It must have been Otieno's idea of a joke. Too many offended egos back at headquarters, too many influential people unhappy with him in Nairobi. And yet, with his record, he was almost impossible to dismiss. So Otieno had sent Mollel straight to Hell.
When we first met Detective Mollel in Hour of the Red God, he was heralded as "a wonderfully complex and tragic protagonist" (Booklist), and Richard Crompton's novel called "spellbinding" (The Christian Science Monitor) and "a fantastic read" (The Plain Dealer [Cleveland]). Now Mollel returns in Hell's Gate, only this time the Maasai warrior-turned-detective has been banished from Nairobi, Kenya's bustling metropolis, to a small, fly-blown town on the edge of a national park. His career, he thinks, has taken a nosedive. His colleagues on the police force are a close-knit group and they have not taken kindly to a stranger in their midst. Mollel suspects they are guilty of the extortion and bribery that plague the force. But when the body of a flower worker turns up in the local lake, he begins to wonder if they might be involved in something even more disturbing.
For all is not as it seems in Hell's Gate. Amid rumors of a local death squad, disappearances, and blackmail, Mollel is forced not only to confront his Maasai heritage but also to ask himself where justice truly lies. In upholding the law, is he doing what is right? Crompton captures contemporary Kenya in all its complexity, and Hell's Gate is a captivating novel that you won't be able to put down.
Release date:
June 2, 2015
Publisher:
Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Print pages:
256
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He is this: a pair of flip-flops, a pair of baggy shorts. A matching tunic in black-and-white stripes. In his arms he carries a grubby foam mattress-a half mattress, cut down its longest axis, no wider than his shoulder blades. A scratchy woolen blanket is folded on top. In the pocket of his tunic sits a little yellow card that bears, in handwritten letters, his name, his number, his crime.
He is this, and nothing more. Just another one of the four thousand or so inmates of the place. He looks like them. He even walks like them-a shallow, defeated shuffle, thanks to the oversize flip-flops.
He looks like them, but he is not one of them. They know it, too: the very first group he walks past stare at him with seven pairs of sullen, hostile eyes.
-Policeman! one of them hisses.
Many times he has entered prison. Many times he has smelled that scent of stale, confined humanity; has felt the air, thick with the heat of hundreds of bodies, burn the back of his throat.
Every time, panic threatens to rise within him. Every time, he shudders to suppress it. Reminds himself that unlike these others, he gets to walk out.
But not this time.
The guard behind him chuckles.
-You're not going to find many friends in here, Maasai. You'd better learn to sleep with your eyes open.
-Look out! comes a voice. And two white-clad prisoners thunder past bearing a huge, steaming aluminum cauldron of gray mush dotted with pink, fleshy beans.
The cooks deposit the cauldron with a clatter in the middle of the courtyard. On that signal the disparate clusters of men morph into a line, plastic plates and spoons in hand.
-You can get yours later, the guard instructs him. First to your cell.
* * *
They approach an ash-block wall with a narrow doorway in it. Above the doorway is painted the word REMAND. With a jangle of keys the barred gate is opened and they pass through. Beyond, a second gate. The gates never seem to stop. This place is gate after gate, door after door, each of them opened and locked in turn. They step inside. The vinegary smell of the food had been bad, but the ripe, choking stench of the cellblock immediately banishes it from memory. It is the smell of sweat, of urine, of shit, of humanity. They walk past open cells, catching a glimpse at each doorway of dark interiors, mattresses scattered on concrete floors. Meager possessions tied in ragged bags to the bars of the high, narrow windows through which gray light trickles in.
Now he is within the very heart of the jail, and the denizens look up at him from their cots as he passes. Lassitude prevents most of them from stirring, but emotion flickers in their eyes. Amusement. Anger. Hatred. Pity.
A curious face rolls out and leers as he passes another door: a hand makes a slashing gesture across the throat.
The guard lets out a short, hard laugh, and a baton in Mollel's ribs keeps him shuffling forward. His cracked flip-flops are hard to walk in, and he wishes he could kick them off. But bare feet, like shoes, are forbidden here. A simple precaution: you can't run in flip-flops. And needle-sharp granite gravel covers the ground all around these walls.
A barked order to stop. Mollel turns to face a cell door that is hanging open before him. -Welcome to your new home, says the guard.
He counts six half mattresses on the floor. Alongside a plastic tub crusted with flies, there is space for one more.
-New arrivals sleep next to the slops, says the guard, and he walks off jangling his keys.
Mollel pushes the tub as far as he can with his foot and rolls out his mattress in the space that remains. Something stirs at the other side of the cell. What he had taken for a heap of blankets turns out to be the skeletal figure of a man. He can barely raise his head, but his eyes, half open, roll in the direction of the newcomer.
-I'm Mollel.
-I know who you are, says the sick man. We all do. We heard you were coming.
His eyes now adjusting to the gloom, Mollel can see that the man's ears are looped just like his own.
-Supai. Mollel greets him in Maa. The man does not reply. -What's wrong with you? says Mollel. Have you seen a doctor?
-There's no mganga can cure me, replies the man. Don't you know this is the fate of all Maasai in prison?
It is said that a Maasai never lasts more than three months inside. In the old days, it was believed they simply died. When the English sat in judgment, they wouldn't even put a Maasai behind bars for anything less than murder. Imprisonment was a death sentence to a people who believed that the whole world was their home.
Over the years, Mollel has seen plenty of Maasai serve out their time. He's even put a few of them there himself. They didn't die. But they may as well have. After a few weeks they became apathetic, listless. Clouds descended upon their eyes and an ashen pallor upon their skin. The elegant Maasai frame, unaccustomed to lying on a cot for twenty hours each day, became hunched and crabbed. These broken figures seldom spoke and never offered resistance. Their spirit was gone.
-How long have you been here?
-Two years, three years.
-On remand? asks Mollel. He knows that the backlog of cases is huge, but even so, he is shocked. -Let me talk to the guards. Let me find you a doctor, a lawyer. I might be able to help.
-You just look after yourself, Ole Mollel, replies the man. No one's going to want your help in here.
The guard returns with a greasy plastic plate and spoon, which he thrusts into Mollel's hand.
-Go get your food before it's all gone, he says.
* * *
Back in the courtyard, Mollel casts his eyes around the space. Prisoners stand in groups or sit on the ground, grazing like zebras from their bowls of slop. Around and among them prowl the guards, in their khaki uniforms, berets, and shoulder braids, twirling their batons nonchalantly.
High walls run all around, dotted here and there with blank, gated doors. Atop the walls, the sky is bound with rusting curls of barbed wire.
A splash of warm liquid hits him in the face. The spit, full of chewed beans, slides down his cheek and he shakes his head to keep it from his mouth.
Laughter greets the bull's-eye.
-How'd you like that, policeman?
He casts his eyes down, but he cannot escape the mocking hostility as he takes his plate over to the cauldron, which is no longer steaming, in the middle of the yard.
He senses all eyes on him as he approaches the tin cooking pot. There is nothing left. Two or three beans are smeared across the sides; otherwise all has been devoured.
As he absorbs this, the laughter returns. First a sneer, then a catcall, then a tumultuous, clamorous cackling. What started haphazardly becomes rhythmic, vibrating: the prisoners are now stamping their feet in unison.
The guards do nothing for a minute. They are enjoying this, it seems. Then, suddenly, they've had enough. The batons are out, and the mob calms down. The prisoners are ordered back to their cells.
Mollel is held back, but only long enough for the others to reach their cells. There is no favoritism for him: the guards just don't want a fight in the corridors.
When Mollel gets to his cell, the dying Maasai is no longer the sole occupant. A chorus of groans greets him.
-Why do we have to have him? protests one voice.
-You get him, Oweno, because you've had floor space for another mattress ever since your cellmate hanged himself. While the other six of you were supposedly sleeping.
Oweno smiles. -We're heavy sleepers here. Aren't we, lads?
The man rises up, grabbing the plastic pot from its place on the ground and thrusting it into Mollel's hands. The smell hits him in the face. A half inch of viscous piss sloshes at the bottom.
-Better get used to it, says Oweno. You're on slop duty.
-Behave yourselves, boys, warns the guard. This one isn't a mule thief from Kericho. If anything happens to him, people are going to ask questions.
-It's not us you need to worry about, replies Oweno. We're all big supporters of the polisi, here.
Another guard comes and murmurs something to the first.
The pair of them look at Mollel with interest.
-Well, well, Maasai. You're honored. The boss wants to see you.
-The governor? Mollel asks.
Laughter rings out around the cell. Even the guards snigger.
-Come on.
* * *
They lead him past the gate to the administration block and onward to the dispensary. There, one of the guards respectfully knocks on the door.
It is opened by a tall man with a pleasant, plump face. Boyish eyes that turn up at the corners. He looks as innocent as a child. Which is totally at odds with what Mollel knows of this man, and of what he does.
He is Mdosi. This current stretch in prison has done nothing to diminish his power or influence. He stands aside to invite Mollel in, dismisses the guards with a nod, and closes the door.
The dispensary is a single room that has evidently been converted into Mdosi's private residence. Curtains hang at the window. A rug is on the freshly painted concrete floor next to the unavoidable pisspot. A calendar showing scenes of a snowcapped Mount Kenya hangs on the wall. A small television on a stool flickers silently. And, perhaps most enviable of all, there is a bed. A proper full-size bed, on legs, with the twisted bridal veil of a mosquito net hanging from a hook on the ceiling above it.
Mdosi's eyes dance with amusement.
-Have you anything to tell me, Maasai?
-About what?
-About why my men keep disappearing. About what is happening to them. They're not just retiring from the business, putting their feet up. They're being killed. And I want to know who's doing it.
-I've got nothing to tell you, Mollel says.
Mdosi smiles. Slowly, carefully, he removes one of his flip-flops. It has a line scored across the sole. Deftly, he cracks it in half.
Next he crosses to the pisspot. He dips his fingers into the liquid, gingerly moves them around, searching for what the eye would miss, then pulls from it a four-inch shard of glass. He sticks the shard into the heel of the broken flip-flop, which Mollel sees has a notch in it for just that purpose. Mdosi handles the shard almost lovingly, watching it gleam in the low light.
-This, Mdosi says to Mollel, is for you.
* * *
It must have been the sound of the chair falling to the floor that made the guard open the door. Mdosi's shard is in Mollel's hand.
Blood drips from it.
The guard looks down at the body of Mdosi, lying in a rapidly growing pool of blood on the concrete floor, then back at Mollel. Mollel opens his hand and lets the shard fall to the ground, where it shatters. Finally, the guard manages to speak.
-You've done it, you crazy bastard, he cries. You've killed him!
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