Free The Boy in the River by Richard Hoskins

am a good Christian.’ She looked into my eyes. ‘Tell me, can the Church help me to protect the babies I have left?’
    She could see I had no answer.
    ‘You know of the ngangas ?’ she asked hesitantly.
    ‘I’ve heard of them,’ I said.
    Ngangas are diviners and healers who use traditional methods in their practices – the equivalent in these parts of the South African sangomas. You might go to a nganga for a problem involving kindoki , the usually low-grade witchcraft with which many Congolese felt themselves to be afflicted from time to time. He would almost certainly cure you of that with a harmless herbal draught and a few words of wisdom. Or you might go to a nganga for guidance on more serious questions. Questions of life and death.
    ‘I love my children with all my heart,’ she said. ‘I would do anything to protect them. I could not bear to bury one more of them.’
    I knew what she was about to ask and I knew what I was supposed to say in response. I knew at least what I was supposed to think, what any sane young Western man was supposed to think. I was silent.
    ‘Would it be very wrong,’ she went on, looking once more into my eyes, ‘if I were to ask the nganga to help guard my babies from harm?’
    I stared back at her, struck dumb by her intensity. She was terrified. The hardship and danger I flirted with was her birthright. She had nothing but her surviving children and she knew as well as I did that she might lose them too. Whatever my devotion to this place, I could leave any time I wanted. She was condemned to stay.
    I couldn’t find a single thing to say to her. Nothing I’d been taught to believe would be of the slightest use to her. No faith of mine could make sense of her and her nation’s tragedy. I had travelled hoping God would protect my family, but if he wasn’t protecting this woman or the millions like her, how could I dare expect special treatment?
    Could I forbid her to go to a nganga ? What did I have to offer instead? In the face of such desperation weren’t all courses permissible?
    She read her answer in my eyes.
    ‘Thank you,’ she said.
    She stood up and moved back quietly into the night. As she vanished straight-backed between the trees, on her way to meet whatever grim future awaited her, I felt my own faith tremble.

 
    12
    Bath, March 2002
    The papers and reports that Will had given to me in Catford were stacked each side of my keyboard. I’d worked through them over the past few days.
    Mike Heath, the pathologist, believed that Adam’s torso was put in the water up to twenty-four hours after his death. He estimated that what was left of the little boy had been floating in the river for anything up to ten days before it was found.
    Tidal experts reckoned that it would have taken just one more day to wash Adam’s body out to sea. They were still trying to identify the exact point where he could have been dumped, but had only narrowed it down to a twelve-mile stretch of the river. There was CCTV coverage of certain parts of the bank, but without a specific focus, examining it would have been a Herculean task.
    The initial Forensic Science Service (FSS) examination had come up with very little. The upper intestine was empty, which meant that Adam had not eaten for a while, and the lower intestine contained indeterminate material which had not yet been tested. His stomach contained virtually nothing, except traces of pholcodine, an over-the-counter cough mixture, and non-indigenous pollen residues. The Thames is full of them, but this provided an indication at least that Adam might recently have spent time outside the UK.
    The body contained very little blood – none of which was fresh – owing to the child’s injuries and his immersion, which also made it impossible to test effectively for antibodies that could have indicated past illnesses and might have given a clue to his origins.
    The FSS had Adam’s DNA, but he wasn’t on any known DNA database and no