Nairobi Heat (23 page)

As we walked away, a few people turned to look at us, but it was obvious that they didn’t recognise Muddy. Practically her whole village had been wiped out, Muddy told me as we walked. These people were resettled refugees, and with them had come some of their killers. After the killing ended where were they to go, if not back to their communities and hope no one remembered? But people remembered and that was why that young man was on trial.

We made it to a run-down brick house. There were several children in the compound and some women looking after them. Muddy asked if we could come in, and the women agreed. Once inside Muddy asked the women if she could look around. They asked her why and she explained.

‘We thought no one had survived,’ they said as they hugged Muddy joyfully – strangers turned into family by death and violence. ‘This is your home,’ they said to her, or at least I think that is what they were saying to Muddy from the gestures they were making. But she simply shook her head and smiled.

Walking around to the back of the house we found three
graves marked with wooden headstones, the names of the dead carefully burnt into them. There were rose bushes growing on the mounds of soil, each one of them surrounded by a ring of carnations – the families that lived in the house had obviously been taking care of the graves.

Muddy was visibly moved. Thinking she wanted to be alone, I started to walk away, but she reached for my hand and slid it around her waist. ‘Stay,’ she said. So I did, holding her in silence as she sobbed away quietly.

‘A word is flesh,’ she began to repeat to herself over and over again. ‘A word is flesh.’ And then she would say their names over and over again. ‘A word is life. A word is flesh.’

Even though she was not raising her voice, her chant became louder and louder until I was lost in it. I found that I was breathing heavily and I felt myself getting light-headed – it was as though I was going to have a panic attack. And then, just as suddenly as she had started, Muddy stopped and we stood together in silence.

When she was ready, we walked back into the compound and she gave the women her contacts. They hugged and then we left for Kigali.

It was evening by the time we got back to the hotel and we were pleasantly surprised to find O and Mo chatting away, the table in front of them crowded with empty beer bottles. We sat around and told stories and jokes. A DJ started playing and we danced, or closer to the truth, stormed the dance floor. Later that night, Muddy and I, alone at last, made love, and the following morning we travelled to the airport together before finally parting ways. Everything had come to an end. Everyone had some sense of closure.

There are things we all do that regardless of how bad we feel always make us feel better. For some it’s cooking, for others it’s sex, but for me It’s running – it’s the closest I come to meditation. By the time I got home from Rwanda I hadn’t run for close to two months and I was beginning to feel like my body was clamping up. It was time – the case was behind me, I was due back at work soon and I was feeling ready to regain my life.

Stepping out of my apartment building, the sun streaming into my eyes, I took a deep breath of the crisp fall air and decided to run my usual circuit, past the graveyard where I always enjoyed watching names roll by. I knew this was going to be a good run when by the end of the first mile my breathing – which had started out a little heavy – was steady and my feet were moving in a good rhythm. I could just enjoy moving. I could listen to myself – my breathing, the sound of my feet hitting the ground and my heart thumping against my ribs – and know that I was alive. But somewhere around the third mile I hit the wall. Any runner can tell you about the wall – the mind tells the body to stop and the body begins to
believe the mind, exhaustion sets in, breathing becomes short gasps, muscles burn and pure agony seems only a few steps away. But if you can get past the wall the mind lets the body go, and this, for me, was the prize – why I ran. As my body took control of itself my mind was washed by thoughts and ideas that came over me without my willing them.

As my mind let my body go, it wandered to Muddy: I saw her as I had first seen her on stage, then as she had appeared at our last meeting; how sad she had seemed even while appearing to be happy. Then I was back at the graveyard, looking at the names as I passed them, reading them aloud, one after the other. Then it was off to Macy Jane Admanzah’s funeral. Was she finally at peace? How could she be if her family’s killer was free?

As I ran on little pieces of the case began to flow into my mind at a steady pace, each piece fitting snugly into the next. Then some of the lessons I had learned with O in Kenya began to surface: nothing is random; look at who wins, who comes out on top. And there was only one big winner, and that was Joshua. With everyone else dead, the Foundation in one form or another was his to inherit. Only Jamal stood in his way and he would be no match for Joshua. And more than this, his tarnished reputation had been restored – he had become a victim all over again. His past had been exposed and the claims against him thrown out of court. It was as if he had been forgiven for his role in the genocide. No one would ever again be able to question his heroism. His biggest gain was his freedom from his past.

Then I decided to ask the toughest question of all the other way round. What would Joshua have gained by murdering
Macy Jane Admanzah and leaving her body on his doorstep?

There was only one answer that made any sense. He had let the finger of suspicion point at him initially because he knew the search for Macy Jane’s identity would eventually point to others. No matter how suspicious it all looked he had known from the beginning that he would never be found guilty, not without an answer to the question of why he would kill her and then leave her body outside his own door. And indeed, when I had finally found out Macy Jane Admanzah’s identity, I had cast doubt on my own suspicions by asking myself that very same question. He knew his plan didn’t have to go perfectly – only a few things had to work right and everything else would be a bonus. He simply had to eliminate those associated with the Foundation in a way that would leave him still standing, no matter how wounded. The media, the public and the police would do the rest for him. He had outwitted his enemies. It was him. It had to be him.

I created another scenario in my head as I ran. Macy Jane Admanzah had gone to the Never Again Foundation to blow the whistle on Joshua. Perhaps Samuel Alexander had sent her to the US. Perhaps she had come on her own. Either way it made sense that the Foundation and Joshua would work together as one to contain a mutual threat. And with Macy Jane gone, balance, as Chocbanc had called it, would have been restored. But somewhere along the way plans changed. Why did they change?

According to Joshua and Jamal, greed was the culprit. Even for Chocbanc greed had been involved, but whose greed? Who stood poised to inherit the earth? It was Joshua – he had seen an opportunity and had taken it. He had killed Macy
Jane Admanzah, cleaned her up and left her on his doorstep.

And then there was BQ telling me that the murder was personal. He was Macy Jane’s killer. It was the only way the case made sense. I had to confront him. I still had nothing beyond a theory, but if I could get him to speak I was sure he would supply all the answers – now that he had fooled everyone, and was in the clear, he would be willing to talk; it would be in character.

I thought of rushing back to my apartment, taking a shower, changing into a T-shirt, jeans and sneakers and then driving to his house. But I was close to Maple Bluff and I would look more convincing, harmless even, if I ran all the way to his house. I got into an easy pace. It was going to be one hell of a walk back.

Joshua – dressed in jeans, a black shirt and light leather shoes – was clearly surprised to see me, but he quickly recovered and invited me in. He was packing, he said, leaving later that night for Rwanda and Kenya for a while. It was time he confronted his past. But I knew he was going to try and rebuild an empire.

In spite of the early hour he produced a bottle of wine and poured two glasses. ‘In the morning I eat wine; in the evening I consume breakfast,’ he said with a laugh.

‘Can I have a glass of water?’ I asked. I was hot and sweaty after my run and the last thing I felt like was a glass of wine.

‘Wine no turn to water for you?’ He laughed as he went to the kitchen and came back with a glass of water.

I gulped the water down, knowing that the gesture would
open him up – for people like us a gesture would always establish trust faster than a word.

‘So, Ishmael, what do you want?’ he asked.

I told him that I knew, that I had figured it all out. ‘Tell me everything, Joshua,’ I said. ‘Surely you must want at least one person to know.’

‘Why?’ he asked, although he was clearly interested.

‘Because you’ve won. Look, you got away with the genocide, didn’t you? Who better to know the truth than I?’ I asked him.

It made a kind of crazy sense. There is no sweeter victory than one in which you tell your beaten opponent how you defeated him or her.

‘You have point there …’ he started. ‘Okay, Ishmael. But we make rules to make game interesting, eh?’ he said with a look of pure glee in his eyes.

‘Sounds like a plan,’ I said as I picked up my glass of wine.

‘Let’s see … Simple rule. You ask one question only. I answer, make one statement only, then we finish. Okay? You agree?’ He made it sound like we were little kids making up ground rules for some game.

I agreed. I needed to know only one thing with certainty. Everything else – the hows and the whys, the moralisations and justifications – came a distant second.

‘Did you kill her?’ I asked.

He took a deep breath. ‘Yes, I kill the girl,’ he answered without a flicker of emotion. ‘She come to me, so I take opportunity for myself and kill her. She dress like that because she know I like young women, and she want to seduce me then give me heroin … She look for justice for herself. But she
didn’t know I know about her … So, we go for a ride to the lake in car I rent, and she start her move to seduce me. I play for a bit, then I tell her we come back to my place. I leave her in room and go meet friends for drink, then I come back. She want to continue. I play more, then I turn her face on bed and I push down till she die. Then I put her in warm water. I drive car to bar, to return to rental place tomorrow and pick up my car where I leave it. I come back quickly, dry her hair, put her on the stairs and inject her with heroin for final effect. Then I call police. I shower and change, but forget to add socks …’

Everything had fallen in place. When she saw that the Never Again Foundation was just stringing her along Macy Jane Admanzah must have understood that she didn’t have enough evidence, power and money to buy justice, so she had decided to get it herself. And when she had turned up on his doorstep Joshua had seen his opportunity and killed her.

‘Why didn’t you just let her go? She had no evidence against you … No one would have investigated her claims,’ I asked angrily, knowing that now he had finally told me the truth Joshua wouldn’t be able to resist breaking his own rules and telling me everything.

‘I tell you when you come to my house before,’ Joshua said. ‘That part truth. Samuel want to eliminate me by sending her to the Foundation. Foundation want her gone, I want her dead too, but Samuel and Foundation think they get rid of me by killing the girl and plant evidence to say it was I. So I kill her first. Death for her inescapable, from me, Samuel or Foundation.’

‘How did you know they wanted to implicate you in her murder?’

‘I get told … Too much greed in Foundation, people compete and secrets leak out. And Samuel behave like stranger, so I suspect as well. I mean, how you suspect me now? Many things, some without name, no?’

‘And people like Jamal, where do they fit in?’

‘Jamal small man who think he big. Three principals: Chocbanc, whom you kill, Samuel, who kill himself, and I. And now only I remain,’ he said proudly.