“I’m going back into town,” I told him. “Go from house to house, perhaps. Try to pick up anything the local cops have missed.”
He nodded. There was a bus that he could take back home.
I won’t say my blood was actually boiling as I went back along the highway, but it certainly was on the simmer. I knew quite a lot about this Chief Manuza. His real name was Saul Agusi, and he came from a normal blue-collar family in Sherwood Park. The fake name he’d adopted from the history books, an old-time supreme headsman.
And the policies that he and his small handful of fanatics advocate? The reclaiming of the old ways. The return to villages, and tribes, and superstition. “Identity,” they call it.
The Tribal Party had just two cramped rooms in an office block in a seedier part of town. I was kept waiting for ten minutes, before the “Great Chief” would have me in his sanctum. There were posters on the walls around me, all with slogans such as TRIBE IS PRIDE and NOT EUROPE, NOT AMERICA, THIS IS AFRICA! At a desk opposite me, a secretary sat. A perfectly lovely woman in her early twenties, made to look ridiculous by the get-up she was wearing, some kind of sarong thing, with a tall white turban on her pretty head.
Manuza insisted on seeing my badge, actually taking it out of my hand. And while he studied it, I looked at the artifacts he’d decorated his office with. Shields and spears, clubs and hatchets, and even bangles made up of what appeared to be lions’ claws. I eyed those carefully. They gave me pause.
Satisfied at last, the man handed me back my badge, a sarcastic grin crossing his pockmarked face.
“So, Lieutenant Enetame.” His voice was a croaky drawl. “An African name that approximates an English word. ‘Entamed.’ How appropriate.”
He was looking me up and down with apparent disdain. It was a struggle to keep calm under such scrutiny. Did he seriously expect me to dress like him? Did he seriously expect all of us to embrace the awful days of yesteryear? Go back to poverty and hunger, corruption and conflict, massacre and the belief in bad spirits? Was that the kind of prospect he was offering my son?
I asked him straight out, “What were you doing at Binaville, with those homeless men?”
“I went there as soon as I heard about the lions.” He said it perfectly seriously.
“There are no lions.”
Manuza snorted, and then rocked his head from side to side.
“Those men. Those derelicts. By force of circumstance, admittedly, they live closer to the old ways than anyone else in this great prison of a city. Closer than me, and a thousand times closer than you. They live off the land, under the open sky. And at night they gather round and tell stories, thus exchanging knowledge. They have seen the lions.”
Was I dealing with a complete madman here?
“Two of their number, in fact, have been killed by them, not that the authorities would care. That is why I gave them the protective amulets, and showed them the dance which might appease the mighty lion chief.”
Something could be learned, I decided, by going along with this nonsense for a little while.
“You think hopping around will stop a big cat?”
But the man grinned hugely, his manner superior. “No, you do not understand. The real free lions are gone. These are ghost lions. Spirit lions.”
“Really?” It was hard keeping a straight face.
“Born out of the heart and soul of ancient Africa herself,” he went on, “and come to avenge her. And they are just the first, you see. More spirits will join them. And they will rip to shreds your false gods and will smash and tear your chained society, till the people see the truth and reclaim what they once were.”
I was wasting my time here, I could see. I’d come all this way for nothing.
“You can change the way a people dress, and feed, and live, and even dream,” he was still ranting as I started getting up, “but you can never change that which is deepest in their hearts!”
I thanked him for the speech and let myself out, with relief.
One thing nagged at me, however, as I drove back to the office. And was still bothering me when I arrived back home. Those artifacts on the walls, those lions’ claws. Could it be that some of Manuza’s people...?
No. It was a perfectly insane idea. But could someone be faking lion attacks, to try and revive some of the ancient superstitions? It was as lunatic a theory as I’d ever come up with. But Manuza was a lunatic, I had no doubt of that.
I arranged for Josh to spend a second night next door, then prepared myself. I got my gun out of my bedside drawer and checked it carefully. Then I drove back to the outer edge of town, for what seemed like the hundredth time.
Binaville was as quiet once again. I cruised silently into the lee of the Nkomo farmhouse and switched off my engine and lights. I wound up my window to keep out the insects, settled back, and waited for something to happen.
After a while I began noticing something odd. There were a few tiny monkeys in a nearby tree, although they seemed rather quiet and nervous. Where were all the other little creatures? The fields were completely empty, and I couldn’t understand how that could be.
At about ten o’clock, a distant shriek brought me jerking up. It was coming from the sparsely wooded slopes. But I calmed down quickly enough to recognize it had to be those baboons I’d heard about. The noise stopped, soon after, and I settled back.
Some time around midnight, I sat up again, believing I had noticed something through my heavy lids. I peered beyond the windshield, and then even switched my headlights on. They revealed nothing whatsoever. So I must have dreamt it.
By about two A.M., I had fallen asleep.
“Heavy night?” Steve Petrie grinned, when I stumbled into the office the next morning. “Don’t tell me that you got lucky, you old dog?”
My back was killing me, and I was not in the mood for such remarks. So I’m afraid that I was rather sharp with him.
He’d had no success with the farmer’s neighbors. I explained what I had been up to. And he looked incredulous at first.
“Yes, I know it sounds farfetched,” I nodded. “But I’m going to spend a couple more nights up there, just to make quite sure.”
“So I’m not your partner any longer?”
“You?” I blinked at him with surprise. “I don’t expect you to do stakeout duty, man. You’ve got a little kid.”
“And so have you. I’ll take the next shift, okay? You genuinely look like you could use some rest.”
“Oh, and by the way,” he added. “Happy Federation Day.”
I stared at him awkwardly as he walked away. The most important event in the African calendar, and I had been so busy, so engrossed, I’d completely forgotten it.
Fortunately, Josh was happy to watch the big parade on the web-vee. I slumped in my armchair, feeling a hundred years old. The crowds in Moya Plaza were enormous. They yelled and hooted, many of them waving furled umbrellas, as the marching bands and floats went by. The weather had taken one of those unexpected turns that we are used to in these parts. Come early evening, the sky had blackened, and there was the occasional rumble of thunder, although no lightning or rain as yet.
“So far, so good!” a reporter in the crowd informed the studio. “We’re all praying that it holds off, and the weather doesn’t spoil things!”
Then, the camera swung to a float on which stood a gigantic inflated Rockin’ Rooster, the God of Good Eating in the Enetame household. Josh leapt to his feet, delighted.
The phone rang.
It was Petrie, calling from his car in Binaville, but the interference from the coming storm was so bad I could barely make him out.