—The ladies just find me irresistible, I guess.
—I meant the anonymous ones.
—You have an account or use phone cards?
—An account.
—Me too. I reckon whoever’s sending these has someone at the phone company checking off the names. Kiunga, Ngugi, Mungai, Mwangi, Wachira, Wambui. Not hard to tell the Kikuyus. It’s even easier to spot the names of Luo subscribers. Otieno, Oketch, Odhiambo. You know Orengo, the desk sergeant? He’s been getting messages in Jaluo saying that the Kikuyus are the ones who are going to attack first.
Although all the major political parties denied it, this election was firmly dividing along ethnic lines. President Kibaki’s Party of National Unity was dominated by the Kikuyu. Raila Odinga’s opposition, the Orange Democratic Movement, had the western Luo tribe at its core. Others among Kenya’s forty or so tribal groups tended to gravitate to one or the other.
—Esaa Enkai Nanyokie, mutters Mollel, and despite the heat, he shudders.
—What’s that? asks Kiunga.
—Something I just recalled, replies Mollel. In my language, it means Hour of the Red God. The Maasai believe it’s a time when madness descends. When people turn against each other and when anger is the only human instinct.
—Sounds about right, says Kiunga. I know you Maasai think there are only two tribes in Kenya, yourselves and everyone else, but the way this election’s shaping up, things are going to get nasty. And it looks like I’m not the only one who thinks so.
Kiunga gestures out the window. —All this jam. It’s people queuing for Nakumatt. Look.
Mollel looks out his window and notices for the first time that the traffic jam they’re stuck in is caused by cars backed up to get into the car park of the large supermarket whose entrance lies ahead. Now that he’s seen this, something else clicks too: the people passing by the car on both sides are not the usual traffic hawkers selling newspapers, trinkets, and fruit. They’re ordinary people, carrying loads of shopping, laden with cardboard cartons and plastic bags. Bags of grain like maize, flour, and millet; bottles of water; canned goods. A lady strides purposefully past with a baby strapped to her back in a khanga; a similar shawl across her breast bulges with tin cans.
—Tell me this is just normal Christmas shopping, says Mollel.
Kiunga laughs. —Haven’t you been stocking up, Mollel? You must be the only person in Nairobi who thinks this election is going to pass off with no trouble.
Mollel feels a hit of dismay. He has not stocked up. His meager provisions would barely feed himself and Adam for a day. It’s lucky the boy is with Faith.
He has been so caught up in this murder case that he has completely underestimated the looming situation. The threat of political violence has been a remote one for him, until now.
—The General Service Unit! he croaks.
—What about them?
—It must have been the GSU that Superglue Sammy heard in Uhuru Park. If there’s going to be trouble, they’d need to set up some sort of command post in the center of the city. That’s the ideal location. It’s the closest open space to both Parliament and the Central Business District.
—Why the secrecy, then? asks Kiunga.
—The GSU only take commands from State House, says Mollel. If word spread that they’re already preparing a command post—
Kiunga finishes his thought. —It would be taken as a sign that the government is planning to steal this election.
—Would they kill someone to cover it up? asks Mollel.
—Who knows what those bastards are capable of? What I do know is that if Lucy got in their way …
He leaves this thought unfinished. He does not need to elaborate. Everyone knows that no woman is safe when the GSU are around.
The common perception of the General Service Unit is that they make the Mungiki look like girl scouts. Rumor has it that they are the direct descendants of the paid death squads the British used against the Mau Mau: when the former freedom fighters took over, they inherited the whole apparatus and, rather than disband them, employed them against their rivals.
In Moi’s day, the GSU became a byword for repression, and the very presence of their dark green uniforms and crimson berets was enough to quell dissent. Those who were not intimidated tended to end up in the basement of the Interior Ministry building, where construction workers in the late nineties found an abandoned complex of hidden torture chambers.
Even though Moi has long since entered enforced retirement, the GSU retains its fearful reputation.
—Maybe they killed Lucy because she was a witness, says Mollel. She might have taken a client to Uhuru Park and stumbled across their maneuvers. But what happened to the client? And why mutilate her like that?
—Perhaps the client’s body has yet to turn up, says Kiunga darkly. And as for the mutilation … some of those guys regard rape as an occupational benefit. Who knows how far they’d go when they’re let off the leash?
—We need to warn Sammy. If they’ve eliminated one witness …
It’s not easy to get off the static dual highway, and it’s another twenty minutes before they get to a stretch where the median strip is clear enough of trees, rocks, and fencing for the Land Rover to get across. Although the traffic is still heavy in this direction, it is moving, and they reach Uhuru Park in another half hour.
The car parked, they head immediately back to Sammy’s palm among the bushes, but there is no sign of him. They cruise the streets for a couple of hours, checking all of Superglue Sammy’s regular haunts, speaking to some of the other beggars who are known to hang out with him.
He seems to have vanished off the face of the earth.
12
They’re heading south again. They’ve left the snarl-up of city traffic behind them and are back on Mombasa Road, but long past the stadium. They have taken a detour through the district known as South C, and now the traffic is more free-flowing. They pass the new office blocks being built on either side of the highway. Construction work is taking place wherever Mollel looks. This part of town is barely recognizable from even a few months before. It seems at times as though the whole city is in a state of flux.
The road itself does not escape the constant churn of development. At Athi River they are forced to take a diversion where a new stretch of highway is being built, and they quit the tarmac and rumble and judder along a rutted, dusty track.
Progress sometimes means taking a step back.
The traffic is still heavy, and numerous matatus and even long-distance buses take advantage of the informal setup to deviate from the track and plow across the open country on both sides, swerving around any obstacles, creating new paths and clouds of dust as they do so. It’s a free-for-all, and Mollel is glad of the Land Rover’s ground clearance when they are forced to swerve off the track by an intercity bus bearing down on them, lights flashing and horn blaring out a ghastly tune. So what if they have right-of-way? Their two tons can’t argue with his fifteen.
The road reconvenes at the cement works, and there’s a bottleneck as all the vehicles jockey to regain the tarmac. Mollel rolls up his window to block the choking dust that floods in any time they slow down. The only way to avoid it is to drive faster than it can blow in. Here, it has an acrid, alkaline taste from the spill-off from the factory and the waste ash that falls from the trucks bringing it to make cinder blocks. It is said that Athi River dwellers dare not go outside with their hair wet for fear of their locks setting hard.
Mollel recalls his own circumcision ceremony—he and his brother, Lendeva, both in their early teens, grinning at each other with their faces whitened with ash—and he puts the thought from his mind.
They cross the bridge over the river, low at this time of year, despite the rains. If the girl’s body had not been stopped in the park, this is where she would have washed up—or, ultimately, six hundred kilometers away in the Indian Ocean. This river also serves as sewer to most of Nairobi’s informal settle
ments—in other words, the city’s slums. Mollel notices a tanker truck parked down at the water’s edge, a man holding a thick suction pipe in the six inches or so of river. The sign on the tanker’s side reads CLEAN DRINKING WATER.
They roll into Kitengela, the last significant township this side of Nairobi, before the city gives way to the Kajiado plain. It’s a busy, thriving area. Church is out, and Sunday night is a time for socializing, for seeing friends, and for being seen in one’s finery. The nyama choma joints along the roadside are doing a brisk business, and the smell of roast meat makes Kiunga cast a longing glance at Mollel.
—I haven’t eaten since lunchtime, boss, he pleads.
—It’s only six!
—Exactly. I usually have something midafternoon. Just to keep me going.
—We’re nearly there. Mollel takes out his notepad and looks at the address Honey wrote for them the previous night. “Paradise Towers, Prison Road, Kitengela. Next to the Happy Days Abattoir.” Take this right.
* * *
They turn down Prison Road. Paradise Towers is a four-story apartment block—four and a half, to be accurate, as the fifth level is a concrete floor with reinforced piles sticking out of it, the owners presumably awaiting a time when they can afford to build further. The ground floor is occupied by the usual array of enterprises—a mobile phone shop, a barber, a nyama choma joint.
—Remember, she asked us to park away from the building, says Mollel.
—Sawa sawa. Kiunga drives past a few buildings and stops the car outside a corrugated iron shack with a sign advertising VIDEO GAMES 10/- PER GO. As they get out, Mollel sees a group within, young men and boys clustered around a TV screen. A car-racing game is being played, and the whole group leans from left to right as the player takes the corners of the racetrack.
A couple of youths are hanging around at the door. —You two, says Kiunga. Watch this car. Anything happens to it, you’re paying for the damage.
—And if nothing happens? asks one of the boys.
—Ten bob.
They grin. —Each?
—If nothing happens.
—Don’t worry, Officer. We’ll take good care of your wheels.
* * *
The two detectives walk to Paradise Towers. There’s enough foot traffic for them to discreetly melt away from the police Land Rover. At the center of the facade, between a shop front and a noisy bar, there’s a staircase, where they pause.
—Listen, Kiunga, says Mollel. With Sammy gone, Honey is our only witness. I don’t want you to upset her.
—Upset her? Kiunga gives him a quizzical look.
—You know what I mean. Last time you were pretty hard on her.
—She’s a poko, Mollel. Prostitutes like her are used to worse than us.
—Maybe. But that’s not the way I want to play it.
A frown crosses Kiunga’s brow, but he seems to assent to his superior officer, and they make their way up to the fourth floor. Once there, the landing takes the form of a balcony that runs the length of the front of the building. There are no numbers on the doors. By the close spacing, Mollel reckons they’re just single rooms. His suspicion is confirmed when he walks past an open door and catches a glimpse of a family living in a space not much bigger than one of the holding cells at Central. Next, they pass a communal bathroom with the door open, a woman inside washing what seems like a schoolful of children.
They come to the end of the balcony. —She said it was this one, says Mollel. He raps on the door with his knuckles. He wonders whether anyone inside could hear it above the sounds of traffic and screaming kids and passersby and music from the bar below. But after only a moment he hears the scrape of a latch being pulled back, and the door opens.
A woman answers, and Kiunga says, —Sorry. We were looking for someone else.
Mollel looks at her closely: smooth, shaved head; average height; Maasai features. It is Honey.
She laughs. —Come in, she says.
Kiunga still looks nonplussed as they enter the cramped, bare space. He breathes an oh of realization when he sees the long, glossy wig carefully placed upon a stand.
—The four-inch heels make a difference, too, she says with a smile. Sorry to disappoint you, boys. Not quite so attractive in the real world, eh?
Mollel surprises himself when he says, —You look lovely. Then, in his embarrassment, he looks at Kiunga, who raises an eyebrow at him.
Honey laughs again. —Kind of you to say so, Sergeant. But fellow Maasai aren’t really my target market. You know? Now, I would offer you a seat, but …
She waves a hand around the small room. It is bare except for a foam mattress on the floor, covered by a shuka; a cooking ring attached directly to a gas cylinder and a few utensils in a pot next to it; a dressing table; and a row of clothes on hangers, dangling from a cane suspended from two pieces of string tied to two nails tacked to the ceiling. Another shuka covers the small window on the far wall.
—You both lived here? asks Kiunga.
—We shared, yes, says Honey. This is just somewhere to sleep. We both managed pretty well. This is not somewhere to bring clients, if that’s what you’re thinking.
—No, I’m sure it’s not to their taste, says Kiunga, a note of sarcasm creeping into his voice. I expect you take them to the international hotels—the Balmoral, the Splendid. Perhaps you slip the night manager a hundred bob to let you ply the bars. Or is the lunchtime trade more your thing? Bribing the housekeepers to give you an hour in a vacant room before the paying guest checks in?
Honey flashes Mollel a distressed look. —I thought we were going to be all right about—about what I do?
—What you do, says Kiunga flatly, is what got your friend killed.
—That’s one theory, says Mollel, flashing his colleague a glance of warning.
Honey turns to Mollel, eyes glistening. —Can I speak to you alone, please? she asks in Maa.
Just as the night before, Mollel is stumped for a reply, so long has it been since he’s conversed in his own language. Finally he says to Kiunga in English, —Why don’t you go get some food?
—With pleasure, says Kiunga. Then, to Honey: —We’re only trying to help, you know.
She acknowledges him with a nod.
—Get you something? he asks Mollel.
—No, thanks. I’ll see you downstairs.
—Give me a shout if you need anything, says Kiunga, and he meets Mollel’s eye. Mollel just wants to be rid of him and is cross that Kiunga has disregarded his advice. But Kiuga’s look says be careful. Then he leaves.
—He’s a good guy, really, says Mollel.
—I’m sure he is, says Honey. But you know, I can hear it in his voice. The contempt. The disgust. To him I’m just another K Street poko. Lucy’s the same. Dead or alive, the job is all we are. That’s why I came to you. I thought perhaps you’d have more sympathy for a poor little Maasai girl who went and got herself killed. That you’d see the person, not just the profession.
—I do.
—Yet you think it was the job that got her killed?
—We just go on the evidence. It is what it is. The location, what she was wearing, the time of night. We think she may have gone there with a client. Perhaps he did it, perhaps she disturbed someone, saw something. If we could just find the client …
Honey throws her hands up in exasperation. Mollel continues: —Statistically, prostitute murders …
—Statistics! she wails. I’ll show you statistics!
She flies to the door and to the balcony rail outside. For an instant Mollel believes she is about to throw herself over. But she stops there, hands gripping the rail tightly, knuckles pale, elbows locked.
—Come! she shouts. Look for yourself!
Mollel joins her at the rail.
The sun is setting. The skyscrapers of the city center are just visible as inky purple silhouettes on the horizon against the crimson sky. The foreground is a panorama of houses and water towers, a landscape of
corrugated iron, concrete, and thatched makuti roofs. Every square inch seems populated. Television aerials sprout like seedlings, satellite dishes like fungi. Mobile phone masts and mosque minarets break the monotony, pushing up as if attempting to escape the humanity below. And where the sky darkens, away from the city, the cement works stand illuminated in halogen and phosphorus, steaming and suppurating dust—a white, powdery moon city in contrast with sun-soaked, blood-soaked Nairobi to the northwest.
The noise is constant: mechanical crashing from the cement works, the rumble of traffic on the highway, music, prayer, shouts, screams, laughter, life. Mollel can hear hundreds of human voices, but apart from the woman at his side, he cannot see a single human being until he looks down. Then the street opens up before him with all its pulsing vitality. People course its length, moving like ants in a trail, each picking his own way but each a constituent part of the two-way flow. Mollel spots Kiunga leaning on the counter of a nyama choma joint across the street; he’s chewing on a chicken leg and chatting up the serving girl. Farther down the street is their car, the two boys from the video shack lounging proprietarily against a wheel arch. Families, spruce in their Sunday best, little girls in puffy satin dresses and boys in replica lounge suits; a sausage vendor pushing his brazier; hawkers selling fruit and mosquito bats and magazines; matatu touts drumming up trade; goats and chickens nonchalantly grazing on trash whenever a spot of clear ground appears.
—You know, says Honey, this city didn’t even exist a hundred years ago. It was our land then. N’garan’airobi. The place of cold springs. All these people—these Kikuyus, Luos, Merus, Embus, Kalenjin, Luhyas, and whatever else—they’re here because the white man came here one day and said, This is a nice, cool, fertile part of the country. I’ll build my city here. Look down at that street. How many people do you reckon there are there?
—Five, six hundred? guesses Mollel.
—And that’s one little side street. There are twenty, thirty streets like it in Kitengela. And Kitengela’s just one district. There’s Mlolongo, Athi, South B, South C, Embakasi, Donholm, Pipeline, Industrial Area. They all have streets like this, full of people. And we’re only talking about the districts in this part of town. What’s that, a quarter, an eighth of the city?
Hour of the Red God Page 9