A Guide to the Beasts of East Africa (9 page)

Mr Gopez had to allow several minutes for
the tumult caused by his words to die down.

‘Now,' he said, ‘with our
adjudicator's permission, allow me to share with you what really happened that
night.'

Tiger Singh rose to his feet.

‘In a court of law, Mr Gopez, I would
have raised several objections by now. But in the spirit of this debate, and looking at
the rapt faces in front of us, I cannot but let you continue.'

Mr Gopez bowed his thanks and turned once
more to face the audience.

‘As she let slip to James Fox, Juanita
Carberry
was
staying at the Broughton house at Karen on the night of the
murder. Like June Carberry, she would have heard Erroll and Diana arrive back from the
dance. Slipping on her gym shoes and taking one of her father's guns that she had
brought with her from Nyeri – you will remember that he was away at the time so she knew
it would not be missed – she climbed out of the bedroom window. While the two lovers
were taking their leave, she concealed herself in the back of the Buick – just as she
later claimed Broughton had done. And just as she said Broughton had done, she
waited until the car slowed down at the junction and shot him. As the
car veered across the road she grabbed at the armstraps, which came away in her hand.
That was another slip she made – how else could she know what happened to those
armstraps? She switched off the car engine and made her way back to the house
unseen.'

‘An interesting and by no means
impossible theory, Mr Gopez,' said the Tiger. ‘You have certainly raised and
answered an important question – why did the girl tell? But you have not yet answered
one of your “big five” questions, perhaps the most important one. You have
not told us
why
she killed Lord Erroll. You have not given us a
motive.'

‘It is simple. Juanita was an
attractive girl. She was sexually precocious and clearly fond of men. Perhaps she found
Erroll as attractive as so many other women did. She approached him and was rebuffed. If
she couldn't have him, she could at least make sure that no other woman could. It
has happened often enough before. Or perhaps the reverse. He made an unwelcome pass at
her – or went even further. In her anger she killed him.'

Mr Patel rose to speak.

‘All very interesting, I'm sure.
But, A.B. old chap, this is pure speculation.'

‘Speculation, my dear Patel, which
just happens to fit the facts. You have proposed your theory. I have proposed mine.
Shall we leave it to the audience to decide which is true?'

Who would you have voted for? I must admit
that Mr Patel made a very strong case for Broughton's guilt, and
even though I noticed a few discrepancies that he tried to brush under the debating
carpet, he certainly had style. On the other hand, you may have been impressed with the
way in which A. B. Gopez first demolished the opposing theory and then came up with a
counter-theory – even if it was somewhat, shall we say, imaginative. As for first
bringing up the Diana confession and then agreeing with his opponent to dismiss it, that
was a very nice touch. Judging from the general hubbub after Mr Gopez sat down, much the
same thoughts were being entertained and discussed by the audience. It took some time
for the adjudicator to call the meeting to order.

‘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.

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.