Excerpt
Five: The Detective
1.
And so, there was a beast. Right here on Earth.
It perched on the topmost steeple of an arched gateway into Sin Palace. It was a red-eyed demon in a crouch. Its body disintegrated and came together like a swarm of bees, ashy specks that hovered in the horizon, forming and deforming in overlapping shapes, casting shadows above the guest house that was once a church building.
Two men swung hand in hand that balmy night. They shared a laugh, and its loudness silenced the night. They paused for a dusk-induced, booze-fuelled moment of passion before crossing the arched gateway into the Gothic building. Access was by a clandestine doorbell just below a psychedelic stained-glass window of St Bridget and her plump leg crushing the head of a serpent. Double solid doors each carved with a cross into the wood swung open, swung shut. It was a priceless entry by membership only, an entry into privacy that was a promise.
Straight spliffs, hard shots in a room that was once a vestry. As the lights dimmed and the men strained against each other, they failed to notice the odour of smoke and rot that entered the room and the shapeshifting silhouette that hovered above them and sprinkled cinders upon them.
2.
And then there was Operation Limelight.
So after the man who was tall as a mandisa pine, graceful as a kudu, a beautiful man dark as night who lived in the land of Great Chief Goanna, there was a story that had a beast come to Earth.
The epilogue starts here, right now.
It opens with a flight: one that filled Detective Inspector Ivory Tembo with ashes and lead. She felt colourless and washed-out, a lead boulder in her stomach. She had no faith in the journey's purpose but had exhausted all options. A murderer was out there, slaying men and scattering peanuts in women's heads – they were disoriented, every single one of them; couldn't get a word out of anyone – and Operation Limelight was light-years from cracking the case.
In Ivory's mind, death was a splash of colour: claret speckled with cinders. This is what she saw in every scene associated with the killings: sprays of rich red, traces of ash.
It tickled Bahati, indulged him even, that she would explore his theory based on a myth.
'It's simple,' he said. 'Track down the seer.'
'In Orange Desert?' she said.
'In Orange Country.'
'And why should I believe you?'
'My professorship? That sagely knowhood of native studies?' he said half jokily, half grave.
Seer, medium, medicine woman – what did it matter?
But it did. Matter. Witchcraft never solved crime.
