32. Investigation

By the time we reached my father’s house, I was tired out but that did not make sleep any easier. No position I could find was comfortable and dawn was breaking before I finally fell into a deep slumber but even then my dreams continued where waking thought had left off.

I was still fast asleep when I was awakened, about mid-day, by banging at the front door. I opened it to a Sergeant Guardian that I vaguely recognised.
“Hi Tommu.” He greeted me. “They told me you were here.”
“Yes. I arrived last night. I’ll call my dad.”
“No,” he said, “it’s you I’m after. Can I come inside, please?”
“By all means. How are things this morning?”

“Pretty bad. I think they’ve recovered all the dead but it’s still very gruesome down there. The smell is what gets you. And the soot.
I was lucky and I got a couple of hours sleep but some of the boys have been working for twenty four hours, solid. They’re just about done in.”

“Is there anything one can do to help?” I wondered why he had come to see me.
“Actually, yes. Captain Hasiki sent me to ask if you’d be able to take a look at the perpetrators before they are buried. I believe that you caught a burglar last year and we’d like to know whether he’s one of them. The grave has been dug and they need to close up as soon as possible for health reasons, so it would be convenient if you could go down this afternoon.”
“I can come down with you now, if you like.” I told him. “I just need to get washed and dressed.”

Just as I was getting ready to leave, my father came in.
“Ah! You’re up. I decided not to wake you.” He said. “I’ve just been down to the market but I couldn’t find any eggs. The whole place is just about deserted.”
“I’m going down to the hangar to see if I can identify the burglar. Would you like to come along?”
“Not really, thanks. It’s all a bit depressing. Unless you need me, Manesh can take care of you.”
“I don’t need taking care of.” I protested, grateful for the name, “Let’s go then.”

The Sergeant and I walked down to the hangar. As my father had said, the Village was almost deserted. The few people out on the streets seemed to be in a hurry to escape, keeping close to the walls of the buildings and disappearing suddenly into doorways.

The sky was lightly overcast so that the sunlight did not cast distinct shadows and the hot, humid wind blew dust and leaves and specks of soot across the bare road. I could feel the sweat beading on my forehead and beginning to run down my back under my shirt. Small groups of Guardians stood on the street corners, rifles at the ready.

The wind brought the reek of smoke and wet ashes and, every now and then, the horrible smell of burnt meat. As we went further down the hill, we could see traces of soot on the road where they had been carried by the feet of people moving about the fire and the quantity of ash in the air began to increase.

At the bottom of the hill, we were stopped by a sentry. Sergeant Manesh explained our mission and we were allowed to go ahead, only to be stopped again a hundred yards further on. At last we were accompanied by one of the Guardians down to the field where the bodies of the three fire-bombers were laid out, together with their victims.

I walked carefully over to them. Fortunately, all the corpses were covered with cloth blankets. I would not have been able to look at the Village dead. I tried not to think about what I might have seen if I had.

Our escort pulled back the blankets, one at a time and I looked into the three faces. One of them had been quite badly burned and all had bullet wounds but they were easily recognisable and, with a peculiar mixture of relief and disappointment, I realised that none of them was the burglar I had apprehended.

“Sorry, Manesh,” I said, “no-one that I recognise.”
“Good. That means that we know what at least one of those on the run looks like,” He answered. “Captain Hasiki asked if you could spare him a moment.”
“The Captain is inside, checking that the structure has been secured.” Our escort added. “Come this way and I will take you back to wait for him.”

We followed him to the entrance of the hangar. I could see the remains of the Guardians’ reception office just inside the door. It was cluttered with ashes and the remains of furniture. At the end of the room, the wooden partition that had separated Rega’s space from the reception area had burned down and I could see the ashes of her desk and chair. The board on which she had pinned her finished work was completely incinerated and so was most of the desk. The remains of its surface sloped down to the ground where the legs had been destroyed, held up at the other end by the last piece of the drawer unit.

The top drawer had slipped open and I could see the black mass of charred papers that were all that remained of the pictures that Rega had drawn. As I watched, fascinated, the wind rocked the the desk backwards and forward, balancing on the last remains of a leg that had been turned to charcoal but somehow continued to provide support at the back.

All at once, it gave way and the desk collapsed, splitting the drawer and spilling the charred papers out onto the floor.
“Our Granny’s portraits!” I cried in surprise as the stack slid forward, revealing that lack of air had protected the centre of the pile from the fire. “Do you think I could see if any of them can be saved?”
“You shouldn’t really go in there,” Manesh answered, looking at me strangely “but why the hell not.”

I stepped through what had been the wall and gingerly lifted the charred pictures off the top of the pile. Most of them had been completely destroyed by the fire and were now reduced to streaks of ash, washed down by the overnight rain. Near the middle of the pile, however, were a few pictures with just the outer edges burned.

I recovered two of the sketches of Our Granny and then, below them, the photograph that Rega had showed me the day we first met. The remainder of the pile consisted of a few other sketches of anonymous faces that I did not recognise, too badly damaged to be worth saving, so I picked up my trophies and returned to wait for Hasiki.

After a few minutes, he came around the end of the hangar, where some yards of wall still stood intact, and greeted me.
“Ah, Tommu,” he said, “I gather that your man was not there.”
“I’m afraid not.”
“That’s what I was hoping you would say.” He smiled grimly. “Although it means that I have to ask a further favour of you.”
“I’ll assist in any way that I can.”

“We need you to help us to find your burglar.” He hesitated, “If you would, of course. We have arrested more people than we can deal with. More than we should have, I think, and I would like you to go up and see whether you can find him there before we let them all go. We have no other obvious leads in this investigation, so you would be doing something really important.”

He looked at me carefully before continuing. “You need to understand, though, that there is some danger to you in this. If you are seen to be turning in one of Hama Batu’s Shadows then they could decide to take revenge on you. We will try not to let anyone know what you are looking for, but we can never be sure that they won’t guess. Will you do it for us?”
“Anything.” I said. “I want to do whatever I can. It’s important to me too.”
“Thank you, Tommu. I wouldn’t have asked you if it wasn’t necessary. If you need anything, then let me know.”

“Actually, Captain,” I said, “there is something. I wondered if I might keep these three pictures?”
He looked carefully at the charred drawings and the photograph. “What are they?”
“They were done by a friend of mine.” I answered.
“In that case, I don’t see a problem. Keep them. But if we need them at some point, you’ll have to return them.
Now go with Manesh. He’ll take you up to the old courthouse where we have the prisoners.”

Hasiki turned back to his men. The Sergeant and I set off up the hill, leaving the scene of devastation behind us. In the eerie stillness of the empty street, the sound of our sandaled footsteps seemed strangely loud.

“May I ask you a question?” Manesh broke the silence. “Why did you want the pictures that you asked the Captain for?”
“I’m not really sure.” I thought for a moment. “Somehow they are unfinished business. I told Hasiki that they were drawn by my friend, but that isn’t the whole of it. I know that she wanted to know whether they were correct or not. Perhaps she would have wanted me to find out.”
“I’m really sorry.” He said.
“What can one say?”

My question closed the conversation and we walked on without speaking further until we arrived at the Gardener’s courts. My mind flashed briefly back to my last visit here for Iliva’s trial but I was soon brought back to the present by the noise of shouting from inside, and what sounded like heavy blows.
“We had better pretend that you’re here to see your father.” Manesh suggested. “If you see the burglar, then don’t say anything until we have moved on. Afterwards you can tell me.”

The first room we entered contained a group of men under guard, sitting on the floor with their hands tied. As we entered, a door at the back opened and two Guardians came in, half dragging, half carrying a man between them. His face was bruised and his eyes were swollen and blackened. I saw that one of his arms was twisted at an odd angle as they pushed him down to sit with the others. They seized another suspect and dragged him from the room and I noticed that several more of the suspects also suffered from bruising.

A quick check showed that my intruder was not in the room and, as we moved on, I whispered to Manesh “Are those members of the Shadows that they have identified?”
“I shouldn’t think so,” he replied, “just routine questioning.”
“In that case, what would they do if they did find one of Hama Batu’s men?”
“You don’t want to know.” He answered. “You don’t want to know.”