Savage Moon

They both nodded in perfect unison, the action of lifelong partners.

'Why all this?' The husband's voice was deep. He waved a hand at the mullioned window and the patrol car outside.

'I'm afraid it appears James is involved in a couple of incidents that have involved the use of violence.'

He watched as they turned to each other. Tears had sprung up in Mrs Field's eyes and her fingers tightened on her husband's.

'Oh Ian.'

Mr Field put an arm round her shoulders and cleared his throat. He looked at the wall to his side. 'We were afraid something like this would happen.'

Jon followed the direction of his sad gaze. The framed photo above the fireplace was of a young boy running through a carpet of bluebells. The shattered hopes of proud parents.

'Was it robbery?' Mrs Field asked.

Jon didn't reply. How can I tell them? It wasn't possible. Instead he dipped his head as if in agreement, unable to actually say yes.

'Armed?' Mr Field asked.

Oh shit, thought Jon. Now I'm getting dragged in deeper. He dipped his head once again. 'Could you tell me about James? We need to know as much about him as possible.'

The couple's eyes met once again and he could see Mr Field was waiting for his wife's assent. Jon was suddenly aware of a clock ticking in the room. Finally she gave a single, reluctant, nod.

With a sigh, Mr Field began. 'We adopted James when he was six. He was an orphan and had spent all his life inside children's homes. He'd never known anything else. Pat and I couldn't have children. This was in the early eighties, before they tightened the rules about white parents and different race children.'

Jon nodded, aware of how the adoption agency had altered its policy in the light of problems arising from Vietnamese, then later, Romanian adoptions.

'We were living in Manchester at the time. Near Prestwich. James was a very intelligent child, but restless, insecure. He couldn't understand so many things when he first moved in. How we would trust him.'

'Like money,' Mrs Field explained in a tremulous voice. 'The way we didn't lock away our cash. He would steal it at first, hoarding it in places round his bedroom. It took a while before he realised there was no need. School was where the real problems started.'

Her voice fell away and the husband took over once again.

'Kids — and some adults I regret to say — couldn't understand how a black child could be dropped off by a white mum. Pat got some comments, but nothing, I suspect, to what James suffered. He became rebellious, that old streak re-emerging. Fights. He's a powerful lad and soon no one was prepared to take him on. The bad elements accepted him into their group. We found it harder and harder to control him. He was arrested for stealing from cars. Then he started taking the cars themselves.'

Jon noted it all down, the familiar path leading to prison opening up before him. An image of his younger brother crossed his mind.

'He was sent to a young offender's facility called the Silverdale when he was fourteen. School had expelled him already. That was for eight months and he returned worse than ever. Now we did have to lock up our money. He'd made new friends in that place. At sixteen he was able to give up on education completely. His home tutor was glad, scared of him in my opinion. Anyway, we saw less and less of him after that. He was back in the Silverdale within months — joyriding and assaulting a police officer — and the few times he did return home, he kept asking about his real parents. The issue became more and more important to him.'

Jon looked up. 'Who were they?'

'We only had limited information, and that's because the authorities didn't know that much either. His mother, we gathered, was of Kenyan descent. She was from a tribe called the Kikuyu, but she had also been brought up in this country by a white couple. She died giving birth to James.'

'And the father?'

'No one knew who he was. Although James looks more black than white, he is mixed race. So we knew the father was white.' Jon thought about the letters. 'We found some correspond- ence in James's flat. You had written to him there.'

Mrs Field's chin went up and she wiped a tear from her eye.

'He'd kept those letters?'

'Yes,' Jon answered, not mentioning that they'd been dumped in a neighbour's bin. 'You were talking about his real name. We didn't understand.'

Mr Field glanced up at the ceiling, as if to gather strength from above. 'On his eighteenth birthday, James exercised his legal right to see all his documents held by the adoption agency. He came to see us immediately afterwards. The lad was very upset, angry even.'

The lad, Jon thought. No longer your son by this time. 'What had he discovered?'

'He wouldn't show us. But he'd learned that, although his mother was called Mary Sullivan, her real surname was Gathambo. As I mentioned, she died giving birth to James. Twenty-sixth of November, nineteen eighty-two, the Wythen- shaw hospital. She had turned up there pretty much destitute, her few personal effects had been retained by the adoption services and given to James all those years later.'

Jon sighed. Things were opening up. Past deeds, motives for revenge. 'Go on.'

'There were letters from other members of the Gathambo family still in Kenya. She must have made contact with them. She was, James told us, planning to return to Kenya and live with them, but then she fell pregnant.'

'I don't follow,' Rick said. 'The mother was brought up by a white couple with a surname of Sullivan, yet she had real family in Kenya?'

Mr Field ground his teeth together. 'We tried to work it out too. James was… distraught. I don't know anything more about his mother's adoptive parents. It was never mentioned to us.'

'But James flew to Kenya?' Jon asked.

'Yes,' Mr Field replied. 'One of the letters from his cousins, or whatever they were, mentioned his mum's pregnancy. They'd told her to be strong, once she got to Kenya, they'd help with the baby. He wanted to meet them.'

Jon circled his pen to form the dot of a large question mark he'd drawn on the page. What the hell was this all about? 'Going back to James's name. Why were you saying sorry?'

'The last letter his mother sent to Kenya, she'd obviously mentioned in it what she was going to call the baby if it was a boy. James was furious her wishes hadn't been followed. But it wasn't our choice, someone at the hospital made the decision.'

Jon's pen stopped its revolutions. 'Field?'

'No, his Christian name. James was just the nearest English equivalent they could think of. He should have been called Njama.'

Rick sat back. 'Jammer.'

Mr Field looked at him. 'No, you're meant to pronounce the N at the beginning. Anyway, we did what we could to help. The flight for instance. We paid for him to go back and meet his relatives.'

'And he was gone for three weeks?'

'About that, I think. He came back a very different person though.'

'How do you mean?'

Mr Field turned to his wife. 'Pat?'

'We picked him up at the airport,' she said. 'He was quiet, brooding. Whoever he had met in Kenya had had a very profound effect on him.'

'Was he happy to have gone?'

'No, not in my opinion. I believe they'd radicalised him.' Bitterness made her words sour.

'Sorry?'

'That's the word they use nowadays isn't it? They'd radicalised him over the history of Kenya. Tell me, what is your impression of the Mau Mau?'

Jon stared back, feeling like a schoolboy caught out in class. To his side, he saw Rick shift in his seat, and to his relief, his colleague began to speak. 'The Mau Mau was a terrorist organisation which sought to overthrow the British government in Kenya. They would emerge from the jungle at night to butcher white farming families. Their attacks were particularly savage, linking into some sort of primitive oath they'd taken to kill all whites. I think they may even have eaten parts of their victims, that sort of thing. I know the British authorities had a really tough time containing the violence.'