Muti Nation

by Monique Snyman

  [Pause]

  At some point I disconnected from the rape itself and just floated, looking down with Dorothy’s pre-Oz eyes. The rest of the field was vibrant with colour—the grass was emerald green, the earth post-box red, the sky sapphire blue, and the tarmac road a shimmering onyx. It was this one spot where I was being brutally violated that remained grey. Needless to say, I focused on the colours and manipulated them in my head until I couldn’t feel anything.

  When he was done, I didn’t even notice. He turned me over, pinned me down, and slapped me across the cheek a few times to bring me back to reality. I was completely out of it. I barely registered when he asked me what part I can offer him.

  Really? I thought. Haven’t he gotten enough from me already? What more can I give this bastard?

  When he took out his knife I snapped back long enough to wonder if I was going to die now. He repeated his question and I said I didn’t understand. Then, he went on to explain he literally wanted a piece of me.

  Esmé:Oh God.

  Hester:I asked him if he wanted a part of me as a trophy. He replied, very calmly, he didn’t take trophies for himself, but what I gave him was intended for muti. He asked me then, again, what part I can offer him. Eventually, I said to him to take my breasts, and he went to work. I passed out.

  [Pause]

  But when I awoke, I still had both my breasts. I don’t know if he was scared off before he could take his muti, or if my passing out was enough to deter him. Either way, I still had my breasts. I’m very lucky in that regard, but I doubt the scars will ever fade.

  Esmé:Can you tell me anything about your attacker? How he looked, how he spoke, anything recognisable or unique?

  Hester:You’d think I’d remember a lot of things, considering how bright the night was and the fact he was unmasked, but his appearance was unremarkable. He had broad shoulders—rugby player shoulders—and he was muscular. But apart from his leather jacket, which was mass-produced, and his necklace, he looked like a regular guy.

  Esmé:Necklace?

  Hester:Yeah, it was this leather thong with a human tooth pendant. I thought it was probably a knock-off curiosity. Well, I hoped so. I can’t be sure. Hey, are you all right? You’ve gone pale.

  Esmé:[Clears Throat]

  I remember someone else mentioning a similar necklace in their testimony, a few months ago. It could be nothing. I’ll have to check my facts.

  Hester:Look Esmé, I would love to find my rapist and take a baseball bat to his skull, but his eyes were [Pause] dead. He was soulless, inhuman. It’s the single most outstanding aspect of him: his dead eyes.

  Be careful when you go searching for him, okay? You don’t want to end up like me, or worse.

  *END OF AUDIO TRANSCRIPT*

  Chapter 22

  I double click on the desktop icon, titled Valentine Sikelo: Case #137-ES, and find the recorded .wav file listed in the folder. I tap on it and wait for the recording to come to life in the Media Player. A deadpan voice I recognise as my own begins before I scroll through the photos located in the same file.

  “Esmé Snyders, Occult Crime Expert, Case Number 137. It is approximately 18:00 hours on Friday, 4 September 2015. The victim is a black female, aged between twenty-six and thirty years. Height is around 1,70 metres, and weight about 85 kilograms. Clothing includes a turquoise peplum top and matching pencil skirt—cut off and discarded roughly two metres from the body—as well as black underwear and a pair of black open-toe heels.

  “Breasts and genitals have been removed, presumably pre-mortem. Defensive lacerations on her palms may confirm theory. DNA evidence of murderer and/or murderers might be present underneath fingernails. Eyes, tongue and lips are also missing.

  “Further investigative information is required to determine whether the victim is, beyond a reasonable doubt, another muti-murder fatality but the preliminary evidence is overwhelming.

  “Edit: The victim has been identified as Mrs. Valentine Sikelo from personal effects found near the body. Several possible suspects have been cleared by the police in record time.”

  The high-definition photographs are graphic and they pull at my heart strings, but I don’t look away. I study each photo in excruciating detail, playing my recording on loop, searching for one overlooked piece of information that’ll help me find this so-called Him. Who is he? What’s his intended outcome? Why murder these people, these wholly different people? My eyes water before I decide to close the folder, stop the recording, and move on to the next desktop icon.

  I open the folder named Carol-Anne Brewis—Case #138-ES and repeat the process. I listen to my uncertain voice with the almost inaudible gulps interrupting my sentences.

  “Esmé Snyders, Occult Crime Expert, Case Number 138. It’s around 06:10 hours on Saturday, 5 September 2015. The victim, one Carol-Anne Brewis, is a white female, aged twelve years. Her height is 1,61 metres, and weight between 40 and 45 kilograms.

  “The victim’s clothing is a panda bear printed onesie. From what I can tell, the right sleeve is torn at the shoulder, but otherwise her clothes are in place. No suggestion of sexual assault is present at this stage. The coroner would be able to verify.

  “Side note: Get coroner’s report ASAP.

  “The victim’s right ankle seems to be broken—possible escape attempt gone wrong? Self-defence is indicated by the victims’ broken nails on both hands. A piece of cloth has been stuffed into her mouth to muffle her screams.”

  A long pause follows these few facts and I remember how I’d mentally readied myself to look at the child’s ruined face and her fatal wounds. I never quite got a handle on seeing innocence stolen.

  “A clean cut with a precision tool—possibly a cranial saw from the serration marks on the edges of the bone, was used to remove the top of the skull. A large piece of the brain is missing. It seems most of this happened pre-mortem.” I hear myself sob and someone in the background asks if I need a break. “I think so,” I say, and the recording ends.

  Admittedly, even after having some time to distance myself from the actual crime scene, looking at the photographs still makes me queasy. I study the photos though, zooming in for close-up shots of the bruising and wounds. I zoom out, piecing the photographs together on the monitor to get an overview of the crime scene and the body.

  Nothing jumps out at me as particularly unique. The killer’s signature is either not there or invisible.

  Sighing, I close the folder and recorded file and move on to the newest icon, named Abraham Amin—Case #139-HW. Howlen’s voice issues from speakers.

  “Howlen Walcott, Ph.D. It is Thursday 10 September 2015 at 08:45. The victim has been identified as Abraham Amin, an ANC MP. His height is 1.81 meters and weight approximately 98 kilograms—as suggested by the missing person’s report. The victim is suspended by bungee cords, running down the ventilation shaft of the Daspoort Tunnel—an elaborate setup, planned well in advance.

  “The victim has an infected wound running from left to right, and severing his Achilles tendon, on his right heel. The fatal wound however is the deep, jagged cut across the victim’s abdomen. Premeditated disembowelment is a possibility, but the momentum of the fifty-meter fall would’ve created a similar effect when the bungee cord jerked back. What bothers me is did the killer take something, some piece of Abraham Amin for a ritual? I cannot be certain at this stage.

  “The victim also sustained multiple post-mortem bone breaks and wounds. From the fall down the ventilation shaft?” Howlen’s voice grows distant, thoughtful, and I can imagine him studying the victim and the whole scene. “Possibly,” he says. “These cords, and the harness, are professional bungee equipment. I’ll look into it.

  “I have doubts about the victim’s political status being the reason he was targeted, but one can never be too sure. Law enforcement will be investigating this particular lead, and Detective Mosepi vowed to keep us updated with their findings. I’d bet a month’s wages the coroner’s report is most crucial to th
is case.”

  I close the files, sit back in my chair, and chew on my bottom lip as I look around my office. The pastel colours are supposedly too cheerful, too homey, and too girly for an occult crime expert. So I’ve heard, anyway. A baby blue and white chevron pattern is painted across the walls. White bookshelves are built around the large window that allows for natural light throughout the year. Mauve and turquoise green vases act as bookends whilst simultaneously matching my dusty pink shag carpet and my repurposed turquoise desk. An oil landscape depicting an abstract Pretoria skyline in more pastel colours hangs at eye-level across from my desk. Then there is my personal rolling whiteboard peeking out from behind the open door. The office is not me exactly. It’s an office better suited to a muted personality. I much rather prefer dramatic colours, severe lines, and unconventional materials for decorating. But when you’re surrounded by death most of the time that sort of décor would depress you further.

  Nevertheless, there is a lot of me in this office.

  The chevron pattern has semi-severe lines. The repurposed desk has an unconventional design. The colours are dramatic for someone’s work office. All in all, it’s still me in its own weird way.

  This leads me to contemplate not only the psychology of murderers and serial killers, but rather human nature in general (if one could call Him a human being).

  In almost every situation, everyone leaves something true about themselves behind. Why should a crime scene be any different?

  “The riddle,” I say to myself, revisiting the memorised words from the note the killer left behind. There were grammatical errors, silly ones where capital letters were used wrongly. It shouldn’t mean anything, and yet…

  Opening my internet browser, I type in Beautiful in Beaufort-Wes, which is a multi-language love song with Afrikaans and English lyrics combined. It isn’t a big lead, but it is something new to follow up on. If anything, this lead could mean the killer is familiar with the Afrikaans language, to some degree.

  I scan the lyrics and I’m overcome with another dreadful feeling, the same one I’d gotten when I first read the note.

  The killer had left a message, all right, a sick, creepy message hidden between the lines of a note, with an added concealed meaning inside a love song.

  I jump up from my seat and rush to the door. “Howlen,” I call down the corridor.

  “Yeah?” he comes into view with an open file in his hands and reading glasses perching on his nose.

  “I think I’ve got something,” I say.

  He closes the file and walks over.

  “That riddle the killer sent is actually an Anglicised title of a song. Well, it technically started out as a poem, but the song’s more popular.”

  We walk back to my desk where the laptop’s still open with the lyrics page on display.

  “After looking at the note’s grammar I might have stumbled onto something.”

  “You couldn’t have mentioned it earlier?” Howlen asks as I take a seat on my chair.

  “I didn’t think his note would reference anything. I thought it was a way to freak me out. Anyway, it turns out to be a song.”

  “Fair enough,” he says. “So, what caught your attention about this song? You know I’m useless when it comes to Afrikaans.” He leans forward to study my computer screen.

  “I’ll quickly translate the parts I think are important.”

  “Everything’s important, but okay, I trust you.”

  “The gist is,” I say, “the guy’s stalking me.”

  “You got that from a song?” Howlen presses his spectacles higher to his face.

  “Stanza one, line two: “You and I had kissed on graves, and on trains, and on the back seats of Ford Fairlanes,” is related to a nightmare I had last night. There were graves in a parking lot, some cars, and I took a ride on the Gautrain.”

  “That’s just coincidental. What’s next?”

  I point at the screen. “The chorus, um, here: “Now you can’t sleep anymore, can’t laugh anymore, can’t do anything for yourself,” is another part relating to me. I’ve had—”

  “Bouts of insomnia, I know. You also struggle with depression when you don’t get enough sleep,” he says.

  “I didn’t think anyone would notice.”

  “I do. What else?”

  “Stanza three is more provocative.”

  “Oh, do translate.”

  I roll my eyes. “It reminds me of the last time we—”

  “Three coincidences are no longer coincidences,” he cuts me off, clearing his throat uncomfortably. “So it’s a stalker note.”

  “Partly. What concerns me is the imagery of stanza three’s last line: “I felt how my heart was torn right out of my body and how it floated away like a rowboat on the river.” Here, I can’t decide if the killer is threatening me or giving me a clue to what he has planned next.”

  “It could be nothing,” he sounds unconvinced. “Him might just be jealous.”

  “Or it could be everything.” I tilt my head sideways to look up at him.

  He grunts an affirmative and pushes himself away from behind my chair and walks around the desk to sit in a chair opposite mine.

  “Maybe I’m being too literal?”

  Howlen shakes his head. “The killer is intelligent, but he lacks the finesse of a formal education.” He sighs, but perks up almost immediately, as though he’s had a revelation. It gives me a microscopic amount of hope. “He’s not brilliant, Esmé. There’s no ingenuity in his methods. He’s a narcissist playing a game with us—with you, in particular.”

  “No shit.”

  “The guy is manipulating us with crude psychology. It’s brilliant, but human. He’s not unbeatable, he just thinks he is.”

  “I like your positive outlook, but it doesn’t get us any closer to an answer.” I spin the laptop around to the open webpage and gesture to the screen. “What do we do about this?”

  Howlen sits back in his seat and fiddles with his left cufflink. “We play his game, of course. That is, unless you’ve got something better in mind?”

  Out of ideas, I shake my head.

  “Then, let’s work on getting the upper-hand. What else have you got?”

  I open the top drawer and find Feyisola’s list of names. Some of them may, or may not, have ordered body parts from outside the country. Feyisola doesn’t give me bad information even if she sometimes omits details to save her own skin. If we’re lucky, one of the names could turn out to be our guy.

  “I have a list of possible suspects I need to investigate,” I say. “There’s a big shipment of muti coming in from Namibia and these people might be involved in some way.”

  “Namibia?”

  When Feyisola first told me I had a similar reaction to the news.

  “That’s new,” Howlen says. “Usually the shipments come through the Beitbridge border.”

  “It’s a weird turn of events, I agree. But, muti is a hot commodity these days, so why not Namibia?”

  “True. Would you like some help?”

  “Thank you, but no thanks. You have enough to deal with as it is. The best way to help is to butter up the labs and get our results back as soon as possible. I’ll see to the list.”

  He nods, stands, and opens his mouth to say something else, but doesn’t.

  “We’re okay, Howlen,” I say.

  “You sure?”

  Smiling, I turn the laptop around to face me again. “I’m sure. We all have our own ways to deal with this.”

  He smiles back, and I know that our brief quarrel has come to an end, and that our friendship is re-established.

  “Go home and get some sleep, okay?” he says.

  “In a minute.”

  Howlen pushes his hands into his trouser pockets like a dismissed schoolboy and turns to leave.

  “Howlen?”

  “Hmmm?” he mutters.

  “If something were to happen to me, you’d look after Gramps, right?”

  “No
thing will happen to you,” he insists.

  “Yes, but if it did…”

  “I will, but nothing’s going to happen to you, May.”

  Howlen slips out of my office without another word.

  Chapter 23

  Detective Rynhardt Louw isn’t the type of person who would enter a career in law enforcement without a good reason. He’s far too kind, almost too polite, and a little too… innocent. His eyes, those wise hazelnut eyes, tell a story of great hardship and loss, but his past hasn’t turned his soul to stone, yet. He’s quick to smirk and tease and joke, but the young detective still seems guarded whenever he does those things.

  For a week he’s acted as Detective Mosepi’s personal errand boy between the firm and the precinct, and I’ve used the time to study him from afar. There’s not been much else to do while we wait for some miraculous break in our cases or for the killer to strike again. So why not curb my curiosity and nose about Detective Rynhartdt Louw while I bide my time?

  Detective Louw’s gait is always determined, always proud. Even with windswept hair and a dishevelled suit he appears unyielding to the sheer force of nature. He calculates his surroundings in a single sweep. Detective Mosepi is the only other detective I know who’s as thorough when the situation doesn’t call for it. Then there’s Louw’s smile that never truly reaches his eyes. Still, whenever he looks my way there’s an almost imperceptible softening in his hazel eyes.

  Contradictions intrigue me.

  Today as he waits for my grandfather to look over the newest developments in the Valentine Sikelo case, I watch him from the staircase. He moves from his seat in the vacant reception area to where I sit on the stairs with a file open on my lap.

  Hidden between the pages is Feyisola’s handwritten message, dropped off before Rynhardt arrived, inviting me to a meeting in a shoddy part of town with one of her shady acquaintances. She didn’t elaborate on why but I’d be an idiot if I didn’t go. Maybe Feyisola stumbled onto something.