City of Sins. Daniel Blake

Marie said. Voodoo gods are called loa …

      Patrese didn’t stop her, but he was thinking furiously. Loa. The last word Cindy had said to him at Varden’s house had been ‘Noah.’ At least, that’s what he’d thought she’d said; it had been a little indistinct, what with her being drunk and slurry.

      But what if it hadn’t been ‘Noah’? What if it had been ‘loa’?

      Loa, and sacrificing people?…voodoo gods are called loa, and the father of them all is Damballah, the primordial serpent deity of new life and fertility who created the world. When the first man and woman came into the world blind, it was Damballah who, as the snake, gave them sight. Another snake loa is Simbi, the water snake. Loa of rainfall and fresh water, he oversees the making of charms, and speckled roosters are sacrificed to him.

      In voodoo, snakes are not seen as symbols of evil as in the story of Adam and Eve; rather, they are a symbol of man, and women often dance with snakes to represent the spiritual balance between the genders, as Marie had been doing in the ceremony on Rooster’s footage.

      The snake also represents fusion and transformation; as the snake sheds its skin, so man can leave his corporeal self and transcend into light and knowledge. From the snake flows wisdom and power, making an oracle of those who channel its spirit. That too was what Marie had been doing; a snake dance to celebrate her link to the ancient knowledge.

      The snake transmits that which is known intuitively. It is the beginning and the end, alpha and omega. It stretches itself out as a bridge across the various levels of consciousness, allowing man to travel freely to the realm of his ancestors, and to the astral plane.

      This travel is also the role of the mirror, one of the symbols of the loa Legba. Beyond the mirror in voodoo is the place between what has been, what is, and what will come. Two magicians can use a mirror like a telephone, transmitting information to each other.

      Marie began to sing. Salue’ Legba, Ai-zan vie, vie, vie Legba, Creoles sonde miroi Legba, Legba vie’ vie’, Creoles sonde miroi Ati Bon Legba.

      She translated for Patrese: Salute Legba, Ai-zan, old one, old one, old Legba, Creoles sound Legba’s mirror, Legba old one old one, Creoles sound Ati Bon Legba’s mirror.

      The axhead is a symbol of the loa Chango. In voodoo myth, Chango hurls bolts of lightning at those chosen to be his followers, leaving behind imprints of a stone ax blade on the Earth’s crust. Altars to Chango often contain a carved figure of a woman holding a gift to the god with a double-bladed ax sticking up from her head. The ax symbolizes that this devotee is possessed by Chango, and the woman’s expression is always calm and cool, expressing the qualities she has gained through her faith.

      That Rooster’s body had been found near a crossroads was also significant. In voodoo, the crossroads is where the earth and spirit world meet. Virtually all voodoo acts begin with the acknowledgment of the crossroads. A murderer can evade capture if he goes to a crossroads and takes nine steps backward down the road opposite to that which he intends to travel along. The law will take the wrong road from the murderer, and their investigations will lead in directions other than his.

      There are four main reasons why voodoo practitioners offer sacrifices: to pacify or appease loa; to prevent disaster or misfortune; to purify an individual; or to offer a substitute for what the loa really desires.

      But the sacrificial objects are always inanimate. New Orleans voodooistes don’t even sacrifice animals any more, whatever Rooster liked to have claimed about the source of his nickname, and they certainly don’t sacrifice humans.

      The killer wasn’t a proper voodooiste, in other words; which meant he wasn’t anyone in Marie’s congregation. If he was working to a version of voodoo, it was a very warped and misguided one. Voodoo was a positive religion. It wasn’t one which encouraged serial killers.

      ‘Until now,’ Patrese said.

      Now the Bureau was in charge, the case incident room was moved from New Orleans police headquarters to the Bureau building on Leon C. Simon, up near the lake. By the time Patrese got back there, it was mid-afternoon. Phelps, Thorndike and Selma were waiting for him. He told them what Marie had said.

      ‘You trust a single word that woman says, you’re dumber than a bag of wet mice,’ Selma said.

      As a way of showing her thanks to him for getting her back on the case, Patrese thought, it was unconventional, to say the least.

      ‘It all sounded sensible enough to me.’

      ‘Don’t matter what the specifics are. She’s mendacious and manipulative. She lies as easily as she breathes.’

      ‘She was co-operative. More so than I’d have been if I were her.’

      ‘Exactly. Exactly. Why would she be like that, except to yank our chain? Make us think she’s being helpful, when in fact she’s doing just the opposite?’

      ‘And why would she do that?’

      ‘To keep us from a truth she knows. Or maybe just ’cos it amuses her.’

      ‘You think this theory, this … voodoo is plausible?’ Thorndike said.

      Patrese heard the skepticism in Thorndike’s voice, and he couldn’t blame him. In the Bureau building’s utilitarian flatness, voodoo seemed to come not so much from another culture as another planet entirely.

      ‘Yes. Yes, I do.’

      ‘Then let’s go back to the start,’ Phelps said. ‘Cindy said something to you about sacrificing people.’

      ‘That’s right.’

      ‘What words did she use? What exactly did she say?’

      Patrese thought for a moment, careful to get his recall precise. Even a trained agent found it easy to confuse what he’d heard with what he thought he’d heard, or what he’d wanted to hear.

      ‘She said there was – is – something terrible going on. She said she needed to tell someone about it. That someone was me, because I wasn’t tainted.’

      ‘Tainted?’

      ‘Everyone here knows everyone, she said. Tell one of them, you tell the whole lot. But I didn’t know anyone, not properly. Which was why she chose me. She said that thing about sacrificing people – those were her exact words; “Sacrifice … Sacrificing people” – and then something which sounded like “Noah” but which I guess could have been “loa”.’

      ‘You’re sure about all that?’

      ‘Positive.’

      ‘No indication as to who “everyone” might be?’

      ‘No. But I assume – and I know you should never assume, because of what it makes – but still, I assume she meant the kind of people who were at the party. You know: movers and shakers.’

      Phelps gestured at himself and Thorndike. ‘Including people like us?’

      Patrese shrugged. ‘I’ve asked myself that before, and I’m still not sure. On one hand, she said “everyone”. But if she wanted to tell me, she must have known I’d have told you. So maybe not.’

      ‘Fair point.’

      ‘And you thought it was something to do with Varden?’

      ‘It was at his house. She said she had documents, evidence, that kind of thing. How would she have got those, unless it was something to do with Varden?’

      ‘And now?’

      ‘Now, we have to consider the alternative. What if it wasn’t Varden Cindy wanted to tell me about? What if it was something else entirely, and what it is, how she knew about it, has nothing whatsoever to do with Varden? What if it’s just coincidence she worked there?’

      ‘You want to give up on the Varden angle?’

      ‘Not at all. We’ve hardly