Detective Kubu 03; The Death of the Mantis

by Michael Stanley

  “We do not need help. Neither do we need extra mouths.”

  Khumanego glared at Dcaro. “I am strong and have much power in the spirit world. Recently I saw Gobiwasi there. It was he who led me here.”

  There was much excitement at this news, but Dcaro held up his hand and the others waited.

  “You tell us that. But how do we know it is so?”

  “Because I say it!”

  Dcaro just shook his head and waited.

  “It will be good for us to work together. I have many powerful friends in this world, too. Did I not save you and these two men from being hanged?” He pointed at the other two men whom Lerako had held. Although they regarded him with respect, there was also hostility. Still, it was an important reminder. The group started to talk again. Some space was made by the fire; clearly they expected Khumanego to join them. But it was Dcaro who led now.

  “Those other people say we Bushmen are liars, that we steal, that we kill what is not ours to kill. That is why they chase us, even though we are honest, take only what is ours and kill only what we need. But you have lied, and stolen, and you have killed a man. We know you killed the white man with a Bushman arrow and caused much trouble. We saw the posters. We had to leave. You have done? great harm. The ancestors are very angry.” At the end of this speech Dcaro was shaking, but he gave no ground.

  Khumanego glared at him. “Since you reject my friendship and help, I will go. But you will regret this night. All of you will regret this night!” His arm encompassed the whole of the small group, and he could see their fear and was glad. Turning back to Dcaro, he softened his voice. “I need water for my journey. You cannot refuse a traveller in the desert when he comes asking for water.”

  “We have no water to spare. There is no water here. There is water in Hukuntsi. Go there.”

  “Then I curse you all! May you too be refused water in your time of thirst.” He stood up and stalked into the desert night.

  Khumanego felt their eyes on his back, watching him, but they meant nothing. He would change his plan. He knew now where he must go. He would go where he needed no one, where there was >water, and where he had power.

  ∨ The Death of the Mantis ∧

  Forty

  When he arrived at the CID on Monday morning, Director Mabaku appeared calm. He had visited Kubu on the way and thought he was on the mend. More to the point, the doctor was satisfied. But underneath, Mabaku was bottling up an explosion of anger. How had this nasty little Bushman dared to mess with his CID detectives? Once he was caught, he was going to be very sorry. Yet Kubu’s burning question kept coming back to him. Why? What was Khumanego’s motive for these vicious and apparently pointless murders?

  Mabaku’s secretary, Miriam, stopped him at his office door to give him a document – the warrant to search Khumanego’s apartment. They had managed to get authorisation over the weekend. The director brightened at once. Now they could take action, do something positive. Perhaps get to the bottom of this mess.

  “Get hold of Zanele and her forensics team,” he told Miriam. “Tell her to get them ready as soon as possible. I want to take apart the suspect’s home piece by piece until we understand what this is all about. I’ll supervise it myself.”

  ♦

  Khumanego’s apartment was on the second floor of a building close to the centre of Lobatse. The caretaker was expecting them. She was full of questions; the police presence over the last few days had caused quite a stir. Mabaku brushed her concerns aside, showed her the warrant and waited for her to unlock the front door. He wasn’t talkative. His mind was focused on whether the key to the Kalahari murders would be inside this modest dwelling.

  When they went in, it looked like a typical Motswana apartment: two small bedrooms, an open-plan lounge/kitchen/dining area and a single bathroom. Zanele and her team went to work while Mabaku stood in the middle of the lounge area. He looked around, but touched nothing, trying to get a feel for the Bushman’s life.

  On one wall was a bookcase containing three shelves of books and two display shelves. Mabaku called Zanele over. He wondered how she could look so attractive swaddled in her shapeless white laboratory coat. He pointed at the top display shelf.

  “Those look like Bushman arrowheads. They may be harmless, but they may be poisoned. Tell your people to treat them as if they are. Even if they are just collector’s items, those poisons can last a long time. Use forceps and put them in strong bags, not flimsy plastic ones. Remember Haake.”

  Zanele nodded. “Do you want us to collect them all?”

  “Yes, do that. And those little containers with them, too. They probably used to contain poisons. Maybe they still do.”

  Mabaku examined the books. Most were textbooks concerned with human rights and legal issues. He spotted a copy of Ditshwanelo’s report on the Maauwe and Motswetla affair, In the Shadow of the Noose. But there was nothing untoward, nothing to suggest that Khumanego was anything other than what he claimed to be: an advocate for the Bushman peoples. The second display shelf was more interesting. It was empty but for six pebbles of white calcrete laid out in a straight line, each separated by about three centimetres. Other than the arrangement, and the fact that they were free of sand and powder, there was nothing unusual about them. Except that they were there. Why collect nondescript stones from the desert?

  “Zanele! Please get pictures of the arrangement of everything here and then collect these stones as well.” She was talking to a man searching for fingerprints with an ultraviolet light, but she nodded.

  Mabaku wandered around the apartment. He came across one of Zanele’s men going through a desk in the second bedroom, carefully sorting through normal office items with latex-gloved hands. It appeared that Khumanego used this room as a study. They had already dusted and fingerprinted his computer and printer and packed them in boxes to be checked later.

  “There’s a GPS in here,” the man told Mabaku. “A Garmin. I think we should take that.”

  “Definitely. Why would a Bushman need a GPS in the Kalahari? There’s a good chance it’s Haake’s. Don’t turn it on. We’ll get the technicians to try to extract his last, route.”

  Mabaku moved on to the main bedroom, which had a narrow balcony facing the back of the opposite building. The small area was crowded with a variety of plants growing in reddish Kalahari sand contained in unattractive plastic pots of the sort nurseries used. He unlocked the steel-framed glass door and stepped out. Prickly and scraggly, they were hardly the pot plants a garden lover would have chosen for a balcony. Were they a homesick Bushman’s reminders of the Kalahari? Or something more sinister? He asked Zanele to collect them too. Carefully.

  A constable searching Khumanego’s clothes cupboard called Mabaku over.

  “Take a look here, Rra. Look at the shoes.”

  Mabaku glanced at the floor of the cupboard, seeing a collection of shoes and boots, neatly arranged in pairs. For a moment he didn’t get the point, but then he whistled.

  “That one pair of boots is almost twice the size of the others – I’d guess size ten. The rest look like kids’ shoes. Let’s see the soles of those boots.”

  The man turned them over, displaying smooth undersides, Mabaku nodded.

  “Take those. Definitely.”

  They found nothing else. Several hours later, they packed up their stuff, carried out the items they wanted to test or examine further, and headed back to the CID in Gaborone. They didn’t have much to show for most of a day’s work, and nothing that pointed to the motive Kubu sought.

  But Mabaku was satisfied. He was sure they had found the boots that had made tracks around three murders, and he had a strong hunch they’d found Haake’s GPS.

  ∨ The Death of the Mantis ∧

  Forty-One

  Willie Taro’s life had become one of constant fear. The petrol attendant at the Kgalagadi Filling Station in Hukuntsi, did his job every day, but his enthusiasm and pleasure in it were gone. He dreaded seeing the Bushman who
called himself Piscoaghu. That was a name from Bushman legend, and Willie didn’t believe it was the man’s real name. At first it had almost been a game, watching the travellers come through the petrol station, chatting with them and asking where they were going. And the money Piscoaghu paid him for the information had been most welcome. But after Haake’s murder by a Bushman arrow, all that had changed.

  He felt guilt, too. He would never have said a word if he’d thought Haake was in danger, but it was too late now. He wondered what sort of game Piscoaghu was playing. And was the game over? He hoped so. But he’d heard enough about murderers to know that they didn’t like to leave people alive who could connect them to their victims.

  He’d sought advice from an elderly Bushman who lived in the town and knew things. He had listened carefully to Willie’s story, and his response was immediate. Willie must go to the police. They would be fair to him, and they would help him. But Willie was scared of the police, so he didn’t take the advice. Then he noticed that Bushmen in the town started giving him odd looks and seemed to be avoiding him. Had the old Bushman spread the story? He was scared of that, too.

  Willie wasn’t stupid. When the news broke of the policeman who’d died in the desert so near where Haake had been exploring, he put two and two together. And when he saw Piscoaghu’s face staring out of a Wanted poster, he was terrified.

  Now it was Sunday. Almost two weeks had passed since Detective Tau’s corpse had been found. His body had still not been returned to the family. People said doctors were cutting it up to find out how he’d died. Willie shuddered, thinking about what those doctors were doing.

  After church, the villagers who had known Tau gathered in the courtyard of his modest home for an afternoon of prayers and speeches in his honour. Tau had always been polite to Willie, and he went to the prayer meeting, sitting on the ground near the back of the gathering. He was scared to be there, as the house was in the police compound, scared that if he was noticed he might be chased away. And he was scared of not being noticed, lest people felt his absence showed ill-will to the late detective. Willie’s life had become one of constant fear.

  The afternoon dragged on as one person after another rose to speak well of the deceased, or to call on Jesus to reward their departed friend. When at last a break came in the proceedings, Willie stood up, stretched, and almost bumped into a tall, well-built man wearing an immaculate police uniform with a fine medal. Willie was in awe. This man must be a very senior officer. Perhaps even the Commissioner of Police! He looked down and muttered a humble apology in Setswana. Unexpectedly, the man stopped and spoke to him.

  “There is no problem,” he said. “We are all here together as children of God to honour our friend Detective Tau.”

  The policeman started to move on, but suddenly Willie felt this man would hear his story and be fair to him. He ran to keep up, fearful that his opportunity to speak might be lost.

  “Rra, I beg your pardon for disturbing you. I know you are an important person with much to do, Rra, and this is the day of rest, and we must pay our respects to the departed. But I have information which may be important to the police.” The policeman looked down at him quizzically. “Rra, it is about the murder of a man called Haake,” Willie gabbled on, scared that if he hesitated, his courage would desert him. “Perhaps I know who killed him. Rra Haake was a man from Namibia…”

  The area chief of police knew very well who Haake was. Without further ado, he steered Willie into the adjoining Tshane police station.

  ∨ The Death of the Mantis ∧

  Forty-Two

  On Monday, Kubu was happy to get back to his office. The hospital had been a trial, and in desperation the doctor had discharged him in order to still his stream of complaints. Then he’d been stuck at home, bored and alone during the day except for the police constable outside, and sidelined in the evening while Pleasant and Joy focused on organising the engagement party. He tried to keep out of their way, playing with Tumi and Ilia, who both appreciated his attention. The weekend had been better; they had taken a trip to Mochudi to visit his parents.

  His colleagues greeted him like a hero, which he found embarrassing. Edison was particularly effusive.

  “All right, Edison, I’m fine now. What’s happening with the case? Any sign of Khumanego?”

  Edison shook his head. “But we searched his apartment a week ago, and I’ve got the reports back. How did he pull it off, Kubu? How did he get to all those places in the middle of nowhere? How did he know where the victims were?”

  They were good questions, and Kubu had spent lots of time thinking about them. “Let’s get some tea and go to my office and bring each other up to date. Also please find some muffins. I lost a lot of weight in the desert. I need to build up my strength.” He was going to have a proper lunch, too. There had been no more nagging at home about dieting.

  Kubu settled himself at his desk. His in-tray was full, and his computer had a demanding air about it. He ignored them both and waited for Edison, who arrived a few minutes later with six muffins. They both set to work on them.

  “So what’s in the forensics reports?” Kubu asked through a mouthful.

  Edison searched through his file. “The arrowheads were clean, but one of the containers held something possibly very toxic, perhaps even what was used on Haake. And the plants that Director Mabaku found were indeed the source of poisons and hallucinogens, including the one that killed the two students. The boots we found in Khumanego’s cupboard match the prints found at each of the three murder scenes pretty well, and the size is right.”

  “Anything on the fingerprints on Haake’s vehicle?”

  Edison nodded enthusiastically. “Khumanego’s prints were on the gun and on the back of Haake’s vehicle.”

  Kubu was about to ask about the GPS when Mabaku came in and muttered something about everyone having a party. However, after enquiring about Kubu’s health, he helped himself to a muffin.

  “I’m feeling fine, Director,” said Kubu, after swallowing the rest of his muffin. “We were discussing how Khumanego pulled this off under our noses. Under my nose, I suppose I should say.”

  Mabaku grunted. “I got an urgent message this morning to phone Lerako about the case. I thought we could do it together.” He tossed Kubu a slip of paper with the message in Miriam’s handwriting.

  Kubu dialled the number, reached. Lerako and put him on the speaker.

  “Kubu! Are you recovered? You’re lucky to be alive. The Kalahari is a dangerous place.”

  “I’m fine, Lerako. Glad to be alive.”

  “Detective Tau’s body has been returned to his family now. Will you be coming to the funeral this weekend?”

  “Yes, I need to be there. I want to tell the family what happened in person.” He owed the man at least that much. “I’ve got Director Mabaku and Detective Banda here with me,” he continued. “Do you have some news for us?”

  “I do! I was right about the Bushmen. Perhaps I had the wrong ones originally, but yesterday I arrested one of the right ones.”

  Kubu’s heart jumped. “You’ve got Khumanego?”

  “No, but an accomplice. A chap called Willie Taro who works at the petrol station in Hukuntsi. He’s admitted everything.”

  Kubu felt some doubt mix with the elation. Lerako didn’t have a good record with Bushman arrests.

  Mabaku chipped in. “You’d better tell us the whole story from the beginning.”

  “Willie’s been spying on people for another Bushman who called himself Piscoaghu and who paid him for the information. All tourists and visitors coming through Hukuntsi pass through the petrol station where he works. It’s the only place to get fuel in that whole area. He reported everything he could find out, but this Piscoaghu was particularly interested in people heading south, especially if they came more than once.”

  “What did this other man do with the information?” Kubu asked. “Why did he want it?”

  “Willie doesn’t know. I t
hink he’s telling the truth about that. He’s been very co-operative.” From the way Lerako said it, Kubu had no doubt co-operation was in Willie’s interest.

  “And this other Bushman, this Piscoaghu, was Khumanego?”

  “No doubt about it. Willie recognised the picture of him on the Wanted poster right away.”

  “Who did he give information about?”

  “Well, he doesn’t know most of their names. But he knew Haake all right. And here’s the punchline. Khumanego was in Hukuntsi the evening Haake was killed. And Willie told him where Haake was.”

  Mabaku gave a low whistle. “Good work, Lerako! How did you get on to this Willie character?”

  There was a moment’s hesitation. “Well, he turned himself in, actually. He approached the Tshane station commander at a prayer meeting for Detective Tau. Took his time, though. If he’d come forward earlier, Tau might still be with us.”

  “So what charge are you holding him on?” Kubu asked.

  “Accessory to murder! He’s an accomplice before and after the fact.”

  It seemed to Kubu that Willie had been used and might have had no idea what was going on. But he didn’t feel like arguing. Willie might be safer in police custody than free, where Khumanego could get at him.

  “Did he know where Khumanego stayed when he was in Hukuntsi?”

  “He said he only visited from time to time. But here’s something really important. He says that Khumanego occasionally arrived at the filling station on an off-road motorbike.”

  Mabaku whistled again, and Kubu’s brain shifted into high gear.

  Lerako covered a few other points, promised to send them a copy of Willie’s statement and said he’d see Kubu and Mabaku at the funeral. Then he rang off.

  Kubu turned to the other two. “Now the puzzle pieces are fitting into place. Khumanego was behind all the murders. Let’s see if I can tie things together.