Scene 23

At that very moment, the sound of sirens rent the air, the drums rose in volume and the voices of the schoolchildren rose in harmonious chorus. Limousines glided past and seconds later Abdoulaye Wade stepped out towards the waiting crowd – with a somewhat masked smile on his face, ready to ceremoniously declare the eighth Art Biennial of Dakar open.

When the first speaker was on stage, there was the regular duel between the chorus of catcalls from the audience and the hiss-and-crackle of the microphone. During that time Maille took the opportunity to rifle through the bag of the wannabe assassin, who was lying powerless, well hidden behind the thick bean bushes. He found American cigarettes and strawberry-flavoured chewing gum, a paperclip, some money and lots of macademia nuts and, naturally, a packet of asafoetida – the tradition of the Hing killer-gang was to mark the murder spot olfactorily with a sprinkling of this stinky stuff. Maille found no hint of the henchman's identity or origin.

The idea of taking along the asafoetida for his own kitchen flashed through Maille's head – but the thought that the killer might have dipped his dirty fingers into the spice deterred him. So he emptied the contents of the packet of spice over the henchman. To his astonishment, a tightly folded piece of paper fell out of the tiny packet along with the powdery, yellow-hued spice. The thin blue paper was embossed with the Cyrillic alphabet – like one finds in a schoolbook – and a few of the letters were encircled with a red pencil. Over the letters was handwritten «Moskwa», below which Maille deciphered one name: «Anna Schukowa». He photographed the paper with his mobile telephone and sent it off via email to Port Louis – thinking that perhaps the «department» could embark on the investigation process with the name and the alphabets.

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