A Carrion Death & The 2nd Death of Goodluck Tinubu

by Michael Stanley

  “Except the kids who were killed in Angola by guns financed by the blood diamonds!” Mabaku interjected.

  Kubu nodded. “Yes, but everyone directly involved benefited. The ultimate goal was to make the mine look like a great prospect and sell it off at a big profit. Grab the money and run. The problem arose when an honest, smart geologist showed up—that’s Aron Frankental. Somehow he stumbled onto the scam. Ferraz and his friends had to get rid of him. I thought I’d figured out why they dumped the body so far away. I thought it was because they knew of the high concentration of game at Kamissa. So there would be lots of predators, particularly hyenas. They expected the body to be completely destroyed. Frankental could simply vanish. No body, no crime.” Kubu paused for breath. Uncharacteristically Mabaku waited patiently.

  “However, I was wrong. The Kamissa body is not Frankental’s. His parents confirmed that he’d never broken his arms. The Kamissa body had both arms broken a long time ago. We now suspect that Frankental may be buried near the farmhouse.” Kubu paused. “The farmhouse seems to be the center of all this. The plane from Angola landed there, that’s where we found Frankental’s Landy, and that’s where we also found the yellow Landy Bongani spotted from his satellite.”

  Mabaku shook his head. “How does the letter fit in?”

  “Somehow Ferraz learned about the letter. Maybe Frankental left a copy in his room, or maybe it was with his missing notebooks. Perhaps Ferraz thought it exposed the scam, so he contacted someone who could get to Cecil. I’ve no idea how he found Kobedi, but he definitely found the right man. Kobedi organized the theft of the letter from Cecil, but must have tried to double-cross Ferraz by giving him a color copy. As a result Kobedi got himself killed. And nearly me, too.” Without thinking, Kubu gently rubbed his head. “By the way, it’s a point in Cecil’s defense. If he was in on the scam, why did he keep the letter at all? He knew Jason was shady, but not that he was stealing the diamonds. I’m not sure why the hit man was killed—he’s called Sculo, by the way. Perhaps because he got a copy instead of the original letter, perhaps just to remove a link to Jason and the bearded smuggler. So Ferraz and his red-bearded Angolan friend are responsible for three murders—Frankental, Kobedi, and Sculo.”

  “So who’s the Kamissa body? Is that a separate case?”

  Kubu shook his head. “No, I’m sure it’s all connected somehow. I’ll bet the yellow Landy at the farmhouse was the one used to transport the body. Also, the garage attendant noticed the driver’s heavy beard and got a valueless tip in Angolan coins. But who the victim is, and why they went to so much trouble to hide his identity, remains a mystery.”

  Kubu looked at Mabaku, who stared at him without saying a word. “That’s my current theory, Director. The problem is that most of the evidence is circumstantial. Even if I found Ferraz, I’m not sure I could charge him, let alone put together a compelling case. Depressing.”

  At last Mabaku spoke. “I think your theory is plausible. You’d better find both Ferraz and the Angolan and bring them in. Otherwise, you’re right. We don’t have a case.” Mabaku stared at the rapidly darkening sky. “If I understand your theory, Cecil was not involved. He was just a source of money, although he would’ve made a lot of money if the scam had worked. Is that right?”

  “Yes,” Kubu replied. “Originally I thought he was involved—perhaps even the kingpin—but now I don’t think so. When I met him, he didn’t seem the sort to get involved in murder. Funny things with money and contracts, perhaps—but not murder. I think you were right all along about that, Mr. Director.”

  “Thank you, Kubu,” Mabaku said. “It seems we may even have changed sides about Cecil. Anyway, good work. I’ll be talking to Cecil again very soon. Give my regards to Joy.”

  Kubu left the office, once more surprised by Mabaku. He wouldn’t have predicted Mabaku would abandon his friendship with Cecil so readily. He might enjoy the benefits of knowing some of Botswana’s rich men, Kubu thought, but at the core he does what is right.

  Kubu packed his briefcase, turned off his computer, and set off home for his dinner.

  Part Eight

  RANK OFFENCE

  O, my offence is rank, it smells to heaven; It has the primal eldest curse upon’t.

  —HAMLET, ACT 3, SCENE 3

  March

  Chapter 53

  Knysna is a jewel set on South Africa’s Indian Ocean coast. The town encircles a wide lagoon, which itself bounds several small islands. The sea enters through a passage guarded by the Heads, one packed with luxury homes facing northward to the Outeniqua Mountains and the other a private nature reserve, a metaphor for the country’s uneasy balance between development pressure and unspoiled beauty. Lush coastal forest jostles homes and escapes to the gorges running into the foothills from the Knysna River.

  The sun warmed Inspector Johannes “Bakkies” Swanepoel in his office in the central Knysna police station. He appeared to be studying a report, his chair carefully positioned to catch the sunlight and to afford his great frame maximum comfort. His rugby-playing days way behind him, he still had shoulders that made him turn sideways to pass through a narrow doorway. Hands that could crack Brazil nuts rested on the desk, and his head leaned on the back of his office chair. His eyes were slightly open—a trick he had learned in enforced periods in the South African army during the worst days of apartheid—but he was peacefully asleep.

  The office phone rang. With a sigh, Bakkies leaned forward and scooped up the handpiece. “Swanepoel,” he said.

  “I’m sorry to disturb you, Inspector.” It was the desk sergeant, sounding genuinely sorry. Perhaps he knew how Bakkies was spending a quiet summer morning. “I have a lady on the line. She wants to report a missing person. He’s only been missing for a few hours, though. I’ve explained our procedures, but she’s very insistent. She demands to speak to a senior officer.” There was a pause. “I thought perhaps you weren’t too busy,” he finished lamely.

  Bakkies grunted disbelief, but his mood was relaxed. How often was he disturbed only by a report of a missing person? No rape? No violent robbery? The day was continuing quite well. “Put her through,” he said. The sergeant, who had expected anything from a ticking off to an argument, obliged with alacrity.

  “This is Inspector Swanepoel speaking.” Bakkies had a bass voice from the middle of his enormous chest and an Afrikaans accent from the middle of the Boer heartland.

  “Inspector, my name is Dianna Hofmeyr.” There was a pause as though this was supposed to mean something to Bakkies, but it didn’t, and he waited. “I want to report Angus Hofmeyr missing, and I want something done about it immediately. He is an extremely important person in Botswana—head of the country’s most important company. I want this treated as an emergency. Your subordinates seem to think it’s a joke.”

  Bakkies sighed. The woman sounded more angry than upset. But she didn’t sound hysterical. “Mrs. Hofmeyr, how long has your husband been missing? Was there an argument, anything like that?”

  “It’s Ms. Hofmeyr, and he’s my brother, not my husband. He’s been missing all morning. There was no argument. Don’t treat me like a fool, Inspector.”

  “Of course not, Ms. Hofmeyr. Please give me your address and the telephone number.” She did so, and Bakkies whistled under his breath. She wasn’t calling from Knysna at all but from Plettenberg Bay, the fashionable beach town up the coast, and her house was in the beachfront road often referred to as Millionaire’s Row. “Perhaps you could tell me the circumstances in detail?”

  Dianna’s voice calmed. “He must have left early this morning. I was up about seven. I thought he was still asleep. I looked in about nine, and he wasn’t in his bedroom. I guessed he had gone for an early swim or jog. He’s very into sports. He does that sort of stuff. But he hasn’t come back.”

  Bakkies glanced at his watch. It was near noon. “Did you look for him?”

  “Of course. I went down to the beach. But there’s no sign of him. And he didn’t take th
e car,” she concluded, anticipating the next question.

  “Could he have gone to visit a friend? Maybe pop into the Beacon Island Hotel for a coffee or whatever?”

  She hesitated. “He would have phoned me.”

  “Does he have a mobile phone?”

  “Yes, I tried that, but it rang in his room. He would hardly take it with him for a swim.”

  Bakkies changed tack. “When did you last see him?”

  “At dinner last night. We chatted a bit afterward, had coffee and calvados, and went to bed. He said he might go for a swim in the morning if the weather was good.”

  “He wasn’t upset about anything? Gave you no reason to believe he might want to leave the next morning?”

  This time there was a long hesitation, but when the answer came, it was unequivocal. “Absolutely not.”

  “Look, Ms. Hofmeyr, we don’t usually consider someone missing until a couple of days have passed. I bet he went for a walk, and it went on longer than he thought and he forgot his phone. I bet he’ll be back for lunch. But I can tell you are worried. What I’ll do is phone the hotel, ask around. Check the hospital. By the way, is he a good swimmer?”

  “Very good. Competition good. Scuba dives, too.”

  Bakkies nodded, relieved. The day was calm, the sea in the bay would be friendly, and the beach populated even quite early. “Call me when he gets back,” he said. “I’ll get to those inquiries just in case. Good day, Ms. Hofmeyr.” He hung up before she could object.

  Dianna phoned back two hours later. There was still no sign of her brother. She sounded more worried, but also more angry. And Bakkies had turned up nothing from the standard inquiries. He sighed and picked up the note of her address. “I’m coming out there to see you, Ms. Hofmeyr. I’m on my way,” he said.

  The house unfolded down the dune as though it had started life as liquid and been poured. The top floor was open-plan, bounded to the southeast by curved glass affording a panoramic view of the ocean. Part of the area was for dining, adjacent to a modern kitchen. The sitting area was flanked by a well-stocked bar. Dianna Hofmeyr offered Bakkies a seat and introduced him to an elderly but wiry lady of mixed descent. “Zelda is our maid,” Dianna explained. “She’s been with us for years. She comes in the mornings when we are here. I asked her to wait for you.”

  Bakkies turned his attention to Zelda. “Did you see Mr. Hofmeyr this morning?” Zelda shook her head, but it was Dianna who replied. “I woke about seven and went to work out. There’s a gym on the bottom level. I’d heard nothing from Angus and thought he’d decided to sleep in. Zelda made some coffee at nine, and I suggested she take Angus a cup. She said there was no response when she knocked on his door. So I went to wake him, but he wasn’t there. That’s when I remembered that he’d said something about an early-morning swim if the weather was good. So I didn’t worry, then.” She arranged herself on the couch. “I’m seriously worried now, Inspector. Just what are you doing about finding him?”

  “I’ve checked hospitals, the morgue, accident reports. Nothing. I also asked the Beacon Island Hotel to keep a look out. Can I see his room?”

  Dianna took him down a flight to a bedroom with a more restricted, but still stunning view. Obviously the room had been cleaned. The bed was made, a pair of black silk sleep shorts folded on the pillow. Dianna noticed his attention and said, “He doesn’t need to wear much in bed. He doesn’t sleep alone very often.” Bakkies didn’t comment, but opened the cupboard. Sports clothes. Toiletries in the bathroom. If Angus Hofmeyr had left, he hadn’t packed.

  “Do you have a recent picture of your brother?”

  Dianna nodded. “Let’s go back upstairs.” There she gave him a head-and-shoulders photograph. It showed a face that was solid rather than handsome, but set off by eyes of an intense blue, almost indigo. The shoulders were wide—rower’s shoulders. Bakkies could appreciate why Angus seldom slept alone unless he wanted to.

  “Ms. Hofmeyr, was anything disturbing your brother? Any recent problems? Anything that might have made him take off without a word?”

  Dianna seemed to want to dismiss this with the ironic superiority that had characterized the conversation. But she hesitated. At last she said, “Zelda, if the inspector has no more questions for you, perhaps you’d wait outside.”

  Zelda got up. “I’ve missed my lift,” she said accusingly.

  “The inspector will take you into the village.”

  Zelda nodded and left, closing the front door behind her. Dianna waited a moment. Then she said, “My brother came here from a clinic, Inspector. He hasn’t been completely well recently.”

  “What was the nature of his illness?”

  “Does that matter?”

  “Perhaps. If he had heart problems, perhaps he had an attack while swimming.”

  “It was nothing like that. He needed to detox. It was like a health hydro.”

  Bakkies digested that. Then he got to his feet. “Your brother has been away since 7:00 a.m.—pretty well eight hours. I’m going to get some constables to look around here in the undergrowth, ask the neighbors if they noticed anything unusual. We’ll keep watching for any accident or assault reports. We’ll do everything we can.” He took his leave. Dianna was polite but skeptical.

  Driving Zelda into town, as much to make conversation as for information, he asked her in Afrikaans when she had last seen Angus Hofmeyr.

  “Not on this visit,” she replied, shaking her head.

  “How come?”

  “He kept to his room yesterday. Didn’t want to be disturbed.”

  Bakkies thought that odd. “Was the bed slept in last night?”

  “Oh, yes. And the clothes on the floor, and a dirty cup. Mr. Angus all right.”

  “And yesterday?”

  The maid shrugged. “I heard him talking to Miss Dianna in the morning. They seemed to be arguing. They usually do.”

  Bakkies nodded. “Brothers and sisters are like that sometimes,” he said, thinking of his own ambivalent relationship with his social-climbing sister.

  “Do you think he’s okay? He’s a good boy, whatever they say.”

  “Oh, yes,” said Inspector Swanepoel. “Probably met something young, attractive, and willing on the beach and went to her pad. I think he’ll turn up.”

  But he did not. The next day passed with no reports, and the neighbors had seen nothing untoward. Bakkies distributed copies of the picture and released the story to the press. The police asked people on the beach. No one had seen Hofmeyr, but one swimmer claimed to have seen a large shark close to shore, and had rapidly left the sea to work on his tan. They tried dogs, but although they happily followed the scent to the beach, there they lost focus. Perhaps all the disturbance of people walking barefoot. Perhaps Hofmeyr had gone straight into the sea. Against his will, Bakkies began to believe that Angus Hofmeyr had not come out of it again.

  Chapter 54

  Strings of expensive homes and holiday villas straddle the first dunes along the sea of Plettenberg Bay. Behind are condominiums housing the somewhat less wealthy. One of these belonged to a middle-aged divorcée, Pat Marks. She shared it with Marcel.

  Pat made a habit of an early jog along the beach with Marcel, followed by a swim. After the exercise she felt refreshed and ready to face the day. Marcel loved to jog. He was a standard poodle, black and boisterous with a Latin temperament to match his name and breeding. Pat had no time for toy dogs. Marcel provided protection as well as company and entertainment.

  As she jogged along Robberg Beach past the Hofmeyr house, Pat felt a twinge of guilt generated by her previous twinges of envy. The house gazed down from its lofty setting on the dune, its curving patios on three levels seeking the ultimate view rather than architectural elegance. She had only met Dianna Hofmeyr once, and had found her pleasant enough. Pat could imagine her pain now, two days after the disappearance of her brother. The agony of speculation without certainty.

  After another half mile or so, Pat was tiring. Usu
ally she would catch her breath and have a swim. Marcel would patiently wait, having discovered long ago that he did not like the sea, and that his mistress did not welcome being saved from it. But this morning she just slowed to a walk. The sea wasn’t inviting.

  Marcel caught up and passed her. With more enthusiasm than grace, he dived into a roll on the beach. He got up full of sand, shook himself, and sat on his haunches. His pink tongue quivered as he panted. His pompom tail wagged when Pat laughed at him. Then he was up again in her footsteps. Suddenly he was off, haring across the beach. Pat laughed again. She knew what he was about. His great joy was chasing seagulls, and she could see three black-backed gulls some way off. Today, as usual, the gulls took flight, but Marcel seemed to have lost interest in them. He was sniffing a piece of gray driftwood where they had been. Checking the male competition, Pat assumed. But then he lifted it in his mouth. Pat was getting closer now, and it didn’t look like driftwood anymore. Even before she was close enough to tell with certainty, she realized what it was.

  “Marcel! Leave! Come here!” The dog was not particularly well trained, but reacted to her tone of voice. He dropped it, but instead of coming to her, he sat waiting. Now Pat could see clearly what had been in his mouth. It was part of a human forearm with the hand still attached, grayed and swollen by the sea. The gulls must have been pecking it, and perhaps fish had already nibbled it. But some of the wounds looked deeper. Perhaps other dogs. Suddenly overcome by nausea, she ran to the bushes at the edge of the beach and threw up. Feeling better, she rinsed her mouth in the sea, biting the salt. After a few deep breaths, she rummaged in the pouch on her belt for her mobile phone.

  Pat wrapped her towel around her shoulders against her sudden chill. She sat with her back against a dune and waited for the police. Marcel barked when they came to take away his prize.