Eastward in Eden by Terence Faherty

Author:Terence Faherty
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: kenya, owen keane
Publisher: The Mystery Company

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

None of us spoke as we drove away from the clinic. I was thinking of Wauki the city man, trying to see a way that tiny bit of biography might help, might explain his murder, might have threatened someone or been a threat to Wauki himself in the wrong hands. I couldn’t. If you believed Wauki’s spirit could live again, you wouldn’t balk at its choosing an urban birth. If you didn’t believe in reincarnation, the details of an individual’s background wouldn’t make you believe any less.

By then we were driving through a patch of forest. Mwarai hadn’t taken us back to the main road. The track we were on was only a little wider than the jeep. I decided it must be a shortcut to Somolet. It certainly fit my general experience of shortcuts, which was that they’re hard on both shock absorbers and patience.

When Mwarai finally spoke, I realized that his preceding silence had stemmed from a renewed sense of grievance.

“The doctor is not a respectful man. He does not respect individuals or ranks or situations. I know this is the result of him not respecting himself. Still, it makes him very unpleasant to work with.”

Basil suddenly placed a hand on the policeman’s shoulder. The movement was so swift and firm that I didn’t have a chance to mistake it for a sympathetic act. Neither did Mwarai. He was braking the jeep even before Basil shouted, “Stop!”

As we slid to a halt, the trees to our left began to sway madly, as though they’d been hit by a very localized tornado. Or rather an earthquake, one that became less localized by the second. The rhythmic pounding made the jeep’s cheap dashboard vibrate like a sounding board. Then the trees parted and an elephant strode onto the road.

I’d probably seen a dozen living elephants in my lifetime, in parades and circuses and zoos, and hundreds more filmed ones on television. None of those exposures prepared me for the size of this animal at the range of a car length. Or the easy speed at which it moved. I had time to note its tusks and the surprising shape of its conical skull with its deeply sunken temples. Then it was into the woods on the other side of the road. A second elephant appeared, the size of the first, then one half that size, and finally a baby, so small that Basil had to stand in his seat to get a view unobstructed by the windscreen.

After they’d passed, we sat on for a time like people who had been narrowly missed by a freight train at a faulty crossing. Then Mwarai said, “That is our current situation, Mr. Keane. It can turn that dangerous that quickly and with that little warning. And I once wished for an American-style murder case. I could bite my tongue.”

He got us rolling again and asked, “In your opinion, what would a proper next move be?”

To give me time to think, I said, “Tell me more about Mugo.

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