Roachville

‘Hi. I’m not sure if I’m still being followed. I’m staying away for a couple more days, but I’m coming back if they’re not after me anymore. Please watch out and have some faith.’

With Ely’s last message in mind, I drove into town and bought shining kitchen knives of various sizes and weight. Acquiring a baseball bat felt like a cliché, so I bought a cricket bat. I swung it in all the rooms in my broken house and listened to the air swishing around me.

In the afternoon, Kalaroo turned up at my door. At the living-room door, that is. As his silhouette materialised on the other side of the glass window, I gripped the cricket bat and stood still, until I was one hundred percent sure I could see him. My eyebrows shaped into a severe frown; I put the bat on the floor and I opened the door.

‘Hi.’

‘How are you?’ he asked with a giant grin.

‘Okay, I guess. Have you got any news about Ely?’

‘Yes and no. It’s kind of a long story. How about you offer me a drink first?’

I opened a couple of beers.

‘You know, you should try raspberry gin. It’s delicious, I reckon you’d love it.’

‘That’s fascinating,’ I said, ‘but I’ve got other things on my mind than bloody fruity gin. Where is Ely?’

The omnipresent sound of rush hour traffic insinuated itself through the open window and I looked intently at Kalaroo. Lazily, he stretched out his arm to close the aperture.

‘Is Kalaroo your real name?’ I asked, unable to bear the silence anymore.

He chuckled and sing-songed to himself.

‘Our real names are Bob and Bruce…’

I choked on my drink and wiped a tear that had formed in the corner of my eye.

‘I agree, they’re real shit names… So I won’t bother telling you who’s who. Don’t think it ever mattered, anyway, or if I could remember,’ he carried on with real melancholy in his voice.

‘Don’t be sad,’ I said. ‘Kalaroo is a wicked name.’

‘Indeed. It means “spirit of the desert”…’

I screwed up my face.

‘Ah ah, just kidding. Don’t know what it means or if it means anything at all! We just liked how they sounded.’

‘They sound great, but please…’ I said, feeling like a pressure cooker on the very edge of explosion, ‘get to the point. Why are you here?’

‘Mulalloo has been in touch.’

‘Yeah?’

‘I’m afraid he has lost contact with Ely.’

A gargled sound came out of my throat. Kalaroo drank the beer in one gulp.

‘I know it sounds bad, but Mulaloo hasn’t lost touch with Tann’s little helper. Last I heard, he was in the far North of Scotland, but now he has turned round and he is on his way back here, which means he’ll be reunited with Tann, maybe today. And you know, I’m not saying it because he is my brother, but Mulaloo is a fantastic tracker – amongst the best. So when Ely turns up, which he is bound to at some point, I’d keep hold of him.’

‘Enough!’ I hissed. ‘First of all, maybe Ely is dead, lying at the bottom of a pond or buried somewhere, and Mulaloo just didn’t see anything. And now Tann is going to come for me, because he knows exactly where I am.’ I darted around the room, assembling what I should pack.

‘Listen.’ Kalaroo clutched my arm like a gentle octopus. ‘I am certain Ely is fine.’

‘How the fuck would you know?’

‘Because the naga brought you two together and so you need to have a bit of faith.’

I grabbed my head and let out a stream of obscenities. Have some faith. Those were Ely’s words in his last message.

Kalaroo made me sit and looked me in the eyes.

‘Of course, it is possible that Mulalloo has missed something, but I doubt it. You know we’ve been playing this game of cat and mouse with Kenneth Tann for a long time, so he would know if something had happened to Ely.’

‘Aren’t you fed up with this game?’ I looked up at him.

Kalaroo nodded pensively and expelled a long vibrating sound. His dark brown eyes turned towards the naga next to me and he scratched his chin.

‘I’m still not giving it to you,’ I said, shifting my position towards the statue.

‘I know that and that is not why I’m here.’

‘So why are you here? Because it would be so easy for you to take it, if you wanted to.’ I narrowed my eyes.

‘This is not the way we do things,’ he explained softly. ‘Besides Phuong said the naga has to stay with you for now.’

I sighed and gazed at the naga too.

‘I wish you would say more to me,’ I scolded the statuette, ‘because I just don’t know what to do right now.’

‘Well, maybe it will,’ Kalaroo said, fixing his eyes on the naga. ‘I don’t know either what you should do, whether you should stay or run away, but you should expect a visit from Kenneth Tann very soon.’

‘And you’re just going to let me deal with him on my own?’

‘Well, you’ve managed all right so far. I’m sorry I can’t be of more help. I’m just a messenger, but I’ll be in touch soon again,’ he said, walking to the garden.

‘Wait!’ I stretched out my arm. ‘How about giving me your phone number?’ But it was no use, Kalaroo’s face went very serious, as he dematerialized outside the back door and the neighbour’s dog started barking at the invisible intruder.