Detective Kubu 01; A Carrion Death

by Michael Stanley

At the top of his list, he needed to interview Cecil Hofmeyr. He was sure Cecil was a key piece of the puzzle. Kubu sighed, realising that Mabaku would probably insist on doing the interview himself. He hoped he could persuade Mabaku to see Cecil immediately and not wait for Monday.

  His wish was granted. Mabaku walked into the room at seven-thirty. After Kubu explained the importance of finding out what was in the stolen letter, Mabaku reluctantly agreed to see Cecil as soon as he could. “The letter is mysterious,” Mabaku said. “But you can’t imagine that Cecil is involved with these murders. He’s just not the sort. He is the head of a highly regarded company. He isn’t going to run around murdering people!”

  “Director,” Kubu responded, “I am not suggesting Cecil is a murderer, but the letter is clearly important. It was stolen. The person who stole it was murdered, and I was assaulted. We have to find out what was in the letter. As soon as possible!”

  At that Mabaku pulled out a piece of paper from his briefcase and handed it to Kubu. It seemed to be roughly a quarter of an A4 sheet that had been torn in half vertically and horizontally. It contained printed text—from a dot-matrix printer by the look of it—and ended with a scrawled signature in blue ballpoint. Under that appeared:

  A.K. FRANKENTAL, BSC

  SENIOR MINE GEOLOGIST

  Below that the paper was blank.

  “Is this what you were looking at under Kobedi?” Mabaku asked.

  Kubu nodded. “It could be. But it was hidden under his body.”

  “When you fell, you covered it completely. There were no other pieces of it anywhere else. We think your attacker missed it because you were covering it.” Mabaku suppressed a comment about this being understandable in view of Kubu’s bulk. “What do you make of it?”

  Kubu read it again and then shook his head. That was a mistake, and he grimaced.

  Mabaku bit his lip. “I’ll leave you the piece of the letter to think about. Don’t lose it; it’s the original. It’s been tested for fingerprints already; a good one of Kobedi’s. Nothing else. Now look after yourself.” He added that he would let Kubu know as soon as he had some information from Cecil. He would try to see Cecil that day, but wouldn’t promise anything. Kubu thanked him, and Mabaku nodded and left.

  Kubu took a deep breath and closed his eyes. Could this be linked to Frankental’s disappearance? And why weren’t Frankental’s and Cecil’s prints on the letter? Moments later, Kubu was asleep.

  It was just after morning tea, and Kubu was desperate to be out of the cloying regimen of the hospital. Joy had already stopped in, but had left to run some errands. Alone, he found his boredom magnified, and time dragged. Joy returned about an hour later, kissed Kubu, and gave him a white paper packet.

  “A little something to take your mind off your head,” she said. He looked in the packet and extracted a large slice of chocolate cake.

  “Ah! Thank you, my dear,” Kubu said, a touch of enthusiasm returning to his voice. “I may survive after all.”

  Joy sat on the edge of the bed, her hand on his shoulder.

  “Kubu,” she said. “I’ve been thinking.”

  Kubu grunted, his mouth full of cake.

  “This is the first time I’ve been really scared.” She paused. “You know, about what could happen to you.” Kubu grunted again as he tried to eat the cake but not the icing, which he liked to leave for last.

  “Kubu, listen to me,” Joy said so sharply that Kubu had to divert his attention from the cake. “You’ve no idea how scared I’ve been since you got here.” She took a deep breath. “I’ve made a decision. It never really occurred to me that you could be in such danger. And if you are in danger, so am I. I am going to take some self-defence lessons, and I’ve asked the director to authorise me to learn how to shoot. He’s agreed to let me go and shoot for a couple of hours at the range, but made me promise that I wouldn’t get a handgun. He reminded me in no uncertain terms that handguns are illegal and that being a policeman’s wife wouldn’t protect me if I’m found with one.”

  Kubu almost choked as he swallowed. “You’re going to do nothing of the sort!” He struggled to sit more upright. “It’s my responsibility to protect you. And anyway, nobody would dare to harm you. They’d know I’d never rest until I caught them.”

  “Kubu. You’ve no idea how vulnerable I suddenly feel. I’m scared for you, and I’m scared for me.”

  “Joy, it’s me who has to protect you. Not the other way round. I won’t allow it.”

  “Kubu,” Joy said, anger creeping into her voice.

  “I’d be the laughing stock of the force,” Kubu continued. “All I’d hear is that Assistant Superintendent Bengu gets his wife to protect him!”

  “You are not listening, Kubu.” There was no give in Joy’s voice. “It’s got nothing to do with you. I’ve made up my mind. You’d better get used to it.”

  “Joy, dear,” Kubu said, patting her arm.

  “Don’t patronise me, Kubu,” Joy snapped. “You’re obviously not listening. I’m not going to discuss this any further.” She stood up, eyes blazing. “I’ll be back in an hour. Don’t dare to raise the subject again.” She turned and stalked out.

  Kubu lay back on the mountain of pillows, icing sticking to his fingers. My God, he thought, this is a new Joy. I hope I like her as much as I did the old.

  While he was wallowing in frustration, there was a polite knock at the door, and to his surprise Bongani walked in. “Kubu,” he said. “I called you at the office, and they told me what had happened. Terrible. No one is safe from thugs these days, not even the police.”

  “Did you need to see me in a hurry?” Kubu asked, wondering what could be urgent enough to bring Bongani to the hospital.

  “No, not at all. I was wondering how the interview at BCMC had gone, but wanted to check that you were okay. How’s your head? It looks dreadful.”

  Kubu was touched. “Well, it’s sore, but they say nothing is broken. My boss says that my head is too solid to be broken by a mere blow with a blunt object. My immediate project is to get out of here. You can’t imagine how bad the food is. Diabolical!”

  At this point a nurse came in with medication. Kubu swallowed it with bad grace and waved her away when she tried to fiddle with the bed. “They don’t give you a minute’s peace,” he told Bongani. “I used to think that the bit about waking you up to give you your sleeping pill was a joke.” He glared at the poor nurse, who beat a hasty retreat.

  At that moment Joy returned, jaw clenched defiantly, just waiting for Kubu to question her decision.

  Kubu turned his head in Bongani’s direction. “Bongani, let me introduce my wife, Joy. My dear, this is the young man I mentioned to you, Bongani Sibisi. He’s one of the men who found the body.”

  Joy’s demeanour relaxed immediately. As they shook hands, she gave Bongani a quick but thorough appraisal. What wealth of information, unseen by the men, was now stored in her head? She excused herself and said she would be back in ten minutes. A call to Pleasant, perhaps, Kubu thought with a wry smile.

  Kubu rapidly told Bongani about the visit to BCMC headquarters. He didn’t mention the letter or the subsequent Kobedi meetings, but told Bongani how they had stumbled on the burglary and about Cecil’s reaction to the BCMC vehicle issue. Bongani nodded. “We really should have thought of that,” he said. “You know, I’ve been noticing just how many of those yellow Land Rovers there are. I was on a field trip yesterday, and you see them all the time, if you are looking out for them. Before, I didn’t pay any attention.” He started to say something else but realised that Kubu wasn’t listening. He was staring at the ceiling with a quizzical look.

  “Say that again.”

  “I said that I keep seeing BCMC vehicles—or at least ones that colour.”

  “No, the last bit.”

  “Oh, just that I see them now that I’m looking, but before I didn’t take any notice of them.”

  After a full minute of thought, Kubu said, “Did you ever read a st
ory called ‘The Purloined Letter’?”

  “Wasn’t that the one about the stolen letter that the thief hid in plain sight on a pinboard with a lot of other letters so that it would be ignored? But Sherlock Holmes saw through it at once? I think we had it in English literature at school.”

  “Not quite. It was Edgar Allan Poe actually, not Conan Doyle, and it was set in France in the nineteenth century. And the letter wasn’t hidden by placing it with a lot of other letters—the French police would have seen through that ruse; it was disguised. But it was disguised as itself. The thief disguised it as a letter, but a letter that no one would care about. An old, tatty letter.” He bit his lower lip.

  “I’ve been wondering why they would use such an easily identifiable vehicle. But you’ve just given me the answer. It’s camouflaged. As itself. Just another boring, beaten-up BCMC vehicle. We need to check if anyone at the Maboane mine owns a Land Rover. One that might have started out yellow or maybe became yellow later.”

  “Speaking of letters, what do you make of this?” He handed Bongani the torn sheet of paper. “Read it aloud.”

  Bongani did so: “‘reputation among his colleagues in’. Then the next line, ‘his approach which I think is’ and the next, ‘at best. I cannot trust him.’ And that ends a paragraph. The next three lines: ‘output from the mine. Because’, ‘wrong about the big gemstones’ and finally ‘diamonds are actually stolen’. Then it’s formally signed ‘A. K. Frankental’. What does it mean? Is it related to the murder?”

  “I don’t know what it means. But it seems that someone was killed to get it.”

  “The body we found?” Bongani asked.

  “I’m not sure about that body. But I found the letter on another body. That’s where I was bashed on the head. The curious thing is that the second body is also tied to BCMC. The letter was sent to BCMC by a geologist at a BCMC mine—that’s Frankental. Then it was stolen, and the person behind the theft was killed. I found this fragment under his body. I am beginning to think that the body you found may be Frankental’s. He’s missing.”

  “What does BCMC have to say about what was in the letter?”

  Kubu sighed. “Well, that is another mystery. The letter was stolen from Cecil Hofmeyr’s office. Hofmeyr reported that there had been a break-in, but that only petty cash was taken. He never mentioned the letter—in fact, denied that anything else was missing. However, his assistant admitted stealing the letter.”

  “I can see why you like your job! Is it always like this? Twists and turns and mysteries?” Bongani’s eyes sparkled as he imagined the challenge of being a detective. “I think I’d love your job.”

  Kubu pointedly rubbed his head, but smiled. “You’d be good at it! But your research is also rather like detective work, isn’t it?” Nodding towards the piece of letter Bongani was still holding, he added, “Anything your image-processing wizardry could do with that?”

  Bongani turned his attention back to the letter. “Why would anyone get so worked up about a copy of a letter?”

  “It’s the original. My boss left it with me because they’ve done all the tests.”

  “Kubu, this is a copy. A high-quality colour copy, but still a copy. Look at the signature.” Bongani handed the letter to Kubu, who looked at its back. Sure enough, there was no trace of the impression that a ballpoint pen would have made. He had missed that.

  “Why would anyone get himself killed over a copy of a letter?”

  Bongani said, “Perhaps he was killed because it was a copy.” Kubu didn’t reply, but his mind was now on a new track. If Bongani was right, he thought he could guess who had the original.

  ∨ A Carrion Death ∧

  CHAPTER 36

  Mabaku wasted no time contacting Cecil at home. Cecil was reluctant to make a special trip to see Mabaku on a Saturday, but eventually agreed to meet him at BCMC at ten-thirty.

  Mabaku had been deliberately evasive about the reason for the meeting, and he smiled as he put down the phone. He swivelled in his chair and looked out of the window at Kgale Hill, just behind the CID office complex. Not so long ago, he thought, this had been out in the country. Now it was a Gaborone suburb with shopping malls and fast-food outlets. All that remained of the past were the baboons that frequently swarmed over the buildings and parking lot. Soon someone would complain loudly enough, and they would be captured and moved, or shot for being a nuisance. You can’t stop progress, he mused, but wouldn’t it be nice if we managed it better?

  He remembered when his father had first brought him here. They spent half the day, it seemed, riding their bicycles to the hill in the dusty heat on treacherous soft sand. They both fell off several times, laughing as they did. It was an adventure! At the foot of the hill, his father had pulled two Cokes from his tattered backpack. This was such a treat that it made no difference that they were lukewarm. He remembered that they had rested under an acacia tree, sipping. Then they climbed the hill, watched curiously and cautiously by troops of baboons, which barked in annoyance at the disturbance.

  When they reached the top, Mabaku had been astonished. He was convinced he could see the whole of Bechuanaland. The hills far to the south; Gaborone to the north and east; and endless plains to the west. What a huge country, he thought. And so beautiful! He swelled with pride. This was his country. It must be the best in the world.

  Mabaku was startled from his reverie by the William Tell overture emanating from his mobile phone. Reluctantly, he reached for it, noting that the call was from his old office on the mall.

  “Mabaku!” he said abruptly, annoyed that his few moments of reminiscence had been interrupted. But the call was important. The body of a very large black man had been found in an alley in a seedy area of town. He had been shot in the side of the head, execution-style. Thinking of Kubu’s description of his attacker, Mabaku asked to be sent a photograph.

  He wondered what was going on. Several months of relative calm with just the usual break-ins and petty thefts, and now suddenly three murders is not much more than a week!

  Mabaku deliberately arrived fifteen minutes late for his appointment with Cecil Hofmeyr. The security guard took him up to Cecil’s office.

  “Come in, Mabaku. Sit down. Tea or coffee? I had them send some up from the canteen.”

  “Tea, if possible. I am so sorry to have to disturb you on a Saturday, Cecil. Normally I wouldn’t dream of it, but this is serious.” Mabaku’s tone was conciliatory. Cecil poured some hot water into a cup and dropped a tea bag in.

  “No milk, I’m afraid,” he said. “I’ll let you take the bag out.”

  Cecil set the cup next to Mabaku and settled behind the desk. “Now, what’s this about a murder?” His normal authoritative tone returned.

  “Sometime yesterday evening a business associate of yours was shot dead in his house. Thembu Kobedi.”

  “Kobedi murdered?” Cecil said, showing only mild surprise and no regret. “I’ve had no dealings with him for some time. Several years, in fact.”

  “In addition,” Mabaku continued, “we are reasonably confident that the corpse found in the desert was a geologist from one of your mines—an Aron Frankental from the diamond mine at Maboane. Your mine manager, a Mr Ferraz, I believe, phoned the police to report him missing. Frankental left the mine a day or two before the corpse was found. Nothing has been heard of him since, and he is the only white reported missing.”

  “Frankental dead?” Cecil fidgeted with a pen on his desk. “I know of him, but I’ve never met him. He’s just a geologist at the Maboane mine. Why would anyone murder a geologist?”

  “Even unimportant people get murdered,” Mabaku said drily. “For one thing, there are a lot more of them. We are not certain it is Frankental, but we’ll probably find something in his room at the mine to use for DNA corroboration.”

  Cecil continued to spin his pen. “What has Kobedi’s death got to do with Frankental?” he asked cautiously. “I didn’t know that they even knew each other.”

>   “We were hoping you could answer that question. We found Frankental’s name on a scrap of paper at Kobedi’s house. You are a common link. One body a former business associate; the other, an employee. What is the link, Cecil?” Mabaku leant forward in his chair and stared at Cecil, who looked down at his pen, saying nothing. He shifted in his chair as though trying to get comfortable.

  “I employ thousands of people, and I have nothing to do with Kobedi any more. I’ve no idea how they are connected, if they are.” Cecil lifted his eyes and tried to outstare Mabaku, who didn’t flinch. It was Cecil who looked down first. His breathing had become faster and shallower. He’s lying, Mabaku thought.

  “I’ve no idea how they are connected,” Cecil repeated, as though each word was a new sentence.

  “Cecil,” Mabaku said firmly. “Are you certain that you know of no link between Kobedi and Frankental?”

  “Of course I’m certain!” Cecil snapped. “I know what I know.” He glared at the CID director, but Mabaku seemed completely relaxed.

  “You’re quite sure?”

  Cecil could sense a trap, but tried to brazen it out. “I’m sure!” he said.

  Mabaku was silent for what seemed like an eternity to Cecil. Then he looked up and said very quietly, “Mr Hofmeyr, I need to have the truth from you. You know how much I admire you and BCMC, and I want to make sure nothing gets blown out of proportion.” He stopped for a moment, but when Cecil said nothing, he continued.

  “When I was here last, you told me that only some cash had been taken from the drawer during the break-in. However, your assistant, Jonny, told us that he had taken a letter. He had been paid to take the letter by one of your acquaintances—the same Thembu Kobedi who has just been murdered. Jonny also told us that he had admitted this to you. So you knew that Kobedi was behind the theft. We think he may have been blackmailing you, which gives you a motive. I want to know what was in that letter.”

  Mabaku watched the effect of his short speech. Suddenly Cecil was no longer the man in charge. He repeatedly ran his tongue over his lips and swallowed hard a few times, trying to get saliva into his mouth. He took a mouthful of his tepid tea. He stood up and walked over to the window, but there was no relief in the heat-dry sidewalks of Gaborone. At last he pulled himself together.