Black Mischief

by Carl Hancock

  ‘I never saw my mummy. But your mummy did. Daddy told me she was there.’

  Bertie steeled himself. ‘It’s all right, Tom. Yes, Mummy was up here, too. Tom’s right. She caught a fish so big it made enough supper for seven people.’

  ‘That must have been a shark!’

  ‘You know, I can’t really remember for sure.’

  ‘I say we go and see what fish are there today, just waiting for us.’

  ‘Oooh, Daddy, like you say, let’s put our best foot forward.

  Sam, that means hurry.’

  * * *

  Rebecca, Sonya and Lydia were in sombre mood as they finished their domestic chores. When they sat down together for yet another coffee, Sonya explained to Lydia.

  ‘Yes, I was there. I had been watching Anna closely since we first heard about the pregnancy. “My miracle baby” she called him. She and Bertie knew the risks. When she came in for the birth, she told me straight away. “Sonya, promise, if things don’t work out, let me go and save the child”. When Ewan was just about to come Bertie drew me to one side. “I hate to ask this but, Sonya, whatever happens, don’t let my Anna go. Please.”’

  ‘Oh, Sonya!’ Lydia reached out to touch Sonya’s arm.

  ‘You know, I’ve been working with mothers and babies for so many years, but the mystery of those precious moments is there every single time. Gynaecologist is a fancy name but, really, I’m no more than a bystander trying to help. The big decisions are made elsewhere. But that was my worst time. I wanted them both, but I didn’t have to fool myself for a single second that I was playing God. The little one was a fighter from the very first moment. Anna saw him, heard him cry but …’ She covered her face and wept quietly. ‘The pity of it. When I brought his boy to Bertie, we just cried our eyes out.’

  The three women sat quietly in the privacy of their thoughts and listened to the sounds of the fitful breeze and the screaming calls of a pair of black kite skimming their way to the open plains further up the mountain range.

  * * *

  The fishing party returned earlier than expected. Sonya was talking to Lydia when they arrived.

  ‘Simon and I loved it in America. The boys hadn’t come along then. We were both offered jobs in Doctors Hospital. We thought about it but, well, NewYork for a holiday, yes, but where could you find a place like this… My God, what’s this?’

  The three of them ran to the edge of the glade. Every one of the fishermen looked as if they had not been by the river but in it. Bertie led the way with Ewan crying in his arms. Tom followed and he was carrying one of the brothers - it must be Sammy - in his arms. The boy was silent. Sonya ran to him. She saw the blood on his blue anorak and then a wound to one side of his forehead.

  Moses and Noah ran to their mother and buried their heads in the folds of her coat. The tears held back for so long were released mingled with sobbing, desperate pleas from Noah.

  ‘Mamma, is he going to be all right? I didn’t push him. He just sort of slipped …’

  Tom took over quickly. ‘We were coming close to the falls. The boys wanted to look down to try to see the bottom. Ewan slipped and fell into the mud. Sammy went to help him up. He skidded and slid over.’

  ‘And fell to the bottom?’ By now, Sonya had taken Sammy in her arms. He was warm and breathing gently.

  ‘No, Sonya. Barely five or six feet.There was a slab of rock down there. Bertie had him back up in seconds. As you see, we all got a bit wet. Spray mostly.’

  She held her little wounded soldier tight, closed her eyes and prayed hard.

  Frantic activity. While the women undressed the boys and dried them, Tom and Bertie broke camp and packed the vehicles. In ten minutes the engines were revved and the journey back down to the plain began. The boys, wrapped in heavy blankets, sat tight together in the back, except for Sammy who lay upright in his mother’s arms. She had done the first aid. There was no more bleeding, no broken bones.

  That same morning Alfred Ross had been doing a lot of reading. By eleven he was driving quietly from his hotel on the edge of the Nairobi city centre to the Highlands. He travelled alone in a second-hand, battered Range Rover, supplied at his request by his client. He was enjoying himself. Alfredo was always happy when a job involved a slow build-up. The bonus here was that he would be taking on a new identity, getting to practise a little acting, always a pleasure. He had not yet made up his mind whether it would be a professor of anthropology or a freelance newsman out on a special assignment. At times like this he always blessed his father for sending him to school in England. The accent alone was worth the investment. Up-market London seemed to inspire trust in a way that Brooklyn did not.

  He enjoyed the brightness of the African light and was fascinated to observe his fellow travellers. At home he mostly used taxis or was driven by a chauffeur. Here the driving was erratic but relaxed. There were so many people on the red earth verges, most of them on the move. There were kids everywhere, on their way to school dressed in different coloured sweaters. Uchome had been right about the views, especially from the highest point of the climb.

  ‘Look out for the volcano to your left. Just beyond, you’ll see the big lake.’

  This Africa was full of life. No dozing at the wheel out here. Get the job done and stay away for a while. He knew that when he was finished, it would the first plane out. One day it might be different.

  Once onto South Lake Road, he pulled over for a final check. Londiani. The finger post pointed down a track to his right. He considered walking to the farmhouse two hundred metres away. Its pitched roof peeped out from a tight circle of dark green trees. Beyond, the blue waters of the lake sparkled on that bright, warm morning.

  A beat-up old car pulled in behind him. Alfredo had been too relaxed on his journey from the town centre. Yes, he had noticed a car behind him, but it was way back and, after all, they were both travelling on a public road. The three occupants had spotted him as he pulled out of the Amin filling station. Smart car, to them, single white driver. This could be interesting and profitable.

  In his side mirror he watched them stepping out, three scruffily dressed skinny youths with the oversized basketball boots and the loose jeans. He had seen such characters everywhere he went in the world. He was fully alert now. He took something out of his pocket and held it under the flap of his coat. As they drew alongside, he rolled down the window and smiled affably.

  ‘Good morning, gentlemen. A nice, fine day for it.’ As a schoolboy in England he had heard the locals use this expression many times, without ever knowing what the ‘it’ meant.

  The laid-back, lazy manner of the young men was no surprise, nor the passable attempt at the down-market Bronx accent.

  ‘So what have we here? Nice wheels, Mister Englishman. How much they cost you?’

  ‘I beg your pardon?’

  The spokesman, and presumably the leader, leaned on the windowsill and checked out the interior of the Range Rover as he spoke. ‘Maybe you could give us a ride to Nairobi. Meeting with our business partners.’ He grinned towards his companions. ‘Better yet, you step out and let me drive.’

  Alfredo pleased them with his quick cooperation. He closed the door behind him and took a step backwards on the verge, not such a pleasing move. When they saw him standing in front of them, they could not resist a comment. Their surprise caused their man to forget the pseudo accent.

  ‘My, you’re small for your age,’ he chuckled. ‘You haven’t escaped from some place?’ The loony house up in Gilgil?’

  ‘I was just going to ask you the same question.’

  The tension was mounting. There was something annoyingly arrogant in this little man. The tall companions behind the man of the mouth stepped forward and reached for their pockets. Too late. Three bangs later and they were screaming with the pain of their wounds. Their lives were in no danger. Alfredo, as usual, had selected his target areas carefully. Fearing another onslaught, they hobbled back to their vehicle, switched on and be
gan a turn.

  ‘The hospital is that way!’ Alfredo mocked, pointing towards Naivasha town.

  He heard the shot almost simultaneously with feeling the burning sensation in his left upper arm. Flesh wound, just one level up from a graze, but there was blood. He was very, very annoyed with himself.

  Alfredo removed his coat to check on his wound. As he did so, he heard the sound of footsteps of someone running up the driveway towards him. In seconds two men appeared calling out something in what he took to be Swahili. On seeing him, they switched to English.

  ‘Bwana, we are coming. We heard shots. You have had some trouble, yes?’

  The brothers, Luka and Erik, night askaris at Londiani, had been on their way into town to visit family and to look around the matumba on the hunt for bargains. Thrown temporarily off balance, Alfredo suspected for a moment that these two were part of the attack squad. He soon realised that these tall, smartly dressed men were on his side. When they noticed blood that had saturated the arm of his white shirt, they scrunched their faces into a look of shared agony.

  ‘Bwana, so sorry, so sorry. Please, come to the house. The memsahibs are at home. They are very clever ladies. They will help.’

  Erik, the brother who had not spoken, took a large blue handkerchief and held it out to this mzungo in distress.

  ‘I’m fine. Just a scratch. Come on, let me drive you down.’

  It was a strange and unnerving situation for Alfredo. He was sitting in the kitchen of two of the women he had come to assess with a view to killing. He had seen their photographs and knew their names. Rafaella, the older McCall woman, was a surprise. The Italian accent had not been completely lost after her many years in Africa and she was a real beauty, a Veronese princess in exile.

  ‘I was not much more than a girl. My father and his friend had been out hunting for birds. It was the last time for Papa. Mama and I were in our kitchen, just like we are here, pulling little balls of lead out of the bottom of Tullio Capello with a tweezers. Papa was jumping up and down on his gun. Mama said, “Blame your eyes, Tonio, not the poor gun!”’

  Alfredo was happy to be the quiet patient, listening to the kitchen talk. One awkward glance from the younger McCall woman put him on his guard. The question was about to be asked. She looked at him sideways, like a naughty schoolgirl about to be impertinent.

  ‘What exactly happened, Mister Ross? Shootings in broad daylight, that’s a first around here.’

  Alfredo smiled dismissively. ‘Please, Fred. It was my fault. It’s my first time in Naivasha. As I came down the steps of the bank, a young man was leaning against my car, waiting for me. He was smartly dressed and polite.’

  ‘“Sir, I am applying for a position on one of the flower farms by the lake. If you are driving out of town, I could get down on the turn onto South Lake Road”. I didn’t know the way so he guided me. Trying to be helpful, I took him further.

  As we came to your entrance he pulled a gun and told me to hand over my wallet.’

  ‘Oh, no!’

  ‘Oh, yes. But there’s always karate. Comes in handy sometimes. Too easy, really. Next thing we were out on the road with his gun on the tarmac. I picked it up and he ran back towards town. I fired a couple of shots into the road to encourage him.’

  ‘But your wound?’

  ‘Carelessness from me. As I grabbed it, well, I think I actually shot myself.’

  A thoughtful silence on the women’s side ended with Maura throwing up a bright idea.

  ‘Inspector Caroline or Hosea, Naivasha police, but honest ones, efficient ones.’

  ‘No, no. I’m an American citizen. Oh, yes, I know, the English accent. If we call in the police, there’ll be a big fuss. And I think the kid has had rough justice served on him.’

  From the bedroom window, there was another majestic view for Alfredo to enjoy. He had gladly accepted the order that he must lie down for a time, just in case of delayed shock. He watched the afternoon shadows as they gradually shifted across the plain. The only shock he experienced was that the turn of events had dulled the sharp edge of his plans. Two of his intended prey had been kind to him. This was useful. He wanted to observe, but he did not welcome the warm intimacy. For a time he questioned if his resolve might be undermined. Common sense and some simple reasoning soon helped him over this hurdle. These people meant nothing to him. In his time he had put away some attractive, undeserving victims. Conscience was not a part of his baggage. And his temporary employer was offering him a very big payout. There would be no problem when the time came.

  The noise of activity outside roused him. He checked his watch. He must have been dozing in that armchair for at least an hour. From the window he saw two men and five women in conversation by the open doors of a newly arrived Japanese four-wheel drive. He knew the two McCall women and their maid Angela. One of the other two must have been the famous Rebecca. No exaggeration about her good looks even from up there. He felt sure that the second young woman was the one who must have troubled Rubai such a lot. He would check later. As for the men, easy, boss man McCall and the dreaded son, Tom. They were not a joyful group. That was obvious.

  When he was introduced downstairs, he attracted little interest beyond the fact that he had been wounded on the road just outside the property. He soon worked out that the three young people had returned early from some trip into the hills. Some young kid had fallen into a river and knocked himself out. The animated conversation around the healing ceremony of the tea taken on the large open veranda presented him with the opportunity to observe without being noticed, except that, from time to time, the other young woman, ah, yes Lydia, gave him what his grandmother called ‘an old-fashioned look’. Another African beauty, the mud stains on her clothes gave her an extra attraction.

  Stupid of him, but there in that comfortable atmosphere, he understood, for the first time, that he had tumbled into a family that was close-knit and caring. Pressed to stay for dinner, he was introduced to four new people. For a time he believed that they were two married couples until he picked up that the man, Briggs, was a widower and the woman next to him had recently lost her husband in a brutal murder he had read about in The New York Times. Sonya Mboya was a doctor and it was one of her kids who had fallen into the river.

  When Hosea Kabari, the sergeant in the local police, arrived he brought his wife. That was a surprise. There was something striking about this Maria, yet another good-looker. But this one radiated an inner strength and possessed a poise he had rarely seen in any human being. Before they sat down, he had been persuaded to take off his shirt for this woman with the firm yet silky hands to examine his wounded arm. Her cool touch soothed the irritation. Perhaps they were right with their suggestion of a gift of healing powers. Even the doctor seemed to believe in the idea.

  He gathered a lot of information that evening, perhaps too much. His memory was his notebook. It had logged in news about plans for a new hospital. He had discovered that this Tom and the singer would be back in New York before he was and raising funds for the project that would fade away with the passing of the dreamers who had thought it up. The plan was for them to be away for two weeks. He would make sure that they were back in less than one. They were taking the Nairobi whore with them, presumably to try to hide her from the boss. Should he tell Mister R that he had run the troublesome female who had bothered him so much? He registered a no on that tiny dilemma, without being able to give himself a satisfactory reason.

  One intriguing but seemingly irrelevant piece of news that came out that evening concerned the injured kid, little Sammy. He was still unconscious when they returned to the Briggs place where this Sonya and her boys were staying. Mama was puzzling on her own dilemma. Should she risk taking him down to the city straight away or wait until morning?

  Without warning and without explanation, Maria Kabari had turned up at Rusinga Farm.

  ‘I think I can help Sammy.’

  Sonya showed no surprise. How could she have forgotten
the hours that Maria had spent with Simon in the coolness of the private surgery in her brother’s house? Maria had a gift and Sonya trusted her. Soon Sammy was with his brothers and Ewan out on the big field bordering the house where they were daring each other to see who would get closest to one of the waterbuck grazing quietly in the late afternoon. Sonya did not try to look for sensible reasons for yet another transformation.

  Chapter Thirty-one

  red Ross left early. He had arranged with Alex that, next morning, Stephen Kamau would escort him around the flower farm.

  ‘One of my courses in New York State was on the flowers of Africa. The roses around the room here, I’ve never seen better specimens. Got to take my chance. You don’t mind me taking pictures?’

  Those left behind at the dinner table did not expect to see him again. Another ship had passed in the night. Life went on and plans became reality. Next morning, Sonya returned to Nairobi. She and the boys became temporary residents at her brother’s home in Karen.

  Later in the same day, Peter Bellengeri brought his heavy machinery to the Naivasha site. As a symbolic gesture, he climbed into the cab of his earthmover and sliced away a few more swathes of topsoil. The new building was on its way. As he was checking his work, Bertie turned up. He was on his way back to Rusinga with Ewan after a drive ‘round Nakuru game park, a treat for a small boy who was missing his friends.

  ‘What do you think, Bertie? I’m guessing that the main entrance should be about here.’

  His old friend was in reflective mood. ‘ Bloody marvellous, Peter. As I drove in, it struck me that this bit of land has been lying untouched, at peace for thousands of years, until we come along and the long wait ended. I hope we can put up something beautiful. Our people have had to put up with tenth rate for too long. I wonder if we can do it.’

  Rebecca and Tom, with an excited Lydia, set off from Jomo Kenyatta on their long journey to the north-west. Just as on their first arrival at Kennedy Airport earlier in the year, Toni Wajiru and Mary were there to meet them. When the chauffeur driven car returned to the daylight on the Manhattan side of the Queen’s Tunnel, there again, on either side of them, was the display of streets and buildings, the world famous cityscape that, to most visitors was the essence of the place. For Lydia, it was just like being in a glamorous film - the canyons of concrete and glass, the broad sidewalks crowded with people on the move and the noise. When a police car passed them with its siren blaring, she watched it go by in amazement and, when the officer on her side looked across at her, waved and smiled, she put her hand to her mouth and was too late to wave back.