The Death of the Mantis (3 page)

“I understand that Monzo went to meet some Bushmen,” Lerako said
at last. “Have you had any problems with them here?”

“Certainly not,” Vusi replied. “No problems at all, as far as I
know.” He looked at Ndoli for confirmation, but was met by silence.
“Why?”

Lerako ignored the question and turned to Ndoli. “Exactly what
did Monzo say to you when he left?”

Ndoli shifted in his chair. “He said he’d had a report that the
Bushmen were poaching in the game reserve. Said he was going to put
a stop to it one way or another.”

“What did he mean by that?”

Ndoli shrugged. “He was angry. I guess he meant to chase them
off.”

Lerako turned back to Vusi. “Did he say anything like that to
you?”

“No,” he said flatly. “What’s it matter why he drove out there
anyway?”

Lerako folded strong arms across a broad chest. His neck spread
from his head to his heavy shoulders. He looked like a bodybuilder.
And he didn’t smile.

“In homicides, people found at the scene are often involved.
There were Bushmen at the scene.”

“But this was an accident! He fell into the
donga
!” Ndoli
exclaimed.

“We have to consider every possibility. I’ll want to know where
everyone was that morning. Another fact is that most murders
involve family, or friends, or persons who knew the victim.”

“Murder? That’s ridiculous!” Vusi had an uncomfortable feeling
that he was losing control of the situation. Where was I yesterday
morning? he wondered. I was late. Monzo had already left when I got
in. “You can’t think one of us was involved!” he said. “We’re a
team.”

Lerako ignored him and changed tack. “Who benefits from Monzo’s
death?”

Vusi swallowed, hesitated. “Well, he had a wife and family.
Marta and the two boys. There will be pension and insurance
benefits for them. Little enough to bring up two young children,
I’m sorry to say.”

Ndoli looked at his boss sharply, but Lerako appeared not to
notice. “How much?”

“I can’t say yet. It depends on certain things… Perhaps fifty
thousand pula.”

“I need to see the place where he was found. Will you take
me?”

“Ndoli will do it,” said Vusi, firmly. The day was already hot.
“He’s the one who found Monzo with the Bushmen. He can tell you
about it.”

Lerako nodded. Turning to Ndoli, he indicated the Bushman. “I’ve
got a tracker with me. He may be able to help if we can’t find
these Bushman suspects. I’ll get my stuff, and we’ll meet you at
the vehicle.”

When they had gone, Ndoli turned to his boss. “Do you know Marta
wasn’t Monzo’s wife?”

“Yes, I know. Just a technicality. Nothing to worry about. I
don’t think we should bother the police with it.”

“He had another woman, too. Not the wife. More a
pay-as-you-go.”

Vusi winced at the term. “So what? We need to get this over
with. It
was
an accident, wasn’t it?”

Ndoli nodded and went to join the detective. Vusi was left
wondering why he felt guilty and a little scared.

♦

It was hardly a pristine crime scene. There were scuff marks and
footprints everywhere. Monzo had been strapped to a stretcher,
carried out of the
donga
at a point where it was less steep,
and driven to a spot where the helicopter could land, so the whole
area had been trampled. The entire staff must have been here
milling around, Lerako thought with dismay. Anything could have
happened at the edge of the
donga
. He dumped the evidence
bag he had carried from the vehicle and turned to Ndoli. “Tell me
how it was.”

Ndoli hesitated, looked down, and then met the detective
sergeant’s impatient look. “Well, the vehicle was back up there
where we parked,” he indicated the location vaguely, “and Monzo was
over here.” He pointed at the precise spot. He remembered the scene
perfectly, and it was clearly marked by the efforts to get Monzo on
to the stretcher. What else should he say? “I’m not sure what more
you want to know, Sergeant Lerako.” Lerako was an odd name. He
wondered if it somehow matched the man’s personality. He had no
intention of asking, though.

“Why did you move it? Monzo’s vehicle?”

“Why abandon it out here? We thought it was an accident.” He
looked down at the glaring sand. “I still think it was an
accident.”

“All right. Go on.”

“Well, I stopped when I saw Monzo’s
bakkie
. Then I
followed his footprints. I lost them once or twice, but eventually
they led me to the edge of the
donga
.” He pointed to a
position above them at the top of the steep incline. “Monzo was
lying down here, and one of the Bushmen was squatting next to him.
The other two were standing over there. I thought he was dead. When
I got to him, one of the Bushmen was trying to give him water. Why
would you do that if you wanted to kill him?”

Lerako ignored the question. “Did you notice footprints? Were
there any up there except for Monzo’s? Any down here except for the
Bushmen’s?”

Ndoli frowned. He’d just assumed the ones at the top of the
donga
all belonged to Monzo. Once he’d spotted the ranger
lying crumpled below, he’d forgotten about footprints. Now, with
all the prints from the rescuers, it was unlikely that anything
could be identified. He shook his head, feeling foolish.

Lerako made him describe the scene exactly, and then nodded. “I
see it,” he said. “Wait. I’ll call if I need you.” Puzzled, Ndoli
did as he was told, finding a thorn tree with a thick canopy
nearby. If only there was a breeze!

Lerako photographed the scene, and then started walking upstream
from where Monzo had fallen. The tracker walked with him, a few
paces to his right. Here there were no footprints. Only the tracks
of buck – springbok judging by the size – and some old hyena spoor.
Nothing recent. Their eyes scanned the ground. From time to time
one of them would stop for a closer look before moving on.

Ndoli wiped sweat off his face with his sleeve, wondering what
on earth the policeman hoped to find. The sun didn’t seem to bother
him. His clothes looked fresh despite the oppressive heat and the
journey from Tsabong. By comparison, Ndoli’s khaki uniform already
felt like wet rags.

About fifty metres from where Monzo had lain, Lerako stopped and
bent over for a careful look. He called the tracker over and
pointed something out before walking back for his evidence bag.
Then he retraced his tracks back up the river, yelling for Ndoli to
join him. When he caught up, Lerako pointed to a chunk of calcrete,
a convenient shape to hold. It was partially covered with a russet
stain. There was no doubt about what that was. Even after a day and
a half of drying in the sun, there were several flies.

“That’s what killed your friend,” Lerako said. “Someone smashed
his head with it, then threw it here, probably from the top of the
donga
.” He shook his head. “It’s very unlikely he’d kill
himself falling down that slope. Break a few bones, yes. Bash his
head, yes. But smash open his skull, no. And why fall anyway, in
broad daylight?” He didn’t mention that the doctor in Gaborone felt
a deep skull fracture was unlikely from such a fall. He turned
away, took pictures from different angles, and then pulled a latex
glove on to his right hand and carefully lifted the rock into a
plastic bag.

He turned to the tracker and said slowly in Setswana, “Find
tracks. One hundred metres all round. Here and up there.” He
pointed to the top of the
donga
. The tracker nodded and set
off upstream, examining the ground closely.

Lerako turned to Ndoli. “We may as well wait in the Landie. Then
we’ll go and find your Bushman friends. I suspect they know a lot
more than they told you. What do you think?” Ndoli started to
answer, but Lerako was already walking back to the vehicle. Clearly
he wasn’t really interested in Ndoli’s thoughts on the matter.

∨
The Death of the Mantis
∧

W
hen the phone rang,
Assistant Superintendent David Bengu – Kubu to his friends and even
some of his enemies – was contemplating how his life had changed.
He was holding a desk photograph taken at Tumi’s christening. The
baby, of course, was the centre of attention, resplendent in a
blue, green and grey dress, which a neighbour had hand-made for the
occasion. Tiny curls were threaded with crimson ribbons. It was
completely over the top, Kubu felt, smiling approvingly. More
suitable for a birthday party. Their neighbour also had a baby, and
suddenly she and Joy had become firm friends. We’ve changed our
social status, Kubu mused.

Tumi was being held by Kubu’s mother, Amantle, who had a wide,
although not very toothful, grin, and behind her stood Kubu’s
father, Wilmon, his usually impassive face cracked into a smile. A
scatter of grey invaded the hair around his ears, a sure sign of
advancing age in a black African man. Honest was the first
adjective that came to Kubu’s mind about his father; warm was the
one for his mother. He hoped Tumi would inherit both those
qualities.

In the picture, Kubu stood next to Joy, his wife and lover, and
now, against the odds, the mother of his child. The two of them
luxuriated in the pleasure of presenting the first grandchild.
Unusually for an amateur photo, all the participants had their eyes
open and their smiles natural. Tumi would be the cause of both.

Kubu’s pleasant recollections were spoilt by the harsh ring of
the phone. How often that happens, he thought – a moment of peace
banished by the telephone.

“This is Assistant Superintendent Bengu.”

“David? This is Khumanego. Are you well?”

“Khumanego!” The name unpeeled years. “What a surprise! Are you
in Gaborone? It would be wonderful to see you.”

“I’m in Lobatse. I work here now.”

Khumanego! They had been friends at primary school in Mochudi,
even though Kubu was two years younger. They had made an odd pair:
the Bushman youth and the share-farmer’s son, one short and slender
in the manner of his people, the other big and already
overweight.

Khumanego’s parents, part of a small nomadic group roaming
through southern Botswana, had sent him with great sadness to
distant and unenthusiastic Christian relatives in Mochudi for good
schooling. To prepare him for a different future, they had said.
But Khumanego had confided to Kubu how unhappy he was. He disliked
his relatives and town life, missing his people and the desert
desperately. But it was school he hated the most. He was the only
Bushman there, and the teachers regarded him as a backward child
from the bush, incapable of learning anything but the simplest
concepts. The cane was always close to hand.

Both Khumanego and Kubu were teased and taunted by the other
pupils, Khumanego for his small stature and poor Setswana, and Kubu
for his fatness, bookishness and ineptitude at sports. Mismatched
with their classmates, the two boys drew together and became
friends.

It was Khumanego who had shown Kubu the desert, how to love it,
and how to understand it. It was he who had drawn a circle in the
scorched sand and shown Kubu that a superficial look revealed only
a few pebbles and bits of dried grass. But on closer inspection,
some of the pebbles were, in fact, curious succulents, and what
looked barren was actually teeming with life.

Kubu began to think of the desert as a metaphor for the world –
superficially everything was as you expected. But if you looked
beyond the obvious, you saw what others did not, and by observing
things properly, you understood them better. He started looking for
the ‘why’ rather than the ‘what’ in people too. That had set him on
the path to becoming a detective.

“David? Are you there?”

“Yes, yes. I was just thinking of the times we spent together.
You remember that trek we took into the desert?”

“Yes, I remember.”

“You live in Lobatse now? I thought you wanted to go back to
your people? Back to the Kalahari? You didn’t like towns and
electricity and what you called funny clothes.”

“That is what I wanted. But what of the future? My parents were
right. The world is closing in like a pack of hyenas circling. You
can’t seal yourself in a time capsule and hope to escape. So now
I’m an advocate.”

“You became a lawyer?”

“No, not that sort of advocate. I work for my people. Making
sure they are heard. Making sure that when the great desert is
gone, taken from them, they know their traditions, and have rights
and money and a way of avoiding the fate of most other aboriginal
peoples when the hyenas take their lands.”

Kubu was surprised, shocked. A bitter Khumanego living in a
large town? What had happened to the boy who was happiest alone in
the Kalahari? Who knew all would be well when he was back there?
“But the Bushman people had a great triumph! The High Court ruled
your people had the right to live freely in the Kalahari. Surely
that pushed the outside world back?”

There was a long silence before Khumanego answered; this time it
was Kubu who thought he had lost the connection. And when Khumanego
did speak, his voice was tired.

“Yes, a great triumph, as you say. I worked behind the scenes
for that, David. You won’t find my name on the reports. It’s the
elders who speak, as it should be, but someone needs to be between
them and all the interest groups pressing for their own ends.
That’s my job. But in the end, how many people went back? Turned
their backs on the comforts of the camps set up for them? And the
promises – maybe empty, maybe not – of schools and medical care?
How many?”

Kubu didn’t know. Not all, he supposed. Perhaps not many,
judging by Khumanego’s tone. “What is the answer, then?”

“The answer? Perhaps there are answers. Perhaps not. One can’t
give up.”