Twisted Times: Son of Man (Twisted Times Trilogy Book 1) Read online

  However, they did not hesitate to ask the government to look into the increasing cases of insecurity in the country.

  *

  “It’s done,” Samson said. “We must get moving.”

  “But it’s already in the news. He must have realized he was being set up.”

  “Don’t worry about that. Everybody has a price tag.”

  “What do you suggest we do?”

  “We shall let them do their investigation, but be sure we shall come out of it clean as a weasel.”

  “Our names are all over the media…”

  “Does that worry you? They would actually apologize not only to us but also to the public for tarnishing our names. Patience pays, David.”

  There was long silence; time which somebody was thinking, weighing the odds.

  “I have some calls to make,” Samson said. “Would you please excuse me?” he reached for his home wireless phone and dialled a number his friend from the Imperial Media Services had given him.

  It rang five times before somebody on the other end picked up.

  A female…

  CHAPTER 43

  As usual I took the Saturday Nation newspaper that was in Urbanas’ Madonna Hostels room and went straight to my favourite page – ‘Leisure’. It was the first stopover before proceeding to the obituaries page to check the moguls who had died, because not everyone pays over fifty thousand shillings for the space on the papers. Urbanas himself was reading the Moonbeam, the second largest and fastest growing newspaper after the Nation Media Group’s the Daily Nation.

  I filled the simple crossword puzzle and the code-word grid puzzle, and when I was done I proceeded to the obituaries. There were no victims who worth our nocturnal visits, they were all from out of town, out of Nairobi. .

  I don’t know why I decided to go through the whole paper this day. Maybe I still ought to know something about the living too. As usual the sensational stories took the front page. It was another illegal drug haul at the Coast - Cocaine Seizure at the Coast. I had glimpsed a similar headline on the Moonbeam: Mexican Drug Lords Thrive at the Coast.

  Urbanas’s words the day he was trying to enlist me in the gang came back to me: “the best place to hide is in people’s hearts, let them trust you, build and fortify that trust, speak against human fears and tragedies, promise a plausible paradise knowing that hell is real. Even Satan was party to heaven before God feared He might lose His power to Satan…”

  I continued to the second page to scan through other headlines.

  I never read further than page three partly because I was not interested and partly because I was shocked. The second page had the headline of a person I knew, right from home, his story continued on page three.

  It was Uncle Job. It was quite ironic he was to make headlines while he was not there to know that he had. It was his dappled looking face and eyes like those of a cat that caught my attention otherwise I would not have wasted my time on some businessman who had been shot dead at his home, just another mogul who was due to give us another wad of cash.

  I read his story.

  I couldn’t say it was touching. I felt nothing. He was just like the others who died daily; others who died and were buried without the whole world knowing. The emphasis of Uncle Job’s story was the increasing insecurity in the country. Some of his business friends had implored the government to do something to the rising insecurity in the country.

  Now that was news.

  CHAPTER 44

  Friday, 13th June;

  At exactly 1830Hrs – I too had become accustomed to this military timings crap like Urbanas – I changed to a cream suit and an ecru shirt with a marching stripped tie. My black leather shoes were perfectly polished as though I too passed through cadet school in Lanet, Nakuru like Urbanas. I put on a pair of specs and completed my face of deception.

  This day we gave the dead a break, a hiatus I’m sure was very much welcome. Since our graduation to hired goons business had been booming. Hijackings and kidnappings were our new modus operandi meant to convey a certain message to the victims who ranged from business rivals, political bickers (whom we called poli-ticks), a vengeful wife, fiancée, girlfriend – anybody who paid the right price. Urbanas was many a time hired to do lone assignments, precisely to kill and that’s why he wanted us to graduate to be with him.

  The strategy was that we act like highway robbers and hijackers, but the actual job would be to kill somebody important, a sanctioned murder, and obviously insecurity would be to blame. The police would be sent on a wild goose chase looking for phantom highway robbers. Killings and ‘police’ extrajudicial executions along most roads in Nairobi and her outskirts ensued. No one, even to date, has ever been nabbed.

  There were other gangs too and in order to avoid running into each other, we mapped the entire Nairobi area and respected the territorial integrity of each gang.

  This day my destination was to Lavington.

  Traffic was heavy. Everything seemed to move at a snail’s speed – an advantage to me. My victim’s car was just three cars ahead. I had made sure that I did not lose him. Our intelligence reports indicated that he took his family – wife, their preteen daughter, and seven-year-old son – to outings on Fridays from four o’clock in the afternoon and then have the whole weekend with his wife at some resort in the city. The happy family returned home at around seven in the evening. They did not have a gateman to open the gate for them, so the wife usually alighted to go and open the gate.

  That was the right time to strike, just before the wife got out. There was need for swift action.

  My task was to hijack and commandeer them to an agreed chosen place. The rest would be on the other Mavis guys.

  Hardly had she opened the car door when I got to her. “Just stay right inside the car, madam.” I talked like a plainclothes police officer.

  The sight of my Mauser C96 machine pistol told her all – it was not some kind of a sick joke, or a request. I got in the back seat beside the pre-pubescent girl and issued my orders. Just be calm, no emotions, and no feelings – that’s what Urbanas had told me.

  “And please, do not make me do something I don’t want. Just do as I say. Don’t try to be smart,” I told the fat daddy.

  I already knew that the Track-It device was not working. It was all over the news that the company that was claiming to be able to track stolen and hijacked vehicles was bluffing and defrauding innocent, unsuspecting vehicle owners. The devices were not working at all, they never worked.

  “Would you please give me your phones? Just pass them over to me.” So far I was enjoying my false confidence and gusto.

  Good. They did as I said.

  The destination was our operating room in Nairobi’s Kileleshwa. From there the horror of running into Mavis would be experienced by the victims and then we would dump them somewhere else. I was just doing my work. After all everything they owned was ours, and Pius in town got a job of working on their car once we repossessed it from them.

  Darkness had already crept in when we reached the destination. They were scared shitless, as Americans say, but what could I do. I was earning my living.

  “This is Melik Wholesalers, the goods you ordered have been delivered,” I told Urbanas when he picked up the phone. “Just as you ordered.”

  CHAPTER 45

  I woke up feeling a little fuzzy around eight o’clock Sunday morning. I felt a heavy yoke around my neck and a persistent hangover looming over me. I had slept a dreamless sleep after a night of carousing at the Carnivore trying to forget the events of the previous night. Even though I tried not to have any feelings I felt that we were going overboard. We had killed four innocent people just because we were paid to. I had objected to killing the kids but Urbanas had said that we couldn’t leave any trail behind that might lead the police to us. The kids could ID us. He said that they were just but collateral damage.

  Collateral damage?

  The man of the family had been forced
to watch everything – his wife being raped; his daughter defiled before his very eyes, his son calling unto him as he died; his family’s demise, and then the ultimate pain; his own death. I must say that I was beginning to have the feelings that I was all along trying to suppress. The kids were innocent, even their parents. I did not see why we should be the tools of settling other people’s scores. Tomb Raider role was better off.

  My phone was ringing and it snapped me to the present. I already knew who it was – Terry. As usual she was calling to tell me that she would be picking me up to go to church together. “Well, just come siz, I would be waiting for ya’.”

  At around nine o’clock she was at my doorstep. Good news is that with the money I was earning from crime I upped my status. I rented a house around Ngara, a short distance from the campus which was near the Kenya National Museums.

  Terry was not in her usual church gowns but she wore a rayon dress. The kilt of the dress reached her mid calves. On her feet, were white brogues and matching anklets. Her long tar black hair was pulled into a do-it-yourself ponytail.

  “You look wonderful, Terry.”

  “Thanks. I rarely get such.”

  She was graduating in two months’ time and I felt that I would dearly miss her, my sister. I had to continue being the mask I was just for her sake, so we went to church.

  Quite to my astonishment I did not sleep over the sermon. It was not because I was listening to it but it’s because there was a girl seating next to me who mesmerized me with her beauty. All the while I watched her, wanting to reach for her heart. Jeez, did I just say that, I wanted to reach for her heart? Yeah, that’s what I wanted. She had a sexy way of pursing her lips in the faintest hint of smile as though she knew what was roiling in my mind.

  She was slender, dark complexioned, adorable, and looked like some kind of a black angel, more of a jailbait. She had a I’m-a-serious-gal-keep-off demeanour on her visage, something I found more charming than just fascinating. When she talked while responding to the customary rote phrases of an RC Mass celebration or while singing, she exposed a set of snow white teeth that glittered like the proverbial gold. Her skin was as soft as though she used Botox. She was not good-looking but sensuous, and only two buds of nipples were exceptionally visible on her bust. I’d like to one day explore whether she actually has tits. Her hair was shiny black, combed straight back. Her lips thin, endearing and ecru tanned. She was dressed in taut hipster pants showing her whole geography as though it was saying don’t-I-look-pretty-boy? Although I am not good at hypotheses, I guessed her age to be mid-teens, most probably sixteen – she had that baby face countenance.

  I must say hi after the mass.

  I did not hesitate to say hi to her after the Mass. Terry found us in an ear-to-ear conversation. I was taken aback to find that they already knew each other – she was a fervent RC and she used to attend Terry’s prayer meetings without fail. That was good of her. After all who didn’t know and was a friend of Terry, the WOSWA chairperson? She resided at the Nashville University’s Lower Westlands hostels and as we parted I did not fail to express my desire to see her again.

  “Pretty sure you will. I am free on Fridays and weekends unless I have a project or practical.” She was a medical student, first year. “I hope we shall meet again, you are so particular.”

  She already likes me. Girls like me.

  “Hell, I want to see ya’ again, sooner than soon.” She gave me her phone number. What a good start… A naughty thought of blowing a kiss to her crept into my mind but I decided against it. I did not know how Terry would take it.

  “And …Excuse me. What is your name?” I turned slowly.

  “Oh! Sorry. Call me anything but, if you don’t want to piss me off, don’t call me son of man.”

  “Son of man?” confusion registered on her pretty face.

  “Yes, they call me that because I once called myself that, but I no longer. Have a nice day, Susan.”

  “What’s with you and the skirts? We are all attracted to you on first sight.” It was Terry.

  “Just like a moth to light?”

  “You’ve got some charm, Ken. You should be checked. Maybe you have gone to Ukambani for kamuti. I can’t believe you are on to each other already yet you barely…”

  “Know each other?” I finished for her.

  “Yes.”

  I changed the subject. “That phone you gave me is fabulous. Thank you.”

  “Now who’s avoiding something here?” I said nothing.

  “You know siz, I gonna miss you so much when you leave. You are fantastic, Terry. There’re very few like you.”

  “It’s like you specialize I dodging things in life.”

  “I don’t want to talk about nothing. I just don’t know what to say.”

  “Me too. Let’s go have lunch.”

  Sure.

  CHAPTER 46

  I had not seen Kate for three months. She had changed her phone number and whenever I went to KCA I did not find her. And no, I did not want to make up with her. I wanted to know why she had to do so; abort my kid that is. In my world, she was a murderer, murderess. How could she kill an innocent unborn kid? I had already judged and convicted her – she was a murderer. Killer!

  I found her already at my house in Ngara Estate waiting for me that evening after the outing with Terry. It had been a nice day with Terry, as usual. The sight of Kate made me feel under the weather.

  The hug was perfunctory, restless, edgy and jittery. She had lost some weight, lots of it. What the hell’s happening to her, I thought.

  “What a pleasant surprise, Kate,” no one could fail to pick the strum of contempt in what I had just said. “I have been trying to reach you.”

  “I lost my phone. I changed the number when I got another phone last week.”

  Liar!

  “And you lost your Zimmerman house too? I have been looking for you but you were nowhere to be found. I’m I missing something here?”

  “I did not come here to quarrel with you. I just came by to say hi… it has been a long time, Ken.”

  “Of course it has been. Why the hell did you do it, Kate? You just got innocent blood on your hands.”

  “Are you livid with me? Of course you are. I have got better things to do than to wrangle with you. Tell me I was wrong in my coming here.”

  Of course you are, you murderer.

  “You are not, Kate. Since you left time has been measured in bitter chapters, Kate. Would you like to come in?”

  The all-out-of-the-place house offered a comfy milieu for a man with no life like me. That was one of the reasons I did not want to stay at the university though I could not have gotten a hostel there. I was to arrange for my accommodation. That was better since they had given me the scholarship.

  Kate’s glamour was still there; the beauty and charm. I wanted to do many things to her, things done by those in love like humans do; but she had told me better never again see each other, touch each other, ogle at each other – I knew better than that. And why the hell was she here?

  But she was a mind reader of sorts.

  “Ken, I know you are wondering why I am here,” she said when we were inside. I prayed she had not been thrown out by her new man and was planning to come back. The thought of it brought memories of our last meeting. “I am here for one thing Ken, you.”

  Oh God, no.

  “I have not been honest with you, Ken. I want you to forgive me.”

  “For aborting our baby? I loved you, Kate, because of who you are. You were always anti pro-choice; you walked in the streets carrying banners saying no to pro-choice. What happened to that?”

  “I know you can’t understand, and you won’t understand. The odds are different, though. We’re both to blame here. You’d ask me why let myself get pregnant. You’d blame me for everything. But why did you just enjoy the goodies without protection? For God’s sake the government donates condoms if you can’t afford...”

  “Don�
��t you dare feed me that crap. Why didn’t you carry them with you?”

  “Do you think it was my responsibility?”

  I did not answer that. I could not.

  “We’re all sinners. You too are a murderer, Ken.”

  It’s true I was, but I didn’t tell her to abort, or does she know?

  “What do you mean? I did not know when you were…”

  “Shh! I saw you. I saw you get into that car. It’s all over the news now. They’ve found the bodies. What are you going say about that? I am damn sure it was you.”

  I was seen? She’s lying. I was careful.

  “I don’t know what you are talking about. Are you trying to blackmail me?”

  “Here’s the story, lover. My boyfriend resides in Lavington. They were our neighbours. I was at the balcony of our house. There could be your look-alikes, but not to me. I can’t even mistake your finger nails with somebody else’s. I can even tell your silhouette from a thousand others.”

  “You are not saying that you think I killed those people. I was…”

  “Ken, I love you, I mean I once loved you and always shall; only that we couldn’t be together. You were the first man I have ever loved. I did not want to leave you for another man. But have you ever heard that love is a devil and he’s coming for you?

  “Steve is the most wonderful man I’ve ever met. I could not reject him, avoid him. He was soooo niiice!” She paused, and then continued. “I was afraid, Ken. My father would not have accepted me, taken me with my pregnancy. He is paying my school fees and I want to make him happy. I had to do that. I had no money. Dad was mad when he knew that I had used my trust fund. I came up with a cock and bull story, and though he could see right through my eyes that I was lying through my teeth, he let go of the matter, but not without a severe warning and admonition. I never mentioned you, Ken; I covered your ass because of what could happen. Our families have been friends for long, or did you want me to be the one who aided your running away from your home? Well, dad forgave me, but he is not a man who forgets. I couldn’t go back to him pregnant and expect him to take care of your bastard, plus he now monitors my account. I couldn’t access more than it could raise a red flag without him knowing. Steve believed my story and gave me the money.”