Deadly Ritual Read online

  The girl pointed to a set of double doors, and Mackinnon stepped inside.

  It was a large room, with staggered seating. The lights were dimmed, and a video was projecting onto a white screen at the front of the room.

  At first, Mackinnon thought the people on the screen were dancing. Then he saw the glowing coals beneath their feet. Mackinnon winced.

  A rhythmic beating of drums and a low chanting accompanied the recording.

  “As you can see,” a voice said, drawing Mackinnon’s attention to the speaker, a tall woman standing by the projector. “The tribe appears to enter a trance-like state at this point, and according to the researchers who witnessed this event, they feel no pain.”

  Mackinnon guessed this was Professor Linda Matić. She was an attractive woman, in her late thirties or early forties with carefully styled shoulder-length blonde hair.

  She flicked a switch on the projector, and the video disappeared from the screen. The sudden ending of the music left Mackinnon with the odd sensation that he could still hear the echo of the drums beating.

  Behind Professor Matić, the screen was filled with images of various African sculptures and artefacts.

  He glanced at his watch. Hopefully, this wouldn’t take long. Professor Matić had a charismatic voice, and despite the size of the room, her voice carried right to the back. To Mackinnon’s surprise all the students looked very interested. Quite a contrast to his university days when most of the students used lectures as an excuse to take forty winks.

  But Mackinnon had to agree the subject was interesting. No doubt the mystery and legends of West Africa were more appealing than his degree course had been. Professor Matić talked her way through a couple more slides, and then she wrapped up the session and switched the lights back on.

  As the students trudged up the steps past Mackinnon to get to the exits, he weaved his way through them to meet Professor Matić at the bottom.

  She was packing her things together. As she reached to switch off her laptop, she raised an eyebrow. “Can I help you?”

  Mackinnon showed her his ID. “Professor Matić, I am DS Mackinnon. I know you have helped the Metropolitan Police in the past, and we have a new case that could benefit from your expertise.”

  Professor Matić nodded. “I’ll do my best to help,” she said. “But I can’t do much without caffeine. We can talk in my office if you don’t mind getting coffee on the way.”

  Mackinnon nodded. “Sounds good to me.”

  They stopped at the university cafeteria, which was full of young students sipping coffees and eating large slices of cake.

  Mackinnon’s stomach growled, but he resisted the cake, opting for a black coffee.

  On the way to Professor Matić’s office, she told Mackinnon of her work with the Met. She had helped them on numerous occasions.

  Her last case had been helping the police following the murder of an albino child.

  “The police suspected she had been sacrificed, and parts of her body used for a variety of rituals that were supposed to bring good luck,” Professor Matić said.

  The professor noted the horrified look on Mackinnon’s face.

  “It’s a very rare occurrence,” she said. “A very small minority believe that albino body parts are more potent, and so the rituals they use them for have more power. There have been multiple reports of abductions of albino children from small villages in Tanzania.”

  Professor Matić handed Mackinnon her coffee so she could unlock the door to her office.

  Professor Matić’s office was filled to the brim. There was barely enough space for her desk and two chairs.

  She apologised and lifted a large wooden sculpture off one of the chairs. The sculpture was fashioned from dark wood and had been shaped into a grotesque figure with a gaping mouth.

  “Sorry,” she said. “I’m attempting some cataloguing this week, but I fear I am fighting a losing battle.”

  She nodded for Mackinnon to sit down in the seat vacated by the statue.

  Mackinnon took a moment to take it all in. Every available surface from her desk to the windowsill was covered in artefacts. Even the floor had a variety of statues interspersed between the piles of paper.

  Once the professor had taken a seat, too, Mackinnon pulled out his phone.

  “If you can, Professor, I’ve got a picture of something I’d like you to identify,” he said.

  “Please, call me Linda,” she said, leaning forward to view the image.

  Mackinnon zoomed in on a picture of the round, flat wooden object that had been found in the victim’s mouth and handed his phone to Linda.

  She pulled her glasses down and squinted at the image, holding it one way and then the other. She pursed her lips as she studied it.

  Mackinnon waited for a moment, then said, “Do you recognise it? Is it anything to do with a West African religion?”

  Professor Matić handed him back the phone. “I’ve never seen anything like it before. It’s quite a crudely made object. Handmade I would guess. Why did you think to bring it to me?”

  “The disc was found in the mouth of a murder victim, a young boy. It was in a red velvet pouch,” Mackinnon said. “We’ve estimated the victim to be mid-teens. But we’ve not identified him yet.”

  Professor Matić ran her hands over her face and sighed. “Oh, that’s awful. Would I be right in thinking you are considering Voodoo?”

  Mackinnon didn’t respond.

  “I can’t say I have ever seen anything like it. Sometimes items are left as an offering to the spirits, but I’ve never seen anything like this disc before. I mean, maybe if it had been bones or something similar… I’m not sure, but I think somebody could be trying to throw you off track.”

  “You think someone is trying to make it look like Voodoo?”

  Professor Linda Matić shrugged. “Possibly,” she said. “I have made a career of studying religions, including Voodoo, but even I don’t know everything.”

  She frowned. “I can give you the contact details of a man I’ve been working with. He’s helping me with my new book. He’s a religious leader who practices Voodoo. He lives in Poplar, and he’s well known in the community, so if anyone would be able to identify this object, I think it would be him.”

  Mackinnon nodded. “That would be very helpful, thank you.”

  “He is known as the Oracle,” Linda said and scribbled down his details on a slip of paper.

  Mackinnon took the piece of paper, thanked Professor Linda Matić again and headed back out onto the Strand.

  He looked at his watch. Meeting with Professor Linda Matić had taken an hour, and he would have missed the briefing, but an hour was a long time in a case like this. The team might have had a breakthrough and made huge progress by now. He hoped so.

  If not, they’d have to pin their hopes on getting some answers from Linda Matić’s Oracle.

  6

  MACKINNON CALLED TYLER STRAIGHT away, giving him the bad news that the professor hadn’t been able to identify the object found in the victim’s mouth.

  He’d sweetened the news by telling Tyler that he had the contact details for a local Vodun Oracle, named Germaine Okoro.

  “That’s something at least,” Tyler had said. “We haven’t managed to identify the boy yet. I’ve got most of the team working on that, but I’ll get Charlotte to meet you at Okoro’s address.”

  Mackinnon met up with Charlotte at Mile End Station, and they walked to the address in Poplar, East London.

  Number thirty-six Queen Elizabeth Walk was an attractive, three-storey terraced house. It stood out from others in the street in a good way. There were pretty window boxes with flowers still in bloom underneath the ground floor windows. The door was painted a dark glossy red, and the brass doorknob and letterbox gleamed.

  They were surprised when a young man opened the door. He was surely too young to be the Oracle.

  Mackinnon had pictured an older man, dressed in robes and a headdress, but
the man who stood before them wore a green hoodie, low slung jeans and bright red socks. His hair was closely cropped to his scalp, and lines had been shaved into the side of his hairline, above his ears.

  “We were hoping to speak with Germaine Okoro,” Charlotte said, holding up her ID. “DC Brown and DS Mackinnon of the City of London police.”

  The man’s eyes widened, and he tilted his chin. “My father’s in the garden,” he said. “Come in. Do you want to wait inside and I’ll go and get him, or you can go out to the garden and speak with him there.”

  “The garden is fine,” Mackinnon said.

  “I’m Kwame,” he said, opening the front door wide so Charlotte and Mackinnon could enter. “I take it you haven’t come with bad news?”

  “No, it’s nothing like that. Your father is expecting us. I called ahead. He’s helping us with an investigation.”

  Kwame nodded, and they followed him through to the living room.

  The house was bigger than it looked from the outside. The living room was open plan, with a couple of leather sofas behind a chrome and glass dining table. Four black, leather chairs lined up on each side of the table.

  The floors were polished wood, and the walls were painted white. On some of the walls, there were abstract black and white photographs, framed with black wood. The overall look of the room was very modern and not what Mackinnon had been expecting.

  He wasn’t sure exactly what he had been expecting. Perhaps something a little more traditional. Maybe some African artefacts laying around.

  Kwame headed to a double set of French doors that led out onto the garden, and called for his dad. As Mackinnon stepped outside he saw Germaine Okoro straighten up from a flower bed and raise a hand in welcome.

  He had been dead-heading fuchsias. Mackinnon frowned. Fuchsias still flowering in October? Mackinnon wasn’t much of a gardener, but wasn’t that unusual?

  Kwame called out from behind them. “Can I get you something to drink? Coffee or tea?”

  Mackinnon and Charlotte both asked for a coffee, and Kwame nodded and shut the doors behind him.

  Mackinnon took another look around the garden, which was more country cottage than inner city. It was amazing, so green and so many flowers were still blooming. Definitely odd for this time of year.

  They walked across the short area of lawn until they reached Germaine Okoro. Mackinnon held out his hand. “Thanks for seeing us,” he said and introduced himself and Charlotte.

  As they shook hands, Charlotte said, “Professor Linda Matić suggested you might be able to help us.”

  Mr. Okoro nodded. “Yes. You mentioned something on the phone about a wooden object?”

  Charlotte nodded, pulled out her mobile and scrolled through the phone until she got an image of the flat, wooden, circular object that had been found in the victim’s mouth.

  “This is it.” She held out the phone and explained how one side of the wooden disc was plain, and the other side was marked with a cross. “Do you have any idea what it’s for?”

  The Oracle was silent for some moments as he studied it.

  Mackinnon felt his stomach sink when the Oracle finally let out a deep breath and shook his head. “I’m sorry, I’ve never seen anything like that before. Are you assuming it is something to do with the Vodun religion?”

  Mackinnon shook his head. “We are not assuming anything. It was found in the victim’s mouth. We believe it must have some significance.”

  The Oracle nodded his head. “Of course. However, I don’t think it’s Voodoo. Perhaps it is a ritual of some significance, but it’s no kind of Voodoo I’ve ever heard of.”

  The Oracle looked down at the vivid pink fuchsias he had been tending when they arrived.

  “Tell me, detective, how much do you know about the religion?”

  “Not very much, really,” Mackinnon admitted.

  “Probably only what you know from Hollywood or dramatic news stories in the press,” the Oracle said. “But it’s only as strange as some other forms of religion seem to outsiders. Drinking the blood of Christ, for example. Some might consider that a little macabre.”

  Mackinnon didn’t want to get into a religious debate. After talking to Professor Matić, Mackinnon had a feeling that the Voodoo angle in this case could be a red herring.

  The Oracle turned to Charlotte. “Our religion creates a very strong social network. Women play an essential role. They perform baptisms, weddings and funerals. It’s really not the scary black magic that most people associate with Voodoo.”

  “The murder victim,” the Oracle asked, turning to Mackinnon, “do you mind if I ask who it was?”

  Mackinnon took a deep breath and breathed in the green scent of the garden. Although the sun was bright today, it had turned colder this afternoon, and he wished he’d worn a warmer coat.

  “We haven’t identified the victim yet,” Mackinnon said. “We know he’s male. We think he’s early teens.”

  The Oracle’s face crinkled. “How terrible. I do know a teacher who belongs to our group. He works locally. Of course, that’s assuming the boy is local…He may not be...” The Oracle trailed off.

  “Thank you. It would be useful to get the teacher’s contact details,” Charlotte said.

  “Is there any evidence to say where the boy is from?” the Oracle asked.

  Mackinnon shook his head. “Not yet.”

  Mackinnon remembered a case that hit the headlines a few years back. The torso of a young boy had been found in the River Thames. The boy had been named by police as Adam. Scientific studies had shown that he had actually been born in Nigeria, and the police working the case had concluded he’d been smuggled into Britain.

  It was amazing what science could do now. It was possible to trace someone’s origins and find out things about them by the food they had eaten.

  Mackinnon hoped they wouldn’t need to do a detailed study like that with this case because that would mean a long investigation, and as everyone knew, the longer an investigation took, the colder the case got.

  Kwame padded up behind them, holding two cups in his right hand and one in his left. He handed a coffee to Mackinnon, then one to Charlotte, and then one to his father.

  “So, what have you done this time, Dad?” He winked and smiled, but the Oracle frowned.

  “Your father was just helping us with some enquiries,” Charlotte said.

  Kwame nodded and grinned. He put his hands in his pockets and gazed down at his trainers.

  “He’s been very helpful and has given us an insight into the Voodoo religion,” Charlotte explained.

  “The mumbo jumbo, you mean,” Kwame said and chuckled to himself.

  Mackinnon frowned. Well, that was awkward. He saw a flash of anger flicker across the father’s face.

  Mackinnon cleared his throat. “Perhaps we could get the name and address of the contact you suggested, Mr. Okoro. The teacher?”

  “Of course,” the Oracle said, mustering his dignity. “I’ll just be one moment.”

  Kwame watched his father walk back towards the house and shook his head. “I shouldn’t wind him up, I know. But he takes it all so seriously.”

  “And you don’t?” Charlotte asked.

  “Please. Are you serious? I was born in London. I went to school in London, and now, I’m at university studying biology. Real science. Why would I have time for any of that?”

  Charlotte didn’t reply, and the Oracle returned with a handwritten note.

  “Here you are. He’s a teacher at Poplar Comprehensive. His name is William Xander.

  “He helps underprivileged children, too, not just the ones that go to his school. I think he runs some kind of after school club as well. It’s a long shot, but he might know something. He is a good man and a member of our congregation.”

  Mackinnon took the note. “Thank you. I have to say you have a beautiful garden. How do you get the fuchsias to bloom so late in the season?”

  The Oracle gave Mackinnon a sly
smile. “That’s all down to the fertiliser. I use the best fertiliser in the world.”

  “Oh, really? What fertiliser is that?” Mackinnon asked, thinking he might get some. Chloe’s garden was huge, and some of the plants were looking a little weathered. They could definitely do with a helping hand.

  “Why, blood of course,” the Oracle said. “The essence of life.”

  Mackinnon suppressed a shudder, and shot a horrified glance at Charlotte as the Oracle turned to lead them out of the garden and back through the house.

  Charlotte shrugged. “My parents were always very into gardening before they moved to Spain. They used a mix of blood and bone meal. They sell it prepackaged these days.”

  They were nearly at the front door when the Oracle turned to Charlotte.

  He paused and shivered.

  “I have…” He put a hand on her arm. “I have a very bad feeling about this.”

  He raised his head to the ceiling, and his eyes rolled back to show the whites. His eyelids fluttered.

  They stood there in silence for a moment, and then his eyes snapped open, and he gazed at Charlotte.

  And in a low voice, he said, “Be careful.”

  7

  “WELL, THAT WAS CREEPY,” Charlotte said as the door closed behind them. She rubbed her arm.

  “I don’t think he meant to be creepy,” Mackinnon said. “But a young boy is dead, and some sicko put a weird wooden object in his mouth. I think most people would have a bad feeling about that.”

  Charlotte shivered and wrapped her coat tightly around her. “So, what do you want to do now? Shall we go to the school and see this teacher, Mr. Xander?”

  Mackinnon shook his head. “Let’s go back to the station first and check in with Tyler. There might have been some developments, and we’ll see what Tyler wants us to do next.”

  It took twenty minutes for them to get back to Wood Street Station. They entered through the reception, passing a couple of people sitting on the plastic chairs.

  Mackinnon nodded to the duty sergeant and swiped his access card to get into the main police-only area of the station.