we’ve found? When did you kill her?”
“I swear I never killed anyone. I was made to do it. Made to bury those bodies. Please believe me. I’d never hurt a child.” Rampa, unkempt after a night in a cell, banged his handcuffed hands against his chest. “Please believe me!”
Westbrook leaned over and whispered in Rampa’s ear.
“So, who made you bury those bodies?” Kubu continued. “Who gave you those bodies?”
Rampa’s eyes were terrified.
“He’ll kill me if I tell you!”
“We’ll hang you if you don’t!”
“Assistant Superintendent Bengu, I must protest. You can’t intimidate my client like this.”
Rampa buried his head in his hands.
“Do you promise not to tell anyone?” Rampa pleaded, ignoring his attorney.
“I can’t do that. You’ll have to take your chances.”
Rampa started sobbing. “He’s going to kill me!”
“Who’s going to kill you?”
Rampa said nothing, still sobbing.
Kubu waited.
Eventually Rampa lifted his head and said, “The witch doctor!”
For a moment Kubu was stunned. Then he burst out laughing. “The witch doctor? You must be joking. You’re the witch doctor. Not someone else. I suppose next you’ll tell me he’s invisible!”
“He is, I promise. I’ve never seen him.”
“Have you looked in a mirror? Good try, Rampa, but I’m not buying it. You’re the person we’re looking for, and you’re going to pay for what you’ve done.”
Kubu stood up and turned off the recorder. He nodded toward the lawyer and left, slamming the door again.
THE NEXT MORNING KUBU invited Samantha to join him in questioning Rampa.
“I have to say I’m a little confused,” Kubu said as they walked to the interrogation room. “Zanele found a partial thumbprint of Marumo’s on the clasp holding the dividers in the briefcase. So the briefcase you found is certainly Marumo’s.”
“How did Rampa get hold of it?” Samantha asked.
“Exactly. I can’t figure it out. Maybe we’ll learn something from Rampa. I’ll lead the questioning, but feel free to ask anything you like.”
A few minutes later they were both seated in front of a slouched and haggard Rampa, unshaven, with the unpleasant odor of someone who hasn’t washed in a few days. He looked exhausted. Westbrook was again seated next to him.
“Rra Rampa,” Kubu began, “we’re going to continue questioning you until you tell the truth, which you haven’t yet done. You claim to have been forced by an invisible witch doctor to bury all these mutilated bodies—bodies that had been murdered for body parts. That’s hard for me to believe. If you expect me to believe that, you’re going to have to give me some real evidence that this witch doctor exists.”
Rampa, chin on chest, shook his head. “He’ll kill me if I do. He said I’d die a terrible death if I said anything.”
“You’re quite safe in your cell. He can’t get to you there.”
“Oh yes, he can. His spells go through walls. It doesn’t matter where you are if he puts a spell on you. I’ll die a terrible death.”
Kubu thought for a moment. I’ll call his bluff, he decided.
“All right, I’m going to ask you some questions. If you give me truthful answers, I won’t ask who the witch doctor is. If I think you’re lying, I will hold a press conference this afternoon to announce how you’ve helped us with information about all the unsolved murders, and we’ll let you go. I’m sure the witch doctor will be waiting for you to thank you for your help.”
“You have to believe me!” Rampa cried. “I’m telling you the truth!”
“You can’t threaten my client like that!” Westbrook said aggressively.
“Mr. Westbrook, I didn’t threaten your client. I said I’d let him go. The witch doctor is his idea, not mine. He has to live with that.”
Westbrook crossed his arms and leaned back in the chair. Passive-aggressive, Kubu thought.
“Rra Rampa, when we searched your house yesterday, we found a briefcase. We can prove that it belonged to the late Bill Marumo, the Freedom Party politician. How did you get it?”
Rampa squirmed in his chair. “The witch doctor gave it to me,” he said quietly, as though the witch doctor might hear.
“Why would he do that?”
“He was delivering some stuff.”
“What was that?”
“I don’t know,” Rampa said. “It was in a packet.”
“And who was the packet for?”
Rampa hesitated. “I don’t know. I had to leave it on a gravestone one evening. The next morning it was gone.”
“And whose gravestone was it?”
Rampa shook his head. “I don’t remember. It was nobody I had heard of.”
Kubu brought his fist down on the table so hard that everyone jumped. “Another useless answer. What do