Rift

by Beverley Birch

  Joe, observing it all intently, seemed suddenly to lighten. His face cleared, and he became aware of Ella’s gaze. He looked properly at her, not through her as if she wasn’t there.

  ‘Charly went up there with us, one time,’ he offered.

  ‘Rest, now,’ the inspector, cross-legged, drinking from his water bottle, patted the rock beside him. ‘Rest properly. Sit. And now, Joe, you can tell us more about this interesting boy, Silowa? How you came to know him?’

  How? Silowa found us, Joe thought. There was just the Buffalos at Burukanda, and Véronique, the archaeologist, and her ‘Introduction to Archaeology’ talk. One minute we don’t know Silowa, next minute he’s there . . .

  Imagine, Joe remembers Véronique saying. Imagine that all this – this vast wilderness – is an enormous lake . . .

  Actually they’re standing on stony earth. No water anywhere. Endless whiteness all round – not even the skeleton of a thornbush. It’s a shallow gully. Further along it cuts deeper, twists through rocks sticking up from the sand like swollen knuckles.

  Cast your mind back to one and a half million years ago, Véronique is saying.

  Everyone’s listening to her, pretty much. Not Janice and Candy, though – whining, working hard at boredom, flopped on the ground, furiously fanning their hats, demanding loudly what’s happening next. Worse than usual. Worse since they’ve started hanging out with Sean in the camp. Worse since that row about them messing up the stream.

  Mr Boyd would’ve squashed the whining flat. But he’s not here, and the others, Mr Sharp and Miss Hopper, they’re too busy yakking to each other, and now they’ve disappeared to sit in the shade.

  Can’t shut Janice and Candy out. Anna mutters at them, Janice squawks, brushes something off her leg, something live that drops to the ground and scuttles off, and Janice fires a bilious glare at Anna, as if she’s to blame.

  Anna ignores it. She tries to listen to Véronique, and it’s Silowa who makes room for her against the bank of the gully, so she can get closer and hear better . . .

  Now picture this, Véronique is saying. The bank of a seasonal stream. During the rains, it drains from high ground into the lake. Acacia trees give it shade in the heat of the day (like your camp at Chomlaya). The lake is full of fish; its green margins throng with animals. Human-like creatures – they are like us, but they are not yet us – they gather here to camp. They fish. Cut up meat with stone tools. Eat. Strip bones, clean skins.

  Anna looks around. As if she’s seeing it all. Silowa whispers; she nods, whispers back . . .

  From time to time (Véronique is raising her voice above the grumbling from Candy), heavy rain in the hills flows down, swelling the stream. It breaks above its banks, just a little. Maybe the rains come early, catching our creatures by surprise. They abandon camp for high ground. They leave tools behind: flaked cobbles, whittled sticks, animal hides, bones, fishheads, eggshells, tubers, bits and pieces of rubbish. They move on, out of our story. Anybody noticed how sand on a seashore shifts with the tides?

  Murmurs all round. Véronique is pleased. She continues, So, the abandoned camp is flooded. Think of water lapping over, just softly covering everything with silt. In time, more and more silt settles on top; everything but the bone and the stone decay. As hundreds of thousands of years go by, the silt hardens to rock . . . She’s leading them along the gully towards the outcrop of rocks, Anna and Silowa in front. I have said to you, ‘Imagine this’. But . . . Véronique stops, it is true. It is a story told in the sides of this gully. There is no lake now. Almost nothing grows here because there is little rainfall. But there are flash floods, and these are our gift. They erode the soil. Year after year they cut down through millions of years of sediments and – gradually, gradually – evidence for our story emerges . . .

  Between the rocks she marches them, and suddenly there it is: long trenches in the earth, people kneeling, peering, brushing, digging, hoisting buckets, sieving, picking, spreading, sorting . . .

  Each and every one of us here, maybe even one of you today – will put a little bit of that story together. We’re on a quest! For what? Guess!

  Everyone looks at everyone else, except for Anna, who’s watching a man kneeling down and brushing something in the soil, delicately, with a small paint-brush. He glances from under an enormous hat at her. He beckons her to look closer.

  An exaggerated sigh from Candy ascends in the silence. Zak, egged on by Antony, is the bold one.

  Looking for hominids?

  Our ancestors . . . ? Antony joining in.

  Ancestors, hominids! Got it! So, here’s the story: our evolution – human evolution – started with an ape. Over millions of years,some evolved that were less ape-like, more human-like; some stood up on their hind legs. We’re the only hominid living on Earth today. How did we become what we are? It’s a treasure hunt! And it starts with something like this . . .

  She signals to Silowa. He’s like a magician conjuring a rabbit: a flourish and he holds up a fragment – small, flat, dark, then it catches sunlight, becomes glossy, burnished brown, like polished wood.

  Piece of skull, announces Véronique. Silowa here has the wonderful sharp eyes that spotted this one! A tiny, tiny piece of fossilized skull. Much, much older than our creatures by the stream. Three and a half million years old (give or take a few hundred thousand years). Here’s another piece, and another. Silowa is helping Dr Otaka here (the kneeling man in the hat raises a hand) to put the pieces together. Just like a jigsaw. And so we will start to know what this individual looked like.

  Silowa’s showing the fossil to Anna. The two of them, heads together, chattering like they’ve been friends for years.

  Later, under awnings billowing in the hot wind, tables spread with thousands of bone fragments. Proudly Silowa lists them: Giraffe. Hippo. That is big – antelope – like the eland. That is a pig. That is human. Thigh bone. Footbones. Toes. Everything gives clues! Stone tool! Bone! I am learning about it. These ones are older than a million years – the layer of the rock tells us this! You go across the ground like this, he’s demonstrating, loping like an antelope, long-legged and skinny, but he’s quartering the ground, scanning as he goes, like looking for pieces of gold . . . you see these little changes in colour. Come, I show you.

  Off to a rubble-covered slope nearby – Anna, but also Matt, Joe, Zak, Antony, Tamara. Pebbles across the surface, red and grey and black, and Silowa swoops, lifts something: a nobble of bone. See, you just look and look again, and then again. This is common, this bone. They lie on the surface, hundreds, all over. They were buried, but now the rain and the wind have taken the top of the soil away and they are just there, you can pick them up. Me, he declares, me, I will find something not common. I will find something to wonder at!

  ‘So,’ the inspector probed, ‘then Silowa comes to Chomlaya to see you?’

  ‘On the supply lorry from Burukanda.’

  ‘And you share Silowa’s fascination for these bones?’

  ‘Working out what they are, when they’re from – that’s pretty good,’ Joe said slowly. ‘Anna and Silowa, they’re mad about searching for them . . . ’

  He stopped. Something had risen and fallen again in his mind, and then there was only the inspector and Ella again, waiting expectantly for something more, and the sergeant and Tomis, already walking back towards them.

  An imperceptible shake of the head passed between the sergeant and the inspector.

  ‘The path is good,’ Tomis announced to them all. ‘It goes up high, high! I am impressed that Silowa has found it. I will ask him how he sniffs this out!’

  But Joe, scrabbling to hold a thread in his thoughts, felt it slipping away. ‘There’s Anna’s logbook,’ he told them, ‘she draws things we saw . . . ’

  Startled, the inspector glanced at the sergeant. ‘I have not seen any logbook of Anna’s.’

  ‘We have found only the books which you have, Sir. No personal –’

  ‘We all had to write t
hem,’ Joe insisted. ‘Miss Strutton made it a competition.’

  ‘No writing books of this sort in the missing students’ tents. I am certain of this, Sir,’ asserted the sergeant. ‘But I will investigate. They are perhaps with the teacher, and she has not seen fit to show them to us.’

  ‘We could ask everyone,’ Ella pointed out. Again she had been watching the camp below. The canteen tent was clearly visible, a drift of figures assembling in the open space around it.

  ‘Well,’ declared the inspector, getting up. ‘I detect Miss Strutton’s meeting is about to take place. Yes, Ella, we can ask. In fact, we too can have a meeting! Joe, what you have told us has been very good, very helpful. We should be encouraged! Now we return as fast as we can. And, Sergeant Kaonga, we will not just talk to a few people and upset our Miss Strutton a little bit. We will talk to everyone and upset her much more, because we will bar the teachers, particularly we will bar our argumentative Miss Strutton. She will not be able to hear what the students choose to say to us. And I will be very childish and enjoy this punishment!’

  10 a.m.

  Barely an hour we have taken to get back to the camp, Murothi thought, and already Miss Strutton has found tasks for everyone at the farthest corners of the camp. Does she deliberately thwart our chance to talk to people?

  Now Tomis and the sergeant were rounding the students up.

  Murothi unzipped his tent and went in. On the rickety table, in a pile at the back, the students’ Book Of Days and the official teachers’ log; on the right, typed transcripts of taped police interviews with all six teachers and the two rangers: Tomis Ntonye and Likon Soimara. Next to them, handwritten notes of police conversations with the camp cook, Samuel Lekitumu, and the two expedition drivers: David Ntanyaki and Nicolas Waiputari. All three were away from the camp on the day of the disappearances. Samuel and Nicolas were buying vegetables, chickens and goat meat from the villages. Their routes had been confirmed by many people, and that they returned after the police search had begun.

  No mysteries there.

  No mystery either about David Ntanyaki, who had driven the large group of students and teachers on the overnight expedition to Lengoi Hot Springs. This was the group that included Ian Boyd. He scanned Ian Boyd’s interview again. He is one I must speak to, after the students, he thought. At breakfast, he seems to have a desire to talk, yet now he is nowhere to be seen. And what of the other teachers? In his return through the camp, Murothi had noted that not one of these was in sight. In fact, not one of these had shown any inclination to speak to Murothi either on his arrival at the camp yesterday afternoon, or in the few hours of this morning.

  They manage to lose three children. Yet they behave as if it is not their responsibility to find them. Their interviews say nothing.

  He put aside the notes on the six teachers, and Samuel, Nicolas and David.

  That left Tomis and Likon.

  Tomis Ntonye (TN)

  Date: 24/2/06

  Time: 18.35

  Place: Northern Province. Chomlaya, British Student Camp

  Interviewed by Sergeant Adewa Kaonga (AK), Constable Lasitai Lakuya (LL): Nanzakoto Police

  Department.

  Case No: 06574

  Tape reference: 2006/Chomlaya/16

  AK Explain your role here, please.

  TN I am a game ranger, and the guide here – there are two of us. Likon Soimara is also here. We take the visitors to places, and we tell them about everything.

  AK You know these missing students?

  TN I know all the students here, of course, of course! I have been working at this camp since everyone arrived. Three weeks now. I know these missing ones very well. They are noticeable! Matt is very interested in what I tell him about animals. He is inventing some music. He wants to listen to the animal cries and make music notes so they echo each other. He is full of questions. They are all full of questions – questions, questions. It is interesting for me.

  AK And Silowa?

  TN Silowa is their good friend. He comes to see them at the camp, he is with them whenever he can stay. At first he goes away at night. But then he stays. He persuades Samuel Lekitumu –

  AK Samuel Lekitumu? He is here? I have not seen him yet. I know him well!

  TN He is a good man. A good man. He lets Silowa sleep in the store tent. The store tent is Samuel’s kingdom, so the teachers cannot say yes or no!

  AK I see. Tell me more about Silowa.

  TN This is a boy with many ideas. Big plans. He sees many adventures ahead! I wish I had ideas like this boy when I was young. You know he has three years in school, but he is going to get himself back to school and gain all the higher examinations. He says this to me. I believe him. He will do it! His people are pastoral. They do not have the school fees any more. He tells me that he comes to the Burukanda archaeology camp with his uncle. The herders bring news of any erosion sites that they see. It may help the scientists. They get payment for doing it. They get a good meal. They enjoy the visit. A very good get-together! The herders are good scouts. Eyes like the eagle! Silowa talks about all this many times. He talks many times to everybody – to me, to Likon Soimara, to Nicolas Waiputari, to lots of the students – to these missing ones in particular but to others, too. But after they travel to Kasinga, he talks to other people less, and stays with the missing ones only. I think they start to keep away from the others.

  AK The trip to Kasinga? What is important about this?

  TN Joe and Matt and Anna go on this journey and Silowa persuades Likon to let him go too. Likon is happy to agree. There is room in the vehicles. He likes Silowa. He is also happy for Silowa’s other friend to join the expedition.

  AK Who is this other friend?

  TN Ndigi. He is another boy who works now and then at Burukanda. He becomes a good friend with Matt. They are mad, very mad, they are just like each other: mad about inventing music! Ndigi has made Matt a pipe.

  AK And why does everyone go to Kasinga? What is there?

  TN The students will help build a schoolroom and dig some wells. The readers of Charly’s newspaper, they help to pay for the cement and these kinds of things. It is part of this expedition. This was just the first visit to Kasinga, to meet the people there.

  AK Silowa goes too, but after this he does not talk to other students. Why is this?

  TN Charly says to me that there was something nasty happening. She was angry, she said it was shaming. This was the word she used. She was ashamed of the teachers – that they do nothing. She did not explain. You can maybe ask Likon. He went with them but he was in the other vehicle. Me, I just notice that Silowa, Matt, Joe, Anna, sometimes Ndigi when he is here, keep far from other people after this day.

  AK Tomis, when was this?

  TN A week ago, Friday . . . yes. You can see in the logbook. This teacher, Miss Strutton, writes down what is done every day.

  AK OK. So, when was the last time you saw the students who have vanished?

  TN They are here when we leave to drive to Lengoi. They are gone when we come back. Charly is also gone. It all happens when we are far.

  Murothi stopped reading, and quickly picked up the students’ log, The Book Of Days. He skimmed for the entry he half-remembered.

  There it was:

  23 February. Tamara (Buffalos).

  We all had to get up in the dark for breakfast at first light and the Buffalos were supposed to be ready to leave for the trip to Lengoi Hot Springs but then Guess Who? got thrown off at the last minute! Miss Strutton picked out Katra and Andy and Phil from the Antelopes to go instead, and they hadn’t got packed, so we hung about, played cards, got bored, got more bored, played more cards.

  Quickly, the names in each team? He rifled through the police notes, found the list, ran his eyes down. Buffalos: fifteen names including the girls who spoke to Joe at breakfast, Tamara and Janey, and the boys they mentioned, Zak and Antony. Joe, Matt and Anna, also on the list.

  But Joe, Matt and Anna did not go to Leng
oi. They were left in the camp with – he found the list of Antelopes: fifteen names, among them, Sean and his friends. The sergeant had checked the names for him: Denny and Carl.

  Joe and Matt and Anna in the camp without Tamara, Janey, Zak, Antony too, who appeared to be friends. Without Ian Boyd. Without Charly.

  Is this significant?

  Trying not to rush, Murothi checked meticulously through the other interviews. Lawrence Sharp, one of the teachers who had been in the camp all the time: same questions about when the disappearances were noticed, and how. Answers: alert at about midday, when the three students were sent for and did not come. No search until the Lengoi group returned, because Miss Strutton thought it was unnecessary, she said the students were just avoiding their duties. The only other teacher there, Miss Hopper, sounded like a parrot; it could have been Miss Strutton speaking. Perhaps a little less strident.

  He picked up the Elisa Strutton interview, leafing through it, hearing her voice and tone rising off the paper, as if she stood in front of him now with her pert smile switched on and off like clockwork.

  ES They were given the task of digging a new trench.

  DC Where was this?

  ES At the back of the camp. For the toilets. The old trench was damaged during the storm three nights ago, the sides broke down. We need to fill it in and dig a new one.

  DC Who else was doing this?

  ES Just those three.

  Just those three. Kitchen duties, digging trenches. Punishment duties. All inside the camp, not outside. Inside, inside. The trouble comes from inside –

  ‘Inspector,’ Tomis’s head poked through the tent door, ‘the students are there. Sergeant Kaonga is with them, and the constables are keeping the teachers at a long arm’s length! Everything is ready for you.’