None of them got any advance warning. I was in sporadic e-mail contact with all of them, I knew they were all working in London, but I didn't call them in advance to tell them what was going on, or even to tell them that I was coming. It would have felt inappropriate. Something like this had to be told face-to-face. And I didn't want to make up some reason for visiting when the truth was that I wanted to recruit them into hunting down Morgan.
I got to Heathrow at 9 AM. I'd slept just enough to be dazed and confused and irritable. I took the Tube in to Earl's Court, and read the Guardian on the way. Thankfully it was Saturday and therefore not too crowded. After checking into the nearest hostel I called Hallam and Nicole. It took me three tries as London had once again changed its entire telephone numbering system.
'Hello,' Nicole answered.
'Nicole,' I said. 'Hi. It's Paul Wood.'
'Paul! How are you! Where are you? It must be five in the morning over there.'
'I'm in London. Earl's Court tube.'
'Oh, fabulous! When did you get in?'
'An hour ago.'
'What are you doing here?' She must have heard something in my voice, her tone had dropped from excited to worried.
'I need to talk to you and Hallam. I was hoping I could come over.'
'Of course. When?'
'Now. And I'd like you to call Steve and Lawrence and have them come over to your flat today too. Tell them it's important.'
'Steve and Lawrence. All right, I'll sort them out. Can you tell me what this about over the phone?'
That was Nicole; no surprise, no demurral, just calm acceptance moving straight into action. It was her husband as well. They were one of those perfect couples who must never break up because they give hope to the rest of us in this imperfect world.
'It's about Laura,' I said.
'Laura,' she repeated. 'I see. I'll see to it that they're here as soon as they're able. Do you have our address?'
'I do. I'll be there soon.'
When I arrived Nicole kissed me hello and sat me down in their living room with a cup of tea and a plate of toast and scrambled eggs. She was petite but ferociously fit, with a runner's build and one of the world's warmest smiles.
'Get you anything else?' she asked.
'That's good, Nic, thanks.'
'Good flight?'
'All right.'
She nodded, sat down across from me, and scanned through the morning's Times as I ate and drank. Hallam was in the shower. I looked around their apartment. Decorated with attractive bric-a-brac from around the world, and postered with countless shots of The World's Most Beautiful Places, many of which had Hallam or Nicole or both in the foreground. I recognized some of the backdrops. Hallam playing Spiderman halfway up an overhanging karst spire that jutted from the ocean somewhere near Krabi on the west coast of Thailand. Hallam and Nicole at Tilicho Tal, the world's highest lake, a side trip from the Annapurna Circuit. Nicole in front of the grave of Cecil Rhodes, in Zimbabwe's Matopos Park.
Hallam came out of the shower with a towel wrapped around him, a bulldog of a man, and he grinned ear- to-ear when he saw me. 'Paul mate. Been too long.' We shook hands, our tribe's secret handshake, ending with a fingersnap the way the Ghanaians do it.
'I rang Steve and Lawrence,' Nicole said. 'they should be here in about an hour. Do you want to wait until we're all assembled?'
'Probably easier that way,' I said.
'Fair enough,' Hallam said. 'Watch the telly then? Should be some Champions League highlights from last night.'
I turned on the television as he disappeared into their bedroom to get dressed. Nic and I made small talk to pass the time. I told her about my layoff and she made sympathetic noises. She was working as a travel agent and enjoying it, and they were planning their next trip already, rock climbing in Tunisia. Hallam's contract ended in a couple of months. He had served two years in the Paratroopers before a medical discharge for a detached retina that couldn't be trusted to take the shock of another opened parachute, and now he made a good living as a contract security consultant.
One of the strong impressions Africa had made on me was that I was completely useless. As were most of the people I knew. Computer programmers, lawyers, accountants, publicists, graphic designers, copywriters — these abstract jobs counted for absolutely nothing in a place where you actually had to fight for your existence. Hallam was quite the opposite. Driver, soldier, mechanic, carpenter, welder, ditch digger, bridge builder, expert rock climber, you name it, he was Mr. Useful. Nicole was more of an abstract thinker and people person, but I remembered days she'd spent covered with grease, helping Steve and Hallam fix the old, fragile truck engine for the umpteenth time.
We watched Man United rout Anderlecht until finally the doorbell rang and Steve and Lawrence came in together.
'Bastard found me on the Tube,' Lawrence explained. 'I'm standing next to this drop-dead blonde, just about to chat her up, and all of a sudden there's this great human mountain in front of me, saying,' and he gave us a sarcastic rendition of Steve's thick country Australian accent, ''Lawrence you bloody auld cunt, how are yae?' She couldn't get away from us fast enough.'
Human mountain was a pretty good description. Big, blond, and thickly muscled, with a cheerful grin perpetually spraypainted on his face, Steve McPhee looked like the walking model for some neo-Nazi definition of The Master Race. He was the lead mechanic for some type of car racing team a few notches below Formula One. Lawrence, thin and wiry, with twitchy mannerisms, disapprovingly pursed lips, and the look of a bird of prey, seemed a scrawny refugee next to Steve. He was a loans officer for a bank and claimed to take great pleasure in turning down mortgage applications.
'And how are you, you bloody old cunt?' Steve asked, shaking my hand, Ghana-style. He kissed Nicole on the cheek and waved hello to Hallam and sat down. Lawrence followed, performing the same greetings.
'Now what's this all about, a reunion of the Old Colonials Brigade?' Lawrence asked, sitting down. 'This room is like a bad joke. Two Kiwis, an Aussie, a Zimbabwean and a Canadian walk into a pub… '
'It's about Laura,' Nicole said quietly, and all the good cheer and bonhomie fled from the room like somebody had turned off a light. They all turned to me.
'Right,' I said, and I felt nervous. Not about what I was going to say, or about talking to them — this didn't count as public speaking, these were my homeys I was talking to — but about what I was going to start. I wished I could feel more confident that there would be a happy ending.
'Right,' I repeated. 'Well, there's a long version and a short version. I'll give you the long version in a moment, I've got papers and pictures and, do you have a Net connection here?' I asked, and Nicole nodded yes, 'but the short version is this. I found out who murdered Laura. I found out for a fact. It wasn't any Cameroonian. It was Morgan.'
They didn't say anything. I studied their faces. They looked worried, surprised, appalled… but not shocked. No, none of them were shocked to hear the proposition that Morgan Jackson was her killer. I guessed he'd been in the back of everyone's mind all along.
'You better give us the long version of that now,' Hallam said gently.
'This all started not even a month ago,' I said, and didn't really believe it. It felt as if a lifetime had passed since that day. 'I was off trekking in Nepal, on the Annapurna Circuit, with this South African guy named Gavin, and we were exploring this abandoned village called Gunsang… '
After I finished there was a long silence. My folderful of evidence, pictures and Web printouts and my timeline, was scattered around the table, much-thumbed and read. My audience of four wore stone-serious faces. Only a couple of hours had passed, but I felt as if I had gone on all day, felt as if night had fallen despite the most
