by Kurt Ellis
‘Sorry, Prof,’ interrupted Steenkamp. ‘Tokoloshe – like those little … dwarf thingies?’
The Professor walked over to his laptop that softly hummed on the podium in stand-by mode. Lifting a small remote, he explained as he searched for an image, ‘Tokoloshe is a mythical creature. It’s a dwarf-like water sprite.’
He found the image he was looking for and enlarged it. A pencil drawing showed a small, snarling, naked creature. Its eyes bulged from an enlarged skull. It had pointed teeth that looked needle sharp – a mouth full of fangs. Its stomach and hands were engorged, and its penis was disproportionally large.
Steenkamp laughed. ‘No wonder black people sleep on bricks to get away from it.’
‘It’s not only black people who believe in it,’ Meyer replied. ‘Remember the Lotter case?’
Steenkamp shrugged but the Professor smiled. ‘Very good, Detective. I remember it well; I was consulted on the case. In 2008, a white girl in KwaZulu said she was being continuously raped by a tokoloshe.’
Meyer nodded. ‘And a guy named Matthew Naidoo convinced her and her brother that he was the third son of God. He ordered them to kill their parents, which they did.’
Steenkamp exclaimed, ‘Oh ja! I remember that case now. It made me sick. Sies.’
The memory of Creed’s words flooded into Meyer’s ears once more: It has been that way since the one monkey pointed at the sun and said to the other monkey, “He said you must give me your share.”
‘Imfene,’ Meyer prompted. ‘I’ve heard of the Tokoloshe before, but not of the Imfene.’
The Professor clicked through more images before enlarging another pencil drawing. It was of a large, ape-like creature. Its shoulders and arms were huge and covered in coarse hair. Its hands hung low at the side of its bandy legs. ‘I did these drawings myself,’ he explained, ‘for a new book I am writing. This is Imfene. Not one of the more well-known characters in South African mythology. Like the Westernised representation of witches that ride on broomsticks, our African witches ride on the back of Imfene.’ The Professor closed the laptop and joined them at the seats again. ‘Of course, this is just myth.’
‘So these things don’t exist?’ Steenkamp asked with a mocking smile.
The Professor laughed. ‘No, Captain. Umthakathi do exist. Their magic might be myth, but the practitioners are real. The people’s belief in their power is real. Which is why bodies are dismembered in morgues, or why people are killed for their body parts. But Tokoloshe and Imfene are like Big Foot or La Chupacabra: the Loch Ness Monsters of African culture. They don’t exist … but that doesn’t matter. It doesn’t matter to some people if we can prove they are scientifically real or not, because they believe. They know they’re real, no matter what anyone else says. And that is all that matters – the belief.’
63
Creed strummed his guitar and mumbled the hook of a song; a lit cigarette stuck in the corner of his mouth. He didn’t know the name of the song, but the melody was haunting and the words flowed from his lips without thought.
He sat on the couch and stared at his reflection in the blank television screen, but he didn’t see himself staring back. He saw his father, sitting in the corner of their home. Creed reached for his glass of whisky on the table. Beads of moisture ran down the outside and dripped onto his lap. He took a sip, then placed it back on the table top, to the right of two high-school textbooks, the sight of which annoyed him. That girl was getting far too comfortable in his house, but he had to admit that he liked knowing there was someone else around. He didn’t want to talk to her or see her. But just knowing she was there, somewhere, meant that he wasn’t alone.
Her screams came from the passage. Creed dropped his father’s guitar and sprang to his feet. The image of Megan came to mind. Oh God. Not again. Rushing around the corner, he saw Carly standing with her back towards him. Her hands were clasped over her mouth as she stared, wide eyed, through the open door of the second bedroom.
His anger rose sharply. ‘What the fuck are you doing?’ he yelled.
She jumped, turned and looked at him, blue eyes drowned in horror. ‘I’m … sorry,’ she whispered through her hands.
‘You have no damn business being in there!’ Creed pushed past her and shut the door with such force that the entire wall shook. He turned to continue reprimanding her but she was gone. He caught a glimpse of her heels as she hurried out of the kitchen.
Creed ran after her. He wasn’t done with her yet, but by the time he had reached his back door, she had disappeared out of the yard – as if she had dissolved into the wind. He stood out in the cold afternoon air and cursed.
He almost didn’t notice the newspaper at his feet. The Daily Standard was printed across the top in large red type. And the headline beneath it read ‘Nicholas Creed – The Madman and the Muti’.
64
Luke Meyer felt betrayed. And like an idiot for feeling betrayed, because he had known from the beginning who and what Tracey was. He knew she was playing him and he had let it happen. Lamb to the slaughter. He forced the gear stick of the car into fifth, then pressed the accelerator to the carpet. At seven in the evening, the traffic to Rosebank was light and porous. He easily manoeuvred between the vehicles. A trickle of sweat ran down the centre of his back. His knuckles were white from gripping the steering wheel.
She’d better be home, he thought to himself. She’d better be.
He skidded to a halt outside the block of flats at the corner of Oxford Road and Corlette Drive, a stone’s throw away from the Wanderers cricket stadium. Not bothering to lock his car, he stormed over to the intercom system and pressed the ringer to her flat. A few seconds passed, more than enough time for him to get even angrier.
‘Hello?’ her voice came through the speaker.
‘We need to talk. Now!’
A pause. ‘Detective Meyer?’
‘Yes.’
A few more seconds passed and Meyer was just about to ring the bell again when he heard the buzzer on her security door. It had been remotely unlocked. He pushed it open and bounded up the two flights of stairs. When he got to the second floor, he found her standing in the passage. Her hair was tied in a loose ponytail, and she wore grey tracksuit pants and a long-sleeved T-shirt – nothing at all like the way she’d dressed when she had previously met with him, yet she still looked unbelievably sexy. Meyer pushed his lustful thoughts away.
‘How’d you know where I live?’ she asked.
‘I’m a detective, Miss Wilson. Remember?’
She smiled softly. ‘You look angry.’
‘I am angry.’
‘I know. I can understand why. And I’m sorry.’
‘Sorry?’ Meyer rubbed his forehead. ‘You make accusations about my major that you cannot support. Your evidence against Creed is circumstantial at best, yet you still use them. But worse, you used information about the Sinamane case from notes you weren’t supposed to see and which you obtained illegally. You realise I could arrest you right now for obstruction of justice?’
Her smile dropped from her mouth. Her look hardened. ‘So you’re upset about me telling the truth?’
‘I’m upset that you have no ethics. You snooped through my coat. You read notes that weren’t yours to read. You put my job on the line.’
‘I didn’t mention you as my source.’
‘That’s the thing. I’m not your source.’ Meyer raised his voice. ‘I was never your f … damn source.’
She laughed. ‘You won’t even swear when you’re angry.’
Meyer didn’t respond.
‘Okay,’ she continued. ‘I’m sorry that I put your job in jeopardy. I really am. But I couldn’t overlook this any more. This story had to be broken. I had to write it.’
She reached her hand out and took his. ‘But I’m sorry for betraying you.’
‘That’s not—’
She pulled him closer, stood on her toes and kissed him full on the lips. The act surprised him. He hadn’t
expected it, nor had he expected the flame that the kiss ignited inside him. The savage serpent of lust uncoiled itself in his gut. He seized her by the back of the head and kissed her eagerly in return. His tongue explored her mouth.
With their lips still locked, Tracey back-pedalled into her flat, pulling him in after her. Meyer didn’t know how they had got from the front door to her bedroom. He just recalled Tracey shoving him back onto her bed and then mounting him. Their hands, their mouths explored each other. Their fingers, clumsy with desire, peeled clothing off. His yearning felt as if it was about to cross the border from intense into painful. He needed to be inside her. Urgently. With a quivering hand, he managed to get his boxer shorts down and once free, he entered her with a shudder.
65
Clement and Nhlanhla refused to enter the house of Nomtakhati. They chose to stand outside in the frigid night. Cowards, Reggie thought.
Reggie stood in the centre of the shack, completely naked. He shivered in the cold air.
Nomtakhati walked around him, a bucket hanging from a hand as she dipped ishoba – a stick with the hair of a horse’s mane attached to one end – into the icy, dark liquid. She mumbled her spells, and at consistent intervals, when she would raise her voice to emphasise a word, she used the wet ishoba to spray the liquid over his naked body.
She splashed him all over, until every part of his body was drenched and dripping. Then she had him kneel on the ground before pouring most of what remained over his head. He had to drink the little bit that was left. The witch grasped his head and shook it roughly as she continued to chant in a language he didn’t understand.
‘We’re done now,’ she said, removing her hands from him. She walked over to her end of the straw mat and sat down.
Reggie had noticed when he had arrived that Imfene wasn’t there. And he hadn’t heard the giggles of uTokoloshe either. The two of them were alone. Strangely, he felt more afraid being alone with her than he had when the two monsters were present.
Reggie wrapped himself in the rough Basotho blanket he had brought with him for the protection spell. ‘Thank you, Mama,’ he responded. ‘I can already feel the power.’
‘Yes, this one. This muti is very powerful. Made from the skin of a white boy.’
‘Thank you, Mama,’ he repeated.
‘Now, you go,’ she continued. ‘You go get me the uSatan.’
66
Saturday, 22 June
Her apartment was warm and comfortable. The wall-mounted heater in the corner of the bedroom had been on the entire night. But the cosiness of her home didn’t do a thing to ease Luke Meyer’s guilt. He sat on the edge of her bed, his bare feet buried in the shag of the lush, cream carpet, and he cupped his head in his hands.
‘Feeling awkward, Father?’ Tracey mumbled from beneath the covers of her bed. She held the thick duvet up to her neck, concealing her nakedness.
Meyer cringed. ‘Please don’t call me that.’
She laughed. ‘I’m just teasing. Come on, Luke. You can’t tell me that last night was your first time with a woman. From what I could tell, you clearly know your way around the bedroom.’
He didn’t answer. His first time had been when he was seventeen and in Cape Town, with a Malay girl named Sumaya. She’d been heavenly – smart, funny and exotically beautiful. It was the only time in his life that he had ever doubted entering the priesthood. Yet, in the same breath, Sumaya had confirmed for him that entering the priesthood was what God wanted of him.
The two of them had loved each other, but she had ended the relationship because she was coloured and Muslim and he was white and not. It had decimated him on one hand, but on the other, it had added more fuel to his passion for the Church.
His first time after he had left the Church had been a one-night stand with a woman he had met at a pub. And then there was Stephanie. He had run into her at a church he began to attend in Rondebosch while he was stationed nearby, but had known her long before then. She was a parishioner of his from De Doorns. She had previously attended his church when she was only a pretty girl in her teens. That pretty, teenage girl was no more. She had blossomed into a beautiful twenty-something professional woman with an aura of dynamism. He hadn’t intend for anything to happen between them. It was supposed to have been an innocent cup of coffee to catch up, but had ended in so much more. It ended with them in bed, and Meyer had felt terrible afterwards. He had been her priest only a few years earlier. He had ministered over her Confirmation, for heaven’s sake. It wasn’t right of him to bed her.
Stephanie had been the last person he had been with before Tracey. That was over two years ago, and now he had done this. He had slept with a woman who had betrayed him. Who had used him to put his boss’s head on the block.
Tracey stopped laughing. ‘Seriously, are you okay, Luke?’
‘I don’t know what you hoped to accomplish last night, but—’
She sat up straight, abandoning the duvet and her modesty. ‘Do you think last night happened because I’ve some ulterior motive? Because I was feeling guilty for what I did?’
Meyer didn’t respond.
‘Let me tell you something.’ Her eyes furrowed with anger, ‘I don’t feel guilty at all for what I did. I feel bad for snooping in your jacket, but not for writing that story. It had to be told. About last night.’ She paused. ‘Last night happened because I wanted it to happen from the moment I met you. But if—’
His cellphone rang, loud and shrill. He found it on the floor, almost completely swallowed by the carpet. Immediately seeing Major Grey’s name, he answered. He listened to what was said, then hung up. He could feel colour fleeing from his face.
‘What’s wrong?’ Tracey asked. ‘What happened?’
He waited a minute before saying, ‘We have another body. Another muti murder.’
67
Meyer had a savage battle with his thoughts during the drive to the crime scene in Diepsloot, a township north of Johannesburg, not too far from the wealthy suburbs of Dainfern and Chartwell. He was angry with himself. Yet he couldn’t deny the fact that he had developed feelings for Tracey. She was intelligent, confident and stunningly beautiful. If he was honest with himself, he wasn’t angry at her for invading his privacy – he was angry with himself for not being angry with her for invading his privacy.
The Saturday-morning traffic was light. It wasn’t long before he saw the multi-coloured shacks packed together and entered the informal settlement. Over a half a million people lived in Diepsloot, a small pocket of land bursting at the seams with human beings in squalor. He spotted the flashing blue lights almost as soon as he drove past the first shack, and he guided his car towards them. A river of raw sewage trickled down the centre of the dirt road.
He turned left into a no-named street and continued to inch his way forward along the tight street until he reached the crime scene. The narrow road was completely blocked off by parked police cars and vans. Almost immediately, he spotted Zwane, leaning on the bonnet of one of the cars. He looked pallid.
‘You okay?’ Meyer asked as he approached.
Zwane shook his head. ‘I don’t think I can handle this any more.’
With those whispered words, Zwane doubled over and vomited onto the ground. He retched so violently that a nearby paramedic rushed over to see if she could assist. Feeling Zwane was in good hands, Meyer made his way into the hovel that was the crime scene.
The interior of the shack was gloomy in the early-morning sunlight. The cramped space looked like the empty shell of some giant, decomposing animal. It was as if someone had cleaned out the guts and innards, leaving only the husk of the beast to decay. And he could smell that decay. It was a few seconds before his eyes adjusted to the murk. At the rear of the shack, he made out Steenkamp and Grey standing over a corpse, with Cho on his haunches.
The corpse was small, the victim just a boy.
‘The leg,’ Cho said in a monotone, ‘cut below the knee.’ He pushed at the chin and open
ed the mouth ‘The tongue is missing too. Genitals, leg and tongue: gone. The skin on his back, gone too.’
Cho stood and dusted at his knees.
Meyer crossed himself and walked up. ‘How old would you say he is? Ten years old?’
‘Probably younger,’ Steenkamp said.
But, to Meyer, it was the boy’s pale skin that stood out. Then the coarse, ginger hair. And finally, the eyes. They were open and red beneath swollen eyelids.
‘An albino,’ Grey stated.
Meyer suddenly knew why Zwane couldn’t contain his stomach. The stink of death and the sight of this horror, all within the pressing, confined space of the shack, were overwhelming. He too wanted to rush outside. It felt as if the walls were closing in on him, as if this hut of the macabre was about to drown him in a gory tide. Meyer recited a silent prayer to slow down his racing pulse.
‘Blood’s sprayed there,’ Cho pointed to the far wall. ‘The heart was still beating when the leg was cut off; that’s why it sprayed so far.’
Steenkamp, who clearly couldn’t take it either, turned and walked out.
‘Let’s get forensics in here to process the scene,’ Grey said, ushering the rest of his team out.
They stood in a circle outside the shack. A dreary-looking Zwane joined them.
‘I’m sorry about that, Major,’ he said to Grey.
‘Forget about it, Zwane,’ Grey said. ‘It’s fine.’ He turned to the rest of the team. ‘Okay, what are your thoughts? We’re here because the person who reported it mentioned the name “Nomtakhati”. I picked it up on the 10111 call log.’
Grey explained that he had set up a flag if certain names and key words were recorded on the police emergency system.
‘Look,’ Steenkamp started, ‘it clearly looks like another muti killing, but apart from the name, there’s no proof it has anything to do with our case.’
