THIRTY

He half woke, shivering, cold, but surrounded by warmth. He could not move.

I am dreaming, he thought. I am asleep. That is why I cannot move.

Someone was singing, softly, to him. A strange, almost Middle Eastern song. He was conscious that the wet clothes that had almost drowned him were not there any more. He was naked but dry.

Something was bothering him, though. Within the smell of woodsmoke, another familiar smell. One he couldn’t place. He didn’t want to think about it now and so he lapsed back into unconsciousness.

Hurting, though. He must be sleeping oddly. That happened sometimes, didn’t it? The dead arm, with pins and needles. Only it wasn’t like that. His arms were aching. He tried to move them again but they were stuck

And that smell. Not strong, but unpleasant.

He recognised it suddenly The smell of the butcher’s shop. The scent of uncooked meat. Of flesh. Of blood.

He tried to scream, but couldn’t. The noise died in his throat. He passed out again.

He opened his eyes with a start

She was there, opposite him, naked, bound to a chair, disfigured and mutilated. Her hanging breasts were crusted with blood and her belly had been criss-crossed by a blade, like pork before roasting. The cuts were so deep that beyond the skin he could see the pale fat.

Not Hibou, who he had been searching for, but Eloisa Fletchet.

With horror, he realised that he too was tied to a chair. And naked as well.

Her eyes were shut. Was she dead?

But her chest rose and fell very slightly, very slowly. She must be unconscious.

There was a tarpaulin on the floor beneath both of their chairs. Under Eloisa Fletchet it was thick with blood that had run down her chest, her belly, her groin and her legs onto the floor.

Breen vomited.

Awake again.

Someone was cleaning the sick off his legs, his belly. Off his penis.

He opened his eyes.

A man with long hair, brown, but with a little grey in it. His head was lower than Breen’s and the man’s face was entirely hidden by the curtain of long hair that dangled downwards, swishing gently from side to side as he dabbed the sponge backwards and forwards, pressing it into the folds of skin at Breen’s groin.

The tramp; Nicholas Doyle. He had cleaned himself, shaved off his beard, but it was the same man.

Breen tried to talk to him, but as he did so realised again that he could not speak. His mouth was now gagged. Instead he found himself making odd, animalish noises.

He must have passed out and been found on the shore. He had been dragged here, stripped of his wet clothes and tied to the chair opposite Mrs Fletchet. It was too fantastical a scene to comprehend. Pure horror.

He had almost drowned in water that would have been only a few degrees above freezing. He had been saved. He would have died out there on the beach. Perhaps that would have been better.

He would be suffering from hypothermia, he realised dimly. He knew it slowed your body and brain. It made understanding hard.

The man in front of him paused in his work. He too appeared at first to be naked, though when he stood, Breen saw he wore a pair of dirty khaki shorts that had a little blood on them. And a knife, sheathed in his belt. The strange man was bronzed, even in winter, and wiry, the outline of his ribs showing on his chest. He unclipped the knife and held it in front of Breen.

Breen’s eyes widened; his head flinched backwards. Knives always terrified him. More than guns or bombs.

The man nodded and said, ‘Shh.’ Then he reached the knife around the back of Breen’s head and cut through the gag. It fell onto Breen’s naked lap.

‘Where is Hibou?’ Breen said, but his voice was unintelligible. His jaw felt like iron, his lips like cardboard.

‘You are Nicholas Doyle,’ Breen tried again. A croak, devoid of consonants. His lungs were weak, he realised. He had been exhausted by his time in the water.

The man said nothing, just kept sponging the vomit from Breen’s body. The water was warm and trickled between his legs, but the man continued cleaning him. He was doing it carefully, respectfully.

‘So you’re not dead, after all,’ said Breen, as loudly as he could manage.

‘Oh, I wouldn’t say that, exactly,’ said Doyle. He spoke in a soft, soothing cockney.

‘What’s happening?’ said Breen.

‘Tell me how you found me.’

Breen tried to remember.

‘Tell me. I will hurt you if you don’t tell me.’

‘You tortured her,’ said Breen. ‘Why?’

‘No questions,’ said Doyle.

‘What about Hibou?’

‘Shh,’ said Doyle. ‘Everything will be OK soon. You are Helen’s friend, aren’t you?’

Breen nodded.

‘I’ve watched you,’ said Doyle.

He squeezed the sponge into a basin and stood back. ‘You’re clean now,’ he said. ‘Tell me how you found me?’

‘What about her?’ said Breen, nodding his head towards Eloisa Fletchet.

‘She’s close,’ said Doyle.

‘Close to what?’

Doyle didn’t answer. He left the room with the basin of dirty water.

For the first time, Breen looked around.

They were in a shack of some kind. It was a decrepit affair, smelling of seaweed and woodsmoke. To one side, driftwood was stacked in a pile next to a small iron stove. The room was lit by a single paraffin lamp hanging from a hook in the wooden ceiling. There were a couple of fishing rods leaning against the wall. It was still dark outside, but this was early spring. The nights were long. How many hours had he been unconscious?

In front of the stove, Eloisa Fletchet’s eyes fluttered. Breen noticed the cigarette burns on her skin. The same as Bill Milkwood; the same as Alexandra Tozer. Breen thought for a moment she was going to regain consciousness, but she didn’t. Her skin was pale. She had lost a great deal of blood already. The same slow, methodical torture.

Doyle returned with his knife unsheathed. Sharpened blades; Breen’s phobia.

Breen stared at it, wide-eyed. Before he realised what Doyle was doing, he raised his hand over Breen’s mouth and pressed, held the knife against Breen’s belly and sliced once, diagonally.

Breen sucked in air through his nose. A silent scream, though surprisingly the cut had hurt less than he expected.

Doyle said, ‘How did you find me?’

When his chest stopped rising and falling so hard, Doyle released his hand.

‘Don’t,’ whispered Breen. ‘Please.’

‘How?’

‘Police are out there looking for you.’ His voice was powerless. Doyle leaned his head closer to his mouth. ‘They know I went this way. They’ll be here any moment.’

Doyle shook his head. ‘I found you crawling outside over an hour ago. If they were behind you they’d be here by now. You’re lying.’

Breen’s heart fell. Helen hadn’t persuaded them to follow. He was on his own. Doyle replaced his hand on Breen’s mouth and sliced again.

This time it hurt. He felt warmth fill his lap. This was his own blood, dribbling down, mingling with Eloisa Fletchet’s on the floor.

‘How?’

‘I had a photograph of you. From Kenya. Hibou recognised it.’

‘Yes. She did.’

Dimly, Breen wondered where Hibou was. She must have tried to come here. But he couldn’t see her.

‘You were in Kenya,’ Breen blurted.

‘Yes. That’s right.’

Breen was thinking desperately. Keep him talking. The longer he could do that, the longer he could postpone Doyle tying on the gag again. ‘You must have seen terrible things.’

No response.

‘I spoke to a Kenyan man whose girlfriend had scars…’

Doyle paused for a second. Nodded. ‘Terrible things,’ he said.

‘You tortured people.’

Doyle was untying the knot from the gag.

‘Was that where you learned to torture people?’

‘You know about it?’ he said.

‘A little,’ Breen said.

Doyle lifted the knife and scratched his chin with it.

‘Jim Fletchet is a devil.’ He was surrounded by blood and the body of a dying woman, and this man was calling Fletchet a devil.

‘It was never about hurting people,’ said Doyle. ‘Not for me. You should understand that.’

Breen saw a glimmer. ‘No? But for the others?’

‘Fletchet, definitely. He is a bastard. A corrupter of men.’

‘I need to understand,’ said Breen.

Doyle didn’t answer. He turned, opened the door on a small blackened stove and threw a piece of driftwood inside.

Where was Hibou?

‘I’ve watched you,’ said Doyle. ‘On the farm. I watched you looking at where I left Alexandra.’

‘You were there, all the time?’

Doyle nodded.

‘You knew Alexandra?’

Doyle shook his head. ‘Not really. I knew Jimmy was in love with her. I saw them fucking in his car. Are you in love with Alexandra’s sister?’

Breen said, ‘Yes, I am.’

Doyle nodded.

Breen looked in the hope that there would be daylight in the sky outside but it was still dark. He could keep Doyle talking. They would find them. But the longer it took, the less chance Eloisa Fletchet would have.

‘I met Penny,’ said Breen. ‘In London.’

‘How is she?’

‘Sad. She thinks you’re dead.’

‘She is right. I am dead,’ said Doyle. He walked over to Eloisa and held his face close to hers, feeling her breathing. ‘Is Alexandra’s sister in love with you?’

‘No,’ said Breen.

They were in a dirty wooden shed of a building, with a tortured woman dying next to him, and they were talking about love.

‘And you? Are you in love with Penny?’ asked Breen.

‘I am dead, remember?’ said Doyle. ‘I am not capable of love. I haven’t been for many years. It’s strange how attractive that can make you to women like Penny. And Hibou.’ He picked up Eloisa’s limp arm and felt her pulse. Was he checking to see if she was still alive?

Breen looked at him. He had a crude tattoo on his left arm. Under a Union Jack, it read ‘Queen and Country’. He was around thirty-five years old, but scrawny and fit still. Under his long hair, his face was sharp and angular.

‘Is she dying?’ said Breen.

‘Not yet.’

‘You can save her still,’ Breen said.

Doyle snorted. ‘Not her. She’s not worth saving. I was in love once,’ he said, taking out his knife again.

‘Tell me about it,’ said Breen, desperately.

Doyle glared at Breen, then suddenly seemed to relax. ‘People tell stories all the time in Africa. You want to hear mine?’

‘I’m not going anywhere.’

‘No,’ said Doyle. ‘You’re not. One thing I have missed is company.’

The cuts were starting to sting now. ‘You’re going to kill me, aren’t you?’

‘I don’t have a lot of choice.’

‘They’ll know it was you.’

‘The police think I’m dead in Spain. They’ve nothing to connect me to you.’ He turned towards the dying woman. ‘The only person who will know it’s me is… your husband, Eloisa. He’s known all along.’

Breen said, ‘What about Hibou? She knows where you are. Did you kill her too?’

Doyle seemed surprised by the question. ‘No. I decided not to.’

‘Where is she?’

‘She said she saw a photograph. She heard you talking about me as the man who had killed Alexandra. So she came to find out for herself.’

‘She’s alive?’

Doyle sighed. ‘Don’t agitate yourself. It does not help.’

‘Tell me.’

‘Yes.’

Breen heard a muffled banging from somewhere. ‘Hibou!’ he called.

The banging got louder. Doyle looked at Breen. ‘Please. It’s better for her if she is not stirred up.’

She must be in another part of the shed, tied to a bed or a chair, banging a foot against the floor or the wall.

‘Shh,’ said Doyle, louder. ‘If you don’t calm down, I’ll have to tie you tighter.’

The banging stopped.

‘Will you let her go?’ Breen asked.

‘How can I? Thanks to you, she knows who I am.’

‘So you are going to kill her anyway?’

‘Death is not important. You don’t know that yet. But you will. I’ve seen a lot of people die. What is important is how you do it. If you are prepared, it doesn’t leave marks on your soul.’ The muffled banging from next door continued. Doyle stood. ‘Hush, girl,’ he called. ‘Relax. Clear you mind, like I taught you.’

Breen could not turn his head fully, but the sound seemed to be coming from the other side of a partition made of planks of wood.

‘Tell me about Kenya,’ said Breen. Keep him talking.

‘The energy is different there. Have you ever lived in a hot country? No? You loved it, didn’t you, Eloisa? We agreed on that, at least. You used to say you adored the heat. I did too. I was in the police, like Mr Breen here, remember? Fresh out of Hendon. Spent a couple of months in Nairobi, then I was stationed in Nyeri with Milkwood. The White Highlands, they called it. And that was where all the Mau Mau militants were. Mickey Mau Maus you used to call them. And then, early ’53, a couple of us were seconded to where you were, a tiny little place called Ngala. Myself and Sergeant Milkwood. It’s where I fell in love.’

‘Eloisa says you went native.’

‘No. I just stopped being a cunt. That’s what you didn’t like, Eloisa, wasn’t it?’

Doyle opened a tin and pulled out a hand-rolled cigarette. Opening the stove door, he lit a twig and used it to light the small cigarette, then he lowered himself onto his haunches, squatting on the floor.

‘After Nairobi, Ngala was great. I was twenty-one. And in the morning the sun would rise behind a beautiful mountain called Mount Kenya. Some parts of the White Highlands were like World War Two, but the troubles hadn’t come to Ngala, not then. It was paradise. We were kings, us white men. It was a little village. Everybody said, “Hello, sir.” There was a little shop in the village. Sold powdered milk for the tea. Stuff like that. “Hello, sir! Your usual?” Packet of fags. Bottle of beer. Can you imagine anything better? Me. A lad from Bow.’

‘No,’ said Breen. ‘I can’t imagine that.’

‘You and your husband put us up in a chalet on their farm,’ said Doyle. ‘I thought you were wonderful. You had us round for dinner. Drinks on the veranda. Oh yes. You gave me the thirst. Isn’t that right, Mrs Fletchet?’ He addressed her naked, unconscious form, then looked back at Breen. ‘But back then, I couldn’t believe my luck. Great people. Plenty of everything. Because we were white, Bill and me, we were OK. Back in England I would have been shit to you, but out in Kenya, it was like I was a king. I had respect. Everything. Even me, I had a servant. Well, a houseboy, anyway. He looked after Milkwood and me at our quarters. Me. A lad from a back-to-back. Drinking gin and bitters on your patio. What were those little things you used to serve with the gin, Mrs F?’

Eloisa Fletchet groaned, but she didn’t seem to be fully conscious.

‘Gherkins. Pickled gherkins on little sticks.’ He mimed holding up a toothpick. ‘It was lovely. Though I’m not sure you approved of me, did you, Mrs Fletchet? You didn’t like your husband mingling with a couple of mere coppers. But he knew what he was doing. We were new in the country. We needed taking in hand. He explained the things we couldn’t see. How families like his had come here in the Thirties. His uncle had settled the place. How there had been nothing here when they arrived. They had made this place. He knew about the Kikuyu, the local people. Spoke a bit of the language. Said he admired them. Wonderful people.

‘We heard about the Mau Mau atrocities everywhere else. All the white farmers were getting ready for their turn. Out in Ngala they didn’t touch us. So we didn’t have much to do, except file reports. I met the local schoolteacher, Ruth Wairimu. She was twenty-five. Older than me. She taught in the local Kikuyu School. One day I met her in the village shop… a tiny little outpost it was… and said hello. She asked me if I would read Shakespeare to her schoolchildren. Me. Read Shakespeare. She said she wanted her children to hear an Englishman read the Bard.’

The rain had started now. It spattered onto the window behind the blankets that hung as curtains.

‘So I did. I always liked English. It was my favourite subject at school. Her school, it was this concrete block with a tin roof. All these desks lined up. And Ruth there in front of them all. She handed a book to me and made me read out of it. She gave me Hamlet,’ he said.

 

‘Who would fardels bear,

To grunt and sweat under a weary life,

But that the dread of something after death,

The undiscover’d country from whose bourn

No traveller returns, puzzles the will

And makes us rather bear those ills we have

Than fly to others that we know not of?’

 

He spoke it quietly, with feeling, looking straight at Mrs Fletchet. ‘Bloody love Shakespeare. I don’t know if they understood a word I said. Ruth explained it all to them… They loved it. All that murder and plotting. Next day we went for drinks on your veranda. Remember that, Mrs Fletchet?’ No reaction. ‘“Oh, I hear you’ve been getting chummy with the local schoolmistress,” said your husband. “Yeah. As it happens…” He sidles over to me and says, “Word to the wise, old chum. Steer clear of the dark meat. If you want it, go to Nairobi. Plenty there. Not round here. Word gets around.” So what if word gets around?

‘I said, “She’s not after my body, only my mind.” We all had a good laugh at that, but you could see it there. And obviously I knew what he was getting at. We had our place. They had their place. Mess that up and it all goes wrong.’ Doyle looked at his watch, then said, ‘But I didn’t want to admit it. I’d fallen in love with her from the start. She was beautiful. Not like you were beautiful, Mrs F. God, you were gorgeous, and didn’t you know it? But Ruth was clever. And she didn’t treat me like some piece of dog shit.’

Mrs Fletchet was waxy white. She did not have long left.

‘In the evenings I would go and sit with her outside the house she shared with the other schoolteacher. There was this amazing noise, in the evening. All the crickets and toads. It was beautiful. We would sit on a bench where everyone could see us, so she could show everyone we were not getting up to no good, you know? I used to love to hear her talk. It was always about her kids. The stupid things they’d done. Out there, one moment it’s the afternoon, the next it’s night-time. The night comes down like a curtain in a play. And sometimes we would only sit there and just listen to the noise of the bugs. She was really funny and smart. I had to write reports and she’d help me with them. It was nothing more than just holding hands. I wanted more, of course. I did try, but she wouldn’t let me…

‘And then the raids came to Ngala. It was always at night. You never saw them, not at first. There was one on a farm fifty miles away, first. A settler’s boy was killed. White. About ten. That was really shocking. They’d already killed half a dozen blacks, but now it was that they’d killed one of us, you know? Then a week later they raided your farm, but your husband was ready. He had guns there and paid men to stay up all night. The Mau Mau weren’t expecting so many bullets to be coming their way and they scarpered. Your headman was nicked by a bullet, I think, but that was the worst of it. In the morning we went out and found the body of one of the Mickeys, hit in the middle of the chest by a bullet. The wound was crawling with ants, I’ll never forget. First real dead man I’d seen.’

He took a puff from his cigarette.

‘I was shocked by the effect it had on me. We were thrilled. We’d seen them off. Only when I told Ruth about it, I burst out crying. I couldn’t help it. The shock of seeing someone dead, I suppose. She held my head in her lap like I was a child and I sobbed and sobbed. That night she took me into her room and kissed me, properly.

‘Anyway, that was the beginning of the end of it. The worst raid was in September. I was in the police station when I heard all the Home Guard jumping into a Land Rover. Your husband was with them, Mrs F. He had his hunting rifle. Huge great thing. A Magnum.’

Breen remembered Eloisa Fletchet talking about the guns she had used to shoot elephants with.

‘They said they had heard that the Mau Mau were preparing to attack the next farm to us. There must have been ten of us. Took us an hour to get there, so it was almost dark by the time we arrived. I remember how we waited for the Mau Mau, guns at the ready. My heart was going crazy. Out there it’s so dark, you know, like a wall of black. And I was thinking: They’re out there. Soon they’ll start firing at us. Only they didn’t. False alarm.

‘So we got into the Land Rover and made it back to Ngala as the sun was coming up, exhausted. And then we heard it, over the engine noise. This wailing sound. And as we rounded the bend into the village, everyone was outside, crying.

‘The Mau Mau had come in the night while we were all away and attacked the headman’s house. They killed all his family. Two men, five women and three kiddies. All hacked to death with knives and machetes, then the whole place had been set alight. When we got back there were still bits of them everywhere. That was what they did, the Mau Mau. They wanted to make everyone afraid. And they did. It was dreadful. I wasn’t used to dead bodies still.’

‘You are now,’ said Breen.

Doyle ignored him. ‘But I didn’t cry this time. I was angry. That night I went to see Ruth. This time it was her who cried. It turned out she taught two of the children who had been murdered. I was so angry. She was grieving so hard, it shocked me. As if they had been her own children. I couldn’t stay long because I had to get back on duty. That would be the last time we were properly together. That same night, going back home to my quarters, I went down past the Home Guard station and I heard someone screaming. Someone really in pain.

‘So I went inside. “What the bloody hell’s going on in here?” There was a man called Jeremiah. A sergeant in the Home Guard. Short-arse with a round face and a big smile. He said, “We are questioning a suspect.” And I could hear behind the door this man whimpering. Saying something in Kikuyu I didn’t understand. “Let me see,” I said. So they opened the door. And there was this naked man. Tied to a chair with wire. It was real dark in the room. But I could see he was bleeding from between his legs.

‘His head was down. I didn’t recognise him at first. Then he must have realised that someone else was in the room and he looked up. It was one of the guys who ran a shop in the village where I used to go to buy beer. I said, “This guy’s not a Mickey. I know him. You all know him.”

‘“No, no, no. He’s one of them,” said Jeremiah. “He takes money for the Mau Mau. We raided his shop and we found the money.” I was shocked. First that they had been torturing this guy I knew, then that they were saying he was a Mau Mau. I’d always thought he was OK.

‘The guy looked up. I didn’t know his name, but he recognised me. “Please, sir,” he said. “Help me.”

‘I was horrified. I said to Jeremiah, “He’s a local. You can’t treat him like that.”

‘Jeremiah just smiled. And then I heard a voice behind me. “Of course he can. This is an emergency.” It was your husband. And he was standing there, cool as anything.

‘I said, “What’s happening? There must be a mistake.”

‘But your husband said no, the Mau Mau must have had spies in the village, you see. The Mau Mau were all holed up in the Aberdare Mountains, miles away. The moment we had gone, somebody would have snuck out and told the Mickeys the village was undefended. That’s how they caught us with our pants down.’

Breen looked toward the window. The first daylight was breaking beyond the curtain. Doyle reached in the pocket of his shorts and pulled out his pack of tobacco again.

‘You see, the shopkeeper had confessed. Milkwood told me how it worked. Behind our backs, the Mau Mau extorted locals to support them. They might not even want to, but they had to. Otherwise they’d be attacked. That’s why they’d killed the village headman and his family. Because he wouldn’t pay. That’s how the Mickeys survived. And it turned out this shopkeeper was their book-keeper. They even found this ledger with the names of people in the village in it and sums of money next to it. The shopkeeper claimed it was just the money they owed him on account, but Jeremiah wasn’t having any of it. Far as I was concerned, if he was the one that took the money, that made him just as bad as the men who chopped up those women and children.’

Doyle licked the new cigarette he was making. ‘I was shocked, I admit. I had trusted this guy. I had bought goods from him. Given him ciggies. And here was your husband telling me he was a terrorist. Of course I believed him. I thought of Ruth’s girls, chopped to pieces in front of their own mother and father. Fair enough. Hurt him all you want, I thought. He deserves it.

‘I never found out what happened to the shopkeeper. I guess he died. If you’d asked me then, I’d have said, “Serves him right.” I’d seen the dead bodies. I’d seen what the Mau Mau did, with my own eyes.’

He stopped talking and lit the new cigarette. He sucked in smoke, then leaned down to pick up the gag. Then he walked behind Breen and tied it around his mouth, so tightly that Breen’s cheeks were drawn back against his teeth.

Breen tried to call out, but all he could manage was a squeak through the cloth.

‘Only then, a couple of days later, I walked into the village for supplies and I saw the shop was still open, so I went in, apprehensive like. And there, standing behind the counter, large as life, was Jeremiah, with this big smile on his face. “Welcome to my shop,” he said. “For you, sir, a special discount.”

‘I remember your husband saying, “So what? The loyal ones deserve their reward. If we don’t support them, we’ll be as bad as the bloody Colonial Office.”’

Doyle sucked the cigarette once more until it was hot, then held it against the skin on Breen’s right arm, just below his shoulder. Breen squealed with pain. He was going to torture him to death, just as he was killing Eloisa Fletchet.

‘That was only the beginning. The Mickeys had more guns now. It seemed as if the Mickeys raided all the time at the end of the year. Always at night. It wasn’t like you ever saw them. Sometimes we fought them off OK. Once they killed a couple of the Home Guard. Another time they caught two girls and raped and killed them. It turned out they were Jeremiah’s cousins. Another time we found a body in the rice fields. This Mickey had been hit and had tried to crawl off, but he hadn’t got far. I felt fine, looking at him, that time. Happy, even. It tears your sanity away, in the end.’

Doyle removed the cigarette, pulled on it a few more times, then pressed it against Breen’s skin a little lower down. Again, Breen’s scream was muffled by the gag.

‘Fletchet was screening everybody in the villages for miles around now. That’s what they called it: screening. Did you ever bother asking him what he actually did, Mrs F? The Home Guard were doing it, supposedly, but mostly it was your husband and Milkwood. They would go off in the Land Rover and come back with three or four people in the back. Then the screening would begin. Thing is, someone like me couldn’t tell if they were Mau Mau or not. They all denied it. You would, wouldn’t you? If you admitted it, you’d be sent for hanging. Or you’d have to become an informer, in which case the Mickeys would probably kill you anyway.

‘At the beginning, I remember asking your husband, “How can you tell which is real and which isn’t?” “That’s the trick,” he said. And he pulled out this lanky guy and we took him into the screening room. Because that’s what we all called it now. The screening room. First off, Fletchet asked him for his ID. Guy said he had lost it. I remember Fletchet smiled at me. See? But that didn’t prove anything, did it? I thought: Loads of them don’t have proper ID.

‘Then Fletchet said, “You’re one of the ones who raided the Home Guard last week, aren’t you?” The guy just shrugged. No. Not me. And he glared at Fletchet. This real dead man’s glare. So Fletchet picked up this gun and swung it round at the man’s head so hard he knocked the guy right off his feet. Crack. The guy got up and still said he had nothing to do with it. He was scared now, though. You could tell.

‘So was he a Mickey or not? Fletchet said to me, “You think I’m being too hard, don’t you? Well, I already have a list of five people who have already told me this guy is a Y1.” We used to classify people as Z, Y or X. Y1 was a Mau Mau of lower rank. Fletchet used to write it all down in a ledger. Name, address, classification. He had all these little code letters too to show what we’d done to them; how far we’d had to go before they confessed. All neat it was, like it made what we were doing official.

‘So this guy was down on his knees now. Pleading with us. I had thought he looked so genuine. The pleading looked real enough too. Your husband said, “See? You can’t tell, can you?” But, look, we already knew he was one of them. I believed Fletchet. This man had taken the oath. And if they broke the Mau Mau oath, they’d be killed. So he had to deny it. No choice. Fletchet said the only way you’re going to get it out of them is to make them more scared of you than they are of the Mau Mau. And he handed me the gun. “Go on,” he said.’

Doyle moved around to the other side and started there. Fresh skin. Fresh pain. Breen threw his head backwards and forwards, trying to loosen the gag, but he couldn’t.

‘I thought of that girl who had been in Ruth’s class. I had seen her body. One of her little hands had been cut off where she’d tried to stop the killer. And this guy in front of me was one of them. So when Fletchet handed me the gun, I had a go too.

‘It wasn’t as hard as you’d think, once you’d hit them the first time. I whacked him in the guts with the butt and it didn’t take long until he started spilling names of people. I didn’t enjoy it, but it was a result. It had to be done. And when I hit him, he gave the names of other people in the village. Fletchet wrote it all down in his book, but then he said, “We could send him to the magistrates’ court. But they’re so backed up with cases they probably won’t even try him till next year. And if they do, one of those coloured lawyers from Nairobi will end up defending him. Maybe even getting him off. That would be ridiculous.”’

Doyle shook his head, as if in answer to something Breen had said. ‘I couldn’t do it. Not that time, anyway. Fletchet did it.’ Doyle made his fingers into a gun and held it to Eloisa’s unconscious head. ‘Bang.’

He stubbed the cigarette out on Breen’s left arm. The pain was excruciating.

‘Like I said, you get used to it,’ said Doyle. He sat down in a chair. Blinked, relaxed. ‘I didn’t tell her what we were doing. But Ruth knew. It was only a small place. I remember going to visit her. She’d be sitting on that bench outside her house. After that first man I interrogated, that was it. When she saw me coming she stood up, she went inside and bolted the door. I knocked, but she wouldn’t answer. She wouldn’t have nothing to do with me after that. I was hurt at first. I said, “He was a Mau Mau. He’s the reason why your pupils are dead.”

‘Your husband said it again: “You never know which side people are on, around here.” I refused to believe that. I thought maybe it was just too dangerous for her to be seen with me now. So I spent more time with your husband and Milkwood. And anyway, things got worse. We spent each day screening people. The attacks carried on. I was spending all day in the station now. More and more and more of them.’

He left the room for a small bedroom to the right. Breen craned his head, but couldn’t see where he was going.

‘You quickly learned there was a point when everyone was going to start naming people. But I noticed something else. As people became more frightened, of us and the Mau Mau, that point became further and further away. Each day, what we had to do to get them to confess got worse. Your husband had started using pliers on their hands, by then. He would cut off fingers. Then we were putting electricity on their balls. They would jump up and down in the chair. I didn’t do it. They did. I watched, though. You just got used to it. We really believed that unless we did it, the tide would engulf us.’

When Doyle returned he was holding a hunting knife.

‘The Home Guard station had become a prison camp now. We’d made them build these huts and it had wire all around the place. By Christmas we were holding two, three hundred people, waiting to screen them. It was exhausting. I have never been so tired in my life. Every day we would be interrogating. All day, every day. We lost our minds. Every day this thing ran deeper. More people. More confessions. Then in the evenings we’d clean up, go to your house for a lovely gin and tonic, like everything was all perfectly normal. “Any news from home?”, “What about the cricket?”

‘Inflicting fear and pain becomes a kind of science. Your humanity disappears. But it worked, in a way. By the next spring, attacks were dying out. We had rounded up so many Kikuyu that we had ripped the heart out of the Mau Mau.’

Doyle stood in front of Breen; he held one hand on Breen’s thigh, keeping him down. He sucked on the cigarette, then held it by Breen’s nipple and pressed.

Breen bucked and wriggled, felt his eyes rolling back into his head. This was tender skin; Doyle had known that the pain would be far worse than before.

Doyle stood back and sucked the cigarette into life. ‘Ruth never came near me all that time. Then one day, in the middle of the night, I heard a knocking on the door of our house. I was a little bit pissed. We’d been drinking at your place. I was drunk every day then, after work. It was the only way I could sleep. You had to be careful opening the door at night. I remember poking my gun out the door and looking round. And there was Ruth, scared to be out late, scared in case anyone saw her coming to see the white policeman.

‘I was so happy to see her. I thought she’d come to see me. I realised how much I’d missed our conversations. I must have been babbling on to her, but she put her finger to her lips and said I was being too loud. She said we had arrested this boy. A former pupil of hers. She asked us to be merciful with him. She swore he was nothing to do with the Mau Mau. That he was a good, Christian boy. “How do you know?” I said. She wrote his name down on a piece of paper for me. I said I would do what I could but she’d have to kiss me first. If he was not a Mau Mau, he’d be fine. I was drunk still from all your gin, Mrs F. All I wanted was a single kiss. But she pushed me away.

‘I was angry with her. It was hard, what we were doing. She should have understood that. Understood that I loved her. Next day I looked out for this fellow, all the same. I would have done anything for Ruth. Couldn’t find him anywhere. I searched all the quarters. Asked all the Home Guard men. They all shook their heads.

‘That night at Fletchet’s place, I asked, casual like, about him. “He was a Mickey,” Fletchet said. It turned out Milkwood had already interrogated him. He had confessed. One of the Home Guard had executed him that morning. “And why are you so interested in him, Nicky?” said Fletchet. “Would it have anything to do with that visit last night you had from the schoolteacher, Miss Wairimu?”

‘I should have realised. Milky had heard Ruth coming to our quarters the night before. He’d heard her asking about the boy. “Did she offer to fuck you, for information?” said Fletchet.

‘I was drunk again. Your gin, Mrs F. I told them they were talking rubbish. Ruth? She would never do that. Everything was getting out of hand. Fletchet called me naive. He laughed at me. Milkwood knew she was sneaking into my room at night, he said. She was a spy. How fucking dare he say that? I remember standing up and smacking him one in the face. That was the last thing I remember. Milkwood clocked me on the head. A gin bottle, I think it was, Mrs Fletchet. I went down like a sack of shit.’

Breen had discovered that if he sat still, the pain seemed to lessen. Some blood still trickled out of the wounds, down onto his naked thighs, but not much. He tried to listen.

‘I woke up locked in our quarters. I screamed and hammered on the door but nobody came. They put food through the front door. Milkwood arrived, eventually, the next morning. He said they were sending me home to England. Compassionate grounds. I said, “Where’s Ruth?”

‘He said, “Forget about her.” I ran to the screening station. They had taken Ruth that previous night after they’d knocked me out. I think they were both drunk. They raped her and tortured her, then left her for dead. She had confessed too, they said. She was a Y, they said. I saw her body too. They had left it in the ditch behind the screening camp. They had tortured her for the whole night and day. They had tortured her with cigarettes. They had cut her breasts. They had cut her stomach. Cut fingers off both hands. They had pushed a boiled egg into her vagina.’

‘Like Alexandra Tozer,’ Breen tried to say, but the cloth stopped the words.

‘Everything I had believed in was a lie. Who had been Mau Mau and who hadn’t. It was all just madness. They didn’t know. Nobody knew. That was the point. All they were doing was making everyone afraid of them. There was no logic. Only fear. When they let me out I refused to go back to England. I was sacked on grounds of ill health, they said. I went to Nairobi. I spent months there, writing letters to the head of the police force. To the Governor. To anyone I could think of, telling them what had happened.

‘They didn’t want to believe me. Nobody did. I tried to see the Central Province Commissioner and the Member for African Affairs. All of them refused to see me. They said I was unwell. I wrote home to the papers. But it was over now. Everybody wanted to forget it had ever happened. Even the bloody liberals and leftists. It was all in the past already, as far as they were concerned. I became known as a troublemaker.’

He leaned forward and removed Breen’s gag. Breen sucked in air.

‘Alexandra Tozer never did anything,’ said Breen.

‘Neither did Ruth. Neither did most of the people we tortured in Ngala. I killed people there. I could have gone mad after seeing what I’d seen and what I’d done,’ said Doyle. ‘Instead I became sane. I saw through the illusion. I travelled. I spoke to monks who taught me the meaning of death. Who helped me see that life was the illusion. But when I came back to England, what happened? I found out that you and Jimmy had become Lord and Lady. All the things you did. And you just sailed through it all.’

‘Alexandra Tozer. She never did anything,’ Breen said again.

‘You’re so hung up on death. You don’t realise. That’s part of the dream. That’s why it hurts you so much to die. Once you know that, nothing can hurt you any more. When I got back here, I followed Jimmy around to see whether he had changed, like I had. But he hadn’t. One day I saw them fucking. I was close by. She was beautiful. He had killed the woman I loved. So I could take her away from him, just as she had taken Ruth from me. Ruth had never done anything either.’

‘Let her go,’ said Breen, nodding towards Eloisa. ‘She’ll die. You can get help.’

‘I don’t need help. I don’t want it.’

‘You’re going to kill me?’

Doyle didn’t answer.

‘You’re blaming Fletchet, but it was you who did the torturing. You’ve admitted it. You’re as guilty as he was.’

‘And I’m going to be the one who punishes him. He knows that. Each time I do this he can see me coming. He knows I’m coming. He’s afraid. Each time, he becomes more and more afraid. And his life will be hell for as long as I choose. He taught me well, didn’t he?’

Doyle held the gag in his hands. He was going to kill him in the same way as he had killed Alexandra Tozer and Bill Milkwood.

Doyle looked at his watch.

There was a pattern. Each one the same. A long message to Fletchet. I am still out there. I am coming for you.

‘Why did Milkwood pay you off?’

‘He was a coward. He was scared. Wouldn’t you be? But I persuaded him I could help him in return. I knew all about drugs. I started to give him information.’

‘Real or fake?’

‘Real, mostly. Not that the rest of the Drug Squad cared either way. As long as they got arrests.’

‘But you killed him all the same?’

‘I was coming down here. Back in January I saw police cars at the farm. You were visiting, but I thought the investigation was starting again. I realised I was running out of time. So yes, it was time for him to die.’

‘But not before you’d given him information that you could use to fake your death. About drug gangs in Spain.’

‘You knew about that?’ Doyle tied the gag even tighter this time.

Breen was overtaken with a huge tiredness. The torture would be slow and long. And utterly pointless. And then he would die.