Daniel Guy's Blog

By Daniel Guy The sun comes up over the Indian Ocean and within a few hours it’s already 35 degrees along the East African coast.  A local lad, Ibrahim, is cleaning the private beach in front of a grand colonial house, owned by Oliver Matuo, a close friend of the country’s president.  There are plenty of discarded black plastic bags, torn to shreds among piles of trash  washed up onto the white sands by the sea every day.  At times the tide will throw ashore the strangest things, discarded in a plastic sack. Ibrahim would tell you, if you asked him. Today, as he rakes the garbage into a large clear plastic sack, he is thinking to himself how strange it is that man has found a thousand things to with plastic bags, and now it seems they too will soon be banned.   Most days he is there, keeping the stretch of sand belonging to Mr Matuo clean and raked. He rarely sees anyone from the house coming down to use the beach. Just Asha, Oliver Matua’s only daughter. She is nineteen

by Daniel Guy Normally when Lennie goes out on a job with the Murphy brothers, he’s the one who stays in the car and keeps a lookout, while Rick and Tom carry out the crimes. But Tom Murphy cracked his toe jumping over a wall three nights ago and his foot is in plaster, so tonight it’s been decided that Tom is staying in the car Lennie will assist his brother Rick with the robbery. Lennie is very unhappy about this and has protested several times. He’s a skinny youth of twenty and just tags along with Rick and Tom to earn some cash for his dope habit. He’s no thief and doesn’t want to do it, but the Murphy brothers are both over six foot and ex-boxers with years of criminal experience, and when they’ve made their minds up, there’s no point arguing with them. It’s three am and they’re sitting in Tom’s old black Jag, parked in a quiet country lane, keeping an eye on a large old house. It’s raining heavily and Lennie has forgotten to bring his coat. A distant church-bell chim