Black Mischief by Carl Hancock

and the boys would be there with them. Until they arrived, unless there was unexpected news about Simon, the situation would be frozen. Until then there was nothing that they could do to ease the fears and apprehensions. It was a time of uncomfortable waiting.
    Imperceptibly there was a shift in the collective mood. The wine flowed more freely than was usual at a party at the Daniels home. Tongues began to loosen. An unexpected change was taking place. Sonya’s arrival time was a barrier and, on this side of it, the eight friends around the table were moving back to their normal lives. The anxiety, the compassion for the Mboya family became an overhanging backdrop.
    Maura sat across from Bertie. When the call from Dorothy came, Alex and Tom were up in Meru on flower business and Bertie drove her down to Karen without hesitation. He was a charming, lively guest, as usual, and only Maura understood the emotional cost he was paying for coming to her rescue. He was spending the night away from Ewan for the first time since he had brought the tiny baby home to Rusinga. He was missing his son, but there was something else to trouble him.
    There was another pain which was as raw at the dinner table that night as it had been almost three years before in that same room. Sonya had been Anna’s gynaecologist. She was the one who had first brought the little bundle of life to him and with it the cataclysmic shock of news that still reverberated down his life. Anna had insisted that they save the child even at the risk of her own life. Sonya had brought him and his son to ‘Cartref’ and looked after them until they were ready to travel back to Naivasha when Maura and Alex came to take them home.
    Sonya had been with Anna to help her bring Ewan safely into the world. Sonya had cried with him in his grief. Now Sonya would soon be with them with an agony of her own.
    Yet the atmosphere in that room was anything but gloomy. He had never known a family who laughed so much. With so many doctors in the family joy and pain were part of their daily work, constant companions which added an emotional richness to their world. Eryl, in her new plaster and sling, told the story of her accident as a hilarious drama. The Daniels family of Karen had the gift of living life with light-hearted seriousness.
    None of them misunderstood the prognosis for a prominent man who was snatched off the streets in broad daylight.
    Maura McCall, the mother of one who had defied the prognosis, wished that Tom had been able to be with them. He would have been a living proof that survival was possible. She had a suggestion.
    â€˜Bertie and I passed the pink palace on our way here.’
    â€˜The candy floss castle. Belongs on a beach somewhere. Gives this place a bad name.’
    â€˜Rhys, you’ve got no taste. Abel Rubai, man of the future, he knows about these modern trends. “Open Sesame” in Swahili is Abel Rubai!’
    Maura took up the point. ‘Gareth, I wish we could find some magic words to get inside that twisted mind and straighten it out. Look, something was working in my mind all the way down.’
    â€˜Oh, that explains why you hardly spoke a word to me.’
    â€˜Sorry, Bertie. That man scares me stiff. He’s so unpredictable. He’s vicious, he’s … crazy. There’s not much going on in this country that he doesn’t know about. We all realise that. Deadly as a cobra. Where will he strike next?’
    â€˜I met the baby cobra this afternoon. Another nut case. Weirdo. I think a cobra could have controlled that motorbike better.’
    â€˜When Tom was taken, the worst thing was not knowing. That was unbearable. You remember Lucy? She could tell us what she had seen, the cars, the big men, Tom being bundled into the boot of a Mercedes. Then, nothing. Simon gets a visit from three big men in smart suits and he vanishes.
    â€˜â€œRubai.” Look at me. I’m still trembling. I know