Jake & Jouma 02; Burn Read online

  “Fine, fine. But, Papa, I thought –”

  “Thought I was dead?”

  “No –”

  Clay Spurling laughed harshly. “It’s amazing what they can do nowadays, isn’t it?”

  Bobby looked at him blankly.

  “Nanotechnology. Miniature robots. Barely the size of a molecule. Can you imagine – millions of these tiny little machines chomping away at the fatty deposits in your coronary arteries? Not a scar in sight. Of course, I’ll be on pills for the rest of my life. But I’m not complaining. Are you, Bobby?”

  It was a pointed question. “I just can’t believe it, Papa,” Bobby said.

  It was a reply that was true whichever way you looked at it.

  ∨ Burn ∧

  13

  Since leaving CID training school in Nairobi nine months before, David Mwangi’s career as a detective had consisted of sitting behind a desk with a calculator in one hand and a guide to fiscal law in the other. Exposing tax impropriety was not what he had expected when he had joined the plain-clothes division.

  Which of course proved what a naive fool he was.

  When you were the son of a prominent government minister, educated at a leading public school in England and the recipient of a first-class degree in mathematics from Oxford University, you were too valuable to waste on such mundane tasks as murder investigations. No, your analytical brain was of far more use identifying and unpicking complex accountancy frauds – especially when the alleged fraudsters were political enemies of the government who, after all, paid your wages.

  A lot of people in the tax fraud investigation department were annoyed when Superintendent Simba seconded him to Coast Province CID, because they had become used to Mwangi doing all the work. But for Mwangi, leaving Nairobi was like being reborn. At last he was free to work on cases that did not involve sifting through dizzying columns of figures. After being a detective in name only, here was his chance to prove himself – and, now that he had it, he was not about to squander the opportunity.

  He sat with Brother Willem in the cool sanctuary of the church and removed his notebook from his jacket pocket.

  “Tell me about Sister Gudrun,” he said pleasantly.

  Willem’s face twitched with irritation behind his spectacles and his long fingers drummed impatiently against the plastic chair in front.

  “I have already told all this to Inspector Jouma,” he snapped.

  “I am aware of that,” Mwangi said, taken aback by the priest’s reaction but determined to maintain the upper hand. “Now I would like you to tell me.”

  Willem expelled a theatrical sigh and, in a sullen voice, explained that, like most of the elders of the Redeemed Apostolic Gospel Church, Sister Gudrun was of Dutch descent. She had been involved in missionary work in Africa for over forty years, and no – he didn’t know exactly how many. It was not the sort of question one asked.

  “And what about you, Brother Willem?”

  “What about me?”

  “What is your background?”

  With a roll of the eyes, Willem explained that he was from Delft and had come to help with the Church’s missionary work in east Africa three years ago – but was all this strictly relevant to the current investigation?

  “Everything is relevant, Brother Willem,” Mwangi said. “Do you know Sister Gudrun well?”

  “What is that supposed to mean?”

  “Is she popular?”

  “She is devout, Detective Constable. If you were to ask her, she would say that popularity is unimportant when compared to fulfilling God’s work.”

  “Of course. So please – tell me about Sister Gudrun’s trip to Mombasa.” Mwangi flashed the biggest, most endearing smile he could manage.

  Slowly, grudgingly, the priest described how, three days earlier, Sister Gudrun had boarded an early morning matatu minibus and travelled thirty miles south to Mombasa. There she was due to meet with a number of prominent local businessmen to discuss funding for Church projects along the Kenya seaboard. It was a routine trip and she was expected back before nightfall.

  “Before you ask, I supplied Inspector Jouma with a full list of her appointments,” Willem said.

  Mwangi nodded. “I am grateful. What time was her last scheduled meeting?”

  “Four o’clock in the afternoon.”

  “So she should have been back here at, say, seven in the evening?”

  “If you say so.”

  “Were you not worried when she had not returned by the following morning?”

  “Sister Gudrun is an independent woman,” Willem said. “She often changes her plans.”

  “Changes her plans?”

  “It’s entirely possible that she decided to pay a visit to one of the other missions. She is one of the Church elders. She takes her responsibilities very seriously.” Willem gave him a withering look. “I would remind you that it wasn’t me who called the police, Detective Constable.”

  No, Mwangi thought. The call had come from the last person on Sister Gudrun’s list, a Chinese rice importer from the Old Town who became concerned when she didn’t show for her four o’clock appointment. Sister Gudrun, it seemed, had a special place in his heart after converting him and his family to Christianity upon their arrival in Africa twenty years earlier.

  Willem, by contrast, was so unconcerned he had gone off to Malindi on a fund-raising mission of his own the next morning. The first he knew about Sister Gudrun’s disappearance was when he returned to Jalawi to find Jouma waiting for him.

  “It’s been three days, now, Brother Willem,” Mwangi pointed out. “Aren’t you even slightly worried?”

  The priest sighed. “If she was a teenage novitiate straight off the boat, then perhaps I would be. But Sister Gudrun knows Kenya better than most Kenyans, Detective Constable Mwangi. She’ll turn up sooner or later. She always does.”

  If Gudrun was indeed prone to going walkabout for days at a time then his irritation at the police investigation might have been understandable. But, as he diligently scribbled in his notebook, the young detective thought back to the briefing Jouma had given him in the car on the way here. Sister Gudrun might have been a responsible Church elder, the inspector said, but there were four Redeemed Apostolic Gospel Church missions within a hundred-mile radius of Mombasa, and none of them had seen her for months.

  “So she has vanished off the face of the earth?” Mwangi asked him.

  “In my experience, Mwangi, people do not simply vanish off the face of the earth,” Jouma had said. “They are always somewhere, and someone always knows where. Which makes me think somebody is not being entirely truthful with us.”

  “You think Willem is involved?”

  “I think he knows more than he is letting on.”

  Now, as he filled the pages with notes, Mwangi could not help but agree.

  ∨ Burn ∧

  14

  A table had been erected on a bluff overlooking the gallops and together Clay and Bobby Spurling shared a light, open-air luncheon of crawfish tails and chilled white wine. Below them a magnificent thoroughbred was being put through its paces and they said little, on the face of it content to watch the magnificent animal perform. But then the old man suggested they take a ride around the ranch and, as they mounted a pair of Arab stallions, Bobby knew that the purpose of this nightmarish father-and-son reunion was at hand.

  The Spurling reserve was vast. It abutted the Shimba Hills reserve, and was almost the same size. Clay Spurling thought of himself as a conservationist – which Bobby always found hugely amusing considering the old bastard had made his millions from pouring concrete over Kenya – and as a result employed a large team of rangers to patrol against the ever-present threat of poachers. It was said locally that any elephant that valued its tusks would make a beeline for the Spurling reserve because it was the safest place in Africa. But they did not ride far that day. Clay had summoned his only son from exile in Jo’burg for one reason, and he was not a man to waste time with preamble.

  “I’m stepping down as company chairman, Bobby,” he said.

  Bobby felt his heart begin to pound. This is it. “It’s the sensible thing to do for your health, Papa.”

  “William Fearon will be taking over. And I’m making Frank Walker CEO.”

  For a moment he found it hard to get his breath and he almost toppled backwards offhis horse. “What?”

  “With immediate effect once I’ve ratified the decision with the executive board.”

  Bobby’s mind raced. William Fearon, the long-serving company CEO, was always a certainty to be promoted to chairman. But –

  “Frank Walker?”

  “That’s my decision.”

  “Papa –”

  “Frank has been a loyal servant to me and this company for over twenty years. He knows the business inside out. He deserves it.”

  Bobby was too numb to feel his father’s barbs. “But what about me?”

  “You’re twenty-three years old, Bobby. You don’t have the experience. Not yet. But your time will come, so don’t worry – you’ll be looked after.”

  They had ridden a circuit that had taken them away from the stables, up around the bluff and back down past the house. Now, as the sun began to set, they were returning to the stables along the track where the desert roses thrust out of the arid soil like bloated hands. As a boy Bobby always felt an eerie sensation that the towering plants were watching him, and that their fat, underground roots contained the bodies of small boys dragged from their beds by the contorted branches.

  But right now any irrational, childish fear was replaced by cold adult fury.

  The selfish, senile old fucker! Handing over the reins of the company to someone else – and to Frank Walker of all people!

/>   He brought his horse to a halt and dismounted.

  “Don’t sulk about it, Bobby!” his father snapped. “And don’t tell me you’ve ever had any interest in the business either.”

  “But it’s our business, Papa. The family’s.”

  “It’s bigger than the family now.”

  “Papa!” With a howl of anguish, Bobby took a hunting knife from his belt and jabbed it into the trunk of the nearest desert rose. A rivulet of oily sap oozed from the wound when he withdrew the blade and, fascinated, he touched it with the finger of his thick leather riding glove.

  “Come on, Bobby,” Clay Spurling was saying, his tone placatory now. “Running a business this size is just one big fucking headache. Believe me, I’m doing you a favour.”

  “A favour?” Bobby stuck the knife into the plant again, but instead of removing it he began sawing absently at the flesh. “You do know that by appointing Frank Walker you’ll make me a laughing stock.”

  “Don’t be ridiculous –”

  “‘Look at Bobby Spurling. Passed over by his own father for some truck driver from a fucking Glasgow housing estate!’”

  “For Christ’s sake, Bobby!” the old man exclaimed. “Do you think you’ve given me a choice? You live like a playboy with your whores and your cocaine and your gambling! You seriously imagine I would let you anywhere near the company I built up from scratch? You’d bankrupt it in a month.”

  “You always hated me,” Bobby spat.

  “Oh, stop feeling sorry for yourself. It makes me sick.”

  “And I could never understand why – because I worshipped you, Papa.”

  “Bobby –”

  Bobby moved quickly. Two, three rapid steps and suddenly he had reached up and dragged the old man from his saddle. Clay Spurling landed on the baked earth with a sickening thump and somewhere inside his weakened body a bone splintered loudly.

  “You miserable old bastard,” Bobby said, grasping his father by the throat and speckling his purple face with white spittle. “You think I’m going to let you fuck me over?”

  Clay Spurling’s blue eyes bulged in their sockets and, as his mouth opened in a silent bellow of rage and pain, Bobby pushed a freshly carved chunk of succulent desert-rose flesh into it with one gloved hand.

  Had Clay Spurling been healthy to begin with, thirty seconds might have been an accurate estimate of his life expectancy. But against such a sudden and heavy concentration of fast-acting cardiotoxic glycosides, the old man’s punished heart stood no chance. He was dead before his son had finished screwing the last of the flesh into his mouth.

  Breathing heavily and shaking with exertion and adrenaline, Bobby got to his feet, brushed the dust off his trousers, then bent down and, with difficulty, heaved the body over the saddle of his horse. In a few moments he would return, distraught, to the stables and inform the staff that his father had suffered one last, fatal heart attack while out riding. Yes – that was what he would do. But at least, he would tell them, Clay Spurling had died doing what he loved, and with the person he loved the most.

  There would be the funeral to arrange, of course. He would bury his father beside his mother, at the foot of the ancient flame tree at the western perimeter of the reserve where they loved to watch the sun coming up over the Shimbas. It was only right that his parents should be united in death as they had been in life, in the corner of Africa they loved so much. And he hoped that, when he sold the estate for nineteen million dollars, the next owners would respect their graves.

  But that was a long way in the future. For now Bobby Spurling was filled with a sudden urgency to get things done. There were phone calls to be made, meetings to arrange. There was no time to lose.

  As he mounted the Arab and set off towards his destiny, his dead father’s pearl-white head thumped against the muscular flanks of the other horse with the solemn beat of a funeral procession.

  ∨ Burn ∧

  15

  After half an hour in Brother Willem’s company, even Mwangi’s copious reserves of patience had been exhausted. With relief he terminated the interview and left the priest fussing over the altar ornaments in the gloom of the church. It was getting late. He was now anxious to get back to Mombasa, to begin retracing the last known movements of the missing nun. But when he stepped outside he discovered that not only was Jouma nowhere to be found, but his car had gone too.

  What was it about Jalawi that made people disappear? he thought to himself.

  After several minutes self-consciously hanging around outside the church, Mwangi concluded that the inspector was not coming back. Maybe, he thought, he was being subjected to some arcane initiation rite in which new recruits to Coast CID were abandoned in the middle of nowhere and expected to make their own way back to the city.

  Or maybe Jouma was testing him in another way. The case was now his. Perhaps he was being encouraged to make the most of it without a senior officer peering over his shoulder.

  Sister Gudrun’s house was on the other side of the village. Like every other building in Jalawi it was constructed of wooden lattice, dried mud and coconut thatch. The only difference was its size. While the other houses were designed to accommodate as many as twenty people from the same family, the nun’s was defiantly single-person occupancy. Peeking through the slatted door, Mwangi saw that apart from the cot the only other item of furniture was a crucifix on the wall. It was not so much a house as a cell.

  Mwangi was debating whether to go inside when he heard the sound of approaching footsteps and girlish laughter. He turned to see two young nuns in red and white robes coming around the corner in the direction of the house. The older of the two was white-skinned with a pretty face framed by short dark hair cropped in a severe fringe. Mwangi guessed she was about four or five years older than the second girl, who was African and who could not have been more than sixteen years old. Both were carrying folded bedclothes in their arms and they stopped sharply in their tracks when they saw him. The younger girl seemed to shrink behind her companion like a small child with her mother.

  “Forgive me, I did not mean to startle you,” Mwangi said. He introduced himself.

  The older girl said something to the other, who handed over her blankets and then hurried back the way she had come, head bowed.

  “I am Sister Constance,” she said, and he detected a strong European accent. “You will forgive Sister Florence but she is very shy of strangers. If you are looking for Sister Gudruns house, you have found it.”

  Mwangi shuffled awkwardly. “I thought it might be helpful to my investigation to see where she lived.”

  Constance moved past him and went into the house. “There is not much to see.”

  “So it would appear.”

  Mwangi watched the young nun briskly strip the blankets from Gudrun’s cot and replace them with fresh ones.

  “Where is the other policeman?” she said. “The old man who was here the other day?”

  The old man? Jouma would love that. “He is…making enquiries elsewhere.”

  “Gudrun is still missing?”

  “I am afraid so.”

  “Then we will continue to pray for her,” Constance said, gathering the old blankets. “And to change her bedclothes.”

  Together they walkecf back through the village in the direction of the church.

  “Sister Gudrun’s seems a very frugal existence,” Mwangi remarked for want of something better to say. “I’m not sure I could ever do without my luxuries. I’m lost without my laptop.”

  Constance laughed. “I have 50 Cent’s new album on my iPod, and my brother sends me DVDs. If I was to tell you that Sister Gudrun considers such things to be the Devil’s work, perhaps you will get some idea of how single-minded she is in her devotion to the Lord.”

  “I see. And what about you?”

  “Ever since I was a young girl I always knew that God would be my vocation, Detective Mwangi. It was just a case of how best to serve Him.”

  “How long have you been here in Jalawi?”

  “I arrived here six weeks ago from the mission at Malindi. Sister Gudrun and Brother Willem were in the process of setting up the mission and wanted help with the children’s education.”