The Prawns of Lebowa (Opening)

The Senior Investigator



The senior investigator hated seagulls. It wasn’t the fact that they were nothing more than aerial vermin nor the fact that they made such a mess. It wasn’t even the occasional attacks that they subjected the people of Lebowa to from time to time. What really got to him was that stupid noise that some of them made after the usual and publicised cries. That low four-syllable grunt that they repeated a couple of times. It sounded like they were muttering under their breath.

It reminded him of people. The kind of  people that he interrogated: criminals often but they were not necessarily so. Some were just ordinary folk, going about their own business and doing their own thing in that short space allocated to them between the cradle and the grave. It was these ordinary people: they were the ones that the gulls reminded him of. They were fearful and complaining, noisy or sometimes petulant: that ridiculous four-syllable muttering.

There were a lot of gulls that morning, just like any other morning really. The sun had just risen and was at that point just before the cool of the night was chased away and the heat of the day came washing in. The small flotilla of fishing boats were mostly up alongside and were bobbing about as they unloaded their catch into baskets on the quayside. As each basket was filled a man would carry it at speed across to the market sheds, braving the gulls that swooped and dived for the chance of another tasty morsel.  In the sheds the shouting would begin and each basket would eventually make its way to an owner and then eventually, after being packed in ice in the special covered wagons, would head off for remoter parts of the Xandrian City States.

There were still one or two vessels that were waiting off for space to tie up and these rode the lazy water out in the estuary. They would be at a disadvantage when they finally came alongside as most of the catch would have been sold and the best prices would be gone, regardless of quality. The catch was prawns: destined for the local restaurants, the markets and the street food stalls. Here they would be transformed from living twitching flesh   into that favoured of Xandrian dishes, Lebowan prawns.

From the small window of his office, Rollo could see two herring gulls fighting over a large prawn as they perched in the rigging of one of the larger boats. It was the Eye of Horos, so named because of the fearsome image sating fiercely out from its bow. The senior investigator couldn’t see the image from where he stood, even though his eyesight was good, but he knew that it was there. It was a bit like this investigation. He knew what was going on with these damned pardoners but he couldn’t quite collect the necessary evidence to bring this baby home.

He stepped away from the window and returned to sit at his desk. In doing so he failed to see two things. Firstly, he missed the smaller herring gull rip the prawn from the beak of the other and then fly off with his trophy. He also missed a small man dressed in the style of a marechati as he climbed off one of the fishing boats and made his way hastily and uncertainly towards the offices.

He was not surprised however when a few moments later, there was a timid knock at his door. He checked the clock placed carefully on the shelf beside him. It was an ancient timepiece that he had lovingly restored from a battered ruin that he had found in a filthy northern marketplace. He had enjoyed the haggling and was delighted when he managed to steal the thing away from the troll of a trader for less than he would expect to pay for a bowl of street food. He permitted himself a smile as he recalled the protruding lower lip and the brown cow like expression of the creature as he looked quizzically at the small coin squatting in his huge outstretched paw. It was all a matter of pronunciation, he reminded himself. It was a sweet success.

There was only one thing wrong with the old clock sitting in Rollo’s office.  It would tell the time beautifully until half past the hour but beyond that its movement was erratic and imprecise until it passed the zenith and started once more its descent of the clock face.

It was just passed the hour.

“Come!” he called imperiously.

There was a slight delay and then the door handle turned. A small man stepped into the room. He was fairly bald and the grey hair that he did have was close shaved to the sides of his head. His face was flushed, he was sweating profusely and his breathing was laboured.

“You’re late!”

“I’m sorry, senior investigator,” he said through his laboured breathing, “we were held up on the shoals.”

Rollo had no idea what being ‘held up on the shoals’ actually meant but he took the excuse on face value and dismissed it with a slightly impatient wave of his hand. The man standing in front of him mistook this for an invitation to sit and he did so in the chair opposite the senior inspector.

Rollo suppressed a comment and let the error, rather than the human, stand.

“You are not looking well,” he said, you shouldn’t be running about like that even at this time of the day.”

He refrained from adding the words “at your age” because these were difficult times in employee relations. It was very easy for a hapless employer to end up before the justices on a charge of discrimination: even an employer like the State Police.

“Yes, senior investigator,” said the man, “but I was late and I didn’t want to keep you waiting.”

“You don’t keep me waiting,” said the younger man, “I have plenty to do here but what would I do if you collapsed and died halfway through this investigation? That I don’t have the time for.”

“I’m sorry, senior investigator.”

A gull started crying out just outside the window. It was a fearsome racket. Rollo rolled his eyes.

“Shall I...” ventured the man.

“Please do...”

The older man rose and went to the window. He wrestled with the catch for a while and then opened it and yelled up at the creature. It must have been sitting somewhere on the ridge tiles of the roof because he couldn’t see it. It stopped its screeching but Rollo could hear that wretched muttering as it seemed to be complaining about the series of Xandrian expletives that the man had sent vaguely it its direction.

“Leave the window open,” he said, “and tell me what you have found out about this character, Malice.”

The man returned to the desk and stooped to pick a small bag from the floor. He retrieved a small book and a pair of glasses. He then sat back down, uninvited and opened the book to a page marked with a piece of loose black ribbon.

“That’s hardly a place to keep your insignia,” commented Rollo.

He liked to think that he wasn’t particularly bothered about uniform and protocol but he really couldn’t let the comment pass unsaid.

“Sorry, senior investigator,” he said once more before dipping his head below the level of the desk to rummage in his sack.

“What are you doing?” asked the senior investigator to the curvature of the man’s back, the only part of his torso that remained visible.

“Looking for the clip,” came the muffled reply from beneath the desk.

“Leave it,” breathed Rollo, “it’s not important.”

“But...”

“I want to hear about Malice, not carry out an inspection. Just get on with it would you!”

“Sorry, senior investigator.”

Gods, the man was such a sycophant, Rollo thought. He knew that he would just as easily shop him to internal affairs if he had a sniff of anything out of the ordinary. Not that there was anything out of the ordinary in the senior investigators life. It was structured, it was orderly and it was clean. It was also sadly, he considered, celibate.

 The man began to read in an oddly formal manner from his notebook. It was a detailed list of the activities of a berserker called Malice from the time that the Marechati had commenced his observations of him on board a ship called the Cor’Moran.

“On the face of it,” explained the older man, “it is a trading vessel but it carries a lot of weaponry even for a northern ship. I suspect some form of piracy but it wasn’t possible to get much out of the crew. They didn’t seem to know much.”

“You mean they didn’t know where they were going or what they were doing?” asked Rollo.

“No, I mean that they didn’t seem to know much about anything at all.”

He tapped his head.

“Not very sharp, any of them unless it comes to food and counting out the short hours between meals; how to keep away sea sickness ;and, a drink called horshp’s which is a green alcoholic mixture with bits floating in it.”

“I’ve met it” said the senior investigator a little impatiently. God’s ear, I’ve even tasted it, he thought to himself with a slight shudder of disgust.

“Anyway, move on a bit. I don’t need to know all this and I don’t need to know how he got to Bretha Yenglesh, just tell me what he did there and, if you know, why we went there.”

“Yes, senior investigator.”

Rollo had left his chair once more and was looking out of the window at a couple of traders who were in a bidding war  with a fisherman over the price of several baskets of prawns that had come in on one of the earlier boats.  They were only a few feet from his window and as he looked down on them he could see the expressions and gestures clearly.  He recognised both of them: one of them, a tall thin man of about forty with dark hair and a sour look, was the owner of the fish restaurant further down the quayside and the other, a portly man of about sixty with thinning hair and a small snappy looking dog was the chef and owner of the restaurant adjoining the marechati offices.

As the man behind him rambled on about the arrival of the participant (he did not call the subjects of investigation, suspects) he listened to the animated voices as first one and then the other said their bit about the quality of the prawns (or alleged lack of it). They covered the desiccation of the catch, the state of the hapless creatures and the sizes of the baskets as they attempted to get hold of what were obviously good quality baskets of the crustaceans.

He hoped that the portly man would get the catch. He planned to eat in the restaurant today and really fancied the prawn dish.

Somewhere in the background, the other man was still talking. It was something unimportant about customs officials on the islands and how they were all pirates and thieves to a man. A thought came to him.

“How did you manage to get on board this boat, this Cor’Moran?”

“Ah!” said the man smugly. “I got a job as a pilot.”

“A pilot!  How on earth did you manage that?”

Rollo’s tone was a little condescending. Perhaps more accurately it was contemptuous. He didn’t really mean to be. It was more surprise than anything and he didn’t intend to offend the older man even if he had. He comforted himself with the opinion that it didn’t actually matter what the other man thought. Inside, though, he knew that that wasn’t actually the truth.

The other man sounded a little crestfallen.

“I have some experience of the waters off the mainland. My father ran a small boat for the fish.”

“Fish?”

“Yes, senior investigator.”

“Not the ...”

“No, senior investigator.  My mother was allergic to prawns.”

“Ah!”

Rollo didn’t really follow the point but he didn’t want to go any further and wondered that he had even bothered to make a point of it in the first place.

“I have a good understanding of navigation and depth finding and I know most of the shoals and reefs in the area. I also speak Bruta Speke.”

The man sounded as though he was trying to justify himself and for some reason it annoyed Rollo. He couldn’t help it, and another scathing comment slipped from his lips.

“OK, that’ll do. You’ve got the job.”

He turned back to the man, the catch of prawns having gone to the taller man this time. Looking into the face of the older man seated at his desk he saw a brief expression of anger there. It was soon gone though. ‘At least he’s human enough to be hurt.’  Rollo decided to skip lunch today and return once more to his desk. The clock was struggling towards ten to the hour but that didn’t mean anything.

“I want to know about what happened on the islands. Who he met, what he did, where he went, all the usual things.”

Rather than start to give the information straight away, the marechati started to flick through the pages of his notebook. Beads of sweat were forming on the bald surface on his head.

 Rollo watched him with a mixture of mild interest and contempt.

“I should have booked a table at Krassi’s for lunch.” he said, not too quietly, to himself.