A Carrion Death & The 2nd Death of Goodluck Tinubu

by Michael Stanley

  Chapter 67

  When Dianna explained that she was being pestered by reporters about Angus’s death, the manager of the Grand Palm, helpful as always, showed her where to catch the service lift from the executive apartments on the fifth floor and how to get out of the hotel past the kitchens. He ensured that the security staff knew she was entitled to use it. Dianna thanked him and rewarded him with a grateful smile and a hundred pula. She returned with him to reception.

  Having cleared out her safe deposit box, she went to her room and packed her valuables and money into her computer case. Some clothes and other essentials went into a carry-on bag. The rest she left in the room. As long as one has access to money, everything is replaceable. Red Beard would have to be satisfied with the cash she had with her now. Once she was safe, she could plan a new future.

  She and her mother decided to have dinner in Dianna’s suite. Pamela ordered smoked salmon followed by lobster thermidor. Dianna warned her that it would be frozen crayfish tail from South Africa, but, as usual, Pamela ignored her advice. Dianna chose shrimps in pastry and then gemsbok fillet. There is a last time for everything, she thought. She opened a bottle of Dom Perignon for an aperitif, remembering the time she drank it with Jason. She felt her pulse quicken with sexual arousal at the recollection of her climax with him that night, the taste of his blood on her lips mixed with the champagne. He would be dead by now. The sexual feeling intensified.

  She tried to concentrate on her mother. Where’s her mind? Here, opposite me on the zebra-skin couch? Somewhere in England with her new lover? Like Angus, she had no shortage of those. Like son, like mother. Somewhere in the British Raj—the governor’s wife? I’ll never see her again after tonight. Do I even care?

  “Did you sort out the issue with the police?” Pamela asked matter-of-factly.

  “Yes. They had some weird theories. They were trying to link Angus, a body in the desert, and a geologist from one of Cecil’s mines. All nonsense, of course.”

  Pamela accepted this. She had little interest in goings-on in Botswana. “What will you do?”

  “Mother, I need to get things sorted out in my life. I don’t want to run BCMC. That was Angus’s idea, you know. He thought that you and Dad would have wanted that. He pushed me into it. But I think I want to build my own business. From the bottom up. Somewhere quite new.”

  Pamela thought about this. She had no interest in the company. It was a source of income, that was all. She knew that Roland had felt differently, had wanted Angus to take over the reins. There had never been any suggestion of Dianna’s involvement. Dianna was Daddy’s little girl. Nothing more. Nothing less. “Whatever you want is fine, my dear. Cecil can run the company. He seems quite good at that. He’s quite sensible when he keeps his pants on,” she concluded nastily.

  Dianna nodded. “I thought you’d feel that way.” She wanted this evening to be different. To mean something. To resolve something. To get beyond politeness and formality. She looked down at the floor. “Do you miss him?” she asked.

  “Your father? I did at first. He was a very powerful man. His attraction was in that power, confidence, control. I found that irresistible. I sound like a schoolgirl, don’t I? We were good together, but I hated Africa. I always wanted to go home. But he was a superman here. In England he was just another rich man without the connections or breeding. England was full of kryptonite for him.”

  “I meant Angus.”

  Pamela turned her head away. Tears started to squeeze from her eyes. “My mascara will run,” she said, her voice unsteady.

  The starters arrived, and they settled around one corner of the dining table for six. They ate in silence and then waited for the main course to arrive. Why is pain the only point of contact? Dianna wondered. It’s always been that way.

  “He’s here, Mummy. Angus is here. We’re all here. I could show you.” But she did not. Her mother wouldn’t understand. She never had. Pamela looked at her blankly. Not knowing this person with whom she was dining. “I don’t understand,” she confirmed. Dianna shook her head. “It doesn’t matter anymore,” she said sadly.

  The main courses came. Dianna had ordered the most expensive chardonnay for her mother and the most expensive shiraz for herself. “You can’t get decent wine in this country,” Pamela complained. She took a mouthful of the thermidor. “The sauce is all right, but the lobster was frozen.”

  Dianna was enjoying the gemsbok. She had asked for it rare, and the blood leaked into the mushroom sauce. She thought of Jason with a moment of regret. There will be lots more men, Angus had told her. Anyone you want. She smiled. “It’ll be all right, Mummy. You’ll see.”

  “No,” said Pamela. “The flesh is quite soggy.”

  Pamela went to her own suite at about 10:30 p.m., claiming tiredness. Dianna kissed her mother good night and gave her an unusual hug, long and clinging. She didn’t expect to see her again after that night. In her room, Dianna booked a taxi, explaining to the dispatcher exactly where to meet her, and then watched television. She was calm. She had gambled and lost, but she was young, smart, beautiful, and rich. And she had Angus and Daniel! Plenty of opportunities lay ahead.

  At last she picked up the two bags, used the service lift, and left through the delivery entrance. She gave the security guard twenty pula, and he let her out. He would tell the police the next morning that it was around half past eleven. He had recently checked the time because he was going off duty at midnight. He watched her get into a taxi and drive off.

  When his passenger told him where she wanted to go, the driver was concerned. It was a poor area on the outskirts of Gaborone, and the street she wanted was an access road to the area. It wasn’t the sort of location that a smartly dressed white woman would frequent in the middle of the night. But she said she was meeting someone there.

  They arrived at a bus stop in a dip on the ill-lit dirt road just before midnight. It was deserted. The driver insisted on staying until his passenger’s friend appeared, and she relented to the extent of making a call on her mobile phone. “He’s a few minutes away,” she told the driver. “Thank you, I’ll be fine. Please go now.” She paid, adding a large tip. With a doubtful shrug, the driver headed back to the city.

  A vehicle came over the rise in the other direction. As Red Beard had told her, it was a white pickup truck. It roared down the road fast, trailing a cloud of dust. That must be him, she thought. But her next thought was that it couldn’t be. Because the vehicle was not slowing down.

  Chapter 68

  Now and Then

  Bongani is tired. He reads a draft of a student’s honors project. While there is nothing really wrong with it, it seems pedestrian and poorly thought out. Much of it is quoted from textbooks, with little evidence of original thought. He isn’t enjoying it. He puts it aside and turns his attention to the television, which has the sound turned low. The late news is on. Some minister is opening a new school, his speech reported in painful detail. Bongani leans his head on the back of the couch and tries to relax.

  A banging on the front door jerks him out of his reverie. It’s after eleven o’clock at night. What could this be about? He pulls open the door and glares at the intruder.

  “What is it?” he says too loudly. He looks down on an old wizened man, neatly dressed. He is holding a walking stick in his left hand, while his right draws patterns in front of his face, so that Bongani cannot see him clearly. The man’s eyes are unblinking and intense. Suddenly Bongani feels completely confused. He feels he should know this man, should know him well, yet also that he should fear him. But then, just as suddenly, his confusion clears.

  “Father! How wonderful of you to visit me. Come in. Come in and sit down. I’ll make us some tea. The way you like it.”

  The old man nods, smiles, and sits down at the dining table, while Bongani busies himself in the kitchen. He returns soon with two mugs of strong tea and an opened can of sweetened condensed milk, which he spoons liberally into each cup. He remembers
that when he was a boy, his father would come to him at bedtime with hot milk or perhaps hot chocolate for a special treat. Then he would tell a story of the birds or the animals of Botswana. How Mokoe becomes Man’s friend and warns him of danger. How Morokaupula takes over other birds’ nests and cheats them into rearing its young. How Morubise is bewitched and brings bad luck in the night.

  “Father, are you well? This was a long journey.” The old man just nods and says nothing. He smiles, takes a small paper packet from his pocket, and adds something white to both their mugs. Extra sugar, Bongani supposes. They both have a sweet tooth. They drink in companionable silence. When the tea is finished, the old man speaks for the first time.

  “My son, I will tell you what I see. Do you want that?”

  “Oh, yes! Please, Father!” says Bongani Sibisi, PhD, expecting a story.

  “Will you promise to go straight to sleep after that?” He waits for the nod of acquiescence.

  “This is how it is,” he begins. “You know of the bird serothe?”

  Bongani says he knows it well. “It is the bird all in black with the forked tail. It is drongo in English.” He is proud that he knows this.

  The old man nods and says, “Indeed. Here is a feather to remind you of it.” He produces a black tail-feather. Bongani, an eight-year-old boy again, takes it and carefully fixes it upright in a crack in the table.

  “Now this bird is not only pretty, but also very clever. Because he can copy the other birds. He will sit in a tree and make calls that belong to them. Then everybody thinks there is a different bird there because he does it so well. Indeed, that is his magic. You sometimes see the herd boys watching the cattle listen to him. Most of the time the cattle can watch themselves, so the boys get lazy and bored. So they listen to the bird and guess what it is. Then they throw little stones into the tree until it flies out. And most times it is indeed the serothe, which is just teasing them! Lazy boys! So the serothe enjoys being other birds sometimes, and it makes people laugh. And that is how it should be.” Bongani nods quickly, enjoying the tale.

  The old man closes his eyes. His voice deepens, losing inflection, becoming almost a chant. “Now this is what I see,” he says. He grasps something in his pocket and pulls out a closed fist. “This is at the center, my son. I see one of the serothe birds that is different. It thinks that if it can talk like another bird, it is indeed that bird. Thus it thinks that it can be segodi—a hawk. It flies high, making the calls of the hawk. Other birds are fearful. Indeed, a little part of it becomes a hawk. It thinks it can be ntshu—an eagle. So it flies high against the sun and cries eagle cries, and the others believe, perhaps, that it is an eagle. So a little part of it becomes an eagle. Then it is no longer serothe, but neither is it Hawk, nor is it Eagle. It is something else altogether. Something made of three.” The old man took a deep breath and continued.

  “It doesn’t know what it is, nor where it belongs. It wants to be with eagles, but instead it finds itself with manong—vultures—and wants to share their meat. So it flies very high and follows them down to the dead flesh they are eating. It sits and cries to them in their language and demands flesh. And some are fooled and think it is a vulture, and some are fooled and think it is an eagle.

  “But there is one very evil vulture with its face all on fire. It is kgosi yamanong—the king of the vultures. The dead meat is its find. It is not fooled by the magic. ‘Why, you are just serothe!’ it says. ‘How dare you?’ This vulture is eating and has a piece of bone in its beak.” The old man opens his fist to reveal a small bone. Now he holds it between his thumb and forefinger, held curved like a beak. But to Bongani it becomes kgosi yamanong—the largest of the vultures—holding a bone in its vicious bill, the feathers on its face stained blood-crimson.

  “He drops it. Thus.” The old man opens his fingers so that the bone clatters to the tabletop and rolls and topples before it is still. Bongani watches, mesmerized. “And NOW he grabs the serothe and bites it dead.” The old man bangs his hand on the table with such force his tea mug falls over. Bongani jumps. Cold tea thick with whitish sludge trickles onto the table.

  The old man says nothing more. Bongani realizes that is the end of the story. It has frightened him. Usually his father would add something humorous to take away the sting of a tale with a bad ending, or explain the moral. But tonight there is nothing but silence.

  “But what does it mean, Father?” asks the eight-year-old son at last.

  The old man opens his eyes. “It means what it says. It is its own truth.”

  “I don’t understand it,” says Bongani, a bit testily. He wants to be tucked up in bed and forget about the evil vulture. He feels tired, woozy, unsettled.

  “Now you must go to sleep as you promised.”

  Gratefully Bongani gets up, walks back to the couch, and slumps down. He is really very sleepy. “Good night, Father,” he says. “Thank you for the story,” he adds, remembering his manners. But there is no response.

  Chapter 69

  Bongani jerked awake, disoriented. His head ached a little, and his mouth felt like the Kalahari. The television displayed a test pattern and played some background music. It must be very late, he realized. They’ve already played the national anthem. He checked his watch. It was nearly two o’clock in the morning. I must have fallen asleep on the couch, he thought. The stiffness in his neck testified to that. Then he remembered his vivid dream. An extraordinary visit and story from his beloved father, who had died nearly four years ago. Perhaps the dream was important? He knew how quickly a dream—even one so clear at first—could fade and be lost. So he began writing the outline of the dream and the details he remembered. He used the back of the hapless honors student’s project. Only when he had it all down did his mind turn to other things. He felt the urgent need for bed and the rest of the night’s sleep. But first he needed a big glass of water and some aspirin.

  Turning off the persistent television, he walked toward the kitchen through the dining area. There he stopped, frozen. On the dining table were two empty tea mugs, one knocked over, a black feather, and a small bone. He guessed at once the identity of the bone, and shuddered. He righted the mug, smelling a bitterness not of the tea.

  He checked the front door. It was closed and locked. It locked automatically if the catch was on and the door shut. He checked all the rooms to ensure he was alone. Then he found the card Kubu had given him with the detective’s home number handwritten on the back. His hand shook as he dialed.

  Kubu came at once. Bongani sounded frantic on the phone, and Kubu was concerned. The young man had always seemed highly strung, but this time he sounded close to the breaking point. The two sat on the couch while they each drained half a tumbler of Scotch. Kubu poured; Bongani’s hands had been too unsteady. Kubu read the notes about the dream while the young man tried to pull himself together.

  “Do you feel better now?”

  Bongani nodded. His face was still gray and drawn.

  Kubu stood and walked around the room, rubbing his eyes. Bongani’s little house was neat but lacked the feel of a home. You need a woman for that, Kubu thought. He picked up a framed picture from the sideboard. It was a black-and-white photograph showing a younger Bongani. To his right stood a big man, slightly taller than Bongani, with his arm rather charmingly holding a petite, smiling lady. The men looked very formal and a little embarrassed.

  “Are these your parents?”

  “Yes. That was taken about two years before my father died. When I’d been accepted to go to the University of Minnesota.”

  “In your notes you say you looked down at the man at the door. There are no steps up to your house, and your father was taller than you. It couldn’t have been your father. He didn’t look that old, either.”

  “Of course it wasn’t my father! My father is dead. It must have been the Old Man, the witch doctor. Look at the finger bone on the table, for God’s sake.”

  Kubu was relieved. This sounded more like the rat
ional scientist again. He nodded. “That white sludge will turn out to be some sort of hypnotic drug. You both took it. It made you more open to the suggestion that you were a youngster again hearing a story, and that he was your father. And that you really saw a vulture, for that matter.”

  “Why does he haunt me like this? I can’t help him. What does he want?”

  Kubu shook his head. “I don’t know. He hasn’t been seen up at the lodge since the Gathering after the body was found. I tried to find him after your last encounter, but he’d vanished. But now he has left the finger bone—if that is what it actually is—so perhaps this is the end of it. He’s never tried to harm you or get money from you.” Kubu wondered why he was giving the benefit of the doubt to this charlatan who was terrorizing his young acquaintance.

  Kubu’s mobile phone rang. It made him start; he had forgotten he had it with him. And it was nearly 3:00 a.m.! He checked the screen, and his heart sank when he saw it was the director. “It’s my boss,” he whispered to Bongani as he took the call.

  Some minutes passed as he spoke to Mabaku. When he ended the call, he looked as shaken as Bongani. He finished his Scotch in two gulps.

  “I’m sorry, Bongani, I have to go. I’ll send over a constable to stay here until morning and collect the evidence. Don’t touch anything. I’d try to get some sleep if I were you.”

  “What’s happened?”

  Kubu hesitated. “They’ve found Dianna Hofmeyr. She’s been the victim of a hit-and-run. She’s in critical condition, and they’ve taken her to hospital. I need to get to the scene. The place will be crawling with reporters in no time.”

  “When?”

  “When what?” Kubu was already collecting his jacket and car keys.