Muti Nation (19 page)

I scan the lyrics and I’m overcome with another dreadful feeling, the same one I’d gotten when I first read the note.

The killer had left a message, all right, a sick, creepy message hidden between the lines of a note, with an added concealed meaning inside a love song.

I jump up from my seat and rush to the door. “Howlen,” I call down the corridor.

“Yeah?” he comes into view with an open file in his hands and reading glasses perching on his nose.

“I think I’ve got something,” I say.

He closes the file and walks over.

“That riddle the killer sent is actually an Anglicised title of a song. Well, it technically started out as a poem, but the song’s more popular.”

We walk back to my desk where the laptop’s still open with the lyrics page on display.

“After looking at the note’s grammar I might have stumbled onto something.”

“You couldn’t have mentioned it earlier?” Howlen asks as I take a seat on my chair.

“I didn’t think his note would reference anything. I thought it was a way to freak me out. Anyway, it turns out to be a song.”

“Fair enough,” he says. “So, what caught your attention about this song? You know I’m useless when it comes to Afrikaans.” He leans forward to study my computer screen.

“I’ll quickly translate the parts I think are important.”

“Everything’s important, but okay, I trust you.”

“The gist is,” I say, “the guy’s stalking me.”

“You got that from a song?” Howlen presses his spectacles higher to his face.

“Stanza one, line two: “You and I had kissed on graves, and on trains, and on the back seats of Ford Fairlanes,” is related to a nightmare I had last night. There were graves in a parking lot, some cars, and I took a ride on the Gautrain.”

“That’s just coincidental. What’s next?”

I point at the screen. “The chorus, um, here: “Now you can’t sleep anymore, can’t laugh anymore, can’t do anything for yourself,” is another part relating to me. I’ve had—”

“Bouts of insomnia, I know. You also struggle with depression when you don’t get enough sleep,” he says.

“I didn’t think anyone would notice.”

“I do. What else?”

“Stanza three is more provocative.”

“Oh, do translate.”

I roll my eyes. “It reminds me of the last time we—”

“Three coincidences are no longer coincidences,” he cuts me off, clearing his throat uncomfortably. “So it’s a stalker note.”

“Partly. What concerns me is the imagery of stanza three’s last line: “I felt how my heart was torn right out of my body and how it floated away like a rowboat on the river.” Here, I can’t decide if the killer is threatening me or giving me a clue to what he has planned next.”

“It could be nothing,” he sounds unconvinced. “
Him
might just be jealous.”

“Or it could be everything.” I tilt my head sideways to look up at him.

He grunts an affirmative and pushes himself away from behind my chair and walks around the desk to sit in a chair opposite mine.

“Maybe I’m being too literal?”

Howlen shakes his head. “The killer is intelligent, but he lacks the finesse of a formal education.” He sighs, but perks up almost immediately, as though he’s had a revelation. It gives me a microscopic amount of hope. “He’s not brilliant, Esmé. There’s no ingenuity in his methods. He’s a narcissist playing a game with us—with you, in particular.”

“No shit.”

“The guy is manipulating us with crude psychology. It’s brilliant, but human. He’s not unbeatable, he just thinks he is.”

“I like your positive outlook, but it doesn’t get us any closer to an answer.” I spin the laptop around to the open webpage and gesture to the screen. “What do we do about this?”

Howlen sits back in his seat and fiddles with his left cufflink. “We play his game, of course. That is, unless you’ve got something better in mind?”

Out of ideas, I shake my head.

“Then, let’s work on getting the upper-hand. What else have you got?”

I open the top drawer and find Feyisola’s list of names. Some of them may, or may not, have ordered body parts from outside the country. Feyisola doesn’t give me bad information even if she sometimes omits details to save her own skin. If we’re lucky, one of the names could turn out to be our guy.

“I have a list of possible suspects I need to investigate,” I say. “There’s a big shipment of muti coming in from Namibia and these people might be involved in some way.”

“Namibia?”

When Feyisola first told me I had a similar reaction to the news.

“That’s new,” Howlen says. “Usually the shipments come through the Beitbridge border.”

“It’s a weird turn of events, I agree. But, muti is a hot commodity these days, so why not Namibia?”

“True. Would you like some help?”

“Thank you, but no thanks. You have enough to deal with as it is. The best way to help is to butter up the labs and get our results back as soon as possible. I’ll see to the list.”

He nods, stands, and opens his mouth to say something else, but doesn’t.

“We’re okay, Howlen,” I say.

“You sure?”

Smiling, I turn the laptop around to face me again. “I’m sure. We all have our own ways to deal with this.”

He smiles back, and I know that our brief quarrel has come to an end, and that our friendship is re-established.

“Go home and get some sleep, okay?” he says.

“In a minute.”

Howlen pushes his hands into his trouser pockets like a dismissed schoolboy and turns to leave.

“Howlen?”

“Hmmm?” he mutters.

“If something were to happen to me, you’d look after Gramps, right?”

“Nothing will happen to you,” he insists.

“Yes, but if it did…”

“I will, but nothing’s going to happen to you, May.”

Howlen slips out of my office without another word.

Chapter 23

Detective Rynhardt Louw isn’t the type of person who would enter a career in law enforcement without a good reason. He’s far too kind, almost too polite, and a little too… innocent. His eyes, those wise hazelnut eyes, tell a story of great hardship and loss, but his past hasn’t turned his soul to stone, yet. He’s quick to smirk and tease and joke, but the young detective still seems guarded whenever he does those things.

For a week he’s acted as Detective Mosepi’s personal errand boy between the firm and the precinct, and I’ve used the time to study him from afar. There’s not been much else to do while we wait for some miraculous break in our cases or for the killer to strike again. So why not curb my curiosity and nose about Detective Rynhartdt Louw while I bide my time?

Detective Louw’s gait is always determined, always proud. Even with windswept hair and a dishevelled suit he appears unyielding to the sheer force of nature. He calculates his surroundings in a single sweep. Detective Mosepi is the only other detective I know who’s as thorough when the situation doesn’t call for it. Then there’s Louw’s smile that never truly reaches his eyes. Still, whenever he looks my way there’s an almost imperceptible softening in his hazel eyes.

Contradictions intrigue me.

Today as he waits for my grandfather to look over the newest developments in the Valentine Sikelo case, I watch him from the staircase. He moves from his seat in the vacant reception area to where I sit on the stairs with a file open on my lap.

Hidden between the pages is Feyisola’s handwritten message, dropped off before Rynhardt arrived, inviting me to a meeting in a shoddy part of town with one of her shady acquaintances. She didn’t elaborate on why but I’d be an idiot if I didn’t go. Maybe Feyisola stumbled onto something.

Rynhardt leans with his back against the bannister, his hands in his pockets as he looks up through the openings to catch my attention.

“Sometimes I think you’re undressing me with your eyes,” Detective Louw barely breathes the words, never diverting his stare. Apparently I hadn’t been subtle enough. “The trick,” he says relaxing his stance, “is to be as inconspicuous about your examination as possible. Make it seem as if you happen to be in the room, as if you belong, and that you don’t really care what’s happening around you.”

He’s silent for a while, before he turns around and flashes me a guarded grin. “You try.”

I shift the open file on my lap, wondering how I can manoeuvre my position to appear more natural. Eventually, I decide to pick up the file and recline slightly before I steal another glance of him.

He breathes a chuckle. “You’re too tense. Also, your position does
not
look comfortable.”

I sit upright. “Okay. What would you suggest?”

“Your initial position was perfect,” he says. “Hunch your shoulders a bit.”

“I don’t hunch,” I say, but I do it anyway. “Now what?”

“Fake your reading of the file. Then, glimpse at the room.”

I do as I’m told, and for extra effect I act deep in thought.

“Check your breathing,” he warns.

I hadn’t even noticed my breathing had become somewhat strained, but I correct the tell.

“There we go. That’s better.”

I feel a blush creep up my neck. “Thanks,” I say, closing the file.

“It takes a lot of practice, but you’ll master it soon enough.” He takes a relaxing stance against the bannister. “Where’s your partner?”

“Howlen? He’s gone to the labs. There was an inconsistency in one of the results or something.” A blatant lie. Howlen’s upstairs, fiddling with his paperwork.

“Oh.”

“Do you need him for some reason?”

“No, I was just wondering,” Detective Louw tilts his head to catch my eye. “So, you two are… together.”

“I wouldn’t go that far.” I clear my throat and study the uninteresting file in my lap.

He gives me a knowing look. “I’m not judging you,” he says. “I only want to know if I can ask you out to dinner without stepping on someone’s toes.”

“Why?” There’s enough suspicion thrown into this one word to make any interested man change his mind.

“Why what?” Detective Louw asks.

“Why do you want to ask me out to dinner?”

“When was the last time you were asked out on a date?”

“I don’t date,” I mumble and stand up.

“Do you want to start dating?” he asks sincerely before I can walk away.

I’m so baffled by this question I can barely formulate a coherent thought.

“It’s dinner. Nothing more, nothing less,” he says.

“Er,” I look everywhere except at Rynhardt. “Can I think about it?”

He smiles crookedly. “Take your time.”

My grandfather rounds the corner asking questions about missing witness statements and coroner reports. Rynhardt steps away from the bannister. I nod, turn, and make my way back upstairs. Instead of going to my office, I head to Howlen’s.

“You wouldn’t guess what happened.” I close his office door.

Howlen, standing in front of his rolling whiteboard, looks over his shoulder with a single eyebrow raised.

“Detective Louw asked me out on a date.”

“I heard,” Howlen says.

“Were you eavesdropping?”

“No,” he says, turning back to his work. “Are you going to accept his invitation?”

“I don’t know.” I strut to his messy desk, and scan the open files strewn across the surface. One of the files belongs to Carol-Anne Brewis. Howlen must be looking into it, seeing as I’m struggling to face the little girl’s picture without a shred of evidence that’ll lead us to the killer. “Maybe.”

“You’re aware that the two of you are badly matched.”

“Really? I don’t know,” I turn away from his desk. “It would be nice to be wooed for a change.”

“If you wanted romance you would have told your grandfather about us a long time ago.” He regards me coolly.

I take a few steps toward the door, ready to leave.

He turns around, making me freeze in my tracks. “If I thought you would appreciate unimaginative dates, being showered with gifts, and hearing sweet nothings day and night, I would do those things. The problem is I know mundane hogwash bores you.” Howlen exhales loudly and shakes his head. “Tell me, Esmé, why did you really come in here? Was it to get a rise out of me? If it’s the case, you’ve succeeded.”

“I…” I begin but immediately realise I’m wholly unequipped to deal with the rush of emotions threatening to suffocate us both. My one hand reaches for the handle. “I was fucking with you, Howl—”

“No! Don’t you dare.” He grabs my elbow gently to keep me from leaving. “I can’t go on like this, May. Either you tell me what you want us to be or I’m handing in my resignation, today.”

“You wouldn’t.”

“Try me.”

We stare at each other for a long minute, unflinching, before I straighten.