Savage Moon

by Chris Simms

  'So the Empire sucked,' interrupted McCloughlin. 'Is this relevant?'

  Jon glanced at Summerby. Come on, Sir. Don't let him start to take things over.

  'Bear with us,' DC Murray replied. 'After World War Two, the Kikuyu started forming organisations to lobby for the return of their land. In nineteen fifty the authorities responded by arresting the leaders and banning many of the groups.'

  McCloughlin sighed. 'In nineteen fifty. That's the last bloody century.'

  Summerby's head jerked with irritation. 'It somehow connects to what we're dealing with today. Will you let my officers speak?'

  Jon kept looking at Murray, but a small smile escaped him. About time, boss, he thought.

  Murray looked back down at the page. 'The tutor underlined this bit, said it's quite pivotal.' He began to read. ' “The Kikuyu grew ever more rebellious and in October nineteen fifty-two a State of Emergency was declared. Thousands of British soldiers were brought in. When leaders such as Jomo Kenyatta were arrested, hundreds of Kikuyu nationalists fled for the forests of Mount Kenya to establish a resistance movement. They formed themselves into the Kenyan Land and Freedom Army. Members who'd fought with the British during the World War organised them into units, even allocating ranks including General.' ” Murray glanced up. 'They began attacking white property, then the settlers themselves.'

  'Mau Mau. You're talking about the bloody Mau Mau, not a real army,' Summerby said.

  'Sir, I'm only recapping what's in here,' Murray answered, beginning to sound exasperated. 'If you go to the last chapter called State Lies, you'll see that the jungle fighters never called themselves Mau Mau. No such word exists in the Kikuyu language. According to this, Mau Mau was a propaganda myth created by government press handouts devised in London. They depicted the insurgents as anti-European and anti-Christian, saying they were determined to seize power in Kenya. Mau Mau was meant to play on Western prejudices about witchdoctors, mumbo jumbo and jungle savages. Read it for yourself.' He turned to the last pages. 'Press releases talked about, “the bestial wave of Mau Mau”, murders were committed by “terrorists insatiable for blood”. The British press fell in line with the Government's stance, using words such as dark, satanic, fanatical, merciless, evil and primitive to describe them.'

  McCloughlin shook his head. 'I think we're wasting valuable time with this... this version of history.'

  Jon stirred in his seat. Time to shut you the fuck up. 'Actually, James Field's adoptive parents described how he flew back to Nairobi to meet members of his estranged family. That was in March two thousand and one, a year before he went back to his old teacher to write this project. We don't know much about his natural family, but his mum's surname was Gathambo. She was from the Kikuyu tribe. Somehow she ended up in this country, brought up by a white British couple called the Sullivans.'

  Summerby's head went up and he shouted over to the office manager. 'Where's Adlon with the stuff from the social services? We need to know who the blazes James Field's real mother was.' The manager held up a hand. 'He just rang in. They're down in the archives now. The records are being dug out as we speak.' Jon sat back, glancing to his side as Rick let his copy of Field's project fall open at a page of images. 'Jesus Christ.'

  'What?' said Jon, looking down. At the top were a couple of crude looking firearms, toy-like in their clumsy simplicity. The caption below read, 'KLFA weapons, from a display at the Imperial War Museum where they're referred to as Mau Mau rifles.'

  Next was a photo of a black man lying on a blanket. The caption read, 'Field Marshal Dedan Kimathi, leader of the KLFA. Executed, February 19th 1957.'

  Alongside was a photo of the side of a plane, a line of little men with spears drawn on the fuselage. 'RAF decals during the war.'

  Below that was an illustration of a naked man leaping through the air, deep shadow tactfully concealing his groin. Covering the top of his head and flapping outwards from his back was the pelt of a black panther. The animal's gaping mouth framed the man's face which, in turn, was midway through a fearsome looking shriek. Clutched in each hand was a terrible claw-like weapon.

  'No act of savagery is beneath the bestial Mau Mau.' In the very corner of the picture was a grouping of five letters. H.M.G.P.O.

  'What is it?' Summerby demanded.

  Rick's shoulders shivered momentarily. 'The weapons he's holding. They're identical to the ones James Field made.'

  'Which weapons?'

  'The ones from the garage he worked in. We radio'd for a car to bring over the plans he'd drawn before we drove down to Bollington.'

  McCloughlin stood up. 'What's the name of the exhibits officer?'

  'Sergeant Sheehan,' someone murmured.

  'Sheehan, you fucking half wit. Anything interesting you'd like to share with us?'

  An officer with tight wiry hair turned to a stack of evidence bags on his desk. 'Sir? I'm getting buried here, can you be more specific?' His cockney accent sounded out of place in the room.

  'A big piece of paper. Like the ones you'll be doodling on down at the job centre.'

  He shuffled through the pile, eventually pulling a bag out.

  'This?'

  Jon stepped over to the desk. 'Don't mind the arsehole,' he whispered, taking it from the other man. 'And we'll need that one with the book in too.'

  After placing the two bags in the centre of the table, Jon sat back down. 'James Field, or Jammer as he was known to his associates, has recreated the weapons in this illustration of a Mau Mau terrorist. It's all about revenge. We also found this book about SAS camouflage and ambush techniques. He's probably dressing himself up in combat clothing, then jumping out on his victims and ripping them apart the same way Mau Mau terrorists ripped open theirs. After that, he's planting hairs from the panther at Buxton Zoo on the bodies.'

  There was silence for a couple of seconds. Summerby turned to Murray. 'You'd better tell us what's in those other chapters.' Gardiner held up her hand. 'Sir, I went through the last parts while DC Murray was driving us back here. Chapter Two, Shoot to Kill, goes on about the colonial government's policy of opening fire on any person seen in prohibited areas. Militia groups formed by the white settlers started using it as an excuse to try and wipe the Kikuyu, or Kukes, out. Those living on isolated farms with no phones brought in bounty hunters who were paid twenty shillings for every suspect they killed. British Army units set up scoreboards, officers paid a bounty for each company's first kill, usually five pounds. The soldiers would cut off the hands of any suspect they shot and carry them back to the camp to prove someone had been killed. The RAF took to decorating their planes with silhouettes of an African holding a spear for each kill they made.'

  Several people's eyes were still on the page of images, including the photo of the plane with its line of little men drawn on the side. Jon couldn't quite believe what he was hearing. They really just opened fire on anyone they saw?

  'Next chapter is called Breaking Resistance. This describes how, to stop the supply of food, ammunition and medical supplies to the KLFA, the British started rounding up the Kikuyu and placing them in what were officially called protected villages. Surrounded by barbed wire, watch towers, armed guards and dogs, these prison camps lacked sanitation and were horribly overcrowded.'

  'Why? How many people did they put in them?' someone asked.

  Gardiner leafed through her copy of the project. 'It says somewhere. Ah, here it is. “By nineteen fifty-three over one hundred thousand Kikuyu had been evicted from their homes. In Operation Anvil, in nineteen fifty-four, soldiers rounded up the entire Kikuyu population of Nairobi. Twenty thousand were interned without trial. By the end of nineteen fifty-four tens of thousands were behind barbed wire.” '

  McCloughlin's head was down. 'I still don't see where this is going.'

  Gardiner shot the thinning hair on top of his head a withering look. 'Murder Camps describes the process of dealing with Mau Mau suspects. Anyone arrested by the security forces – men, women or children �
�� was screened to see if they'd taken the oath of Mau Mau allegiance. Screening was another word for interrogation. It involved beating and—' Her eyes flicked downwards in embarrassment '—other forms of torture. The aim was to get a person to break their oath by confessing to have taken it. Then their rehabilitation through increasingly less secure camps – or the Pipeline as it was called – could begin. However, typhoid outbreaks started to occur.' Again she started reading from the page. ' “Interned people slept in the same rooms as their toilet buckets. Bed bugs and lice infested them, rats were killed for food.” '

  'Maybe we have dwelt on this long enough. How did it all end?' Summerby asked quietly, eyes on the table.

  'News of the atrocities started leaking out back in Britain. Questions were asked in Parliament, though the government of the day did its best to deny everything. Also the Mau Mau had been bombed out of existence by the late fifties; the RAF dropped over fifty thousand tons of ordnance into the jungles during the conflict. Keeping the Kikuyu in prison camps started to become an expensive political liability. By nineteen fifty-seven, two thousand prisoners were being released back on to the reserves every month. When a cover-up of an inmate massacre at the Hola detention camp was exposed in nineteen fifty-nine, it was the final nail in the coffin for the Pipeline. The British withdrew and the country was independent a few years later.'

  A few people fiddled with their photocopied sheets in the silence. Summerby looked around, then stood up, yanked the map off the whiteboard behind him and grabbed a marker pen. In the middle of the empty board, he wrote James Field/Jammer. He drew a vertical line above it and turned to Jon. 'What was his mother called?'

  'His birth mother was Mary Gathambo. His adoptive parents are called Pat and Ian Field.'

  Summerby wrote the names down. Next to James Field he drew a horizontal line and wrote Danny Gordon. Above that he wrote Derek Peterson.

  'So, given that Danny Gordon was dead before Peterson was murdered, we're assuming James Field killed him as payback for his mate's suicide.' He picked up a red pen and connected Field's and Peterson's names. Switching back to blue, he then wrote Trevor Kerrigan next to Mary Gathambo connecting it to James Field with a blue and then a red line. 'James Field also killed his birth dad, for reasons as yet unkown.'

  To the side he then wrote out Rose Sutton, connecting it to James Field with another red line. 'His first victim, again, killed for reasons as yet unkown.' Below Sutton's name, he jotted down a question mark. 'And the final person or persons he's after. Who might it be?'

  'If he killed his own dad, maybe he'd kill his mum's adoptive parents, they abandoned her after all,' Gardiner said.

  Summerby looked at the board. 'You're right.' Above Mary Gathambo's name he added two more vertical lines, topping one with a question mark and the other with Sullivans. 'Mary's mum and dad, adoptive and natural, we need to know all of their whereabouts. OK, who else?'

  Rick briefly raised a hand. 'Whoever changed his name from Njama to James. Midwife at the Wythenshaw, the doctor who delivered him, the social worker. Could be any number of people.'

  McCloughlin crossed his arms. 'What about the Silverdale? Maybe there was more than one kiddy fiddler on the staff. Perhaps we should be thinking about that tutor who helped him produce this load of shite.' He tossed his copy of the project to the side.

  Summerby added Tutor to the growing list by the question mark. 'Who else?'

  Jon interlaced his fingers. 'Someone tried to scrub the word

  'Kuririkana' from the rocks on Saddleworth Moor. Clegg has been hiding information from the start of this thing.' He thought about the Inspector at Mossley Brow. Suspended from duty, his sister dragged in and cautioned. 'The bloke was banging Rose Sutton. Maybe he's on the hit list.'

  'And Hobson,' added Rick. 'He's had dealings with Field too.'

  As their names went on the board, the office manager called over. 'Boss? DC Adlon's on the line with that information.'

  Summerby pointed to the phone on the desk. 'Put him through to here, I'll switch to speakerphone.'

  McCloughlin jumped to his feet. 'Silence in this room!'

  The buzz of the civilians' voices manning the phones evaporated. A high-pitched version of Adlon's voice emerged from the unit's base. Jon wasn't sure if the squeak was due to excitement or the loudspeaker. 'Boss? Are you there?'

  Summerby nodded. 'Go ahead, you're on speakerphone.'

  'We've got the records. Copies of all this stuff were taken by James Field back in two thousand. It's a sad bloody story. No wonder the lad flipped out. James Field's birth mother was Mary Gathambo. She was brought up by the Reverend William Sullivan and his wife, Emily. They lived in a vicarage just outside Warrington. The Sullivans were Mary's legal guardians, not adoptive parents. They returned from Kenya with Mary when she was eleven months old.'

  'So who are her birth parents?' Summerby asked.

  'Mary was an orphan. Apparently her mother died in a place called the Kamiti detention camp. Medical complications after the birth.'

  'Have you got contact details for the Sullivans?'

  'They're dead. Both were killed in a car crash in nineteen seventy-nine.' Summerby reached out and crossed their surname off the list as Adlon continued. 'Mary was eighteen at the time. It seems they'd not written her into their will. None of the relatives were interested so she was basically left to fend for herself. Details are sketchy from that point on, just stuff she was prepared to tell the hospital staff. She moved to Manchester and lived in bedsits for a while, but by the time she turned up at the hospital she'd been sleeping rough.'

  'Sleeping rough while pregnant? Why do that?' Summerby asked.

  'No explanation. Fell behind with her rent?'

  Jon's mind was turning. 'Kerrigan started out in the property game, bedsits and the like. What if Mary was a tenant he took liberties with? It would explain how she ended up preferring to sleep rough.'

  Summerby's eyes were on the board. 'You mean he raped her. That's why Field killed him. But how did he find out who his father was?'

  'Sorry. You talking to me, boss?' Adlon's voice buzzed.

  'No, rhetorical question. What were the Sullivans doing in

  Kenya?'

  'He was the chaplain for the Kamiti area. Left in the late fifties just before the country got its independence.'

  'With an orphaned Kenyan baby?'

  'There are notes from the social worker who initially dealt with the Sullivans on their return to Britain. Apparently Kenya was in chaos. There'd been this armed uprising by the Mau Mau, thousands had been locked up in specially built camps. Then the decision was made to release them all. It seems in all the confusion many orphaned babies were left behind. Convents took in some but the Sullivans took in Mary Gathambo.'

  Rick coughed. 'Before the Sullivans died, we know they told Mary all about where she was from, including her family name. She'd obviously contacted members of the family back in Kenya. James Field had the letters they'd sent her. She was planning to return to the country when she fell pregnant by, we now know, Kerrigan. We also know James Field made contact with the relatives and flew out there to meet them in March, two thousand and one. He came back a different person, knuckled down in a job, kept out of trouble and quietly planned all this.' Summerby slapped the end of the marker pen against his palm. 'We're no nearer to working out who he's after next. DC Adlon, bring everything you've got back here.' He cut the connection and turned to the table. 'We need to re-question every offender who was in the Silverdale at the same time as Field. And go round the squats, pull in everyone who knew him as Jammer.'

  A phone rang and was swiftly answered. 'Is there a DI Spicer here?' a female civilian called out.

  Jon turned to her, instantly clocking her worried expression.

  'It's Sergeant Innes in the radio room. He's got a message about your wife.'

  Thirty-Six

  Jon got to the woman in three strides and took the phone from her outstretched hand. 'Sergeant?
'

  'Jon. This might be something and nothing. Your other half, is she called Alice?'

  He felt a plunging sensation, as if he was in a lift that had unexpectedly started to go down. 'Yes. What is it?'

  'You know the Liberal Democrat constituency offices in

  Cheadle Hulme? On Gill Bent Road?'

  'Yes.'

  'We've just received a call about an incident there. A woman turned up, er, in a bit of a state. Complaining. Apparently about the war in Iraq.'

  He knew instantly it was his wife. Please let her be OK. Oh God, what about Holly? 'Is there a baby with her? Does she have a baby?'

  'Yes. A girl. The staff are caring for her.'

  'The staff ? What's Alice doing?'

  'The caller described her as extremely agitated. I'm sorry, Jon.' He lowered the handset and stared at the wall. Rick's voice sounded behind him.

  'Jon, what is it? Is Alice OK?'

  He hung up. 'I've got to go. Alice isn't well.' He was in a tunnel, the only visible things were the doors he was marching towards. Voices were around him, exact words unintelligible. He was about to grab a door handle when he realised he didn't have his car keys.

  Summerby collared him as he returned to his desk. 'Jon, is there a problem?'

  'It's my wife. I have to go.'

  Summerby clicked his fingers. 'DS Saville, go with him.'

  Jon waved a hand. 'It's all right.'

  Footsteps followed him down the corridor. He glanced over his shoulder to see Rick, his mouth beginning to open. 'Come on mate, I'll drive you.'

  'It's all right, honestly.'

  'Jon, just let me drive, OK?'

  Anger flared and he started to turn. But as he did so a sense of nausea welled up. He wanted to sit down. 'All right,' he swallowed.

  Once in his partner's car, Jon leaned back in his seat. What has happened? Has she gone mad? Have I lost her forever? He saw Alice in a white hospital gown, rocking back and forth. Oh no. Gritting his teeth, he got out his mobile and phoned home.