A Guide to the Beasts of East Africa (16 page)

‘If it
was
the Bashu boys,
then they must have been hiding somewhere in the club.'

‘But even so, how could they have got
away with the lion? It's not something you could hide under your hat.'

Nor even, thought Mr Malik, in your
briefcase. Nothing more could be done about the matter for the moment. Tiger Singh at
last managed to persuade Mr Malik that a relaxing game of billiards was just what he
needed and had time to win two games before the coach arrived with the rest of the
safari party.

‘Place doesn't look the same out
there,' said Mr Gopez as he joined them in the bar. ‘Has anyone worked out
yet how they did it?'

As Mr Malik shook his head, he noticed a
pale mark on the wall.

‘That's strange,' he said.
‘Isn't that where the registration certificate usually hangs?'

Mr Malik awoke with a startling thought. Oh
my God, what about the loos? There might be enough room in the garden for 170 people,
but he had only one loo – two, if Benjamin didn't mind guests using his. Wait a
minute, what was he worrying about? There was not going to be a wedding. Oh dear, oh
dear, oh dear. Not even the Tiger had been able to suggest how to get Petula and Salman
back together. He sat up in bed and shook his head. He supposed Petula knew what she was
doing. He gave a long sigh. It was all too difficult. He reached for one of the stack of
books on the bedside table.

On the cover a white man in a short-sleeved
shirt and slouch hat lounged on a lawn sloping down to some water. Beside him was an
enormous deerhound. It was a picture of Lord Erroll taken at Lake Naivasha sometime in
the 1930s. Mr Malik picked up a second book. Looking back at him was a young woman
dressed in shorts and a short-sleeved shirt. She was lying on bare ground beneath some
trees. Beside her, its head in her hand, was a cheetah. In the black and white
photograph the young woman looked about sixteen. This was the girl who
claimed Sir Jock Delves Broughton admitted to her he had murdered his rival in love,
Lord Erroll. Was A.B. right? Could Juanita Carberry really have been the killer? There
was no doubt that he had put his finger on something. There
was
something
strange about the timing of her revelation, so long after the event. If she had decided
to keep silent at the time, why change her mind, and why do it then? Then there were the
inconsistencies in her own accounts. Was she in Nairobi at the time of the murder or
wasn't she?

He could see problems, though, with
A.B.'s theory. If Juanita
had
shot Erroll, how had she managed to get his
car into the ditch, and how had she manoeuvred his dead body on to the floor of the car
all by herself? There was something strange about the position of the car too. If the
murderer – whoever it was – waited for the car to slow down at the road junction, why
was it on the Nairobi road, a good 150 yards beyond the junction, when it was found by
the milk delivery drivers? Something was still not right. But why, thought Mr Malik, was
he wasting his time thinking about the Erroll case? It was over, it was finished, it was
all in the past. Like the wedding.

He put the books back on the pile beside the
bed and looked over at the clock. That must be Petula he could hear bustling about in
the kitchen. Time to get up. It was going to be a busy day.

‘Ah, there you are, darling.'
Mr Malik levered open the tin of Nescafé with a teaspoon. ‘How was the drive
home yesterday?'

‘Fine,' said Petula, taking the
jug of passion-fruit juice
from the fridge. ‘Was that you we saw
in Mr Singh's car?'

‘That's right, he gave me a lift
back to Nairobi.' Mr Malik spooned just the right amount of powder into his cup,
added a dash of water from the tap and stirred. He'd found that if you mixed in a
little cold water before you added the hot it seemed to taste better. ‘I
didn't see you, though.'

‘You overtook us and another couple of
cars rather fast on the hill just outside Muranga. As far as I could see you seemed to
have your eyes shut.'

‘Really?' said Mr Malik, filling
the cup from the kettle. ‘Just having a bit of shut-eye, I expect.' Mr Malik
took a sip from his cup. ‘You know, darling, about the wedding …'

‘Daddy dear – the wedding is
on.'

Mr Malik put down his coffee.

‘Really? I'm delighted to hear
it.'

‘You know – that's just what
Angus said you'd say. It was good to have that chance to talk – to someone outside
it all, if you know what I mean.'

‘So you didn't just talk about
Clarity International all the way home then?'

‘We talked about lots of things – we
even talked a little bit about you. But he made me see that perhaps I was a little hard
on Salman. After all, his work is important, and important to him. So I'm going to
give him a second chance.'

Mr Malik thought back to his own work and
marriage. How many times had his own dear wife missed out on evenings out or weekends
away when something came up at the factory? Too many. She had never complained. Though
Mr Malik knew that he could not undo all the
mistakes he had made in
his life, sometimes he found himself wishing that he had done things differently.

‘Work isn't everything – but
yes, perhaps you were a little hard. So I don't have to cancel the marquee,
uninvite all the guests?'

His answer was a small kiss on the cheek.
The telephone rang.

‘The Tiger called you two as well,
did he? Do you know what it's about?'

‘All he said to me was something about
a letter, A.B.,' said Mr Patel. ‘Did he mention anything else to you,
Malik?'

‘No, but he sounded worried – and you
don't often hear the Tiger worried.'

When Tiger Singh arrived at the club moments
later, his brow was indeed adorned with an unaccustomed furrow.

‘Ah, there you are, Malik, A.B.,
Patel. Good.' He took from his briefcase a single sheet of paper.
‘I'll cut straight to the chase, gentlemen. This morning I received by
courier this letter from the office of the Minister for the Interior. It is short and to
the point, simply calling my attention, as President of the Asadi Club, to Statute 232
of the 1901 British East Africa Protectorate Regulations, later passed into law
sine
legislatio
at Kenyan independence in 1963.'

‘Ministry?' said Mr Malik.

‘Statute?' said Mr Patel.

‘Sorry, old boy,' said Mr Gopez,
shaking his head. ‘I don't get it.'

The Tiger put the letter down on the table in
front of him.

‘The statute in question relates to a
regulation that all non-governmental, non-religious organizations are required to
register with the proper authority at or within three calendar months of establishment.
Those that fail to do so will be deemed non-lawful and liable to have their assets
seized.'

‘Register?' said Mr Malik.

‘Proper authority?' said Mr
Patel.

‘Assets seized? Sorry, Tiger,'
said Mr Gopez, ‘I still don't get it.'

‘It is quite simple, gentlemen,'
said Tiger Singh. ‘They are trying to get their hands on the Asadi
Club.'

Mr Gopez groaned. ‘Not
a-bloody-gain.'

‘But they can't,' said Mr
Patel. ‘I mean, it's ours, the members'.'

‘They are saying we have to prove
it.'

‘Of course we can prove it,'
said Mr Gopez. ‘Good God, it's been here a hundred years.'

‘A hundred and seven, to be
precise,' said Mr Malik. He turned to Tiger Singh. ‘It's something to
do with that certificate, isn't it? The registration certificate, the one that
isn't there any more.'

‘I suspect that the two events – the
disappearance of the certificate and the receipt of the letter – are not
unconnected.'

‘And the lion too, of course,'
said Mr Malik.

‘Never mind the lion,' said Mr
Patel, ‘if it's just a registration certificate we need, there must be a
copy of it somewhere, in some government office or something.'

‘One might reasonably suppose that to be
the case,' said the Tiger, ‘and I spent most of the morning making
enquiries. I have been assured by my contacts in the Interior Ministry, the Land
Registry and the City Council that no such copy exists.'

‘Of course,' said Mr Malik.
‘The fire.'

‘Fire? What are you talking about,
Malik?'

‘The fire, A.B. – the one in
Erroll's office.'

The Tiger nodded.

‘Exactly. On Tuesday the eleventh of
September 1940, a fire started in the office of the then Military Secretary Lord Erroll,
destroying most of the records of the Kenyan Secretariat.'

‘Yes, I was reading a book about it
again only this morning.'

‘The one by the woman who thought he
was knocked off by the British Secret Service?' said Mr Gopez.

‘That's right,' said Mr
Malik. ‘Her theory was that Erroll lit it himself – to destroy incriminating
evidence.'

‘Sounds like poppycock to
me.'

‘Like the theory that he was murdered
by Juanita Carberry?' said Mr Patel, smiling.

Tiger Singh held up a hand.

‘I think we need to focus all our
attention on the current problem, gentlemen. But it does seem almost certain that among
the documents destroyed in that fire were the original records pertaining to Statute
232. This means that the only existing proof of registration is the certificate that,
until last Friday, hung on the walls of this very club. The only way we can prove we are
registered is to produce the certificate. This afternoon I
talked to
the minister's office, to his private secretary Mr Jonah Litumana. He most kindly
informed me that rules are rules. We have fourteen – no, thirteen days to find
it.'

I think it was the great
seventeenth-century Dutch philosopher Baruch Spinoza who said that searching for the
meaning of life is like looking for the purpose of the human earlobe – or it may have
been my friend Kennedy. Sitting upstairs in front of her computer on that cloudy Nairobi
afternoon, Rose Mbikwa was thinking of her past, her present and her future. She could
see that caring for an ancient parent had a purpose. She could see that raising a child
had a purpose. But what of her life now? What about life in general? She thought back to
Saturday night. She'd had so much fun with Harry Khan – she hadn't laughed
so much since she couldn't remember when. There was nothing wrong with having fun,
was there? There was nothing wrong with laughter? And yet … and yet. Her
thoughts were interrupted by the sound of laughter from outside her window. Rose smiled
– the sound of children's laughter always made her smile. Elizabeth and
Reuben's youngest grandchildren had come to stay for a few days. Now that both
their parents were dead they often came up to Nairobi. It gave them a break from the
heat and dust of the plains where they had grown up and now went to school. And it gave
their great-aunt,
Elizabeth's sister, a break from looking after
three such boisterous and active young things.

Rose Mbikwa's house was smaller than
most in Serengeti Gardens but its garden was large and contained spacious staff quarters
– home to Elizabeth and Reuben Mahugu. They had joined the family just after Rose and
Joshua were married. At first Rose had refused to have servants. This was the twentieth
century – she was a modern woman used and quite able to look after herself, thank you
very much. Did her husband think they were still living in the days of the British
Empire? It had taken Joshua several weeks – weeks during which the servants'
quarters lay empty and unused – to persuade her that it might be a good idea to give at
least two of the tens of thousands of unemployed people in Nairobi a job and a decent
place to live. There had been times after Joshua's death when money was tight and
Rose had thought of letting Elizabeth and Reuben go. But where would they go? And what
would they do? Even with Elizabeth's skills as a cook and housekeeper and
Reuben's magical ability to make plants grow (and the old lawnmower perform its
weekly duty long after it should have been replaced), employment prospects were never
good in a Nairobi that was still sucking in hundreds of people a day from all over the
country. But she had no real need for household help now. Perhaps they could retire.
With the money invested from the sale of her father's house Rose would be able to
afford them both a decent pension.

And perhaps it was time that she herself
moved – somewhere smaller and easier to manage. It seemed wrong, somehow, that just one
person should have so
large a house and garden to enjoy. Well, not
quite one. Rose looked out of the window. The older two children were helping the
youngest climb on to the lowest branch of the jacaranda. Some of Angus's toys were
probably still around somewhere. She should try and find them.

There was a soft knock on the door.

Elizabeth wanted to know whether she'd
mind if the children stayed two more days.

‘No, no, not at all. I was just
thinking how lovely it is to hear the sound of children's voices in the garden
again.' She stood up; there were things to be done. ‘And would you ask
Reuben to come in when he's got a minute – and bring the short ladder. I want to
look up into the attic.'

‘Come on, Tiger,' said Mr Gopez
as he put the tray of drinks down on their usual table by the window. ‘Surely it
can't be as bad as all that?'

‘I'm very much afraid it
is,' said the Tiger. ‘They've wanted this land for years – and now
they think they've found a way to get it.'

He helped himself to one of the glasses. He
didn't have to explain who
they
were.

‘Then,' said Mr Gopez,
‘they've got another think coming.'

‘While your optimistic spirit does you
proud, A.B., the fact remains that without the certificate – and according to the law –
this club cannot be shown to be legally registered. It is therefore illegal – as the
minister's private secretary Mr Jonah Litumana seemed rather too pleased to tell
me.'

‘How long did you say we've
got?'

‘Until Monday week, just as it says in
the letter.'

‘But why us? Why not the Nairobi Club
or the Muthaiga?'

‘I phoned Pongo Hepplewhite this
morning. He said he wasn't surprised – they've been trying to get hold of
the Muthaiga Club for years too. When I told him about the registration certificate he
whipped theirs straight off the wall of his office and into a bank vault.'

‘But we've been here even longer
than they have,' said Mr Gopez. ‘Surely that means something? Law of
primogeniture – or whatever you legal chaps call it.'

Tiger Singh shook his head.

‘While the principle of primogeniture,
A.B. – whether it be agnatic, cognatic, uterine or absolute – has done sterling work in
ensuring the succession and inheritance of innumerable royal houses both within Europe
and without, I fear it is inapplicable to the present situation. We have to prove to the
ministry that we are registered. Without the original document we cannot do so. Ergo we
are illegal, ergo they can close us down.'

‘Well,' said Mr Patel,
‘we'll just have to pay them off.'

‘As a lawyer, my dear Patel, I did not
hear that. Besides, it would take millions of shillings – tens of millions. Have you
looked at the accounts recently?'

‘Couldn't we all, well, chip in
a bit?' said Mr Malik.

‘A noble thought, Malik. There are
currently two hundred and forty-three full members of the Asadi Club, with another
thirty or so country members. Some of us might be able to scrape together a lakh or two,
but I know most couldn't.'

‘But hang on a minute, Tiger,'
said Mr Gopez. ‘Is it not a basic principle of law that a party is assumed
innocent
until proven guilty? We may not be able to prove that the
club was registered, but under the law would we not be given the benefit of the doubt,
so to speak?'

‘An excellent point, A.B., but I fear
the principle in question relates to matters of criminal law,' said Tiger Singh.
‘Our case, unfortunately, falls within the civil jurisdiction.'

‘But if this damned burglary
wasn't criminal, what is?'

‘I suppose you could have something
there,' said the Tiger. ‘What you're saying is that in this case,
although by law proof of registration is incumbent on the respondent, if said proof can
be shown to have been destroyed, removed or otherwise made inaccessible by criminal act
then, under the civil code, such proof must be assumed. Is that about it?'

‘In a coconut shell, yes.'

‘I will certainly give the matter some
thought. Does anyone else have any ideas?'

‘It seems to me,' said Mr Malik,
‘that we should consider fighting this on two fronts, as it were. First, the legal
one. A.B.'s idea is a good one, and perhaps we can prove registration some other
way, or question the regulation, or –'

‘Or tie them up in so much pink ribbon
that they won't be able to lift a legal finger.' For the first time that
evening the Tiger smiled. ‘I'll certainly see what I can do. And the second
front?'

‘We need to make an all-out effort to
find the missing certificate.'

‘If it still exists,' said Mr
Patel. ‘After all, the powers of darkness might have already destroyed
it.'

‘You have a good point, old chap,'
said Mr Gopez. ‘If they have taken the certificate it would make sense to destroy
it asap. But still, trying to get the damned thing back has to be a priority. Perhaps we
can ginger up the police, get them to launch a proper investigation.'

The Tiger shook his head.

‘As far as the police are concerned,
all that was stolen is a stuffed lion and a framed certificate – neither of which are of
great monetary value.'

‘What about if we offer a
reward?'

Again the Tiger shook his head.

‘Under present circumstances, A.B., I
fear that would be of little use. There are complicating factors, you see. I happen to
know that the Minister for Police is a close friend of the Minister for the Interior.
They play golf together – I've seen them at the Sandringham. Whatever we do, we
cannot count on much help from official quarters.'

‘One thing I'd like to do is
have another word with our club manager,' said Mr Malik. ‘We might have
missed something.'

When the manager was called to the table, he
confirmed the story that on Friday night the Tiger and Harry Khan had been the last to
leave the club. He told them again about the incident with the front door being
accidentally locked.

‘But Mr Khan brought the spare
back-door key straight back from Mr Singh's house.'

‘And when you locked up, you are
absolutely sure the lion was still there – and, as far as you know, the
certificate?'

‘As far as I can remember, Mr Malik. I
locked up as
usual. It is a routine. I had already checked all the
windows were closed while Mr Singh and Mr Khan were in the billiard room – what with so
many members being on safari, it was a quiet night. After Mr Khan brought me the key I
went back inside, emptied the till and put the money in the safe in my office. I checked
that all the keys were on the board there and switched on the alarm. Then I went out
again through the back door. The alarm gives you thirty seconds to get out.'

‘What about the front door – did you
lock that?'

‘It was already locked, sir. Mr Khan
–'

‘Ah yes, of course, Mr Khan had closed
it behind him. So you didn't need to check that it was closed.'

‘No, sir. And there is the alarm board
too – all the door and window locks show up on the board. It is easy to see if anywhere
is unlocked.'

‘Do you lock the door to your
office?'

‘No, sir, it is not necessary. The
internal doors are not alarmed – but, as I say, I always check the key board in my
office before I leave. No keys were missing, and all the keys were certainly there the
following morning.'

‘Then it's quite clear what must
have happened,' said Mr Gopez.

‘It is?'

‘Someone must have hidden in the
building – stayed on after everyone else had gone.'

‘Or snuck in through the back
door,' said Mr Patel, ‘while everyone was out the front.'

‘Yes,' said Tiger Singh,
‘I suppose either is possible. Then after our meticulous manager locks up, he – or
they – have the run of the place.'

‘That's all very well,' said
Mr Patel, ‘but why take the lion? And how did they get out? All the doors and
windows are alarmed. And why take the certificate?'

‘Well, I don't think it's
difficult to work out,' said Mr Gopez. ‘Let's not forget that two days
later that letter arrives. As the Tiger says, they must be connected.'

Since rereading all the accounts of the
Erroll murder, Mr Malik had been thinking a lot about connections. Everyone assumed that
everything about the case – the position of the car and the body, the bloodstains and
the marks on the seat, even the inconsistencies in Juanita Carberry's accounts of
what had happened – were all somehow linked. But what if they weren't related at
all?

‘Of course,' he said,
‘they might
not
be connected. I mean, the person or persons responsible
for taking the lion are not necessarily the same persons who removed the
certificate.'

‘While logic is on your side,
Malik,' said the Tiger, ‘I fear circumstances are not.'

‘The Tiger's right,
Malik,' said Mr Patel. ‘That would be stretching coincidence a little too
far.'

‘Well, it's no use sitting
around,' said Mr Gopez. ‘I'm going to jolly well do something. First
thing – house-to-house enquiries. Someone might have seen something.'

‘And I'll talk to the staff
again,' said Mr Patel. ‘One of them might have remembered
something.'

‘And I,' said the Tiger,
‘will call an extraordinary general meeting, for tomorrow.'

‘Excellent idea,' said Mr
Patel.

‘By the way, sir,' said the
manager. ‘I have had two
quotes for repainting the clubhouse.
What would you like me to do about them?'

‘Nothing,' said Tiger Singh.
‘I rather fear that the way things are looking at the moment, the club may never
need repainting again.'