The Fall of Saints by Wanjiku wa Ngugi Page B

myself again, though there was no harm in knowing.“Who?” I asked.
    “Edward and Palmer.”
    “What?” I shouted, pulling the phone from my ear to look at it. The tension in my cheeks tightened. Just then I saw Kobi running toward me. “Ben, I have to go. I will be in touch,” I said, and hung up.
    Kobi got in the car, excited by the goal he had scored. He took a ball we had bought him for home practice and hugged it. I tried to force a smile. I drove home, fighting to focus on Kobi’s happiness and not the shock of Ben’s revelation.
    A few seconds later, the phone rang again. I pulled over to answer it.
    That call would haunt me, follow me even in the Nairobi streets, sometimes wake me in the unexpected hours. I would recall my near certainty that it was Detective Underwood calling me again, perhaps to add to what he had told me. I would see and hear myself asking: “Hey, got more details?” The muffled noise and shallow breathing would come back, the questions ending with the threat, uttered so simply: “You are asking too many questions,” almost like a warning from a friend. I would see myself arriving home, cold with fear, numerous questions popping up in my mind from nowhere.
    They folded into one: Should I tell Zack? It was a question that I should not have had to ask, but the information that Ben had given me deepened my indecision: Tell Zack about the threat, or confront him about the links between his law firm and the mysterious Kasla agency?
    •  •  •
    I woke up the next morning tired and worried. Chaotic thoughts and images swirled in my mind; why did they want me to stop asking questions? It wasn’t as if I had been all over the city, accosting each and every person I met. I went over any contact of whom I had asked questions recently or in the past. The voice was male. That ruled out Melinda. I was sure I would have recognized Joe’s voice. The only other question was to the Rhino Man, and I didn’t know how he would have gotten my number. Could Ben be playing games with me, disguising his voice or getting a fellow officer to do his dirty work? Messing with my mind? Who else might have an interest in toying with me? Mark. He had wagged a warning finger at me. He had recommended Kasla . . .
    Kasla was at the center of my problems. Where was this ghostly agency that received telephone calls, faxed papers, and then retreated to the silence of the dead? And yet it did exist once, as Ben had confirmed: It had given us Kobi, and it had sought and received representation from Edward and Palmer. I had to crack the mystery. I did not tell Zack, but the resolution to handle the threats all by myself and at the same time steady my nerves was easier said than done.
    Even Rosie noticed that I was out of sorts. I thought of telling her the whole story, but then I felt uncomfortable dragging her into my increasingly troubled domestic life. It was as if she read my thoughts and beat me to it. I was in the garden when she came over and said after a few nothings: “My sister, I don’t know what is worrying you. Please forgive me for saying it, but I don’t like these white people around you. Me, I keep all white folk at arm’s length. Is there anything I can do to lift your burden? Do you want to talk to your African sister?” I thanked her and told her all was well. Then I became suspicious; she had taken the same line as Ben on white people. I thought of asking her if she knew him or talked to him, then changed my mind.
    I went back inside the house. A shot of vodka helped me relax a little and follow some threads of thought. Ben had told me they could reopen the Kasla file only if there were evidence of a crime. An unrecorded telephone threat was not a provable crime. The ghostly existence of an adoption agency was not a crime. But what if I could somehow procure the letters, briefs, emails, any correspondence between Edward and Palmer and the Kasla agency? I wished I could engage some clever