A Carrion Death & The 2nd Death of Goodluck Tinubu

by Michael Stanley

  Red Beard came to see him after supper. His most striking feature was his bushy ginger beard, which flowed off his craggy and sunburned face. It was the only growth on an otherwise bald head. He spoke English with a strong accent and, from time to time, used Portuguese words when he couldn’t be bothered to find the appropriate English ones.

  “You want talk to me?” he said. He didn’t sound happy. “What you want?”

  “I want to know what’s happening. You said you’d keep me informed. Have you got the ransom? They should have paid it by now. When do I get out of here?”

  “Money comes soon.”

  “That’s not good enough! Let me talk to them myself!”

  “Vai se foder! Do like you told and you okay. Don’t make me mad, or I make you real sorry.”

  He walked up to the prisoner and glared at him, faces a few inches apart. He turned and walked out, slamming the door. The prisoner heard the lock click. He was convinced now that the ransom was irrelevant to his situation. What sense did this conversation make? They should be ranting and raving at him about the money, not the other way around. He should be pleading for his life on tape, or bits of his anatomy should be being delivered in anonymous parcels. Yet his captors seemed calm and relaxed, as if everything was going to plan. He decided he had to take the initiative, whatever the risk.

  He got ready for bed as usual, brushing his teeth, putting on sleep shorts, dousing the storm lantern in the bathroom. Then he climbed into bed and pretended to read his newspaper again. He didn’t know if they watched him, but he didn’t want to take unnecessary chances. After about fifteen minutes, he turned off the reading lamp and tried to rest. He knew he’d wake when the time came, but he was tense and thought he wouldn’t sleep.

  When he woke abruptly from a deep sleep, it was pitch-dark and still. He knew it was time. He lay with his eyes open for a while, listening in the dark, but he could hear no sounds. He carefully stood up and made a crude image of himself in the bed with the pillows. He groped around in the open wardrobe for his tracksuit and pulled it on over the sleep shorts. He put on his running shoes, not bothering with socks. He didn’t take anything else. He believed safety was only about six miles away. He tiptoed into the bathroom and as quietly as possible closed the door. It creaked a bit, and he stood breathless for a few seconds, listening. He heard nothing. He stuffed a towel at the base of the door where the gap would show light. He fumbled for the box of matches by the basin and lit the storm lantern over the cabinet. This was the riskiest part, but he had no choice. He couldn’t do what had to be done in the pitch-dark.

  He took down his toilet bag and rummaged for a now-bent five-thebe coin. He had snapped the nail file on the first day, but the coin had proved more resilient. It had amused him that the classic escape tool had been so useless. He fitted the coin into the head of one of the screws holding the plywood panel and easily unscrewed it. It was loose, because he had taken all the screws out before. He repeated the process for the other nine screws. When the panel came away from the wall, it revealed the window. The bottom section was solid frosted glass, but the upper part was a ventilation window that hinged upward. The opening was large enough for a man to fit through with some difficulty. He couldn’t remove the glass in the lower panel because the putty was too hard for his makeshift tools. Breaking the glass was out of the question.

  He climbed onto the toilet and carefully pulled himself up to the top section of the window. He had heard that if you could get your shoulders through an opening, you could get your whole body through. After some uncomfortable wriggling, his shoulders were free. He could see the area below, dark and quiet. It would be quite a jump from the window to the ground, but with luck, he would be off and running for the unlit and unguarded gate within seconds of landing. It seemed easy. But then he heard the bathroom door open.

  “Fuck!” yelled Sculo behind him. “What the fuck?” He pulled himself desperately forward, trying to dive out the window, overlooking that with no head start, he had little chance of getting far.

  A huge hand closed on his ankle and pulled him back, grazing his shoulders on the window. “Where the fuck you think you’re going?” He grabbed the window frame, as much to stop himself falling as to fight back. He kicked out hard with his free leg almost by reflex. It was sheer luck that his shoe collided with Sculo’s face with a satisfying thud. For a moment, he was free and pulling himself out of the window again. Then both legs were grabbed, and he was yanked back. This time he couldn’t hold onto the window, and he collapsed on top of Sculo. He kneed Sculo hard in the crotch. Although Sculo screamed and doubled up for a moment, the fight was over. Sculo of the swollen eye and battered genitals was now angry, very angry. He smashed his fist into his tormentor’s face as hard as he could. His victim flew back against the bath. If his head had hit the tiles, he would have been concussed. As it was, his head hit the makeshift shower mount, smashing his skull and breaking his neck.

  Red Beard and his bodyguards pushed into the bathroom. He glared at Sculo but said nothing until he had examined the prisoner.

  “You killed him, you load of cow shit. Why you so fucking stupid?”

  “He was trying to escape,” Sculo said, but given his size advantage over the dead man, it sounded lame even to him. Red Beard felt like killing the black man immediately, but he already had one inconvenient corpse to deal with. Punishment could wait. A bullet in the head in a slum area of Gabs would be much more convenient. He looked forward to doing it himself.

  Red Beard was silent for a few minutes, thinking, while the others waited. At last he turned to Sculo. “Get his clothes off. Then you stay here. No move!”

  With that he stalked out, slamming the door. Sculo pulled off the bloodied track suit, shorts, and shoes, leaving them oozing in the tub. After that he wasn’t sure whether he shouldn’t move at all or whether he shouldn’t leave the room. Eventually, he sat down on the toilet.

  A few minutes later, the door swung open, and Red Beard returned, his face flushed the color of his whiskers. A tall black man followed him with a plastic ground sheet and some tools. He wore blue jeans, but his shirt was that of a bush guide. Without a word, Red Beard pushed the naked body flat in the bath and with a hammer and screwdriver smashed out the teeth. Then he started slicing off the fingertips with a sharp meat cleaver. Sculo’s blackness took on a tinge of green.

  “Oh, this is nothing, man,” Red Beard said sarcastically. “More fun if he’s still alive! Get the Landy ready. Me and the guide take a little bush trip.”

  Then he turned back to the mess in the bath. He looked down at the body for a few minutes after Sculo left. Then he smiled. He lifted an arm and pulled it over the edge of the bath. Using the cleaver, he hacked down just above the elbow, feeling the blade bite the bone. After a few blows he changed his mind. More carefully he cut through the sinews of the elbow, sawing to the bone. With a sudden movement, he put his knee on the arm and put all his weight on it. The forearm broke off with a crack and dangled toward the floor, held only by a few sinews. One tug detached it from the rest of the body. Noticing a heavy gold ring on the prisoner’s other hand, he pulled it off and pocketed it. Then he walked out, taking the arm with him. He was painted with blood, a nightmare from The Masque of the Red Death.

  Part Five

  FALSE THIEVES

  A plague upon it, when thieves cannot be true to one another!

  —SHAKESPEARE, KING HENRY IV, PART 1, ACT 2, SCENE 2

  March

  Chapter 24

  Sunday was the only day when Kubu and Joy were still in bed after six thirty in the morning. Normally, they both left for work around 7:00 a.m. On Sundays, Kubu would get up when he woke, wrap himself in a large dressing gown, fetch the Sunday Standard from the driveway, put some food in Ilia’s bowl, pour two glasses of juice, and return to bed, followed shortly thereafter by Ilia, who always found a comfortable valley in which to snuggle.

  As far as possible, Kubu maintained Sunday as his f
amily day. Every Sunday morning, he and Joy would visit his parents at their home on the outskirts of Mochudi, about fifteen miles north of Gaborone. This day was no exception. At about 10:00 a.m. the three of them set off on the thirty-minute drive. Joy always drove, Kubu relaxed, and Ilia stood on the backseat with her nose pushed out of the gap made by a slightly lowered window. Traffic was relatively light, but taxis, bicycles, and pedestrians kept the speed down to a fast crawl until they reached the highway. As they turned onto his parents’ street, Ilia started yapping with excitement. There was no doubt that Ilia recognized the street, Kubu thought. He wondered how much more went on in the dog’s head. Were dogs relatively stupid compared to humans, or were they smarter in ways that humans just couldn’t comprehend?

  Kubu’s parents lived on a small, sandy plot in a rectangular house that had two small bedrooms, and a living area that included kitchen, dining area, and lounge. The walls were made from a combination of mud and brick, and the roof was the ubiquitous corrugated iron. At the front of the house was a small lean-to veranda, which Kubu had given his parents as a present when he was promoted. They spent most of the day there, sheltering from the hot sun.

  The garden was arid. Several aloes grew at the side of the house, and a straggly acacia tree at the back only partially obscured the outhouse. Behind the house were carefully tended beds containing squash and carrots and potatoes, which Kubu’s mother, Amantle, tended with almost religious care. Next to them was a collection of other plants, some in small beds of their own and some in earthenware pots. It was an eclectic collection of small shrubs, herbs, and succulents, and these Amantle would never touch. Kubu’s father, Wilmon, had spent years on a cattle post in the Kgalagadi and had learned much natural lore from the Bushmen and others. He made no pretense of magic, but his herbal remedies were highly sought after in the town, especially for rheumatic pains. Many sufferers attested to the rapid relief brought about by Wilmon’s rubs.

  Relative to many in the Gaborone area, they were well off, because they had running water—a huge boon—and sporadic electricity whose availability was totally unpredictable. Kubu wasn’t certain whether his father even realized that there was a charge for the electricity, because he and Joy paid the monthly bills.

  And they had a mobile phone—another present from Kubu and Joy. Although he and Joy spoke to them quite frequently, he was sure they never used it themselves. Nevertheless, his father religiously turned it on each morning and off each evening. On Saturday nights, he recharged it whether or not it was flat. The routine was the important thing.

  As Joy stopped the car at the edge of the dirt road in front of the house, they saw, as they always did, Wilmon slowly lifting himself out of his favorite chair. Ilia, of course, was ecstatic; they had arrived at a place where she was even more spoiled than at home.

  “Shut up, Ilia!” Joy said.

  “Quiet. Quiet!” Kubu hissed to no avail. As soon as the door was open, Ilia raced along the fence, skidded around the corner at the gate, and jumped up on the elder Bengu, who smiled broadly and lifted the dog affectionately off the ground. Ilia was delighted and licked all available skin. Kubu walked up to his parents and formally greeted them, “Dumela, Rra. Dumela, Mma.” He then extended his right arm to his father, with the left crossed over it as a mark of respect.

  Wilmon responded solemnly: “Dumela, my son.”

  Kubu followed with: “I have arrived.”

  “You are welcome, my son. How are you, my son?”

  “I am well, Father. How are you and Mother?”

  “We are also fine, my son.” Wilmon’s voice was strong, but quiet. It was the same proud greeting that they had heard every Sunday for seven years.

  Joy gave Wilmon and Amantle nontraditional hugs, even though Ilia was between them. Then the three of them settled in their favorite chairs, and Amantle went into the house to make tea. Even Ilia relaxed on Wilmon Bengu’s lap.

  “Father, I am well, even though I have been traveling too much, and my wife has been trying to starve me to death. Women today have no respect for their husbands.”

  “David, you are lucky to have found any woman to marry, let alone such a wonderful one as Joy,” Wilmon said with a straight face, while Joy suppressed a snigger.

  “Father, you are a wise man, and I listen to you.”

  Kubu’s mother came out of the house carrying a bent and battered tray with a large aluminum teapot, four enamel mugs, a white milk jug, and a bowl of sugar.

  “David and Joy,” she said. “Please have some tea.” She put the tray on the table. Joy stood up and insisted that she serve. As she did, she opened her handbag and took out a packet of Marie biscuits, Amantle and Wilmon’s favorites. She poured four cups of strong tea, added milk and sugar, and handed the mugs around together with three biscuits each.

  For the next few minutes there was a comfortable silence as everyone either bit into their biscuits or dunked them in the tea. Kubu loved to put half the biscuit in the tea and see whether he could lift the sagging half to his mouth without it falling back into the mug or onto his trousers. Joy thought this behavior was very childish, but knew better than to say anything. She nibbled at her dry biscuits. Kubu slipped Ilia a small sliver of biscuit from time to time, but he made sure his parents weren’t watching. They would surely remind him of all the hungry people in Africa.

  “Joy,” Kubu’s mother said, pretending not to notice what Kubu was doing, “How is Pleasant, and how is Sampson?”

  Joy’s parents were dead, and her only close relatives were her younger sister, Pleasant, and an older brother, Sampson, who was working in Francistown. Her parents had both been educated at a mission school up north near Francistown. Her mother was a schoolteacher who loved children and was able to impart her passion for learning to them. Her father had started a small clothing shop that was successful, due to his energy and the fact that he was willing to go to Johannesburg to buy his stock.

  When Joy was about fifteen, her mother had died of tuberculosis, leaving a hardworking thirty-five-year-old husband to care for three young children. He was devastated by his wife’s death. In typical African fashion, both his family and his wife’s family absorbed the children into their lives and homes, while he engrossed himself in his work. He became obsessed with the shop as a way to handle his grief. Five years later, he suffered a massive heart attack and died within a few days. Sampson was twenty-one, Joy was twenty, and Pleasant eighteen. None of them had any experience running a business, so they decided to sell the shop. The amount they were offered sounded like a fortune to them. It was only years later that they realized they had sold at a price far less than the shop’s real worth. Nevertheless, by local standards they were well off.

  Joy and Pleasant took a secretarial course and decided to move to the capital, Gaborone, which had more opportunities for work and a larger pool of single men. Joy found a job with the police department, while Pleasant joined a travel agency, where she soon upgraded her qualifications to become an agent rather than a secretary. Sampson stayed in Francistown and went to work for the government, in the Ministry of Lands and Housing.

  Joy and Kubu saw Sampson about once a year, but Joy and Pleasant were inseparable, talking to each other several times a day on the phone as well as frequently having lunch together at one of the fast-food outlets near the travel agency. Joy wished Pleasant lived closer to them, but that was not to be. She lived a couple of miles away on the north side of town, where there was a better nightlife and more young people.

  “Mma Bengu, we have not seen Sampson for several months. He is well, but still single.” The tone of her voice conveyed the inherent contradiction that one could be well and single. “As for Pleasant,” she continued. “She too is well, but also still single.”

  Kubu’s mother seemed to shudder. “The children of today have no sense of responsibility. If your parents were still alive, they would be living in sadness for your brother and sister. I know what they would feel. Just look how
long it took before David got enough sense to marry you. I thought I would never smile again, and my heart was always dark.”

  Kubu concentrated on his last Marie biscuit, willing it not to fall into the tea.

  “It has worked out well,” Joy said with a smile. “It was important for David to do well in his career so he could support me, and I am a patient woman. I knew in my heart that we would marry, so I did not worry too much. And now David and I are very happy.”

  “I am proud of my son.” Wilmon’s comment startled the group because he rarely participated in domestic conversations, thinking them silly and repetitive. He continued as though Kubu was not present. “He is an important man. He makes Botswana safe for us. He is very clever—much more clever than the crooks.”

  Joy took advantage of Wilmon’s presence in the discussion. “David has been working on a difficult case. Last week some rangers found part of a skeleton in the desert. It was being eaten by hyenas. There is no clue as to who it could be.”

  “Aaiiaa!” Amantle let out a wail. “Another Segametsi. Aaiiaa.” She covered her face with her hands.

  Amantle was referring to the ritual murder a decade earlier of a young girl, Segametsi Mogomotsi, who lived just up the road. The murder had reverberated through the community, pitting old against young, women against men, community against the police. People had taken to the streets to protest the barbaric desecration of human life—the sexual abuse, mutilation, and killing of a beautiful young girl, all in the name of tradition. Crowds had protested the inability of the police to solve the murder. They accused the police of not doing anything because prominent people were involved, perhaps even policemen. And the murder was never solved, even though the government took the unusual step of inviting Scotland Yard to take over the case.

  “No! No!” Joy said quickly. “This was a man—a white man. Not one of us.”