Father Confessor - For the Motherland

Chapter 16

Garikai had dealt with men like Chavapi before. Psychopaths without a shred of conscience, whose only guidelines were either expediency or greed. Or both. Ordinary scare tactics could not work on such creatures, mostly because they were sadistic as well as masochists.

But Garikai also knew they were human, so they had weaknesses.

Before he went into the room, he turned to Nariti.

"Find the caretaker's workshop and bring me a toolbox. Pliers, spanners, screwdrivers and andhammers."

The chief inspector stared at him like he was a nuthouse escapee.

"You are to question him, mister, not to torture him," she said.

Garikai plastered a horrified expression on his face.

"What? Me?" he asked innocently. "You think I would do that? What do you take me for?"

He saw Tsholo struggling to maintain a poker face.

"Spare me the theatrics. What would you want those tools for if not torture?" Nariti spat  out the words, her annoyance clear on her face.

"Well, DCI Nariti," Garikai said slowly, pointing at Chavapi through the mirror. "The guy who just got out is the good cop. I'm the worse one. Bring me the tools. When you do, a little theatre is recommended, for the benefit of the perp."

He left them and went in, feeling selfishly superior.

"Well, well. If it ain't the knight in shining armour," Chavapi chuckled. "I would bow for you, but my hands are tied."

"In kindergarten," Garikai said abruptly, "our teachers taught us a game. See, we knew all the Shona words for our body organs. It was the English names that confused us."

Chavapi shrugged and smirked. "You are feeling very chatty, aren't you? Is there a point to this trip down memory lane?"

"I said a game? It was more like a song." Garikai pretended he hadn't heard Chavapi's questions. He raised his voice in a song.

"Head and shoulders...hands and legs...

As he sang he touched each body parts in a parody of the children's educational game. He did so with his eyes fixed on Chavapi's face, alert to any minute twitch and blink.

He paused his singing and spoke. "Very quickly and easily, we learned. So we advanced to specific body parts, joints and limbs." He resumed his singing, going through eyes, nose, ears and mouth. Then he progressed to hands and finally to legs.

By then, he had begun to doubt his method would work. For long minutes, Anthony Chavapi sat in the chair like a statue, a sly smirk on his face. It was only when he mentioned feet that Chavapi reacted. It was a small, barely discernible twitch of the mouth but Garikai caught it.

"Feet," Garikai said slowly, eliciting a transmogrification of the smirk into a wince. There you are, scared little Tony, he thought.

"I'm not telling you shit," Chavapi blustered, his voice betraying his inner battle to appear nonchalant.

Garikai said, "Two feet on a human being, each with ten toes. Not forgetting my favourite part of the foot, the ankle..."

"You are crazy! Shut the hell up!" Chavapi yelled, spit flying out with his words. His jaw was set and his eyes had grown wider. He attempted to stand up but the handcuffs holding him to the desk restrained him. "Shut up,shut up! SHUT UP!"

Garikai slammed his palm hard on the desk, startling Chavapi, who fell silent abruptly and started shivering.

Garikai turned his back to him, feeling a thrill in his entire being. I am really good! he told himself. Take this, Patrick Jane.