by Jay Nadal
The track carried on upwards for some time before he slipped off to the right and ducked under several branches that blocked his route. A hundred yards further on, he arrived at the small opening. The tree line thinned. A sliver of moonlight spilled through the sparse canopy like a searchlight, offering him the first glimpse of his destination. Ahead were posts and a wire fence. The shed just beyond.
He paused. The chill licked his face and crept under his clothes, spreading across his skin like the cold tide on a winter’s beach. His teeth chattered as he pulled his thin coat tighter to fend off the shivering. After carrying his load for what seemed miles, he should have been hot with steam trails wafting from his head, but he felt chilled. Perhaps it was the sense of anticipation rather than the cold.
Unlocking the door, he let himself in, glancing around one last time for unwelcomed visitors. He felt safe inside. Everything he lived for, he could experience here. He lit the circle of candles. The air remained still except for the odd draft that crept through the gaps in the walls.
The flames captivated him as they danced in his eyes. They were steady and bright enough to relieve the darkness of the room, but not enough to read by. The items around the candles cast shadows that stretched out as hands on an old analogue clock would. The wicks blackened; the wax turned to liquid, running down the sides and on to the glass plates.
He unrolled his bag of instruments and selected a sharp craft knife which he placed by a large shallow pan. The skull he’d placed outside of the circle of candles smiled back at him, its face illuminated in the soft light. He chanted the words that he’d been taught. “Kwangathi lo mnikelo uletha ingcebo nenhlanhla.” He was sure that this offering would bring wealth and luck as he repeated the chant, increasing the tempo and preciseness of his words.
His eyes widened, his head spun, and his breath came short and fast. Picking up his sacrifice by its legs, he attached it to the A-frame that he had built. His hand trembled as he reached for the knife. He bit his lip and tightened his fingers around the handle, his fingertips turning white with the pressure. A shiver rattled through him. He tried to calm himself, but only shallow breaths followed.
His sacrifice struggled and screamed, but only for a few moments, before the craft knife carved a deep wound across its throat. Silence fell on the room as the blood pulsed out, forming a pool in the shallow pan. Steam rose as the sickly sweet smell filled the small room.
He bowed and muttered, “Kwangathi lo mnikelo uletha ingcebo nenhlanhla.”
Holding the head in one hand, he continued to carve through the neck until it separated from the body. He needed to work fast. He couldn’t keep the gods waiting. The offerings had to be warm. He placed the severed head on a bed of feathers before taking the craft knife once again and tracing it down the centre of the body.
A warmth emanated from the cavity as he reached in, the heat and blood wrapping his hands in the gloves of death. With the warm heart in one hand, he hacked away at the structures holding it in place.
He cupped the heart in two hands and raised it above his head before closing his eyes. “Kwangathi lo mnikelo uletha ingcebo nenhlanhla,” he shouted three times. Euphoria spread through him uncontained, like a bush fire, as the hairs on his arms prickled in excitement. He inhaled soaking up the magnetic energy and vibes that circled him like a preying vortex.
Pleased with his work, warped satisfaction in the shape of a smile softened his face.
With his precious gift stored away until tomorrow, he padlocked the door. A final look around confirmed the absence of unwanted guests, so he started his journey back to the vehicle.
15
Cara woke to Scott whistling and shouting, “Morning beautiful.” Cara opened one eye, glanced at the clock and groaned. It seemed mere seconds ago she’d collapsed in bed. She reached out and pulled the covers over herself. The Flying Scotsman thundered along its tracks inside her head, and Scott’s voice sounded no different to its whistle.
“Breakfast time!” Scott shouted, holding a glass of orange juice in one hand, and a tray with toast and tea in the other.
“What’s this?” Cara groaned, “National Let’s Annoy Cara Day?”
Scott plonked the juice down on the bedside table and placed the tray on the bed. “No, it’s room service, madam. You worked so hard yesterday, and last night you exhausted yourself. No doubt it was a real chore getting through a bottle of wine, and all that lifting.” Scott repeatedly mimicked raising his hand to his mouth. “I thought you might need a lie-in, and then a pick-me-up.”
From beneath the covers, Cara’s hand appeared to give him a third finger salute.
“That’s not a nice way to treat your boyfriend,” he replied climbing over the bed to pull her covers down. “Besides, we do have to get up. I’m due in at ten, and you said your first PM is at ten-thirty a.m.”
Cara groaned again as she hauled herself up in bed, rubbing her eyes, and then ran her hand through her hair. “Next time we do a dinner bash, we do it as the weekend, agreed?”
Scott smiled. “Next time we do a dinner bash, you don’t drink so much, agreed?”
Cara playfully punched him on the arm and reached for her juice.
“Oi, that’s assault you know.”
“Does that mean you have to handcuff me and then frisk me?” she toyed.
“Frisk you?” Scott laughed. “You’ve been watching too many American cop shows.”
There was a comfortable pause as Cara took a bite from her toast, and sipped her tea. The ease with which they could sit there in silence reflected just how far they had come as a couple, and how they relished being in each other’s company.
Scott leant over and kissed her on the cheek. “It was good fun last night, wasn’t it?”
Cara nodded. “What did you think of Jonathon?”
Scott raised his eyebrows, saying, “Actually, he’s a really nice bloke. He dresses well, he likes to talk, a real conversationalist and really genuine.”
“You sound surprised?”
“Well…not so much surprised. I guess more pleased than anything. Abby’s told me on many occasions how shitty her old relationships were. Big drinkers, big smokers, verbally aggressive, and a complete mismatch in personalities. I think she got to the point where she’d lost faith in finding a truly meaningful relationship. Abby had become very sceptical. To the point where I think she held back on her feelings to protect herself, and that’s why I think people found her quite cold and defensive. I think it was a defensive mechanism, if I’m honest.”
“Thank you for that assessment, Dr Baker,” Cara teased. “The main thing is that’s she’s happy. She looked terrified last night on the doorstep, and you didn’t help by giving him an interrogation,” she added, laughing.
“Well, I’m only looking out for her,” he mumbled as he went off for a shower.
Scott had only just arrived when Abby came searching for him desperate to know his thoughts about Jonathon. Like a nervous teenager, both excited and petrified of receiving their A-level results, she eagerly searched Scott’s face for feedback.
He kept it nothing but complimentary, much to Abby’s relief. In a strange way, he got the sense that Abby sought confirmation that her judgement and choice of men didn’t always suck, and that Jonathon’s virtues weren’t figments of her imagination.
Abby had been keen to stress just how much they had enjoyed the evening, and on the journey home, how Jonathon kept repeating how much he had enjoyed the evening. He had gone as far as to say that Scott and Cara made a lovely couple, and that they should return the offer of a meal.
The conversation stopped abruptly when Scott’s internal phone rang. He answered with a stony face as he listened to the desk sergeant. Scott scribbled down a few notes, and asked a few questions before replacing the handset.
“Problems?”
Scott sighed and stared towards the ceiling. “We’ve just had a report come in. A five-year-old boy’s gone missing.”
“Coincidence?” Abby speculated.
“You know me; I don’t believe in them. He’s five years old, black, lives on the Whitehawk estate, and his family are asylum seekers.”
Abby’s eyes widened as she swore.
“Exactly.” Scott threw his pen on the table. “What fucks me off is that he’s been missing for three days, and his parents have only reported it this morning. Dolores Carter is a care worker who works for a support group. The group has close contact with families seeking asylum. The parents told her, and she’s called it in.”
Dolores Carter, a slim African lady with braided hair, answered the door. Abby immediately noticed her exceptionally large silver earrings that dangled from her stretched earlobes. She showed the officers through to a small lounge where a couple sat huddled together, fear etched in their eyes. Dolores introduced Scott and Abby to them before offering them a seat.
Scott had asked Abby to take the lead on this whilst he took notes. With the fear and intimidation that they obviously felt, he wasn’t entirely sure that they would open up to him.
“I’m Detective Sergeant Trent, and this is my colleague Detective Inspector Baker. Dolores called to inform us that your son Nathi has been missing for three days. Can you tell us what happened?”
Sizani and Musa Buhari glanced nervously at each other, both uncertain as to who should speak. Their hands were tightly woven for support. Musa glanced towards the officers. In broken English he began, “Nathi, just a small boy. He said he wanted to play with other boys. We let him play in street. He used to playing out in our home country. He went out and not come back.” Musa looked towards his wife who sobbed heavily, her shoulders shaking with grief. He placed a reassuring arm around her shoulder, and pulled her tight to his body.
Despite his heavy accent, Musa’s command of the English language surprised Abby. She nodded sympathetically. “Do you know who he was playing with?”
“Just other boys.”
“Do you have their names, or know where they live?”
A wall of silence met her question. The parents exchanged another round of frightened glances, before looking in Dolores’s direction.
Dolores nodded. “I can provide you with their names later, but I’ve already been around to their houses. And no one has seen anything. They said that one minute the little boy was playing with them, and the next he disappeared.”
Abby took a picture from the parents. A small chubby face, and a wide radiant smile stared back at her. He held his arms up aloft in some gesture of victory, clearly capturing a joyous moment. Sadness and apprehension ran through Abby’s body as she contemplated just how frightened the young boy must be. She pushed away a dark thought that crept into her mind. What if he had already taken his last breath?
The team had been unable to make inroads into Michael’s case over the last twenty-four hours. Searches on the pastor turned up nothing of concern. Scott, however, remained adamant that the pastor was connected to the case in some way. How? That part was uncertain. The pastor was both revered and feared. He had access to Michael through the Sunday school. Evidence of Michael being there had been found, but there had been nothing else to implicate the man.
Enquiries on Pastor Joshua Mabunda uncovered that he’d travelled to the UK eleven times in the past two years, and would stay for six to eight weeks before returning to South Africa. He had just returned to the UK two weeks ago, approximately a week prior to the discovery of Michael’s body.
In Scott’s eyes, the timings were a little too close for them to be random. Information obtained from the South African embassy confirmed that on each occasion, he had obtained a UK visitor visa. He had never stayed the maximum six months allowed under each visa. Scott assumed that if the pastor continued that trend, he would leave in less than six weeks. That time frame only heaped further pressure on Scott and his team to uncover any connection with Michael’s death.
Scott clicked through pages of websites that he’d pulled up on muti killings. The images horrified him. A common thread appeared in all the images…they were children, young children. He winced and screwed his face.
“Whilst being mutilated, it is believed that the noise from the agony of the victims strengthens the potency of the various soft tissues and organs being removed,” he repeated to himself.
He glanced through one case after another from South Africa. One article in 2009 reported how a ten-year-old child was taken, and was found in bushes near her home the following night with her internal organs stripped. In another, the murder occurred in 2004, when a ten-year-old boy was hit with an object causing a gash on his head. The murderers then chopped off his penis, his hand, and his ear.
Scott shook his head, a mixture of repulsion and fascination washing over him. No matter how hard he tried to look away, the morbid allure of these cases pulled him back in.
Another case highlighted the murder of a six-year-old girl found brutally mutilated. As he read through each case, he hardened to the facts being presented. The little girl’s tongue, heart, and intestines were cut out of her whilst she was still alive. After she had died, the murderers put her body in a plastic bag. Her body was found five days after she was reported missing, floating in a nearby river. On this occasion he sat back in his chair, his mouth aghast.
Just as he thought he’d read it all, this female victim had experienced savagery beyond his comprehension. He ran his hand through his hair in disbelief as he read through the last few lines again. “The left hand had been severed, her tongue cut out, and there was an incision from her navel to the end of her buttocks. The private parts had also been removed.”
He’d seen enough.
16
Having read through horrifying accounts of child murder, Scott questioned how such killings could be allowed, and more to the point, accepted in some parts of the world. The fact that cases of muti killings appeared to be on the rise alarmed him even further.
The evidence, the cultural background of those involved, and nature of the crimes all pointed towards sacrificial or ritual killings. However, Scott couldn’t rule out the possibility of this being a more straightforward case of abduction and murder disguised to look like muti.
Once again, he stared at his notepad. Pastor Mabunda had a question mark by his name. Margaret, the childminder had a NO by hers. Scott’s gut told him that Margaret wasn’t involved in the murder. She was more concerned with finding a way to stay in the country. He added Nathi Buhari to the page. The irony of the boy’s name hadn’t been lost on Scott, when the boy’s parents had informed Scott that Nathi in Zulu meant god is with us.
With nothing more to go on, Scott needed to expand his search, and learn more about the complexity of ritual killings. A call to Simon Young would be a good starting point. He’d also ask Abby to put the heat on Dolores Carter. The support worker provided their avenue into the secretive world of asylum seekers. Up to this point, they’d met a wall of silence. The council had given them the locations of all the families, but none had been willing to talk. Many had even refused to answer the door when members of Scott’s team had visited.
Scott headed over to the incident board, and added a few more photos of Nathi. With one child murdered and another missing, there was a growing argument to go for press appeal. His thoughts were interrupted as Helen hung up the phone.
“Guv, we’ve hit a positive match on the blanket that Michael was wrapped in. We’ve found a couple of local camping, outdoor type shops that stock this item. Two of the shops have recorded sales of the blanket in the last three weeks.”
Scott spun on his heels as he did a double take of the incident board. The forensic pictures of a crumpled, red, bloodstained blanket caught his eye. “Excellent work, Helen. Get down there. We need any CCTV footage of the transactions, and purchaser details. Take Abby with you.”
Abby and Helen made their way through the station with a sense of urgency in their steps. As they neared the back entrance to the car park, Abby heard her name
being hollered as Samantha Huxtable jogged up behind her. “Is it urgent, Sam? We’ve got to dash.”
“No worries, I can catch up with you later. I’m heading out in a moment, too. Remember that sodding case I’ve been given?”
Abby nodded as she searched her bag for her car keys.
“Well, I’ve just had a report of a dismembered pooch being found. It had its heart removed.”
This time, Scott did meet Simon Young in his campus office. The lecturer rose from his worn swivel chair and shook Scott’s hand. “So, are you ready to become a fully paid-up witch doctor?” The seriousness in Simon’s expression threw Scott for a moment, but then he smiled. “Had you fooled? You should’ve seen your face.”
Scott smiled not expecting such a welcome from the man.
Simon offered him a nearby armchair. “How can I help? I sensed a pressing urgency in your voice when you called.”
Scott took out his notepad ready to refer to some earlier notes. “We’re hitting a brick wall with this case. We’ve got very little forensic evidence other than the blanket and sheeting that the boy was wrapped in. We’ve got no witnesses, and the community and others connected to the case are proving less than helpful. Simon, what I need from you is help tracking down the person responsible. Is there anything that you can tell me in terms of who or what we could be looking for?”
Simon formed a steeple with his fingers as he rested his elbows on the table. “When I’ve liaised with the Investigative Psychology Unit of the South African Police Service as part of my study into muti, they estimate that fifty to three hundred lives are lost to ritual murders every year. It’s widely practised, accepted, and feared. They don’t have accurate figures because most murders are recorded simply as murders irrespective of motive, dismissed as the work of some crazy nutjobs.”