Bait
NICK BROWNLEE
Hachette Digital
www.littlebrown.co.uk
Table of Contents
Dedication
Title Page
Copyright Page
Acknowledgements
Day One
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Day Two
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Day Three
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Day Four
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Day Five
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-One
Chapter Twenty-Two
Chapter Twenty-Three
Chapter Twenty-Four
Chapter Twenty-Five
Chapter Twenty-Six
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Chapter Thirty
Chapter Thirty-One
Chapter Thirty-Two
Day Six
Chapter Thirty-Three
Chapter Thirty-Four
Chapter Thirty-Six
Chapter Thirty-Seven
Chapter Thirty-Eight
Chapter Thirty-Nine
Chapter Forty
Chapter Forty-One
Chapter Forty-Two
Chapter Forty-Three
Chapter Forty-Four
Chapter Forty-Five
Chapter Forty-Six
Chapter Forty-Seven
Chapter Forty-Eight
Chapter Forty-Nine
Chapter Fifty
Day Seven
Chapter Fifty-One
Chapter Fifty-Two
Chapter Fifty-Three
Chapter Fifty-Four
Chapter Fifty-Five
Chapter Fifty-Six
Chapter Fifty-Seven
Chapter Fifty-Eight
Chapter Fifty-Nine
Chapter Sixty
Chapter Sixty-One
Chapter Sixty-Two
Chapter Sixty-Three
Chapter Sixty-Four
Chapter Sixty-Five
Chapter Sixty-Six
Day Twelve
Chapter Sixty-Seven
Chapter Sixty-Eight
Nick Brownlee is a former Fleet Street journalist. Now freelance, he continues to write for national newspapers and magazines, and is the author of several non-fiction books. It was while attempting to land a 500lb bull shark off the Kenyan coast that he was inspired to write Bait, his first novel. Born and bred in the North-East of England, he lives in Cumbria with his wife and daughter.
For Janey - who always kept the faith.
Bait
NICK BROWNLEE
Hachette Digital
www.littlebrown.co.uk
Published by Hachette Digital 2008
Copyright © 2008 by Nick Brownlee
The moral right of the author has been asserted
All rights reserved
No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval
system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, without the prior
permission in writing of the publisher, nor be otherwise circulated in
any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and
without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on
the subsequent purchaser
All characters and events in this publication, other than
those clearly in the public domain, are fictitious
and any resemblance to real persons,
living or dead, is purely coincidental
A CIP catalogue record for this book
is available from the British Library
ISBN 978 0 7481 1106 0
This e-book produced by JOUVE, FRANCE
Hachette Digital
An imprint of
Little, Brown Book Group
100 Victoria Embankment
London EC4Y 0DY
An Hachette Livre UK Company
Acknowledgements
This book was inspired by the remarkable country of Kenya, and by the warmth, wisdom and optimism of its people.
In particular I would like to thank Damian Davies of Watamu beach for his insights into White Mischief, 21st-century style, and Edward Bejah of Mombasa for sharing his knowledge, enthusiasm and irrepressible good humour.
I would also like to thank Jane Gregory and Emma Dunford for taking a punt and making it all happen - and for allowing me to fulfil every unknown writer’s dream of one day having lunch with his agent and editor.
Day One
Chapter One
As a boy, George Malewe had gutted thousands of fish for the white men who came to catch game off the coast of Mombasa. But, as he plunged the blade of his favourite teak-handled filleting knife into the soft underbelly and eased it upwards through the stomach wall with a smooth, practised sawing movement, it struck him that he had never before gutted a white man.
A man, George concluded, was not so different from a large karambesi or marlin. The guts spilled out on to the cockpit deck with the same moist splash. And the pool of blood that hissed between his bare toes had the same warm tacky consistency as that of a big game fish.
Admittedly, there was more of it. It would take him a lot longer to swab down the deck and hose the entrails out through the scuppers in the stern of the boat when he was done.
And, George reflected, he had never before gutted a game fish that had been bound to the fighting chair with fishing line.
Nor one that screamed as he eviscerated it.
‘George - move your arse, will you?’
He jumped suddenly at the harsh voice from above. ‘Yes, Boss.’
The scrawny African moved to one side, so that instead of hunkering between the bound man’s knees he now leaned against the outside of his immobilised left thigh.
‘Smile!’
George turned and looked up into the lens of a camera pointing down at him from the flying bridge. He knew all about cameras, and this one was top of the range. Very expensive. He beamed, revealing a decimated set of yellow teeth beneath the peak of his New York Yankees baseball cap.
The Boss Man holding the expensive camera pulled away from the eyepiece with a snarl of annoyance.
‘Not you, you stupid kaffir. Him. You get on with your work.’
George’s face fell and he turned silently back to the gaping abdomen of the man who sat bound by his wrists, forearms, ankles, upper thighs and knees to the steel struts of the fighting chair.
‘Come on, Dennis!’ the Boss Man said cheerfully. ‘Say cheese!’ Again he snorted with annoyance. ‘George - lift up his head, will you?’
George went behind the fighting chair and wrenched the bound man’s head off his chest by a hank of silvery hair.
‘Up a bit, up a bit . . .’
From his position on the tarpaulin-covered flying bridge, overlooking the cockpit and the stern of the boat, the Boss Man wobbled on his feet slightly as he adjusted the focus on his camera.
‘He don’t look too clever, does he, George?’
George glanced down at the grey upturned face. The mouth hung slackly and the open eyes had rolled upwards.
‘He look dead to me, Boss.’
‘Mmm.’
The Boss Man put do
wn the camera and clambered gingerly down a set of iron ladders connecting the superstructure to the cockpit. He was thickset and the way he staggered drunkenly as the boat pitched and rolled on the swell indicated that he was no sailor.
But then George had known that anyway. The skippers who worked these fishing grounds for a livelihood knew every inch of the reef, knew precisely where the snag-toothed coral lay near enough to the surface to rip the bowels out of a thirty-foot twin-engined game-fisher like Martha B as easy as tearing paper.
The Boss Man didn’t have a clue.
George did; but then you didn’t crew fishing boats from the age of eleven without learning how to navigate into open sea, how to read the currents and how to anticipate the waves that could pick you up and smash you into matchsticks.
That was why he was here.
That and the five hundred dollars the Boss Man had promised him for navigating Martha B through the reef, gutting the white man in the chair and asking no questions.
George felt a flutter of excitement as he thought about the money. Five hundred dollars was a fortune in a country where the average monthly wage was less than ten. With five hundred dollars, he could be someone. There would be no more scraping a living on the streets of Mombasa, no more stealing from white tourists just to put food on the table for Agnes and little Benjamin. With five hundred dollars, he could set himself up in business, be one of the smartly dressed tausi like Mr Kili who drove around in expensive cars and could order things done simply by snapping his fingers.
‘Yep. He’s dead all right,’ the Boss Man said, a hint of disappointment in his voice. ‘Cut the line, George.’
Five hundred dollars.
Gutting the white man had not been as hard as George had imagined. Once the Boss Man had smashed him over the head with the metal claw of the grappling hook, the rest had been relatively straightforward. In fact, he had quite enjoyed it. It certainly beat stealing wallets, cameras and cell phones. Of course, George had been puzzled as to who this white man was, and what he had done to deserve such a fate. But the Boss Man seemed to know him, so that was OK.
Ask no questions.
As the last of the fishing line was cut from the dead man’s wrists, George looked at his face and shuddered.
‘Right. Get him to the back of the boat.’
The Boss Man was back on the flying bridge now, issuing his orders against the increasingly excited cawking of the seagulls circling overhead.
George manhandled the body out of the fighting chair to the stern rail.
‘OK. Get rid of him.’
The body splashed into the ocean. It floated face-up for a moment, but only until the empty abdominal cavity filled with water and sent it swiftly beneath the surface.
‘Right,’ the Boss Man said. ‘Now get that shit cleared up.’
As he got to work with the hosepipe and the stiff brush, George reflected that the body would not last long in these waters. The blood and entrails siphoning from the scuppers would soon attract a hammerhead or a bull shark, and tuna or sailfish would consume what was left.
As he worked he hummed a tune, ‘Wana Baraka’, which was a traditional folk song he used to sing with his mother in the shanty church of Likoni when he was a boy. It was about how those who pray will always be blessed, because Jesus himself said so. Nowadays George sang it to his own son, Benjamin, and just the thought of his little boy brought a broad smile of joy to his face. There were not many things in George’s wretched life that he was proud of, but Benjamin was one. Today was his third birthday, and five hundred dollars would buy him a present he would never forget.
But, suddenly, George’s beatific expression turned to one of puzzlement. Putting his hand to the peak of his cap, he stared out across the grey water towards the western horizon. A boat was approaching, low in the water, and, judging by the cascades of spray it threw up as it smashed against the swell, it was travelling fast.
George looked up to the flying bridge, but the Boss Man was hunched over, fiddling with something under the steering console.
‘Boss!’
‘What is it, George?’
‘Boat coming.’
The Boss Man appeared at the rail, squinting through his sunglasses at the rapidly approaching vessel. He smiled. ‘Right on the money,’ he said, and turned back to the wheel again. ‘Get on with your work.’
As he swabbed the deck, George watched the other boat out of the corner of his eye until it drew near enough for him to identify it as a high-powered speedboat, the kind he sometimes saw moored near the rich tourist resorts at Kikambala, Bamburi and Watamu. There was a white man at the wheel, hunched down behind the Perspex windshield. George did not recognise him. As the boat drew alongside Martha B, the man tossed a mooring rope across. George took the rope and secured it to one of the deck cleats.
‘Right, Georgie-boy,’ said the Boss Man, ‘I’m afraid this is where I’m going to have to bid you kwaheri.’
George watched him negotiate the whitewashed iron ladder on the side of the boat. The expensive camera was now secured in a padded shoulder bag slung across his broad back. The Boss Man tottered unsteadily on the leading rail before sitting down and easing himself into the bobbing speedboat. He turned and smiled at the bemused crewman.
‘Hope you don’t mind - but I’m sure you know how to drive, don’t you, George? It’ll be a little treat for you. And you know that bloody reef like the back of your hand.’
George nodded dumbly.
‘Nearly forgot.’ The Boss Man rummaged in the pocket of his shorts and flung George a ten-dollar bill. ‘You’ll get the rest back on dry land.’ He grinned. ‘Then you can buy me a beer, eh? Maybe some girls. Lots of pretty manyanga for Georgie-boy, eh?’
Then the Boss Man said something to the man in the speedboat, and the craft’s mighty engines coughed into life. George watched as it moved away from Martha B in a lazy arc, and saw its stern bite into the churning water as the turbos kicked in and fired it towards the distant mainland.
George shrugged. Five hundred dollars and no questions asked. He stared at the ten-dollar bill in his hand, then put it under his cap and shinned up the ladder to the flying bridge. He’d been on the flying bridge of one of these game boats before, of course. But always at the shoulder of the skipper. Bait boys weren’t allowed near the wheel or the controls, not unless they were trusted.
When he’d been a bait boy, George reflected bitterly, he’d never been trusted.
He had watched though. He knew how to steer, how to ease forward the throttles and make the engines throb - and, although he wasn’t sure how the compass worked, he knew every last inlet of the coast. George settled himself in the cushioned pilot’s chair and sighed contentedly.
Five hundred dollars. Yes, he would soon be like Mr Kili in Mombasa. Maybe one day he would have his own boat. Yes, that would be good. Little Benjamin would like that.
He reached forward and jabbed the starter button.
A mile away now, the Boss Man winced in his seat in the rear of the scudding speedboat as Martha B disintegrated in a ball of flame. Splinters of wood and debris rose on the back of an oily black mushroom cloud, drifted lazily in the air, then fell back to the ocean in a cascade of tiny splashes. Eventually the smoke dissipated into a single thin swathe high above the surface, then vanished altogether. Of the boat, there was no sign.
‘Kwaheri, George,’ the Boss Man muttered as the powerful boat swung round and headed south. ‘Kwaheri.’
Chapter Two
Ever since the elections of late 2007 and the damn-near civil war that followed, Ernies had been scarce in this part of Kenya. Too many killings. Too much heavy shit going down. But scarce did not mean extinct - and thankfully there were always a few gunslingers determined to prove that tribesmen with machetes and cops with batons and semi-automatics couldn’t spoil their fun.
‘Aw - sonofabitch! I’ve done it again!’
Up on the flying bridge of Yellowfin, Jake Moore sighed
and killed the thirty-footer’s twin engines and tried to remember that in these troubled times the Ernies and their money were just about all that kept his boat - and his livelihood - afloat.
‘Mr Jake! Mr Jake!’
‘OK, Sammy,’ he said, wearily swinging his legs from the dashboard and easing himself out of his chair. ‘I heard.’
His accent marked him out as an Englishman, and the faint north-east twang betrayed his Northumbrian roots. He certainly had the rugged look of a Cheviot hill farmer - and there were those who said he had the cussedness too. It was a comparison that always amused him, because Jake had never been to the Cheviots in his life. He belonged to the sea. And no matter how many times he tried to escape its grip, he always found himself coming back.
Down in the cockpit, Sammy the bait boy had clambered barefoot on to the stern rail and was peering out at the ocean. Behind him, strapped into the fighting chair, the overweight Ernie in the shop-new bush hat scratched the back of his neck, leaving livid white marks on the red raw skin. He spun round and smiled stupidly as Jake came down the ladder.
‘It slipped out of my hands,’ he said sheepishly. ‘Sorry, man.’
There was a guffaw from the shade of the cabin awning beneath the bridge, where two more Ernies sat in deck chairs and tinked their beer bottles together.
‘That piece of kit has got to be worth twelve hundred bucks at least,’ one of them announced. ‘You’re a goddamn liability, Ted.’
‘I’m real sorry, Jake,’ the Ernie in the chair repeated.
‘Not to worry,’ Jake said evenly, thinking only of the hundred bucks an hour these bozos were each paying for the privilege of dropping his fishing rods in the ocean. ‘You see it, Sam?’