“You know, Director, you and I don’t believe in coincidences. Yet in this case there was a huge one. It nearly derailed everything by sending me off in the wrong direction.”
“The Gomwe murder?” Mabaku suggested.
“Yes.” Kubu shook his head. “The timing seemed perfect—Gomwe coming back to Botswana just as Boardman was killed and then being murdered himself. But actually he was trying to muscle in on the trans-frontier drug trade. Perhaps the money people in South Africa tipped him off about Jackalberry, and that’s why he was snooping around when Goodluck was there. But actually his death wasn’t directly connected to the money destined for Zimbabwe. I was so desperate to catch the people who were threatening Joy and Pleasant, I convinced myself that Gomwe’s murder was the key. That was almost a huge mistake.”
Mabaku nodded slowly, digesting this. “How’s Tatwa doing on that case?”
“It’s going to test his skills even more than the Jackalberry one. We’ve got the woman and the ranger on various drug charges—that’s open and closed. But as for the murder charges, I don’t know. They both claim that the other’s accusations are lies. I’m not sure we have enough hard evidence to convict them. Anyway, we’ll see. Tatwa’s developing into a very good interrogator. Maybe he’ll get a breakthrough.”
“And Van der Walle owes me one for his bust in Johannesburg. That’s always useful.” Suddenly Mabaku was serious again. “Things are still pretty confused in Zimbabwe, Kubu, but we’ve asked the government for help to track down Madrid and his thugs. The commissioner has made it clear that if they want cooperation from the Botswana Police Force in the future, they need to deliver on this one.”
“But they’ll never give us Madrid if they catch him!”
“Yes, we know that. We just want to be sure he doesn’t get away. Once they’ve got him, he’s no longer a threat. To anyone.”
Kubu realized that this was the best resolution he could hope for. He was grateful the commissioner had moved so quickly and was beginning to feel a little ashamed of his earlier outburst.
“Thank you, Jacob. And thank you for your support when things were going badly for me. You won’t regret it.”
Mabaku smiled. Suddenly he stuck out his hand and warmly shook Kubu’s surprised one. “Oh, and congratulations!” Realizing that Kubu was lost, he added, “On becoming a father, of course.” Kubu’s mouth worked. How on earth does Mabaku know these things? It seemed Mabaku could read this thought too. He laughed. “Oh, I phoned for you yesterday when you were out, and Joy told me. She didn’t mention it to you?”
Kubu shook his head, but he had a broad smile. Just the reminder was enough to restore his good humor.
Mabaku gave him another playful thump. “Your life’s going to change, Kubu. But you’ll never be sorry, not for a moment. My kids are grown up now, but they still give us a lot of pleasure. The first twenty-five years are the hardest, though!”
Kubu grinned. “We better get back to work,” he said.
ALL ALIKE
He walked by himself, and all places were alike to him.
—RUDYARD KIPLING,
Just So Stories
Salome walked around the camp thinking of what had been lost and what had been gained. It was not for the last time. She would need at least two trips to Kasane to move the items not part of the sale of Jackalberry Camp. She had been lucky to find a buyer who was willing to negotiate the extension of the concession and pay her a fair price. For the first time in many months she looked around at the river and the view of the hills, hurting from the beauty. Scattered clouds were gathering on the horizon. She would go to the lookout for the sunset. It should be spectacular.
One more commitment remained. She was tempted to shrug it off, just as she was trying to shrug off the life and the events that had led her to this point. Why, when things were changing for them, had Dupie thrown it all away on a quest for revenge and riches? She shrugged. She needed to move on while there was still time for her to build a life. If there is still time, she thought wryly. Wherever I go, I take myself with me. But she had made a promise, and she did not want any open doors left behind her.
She needed a spade. Take a spade, Dupie had said from behind the heavy prison glass. She had seen him just that once after her release. Will you come to see me again? he had asked. With sadness in her heart, she had said she would not. He had nodded, almost relieved. That is when he had told her where to go and to take a spade. He had asked her to promise that she would, and after hesitating, she had given her word. They owe it to you, he had said. So now she needed to close this one remaining door.
The spade, used to trim the camp paths, lived behind the kitchen, so she went to fetch it. There she found Moremi. As always Kweh was on his shoulder, clucking and eating a marula.
“Will you stay, Moremi?” she asked. “You’re a wonderful cook; the new owner will be lucky to have you. He’ll probably pay you much more than I could afford to. I’ll write a reference, if you like.”
Moremi smiled but shook his head. “We’re going to see the world, Kweh and me. Kasane, Francistown, maybe even Gaborone!” He did a little pirouette, disturbing the bird. “Don’t worry. We’ll be fine. You, too. We’ll all be fine. It is time.” He started to hum the farewell song.
She picked up the spade. Moremi watched her as she walked off.
Where the camp path ended, she had to push through bushes to get down to the river. There was a small inlet with a quiet bay surfaced with fine mud. Salome had no idea what she was looking for, or what was there to find, but she took off her sandals, checked for crocodiles, and waded into the water in her shorts. There was a large log jammed between rocks, red and shiny from water wear. Where Dupie had told her, she started to dig in the silt behind the log. More accurately she scooped the mud away. Very soon, the spade hit metal, and she stepped back, waiting for the now cloudy water to clear. Then she could see a mud-stained muslin bag. Leaning on the spade, she reached down with her right hand and tried to lift it out, but it seemed stuck in the river. After a few tugs, she tossed the spade onto the shore and used both hands to dislodge the bag. It didn’t seem large but it was very heavy. She supposed it was waterlogged and weighed down with mud. There was another bag below the one she had moved.
Salome dragged the bag to the shore and unwound the wire tie. Then she saw the golden gleam. She lifted out the top bar, shiny, unsullied by the mud or water. On the top was stamped 1 kg, with a mark indicating the source and the purity. Over two pounds of Zimbabwean 20 carat gold, with a value of over thirty thousand U.S. dollars. And the bag was full. And there was at least one more bag in the river. There could be a million dollars worth of gold here, she thought, amazed.
“They owe it to you,” Dupie had said. Who? The terrorists who killed her family and distorted her life? The people of Zimbabwe? The politicians who had maimed the country as badly as she had been maimed? She stood and thought about this gold and the money for which, she supposed, it was to have been exchanged. Money and gold that had taken four lives, as well as the freedom of Dupie and Enoch. Should she turn in the gold to the police? Be free of it once and for all? But they would give it back to the greedy politicians. Or should she keep it as repayment of a debt everyone else had forgotten?
Eventually she retied the wire, dragged the bag back into the river, and covered it again with the sandy mud. Perhaps there would be a time for it, but that was not now. She washed her hands and feet in the river and put on the sandals, slippery on her wet feet. She pushed through the brush back toward the camp. Perhaps Moremi had made coffee.
GLOSSARY
Amarula
South African liqueur flavored with marula fruit.
Bafana Bafana
South Africa’s national soccer team. Literally “The Boys, the Boys.”
bakkie
South African slang for a pickup truck.
Batswana
Plural adjective or noun. “The people of Botswana are known as Batswana.�
�� See Motswana.
biltong
Meat dried with salt, pepper, coriander and other spices. Similar to beef jerky (but much tastier!).
bobotie
South African Malay dish based on lightly curried ground lamb.
braai/braaivleis
South African term for a barbecue.
Bushmen
A race small in size and number, many of whom live in the Kalahari area. They refer to themselves as the San people (see Khoisan). In Botswana they are sometimes referred to as the Basarwa.
Debswana
Diamond mining joint venture between De Beers and the Botswana government.
donga
A dry river course, usually with steep sides.
dumela
Setswana for “hello” or “good day.”
gemsbok
Afrikaans name for the oryx (Oryx gazella). Large antelope with spearlike horns. Prefers arid habitat.
Khoisan
Name by which the lighter-skinned indigenous peoples of southern Africa, the Khoi (Hottentots) and San (Bushmen), are known. These people dominated the subcontinent for millennia before the appearance of the Nguni and other black peoples.
koppie
Afrikaans for “small hill.”
kubu
Setswana for “hippopotamus.”
Landy
Term of affection for a Land Rover.
lechwe
Type of water-loving antelope (Kobus leche) common in the wetter areas of Botswana.
lobola
Bride price (originally in cattle) paid to the bride’s parents in African tradition. Sometimes used to set up the newly married couple.
marula
Sclerocarya birrea. Large African tree, member of the mango family, with tasty greenish-yellow fruit.
mokoro
Watercraft commonly made by hollowing out the trunk of a sausage tree (Kigelia pinnata). Also made from other trees. It is propelled by a long pole held by someone standing on the back.
mielie
Corn.
Mma
Respectful term in Setswana used when addressing a woman. For example, “Dumela, Mma Bengu” means “Hello, Mrs. Bengu.”
Motswana
Singular adjective or noun. “That man from Botswana is a Motswana.” See Batswana.
muti
Any sort of medicine or potion. The term usually refers to medicines prepared by traditional healers or witch doctors.
pap
Smooth maize meal porridge, often eaten with the fingers and dipped into a meat or vegetable stew.
pappa le nama
Pap and meat.
potjie
A three-legged metal pot used to make stews over an open fire.
pula
Currency of Botswana. Pula means “rain” in Setswana. 100 thebes = 1 pula.
quelea
Small seed-eating bird (Quelea quelea). Can occur in huge flocks that in flight resemble clouds of smoke.
rand
Currency of South Africa. 100 cents = 1 rand.
riempie
Leather strands that are interlaced to make chair seats.
rooibos
Red herbal tea made from a plant native to southern Africa (Aspalathus linearis).
Rra
Respectful term in Setswana used when addressing a man. For example, “Dumela, Rra Bengu” means “Hello, Mr. Bengu.”
rusk
A kind of hard cakelike sweetened biscuit.
San
Bushmen people. See Bushmen and Khoisan.
Setswana
Language of the Tswana peoples.
steelworks
Drink made from cola tonic, ginger beer, soda water, and bitters.
thebe
Smallest denomination of Botswanan currency (see pula). 100 thebes = 1 pula.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
In our first book, A Carrion Death, we introduced Detective Kubu, and he struck a chord with readers. We’ve been delighted by all the support he’s received both in reviews and in personal communications. We’d like to thank everyone for their interest, comments, and enthusiasm.
Among the first Kubu supporters were our wonderful agent Marly Rusoff and her partner Michael Radulescu. We thank them for that and much more. Marly introduced Kubu to Claire Wachtel, Senior Vice President and Executive Editor at HarperCollins, who bought this book as well as A Carrion Death. We are very grateful for her strong guidance, which has greatly improved our books. Our thanks also go to Heather Drucker, our publicist, and to Evie Righter for her meticulous copyediting. Indeed, we are grateful for all the support and encouragement from the team at HarperCollins.
As with our first book, many people have provided input and suggestions. While the curiosity of a new writing partnership might have motivated the help they gave on the first book, we are delighted that they have been willing to extend their support as enthusiastically and unselfishly to a second.
The job of focusing the setting for Jackalberry Camp fell to Peter Comley and Salome Meyer. They hosted us at their wonderful property near Kasane, and then spent a week driving us around northern Botswana making sure that we understood the environment of the Chobe and Linyanti Rivers. We thank them for the benefit of their encyclopedic knowledge of Botswana, formed in a lifetime of living and working there, and for their wonderful company.
We particularly want to thank Thebeyame Tsimako, Commissioner of Police in Botswana, for taking time from his demanding schedule to give us comments and advice, and for helping with our requests. We also want to thank Superintendent Ntaya Tshepho and others at the Kasane Police Station for showing us around and answering questions about policing the area. They have important work to do, but managed to find time to satisfy a couple of inquisitive writers.
Despite the efforts of all these talented and generous people, and the breadth of their knowledge and experience, the book may still contain errors. A writing partnership is wonderful for many reasons. Among them is that we each have the other to blame!
Michael Sears
Stanley Trollip
An Excerpt from
Death of the Mantis
On Sale 9/6/2011
Prologue
Sixty Years Ago
The desert glowed in the dawn light. The Bushman boy woke from a deep sleep, still tired from the exertions of the last days. His father was already up, standing like a sentry, watching the sun creep above the horizon.
“We must go on, Gobiwasi,” he said. “We will reach The Place today. We must travel while it is still cool. Here, chew on this as we go.” He handed the boy a chunk of Hoodia.
For the boy it had been a journey of heat, of sun, of exhaustion, as he tried day after day to keep up with his father. But he had offered no complaint, and now felt the thrill of discovery ahead. Today he would be at The Place! Very few people had ever seen it or even knew about it! He gathered up his few belongings, gnawed the root, and tried to match his father’s easy pace.
After about an hour his father stopped and pointed silently ahead of them. Gobiwasi could see what appeared to be small hills on the horizon. He looked up at his father, and the man nodded. Then they set off again.
At last they came to the hills—a group of koppies rising out of the desert. They passed between them until they came to one in the center of the group—a solitary hill with a rocky cliff facing them to the east, steep slopes to the west. It was uniformly high north to south, showing caves and recesses from bottom to top in the cliff. They rested in the dappled shade of a scrubby acacia and ate and drank a little. Then Gobiwasi’s father said it was time.
First they went to a large overhang in the center. There his father pointed out paintings of ancestors: men and women dancing, thin-legged, watched by gemsbok, eland, and springbok— gorgeous and strange representations that left the boy awed and a little afraid. Low down on the right, a lion, teeth unnaturally large, with a black mane and a long tail, seemed to growl at him.
/> Then they climbed to a cave many yards off the ground. The walls were black with soot, and on the floor lay a human skeleton, bones picked clean. Spread around it in a spiral were the contents of a hunting bag—spear, bow, delicate arrows, knife, cord, sandals that looked as if they would fall from the feet at the first step, leather-topped hollow root for holding the arrows, and several horns that Gobiwasi knew had contained poisons. To one side was a toy bow with small arrows—a child’s precious possessions. And two necklaces of cocoons containing pieces of ostrich egg shell that rattled in dance. A Bushman’s entire life lay on the floor. The boy wondered whose life.
They climbed farther, Gobiwasi scared of the height, afraid of slipping and falling. His father scampered up to the topmost cave, almost perfectly round at the entrance and perhaps five yards deep, and waited there. When the boy joined him and had caught his breath, his father took him by the hand and led him past a crowd of people, watching from the walls. Red people and brown people. Adults and children. Animals watched too, and a strangely shaped white fish that Gobiwasi did not recognize.
For the next few hours his father told him about the spirits and about the ancestors, visiting different caves and pointing out important paintings. Then they climbed down, and his father showed him a hidden spring at the back of a small cave, from which they drank.
A Carrion Death & The 2nd Death of Goodluck Tinubu Page 84
