Recoil

1

Lugano, Switzerland

Sunday, 18 June

It was ten days since I’d last sat here, but it was like I hadn’t been away. The money still drove its way along Riva Albertolli, or rested its rather large arse beside the lake. The rest sat in cafés and watched the guys in their electric mini-tankers water the immaculate flower-beds.

I’d flown into Milan this morning on an overnight from Cape Town, and got off at the railway station a couple of hours later with my holdall and a rolled-up copy of the Sunday Times. The moped had gone. I wandered the town, did a little shopping and, with nothing else on just yet, decided to do what I always did around midday: have a brew at Raffaelli’s.

The sun was out, the lake was a mirror. Families took their Sunday strolls along the palm-lined boulevards; airbrakes hissed as a coach prepared to kick out its payload. All was well in the land of Toblerone and tax dodgers. I sat back and enjoyed. I felt calm and relaxed. For the first time in ten days, things were under control. And there had to be worse places on earth to pass the time while you waited to exact a little vengeance.

I’d ordered a cappuccino. The waiter appeared and I moved my mobile to the edge of the small round table to make room for the tray.

‘Grazie mille.’ It was nice to be nice.

He smiled back at me. ‘Prego.’

He sort of recognized me, but couldn’t quite place me. For starters, I supposed, I wasn’t with a beautiful blonde. And then I looked much smarter than I usually did, in new jeans, shirt, a blue jacket and shoes so shiny I had to wear sun-gigs to look at them.

But there was also the grime I hadn’t been able to get out from under my nails, and the scratches, cuts and bites on my face and hands to confuse him even more. Also, he probably didn’t remember me scratching like I had fleas the last time he saw me. The rash on my back was drying up, but even more itchy.

I took the baby biscotti sitting in the saucer and dunked it in the froth as I unfolded the paper. There was all the normal stuff, but deep inside the news pages my attention was grabbed by an article telling me that the DRC was going to hold its first multi-party elections for forty years at the end of July.

I put the paper down. I wasn’t enjoying myself so much any more.

The elections would help no one. Just as with Middle Eastern oil, the multinationals and scum-bags like Stefan would be making sure they had whoever won tucked well inside their pockets.

Another coach offloaded its well-fed cargo of Dortmunders and they stood in the shade of the palm trees. All of them were on their mobiles, or had a camcorder stuck to their faces and pointing at the lake. I thought back to Sunday, the Chuckle Brothers, the bodies we had left at the mine, even the miners who had dragged the rock out of the ground with their bare hands.

And what about me? I looked down at the mobile. Tucked inside it was a small rock’s worth of the stuff that brought such grief and hardship to so many, and so much cash to so few.

It made me think of what Crucial had said as we faced the river before I ran the firing cable back to the knoll.

I can’t change the world, but I can do something for this bit of it . . .

And I was.