Strong Medicine (8 page)
Authors: Angela Meadon
Seventy-two hours had passed since I’d seen Lindsey on Monday. I’ve watched my fair share of Medical Detectives, I know that the first 48 hours are the most critical, and if the missing person isn’t found in that time the chances of them being found alive goes down. Way down.
Sue and Thomas had taken Peter to her mother’s house the night before, and just as well. Our house was starting to resemble a dump. It was no place for a toddler. Busi had spent the whole day on Wednesday helping with the search for Lindsey, and neglected her usual chores. The dustbin was overflowing with beer bottles, take-away boxes, and
stompies
. Ashtrays full of dead smokes lay on the kitchen table amid a mess of stained flyers and spilled coffee.
“Why don’t you take a shower?” Besta said from her customary station next to the tea pot.
“I’m too busy.” I rubbed my eyes and lit a smoke.
“You’ve just woken up.” She came over and patted my shoulder. “It’s too early for you to start phoning people. Busi hasn’t come in yet. It won’t do you any harm to get cleaned up. You’ll feel better.”
I couldn’t remember the last time I’d showered. The past few days were a blur of frantic activity and I was starting to pay the price for it. The idea of a few minutes under the hot spray of the shower appealed to me.
I hate to admit it, but Besta was right. The steam of the shower cleared my head, and the fresh soap smell calmed my nerves. I stood under the hot water until my skin turned pink and my fingers wrinkled. ‘Granny fingers’ we called it and I always teased Lindsey about how she would have to start knitting if her fingers wrinkled from being in the bath for too long.
When I came back down to the kitchen, cleaner than I had been in days, Busi and Besta were chatting over a cup of tea. It seemed almost normal, two women of roughly the same age, enjoying a morning gossiping together. The veneer of normality was less than skin deep, though. Busi was black, for a start, and under normal circumstances Besta would expect her to be cleaning the kitchen, not socializing in it. Twenty years may have passed since the fall of the old regime, but some things did not change.
“Ah, there you are.” Busi stood up and folded me in a warm, soft embrace.
“Busi was just telling me about an idea she’s had for finding Lindsey,” Besta said.
“You’re full of ideas.” I sat down at the kitchen table. I didn’t add that I hoped this idea didn’t include appealing to the imaginary spirits of our ancestors. I did not want to insult the woman who had shown so much concern for me.
“Well, we have to keep thinking if we are going to find your daughter.”
“What’s your idea?” I asked.
“We should make a Facebook page.” Busi sat down opposite me, her eyes wide and her hands darting about as she explained her idea. “We can put up photos and maybe a video of you asking for her safe return. Things like that get a lot of attention.”
“Ja,” I said. “That’s a good idea. We can ask people to share her picture. If anyone has seen her, they might recognize her.”
“Do you know someone who could do that for us?” Besta asked.
Busi nodded and was about to answer when the phone rang at her elbow.
“Hello?” she answered, one hand reaching for a pen as the other pressed the receiver to her ear. “Yes, this is.”
I watched her hand hover over a piece of paper, one corner stained brown and crumpled. I was holding my breath and couldn’t force myself to let it out even though my chest ached.
“Yes, we are looking for a young girl. Blond, nine years old.”
Busi started writing.
“She went missing on Monday on her way home from school, in Edenvale.”
Her eyes went wide and she looked sharply at me.
“You did? When?”
“Who is it?” Besta leaned forward in her chair, pressed herself hard up against the table and made it wobble.”
“Can you remember what he looked like?” Busi’s handwriting crabbed across the page as she scrawled notes.
“Yes, sir. Thank you Mr. Gwala. Your number is zero eight two, six six eight, seven three two five. We’ll be in touch. Thank you.”
Busi put the phone back in its cradle, her hand shaking so hard the receiver rattled against its base. She looked up at me, and then her gaze darted to Besta and back again.
“What is it?” I almost screamed the question at her.
“He thinks he saw Lindsey talking to someone on Monday afternoon. Down by the
veld
on Third Avenue. He says she was talking to a well-dressed black man, maybe thirty years old. He might be able to identify him.”
Inmate Number: 7865649
Bongani Zulu
18 August 2005
CMAX Prison, Pretoria
Detective Tshabalala (DT): Do you know what happened to the body parts once they were taken from people?
Bongani Zulu (BZ): The
inyanga
uses them to make
muti
and sells it to people.
DT: Did you see him giving them the
muti
?
BZ: No, but he told me sometimes what he did.
DT: What kind of people use the
muti
?
BZ: All kinds. You get muti for every problem. If you are sick, or you want your business to make lots of money, or you want your lost lover to come back. Everything.
DT: Can you give me an example of someone who was sick who took
muti
?
BZ: There was a lady from the village who lost her baby before it was born, but she wanted it back. She came to the
inyanga
for
muti
.
DT: What did he give her?
BZ: He gave her something to drink. It had blood and fat inside. There was also a piece of an organ that he told her to eat a little every day. And he gave her a belt to wear under her clothes that had genitals on it.
DT: Do you know what the organ was that she was meant to eat?
BZ: He said it was a heart.
DT: A human heart?
BZ: Yes.
DT: All right, and you mentioned a belt, tell us about the belt.
BZ: It was made of impala skin, with the hair still on. He put four, maybe five of the genitals of little boys on the belt. He told her to wear it under her shirt until the hair came off the impala skin.
DT: What happened after that?
BZ: I saw her in the village sometimes. She had another baby but that one died also. Then she went to Cape Town to look for work. Hey, I’m telling you all of this stuff, what are you going to give me?
DT: We’ll put in a good word for you with the
baas
. Maybe you’ll get more yard time or something.
BZ: I want to see my wife, Petunia. And I want KFC.
DT: All right, I’ll see what I can do about the KFC. But, don’t get your hopes up about seeing your wife. If the guys in here found out, they’d target you.
BZ: I killed children for
muti
, if any of the guys knew that, they’d kill me.
DT: Okay, I’ll let the warden know—
BZ: No. Don’t tell him, he will tell the others. Bring her here, like a cop. Dress her like you.
DT: I don’t know if I can do that.
BZ: And I don’t know if I can keep helping you.
She tried to kick out one of the tail lights at first, but her foot bounced off with a
thunk.
All she got was sore toes.
Colours swirled behind her eyes, green and blue and red. She breathed in ragged gasps, coughing every time the gag got too deep in her throat. She tried to make her heart slow down and breathe slower, but she couldn’t control her body.
She shifted her weight to get some pressure off her legs and broken arm. The boot was too small though, and she was wedged in between bottles and cans and other hard things that smacked into her whenever they went over a bump.
How could this be happening to her? She’d always listened to her mommy. She knew about not talking to strangers or going anywhere with them. These men had got her anyway. Kidnapped her.
The word echoed through her head. She’d been kidnapped, like Luke last year. The police found Luke dead by the train station. Was that where these men were taking her now?
Lindsey’s throat burned and a deep sob caught in her chest before she let it out. It was okay to cry now, the men couldn’t see her. Tears burned at her eyes, and then flowed down her cheek. Some of them went into her nose and stung like she’d breathed in sea water.
She cried for a long time before the tears dried up. Her nose was full of snot and she blew it out onto something in the boot. Some of it stayed on her cheek, drying in a thick line on her skin.
She wasn’t dead yet, she would fight these men as long as she was alive.
Lindsey listened to the sounds of the road, trying to figure out where the men were taking her. There were lots of trucks going past, and lots of taxis hooting. Soon the sounds got quieter. A few cars, dogs barking. They were somewhere people lived.
The car stopped. One of the men got out, slamming the door and making the car rock back and forth. Lindsey heard a gate rattle open, and then the car drove through.
The car stopped and the engine turned off. Lindsey’s heart started to beat faster. This was it. This was the place they were taking her to. She couldn’t hear trains though. Lots of airplanes going past, very low and loud. They were near the airport!
Were they going to kill her here and leave her for the police to find, like Luke?
What could she do to fight them when they took her out of the boot? She couldn’t kick because her feet were tied up. Her left arm hurt too much to open and close the fingers, and her right arm was almost numb from lying on it for the whole drive. All she had was her teeth.
Nobody came to get her though. Not for a long time. The boot got so hot that Lindsey’s clothes were soon soaked with sweat. The air was so hot she couldn’t breathe it properly.
Her head started to swim and the colours swirled swirled like an angry swarm of bees behind her eyes.
The boot popped open, jolting Lindsey back to the present with a gust of fresh air and a blast of light that stunned her, even through the blindfold.
Someone grabbed the bag and pulled it off her head.
Lindsey looked up into kind eyes, big and brown, surrounded by wrinkles. The man was old, with grey hair. He smiled and the wrinkles folded around his eyes like a warm blanket. He looked friendly. Had he come to help her?
A tiny spark of hope flashed in Lindsey’s chest.
“She’s perfect,” the old man said.
I recognized Mr. Gwala from the description he’d given us as soon as he climbed out of his green Opel Corsa. He was wearing a white,
suit
, and had short, neatly trimmed hair with a dusting of white at the temples. As he drew closer his face came into focus. It was lean, with sharp cheekbones and laugh-lines around his eyes. A deep scar ran across his left cheek.
“Are you Erin du Toit?” he asked as he walked up to me.
I nodded, forced a smile and stubbed my cigarette on the asphalt. He held out his hand for me to shake.
“I’m so sorry for your loss,” he said when we clasped hands.
“Thank you, but I’m trying not to think of her as lost just yet.” His hand was clammy and I tried to surreptitiously dry my palm on my jeans when we walked into the police station.
“Good,” he said. “Trust in God to keep her safe.”
I didn’t, but I smiled and nodded anyway.
Detective Brits met us in the reception area and led us into the same cramped office in which I’d first reported Lindsey missing. He sat in one of the plastic chairs at the table, and Mr. Gwala and I sat in the other two.
“Detective Nyala not with you today?” I asked as I tried to get comfortable in the rigid chair.
“He’s following up on some leads right now.” Brits unfolded his notepad and clicked a pen, ready to start taking notes.
I sat forward, my hands gripping my jeans. “On Lindsey’s case?”
“No, another one. A boy who was found at the train station.”
“Oh.” My heart sank back into its cold trough of despair. “Have you got any leads on our case?”
“Nothing solid yet, but we’re hoping that’s about to change.” Brits looked expectantly at Mr. Gwala, who smiled nervously and cleared his throat.
“As I told Miss du Toit,” Mr. Gwala said in a soft, deep voice. “I think I saw a man speaking to Lindsey on Monday afternoon.”
He spoke slowly, like he was explaining a difficult concept to an intelligent child, taking time to explain exactly what he was doing, where he was going. “I saw a blond girl, like the one in the posters, talking to a young man. They were standing on the path that runs through the
veld
on Third Avenue.” He paused, frowned, and rubbed at his chin with the back of his hand.
“Carry on,” Brits prompted while taking notes.
“I was stuck in traffic on Third. There was something blocking the intersection with Fiskaal, a taxi I think. I watched the man talk to the girl for a minute or two. It looked like she was giving him directions. Then the traffic started moving again and I drove off. I didn’t think of it again until I saw the poster outside the Spar by my house yesterday.”
“Can you describe the man you saw?” Brits asked.
“He was about my height, maybe a little taller,” Mr. Gwala said.
That put him around five feet eight inches tall.
“He was thin, wearing brown trousers and a blue jacket. Like overalls. Not fancy clothes, but clean and neat. His head was bald.”
Detective Brits paused, his pen hovering over the pad, eyes fixed on the words he’d scrawled there. “Anything else?” he asked at last.
“No, that’s all.” Mr. Gwala looked at me, almost apologetically, as if he’d failed a test or something.
“Thank you both for your time.” Detective Brits stood, tucking the notepad back into its place inside his jacket. “We’ll be in touch if we need anything else.”
“What, won’t you do a lineup or something?” I asked.
“We don’t just have guys standing around to do lineups,” Detective Brits said. “We don’t even do lineups here. There’s only one station in the East Rand that has the right facilities; one-way glass and all that. It takes time to set these things up.”
“How about a sketch? A signed statement?”
Panic tightened my chest like a vice. I fought to draw breath and keep my heart from exploding out of my chest.
“I’ll see if we can get an artist out. I’ll call you if anything changes.”
“That’s bullshit!” I slammed my fists on the table. Mr. Gwala jumped in his chair. Detective Brits narrowed his eyes at me.
“This isn’t the States,” Detective Brits said. “We’re all you’re going to get. You’d better get used to it.”
With that, he ushered us out of the police station, and left us standing in the blustering winter wind in the parking lot.
“That’s such bullshit,” I said as I lit a cigarette and inhaled a hot lungful of smoke. My panic burned away, and was replaced by fury.
What the fuck was Brits doing?
“He seemed in a bit of a hurry.” Mr. Gwala took a heavy ring of keys out of his pocket, with a threadbare stuffed Bugs Bunny on the key chain, and smiled his tight little smile again. “I hope you find your daughter soon. Call me if you need anything.”
And then I was alone in the parking lot, shivering in the shadow of the face-brick building and tapping ash off the end of my smoke.