A Guide to the Beasts of East Africa Page 8

  ‘Ladies, gentlemen – quiet, please,’ said Tiger Singh for the second time. ‘You have heard the arguments from our two esteemed speakers. It is now my task to sum up each of them, and then to call for a vote. Mr Patel has said that, despite the acquittal of Sir Jock Delves Broughton in a court of law, his subsequent confessions to the murder of Lord Erroll leave no doubt that he was the guilty party. Mr Gopez has explained that these confessions may have been the result not of guilt but of bravado. He has also suggested that certain irregularities in the statements of another person, Juanita Carberry, lead to the conclusion that not only did she fabricate the story of Broughton’s confession to her, but that she was herself the murderer. I will now ask you to vote. All those who support Mr Patel, please raise your hands.’

  The Tiger counted and wrote down the number.

  ‘All those who support Mr Gopez, please raise your hands.’

  A second number was written beside the first. The Tiger looked over his glasses towards the expectant crowd.

  ‘As might be expected in a debate of this nature and with debaters of this calibre, the count is a close one. The result is as follows. Mr Patel, forty-one votes. Mr Gopez …’ he paused. ‘Mr Gopez, forty-two.’

  Mr Malik was the first to congratulate both parties on their inspired performances.

  ‘Yes,’ said Tiger Singh, ‘I would not like to come up against either one of them in a court of law. But I noticed that you didn’t vote, Malik – didn’t want to offend either party, I suppose.’

  ‘No, not so much that,’ said Mr Malik. He paused. ‘It’s just there are some aspects of the whole thing that still worry me. But as I say, it’s all in the past now – as I feel sure is the dispute between our two friends. Let me again thank you all for stepping into the breach. I don’t think even a lecture on Nairobi’s water supply could have attracted such a crowd. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I should go home. Early start in the morning, you know.’

  ‘Sure you wouldn’t like to stay for another billiard lesson?’

  Mr Malik turned to the figure who had just appeared behind him.

  ‘Oh, hello, Harry. I wasn’t expecting you tonight.’

  ‘I’ve been out to dinner at Tusks – just business – so I thought I’d drop by on my way back into town. So, what do you say, Jack, how about a game?’

  ‘Now, Harry, we really must let Malik go,’ said the Tiger. ‘It is indeed a busy day tomorrow – the club safari, you know. Which reminds me, Malik. I’m going to have to be in court again tomorrow morning. I’m afraid the case I’ve taken on is lasting longer than expected – in fact, I’ve still got a bit of work to do on it tonight. Don’t keep a place for me on the coach. I’ll drive up in the afternoon and join you there.’

  ‘What about you guys?’ said Harry Khan, turning to the other two. ‘Can I buy you a drink?’

  ‘Not for me, thanks, Harry,’ said Mr Patel. ‘It’s been quite a night.’

  ‘You missed an excellent debate,’ said Tiger Singh.

  ‘Oh yeah, right – the debate. Well, what about you, A.B.?’

  ‘Just a nightcap perhaps, Harry. Though sweet be victory, it is sometimes rather thirsty work.’

  It turned out that after so closely fought a contest Mr Gopez needed not one restorative but three, and in the course of consuming them he was interested to discover that Harry had had a very busy day. Not only had he met the Minister for the Interior that morning, but that evening he’d been dining with the Minister of Transport.

  ‘Oh really? He lives round here, you know, just over the back fence as a matter of fact. Once tried to persuade us – the club, I mean – to sell him some land. Nothing came of it, of course. Didn’t I read something about him and his secretary in the Evening News yesterday?’

  ‘Yeah, but he explained it to me. Seems like some kind of spider or insect fell down her dress and he was just trying to help her get it out. But he’s still not sure how the photographer got there.’ Harry chuckled. ‘Those guys, they sure don’t like that newspaper – and boy would they all like to get hold of that Dadukwa guy. But from what I’ve been told, the Evening News will be closing down any day. Anyway, got to go. Have fun on that safari.’

  By the time Harry Khan arrived at his hotel the several clocks above the reception desk revealed that, while the sun was rising over the Sydney Opera House, it was approaching midnight in Dubai and most of the office workers of New York were looking forward with mixed feelings to the subway ride home. On his way past the Jockey Bar he did notice an attractive woman in tight-fitting jeans sitting by herself, and thought perhaps a final nightcap might not be such a bad idea, but he had second thoughts when he saw her being joined by a tall man carrying two long glasses of what appeared to be ginger beer. As he changed direction and headed for the lift, he heard the woman thanking the tall man.

  ‘My pleasure, Petula,’ said the man.

  12

  The chameleon does not dance before the snake, nor the beetle before the chameleon

  Isn’t that good news? Petula’s fiancé Salman has managed to get some extra time off. He must have taken the afternoon flight from Dubai and Petula has picked him up from the airport after her CI meeting. Perhaps he has already checked into the hotel, and the two love birds are enjoying a drink together before a night on the town – or somewhere more private perhaps.

  Actually, no.

  Salman, I have to reveal, is still sitting at his desk in his office on the thirty-second floor of the TransAsia building in downtown Dubai. He is double-checking the week’s spreadsheets, and by the look of them he will soon be burning the midnight oil (of which, despite all Salman’s long hours, Dubai still has a reasonable supply). You will be pleased to hear, though, that this is not too much of a chore, for Salman has always loved figures – especially when those figures represent large sums of dollars, euros, pounds or yen. But if Petula’s fiancé is still in Dubai then who, I hear you ask, is this other chap – this tall, rather good-looking chap – sitting next to her in the Jockey Bar of the Hilton Hotel late on a Thursday night in downtown Nairobi?

  ‘Yes, but where do you start?’

  The tall man put down his glass.

  ‘The way I look at it is this. It’s no good just trying to tackle the problem from the top down, and it’s no use just trying to do it from the grass roots up. We have to attack corruption at every level.’

  ‘But aren’t we just whistling in the wind?’ said Petula. ‘Surely poverty is the real problem.’

  ‘I can’t argue that poverty and crime aren’t connected. Just as poverty leads to crime, crime – and I’m including corruption here, of course – surely leads to poverty. Look at this country. Nominal per capita annual income less than eight hundred dollars – by most standards that’s pretty low. And within those figures, huge disparities of wealth. Corruption has to be one of the factors behind that.’

  Petula sighed and nodded.

  ‘Yes, I’ve been looking at CI’s own figures. We’re right up there with places like Paraguay and the Democratic Republic of the Congo. But how do you tackle it? I mean, take the police. They get paid a pittance. The only way an individual policeman can survive is on bribes and dodgy fines –’

  ‘Most of which they have to pass up the ladder anyway.’

  ‘Right, and we all know how far up that ladder reaches. Corruption has become an institution. So where do you start trying to dismantle it?’

  ‘Remember what we were talking about at the meeting on Tuesday? Publicity. Let the people know who’s taking the bribes – and not just the small ones. As I said, you’ve got to attack this on every level. How much does the average man in the street –?’

  ‘Or woman …’

  The man smiled.

  ‘Or woman … have to pay every day? We’re not just talking about direct bribes, but indirectly – in the things they have to buy.’

  Petula nodded.

  ‘People forget about that. Every time a matatu driver has to pay a bribe
at a police roadblock, that puts the fare up.’

  ‘Every time a butcher has to bribe the health inspector, up goes the price of meat.’

  ‘So what are we going to do about it?’

  They raised their glasses.

  ‘Publicity!’

  ‘And if I may say so,’ continued Petula, ‘I thought that point you raised at the end of the meeting was spot on. The internet has got to be the way to go. The government can try to gag the press as much as they like – I even heard a rumour that the Evening News is going to be shut down – but let’s see them try to control the internet.’

  ‘That’s right,’ said the man. ‘Let’s see them try.’ He drained his glass. ‘Another ginger beer?’

  ‘Thanks, but I’d better get home.’

  ‘What about another meeting tomorrow then – same time, same place?’

  ‘Sorry. I promised to go with my dad on his club safari this weekend, and I have to be up early on Saturday. I’m meeting Salman – my fiancé – at the airport in the morning and we’re driving up.’

  The man smiled again.

  ‘Sounds great. You know, that’s one thing I really missed while I was away. Camping out under the stars, seeing all the wildlife.’

  ‘Yes, of course. I forget you were born here. When they said our new director was coming from Geneva, I just assumed you were Swiss. How long have you been away?’

  ‘That’s kind of difficult to say. I started school here in Nairobi, at St Edward’s, but I went away overseas to boarding school when I was thirteen – I came home for holidays, of course, but that was never for more than a few weeks at a time. Then college in the UK and then I joined the UN. I was working for them for eleven years – mostly in Geneva. I’ve always tried to come back to the old family home as often as I could – my mother still lives there.’

  ‘Will you be moving back there then?’

  The tall man smiled.

  ‘She hasn’t asked me, so I haven’t had to say no. I think we both know that we’re too old for that to work. But I’ve been looking forward to living in Nairobi again. It’s one of the reasons I applied for the job.’

  ‘So it’s good to be home?’

  ‘Good,’ said the man with a grin, ‘and getting better.’

  Over the many years that he had been running the annual Asadi Club safari, Mr Malik had come to accept that no matter how many times you tell everyone that the coach will be leaving from the club car park at eight o’clock sharp, at least one of them will be late. Who would it be, he thought with an inward smile, this time? Would it be Shivraj Prasad, unable to find his sun hat or binoculars anywhere? Or, mused Mr Malik, would the youngest teenage child of the Dev family (what was her name?) once again refuse to get out of bed at so unearthly an hour? Perhaps, like last year, the coach would be kept waiting by Ali Hilaly’s mother’s missing medicine. In the end, it turned out to be Mrs Lakshmi (who forgot her pills and had to send her husband home to get them), but by eight thirty-five all of the twenty-two names had been ticked off the list. Mr Malik suffered a small moment of panic when another car pulled into the car park, but it was only two men from a painting firm come to give an estimate for redecorating the clubhouse – Mr Malik was pleased to see the manager had wasted no time. With some relief he climbed aboard the coach.

  ‘Everybody ready?’

  ‘No, no, just a minute.’

  Mr Lakshmi whispered something to Mr Malik and scurried into the club. Three minutes later, as he climbed back inside, it was Mr Malik’s turn to whisper something. After Mr Lakshmi had made the necessary sartorial adjustments, Mr Malik tried again.

  ‘Everybody ready?’ he repeated. ‘Righty-ho. We’re on safari.’

  At these magic words the coach driver pulled the handle to close the door and released the big black brake lever. The coach crept slowly out of the car park of the Asadi Club into the Nairobi morning traffic.

  ‘What about your daughter, Malik?’ said Mr Patel from the second row of seats. ‘I thought you said she was coming with that fiancé of hers?’

  ‘Petula – they – will be coming tomorrow,’ said Mr Malik. ‘Salman couldn’t get the day off, but he’ll be flying in from Dubai on the early flight. She’s fetching him from the airport and they’ll drive straight up.’

  To travel from Nairobi to Meru there is little choice but to take the Thika road, known to generations of Kenyan drivers as Pothole Alley. Some potholes have now been there so long they have acquired affectionate nicknames – the Big Splash and Lake Victoria come to mind. Very occasionally they are filled in – if, for example, the President leaves Nairobi on one of his five-yearly ‘meet-the-people’ tours – but their location can still be identified, sometimes years later, by the way the traffic parts round an apparently smooth piece of road as the drivers automatically swerve aside to avoid the phantom pothole.

  The going was good until just past Ruiru, where the coach had to squeeze past a broken-down truck right in the middle of the road. A few miles further on they came across an accident between two matatus. It seemed that at least a hundred people were sitting and standing beside the road – thank goodness, thought Mr Malik, that none of them seemed hurt. So it wasn’t until eleven o’clock that the bus finally passed through the small town of Thika and crossed the Chania Falls.

  Mr Patel leaned over A. B. Gopez to point at the still-swollen waters of the Thika River surging over the rocks below the bridge.

  ‘It’s still there, you know.’

  ‘It? There? What?’

  ‘The gun, the one that Broughton used.’

  Mr Gopez turned to Mr Malik in the seat in front.

  ‘Malik, old chap, remind me – what was that score last night?’

  ‘Patel forty-one, Gopez forty-two. I say, look. Isn’t that a hippo?’

  ‘So it is,’ said Mr Patel, gazing down at the water below. ‘One down, four to go.’

  ‘Now what are you talking about?’ said Mr Gopez.

  ‘The big five, of course, A.B. Elephant, rhino, hippo, lion and leopard.’

  ‘Hippo? I’ve told you before, hippos are not one of the big five. Buffalo.’

  ‘So you did, so you did. But still, hippos kill more people.’

  ‘What do you mean, kill more people?’ said Mr Gopez.

  ‘That’s what they do. In boats.’

  ‘How, may I ask, do you get a hippopotamus into a boat?’

  It was Mr Patel’s turn to roll his eyes.

  ‘Hippos in water, A.B. People in boats. The things swim underneath and tip them over. Then – chomp. Happens all the time, apparently. I read something about it in the Evening News just the other day.’

  ‘Malik, would you mind telling Patel here that he’s spouting balderdash? He seems deaf to my voice.’

  Mr Malik, it has to be said, had not been following his friends’ conversation with all due diligence, his thoughts not being on murders or hippos but on the surprise he had planned for the safari. If everything had gone according to plan, Benjamin should have it up and ready at the campsite by now.

  ‘Hmm? What did you say, A.B.?’

  ‘What would you say was the most dangerous animal in Africa?’

  ‘Er … lions?’

  ‘No, no, Malik. Your lion, it is generally accepted, is at heart a cowardly beast. Think harder.’

  ‘Zebra!’

  This ejaculation was uttered by neither Mr Patel nor Mr Malik but by young Imran Hilaly in the back of the bus, who thus claimed the traditional Asadi Club safari prize for spotting the first zebra of the trip. With some relief, Mr Malik excused himself, stood up and reached towards the luggage rack for the large tin of Jolly Man assorted bonbons.

  13

  The beetle on the elephant’s back cannot say there is no dew on the ground

  The sight of Imran Hilaly demolishing four Cheetah Chews and a Lion Licker had made Mr Malik feel a little peckish. He looked at his watch. Yes, lunchtime. The driver found a place to stop the coach under some thorn tre
es beside the river, and everyone piled out. Tiffin packets were passed round – chapatti wraps, cutlets and samosas – and Mr Malik opened a case of mixed sodas.

  ‘Lemonade, cherry fizz or cola?’

  ‘What, no beer?’ said Mr Gopez.

  ‘Mmmm,’ said Mr Patel, swallowing a large bite of samosa. ‘I’d know Ally Dass’s cooking anywhere. Plain soda for me, please, Malik old chap. Have you booked him for the wedding yet?’

  ‘All arranged – mchuzi, marquee, mosque.’

  ‘Mosque, eh?’

  ‘Salman said he wouldn’t mind temple but his family wanted mosque. Petula doesn’t seem to care one way or the other.’

  The thorn tree in whose shade they now sat was, Mr Malik noticed, adorned with several weaver birds’ nests, each with an attendant male advertising its nuptial credentials with loud songs and vigorous waving of wings. From their black eye masks and dark backs Mr Malik recognized them as Baglafecht weavers. How long ago it seemed since he had last heard Rose Mbikwa say those words on the Tuesday morning bird walk – ‘Bag-la-fecht weavers’. What had she seen while she had been away in Scotland? he wondered. In the 1960s he had spent two years in England but he had never crossed the border. Were there Scottish swans, Scottish sparrowhawks, Scottish skylarks?

  Mr Malik gazed up past the thorn tree to the wide blue sky. High overhead flew a skein of birds – probably pelicans, he thought, on their way to Upper Reservoir. As if from nowhere a pair of black kites appeared and began circling above the coach. Amazing how even in an out-of-the-way place like this they could spot a picnic within minutes. He looked around. Everyone seemed to have finished their lunch packets and sodas. It was time to get back on the bus. Next stop – the equator. For just as it is a tradition on the Asadi Club annual safari that the first child to spot a zebra wins a prize, it is a tradition when heading north to stop at the equator to stretch the legs and watch water go down the plughole.