Girl with the Golden Voice (23 page)

His fingers probed the place where the wall and the ground met, but still there was no sign of where the rats came and went. As he drew his hand along it hit against something soft and warm and small. It squealed and ran off. Mice! Mice! Not rats at all!

He took another short breather and relaxed for a few moments. He was dragging his bony mattock as he crawled and when he felt sure that he had completed a full circuit, he began to attack the pounded earth. His first attempt at digging was more of a scrape than a scoop. He dreaded hitting rocks or tree roots. What he would have given for a cheap, sharp-bladed shovel! If only old Prince were with him for the company and for his big ridgeback feet. Those powerful claws would soon have dug out a deep hole.

The skull was too fragile for this work. He must try something else. The best he could do was to lean back on his elbows, plant his heels into the earth, press down hard and pump them back and forth, and, when his legs tired, scoop up his little pile of dust and throw it behind him. Even with this minimum amount of work to do, the skull began to shed shards of bone. In his panicky frame of mind these beginnings of disintegration upset him, distressed Tom unreasonably. He had no right to destroy these last remains of a fellow human being. He had no right and nothing good would come of it.

And there were signs of progress, a hole a foot deep and just as wide. From now on he would use his hands for scoops.

There was a price to pay for the relentless pumping. So much lactic acid had built up in his leg muscles that they had turned to jelly. He was forced to waste precious minutes to wait for them to recover. He sat up and reached for the skull and couched it in the crook of his arm. Perhaps this piece of crumbling bone would be his last human contact. Tom caressed the smooth, hard cranium and sighed. A delicious weariness gradually came over him. And something else, something he would normally have described as weird. The disturbing sense of aloneness had left him to be replaced by an equally disturbing sense of a kind of presence. He soon became certain that this spirit, or whatever it was, meant him no harm. He had not felt so relaxed in a long while. His failing sense of hope that things would turn out well became strong again. He was ready to return to work.

There was one last piece of weirdness. As he carefully placed the skull behind him, his hand dipped down into the hole to check if there was any dirt to remove. As he touched bottom his fingers penetrated the soil, only it was not soil that he touched but sand. The feel was unmistakable. Where could it have come from? He moved quickly to a kneeling position and thrust both hands down. His lips mouthed the single word, ‘miracle'.

He soon developed a rhythm, hands paddling shoulders rolling to the beat of disco music that he played in his mind. He ignored the sweat that coursed in rivulets down his face and body until a light, chill breeze breathed on his chest. Air was coming in from outside! He could not see any opening, nor did he lean forward to check this wonderful truth. He simply increased the pace of his work until it became obvious that he had opened a sizeable hole. Tom paused then and moved right up to the wall. He could see the shadowy outline of trees but knew that there was more to be done before he could squeeze his body back out into the world. And what if, in the next few minutes, the beam of headlights appeared along the track? He would surely have a heart attack.

At last came the blissful, ecstatic moment when he knew that he could slide through. He grasped the skull and looked back into the blackness of the interior for one final glance, and said in low and solemn voice, ‘Thanks. I'll make sure I do the right thing.'

In seconds he was standing outside, unsteadily. Ignoring the pain and stiffness he was moving away, staggering rather than walking, content for the moment to follow the rough vehicle track.

* * *

Adil Patel, the night editor of The Daily Nation, changed his headline half an hour before the first editions began to roll off. For the first time ever the big boss had phoned in after midnight and dictated the lead article and editorial comment.

‘Brutal Kidnap at Lakeside.'

The story spread far beyond the borders of Kenya. The Wajiru family was renting a ranch complex in the hills inland from San Francisco. The whole band and their families had their space out there. It was good to be back in California, away from that snow on the east coast. At breakfast time it became a habit for them to sit around and read the Internet edition of The Nation. Rebecca was late in that morning and the print-off had been hidden away. Rebecca was not put out when Mary told her that something had gone wrong with the machine that day. Mary had asked her father to let her tell Rebecca the news. A hastily gathered family conference had decided they would wait. Better to give her a complete story even if the news was the worst she could receive.

On the day the story broke, Julius Rubai was on the road early with his mother and father. It was still dark when they began the descent off the dual carriageway. They arrived at Londiani just as Alex and Stephen were completing the day's roster.

om had little idea of where he was. Perhaps they had taken him across the border. There had been time for that, perhaps. He was in a forest somewhere. If he was still in Kenya, he knew several where it was cold in the night. For now he was thrilled to be peering into the thick woodland and looking up at the dusty brightness of the Milky Way. His sweat had already dried to a crusty saltiness.

He stood still and listened. He detected no sound except for a light breath of wind. There was danger for him so close to the hut, but choosing the safest route out would be a matter of guesswork. For all he knew they could be out there close by, watching and waiting for their moment. Another unpleasant thought struck hard. Had they brought him to the Aberdares? That national park was home to thousands of animals, none of them friendly and many of them dangerous. Big cats roamed at night and he was easy meat if one happened by. They had given him the choice of death by starvation or by an invisible martyrdom in the jaws of a family of big cats. But, apart from the mice, he had not heard a single sign of any animal.

He looked back towards the hut for the last time and pointed the eyes of his companion in the same direction. They must move away and quickly. He must find a road, if there was any close by. The track he was following crossed a well-worn, dusty path which he took believing that there would be less chance of carelessly stepping on twigs or clumps of dead leaves. Soon he learned two solid facts. A faint pink light in the sky behind him told him that he was travelling westwards and that a new day was coming. He celebrated by rubbing his companion skull gently and sharing the good news.

‘Billy, we're getting there, boy. We're getting there!'

And there was more, a new sound on the breeze that had been with him since he started his march to freedom. He stopped to listen. Surely that was the noise of an engine. Instinctively he dropped to his knees, half expecting to see headlights probing the gloaming up ahead, but the sound weakened and faded to nothing.

He began a hobbling run, happy that the path was taking him towards where the sound had been. There was another sound, louder, closer. It was the drone of the engine of a truck or a coach labouring up a steep hill. A beam of headlights was pointing upwards.

Through the last thin screen of trees he saw it, not a truck, not a common bus but a coach, the coach, the gleaming blue and gold of
The Eldoret Express,
lit up and gathering speed after cresting the hill.

By the time Tom reached the grey of the tarmac, the coach had disappeared. He now knew, almost for sure, where he was. He was standing on the road that bisected the Kakamega Forest and somewhere down to his left was Nakuru and all points south. The sun was about to rise and for the first time he could take a close look at his companion of the night. The skull was smaller than it had seemed, shiny and almost bleached but hardly damaged by his attempt to use it as a tool.

‘Sorry about that, truly sorry. I was desperate. I'm sure you know all about how that feels.'

He began to wonder if there was some way in which he could discover an identity. He would think about that one later. For now it was enough to work on the best way for him to cover the two hundred kilometres or so that separated him from Londiani.

He would travel by coach. With luck the next
Eldoret Express
along would be heading south for Nairobi and would pass through Naivasha, hopefully with him on board. He had no money for the fare, but when the time came he would get over that. A bigger problem was making sure the bus would stop for a casual pick-up, especially a dirty and unkempt one. The drivers were on a tight schedule.

He started walking south hoping to come to a bus stop but ready to slip into the cover of the forest if he heard a vehicle approaching. The sound of an express would be unmistakable. He had heard it a thousand times.

* * *

Abel Rubai was a troubled man. He roused his wife and eldest from sleep at four am. He needed their support. For a second night he had not slept, only dozed fitfully in front of his screens. The volatility of the Far East markets challenged him and by smart thinking he had come away each night with satisfactory profits, very. But the old kick that he used to feel when outsmarting the opposition was no longer there. Worse, for the first time he was suffering doubts about his judgement. Three times he had phoned his men with changes of plan.

McCall. How he had come to hate that name! He wanted the eldest son out of the way but had choked on the idea of dealing the final blow. He sensed danger to himself in wiping out this nuisance, an irrational fear that in some mysterious way, with this one trivial act, he would set in motion his own downfall. Perhaps he would get rid of these troublesome demons if he did the job himself.

In a break from his money making he read the story of the kidnap on
The Nation's
website, but no one would find that hut in the Kakamega Forest. The kid was coming to the end of his first night there. One phone call and it could still happen. A single bullet would do it. Two years before he had let that too inquisitive reporter who knew too much about one of his profitable scams starve to death in that same hut.

Abel wanted to be done with speculation and balancing options. He desperately needed some kind of action. He would take on the role of the concerned, compassionate neighbour. So he rounded up Sally and Julius for a journey to the Naivasha lakeside. The boy drove and Sally, soft-hearted, innocent, would provide cover. Her reaction to the new misfortune of the McCalls' would be emotional, her sympathy sincere and uninhibited.

* * *

Mary was ready to travel with Rebecca to New York, London or Nairobi. Instead the two friends shared a long weep at San Francisco airport and then parted. Mary grieved with Rebecca for her loss but felt guilt that she was more sad for a loss of her own. Even after just three weeks of concerts with the band, Rebecca had transformed them, raised the level of performance. The combination of her beauty, her voice and her stage presence was world class. With Rebecca around, America would have taken serious notice of the whole Wajiru experience.

On her journey home Rebecca's greatest need was for peace and the chance to come to terms with this violent shift in her life and the weight of the guilt that would not leave her. She had left Kenya twenty-five days before without even contacting Tom or Mama and Papa. She had spent many hours since taking herself back to that time, probing deeply and as honestly as she could the thoughts and feelings behind the why of this. Shame, fear, the need to get away, a fascination to see close up and experience a little of the glamour and glitter of a life she had touched only in magazines and films, these had been the most of it. She had expected to sing a few songs, travel a little and then return home. The thrill of standing in front of large audiences in the two concerts the band had given down at the coast had dazzled her. America would be different, but she wanted to see for herself. It was kind of Toni to give her this chance and she did not want to let him down.

The reality was certainly different. From her first moments on stage she became aware that something unusual was happening to her. When the first show ended she came off but could not wait to be back out there in front of another audience. She was being fulfilled in a new way, excited by the unexpected urge to take risks with her performance that all came off so easily. The rapture of these Americans, their wild applause helped to make her a little less the wash girl of Londiani.

But Stephen and Angela Kamau's eldest saw the danger of becoming addicted to this drug. She was making a lot of money for using God's gift and that frightened her. All these smart people treated her as someone special. These new ways were bringing uncertainties and turmoil. In the noise and the colour it was easy to hide, but the mask of glamour could not protect her in the lonely moments of the early morning.