The Claw

Two

Ten hours earlier, Alan Knight was thinking: My God, he's crazy. I'm being driven by a madman.

Though the expressway to the airport was slippery with rain, everyone was driving as if they couldn't leave Lagos behind soon enough. They still had miles to go, for here on the mainland Lagos sent its housing and industrial estates swarming toward the north. They'd passed the overcrowded bungalows of Ebute-Metta, but Mushin and Oshodi were still to come – if Alan ever got there, if the car hadn't left the road by then.

'I think we've got plenty of time before check-in,' he said, as casually as he could.

When Marlowe glanced at him, the car swerved. This is it, Alan thought numbly. I've done it now, I've made him crash. But Marlowe guided them back into the wake of the car ahead. 'Better let me judge the speed. We're liable to cause an accident if I try to go slow.'

True, many of the drivers were unused to high-speed roads. Alan had already seen three cars off the road today, one attended by an ambulance and two already rusting. All the same, he could see no reason for Marlowe to drive like this, glaring fiercely through the watery fan of the windscreen wiper, overtaking whenever he saw the hint of a gap. In his great red-haired hands the wheel looked like a toy, and Alan was afraid that Marlowe regarded it as such. He was beginning to wish he had taken a taxi, even though, after Frankfurt, Lagos had the most expensive taxis in the world.

How had he ended up with this lift at all? He remembered being invited to last night's party ('Mr Knight, you must come, everyone knows your books, they're dying to meet you') but very little of the party itself: a blur of people in pale thin suits or dresses or Yoruba robes, Nigerians laughing and shaking his hand for minutes, expatriates dark as mahogany, full of all the questions you were supposed to ask a writer. They might know of his books, but it seemed that nobody had read them. After hours of this sort of thing he'd found himself talking to Marlowe, the red-bearded giant he had noticed drinking and brooding all by himself in a corner. He couldn't recall what Marlowe had said – something about the hidden dangers of anthropology? – until suddenly Marlowe's eyes had brightened, for no reason that Alan could see. 'You're going to need a lift tomorrow,' Marlowe had said, and here it was.

The downpour was worsening. As they sped through Mushin – cheap houses crammed together fifteen to the acre, four people or more to a room – the rain made grey auras just above the roofs of cars, sloshed over windshields faster than wipers could wipe. Apart from craning forward to peer through the rain, Marlowe made no concession to the weather, even though once the back wheels began to slew.

All at once he began to talk, or at least to mutter to himself. 'I shouldn't have brought my family out here. You never know anything until it's too late.'

What had he said last night about families? Marlowe swerved the car into another gap, and Alan could only sit on his prickling hands and pray that the wheels held the road. He had a horrid suspicion that if Marlowe were distracted in any way, he might forget that he wasn't in England and relapse into driving on the left.

'It's like any other science,' Marlowe said – anthropology, Alan assumed. 'We have to learn that research isn't everything. We ought to stop sometimes and ask whether what we're finding out is likely to be beneficial. But we can't stop, we have to go on, it's a compulsion. We're no more in control of ourselves than the animals are.'

His hands were trembling on the wheel; the wheel itself was shaking. Alan turned away quickly and stared out as the stunted dense houses of Oshodi shot past, tin roofs steaming in a sudden lull in the rain. Just a few minutes to the airport, he thought desperately. Just a few minutes, and then in a few hours I'll be with Liz and Anna and we'll laugh about this. Though not about him, poor sod, whatever's the matter with him.

'Did I show you a photograph of Helen and my wife last night?' Marlowe was mumbling. 'I have to get her back to England, both of them. This country's no good for us.'

Alan could see the textile mills of Ikeja ahead. An airliner rose from the airport, slow as treacle. Though the car was rushing onward, spattering itself with mud, the airport seemed to be receding. But here was the approach road, thank God. Marlowe drove onto it without slowing, the back wheels screeching as he braked at last. It's a miracle, Alan thought. We've made it. He had never imagined he could be so grateful to see the perimeter fence and the guards.

The last raindrops were scurrying like insects down the wire mesh of the fence; the concrete pillars were piebald with drying. Though the guard's holster appeared to be sweating, he scarcely glanced into the cars before waving them on. Now that they had to proceed more slowly, Alan could relax; but it was odd that Marlowe seemed to be growing more tense. Perhaps it was a reaction after driving.

Metal roofs glittered in the car park. Marlowe eased the car into a space, turned off the engine, and sat gripping the wheel. All at once, as though he'd reached a decision, he opened the door and squeezed out. For the first time the large car felt spacious. 'We'd better get your luggage,' he said.

When Alan climbed out, Marlowe was standing by the boot to let a black car pass. As the car glided into a nearby space, he unlocked the boot and lifted out Alan's suitcase as though it weighed less than a handbag. Then he stood staring into the boot. 'Oh, good God, no,' he said.

'What's wrong?'

'I forgot to post a package. It had to go to London today. I'll never get to the post office in time.'

Alan had an idea of what he was expected to say, but after the drive he was wary. 'What is it?' he said.

'Just an artefact. I would have remembered except for meeting you and giving you a lift.'

However appalling the drive had been, it was over now, and Alan was sure he could write it into a story. 'I'll take it for you, if you like.'

'Oh, would you? That's extremely good of you. It would be a great weight off my mind.' Marlowe's voice was hollow, for he'd stooped to rummage around in the boot. As he emerged with the package, he unbent too soon and scraped the back of his neck on the metal edge of the lid of the boot. He seemed too preoccupied even to notice. 'Here you are,' he said.

It was a rectangular box sealed in brown paper, a package almost the length of a hand and a forearm, though it didn't look so large in Marlowe's hands. 'I should put it in your suitcase, just in case the Customs people think it looks odd,' Marlowe said. 'You know, the postal monopoly, that sort of thing. You can see it's all right from the label, can't you? The Foundation is highly respected, any anthropologist would tell you so.'

The Foundation for African Studies sounded perfectly legitimate – it was all this explanation that was making Alan nervous. He hid the package under his shirts and snapped the catches. Then he started. Someone was watching him: a tall man in a white suit, who was closing the boot of the black car that had passed a few minutes ago.

Before Alan could speak, Marlowe grabbed bis suitcase. 'Let me take that,' he said, and strode toward the airport building, long stacks of concrete sprouting the stone blossom of the control tower. The tall man had turned away; no doubt he hadn't been watching at all. Alan had written so much spy fiction that he sometimes felt he was living a spy story himself.

Marlowe didn't slow down until he reached the check-in desk. By the time Alan caught up with him he had already dumped the suitcase on the weighing platform. Breathlessly, Alan panted that he wanted to sit in the no-smoking area, before his case sailed away behind the scenes.

There was at least an hour to wait before boarding. Marlowe was mopping his forehead. 'Fancy a drink?' Alan said.

'No, I have to get back.' Marlowe was stuffing his handkerchief back into his pocket; in his huge hand it looked as if he'd picked up a woman's handkerchief by mistake. 'I need to get back to my family,' he said, with an expression so apologetic it looked guilty. He shook hands, then strode away without a backward glance.

Alan went through into the departure hall and wandered toward the bar, looking for details he might use in his novel and trying to think of a title. They had streamlined the terminal and called it Murtala Muhammed Airport -another airport named after an assassin's victim. A priest came down an escalator, his skin black as his cloth, his collar gleaming fluorescently. A group of Yorubas in robes and caps stood by the duty-free shop, greeting each other effusively. A Hausa family strode by in search of someone, the wives chattering behind their husband, all of them in dazzling white robes like the newly baptized. A Yoruba mother sailed along a walkway, her baby slung on her back. It reminded Alan of a koala cub, alert gleaming eyes and all.

He sat in the bar and sipped a glass of the potent Nigerian beer. He had the scenes he'd come to Nigeria for, but what was the book to be called? The lack of a title made him edgy, especially when he was so near to writing the book. His mind seemed fixed on the Nigerian episode; the narrator came here in search of a birth certificate, but after much travelling and bribery, went away empty-handed, unaware that the man whose double-dealing had lured him halfway across the world, along a trail of torture and murder, was his own father. So far all the titles he could think of revolved round that theme too: Family Plot and Family Circle were too obvious; Familiarity sounded like a Victorian novel, and would sell just about as many copies nowadays. Shrugging irritably, he went to the window to check the departure board. Then he was coughing into his beer, and had to restrain himself from dodging back out of sight at once. Out there in the departure hall, the man who had watched him in the car park was talking into a pay telephone and gazing straight at him.

Alan finished his beer as quickly as he could and emerged into the bright spacious hall. The man in white was no longer to be seen. Of course, it was just a coincidence – the man had had to look somewhere while he was talking; and anyway, why should he have known that Alan was in the bar? If he let himself, Alan could imagine that Marlowe's package was a bomb, that Marlowe's dislike of his job was so uncontrollable that he meant to wipe out the Foundation in London. That was nonsense. All the same, he was relieved that the number of his flight had come up on the screen.

The enclosed ramp to the plane was narrow. The aisle of the plane was narrower, and blocked by shuffling passengers, yet all at once Alan was easier in his mind. It was absurd, but somehow the British Airways plane felt like British territory. He hadn't realized how secretly vulnerable he felt in foreign places. As soon as the plane lifted off and rainclouds wiped out the landscape, he forgot about the package in his suitcase, and the man, who surely hadn't been watching him after all. Perhaps he would call them to mind if he needed them. Writing had that advantage – you could always use your experiences eventually, however unpleasant they seemed at the time.

In the cramped toilet he splashed cold water on his face. When he raised the plug the water was sucked down the plughole with a shrill rush of air. He resumed his seat as the stewardesses came round with meals on moulded plastic trays. Alan ate ravenously, though his red-faced neighbour was bending forward over a sick bag and staring lugubriously into its depths. Hangman's Dance, To Visit The Queen, The Sunday Assassin: he was pretty good with titles as a rule – why couldn't he think of one now? It reminded him of his early days of struggle, of going to his desk in the corner of the London flat without a thought in his head. He remembered sitting beneath the patch of damp that looked like a sneering face and grinding out paragraphs purely in order to get the story over with, the story that had excited him so much – until he'd actually sat down to write it. He had never felt the least involvement with the characters as he'd struggled to make them seem real. His pen and his brain had felt scratchy, Liz had been pregnant with Anna, the damp had crept over the walls, he'd been desperate to buy a house before she had the child – and he'd finished the book with no sense of achievement at all, without ever reaching that magical point where the characters take over and dictate their story to the writer. He'd already had two novels stuck in a drawer with bunches of rejection slips, and when he'd started he'd been convinced that this was the one that would sell. The end-product had depressed him so much that he hadn't even let Liz read the typescript before he sent it away. Yet that book The Sunday Assassin had been his first major success – 'all plot, and not a wasted word,' one review had said.

Now the days of struggle were over, more or less; now he only had to struggle for a tide.

How about Out of the Past? It sounded like a film, but he didn't think it was; perhaps it sounded like the film it might be made into. He couldn't resist it; it seemed too good an omen. He lay back in his seat, relaxing at last, and closed his eyes. The plane was bumping gently, rhythmically. He thought a hammock might feel like that, rocking in a breeze.

The hammock was in Africa, and so was he, trying to run home. He had been running for a very long time. Now the looming vegetation was too vague for him to make out where he was. He was trying to catch up with someone in the foggy dark, while something red loped alongside him, urging him on. He managed to turn aside at the last moment, into a clearing. A thin old figure leapt to its feet as it saw him, and Alan was stumbling, unable to keep his balance, falling into the restless arms of the figure, which had the smallest eyes and the longest nails he had ever seen. The ground had thrown him forward into its arms, because the ground was tilting, the plane was. He woke to find that the plane was landing at Heathrow.

He was bewildered to find he'd slept so long, and he was still trying to blink himself awake as he shuffled forward with the rest of the passengers, past the captain standing by the exit like a priest after a mass. What was it that he couldn't quite remember? Perhaps he would know when he woke up fully.

Chimes rang, amplified voices boomed high up in the airport hall. Suitcases appeared at the top of a ramp, slid down to the roundabout where their owners were waiting. It all had the unresolved quality of a dream; in a moment the scene might be transformed into parents watching their children on slides and roundabouts, invisible giants ringing bells overhead. He was nearly awake now. He grabbed his suitcase as it sailed by and staggered with it toward the Customs area, something to declare, nothing to declare. 'Nothing' seemed easier, and the sign was green for go.

As soon as he reached the counter he knew that he'd made a mistake. The officer behind the desk was young, and eager to show he was doing his job. You could tell he would relish body searches, even though he would never have admitted it, even to himself. He stood straight-backed as a dummy, eyes gleaming impersonally in the smooth scrubbed face, his hair and moustache clipped short, his manner precise. 'Have you read the notice?' he said, like a policeman cautioning a criminal.

'Yes, I have.' Alan was sure he had nothing on the list: jewellery, wines, spirits.. -. Nevertheless the Customs officer read out the items one by one. 'You're quite sure you're not carrying anything on that list?' he said.

'Yes, I am.'

A determined blankness spread over the officer's face. 'Will you open your case, please?'

Alan opened it readily enough. It wasn't even locked -that would only have risked someone breaking into it while it was behind the scenes. He should have felt smug, because he knew that the Customs man would find nothing, except that he could almost hear a warning deep in his mind. The young man was turning over shirts and underwear like an overseer in a laundry, searching primly for stains. Suddenly he poked a rectangular bulge under the towels. 'What's this?' he said.

It was the package that Marlowe had given him. How could he have forgotten? He must still be half asleep. 'It's a parcel for these people,' he said, pointing to the address. 'They need it urgently, and so I said I'd bring it over.'

'That's against regulations.' The Customs man's face was blanker than ever. 'Please open it,' he said.

As Alan fumbled with the wrapping, almost breaking one of his nails, sweat stung his palms, as if the package were covered with cinders. Christ, why hadn't he refused to hide it in his luggage, to bring it at all? He hardly even knew Marlowe…

At last the heavy tape came away, tearing the wrapper. Inside was a cardboard box which proved, when he parted the halves of the lid, to be stuffed with cotton wool. The packing squeaked beneath his nails as he began to push it apart – but the Customs officer took the box from him and lifted out the top layer of packing. He stared into the box, then he lowered it slowly so that Alan could see within. 'I think you've got some explaining to do,' he said.