The Boy in the River by Richard Hoskins Page A

death, the choice of their colour and the fact that deposition was in the river. I still think the victim and the perpetrators came from the same ethnic group or same geographic area. And I’ve an idea that might be West Africa.’
    ‘ West Africa?’
    I could see Will hacking through the operational tangles that would spring up if West Africa emerged as a firm front-runner days before their visit to South Africa.
    ‘Any chance of being more specific?’he asked.
    I had hoped to avoid this. I knew how easily it could be misrepresented if I went about naming ethnic and religious groups, especially when I had no hard evidence. ‘Adam was circumcised as an infant. Circumcision at that age is common among the Yoruban people, and not very common elsewhere. The Yoruban homeland is in central and western Nigeria. And there’s some evidence that human sacrifice is still practised by certain Yoruban cults. They’re probably not the only ones who do it, but there’s a strong historical association.’
    ‘So if I ask Ray Fysh to get the boffins to start searching for matches in West Africa, and especially Nigeria, are you confident they may find something?’
    ‘The sacrificial victim is often forced to drink some kind of potion before the ritual act itself. That can be very specific in its make-up, depending on which deity is involved. We ought to get the contents of Adam’s intestines carefully analysed with that in mind. Not his stomach. His intestine. If he was given any sort of concoction, as I’m suggesting, he probably would have been forced to drink it a day or two before the killing, so it would already have gone through his stomach and into the gut.’
    ‘I’ll see if we can push it up the list of priorities.’ Will blew out his cheeks and sat back in his chair. ‘Nick, while you’re on your feet, why don’t you get the cultural adviser another beer?’

 
    15
    Bolobo, Oxford and Bath, 1989–1999
    Sue turned to her faith for the support I could not give her. She submitted to the tragedy as the will of God and found that in this way she could come to some level of acceptance.
    My own response was anguished and confused. I felt betrayed by God for not keeping his side of the bargain I thought we’d made, and sometimes my mind seemed locked in one long howl of protest against his very existence. I tried to deny him on the grounds of human suffering – not just mine but the suffering I’d observed in the lives of the people of the Congo.
    And yet here I was caught on the horns of a dilemma. For if I did not believe in something, if I did not allow the existence of some purposeful pattern in life, how could I make any sense of my daughter’s death?
    So, despite everything, I clung to faith for the time being. I could no longer even attempt to conceptualize what sort of God it was in whom I believed, but I had to believe nevertheless. I could not allow myself – not even for a moment – to entertain the thought that I had returned to the Congo with my beautiful daughter for no reason. Even worse, gnawing away underneath was the constant doubt about what might have happened if I had made the sacrifice as Tata Mpia had urged me to. Surely that way madness lay.
    The Baptist Mission reacted to our loss by arranging for us to be sent back to the UK on extended compassionate leave.
    On our last night before leaving Bolobo, Sue and I sat on opposite sides of the kitchen table and looked at each other through the glow of the hurricane lamp. Our hands were on the tabletop but they did not touch.
    ‘I don’t think I want to go,’ I said.
    ‘We both need to go home, Richard. We both need to move on.’
    ‘This is home,’ I said. ‘And I don’t want to move on.’
    ‘What do you want?’
    ‘I want to stay here with Abigail. I want to be buried here beside her.’
    I was entirely serious. I did want to be buried beside my daughter, and at that moment I didn’t care how soon it happened. Indeed, I would happily