The Boy in the River (35 page)

I described services of exorcism in the Congo, and the abusive methods often employed there. But I then told the court that the violence meted out to Kristy by Eric Bikubi and Magalie Bamu was on another level altogether. Cut loose from normal social restraints, this pair had been able to commit acts of atrocity without anyone apparently noticing or stepping in to help.

It took all afternoon to complete my evidence, with the judge putting questions as well as counsel. Mr Justice Paget suggested that exorcism was not an alien concept in this country. I agreed, though I added that in northern Europe it is more usual for a place to be exorcized than a person. I also pointed out that it was a literal interpretation of the Bible that prompted some pastors to starve the apparently afflicted children; fasting for deliverance had its roots in the new Testament.

Only Eric Bikubi’s barrister cross-examined me. He wanted to demonstrate that Eric was deranged both in action and belief. I told the court that whilst the Congolese Government had made it illegal even to call a child a witch, the beliefs that lay behind the notion, however repugnant they might seem, were well founded in their culture. I told the court that the actions of the two accused should not be confused with the belief system in which they sought shelter.

Brian Altman approached me as I left the court.

‘The trial’s back on track,’ he said. ‘Back to where we should be. It’s not the
What?
now, but the
Why?
You did that. The jury were taking reams of notes. I think we’ve lanced the Bikubi defence.’

‘What about Magalie?’ I asked.

‘I reckon she’s going to try and blame Bikubi for the whole thing. I reckon that’s why her team didn’t cross-examine you. Doesn’t stack up, though, with the evidence.’

I felt completely wrung out. I’d kept my emotions in check – even when I heard Tata Mpia’s voice in my ear – but only just. Dodging the cameras, I returned to Clapham.

At four in the morning I woke and sat bolt upright in bed, tears streaming down my cheeks. I wasn’t only thinking of Kristy; I was remembering Abigail.

48

London, March 2012

After I’d given my evidence, four eminent psychiatrists spent a week trying to persuade the jury that Eric Bikubi was insane and that I was wrong to attempt to place his beliefs within the context of an established cultural paradigm. Eric didn’t take the stand.

Magalie Bamu’s defence focused on her inability to say no to Eric. She described a lifetime of servitude – under the thumb of another relative and his wife – since arriving in Britain at the age of thirteen.

Brian Altman’s opening question set the tone of his response: ‘Now you’re not telling the court the truth, are you?’

He began to systematically undermine her testimony. He argued that she had only recently hatched the ‘blame Eric’ defence. I scrutinized her face as she stood in the dock, looking for hints of the darkness within. How could she have turned so violently against her own brother?

Suddenly aware that I was watching her, she stared back at me. I felt myself recoil. The challenge in her eye seemed more appropriate to a nightclub than the dock of an Old Bailey courtroom. Her defiance bubbled to the surface with increasing frequency over the next two days as she gave her testimony. She became steelier and more impatient under questioning. Perhaps most remarkably of all, she showed no sign of remorse.

‘Do you admit striking your brother Kristy Bamu with a curtain pole?’ Mr Altman asked.

‘Yes.’

‘Around the head?’

‘Yes.’

He nodded towards one of the trolleys. Detective sergeant Dave Boxall handed him a package. The barrister held it horizontal, for the benefit of the jury.

‘This it?’

‘Yes,’

‘There’s a dent in it, do you see?’

‘Yes.’

‘It’s a dent in the shape of his skull, isn’t it? It’s bent completely out of shape like that because you struck him so hard on the head.’

He flourished photographs of the front door, showing that it had not been locked with a key, as she had claimed. She could have run for help – even removed her brother Kristy from further harm – at any point. Any lingering sympathy for her evaporated.

‘And then, when Kristy staggered across the room, blood pouring’– Altman paused, betraying his own distress for the first time – ‘all you could say to your
own
fifteen-year-old brother, who was
dying
in front of you, was, “Don’t sit on the sofa, or you might
spoil
it . . .”.’

‘All parties in Bikubi and Bamu to Court 5.’

Reporters swarmed through the entrance, clutching their mobile phones. The verdicts would be tweeted around the world before anyone had left the courtroom. Mr Altman ushered me across to the prosecution benches.

The twelve members of the jury had chosen a woman to speak for them.

‘To the first count of murder against the defendant Eric Bikubi, how do you find?’

‘Guilty.’

‘To the first count of murder against the defendant Magalie Bamu, how do you find?’

‘Guilty.’

Some journalists dashed for the door, others began typing furiously into mobile devices. But in the central well of the court we all sat quietly, pausing to reflect on the enormity of what we had witnessed.

Judge Paget thanked the jury. Owing to the harrowing nature of the evidence, he exempted them from further service for the rest of their lives. Then Brian Altman read a searingly dignified statement from Pierre Bamu on behalf of the family.

‘The pain is unimaginable,’ Pierre said. ‘This was done by people we loved and trusted. To know that Kristy’s own sister, Magalie, did nothing to save Kristy, makes the pain that much worse. We are still unaware of the full extent of the brutality. We cannot bring ourselves to hear it.’

A few days later Judge Paget sentenced the two to life imprisonment. The severity of the torture meted out to Kristy in the name of
kindoki
exorcism was reflected in the minimum tariffs before which they could even be considered for parole: thirty years for Eric Bikubi and twenty-five for Magalie Bamu.

Epilogue

Scotland Yard, London

I am waiting in the foyer of New Scotland Yard, near St James’s Park. The iconic triangular box revolves outside the glass frontage of the Metropolitan Police HQ. A tall, wiry figure appears and ushers me upstairs.

I have received a rather unusual invitation from Chief Superintendent Chris Bourlet.

The Yard’s Crime Museum is located on the first floor, in Room 101. Unless you’re seeking it out, you might not know of its existence. Chris tells me he has served here for years without being invited inside.

We walk along a shadowy corridor until a white door emerges out of the gloom. Chris knocks twice. We pass through and it clicks shut behind us. I hear a key turn.

A sandy-haired man in his fifties with a slightly nasal twang introduces himself as the curator. He explains that the museum dates back to 1874; it is the oldest establishment of its kind in the world. He then demonstrates, with some relish, how nooses are tied. He points to the wall where I see a row of them, all of which were used to hang some of Britain’s most notorious criminals.

As he talks I glance around. I can now see that there are two rooms, forming an L. Their spines and outside walls are lined with glass display cases, with larger objects on show between them. I can make out a badly stained apron, a bath and a large pot perched on an old cooker.

The curator reaches into a wooden box near the door and hands me a state-of-the-art audio handset. He points out the numbers displayed on each cabinet, and tells me that I can follow the exhibition in any sequence I like so long as I tap in the relevant digits on the keyboard.

Reggie and Ronnie, the infamous Kray twins, would have been pleased; they command twice the space of their fellow criminals. Newspaper cuttings and photos give mute testimony to the terror in which they held the East End of London during the Fifties and Sixties, alongside the gun Ronnie used to shoot fellow gangster George Cornell in the Blind Beggar. I feel slightly queasy, but move on.

A display devoted to the 7/7 London Bombers includes the items recovered from the car they left outside Luton railway station when they set off on their last journey, containers of bomb-making equipment found in their flat, a laptop used by one of the suspects and a rucksack similar to the ones they so devastatingly deployed.

I’m momentarily captivated by the bullet with which Mark David Chapman killed John Lennon, but when I ask the curator how or why it’s there he cannot – or will not – say. The ricin pellet recovered from the body of the Bulgarian dissident Georgi Markov is close by. Markov was waiting at a bus stop on Waterloo Bridge in 1978, en route to the BBC, when he felt a stinging pain in the back of his thigh. The deadly projectile had been fired from an umbrella designed by the Soviet KGB. There is a replica of the weapon alongside the actual pellet. The poison had been coated in a sugary substance designed to melt at 37°C, the temperature of the human body.

The bath I had spotted earlier is made of steel, and stands alongside a number of drums. It belonged to John George Haigh, the infamous acid bath murderer of the late 1940s. Close by is the cooker upon which sits the pot in which Dennis nilsen boiled the heads of his fifteen male victims in Muswell Hill between 1978 and 1983. A voice in my ear describes how Nilsen lured and dispensed with his victims.

There are medical instruments used by Harold Shipman, the biggest serial killer in British – if not Western – history, with over 200 alleged victims of his depraved ‘mercy killing’ spree. Dr Crippen’s display includes macabre remains recovered from his cellar. The blood-soaked apron belongs to John Reginald Halliday Christie, who murdered at least eight women, including his wife Ethel, in 10 Rillington Place between 1943 and 1953.

When I finally come across the Child B exhibit, I realize why I’m here. Chris appears at my elbow as I take in the sack that confined the little girl, a series of photos and the diary kept by her aunt, Sita Kisanga. The commentary describes my contribution to the unravelling of the case, and the twisted belief system that Child B’s torture had forced us all to confront.

Child B seems awfully lonely in this company. But the depravity of her treatment does not stand out here. I’m forcibly reminded that the world in which I work is not defined by race, culture, age or gender. Whether or not its darkest actions can be shielded from the full force of the law by claims of custom, diminished responsibility or insanity, the cocktail of ritual and manic fundamentalism, however horrifying, does not set it to one side. We cannot comfort ourselves with the thought that the heart of darkness lies beyond our horizon. It lies squarely within the world we inhabit, and within us.

I hand back my audio set and thank my guides. As I walk away from Scotland Yard through the gentle rain, my mind is not filled with images of acid baths and gangland killing – or even Child B – but once more with the case that isn’t there: the cold-blooded murder of the little boy we knew first as Adam, and more recently as Ikpomwosa. The boy in the river.

No expense was spared in the decade-long investigation. The people who were responsible for trafficking him and countless other children into this country have been sent down, but no one has been convicted of his killing. His death still haunts me. And I know I’m not alone.

The rain is falling heavily now. I pull my jacket more tightly around me as I picture again that innocent, smiling face: the victim of an unimaginable sacrifice, here in the heart of our capital city.

Acknowledgements

This book would not have been written without the unswerving friendship, dedication and loyalty of Mark Lucas at LAW. I owe you a debt of gratitude beyond words.

George Morley, Dusty Miller, Jon Mitchell, Tania Adams and the team at Pan Macmillan have been wonderfully enthusiastic and committed.

Joe Fiennes and Ken McReddie have also offered me their unflinching support and much-valued friendship through an often searingly painful process.

Others that deserve particular mention include my first editor and friend Tim, who showed me the way forward in the early days; Alice at LAW; Remy and Moise in Kinshasa; Claude in London; Sue, Faith, Caroline, Silas and the remarkable Elspeth who shared so much of this journey; my mother Audrey and siblings John, Jane and Jill.

Author’s Note

This is the story of an investigation with which I was involved for over ten years, and others that unfolded alongside it, during which time I found myself compelled to confront my own African tragedy. Three names, and some details, have been altered to safeguard the identity of those who might otherwise be put at risk.