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giving them a call. They won’t accept you were driving around the streets looking for Abiola if they find his DNA in the boot.’
    ‘It’s what most fathers would do,’ Ebuka protested nervously. ‘You said so yourself.’
    Mr Broadstone lowered his voice even further. ‘Indeed, but they don’t forget to tell the police about it afterwards. You’d better pray the car wasn’t captured on camera that time. You’ll have a hard job persuading Inspector Jordan that such a reasonable excuse for a two-hour delay slipped the minds of both you and your wife.’
    After he departed, the Songolis argued with each other in whispered Hausa. Each blamed the other for their problems. Yetunde said Ebuka should have known about street cameras. Ebuka said Yetunde should never have brought Muna into their house. But for her, they could have called the police immediately.
    Neither said aloud that Muna had set her demons upon them, but their hate-filled glances in her direction told her that’s what they believed. Nothing else could account for the chaos that had entered their lives. It was Yetunde’s favourite sport to beat the Devil out of the girl, and Muna had come to welcome the punishment. If the Devil was so hard to expel, it meant He must be real.
    Sometimes at night, in the darkness of the cellar, she heard Him whispering to her. His words were always encouraging. Muna was His chosen one. His beautiful one. His clever one. If she bided her time, He would prove to her how powerful He was. She had longed for Him to strike Ebuka dead each time the door at the top of the steps opened, or whip the rod from Yetunde’s hand, but she saw now that He preferred to inflict a more lingering pain.
    Ebuka had become a shadow of himself these last few days and Yetunde’s overweening sense of importance was much deflated. Muna imagined they felt grief for Abiola – she had seen misery in both their faces from time to time – but it was fear of the police that troubled them more. Perhaps even fear of each other.
    Their hostility was very strong, particularly where Muna was concerned. Ebuka said thieves reaped what they sowed. If Yetunde hadn’t brazenly stolen another woman’s child, she wouldn’t have lost her son. He’d warned her at the time that no good could come of such an action. But Yetunde accused him of hypocrisy. Did he think she didn’t know what went on in her house? Who would believe Ebuka was innocent of Abiola’s fate if the girl ever spoke of the obscene acts he’d performed on her from the age of eight years old?
    Muna sat as still as possible, hoping immobility would make her invisible. It was hard to pick up every word because their whispers were so low, but she trembled at the thought of the beatings she’d receive for being the cause of so much hatred. Yetunde’s words suggested she knew that Ebuka visited Muna in the cellar, and Muna dreaded what the Master would do to her. He had said many times that she would learn the real meaning of pain if Princess ever found out.
    Muna didn’t doubt it was the Devil who jumped into Olubayo’s body and caused him to behave as he did. Without warning, the boy fell to the floor, flinging his body from side to side as if demons were pricking him with red-hot needles. Yetunde howled in shock, screaming at Ebuka to do something, and the man rose clumsily to his feet as the boy’s eyes rolled to the back of his head and foam frothed on his lips.
    Neither noticed Muna slip quietly from the room. She hid in the kitchen, squatting in the shadows of her favourite corner, and tried to persuade herself to run away. There would be no mercy if Yetunde believed Muna had caused Olubayo to writhe and twitch. But the girl was more afraid of the world outside than she was of this house where the Devil lived. It was surely to help little Muna that He’d set his demons on Olubayo.
    A bare few minutes passed before she heard the sound of a siren and wheels on the gravel. People entered