Chapter Forty-Four
Having spent the morning in and around the pool with Caro, William and Freddie were just finishing lunch when Henrique arrived home. He was nominally retired but still acted as a consultant for the company he co-owned and he liked to keep his finger on the pulse of the business world. It was a fast moving environment and he was loath to be caught napping. But being both the senior partner and retired meant he could dictate his own hours, so often called it a day and came home at lunch time.
Freddie was due to go down for his afternoon nap so Henrique asked William if he would like to accompany him to The Thinking Place – which was the name they had given to the stand of trees at the top of the hill. Henrique was still in the process of constructing his Mind Tree and William was helping him with that.
'I have some things I need to put in the Brig in my Mind Ship, too,' the little boy explained. He wanted to get the last of the memories of that horrible day locked up before he returned to the hotel. He'd taken care of most of them but, just this morning, the image of a hand, holding a gun, resting on a banister had popped unbidden into his mind so he needed to secure that away.
They walked up the hill, chatting in a companionable way. Henrique had grown very fond of the Hooper-Holmes family, over the preceding five weeks but especially of William. The little boy was so serious and intense, old beyond his years. He looked at everything with an enquiring eye and noticed how things connected together in unusual ways.
But he was also just a five-year-old boy who enjoyed a bit of rough and tumble, who got grouchy when he was over-tired and who loved to play pirates. Having no children of his own and no nephews or nieces who were particularly close, Henrique had never imagined what it might be like to be a grandfather but, when he was with William and Freddie, he thought he understood how that special relationship could be shared between two generations separated by a third.
On reaching the stand of trees, they threaded their way through to the one special tree – right in the centre – and Henrique spread the blanket they had brought, just for this purpose, on the ground. They sat down and each went into their own Mind Place – the boy to his ship and the man to his tree – and went about their individual tasks.
It was sometime later that William heard a sound that grabbed his attention and snapped him straight out of his Ship and back to the stand of trees. He opened his eyes and looked around. The noise had been barely discernible but there was something about it that demanded to be heard. As he looked around, he slowly became aware of several figures standing in a group amongst the trees.
They were adults – men and women – but they were quite small. They had very dark skin and straight black hair. Their noses were broad and rather flat and their cheekbones were high and sculpted and painted with strange markings. They were dressed in tee shirts and shorts but also wore strings of brightly coloured beads and feathered head dresses. They stood still and silent and looked at William with sharp, black eyes. Then one of them, the one in the middle, broke into a broad smile, completely dispelling any feelings of apprehension the small boy may have had and William smiled back.
'Olá. Em que é que posso ajudar?' he asked.
'Can you help me with what?' Henrique asked, jolted out of his own Mind Place by William's sudden enquiry.
'No, not you,' William replied, 'the other people,' and he pointed to the group of indigenous people standing under the trees.
Henrique was surprised but not alarmed to see Indians. He'd seen them before, from time to time, passing across his land on their way from here to there, but always at a distance and always on the move. He had never known them to stop and he had certainly never known them attempt to make contact but it was obvious that these people wanted his attention, wanted to speak to him, had something they wanted to say.
There were many indigenous ethnic groups in Brazil and each had their own distinct language or dialect but most – apart from the very remote and the, as yet, Uncontacted - spoke Portuguese.
Henrique repeated William's enquiry.
'Olá. Em que é que posso ajudar?'
'Nós estamos olhando para Inglês, Senhor Holmes' said the man in the middle, who was clearly the leader or at least the spokesperson. They were looking for the Englishman, Mr Holmes.
ooOoo
When Caro glanced out of the window of her study, she could hardly believe her eyes. Her husband was walking across the lawn, holding William by the hand and accompanied by seven Indians. But they were not local people. These people wore tribal markings, painted or tattooed on their faces, and were clearly indigenous people from the forest not from the city.
Caro left her study and walked through the house to the Afternoon Sitting Room where the big French doors stood open. She stepped outside and waited for the strange procession to appear around the corner of the house. Then she walked forward, smiling. The entire party came to a halt and Henrique introduced Caro to them as his wife.
'These people have travelled a long way, Caro-mia,' he explained. 'They're hungry and thirsty and they are our guests.'
She immediately turned and went back into the house, calling for Giorgio and asking him to bring fruit and cold meats from the kitchen, along with a big jug of iced water and another of lemonade. In the meantime, the visitors sat down on the patio, in front of the French doors, and peered into the gloomy interior but showed no desire whatsoever to enter.
When Caro emerged once again, carrying a tray of food which she placed on the patio table, they waited to be invited to help themselves but then got stuck in and began, enthusiastically, devouring everything on offer. William was chatting in Portuguese to the group leader so Caro took the opportunity to ask Henrique to what they owed the honour of a visit from these usually reclusive forest dwellers.
'The leader, Chi'ipa, says he knows Sherlock. He says his people helped our friend when he was here before and now they need Sherlock's help. They heard that he was back in Brazil so they came looking for him. They were told, at the favela, that he was here. So they came here.'
Caro shook her head in amazement. In all the years she had lived in Brazil, this was the first time she had met and spoken to any of the indigenous tribespeople. Sherlock was here for less than a week, last time he came, but had clearly made quite an impression on these people.
ooOoo
Sherlock and Molly were in Caro's car on their way back from the hotel when his phone rang. The caller ID said it was Henrique. He answered, wondering what emergency had prompted their friend to call. When Henrique explained, he was both relieved – that there was no problem with the boys – and intrigued. He could still remember very little of his journey through the Amazon but his clearest memory of that period of time was of a face and a voice. Could that be this Chi'ipa? Sherlock closed the call and turned to Molly, who had been listening with interest, to his side of the conversation and whose expression mirrored how he felt.
'I think I'm about to meet another ghost from my past,' he said, and sat back in the leather upholstery, tapping his chin, distractedly, with his phone.
When the car pulled up outside the colonial house, Giorgio was there to meet them and directed them through to the Afternoon Sitting Room and out onto the patio. As soon as Sherlock stepped out through the French doors, all the Indians got to their feet and one man came forward to meet him. They recognised one another, immediately.
'English, my memory didn't deceive me. You really are as tall as a tree,' Chi'ipa exclaimed and reached out to take Sherlock's big, smooth hand in his own small, calloused one. The Indian barely came to Englishman's breast bone but Sherlock gazed down at the diminutive figure with a degree of respect that he rarely gave to any other person. This man had guided him through the Amazon Jungle, on a two-week long trek, for which he was ill-prepared and completely unequipped, but had kept him safe and delivered him back into civilization then disappeared like a ghost in the night.
'It is good to see you again,' Sherlock said, as he shook the man's hand, fervently.
'And you, too, though my reason for needing to see you is not a good thing,' Chi'ipa replied.
Sherlock gestured for them all to sit down again and he joined them, sitting cross legged on the ground. William came and sat in his lap. Caro, Henrique and Molly sat around the patio table, witnesses to the discussion and Freddie wandered about, ingratiating himself with the various members of the visiting group, as he saw fit.
Sherlock opened the conversation.
'Please, tell me what this bad thing is and if I can help you with it, I certainly will.'
Chi'ipa began to tell his story.
His people lived on the banks of a great river, a tributary of the mighty Amazon itself. They lived as they had for centuries, hunting in the forest, fishing in the river, trading with the New Brazilians but obtaining most of what they needed from the land – their land. But, recently, the Brazilian government had decided that their river would be the perfect site for a hydroelectric dam, to provide much needed electricity for the civilized parts of Brazil, the towns and the cities.
Chi'ipa's people had no need of electricity. They had survived without it for centuries, they could survive without it for centuries more but their rights to their tribal lands were being over-ridden in the name of progress. They had started a campaign to regain control of their own lands but, in the meantime, the power company had started to clear the jungle in preparation for building the dam, displacing the wild animals, destroying unique ecosystems and rare indigenous species of plants and animals.
And as if that were not bad enough, now a mining company wanted to mine for gold on the tribal land. This gold would make a fortune for the mining company but the Indians would gain no benefit at all. All they would get was an enormous spoil heap – larger than the Sugarloaf Mountain in Rio de Janeiro – and further disruption to their way of life. The blasting of the mine would go on day after day, month after month, year after year. All the animals would be frightened away.
This river was their super highway. It was their Route 66. But the power company wanted to block it, drain it dry and leave the indigenous people with no means of transport or communication. The jungle was their supermarket, their shopping mall, their factory floor but the mining company wanted to blow it up to get to the gold hidden underneath.
Chi'ipa went on to explain that, under the Brazilian Constitution of 1988, his people were granted exclusive rights to their lands as Indigenous Territories to pursue their traditional way of life, except in extreme circumstances of 'relevant public interest'. However, the National Indian Foundation lacked the resources to uphold these laws so their lands were constantly under threat from logging, mining, cattle farming and, now, hydroelectric schemes.
And, as if that were not bad enough, Brazil's Congress was debating a bill to open up indigenous territories for mining, dams, army bases and other industrial projects. If the new bill became law, it would mean the end of their way of life – possibly the end of their people, since other tribes had been driven to extinction by similar encroachments on their land.
'The people who support this bill are very powerful,' Chi'ipa concluded. 'Some members of congress are believed to be receiving money from mining and other companies. We are desperate, English. We heard that you had returned to Brazil and that you were trying to help the Indians and the Street Children. So, we came to find you and to ask you for your help.'
Sherlock had listened to the man's story with a burgeoning sense of outrage and despair. He had no idea what he could do, how he could possibly go up against the Brazilian Congress and achieve anything useful but he was not about to give up without trying. He turned to Henrique, with a look of grim determination.
'Where do we start?' he asked.
'We start with the law,' Henrique replied.
ooOoo
