Black Magic Woman (25 page)

Across from him, his wife was in a similar position. Except that she was covered in blood, as dead as Nshonge's last hopes.

That had been three weeks ago. As he had feared, his wife's body had been stolen from her grave, despite all precautions, and Nshonge was alone now, waiting for the next full moon so that his torment, along with his life, could finally end.

Once Nshonge stopped talking, there was quiet in the room for the better part of a minute. Looking at Sergeant Shemba, Van Dreenan could tell that his partner was seriously perturbed by what he had heard. Van Dreenan thought he knew exactly how the big man felt. He said to Shemba, "Ask him for the name of this
tagati,
and where he may be found."

When the question was put into Xhosa, Miles Nshonge appeared agitated for the first time in the interview.

"He refuses," Shemba said. "He says the
tagati's
vengeance is already terrible enough—he does not wish to make it even worse."

"What the hell could be worse than what he says he is facing now?"

"He says he does not know, and does not wish to know. He will not speak the
tagati's
name to us."

After a few more attempts to coax the name of the sorcerer out of Miles Nshonge, Van Dreenan gave it up. As they left, Sergeant Shemba gave the man his card, inviting him to call if he changed his mind. Nshonge accepted the card, but neither policeman seriously thought he was going to be getting in touch with the law.

The car was, fortunately, still in one piece. As they drove off, Van Dreenan asked, "When does the next full moon start, do you know?"

Sergeant Shemba thought for a moment. "Not tonight, but tomorrow night. Yes, I am sure of it."

Van Dreenan nodded slowly. "I was thinking," he said, "that the day after tomorrow might be a good time to come back, pay Mister Nshonge another visit."

Shemba looked at him, before turning back to watch the road. "Assuming he is still alive, you mean."

"
Ja
," Van Dreenan said glumly. "Always assuming that."

The locals gave way to the two policemen as they walked to Nshonge's front door, which stood open. The buzzing of flies inside the house was loud, as if something within had attracted their interest. Van Dreenan was pretty sure he knew what it was.

Miles Nshonge lay on his back, upon the bench where he had sat during his interview a few days earlier. He might have seemed asleep, were it not for the pool of blood that spread out from underneath the bench to cover a good portion of the floor.

Taking care not to step in the small lake of gore, Van Dreenan prowled the room, although he could not have said exactly what he was looking for. There were no signs of struggle. Nshonge's body bore no visible wound. The blood smelled fresh, and a careful touch of Van Dreenan's finger revealed that it was just starting to become tacky. Nshonge had been dead no more than a few hours.

Van Dreenan made a gesture toward the open door with his chin. "Have a chat with that lot outside, will you?" he said to Shemba. "See if anybody saw or heard anything, the usual drill—for all the
fokken
good it will do."

Van Dreenan took the small police radio that he wore clipped to his belt, flicked it on, and prepared to follow procedure for reporting a suspicious death on his patch.
And they don't get much more bloody suspicious than this,
he thought.

While he spoke into his radio, he let his eyes wander idly around the room, taking in the blood pool, the flies that were gorging themselves on it, the sparse decorations, the cheap but serviceable furniture…

It was then that he noticed the piece of paper.

The Nshonge family's dining table looked old but of good quality, as if it were an heirloom handed down through several generations. On it rested salt and pepper shakers, a few small bottles probably containing other spices, a cheap-looking necklace with some carnivore's tooth attached, and, underneath it, a half-sheet of paper.

Van Dreenan finished his radio conversation while making his slow way over there, careful to avoid the blood. Out of habit he touched nothing on the table, but he doubted forensics was going to be much help to him this time.

He wondered if the amulet on the table was one of those that Miles Nshonge had purchased from a
sangoma,
in a desperate and futile effort to keep what was left of his family alive.

The piece of paper beneath the amulet had writing on it. Van Dreenan bent closer and saw that someone, probably the late Miles Nshonge, had written two words there in a clean, precise hand: Jerome Lekota.

Which is how George had found himself stationed outside the double doors of this hospital morgue, with orders to make sure that nobody made off with some
kaffir's
dead body. Eight bloody hours, apart from his lunch and two piss breaks, standing there. And if that wasn't bad enough, he was also expected to visually check every corpse that was removed from the room, to be sure that the remains of said
kaffir,
one Miles Nshonge, was not among them.

That detective, Van Dreenan, had been very explicit in his instructions. Maybe too much so. He'd taken George inside the large, cool room and pulled open one of the sliding metal drawers, looking for all the world like a bloody great filing cabinet. Made him study the face of the dead
kaffir,
as if they didn't all look alike.

"You don't go just by the morgue tag," Van Dreenan had told him. "Somebody wheels a corpse out of here, you make them zip open the body bag far enough for you to check who's inside it. Got that? The autopsy on this gentleman is not scheduled until the day after tomorrow, maybe later, so there is no reason for his body to leave this room until then.
And it had better bloody not."

George DeBrine liked his job—most days, anyway. He certainly didn't want to lose it and have to start fresh with something else that would probably offer less money and far less authority. So he had decided, reluctantly, to reform. No more boozing. At least, not when he had work the next day. He'd not had a drop of anything stronger than his tea the night before this boring, useless assignment.

Which is why George was so astounded when he groggily awoke to find himself in a corner, back against the wall and his legs straight out before him, hands folded peacefully in his lap, his neck with a painful crick in it. He got unsteadily to his feet and began brushing dirt from the filthy floor off his khaki uniform. He had no memory of getting down there to have a snooze in the corner. Christ, he couldn't remember even
thinking
about doing something so incredibly stupid. It was only by a stroke of luck that none of the hospital staff had come along and found him—

George stopped brushing himself off and just stood there like a statue, as a horrible thought flashed through his mind. He looked toward the double doors of the morgue and then, after a long moment's hesitation, began to walk slowly toward them.

Ordinarily, being in this room all by himself would have given George the creeping willies, but this time he was glad to be alone. He remembered clearly the number of the drawer containing the remains of Miles Nshonge: 1408. A few seconds later he stood in front of it, one hand wrapped around the cool metal handle. George knew that, one way or another, the course of his life from this point forward was going to be determined by whether the dead
kaffir
was in there or not.

In his mind, he offered a brief, beseeching prayer to his Creator, whom he had not addressed in quite some time. Then he took a deep breath and pulled the drawer open.

Apart from the bloodstained sheet upon which the body of Miles Nshonge had once lain, the drawer was as empty as George DeBrine's future with the South African Police Force.

"Think so?" Van Dreenan asked. "I'm beginning to wonder."

"Are you? Why?"

"Tell you in a bit. First things first. Jerome Lekota is as clean as they come—officially, anyway. I found the record of his birth from forty-six years ago, and that's all. Never been convicted, arrested, questioned, or even farted in public, far as I can tell. Model citizen, is our Mister Lekota."

"Officially," Shemba said.

"Right. And, as everybody knows, that's all that bloody matters. How about you? Turn up anything?"

"I know that Lekota is a
tagati,"
Shemba said. "He lives in the next township over from Thokoza. Those who know what he is, and they are few, fear him."

"Works powerful witchcraft, eh?" There was a time when Van Dreenan would have said that with a condescending smile. He was not smiling now.

"Most powerful. Those who have incurred his anger, they are said to have died, all most unpleasantly."

"Any particular way?"

"My informants mentioned several, although it is impossible to separate rumor from fact when one speaks of such things." Sergeant Shemba took a long swig of water, then placed the bottle on the desk in front of him and stared into it glumly, as if it were a crystal ball revealing a future he didn't much care for. He did not look up when he said to Van Dreenan, "But two different people did say to me they had heard of enemies of Lekota who developed uncontrollable bleeding in the night, from all their bodily orifices, and soon bled to death."

The two men were silent for a time, until Van Dreenan cleared his throat and said, "
Ja,
well, in addition to checking Mr. Lekota's nonexistent criminal record, I spent some time with the tapes from one of the hospital surveillance cameras."

"They had one pointed at the morgue?" Shemba looked surprised.

"No, but they've got one covering the corridor just around the corner from it. There's a storeroom there where they keep drugs, so they want to know who's coming and going. I went over there this morning and walked around a bit, just to be sure that my memory of the place was correct, and it was. There is no other way out of the morgue except through that corridor. No doors, no windows, not even a bloody mouse hole. Nothing. It's in the cellar, remember."

Shemba nodded slowly. "That would appear to simplify matters for us."

"Think so, wouldn't you? Well brace yourself for the bad news, my friend, because nobody took a body out of that morgue between when I was there the first time and when DeBrine sounded the alarm."

"No autopsies were done? None at all?"

"They've only got one pathologist on staff, and she's sick. Flu, or something. Been out a couple of days. Several bodies went in, all right. They're all on the tape and supported by the hospital records. But nobody wheeled a corpse out of there, or brought out anything that might have hidden a corpse inside it, like a crate, a trash container, or even a bloody steamer trunk."

"Could Nshonge's body have been moved to another drawer in the morgue, perhaps?" Shemba asked. "Whether by accident or design?"

Van Dreenan shook his head. "The hospital people thought of that, too. Checked every
fokken
one. No Miles Nshonge."

"Is there an incinerator near the morgue, where the body could have been burned up?"

"No, sorry. Oh, they've got an incinerator, all right. But it's on the other side of the building, with no access from the morgue that doesn't take you right through that corridor with the video camera. And before you ask, I checked with the video boffins upstairs: there's no sign that the tape has been tampered with. None."

Shemba took another drink, then sat back in his chair. He was looking right at Van Dreenan now.

"Almost like it was magic," Shemba said quietly.

Van Dreenan would have, not so long ago, greeted such a pronouncement with derisive laughter. Now he only grunted.

"This man, this
tagati,
has wiped out a whole family. Five human beings. And who knows how many others before that?"

Van Dreenan just stared at him.

"Left alone, this Lekota, he will surely kill again in pursuit of his dark purposes."

"We can't arrest him," Van Dreenan said. His voice was now as soft as Sergeant Shemba's. "There's no
fokken
evidence a crime has even been committed. And I don't fancy asking the Prosecutor to charge some bloke with murder by witchcraft."

"I agree. We cannot arrest him, even though we know he is guilty of murder."

Van Dreenan leaned forward suddenly, his mouth a thin hard line. "Then what the bloody hell
can
we do?"

Shemba hesitated before saying, "If you wish to know, I will tell you. But be certain, my friend, that you really wish to know."

In the space of the next few seconds, Van Dreenan thought fleetingly about many things—his pension, his wife and children, his deep regard for Shemba, his own conservative Christian upbringing. But mostly he thought about Miles Nshonge and his family.

Van Dreenan walked slowly to the office door, and closed it. Then he sat back down and said to Sergeant Shemba, "Tell me."