The Devil's Feather - Minette Walters [3]
I ran my suspicions past a few of my colleagues, but they were sceptical. As they pointed out, the killings had stopped with the arrest of the boys, and Harwood’s modus operandi was to use his fists, not a machete. The tenor of their argument seemed to be that, however despicable Harwood was, he wouldn’t have raped the women before murdering them. “He can’t even bring himself to touch a black,” said an Australian cameraman, “so he’s hardly likely to soil himself by dipping his wick into one.”
I gave it up because the only evidence I could cite against Harwood was a particularly brutal attack on a young prostitute in Paddy’s Bar. A good hundred people had witnessed it, but the girl had taken money in lieu of prosecution so there wasn’t even a report of the incident. In any case, my stint in Sierra Leone was almost at an end and I didn’t want to start something that might delay my departure. I persuaded myself it wasn’t my responsibility and confined justice to the dustbin of apathy.
By then I’d spent most of my life in Africa, first as a child, then working for newspapers in Kenya and South Africa, and latterly for Reuters as a newswire correspondent. It was a continent I knew and loved, having grown up in Zimbabwe as the daughter of a white farmer, but by the summer of 2002 I’d had enough. I’d covered too many forgotten conflicts and too many stories of financial corruption. I planned to stay a couple of months in London, where my parents had been living since 2001, before moving on to the Reuters bureau in Singapore to write about Asian affairs.
The night before I left Freetown for good, I was in the middle of packing when Harwood came to my house. He was escorted to my door by Manu, one of the Leonean gate-guards, who knew enough about the man’s reputation to ask if I wanted a chaperone. I shook my head, but protected myself by talking to Harwood on my veranda in full view of the rest of the compound.
He studied my unresponsive expression. “You don’t like me much, do you, Ms. Burns?”
“I don’t like you at all, Mr. Harwood.”
He looked amused. “Because I wouldn’t pass on your request for an interview?”
“No.”
The one-word response seemed to throw him. “You shouldn’t believe everything people say about me.”
“I don’t have to. I’ve seen you in action.”
A closed expression settled on his face. “Then you’ll know not to cross me,” he murmured.
“I wouldn’t bet on it. What do you want?”
He showed me an envelope and asked me to mail it in London. It was a common request to anyone going home because the Leonean postal service was notoriously unreliable. The usual routine was to leave the package open so that the bearer could show Customs at both ends that there was nothing illegal in it, but Harwood had sealed his. When I refused to accept it unless he was prepared to reveal the contents, he returned it to his pocket.
“You’ll be needing a good turn from me one day,” he said.
“I doubt it.”
“If you do, you won’t get it, Ms. Burns. I have a long memory.”
“I don’t expect to meet you again, so the situation won’t arise.”
He turned away. “I wouldn’t bet on it,” he said in ironic echo. “For people like us the world’s smaller than you think.”
As I watched him walk to the gate, I was curious about the name I’d glimpsed on the envelope, “Mary MacKenzie,” and the last line of the address, “Glasgow.” It flipped a switch in my memory. It was Kinshasa where I’d seen him before—he’d been part of a mercenary group fighting for Laurent Kabila’s regime—and the name he’d been using then was Keith MacKenzie.
I must have wondered why he’d assumed an alias, and how he’d acquired a passport as John Harwood, but it wouldn’t have been for long. I spoke the truth when I’d said I didn’t expect to meet him again.
2
TWO YEARS LATER, in the spring of 2004, I recognized him immediately. I was on a three-month assignment to Baghdad to cover the rapidly deteriorating situation in Iraq, which was about as long as any newswire journalist could take