Matingo

Matingo had promised the trip of a lifetime. And, flying over the boughs of the Serengeti Jungle, Bertie Johnson could hardly argue. They’d been drinking, dancing, hunting, and fishing. They’d posed with lions and tigers, camped and slept in moon-drenched, jungle hideaways. What was owed, had been paid, and then some.

But Bertie did not forgive, and he did not forget.

He glanced out of the acrylic window. The sky was grapefruit-pink, cotton clouds cresting against the wings of the aircraft. Even here, in the rare air of the upper atmosphere, the sound of the twin engines was but a distant rumble. Far below, a group of pelicans were flying – red-arrow formation – across the lip of the Magadi Lake, the water brushed with colour from the setting sun.

Bertie leaned back in his calfskin leather chair. He knew it would not be long now. Somewhere soon to be far away, a two-seated convertible was pulling into the driveway of a four-storey, iron-gated house. A man in a white suit was stepping out of the vehicle, the brim of his straw fedora pulled low across his brow, an unloaded rifle left carelessly on the back seat. And now he was strutting across the trimmed green lawn, his loafers frictionless against the freshly cut grass; silk shirt rippling in the gentle, East-African wind. The man was turning a key, and sliding a glass door open with his moist, ageless palms…

At Bertie’s feet, the briefcase suddenly seemed to carry its own dark energy, as if the blood money inside had been replaced with hundreds of thousands of souls, weightless entities that picked the case up and flung it across the cabin, sending money soaring in every direction. Bertie watched, astonished, and then he began to roll too, tossed and tumbling from one side to the next, clutching desperately at the ivory armrest of his seat. The pink light of the sky had become a bloodshot whirl. The clouds were rushing and roaring and bursting as the plane pitched from one side to the next, swinging violently down towards the open mouth of the jungle.

Thrown against the window, Bertie felt a growing dampness on his scalp. His legs were shaking, his eardrums punctured. From the corner of his eye, he could see lights, growing brighter and brighter, as if the god he had forsaken for so long was finally here to bring him to justice. The acrylic glass had shattered, leaving a gaping hole into which Bertie’s memories poured like ink from a bottle. His mother’s last words. The faces of men he had murdered. A girl with pale gold hair and soft blue eyes, crying in the snow.

And then the corners of his mind folded inwards, a black sheet thrown across the surface of the earth.   

*********

On the jungle runway, two armed men watched the tiny private plane descending from the sky. What began as a struggle, was now a peaceful glide. Wheels extended, nose straight against the wind, the little aircraft slid noiselessly down the tarmac and came to a halt.

A dark-skinned man in a straw fedora stepped out of the cockpit. There was a smear of blood on the lapel of his white suit.

‘Mr Matingo,’ one of the men bowed. ‘It’s an honour.’

*********