A Guide to the Beasts of East Africa (21 page)

Rose Mbikwa looked up at the black shapes
scything the blue – swifts on the wing. Circling high above them were a pair of augur
buzzards. Were the ancients right? she wondered. Was the future to be read in the flight
of birds? If so, what were they telling her? She turned towards the house. Angus would
be home soon. He didn't usually come to see her at lunchtime, but he'd
phoned that morning to say he had something important to tell her. Elizabeth had been in
the kitchen all morning steaming the plantains and grinding the peanuts for matoke – one
of his favourites. But if what Harry Khan had told her last night was true, soon Angus
wouldn't be eating at home with her quite so often. She caught a sweet scent on
the air – ah yes, the jasmine. Before she came to Africa Rose had never smelled jasmine.
She looked up again at the black birds. Were they European swifts? Had they been born
under Edinburgh roofs, perhaps, and ridden the North winds to Kenya? A smaller bird was
hopping and pecking among the buds of a Cape chestnut tree. A warbler of some kind, she
supposed. Bracken warbler? Woodland warbler? It could even be a willow warbler. She
should get
her binoculars. She had just stepped on to the veranda when
she heard a scream and saw Angus race out.

‘Don't worry, Mother,
don't worry. It was just Elizabeth.'

‘What is it? What's happened?
Tell me.'

‘I've just told her some news.
I'm sorry, I had no idea she'd react like this.'

‘News? What news?'

His face broke into a broad grin.

‘The news, dear Mother, that your son
is getting married.'

When Mr Malik had opened the door of the
darkroom and seen the Kima Killer, his reaction was not a loud scream of joy, nor even a
small whoopee. There was the lion all right, safe and undamaged, but a quick glance
followed by a thorough search of every shelf and cupboard in the darkroom revealed not
the slightest trace of the missing certificate. But was it too much to hope that the
reappearance of its mascot might at least augur a little good luck for the Asadi
Club?

‘My friend,' he said, turning to
Benjamin, ‘once again I find myself in your debt.'

‘Mr Malik, I am very happy to do this
for you.'

‘It is not just for me, Benjamin, it
is for all of us. For the Asadi Club.'

With the help of the manager it took no time
at all for them to lift the lion into its old position by the front door and only
slightly longer for the word to spread that the Kima Killer was back.

Benjamin had never seen so much Coca-Cola.
It seemed every member arriving at the club insisted on buying him
a
glass. It would have been impolite to refuse it, and by the time Mr Patel and Mr Gopez
arrived seven empty glasses and five full ones were lined up along the bar.

‘And the reward,' said Mr Gopez.
‘What about the reward?'

‘You're right, A.B.,' said
Mr Patel. ‘We did talk about offering a reward. What do you say, Malik?'

Mr Malik cleared his throat.

‘Benjamin, will you please allow me,
on behalf of my fellow members, to express our thanks in more tangible form? Is there
anything – anything at all – that you would like as a token of my –
our
–
appreciation?'

Benjamin thought.

‘I would very much like an umbrella,
Mr Malik. I have an umbrella, but it is a very small umbrella.'

‘A new umbrella you shall have,
Benjamin – a large one. But is there anything else you want, perhaps something that you
have always wanted?'

It so happened that there was another thing
Benjamin wanted. Something he had wanted ever since he had first seen one in the
schoolmaster's house outside the village where he grew up. Benjamin loved words –
not only the words of his native language, but the Swahili and English words that he
learned at school. How wonderful that every object, every thought and feeling, could be
described in these magical sounds. How doubly wonderful that each of them could be
transformed into squiggles on paper, which could then be read out and turned back into
sounds. He remembered the first time the schoolmaster had shown the class a dictionary.
To think that every word in the language was in just that one book. That was what he
would like, he told Mr Malik, his very own dictionary. So out of the
club they went and into Mr Malik's old green Mercedes.

Amin and Sons General Emporium was sure to
have just the thing.

Finding a place to park your car in a big
city is always a problem. In Nairobi the problem is compounded by the fact that when you
have found your parking space you have only to leave your vehicle out of sight for a
moment to find that mysterious things will happen. First its wheels disappear. Give it a
few more seconds and the rubber mounting around its rear window will part, as if cut
through with a sharp blade, and the glass will be gone. Another minute and the entire
portable contents of the car will vanish. Just a few more minutes and doors, seats,
interior fittings, muffler – even the complete engine – just won't be there any
more. The solution to this problem is to employ the services of one of the young men to
whom has been passed down the dark knowledge of how to protect motor vehicles against
these disappearances. Fortunately for motorists, representatives of this brotherhood are
to be found on every Nairobi street, only too willing to offer their services for what
is, all things considered, a most reasonable fee.

Mr Malik parked right outside the shop and,
after negotiating the provision of vehicle security, the two friends entered. Mr Malik
introduced Benjamin to Godfrey Amin himself.

‘And what did the young gentleman have
in mind? A concise dictionary – or a pocket version, perhaps? It all
depends on how and where you intend to use it, you see.'

He took them up to the second floor and
showed them a shelf containing several of the volumes he had just described. Lying on
its side on the bottom shelf, and still wrapped in plastic, Benjamin spotted a large
blue box.

‘Is that a dictionary?'

‘Ah, the Compact Oxford. A lovely
volume – well, two volumes actually. What with computers and the internet and
everything, though, I'm afraid there's not much call for a book like this
these days.'

As his assistant lifted the box on to the
table and began unwrapping it Godfrey Amin explained that the two-volume set contained
all the information in the twelve-volume Complete Oxford (‘And, I think, the five
later supplements – though I'm not sure about that'), but that it had simply
been printed in smaller type on finer paper.

‘And as you can see,' he said,
sliding open a little cardboard drawer at the top of the box, ‘it comes with its
own magnifying glass.'

Mr Malik took one look at the expression on
Benjamin's face.

‘Thank you, Godfrey, we'll take
it. And an umbrella, if you please. Your very largest.'

With the purchases locked in the boot, the
guardians of the car paid and thanked and Benjamin strapped in the passenger seat, they
headed for home. At the intersection of Kenyatta Avenue and Uhuru Highway the traffic
was, as usual, locked almost solid and several policemen were, as usual, attempting to
unlock it. While he waited, Mr Malik found his mind turning once more to the case of
Lord Erroll.

When the police (and every investigator since)
had investigated the murder, they had naturally assumed that it had been somehow linked
to all those other clues – the position of the car, the tyre tracks, the broken
armstraps. If Mr Malik's theory was correct, they had turned out to be not really
linked at all. Could the disappearance of the lion and the disappearance of the
certificate also be separate events – their only connection being the approximate time
at which they happened? And the more he thought about it, the clearer it became. By the
time the police had sorted out the snarl and he was heading north up Uhuru Highway, he
knew how the lion came to be in the darkroom and why. By the time he reached the
Westlands turn-off, he was sure he knew what had happened to the certificate. And, of
course, the Asadi Club would be safe – just as he had promised his father. But there was
only one person who could save it.

Had you been standing on the corner of Mama
Ngina Street and Taifa Road at two o'clock that Friday afternoon, you might have
noticed two figures emerge from the law chambers opposite. One is a tall man in dark
suit and dastar to match. He puts a small envelope in his pocket before shaking the hand
of a shorter, fatter man, hailing a taxi and climbing inside. The other man crosses the
road in the direction of an old green Mercedes. After handing some money to the young
person who has been protecting his car from unforeseen eventualities he sets off for the
Aga Khan Hospital, where he will spend the rest of the day and much of the evening
sitting beside the patients in the large ward at the back of the hospital, talk
ing or not talking. Perhaps on the way home he will be thinking that
the cell in which he will soon be incarcerated cannot be much worse than that room.

The tall man asks his taxi driver to take
him straight to the Ministry for the Interior. They turn out of Taifa Road into Freedom
Street. He takes the envelope from his pocket and reads the single sheet of paper it
contains. As they pass Amin and Sons, he taps the taxi driver on the shoulder.

‘Stop here a moment, would you?'
says Tiger Singh. ‘There's something I need.'

As he leaves the store, carrying a very
small parcel, he recognizes Mr Malik's daughter's friend Sunita also coming
out.

‘Hello, Mr Singh,' she says,
smiling. She is looking very pretty. She looks down at the larger parcel in her own
hands. ‘A new sari,' she tells him, ‘for the wedding. Amin's is
still the best place for that something special.'

The Tiger smiles.

‘You know?' he says. ‘I
couldn't agree more.'

In his bed that night at Number 12 Garden
Lane, Mr Malik tossed and Mr Malik turned. He had stayed late at the hospital, then gone
straight home and straight to bed. But while his body felt exhausted, his mind refused
to let go of the day. When at last sleep came it was filled with dreams of lions – not
stuffed and smiling lions, but living, snarling lions with long sharp teeth and claws to
match.

He awoke late but unrefreshed, donned
dressing gown and slippers and headed for the kitchen to prepare his morning cup of
Nescafé. Petula, it seemed, had already left the house. There was no sign of
Benjamin either, though he noticed that the night's leaves had already been swept
into neat piles on the lawn ready for the afternoon bonfire. The phone rang. It was
Tiger Singh – yes, everything had gone according to plan. The certificate of
registration had been returned, the Asadi Club was saved. How long now, wondered Mr
Malik as he put down the phone, before they came for him? Though tired, he felt
perfectly calm. It had all been quite straightforward. He had known what he must do and
he'd done it.

From the croton tree at the bottom of the
garden a
hadada called out its three-note cry. A troop of speckled
mousebirds were chasing each other in and out of the bougainvillea. Mr Malik shuffled
over to the hall table and picked up his binoculars from beside the bowl of fading
roses. With his Bausch & Lomb 7 x 50 binoculars in one hand and a cup of
Nescafé in the other, he sat down in his favourite chair on the veranda. A small
dusky-pink bird flew into the climbing fig nearer the house, trailing a long piece of
grass in its beak. So the red-billed firefinches were nesting again. High overhead two
black kites – which are not really black but brown – made lazy circles on four broad
wings.

He heard a knock at the door. So soon?

‘Malik,' he heard a voice shout.
‘Malik old chap, open up.'

Strange – that sounded like the Tiger. Of
course, the Tiger would want to be present when they came. Always best to have a lawyer
on hand. Good old Tiger. He went to the front door and opened it.

Tiger Singh rushed in.

‘Come on, Malik, we haven't got
much time. Are you ready?'

‘Yes,' said Mr Malik,
‘I'm ready.'

‘Well, you don't look ready. You
can't go like that, you know. Aren't you going to put on a suit and
tie?'

So they were going to court, eh? – some sort
of mock trial before they locked him up and threw away the key. Well, so be it. Never
let it be said that a Malik was seen to cower before a bully. You can break many a Malik
bone, you may even break his heart – you will never break his spirit.

‘That's better,' said Tiger
Singh as Mr Malik emerged from his bedroom dressed in best blazer and club tie. In one
hand he was clutching a small overnight bag with a few things he'd thrown in –
toothbrush, pyjamas, razor (did they allow razors?).

Tiger Singh looked at the bag.

‘I don't think you'll need
that, old chap, but never mind. Oh, and as I expect you've noticed, Petula and
Benjamin have already gone.'

‘Gone?' Mr Malik's heart
sank into his socks. ‘Gone where?'

‘To the club, of course.'

‘The club?'

Tiger Singh gave him a puzzled look.

‘To the club, for the celebration.
Come on, we'll be late.'

‘Celebration? Oh, of course, the
certificate. Well done, Tiger. I knew you could do it. But the minister –'

‘My dear Malik, don't worry
about the minister. Just hop in the car – I'll explain it all on the
way.'

And so it was that on the drive from Garden
Lane to the Asadi Club, Mr Malik learned how Tiger Singh had indeed been to see the
minister the previous afternoon and had indeed persuaded him to exchange the
registration certificate of the Asadi Club for the one thing he wanted more than the
land it stood on. That was to know the identity of the man who had so regularly raised
his blood pressure and robbed him of his sleep – the real name and identity of
Dadukwa.

‘They'll be coming for me
then?'

Tiger Singh pulled an envelope from his
pocket and
handed it to his passenger. Mr Malik recognized it as the
one he had given his friend the afternoon before, the one containing the single sheet of
paper with his name on it.

‘It's been opened.'

‘Yes,' said the Tiger. ‘I
thought I'd better have a look – lawyer's privilege, you know.'

‘But he read it – the minister, I
mean?'

‘No. No need.'

‘So you didn't give him the
letter, you just told him it was me?'

‘Well, not exactly.'

‘But you just said you went and saw
him yesterday afternoon.'

‘Oh yes – I went, all right. I
don't suppose you've ever been in the office of the Minister for the
Interior, have you? Quite grand. There's even a lion-skin rug on the floor,
stuffed head and everything. Elsa's mother, apparently – or so Harry Khan told me.
Said the minister was rather fond of it.'

‘But you said you were going to give
him the letter. We agreed.'

‘I know that, Malik my dear chap, but
before I could hand it over I happened to put my hand in its mouth.'

‘In its mouth?'

‘Yes, that's right, the lion –
in its mouth. I was just admiring it when I thought I noticed something there. A little
wire or something. The minister said he couldn't see it himself, but when I
reached in what do you think I pulled out? A miniature transmitting device. The minister
was most surprised. He'd never seen one, but I recognized it immediately – they
sell them in Amin's, you
know. I happen to know these things
don't have a very big range, so we went into his secretary's office –
he'd just been called out on urgent business, something to do with shopping malls,
I believe – and what do you think I discovered in one of the drawers? The receiver –
tiny little thing. This secretary chap, Jonah Litumana, had obviously been bugging the
minister – and his predecessor, no doubt, and who knows who else – all the time.
Explains everything, wouldn't you say?'

Mr Malik stared at Tiger Singh with open
mouth.

‘You can imagine how grateful he
was,' continued the Tiger, ‘the Honourable Brian Kukuya, I mean. Handed the
certificate over without another word. He even accepted my offer of a lift to the
Sandringham Club, and who should we meet at the nineteenth hole but Judge Kafari. So –
everything sorted out. On Monday morning I've arranged to see the judge in
chambers, just to dot the legal i's and cross the administrative t's, so to
speak.'

Mr Malik's mouth remained open but no
words came out.

‘Just one more thing. The minister
assured me that that secretary of his would be … er … castigated, I
think he said – and I said we'd be quite happy to leave it at that.'

Even when Tiger Singh suddenly swore and
swerved round a cyclist on a blind corner, Mr Malik said not a word.

‘Did you see that? Shouldn't be
allowed on the roads. Anyway, as far as your part in the thing goes, Malik old chap –
and, of course, none of this would have happened without you – I wonder if you'd
mind keeping it under the old turban. Not the Kima Killer business, of course –
damned fine work – but the certificate. Might be best. And perhaps
you could mention it to that Dadukwa chap too, if you see him.'

At last Mr Malik found himself able to
speak.

‘But …'

‘Of course – the
Evening
News
, I'm glad you reminded me. Yes, before I agreed to anything I raised
that subject, and I'm delighted to say that the minister seemed to think that in
view of recent developments, as it were, he wouldn't be at all surprised if the
Evening News
certificate were to turn up too. What a piece of luck,
eh?'

‘So …'

‘Mm, I know what you're going to
say. I've been wondering about that too. I know you told me yesterday that it must
have been those painting contractors who stole the certificate in the first place – the
ones who came to the club to give the quote just as you were leaving for the safari –
and presumably the same fellows who swiped the one at the
Evening News
. But I
still can't see why they would have wanted to hide the lion. Had any more
thoughts?'

At which point Mr Malik found that though he
could speak, on reflection it might be better if he didn't. Lions in darkrooms,
petroleum-jelly sandwiches, pythons in pyjamas – perhaps some truths were better left in
the past. In the present, it truly seemed that everything was all right.