Thunder over the Grass Page 18

  “Fetch some water to drink, Ray.”

  He did not answer but climbed to his feet and stumbled away.

  Maliha did not wipe away the tears that fell from her eyes. She blinked to clear the blurriness and moved round to examine the wound in more detail. The bone of the skull had thousands of tiny serrations indicating a mechanical cutting tool. She covered the body again and sat back on her heels.

  Ideas as to why someone would do this, how they could do this, fought with how she could possibly tell Ulrika the likely consequence for her son, even if he were the incestuous get of her own father. Or how Wit Nickells could be told. Or the black families, one of whom was family to this child.

  She stood up and stared out into the city.

  What was happening here?

  After a while Ray returned with a tin mug of tea and another bucket of water.

  “Clean yourself up,” he said and put the bucket down under the bushes by the pumping station. She washed her hands and face. The water was refreshing and she felt herself recovering a little.

  He handed her the tea. It looked intensely brown. It tasted as if he had used three spoons of tea in that one mug and then emptied the sugar bowl into it. It was completely stewed and she hated tea with sugar. She drank it all down and felt the strength returning to her.

  “Nothing like a good cup of tea,” said Ray. “Good job our mate Grummond is a proper Brit.”

  “This is nothing like a good cup of tea, Ray,” she said. He looked hurt. “But thank you. It’s what I needed.”

  The first Johannesburg uniformed police officer hurried through the gates with Mr Grummond and Maliha sighed. “Here we go.”

  vi

  “Well, Miss Anderson,” said the chief detective. “You have really done it this time.”

  “I beg your pardon?”

  She looked out through the window of the office in which she and Ray had been put after the police took over the area. There were nearly twenty officers in uniform and half a dozen in plain clothes combing the grounds.

  Pointlessly.

  “You had to keep digging.”

  “I think that’s a fairly poor turn of phrase under the circumstances.”

  “What did you think you would achieve?”

  She turned away from the window. The chief detective looked as if he’d aged twenty years. Given that he could be expected to have several sleepless nights ahead of him she did not expect he was going to be looking much better for a long while.

  “I am investigating the disappearance of children,” she said. “And you can add to that their murder and mutilation.” She did not want to save his feelings since she had yet to find any. “Hopefully after they were dead.”

  “If you had left it alone as I told you—”

  “What, and allowed these murderers to continue kidnapping and killing children?” she stopped for a moment. “Or is killing black babies not a crime?”

  “Of course it’s a crime,” he said hotly. He approached her, emphasising the foot of height he had over her. “We were investigating.”

  “Really? When did that start? You told me yourself that you didn’t believe it was happening.”

  “Your evidence in regard to Wit Nickells—”

  “Oh, so you believed me? That’s a novelty—Mr Jennings? Do make a note of that, won’t you?”

  Vandenhoek glanced across at Ray who was perched on a desk with his notebook and a pencil. He looked up with a malicious grin and waved at the chief detective.

  “You will not print any of this!”

  “I am a member of the press, Chief Detective Vandenhoek. You spell that with an oh-ee, doncha?”

  “I’ll have you in jail, and I’ll throw away the key!”

  Jennings’ grin became wider. “Embarrassed Crusher Jails Innocent Journalist.”

  Vandenhoek’s face had become so red it looked as if he were going to explode. Maliha decided she had done enough.

  She turned her back on the chief detective. “Am I under arrest?”

  “No,” growled Vandenhoek.

  “What about Mr Jennings?”

  “No.”

  “Good,” she said. “Now, shall we sit down? You can ask me anything you like about the case and I will attempt to answer those questions to the best of my ability.”

  Vandenhoek growled again but pulled up one of the straight-backed chairs and sat facing the window so he could see what was going on. Ray stayed on the desk while Maliha brought a chair close to the window and sat also facing out.

  A number of water treatment engineers had turned up, some of them were black.

  “How did you know to look here?” asked Vandenhoek in a forced calm.

  “I didn’t really,” she said. “It was just a guess.”

  “Are all your guesses like this?”

  “Usually.”

  “I see.” He paused and she glanced at him. He was staring out at where a doctor was examining the child’s body before moving it. “I have never had to deal with anything like this before.”

  “Neither have I,” she said. “It is an abomination.”

  He turned his gaze on her. “Yes, that is the word.” His face hardened. “But you still have not explained why you came here.”

  “It was possible, of course, that the children were being shipped away in which case we would have no chance of discovering them,” she said. “But the method by which they were being kidnapped seemed too sophisticated for simple slavers, and very young children don’t make good slaves.”

  “They have other uses,” said the chief detective darkly.

  “I know, but again that route would be much harder to trace, so I went for the simpler option.”

  “Simpler? What are you talking about?”

  “They were being taken one at a time, used in some fashion, and then disposed of,” she replied.

  “It would be simpler to take the bodies into the grass and leave them for the animals,” said Vandenhoek.

  “Yes, and the fact that they did not tells us a great deal.”

  Vandenhoek’s face relaxed. “You mean they are not locals so the best idea they had was to put the bodies in the sewer.”

  Maliha did not respond and looked out.

  “Lucky you found the right one first.”

  “Yes,” she said absently. “That was lucky, wasn’t it?”

  He got to his feet and went to the door.

  “We are free to go?” asked Maliha, standing as well.

  “Yes,” he said. “I understand you have booked passage back to India.”

  “That’s right.”

  He turned to go then stopped halfway through the door. “I should thank you for your assistance.”

  “Yes,” she said. “You should.”

  “I know you think of us as primitive and uncultured, Miss Anderson,” he said. “But we can be the bigger man, so I want to thank you for your help and I hope your journey home is uneventful.”

  Maliha smiled as he left and shut the door. She allowed the sound of his footsteps to disappear before she turned to Ray with no sign of the smile she had been wearing.

  “What a nasty bloke,” said Ray. “And I thought the police back home were bad.”

  Maliha did not disagree.

  “We’re not leaving, are we?” he said.

  “We? Mr Jennings? You are not one of my party; what you choose to do is your business.”

  He put his head on one side. “All right. Yes. I know. But you’re not leaving, are you?”

  “I am not.”

  Ray’s face fell. “But you’re sending Meeta back?”

  “With Barbara, Ulrika and the baby, yes. Someone needs to look after them.” She turned away and moved the chair back to where it had come from and then the chair the chief detective had used.

  There was a map on the wall showing the route of the main sewers through the city. Maliha studied it for a few moments and then said. “She likes you.”

  “What?”


  “Amita likes you, Ray.”

  There was a long pause. “She punched me.”

  “Everyone wants to punch you, Ray.”

  Another long pause. “I like her.”

  “Even though you know what she is?”

  The next pause was even longer. “Because of what she is.”

  Maliha smiled at the map. She knew it was difficult for him, and what he had admitted was a crime that would get him locked up.

  “You could go back to India with them.”

  “Nah, the story’s here,” he said. “And you were right; it’s a bloody good story. I’ll steal the front page from that Winifred Churchill cow.”

  “We better get you to a place you can write it up and send it then, hadn’t we?”

  She turned back and Ray was grinning like a cat that had got the cream.

  vii

  Valentine took his room key from the desk clerk who slouched back into his chair once his duty was discharged. The foyer of the hotel was empty. Valentine strode across it to the stairs and was about to push through the worn door.

  “Hey.”

  He turned to see the desk clerk waving a letter. Valentine retrieved it from the man, who said nothing further and relaxed back into his chair, and headed upstairs.

  The room was as he had left it as far as he could tell. The bed still unmade, the wardrobe door closed tight, the half-consumed whiskey bottle still on the bureau.

  He opened the cupboard and looked at the screwed up paper in the corner behind his suitcase. He pulled it out and opened it carefully. The hair was missing. Valentine smiled.

  The sun was on the other side of the building so he did not have to suffer its intense heat but the room was stuffy. He pulled up the window letting the sound of the city in with the slightly fresher air.

  He sat on the bed leaning against the wall with the pillow supporting his back and examined the envelope. His fake name and the hotel address were typed and there was no stamp. He might be able to get a description of the person who delivered it from the desk clerk. He tore through the top of the envelope with his finger and extracted the thin paper from the interior.

  Mr Jonathan Dyer esq.

  We are pleased to confirm that our enquiries in regard to your bona fides have been successfully concluded. Your appointment will commence this coming Thursday. We lift at midnight. You will be informed of the location separately.

  Yours sincerely,

  Capt Blake

  Valentine put his head back against the wall and closed his eyes. He had done it at last. He would be aboard one of the vessels that should not even exist.

  And then he thought of Maliha.

  He still had some time with her but that would be all. And then they might never see one another again. There was a good chance he would end up dead. If not from the slavers themselves then in a fight, or even by an attack by the Royal Navy.

  He toyed with the idea of simply going to the consulate with this information and staying with Maliha. But he could not; he had to bring down Timmons. Not just for Maliha but for Riette and Marten and every other person enslaved or taken by them.

  And he could discover the secret of their Faraday device that could lift a ship the size of a Sky-Liner as if it were a feather.

  These things were so much more important than his relationship with a woman he had met on a passenger ship. He remembered the way she had moved the previous night and smiled.

  Valentine rolled over on the bed. He had not realised how tired he was. But the night had been long on action and short on rest. A quick nap would do him the world of good.

  * * *

  He jumped to being fully awake.

  His arm was hot. The brightness through his eyelids told him that the sun was now shining through his window directly on him. He must have been asleep for hours.

  A shuffle of movement on the floorboards behind him told him there was someone else in the room. Without thinking he rolled over and up into a sitting position. He got his feet on the floor and launched himself at the dark figure by the bureau. Even as he did so he caught sight of someone crouched down by the door.

  He landed on the intruder and bore him to the ground. There was a childlike squeal from the one by the door. He got his knee in the back of the one under him when something hit him over the head. It was a surprise but no damage was done.

  “Get off my brother!”

  Valentine lashed out with his arm to grab the other assailant round the knees but found a waist instead. A thin, childlike waist. Brother?

  He stood up and jumped back to the wall.

  Izak lay on the floor. Lilith’s face was pulled into a very serious expression of anger with her fists curled into hard and dirty balls. Izak turned over and grinned. “Good fighter, boss.”

  “What are you two doing here?” he demanded. “And how did you get in?”

  Lilith glanced at the open window. “Open windows invite snakes.”

  “Not on the third floor.”

  She smiled. “Some snakes got legs.”

  “What are you doing here?”

  Izak’s face grew serious. “Goddess wants you. Bad business.”

  Valentine panicked. “She’s not hurt?”

  “She’s not hurt,” said Izak. “But she found babies.”

  “That’s good.”

  “Dead babies.”

  “Oh god,” said Valentine. Izak and Lilith crossed themselves like Catholics though Valentine guessed they’d probably never been in a church—except perhaps to steal something. He also knew Maliha was not as strong as she pretended to be. “Is she really all right?”

  “The goddess is angry,” Lilith said simply.

  Yes, that was her other emotional setting. She could burn with an anger that would scorch anyone who stood too close. Most people did not see it in her, but he had felt it.

  “All right,” he said. “I need to get back to the hotel. You go back the way you came, I’ll just go out through the front.”

  Lilith put her hand on his wrist. He looked down into her brown eyes. “You be careful. Danger outside.”

  “Why, what’s wrong?”

  Lilith glanced at Izak who answered. “Goddess found black baby in white people’s toilet. Black baby had head cut open. Black people angry. Mama Kosi say white people use bad magic. She make black people fight.”

  He looked back at Lilith who had squeezed his wrist. “Black people want to kill white people dead and dead.”

  “You come hard way with us,” said Izak. “Goddess said we have to help you find your way.”

  Valentine nodded. He looked around the room; there was nothing here that he needed. He was paid up for a week so no one would come checking on him. He looked at the window. Well it wouldn’t be the first time he had to leave a room that way.

  “Won’t you be in danger if you’re with me?” he said.

  Izak grinned showing a lot of white teeth. “If that happens, we just knock you down and kick you.”

  Valentine matched his smile with a wry grin.

  “Lead the way,” he said.

  Chapter 7

  i

  “Did you have to tell her?” asked Valentine. He was looking through the doorway into Maliha’s bedroom. Ulrika was curled up in the opposite corner. He could not see whether she was crying but her body was moving rhythmically with her heavy breathing.

  “What else was I supposed to do?” she said. “Let her read about it in a newspaper? Or overhear our conversation?”

  “Yes, but...”

  “There was no easy way, Valentine,” she said and turned her head to look in on the girl. “Sometimes you have to do something bad in order to do right.”

  He looked at her profile in the light, her straight nose and delicate lips. “You don’t always have to be the one to do it.”

  She turned back to him. “I may not be the one who committed the crime but I am the one who uncovered the truth of it. Who else has the responsibility?”

&nbs
p; He sighed. He knew she was right, and he was sure she would have been as gentle as she could have been.

  As if they were one person they moved away from the door to save any further embarrassment to the poor girl.

  “Are you sure her Henry will be dead?”

  The dark streets were empty; even the gentle background susurration of the city was absent. The mayor had announced a curfew. Anyone breaking it would be shot. Of course, they meant any blacks found breaking it.

  She shook her head. “No, of course I can’t be sure but it is most likely,” she took a deep breath. “And even if he is not there is no telling what condition he might be in. He might be better off dead.”

  There was the crack of a gun in the distance.

  “Izak said they cut the top off the head.” Valentine said the words yet he could still barely believe it, let alone imagine it. How could someone do such a thing to a child?

  “Yes.”

  “Why?”

  Maliha sighed. “It was reminiscent of post-mortem examination or a surgical demonstration.”

  “That still doesn’t explain why.”

  “Do I have to spell it out, Valentine?” she turned on him. “Do you have to make me say the words?” He tried to put his arm around her to provide some comfort but she shrugged him off. “Why don’t you just think for a change?”

  Her words hurt but he knew it was because of what she had seen. What he did not want to see.

  “Someone is carrying out experiments. Why?”

  “It may be related to the eugenics work of Galton.”

  “I don’t know what that is.” he said.

  “That humans can be bred like dogs to produce desirable traits and weed out the undesirable ones,” she said quietly. “It is a popular hypothesis in some quarters. They might be looking for evidence of a difference in brain development between blacks and whites.”

  “Oh,” he said. “And where would you fit into that scheme?”

  “I’m sure you can work it out, Valentine.”

  She turned on her heel, crossed to the connecting passage and went through into Barbara’s suite.

  * * *

  Maliha tried to force herself into calm. She was not angry at Valentine, just the perpetrators of this monstrosity. But they were not here, and Valentine was. She still did not treat him well. Absently she turned the engagement ring on her finger. She wanted to act right now but she could not.