Detective Kubu Investigates by Michael Stanley

Author:Michael Stanley
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Kubu, Detective Kubu, Michael Stanley, Botswana mystery, Botswana
Publisher: michael stanley
Published: 2013-03-03T00:00:00+00:00

KUBU AND IAN FOUND Thobela with her family and her children around her. She seemed calm and took them into the kitchen for coffee and privacy. She offered them homemade bread with jam, but to Kubu’s disappointment, Ian refused firmly, if graciously, for both of them. At another time, Thobela would have been embarrassed to have a senior official and a white doctor in her kitchen, but now she was beyond that.

“Why do you not arrest this evil man? He sits there in his house watching us. Perhaps I am next, or the children. What will you say then?”

“Mma,” said Kubu, “I am a senior officer in the CID, and this is the chief police doctor here with me. You can see how seriously we, and the chief who asked for us, are taking this case. I believe it will be solved in the next few days.” Kubu wondered if there was any chance of that happening. Then he asked Thobela about their friends, enemies, family. She kept coming back to Nonyane. Ian took his coffee and walked around the kitchen, stopping to look at various items. But he touched nothing. At last, when there was a break in the interaction with Kubu, he ventured a question.

“Mma, would you tell me exactly what Rra Kutsi ate on the day before he became ill?”

She gestured to a row of boxes of cornflakes – their breakfast since Kutsi had discovered an extra carton loaded onto his truck – and mentioned the leftover goat and the vegetables for lunch, and the pap and wors they had shared for dinner. Ian asked if anyone else in the family had felt unwell, but she shook her head.

“Was there anything that only Rra Kutsi ate or drank?”

She thought for a moment. “The leftover goat stew and the beans. Two beers at lunchtime and two more in the evening.” She hesitated. “Maybe he had something in the morning when he was doing deliveries. He was sick of cornflakes. And you have to throw out the weevils.”

Ian was looking at the jars of preserved goods supporting the cornflake boxes. Something stirred in his memory.

“The beans. Were any left over?”

Thobela pulled a container from the fridge, still a quarter full, and put it on the table. Ian unscrewed the lid and carefully examined the contents, but nothing seemed untoward. “I’d like to take this with me,” he said.

“There’s nothing wrong with the beans,” Thobela said. “I made them myself. And how could Nonyane know which jar Kutsi would eat? How would he get into the house?”

Ian had no answer for this, and Kubu took up the questioning again. Shortly after, they left with the remains of the beans but little else to show for the visit.

As they drove off they noticed that Nonyane’s windows had been broken. It seemed the people were already taking matters into their own hands.

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