Dying to Live

by Michael Stanley

  “Do you have a cigarette?” he asked.

  Ixau shook his head and apologized for not smoking. N’kaka grunted.

  “Heiseb’s body has disappeared,” Ixau told him. “So there can be no proper funeral. It’s very sad.”

  Still N’kaka said nothing, but it was hard for him to hide his interest in this news.

  “You knew Heiseb well,” Ixau continued. “What do you think happened to him?”

  N’kaka sat for a few moments without answering. He took a swig of St. Louis. “Someone killed him,” he said at last.

  Ixau nodded. “Who would want to do that?”

  “Who? People who wanted what he had.”

  “And what was that?”

  “He had a secret. The way to long life.”

  “He was very old, but—”

  N’kaka interrupted. “You know nothing. I am an old man now, but my mother knew him. Not as a boy but as a man.” He took another swig.

  Ixau digested that. Heiseb must have been well over a hundred if what N’kaka said was true, but he didn’t pursue it. Instead he asked, “Who were these people? People from here?”

  N’kaka shook his head. “Once or twice someone from here would follow him to see where he went and what he did. But he always gave them the slip. Once, when I was a boy, I went with him. He taught me things, but he never shared his secret. Not with me.” He shook his head. “No, it was the others who killed him. The people out there.” He waved his arm to encompass the world beyond New Xade.

  Ixau’s heart sank. N’kaka knew nothing. It was all speculation. But the old man hadn’t finished.

  “That white man who said he was studying our traditions. He used to talk to me, maybe bring me cigarettes. He said he wanted to know how we remembered our past, how we told stories of it.” He shook his head. “That wasn’t what he was interested in. He wanted to find someone old. Not to hear his stories but to find out the secret of long life. That was what he wanted. When he met Heiseb, he wasn’t interested in me anymore.”

  “Dr. Collins?”

  N’kaka shrugged. “I don’t remember his name. He was a greedy man. Greedy. Like the others.”

  “Others? There were more white men?”

  N’kaka shook his head. “A black man. Mrs. Kang brought him to me. He was after the secret too. He hurt my arm.” He held up his arm to show Ixau. “But I cursed him,” he added with satisfaction. “A powerful curse. He will be sorry for his greed.”

  Ixau was silent. A powerful curse was a serious matter.

  “And that other man who came here. They are all the same. Filled with greed.”

  “Another man?”

  “Yes, before the white man came back.”

  “A black man?”

  N’kaka nodded. “He had Twi with him. The man who works in Ghanzi for the blacks. As you do. He gets money to spy on us here.”

  “He’s a translator. He doesn’t spy.”

  N’kaka spat on the ground. “He does what he’s told, for money. Like you.”

  Ixau ignored the insult. “Who was this man? What did he want?”

  “I don’t know who he was. But he was looking for Heiseb—he wanted the secret, like the rest of them.”

  “Did you tell him where Heiseb was?”

  N’kaka looked at him as if he were an imbecile. “How would I know that? Heiseb was here, or he was not here. That time he was not here. I told the man Heiseb was in the desert. Twi suggested he could track him, but Twi couldn’t track a herd of goats! And if Heiseb didn’t want you to find him, you didn’t find him.” He said it with the conviction of personal experience.

  Ixau asked him to describe the man, and N’kaka did so. He claimed the man was fat, but there was nothing else special he remembered about the visitor. Plenty of Batswana men would fit his description. Ixau thanked the old man and left him to his beer.

  As Ixau walked back to his office, he decided he had learned something. They already knew about Heiseb’s meetings with Collins, and the time that Festus had come, following him. But who was the black man who had come seeking Heiseb before Collins’s last visit? It seemed he’d left empty-handed, but perhaps he’d come back when Collins had returned. Ixau walked more quickly. The assistant superintendent in Gaborone would be interested.

  * * *

  IT WAS QUITE late in the afternoon when Kubu received a package from the Chinese embassy, containing a memory stick. He went over to see Zanele and asked her what she could make of it.

  It contained a video of what appeared to be a Chinese man arguing with the gate guard, but there was no sound. He was showing the guard a document and pointing at his watch. At several points, there were good images of his face. Zanele froze the picture at one of those.

  “I think we’ll get some good shots of him from this.”

  Kubu thanked her, asked her to send copies to him and to Edison, and headed back to his office. Perhaps the Chinese official had been true to his word.

  He was just about to pack it in for the day and head home when his phone rang. It was Constable Ixau.

  “Good afternoon, Assistant Superintendent. Are you busy, or can I talk to you?”

  Kubu could hear Ixau’s excitement. “Yes, of course. What’ve you found out?”

  Over the next several minutes, Ixau explained that he’d identified the young man who’d spoken to Segodi, and that this had led him to N’kaka. “I suspect that he was having Heiseb followed, but I’m sure it was never successful. They say no one knows the desert like Heiseb did. But the interesting thing is that someone else was looking for Heiseb, before Collins came back the last time.”

  Kubu felt a hint of excitement. He’s going to tell me it was a Chinese person, he thought, but he was wrong.

  “It was a black man.”

  “Festus Moeng?”

  “No. N’kaka knows him from their meeting last week.”

  “So any idea who it might have been?”

  Ixau hesitated. “He gave me a description. It was a black man, and he said he was overweight. It could be almost anybody. He didn’t notice anything special about the man.”

  Kubu thought about it. “This is very interesting news, Constable. Well done. What we’ll do is this: Tomorrow morning I’ll fax you some pictures of black men who might have some connection with this case. Ask N’kaka if he can pick out the man who visited him. Maybe we’ll strike gold.”

  Ixau thought this an excellent idea and promised to find N’kaka as soon as he received the pictures.

  After he’d disconnected, Kubu sat for a few minutes.

  There aren’t any obvious black male candidates for the photo lineup other than Festus, he thought, and he’s been excluded. Well, I may as well try some long shots. Ramala, for one—after all, he was also interested in the long-life story, and his father was supposed to have some connection with the Bushmen. And Professor Thabo. He knows more than he’s letting on. And I may as well put Gampone in as well. Why not? We don’t know what he’s really up to. And then another face or two.

  He looked at his watch and realized that it was time to head home for dinner. He’d promised not to be late again, so that he could spend time with the girls. It was wonderful that Nono was home again.

  CHAPTER 34

  When he got to the CID on Friday morning, Kubu phoned Samantha to come to his office.

  “Sit down,” Kubu said when she walked in. “What’s been happening with Gampone?”

  “Well, the powdered material he gave me from the safe was rhino horn all right. We’ve had it analyzed. There was nothing else of interest in the safe. There was a lot of foreign cash—US dollars—but I suppose that makes sense with his business, and there’s nothing illegal about that anyway.”

  Kubu nodded. “We’ll need to keep him under surveillance. I’m not sure I trust him. But if he is on the level, and if he’s right about the Ramala killing on his property being a warning, then he may need our help very quickly.”

  “I arranged that before
I went out to his place.” Samantha said.

  “Excellent. Good thinking. Now, I’ve a lot to tell you, too.” Kubu then related his conversations with the man at customs and with Chan at the Chinese embassy.

  “You mean someone used the Chinese embassy as a front to ship Heiseb’s body out of the country?”

  “If it was his body. It certainly seems that it wasn’t a young Chinese girl’s, though. I got the CCTV tapes of the person who brought the paperwork to the embassy. The images are pretty good, and I think the tapes are genuine.” He paused. “My gut feeling is that the Chinese official isn’t involved but just on the take. Probably willing to help anybody for a fee.”

  “And the name of the person who sent the body was fictitious?”

  “Yes. Same last name as the nonexistent girl. Name of Ho. There’s no record of such a person at immigration.”

  Both sat quietly for a few moments.

  “I’ve an idea,” Samantha said. “Obviously, someone had to pick up the body at the airport in Qingdao, probably an undertaker of some sort. We should try to find out who that was. The information has to be on a manifest somewhere, most likely with whoever filled out the documentation here in Gabs.”

  “I thought of that, and called the shipping company listed on the manifest. They have no record of shipping a body or anything else on that day. Someone must have stolen a blank form and filled it out themselves. So I’ve asked Interpol to see if they can uncover any useful information. Chinese customs should have a record. There can’t have been too many bodies arriving from Botswana on about the twenty-fourth of October.”

  “It could take a while before Interpol gets back to you.”

  Kubu nodded. “Yes, but you’ve given me an idea.”

  He opened his notebook, found the telephone number of his contact at customs, and dialed it.

  “Rra Tole? This is Assistant Superintendent Bengu again. Sorry to keep worrying you. Do you happen to know which shipping agents are typically used for shipments to China, other than Botswana Logistics?”

  He listened for a few moments.

  “That’s very helpful. Thank you.”

  He turned back to Samantha. “There are only three shipping agents who typically deal with China: Botswana Logistics—they’re the outfit on the fake manifest—FedEx, and UPS. They’re all in the industrial area. Go and ask them if they’ve ever sent packages to Qingdao. If they have, get the details of the sender and receiver. If we’re lucky, they won’t have used a fake name for routine shipments. If the companies don’t want to give you the information, tell them you’ll be back with a search warrant, and you’ll take their computers away. That should persuade them.”

  He handed Samantha his notebook so she could copy the address to which the coffin was shipped. She wrote down the information, then stood up to go, when his phone rang.

  “Wait, there’s more,” he said to her as he answered the phone. “It’s Edison,” he said. “I’ll put him on speakerphone. This could be interesting.” Samantha sat down again.

  “Hello, Kubu.” Edison’s voice sounded tinny. “I checked the passenger list for the plane that was carrying the coffin. There were only two Chinese-sounding names, but I asked immigration to check the nationality of all the passengers. In fact, only those two came from China—one from the People’s Republic and one from Taiwan. I’ve followed up on both of them. The Taiwanese was on an organized tour to the Okavango the whole time he was here. The other is working here on a project for a Chinese engineering company, and I got a picture of him from them. I’m not very good on Chinese faces, but he really doesn’t look like the picture Zanele said you got from the Chinese embassy.”

  Kubu thanked him and hung up, disappointed. He then turned to the information from Ixau.

  “I had a call from the constable in New Xade yesterday afternoon. I’d asked him to poke around to see if he could come up with anything else about Collins. It turns out that someone else was looking for the Bushman Heiseb, other than Collins and that Festus Moeng character. He asked one of the old men in the village if he knew where Heiseb was. So I faxed the constable some photos to see if the man could recognize the visitor. It’s a long shot, but I sent him photos of Ramala, Gampone, Thabo—and Edison, as a ringer. It would certainly be interesting if Gampone had been there. That would change things.”

  “It would,” Samantha said, “but it wouldn’t help me on the Ramala case. I wonder what it would mean if it was Ramala who’d been there.”

  “Well, there’s no point in speculating right now. I’ll hear from the constable later this morning, I think, so let’s meet again this afternoon.”

  Samantha stood up and left Kubu to his hated paperwork.

  CHAPTER 35

  Ixau carefully cut out the four pictures he’d received from Kubu. He didn’t remove their names; he didn’t want to get them confused, and N’kaka couldn’t read anyway. He said their names aloud. “Professor Thabo.” He was shocked. How could a professor be involved with a murder?

  “Botlele Ramala.” This was an older man whose face looked quite thin, but maybe N’kaka would think him fat. “Jonah Gampone.” This man’s face was round. Ixau thought he might be the man.

  “Edison Banda.” The man had a pleasant open face and was younger than the others. Ixau shook his head.

  Taking the pictures, he went to N’kaka’s house. There was no sign of the man, so he rapped on the door. After several repetitions, N’kaka appeared, looking half asleep and wearing only tattered shorts.

  “Why do you bang on my door so early and wake me? Have you no respect?”

  Ixau looked at his feet. “I’m very sorry to disturb you, but it’s very urgent.”

  “So early?”

  Ixau glanced at the sky. “The sun is high already.”

  N’kaka followed his gaze. “Well, what do you want?”

  “I’d like you to look at some pictures and see if any of them came here looking for Heiseb.”

  “You wake me for that?” N’kaka shook his head. “Well, show me, then.”

  Ixau presented the pictures one by one, starting with Edison. N’kaka looked briefly at the images and made some unflattering comment about each man. When he’d looked at the first three, he said, “Show me that last one again.”

  Ixau handed it to him.

  “It is that man,” N’kaka said firmly. “He is fat. He is the man who came to see me. He is the man who wanted Heiseb.” The photograph was of Professor Thabo.

  “You haven’t seen the last picture.”

  N’kaka shrugged. “It is that man.”

  Ixau took back the pictures. “Look once more,” he said. This time he started with Ramala, followed by Gampone, and then Edison.

  “I told you already,” N’kaka said. “It is that one. There is no doubt.” He pointed to the picture of Gampone.

  Ixau held back his anger. Either the old man couldn’t see or he wasn’t trying. Although many black men did look similar, Gampone and the professor had quite different faces.

  “Thank you. I’m sorry I disturbed you,” he said stiffly, and turned to go.

  “It is that man,” N’kaka called after him. “I am quite sure.”

  * * *

  DISAPPOINTED, IXAU WENT back to his office to phone the assistant superintendent. He’d hoped to identify the suspect and give the senior detective good news.

  What would a real detective do next? he asked himself.

  And as soon as he posed the question, he had the answer. He would find the guide, Twi.

  He checked that his vehicle had enough fuel and loaded an empty drum to fill up at the police depot in Ghanzi. Then he headed off. An hour later, as he drove past the tourist ranches that surrounded the town, he started to worry about his plan.

  What if I can’t find Twi? he wondered. I don’t know where he lives, and what if he’s working and not in town?

  He filled the drum and his truck with fuel and filled out the paperwork. He needed some provisions,
also, but would wait to get those until he headed back. Fresh stuff might spoil in the heat if it took him a long time to find Twi.

  He wondered where to start. Perhaps the tourist hotels would know? He headed toward the Kalahari Arms, but before he reached it he passed a shop selling Bushman artifacts. He pulled over and went in. The interior of the shop was filled with items—a much more extensive choice than the little gallery at New Xade. There were bracelets and necklaces made from ostrich shell, paintings by well-known Bushman artists, Bushman hunting kits made for tourists but including all the items you might find in one—arrows, empty poison containers, digging sticks, dry kindling to make a fire.

  While he was taking it all in, he was approached by the manager. “Can I help you, Constable?”

  Ixau focused on the job at hand. “Thank you, rra. I’m looking for a Bushman called Twi. He’s a guide and—”

  “I know him,” the manager interrupted. “What do you want with him?”

  “I want to ask him a few questions. To help me with my inquiries.” When he noticed the man’s suspicious look, he added, “He’s done nothing wrong.”

  “I don’t know where he is, but I can give you his cell phone number. Occasionally one of my clients wants to hire a guide, and I recommend him. He’s a good man for a Bushman.” The man hesitated, realizing the implications of what he’d said. “I mean, some of them are not as hardworking as Twi.”

  “I will be grateful for the cell number,” Ixau said stiffly.

  When the manager found it, Ixau copied it into his notebook, thanked the man, and left.

  Outside, he dialed the number and waited. It rang several times, and Ixau was about to give up, when a voice said, “Dumela. This is Twi.”

  Ixau switched to Naro and greeted Twi in their language. They had grown up together in New Xade but, although Ixau studied and worked hard to be accepted by the police, in the end it was Twi who’d made it out of New Xade.

  Ixau quickly discovered that Twi was in Ghanzi and that they could meet right away. Twi suggested a small place that sold coffee and cheap sandwiches.