‘Juju?’ Barry frowned. ‘But isn’t that –’
He was interrupted by the return of Mrs Macksie, leaning on Clare’s arm. She launched into a speech like a diver off a high board. ‘I want you, sah, to understand – about all this I know nothin’ – nothin’ at all. But there was a time I see something of the sort befoah. When my late husband he was a medical orderly back home in Trinidad, the Lord’s work call us to missions often. There was a bad time then, on other island far away; all kinds of folk comin’ away in feah of their lives – to Jamaica, Trinidad, anywhere they could, Cuba even. We see a lot of them round missions, we get to know their lives. Poor folk, bittah folk with bad blood an’ scores to pay; Things went on – She squirmed, as if the very thought made her uncomfortable. ‘Devil’s work. Obeah. Ouanga, they call it in their fear. We war against it as we could with love, but theah’s some too steeped in darkness to see the light. Theah we see things done … like this. Never so bad, though, even then. The signs I doan’ remember, not at first, not till I see that …’
She drew a deep shaky breath and pointed at the nasty speck of blood and feathers on my screen. ‘That … You want to know what obeah is? That theah’s obeah. You take that and you burn it.’
‘I’ll be glad to,’ said Barry, a little shakily. ‘But what is it?’
‘It’s bad – you need to know more? Okay. It’s called a cigle don-Pedro, and I don’ know what that mean any more’n you and I don’t ever want to know. Sometimes the Mazanxa use it, sometime the Zobop or the Vlinblindingue. Use it with signs like these, and for nothin’ good. An’ thass’ all I’m telling you, ‘cause thass’ all I know.’
‘Hold on a minute,’ said the policeman hastily. ‘Am I to understand –’
Ignoring him, she turned to Barry. ‘And now, sah, if you’ll kindly excuse me, there’s a heap of work heah, and I’m getting all behind.’ With serene calm she turned and walked out again. The CID man gaped after her, but he didn’t try to stop her. He turned to Dave instead.
‘What the hell was all that about? Was she trying to tell me this was done by these – what the hell did she call them? These refugee types? Where were they refugees from, anyhow?’
‘That’s the kicker,’ said Dave with ghoulish relish. ‘You ask me – it looks like we got turned over by some of those West Indian yobs from out South Street way.’
‘West Indian?’ blinked Barry. ‘Why so?’
‘Well, I can’t see there being that many Haiitians in town – can you?’
‘Haiitians?’
‘You heard the lady. That’s where the refugees were coming from. Happy little Haiiti. And obeah’s just the local name for practices no respectable Trinidadian would be caught dead in – if you’ll pardon the expression. But down thataway they’re a lot more common.’
The CID man shut his notebook with a snap, and twanged a rubber band into place around it. ‘Good as computers, that, for me … Yes. Well, it’s a lead, I suppose. Don’t suppose we’ve been treading on any West Indian toes lately, have we, sir? No Race Relations Board cases?’
Everyone laughed. Of course we hadn’t; we were a respectable company, and our business was international. Our standards were high, but an unusual or exotic background was a positive plus; we hired people from all over, and discriminated on just about everything except race. It said something for our good sense, if not so much for our social conscience. The only employee who’d been caught up in any fracas at all recently seemed to be me. And no way was I about to mention that, not something I couldn’t be sure had even happened. Even if it had, those huge thugs weren’t West Indian, anyhow.
They’d been burglars, though. Or something illicit, anyhow, something they cared enough about to spill out lives. Some motive that wasn’t immediately obvious … any more than it was here, either. The police were visibly writing the whole thing off as the work of drunks, druggies or kids, who had just happened to descend on us, found nothing worth stealing and wrecked the place out of spite. They’d keep their ear to the ground, but …
I couldn’t accept that. The unease that was dogging me grew stronger, darker, clutched hard at my heels. It lurked there behind my thoughts, all through the rest of the day that should have banished it, hectic but reassuring. A kind of minor spring filled the office as the air grew sharp and piny with disinfectant, then heady and flowery with scented polish, and at last cool, clean and neutral as the air conditioning took hold; in the background phones trilled cheerfully and printers chattered and whizzed like bright insects, restoring our records to hard copy. Normality burst out like an impatient seedling, stiffened and blossomed into the status quo, sunflower-bright. The smooth speed of it was awesome, like watching a time-lapse film; we had an efficient business here, and a committed workforce. It should have reassured me. It didn’t.
Two break-ins that wouldn’t go away, both strangely motiveless – and with one other obvious connection, namely me. Not one little bit did I like that idea, and I couldn’t make sense of it. Suppose I really had been followed, that night – but I’d got to my car, and away. No other car had followed me out of Tampere Street, not even Danube Street. They might have caught the number, but somehow I didn’t see them using the police computer to trace me. And then they’d have had to follow me not only home, but to the office next day; and why bother? Why hit the office, when they could have got to me personally at home? No, it was a daft idea; but daft or not, it was getting under my skin. If I could find some way of distinguishing the two incidents, some reasonable explanation for one or the other …
First things first. Modus operandi. The office raid must have been a swift and well-planned affair, to do so much damage without attracting attention. Not so the other; in fact, it could hardly have been sloppier. What were the raiders up to, muscling up to the front door like that on the flimsiest of pretexts? Why would anyone want to break into a warehouse that way – with a murder added, and out on the open street, when with an ounce more planning they could have kept everything behind closed doors? Because they wanted their victim to be found outside? As if – almost as if they were trying to establish beyond all doubt that it was a burglary. And ruthlessly enough to snuff out a life for corroborative evidence.
Now that rang a bell. I’d come across cases like that; where somebody was trying to use the break-in somehow … to account for something. Something that wasn’t there, and should have been. Or something that was, and shouldn’t –
‘Jesus, yes!’
I couldn’t help exclaiming aloud. A chill wind of certainty blew through me. I’d found my motive.
Across the newly gleaming desks Dave, deep in checking his recovered records, looked up startled. ‘Whazzat?’
‘Nothing.’ I wanted to be up and running. But I forced myself to be calm, act natural; and yet there might not be much time. If I really hadn’t dreamed up the whole thing … ‘Just getting worked up about this raid again. So bloody senseless. Or so it seems. But sometimes there’s a hidden motive to these things.’
‘Gotcha.’ Dave leaned back and tapped his cigarette packet. To my relief he’d run out. ‘Damn! Like that tonne of hash they had to sneak out of a wool shipment before it came out of bond, and explain the hole it left – so they staged a break-in –’