for him to get it over with. Two months later the wounds were healed, and the mining company was his new employer.