The Claw

That seemed unlikely, since they consisted of a few grey photocopied pages of charred fragments from notebooks. 'He burned everything else,' Isaac said, 'but I can tell you more.'

Alan wasn't sure if he wanted to know more once he had read the first fragment. '1946 police reports: victims waylaid in evening on path back from market or farm. Spikes driven into neck. Heart and lungs always taken. All flesh removed from severed heads to prevent identification, yet Leopard Men often killed before witnesses – seemed to think themselves magically invulnerable…' These must be later notes, the handwriting had degenerated so much. Had Marlowe been trying to regain control of himself by listing facts? They didn't seem the kind of thing that would have helped his mind.

The handwriting on the next sheet was more precise, though the notes read like speculation. '… cannibalism as a source of magical power: Gilles de Rais was said to have eaten children. Sierra Leone Weekly News 4th April 1891 notes similarities of Jack the Ripper mutilations to those of Leopard Men. Was Ripper a magician who ceased his activities when he'd achieved his aim?'

Alan was seeking an answer, not more questions, and certainly not this description of the ritual of one group of Leopard Men: 'Girl was sent along crooked footpath. High bush either side, creepers covered any opening. Leopard Men lay in wait. Sometimes made animal sounds before they sprang.' He imagined the claw biting into flesh, and almost tore the page in turning it. 'Eisler in Hibbert Journal takes Leopard Men to be survival of primitive practice of hunting in packs. Men learned from beasts of prey, ran down prey and surrounded it, devoured it alive. Animal sounds meant to recall this? Sound of snuffling???'

Alan couldn't understand the three question marks -bad style, that was all – and the notes were growing less coherent, less objective, and even less meaningful to him.

'Witchcraft a stage through which all races pass. Attempt to regain lost powers of primitive? Every race capable of reaching back to THE SAME primitive powers. We all came from Africa…' THE SAME was underlined three times, so emphatically that the pen had torn the paper. He felt bewildered and irritable, he was beginning to wonder what he was doing here at all. 'Sound of snuffling,' he said jeeringly, despairingly.

'Yes, I can explain that.' Isaac's voice was gentle. 'You should know the legends of the Leopard Men.'

'Quite a few, are there?' Alan snapped, and felt ashamed. 'I'm sorry. You must think me very ungrateful. I do appreciate your letting me come here, looking after me like this. It's just that all that's happened…'

His voice was trembling, he couldn't go on. Isaac grasped his hand while he closed his eyes and took deep shuddering breaths. Eventually Alan was able to say 'Tell me what you were going to tell me.'

'There are two legends you should know.' He seemed to be debating with himself which to tell first. Eventually he said 'The origin of the Leopard cult is itself a legend.'

The tone of his voice made it clear that legend was a kind of truth. 'Marlowe believed they were trying to reach back to powers they felt man had lost when he ceased to hunt in packs.'

Alan found himself staring at the last fragment: 'Every race capable of reaching back…' He wasn't sure that he wanted to know. 'Reach back how?' he said.

'The oldest version David traced was that a Ju-ju man had the first claw made by an artisan whom he then killed. It isn't clear if that was to prevent the secrets of the making from being revealed or to blood the claw. In any case, it seems that the powers he invoked were too strong for him. There's a suggestion in the legend that he encouraged the cult to be formed in the hope that it would dissipate the hold the claw had over him. Presumably it didn't, because he ran with the Leopard Men even when he was too old to hunt. He had to be fed every time they made their kill.

The legend says he cannot die. He is doomed to wait to be fed every time the talisman makes a kill.'

'Which talisman?'

'The one Marlowe gave you.'

Night pressed against the windows, black and moist as the earth Alan could smell. It felt almost like being buried alive, though he couid hear some animal snarling in the distance. 'You're saying that was the original?'

'So he believed.'

'But how could a piece of metal do all this?'

'Do you believe things have souls? We believe everything has. The talisman has an evil soul.' As Alan looked skeptical, Isaac went on, 'David came to believe that the originator of the talisman would try to influence whoever held it to use it. The legend says that he would appear in the form of a naked man covered with the blood of all his feasts.'

Alan felt as if he was on the edge of a precipice of belief where nothing was familiar, yet everything was. 'What can I do?' he cried.

'That is the other legend. It must be as true for you as David thought it would be for him.'

His voice was grave. 'Tell me the worst,' Alan said.

'Simply this. There is a legend told throughout Africa that the last Leopard Man will come from a far land and destroy the power of the claw.'

Alan couldn't quite shrug that off, as all his Englishness demanded he should; it was as though he had already known. 'That's all?'

'Not at all. David traced variations as far as Kenya. They must have been among the papers he destroyed, but he told me most of them, I think. All the legends say that he will confront the giver of the claw and take his power to destroy it for ever. Once they come face to face in the jungle the legend will tell itself.'

Alan thought of his dream of the jungle, of the scrawny feral figure that rose to meet him. 'My God,' he said, shuddering less with terror than with realization, and then he thought he perceived a flaw. 'Why wasn't it Marlowe? Why didn't it work for him?'

'Because he was no longer capable of doing what had to be done by the time he found out what it was.' Isaac gave him a long sympathetic look. 'You have one great advantage. You've put an ocean between yourself and your child.'

So that was why he'd insisted that Alan come to Nigeria to learn what he must do. If this was reassurance it was appalling, and yet it made Alan so furious with himself he could hardly sit still. 'What am I supposed to do?' he demanded.

'Most versions say that the giver of the claw must die in order for the power to be consumed. David was convinced that meant the giver must be killed.' He sat forward and looked ready to clasp Alan's hands. 'Whatever happens, I shall be with you. You won't have to do this by yourself.'

Alan blurted out his question in order to deal with his flood of emotion: gratitude, fury with himself, anticipatory fear. 'Why are you doing all this for me?'

'Because of what I wished upon you.' He held up one pink palm as Alan made to speak. 'No matter that I didn't realize I was doing so. I want to help destroy what destroyed my friend David Marlowe.'

Alan reached out impulsively and grasped Isaac's hands. 'We will. By God, we will.'

'Now we must try to retrace David's steps,' Isaac said, 'to the man who gave him the claw.'

Twenty-one

They seemed to have been trudging through the shanty town for hours, peering out from beneath their umbrellas as they picked their way through the narrow makeshift random lanes, when Isaac halted suddenly. Rain shrilled on the corrugated tin roofs and awnings, water rushed down the open sewer channel which cut through the mud of the lane, and he had to shout to be heard. 'You ought to know this,' he said, and took Alan's hand. 'It may help.'

For a moment Alan thought he was going to give him a charm. But Isaac was shaking his hand, running a second finger across Alan's palm as he did so, and rolling his eyes. Here they were, standing in the maze of rickety shacks and propped-up shelters of tin and cloth, ankle-deep in the sucking mud and shaking hands like freemasons, blocking the way of three women with sodden cartons balanced on their heads. Beyond the shacks, palm trees nodded in the rain. Alan wondered if both he and Isaac were mad. But Isaac leaned his head close to Alan's beneath the umbrellas while the women grumbled past. 'That is the secret sign of the Leopard Men,' he said.