—What did you do with my baby? I asked. Where is it? Where has it gone?
—But she just laughed. And started to cough. The blood bubbled up in her throat.
—I shook her. She was slipping away. She pitched forward, started sliding into the ditch. She was so heavy, I couldn’t stop her. She took me with her, but I kept shouting, Where is my baby?
—I couldn’t believe she had cheated me at that final moment. She had stolen my baby, sold it.
—I kept shouting long after she was dead. I was still shouting when I found the knife in my hand, the knife she kept ready in the small of her back. It was such a tiny thing. When I held it, it felt like I was punching her. Punching her dead body. Punching her where she had wounded me. Had cut the life out of me.
—I heard the white man’s voice. He was standing over us. Horrified. What have you done?
—I got up. I didn’t bother explaining to him. Lights swept across his face, and in his eyes I could see terror. Even then I could see that it might be useful for him to think I could have killed her.
—The lights were getting brighter. There were vehicles coming in, crackling across the gravel. I held the knife to the old man’s ribs, and together we walked back to the car as if nothing had happened. It was starting to rain when we left.
Mollel reaches into his pocket and pulls out a crumpled photograph. He holds it in his damaged hand, proffers it to Honey.
—Take a look.
It is a baby. A dead baby. An incomplete baby.
Her baby.
—It’s a trick, she says weakly.
—No, Honey, it’s not. It’s your baby. Yours and George Nalo’s. I’ve seen the records. It never could have survived.
—Oh, Honey, says Faith. What have you done?
There is a loud bang at the kitchen door. And another.
—It’s not murder, says Mollel. If she died because of the car crash, you have nothing to feel guilty for. Come with me. Make a statement. There’s nothing here we can’t deal with.
There is a clatter as the knife drops to the floor. Honey’s body is limp. She no longer holds Faith. Now it is Faith holding her.
She mutters a few quiet words in Maa.
Faith stands up tentatively and walks over to Adam. She scoops up the boy in her arms. —We’ve got to go now, she says.
Mollel extends his hand. —Honey? Are you coming?
* * *
The sound of splintering wood crashes through from the kitchen. Mollel turns toward it. Light streams in, powerful white light. From it, he sees a figure emerge.
—Sorry about the door, comes a shout. Mwathi is standing there. —We’ve forced the line but can only hold it a few minutes. Are you coming or not?
Faith runs forward, Adam in her arms. She runs toward the light, through the shattered kitchen door. In the compound, a GSU truck is parked on top of the fallen gate, its engine running, headlights blazing.
—Come on, Honey!
Mollel grabs her wrist and pulls her with him toward the doorway. He runs out, ducking, as a hail of missiles flies over his head, bouncing off the roof of the house. Faith and Adam have already taken shelter in the cab. Mollel turns to help Honey in—
—and she is gone.
Mwathi scrambles in the other side, behind the wheel. He releases the brake and starts to back out.
—Wait! shouts Mollel, standing in the door. There’s someone still in there!
—Your killer, I suppose? says Mwathi. Leave him. He’s going to get what’s coming to him!
Mollel looks back at the house. The broken doorway stands black and empty in the beam of the headlights. —Honey! he shouts.
—She won’t come, says Faith. Not now. She’s made her choice.
Mwathi throws the truck into gear and starts to back out. A petrol bomb arcs overhead and bursts on the gravel in front of them in a curtain of blue flame.
Something crashes on the roof of the cab, and Mollel slams the door shut just as liquid fire begins to pour down the side. The cab is filled with the stench of burning, and the window at his side snaps with the sudden heat.
The truck lurches back and swings around the gatepost. Mwathi grinds it into first and puts his foot down. GSU men on either side of them scatter as the vehicle roars past; they lift their shields above their heads and run in its wake. As the flames pour away from the side window, Mollel has a fleeting glimpse of faces contorted in hate, baying at the truck as it passes. And then they bump and rumble toward the GSU line, which parts, and the truck is suddenly surrounded by silence and the blackness of night.
—Honey, breathes Mwathi, turning off the engine. Funny name for a murderer.
43
—You sure you want to do this? asks Kiunga.
—I’m sure, says Mollel.
The city mortuary is overflowing with bodies, but here at Central CID, a lone corpse occupies a cell all of its own.
Mollel bends over the bench. He takes a corner of the sheet and gently folds it back.
He flinches at the sight of the familiar face. Despite the round hole in the forehead, it looks peaceful. The dreadlocked skull behind it, however, is gaping and open.
* * *
—I’m sorry, says Kiunga. It’s tough to lose someone you trust.
* * *
Mollel replaces the shroud.
* * *
—He saved our lives, continues Kiunga. It was just after you left us. If we’d kept going, we’d probably have been all right. But they were all around the car before I even noticed.
—We were only a few hundred meters from here. I couldn’t raise the police station on the phone, so I blasted my horn, hoping to get their attention. The back window shattered. Panya scrambled forward, but they had him by the ankles. They dragged him out. Lethebridge was screaming at me to drive, to just plow down those in front of me. I would’ve done it, too, if it wasn’t for Panya.
—Then Benjamin got out of the car. Someone swung a panga. It took off the wing mirror, but he didn’t even flinch.
—He spoke to them, Mollel. I didn’t catch it all. It was Kikuyu, but it was that strange dialect the Mungiki speak. He spoke to them, and he told them we were going. He picked up Panya despite his injured arm, and I helped Lethebridge out of the car. The old man’s face was pretty cut up from the glass. We were walking toward Central. I could see that some of the other officers had come out. They were armed. They’d heard the horn. We were just steps away from safety.
—When I heard the explosion, at first I thought the gang had torched the car, that the petrol tank had gone up. I turned to look. The gang was scattered, but the car was intact. And then I saw Benjamin crumple to his knees. The last thing he did, you know, Mollel, was lay Panya down on the ground. So gently.
—The guys at the station house had shot him. They saw the dreadlocks, you see. It was all about the dreadlocks.
* * *
In the CID office, Panya is playing with a baton. Someone has found him an old uniform, and he flounders about in the oversize shirt tucked into trousers belted with cord. He seems to be lecturing Mwangi about putting his feet on the desk.
—Where’s Lethebridge now? Mollel asks Kiunga.
—Kingori’s taken him. We’ve not got enough to bring charges at the moment. Maybe, when all this has settled, we’ll persuade Otieno to look at an obstruction charge. But from what you’ve told me, we’d never make accessory to murder stick. Or blackmail. The Nalos aren’t going to back that one up.
—He’s going to walk, isn’t he? says Mollel.
—Looks like it, boss. I guess I don’t call you boss anymore now, though. You’ll be back to traffic. I’ll be back to Mwangi. Solving crimes. Catching thieves. Letting them go when they don’t fit with Otieno’s statistics. Dishing out beatings and taking bribes.
—That’s not you, Kiunga.
—No, it’s not, says Kiunga. It might have been. It would have been, a few years from now, if you hadn’t come along. You showed me that
police work doesn’t have to be done that way.
He breaks into a grin.
—I’m not saying I’d do it your way, either, mind you. Jesus Christ!
* * *
Back at his flat, Mollel finds Faith and Adam in the sitting room, in front of the TV.
—Have you heard? asks Faith. Kibaki has had himself sworn in at State House. The electoral commission’s declared him the winner. They’ve not even finished counting the votes yet!
If it weren’t so serious, Mollel would find Faith’s outrage amusing. Just a few days ago she had been lamenting what might happen if President Kibaki were not returned for a second term. But then, a lot had happened in the last few days.
She stands and walks toward the kitchen. There’s a big pan of chai on the stove; she ladles Mollel a cup. He wraps his hands around it gingerly. He’s grateful that during a lull in the chaos that morning he was able to get a few groceries—enough to last them for the next few days. This latest news is not going to do anything to calm tensions in the city.
—Any news on Honey? she asks.
He shakes his head.
—That poor girl’s going to face a higher judgment than we can give her, says Faith sadly.
—She refused to believe that her baby was dead, Mollel says. She constructed a fantasy in which it survived and was adopted. Just to spare her the guilt.
—Guilt? asks Faith. It wasn’t her fault.
—I’ve been thinking about what she said, replies Mollel. Those final words I heard her speak. She said something in Maa. She said: I ate my baby.
Faith looks at him with incredulity.
—It’s an old Maasai expression, he says. When a woman has a miscarriage or a stillbirth, she’s said to have eaten her child. It’s usually blamed on having had sex when pregnant. When you consider that she probably didn’t even know she was carrying the baby for a long time … and who she was …
—She wasn’t a murderer, though, says Faith. If she had come with you, as you suggested, she might have had another life.
Mollel fingers the red silken tie hanging over the back of one of the kitchen chairs.
—No, he says. She was a murderer. All those things she said about Lucy. The manipulation, the seduction. When she was talking about Lucy, she was talking about herself. Those were the tricks she used on me. Lucy didn’t die because of her injuries in the crash. Honey murdered her. Premeditated, cold-blooded murder. The reason she didn’t come out of the house was because she knew I knew that. I’m just not as good a liar as she was.
Faith crosses herself. Then she looks at the tie in Mollel’s hands.
—That’s nice, she says. Why don’t you wear it more often?
Adam comes in from the sitting room.
—The news is boring, Dad, he says. When will they start showing cartoons again?
—I don’t know, Adam, says Mollel. Maybe in the New Year.
A Note About the Author
Richard Crompton, a former BBC journalist, lives in Nairobi, Kenya, with his wife and their three young children. This is his first novel.
Sarah Crichton Books
Farrar, Straus and Giroux
18 West 18th Street, New York 10011
Copyright © 2013 by Richard Crompton
All rights reserved
First edition, 2013
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Crompton, Richard, 1973–
Hour of the Red God / Richard Crompton. — 1st ed.
p. cm.
ISBN 978-0-374-17199-5 (hardcover: alk. paper)
1. Maasai (African people)—Fiction. 2. Murder—Investigation—Fiction. 3. Nairobi (Kenya)—Fiction. 4. Mystery fiction. I. Title.
PR6103.R647 H66 2013
823'.92—dc23
2012034612
www.fsgbooks.com
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eISBN 9780374709259
Hour of the Red God Page 29