Death of the Mantis

by Michael Stanley

  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 reveals only sand and a few pebbles, bits of dried grass. But on closer inspection, some of the pebbles are, in fact, curious succulents, and what looks barren is actually teeming with life.

  Kubu began to think of the desert as a metaphor for the world—superficially everything is as you expect. But if you look beyond the obvious, you see what others do not, and by observing things properly, you understand 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 answer, 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.”

  I owe this man a lot, Kubu thought, and yet I don’t know him at all. I remember an intense and enthusiastic boy. An older friend even than the friend who called me a jolly hippo, and I became Kubu forever. Kubu felt a sudden pang of loss for that friend, and a pang of a different type of loss for Khumanego.

  “Is there a way I can help?” Surely Khumanego had not called to chat after all these years.

  “Do you mean that?”

  “Of course.”

  “I can’t talk on the phone. I need to see you privately. And not at a police station.”

  The Criminal Investigation Department was not a police station, but Kubu doubted that fact would satisfy Khumanego. He checked his watch. Just about ninety minutes to lunch. Time enough for Khumanego to drive from Lobatse.

  “Do you drive?”

  “Yes,” Khumanego answered.

  “Then we can meet for lunch—a light one, mind you, because I’m on a diet. I’ve put on a few extra pounds over the years.” He hesitated over this understatement. A lot more than a few pounds had attached themselves to his frame since he was ten years old. But then, of course, his frame had increased quite a bit too. “Do you know where Game City is? From the Lobatse road, you’ll see Kgale Hill on your left and Game City is a big shopping center a bit further on before you reach the city. There’s an excellent coffee shop that serves snacks on the upper level. I’ll meet you at twelve thirty.”

  Khumanego said he would find it and said good-bye.

  Kubu was still turning the strange telephone discussion over in his mind when Edison Banda walked in clutching a forensics report. He waved it excitedly at the senior detective.

  “We were right, Kubu! They were poisoned!”

  Kubu leaned back in his chair, causing a protesting creak. Who was poisoned? It took him a moment to recollect the case. The forensics report had taken weeks! Two students from the University of Botswana had been found dead at a campground in Sekoma, collapsed outside their tent, faces horribly contorted. They’d been on their way back from a field trip to collect samples of plants in the Kalahari. The locals had immediately suspected witchcraft.

  “What’s it say? Why did it take them so long?”

  “Well, we had to send samples to the Poison Information Centre in Cape Town. They were able to do it the quickest. Then Ian MacGregor was sick, so . . .”

  “Never mind that. What killed them?”

  “Bushman poison bulb. Just as we guessed. Apparently it’s a member of the amaryllis family. Very poisonous indeed. Remember there were samples of it in their collection? I’ll bet anything you like that they knew the Bushmen use it as a hallucinogen. So they decided to try it out on their last night alone. But they took much too much.”

  “But they were senior students! Of botany. Surely they’d know better?”

  Edison shrugged. “They were students,” he said, as though that explained everything.

  “Could it have been deliberate?”

  “You mean a suicide pact?” Edison shook his head. “Two young guys. No note or motive. Doesn’t make sense.”

  Kubu hesitated. “Two men. Could there have been something going on between them?” That might be a motive for suicide. Homosexuality was illegal and deeply frowned upon in Botswana.

  “One had a regular girlfriend here. I talked to her after they died. She was very upset. They wanted to get married. He was saving for the lobola. The other didn’t have a girlfriend, but played the field.”

  “What about murder?”

  Edison was not to be shifted. “By whom? What for? Nothing was stolen as far as we can tell, and no one knew them in Sekoma. The local police asked around the campground. No one saw anything suspicious.”

  Kubu thought it over. The kids had enjoyed a few beers—not drunk, but perhaps enough to make them irresponsible. Try out a Kalahari traditional drug. A big mistake. A fatal mistake.

  “Have you told the director?”

  Edison looked sheepish. “I thought I’d try it out on you first. Maybe we can see him together.”

  “He won’t bite off your head,” said Kubu, although he thought it likely Mabaku might do exactly that. Edison had been out of favor with the director of the CID for some time. Kubu sighed, clambering to his feet to share the news with his boss. This is what our work here is almost always about, he thought. Not solving puzzling crimes but rather picking up the pieces after a drunken knifing, a domestic brawl, or two kids who threw away their young lives on a stupid experiment.

  “Okay,” he said. “Let’s go and talk to Mabaku.”

  Khumanego was more than half an hour late. Kubu drank water with lemon and then, growing desperate, ordered a salad with as much in the way of cheese and avocado as the chef could find. Joy had assured him that salads were healthy, that he would lose weight, and that he would feel full at the same time. The salad-lunch diet had lasted a week, and so far Kubu had no evidence to support any of these three contentions.

  He had fini
shed the salad when Khumanego arrived. When Kubu saw him, he had to suppress a smile. Khumanego was no more than four and a half feet tall—a diminutive figure wearing ill-fitting clothes he must have bought in the boys’ section of a supermarket, his narrow yellow-brown face sticking out from a blue shirt. His trousers were too long and overlapped his shoes. On most people, Kubu thought, they’d be shorts.

  Khumanego muttered about traffic and parking by way of apology. Kubu responded that neither were significant problems in the Kalahari, and his friend nodded but didn’t smile. Although Kubu made it clear that he was paying, Khumanego ordered only an open sandwich of bacon, lettuce, and tomato, and a glass of water. Kubu felt it would be rude to let him eat alone and, having satisfied the requirements of the salad diet, ordered the same sandwich. While they ate, questions bounced to and fro filling in the intervening years. Kubu explained how he’d got his nickname at high school and that all his friends still called him that. Khumanego laughed, enjoying the humor around their size contrast. “They should call me Mongoose then,” he joked. But then he sobered and recounted how he’d returned to his people before finishing high school.

  “You know how hard it was, David,” he said. “I couldn’t take it anymore. But when I got back to the desert, I didn’t fit there either. I’d lost the ways of my people. I couldn’t track a wounded springbok, and I was no longer able to make myself invisible to animals. People found my ways strange; they were uncomfortable with me. I had become a stranger in my own land.” He shook his head.

  “It was a terrible time, David. I had waited for so long to be a Bushman again. A Bushman in the desert. With my friends and family. Going to where we could find game and plants. Moving or staying as living dictated. But it wasn’t like that anymore. Everything was being fenced for cattle. We weren’t allowed to hunt freely; we had to get permits and often had to pay bribes for them. The government was moving my people to settlements on the edge of the Central Kalahari Game Reserve. They said it was for our own good; that there would always be water there, and permanent homes, and schools for the children. But in the end they were just camps, places where we could be forgotten. Then foreigners came from overseas, to help us fight the government, to win back our rights, they said. But they didn’t understand us either. Maybe they made things better, maybe worse.”

  Khumanego paused after this uncharacteristic torrent of words. Kubu just nodded, and Khumanego continued. “David, who could we trust? Who was right? What was right? I saw what was happening to our people. They were confused, not understanding what was going on. Pulled this way and that. Puppets in other people’s games. My parents had been right; what they feared had already arrived.”

  Kubu responded that he had been fortunate to go to Maru a Pula high school in Gaborone, where he too had been unhappy at first, bullied because he was different. But after some time he had found friends. He started to sing in the choir and enjoyed cricket, becoming the school’s official scorer. He told of his love of detective work and how it linked to what Khumanego had taught him in the desert. And, with a broad smile, spoke of meeting Joy and the miracle of his little girl, now three months old.

  Khumanego asked after Kubu’s parents, around whose modest house he had spent many hours playing. He was delighted to hear they were still alive and in good health. But when Kubu asked after Khumanego’s parents, he replied, “My mother is living in one of the new settlements.”

  “And your father?”

  Khumanego just shook his head. “He died,” he said simply without elaboration. “After that I felt a responsibility to guide my people through the barrenness of the political landscape—things they know nothing of and certainly don’t know how to deal with. I felt I had to guard their interests.”

  Eventually there was a lull in the conversation, and they agreed on coffee, Kubu recommending the cappuccino.

  Then, at last, Khumanego was ready to come to the point.

  “Do you know about a man who died at the Kgalagadi Transfrontier Park a week ago? His name was Tawana Monzo.”

  Kubu remembered a report crossing his desk. “Yes, it was an interesting situation. He fell off a cliff into a dry riverbed or something like that, didn’t he? Worked for Wildlife? Initially it seemed to be an accident, but the doctor who signed the death certificate was wide awake. Does some pathology work, I think. He felt that the skull had been fractured with a weapon rather than in a fall.”

  Khumanego nodded slowly. “The police have made up their minds that it was murder. The investigating officer found a sharp rock near where the body was found and claims it had Monzo’s blood on it.”

  This was news to Kubu. Khumanego seemed very well informed. Kubu concentrated on spooning the foam off his cappuccino as he waited to discover where all this was leading.

  “The officer walked up the riverbed in a direction where there were no footprints and found the weapon. How did he know to look there? After that he went with a park official to where the Bushmen are living and questioned them about who attacked the man, who pushed him off the cliff, who found him. He thinks the three men with Monzo when he was found are the most likely suspects. He told them it would be better to admit it immediately rather than wait till they were caught out.” Khumanego paused, waiting for a reaction. When none came, he said with a new intensity, “Don’t you see, David? He’s already decided it’s the Bushmen. It’s all starting again.”

  “Who is the investigating officer?” Kubu asked mildly.

  “They say his name is Detective Lerako. Detective Stone Wall! That’s what his name means, and that’s how he behaves!”

  Kubu knew the man—fair but not imaginative. It was true; once his mind was made up, it was hard to shift Stone Wall. “What do you want me to do? It’s not our case. It’ll be handled out of Tsabong.”

  “I want you to make sure it’s fair. You know our people. We don’t kill; human life is sacred. To survive in the desert everyone has to contribute, to support. Those three men found Monzo injured and tried to help him; did help him. Why would they want to kill him anyway?” Khumanego paused. “David, I know those men myself. I work with them and they are from my group. We are brothers. They are like me.”

  “You had brothers?”

  “All children in a group are brothers, David. These men would never kill another human. I was with them a few weeks ago. Still traditional. Still following the old ways in the desert.” Khumanego stared at Kubu, challenging, pleading.

  “And now they’ve been arrested! They’re being held in Tsabong. It’s crazy! This Monzo had an unlucky accident, and now it’s being turned on these peaceful people! To get rid of them.”

  Kubu was already worrying about how he was going to explain all this to Mabaku. He could hear his boss asking him how come he had so little to do that he had time to interfere in another detective’s case. He sighed and hoisted himself to his feet.

  “All right, Khumanego. I’ll look into it. I’m not promising anything, but I’ll see what I can do.”

  Chapter Four

  “The answer is no!”

  “But, Director!”

  “No buts, Kubu. You’re not going to stick your nose into another detective’s case. Lerako does things by the book. He’s not going to arrest anyone without good cause.”

  “I’ve known my Bushman friend for over twenty years. I trust him, and he vouches for the men Lerako has arrested. He knows them like brothers and says they would never kill another human being. Lerako must’ve missed something, jumped ahead of himself.”

  Jacob Mabaku, director of the Criminal Investigation Department, snorted. “Known him for over twenty years, you say? Close friends, you say? That’s bullshit! You’ve barely seen him since you left primary school!”

  Kubu looked down in embarrassment. How did Mabaku know these things?

  “Director, it’s true that I haven’t seen Khumanego for a long time. But people don’t change. He and I were very close at school. He was the one who showed me how to see th
ings that others didn’t. It was really because of him that I became a detective. I owe him for that.”

  “Then take him out for a drink or dinner or something! You are not going to get involved in a case in Tsabong. It’s under control. You’ve enough to do right here.”

  Kubu looked at Mabaku. There was no give in his face. How am I going to tell Khumanego? he wondered.

  “Yes, Director. I’ll tell Khumanego that the police aren’t interested,” Kubu said as he turned to leave.

  “Bengu!” Mabaku’s voice stopped Kubu in his tracks. It was a long time since Mabaku had used his last name. “Bengu, if you undermine my authority or the reputation of the police in this matter, you’ll spend the next few years as the detective in Tshootsha or Hukuntsi!”

  “Yes, Director. I’ll tell Khumanego that I’m too busy to help.” He walked out of Mabaku’s office, closing the door gently behind him.

  Tshootsha or Hukuntsi! I’ll starve to death if I go there, Kubu thought. If I don’t die of boredom first. He walked back to his office, depressed. I shouldn’t have raised Khumanego’s hopes. I should’ve realized that Mabaku wouldn’t let me tramp on another detective’s turf. Khumanego is going to be very disappointed. But then again, I won’t have to leave Tumi and Joy.

  Kubu was still depressed when he left work and drove home. Khumanego hadn’t taken it well when he told him of Mabaku’s decision.

  “I told you, David! All the police want to do is persecute the Bushmen. Another government effort to stop us living how we have always lived! Why don’t you put us in cages and show us in the zoo? That’s about all we seem to be worth in this country.”