Free Easy Motion Tourist by Leye Adenle

month later she was going to Cambodia and she asked if I’d come. When she returned she didn’t talk about the trip and I knew that at some point she had concluded that I wasn’t ‘that kind of person.’ That would have been fine, only that a week later, at her friend’sretrospective at the Barbican, an art professor we met there asked if we’d be able to come to a new exhibition he was curating in Cairo and Mel said ‘I’ll come.’ In the cab back to her flat I asked why she’d assumed I wouldn’t go and she said, ‘But you never leave Europe.’
    Well, damn her. Here I was in Africa. And as I contemplated the policeman’s question, I realised I’d already started blaming her for the mess I was in.
    ‘I’m here to cover the elections,’ I said.
    ‘Are you married?’
    ‘No. But I have a girlfriend. She’s half Nigerian.’
    ‘Really?’
    ‘Yes.’ Maybe I could get him onside. Melissa was doing her bit.
    ‘You met her here, in Nigeria?’
    ‘No. England.’
    ‘Oh, I see. You said she’s half Nigerian.’
    ‘Yes. Her mother is Irish. White.’
    ‘So, she’s half-caste.’
    ‘Sorry?’
    ‘You said her mother is white.’
    ‘Yes. She’s mixed.’
    ‘What is her name?’
    ‘Melissa Iyiola.’
    ‘Iyiola,’ he said, using the correct pronunciation, I guess. I’d said it the way Mel says it, which was surely the wrong way.
    ‘You said you work for the BBC?’
    ‘Yes.’
    He pulled a laptop from a drawer and set it upon his desk.
    ‘So, if I Google your name I’ll be able to confirm this?’
    He plugged a wireless dongle into his laptop and startedworking the keyboard.
    ‘We just need to match your face to your name, then we can take your statement, and then we can let you go,’ he said. ‘By the way, is your profile on the BBC website?’
    Noise from the corridor made him look up from the screen. It sounded like a fight had broken out. He stopped to listen, then as quickly, he continued to prod the Internet.
    ‘W, w, w, dot, b, b, c, dot, co, dot, UK,’ he read out as he typed. ‘So, where would I find you on here, Mr Collins?’
    I was still trying to decide whether to continue lying or to come clean. The noise from the corridor grew louder until it was possible to make out words. There were shouts of ‘congratulations’ and ‘fire for fire,’ and loud slaps. He looked up again.
    Whoever knocked did not wait to be invited in. The door flew open and men in uniforms that looked more military than police poured in. There wasn’t enough space for all of them so some stayed outside in the corridor. They were shaking hands and slapping one another on the back. Their automatic weapons dangled from straps slung over their shoulders; extra magazines bulged from pouches on their belts. They looked tough and dangerous.
    The shortest of them, still a considerably tall fellow at that, shared the good news with Inspector Ibrahim who had risen from his desk. ‘Fire-for-Fire has done it again, sir,’ the man said. ‘We have rounded up every member of the Iron Benders gang. No casualties, two fatalities.’

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    Inspector Ibrahim yelled and I jumped in my chair. Maybe it had something to do with the ‘two fatalities.’ What the heck did that mean, ‘No casualties, two fatalities’? But then he grabbed the officer’s hand and shook it like he wanted to tear it off. It was good news. So good, that the inspector called someone on his mobile to share the news: ‘Sir, we have just captured the Iron Benders… Sorry sir. I didn’t check the time… The Iron Benders… Yes, sir. No, sir, those ones are from Benin Republic. Iron Benders, sir. They used to be iron benders. They worked at a mechanic’s yard in Ajegunle.’
    It turned out that the Iron Benders gang was a group of novice robbers who compensated for their inexperience with violence. Their speciality was carjacking. In the few months since they took up their new trade, they had become the most wanted robbers in two states. They