The Death of the Mantis (9 page)

Another long pause.

“I did not know what to think. I wondered if The Place was more
sacred than Tsodilo, the birthplace of mankind, which I thought was
the most sacred of all places. To be revered and respected. That is
where the first spirit knelt down near the top of the Male Hill and
blessed the earth after he had created it. I have been to Tsodilo
and seen with my own eyes the marks in the rock where the spirit
prayed. I have seen the Female Hill, where most of the spirits
live, where they rule the world. Could this place be as great even
as Tsodilo?”

“Did you find out?”

Gobiwasi continued to rock, but said nothing, his eyes still
closed.

“Were you successful?”

“What is success?”

“Old man, I need your help. I need the benefit of your wisdom. I
have many questions.” There was urgency in Khumanego’s voice.

Gobiwasi opened his eyes and stared at him. “I have said too
much. I swore not to talk of these things.” He took a deep breath.
“I see you are eager, but you must be careful and let the spirits
guide you. If you do not, the ancestors will be angry.”

He struggled to his feet. Khumanego followed suit, many
questions unanswered. Together they walked slowly back to the
waiting group.

♦

Khumanego said a few words to the Bushmen, then walked to the
Land Rover. Kubu and Lerako followed. Kubu didn’t know whether he
should wave to the group, so he turned and touched his forehead.
There was no response.

They tumbled into the Land Rover, Lerako hesitating only to mark
the spot on his GPS. “Shit! We’re only about a kilometre from where
the body was found. It seemed much further than that.”

Kubu strapped himself into his seat and prepared for another
bout of torture. For the next twenty minutes, they followed
Khumanego’s directions, Lerako’s mood deteriorating with each
passing moment as he wrestled with the steering wheel. Eventually
Khumanego told them to stop. They climbed from the vehicle and
carefully made their way to a calcrete ridge. Khumanego searched
around, but the ridge appeared solid and unmarked.

Lerako was hot and irritated, and he lost his temper. “This is
all a complete waste of time! There’s nothing up here. They just
wanted to get rid of us! Let’s get out of here.” But meanwhile,
Khumanego had walked some distance up the ridge, and now he shouted
for them to join him. He was pointing at the ground.

There, between two ridges of hard calcrete, was a small island
of sand. In it were two prints, clearly of a hiking boot or
something similar. They were pointed away from where Monzo had been
found – about two hundred metres to the east.

“Could they be Monzo’s?” Kubu asked.

Lerako shook his head regretfully. “The print of the sole is
different. Monzo’s boots had a distinct pattern. This one is
smooth.”

“So there
was
someone else here,” Kubu said, pulling a
camera from his pocket.

“You know prints can stay in the desert for a long time,” Lerako
growled. “We’ve no idea whether they are linked to the murder.”

“True,” Kubu said.

“And why weren’t any of these prints close to the body? My
tracker didn’t find prints like this anywhere.”

Kubu shook his head. “If you look carefully, you can see there
are long ridges of calcrete on either side of the prints. Someone
could walk all the way to the edge of the
donga
where the
body was found, without leaving a trace. We’re lucky there was this
patch of sand.”

Lerako clenched his teeth. He knelt on the edge of the sand and
examined the prints carefully. After a couple of minutes, he stood
and shook his head, but said nothing.

He walked back to the Land Rover and settled behind the steering
wheel. Kubu climbed in, not looking forward to the upcoming
journey. Khumanego followed.

“You’ll let the Bushmen go now?” Kubu asked Lerako as they
pulled away. Eventually, Lerako gave a curt nod. “What do two
footprints by themselves mean? I still believe they did it. But I
don’t have the hard evidence to hold them.”

Kubu turned to Khumanego. “Your brothers will be freed tomorrow.
Detective Sergeant Lerako will arrange for them to be dropped back
near here.”

♦

Back at the ranger station, they splashed their faces and
rapidly downed several tepid cold drinks. Then Kubu prowled around
looking for something to eat. It was well after lunch, and he was
getting desperate. Eventually his hunger overcame his judgement,
and he poured pula into a vending machine, ending up with a pile of
junk food.

Not what I’d call lunch, he thought. And I’d better not tell
Joy.

He found an empty desk and settled down to appease his hunger.
Lerako was not a happy man, and he paced while Kubu methodically
worked his way through the rustle of wrappers. Khumanego sat
silently, shaking his head at offers of the junk food. When Kubu
had finally consumed everything, he and Lerako went to talk to the
head ranger, Vusi, and the office manager, Ndoli, leaving Khumanego
staring out at the desert.

Despite Kubu’s thorough probing, Vusi added nothing to what they
already knew. However, it was obvious that he wasn’t greatly upset
that Monzo was dead.

“Monzo could be difficult,” he said when pushed. “Did whatever
he liked, when he liked. Problem was, he was good at his job.
Otherwise I’d have fired him.”

Kubu wondered whether that was the only reason Vusi didn’t like
him.

He turned to Ndoli.

“How did you find Monzo? He was quite far from the road.”

“I saw his
bakkie
and stopped to take a look. He wasn’t
there, but I found his footprints. I followed them to the top of
the
donga
. Then I saw him with three Bushmen.”

“Was the engine of Monzo’s
bakkie
running?”

Ndoli frowned. “I don’t think so. Why?”

“Well, if it was running, he didn’t expect to be away for
long.”

“So he thought he would be away for a while?”

“Looks like it. How did the Bushmen react when you
appeared?”

“No reaction. One was squatting next to Monzo, trying to get him
to drink. The others were watching.”

“That doesn’t sound as though they were trying to kill him.”

Lerako interrupted, his frustration showing. “But he wasn’t
giving him water when you arrived at the top of the
donga
,
right? When they saw you, they probably decided they needed to look
friendly. Water was the only thing they could do.” He glared at
Ndoli.

“They weren’t hostile at all.” But now there was a shade of
uncertainty in Ndoli’s voice.

Kubu asked Ndoli a few more questions, but learnt nothing new.
He turned to Vusi.

“Rra Vusi, before we head back to Tsabong, can you take us to
Monzo’s wife? I’d like to talk to her.”

Even though the house was several hundred metres away, Kubu
thought it preferable to walk rather than spend more time in the
Land Rover.

“That’s Monzo’s house,” Vusi said pointing ahead. “Her name is
Marta.”

“How long had Monzo been here?”

“Two years in May, I think.”

“How long had he been married? Did he have kids?”

Vusi hesitated. “They weren’t married, but they had two kids.
Apparently his real wife is in South Africa somewhere.” Kubu
wondered why Vusi looked so uncomfortable.

A handsome woman, traditionally dressed, answered the door. She
smiled warmly at Vusi, but her faced closed when she caught sight
of Kubu and Lerako.

Vusi introduced them. “Marta, this is Assistant Superintendent
Bengu. He wants to ask you some more questions. Is that all
right?”

Marta nodded, but looked unsettled. Nevertheless she answered
Kubu’s questions confidently, and nothing unexpected emerged. She
confirmed everything that Lerako had told him. Kubu noticed that
from time to time she would look to Vusi for confirmation or
support. It seemed there was some connection between them. Leaving,
Kubu wondered about that. Was Vusi just being opportunistic after
Monzo had died? Taking advantage of the presence of a now single
woman? Or had they had a relationship before Monzo died?

That was worth pursuing.

∨
The Death of the Mantis
∧

T
he next morning,
Kubu and Khumanego went to the police station to check on the
release of the three Bushmen. All three were already out of the
holding cells, waiting for their lift back to their group. They
greeted Kubu respectfully, and there was much enthusiastic
discussion with Khumanego in their own language. Kubu stood back,
allowing himself to enjoy the feeling of righting injustice. There
was no sign of Lerako; his office door was closed.

Eventually the three climbed into the back of a police Land
Rover. The driver was a uniformed constable, and a man, another
Bushman, sat next to him in the passenger seat. Perhaps an
interpreter? Kubu wondered. Was Lerako coming around? It seemed a
sympathetic gesture.

At last they were ready to go, and the vehicle pulled away.
Khumanego was still talking to them, laughing and waving as they
left. He came inside looking happy for the first time on the
trip.

“Look, David. See what I have here.” He opened the palm of his
hand, revealing a large desert-brown praying mantis sitting there.
It seemed content and quiet in the darkness of his hand.

“Where did you find it?”

“No, I didn’t find it. It flew to me and settled on my hand. It
is a great sign, a wonderful thing!” Khumanego’s face glowed. “The
Mantis created the world and all its people. But we don’t think of
him as a god. He is sort of a good friend to the Bushmen. He’s
always playing practical jokes. He makes us laugh.

“He created us first,” Khumanego continued. “That is why we call
ourselves the First People. We were here before the Hottentots,
before the Batswana, before the whites. Before everybody.” Suddenly
his face fell, and bitterness was in his voice again. “Now it seems
we will be the first people to disappear.”

Kubu could see why the Bushmen had chosen the mantis over the
lion or elephant as their creator. It was small, like the Bushmen,
and its little triangular face resembled a Bushman face. Even the
light brown colour was similar.

“It’s wonderful he came to you himself,” he said, trying to help
Khumanego recover his earlier joy.

Khumanego shook his head. “She. Too big for a male.” He
hesitated. “David, you have done a wonderful thing for our people
here. I thank you, and my people give you their thanks. You are our
friend indeed.” He held out his hand, and Kubu took it.

“I just did my job.”

Khumanego nodded. “But many don’t. Some just go with their
prejudices. Like him.” He nodded towards Lerako’s closed door. Kubu
said nothing.

“Well, David, I must go too. There is a truck taking water to
the settlements in the Kalahari leaving today. I’d like to visit
the people there, hear what they know, see if they are all right. I
need to be ready soon.”

This was a surprise to Kubu. He had assumed that his friend
would return with him to Gaborone. He had looked forward to the
company now that things were resolved.

“How will you get back to Gaborone?” he asked.

“Oh, there are minibus taxis, but I’ll probably get a lift with
one of the aid workers or someone else. There’s a lot of traffic.”
Kubu hadn’t noticed that, but it seemed Khumanego’s mind was made
up. He gave him a playful shove, which nearly knocked the Bushman
over. “Go well, my friend,” he said. Khumanego nodded, and was gone
as suddenly as a ghost.

Kubu turned and headed for Lerako’s office. With the Bushmen out
of the picture, the case would need to be solved from scratch. He
felt a prickle of excitement.

♦

Lerako was nowhere to be seen, so Kubu took advantage of the
privacy of his vacant office to phone Joy. He didn’t expect her to
be happy that he was staying on in Tsabong, and he was right.

“Kubu, I really need you home. It’s hard enough to cope when
you’re here! Now I have to do everything myself. I can’t manage. I
can’t.” She sounded close to tears.

“Darling, I’ll be home as soon as I can. Soon, I promise.”

“But
when
will you be back?”

There it was again. How could he possibly be expected to answer
that? “Why don’t you take some leave? Stay at home with Tumi. Get
some rest.”

“I used up all my leave after she was born. There’s nothing
left.”

Kubu grasped for a straw. “Well, when I’m back, I’ll take some
leave. Stay at home with Tumi. Then you can get out with your
friends in the afternoon. See Pleasant.”

“You should save your leave for when we…” But Joy seemed to lose
that thought. “I’d still have to cook for us as soon as I get home
anyway.”

Kubu had an inspiration. “That’s what I’ll do with the leave!
I’ll take up cooking. You know how interested I am in food. I can
choose a cuisine. Maybe Chinese. I’ll enjoy it, and you will have
free time.”

Joy thought about it, seeing a glimmer of hope. “Would you
really enjoy cooking?” she asked hesitantly. Cooking wasn’t
traditional male behaviour among the Batswana.

Kubu had never thought about it before and had no idea if he
would enjoy it. “Absolutely! It’s something I’ve always wanted to
do, but there’s never been time. And you cook so well, I thought
you might be offended if I even suggested it.”

“Oh, Kubu, I don’t know. But if I had some time. Not to see
friends, but perhaps to visit Pleasant. And rest a bit. I would be
so grateful.”

“I’m sure I’ll manage. I’ll cook the very day I come home.” He
felt he was laying it on a bit, but his enthusiasm was building up.
He loved Chinese food. How hard could it be? Everyone in China
cooked it, and there were billions of people there. And, after all,
Mabaku couldn’t refuse him some leave. Compassionate leave. For
Joy.