from his colleagues.
With a tug on Ignatious’s arm, Karakta asked him to come along to see something of great interest. He moved to the hill and began to climb. This was forbidden territory and Ignatious knew that his friend was breaking one of the strict laws of the tribe. None-the-less, he followed without protest. As the hill steepened, the lush vegetation thickened into interwoven branches of small trees and hardy bushes, making progress so much tougher.
It took half an hour to arrive close to the top, where Karakta whispered for Ignatious to lie on his stomach and wriggle the rest of the distance. “Keep very low and show as little of your head as possible,” he said.
When the pair reached the top, they lay flat and peered over. What came into view took the priest’s breath away. He stared in disbelief.
At the foot of the hill, there lay a flat expanse of land, covered in fine, deep-green grass. Built on this land, at a distance of around twenty feet away, were three buildings, one large, flanked by two smaller ones. The amazing thing was, they were pyramid shaped! They appeared to be built of the same materials as those at Giza in Egypt but covered in a shiny limestone, as would be the original Great Pyramids.
The centre one would be around seventy feet high with the two smaller being around fifty. Several people, all similar to the Leader whom Ignatious had first seen, were moving around, apparently carrying out repairs to the pyramid on the right. Part of the structure, about half way up, had been removed and it was clear that the workers were about to fill the gap.
An untidy pile of flat, square blocks hewn from this rocky side of the hill, lay nearby and the men were moving in that direction. Ignatious could see no lifting gear or means of transport so he wondered how the blocks were to be moved. Each block would measure something in the region of five feet square, by two feet deep and must weigh extremely heavily.
The men approached and stood in groups of two around three of the blocks. For a minute, they stood, simply staring at the objects and then each man placed his fingertips on the block in front of them. A further half-minute or so of staring and, incredibly, the blocks rose as if lifted by the fingers! The party then moved off in the direction of the pyramids as though carrying a cardboard box. The naked arms showed no sign of muscle strain, whatsoever. Ignatious’s mouth dropped as he watched the men walk up a ramp erected by the side of the damaged building and carefully slide the blocks into the appropriate places, leaving them perfectly aligned. This operation was repeated until the pyramid was completely repaired, the limestone being applied as a final act. Finishing the task, the men removed the ramp and went inside the pyramid.
Ignatious turned to his pal, his mind full of questions, not knowing which to ask first. “Just how did they do that?” he asked, utterly mystified.
“Magic,” said Karakta in explanation.
As they made their way back down the hillside, Ignatious gleaned a fuller explanation from his companion. Through the ignorance of the tribe in such elevated matters, Ignatious managed to put together the picture. It seemed that the power of the mind was once more at work but of a higher quality than that employed by the tribe — and Ignatious, too, with his newfound ability.
The men were not concentrating on the actual blocks, but through them to the ground beneath. What they were doing was removing gravity! In his way, Karakta explained that the human form carries many varied electrical impulses, the strongest of these being contained in the brain. By isolating that part and concentrating it on, or through, an object, it acted as a magnetic repellant to gravity, therefore removing the weight from the solid mass. In this way, gigantic stones, weighing many tons, could be easily transported over any distance and put into whatever position was required. It was all so simple, really!
Reaching the foot of the hill undetected, the friends said their farewells and went to their respective dwellings, Karakta with the intention of enjoying sexual activity to release his new exhilaration and Ignatious to pray and sleep.
The missionaries had been with the tribe for almost a year and a half when it all went badly wrong.
Ignatious stirred in his slumber and opened his eyes, a thin film of sweat on his brow. He sat up and checked the time: eight-thirty and time to be moving on.
“Hello, Graham,” opened Flint. “Glad I finally got you. Been on to the Met and they gave me your mobile number.”
Graham wasn’t too happy to be contacted now, with his secret tryst in flow, but the urgency in the Sergeant’s voice made him expect the worst.
“Yes, George. What can I do for you?” he said, pleasantly.
“It’s another body, Graham, believe it or not. A man again and no immediate signs of how death was caused. No one has touched the body and we’re waiting for your forensics boys to get here. I believe the pathologist is with you at the moment.”
Graham sighed. “Yes. She’s here with me. Sallie Dunning. You met her last time, George.”
“Yes, I remember her. Couldn’t forget a face and figure like that, could I?”
A small wave of anger washed over Graham at the light-hearted comment but he quickly let it die. He had no right to complain; Sallie wasn’t his, after all, and men, he included, were apt to make such remarks. “No, you couldn’t,” he replied, forcing a chuckle.
“Right. The unnerving thing about this one is, that the scene is the same as where Debbie Singleton was found. The exact spot.”
Graham gasped in surprise. “We’ll meet you there, then, George. I know where it is. See you in about twenty minutes?”
“Yes, okay. ‘Bye.” He hung up.
Sallie looked at her lover expectantly. She had heard him say that ‘we’ were to meet someone and by Graham’s expression, she knew it was a serious matter. “Where are we going, Graham?” she asked.
Unable to hide a smattering of annoyance, Graham explained the substance of the call to Sallie and the priest, after which they took their leave.
On the journey, the couple tried to convince each other that this might not be a connected death. It could even be from natural causes, like the woman on the picnic. Neither believed it.
Arriving in the area of the death, Graham parked the car and they set off on foot to the scene. A serious looking Sergeant Flint met them on arrival and they stepped under the striped plastic tape moving to a spot where the body could be seen, to await the forensic squad.
Nothing much could be learned from their present position, except that there were no signs of struggle and the body was naked, lying face down with one leg bent backwards from the knee, five or six inches from the ground. The man’s clothing was neatly piled a short distance away — early indications that this was the work of the detective’s quarry. The notion that it may have been a natural death evaporated quickly, as did the couple’s thoughts of a pleasant evening meal together followed by unbridled sex!
The forensics team finally arrived some fifty minutes later, and began their painstaking work. Graham was allowed to move closer to the body to carry out a visual inspection, some four feet away. His eyes were searching for the one convincing sign that this was their murderer and, peeping from the right thigh of the man, he found it — the small bunch of feathers. Some time later, he saw one of the team carefully remove it with a pair of tweezers and drop it into a plastic bag.
It was more than an hour before the team completed their work and Sallie moved in, with Graham and Flint in close attendance. She donned her mask and surgical gloves before carrying her case of equipment to the body. Following the customary practice, she began to record her words onto the tiny machine as she worked. “Male, approximately forty years of age, found in naked condition.” She closely inspected the man’s back, buttocks and legs. “No scars or injuries to rear of body.” Sallie carefully rolled Thomas over and began her inspection of his front. “Facial area unblemished, eyes open, mouth open with tongue protruding and blackened. Bruise on upper left side
