Jungle Out There

by William Stafford

  “Mistake identity,” Man shrugged. “Mjomba feet dainty.” But I could tell from his tone that my husband was clutching at straws.

  “Like I say, I was going to pop around for a quiet word, but first things first, eh? Let’s get you your boy back.”

  He led us towards the staircase.

  “Wait,” said Man. “Big shop have CCTV?”

  “I should say so,” said Policeman Andy. “We - that is to say, the police - will examine it for any images of your child’s abduction.”

  “Good,” said Man. “Yesterday too.”

  “Quite right, darling! You must look at yesterday’s recordings to see those two men I was telling you about.”

  “That’s where you can help,” said Andy. “Then at least we’ll know who we are looking for.”

  He drove us to a large building that proclaimed itself to be a police station - but not just any old police station. A huge, gleaming sign on the front lawn declared this to be the home of the Serious Crimes division.

  “You’ll be asked to give a statement, your ladyship. What you were doing the moment your boy was taken, all of that.”

  I blushed with guilt. I had been fretting with jealousy about my husband bounding off with another woman - Hah! I laughed bitterly to myself: he’s not with her now, is he?

  I was going mad. My son was kidnapped in a strange land and I was still harping on about that Porter woman.

  “And then we’ll review the CCTV footage. See if you can spot the bastards.”

  “When you say ‘we’, do you mean you’ll be there? I’d like you to be.”

  Policeman Andy squeezed my hand. “I’ll see what I can do. But, rest assured: they have a crack team of detectives here. You’ll have your boy back in no time.”

  ***

  We were shown into a drab room with harsh lighting where we were introduced to the detective overseeing the case, a tall, skinny man with a disgusting moustache who had attained somehow the rank of Detective Inspector. His name was Benny Stevens and I disliked the look of him as much as he appeared to like the look of me. With my husband present and in close proximity, he restricted himself to lecherous leers and, to his credit, refrained from making suggestive remarks or cracking jokes at this very painful and worrying time.

  I gave my account of our trip to the shopping mall and what I’d said and done and what Baby had said and done and Jamie Peters and - Stevens made me go over it time and again, trying to jog my memory for any detail, however insignificant it may seem that I may have overlooked or neglected to mention.

  I was thoroughly exhausted. A younger detective who Stevens referred to as ‘Jase’ brought in cups of tea, which proved undrinkable.

  “What happen next?” said Man.

  Stevens’s moustache crawled as he grimaced. “We ain’t finished with you yet. I’m sorry, your ladyship, but it’s a bit of a hard slog ahead for you. Hours and hours of CCTV to go through, I’m afraid, but if you can spot the two gits who was following you, it’ll be a great help.”

  I said I would do anything to get my Baby back. Man said he would too. Benny Stevens shook his head. “Don’t you go getting ideas, big man. Can’t have you going off half-cocked.”

  Man glanced down at his loincloth, confused.

  “Let’s just say, we don’t want any more snakes murdered or social workers dangling off of roofs.”

  “Man understand,” said Man, but I could tell he was harbouring so much pent-up nervous energy he might burst.

  “This way, if you please.” Benny Stevens opened the door and bowed in mock deference to my title. I could feel his eyes on my backside as I walked along the corridor. I stayed close to my husband.

  In a room of screens and equipment a long-haired young man was introduced as Ian the technician. He operated the machines, making images move at lightning speed, forwards and backwards, or freeze, flickeringly, whenever I thought I spotted something of import.

  It took hours and all the while I was afraid that whoever had taken my Baby was getting further and further away. And what might Baby be feeling? What was he going through? He was always a brave boy - IS always a brave boy! - and has got himself out of sticky situations without our intervention from time to time. But, this was not the jungle. Baby was a stranger in a weird land and must have been very, very frightened.

  All through the screening, Man squeezed my hand. I felt it was hopeless; tears kept clouding my vision and I had to blot them away.

  “There’s you, your ladyship,” said Ian, freezing the picture. “On your way to the shoe shop yesterday. And if we switch to the camera a bit further back... “

  My mouth dropped open. There were two men, loitering behind a pillar. They were hunched over and skulked across the screen. Ian switched back to the previous view: the two men hove into view.

  “Can’t really see much from this angle...” Ian sounded apologetic. “But if we switch again...” He clicked a few buttons.

  My jaw dropped even further, as though I was unhinging it in order to swallow a goat for later digestion.

  “Stop it there!” I urged. “Frame freeze!”

  “Freeze frame,” muttered the technical expert, but he did it anyway.

  Two slightly blurry but recognisable faces flickered on the monitor.

  “That them?” said Ian. On a chair in the corner, Detective Inspector Stevens perked up and came over.

  “Am you sure?” he asked. “These am the two blokes who was following you?”

  “Oh, yes, I’m certain,” I nodded. “And furthermore, I know who they are.”

  My husband, the detective inspector and the technician stared at me.

  “It’s been a long time,” I explained, “but I would know those men anywhere.” I pointed to the one on the left. “That one there whose eyes are close together; that’s Jakes, my old chauffeur, and the ruddy-cheeked man with him is Gable, the gardener.”

  Chapter Eighteen

  In which an appeal is made and we get another shock

  “Great!” said Benny Stevens. “Now we know what the buggers look like, we’m in with a chance. Can you print off that image, Ian? Ta. And email it to - oh, I don’t know - everybody.”

  He strode from the room.

  “Good work,” said Ian. He nodded towards the door. “He may look like a pranny but - well, he is a pranny; I don’t know what else I can say.”

  I thanked him for those words and his assistance. Man and I were at a loss so we remained where we were. Man paced the floor, like a caged animal, desperate to get out and find our son himself.

  “Man feel like Sokwe,” he said sadly.

  I felt another pang of guilt. I hadn’t asked about Man’s encounter with the gorilla; I suppose I did have other things on my mind - and perhaps I did not want to hear my husband talk about that Jenny Porter.

  Presently, Detective Inspector Stevens returned. “Right,” he announced. “I’ve had a word with the boss and the consensus is - well, what she says is the next thing to do - is we’m going to stage a press conference. Get the word out there. We’ll put up your boy’s picture. We’ll put up the picture of these two jokers. Somebody will have seen something. And an impassioned appeal from the worried parents always goes down well.”

  “I’m sorry, Inspector -”

  He interrupted me. “Benny, please.”

  “Benny... I’m afraid I don’t understand a word of what you say. You must remember we are strangers to the ways of the people here. Perhaps if we weren’t, we would - well, I would - have been more careful with letting our child out among them.”

  Man tried to hug me but I resisted. I had something to say and, by gum, I was going to jolly well say it.

  “It comes to something when our Baby’s safer in the jungle, where we can let him out of our sight among
all the predators and dangers, the quicksand, the rotten rope bridges, the carnivorous plants and all the rest of it, but we spend five minutes in the so-called civilised world and someone snatches him right from under our noses. What is the use of all those CCTV cameras? They don’t stop anything, do they? You can have a thousand eyes but what good are they if you don’t do anything?”

  “Well... they help us to identify and catch the perpetrators... ”

  “After the fact! When there should be no fact. I mean, it shouldn’t happen. Why aren’t people being taught not to do these things? Why are they carrying on as though anything is acceptable? Why - oh why? - did those two men take my Baby?”

  I collapsed into Man’s arms. I wasn’t sure I’d made any sense or if I’d made my point.

  “You’m angry,” said Benny Stevens, clearly a born detective. “I get that. Look, we’ll take you home, you get yourself spruced up a bit, and then we’ll bring you back for the press conference, yeah? Don’t you worry, your ladyship; I’ll be right there with you.”

  I felt sick.

  ***

  Policeman Andy dropped us back. We were barely out of the car when Mrs Lyons was upon us, pouncing like her namesake.

  “Where is she?” she just about screeched in our faces. She repeated the question a couple of times. Man tried to usher me past her.

  “Son a he,” he corrected her.

  “If we knew where he was, do you think we’d be this upset?”

  Mrs Lyons gaped like a startled fish. “What are you talking about?”

  “Our son has been kidnapped, Mrs Lyons, so if you’ll forgive us we want to get indoors rather than argue in the street.”

  “Your son! Kidnapped! If it’s not one thing it’s another with you people,” her anger bubbled up then disappeared to be replaced by a glint of hope. “You don’t think she’s with him, do you?”

  “Who?”

  “Our Alison. You don’t think she was kidnapped and all, do you?”

  “I shouldn’t think so. Look, Mrs Lyons, if your daughter is missing, I’m sure it’s nothing to worry about. Good day to you.”

  But still she would not let us pass.

  “You know something,” she pointed an accusing finger.

  “I know lots of things,” I agreed. “I know that she was worried about telling you about her new boyfriend - I - oh, I can’t deal with this right now, Mrs Lyons. Go home and call your daughter on her portable thingamabob, make your peace and invite her back. Then get on with your lives in harmony, sweetness and light. But for now: kindly get out of my bloody way!”

  Mrs Lyons was so stunned she stepped aside. Man and I went through the side gate and into the kitchen and for the first time since we moved into that house on Edgar Street, closed and locked the back door.

  ***

  Feeling a little fresher but no less anguished after Mjomba hosed us down in the back garden, Man and I were driven back to Serious Crimes, having implored our dear, sweet uncle to remain indoors and attempt to stay out of trouble. That was a problem with which we would have to deal later. Our priority was to get our Baby back.

  We were taken to a room in which rows of chairs had been set out to face a line of tables. Behind the tables was a large television screen bearing the word SERIOUS in intimidating letters.

  Detective Inspector Stevens told us what was going to happen. Representatives from newspapers, radio and television stations would attend - the more coverage we could get, the more chance we would have of a speedy resolution. He pointed at a device with words on its screen and told me I was to read the words as they scrolled upwards. And, he stuck a finger too near my nose for my - and Man’s - liking, he admonished me to read only the script and nothing but the script. I said, Yes, of course. Anything to get my Baby back.

  Stevens installed us behind the tables. Man sat to my right and the detective inspector to my left. I insisted that Policeman Andy also be present and might he take Stevens’s place at my side. Stevens muttered something about that ruining his chances of getting in something called a two-shot with me but, grudgingly, he moved one seat further along.

  I burst into tears. The situation reminded me of the Mad Hatter’s tea party - another story I had told Baby in his cot. Man squeezed my hand.

  “‘No room’,” he quoted, understanding me completely.

  “Oh, darling!” I rested my head against his arm.

  “Oh, good,” said Stevens, “You’re already blarting. That’ll look great on camera. Keep them tears coming.”

  I felt like telling this odious man and his even worse moustache what a perfectly cruel beast I found him to be but Man squeezed my hand again - a different squeeze, telling me no.

  “Whatever takes,” he said. I resolved then to turn the old waterworks to maximum output.

  “Here they come,” Stevens heralded the entrance of the reporters.

  “You’ll be fine, your ladyship,” said Policeman Andy to my left. I smiled and thanked him for his kindness.

  It all went by in a bit of a blur, like a foggy, half-remembered dream. Detective Inspector Stevens began with a description of Baby. The only photographs they had were those from the local paper: Baby having fun posing like the hero he was - IS!

  CCTV footage of the shoe shop was shown behind us and Stevens asked the viewers, listeners and readers if they had been near the footwear outlet at the specified time.

  Then he must have introduced me - more than once because Policeman Andy leaned towards my ear and whispered in it, “That’s your cue, your ladyship.”

  “What? It is?”

  “Just read the bloody script,” urged Stevens from behind his moustache - and he employed a much stronger expletive than ‘bloody’ as you might imagine.

  “I am Sonny’s mother,” I read in a manner that reminded me of Baby’s first attempts at being literate, “- and this,” I pointed mechanically at Man, “- is my husband, Sonny’s father.” Man did not move any of his many muscles. He was frozen stiff like an ice sculpture of himself. “Our son is such a lively - uh, lovely young man with his whole future ahead of him. We love him and we miss him very much. So, please, I appeal to whoever - shouldn’t that be ‘whomever’?”

  Detective Inspector Stevens slapped a hand to his forehead.

  “- I appeal to whoever has taken him to send him home. Please: if you’re a parent yourself or have anyone you’re close to - to whom you are close -”

  “Stop correcting the bloody grammar!”

  “- I appeal to whoever has - Hang on; I’ve read that bit already.”

  “Christ alive!” said Stevens. I would not have taken him to be a religious man. I waved him down.

  “Look,” I said, talking directly to the lens of a television camera. “If you have my Baby, bring him back. Or leave him at that shoe shop. Or -”

  Stevens, out of his chair, moved around to the front of the table, blocking me from the camera. I tried to peer over his shoulder and continue my extemporised appeal.

  “We would very much like to receive information about two suspects believed to be connected with the disappearance of Sonny um - the boy in question.”

  The images from the CCTV appeared on the screen: the faces of two former employees and family retainers, faces from the past.

  “We would like to learn the whereabouts of Albert Jakes and Leonard Gable. We are very interested in talking to these men. But the public are advised not to approach them, like, just to be on the safe side.”

  “Nonsense!” I interrupted, jumping up. “They would not hurt a flea.”

  “Your ladyship, I’ll handle this,” Stevens urged me to sit back down. “You carry on looking upset.”

  “Well, really!” I climbed over the table, escaping all attempts by Man and Policeman Andy to stop me. I shoved the detective i
nspector aside and peered into the camera lens. “Give me back my Baby!” I yelled. Tears scalded my cheeks and I must have looked a fright but for once, I did not care one jot. “Give me back my son or I will find you and I will kill you!”

  My threat caused a general stir among the reporters. Cameras flashed and a volley of questions was hurled in my direction. So many people were calling out ‘your ladyship’ I didn’t know where to turn.

  Man put his arms around me, lifting me off the floor, trying to pull me away. Policeman Andy opened a door and beckoned us through. Stevens shouted over the commotion, trying to regain control.

  Our egress was blocked by the hurried arrival of that younger detective. He said he was sorry and asked us to wait.

  “Oi, Benny!” he called across to his colleague. “Hold the front page. Them two geezers,” he waved at the screen, “They’re here!”

  The announcement gave rise to a resurgence of clamour and cacophony.

  “What?” Benny Stevens came bounding along on his lanky legs like a stick insect on stilts. “Who are?”

  “The suspects! They’ve just walked in.”

  “Well, I must say, Inspector,” I grabbed Stevens by his damp hand, “you are to be congratulated on the efficacy of this appeal.”

  But the younger one - Jase - interrupted. “No, no, your ladyship; it’s not like that. They say they heard their names on the car radio and they’ve come to clear it up.”

  “What do you mean?” I clung to my husband as I felt my legs buckle.

  “It’s not them. They’re not the ones who took your boy.”

  “But - but - they were following me -”

  I fainted clear away.

  Chapter Nineteen

  In which Man does what he does best

  I came to in Man’s arms - my favourite place to be in all the world - but those arms and the rest of my husband along with them, of course, were still at the Serious place. I accepted a cup of water from that Jase fellow, whose name I was to learn was Detective Constable Jason Pattimore.