—Do you reckon he’s on the take? asks Kiunga, his smile fading.
—I don’t know.
—He certainly shut down the case pretty rapidly once Kingori came on the scene. And they obviously know each other.
—If you’re suggesting that Kingori might have bribed him, I don’t think that’s Otieno’s style. For all his arrogance, I think he’s more concerned about his career than his wallet. Who knows what pressure might have been brought in that department.
—Talking about little gifts, says Kiunga, don’t we have a Christmas present to deliver?
* * *
Districts mean a lot in Nairobi. Take, for example, Lavington, one of the most desirable neighborhoods in the city. Most people would agree that Lavington ends at the James Gichuru Road. West of there, it’s Kawangware.
Most people would agree, but not Faith. It’s well known, she insists, that Lavington extends at least one block west of James Gichuru. And that’s where her house is. Any attempt to persuade her otherwise is met with a stern look and the response, —I’ve lived here twenty years and it’s always been Lavington.
However, James Gichuru Road is more than a psychological barrier. As soon as you cross it, a change as sudden as the Great Rift’s rain shadow comes over the environment. The genteel colonial bungalows with their clipped lawns and jacaranda confetti are replaced with cinder-block walls and hastily erected apartment buildings. Street hawkers, who seemingly feel discomforted across the road, sell their maize and secondhand clothing openly, and in recent years this also appears to have become the destination of choice to buy knockoff DVDs. Even the matatus respect the apparent frontier, coasting peacefully along Gitanga Road as far as James Gichuru, then pushing their way across their rivals’ paths, jockeying for space alongside—and on—what passes for sidewalk, blasting their horns at any pedestrians who fail to fly into the bushes at their approach.
—I thought Faith lived in Lavington, says Kiunga as Mollel gives him directions to her house.
—If she mentions it, just accept that her house is in Lavington. It’s a little piece of Lavington in the middle of Kawangware. Think of it as an embassy.
* * *
Today this part of Lavington-cum-Kawangware is quieter than usual. Mollel directs Kiunga to pull off the main road, and they go a short way down a dirt track. It’s a few weeks since Mollel has been to Faith’s house, and the first thing he notices is a frothy metallic swirl gleaming along the top of the wall. For a moment he thinks it’s a Christmas decoration. Then he realizes it is razor wire.
Next he notices the youths loitering outside the gate. Actually, youths is an inaccurate description. They have the shiftless, cagey manner of truant schoolboys, simultaneously nervous and challenging. But these five men are no adolescents.
Even so, they instinctively palm their cigarettes when the police Land Rover approaches. Kiunga’s defense instincts have clicked in, just as Mollel’s have. Instead of driving to the gate, he pulls up opposite the house and stops the engine.
—Ho, says one of the men. Looks like the old Kikuyu woman has visitors for Christmas lunch.
Mollel and Kiunga get out.
—Habari, vijana, Kiunga says. What’s up, boys?
—Nothing.
They mutter some words that Mollel recognizes as belonging to the Luo language, and they laugh. Then Kiunga addresses them in the same tongue. They look at him in shock.
—Yes, I speak Jaluo, says Kiunga, switching now to English. My first posting, straight after basic training, was to Kisumu. So I’ve heard every slang term for Kikuyu and policeman that you could possibly come up with. Now, what’s all this tribalist nonsense?
—It’s not us, says the man at the front of the group. Ask those thieving Kikuyus! He waves his hand at Faith’s gate, and Mollel sees a glint of glass bottle.
—Us Luos always get a bad deal, complains another. These Kikuyus come here, pushing up the rent.
—She’s probably been here longer than you! protests Kiunga.
—Doesn’t give her the right to tell us where we can and can’t go. This is a public highway, isn’t it?
—So she’s complained about you hanging out here?
There is muttered assent.
—I don’t blame her! says Kiunga. Look at you!
The men shuffle and eye one another. Kiunga laughs. Slowly, grudgingly, they smile too.
—You want to talk about grievances? continues Kiunga. He’s on a roll. He points to Mollel. —Look at this guy. A Maasai. His lot were fighting off the wazungu with bows and arrows while you were still dragging dagaa out of the lake!
They give a reluctant laugh.
—Come on, says Kiunga. It’s Christmas. I know the old woman can be a bit of a jike, but give her a break, huh? Can’t you find somewhere else to drink your chang’aa?
—Suppose so.
—And we’re all Kenyans, aren’t we? Let’s hear no more of this tribalist crap.
The men swagger away. The policemen watch them until they have cleared the corner.
—You handled that well, says Mollel.
—You’ve got to deal with it with humor, says Kiunga, otherwise you’ll end up with a panga in your head. Christ, I can’t stand all this tribalism. You know, I spent the happiest five years of my life in Kisumu. I like Luos. I love Lake Victoria. Imagine, a Kikuyu whose favorite food is fish. And Luo girls …
The blissful, distant look on his face completes the sentence.
—And I do believe, says Mollel, that you called my mother-in-law a bitch.
—Sorry about that.
—I didn’t say you were wrong.
* * *
Faith’s first words, once they’ve brought the car inside the compound: —You saw those no-good wamera outside, then?
Mollel glares at her. —I hope you don’t use language like that in front of Adam.
—What’s wrong with that? They’re Luos, aren’t they? So they must be uncircumcised. It’s simply a statement of fact.
—I don’t want him picking up tribalist terms.
Faith scoffs. —You think he doesn’t hear them every time he goes through the gate? He used to play on the street there, until it got too much. They’re trying to drive us out, me and the other Kikuyus. They want to make this a Luo-only zone.
—That’s what they said about the Kikuyus.
—Well, it will have to be one or the other, says Faith. She looks at Kiunga. —I suppose I’m going to have to set an extra place for lunch?
—Happy Christmas, Faith, says Kiunga. Don’t worry about me. I’ve just come to help drop off Adam’s present.
—Actually, says Mollel, getting the bicycle out of the back of the Land Rover, I won’t be staying for lunch either.
—It’s Christmas Day, says Faith. I’ve killed a chicken.
—I know. There’s nothing I can do about it. It’s work. I’ll be here for supper.
—Well, you can tell him yourself. I’m not going to break it to him. He’s around the back.
* * *
Behind the house, in the laundry area, Adam is kicking a football against the wall. Mollel feels a pang of dismay at the small square of sky above; the whole space seems so curtailed. At the same age, he’d easily cover five, sometimes ten miles a day. Forest, ravine, mountain, plain.
And then he thinks of the smart shoes on Adam’s feet, his clean clothes, his school, his opportunities.
The boy is well-off, he decides.
—Hi, Adam.
—Dad! He rushes up and hugs him. —Happy Christmas!
—Happy Christmas. What’s this, a new football?
Adam looks embarrassed. —Yes. Grandma bought it for me.
Mollel picks up the football. He turns it in his hands. It’s light, springy. It’s orange in color. A fun gift for a boy.
—Sorry, he says. I should have bought you a football before now. I never thought of it, not having had one myself as a child.
—Oh, no worries, Dad.
The football in his hand, Mollel has an idea forming in his mind.
—Can I borrow this for a while?
—I suppose so, says Adam.
—Don’t worry. I’ve got something else for you instead. Come and see what your dad has bought you for Christmas.
* * *
They stay an hour or so, Adam wobbling up and down the road, Kiunga holding on to his saddle, the new bike getting smiles from passing neighbors and envious glances from their children. With the Luo boys gone, the atmosphere in the street is relaxed, friendly. Even the roar of traffic from the nearby main road fades into the background, and the place feels like a village.
—Look, Dad! I’m doing it on my own!
He pulls away from Kiunga, who stops running and puts his hands on his knees, laughing. Adam speeds toward the main road.
—Okay, Adam, stop now!
—I can’t! Panic in his voice.
—Stop him! cries Faith. But Mollel, who has never ridden a bike, is unable to think what to do. He feels the rush of air past him as Kiunga sprints after Adam. He watches as Kiunga catches up with the bike, grabs the boy’s shoulders, and pulls, bringing the bike crashing to the ground just a few feet short of the main road as a truck roars past.
He doesn’t run to his father. It’s Kiunga’s shoulder the boy chooses to bury his tearful face into.
20
—I wish it was Christmas every day, says Kiunga. Then, getting no response from Mollel, he continues: —Not that I’m a big fan of festivities. I just like the lack of traffic. It would take us, what, an hour to get here normally? And we’ve just done it in ten minutes.
They pull up at the entrance to Uhuru Park. Kiunga squeezes through the concrete posts. There are a couple of other cars in the car park, but no other signs of life.
—Stop here, says Mollel.
Kiunga parks, and they get out. Mollel approaches the posts. He examines one, then the other. At the right-hand one, he crouches, rubs it with his fingers.
—What is it? asks Kiunga, bending over for a better look.
—See here? This post’s been hit. Not hard. Just enough to chip the concrete, probably dent the fender of the car. And leave a few flecks of paint behind.
He holds up his fingernail.
—Silver paint, he says. The Land Cruiser owned by Equator Investments has a scrape on the fender.
—Could be a coincidence, says Kiunga.
—Could be. Or it could be that James Lethebridge, or someone else driving that car, was here before Lucy’s body was discovered.
—It doesn’t really fit in with your theory, though, does it? I mean, according to you, Lucy was dumped up the hill, at Orpheus House. They didn’t know she was going to wash out down here.
—True, says Mollel. And he tries to convince himself that there are plenty of silver cars in Nairobi, plenty of places where that Land Cruiser could have picked up a scrape. This is all a distraction. It’s Wanjiku Nalo he’s after, and he has a baby to find, alive or dead.
* * *
And then he thinks, If the facts don’t fit the theory, maybe the theory’s wrong.
But no. He’s convinced of Wanjiku Nalo’s guilt. And he’s come here today to try to prove it.
* * *
—Get me the football from the car, would you?
At the place where Lucy’s body was found, all that remains is a lot of smeared mud and footprints. A steady stream of water runs down the central rill of the drainage ditch. Mollel takes the orange plastic football from Kiunga and drops it down, like flowers into a grave.
The ball bounces off the concrete and rolls into the water. The current bears it swiftly away, and they watch it skitter and bob until it disappears from sight, into the gloomy round mouth of a pipe.
* * *
—Do you ever wish you’d gone to university, Mollel?
—Never thought about it.
—All those student girls, says Kiunga wistfully.
They’ve left the park and are now crossing the main quadrangle of the adjacent Nairobi University. Casting their glances down, they try to divine the course of the underground pipe into which the ball vanished. After their investigations upstream, spotting manhole covers has become second nature to them.
Usually, the neatly clipped grass here is dotted with youngsters reading, chatting, or flirting. If it wasn’t for their smart appearance and studious air, you might mistake them for pleasure seekers overflowing from the park. But today the place is empty.
The two men cross the lawn and turn a corner around a building called Faculty of Science. The genteel facade gives way to a standard industrial-type building. A row of Dumpsters overflow with yellow plastic bags, and a smell best described as biological fills the air.
—This is the place they do all the experiments, says Kiunga in a low voice. You know, all the human heads on rat bodies, and the like.
As if on cue, a rat scurries from under one of the Dumpsters, runs along the narrow alleyway, and disappears into a low sewer grate built at the bottom of a high wall some distance up ahead.
—That’s where we’re going, says Mollel.
—Oh, Jesus.
* * *
The iron grate looks solidly cemented in place, but with a swift jerk up and out, Mollel lifts it and places it to one side.
—I chased a chokora down here once, he explains. He went around the corner. I thought it was a dead end, so I stopped running. By the time I got here, he was gone. Took me ages to figure out how he got away.
—These street boys have secret escape routes everywhere.
—Look at the wall above the grate. See it?
—Just looks like scratches to me.
—That’s what I thought, too. But see, they’re not just random. Three lines, in a row. Once I’d spotted it, I started seeing this mark all over town. Under bridges, beside manhole covers, on loose planks in fences. It means place of safety.
—Doesn’t look very safe to me.
—We should be okay, as long as you watch your step.
Mollel lowers himself through the grate and drops a few feet into ankle-deep water.
—Hold on, says Kiunga. I’ll take off my shoes.
—You’ll want to keep them on, replies Mollel from below.
Kiunga groans. —I only bought these a week ago.
—They’ll wash.
He drops down, and Mollel steadies him as he lands.
—Dark, isn’t it?
—Yeah, well, I suppose they haven’t got around to putting streetlights down here yet. Oh, what a smell!
—Come on, says Mollel.
21
—Fresh batteries, says Kiunga, producing his flashlight from his pocket and turning it on. He passes it to Mollel, who has gone ahead.
They pick their way through the muddy water. Even at this low level, there is a discernible push against their ankles.
—According to my reckoning, says Mollel, this is a direct continuation of the drainage ditch in Uhuru Park and, above that, Orpheus House.
—And a whole lot of other places, besides.
—Sure. But right now it’s downstream that interests us. Wherever that ball ends up, we should find anything that was dumped at the same time as Lucy’s body.
Like a baby, he thinks.
Kiunga lets out a cry of disgust. Mollel follows the beam of his flashlight down to their feet, where excrement and wads of paper wash around them.
—It’s only mavwi, says Mollel.
—Human mavwi! Forget about washing these shoes. I’m going to burn them!
* * *
The drain narrows, and they walk single file, Kiunga holding on to Mollel’s belt. The sound of running water mingles with the occasional rumble of a heavy vehicle overhead. At fairly regular intervals they pass under a grate, and a shaft of sunlight falls through the crack above.
—Look, says Mollel, pointing. Two large concrete pipes join the drain. Mollel shines his beam at the wall.
—There are your three lines, scratched next to one of the pipes, says Kiunga. And on the other one—a cross. What do you suppose that means?
—I don’t know. But these are both inlets. We’re headed downstream, remember.
They trudge on. Mollel senses a void ahead of them before it is even discernible by sight. There is a change in the sound of the water, splashing and echoing, and the dense, confined odor of the tunnel is replaced by an earthier, more open smell. Mollel puts his foot forward and feels nothing beneath it. Just in time, he extends a hand and finds an iron bar set in the wall. The flashlight, however, falls into the darkness with a splash, and he sees its suffused beam for a second as it sinks greenly into deep water below.
—I’m okay, he gasps.
—Oh, I’m so glad, mutters Kiunga sarcastically. He has grasped Mollel tightly around the waist. —Now, are you going to go down and get the light?
But it’s already died. Gradually, they become aware of gray daylight up ahead, just enough to see by.
Mollel extends his hand along the rail, and his foot finds a narrow ledge running perpendicular to the tunnel exit. It’s some inches above the water level, and dry. He steps onto it and edges along, entering a new space where there is just enough light for them to see around them.
He lets out a low whistle.
The void, though not large, feels massive after the confines of the tunnel. It’s at least twenty meters long and ten across. The ledge on which they are standing is less than half a meter wide, and the center of the room is a large cistern that acts as a sediment trap. At the far end is another grille, and beyond it, a wide corrugated tube, along which the reflection of gloomy daylight is just visible.
—I know where this is! says Kiunga. That tube comes out in the river just below the Globe Roundabout. You can see it from the matatu stop.
At their feet, the water froths into black depths, but as it gets to the grille, it is clogged with floating material, most of which is indistinguishable.
—Well, this is where your orange football should’ve ended up, says Kiunga.
They look around the walls of the chamber. Aside from the tunnel they came from, there are four other inlets of varying sizes. Mollel wants to get a closer look at the flotsam caught in the grille, so he edges along the ledge. His foot touches something soft, and he instinctively recoils.
Hour of the Red God Page 14