by Karen Perry
Inspector Atabe has lost interest in the garden. He turns his chair so that he is facing her. Reaching into his inside jacket pocket, he takes out a notebook and pen, and asks: ‘Will you humour me a moment, Mrs Yates, and take a look at this?’
She acquiesces and he opens to a page where he has drawn a map. Examining the neat marks, the careful and deliberate strokes of the pen, she can see that he is a fastidious man, with a certain neatness, despite the crumpled suit.
‘This is a little map I have made of the area where the death occurred,’ he explains, and then, using the nib of his pen as a pointer, he goes on, ‘This is your camp, and over here is where the Gordons have their hut. And here, between the two, is the river. You will see here this little X I have marked on the river – this shows where Cora’s body was discovered. And over here, you will see another X I have marked to show where the children were playing.’
She leans over the page, following the movement of his pen, wondering where he is going with this.
‘In the statement that your sons gave to my colleague in Narok, they said that they were playing here – the boys and their friend, Katie, and the two little Gordon girls.’
‘That’s right,’ she agrees. ‘I saw them there myself.’
‘And, according to the statement, they were splashing around in the water, playing some game that involved holding their breath?’
‘Yes. It’s a game they sometimes play. They hold their breath under the water. Whoever stays under the longest is the winner.’
He smiles and nods, but she feels the undercurrent of danger.
‘Then they say that at some point they noticed one of them was missing.’
‘Yes.’
‘Strange, don’t you think? That they didn’t notice she hadn’t surfaced, that they weren’t paying attention to her – as if she wasn’t part of the game?’
‘Well, no … I mean, they had been playing it for a while. It was a hot day, they were tired, probably a little light-headed from holding their breath for so long …’
He watches carefully as she offers this explanation, his face giving nothing away.
‘So when they couldn’t find her in the water,’ he goes on, ‘did they look for her along the banks?’
‘I think so. For a little while.’
He watches her. Waits for her to go on.
‘They were tired from the game, the heat of the day.’
‘So when they couldn’t find her, did they come and tell you?’
A beat. A slight flash of panic. She tries to put herself back to that day, to what she said in the police station, the statement she had made.
‘They assumed she had gone home.’
‘Oh?’
‘The younger sister had already disappeared. When they couldn’t see Cora, they thought she must have followed her sister home.’
‘So they didn’t come to tell you.’
‘No.’
‘What did they do?’
‘They went back to the field. Resumed their game there.’
She says it as lightly as she can, holds his gaze. But her heart is beating fast, and she is living it all over again – the moment when she found them. Three heads close together in the tall yellow grass. Relief going through her like a flash of pain. They had turned when they heard her approach and the expressions on their faces had made her stop. Fear mingling with guilt. And that was when she had heard it. Another scream. The word ‘No!’ carried on the air. Felt her breath catch in her throat, understanding what it meant. When she had turned back to them, all three children were staring at the ground, not at her, not in the direction of that cry of distress. Heads bent, they refused to look her in the eye, as if they knew what had happened – as if they had been expecting it.
‘And that is where you found them,’ Atabe goes on.
‘Yes.’
‘How long had they been there?’
‘I’m not sure. A while, I think.’
‘They didn’t hear you calling them? They didn’t hear Mrs Gordon crying out Cora’s name?’
‘No.’
‘You don’t find that strange?’
She shrugs. ‘Water in their ears – from the river. My son, Nicky, still can’t hear properly since that day.’
‘I see.’ He smiles, but fleetingly. ‘And when you found the children, what did you do?’
‘I brought them back to the camp. My husband had just returned, along with my friend, Helen.’
‘You didn’t go back to the river? To see if Mrs Gordon had found her child?’
She hesitates, panicked and uncertain as to what they had agreed upon – Sally and Ken – when they had gone over the story together. They only talk about it at night, when the boys are asleep in bed. Each night since it happened, the pair of them have picked away at the scab, whispered conversations hampered by grief and shock, this awful cocktail of fear and a disappointment so bitter she can taste it.
‘Not straight away, no. But it was a few minutes later.’
‘Why did you wait?’
‘I wanted to tell my husband what had happened.’
Again, the lightness of her tone, working hard to keep hidden from him that frantic conversation at the camp, Ken’s eyes widening with alarm, the urgency with which he had walked away from her, his stride quickening to a run, through the field, down to the river, from where the howls were rising.
‘Of course. Forgive me,’ he says, and she realizes how defensive she must have sounded, despite her efforts.
He looks down at his notebook, flicks on a few pages, glancing at notes she cannot read. ‘And just to go back. All the time the children were at the river, you were at the camp?’
‘Yes. I was packing up, preparing to leave.’
‘And you knew the children were by the river?’
‘I did.’
‘You weren’t worried? After all, this is the Masai Mara we are talking about. There are hippos, crocodiles …’
‘We were told that part of the river was safe.’
‘I see.’
He flicks the pages of his notebook again, finds his little map, runs a finger along his brow, and nods. She senses, with a degree of relief, that this interview is coming to a close.
‘One more thing, and then I will leave you in peace.’ Drawing her attention to the map once more, he says: ‘This is where they were playing the game, yet this is where Cora’s body was found.’
She follows the movement of the nib of the pen from one careful spot to the other.
‘It’s a distance of ten or twelve metres.’
She looks at him, unsure.
‘Why do you suppose the body would have moved so far from where they were playing?’
He holds her gaze, and she feels momentarily staggered, confused as to what to say. Sweat breaks out anew on her back, and she swallows, leaning forward to look at the page. ‘Isn’t it possible that it floated away? The drag of the river …’
‘But the body was found upriver from where the children were playing.’
She frowns and pulls at her lower lip with her thumb and index finger. ‘Maybe the children had moved upriver to play –’
‘No. Amy Gordon says they remained at the original spot. There is a knotted blue rope hanging down from a tree that their father had hung there for them. He always insisted that they stay there when they were in the river.’
‘Are you sure? I mean, children say all sorts of things, especially when they’ve been disobedient. And that little girl – Amy – seemed very young. Only four or five …’
‘Five. But I’ve spoken to her and I would say that her evidence is reliable. She is an intelligent little girl, and quite eloquent, despite her age.’
Sally, flustered now, struggles for an answer. ‘Perhaps an animal pulled her upriver. Some creature hidden in the water.’
‘There was no evidence of any animal marks on the body. Besides,’ he says in a silky tone that she doesn’t like, ‘didn’t you just say that
part of the river was safe?’
‘Yes. But I suppose –’
‘There were leaves in her hair. And twigs.’
‘So?’
‘When I went back to the place she was found, I saw other leaves and branches heaped there along the bank. The same kind that had been tangled in her hair.’
‘I don’t understand.’
‘Those sticks and leaves did not arrive there by themselves. It looked to me like someone had put them there. To conceal the body.’
‘But the drag of the water, the trees nearby, surely …’ Her voice drifts into silence.
He holds her there for a moment or two and Sally knows she has failed. She has failed this test but, more than anything, she has failed her sons. Fear grips her heart and words come to her lips, words that she had had no intention of saying.
‘The driver …’ she begins, and watches his eyes narrow, a new curiosity entering his gaze.
‘What about him?’
‘Have you spoken to him?’
‘Yes.’ He spreads his hands wide – large hands, she notices. ‘There was not much he could tell us, seeing as how he was asleep in the van for the duration. Drunk, I believe.’
‘Yes,’ she says, but the way she draws it out slowly, speculatively, makes him sit up and lean forward a little.
‘Are you saying he wasn’t?’
The question is put to her softly, easily, and just as easily the lie comes.
‘I was putting away the tents. My husband had gone to the village and my friend had followed after him. The children were down at the river. While I was packing the tents away, I looked into the van to check on the driver. That’s when I noticed he wasn’t there.’
‘He wasn’t there?’
‘No.’
‘You’re sure?’
‘Yes, I’m sure.’
‘Did you see him anywhere?’
‘No. I didn’t look for him. I assumed he’d gone to find a cooler place to lie in – the van would have been very hot. But now I wonder …’
Her voice drifts into silence. The lie is out there.
A beat. He considers this new information. It sits between them – the seed she has planted. And, for just a moment, Sally can almost convince herself that it is true. That it really happened. Later she will tell herself it was a white lie – told to deflect attention from her sons. She will tell herself that it will come to nothing anyway – that she will not swear to it in court.
He frowns, as if this new evidence troubles him, writes something in his little notebook. All the while, Sally holds herself steady, wills him to leave, for this interview to be over.
Inspector Atabe gets to his feet and downs the rest of his iced tea in one gulp, placing the empty glass on the table beside hers. He tucks his notepad and pen back into his jacket pocket and she stands up to see him off. At the bottom of the steps, he turns back to bid her goodbye, and as he shakes her hand, he says to her: ‘Perhaps you’re right. Perhaps something did pull her under.’ He looks her squarely in the face, his eyes plain and searching. ‘There are all sorts of creatures lurking in the water.’
Just like that, the decision is made. Rather than feeling panicked in the aftermath of Inspector Atabe’s visit, a kind of calm comes over her. After all the turmoil, the indecision, the sleepless nights, the endless prevarication and discussion, in the end the decision is arrived at swiftly and definitely, her mind made up by forces beyond her control.
Calmly, she picks up the phone and dials the number. In even tones, she tells her husband what has happened.
‘Did he say if he’s going to return?’ Ken asks, in a voice kept low so that his secretary in the next room cannot hear. Sally hears the note of alarm in it anyway.
‘No, but he will,’ she says softly.
‘Sally –’
She is there before him. ‘We’ll be packed by the time you get home.’
One more phone call. She keeps it short, imparting only the most basic and urgent of details – that she loves him but her boys come first. There is no discussion: she will brook no argument. Her mind is made up.
Then, quietly, she goes about it – moving from room to room, packing enough for her and the boys. They will go ahead; Ken will follow in the coming weeks. He spoke of it briefly on the phone and she had agreed: he would see out his contract, and arrange for the rest of their belongings to be packed up and shipped home. But Sally and the boys would go now, as soon as they could get flights. They would tell no one – not even Jamil. The risk was too great. But still she had called Jim. She owed him that much.
By the time Ken’s car pulls through the gates that evening, she has the bags packed and is waiting for her husband to join her so they can tell the boys together. Watching him mounting the steps, his briefcase in one hand, his jacket slung over his shoulder, she notes the weariness in his posture. He hasn’t seen her yet, and in that brief moment, there is something about him that is so defeated she wants to take him in her arms. The impulse passes, and instead she opens the door, takes his briefcase from him and briefly touches his arm, an unspoken resolution passing between them.
‘It’s all booked,’ he says quietly. ‘I’ve got you seats on an Air France flight to Paris, with an onward connection to Dublin. It leaves in the morning.’
She nods, the shadows gathering now as evening draws in – their last night together in Kenya as a family. Something inside her is coming undone.
They tell the boys together. Luke cries, but Nicky doesn’t say a word. They hug their sons, telling them how much they love them, how this move back to Ireland is for the best, a new adventure in their lives, but however hard they try to reassure them, Sally cannot help but hear the hollowness of their voices, the tinny music of their forced enthusiasm.
They eat in silence, picking at their food, a collective loss of appetite in the wake of the decision made. And it is as she folds her knife and fork across her plate that Sally sees the swing of headlights across the windows, hears the screech of brakes outside. Ken swivels in his chair to follow her gaze, then gets to his feet. Already, Sally can see the apprehension in his face, the sudden loss of colour in his cheeks as he moves swiftly to the door. The boys look at her and she holds herself very still, straining to hear who it is. A car door slams, the click of the screen-door, and Ken’s footsteps on the terrace, his voice raised in greeting. Another voice – a man’s – low and gravelled and she knows it immediately.
‘Go to your room,’ she tells the boys, hearing the urgency in her own voice.
They shuffle away and she hurries to the screen-door, her heart beating high and light in her chest.
Jim is at the foot of the steps, and from where she stands, hiding, she can see his face lit from above by the lamp over the door. There is something unsteady in the way he is holding himself, his shirt untucked and hanging over his jeans, hands on his hips and a kind of wildness that seems barely contained within his body. He has been drinking. Ken stands with his back to her so she cannot see his face, only the line of his shoulders, hands by his sides, as he waits on the bottom step, looking down at Jim who speaks in a low voice: ‘You can’t do this, Ken. It’s folly – a complete overreaction.’
‘Thank you for your concern, Father Jim,’ Ken sounds stiff and formal, rigid with suppressed anger, ‘but we have made our decision.’
‘Please just think about it – sleep on it. Don’t tear the boys away from their home like this. Don’t you see? After all they have been through, surely what they need now is the security of familiar surroundings, rather than being uprooted and plunged back into a life they have no memory of.’
‘Please, Jim, I know you mean well,’ Ken says, and she hears the strain of temper in his low voice, ‘but your concern is unhelpful at this time. We need to be left in peace.’
She holds her breath, willing her lover to leave. In that moment, she sees how dangerous he is to her, brought to the brink by the decision she has made. In her head, she pleads with him t
o go, uncertain as to whether she should go outside and attempt to defuse the situation, or whether that would only fan the flames. Meanwhile he continues to stand there, hands on his hips, facing Ken.
‘If you send them away, it will only make them appear guilty. Don’t you see that?’ he implores, tilting his head to one side, his face caught in the ghostly light of the lamp, a pale bewildered moon, eyes desperate. ‘By making them go, you’re fingering them – condemning them. Your own sons …’
Ken, a hand held up in warning, says: ‘You’ve said your piece. Now you should leave.’
But Jim is rooted to the spot, as if stepping away would leave him coming apart at the seams.
‘What about Sally?’ he asks desperately. ‘What about what she wants?’
Sally stiffens.
‘She wants to protect her sons.’
‘She’s just doing this because of the pressure you’re putting on her.’
‘You’re overstepping the mark, Father.’
‘Am I?’
‘Don’t presume to lecture me about my wife.’
‘Why not?’
Consternation rises in Sally, like something hard in her throat.
Recklessly, Jim goes on: ‘I know her better than you think, what she wants, what she desires –’
It happens quickly. Ken steps down, places his hands on Jim’s chest and pushes him. Her lover staggers backwards, shock on his face. Ken pushes him again and, moving quickly now, Sally comes out onto the veranda and down the steps while the two men grapple and grunt, trying to gain some kind of purchase on the other. Wild swipes that barely connect, an awkward dance of grabbing and shoving, and she is there at the edges, trying to pull them apart, an ineffective plucking and pleading. A gap opens and she puts herself between them, her back to her husband – a protective pose – the two of them breathing heavily while they face Jim down.