Dogstar Rising

Chapter Sixteen




By the time they arrived, the alleyway was already choked with people. Makana stuck close to Father Macarius who cut straight through the crowd. But even his authority wasn’t enough in the end. Macarius had to physically throw himself into the fray until people grudgingly stepped aside.

The house was nothing more than a shell. The roof had long gone and the walls were crumbling, doorways and windows only gaping mouths. There was little street lighting in this part of town and the alley was narrow and dark, lit only by a faint lamp fixed to a wall at the far end. Wires looped through the air overhead. People shuffled around in the dark, jostling for a better view. The road itself was narrow and uneven, slick with centuries of mud and waste so that it now resembled the hide of a strange animal that gave off a warm, thick stench.

‘Did someone call the police?’

A large man in a checked shirt laughed. ‘Police? They won’t dirty their shoes round here.’

‘Who is he, Abouna?’ someone else asked, pointing at Makana.

‘He’s an investigator,’ explained Father Macarius. ‘He’s here to help.’

The priest’s authority again seemed to carry weight. Makana found himself in the unusual position of having privileged first access to the victim. It was something of an honour, he reflected. Once upon a time, in what he had come to think of as his previous life, this had been his work. It was ten years now since he had been an inspector of the Criminal Investigation Department. Most of the crimes he had dealt with back then were straightforward batterings. Murderers were not as sophisticated as their fictional counterparts liked to make out. People killed their wives and husbands, their brothers and in-laws, and they did it wildly and without much forethought or planning. Blunt instruments, broken bottles, kitchen knives and rat poison being the weapons of choice. Taking a torch from the man in the checked shirt, Makana stepped closer and leaned in over the body. The man waved people back.

‘Give him room to work!’

Touching a hand to the forearm, Makana estimated that rigor mortis, the stiffness that sets in when oxygen no longer flows through the body, had barely begun. The boy was taller than he had expected and older, perhaps thirteen years old, maybe more. He had been dead less than three or four hours. His face had been bludgeoned with a hammer or some other blunt instrument. Identifying him by his features would be impossible. Makana moved slowly around the body. There was a strong smell of kerosene, the body was doused in the stuff.

‘Who found the body?’ he asked over his shoulder.

The large man in the check shirt seemed to exercise some sort of local authority.

‘My son, Emad, he stepped in here . . . to answer a call of nature.’

‘It’s disgusting!’ someone yelled out. ‘They use this place like a common toilet.’

‘He’s just a boy.’ The man defended his offspring.

‘And who taught him to behave like that?’

‘Where is your son?’ Makana interjected, before it degenerated into a fully fledged brawl.

‘I sent him home. This is no place for a child.’

‘Very thoughtful of you, but I shall need to speak to him.’

‘Of course, Effendi, I shall summon him immediately.’

Makana turned his attention back to the corpse. He wondered how long it would be before someone asked to see his credentials.

‘Can you tell anything?’ Macarius seemed eager for Makana to prove his abilities.

‘It’s hard to tell without a forensic investigation, but it looks as though he died from the beating he took.’ Makana ran the beam of light over the ground around the boy’s body but it had been so firmly trampled that any evidence left by the killer would have disappeared by now. He turned his attention back to the body.

‘The bruises indicate that he was still alive when these blows were administered. My guess is that he choked on his own blood.’

Makana examined the underside of the body. It looked as though he had been killed on the spot. He moved in closer, fanning away the flies that clogged the boy’s nose and mouth. Behind him he could hear more shouting coming from the street. A scuffle that had been going on for some time, he realised, was growing in intensity. He pushed it from his mind and concentrated on the body again. The boy’s clothes were relatively clean. He was wearing jeans and a ragged coat. His hands were filthy. Not just from the place he was lying, but dirt was engrained in the skin, under his broken nails. The beam of light traced the length of the body and Makana’s eyes were drawn to the wrists. There was evidence of old scarring, as if he had been tied up for long periods. But not recently.

‘He was held against his will somewhere,’ said Makana. ‘And then he was released.’

The torch beam stopped on a spot halfway up the boy’s calf. Makana leaned closer and touched the torn fabric.

‘May God have mercy on his soul!’ Father Macarius instinctively crossed himself. The gesture provoked an angry response.

‘Hey! What do you think you’re doing?’

A group of burly men were now clustered tightly around the entrance to the ruined building. Makana recognised a couple of faces who were outside the mosque protecting Sheikh Waheed. Their progress was hampered by the people inside the building who pushed back instinctively, not seeing who was trying to get by them. For a time there was confusion and it wasn’t clear what was going on. Father Macarius tried to make amends.

‘I meant nothing by it.’

‘Keep your rituals for inside your church.’

‘Don’t let him speak!’ yelled one irate man from further back.

‘They want to close our eyes to the truth!’ added another.

Everyone seemed eager to get involved in the fight. Faces peered out of the gloom, like miners trapped deep inside the earth’s crust. The light from torches and hurricane lamps grazed their eyes as if from an approaching storm, lighting up their fear.

‘Don’t talk about things you know nothing about.’ Makana regretted speaking the moment the words were out of his mouth. The burly men turned their attention to him.

‘What kind of an investigator are you exactly?’

‘The kind that can recognise insolence when he hears it.’

‘What unit are you attached to?’

These were the same men he had seen outside the mosque, or at least some of them. He was sure of it. More than likely they were local men, thugs attached to the Merkezi, the Central Security Forces, by some obscure, loosely defined bond. They would be reluctant to reveal their identity, although probably everyone around here knew who they were and what they did.

‘This area must be secured for the scientific unit. Instead of spouting nonsense about religious sacrifices, why don’t you make yourselves useful?’

‘Who are you to give us orders?’

‘I don’t have time for this.’ Makana stepped boldly forward until he was standing in front of the one he took to be the leader. A large man with a moustache. He had, as far as he could tell, nothing to lose. ‘I never forget a face,’ he said quietly.

‘Me neither,’ replied the other.

It seemed like a good moment to move on, so Makana turned to make sure Father Macarius was right behind him before leading the way out into the narrow alleyway. The crowd made way for them and the burly men took it upon themselves to secure the crime scene. Somewhere in the distance sirens could be heard drawing nearer. Any minute now the riot squad would come charging through waving batons and beating back the crowds.

‘It’s better to be gone,’ he whispered. Father Macarius, his confidence shaken, agreed with a simple nod. As they reached the end of the alleyway the man in the checked shirt appeared.

‘Let me take you to my son.’

‘Where is he?’ Makana asked.

‘My shop, just around the corner.’

It seemed like a good idea. Two minutes later they were sitting in the back of a small grocery shop surrounded by sacks of rice and heaps of red onions. The boy had a defiant look in his eyes.

‘Are you Emad?’ Makana asked. ‘Tell me what happened.’

‘There’s nothing to tell,’ the boy said. ‘I often go in there, if I have to.’

‘You were alone?’

Another nod. ‘I didn’t see him at first. I mean, I had my back to him. You know, I was facing the wall. But I heard it moving around.’

‘Heard what moving around?’

‘That would be a cat or maybe a rat,’ the father offered helpfully.

‘No, no!’ The boy’s eyes widened. ‘It was the angel.’

‘What angel?’ Makana was confused.

‘The Angel of Imbaba,’ said Father Macarius. ‘Everyone knows about it. Go on, my son.’

‘Well, I started to take a piss and then suddenly I heard it moving and I nearly died. I swear it flew right past me over my head!’

This earned him a swift cuff around the ear from his father.

‘Don’t lie! I told you about that.’ He shrugged at his visitors. ‘He’s generally an honest boy. Ask anyone. He takes care of the shop when I have business to see to.’

Outside helmeted policemen were milling about in the alley. Batons lifted and fell as they cut a swathe through the crowd. Makana glimpsed the thugs around the entrance. One of them was pointing in their direction.

‘We should probably move swiftly along, Father. You must tell me about this angel.’

‘Yes of course,’ said Father Macarius as they hurried back towards the church. ‘And there is something else about these killings, something that happened a long time ago.’

They had just reached the main road when an unmarked car cut them off and two men jumped out and grabbed hold of Makana, one on either side.

‘Inside,’ they said, and bundled him into the rear of the car.