Death of the Mantis

by Michael Stanley

  “Stop it,” she said aloud. “You’ve been alone so long that every man looks attractive.” Traveling around the world as a freelance reporter was fun and exciting, but it didn’t lend itself to lasting relationships. Not that she usually had trouble finding male companions. “Now I have a crush on an overweight, married policeman!” She laughed at herself.

  As she refilled her cup, her cell phone rang in the bedroom. She had to rush to reach it, but grabbed it just in time.

  “Yes, hello?”

  “Cindy? It’s Khumanego.”

  “Khumanego! How are you?” She hadn’t spoken to him since their surprise meeting in Tsabong.

  “I’m okay. Look, have you seen what the newspapers are doing? They’re whipping up public opinion against the Bushmen again! Something really nasty could happen. It’s outrageous!”

  Cindy was caught off guard. Khumanego always saw things so starkly, no shades of gray. “They’re just excited about this latest murder. Don’t worry, it’ll all die down after a while.”

  “After a while? Can you imagine what might happen in the meantime? Do you know what this could do to relations between the Bushmen and the other population groups? It could take years to fix.”

  “I think you may be overreacting, Khumanego.”

  “That nasty piece of work Lerako is behind this. I’m sure of it. They don’t even know it was a Bushman!”

  “But Haake was shot with a poisoned arrow,” Cindy said mildly.

  “But was it a Bushman arrow? There are lots of different types of arrows. And do they know what sort of poison it was?” Khumanego paused, and when he went on he sounded calmer. “It would be so easy to frame a Bushman for the murder. Get hold of some black mamba venom, or something like that, take a bow and arrow and shoot this Haake. And the police might well fall for it! Especially because that bastard Lerako can’t be bothered to look beyond the obvious. Perhaps he doesn’t even want to look beyond the obvious.”

  Cindy hadn’t thought of this possibility, and she recalled Kubu’s remark suggesting he wasn’t entirely sure about the murderer being a Bushman either. On the other hand, how would one lay one’s hands on mamba venom? She shuddered.

  “Why don’t you tell Kubu all this?”

  There was silence from Khumanego. “Maybe I am overreacting,” he said at last. “David’s been fair to me. But I don’t trust the police.”

  “What do you want me to do?” Cindy asked.

  “Write a story. Point out that the Bushmen are being framed again. Just like before. Force the police to look below the surface.”

  “I’ll think about it, Khumanego. Maybe I’ll interview Kubu. See if the police are covering all the angles.” She hesitated. “I think Kubu is doing his best,” she finished weakly.

  “Sorry, Cindy. I shouldn’t keep coming to you. I’m just very upset and angry. I’m expecting something bad to happen. Really bad. Anyway, think about what you can do.”

  Cindy promised she would, and said good-bye with relief. She finished pouring her coffee and returned to the veranda. She felt disturbed. Khumanego had been so intense, so angry. She rummaged in her handbag until she found the card that Kubu had given her in Tsabong.

  Joy answered the phone and passed it to Kubu. He wasn’t pleased to hear from Cindy on a Sunday; he’d had enough questions at the Friday press conference. Initially he was quite short with her, but as she described the call from Khumanego, he became intrigued. He hadn’t considered the possibility of a backlash against the Bushmen when he’d agreed to Mabaku’s ruse of keeping their suspicions about Haake’s murderer to themselves. Now Khumanego was getting worked up because he thought that the police were again taking the easy option rather than looking for other possibilities. At the end of the call he thanked her and promised to look into the issue.

  “Who was that?” Joy asked, rocking the baby.

  “Just a reporter after a scoop,” he said. Somehow his dismissive description rang oddly false.

  Joy gave him a strange look. “Do you know her?”

  “Yes, she was at Tsabong after a story when I was there with Khumanego.”

  “Oh,” said Joy. “You never told me about her.”

  “Didn’t I?”

  Joy shook her head. “Tumi’s asleep. I’ll put her in her crib.” She walked through to their tiny second bedroom, now proudly referred to as the Nursery.

  Cindy is just after a story, Kubu thought. Why do I feel guilty that there’s a tiny part of me that’s sorry about that?

  “Would you like some coffee, my darling?” he called out. After all, it was too early for wine.

  Chapter Thirty-one

  A pensive Kubu arrived at the CID on Monday morning. He was still digesting the conversation with Cindy. And now he was faced with how to find Haake’s mysterious koppies. Bongani had offered to help, but the best he could do quickly was print out a satellite image of the area from Google Earth. But nothing stood out clearly. Much of the area was semi-desert, but some parts were covered by scrubby trees that might disguise the topography. Bongani suggested that there might be small hills there, camouflaged from the satellite by the vegetation. Without more information they’d be forced to fly over the area or explore it on the ground and compare any koppies they found with the drawing on Haake’s map. Kubu wasn’t sure he could get Mabaku’s support for either option at the moment.

  “You’ve got a visitor,” the officer at reception told Kubu in reply to his greeting. “A Bushman. I put him in the waiting room upstairs.”

  Kubu climbed the stairs to his office and then looked into the waiting room. Khumanego was sitting stiffly, an untouched polystyrene cup of tea next to him.

  “Khumanego! Let me grab a cup of tea. Bring yours into my office.” The Bushman nodded without smiling and picked up his cup. Kubu helped himself from the urn, and they went to his office together. Khumanego closed the door.

  “Have you seen the newspapers, David? They’re building up a frenzy against the Bushmen. There’s going to be trouble. Some people are just looking for an excuse to get nasty. This could be it. Why are you doing this to us?”

  Kubu nodded and sipped his tea. “Cindy told me you were upset.”

  “She called you?”

  “Yes. She was also concerned by the newspaper reaction. What do you mean by ‘doing this’?”

  “The police! You’re deliberately letting the blame fall on the Bushmen again. Even encouraging it!”

  “That’s not true.”

  “Have you investigated the crime scene? Looked into matters? Yourself, not that Lerako.”

  Kubu opened a file and extracted three glossy prints of the pictures he’d taken of the arrow at Princess Marina. He tossed them across the desk to Khumanego, who picked them up and looked at each one in turn. Kubu watched his reaction.

  “Is this the arrow that shot Haake?”

  Kubu nodded.

  “It’s ridiculous! No Bushman would’ve made a thing like this. It’s clumsy. And the head should detach. You know what a Bushman arrow is like!”

  Kubu decided to play devil’s advocate. “Yes, we noticed that too. But maybe the Bushman didn’t have the time or the patience to make the arrow properly. He knew it would be easy to get close. Why bother with the niceties?”

  “Why bother? It would be a matter of pride!”

  “There’s not much pride in preying on lone visitors.”

  Khumanego started to retort but Kubu cut him off. “We’re looking at all possibilities, Khumanego. All possibilities.”

  Khumanego’s expression changed. “What other possibilities?”

  “Well, it’s tentative at the moment. Let me show you some prints that Pleasant’s fiancé made for me over the weekend—he works with this sort of thing at the university.” He dug out the Google Earth images from his briefcase. “We think there’s a group of koppies in here somewhere that someone wants kept secret badly enough to kill for it.”

  “Why do you think that?”

 
“Haake told me about it before he died. He saw some strange things there.”

  “Did he tell you where they were?”

  “No. I think he knew, but he wouldn’t say. Now it’s too late. And we can’t follow his GPS because it’s gone. He said it was stolen.”

  Khumanego shrugged. “It’s almost impossible to find a small hill in the middle of the Kalahari unless you know where to start looking. You’ll have to wait for something else to happen.”

  “I want to try. I think there are other ways we might find it. And after all, the Kalahari doesn’t have too many hills. I think we could find it using this information”—he tapped the images on his desk—“and Haake’s map. Haake said there were other tracks there too. Maybe we’ll come across them. Someone is out there and up to no good, and I’m going to stop it.”

  Khumanego thought about it for several seconds, then reverted to his concern about the press. “You should tell the newspapers about the arrow. Otherwise something really bad could happen.”

  Kubu ignored that. “I need a guide. Someone who knows that area of the desert. Who could help follow tracks and so on. Do you know any Bushman who would help?”

  Khumanego shook his head. “No one will head out there. It’s an area with a bad reputation. A place of spirits. Unlucky. It’s avoided.”

  That, thought Kubu, might explain why whoever was there was able to come and go unnoticed. “The only other option will be low-level flights over the area looking for the tracks. Bike tracks apparently. Might spot them from the air. But I don’t think my boss will go for that in a hurry.”

  “Maybe Haake made the whole thing up. Maybe he was after something else in a different part of the Kalahari, and just used this koppie story to confuse you.”

  Kubu shook his head. “It’s possible, of course. But he was dying and knew it. I don’t think he would make the whole thing up. Why should he? He had nothing to gain. I’m committed to this, Khumanego. Maybe Lerako’s tracker can help me.”

  “The one who thought the footprints near Monzo were faked? What use is he? You’d trust your life to someone like that?”

  “I’m still going to go.” Kubu held Khumanego’s gaze.

  “Very well,” said Khumanego, not blinking. “I grew up in that area, remember? I know it as well as anyone, and I’m not superstitious. I’ll help you. The two of us can go. Not a police invasion. That area is important to my people. It has religious significance.”

  “Why are you willing to do this? It could be dangerous.”

  “You helped me before. It’s my turn now. I pay my debts.”

  Kubu thought about it for a while, then he nodded. “All right. We’ll leave the day after tomorrow. Can you do that?”

  Khumanego nodded. “You’ll talk to the press?”

  “I’ll discuss it with my boss. Maybe Cindy gets her scoop after all.”

  Kubu was pensive after Khumanego left. He carefully returned the arrow pictures to his file, then tidied his desk. He picked up the forensics report on the bullet found in Haake’s vehicle. It seemed likely that it came from Krige’s gun, but they couldn’t be sure. Nothing surprising or helpful there. He tossed the report aside.

  Ideas were floating in his head. Puzzle pieces turning around, but still not fitting. Not in the right places anyway. Opportunity, he thought. Suppose Haake was innocent. Then who’d had the opportunity to commit all three murders? In each case there was no trace of the murderer, so how had he reached the victims and then disappeared? And suddenly the answer was obvious. They’d worked out how the murderer had reached Haake without leaving any tracks; the same method could be used for the murders of Krige and Monzo. Driving on a Kalahari road, cars gouged paths for themselves in the soft sand. If a skilled off-road motorbike rider stayed carefully in one of those ruts, there would be no trace—certainly not after the next vehicle went through.

  But he wasn’t ready to take it to Mabaku. He needed something more. He needed someone who could tell him about diamonds. He picked up the phone and called Africa Ndlovu at the diamond branch of the CID. He needed to speak to the Walrus.

  The Walrus was Dr. Waskowski, a senior scientist at De Beers, who had helped Kubu before with another case. His bushy beard, handlebar moustache, and bouncing eyebrows made Kubu think of a surprised walrus. So the Walrus he had become.

  Africa listened to Kubu’s story. “Yes, call him,” he said tersely. “He’ll help you if he can.” He gave Kubu the number.

  Kubu was put through immediately when he said who he was. De Beers liked to cultivate a very close relationship with the Botswana police.

  “Bengu? This is Waskowski. What can I do for you?”

  “Dr. Waskowski, thank you for your time. I have a very strange case. A man—a prospector from Namibia—was killed in the Kalahari recently. I’m trying to understand what he was doing there.”

  “That chap Haake? Who was shot with a Bushman arrow?” Apparently Waskowski took an interest in the news.

  “Exactly. Although he didn’t admit it, we think he was looking for diamonds. Specifically, the source of the Namibian diamonds.”

  “The Namibian alluvials? The mother lode? That old story.”

  “It’s not a new idea?”

  “Hardly. Obviously it’s been a source of great interest in the diamond community for many years. A flood of diamonds washed to the coast. Millions of years ago. There were so many, you could pick them off the beach at one stage, so the area had to be closed. It was called the Sperrgebiet—the forbidden area.”

  “Do scientists know the source?”

  “No. There are lots of theories and speculation. Possibly some huge field of kimberlite pipes—maybe in Botswana—eroded away over millennia. Gone now. Or maybe they moved across the continent from the Drakensberg mountains over an even longer time period. Diamonds are very old, Assistant Superintendent. They have lots of time to move once they are separated from their mother rock.”

  “Is it possible that the mother rock is still out there? Full of diamonds and hidden under the sand? That Haake knew what he was doing?”

  “Anything’s possible. I’d be very surprised though. It’s just another wild goose chase.”

  Kubu grunted. “Haake had an old map. We think it might go back to a man called Hans Schwabe.”

  “Schwabe? Another treasure hunter? With a treasure map? Grow up, Mr. Bengu.”

  “Well, it has what appears to be a geological map on one side. Could I fax it to you and get your opinion?”

  “A geology map? Well, that might be of more interest. Sure, fax it to me.”

  Kubu’s thoughts turned to the Namib Mining Company. He asked Dr. Waskowski if he knew of it.

  “Yes, I believe so. A junior exploration company. It’s looking for uranium in the Kaokoveld, I think. Appears legitimate. I wouldn’t put my money there though. Uranium’s past its peak.”

  “They wouldn’t have an interest in diamonds? Do you think if they came across a rich find they might try to keep it secret? Mine it on the sly?”

  Waskowski laughed. “Hardly! You don’t understand junior mining companies, Assistant Superintendent. Their bread and butter is mining the stock exchange, not the earth. An announcement of a big discovery is their bonanza. Shares shoot up, they’re able to raise lots of cash, dish out bonuses. Their idea of keeping something under wraps is to invite only ten mining analysts to the briefing!” Waskowski laughed again, enjoying his little joke. “And what would they do with the diamonds anyway? You’ve heard of the Kimberley Process? Every legitimate diamond is tracked from where it’s mined until it ends up in a piece of jewelry. It’s like a pedigree. They’d have no way to sell their diamonds outside that process. Complete waste of time.”

  Kubu sighed. So much for his idea of the Namib Mining Company being behind all this.

  But Waskowski wasn’t finished. “Now if you had a gang of smugglers or the like, and the diamonds were close to surface, that would be a different story. For a few individuals, there coul
d be real money in it. The Kalahari has kimberlites all right. No reason why someone couldn’t stumble on a small, rich lode somewhere in the middle of nowhere. ”

  “But wouldn’t they also come up against the Kimberley Process?”

  “Of course. But if you get something for nothing, anything you sell it for is a good profit.”

  Kubu realized that the Walrus might have given him what he needed to convince Mabaku. His heart beat a little faster.

  “Dr. Waskowski, you’ve been a big help. Thank you very much.”

  “Always happy to help the police.” The line went dead.

  Kubu hung up, his mind in high gear. Pieces of the puzzle were clicking into place now, but something still worried him. It was as if the pieces fitted perfectly, but the picture they made wasn’t really the same as the one on the front of the box. Yet he couldn’t find the flaw. He shrugged off his doubts. Let’s try it on Mabaku, he decided.

  “Diamond smugglers!” Mabaku actually jumped out of his chair. Kubu enjoyed that. He had always wondered just how it would look. “That changes the whole case.”

  Kubu nodded. “It could be a gang, exploiting the Bushman issue to cover up the murders of anyone who stumbles across what they’re doing. And the area is supposed to be unlucky, so the Bushmen keep away.”

  Mabaku snorted. “But three murders?”

  Kubu shook his head. “Edison has been following up any unusual deaths in the area. There is at least one more, probably three. And one long ago. But that doesn’t fit with this, of course.” Mabaku looked puzzled, so Kubu continued. He spread his topographic map on Mabaku’s desk, pushing the director’s paperwork out of the way. The map had two new crosses marked on it and a dotted line and a solid line running through part of the region.

  “This spot”—Kubu pointed to one of the crosses—“is where a prospector by the name of Herman Koch died twelve years ago. Also looking for diamonds, it seems. Not close to where Monzo or Haake died, but not that far from Krige. Is that a coincidence? Maybe. But maybe not, because he was the previous owner of Haake’s map.”