The Death of the Mantis (38 page)

Gobiwasi said nothing, and Khumanego’s anger grew until
everything seemed tinged with red, even the bushes and the
desiccated grass.

“You are a fool, Gobiwasi! You killed, too, for The Place. Long
ago. Yet now you challenge me! What right do you have? Now you say
you wait. What are you waiting
for
, old man?”

But now everything was blurred by the red mist of his anger, and
Khumanego closed his eyes to clear them. When he opened them and
moved his arms from his face, he saw that the red tinge remained.
It came from the huge crimson sun climbing ponderously above the
horizon in the east, temporarily colouring the grey world.

♦

The next night as he walked he smelt a whiff of a cooking fire
long before he heard or saw any sign of the Bushman group. He
smiled. Once more the ancestors had guided him. His plan would be
to join the group, live with it, camouflage himself completely. No
one would find him. He could move to another group if the police
got too close. And he would keep watching The Place. Keep guarding
against intruders. There would be other killings when the time was
right.

When he came to the edge of the campfire’s light, he saw that
the ancestors had indeed been good to him. For the little group he
found there was the very group that Gobiwasi had once led. They
knew him and would be grateful for what he had done to rescue them
from Lerako. He could have asked for no better meeting. Perhaps it
was for this that Gobiwasi had been waiting?

So he strode into the light of the fire and greeted the oldest
man warmly in the IGwi dialect.

“Dcaro! I know you. This is a most happy meeting.”

The man regarded him with natural surprise, but there was a
trace of something else in his expression. “Khumanego. I know you.”
It was a cold response.

“Indeed! I am here alone and wish to join you. I will help you
hunt, gather
hoodia
and melons, do whatever needs to be
done.”

“We do not need help. Neither do we need extra mouths.”

Khumanego glared at Dcaro. “I am strong and have much power in
the spirit world. Recently I saw Gobiwasi there. It was he who led
me here.”

There was much excitement at this news, but Dcaro held up his
hand and the others waited.

“You tell us that. But how do we know it is so?”

“Because I say it!”

Dcaro just shook his head and waited.

“It will be good for us to work together. I have many powerful
friends in this world, too. Did I not save you and these two men
from being hanged?” He pointed at the other two men whom Lerako had
held. Although they regarded him with respect, there was also
hostility. Still, it was an important reminder. The group started
to talk again. Some space was made by the fire; clearly they
expected Khumanego to join them. But it was Dcaro who led now.

“Those other people say we Bushmen are liars, that we steal,
that we kill what is not ours to kill. That is why they chase us,
even though we are honest, take only what is ours and kill only
what we need. But you have lied, and stolen, and you have killed a
man. We know you killed the white man with a Bushman arrow and
caused much trouble. We saw the posters. We had to leave. You have
done? great harm. The ancestors are very angry.” At the end of this
speech Dcaro was shaking, but he gave no ground.

Khumanego glared at him. “Since you reject my friendship and
help, I will go. But you will regret this night. All of you will
regret this night!” His arm encompassed the whole of the small
group, and he could see their fear and was glad. Turning back to
Dcaro, he softened his voice. “I need water for my journey. You
cannot refuse a traveller in the desert when he comes asking for
water.”

“We have no water to spare. There is no water here. There is
water in Hukuntsi. Go there.”

“Then I curse you all! May you too be refused water in your time
of thirst.” He stood up and stalked into the desert night.

Khumanego felt their eyes on his back, watching him, but they
meant nothing. He would change his plan. He knew now where he must
go. He would go where he needed no one, where there was >water,
and where he had power.

∨
The Death of the Mantis
∧

W
hen he arrived at
the CID on Monday morning, Director Mabaku appeared calm. He had
visited Kubu on the way and thought he was on the mend. More to the
point, the doctor was satisfied. But underneath, Mabaku was
bottling up an explosion of anger. How had this nasty little
Bushman dared to mess with his CID detectives? Once he was caught,
he was going to be
very
sorry. Yet Kubu’s burning question
kept coming back to him. Why? What was Khumanego’s motive for these
vicious and apparently pointless murders?

Mabaku’s secretary, Miriam, stopped him at his office door to
give him a document – the warrant to search Khumanego’s apartment.
They had managed to get authorisation over the weekend. The
director brightened at once. Now they could take action, do
something positive. Perhaps get to the bottom of this mess.

“Get hold of Zanele and her forensics team,” he told Miriam.
“Tell her to get them ready as soon as possible. I want to take
apart the suspect’s home piece by piece until we understand what
this is all about. I’ll supervise it myself.”

♦

Khumanego’s apartment was on the second floor of a building
close to the centre of Lobatse. The caretaker was expecting them.
She was full of questions; the police presence over the last few
days had caused quite a stir. Mabaku brushed her concerns aside,
showed her the warrant and waited for her to unlock the front door.
He wasn’t talkative. His mind was focused on whether the key to the
Kalahari murders would be inside this modest dwelling.

When they went in, it looked like a typical Motswana apartment:
two small bedrooms, an open-plan lounge/kitchen/dining area and a
single bathroom. Zanele and her team went to work while Mabaku
stood in the middle of the lounge area. He looked around, but
touched nothing, trying to get a feel for the Bushman’s life.

On one wall was a bookcase containing three shelves of books and
two display shelves. Mabaku called Zanele over. He wondered how she
could look so attractive swaddled in her shapeless white laboratory
coat. He pointed at the top display shelf.

“Those look like Bushman arrowheads. They may be harmless, but
they may be poisoned. Tell your people to treat them as if they
are. Even if they are just collector’s items, those poisons can
last a long time. Use forceps and put them in strong bags, not
flimsy plastic ones. Remember Haake.”

Zanele nodded. “Do you want us to collect them all?”

“Yes, do that. And those little containers with them, too. They
probably used to contain poisons. Maybe they still do.”

Mabaku examined the books. Most were textbooks concerned with
human rights and legal issues. He spotted a copy of Ditshwanelo’s
report on the Maauwe and Motswetla affair,
In the Shadow of the
Noose
. But there was nothing untoward, nothing to suggest that
Khumanego was anything other than what he claimed to be: an
advocate for the Bushman peoples. The second display shelf was more
interesting. It was empty but for six pebbles of white calcrete
laid out in a straight line, each separated by about three
centimetres. Other than the arrangement, and the fact that they
were free of sand and powder, there was nothing unusual about them.
Except that they were there. Why collect nondescript stones from
the desert?

“Zanele! Please get pictures of the arrangement of everything
here and then collect these stones as well.” She was talking to a
man searching for fingerprints with an ultraviolet light, but she
nodded.

Mabaku wandered around the apartment. He came across one of
Zanele’s men going through a desk in the second bedroom, carefully
sorting through normal office items with latex-gloved hands. It
appeared that Khumanego used this room as a study. They had already
dusted and fingerprinted his computer and printer and packed them
in boxes to be checked later.

“There’s a GPS in here,” the man told Mabaku. “A Garmin. I think
we should take that.”

“Definitely. Why would a Bushman need a GPS in the Kalahari?
There’s a good chance it’s Haake’s. Don’t turn it on. We’ll get the
technicians to try to extract his last, route.”

Mabaku moved on to the main bedroom, which had a narrow balcony
facing the back of the opposite building. The small area was
crowded with a variety of plants growing in reddish Kalahari sand
contained in unattractive plastic pots of the sort nurseries used.
He unlocked the steel-framed glass door and stepped out. Prickly
and scraggly, they were hardly the pot plants a garden lover would
have chosen for a balcony. Were they a homesick Bushman’s reminders
of the Kalahari? Or something more sinister? He asked Zanele to
collect them too. Carefully.

A constable searching Khumanego’s clothes cupboard called Mabaku
over.

“Take a look here, Rra. Look at the shoes.”

Mabaku glanced at the floor of the cupboard, seeing a collection
of shoes and boots, neatly arranged in pairs. For a moment he
didn’t get the point, but then he whistled.

“That one pair of boots is almost twice the size of the others –
I’d guess size ten. The rest look like kids’ shoes. Let’s see the
soles of those boots.”

The man turned them over, displaying smooth undersides, Mabaku
nodded.

“Take those. Definitely.”

They found nothing else. Several hours later, they packed up
their stuff, carried out the items they wanted to test or examine
further, and headed back to the CID in Gaborone. They didn’t have
much to show for most of a day’s work, and nothing that pointed to
the motive Kubu sought.

But Mabaku was satisfied. He was sure they had found the boots
that had made tracks around three murders, and he had a strong
hunch they’d found Haake’s GPS.

∨
The Death of the Mantis
∧

W
illie Taro’s life
had become one of constant fear. The petrol attendant at the
Kgalagadi Filling Station in Hukuntsi, did his job every day, but
his enthusiasm and pleasure in it were gone. He dreaded seeing the
Bushman who called himself Piscoaghu. That was a name from Bushman
legend, and Willie didn’t believe it was the man’s real name. At
first it had almost been a game, watching the travellers come
through the petrol station, chatting with them and asking where
they were going. And the money Piscoaghu paid him for the
information had been most welcome. But after Haake’s murder by a
Bushman arrow, all that had changed.

He felt guilt, too. He would never have said a word if he’d
thought Haake was in danger, but it was too late now. He wondered
what sort of game Piscoaghu was playing. And was the game over? He
hoped so. But he’d heard enough about murderers to know that they
didn’t like to leave people alive who could connect them to their
victims.

He’d sought advice from an elderly Bushman who lived in the town
and knew things. He had listened carefully to Willie’s story, and
his response was immediate. Willie must go to the police. They
would be fair to him, and they would help him. But Willie was
scared of the police, so he didn’t take the advice. Then he noticed
that Bushmen in the town started giving him odd looks and seemed to
be avoiding him. Had the old Bushman spread the story? He was
scared of that, too.

Willie wasn’t stupid. When the news broke of the policeman who’d
died in the desert so near where Haake had been exploring, he put
two and two together. And when he saw Piscoaghu’s face staring out
of a Wanted poster, he was terrified.

Now it was Sunday. Almost two weeks had passed since Detective
Tau’s corpse had been found. His body had still not been returned
to the family. People said doctors were cutting it up to find out
how he’d died. Willie shuddered, thinking about what those doctors
were doing.

After church, the villagers who had known Tau gathered in the
courtyard of his modest home for an afternoon of prayers and
speeches in his honour. Tau had always been polite to Willie, and
he went to the prayer meeting, sitting on the ground near the back
of the gathering. He was scared to be there, as the house was in
the police compound, scared that if he was noticed he might be
chased away. And he was scared of
not
being noticed, lest
people felt his absence showed ill-will to the late detective.
Willie’s life had become one of constant fear.

The afternoon dragged on as one person after another rose to
speak well of the deceased, or to call on Jesus to reward their
departed friend. When at last a break came in the proceedings,
Willie stood up, stretched, and almost bumped into a tall,
well-built man wearing an immaculate police uniform with a fine
medal. Willie was in awe. This man must be a very senior officer.
Perhaps even the Commissioner of Police! He looked down and
muttered a humble apology in Setswana. Unexpectedly, the man
stopped and spoke to him.

“There is no problem,” he said. “We are all here together as
children of God to honour our friend Detective Tau.”

The policeman started to move on, but suddenly Willie felt this
man would hear his story and be fair to him. He ran to keep up,
fearful that his opportunity to speak might be lost.

“Rra, I beg your pardon for disturbing you. I know you are an
important person with much to do, Rra, and this is the day of rest,
and we must pay our respects to the departed. But I have
information which may be important to the police.” The policeman
looked down at him quizzically. “Rra, it is about the murder of a
man called Haake,” Willie gabbled on, scared that if he hesitated,
his courage would desert him. “Perhaps I know who killed him. Rra
Haake was a man from Namibia…”