by Alex MacBeth
After independence in 1975, the building hosted the newly formed district police. For the next twenty years it switched hands several times during the ‘situation’ – the war. After the war it continued to serve as Mossuril’s police station. During the rainy season, complaints were made by citizens clutching an umbrella over their heads; reports were typed out by wet policemen drumming at a rusty typewriter with one hand while holding up their own umbrella with the other. Since the new police station had been opened in 2010, the old one had remained unused, a home for stray dogs, rats, weeds and urinating drunks.
Felisberto found a candle in his pocket and lit it. A praying mantis on a rock jumped in and out of the shadows it cast, creating an eerie atmosphere. Felisberto and Samora heard footsteps and drew their guns instinctively. “It’s us,” said Albertina, followed by Amisse and João. They sat in silence and watched the candle.
“What is going on?” asked Amisse.
“Did someone really try to blow up the comando?” whispered Albertina.
“They didn’t try, they did blow up the comando,” said Samora.
“Who are ‘they’?” blurted João.
“Shh,” said Felisberto and everyone fell so silent that if a pin had dropped right then in the old comando it would have sounded louder to those present than the explosion from an hour before. “Nobody blew up the comando. Tomorrow, when the crowds disperse and a molecule of calm clouds our minds again, we’ll analyse the evidence and then begin to draw conclusions. My first suspicion is a gas leak,” Felisberto added unconvincingly. “Whatever it is we will take our time to find out.” He let his words sink in as a few drops of rain from the day before slow-dripped into a puddle.
The Comandante had hoped his words would calm his team’s spirit, but they merely raised their concerns. “Did somebody try to kill you, chefe?” Amisse demanded, revenge surging in his eyes. The young cadet had that look, thought Felisberto. Just give him a list of names and he’d skin half the suspects’ neighbours just to protect his Comandante’s honour. “Nobody tried to kill anyone, Amisse. It was probably the wiring…”
“For the record, Comandante, I said at the time that we shouldn’t have gone for cheap pirate wiring just to save money,” said Albertina, with a told-you-so-look that she made evident to everyone. “You did, and you were probably right,” Felisberto concluded. “Now let’s get some sleep and tomorrow we will get to the bottom of this.”
Felisberto knew that nobody would sleep that night, least of all him.
Chapter Seven
The next morning Raquel from Monapo and the forensics team from Nampula were busy analysing the charred remains of the comando. It had rained overnight and extinguished the flames, leaving a collection of charred wood and plastic office furniture. The night before Felisberto had hardly slept, sifting repeatedly through the facts of the case and hoping he had missed some vital detail. Nothing was clear. The dead man, the minister, the Chinese engineers, the temptress Bia, and a possible attempt on his life all collided violently in his brain without producing any lucid conclusions.
When the Comandante arrived at the former comando, he found Samora moving a desk and two chairs into a room that still had some roof over it. Two builders were hoisting a few new sheets of zinc onto the holes in the ceiling while Samora watched closely, his index finger hurriedly tapping his watch. In no time the zinc plates were in place and Samora and Felisberto were once again alone.
“Good morning, chefe,” said Samora, shoving a cup of tea with condensed milk and an egg roll Felisberto’s way. “I took the liberty of getting the place ready for work,” added Mossuril’s police deputy. “Mozambique’s greatest detective can’t work with holes in the roof.” Felisberto sipped the tepid tea and looked out through the window onto the bay. A group of local women were collecting crabs on the beach. Further out, two passenger dhows crossed each other in the bay halfway between Lumbo and Mossuril. Felisberto had read that the Aga Khan, the influential religious leader and philanthropist, had honeymooned with a famous US actress called Rita Hayworth at the Hotel de Lumbo in the 1940s. The Comandante imagined the two rich and successful VIPs sailing in the same bay over sixty years before. Mozambique had since fought a war of independence with Portugal, its former coloniser. The country had then endured another sixteen years of war to safeguard that independence from foreign interests. Now the Hotel de Lumbo, once the haunt of global celebrities, was a complex of ruins slowly being returned to nature with the assistance of termites, rain and wind. Its only remaining seasonal guests were the swallows that weaved in and out of the fallen rafters.
A brown eagle glided in and out of Felisberto’s viewfinder and the Comandante followed it as it flew towards Ilha de Moçambique, the country’s former capital. Felisberto sipped his tea and looked across the bay in the other direction towards Quissanga. Nothing he did, it seemed, could escape the spell of Stokes’ death and the trails it had left. The sight of two children playing with dice refocused the Comandante.
“I want you to call all the casinos in the country and find out if Stokes or if the Chinese engineers visited any recently,” said Felisberto.
“I’m sure plenty of Chinese citizens have visited casinos recently, boss,” said Samora patronisingly. Felisberto didn’t like his deputy’s tone, even though he knew he was right. Thousands of Chinese engineers now worked in Mozambique and finding the two in question would be like finding a specific grain of sand at the bottom of the ocean. It was lucky for the Comandante that he came to this conclusion. He had no idea what Li Le Tian and Jiao Ze Zhao were capable of.
“Let’s focus on Stokes then,” said Felisberto. “Releasing the names of the Chinese suspects at this stage could do more harm than good.”
“Most casinos have video cameras these days. I’ll send round a picture of Stokes. Do you think Stokes was a gambler?” asked Samora unconvinced.
“At this point we have to follow every lead. The old man in Quissanga said he heard Stokes talk about a game shortly before he died. Stokes said he would win in the end, according to the old man. Which makes me think that money or debt could be a motive,” said Felisberto.
“You think Stokes was in debt with the Chinese?”
“He may have been in business with them. At this point we can’t say,” said Felisberto vaguely, “but we have to pursue all avenues. If we can place Stokes in a casino, we can find out who he was with.”
Samora typed some commands into his brand new Galaxy S7. “I looked into Stokes’s career like you asked, Comandante,” continued Samora. “He had worked for the Independent, Spectator Magazine and the Times of London. He came to Mozambique four years ago and settled in Maputo before moving to Pemba last year.”
“What kind of articles did he write?” asked Felisberto, perching himself on a plastic chair between two large puddles in the building.
“Mainly business news,” replied Samora. “He’d worked in Frankfurt for Bloomberg and in New York for Reuters before he came to Mozambique.”
“Frankfurt, New York, Maputo. Doesn’t seem to be an obvious career evolution.”
The Comandante flicked through a pile of clips that Samora had arranged. The headlines typified a western journalist’s view of Africa, Felisberto thought:
‘Gas discovery set to bring Mozambique out of poverty’
‘“Tourism will develop northern coast,” says Minister’
‘HIV/ Aids epidemic decimating Sub-Saharan nations’
‘Car exports from Japan to Mozambique increase threefold in 2013’
Hardly the kind of headlines that would get a reporter killed. He read on. Dozens of pieces rehashed the notion that the coal in Tete and gas in the Ruvuma Basin would suddenly lift Mozambique out of its post-war economic slump. Every other paragraph referred back to Mozambique’s ‘extreme poverty’ and ‘civil war’. Nothing about it had been civil, thought Felisberto. Besides, that’s all the world ever sees: Poverty, disease, war. What about the country’s achievements in h
ealth and education? What about South Africa, the US and Germany’s support for Renamo terrorists who had killed hundreds of thousands of teachers, doctors and high school graduates just to destabilise the country’s socialist path, thought Felisberto. Why didn’t anyone write about that?
Felisberto threw the clips on the table and lit a cigarette. “Did you see this, Comandante?” Samora asked, handing Felisberto a copy of a newspaper article in faded ink. “That our printer isn’t working again?” answered Felisberto, perusing the piece.
‘Child found in container says he was abducted by organ smugglers‘. Could Minister Frangopelo be involved in smuggling the hearts and livers of children? It was a hugely profitable business in the region, but surely not something the oil and gas minister would dirty his hands with. Felisberto read the article and found little in it that connected with Stokes. But he had to be thorough.
“Check with Nampula if they have any reports of organ smuggling rackets operating in the last year,” Felisberto said. Samora took a note and handed Felisberto another news cutting.
‘Pakistani drug lords using Mozambican ports’ read the new headline. No breaking news there, thought Felisberto. Only last week a boat containing half a tonne of hashish had been found in Nacala Port and the authorities believed it had originated in Pakistan. “You can try the anti-drugs squad,” said Felisberto with raised eyebrows to Samora, “but last I heard they were still working out how to fix the drains at their new provincial headquarters.”
Samora chuckled while he took notes and continued to feed Felisberto clips. ‘Government threatens to close UNHCR refugee camp.’ Felisberto read on through the headlines on topics ranging from arts and crafts to the art of the curandeiro, local witchdoctors. One could tell from the way Stokes wrote that he had liked Mozambique, even if the European spectacles were always there. ‘Animals found dead at Nampula Wildlife Reserve’. No surprise there thought the Comandante. ‘Struggle to rehabilitate elephants with post-traumatic stress’ read one emotionally charged piece about a nearby reserve. ‘Elephants refused to return to their natural habitats where they had witnessed war crimes, said experts.’
Felisberto remembered seeing dead elephants and tusks in the Rift Valley. He had been posted there, to the forests of Niassa, during the war in ‘82. The Comandante wondered if readers outside Mozambique needed to hear how the war affected animals as photogenic as elephants before the same readers could apply a similar empathy to human victims. He read on through Stokes’ portfolio.
‘Cabinet reshuffle gives Frangopelo oil and gas brief’. So Stokes had already met the minister in 2012, if not earlier. “These offshore discoveries will project Mozambique into the position of being one of Africa’s most successful oil and natural gas exporters by 2020,” Frangopelo was quoted as saying in the ‘exclusive’ interview, published in The Telegraph of London. Felisberto read it from beginning to end and found little suspicious. The article was littered with the usual political hyperbole – ‘the profits would be reinvested locally’ etc. - but there was nothing in it that could suggest the interviewee had designs on the life of his interviewer.
Felisberto turned to face the sea. He churned over the details of the mystery in his mind for the hundredth time in twelve tides. As he spun a complex web involving Minister Frangopelo, Stokes, two mysterious Chinese engineers and a probable attempt on his life – all bathed in the scent of frangipani – Felisberto heard his name called out by Amisse.
“What is it?” said Felisberto, grabbing a bag of pre-ordered puto pastries from his cadet and putting two in his mouth.
“Comandante, they’ve killed a young health worker in Namitatar,” said Amisse, his words clumsily stumbling over each other as he recalled the details. “He was… disinfecting…. Disinfecting the public well… A crowd saw him pouring liquid into the water and accused him… of putting cholera in the well, Comandante.” Felisberto cursed the similarity between the local words for cholera and bleach, cólera and clore. The latter was what the health worker had been pouring into the well to prevent a cholera outbreak.
He sighed. This was the second such incident in three years. Namitatar, a small settlement of some fifty or so mud huts either side of the road between Ilha and Monapo, had always had an edge. Felisberto remembered hearing about the tiny hamlet before he’d even moved to the North. Renamo’s mercenaries had occupied the town to stop supplies reaching Ilha and starve the former capital. After the war, the rebels settled, ensuring the coal-rich hamlet retained a strong anti-government energy.
“How many people attacked him?”
“It was a gang of between ten and fifteen people according to witnesses, Comandante,” said Amisse. “Dr. Raquel’s team from Monapo went to knock on some doors but the suspects have disappeared. Most looked like they left in a hurry. Some even left their ID cards behind.”
“Well, stake it out,” Felisberto ordered.
Felisberto called Raquel in Monapo. “We’ve got the results on the explosion at your comando,” Raquel informed him. “We don’t want to call this too early, but it looks like the explosion originated from your gas canister. Whoever did it may have been at the comando at the time of the blast.”
“Couldn’t it be a simple gas leak?”
“Somebody set fire to the canister,” repeated Raquel.
Felisberto’s brain shuffled through the five hundred or so local names that could be suspects. As the only police commander for more than 130,000 people, he had no shortage of enemies.
“What have you gotten yourself involved in, Felisberto?” Raquel admonished, with the tone a mother assumes when coaxing her child to confess to his misdemeanours. “Since when are people trying to kill you?”
“Kill me?” exclaimed Felisberto. “You’re a good forensics expert, Raquel, but leave the detective work to me. Nobody is trying to kill me. Unless it’s the gas company, but they’ve been doing that with price hikes for years.”
“So a gas canister finds its way into a wall in the holding cell by your office, and explodes as you are minutes away from it and you don’t find that suspicious?”
Felisberto desperately wanted to change the subject. “What about your daughter,” he tried, “does she still need a work placement? I could speak to Samora and see what we could do.”
“Really?” Raquel beamed enthusiastically. “Cristina would love that. She’s a wayward child; it would do her the world of good. Are you serious?”
Felisberto was conscious of what he had gotten himself into but he knew there was no way of backing down from the foolish interjection. Raquel had been badgering him to give an internship to her unemployed daughter for the last two years. “Sure, we’ll see what we can do,” he said.
“Thanks again,” said Raquel. “Whatever this is, if I were you I’d lay low for a while. These compressed gas bombs aren’t local, that’s for sure. Somebody switched the canisters shortly before the explosion. It looks like the work of the Chinese to me,” said Raquel. She should know, thought Felisberto.
Raquel had spent four years in Xi’an, home of the terracotta warriors, training with the Chinese Red Army’s doctors. She was one of the first students selected to take part in an exchange programme between Communist China and independent Mozambique. Raquel had spent most of her time in the Middle Land dissecting bodies and this fascination with the flesh followed her – as did a taste for dumplings and mahjong – back to Mozambique.
Raquel returned as one of the most knowledgeable forensics experts in the country. That she was in Monapo was the lucky side of a lottery. As part of the government’s anti-corruption plan, police officers were arbitrarily relocated. Just like Felisberto had been posted to Mossuril, Raquel had been relocated to Monapo, a tiny police station hidden by mango trees, with no former forensic facilities. Raquel married a local teacher and settled.
Felisberto knew Raquel was a good officer and forensics expert, but he had never completely trusted her. His wife, Adija, had always talked badly of the overbearin
g forensic pathologist and he had inherited the suspicion by proxy. A few years back Raquel had reported Felisberto to their superiors in Nampula for violent misconduct. Felisberto had punched a man accused of domestic violence. The accused in question had nearly killed his wife, leaving her head practically dangling off her body. He walked free after the internal investigation.
Felisberto had never fully forgiven Raquel. The wife-beater was a cousin of Raquel’s husband and Felisberto had always suspected that Raquel had interfered unnecessarily in the case. He couldn’t help but feel her sudden concern was fake. What’s more, he had just offered to place her daughter in his comando.
Raquel hung up having agreed to stake out the premises of the Namitatar cholera killers with a dozen officers. Felisberto sat down again with Samora to look through Stokes’ clips for more clues. Samora was busy photographing the articles and assaulting his computer’s keyboard, which never helped Felisberto to think. “So why was Stokes killed?” Felisberto demanded, only aware he was thinking aloud after he’d spoken.
“Well, we have a number of suspects, Comandante,” began Samora with relish, overjoyed that his boss had enough faith in him to ask for his prognosis. “We can presume that whoever blew up the comando also killed Stokes. And that person, or those people, have interests that somehow relate to Minister Frangopelo.”
