by Jane Shemilt
‘I told the police about Teko on the way home. I sent them the picture of her that I took at the game park on Christmas Day.’ Adam’s voice slurs with tiredness. ‘They’ll find her … ’ He falls asleep again, in mid-sentence.
The window bangs, followed by the soft, rushing sound of rain. After a moment, the scent of wet earth leaks into the room. Then I catch the sound of footsteps shuffling along the veranda. It could be someone returning Sam, just as I’d thought. I run back down the corridor and into the sitting room. I struggle with the heavy front door, twisting the handle this way and that. Finally it swings open.
The veranda is empty.
Rain blows in my eyes; a blurred figure moves into the circle of light from the door. It’s Josiah on his nightly round; keys glint in his hand. He nods, pulls his hat lower and steps into the darkness again.
I crouch; my hand spread out on the wet wood. The rain pours onto my back, but I stay where I am, bent over the space where I’d imagined my son to be.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
Botswana, March 2014
When Sam was newborn, I brought him into our bed every night. He’d burrow against me, nails softly scraping, face pushing into my breast, small mouth latching on while I drifted in and out of sleep. It was easier that way, though the health visitor disapproved. Sometimes I’d wake later to find him moving on my abdomen, wriggling and elbowing as if he were still inside me. As I wake on the second morning without him, my skin feels the imprint of his body, as though he had just that second been lifted away.
Adam is up already, his pale face empty of expression as he downs coffee in the kitchen. He hasn’t shaved; his hair is still flattened on one side by sleep. Today he will recount our loss to strangers and may have to listen to horrors we haven’t thought of. Megan’s name isn’t mentioned. My suspicions have faded in the night, taking on the quality of a nightmare, disturbing but unreal, sliding away into the shadows.
Before he leaves, I tell Adam that Sam’s knitted elephant was found in the pond.
‘Who could have done that, Adam? Why would they?’
He stares at me, as if he’s forgotten that Sam even had such a toy.
‘It could have been there for days,’ he replies after a few seconds. ‘Dropped in the garden, then kicked into the water by accident. Zoë drops toys all the time.’
But Zoë picks her toys up – they’re precious to her; and, apart from that concert, the children knew not to play near the pond again. Adam shuts the door, without saying goodbye, and my thoughts circle round and and round, going nowhere.
I take the girls with their books and a rug to the lawn under the trees. Alice hunches over her maths, but her eyes are closed, her hand rests on the cover. The book remains unopened. Zoë lies on her stomach beside her, sighing. She opens a nature book, settles tracing paper over the outline of an elephant and makes a start, breathing deeply. Peo sits close, hemming a green linen cloth, her long legs tucked under her skirt. Her eyes move constantly, registering Josiah sweeping the veranda, the van that flashes white through the trees as it passes, and the way the shade falls, so that the children keep inside its grey edge.
Sam was there, under the tree, three days ago, the day before he was taken. The leaves had been reflected in the blue of his eyes; his arms and legs were moving. He was intact. Leaving the children with Peo, I walk back to the house, my heart banging, eyes and throat burning. I feel ill, as if anguish itself were a virus, growing and multiplying in every cell.
Megan still doesn’t answer her phone. Sam’s image springs out at me on the screen when I bring up the news on my laptop. His passport photo has been magnified, the birthmark clearly visible, a brighter scarlet than it is in reality. I touch it through the screen. His eyes meet mine, their gaze hopeful but solemn. The text is garish.
Baby Sam, only son of English doctors on a mercy mission in Africa, has been missing for forty hours. Torn from his …
Dr Jordan returns from doctoring to find her son Sam has vanished …
Successful couple robbed of only son …
Tragedy for Brits …
The media industry recycling our despair.
None of the articles mentions trafficking. When people read these pieces, will they think to look in the places where traffickers hide their goods? I take the laptop to the window-seat, the better to watch the girls in the garden. Alice is kneeling now. Zoë has rolled over onto her back and is holding her tracing paper above her face, waving it about.
The rewards for traffickers must be vast to make the risk worthwhile. Who has the money to pay them? ‘Politicians,’ Esther had said, and businessmen buying power for the price of a pot of medicine. Eyelids or hands or testes, she’d whispered. I lean my face to the window, smearing the glass with sweat. Arms and legs.
Outside, Alice is standing on the rug, as immobile as a little statue. I start tapping quickly: Human medicine. The page comes up immediately, as if searching for this could be something people often do, like looking online for a dress you might need, or where to go on holiday.
… taking of human beings to excise body parts to use as medicine or for magical purposes in witchcraft … since 1800s, increase in times of economic stress … topic of urban legends …
In 1994 in Mochudi, Botswana, a fourteen-year-old, Segametsi Mogomotsi, was selling oranges by the road to raise money for a school trip. Men bought all of them but had no change. She waited all day. They came back, gagged her, dragged her into the bush, and cut her into pieces … No one was charged … police corruption suspected … student riots … Scotland Yard involved.
The horror seems to leak from the screen into the room until the air vibrates with it, so it takes a while for the shouting outside to reach me. When I look through the window there are only two people on the rug instead of three. Peo, standing, with Zoë by her side, is calling loudly for Alice.
I push my laptop onto the seat and run. All the rooms are empty. Behind the house the pond is coin-flat, reeds untrodden. Pounding down the drive, I glimpse cars in the road through the trees As I round the last sweep, Alice comes into view, facing towards the gate. Sick with relief, I slow and walk towards her as a man leans over the bars, calling to her, microphone in hand. Surrounding him are vans, satellite dishes and a forest of tripods. Dozens of cameras click in unison. Where has all this come from?
The man’s head jerks in my direction as I approach: he has white skin stubbled with growth, brown hair frothing at the neck of a T-shirt and small eyes that dart over me. Next to him, a young Motswana girl lifts her camera in the air, aiming it at me. There are others behind her, a mass of faces, brown and white, looking towards me. I turn Alice round very gently and we start walking back. Loud voices call after us.
‘What happened, exactly?’
‘What did you see?’
‘How are you coping?’
‘Where’s your husband?’
‘Who do you think did this?’
‘How do you feel?’
I want to shout that I feel like dying; that death would be better than the torment of wondering every second if he’s suffering, screaming. Dying. That I want the earth to open and swallow their cameras and the cars, their terrible, intrusive questions.
Zoë flings her arms around Alice, crying noisily. Peo pats her head, then folds the rug, collects the books and her needlework, and they walk back to the house.
We need these journalists. We need anyone with a camera, a microphone and a notebook. I return to the gate. Speaking above the flurry of clicks and questions, I force myself to thank them for their interest and tell them the police will let them know more. Cards with numbers and email addresses are pushed through the bars; more questions surge up the drive after me.
The silence in the house lies like a cool sheet. Elisabeth takes the girls into the kitchen, the door closing quietly on the scent of baking. Five minutes later, Kopano and Goodwill arrive. They emerge from their car looking calm; they must have negotiated their way
through that scrum with no effort. They do this all the time. Kopano strides into the garden, but Goodwill follows me inside. Wedging himself into the same seat, he pulls out his notepad. He flicks it open and looks up, unsmiling.
He has read the email Adam sent him about Teko, and wants to know everything about her. I explain that we think she absconded out of fear, not guilt, though we don’t know anything for sure.
‘Where does she come from? Surname? Family? Village?’
I know none of the answers. She has slipped away like a shadow, as insubstantial and silent as she’d been when we met her.
I trace the train of events that brought her to our door: Megan, David, the orphanage that Adam couldn’t find. Goodwill takes Megan’s number and goes outside to phone her. He comes back, his mouth set. So he can’t reach her either.
‘It is important that we find this Teko,’ he says, sitting down with his notebook. ‘She may have seen something. Experience tells us, however, that young girls do not commit these crimes. It is unlikely she was involved. She didn’t disappear with your son, which I would have expected, and someone had to break in through the doors in your room. If she’d been helping, she would have unlocked them.’
‘She didn’t know where those keys were. I’d removed them,’ I told him. ‘But the front door is unlocked in the daytime. If she’d been helping an accomplice, she would have shown them in that way.’
‘As I said, I think her involvement is unlikely.’ Goodwill sounds irritated.
The criminals must have crouched in the bushes, watching the room as Teko stood, stretched, yawned, walked out to the kitchen maybe. It would have taken only moments to shatter the glass and snatch Sam.
‘Where is the key now?’ Goodwill asks. I find it in the bedroom drawer where I left it and drop it on the table. He looks at it, nodding. ‘Why did you lock those doors in the day but not the others?’ he asks.
‘There are marks on the wall by the doors. I thought the children had made them …’ Then I get up quickly and hurry to the bedroom. Goodwill follows but the marks have gone. Elisabeth is summoned. She cleaned the walls, she says, looking frightened. Four days ago. She thought the children had made them dirty.
‘She is doubtless correct,’ Goodwill says, sitting down in his chair again. ‘Is there anyone else who works for the family,’ he asks, ‘who might also accidentally have slipped your mind?’
‘You’ve met Josiah and Elisabeth.’ Then my eye is caught by Alice’s exercise books, still neatly stacked on the table. ‘There is someone else or, rather, there was. Simon Katse. A tutor for the girls. He left before this happened.’
‘When?’ Goodwill starts writing in his notebook. ‘Why did he leave?’
Why did he? For a moment I can’t remember when or why he went, or even what he looked like.
Goodwill waits, tapping his red pen against his teeth impatiently.
‘He left because of his wife.’ It comes back to me gradually. ‘She has a new job in Serule, so they had to move. They have a child so he –’
‘When exactly did your Mr Katse leave?’
‘Monday. The day before Sam was taken. Four days ago.’ Another lifetime.
‘And the new job that is so important?’ He is writing quickly now and doesn’t look up.
‘Something to do with a development committee. Simon told me she was up for election …’ The word seems to hang in the air of the sitting room.
‘We will need to speak to this Simon,’ Goodwill says slowly. ‘Have you an address?’
‘No. Kabo knows where he lives.’
‘Anyone else?’ He clears his throat impatiently. ‘Anyone at all you have met or been in contact with since you arrived in Botswana?’
I’ve hardly met anyone since we’ve been here. Esther’s frightened face floats across my mind’s eye, Claire’s broad one. The smiling rangers at Mokolodi. Esther will be scared, Claire could be annoyed, but Goodwill may find his way to them anyway. While he is writing down their contact details, I text Esther and Claire a rapid message, hoping they’ll understand. So sorry. Police checking all our contacts; might even visit you.
Hearing me text, Goodwill frowns. Does he think I’m warning my friends? He closes his notebook and walks out, closing the door behind him. Soon he is striding up and down the veranda, the phone clamped to his ear.
Simon is a good man, but what might she be willing to do, his ambitious political wife?
Kopano appears in the doorway. ‘The cages,’ he says.
A statement or a question?
‘They belong to the children, for their zoo.’ How could this be important?
Zoë must have been listening from the kitchen because she comes into the room at this moment, walks up to Kopano and holds out a bowl of plums. He takes one from her, but puts it down on the table. ‘It’s a zoo, for lizards and a frog.’ She tilts her face up to his, a dark ring of chocolate around her mouth. ‘There are two lizards, called Josiah and Simon. They’re best friends. There’s only one frog so far. We call him … Sam.’ She flushes and, glancing at me, lowers her voice to a whisper: ‘Because he hiccups.’ Then, putting her bowl down, she runs quickly to me, burying her face in my skirt.
Kopano looks at her, then at me, his deep eyes flickering with an emotion that is difficult to read, though I register unease. Loosening Zoë’s fingers, I take her back to the kitchen; and am caught for a moment by the ordinariness of the scene in front of me, the colour in it: orange nasturtiums in a green glass, a plate of mauve plums besides Alice, who is reading a book at the table. Elisabeth puts a blue-striped mug beside her, the steam twisting up. Zoë takes a muffin from Peo. I want to stay for a while, watching, unnoticed, but Alice has noticed, she slides from her chair, the book in her hand, and, still reading, shuts the door in my face.
Kopano touches my shoulder; he wants me to accompany him outside. We hurry down the steps. Alice is grieving; I mustn’t mind. Kopano takes long strides. It’s hard to keep up. She doesn’t hate me: this is simply her way of coping.
The thin shade under the gum trees is aromatic, a relief after the glare on the lawn. Kopano points to the cages: all the doors hang open. Have the children let their animals go? As I get nearer a loud buzzing comes from the largest cage. Inside, a glittering mass of flies clusters in the corner towards the back. Kopano stretches his arm past me, and flicks his fingers above them. The noise swells into an angry crescendo as the flies rise, uncovering a small heap of glistening muscle. It takes me a few seconds to realize that the little frog has been skinned.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
Botswana, March 2014
Kopano and Goodwill carry the cages to the car. I tell Alice and Zoë that I’ve freed the lizards and the frog; kinder now that neither girl is allowed in the garden on their own. Both accept this silently, a small loss swallowed by the greater, but the mystery haunts me. Who skinned the little frog? Why? Where are the lizards? Are random hooligans gathering, hyena-like, attracted to devastation? Despite the penetrating afternoon heat, I feel chilled. It seems like a warning, but one I can’t read.
Goodwill comes to find me: he has prepared a statement he wants me to read.
Three days ago our four-month-old son Sam was taken from our rented house near the village of Kubung in western Botswana. Sam has a large red birthmark on his right cheek, fair hair and blue eyes. Please report any sightings.
His nanny, Teko, went missing the next day. She may have important information and anyone with any knowledge of her whereabouts should come forward immediately. Teko is in her late teens or early twenties, medium height, slight build. She has dark hair, which is often plaited, and a slight right-sided limp.
When last seen, she was wearing a necklace of blue stones.
I fill jugs with water from bottles in the fridge and, with Goodwill beside me, carry a tray of stacked glasses down the drive. A young woman takes the tray with a little bow. A group gathers and the jugs are quickly emptied.
Goodwill guides me
to a line of microphones; facing the journalists and several large cameras mounted on tripods, I begin to read: ‘Three days ago, our four-month-old son … our son Sam …’ The writing blurs. ‘Please help us …’
I back away from the microphone and the paper falls from my hands. Goodwill picks it up and continues. ‘Sam was taken from the house where his parents live near Kubung village. He has a large red birthmark …’ His voice fades as I walk away up the drive.
Before he leaves, I ask Goodwill about trafficking again. He simply shakes his head.
Adam returns in the evening, grey-faced and quiet. He has been tailed by the press on the way home, then surrounded by the group outside. He drove through but now lies exhausted on the bed. His body seems to take up less space than it did, as though grief and stress have diminished him already.
‘Interpol are now co-ordinating international teams,’ he says. ‘Though they think it unlikely he’s already left the country. The searches at border controls and airports have been stepped up.’
It would be difficult to smuggle Sam: he’d be too visible. The mark will protect him.
‘They’re tracking all the known cross-border criminal organizations,’ he continues.
But borders must be irrelevant in the deep bush, where there would be no one to stop a gang walking across a wild stretch of land from one country to another. It would be impossible for any police force to monitor miles and miles of desolate countryside.
‘I talked on Skype to a German anti-kidnapping agency,’ Adam says. ‘If we’re contacted by the abductors anywhere we should involve this agency. Never agree to transfer money.’
Against this glimpse into global crime, the horror of the destroyed cages and skinned frog seems to fade a little.
‘It could be local kids,’ Adam says when I tell him what has happened. ‘Egging each other on. They might think we’d be off our guard so they could get away with it.’
They have got away with it. The shadows cluster under the trees where the cages had stood; it would have been easy for children to hide there at night, quietly performing their cruelty.