William looked surprised. “But…” he began, but Gomwe interrupted. “What about Langa? Has anyone seen him this morning? Was he at breakfast?”
“He didn’t come to breakfast,” Solomon said.
“He didn’t come to breakfast!” Moremi stabbed with his knife toward the neatly set table. Amanda gave a small scream, and Solomon remonstrated with the cook in Setswana, banishing him to his kitchen domain. Moremi left muttering under his breath. Kweh, however, objected and flapped noisily around Moremi’s head.
“Langa,” Gomwe reminded. “We should check his tent.”
“We won’t. I will!” Dupie said, returning from the reception tent.
At that moment, a woman, anxious and flustered, ran up to the group. “Oh God, what’s happened?” She was tall, with hair sun-yellowed rather than blond, done up in a bun; her arms bare and brown. She wore a khaki top and slacks to below the knee. Tanned and scratched legs ended in worn, flat sandals. Her face, safe from the Botswana sun thanks to a straw hat, looked younger than her forty-three years. Worry now lined it. “What’s happened?” she repeated. For a moment no one said anything, then Dupie told her.
“One of our guests is dead, Salome. Goodluck Tinubu. Someone cut his throat. And we’re not sure where Sipho Langa is.”
Salome shook her head. “Murdered? What are we going to do?”
“I’ve already contacted the police. They should be here in a couple of hours if they can get a plane. Otherwise it’ll take all day.” Dupie put his hand on Salome’s arm. “Take the guests to the bar. Drinks are on the house. I’ll be there in a few minutes. I’m going to check Langa’s tent.”
William watched Dupie walk off, thoughtful. Then he put his arm around Amanda’s shoulders. “Are you all right, darling? I guess I could handle a stiff brandy at that.”
Chapter 2
“There isn’t enough blood,” said Detective Sergeant Mooka, known as Tatwa to his friends. His slender body, just shy of six feet six inches, was too tall for the bush tent, forcing him to stoop to look down at the corpse. He held a handkerchief over his mouth; the smell of body waste pervaded the tent.
Dupie, not short himself, looked sharply up at him. “There seems more than enough to me.”
“I suppose so,” the detective replied, regretting his involuntary remark. He squatted to get a closer look at the body and to relieve the pressure on his neck and shoulders. The victim was a black man, probably in his fifties. He was dressed in a T-shirt and under-pants and lay on the floor on his back. There was a bruise on the side of his head with the skin broken. An awful purple slash of congealed blood disfigured his throat, and on his forehead were carved two slashes in the form of a cross. Both ears had been hacked from his head, then rammed into his mouth to stick out like nasty fungi growing from rotten wood.
“It’s that stinking mob in Zimbabwe,” Dupie said suddenly. “I’ve seen this done before. In the bush war.”
“To a black man?”
“Black, white, the terrorists weren’t particular. They’d kill and mutilate anyone who stood up to them. Still do. And they run the place now,” he concluded with disgust.
“You think this could be politically motivated?”
“Hell knows what motivates those people. Tell you what, when you’ve finished measuring the amount of blood, come up to the bar, and I’ll tell you who did this. Then you can find out why.” He pushed his way through the tent flaps, leaving the detective with the dead.
Tatwa had seen a man with his throat cut before. Then it had seemed as though every drop of blood had been pumped out through the wound. Now, there just wasn’t enough blood for that. He sighed. He had better wait for the pathologist before he disturbed the body. He should be here soon, flying by light plane from Gaborone.
Tatwa looked around the tent. Army-style, it was comfortable in a bushy way. Two single beds with cane pedestals on which stood a storm lantern, a candle, two glasses with drops of liquid still in them (why two?) and a half-empty bottle of mineral water. To one side, there was a hanging area for clothes and a folding stool holding a brown suitcase, on top of which was a black briefcase. They’d need to go through those in due course. There was an adjoining toilet and a shower with a floor mosaic of a kingfisher.
He decided he had better take Du Pisanie up on his offer. He seemed to be in charge of the camp, and probably knew most of what happened in and around it. Perhaps he did have an idea who had murdered this man. He got to his feet—instinctively ducking, as he did even in friends’ houses—and backed out of the tent. The zipper must have been left open when the cleaning woman found the corpse. The fat bush flies had already found their way in.
As he walked toward the bar, he motioned to his two colleagues from Forensics. They would scour the tent and surroundings for clues.
Tatwa found the entire complement of the camp gathered in the bar. Obviously lunch had been delayed until after his meeting. Dupie introduced him to Salome McGlashan, the owner of the camp concession. Then the guests: Amanda and William Boardman from South Africa, Boy Gomwe also from South Africa, and Trish and Judith Munro, sisters from England. Finally, Dupie got to the staff: Enoch Kokorwe, the camp manager, Suthani Moremi, the cook, Beauty, who did the cleaning, and her husband Solomon, the waiter. Tatwa greeted them all with respect and thanked them for their patience.
“Regrettably I have to confirm what Mr. Du Pisanie has already told you. One of the guests, Mr. Goodluck Tinubu, has been murdered. We have a pathologist on the way from Gaborone, but my guess is that Mr. Tinubu was murdered sometime late last night.” He paused, looking around the group.
“I know you must be shocked by what has happened. But there’s no need to worry. I’ve two armed men with me who are searching the area. If the killer is nearby we’ll find him. If he’s left, which I’m sure he did many hours ago, there’s no danger. I’ll need to interview all of you later, so I’m afraid I have to ask you not to leave the camp until I give permission. Also, we’ll need to take fingerprints from all of you.”
“Are we being treated as suspects then?” Gomwe asked. “Why do you need fingerprints?”
“None of you are suspects at this point, Mr. Gomwe. We need your prints so we can distinguish them from any others we may find.”
“I may be able to help,” William exclaimed. “I always have a small digital camera with me for pictures of artwork and friends. Happy snaps. I took pictures of everyone at the camp last night. We were all having such a good time after Dupie’s chair…” He let the sentence drift off after seeing the look Dupie gave him. Tatwa thanked him and said the pictures might be very helpful.
As there were no further contributions, Tatwa added with un-intended irony: “I suggest all of you enjoy a good lunch while I get some background information from Mr. Du Pisanie.”
Dupie took Tatwa to the tent off the side of the main reception area, which he described as his office. It contained a table, three plastic chairs, and a metal filing cabinet whose top drawer had slipped off its rollers and was jammed half open. The table was host to a selection of fish hooks and reels, a coffee-stained map of the Linyanti, and a cup, half full of cold coffee, which might have participated in the staining. Piles of documents, old newspapers from both Botswana and Zimbabwe, batches of handwritten envelopes held together with elastic bands, calendars several years old, and stacks of receipts and canceled checks covered the table. Pens and pencils lay scattered among paper clips and crumpled Post-it Notes. On top of the filing cabinet were two old black-and-white photographs, apparently family scenes from a time long past.
Dupie seated himself behind the desk, well back to allow room for his stomach, and waited for the detective to help himself to a chair.
Taking off his ever-present charcoal cap that honored St. Louis (more likely the American city than the Botswana beer), Tatwa pulled a notebook from his shirt pocket. “You said you had some useful information, Mr. Du Pisanie?”
“Well, it’s the dog that didn’t bark is
the answer,” said Dupie. “You know your Sherlock Holmes?” Tatwa shook his head. “Well, it’s who isn’t there, you see. The men who aren’t with the group outside. One called himself Langa and the other Zondo.”
“Where are they?”
“Ah, that is the question! That’s Hamlet, by the way. Langa has disappeared. Perhaps he took one of the mokoros. I don’t see how else he could have escaped.”
“Are you missing a mokoro?” Tatwa asked.
Dupie shrugged. “Who knows? Most of them belong to the village on the mainland. Anyone who wants one borrows it and brings it back later.”
“What about Zondo?”
“He left this morning. He was supposed to be here three nights, not two, but told me last night after dinner that he had to leave first thing this morning. Some sort of family emergency.”
“How did he hear about it?”
“We actually have mobile phone reception here—as unlikely as it may seem. There’s a tower in Linyanti town across the river in Namibia. If you have roaming, you’ll pick it up.”
“When did he leave?”
“I took him to the airstrip early—before breakfast.”
“When did you last see Langa?”
“At dinner last night. He went to bed shortly after Zondo and Tinubu. Tired, they all said, although they hadn’t done much during the day.”
“Do you have an address for Mr. Zondo?”
“Oh yes. In Zimbabwe. One of the fat cats. No doubt about that. I know the type. Fat from the gravy train while everyone else starves.”
“Please give me the details. We’ll get the Zimbabwe police to help us trace him.”
“Best of luck to you.” Dupie sneered and tossed him Zondo’s registration form. Tatwa glanced at it and was disappointed not to see a telephone contact number.
“Does Mr. Langa also come from Zimbabwe?”
“No,” Dupie replied. “He has a South African passport. Lives in Johannesburg, I think.”
“And Mr. Tinubu?”
“Well, he’s more interesting. He showed me a local identity document so I thought he was a Motswana. But when I checked it, it said he was born in Zimbabwe. Bulawayo, I think. So there could be a connection. In fact, I’d bet on it.”
“I’d like the forms for all the other guests too, please.”
“Sure. I’ll get them. Then I’d say it’s time for lunch.”
Tatwa nodded. After lunch he’d have to interview the others, but first he had to trace Zondo and start the search for Langa. He needed to report back in any case, and he wondered what had happened to the pathologist.
“Please make sure no one leaves the camp until I say so. I’ll need to get more information from all of you later.”
Dupie nodded. Then he followed his impressive stomach out through the flap of the tent, nearly colliding with a policeman. The constable, ignoring Dupie, addressed Tatwa in Setswana.
“Sergeant, you must come at once. We’ve found another man.”
Tatwa could tell from the uniformed policeman’s demeanor that he had another corpse on his hands. “You’d better come with us, Mr. Du Pisanie,” he said. “I’m sorry to further delay your lunch.”
They had found the body at the western end of the camp. One of the policemen had walked to the top of a small cliff at the edge of the water and had looked down. A man lay crumpled at the bottom of the slope.
It took Dupie and Tatwa several minutes to clamber down to the body and join the other uniformed policeman. There was no mystery about this death, no arcane cross on the forehead, no slit throat, no severed ears. The man had been hit hard enough to dent his skull. He must have been on the path above, because the body’s progress down the scree had marked rocks with blood. The body was that of a large, well-built black man, wearing shorts, T-shirt, and a light jacket, all in khaki. He wore dirty white sneakers without socks, and a pair of binoculars hung around his neck. The face stared sightlessly at the sky.
“My God,” said Dupie. “That’s Sipho Langa! He’s been murdered too.”
Tatwa clenched his teeth. Suddenly he had two victims and one suspect instead of one victim and two suspects. The forensics people would have their work cut out to cover two murder sites before dark. Just then a light plane flew low overhead, probably the pathologist. He was glad of that. He needed help. This was his first big case, and he was beginning to feel out of his depth. If Zondo were the culprit, he’d be out of the country already. And, if he had the right connections as Dupie suspected, he would be impossible to shift from Zimbabwe. Since his boss in Kasane was ill, Tatwa decided to call the director of the Criminal Investigation Department in Gaborone directly. He and Dupie walked back to the main camp in silence.
“May I use your office? I need to contact the CID in Gaborone.”
“Why in Gaborone?”
“It’s procedure.”
“Go ahead. Call me if you need anything.”
As they walked through the dining area, everyone became silent. Glancing at the river, Tatwa noticed the large crocodiles sunning themselves on convenient sand banks. One was huge—a fifteen-foot monster. Tatwa shuddered. He hated crocodiles; one had cost him a younger brother. Pulling himself together, he walked to the office and made his call to Director Mabaku.
Chapter 3
Assistant Superintendent “Kubu” Bengu had just returned from a daylong investigation of a robbery at a gas station in Lethlakeng, when he was summoned to see the director. A meeting with Mabaku was an unwelcome intrusion because he hoped to finish his report before going home to his wife and dinner. With a sigh he heaved himself out of his chair and headed for the director’s office.
Mabaku growled, “Why are you always away when I need you?”
Kubu opened his mouth to respond but was cut short.
“It’s too late now! Sit down.” Mabaku pointed toward a chair. “I have an urgent matter to discuss. It concerns a double murder reported this morning.” Kubu had heard nothing of a new murder case. His eyebrows rose.
“This morning a Motswana male was found with his throat cut at a lodge in the Linyanti. Probably happened last night. Then his face was mutilated. Later, another guest—a South African—was found bludgeoned to death and dumped in a gulley. There are a number of, shall we say, sensitive aspects to the case, and we have a camp full of tourists stuck there. Detective Sergeant Mooka is investigating. But he’s new, and he needs help.”
“Oh, Tatwa!” Kubu chuckled. “Good chap even if he is a bit tall!” Kubu had met Mooka as a trainee in Gaborone. They could hardly avoid hitting it off. Mooka had acquired the nickname of Tatwa, a play on the word thutlwa, Setswana for giraffe, from his very tall, slim build and occasional slightly surprised look. Because Tatwa was gentle and quiet unless threatened, the name suited him remarkably well and had stuck. And David Bengu was nicknamed Kubu, Setswana for hippopotamus, for his impressive girth, appetite, and, until roused, his deceptively ponderous approach. Even the usually humorless Mabaku had commented that the CID was becoming a menagerie instead of a police department. Then Tatwa had been posted to Kasane, and they had lost contact.
“Why doesn’t Assistant Superintendent Dingalo take charge? He’s based in Kasane,” Kubu asked.
“He’s got another bout of malaria. Kasane is becoming as bad as Victoria Falls. Several CID people are down with some nasty, drug-resistant strain. You’ll have to go up and take over.”
“Isn’t it time Tatwa went solo on a case? Won’t he be demoralized if I take over?”
“Kubu, you’re not listening. I said there were sensitive aspects. You know how much the country relies on tourism. The first victim’s name is Tinubu. He lived in Botswana. But he’s ex-Zimbabwe according to his identity document, and he gets himself killed not far from Zimbabwe. The obvious suspect registered under the name of Ishmael Zondo, but the Zimbabwe police tell me that the Zimbabwean passport he used is a fake. I think we can take it that his name is also false. At the moment, there’s no trace of him. A se
cond man, Sipho Langa, who’s South African and apparently unrelated to the first victim, is also dead. All this happens in front of a group of international tourists who want to get on with their holidays. MacGregor is already up there taking care of the bodies. We need this tidied up quickly. And there’s the African Union meeting coming up in Gaborone in about four weeks, remember? We don’t want to be embarrassed. The manager up at the camp is a chap called Du Pisanie, another Zimbabwean turned Motswana, believe it or not.” He grimaced. “Catch the Air Botswana flight to Maun in the morning, and have Miriam contact the Defense Force about getting from Maun to the camp. That’ll be the third flight we’ve asked the BDF for today. I hope they don’t refuse, otherwise you’ll have to hitchhike.” He turned back to his paperwork. “Give my regards to Joy.”
Kubu sighed as he left. He wondered if the food at the camp was any good.
Chapter 4
Kubu looked down at the patchwork landscape of the Linyanti. As they flew over the web of waterways, the pilot pointed out various geographic features and several groups of elephant. It was hard to tell where the water stopped and the land began. Fingers of water moved into channels and then overflowed, silently with no waves; the flood came like a thief in the night, gently stealing the land.
What snake has slithered into this Eden? Kubu wondered.
In an unusual change of perspective, they looked down on two huge lappet-faced vultures gliding in an updraft a thousand feet above the ground. The pilot pointed out a pod of hippo basking on the bank of one of the channels. Kubu nodded, enjoying the aerial views of his namesakes, and was struck by the dramatic contrast of this water world to the arid dryness of the country’s heart. Then the Islander banked, following one of the larger channels to the airstrip near Jackalberry Camp.
The pilot did a low pass over the airstrip. A family of warthogs rushed off with flagpole tails. Satisfied that the runway was free of game, the pilot turned, aligned the Islander with the dirt strip, and brought it down in a cloud of dust and a succession of bumps.
A Carrion Death & The 2nd Death of Goodluck Tinubu Page 45
