A Carrion Death & The 2nd Death of Goodluck Tinubu

by Michael Stanley

Tatwa had the confession he wanted. The case was solved. Why was he not elated?

  “My ancestors knew I would end up here,” Enoch said. “It is how my life was to be.”

  Enoch put his arms on the table, his head on his arms, and said no more. Tatwa and the Namibian policeman tried to get more details but to no avail. Enoch had told his story. He had nothing more to say.

  Chapter 79

  On Monday at 8:00 a.m., Mabaku arrived unannounced at the Central Prison and had Beardy brought to an interview room. He waved away the guards, who withdrew doubtfully. This was against procedure. Beardy wanted his lawyer but Mabaku dismissed that with contempt.

  “It’s time for us to have a private talk, Mr. Khumalo. You’ve not been very helpful. Lots of promises, lots of delaying tactics, no delivery.” Beardy started to protest but Mabaku frowned him to silence. “Yes, you’ve told us all about the kidnappings. Everything we already knew. But not what it was all for.” Again Beardy tried to interrupt and again Mabaku ignored him. “Well, we know now. Assistant Superintendent Bengu has unorthodox methods, but they sometimes pay off. You were part of a plot to depose—perhaps assassinate—the president of Zimbabwe. We don’t yet know all the details, but we will. This will be very embarrassing for the Republic of Botswana. It seems that we were also used as a conduit to finance this attempted coup. We will, of course, cooperate fully with the Zimbabwean authorities. But we don’t want to look incompetent. We want to be able to show them that we took every step to avoid an illegal action against their government.” He glared at Beardy. “You can help us. If you do, we will recommend leniency on the kidnapping charges. You’ll want to be in a Botswana prison for the time being, safe from extradition to Zimbabwe, won’t you, Mr. Khumalo?”

  Mabaku sat back, folded his arms, and waited. If Beardy called his bluff, he would have no options left. It all depended on whether Beardy believed the plot had failed and moved to save himself, or whether he decided that if he kept silent all might still be well. Mabaku stared at him without blinking. At last Beardy dropped his eyes. That was when Mabaku knew he had won.

  Mabaku went straight to the commissioner. He was involved in an important meeting, but Mabaku persuaded his assistant that he had to see him immediately. A few minutes later he was ushered into a small meeting room. The commissioner had been talking to the Minister of Foreign Affairs and International Cooperation. The commissioner introduced Mabaku and invited him to sit. “I think I know what you are going to tell us, Mabaku. The minister should hear it directly from you.”

  “Thank you, Commissioner,” Mabaku said. Turning to the minister, he continued, “I have a confession from a certain Mr. John Khumalo, who is being held in connection with the kidnapping of Assistant Superintendent Bengu’s sister-in-law. It probably won’t stand up in court, because I embellished the truth a bit, but the purpose was to discover what was going on. Before it was too late.”

  “And that is?” The minister seemed only mildly interested.

  “A plot to overthrow the president of Zimbabwe. A coup is planned for the period that he is out of Zimbabwe, when he is here in Botswana for the African Union meeting. What’s more, it was being financed by monies smuggled from South Africa into Zimbabwe. Through Botswana.”

  The commissioner cut in. “After you spoke to me last night, Mabaku, I decided that I should apprise the minister of the possibilities you suggested. He wasn’t as surprised as I expected. It seems there have been rumors developing over the past few weeks. We knew nothing. So we said nothing. Now we know something.” He stopped and looked at the minister expectantly.

  The minister rubbed his beard, making a sandpaper noise. “Director Mabaku, you are aware, I’m sure, that the relations between ourselves and the current leadership of Zimbabwe are very strained. Since we rejected the 2008 elections, we have been almost alone in Southern Africa in opposing the regime there. We had great difficulty accepting that Zimbabwe’s president will be here for the African Union meeting, but it was made clear that if we interfered, the meeting would move elsewhere.” He looked at Mabaku with more intensity. “What do you think we should do with this information now, Director Mabaku?”

  Mabaku looked back without blinking. “Minister, I’m a policeman not a politician. I enforce the laws of the country. I have no doubt that many laws have been broken. Laws of this country and of another. We are obliged by protocol to inform that other country. Without delay.”

  “Even if that removes the possibility of a different sort of government taking the reins in an important neighboring country?”

  “Minister, as I said, I’m not a politician. But I haven’t noticed great democratic progress in countries where governments came to power in coups or military takeovers. I believe in the rule of law. The end is desirable, but it can never justify inappropriate means.”

  The minister rose and held out his hand. “Thank you, Director. I’m glad we have people like you running our police force. We’ll think about what you’ve told us. In the interim, I trust you will keep this meeting and everything you have learned today in the strictest confidence?”

  Mabaku gave a stiff nod, shook hands, and left for his office at Millennium Park.

  That afternoon General Joseph Chikosi received a message from a contact he trusted. The message was short. The general and his key men had very little time to flee the country. The government would soon be looking for them. And once it looked, they would not be hard to find. The general felt obliged to tell Madrid. He, too, would soon be in serious danger. Chikosi didn’t really care about that, but he had his honor. However, Madrid was nowhere to be found. It seemed Madrid’s spies were even better than those of the leader of the coup,

  That evening the government of Zimbabwe announced that due to pressing business, the president would not, after all, attend the African Union meeting. A deputy with full rights to speak on behalf of the government would stand in for him. This came with a very gracious apology to the government of Botswana. It seemed relations were on the mend.

  The evening before, a charter flight left Zimbabwe headed for Argentina. None of the passengers went through customs or immigration formalities. The plane’s cargo was in sealed boxes that also were not inspected. One of the men was a short and swarthy European. He spoke in Spanish to the pilot, who nodded without surprise. The flight plan had just changed, but Zimbabwe air traffic control would not be informed.

  Madrid settled himself into an aisle seat. He started to relax. He had played double or quits with Joseph Chikosi and had lost. Shoving some U.S. dollar bills into his wallet, he came across a remaining 1,000,000 Zimbabwe dollar note, a souvenir. Madrid laughed, partly at the size of the note—worth less than 10 U.S. cents on the black market—and partly because he had offered it in answer to Johannes’s question about how much he would spend to spring the bearded idiot from a Botswanan jail.

  He signaled for a beer. He was philosophical about the Zimbabwe project. Madrid was leaving empty-handed, but there would be another country, another opportunity. There always was.

  The plane started to taxi to the runway, and he checked his watch. It was 6:30 p.m. Good. He had told his Zimbabwean contacts he would leave early the next morning. He fully expected the airport to be full of soldiers by then. They had skins to save too.

  The plane took off and headed west over Zambia and Angola, then out over the ocean. As Madrid sipped an ice-cold beer, the huge ball of the setting sun spread blood over the African Atlantic.

  Chapter 80

  As soon as he came in the next morning, Kubu tossed his briefcase onto his desk and barged passed Miriam into Director Mabaku’s office. Warily, Mabaku looked up from his desk. “You made Beardy talk, didn’t you?” Kubu threw himself into a chair, which creaked ominously.

  “Yes, Kubu, you were right.”

  “But they knew already, didn’t they?” said Kubu shrewdly. “That’s why I heard nothing from you. They were just keeping a low profile hoping it would all work out.”


  Mabaku was puzzled. “Who knew?”

  “The commissioner! The minister! The great Republic of Botswana! We were in on it, weren’t we? More what the world expects from the CIA than from the Republic of Botswana.”

  “Kubu, this is nonsense. I’m sure the commissioner knew nothing about the coup. I’m not saying no one knew what was going on in Zimbabwe. It all seemed rather neat, didn’t it?”

  “And my family was attacked because the politicians decided to dabble in the affairs of another country!”

  Mabaku was getting irritated. This was an issue that should be left well alone. “You may recall that you were the one who got Madrid onto your family. That had nothing to do with any high-ups. I was furious with you at the time, and I was right.”

  Kubu had to accept the justice of this.

  Mabaku spread his hands on the desk in a conciliatory gesture. “We didn’t engineer this. That’s for certain. You think they’d pick someone like Goodluck Tinubu to courier more than half a million dollars from South Africa? Hardly. I’m sure no one in the government even knew about him, otherwise I’d have had a lot more heat when they discovered he was dead.”

  Kubu had another thought. “Maybe it was the South Africans? That would explain their shadowing of Tinubu without letting you know. Maybe the money was raised by powerful people ready to support the coup. Maybe the money started life as South African rands before it morphed into U.S. dollars.”

  Mabaku shrugged. “The South African government always seemed pretty hands-off about Zimbabwe. Rich, well-connected individuals putting up the money to further their own agendas? Well, that’s certainly possible.”

  Kubu wriggled in the chair, causing more creaking protests. “A good man, a citizen of Botswana, was murdered for that money. Money for an illegal plot. And we turned blind eyes to it.”

  Mabaku shook his head. “It won’t stand up, Kubu. Goodluck knew what he was doing, and he must’ve realized the risks. What happened was the result of a confluence of circumstances.”

  “So Goodluck’s life was wasted twice.”

  “Well, I had a call from the commissioner this morning. It seems a pretty clear message got through to the president of Zimbabwe. We may see some changes there in the future.”

  Kubu thought for a moment. “Perhaps,” he said.

  Mabaku spotted the hesitation, the waning of steam, and slyly moved the subject to the Jackalberry case. “Tatwa’s very pleased with himself. Getting that confession from Kokorwe really tied up the case. He’s done a good job. Impressive. Of course, you were the brains behind it. When you decided to use them.”

  “It was a joint effort. Tatwa’s a good detective. He’s got brains too. He’s learned a lot from this case.”

  “What was the final story of the murders? I’ve got Tatwa’s report, but I haven’t had a chance to read the details yet.”

  Kubu thought for a moment to get the pieces of the story in the right order.

  “Well, it was pretty much the way we’d worked it out already. Salome thought Goodluck was one of the group who’d attacked her and murdered her family, so Dupie snooped around in his tent. Dupie was intrigued by the briefcase, which looked out of place with the old suitcase and cheap clothing Goodluck had with him, but it was locked. So Dupie got Enoch to filch Goodluck’s keys and investigate at dinnertime. That nearly went wrong, because Goodluck realized almost at once that the keys were missing and made a hell of a fuss. But they pretended he’d dropped them at the buffet.

  “Enoch had an amazing story to tell Dupie: The briefcase was full of one hundred dollar U.S. bills. From there greed and revenge egged each other on. The plan was to murder Goodluck late that night, strip his body, and dump it in the river. The crocodiles would take care of the rest. Dupie would pretend to take Goodluck to the airstrip early the next morning, giving a family emergency as the reason. So there’d be no murder in evidence at all. Obviously people would look for Goodluck, but the people who were expecting the dollars would put two and two together and get five: that Goodluck had taken off with their money. Dupie and Enoch might’ve got away with that.

  “But the plan went wrong, because when they’d killed Goodluck, they found he no longer had the money. He’d passed it on to someone else. I think this is why Goodluck was found on the floor. They were about to drag him to the river and throw him to the crocs when they realized the money was missing.

  “So Enoch and Dupie had two problems. First, who had the money, and second, how to deal with killing two people. No one would buy a double family emergency that forced two completely independent people to leave the camp early and then disappear.

  “They solved the second problem by actually making Goodluck look murdered. Dupie got clever and mutilated the body to make it look like a revenge killing of some kind. He knew we’d see through that, but his idea was that his hypothetical murderer would want to apply some misdirection to point away from the money.

  “As to who had the money, they assumed it would be one of the black guests. The choice was between Zondo, Gomwe, and Langa. Langa seemed unlikely. He had come with Goodluck. Why give him the money at the camp when they could do it in comfort in the car? Gomwe was a possibility, but he came from South Africa. Why travel across the whole of Botswana to do the exchange? What was wrong with Mochudi itself? That left Zondo. Flown in from Zimbabwe by charter. It made the most sense. So they went after him, and they were right.”

  “So it was Zondo who ended in the river?”

  “That’s right. And the story of the family emergency was transferred to him. They even dressed up Enoch in Zondo’s hat and jacket in case anyone was up and watching when the two of them left, supposedly Dupie and Zondo going to the airstrip. On the mainland, Enoch borrowed a mokoro—it turned out to be Solomon’s—to get back to the camp and take William Boardman bird watching, while Dupie drove toward the airstrip and got rid of Zondo’s hat and coat. Our lucky break was when those were found.”

  “What about Langa and Boardman?”

  “Langa was following Goodluck. He must have realized the money had been passed on to Zondo, so he transferred his attention to him. Maybe he heard something and went to check. Anyway he came upon Dupie and Enoch coming back from the river with bloody hands. He challenged them. That was a fatal mistake.

  “As for Boardman, he was up even earlier than usual, going about his bird watching, and saw the two men crossing the river in a mokoro. Of course he had his binoculars with him and took a look. He spotted that it was Enoch and Dupie, and probably wouldn’t have thought any more about it, but he was surprised by Enoch’s hat. Exactly like Zondo’s. Dupie had been too clever again. But it wasn’t spotting the hole in Dupie’s story that was his fatal mistake, it was trying to use it for blackmail.”

  Mabaku shook his head at the wiles of people. “And they pulled that murder off by setting up a meeting between Dupie and Boardman in Maun, and pretending that Enoch had broken down along the road to Kasane when, in fact, he made his way along the firebreak road to Maun, killed Boardman, and headed back to Kasane on the main road, even making a cell phone call to try to confuse the time of death.”

  Kubu nodded. “Yes, that’s exactly what they did. I wonder if Notu is still trying to find his robbers!”

  “Has Du Pisanie admitted all this yet?”

  Kubu shook his head. “No, he’s sticking to his story: it was all Enoch acting on his own. He only admits providing Enoch with an alibi for the trip to Maun. But no judge will buy that in the face of Enoch’s coherent confession and the disappearance of Ishmael Zondo. Dupie claims Zondo vanished because he still had the goods he was going to swap for the money. But that’s nonsense. In fact, I no longer think it was a swap. It was payment for services about to be rendered. To the new interim military government of Zimbabwe.” Kubu snorted.

  “What about the McGlashan woman? What was her role?”

  Kubu looked pensive. “First I thought she was the brains behind the whole thing, but now I’m not sur
e. She claims she knew nothing about what was going on, and she’s been pretty convincing. She may have known about them, but she certainly wasn’t actively involved in any of the murders. Enoch is adamant that she knew nothing at all, and he has nothing to gain by saying that. Frankly, whether she knew about the crimes or not, I don’t think we have a case against her unless Enoch and Dupie change their stories. We’ll sweat them a bit longer, but then we’ll have to let her go.”

  Mabaku nodded slowly. “Good work. How did you eventually get four when you put two and two together?”

  Kubu shrugged, a little amazed that the director was so complimentary this morning. “It was a lot of small things. Goodluck had his throat cut after he was dead, and Boardman was tortured after he was dead. It seemed an odd coincidence. The two glasses in Goodluck’s tent with Zondo’s prints on one. Why would Zondo leave a glass there after murdering Goodluck? In fact, Dupie brought the glass there from Zondo’s tent after the murders. Then there was Zondo’s disappearance. Even if he’d planned the whole thing carefully, it was hard to imagine he would vanish so perfectly. We thought maybe the Zimbabwe police had him, but my visit there convinced me otherwise. And if he had gone to—say—South America, then Boardman’s murder was unconnected. That seemed unlikely.”

  Kubu had more to tell. “Finally there was the issue of Zondo’s hat. Why would he discard it? He always wore it at the camp. First I thought that he’d deliberately used it as an inverse disguise—attracting attention to the hat rather than to himself—but Moremi said he had an attachment to the hat, and I believed him. That meant the hat was discarded because Zondo wasn’t around anymore. Once I had that insight, the rest came easily.”

  Mabaku came around from behind his desk and gave Kubu a thump on the shoulder. “Well done! It seems the hippo outfoxed the crocodiles!”

  Kubu thought of Zondo’s consumed body, and Tatwa struggling in the river. “Maybe,” he said somberly. “But it was a close thing.” He rose to leave, but another thought occurred to him.