Cacodaemus: A Guy Edrich Story

By Vanda Denton and Tom Denton

They came to this world from another realm, with the sole purpose of making humans good. Once here they dwelt amongst the natives in various ancient societies until they found satisfaction and like-minds with the Cathars of southern France. Thus, they adopted much from the Cathar lifestyle as ascetics, Credentes and Parfaits. Once labelled as saints and their works miracles, they turned their skills to more mundane matters. Centuries of this pedestrian lifestyle left them ill-equipped for dealing with the only enemy aware of their existence in the modern world. When hell came to earth, it was a man they rejected, Guy Edrich, a half-breed they judged unworthy of them, who became the only capable defender of humankind.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Lulu.com
• Release date: May 19, 2018
• ISBN: 9780244688561

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Cacodaemus: A Guy Edrich Story

Cacodaemus

A Guy Edrich story

Vanda & Tom Denton

© 2018 Vanda & Tom Denton

All rights reserved by the author. No part of this publication can be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publishers and/or authors.

eBook ISBN: 978-0-244-68856-1

Paperback ISBN: 978-0-244-08855-2

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Prologue

Guy

I see you clearly. I didn’t expect to keep my eyes when I crossed over. To see your world of light.

I am fully aware that I speak to no individual here so let all hear me. Yes, I am amongst you, an individual it never once occurred to any part of this sanctimonious community, would bother you again. And I bring with me another part of you. The part you believed you’d left behind. A part that will taint you with evil as it did my world.

I can feel your shock and dismay, your anger, your disbelief. What is all that negative emotion? That I’d dare?  That you’d presumed you’d escaped? That you assumed you were free of this abomination for ever?

You want rid of me. It shocks you to find yourselves unable to evict me. I will leave. But only after I have presented my very last report. I begin with a reminder of one set of accounts taken from the tens of thousands that you commissioned. Yes, I can feel you absorbing this, as I process it.

It blasted into the clearing. Nurses dropped sterilised equipment, patients backed into operating tables and supplies went flying.

‘Takoloshe!’ they screamed. ‘Run! Run!’

It careened through the people gathered there, abnormally large, eerie red eyes flashing around wildly, chased by one wailing woman who was followed metres behind by a mob of other women. The sprightly midget, its complexion brown rather than the beautiful ebony of this race, leapt athletically, shrieking, howling and baring large sharp teeth in a wide mouth. A lone woman, snatching her hands back from claws and teeth, seemed to be trying to catch it. Unlike the baying crowd pursuing these two, she apparently wanted to secure it without harming it. The club-wielding women rushing behind could have been stopped had the westerners working there been willing to help. I believe they were as confused as I. In any case I had my arms full, literally. I’d plucked an unconscious man in the midst of receiving a complex procedure on his leg, from a falling operating table and flying medical equipment, shielding him with my back which suffered fallout from items thrown by the ‘takoloshe’, as well as larger missiles being hurled by the women and missing it, but not me.

A white woman I knew by sight only, grabbed my arm, shrinking tightly into me, burying her face in my shoulder for protection from shooting debris as if I were nothing more than a convenient shield.

She repeatedly screamed, ‘What the hell is it?’

I had no better concept than she had and so, no answer to offer. I checked out the canvas shelter with its cubicles for consultations, inoculations and operations. It was beginning to collapse and expensive equipment was being ruined.

As the local women tried to grab the vicious little thing by its long black hair, and even by the tail, it bit a lump out of an innocent child who, too shocked to move away, had been queuing for the malaria vaccine with his mother. For long moments, I was transfixed by this child’s horror and pain. By the time my attention moved to his frantic mother who somehow hauled him up into her arms and spun on her heels desperately seeking refuge, the others were scattering. The thing sped, dodged, growled and snapped madly amongst them.

When at last I found a willing helper to look after my charge, some of the crazed women had moved great burning logs from the fires that had been heating water for medics, into a huge pile in the clearing. Clubbing the creature violently, subdued it, but didn’t kill it. I knew by their expertise that this wasn’t their first encounter. Knocking it unconscious had been frenzied but the process of assembling the fire and burning the unconscious, yet still alive being, was to some extent, familiar to them. At first, with it groaning and bleeding heavily, they pushed it into the fire with sticks. But it soon awoke screeching and writhing in the flames. It clawed at them frantically, but they were prepared.

I wanted to examine it. I’d been in this sub-Saharan village for the singularly pedantic purpose of personally cataloguing the actual medical packages against the official ledger, but sightings such as this were most certainly a part of my general remit. I rapidly calculated my chances of saving even a part of the body of a creature I’d only ever come across in various mystical drawings and oral tradition. And I weighed the benefits of that against exposing my deeper, ongoing mission.

The woman still hanging on to my arm was hyperventilating, ‘What the hell’s going on?’

Now I turned a little attention to her, recognising her as the Oxfam worker who I’d noted should not be here in this climate with the delicate complexion that accompanies strawberry blonde hair. She’d been distributing aid packages.

‘I don’t have an answer for you right now but I am sure the poor thing has suffered enough to allay your fear.’

‘Are you nuts? Did you see that? It, it…’

Fortunately, she ran out of words. I said, ‘You’re safe now.’

She was not comforted, yet she must have felt enough human protection from within me to keep her on my arm seeking reassurance now, rather than an inanimate guard. Being of average height and build, with only the normal strength and courage of any English woman in her prime, I noted her vulnerability compared to that of the women I normally had close contact with.

As the odour of burning flesh, once experienced and never forgotten, sickened all in the clearing, the village chief arrived. He examined the horrendous fire where the ghastly being squealed and rolled, trying to escape the glowing logs the women confined it to. The smoke alone would have rendered any animal, including the human kind, unconscious, yet here it was with burning flesh peeling away, not yet vanquished.

The chief seemed satisfied that the women had control of it, and so turned to us. Because I understood only a part of what he said I sought interpretation from the woman with the vice-like grip on my arm who, I’d noticed earlier, had a decent grasp of the native language.

She brought her wide, gleaming, grey eyes up to mine, ‘He said we’re to take our ‘filthy medicine’ and leave while we can.’

I could see some workers trying to question him and I required no translation for the gestures that told us to leave or face a fate possibly as terrible as that of the unidentified creature.

Everything was packed rapidly and precisely. Even the canvas was quickly dismantled, folded and thrown on to the trucks along with the sturdy containers for valuable equipment and drugs. The shaken and also despondent mood of retreating aid workers was reflected in only a few native faces.

My trembling limpet poked and grumbled at me until she had me moving to one of the Oxfam trucks.

She’d paid greater heed to me than I had her, during our time there trying to complete our individual tasks. ‘I know your ride isn’t due back today. Obviously, you can’t walk out of here.’

While she climbed in, urging me to follow, I stopped to look around and take stock. I saw her colleagues rapidly filling the cabs and her driver taking his seat.

‘Get in!’ she hissed, afraid to raise her voice.

Local women were redirecting their attention from the burning carcass to me. When they began moving towards me, wielding their sticks, I quickly pulled myself into the seat that sandwiched the woman between the driver and myself. Craning my neck to continue observing the scene I told her, ‘Thank you…’

I left the gap for her name, which she supplied in a voice of fear crossed with agitation and confusion.

‘Celeste.’

I completed the niceties as I straightened my back, ‘Guy.’

I could almost see her brain regaining some control. ‘They called it a demon. Did you hear that?’

Her somewhat more pragmatic driver had moved on to other concerns, ‘I bet we never get to know what it was. It’ll be a cold day in hell before Gowedo lets us back into his village. Took flaming ages to get their trust.’ He thumped the steering wheel causing Celeste, with her taut nerves, to jump. ‘Half of them will bloody die from things we’d hardly take a bloody week off work for!’

This being a tricky road to traverse through African jungle, I chose not to respond. He was working at keeping his temper to get us out of there, rather than strand us with a broken prop shaft.

Celeste was sensitive to his mood as well. She pulled off her scarf, scraped her fingers through her short, messy hair and opted for avoiding the obvious topic by engaging in polite conversation which, in the circumstances, was a little unnerving.

‘I couldn’t work out who you were with. No one gets left to work alone in a village like that.’

‘Thanks to you I wasn’t alone.’

‘Yeah well,’ she was calming a little, ‘If you hadn’t quit dangling around like a dick, you might have been. But answer my question.’

‘You might not hold on to me quite so tightly if I tell you.’

She let go.

Only of the arm though. ‘Well?’

‘I am investigating fraud concerning the money given for aid.’

She went quiet so I turned to study the narrowed eyes I knew I’d see. Charities too frequently are obliged to pay ‘middle men’ before they can actually help the people who need it. And that would be a positive scenario from her point of view. She would be suspicious that I also was looking into any misappropriation of funds by aid workers themselves. The truth was I had investigated everyone involved in that project at every level, from government aid being allocated, to collection pots in the local Post Office. I had a list of names along with proof, of individuals getting rich while desperate people suffered. The outcome of my investigation was that almost half of what should have reached the people in need as a gift from caring donors, was in the pockets of people who would be facing court somewhere in the world, quite soon. Any cases that failed to reach a court would go to the newspapers. Some would result in our legal team rigorously prosecuting anyone from a British civil servant to the pub landlord who stole from the collection cup. One was an Oxfam worker who Celeste probably knew.

It was a terrible journey, caused by the atmosphere in the cab as well as the bumps and ruts and bad suspension. On the bright side, we safely reached the small rural town where my ‘ride’ as Celeste put it, was making his own investigation of a related topic. He was more than a little surprised to witness the convoy, mostly passing through, and me jumping down from one of the slow-moving trucks.

I leaned into the open window, handing Celeste my card.

‘I’ll be back in London Tuesday week. Please call me if you hear anything about…’ I waved a hand to cover the peculiar thing we had no accurate name for.

She snatched it from my hand, I think as much because of lingering fear as for disgust with my line of work.

Her driver pulled away, slotting back into line and saving me from an awkward half-lie of an explanation.

Chapter 1

Guy

Did you bring all those reams of reports, megabytes of information, here into this world of light? I think not. Thus I tell you to note one particular, quarter of a century old, account that I attach to this document: my father, Desmond’s personal report of the particular assignment in Africa which proved to be our first, though unrecognised, warning of appalling events in the making.

Desmond

Mirka looked as stunned as I felt. My mission had been a fiasco. Hers also was unsuccessful and now she’d been forced to summon me to a safe meeting place. It was one of those fabulously hospitable villages you find in certain areas of Africa.

She attempted to speak and failed. I concealed neither my exasperation nor my irritation when I should have been trying to understand the cause of her stricken expression.

She stammered the important words. ‘It’s Alfred.’

I looked away, and back. Within those seconds I’d recalled Alfred DeLanza’s perilous assignment, similar to mine, but in a known danger zone. It was unkind, but tired apprehension had me forcing Mirka to face me.

‘What?’

My voice was too sharp. She flinched.

In Mirka’s defence I will report that she is not a timid woman. Far from, it in fact. But her news would send any heart plummeting, even more so than my recent failures.

She straightened her spine, stiffened her lip, met my eyes manfully, possibly with some judgement, and said, ‘Alfred is dead.’

I should have been shocked.

‘Are you sure?’

A tear trickled down her blotchy cheek. ‘Yes.’

Again I stared while Mirka averted her face, as though I blamed the messenger.

‘What happened?’

She sniffed, swiped a tear, tried to prevent a wave of anger passing through her features and finally told me, ‘I don’t know other than it was bad. Very bad.’

This had me reining in fury. My instinct was to assassinate Kagani. Oh alright, that’s a clinical way of saying what I really wanted to do to him.

‘Des?’

‘What!’ I felt no remorse for frightening her.

‘You know this has to be done in the right way.’

I felt my lip curl.

I watched her swallow more than my bad temper. ‘Doing it properly will facilitate the greater good.’

I wanted to slap her. Poor Mirka. She told me what I had to hear. I’d frightened her and I turned on my heel to hide my anger.

Still with my back to her, I said, ‘What are Kagani’s terms?’

‘The body can be collected at the border.’

Images flashed through my mind, of other bodies I’d brought home. ‘Alright, give me the details, Mirka.’

When I turned back she was crying. That annoyed me further. A day or two later I was the one crying.

I said, ‘Leave Africa today, Mirka. Get whatever flight you can to any friendly country. From there home.’ I looked around at where we were. She had a truck. It was one of three in a village growing into a town. I saw men with motorbikes.

‘Take the truck. I’ll get a lift on a bike.’

‘No. I’ll drop you off.’

‘Don’t question my orders.’

‘But…’

‘Do as you’re told or find a new path in the commune.’

She met my eyes with fear and concern. And some healthy defiance.

I said, ‘Go.’

She was wise not to argue.

It was a young man who was rash enough to take my money for a pillion ride. At last with a companion I couldn’t be expected to converse with, I had time to think. Knowing the terrain of the border I had been instructed to collect Alfred’s body from, I’d taken the time before setting off, to hire a helicopter. The motor bike was my quickest mode of transport to that. As it happened it also lifted my spirits a little. The young motor cyclist tried to con more money out of me by claiming I’d misunderstood the deal. I was still laughing, hollow though the mirth was, as I approached the helicopter pilot.

Aware that the pilot would be reluctant to take me too near to the border I’d also hired a guide who would lead me through the hill country. Thus, forty minutes later, my companion and I left the helicopter to make the final three kilometres on foot.

As we fought our way through some of the most inhospitable land I’d ever been in, I fell deep into thought. So deep in fact that my guide was obliged to save me from a snake, a ravine and some snares set up to trap an animal I’d never heard of in order for Alfred’s nemesis to have a delicacy for lunch. A delicacy it didn’t cross his mind he shouldn’t have because the species was endangered or because it involved trespassing in another country. All this to get a body part from an obscure animal, served to reinforce his position within his own small, dim-witted ruling party, as well as my critical view of President Kagani: the object of my preoccupation at that time.

From his opposition in exile, Ndome Hargame wrote of Kagani as having the characteristics of a serial killer. By that he meant he was very vindictive, self-centred and brutal, and he was a high risk-taker. Consequences were not even considered. Someone once said all political leaders, all major industrialists, the heads of armies, big financiers and so on, to some degree or another display the signs of psychopathic narcissism. I believe that to be true whilst acknowledging few present those characteristics to the extreme of President Kagani.

And let me tell you, western leaders are not free of this analysis. Kagani was once favoured by a British Prime Minister and a U.S. President. He had oil to sell. When Kagani became over-confident in spite of a fall in world prices, western governments ceased their suppression of information concerning his crimes which ranged from the orchestrated murder of political opponents, children mining for gold dying from mercury poisoning and displaced sections of his population starving to death.

There have been several assassination attempts, which is remarkable considering the torture they knew they’d face if they failed. He excels in torture. It is said he is hands on, so to speak, if he hates his victim sufficiently, or, I believe, if he’s in the mood for it.

He has made his cohorts into ‘businessmen’: billionaires with private jets. Through them he bribes anyone who tries to bring a legal action against him, in countries other than his own. Thus, so far, Kagani has avoided the justice of The Hague. For that reason, I have already set up an investigation by a secret supporter of Ndome Hargame within the country in order to gather the evidence for an international trial. I was aware, when I trekked through the jungle to collect my friend’s body, that this man was making good progress in the dangerous process of infiltrating Kagani’s inner circle. I will have no knowledge of his success or otherwise until I hear of his coming to a terrible end or receive the necessary evidence. I will certainly know if it is the former. Kagani always leaks publicity regarding a tortured death, as a warning to others. If my agent brings the proof to me, that evil despot will be given the choice of returning more than ten million pounds stolen from charities, and allow it to be used, and monitored, for its intended purpose in his country, or face charges in The Hague. I recommend keeping some of the evidence back. If Kagani clings to power for another five years he can then be prosecuted. Perhaps by then there will be a less corrupt opposition than the one currently headed by Ndome Hargame.

At the time of Alfred’s death, I personally was known to Kagani, though he was aware of nothing concerning my motives or who he might suppose my paymaster to be. Whatever his theories, I had become an identifiable, personal enemy and so I knew he’d leave a message for me. It would come in the condition I found Alfred’s body. Kagani would make sure the body was fresh enough to reveal every mark of Alfred’s suffering. Some would say we never learn, whereas we would say that evil despots never learn. In this instance, I viewed it as a mistake on Kagani’s part. One he would pay for.

The guide refused to lead me for the last five hundred metres but he gave me clear directions and I knew he would wait for me and help me get Alfred’s body back to the helicopter. Not only because I’d paid him well but also because he’d shown signs of approving of my work.

The small building was exactly as described: brick-built and with a generator. Kagani’s guards there watched my approach closely but none moved. I noted the scars they bore. I calculated them to be easy killers, yet too afraid to risk Kagani’s wrath by killing me. By the vacant brutality in their features and body language I knew they had been child soldiers.

I, in no way, walked to the door with an air of cool boldness as I would like to have done. But I did enter without hesitation. It was a single room: a cold mortuary. Kagani’s people died for the want of generators such as the one keeping this room chilled in order to preserve a body and make a point.

I will not sanitise this report, especially with regard to the state of Alfred’s naked body. There was enough left of his face for me to be fairly certain this had been my friend. I turned the corpse on to its side to examine the tattoo of the Cathar cross to be sure it was Alfred. Now knowing there was no trickery I gave a moment to the mourning of my loss. I’d lost touch with Alfred weeks previous to this and none of our people, including those also investigating corruption in Kagani’s regime, had been able to trace him. Clearly he’d been captured then and given no food since. That was no new method for Kagani who had starved to death entire tribes and races within his country’s borders. Alfred had been given just enough water to stay alive. To fully experience the torture.

In a fog of emotion I realised, when I turned his body, that Alfred had been brutally raped with an object I didn’t even try to imagine. He had a thousand cuts and a thousand or more burns on his body. There was hardly a square inch of untouched flesh. The process would have lasted for as long as it took Alfred to lose consciousness and repeated as many times as possible prior to his starving to death.

I am obliged, I understand why though it breaks my heart to do so, to list all methods of torture I could recognise, for our records: They had used blades on him. Some cuts were deep and some shallow and criss-crossed, while others were cauterised as in the employment of a heated craft knife. Many burns were consistent with cigarettes whilst others told of the sites for electrodes: tongue, nipples and testes. Broken bones were: left femur, both knees and both ulnas. And my poor, dear friend had been forced to walk over burning coals to the extent that little flesh remained on his blackened feet. They had tried to find out who sent him, no doubt knowing he wasn’t connected with the British government whose representatives Kagani had been bribing for years. The last one was even also taking a cut from each charity sending aid there as well as pocketing a fair proportion of British government aid.

End of Report.

I first read that account aged fifteen but only recently allowed myself to accept these facts: with your particular skills had you studied these words of my father more closely, you would have asked yourselves what it was exactly, that Kagani wanted to force Alfred into revealing, and who precisely was behind the question as well as the torture. You could have prevented what many humans regard as an apocalypse, had you been remotely as thorough as you judged yourselves to be. Had you lost touch with this realm, this world of light? Or was this retreat always an option you were prepared to fall back on?

I’ll not dwell on those questions yet. Instead I’ll continue to relay my earthly statements regarding events that led me here.

This was the beginning of the direction my career was to take. It was my father’s wish that the majority of my work would be based in Africa. Africa! I ask you. As appalled as I was on discovering how Alfred DeLanza had been tortured, I had no desire to continue my father’s work. I had ambitions and knowledge to do far more than track down fraudsters, evil though they can be. I’d seen my peers training as assassins, spies to infiltrate anything from the British Civil Service to international banks, and as top-level financiers with a view to redistributing the world’s wealth. It was because of my mother that I entered our work at a low level. Indeed, as a child I couldn’t fail to witness the reason for it, every day in fact, in the sorry physical state of my sister, for the short time that she lived with us. However, it was that or nothing, and I did have some comprehension of the sacrifice each of my parents had made in order for them to be together. That also was swallowed with a bitter taste in those early days. I had a few unsettled years in my mid to late teens, made some horrendous mistakes, shamed my parents and eventually took on my father’s mantle. It was heavy. Damned heavy to begin with. I tried to live up to the reputation of a saint. An expression that both saddened and angered my mother. But I stick by it, even now. Desmond Edrich was a saint: brave, bold, self-sacrificing, devout, humble, be sure you comprehend the true meaning of that, and finally he was martyred.

He died a little more than a decade after bringing Alfred’s body home, when I was living the life-style of my parents’ choice, with massive resentment. Only days prior to the news I had expressed hatred of my father. Mother received the brunt of it. I hated that he was never home, I hated that on top of school subjects which I loathed in any case, I was forced to study the geography of all of Africa. It’s a damn great continent that does not, contrary to popular belief, divide into three or four simple parts. And if that wasn’t excruciating enough I also had to study the history and the politics of that enormous continent. In detail.

To me at that time, both of my parents were infuriatingly naïve in thinking one could conduct charitable assistance without turning a blind eye to corruption. And what did it matter anyway? Factor it in, for fuck sake. Yes, I did use that language and yes it did get an extreme reaction and yes that at least gave me some satisfaction even though I can still feel the sting of my mother’s hand on my left cheek. It was the literal turning of the other one to her, that reduced her to tears.

None of that meant anything when my father died. My opposition to the choices made for me, fell away. My father, who was home more often than I’d given him credit for, who had loved me, nurtured me, cared deeply about my teenage pain, the man who had finally been close to a water-tight case against Kagani, was shot dead in Hyde Park. The gunman was never tracked down and Kagani is still President, two decades later. I lost three assassins in an attempt to redress the balance.

My last week on the dark continent, following the awful incident in Chief Gowedo’s village, was spent in preparation of another assassin. If nothing else I had Kagani’s security stitched so tight he couldn’t enjoy one cent of his misappropriated, wickedly acquired, Swiss bank account fortune. And his properties in other countries had been burned to the ground. That foul tyrant hardly ever saw the light of day, literally, and to some extent I found satisfaction in viewing that as house arrest. I’d rather have seen him dead though.

Chapter 2

Guy

We set down in London City Airport in the late afternoon and I was in my flat before six. Exhausted, I dumped my bag in the hallway, went first to the kitchen for a glass of water and then slumped on the sofa in the lounge, staring at the bright lights of The City across the Thames, as I had done so many times in the past.

I found myself fighting depression. Messages on my phone told me that still there was no result with Kagani. Far from it. He’d taken my last assassin alive and I was forced to accept that did not mean the latest one I had employed but the last man I would ever put in that position. I’d have to give up on one of my life’s objectives.

As I logged into my emails I brightened a little. My agents in Switzerland had emptied all the bank accounts we were aware belonged to Kagani and every member of his family, as well as those of all his loyal supporters. And we’d cut off a lot of his gold and diamond trading, mainly by making deals that involved us taking possession of those valuable assets whilst blocking the payments for them. With any luck he’d die of a heart attack.

When my phone began vibrating, I swore. I’d have switched it straight off if I hadn’t looked first. It was an unidentified number. Something I couldn’t ignore. Happily, it turned out to be no one more dangerous than the young Oxfam woman. Fortunately, she introduced herself: Celeste Corsair. I’d forgotten her name entirely. Couldn’t even make a close, mumbled guess. Also fortunately, I didn’t voice aloud the first thing that came into my mind which was that I’d call her back tomorrow. Instead, good manners being fundamental to our culture, I asked how I could help. She stumbled over her words a little, in asking me to join her for dinner. I asked her to hold and used that time to check my kitchen for food. Any shelves that weren’t empty held only a few unappetising tins and I had a couple of frozen meals that would normally suffice after a long trip abroad. I considered ordering something unhealthy but filling, to be delivered.

Only when I could hear a faint voice saying, ‘Guy, are you still there?’ did I remember the phone in my hand.

I held it to my ear, ‘Sorry, Celeste. I’ve only just returned from Africa. I’m terribly tired.’

‘This must be your lucky day then.’ She sounded a little too up-beat but I didn’t bother trying to analyse that further than deciding she wasn’t the type to take recreational drugs.

‘Call a cab and come straight over. All you’ll have to do is manage the cutlery.’

The thought of home-cooked food had my mouth watering and my stomach begging for better treatment than it had suffered of late. I said, ‘Thank you,’ with feeling as she gave me her address.

I noticed little of the journey and its famous landmarks, once I’d given the driver the address. The car stopped outside a large old house, converted into small flats.

Hardly had I pressed the intercom than she answered. ‘Come straight up.’

She’d left the flat door open for me, which was stupid even if she did think she knew everyone living in the building.

I called out to let her know it was me entering and added, ‘Smells great.’

‘I forgot to ask. I hope you like spag bol.’ She was nervous, which was understandable. She had met me once, during the strangest of times, and knew nothing about me. I told her I was very fond of Italian food. Which I am.

I glanced briefly around the cramped flat. There was a kitchenette behind a breakfast bar-stroke-worktop. A small round dining table which was squeezed between that and the door, was set for two. A little lounge area to the right had only a two-seat sofa with a cheap coffee table. On the wall facing the sofa was a small flat screen television.

She was working at making herself relax. ‘Sit down. I hope you’re hungry.’

‘Quite honestly I’d eat my granny at this stage, gristly though she is.’

She smiled broadly, and held up a bottle of wine, already half empty, with a glass. ‘Wine?’

I noticed that her second glass was still full and that she was near enough sober, so had probably consumed only one.

I sat at the table facing Celeste as she worked in her kitchenette, relaxed, and answered her offer, ‘Not tonight thank you. Just water please.’

‘Oh,’ she showed mild signs of nerves again, took a large slurp from her glass and said, ‘It’d have to be from the tap.’

I checked my phone while Celeste delivered my glass of water and sent a quick text reply.

She worked at making conversation, ‘When did you get back?’

I wiped tired eyes and pocketed the phone. ‘About two hours ago.’

‘Oh,’ she watched me wide-mouthed. ‘I wouldn’t have called if I’d known. I…’

‘Honestly, this is very welcome. Much better than a freezer meal.’

‘Oh good.’ She strained to relax again, by taking another large mouthful of wine. I noticed the short strawberry blonde hair had been styled and she had spoilt her clear grey eyes with mascara. ‘How was your journey?’

‘Boring. Yours?’

‘I slept most of the way.’

‘Always a good tactic.’

‘You travel a lot I suppose.’

‘Fair bit. How about you?’

She set about draining the spaghetti, expertly. This was obviously a well-practised dish. ‘Only lately. I worked in the London office before.’

‘Oh yes? How did you end up in Africa?’

She sighed, ‘I volunteered. They were looking for new people in the field and it sounded easy, to be honest. A chance to see something of the world whilst actually handing things out to the people who need them. And I wanted to practise some of the languages I’d been learning.’

‘Was it your first time?’

‘No. Fourth.’ She slipped the spaghetti into a dish and poured a gloriously rich-smelling sauce into another. Whilst carrying them to the table she said, ‘It’s always a shock seeing people, especially children, in that state.’

As I served some spaghetti to her plate and then to mine, Celeste retrieved her glass of wine. She brought the bottle with her, to top her glass up.

She said, ‘Wow. No one’s ever done that for me before.’

What she felt to be a minor social gaffe caused another visit to the glass.

I hadn’t caught on immediately, so I asked plainly, ‘What?’ while I spooned sauce on to her spaghetti.

Finally, the wine kicked in in earnest, and it kicked out all remaining anxiety. ‘Well, usually my guests just dig in and get their own. That’s,’ she searched for a word and came up with one that made her giggle, ‘gallant.’

I soberly wound spaghetti around my spoon and delivered it expertly to my desperate mouth. Whilst chewing with enormous satisfaction my expression and gesticulation told her it was delicious. I picked up the parmesan, holding up the glass dish by way of asking if she wanted some. While she began winding her spaghetti around the fork she asked for just a little. Having spooned some onto my plate I continued enjoying the flavourful food.

It was her fork and spoon being placed on her plate that caught my eyes. Hers were too shiny.

She said, ‘You’re different.’

‘No.’ I dabbed my lips with the piece of kitchen towel she’d folded in place of a napkin. ‘Definitely the same man you left in Africa. You can quiz me to check, if you like.’

She smiled, somewhat giddily. ‘My friends are not slobs but,’ again she searched for the right word but this time checked herself before speaking. ‘Sorry. That’s way too personal. Anyway, there’s an elephant in the room.’

I continued eating, enjoying the food very much. Celeste was eating less heartily.

‘It was horrible wasn’t it?’

I ceased my busy work with the cutlery in order to meet her eyes and express regret. ‘I’m afraid you’ll see worse if you continue working in certain areas of Africa.’

For a moment she blinked at me, and then turned to the comfort of her wine glass.

I cleared my plate and added quietly, ‘That’s not to denigrate an entire continent. Awful things happen all over the world and in your line of work you will see some of the worst. I try to balance it out.’

‘How?’

‘I do all the good I can while I’m there…’

‘By calling charity workers swindlers!’

She’d shocked herself with the outburst and gaped before getting a grip. That involved another large gulp of wine.

‘It felt that way from our point of view.’

‘It isn’t that way.’

I was aware that my line of work was not at the forefront of her mind. That something besides me was making her nervous. It was a topic I’d been gaining thinking time for.

‘Anyway, you know that’s not what I meant.’ She stared meaningfully, before emphasising, ‘That wasn’t even from this world.’

I gestured a request for a second helping by way of making more time to compose my response, and told her, ‘You should eat.’

‘I can’t. All I can think about is that demon.’

I told her one thing I felt certain of. ‘It wasn’t a demon. Look at me, Celeste.’ Her alarmed gaze met my calm one. ‘You can’t afford to be fanciful. And you need to eat. There’s nothing worse than hunger for developing a morbid imagination.’

There was a childish wobble to her lip. ‘They said it was a demon.’

‘Yes and I researched the term they used before I left Africa. They called it takoloshe. In other areas its name sounds more like thokolosi and tikoloshi. Excuse my poor accent.’

Celeste tried to smile.

‘It is generally described as a brown, hairy dwarf.’

‘That’s what it was!’

‘It wasn’t hairy.’

‘Yes it was! And it had red eyes. Nothing from this world has red eyes.’

‘It was a lightly hirsute child with bloodshot eyes.’

I raised my hand to prevent her interrupting.

‘Now listen, because if you still believe it was a demon when I’ve finished I’m going to question your sanity. And eat.’

She began slowly turning spaghetti on her fork.

‘The takoloshe they were screaming about is, they believe, a mischievous spirit that can become malevolent when controlled by an evil sorcerer.’

She swallowed a mouthful. ‘That’s what it was.’

‘A sorcerer, Celeste.’ I tried turning her thoughts away from a path she seemed bent on following. ‘Eat.’

She wound more spaghetti.

‘They use the concept to scare children like some people use the notion of a bogie man. And a few of them, when times are particularly bad like they were then, believe it to be a supernatural being whose power extends to causing illness and even death. People were dying there. They were afraid.’

‘I know what I saw. A demon. And that’s what you saw too.’

‘No. I saw a mother trying to save her malformed child from village women who believe in demons. Gowedo threw us out because he doesn’t like westerners seeing how they deal with what he also believed to be some kind of a curse. He has some western education. He knows we might have laughed at him for that.’

Since she responded to my straightforward reasoning with a frown, I introduced a different approach. One in which she might accept there is a tendency for fanciful humans to seek outlandish theories.

‘People all over the world, including the sophisticated industrialised countries, create outlandish explanations for unusual human conditions; frequently centring around extra-terrestrials these days.’

Her expression informed me that she did not appreciate what she perceived as a scathing tone. I elaborated in order to show her she hadn’t been singled out for scorn.

‘On September the sixteenth 1994, three flying saucers were reported to have been seen over Ariel school in Ruwa, Zimbabwe. One landed, so the story goes, and a small being with long black hair and large eyes stepped out of it. The people ran away so any investigations have been inconclusive.’

‘But they saw it.’

I frowned at her downcast face as she obediently filled her fork for the last time. Surely she wasn’t so naive.

While I finished my story I checked out her reaction, ‘UFOs are now commonly seen in Zimbabwe. They call them ruserwa.’

She looked up sharply, catching the calculations going on behind my eyes. ‘Oh, you just think I’m a basket case who’s been spooked by voodoo.’

‘I think you’ve been frightened and that a bottle of wine is not helping.’

I watched her attempt to release tension in her muscles. ‘I’ll get the ice cream and let’s change the subject. More water?’

‘Tea if you have some, please.’

While she made tea and spooned ice cream into dishes, I fell into private speculation concerning the team I’d set up to investigate Chief Gowedo’s village, and any other such reports in the region. It would be done by local, more enlightened people, who agreed with the work we were doing, and it would take a very long time probably.

It was as she was placing ice cream and tea in front of me, chatting animatedly over a new topic, that I realised Celeste’s imagination had led her into the realms of the conspiracy theorists. I should include here that that was a time when the media had released facts concerning the corruption of a number of bankers and high-powered industrialists along with certain politicians and media moguls. In fact, I’d tried hard to get transferred to the department working to clean up the news media.

‘Do you know where the banking disaster began?’

Obviously I did. But I chose to eat my ice cream before it melted rather than stir it to a mush as she was doing.

‘They created,’ she made dramatic quotation marks in the air, ‘money as a debt. Then they charged interest on it. And they did it on a global scale. Never mind sub-prime houses. This is the International Bank! Countries were put under an obligation to repay money that never existed. What’s that all about?’

‘Don’t ruin your ice cream.’

She scooped up a couple of big spoonfuls, giving herself time to prepare the next assertion. ‘Financiers know developing countries will never be able to repay those debts. It puts the population in poverty, leading to unrest, crises and eventually war.’

‘I think it’s more to do with unscrupulous individuals getting rich without a care for the consequences to others.’

‘No. I was reading about Clifford Hugh Douglas.’

I knew of this man. He’d founded the Social Credit School. ‘That was a century ago.’

She was surprised I was keeping up. Unfortunately, she read that as some level of agreement and interest.

‘And it’s still relevant today. It’s timeless. He said that people in charge of international finances have no interest in improving the money system. They’re only really interested in its consequences of war, sabotage and social friction, because then they can take charge. Once they’ve got this debt-system going, the countries they’ve got a hold over have to accept the solutions they give to them. And what they plan to give, are working towards in fact, is centralisation. Eventually they’ll impose a single world currency, and a one-world government in which sovereign states will be abolished.’

‘You’re making a conspiracy theory fit a basic framework you could shoe-horn any pet hatred to fit, such as political alliances and weapons trade. Your particular view often follows