Chase the Morning

‘It’s the letters after my name,’ he said cheerfully, his flash of temper gone as fast as it had come. He lit another cigarette. ‘Mad keen on education, all these West Indians are – worse than the Scots. Okay, I’ll ask.’

But when he appeared a few minutes later he was looking a little ruffled. ‘She’ll tell,’ he said. ‘I think maybe Clare persuaded her, more than me. And – well, could be we do have something like this back home, though not by that name. But city folk, educated classes – it’s not something we’d ever run into. Strictly for the hicks in the stix – straight down from the trees, as you might say, sergeant, eh? Juju, that’s what they call it.’ He grimaced. ‘That word – my old man’d have a fit if he’d heard me use it. Wash-your-mouth-with-soap stuff.’

‘Juju?’ Barry frowned. ‘But isn’t that –’

He was interrupted by the return of Mrs Macksie, leaning on Clare’s arm. She launched into a speech like a diver off a high board. ‘I want you, sah, to understand – about all this I know nothin’ – nothin’ at all. But there was a time I see something of the sort befoah. When my late husband he was a medical orderly back home in Trinidad, the Lord’s work call us to missions often. There was a bad time then, on other island far away; all kinds of folk comin’ away in feah of their lives – to Jamaica, Trinidad, anywhere they could, Cuba even. We see a lot of them round missions, we get to know their lives. Poor folk, bittah folk with bad blood an’ scores to pay; Things went on – She squirmed, as if the very thought made her uncomfortable. ‘Devil’s work. Obeah. Ouanga, they call it in their fear. We war against it as we could with love, but theah’s some too steeped in darkness to see the light. Theah we see things done … like this. Never so bad, though, even then. The signs I doan’ remember, not at first, not till I see that …’

She drew a deep shaky breath and pointed at the nasty speck of blood and feathers on my screen. ‘That … You want to know what obeah is? That theah’s obeah. You take that and you burn it.’

‘I’ll be glad to,’ said Barry, a little shakily. ‘But what is it?’

‘It’s bad – you need to know more? Okay. It’s called a cigle don-Pedro, and I don’ know what that mean any more’n you and I don’t ever want to know. Sometimes the Mazanxa use it, sometime the Zobop or the Vlinblindingue. Use it with signs like these, and for nothin’ good. An’ thass’ all I’m telling you, ‘cause thass’ all I know.’

‘Hold on a minute,’ said the policeman hastily. ‘Am I to understand –’

Ignoring him, she turned to Barry. ‘And now, sah, if you’ll kindly excuse me, there’s a heap of work heah, and I’m getting all behind.’ With serene calm she turned and walked out again. The CID man gaped after her, but he didn’t try to stop her. He turned to Dave instead.

‘What the hell was all that about? Was she trying to tell me this was done by these – what the hell did she call them? These refugee types? Where were they refugees from, anyhow?’

‘That’s the kicker,’ said Dave with ghoulish relish. ‘You ask me – it looks like we got turned over by some of those West Indian yobs from out South Street way.’

‘West Indian?’ blinked Barry. ‘Why so?’

‘Well, I can’t see there being that many Haiitians in town – can you?’

‘Haiitians?’

‘You heard the lady. That’s where the refugees were coming from. Happy little Haiiti. And obeah’s just the local name for practices no respectable Trinidadian would be caught dead in – if you’ll pardon the expression. But down thataway they’re a lot more common.’

The CID man shut his notebook with a snap, and twanged a rubber band into place around it. ‘Good as computers, that, for me … Yes. Well, it’s a lead, I suppose. Don’t suppose we’ve been treading on any West Indian toes lately, have we, sir? No Race Relations Board cases?’

Everyone laughed. Of course we hadn’t; we were a respectable company, and our business was international. Our standards were high, but an unusual or exotic background was a positive plus; we hired people from all over, and discriminated on just about everything except race. It said something for our good sense, if not so much for our social conscience. The only employee who’d been caught up in any fracas at all recently seemed to be me. And no way was I about to mention that, not something I couldn’t be sure had even happened. Even if it had, those huge thugs weren’t West Indian, anyhow.

They’d been burglars, though. Or something illicit, anyhow, something they cared enough about to spill out lives. Some motive that wasn’t immediately obvious … any more than it was here, either. The police were visibly writing the whole thing off as the work of drunks, druggies or kids, who had just happened to descend on us, found nothing worth stealing and wrecked the place out of spite. They’d keep their ear to the ground, but …