A Guide to the Beasts of East Africa Page 19

  ‘But the car, Mr Malik. How did it get into the ditch, and how did the body get on to the floor?’

  Mr Malik looked once more towards the white-haired man sitting beside him, then back to the hushed crowd before him.

  ‘Yes, ladies and gentlemen, I haven’t quite finished the story. You will all remember that the two delivery drivers are already implicated in Juanita’s deception. They now decide to try to dispose of the evidence – at least, for long enough to buy time for the little memsahib. In the light of their lorry’s headlights they see the reflection of what looks like a ditch on the opposite side of the road. If they can push the car into the water, it might be a while until it is found. First they have to move Erroll’s body out of the way of the steering wheel and the pedals. They manage to manoeuvre it on to the floor. With one of them pushing the car from behind, and the other pushing and steering through the open window, they eventually heave it across the road and towards the water. The reflection is deceptive. The water is just a shallow pit where some murram has been removed for surfacing the road. The car comes to a halt with one front wheel in this pit. It is stuck. They drive the truck closer to get more light and try again, but no – after the rain the road is too slippery.’

  ‘So that explains the tyre tracks,’ said Tiger Singh.

  ‘Exactly. But what should they do now? If they leave the car as it is, it will soon be found – they know that their boss Leslie Condon will be driving into Nairobi soon, as he does every morning. With a dead man in the car they also know the police will be involved. They can hardly pretend they hadn’t noticed the big black Buick in a ditch when they had driven by. There was only one thing to do. They will have to call the police. They will have to say that they discovered the car just as it is now. They will have to say that they thought they had seen a body in it but they hadn’t touched anything. Whatever happens, though, they both agree to say nothing about the other person in the car, the person who has just run back to the house at Karen, hidden her mud-stained white gym shoes beneath the ivy, climbed up the drainpipe, and is already safely back in her bed.’

  32

  The swallow does not ask the weaver bird to build its nest, nor the weaver bird the swallow

  ‘A most intriguing story,’ said Tiger Singh, joining the others at the bar. ‘Well done, Malik. It certainly explains the missing pieces of the puzzle. And thank you, Mr Nyambe. You have been most generous in sharing your tale with all of us here at the Asadi Club. But, Malik, I still don’t understand what she was doing there. Why was Juanita Carberry hiding in the car? Was A.B. right? Had she and Erroll been having an affair or something?’

  ‘No – as she says in her autobiography, she had never met the man. It is quite simple. She was running away. You may remember that ever since the previous November, when her father had found a soldier climbing out of her window at the house in Nyeri, she had been locked in her room every night. This was the first time since then that Juanita had been away from there. This was her first chance of escape. And a few months later she really did run away to her uncle’s house in Nairobi – never to live with her father and stepmother again.’

  ‘So she really had nothing to do with Erroll? Well, I have to say that makes sense too. He always seemed to go for married women. But where does all this leave Broughton? Are you saying she made up all that stuff about him confessing?’

  ‘I have to admit,’ said Mr Malik, ‘that was indeed a puzzle. Neither my friend Mr Nyambe here nor I could work it out – until I remembered that though Juanita had been in the car when Erroll was shot, she didn’t see who did it.’

  ‘I still don’t understand.’

  ‘Well,’ said Mr Malik, ‘let us suppose that Broughton did indeed confess to Juanita. Why should she not believe him?’

  ‘Just a minute. Are you saying that Mr Gopez was right, that it was all bravado?’

  ‘Possibly. Or perhaps …’ Mr Malik paused. ‘Or perhaps Broughton believed that Juanita Carberry was actually the murderer.’

  ‘He thought she’d done it? Why?’

  ‘Think about what happened later that night. Through his bedroom window Broughton sees Juanita returning to the house. He sees her hiding the gym shoes. The next morning he hears that Lord Erroll has been found dead in his car just down the road.’

  ‘He thinks there’s a connection?’

  ‘Quite so, A.B. But if the girl did have something to do with it, Broughton wouldn’t want to expose her – he’d want to protect her. At lunch he’s introduced to Juanita – remember, they’d never actually met before. He takes her to see his horses, just the two of them together. He can’t just come straight out with it – I saw you sneak home last night and hide the gym shoes, and I know you killed Lord Erroll, but I won’t say anything.’

  ‘Because he isn’t absolutely sure she’d done it.’

  ‘Exactly, A.B. He takes her past the bonfire. When she sees her shoes burning she will surely realize that he is destroying the evidence linking her with Erroll, that he is on her side.’

  ‘But hang on a minute, Malik. A few minutes ago you said that she hadn’t done it.’

  ‘Yes, but Broughton still thinks she did.’

  ‘Wait,’ said Tiger Singh slowly. ‘Are you now suggesting that Juanita Carberry thinks that Broughton did it, that his was the voice she heard while she was hiding in the back of the car?’

  ‘Not at this stage. She is surprised that her shoes have been found – and perhaps still worried that she’ll get into trouble. And no doubt she’s puzzled as to why he’s burning them.’

  ‘But the next day he took the police investigator right past the bonfire too,’ said Mr Gopez. ‘What was that all about?’

  ‘It was quite deliberate, to ensure that he is the number one suspect and so protect the girl – though, of course, at the same time he denies any knowledge and is confident the police don’t have enough evidence to arrest him.’

  ‘Which they didn’t.’

  ‘That’s right, Tiger. At the inquest he hears about the white marks on the car seat. He’s seen her hide the shoes, so now he’s even more sure that Juanita Carberry must have had something to do with it. He drives to Nyeri to find that June Carberry and his wife Diana are out. By this time he’s thought up another plan to let Juanita know that he knows. “I killed Lord Erroll,” he says.’

  ‘Now you’ve completely lost me,’ said Mr Gopez. ‘How does him saying to her that he did it, tell her that he knows that she did it?’

  ‘It was meant to be a sort of code. Broughton had now convinced himself that Juanita was the murderer. By telling her that he shot Erroll, he thought she would realize that even though he knew the truth, he wasn’t going to say anything.’

  ‘So he still thought she’d done it, and now she was convinced he’d done it.’

  ‘That’s right, A.B. And all the time it was neither of them.’

  Tiger Singh smacked both hands to his head.

  ‘Brilliant, Malik, absolutely brilliant. Malik, my dear chap, your sleuthing skills are as impressive as your friend Benjamin’s. Yes, of course – I should have seen it. Tempus veritas revelit. I do believe you’ve solved the case.’

  ‘No, no, Tiger, not solved it. It’s just a story – based like all the others on no more than circumstantial evidence and hearsay. The witnesses are dead, the suspects are dead. But perhaps now so is the crime.’

  ‘Excuse me, gentlemen,’ said the barman. ‘Mr Malik, your daughter is on the line. She says she has something important to tell you.’

  Mr Malik took the phone.

  ‘Hello, darling – can’t it wait? I’ll be home very soon …’ he paused. ‘Oh, I see.’

  Mr Malik put down the phone and turned to his friends.

  ‘Excuse me please, gentlemen, I’d better get back home. My daughter tells me she has thought of a way to save the Asadi Club.’

  33

  It is by coming and going that the weaver bird builds its nest

  It had b
een, thought Mr Malik, as he watched Benjamin cut some twigs to bind on the broom handle for his morning leaf sweeping, a very good idea. Petula had been so excited. The time for defence was over, she told him when he’d hurried back from the club last night. Now it was time to attack.

  ‘Publicity, that’s what you need. I was talking to Angus – Angus Mbikwa, you know – just a few days ago and this evening it came to me. Let the people see exactly what is going on. Shine the light of truth on the murky doings of this honourable minister.’

  ‘This seems like an excellent idea,’ said Mr Malik. ‘But how exactly do you propose we do it?’

  ‘I’ve thought of that too.’ Petula slammed down a copy of the Evening News. ‘We haven’t got the whistle-blower website going yet, but you know about that Dadukwa chap, the one that writes the “Birds of a Feather” column? Get in contact with him, let him know what’s going on. The Evening News prints the story, and bingo! Problem solved.’

  Mr Malik picked up the paper. How much should he tell her?

  ‘I don’t know if you looked at the date on this paper?’ he said.

  She took it from him.

  ‘Tuesday the twenty-first. The column comes out on a Wednesday. There’s plenty of time.’

  ‘Then I suppose you haven’t heard.’

  And Mr Malik explained to Petula how there would be no paper next Wednesday. That as from yesterday there was no more Evening News.

  ‘They used the same trick to close down the paper as they’re using to close down the club. The paper’s certificate of registration mysteriously disappeared. No certificate, no newspaper.’

  He wished he hadn’t had to tell her even this much. When she came to kiss him goodnight, she had looked so sad. In the morning she left the house before he was up.

  Benjamin had finished making the broom and was already sweeping up the leaves at the bottom of the garden into neat piles. If only his life was as simple as Benjamin’s. Mr Malik thought back to his revelations of the previous night at the club. He should be feeling just a little triumphant, but he wasn’t. Though the Tiger had been most flattering about his deductive skills, it was his friend Thomas Nyambe who had really solved the mystery. And really, it was not important. What mattered was not the past but the present. In three days the Asadi Club would be no more. Never mind solving the mystery of who killed Lord Erroll – what about the mystery of the vanishing lion and the missing certificate? Mr Malik reached for his cup of Nescafé and took a troubled sip.

  For the umpteenth time he went over the sequence of events that Friday night at the club. It might be best to treat the lion and the certificate separately. So … when had the lion last been seen? It was when the Tiger and Harry Khan went to leave. There had been that business with the keys and the briefcase. Could Harry Khan have had anything to do with it? He had come out of the club with the Tiger, gone back inside, then come out and closed the door behind him. Had he seen the lion again on his way out? As far as Mr Malik could remember, no one had asked him. Harry had taken the Tiger home, returned to give the manager the spare key to the back door, then driven back to his hotel. The manager had gone into the club through the back door, locked up and left – again through the back door. He had only noticed the lion missing the next day when he opened up. The lion could have gone missing any time between the three men walking out of the front door and the following morning – but how?

  Now for the certificate. This was more difficult. Even though he had himself noticed its absence quite soon after getting back to the club after the safari on Sunday night, he couldn’t swear that it had definitely been there on Friday – or Thursday or any other day, for that matter. Nor could anyone else. And were the two disappearances linked or weren’t they? Removing a small framed certificate was certainly a different matter from stealing a stuffed lion. There could be little doubt that the theft of the certificate was linked to the letter from the minister – but as for the lion … If only that could be tracked down as easily as Benjamin had tracked those leopards on the safari. Benjamin was now sweeping up the last of the leaves near the veranda. Wait. It had been two weeks now, but perhaps there was still just a chance.

  ‘Benjamin,’ he said out loud. ‘Benjamin, I have had an idea.’

  Benjamin had no time to object or even speak before he found himself being bundled into the front seat of Mr Malik’s car. On the way to the Asadi Club Mr Malik told him all about the recent goings-on.

  ‘I know it has been two weeks since the robbery – or robberies – but there is just the chance that some trace remains. I have seen you track a leopard and I have seen you track an ocelot. Benjamin, would you be able to use those clever young eyes of yours to track down a lion?’

  As soon as they arrived at the Asadi Club, Mr Malik hurried Benjamin into the lobby.

  ‘This is where it was,’ he said. He showed Benjamin to the oh-so-empty space inside the front door.

  ‘The lion, Mr Malik, was it very heavy?’

  Mr Malik thought for a moment.

  ‘No, not heavy – but it would be very awkward to carry. It would really need two men to lift it.’

  Benjamin looked at the place where the lion had been. He looked at the walls, he looked at the ceiling. He got down on his hands and knees and examined the floor.

  ‘And all these doors, Mr Malik, what are they for?’

  Five doors led off the lobby. There was the front door through which they had just come. Just to the left of that was the manager’s office – which you could also enter from the dining room – and then the double glass doors that led through to the dining room and bar. On the right-hand side of the lobby were two smaller doors.

  ‘That one is the cleaner’s cupboard, where he keeps all his buckets and things, and the other one is the club darkroom – for making photographs, you know – though nobody uses it much these days. We’ve been thinking of turning it into a computer room.’

  Benjamin went round the lobby examining each door and door frame.

  ‘People do not bring other animals here?’

  While the club rule forbidding women to enter the club had, after much heated debate (and even the threat of murder and/or suicide by Jumbo Wickramasinghe), been rescinded as long ago as 1977, Rule 11 forbidding pets was still in force – a fact which Mr Malik was able to confirm to his friend.

  ‘Then this, I think,’ said Benjamin, taking something from one of the door frames and holding it up between finger and thumb, ‘must be the hair of a lion.’

  Mr Malik went over to where Benjamin was standing beside the door to the darkroom.

  ‘But this door is always kept locked. No one goes in there. Only the manager has the key, in his office.’

  He tried the door handle and, sure enough, it was firmly locked.

  ‘But look, Mr Malik.’ Benjamin pointed to the floor. ‘Tracks.’

  Mr Malik looked down at the polished wood, almost expecting to see the wide round footprints of a big cat. What he saw were not prints, but scratches. With the light coming in through the front door he could see a definite line of faint scratch marks leading to where he stood. It took only a minute for him to find the manager, who quickly found the key to the darkroom hanging on the board in his office.

  He unlocked the door, pushed it open and turned on the light.

  34

  The weaver bird does not build its nest over the crocodile

  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 would
n’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.