The Death of the Mantis (4 page)

I owe this man a lot, Kubu thought, and yet I don’t know him at
all. I remember an intense and enthusiastic boy. A friend older
even than the one who called me a jolly hippo, and I became Kubu
for ever. Kubu felt a sudden pang of loss for that friend, and a
pang of a different type of loss for Khumanego.

“Is there a way I can help?” Surely Khumanego had not called to
chat after all these years.

“Do you mean that?”

“Of course.”

“I can’t talk on the phone. I need to see you privately. And not
at a police station.”

The Criminal Investigation Department was not a police station,
but Kubu doubted that fact would satisfy Khumanego. He checked his
watch. Just about ninety minutes till lunch. Time enough for
Khumanego to drive from Lobatse.

“Do you drive?”

“Yes,” Khumanego answered.

“Then we can meet for lunch – a light one, mind you, because I’m
on a diet. I’ve put on a few extra kilograms over the years.” He
hesitated over this understatement. A lot more than a few kilograms
had attached themselves to his frame since he was ten years old.
But then, of course, his frame had increased quite a bit too. “Do
you know where Game City is? From the Lobatse road, you’ll see
Kgale Hill on your left, and Game City is a big shopping centre a
bit further on before you reach the city. There’s an excellent
coffee shop that serves snacks on the upper level. I’ll meet you at
twelve thirty.”

Khumanego assured him he would find it, and said goodbye.

♦

Kubu was still turning the strange telephone discussion over in
his mind when Edison Banda walked in clutching a forensics report.
He waved it excitedly at the senior detective.

“We were right, Kubu! They were poisoned!”

Kubu leant back in his chair, causing a protesting creak. Who
was poisoned? It took him a moment to recollect the case. The
forensics report had taken weeks! Two students from the University
of Botswana had been found dead at a camp ground in Sekoma,
collapsed outside their tent, faces horribly contorted. They’d been
on their way back from a field trip to collect samples of plants in
the Kalahari. The locals had immediately suspected witchcraft.

“What’s it say? Why did it take them so long?”

“Well, we had to send samples to the Poison Information Centre
in Cape Town. They were able to do it the quickest. Then Ian
MacGregor was sick, so – ”

“Never mind that. What killed them?”

“Bushman poison bulb. Just as we guessed. Apparently it’s a
member of the amaryllis family. Very poisonous indeed. Remember
there were samples of it in their collection? I’ll bet anything you
like that they knew the Bushmen use it as a hallucinogen. So they
decided to try it out on their last night alone. But they took much
too much.”

“But they were senior students! Of botany. Surely they’d know
better?”

Edison shrugged. “They were students,” he said, as though that
explained everything.

“Could it have been deliberate?”

“You mean a suicide pact?” Edison shook his head. “Two young
guys. No note or motive. Doesn’t make sense.”

Kubu hesitated. “Two men. Could there have been something going
on between them?” That might be a motive for suicide. Homosexuality
was illegal and deeply frowned upon in Botswana.

“One had a regular girlfriend here. I talked to her after they
died. She was very upset. They wanted to get married. He was saving
for the
lobola
. The other didn’t have a girlfriend, but
played the field.”

“What about murder?”

Edison was not to be shifted. “By whom? What for? Nothing was
stolen as far as we can tell, and no one knew them in Sekoma. The
local police asked around the camp ground. No one saw anything
suspicious.”

Kubu thought it over. The kids had enjoyed a few beers – not
drunk, but perhaps enough to make them irresponsible. Try out a
Kalahari traditional drug. A big mistake. A fatal mistake.

“Have you told the director?”

Edison looked sheepish. “I thought I’d try it out on you first.
Maybe we can see him together.”

“He won’t bite your head off,” said Kubu, although he thought it
likely Mabaku might do exactly that. Edison had been out of favour
with the director of the CID for some time. Kubu sighed, clambering
to his feet to share the news with his boss. This is what our work
here is almost always about, he thought. Not solving puzzling
crimes, but rather picking up the pieces after a drunken knifing, a
domestic brawl, or two kids who’ve thrown away their young lives on
a stupid experiment.

“Okay,” he said. “Let’s go and talk to Mabaku.”

♦

Khumanego was more than half an hour late. Kubu drank water with
lemon, and then, growing desperate, ordered a salad with as much in
the way of cheese and avocado as the chef could find. Joy had
assured him that salads were healthy, that he would lose weight and
that he would feel full at the same time. The salad-lunch diet had
lasted a week, and so far Kubu had no evidence to support any of
these three contentions.

He had finished the salad when Khumanego arrived. When Kubu saw
him, he had to suppress a smile. Khumanego was no more than one and
a half metres tall – a diminutive figure wearing ill-fitting
clothes he must have bought in the boys’ section of a supermarket,
his narrow yellow-brown face sticking out from a blue shirt. His
trousers were too long and overlapped his shoes. On most people,
Kubu thought, they’d be shorts.

Khumanego muttered about traffic and parking by way of apology.
Kubu responded that neither were significant problems in the
Kalahari, and his friend nodded but didn’t smile. Although Kubu
made it clear that he was paying, Khumanego ordered only an open
sandwich of bacon, lettuce and tomato, and a glass of water. Kubu
felt it would be rude to let him eat alone and, having satisfied
the requirements of the salad diet, ordered the same sandwich.
While they ate, questions bounced to and fro, filling in the
intervening years. Kubu explained how he’d got his nickname at high
school and that all his friends still called him that.

Khumanego laughed, enjoying the humour around their size
contrast. “They should call me Mongoose then,” he joked. But he
soon sobered and recounted how he’d returned to his people before
finishing high school.

“You know how hard it was, David,” he said. “I couldn’t take it
any more. But when I got back to the desert, I didn’t fit there
either. I’d lost the ways of my people. I couldn’t track a wounded
springbok, and I was no longer able to make myself invisible to
animals. People found my ways strange; they were uncomfortable with
me. I had become a stranger in my own land.” He shook his head.

“It was a terrible time, David. I had waited so long to be a
Bushman again. A Bushman in the desert. With my friends and family.
Going to where we could find game and plants. Moving or staying as
living dictated. But it wasn’t like that any more. Everything was
being fenced for cattle. We weren’t allowed to hunt freely; we had
to get permits and often had to pay bribes for them. The government
was moving my people to settlements on the edge of the Central
Kalahari Game Reserve. They said it was for our own good; that
there would always be water there, and permanent homes, and schools
for the children. But in the end they were just camps, places where
we could be forgotten. Then foreigners came from overseas, to help
us fight the government, to win back our rights, they said. But
they didn’t understand us either. Maybe they made things better,
maybe worse.”

Khumanego paused after this uncharacteristic torrent of words.
Kubu just nodded, and Khumanego continued. “Who could we trust? Who
was right? What was right? I saw what was happening to our people.
They were confused, not understanding what was going on. Pulled
this way and that. Puppets in other people’s games. My parents had
been right; what they feared had already arrived.”

Kubu responded that he had been fortunate to go to Maru a Pula
high school in Gaborone, where he too had been unhappy at first,
bullied because he was different. But after some time he had found
friends. He started to sing in the choir, and enjoyed cricket,
becoming the school’s official scorer. He told of his love of
detective work, and how it linked to what Khumanego had taught him
in the desert. And, with a broad smile, he spoke of meeting Joy,
and the miracle of his little girl, now three months old.

Khumanego asked after Kubu’s parents, around whose modest house
he had spent many hours playing. He was delighted to hear they were
still alive and in good health. But when Kubu asked after
Khumanego’s parents, he replied, “My mother is living in one of the
new settlements.”

“And your father?”

Khumanego just shook his head. “He died,” he said simply,
without elaboration. “After that, I felt a responsibility to guide
my people through the barrenness of the political landscape –
things they know nothing of and certainly don’t know how to deal
with. I felt I had to guard their interests.”

Eventually there was a lull in the conversation, and they agreed
on coffee, Kubu recommending the cappuccino.

Then, at last, Khumanego was ready to come to the point.

“Do you know about a man who died at the Kgalagadi Transfrontier
Park a week ago? His name was Tawana Monzo.”

Kubu remembered a report crossing his desk. “Yes, it was an
interesting situation. He fell off a cliff into a dry river bed or
something like that, didn’t he? Worked for Wildlife? Initially it
seemed to be an accident, but the doctor who signed the death
certificate was wide awake. Does some pathology work, I think He
felt that the skull had been fractured with a weapon rather than in
a fall.”

Khumanego nodded slowly. “The police have made up their minds
that it was murder. The investigating officer found a sharp rock
near where the body was found and claims it had Monzo’s blood on
it.”

This was news to Kubu. Khumanego seemed very well informed. Kubu
concentrated on spooning the foam off his cappuccino as he waited
to discover where all this was leading.

“The officer walked up the river bed in a direction where there
were no footprints and found the weapon. How did he know to look
there? After that, he went with a park official to where the
Bushmen are living and questioned them about who attacked the man,
who pushed him off the cliff, who found him. He thinks the three
men with Monzo when he was found are the most likely suspects. He
told them it would be better to admit it immediately rather than
wait till they were caught out.” Khumanego paused, waiting for a
reaction. When none came, he said with a new intensity, “Don’t you
see, David? He’s already decided it’s the Bushmen. It’s all
starting again.”

“Who is the investigating officer?” Kubu asked mildly.

“They say his name is Detective Lerako. Detective Stone Wall!
That’s what his name means, and that’s how he behaves!”

Kubu knew the man – fair but not imaginative. It was true; once
his mind was made up, it was hard to shift Stone Wall. “What do you
want me to do? It’s not our case. It’ll be handled out of
Tsabong.”

“I want you to make sure it’s fair. You know our people. We
don’t kill; human life is sacred. To survive in the desert,
everyone has to contribute, to support. Those three men found Monzo
injured and tried to help him; did help him. Why would they want to
kill him anyway?” Khumanego paused. “David, I know those men
myself. I work with them and they are from my group. We are
brothers. They are like me.”

“You have brothers?”

“All children in a group are brothers, David. These men would
never kill another human. I was with them a few weeks ago. Still
traditional. Still following the old ways in the desert.” Khumanego
stared at Kubu, challenging, pleading. “And now they’ve been
arrested! They’re being held in Tsabong. It’s crazy! This Monzo had
an unlucky accident, and now it’s being turned on these peaceful
people! To get rid of them.”

Kubu was already worrying about how he was going to explain all
this to Mabaku. He could hear his boss asking him how come he had
so little to do that he had time to interfere in another
detective’s case. He sighed and hoisted himself to his feet.

“All right, Khumanego. I’ll look into it. I’m not promising
anything, but I’ll see what I can do.”

∨
The Death of the Mantis
∧

“T
he answer is
no!”

“But Director – ”

“No buts, Kubu. You’re not going to stick your nose into another
detective’s case. Lerako does things by the book. He’s not going to
arrest anyone without good cause.”

“I’ve known my Bushman friend for over twenty years. I trust
him, and he vouches for the men Lerako has arrested. He knows them
like brothers and says they would never kill another human being.
Lerako must’ve missed something, jumped ahead of himself.”

Jacob Mabaku, Director of the Criminal Investigation Department,
snorted. “Known him for over twenty years, you say? Close friends,
you say? That’s bullshit! You’ve barely seen him since you left
primary school!”

Kubu looked down in embarrassment. How did Mabaku know these
things?

“Director, it’s true that I haven’t seen Khumanego for a long
time. But people don’t change. He and I were very close at school.
He was the one who showed me how to see things that others didn’t.
It was really because of him that I became a detective. I owe him
for that.”

“Then take him out for a drink or dinner or something! You are
not going to get involved in a case in Tsabong. It’s under control.
You’ve enough to do right here.”

Kubu looked at Mabaku. There was no give in his face. How am I
going to tell Khumanego? he wondered.

“Yes, Director. I’ll tell Khumanego that the police aren’t
interested,” he said as he turned to leave.