Juba Good (2 page)

I visited the tables. I asked the same questions I'd asked Shirley. Got nothing but shakes of the head and questions back.

Only a shy young waitress named Marlene thought hard. I suspected Marlene liked me. I didn't know if she really liked me or was just hoping for a visa to Canada. I made sure to always keep things light and no more than friendly. Tonight, she had nothing to say that would help us.

Back to the bar. I leaned against the counter and sucked on my Fanta. The restaurant was emptying out. People called good night to their friends in the warm night air.

A tall white woman, blond, pretty, came up to the bar. She dug in her purse. “I need more Internet time,” she said. “Can I buy three hours?” Her English was perfect, the Dutch accent strong. She gave me a smile as Shirley searched for the Internet vouchers. I hadn't seen the Dutch woman when we came through the restaurant.

“Do you live nearby?” I asked.

“In the townhouses, yes.” Four modern townhouses were next to the restaurant. They were surrounded by a concrete wall. They boasted a rare patch of scrappy lawn and trimmed bushes.

“Were you outside earlier? Say around nine, ten?”

“Why do you ask?”

“Police business.”

Deng refrained from rolling his eyes. He thought I was trying to pick her up.

She laughed through a mouthful of perfect white teeth. “I had dinner with friends. Came home by taxi. Around nine, I think. What happened?”

“There was a killing. On the corner. Where the road bends.”

She lifted her hand to her mouth. “A killing? Who? Someone I know?”

“A local, probably.”

The concern faded from her face. “That's very sad.”

“It might have been around that time. Did you see anything unusual?”

She hesitated.

“What?” I asked, my tone sharper than I'd intended.

Shirley passed her a slip of paper. “Twenty-five pounds.”

The Dutch woman handed over an orange bill. She chewed her lip. “I heard something.”

“Yes?”

“The air-conditioning wasn't working in the taxi. The windows were down. I heard someone—a woman—scream.”

“And?”

“And nothing. Just a scream. Once only.” She looked away, embarrassed. “We drove on, and I heard no more. I'm sorry.” She scurried off.

I let out a long sigh.

“What did you expect, Ray?” Deng asked.

A good question. I expected nothing else, really. No one would want to get involved. Not many people would much care. What was the scream of a woman in the hot African night?

In Canada, plenty of people would have rolled up their windows too.

“Helps narrow the time,” I said, not very helpfully. “The state of the body indicated a time of death around nine. The scream was heard at that time.”

“Very helpful,” Deng said. I suspected he was being sarcastic.

I put the remains of my sickly sweet orange drink on the bar and stalked out. Deng followed, chuckling.

Chapter
Three

Home sweet container.

I live in a shipping container in the UN compound. The walls are painted a practical beige. It has no art, no decorations, no rugs. In my good moods, I think of it as my man cave. The single bed's moderately comfortable. The small desk has a flimsy office chair and a laptop.

It has plumbing and electricity. But it's still a box.

Three pictures sit on the night table. Our eldest daughter at her wedding. Our second daughter at her university graduation. Jenny and me at our wedding. Looking so young, so happy. I had long curly hair back then. Not much of it's left these days.

I didn't sleep well that night. Not that it was night when I crawled into bed. The hot sun was rising in the eastern sky.

I've seen a lot in my time as a cop. More than I like to think about sometimes. Not much bothers me anymore, unless it's kids. I hate it when violence is done to kids.

But I couldn't get the dead hooker out of my mind. She might not have even been a hooker. These days it's hard to tell the hookers from the office workers out for a night on the town with their girlfriends.

The woman looked to be South Sudanese. These people had been through so much hardship. If the woman was in her twenties, chances were she'd never known anything but civil war.

Then to be killed, murdered, in a time of peace.

Life could be so damn unfair.

* * *

I rolled out of bed not long after noon. I pulled on white shorts and a Vancouver Canucks T-shirt and went in search of breakfast.

The UN compound is close to the center of Juba. It's clean and tidy, with a bit of grass and some flowering bushes. Neatly swept footpaths and small houses with curtains in the windows.

Surrounded by concrete walls topped with razor wire.

Step out the gate and you're in Africa.

I crossed the yard. The air was an orange haze. Everything was covered with dust. It hadn't rained since October. Everyone was waiting, waiting, for the first rains of the season to fall and the heat to break.

The sun wasn't visible through the murk. But I always wore a broad-brimmed beige hat to protect my balding head.

Two people were in the common room when I entered. Joyce, a tall lean Australian with a shock of wild red hair, was in uniform. She was eating eggs and reading. She lifted her head, said hi and returned to her food and book. Peter, a cop from Namibia, was sprawled across the badly sprung couch, watching
TV
. As always, a soccer game was on. I hate soccer. Give me a good hockey game any day. Even baseball's better than soccer. But they sure love soccer in Africa.

I popped two slices of bread into the toaster. I twisted open the top of a jar of peanut butter. On the
TV
, the crowd roared. I didn't bother to look up. No one would have scored. No one ever scores in soccer. They run around the field for two hours and then have a shoot-out to decide the winner. Might as well just have the shoot-out and everyone go home early. I grunted in disapproval.

“Something bothering you, man?” Peter asked.

My toast popped up. I began spreading a thick layer of peanut butter. Love peanut butter.

The door opened. Orange dust blew in along with Nigel, a Brit. A short, bald, pasty-faced guy, arms and chest thick with muscle.

Nigel grunted greetings and headed straight for the fridge. He pulled out a can of Coke. “A killing last night,” I said, answering Peter's question. “A woman. Down by the river.”

Joyce looked up. “Raped?”

“No sign of it. It's the fourth one like it this month.”

Her mouth twisted and she shook her head. She glanced at her watch.

“I gotta go. Fill me in later.” She folded down the corner of a page and got to her feet. She stuffed the book into her pocket.

“Hooker?” Peter asked as the door slammed shut after Joyce. His eyes remained fixed on the
TV
.

“Probably.”

“Occupational hazard.”

I felt a tightening in my gut. “Even a cheap hooker doesn't deserve to be slaughtered like a pig.”

“Then she shouldn't be hooking.”

“They don't always have a choice, you know.” Nigel took out a second can. “Husband dead, family to support.”

“Save it, mate,” Peter said. “I've heard it all before. Hooking's easier than working in a shop or washing dishes. Pay's better too. I've got no tears for them.”

I'd heard it all before too. The threat of rape or murder shouldn't be part of the job. No matter what type of job it is.

But I didn't feel like arguing. I ate my toast.

I went back to my container. I had a long-standing tennis date with a Dutch diplomat named Donald.

I grabbed my racket and headed out.

My room was next to Sven's, a cop from Sweden. Sven was sitting on a plastic chair in the shade of a mango tree. Barely past noon and he was already sucking on a brown bottle.

But he wasn't working, so not my concern.

“Morning,” I said. Just to be friendly.

He grunted. Typical.

I stopped in front of him. I told him about the killing the night before. Asked him to keep an eye out when he was next on patrol.

“Never would have thought of that,” he said. “Is that what they consider in Canada to be an original idea?”

I didn't rise to the bait. “Just mentioning it. Ask your partner to be on the lookout too.”

“Yeah, we'll look out for hookers. Keep them all nice and safe.” He took another slug of his beer.

I walked away. I sometimes wondered why Sven had taken this post. He hid it well, but he didn't seem overly fond of Africans. Nor of women, come to think of it.

Most of the guys and the few women posted here get on fine. They're a good bunch of people. Gave up career and family for a year to try to help a struggling country. We're all far from home, living in rough conditions. We try hard to make it work. But there's one in every bunch. Sven was ours.

As usual, Donald whipped my ass at tennis. Instead of our usual beer after the game, Donald had to leave for a meeting. I planned to head back to the UN compound. I'd grab an early supper and read for a while. Then it would be time to meet Deng for another night on the streets.

Instead, I found myself driving to the police station near the water tanks.

The place was barely controlled chaos. I'd found in my time here that things might look out of control, but somehow they made it work. Juba good, we call it.

I knew the clerk at the front desk. He sat at a large black ledger, making note of anyone who came in with a complaint or an inquiry. Not many did.

“Hi, Edward,” I said. “Busy?”

“Yes,” he replied. There wasn't a civilian in sight. Most of the police here knew me, and they paid me no attention.

“A woman was killed last night,” I said. “Has anyone come in asking about her?”

Edward shrugged. I glanced at his book. The surface was unmarked. He didn't bother to flip back through the pages to check. His cell phone rang, and he pulled it out of his shirt pocket. He began to talk.

I leaned across him and turned the book around. I flipped the page. The latest entry had been at noon yesterday.

I should have known I was wasting my time. I left the building. I sat in the UN
SUV
, air-conditioning running hard, and thought. I could try the hospital. If anyone was looking for the dead woman, they'd be more likely to go there than to the cops.

I decided I couldn't face it. Let her be. If no one else cared, why should I?

Chapter
Four

But I've never been good at letting things go. Instead of heading home, I drove to the bend in the road. Blue water trucks were lined up around the corner, waiting their turn. The drivers squatted by the side of the road or stood in groups, gossiping. I left my vehicle at Notos and walked over. The workers and drivers paid no attention to me.

Garbage collection is an unknown concept in much of Africa. Scraps of paper blew in the dusty wind. Cardboard floated in the red puddles. Water bottles were stacked against walls where the wind had left them. I reached the spot where we'd found the woman. I squatted and pulled on a pair of latex gloves—to protect me, not the evidence. I poked through trash, leaves and twigs. I found a handle broken off a cooking pot and the leavings of stray dogs.

Then a flash of color caught my eye. I pulled a glittering red earring out of the rubbish. Glass. I thought back. Yes, the dead woman had been wearing one, and only one, red earring. I slipped it into my pocket. I started to push myself back up. A white square caught my eye. A business card, the sort you'd find anywhere in the world. Reasonably clean with a smudge of red dust in one corner. It hadn't been there for long.

The card was for Blue Nile Restaurant. A place on the river, with tent fabric for roof and walls. It serves Middle Eastern food, mostly. I've been there once. I didn't care for the cooking and never went back.

I tucked the card into my pocket beside the red earring. Then I went home to get ready for work.

Chapter
Five

The main road through Juba features a row of streetlights. Good solid streetlights of the sort you'd see in any western city. Tonight, some drunk had found out just how solid they were.

By the time we got to the scene, the crowd of onlookers was growing. The car, a battered old Toyota Corolla, was buried headfirst in the base of a lamppost. The driver was buried headfirst in the dashboard. He had not bothered to put on his seat belt. Nor had his female companion. She was now little more than a bloody lump thirty yards farther up the road. The car was about twenty years old and did not come equipped with air bags. It might well have been stolen off a lot in Vancouver.

I told Deng we were here to do crowd control until the bodies were carted away. We would try to keep the curious from going through the wreck and the pockets of the deceased.

Shame about that streetlight. It would have cost a lot, in a country that didn't have much to spend on luxuries.

A van arrived and the bodies were loaded up. Then everyone drifted away, and Deng and I got back into our truck. An old woman came out of nowhere and began sweeping the road with a homemade broom.

The rest of the night was quiet.

The next day, I decided to treat myself to lunch out. Back home, I have a reputation for being quite the good cook. When the kids were growing up and my shifts permitted, I did most of the cooking. Jenny's a practical cook. Meat and potatoes, lots of pasta and hearty stews. I like to try new and different things. I love nothing more than to have dinner parties. To dress up, put out the good china and make my favorite recipes.

Here, I soon learned that fresh meat is something you don't want to buy. It hangs in the market in the sun for hours, pecked by birds and covered in flies. Edible fresh greens are nonexistent. Every once in a while the grocers run right out of something. Last month, there wasn't a pat of butter to be found for love nor money anywhere in Juba.