‘There,’ the driver said, jerking a surly thumb. ‘The place you’re looking for is down there.’
I paid him and he drove of at once. It was quiet after the mayhem of Kasa-Vubu. I started to walk down the narrow street. I felt very alone and a little afraid, and I was relieved when the white Land Cruiser appeared behind me and pulled up near the entrance. From there, I guessed, Petra would be able to film the house. I reached the address I had been given, a respectable dwelling with a security gate and – as I could glimpse over the wall – a couple of acacias growing in an inner court. I knocked on the door.
It was opened by a sullen woman of about thirty in a scarlet and white cotton wrap.
‘I’m looking for a boy called Londres,’ I said. ‘Are you his aunt?’
She squared up to me. ‘Why? Who are you?’
Evidently my bully-boy tactics were not going to work on this one.
‘I’ve come from London,’ I said, more agreeably. ‘I’m a university researcher, and I’m writing a book about African churches. I’m very interested in Londres’ story.’
‘What story?’ she demanded.
‘I understood that he had come back to Kinshasa to undergo deliverance?’
‘So? What of that?’
I hesitated, and in that moment a withered old woman appeared beside the aunt. She was toothless and keen-eyed and she peered narrowly at me.
‘It’s about that boy, is it?’ she demanded. ‘That Londres?’
‘Yes, madam,’ I said quickly, my heart beginning to thump. ‘Is he here?’
‘Nothing but trouble, that boy,’ the old woman muttered. ‘I should know. He’s my grandson. They put him through deliverance at the church, but it didn’t do much good. We sent him back for another lot. But the kindoki’s too strong in that one.’
‘He has kindoki?’
‘Of course he has. There’s a lot of it about, but he’s got it bad.’
‘He’s not here,’ the younger woman put in before I could go on.
‘But he lives here?’
‘Sometimes.’
‘Will he be back soon?’
‘Who knows?’ she said. ‘He may be on the other side of the city. How should I know when he’ll be back?’
‘Could I wait for him? He’s not in any kind of trouble, not with me. I just want to talk to him.’
She paused, but then gave in, perhaps realizing she was not going to get rid of me easily, or maybe convinced by my reassurances. Perhaps she even saw me as a potential source of profit.
‘You’d better come in, then,’ she said grudgingly. ‘But like I say, I don’t know how long he’ll be. Maybe he won’t come back at all tonight.’
I thought of the camera crew in the car just a few yards away. I didn’t want them to lose sight of me.
‘If it’s not too much trouble,’ I said, ‘perhaps we could have a couple of chairs out here? It’s so much cooler in the breeze.’
She shrugged, contemptuous of the eccentricities of foreigners,but brought out a couple of chairs and went back for another. In a few minutes, Londres’ aunt, his grandmother and I were sitting in the gathering dusk waiting for the boy’s return and chatting with stilted formality.
By this time we had an audience. A considerable crowd of children had gathered around us, steadily filling the lane. Most looked better cared-for than the kids along Kasa-Vubu, but they behaved in much the same way, some standing and staring, mostly at me, and a few scuffling and shoving one another. When they grew boisterous the aunt would snap at them and they would fall silent for a minute or two before starting up again. They knew who I was looking for: I could hear Londres’ name whispered among them.
I sat there in the mosquito-humming gloom for perhaps an hour. I dreaded the moment when the aunt would declare that we had waited long enough and tell me to clear of and not come back. I strongly suspected she thought I was trouble and I feared she’d got a message from someone to keep the boy away.
Just then one of the kids near my chair sidled up and jostled my arm. When I glanced at him he nodded down the alley to where a thin boy had just turned the corner and had stopped at the sight of the crowd.
‘Londres,’ the lad whispered in my ear.
I jumped up before anyone could speak to the new boy. I walked over to him, and as I drew closer I recognized him from his photographs. The gauntness of his face made his eyes look very large, and his whole aspect was wary and fearful, but he was the boy I was looking for. I felt a rush of relief.
‘Hello, Londres,’ I said slowly in English, not really sure if this child in the middle of the Congolese capital would really follow.
‘Who are you?’
He wasn’t tall for his age, but he had a certain breadth to his shoulders, and I guessed in England he would have been called stocky. Now the flesh had fallen away and left him looking pinched and underweight.
‘My name’s Richard,’ I said. ‘I’ve been looking for you.’
‘For me? Why are you looking for me?’ He looked cowed and unhappy, but his accent was pure street London, all fat vowels and glottal stops.
‘He wants to hear your story,’ the aunt called scornfully. ‘I don’t know why.’
The boy’s eyes were full of suspicion.
I told him I’d heard he had been through deliverance, and that he’d been brought back to Kinshasa for that. He watched me in silence.
‘They tell me you miss London,’ I said.
‘Yes.’ I could see hope jump in his eyes. ‘I miss London. I hate it here.’
‘Nothing but trouble, that boy,’ the toothless grandmother spat. ‘Trouble and ingratitude.’
‘Let’s not talk about it now,’ I said, leading him over to the two women and addressing myself to them. ‘Why don’t I come back in the morning and I’ll take Londres out somewhere for the day?’
‘Take him where?’ the aunt demanded.
I said I’d take him somewhere respectable, and suggested the Portuguese Club, which wasn’t far away and had a pool and a restaurant. I told the women I would buy the boy lunch and bring him back before dark. Before they could object I turned to Londres and asked him if he’d like a chance to chat about England, and especially football. He tried to look nonchalant, but in his eyes I could see a gleam of collusion, as if a secret message had been exchanged between us.
39
Kinshasa, August 2005
I was back outside the door by 9 a.m. the next morning.
I worried that Londres’ family might have had a change of heart; when I arrived and the aunt opened the door to me I could see no sign of him.
‘He’ll be around,’ the aunt told me, offhandedly. ‘You can wait inside.’
She walked of into the house, her flip-flops slapping on the cement. This time I followed her, and she led me into a neat room of an internal courtyard. A tall, elderly man I had not seen before was already sitting there. He was grey-haired and had a certain bearing, and as I entered the room he rose and greeted me coolly.
He explained, with some dignity, that he was Londres’ grandfather, and asked me to tell him what I wanted with the boy. I went through my patter: I was an academic, writing a book on the phenomenal rise of African revivalist churches, and I was interested in the experiences of someone who had gone through deliverance.
‘Not that it did him any good,’ the grandmother put in, shuffling past the doorway. ‘Trouble, that boy.’
‘I am concerned about this,’ the grandfather said. ‘I hear you want to take him to some club?’
It was a fair point. A foreigner appears out of the blue and wants to whisk your fourteen-year-old grandson of for the day? He had a right to be suspicious.
I said that I would take Londres for lunch, and maybe a swim, and that he would be back by the afternoon. I made a big thing of saying that naturally I wouldn’t want to do any of this without the grandfather’s agreement, and with that I produced a consent form. I had thought this piece of bureaucracy might be an ob
stacle, but now it worked to my advantage. Impressed by the formality of my important document, and with his authority acknowledged, the grandfather barely hesitated before signing.
As he did so, Londres walked into the room.
His face lit up when he saw me. Perhaps he hadn’t truly believed I would come back.
‘Hello, Londres,’ I said. ‘Shall we go?’
‘Yes,’ he replied, nodding rapidly. ‘Yes.’
When we arrived at the Portuguese Club at ten that morning we were its sole guests. The only sign of life at all in the gathering heat of the day was an old man listlessly sweeping up between the poolside tables.
The club is one of those fading expatriate social clubs that can be found in every former colonial city. I had chosen it because it wasn’t far from Londres’ house and because I slightly knew one of the Congolese chefs. The crew set up under one of the thatched shelters that surrounded the pool.
Londres was surprised to find that he was to be filmed, and a bit overwhelmed by all these unexpected professionals bustling about, but the crew – Andy in particular – were wonderful with him and he soon relaxed. Within a few minutes, with a Coke on the table in front of him, he was telling me his story.
‘I’ve been in London since I was four,’ he said. ‘I didn’t know anything about this kindoki, or whatever it is.’
‘And you didn’t want to come back to Kinshasa?’
‘Why would I? I don’t even speak their language. All my mates are in London. Besides, I was always afraid of coming here.’
‘Afraid? Why do you say that?’
‘It’s a place people try to get out of. Refugees and that. They only come back if they get caught or they’ve messed up.’
I could hear the faint whirr of the camera over my shoulder and could almost feel the crew engaging with his story. I was desperately sorry for Londres. I couldn’t miss the sadness in his large, pleading eyes. I had been told he’d been in trouble at school, and I didn’t have much difficulty imagining that, but to me he seemed like a typical fourteen-year-old London boy. He liked rap music and McDonald’s and was passionate about football. He supported Manchester United and idolized Cristiano Ronaldo.
‘Londres, do you have a British passport?’
‘I would’ve had in another month. I was sent here just before I was going to get it.’
Just one more month.
‘Tell me how you got here,’ I said.
‘My mum told me we were going on holiday. Switzerland, she said. I’d always wanted to go to the mountains, the snow and that. I was really excited. I thought she meant it. I really did.’ He was quiet for a moment, thinking back to this betrayal, still wounded by it. ‘I only caught on we were going to Kinshasa when we changed planes in Paris. Too late by then.’
‘What happened?’ I asked.
‘When we landed, my mum handed me over to this bloke from the church. That’s where he said he was from, anyway. I’d never seen any church like it. He took me away to some compound and locked me in a shed. Just like that, like I was a prisoner or something.’
‘And your mum?’
‘I saw her once more, a bit later. Then she went back to London and left me there.’
‘And what happened to you in that place?’
‘They call it deliverance. They’re mad, this lot. I mean, seriously mental.’ A flicker of fear entered his eyes and his voice. ‘I was kept in this church place for four weeks. I was alone most of the time. I got bread and water, and not much of that.’
‘For four weeks?’
‘Every now and then these people would come in and shout and rave at me and sometimes slap me about. I didn’t know what they wanted me to do. I couldn’t even understand what they were saying. They just screamed and shouted and then went away and locked me up again on my own.’
‘And then?’
‘They said it hadn’t worked. They moved me to some other compound and it all started again.’ His voice became urgent and he leaned across the table. ‘They’re bad people, Richard.’
‘The church, you mean?’
‘Yes. They’re bad news.’ He looked around as if he might be being watched. ‘They run all sorts of shit in this town. They can get anything done. You wouldn’t believe.’
Londres was clearly very frightened, and I could see why. I was filled with an intense pity for this lonely, scared boy, marooned in what looked to him like a madhouse. It seemed very like that to me too.
‘Can you take me back to London?’ he asked suddenly. His tough-kid attitude had deserted him. ‘Please, Richard. Take me home with you. I’d do anything to get out of here.’
‘Londres, your family would never let me do that.’
‘Please. I’ll be stuck in this place for the rest of my life. I’ll never get out.’
I couldn’t answer him, and I sat staring stupidly at the boy for several seconds. It was Andy, the lanky soundman, who saved the moment. He took of his headphones and punched Londres lightly on the shoulder.
‘Bollocks to this,’ he said. ‘Time to cool off.’ And with that he stepped to the edge of the pool and threw himself in, fully clothed. In a couple of moments Londres and the rest of us were all in the water, in various states of undress, splashing around like kids. Someone found a ball and a half-hour game of improvised water polo followed, which continued as soccer once we had dragged ourselves out of the pool. I could see why Londres was so passionate about football: he was extraordinarily good, and ran rings around even Andy, who was no slouch when it came to ball skills.
Perhaps for the first time in months Londres became a teenage boy again, laughing and shouting, squelching around after the ball in his sodden clothes. It felt to me as if this was all I could give him, this hour or two of normal, boisterous life. I suppose it was something.
After that we treated him to lunch. He sat wrapped in a towel while his clothes dried in the sun. I told him to order anything he wanted – he had two main courses and a vast confection of a dessert – and at about three in the afternoon I called a cab and prepared to take him back.
He was laughing until the last moment, high-fiving the crew and cracking jokes, but once inside the cab his mood grew instantly tense again and his expression hangdog. We drove away from the club in silence, and he barely acknowledged the waves and shouted farewells of Andy and the others.
As we approached his aunt’s house, his distress became even more evident and I felt desolate. I took him to the door, hugged him quickly and walked away,leaving him a forlorn and tearful figure, with his aunt and toothless crone of a grandmother fanking him like jailers. An ordinary London child, delivered into a ghoulish nightmare from which he could not escape.
Later that afternoon I contacted the British Embassy in Kinshasa.
‘We’re sympathetic, of course, Dr Hoskins,’ an official told me. ‘But if I understand you correctly, the boy isn’t even a British citizen.’
‘No, but he’s been a resident of London for most of his life.’
‘Hmm. Not good enough, I’m afraid. He’s Congolese. He’s a minor. He’s here with the consent and approval of his parents. From what you’re telling me, his mother actually brought him out here.’
‘He doesn’t want to be here. Doesn’t he have any rights?’
‘Of course he does, Dr Hoskins, but none that we can enforce.’
‘So what do you suggest I do?’
‘You could contact the Kinshasa social services department.’
‘Are you serious?’
‘I’m sorry. Truly.’
The next morning I took a cab straight round to the social services department of Kinshasa, a huddle of cinder-block offices in a littered backstreet. The visit proved to be every bit as much of a fiasco as I’d feared it would be.
I was greeted by a bad-tempered man in a white shirt who claimed he was the director. Speaking to me across a dusty desk entirely devoid of any signs of ongoing work he made it clear that he was profoundly uninterested in
Londres’ case. I didn’t like him, but he had a point. The streets outside his barred windows were full of destitute kids – tens of thousands of them – stealing, starving, selling their bodies. Every one of them had a tragic story, many of them more tragic than Londres’. What was special about Londres, the director seemed to imply, except that I chose to think of him as British?
‘I will make inquiries,’ he said, and stared stonily at me to show that the interview was over.
I suspected that he had forgotten me and Londres by the time I had left the building.
Back at Sacha’s room in the Memling hotel I called DC Jason Morgan in London.
‘We have no jurisdiction, Richard,’ he told me bluntly. ‘We’re the London Metropolitan Police, and you’re in bloody Kinshasa.’
‘You’d have jurisdiction if he was in England, wouldn’t you?’
‘Yes. But he’s not.’
‘He’s a boy from London. In everything except citizenship he’s as British as you or me. He deserves our help.’
‘They all do. Get real, Richard. What do you want us to do? Send in a squad car?’ When I said nothing his voice softened. ‘Half the world deserves our help, mate. Almost no one gets it. It’s not right,but it’s the way it is. You know that.’
I put the phone down and went to the bar, where the crew were drinking. They knew what I’d been trying to achieve, and they’d known I would fail. They lowered their voices when I appeared, the way people do around the bereaved.
‘Cheer up, Richard,’ Sacha said at last. ‘I’ve got us on a flight tomorrow. We can get back home and watch some cricket.’
Andy put a Primus on the bar in front of me. ‘We could always kidnap the little blighter.’
Of course he was joking. But as I stared into the frosted glass, I wondered if I might do just that – take a cab round to the house in the morning, bundle the boy in and escape with him. I knew the system well enough. I could bribe our way through the airport and onto the plane. I might just get away with it. And in London? Presumably I would be arrested for abduction. But Londres would be back home – and what headlines we would make with the case! Could it be worth it?
The Boy in the River: A Shocking True Story of Ritual Murder and Sacrifice in the Heart of London Page 23