Chapter Thirty-Six

Sauer slowed down as he turned into Twist Street. He drove slowly as Hobbs scanned the street for the Luscious Love Sex Shop. Nothing.

Twist Street is a one-way. They had to come down Claim Street before turning up in Twist again. Sauer crawled along. The motorists behind them honked their horns and swore. Sauer threw a signs out the window, not really paying attention to who it was aimed. Up and down they drove, retracing their steps again and again. Nothing. “Why don’t we just ask?” Hobbs suggested.

“Yes maybe…I think the place has either been moved or closed down.”

Hobbs spotted a line of tired prostitutes sunning themselves outside a café. The sat with their backs against the wall, their legs wide open. “Let’s ask them.”

Sauer slammed on the brakes. All of the prostitutes jumped up and run away, except for one. She merely looked up at them. “I am a South African,” she repeated loudly while patting herself on the chest. “I am a South African.”

“Where is the sex shop?” Hobbs was very short.

“You want some now?” She dropped her head slightly to one side.

Hobbs took a deep breath. “There is nothing in this world that I would want from you. I have a hand…I want to know where the Luscious Love Sex Shop is.”

She looked at him wearily, shaking her head.

“I take it you have never heard of it or seen it.”

She stared at Hobbs with a blank face. He felt like swearing at her. “Fucking useless whore!” he whispered through his teeth. “Why is it that they always sit with their legs apart?”

“To air the wares.” Both detectives sniggered.

Sauer drove further down the road. A block away he spotted a dirty boy sitting on the pavement in the late afternoon sun. He drove the Turtle onto the pavement opposite the boy, and with his huge hand, waved to the boy. “Come here,” he bellowed. The boy cautiously walked closer to the Turtle, checking over his shoulder all the time.

“Are you the police?” the boy asked when he stood next to Sauer.

“Yes,” Sauer said and showed the boy his identification card. “Why?”

“Uncle Burney said he would call the police, but that was two days ago and nobody came yet. Please come help me,” the boy said, “I can’t wake my mom.”

Sauer killed the Turtle’s engine and both detectives jumped out. “Where’s your mom now?” he asked. The boy retreated as he saw Sauer’s huge body.

“Still in the bedroom.”

“Where do you live?” Sauer asked.

“Up there,” the boy said, pointing upwards towards a block of apartments.

“Since when can’t you wake her up?” Hobbs asked.

“Since two days ago.”

Hobbs put his arm around the boy. “Show us.”

They walked across the road and into a dilapidated building.

“Don’t take the lift,” the boy said. “It’s broken.”

They walked the three sets of stairs, Hobbs in front with the boy, Sauer puffing behind. The door of the apartment was locked. The boy retrieved a key hanging around his neck. He opened the door and Hobbs indicated to Sauer to stay outside. Hobbs could smell the decay as he followed the boy into the tiny apartment. Dirty clothes and dishes were scattered everywhere. The heat made the body decompose faster. The boy stopped at the bedroom door and pointed to the lump under the blankets. “There she is.”

“You stay here,” Hobbs said as he walked over to the bed. He lifted the blanket carefully and looked at the corpse. The woman was indeed dead. Her neck was bruised. She was strangled. Hobbs dropped the blanket on top of the corpse again and walked to the boy. He took the boy’s hand. “You come with me,” he said.

Back in the hallway, Hobbs took his mobile phone out of his pocket and dialed a number. He spoke briefly. He picked the boy up, and the three of them walked down the steps to wait for the sirens to come closer. Within minutes, the police vehicles stopped outside the building. Hobbs spoke to the uniformed policemen briefly before crossing the street towards the Turtle. “Where you taking me,” the boy asked, resting his head on Hobbs’s shoulder, trusting the stranger completely.

“To a lady that will love you forever.”

“Who’s that?” Sauer asked silently.

“Mother Tilly.”

Sauer got into the Turtle and waited for Hobbs to place the boy in the middle of them. “Cool,” said the boy, “I’ve never been in a car before.”

“This is not just any old car,” Sauer said. “This car has supersonic jets that kick in the minute when we have to chase a crook.”

“Really?”

“Yes.”

“How fast can it go?”

“Faster than anything you have ever seen,” Sauer said as he drove the short distance to the Saint Mary’s School. They stopped outside the gates and Hobbs walked over to the intercom system and spoke into it. The gates opened slowly and Sauer waited for Hobbs to get back into the Turtle before they drove up the beautiful driveway. The boy had now lost interest in the Turtle. He only had eyes for the imposing building and the massive grounds. Sauer stopped outside the impressive front door. The boy jumped in Hobbs’s arm as he climbed out. The door opened and Mother Tilly herself came out to meet them. She stretched her arms out to the boy. “Welcome my darling, welcome.” The boy turned his face onto Hobbs’s shoulder and clung unto him for dear life.

Mother Tilly stroked the boy’s back. “Come in, let’s have some tea.”

Why always tea? Can’t we for once have a beer?

The two men followed Mother Tilly into her office. Several nuns were busy scrubbing floor or polishing the wooden furniture. She sat behind her huge desk and picked up the phone to order tea.

“Now then young man, what is your name?” she asked the boy, who still had his face buried in Hobbs’s shoulder. He dug his face in deeper and Hobbs’s instinctively closed his arms around him tighter. It was Sauer who broke the ice.

“Mother Tilly, am I right in saying that you have been in this neighborhood for a long time?”

“Oh yes, since 1962. I came here as a young nun from India.”

“Perhaps then, you can tell me where the Luscious Love Sex Shop is,” Sauer asked with a straight face. He saw the shock on the nun’s face and the amusement on Hobbs’s.

“Why on Earth would I know something like that?” she retorted.

“I was just wondering. It is part of our investigation.”

Mother Tilly sat back in her chair. She pointed a finger towards the back of the boy. “Is his mother one of the victims?”

“Not of our serial killer. Don’t really know, but experience tells me it was a violent, domestic incident.”

The tea arrived and Mother Tilly managed to coach the boy into taking a biscuit. He ate it hungrily and then held his hand out for another. Mother Tilly walked over to him and gave him another. He smiled at her shyly and buried his face into Hobbs’s shoulder again. Hobbs’s shirt was smeared with crumbs, snot and spit. Slowly, she managed to win his confidence.

“What is your name?” she asked in a sickly sweet manner.

The boy dug his face deeper into Hobbs’s shoulder.

“Eddie,” he mumbled.

“How old are you Eddie?”

“My mom said I was five.” The boy was clearly older than that.

“Which school do you go to?”

“I don’t go yet. My mom said next year.”

“Do you think you will like school?”

“Yes…I can’t wait to go.”

“I have a school here. With lots and lots of friends and food. Would you like to come to my school?”

Eddie looked at Hobbs, who smiled down at him. Then the boy shook his head up and down slowly.

She took the boy from Hobbs’s lap and nestled him to her bosom.

Both the detectives looked up in surprise. The boy was rather small for his age. As if she read their minds, Mother Tilly said, “We find that the children from this district often suffer from malnutrition. For this neighborhood, he is about right for his size.”

Sauer thought of the mountains of food that appeared on their dining room table three times a day when he was a child. He never had to go to bed hungry. Neither did any of his siblings or anyone he ever knew as a child. He saw hunger for the first time when he became a policeman.

Hobbs got up and stroked the boy’s hair. “We’ll come visit you soon,” he said, knowing full well he would never see the boy again. But saying it somehow soothed his conscience.

As the detectives turned to walk out the door, the boy spoke, “That place you’re looking for, that sex place…”

“Yes,” Hobbs replied as he walked back towards him.

“That place is in an alley near my house. Outside the alley is a China food place…Foo Shie. They give me food.”

Hobbs fluffed the boy’s hair again with a smile and followed Sauer out the door.