The Lions' Den by Iris Mwanza

Author:Iris Mwanza
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Canongate Books

Chapter Twelve

It was the third night that Grace wasn’t able to sleep. The season brought almost constant rain, but this night, the usual mild patter of raindrops suddenly became a storm. Fierce wind thrashed through the trees and lightning crashed down from the sky, momentarily exposing the spirit world. The frangipani tree outside her window banged and scratched as if trying to escape to the inside. After the thunderstorm petered out, she still couldn’t sleep. She pulled the covers up over her shoulders, then she felt too hot and pushed them down to her waist; she shifted her pillow and lay on her stomach for a while, then tried rolling onto her back. She sighed and gave up. It had taken two days of waiting before the nolle prosequi arrived at her office after hours. She was working late and took it home with her so that she could go to the police station first thing the next morning. She was worried about Willbess. Why had Bwalya been so spooked? What did he mean that the case was a lost cause? She hoped the police hadn’t hurt Bessy again. I’ll find out tomorrow, she thought, but worried more and more as the rain drummed on and the shadows paced across the ceiling until morning.

At dawn, Grace got out of bed and put on her suit. She stood at the window fully dressed but still barefoot, and pressed her head against the cold glass, watching and willing the rain to stop. She considered going to the police station anyway but the rain was too heavy and she didn’t have an umbrella.

It was another long hour before it finally stopped. Grace scanned the pewter sky and saw a distant patch of blue blossoming fast enough to tell her that the rain was done. The frangipani nodded and shook raindrops off its waxy leaves, so she slipped on her shoes, grabbed her bag and ran out of the front door.

She arrived at the police station just after eight in the morning. Because of the downpour, there were only a few people milling around. A street vendor with banana fritters stuffed into a bucket held one up and waved it enticingly at Grace. It looked crispy and delicious and her stomach growled. She hadn’t eaten in her hurry to get Willbess out, but she needed all her money to get him home by taxi. She worried that Avaristo would dispute her reimbursement claim; she hadn’t cleared it in advance and he was particularly fussy with pro-bono cases where expenses couldn’t be passed on to the client. She hop-scotched across the muddy puddles in the pavement before running up the clean, rain-swept, white stairway. When she saw police boots sticking out from under the desk in the foyer, she thought it was Officer Lungu and stopped so suddenly that she skidded on the slick stairs. She hadn’t seen the policeman since he had shoved her to the ground and knocked her out. Taking a moment

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.