by Alex MacBeth
“And?” Samora pressed eagerly
“My partner Naiss went to jail while I was invited to apply for an eighteen-month unpaid sabbatical. And, in case he died and had to be buried with honours, Palma was whitewashed and allowed to emerge smelling of frangipani…”
The word lingered. The Comandante was cast away to the image of Bia naked in his arms the night before.
“So apart from Palma emerging smelling of… frangipani, did anything else happen?” asked Samora.
Felisberto left Bia’s embrace and returned fully to the room.
“Are you okay?”
Felisberto drunk the glass of water his deputy had given him and continued.
“A couple of Palma’s team went down and Naiss and I carried the can.” Felisberto winced and corrected himself: “Well, Naiss carried the can.”
“How come this Naiss went to jail and…?”
“And I didn’t…? He had stuff at his house, stuff he couldn’t possibly have bought with his salary. Stuff that ordinary guys like us didn’t have in Maputo in those days… And he had a little brother, a little brother who smuggled Hi-Fis and radios and luxury goods in from Jo’burg. Naiss loved his brother so he took the rap for it.”
The Comandante watched through the window as João and Amisse showed off dance moves in front of Albertina. Police work in Mossuril was quiet and cadet officers could afford to leave their weapons uncocked on the veranda while thrashing out the lyrics of local rappers like Azagaia and Pacas. With the exception of the odd robbery and the occasional bar brawl, crime had stopped at Naguema, where the promise of a getaway road attracted more dedicated law-breakers. Down the mud road in Mossuril, thousands of potholes, a lack of things to steal and a largely honest community had kept crime at bay, or in this case, away from the bay.
Now it had arrived, replete with sartorial exuberance, an international poster boy and a trail leading right up to the highest echelons of power in his country. Felisberto thought back to when he had found the body and now concluded it would have been better to have put it in a canoe and let it float back across the bay to Ilha. The island’s chief of police, Commander Pasqual, and his men would have found it in good time. If the canoe missed the banana-shaped former capital drifting out into the open ocean, the sharks would have eaten the corpse.
Instead he had found it. Then he had compounded the cock up by going to Pemba, hundreds of kilometres outside of his jurisdiction, to cause havoc with some woman and the offices of two Chinese engineers. Then he’d called down forensics to carry out a post-mortem, thereby ensuring an official report would be written and that the dead man would become an official dead man, with a photo, with links to the minister for oil and gas, and Chinese engineers, stored away in a police archive never to be forgotten. Felisberto wanted to forget. Let it disappear.
He imagined some smart-ass Samora from Nampula Forensics taking pictures of Stokes on his phone and putting it on The Facebook. People would comment that men in such nice suits don’t just wash up in Mossuril. Maybe there’d be a photo of him, Comandante João Felisberto, and the dead man. Maybe a spirit had snapped one on his phone thing that night and was busy posting it in the underworld’s equivalent of The Facebook right now. Perhaps Stokes and the Michelin Man would share it.
The Comandante suddenly jumped out of his chair with renewed conviction and turned to Samora. “What happened to the computer we got from Nampula?” Felisberto asked his deputy.
“It’s at home, Comandante. Why?” replied Samora, surprised to hear his boss even mention it. The computer had been a standard issue from the ministry for the police station. Since Samora was the only person at the station who knew how to use it and since he wrote all the reports and log arrests on the machine, eventually the laptop had simply relocated to his home.
“If Stokes was a journalist, his work will be in the Internet thingy, won’t it?”
“Should be,” Samora agreed, already searching on his phone.
“He was a journalist alright,” continued Samora. Felisberto grabbed the phone and tried to flick from one article to another, but instead ended up playing music and looking at his deputy’s private photos. “Just… go through everything Stokes ever wrote about Mozambique. Look for any links to dodgy business dealings, China or Pemba,” said Felisberto gruffly, grabbing his keys.
“What about links to Minister Frangopelo, chefe?” asked Samora, but before he’d had time to phrase his question, Felisberto was gone.
Chapter Six
Felisberto jumped on his 125CC Honda and sped down the road to Quissanga as the sun was setting. When he reached the beach where Stokes’s corpse had been found, a crew of fishermen were busy sorting their catch and straightening their nets. From the sight of the laughing anglers, Felisberto knew that Stokes couldn’t have arrived in the bay before dark that night or the very same fishermen would have been there.
The tide was out further than it had been when Stokes was found, allowing Felisberto to search for clues in the exposed sands of the beach. The Comandante walked in circles from the point where the body had been found, which Samora had been smart enough to mark with a severed mangrove stick.
The Comandante had no idea what he expected to find but he knew that something about Stokes had remained right there in the bay. The sun continued to fall towards the horizon as Felisberto sought and sought, finding nothing but crabs, patches of mangrove, mud, and shells. Scraps of porcelain from sunken colonial ships reflected the rising moon. As darkness closed in, Felisberto gave up and returned to his motorbike.
His keys were always lost amidst the detritus of his pocket and Felisberto felt his irritation growing as he clawed his way through old nails, biscuit crumbs, coins, matches and scraps of wood and paper to find them. As he was beginning to make progress in the delicate affair of his keys, his eyes were drawn to the site of a small mud hut in the distance. Wasn’t that the home of the fisherman who had found the dead man? Samora had interviewed him but Felisberto sensed the old man might have kept something back.
He jumped on his bike and drove over in the dark with dimmed lights. A kerosene lamp burnt at the centre of the straw-thatched hut, casting a beam of light through the mud construction’s only window and out into a well-kept and tidy compound.
“Hodi,” said Felisberto, in the area’s native tongue of Macua. Nobody answered. “Com licença,” he tried in Portuguese. Felisberto called for attention again and this time an old man stepped out into the compound with the lamp. A roosting chicken screeched as the light changed and the hunchbacked old man looked up at the stranger in his compound.
“Good evening, Uncle,” said Felisberto, aware that he’d perhaps frightened the man.
The old man didn’t say anything, but leant in closer to the lamp to get a better look at Felisberto.
“You were here three nights ago,” said the old man.
“That’s right,” replied Felisberto. “I’m a police officer.”
“I know who you are,” said the old man, taking up a new position so that the light from the kerosene lamp illuminated Felisberto’s face. “And you’re here to ask me about the man you found dead in the bay.”
Felisberto wasn’t in the mood. “How do you know he was dead?”
The old man laughed and sat down on a mat on the ground, inviting Felisberto to do the same.
“Don’t ask me silly questions, Comandante. Ask me if I saw someone else that night.”
“Did you?” said Felisberto, opting to stay standing.
“Maybe,” said the old man. “But first I saw a car.”
Felisberto pulled out his notebook and leaned against the wall.
“It was about 1.30am. It had been raining and I hadn’t been able to sleep. We often get snakes here after the rains and since my wife passed away, well, let’s just say I’m not as fit as I used to be at fighting the elements. Anyway, I got up to smoke a cigarette… Comandante, do you have a cigarette?” said the old man, sensing that this well-dressed st
ranger in the night might be carrying a packet.
Felisberto handed him a cigarette and a box of matches, which the old man didn’t return.
“So… I lit the cigarette and sat on my porch as I always do when I can’t sleep. Normally all you see is the moon out here. We’re yet to get electricity,” said the old man, pointing to a large wooden transmitter pole in the far distance.
“So you saw a car.”
“I saw two cars,” said the old man. “I heard them coming and hid the cigarette so they wouldn’t see me. I stayed behind those stacks of straw and looked through the hole. I watched them,” said the old man, now shaking.
“Do what?” pressed Felisberto. “Who? What happened?”
“The man was breathing heavily and gasping for air. He could hardly talk and vomited several times. When he did say something it was half Portuguese, half foreign. He was an acuna and you could see he was struggling.”
“Where were the other men from?” said Felisberto, filling up line after line in his notebook.
“They spoke Portuguese, but proper Portuguese, not what we speak,” said the old man. “They spoke like people do on the radio and during elections. Like they do during elections,” repeated the old man.
“Were there any other acuna?” said Felisberto, using the Macua word for white men.
“No,” said the old man. “Just the gasping acuna and two other men. There was a woman too. From the sound of her voice I’d guess she was beautiful.”
“What colours were the cars they were driving?” asked Felisberto wondering if one could be the green Toyota Land Cruiser that the two Chinese men had fled in.
“Black,” said the old man.
Felisberto stood up and shook the dust off his trousers. “Thank you,” he said, closing his notepad. The old man didn’t move but made puppy eyes. The Comandante understood that there hadn’t been enough give and take in the conversation. He handed over his cigarettes and began to walk to his Honda.
“Comandante, there was one more thing,” said the old man as Felisberto was leaving.
“It was something the acuna said. The men left him by the ocean and drove away,” said the old man.
“Why didn’t you help him?”
“I did, Comandante. When the cars left I lit a kerosene lamp and ran over to him. When I arrived he was dead. So I called the comando,” said the old man, lighting another cigarette now that he had the luxury of a full packet. “But as I was lighting the lamp, I could hear him screaming in some foreign language. There was one phrase he kept repeating in Portuguese. ‘I’ll beat you at your own game, you’ll see,’ he kept saying. When I arrived at the man, he was already dead.”
The Elder raised his nose and tilted his head towards the sky as if trying to remember a smell or a sensation. “Comandante, when I arrived at the scene I could still smell the woman’s scent. A strong yet delicate scent of frangipani.”
“Are you sure that was what you smelt?” Felisberto asked with sudden aggression. The old man was afraid again but Felisberto had to know.
“Was it frangipani?”
“It was frangipani, Comandante,” said the old man. “My wife wore it on our wedding day. I could never confuse it.”
“Why didn’t you tell any of this to the officer who interviewed you on the night?”
“The young officer only asked me if I knew what had happened. I had no idea what had happened, I said, only that I’d heard a noise and then found a dead man down by the sea. I gave him my name and he left.”
“Why didn’t you mention the car before?”
“I must have forgotten amidst the shock,” said the old man, still enthralled by the pack of cigarettes. He considered lighting another before changing his mind and placing it carefully back in the pack.
Felisberto knew that Samora cut corners where he could. Ever since he had that new girlfriend in Nampula, he was always saving up minutes to run off and be with her. Probably why he had missed such a vital detail. Frangipani. Was Bia here that night? How did she fit into the whole story anyway?
Nothing was making sense to Comandante João Felisberto. What game could Stokes have been referring to? And why would he treat his own death as a game? Felisberto knew that the acuna had strange habits, but to enjoy your own death? The Comandante knew he was on the wrong track. Could the die found in Stokes’ pocket have something to do with the game? Maybe Stokes was a gambler. Perhaps he was in debt. Could Stokes have owed money to Xin, and possibly Hua?
He would have Samora call all the casinos in the country and ask them if anyone fitting the description of Stokes or the two Chinese men had been gambling in the last three months. He berated himself for not having made the connection between the die and casinos earlier. He could have made enquiries when he was in Pemba.
The case was getting more complex, even if all he really knew was that a man had lost his life and that while dying he had talked of a ‘game’ and winning it. By his calculation the dead man had already lost. On the other hand Felisberto was afraid that this game could be a metaphor for something bigger, something that might somehow incriminate Minister Frangopelo or, who knows, ministers in the plural, and thereby cause the collapse of the government and destroy his country’s economy and future prospects. Then everybody would say he, Comandante Felisberto, was a villain and that he had stolen the fruits of their labour from out of their mouths.
“Can I cook my dinner now, Comandante?” asked the old man, who had been waiting with the kerosene lamp while Felisberto gathered the threads of the case. “Yes, thank you. You have been very helpful. One of our officers will be in touch to update your formal statement,” Felisberto informed him kindly. “For now, good night, uncle.”
The Comandante jumped on his bike and drove away into the night. His mind was hotter than the iron exhaust at his feet as he raced between aloe vera and sisal plants. He cursed himself as he drove, swallowing moths, stink bugs and mosquitoes that flew into his mouth. A mound of sand nearly threw the Comandante sideways but he recovered to pull up beside a battered tamarind tree.
He’d been played. He knew it now. Someone had set him up with Bia to distract him and get into his car. Someone had dangled desire wrapped in frangipani before him and he had bitten at it like a flustered teenager. Someone now knew he was investigating the minister. Somebody knew he was sniffing around about the dead man in the nice suit. And everybody must know about ‘the game’. Stokes had known and he had died playing it. What could Stokes have been involved in to get himself killed? And were the people who killed Stokes the same people who had shot at Minister Frangopelo? The Comandante suddenly felt like a pawn being pushed around a chessboard.
He arrived back in Mossuril pale like a ghost and sweating. The Mozambican flag, a Kalashnikov and an axe floating above a book stamped on a yellow star, flapped in the night breeze on the high street. At the roundabout beyond the comando stood Eduardo Mondlane in stone, arm raised to the sky in a victory salute.
As Felisberto approached the comando, the strangest thing happened. His office exploded before him. Shreds of glass and broken pieces of wood flew in all directions, denting the side of his car. The Comandante passed out. When he awoke, Samora was coordinating a chain of water between João, Amisse, and several helpers to extinguish the remaining flames. A crowd of people had gathered on the streets and were muttering in awe at the sight of part of the burning police station.
Felisberto looked at his charred office.
He stepped out of his car, refusing a hand from Samora, and walked through the crowds towards what remained: the Chinese fan had melted into a Salvador Dali clock. His old wooden desk had lost two legs and lay among a pile of burnt papers like a soldier wounded on the battlefield. The television that had been given to Felisberto as a bonus for breaking the racket of electric wiring thieves, had melted into a ball of plastic. The screen lay shattered beside it. Felisberto wiped the blood from a cut above his left eye and vowed revenge upon whoever attacked his sanctu
ary.
João and Amisse were still ferrying jerry cans of water from the well to the fire. Albertina was busy taking photos on her mobile and reassuring the crowds, while Samora was involved in what looked to Felisberto to be a live video commentary. It sounded like Raquel from forensics on the other end of the line.
“Right,” said Felisberto with a booming voice. “Luckily no one is hurt so I want everyone to gather round.” When he was confident his team could all hear him, he continued. “We’ll report at the former comando in fifteen minutes for an emergency meeting,” he said, toying with the idea of asking Raquel for a roadblock at Naguema. Just as he toyed with the idea of asking Angelina to get on to the coastguard on Ilha, and get Samora and João onto the back roads to Matibani. He decided the measures would only cause panic. Someone had taken a well-aimed shot at his comando that had missed him, its possible target, by seconds. He needed to find out more before he alerted his superiors.
About an hour later, Felisberto and Samora were stood in the dark in the town’s former comando. It was a building that had outlived hundreds of prisoners who had passed through its doors yet lay in a state of decay far worse than any suspects who had been condemned to its cells. The old comando consisted of four rooms and a hall, none of which had an intact roof. Tufts of grass and saplings had started to grow through the building’s floors and foundations. One room had become something of an unofficial public toilet and despite the sea breeze, the smell had become particularly pungent.
Felisberto was happy to be back in the temporary safety of its crumbling walls and its turbulent history. The building had hosted various types of authority in its years as a functioning law and order post. Colonial Portuguese commanders had used it as a prison to punish black Mozambicans who refused to pay their hut tax to the crown or who baulked at their forced labour in the cashew plantations and cotton fields. Many former colonial subjects had spent years in the cells for as little as stealing vegetables from their colonial subjugators. Felisberto had heard horror tales from local elders. The former settlers spread the myth that vegetables spread malaria, the elders would often recount, thus protecting their limited stock of beetroot, potatoes and onions in arid coastal lands. Felisberto’s fathers had always said that since Vasco da Gama had landed in 1497, the Portuguese had overpowered the indigenous Macua of the coastal region with a combination of extreme violence, oppressive regimes, and divide and rule politics.
