Detective Kubu 01; A Carrion Death Read online

  Michael Stanley

  A Carrion Death

  Detective Kubu #1

  2008, EN

  Smashed skull, snapped ribs, and a cloying smell of carrion. Leave the body for the hyenas to devour no body, no case.

  But when Kalahari game rangers stumble on a human corpse midmeal, it turns out the murder wasn’t perfect after all. Enough evidence is left to suggest foul play. Detective David ‘Kubu’ Bengu of the Botswana Criminal Investigation Department is assigned to the case.

  The detective’s personality and physique match his moniker. The nickname ‘Kubu’ is Setswana for ‘hippopotamus’ a seemingly docile creature, but one of the deadliest on the continent. Beneath Kubu’s pleasant surface lies the same unwavering resolve that makes the hippopotamus so deceptively dangerous. Both will trample everything in their path to reach an objective.

  From the sun-baked riverbeds of the Kalahari to the highest offices of an international conglomerate, Kubu follows a blood-soaked trail in search of answers.

  Beneath a mountain of lies and superstitions, he uncovers a chain of crimes leading to the most powerful figures in the country influential enemies who will kill anyone in their way.

  A memorable detective makes his debut in this gritty, mesmerizing thriller. Set amid the beauty and darkness of contemporary Africa, A Carrion Death is the first entry in an evocative new series cutting to the heart of today’s Botswana a modern democracy threatened by unstable neighbors, poachers, and diamond smugglers. Those trying to expose the corrupt ringleaders will find themselves fighting for their lives…

  Table of contents

  Cast of Characters

  Botswana and Surrounding Countries

  PART ONE: A Carrion Death

  1 · 2 · 3 · 4 · 5 · 6 · 7

  PART TWO: Nature’s Needs

  8 · 9 · 10 · 11 · 12 · 13

  PART THREE: Reading the Writing

  14 · 15 · 16 · 17 · 18

  PART FOUR: Pricking Thumbs

  19 · 20 · 21 · 22 · 23

  PART FIVE: False Thieves

  24 · 25 · 26 · 27 · 28 · 29 · 30 · 31 · 32 · 33

  PART SIX: Ugly Death

  34 · 35 · 36 · 37 · 38 · 39 · 40 · 41

  PART SEVEN: Dumb Jewels

  42 · 43 · 44 · 45 · 46 · 47 · 48 · 49 · 50 · 51 · 52

  PART EIGHT: Rank Offence

  53 · 54 · 55 · 56 · 57 · 58 · 59 · 60 · 61 · 62 · 63

  PART NINE: Deceivers Ever

  64 · 65 · 66 · 67 · 68 · 69 · 70 · 71

  PART TEN: A Villain’s Mind

  72 · 73 · 74 · 75 · 76 · 77 · 78 · 79 · 80

  EPILOGUE: Painted Devil

  Authors’ Note

  Glossary

  ∨ A Carrion Death ∧

  Cast of Characters

  Words in square brackets are approximate phonetic pronounciations.

  Banda, Edison Detective sergeant in the Botswana Criminal Investigation Department (CID) [Edison BUN-dah]

  Bengu, Amantle Kubu’s mother [Ah-MUN-tle’ BEN-goo]

  Bengu, David ‘Kubu’ Assistant superintendent in the Botswana Criminal Investigation Department [David ‘KOO-boo’ BEN-goo]

  Bengu, Joy Kubu’s wife [Joy BEN-goo]

  Bengu, Wilmon Kubu’s father [WILL-mon BEN-goo]

  Botha, Andries Assistant manager and ranger at Dale’s Camp [UN-dreess BOH-tuh]

  Daniel Behind-the-scenes player identified only by his first name

  Dlamini, Zanele Forensic specialist in the Botswana police [Zah-Nfi-le Dlah-MEE-nee]

  Ferraz, Jason Manager of the Maboane diamond mine [Jason Ferr-AZZ]

  Frankental, Aron Geologist at the Maboane diamond mine [Aron FRANK-en-tall]

  Hofmeyr, Angus Son of Roland Hofmeyr, and Dianna Hofmeyr’s twin brother; inherits control of the Botswana Cattle and Mining Company (BCMC) on his thirtieth birthday [Angus HOFF-mayor]

  Hofmeyr, Cecil Brother of Roland Hofmeyr; has been running the Botswana Cattle and Mining Company and the Roland Hofmeyr Trust since Roland’s death

  Hofmeyr, Dianna Daughter of Roland Hofmeyr, and Angus Hofmeyr’s twin sister; inherits shares in the Botswana Cattle and Mining Company on her thirtieth birthday

  Hofmeyr, Pamela Wife of Roland Hofmeyr, and mother of Angus and Dianna

  Hofmeyr, Roland Founder of the Botswana Cattle and Mining Company, killed in a plane crash

  Kobedi, Thembu Middle man [TEM-boo Ko-BE-dee]

  Mabaku, Jacob Director of the Botswana Criminal Investigation Department [Jacob Mah-BAH-koo]

  MacGregor, Ian Pathologist for the Botswana police

  Molefe, Jonny Secretary to Cecil Hofmeyr [Jonny Mo-LE-fe]

  Nama, Robert Government-appointed board member of BCMC. Always with Peter Rabafana [Robert NAH-mah]

  Rabafana, Peter Government-appointed board member of BCMC. Always with Robert Nama [Peter Rah-bah-FAH-nah]

  Red Beard Nickname of Angolan operator

  Serome, Pleasant Joy Bengu’s sister [Pleasant Se-ROE-me]

  Sibisi, Bongani Professor of ecology at the University of Botswana [Bon-GAH-nee See-BEE-see]

  Swanepoel, Johannes ‘Bakkies’ Detective in the South African Police [Yoh-HUN-ne-s SWAN-e-pull]

  Tiro, Peter Detective sergeant in the Botswana Criminal Investigation Department [Peter TEE-roe]

  ∨ A Carrion Death ∧

  Botswana and Surrounding Countries

  ∨ A Carrion Death ∧

  PART ONE

  A Carrion Death

  “A carrion Death, within whose empty eye

  There is a written scroll!”

  Shakespeare, The Merchant of Venice, Act II, Scene 7

  FEBRUARY-MARCH 2006

  ∨ A Carrion Death ∧

  CHAPTER 1

  The hyena moved off when the men shouted. It stood about fifty metres away, watching them with its head low between powerful shoulders, wary, not fearful, waiting for its chance to retake the field. The men stood in silence, staring at what the hyena had been eating.

  Yellowed bones pierced through areas of sinew and desiccated skin. The head, separated from the spine, lay about a metre away. Remnants of skin on the upper face stretched in a death mask over the skull and pulled at the scalp. The lower part of the face had been torn away, and the back of the skull was smashed by jaws hungry for the brains. The eye sockets were empty, save for dried blood; one of the vultures had already had a turn. Snapped ribs lay scattered, but the backbone and pelvis were intact. One leg remained attached; the other was gone. The lower half of one arm was missing; the other, freshly crunched by the hyena, lay a short distance away. There was a cloying smell of carrion, unpleasant but not unbearable. The scavengers had removed most of the flesh and the desert sun had desiccated the rest. The flies, less cautious than the hyena, had startled to a buzzing swarm but now resettled, fat green jewels on the dirty bones.

  “It’s definitely a man,” said Andries unnecessarily.

  Bongani was staring at the bodiless head.

  “It’s not one of our people,” Andries continued. “Would’ve heard that somebody was missing. It’ll be one of those bloody poachers that have been causing trouble up north. Damned cheek, coming this close to the camp.” Andries gave the impression that the man had got his just deserts, given this lack of proper respect for the authorities.

  Bongani looked at the area around the corpse. Thorn acacias, trees typical of Kalahari stream verges, were scattered along the edges of the dry river. Vultures brooded in the branches, waiting for another chance at the remaining scraps should the men and the hyena withdraw. The riverbanks consisted of mud baked to hardness by the sun. From there scattered t
ufts of grass spread away from the bank, becoming less frequent as they battled the encroaching sand. Beyond that the desert had won, and the first slope of loose sand ran up to the Kalahari dunes, which stretched endlessly into the haze.

  The two men stood under one of the trees, its canopy cutting off the heat, its roots sucking moisture from the subterranean water. The body sprawled on the edge of a mess of twigs, leaves, and branches, which had fallen to the ground over the years. Behind it lay the sand bed of the long-vanished river, patterned with tracks of animals, some old with the edges of the imprints crumbling, and some as recent as the disturbed hyena.

  Bongani spoke for the first time since they had spotted the vultures circling. “Do you have problems with white poachers here?”

  Andries just looked at him.

  “Look at the head. There’s still some hair left on the scalp.”

  Andries knelt next to the skull and examined it more closely. Although the hair was fouled with blood, he could tell it was straight and perhaps five centimetres long. This was a disturbing development. These days game reserves survived on tourists rather than conservation imperatives, and bad publicity would be unwelcome.

  “You wouldn’t expect to find a poacher down here anyway. You just said so,” Bongani pointed out. “And why on his own in a dangerous area? They don’t operate like that.”

  Andries was reluctant to give up his simple diagnosis. “Some of them aren’t in gangs, you know. Just hungry people trying to get some food.” But he knew it would never wash with that straight hair. “But not the white ones,” he admitted. “It’ll be some damn-fool tourist. Has a few too many beers in the heat and decides to take off into the dunes to show how macho he is in his four-by-four that he’s never had off-road before. Then he gets stuck.” The retributive justice of this new idea made him feel a little better.

  Bongani focused farther up and down the river. The wind, animals, and the hard stream verge could explain the lack of footprints, but a vehicle track would last for years in these conditions. It was one of the many reasons why visitors had to stay on the roads.

  “Where’s the vehicle?” he asked.

  “He’ll have got stuck in the dunes and tried to walk out,” Andries replied.

  Bongani turned back to the body. The lengthening afternoon sun highlighted the dunes and concentrated his attention. “Wouldn’t he follow his vehicle tracks back to the road?” he asked.

  “No, man, he’d realise that this stream would join the Naledi farther down—nearer the camp—and take the short cut. You’d be four or five kilometres at least from the road up there,” said Andries waving vaguely upstream, “and you’d be climbing up and down through the dunes all the way.”

  Bongani grimaced and turned to stare at Andries. “So let’s see. Your tourist has too much to drink and sets off into the dunes, probably in an unsuitable vehicle—by himself since no one reports him missing. He gets stuck and then has enough knowledge of the local geography to realise that following the watercourse will be the easy way back to camp. However, he doesn’t realise how much dangerous game he may encounter in the river. And, by the way, he’s working on his suntan at the same time because he sets off naked.”

  Andries looked down. “What makes you think he was naked?” he asked, ignoring the rest.

  “Well, do you see any cloth scraps? The animals wouldn’t eat them, certainly not with bone and bits of sinew still left. And what about shoes? Animals won’t eat those either.” Bongani continued to watch the changing light on the sand dunes while Andries silently digested this new challenge.

  “Let’s take a look up in those dunes,” Bongani said at last. “Maybe he came from up there. Let’s go round the side of the tree, though. I don’t want to disturb the area between the body and the dunes.”

  Something in the way the sand looked struck him as not quite right. For once Andries didn’t argue. They clambered up until they could see beyond the crest of the dune above the stream bed. Two sets of tyre tracks stretched away from the river, the fat-shoe tracks of vehicles designed for the desert. The tracks came towards the dune and then stopped abruptly as though the vehicles had been lifted into the sky.

  “Oh shit!” said Andries. “It drove out here and then went back. It was one vehicle, not two.”

  “Yes,” Bongani agreed. And they had to turn around on this dune when they saw that they’d come to the river. They smoothed the area where they turned so that you couldn’t see the tracks from the river bed. They walked together towards the spot where the tracks disappeared. Once there, they had no further doubts. There were boot prints aplenty, and close up they could see the sweep marks on the sand that the wind had not fully erased. Whoever had been there had been careful to use the hard ground and debris from the trees to hide their progress into the river course.

  “They knew what they were doing, these people, whoever they were.” Bongani had grudging respect in his voice. “They wanted that body destroyed, and they knew that was more likely to happen along one of the river courses than in the relatively dead dunes. And they left it naked because that way nothing would remain to show it was human. In another day or so they would’ve had what they wanted. And in case by bad luck the remains were found, they took care to hide the tracks, which might be visible from the river. Your tourist, or whatever he was, was murdered, Andries. I think we have a big problem.”

  Andries nodded. “We can use the camera in the truck to take some pictures. We’d better bring the tarpaulin to cover the remains. And we’ll have to wait here until we get some men to keep guard. They’ll have to spend the night here. The police won’t get here until tomorrow morning.”

  Sitting in the sand with Bongani and a corpse for several hours was the last thing Andries felt like doing, but there was no choice. The hyena was still waiting. It had moved much closer when they climbed into the dunes.

  ∨ A Carrion Death ∧

  CHAPTER 2

  Assistant Superintendent ‘Kubu’ Bengu of the Botswana police hoisted his not inconsiderable bulk on to the front seat of the police Land Rover and settled himself for the long drive. This involved selecting a CD of one of his favourite operas with a baritone part. He fancied that he had a reasonable voice and sang with gusto, but restricted this to periods—of which there were plenty—when he was on his own. Most of his friends were not opera lovers, and the others knew him too well to be polite. After selecting Mozart’s Magic Flute—he would sing Papageno—he checked that he had enough fuel and drinking water for emergencies and pulled on to the main road. It would take him four hours to get to Dale’s Camp, the bush resort near where the body had been found, on the verge of the Central Kalahari Game Reserve.

  Two hours later, Kubu ejected the CD, satisfied with his singing. He had modestly given himself only two encores of the bird-catcher aria. The opera helped him remain patient on the congested road from Gaborone to Molepolole. One had to be aware of so much: pedestrians who insisted on playing chicken with oncoming vehicles; real chickens which foraged for food in the road; and of course the other vehicles, the drivers of which claimed right-of-way over all others. Especially terrifying were the minivan taxis, which stopped whenever and wherever they chose, passed on either side of other vehicles, and were not above using the sidewalk as a highway.

  At Molepolole, Kubu turned north, and the traffic dropped off. Now there were no fences, and one had to watch out for livestock. The slightly raised road meant that what little rain the area received was channelled to the verges where the dry grass was tinged with green, attracting the animals. Kubu wasn’t concerned about the goats. They were smart and got out of the way. However, sheep, if scared by a vehicle, were as likely to run into the road as away from it. Since his Sunday-school days Kubu had thought that goats had been unfairly judged. Sheep were as likely to be led into temptation as redemption and would be too stupid to tell the difference. He would rather be a goat himself. As for the cows, they preferred to examine the danger of an oncoming c
ar at their leisure from the middle of the road. No amount of hooting or shouting would shift them. The cows were the worst.

  After forty kilometres the road narrowed so that there was just enough room for two cars to pass in opposite directions, but not enough if one was a heavy vehicle. Kubu had to pull on to the dirt shoulder twice when trucks approached. He concentrated on the driving and set aside his musings, as well as his music.

  As he approached the town of Letlhakeng, Kubu relaxed and slowed. A new roadside poster focusing on HIV safety momentarily caught his attention. When he looked back at the road, he was horrified to find an enormous pig crossing just ahead of him, moving towards his side of the road. She was dark and almost invisible against the tarmac. And she completely ignored him as she made her way purposefully to the far side.

  Kubu swung the Land Rover on to the dirt verge, controlled the threatened skid, and stopped the vehicle in a spray of sand. As he cursed and mopped his forehead with his handkerchief, he watched the sow’s progress in his rearview mirror. Although he must have missed her by only a whisker, she had not even glanced in his direction, nor had she broken her stride. And now she was joined by the excited piglets that had motivated her near-death experience. Kubu had not seen them in the shock of the close encounter with their mother. He started to see the funny side, and his mouth twitched into a doubtful smile. What an obituary it would make! The overweight detective and the monster pig! As he watched the huge creature waddle with her brood into the thorn bushes, he promised himself that he would take his diets more seriously in the future. Then he started to chuckle.

  After Letlhakeng the road became a track, and there were no other vehicles. Kubu drove on through the endless grass and thorn scrub of the Kalahari. There is something special about this land, he thought. Its desolation, its vastness, its emptiness. A hard land that plays havoc with people who are not self-sufficient, but reluctantly gives up secret prizes to those who understand it.