Thabiti and Judy were directed by a Lewa security guard towards an encampment of round mud huts with dried grass and reed roofs. As they approached, three chickens, which had been quietly pecking at the ground, squawked and ran off, flapping their wings, pursued by a naked toddler.
A woman backed out of the doorway of one of the huts. She was bent double and flicked a brush, made from a bundle of reeds, to and fro as she swept the dry earth floor.
Thabiti followed Judy, who strode purposely towards a group of men sitting on upturned crates and sections of tree trunks.
“Good afternoon. I’m Constable Wachira, from Nanyuki police station. I understand you were working at the marathon site yesterday morning.”
A man with a scar above his left eye looked up at her, squinting in the sunlight and responded, “Is this about the woman’s body Baz and Blaze found this morning?”
“Yes it is. And the young woman was murdered, hence my enquiries.” Judy stood with a straight back and her feet close together.
The man shook his head and murmured to his friends, “Bad business. And bad for business.”
A thick-set man looked up, shielding his eyes with his hand, and asked, “What do you want to know from us?”
Constable Wachira stepped closer and removed her notebook from her trouser pocket. “Well, to start with, did you see a lone English woman wandering through the conservancy, or near the marathon track yesterday morning?”
The men in the circle all shook their heads as they considered the bare earth.
The thick-set man said, “We get plenty of crazy mzungus around marathon time. You had one on Friday night, didn’t you?” He nudged his friend, a younger man with a gold earring.
The man with the scar looked at him and said, “Do you mean the woman whose car had broken down in Borana?”
“Tell me about it,” prompted the young constable.
The man looked at her shyly, bit his bottom lip and said, “You see, my boss got this call. Apparently some English woman had decided to take a shortcut through Borana to reach the marathon, rather than using the main road. But she’d taken a wrong turn, got herself lost, and then her car had broken down. I was sent to collect her.”
“And where was this?” asked Judy as she sucked the end of her pen.
“Below that new lodge, near the watering hole where they’ve built a viewing platform. Mind you, I never saw the car. I just picked her up and brought her back here.”
Thabiti shuffled forward and cleared his throat. The men looked at him and he felt the heat rise in his face as he asked hesitantly, “Was it a young woman wearing a floppy hat, or with fair hair cut quite short?”
The stocky man nudged the younger one again and cried, “Oh no. This one was quite a looker, wasn’t she?”
The younger man drew in the earth with his finger but said nothing.
The stocky man grinned at Thabiti. “She had long glossy dark hair and moved like a cheetah.”