Black Cloud Rider

One

Tucked away in the picturesque, far eastern corner of Botswana, right on the edge of the Tuli Block, sprawled amongst butterfly trees, giant Mashatu and baobab trees, lies a sleepy and deeply religious village. With a population of only five hundred God-fearing citizens, Lentswe-Le-Moriti was the most unlikely place for a crime, let alone a homicide, to take place.

When the body of thirty-two-year-old Pinki Lôcha was found without a head, the God-fearing residents refused to even contemplate murder as an explanation. Rumours that she’d drunk herself to death or committed suicide seemed much more palatable an explanation. As to the whereabouts of her missing head, the hyenas were the prime suspects. Nobody had ever been attacked in the village, let alone murdered. Nobody in the village fitted the profile of a killer—all the men, as murder was the kind of crime where the perpetrators were likely to be male, were either pastors or trainee pastors.

But there’d been no animal prints at the scene of crime to support the escalating rumours. Flora, Pinki’s five year old daughter, appeared to be suffering from severe post-traumatic stress disorder—she’d lost the ability to speak.

Duski could not remember how long she’d stood there studying the place where her twin sister’s life had ended.

It had only just gone seven in the morning, but the heat emanating from the unobstructed sun was rapidly getting intense.

Typical January weather.

She could feel the boulder on which she stood heating up as if a fire had just been lit beneath it. The smell of heat was everywhere, tainted now and then by the scent of newly shed reptile skins. The air around her was reverently still, so still she’d wondered if it was too afraid to blow. It almost felt as if someone had got hold of it and bottled it till the mystery of what had occurred on top of that sacred hill had been unravelled.

Duski looked around her, examining from afar the shallow cave where Pinki’s body was found—her presence was everywhere. She closed her eyes and tried to connect with her sister like she used to, when they were both little. She couldn’t see or hear anything save her own anger—she was angry that Pinki had got herself killed, that she hadn’t heard the phone when Pinki rang her, that she wasn’t there to protect her.

Duski brought her attention back to the crime scene, trying to think good thoughts and rid her mind of negativity. It had taken her two days to summon enough courage to visit the already contaminated crime scene. Washed-out blood spatters had stubbornly stayed on at the mouth of the cave as if to permanently mark the place as Pinki’s.

The Bobonong police, who were in charge of the investigation, had allowed her to read and examine all the statements they’d taken from relatives and friends, including a short report on the crime scene. She hadn’t wanted to get involved in the investigation of her sister’s untimely and mysterious death, but she knew it was her duty to—she owed it to Pinki.

The first thing she’d do was pull herself together—she’d personally look into the case, take over the investigation if she had to. Something in the statements she’d read had made her wonder if there was more to her sister’s death than she’d been told.

Duski and Pinki were both born and bred in Lentswe—le—Moriti and they’d never—not once—seen or heard hyenas anywhere near the village.

The animals, Duski thought, had only ever skulked on the outskirts, but always keeping to their patch—they’d never crossed the line. The only animal incident she recalled involved a woman, years ago, who was killed by a bull elephant, but it had been outside the village. And it had been because poachers had injured the elephant only a few days before it attacked the woman—the elephant had been, quite rightly, pissed off. The woman had simply been in the wrong place at the wrong time.

The theory that Pinki had committed suicide and that her head had been devoured by hyenas only a few hours after her death, just didn’t hang together.

Surely hyenas would have scavenged more than the head. So why was everyone sticking to that story? She didn’t get it.

Duski faced the boulder with remnants of her sister’s blood on it. Pinki, I’ll find whoever’s done this; I’ll make sure justice is done. She directed her thoughts at the cave before surveying the surrounding scenery as if it held the secret of her twin’s mysterious death.

How was she to live without Pinki? She sat down on a nearby boulder, holding her head in her shaking hands. Memories of their childhood came flooding in like floodwaters during a monsoon season.

They had shared their mother’s womb and were born at the same time, though she’d come out slightly browner than Pinki—they were like chocolate and caramel. Otherwise they’d have looked exactly the same.

Memories of their evening village entertainment flashed across her sore and traumatised mind.

‘Hyenas had retired for the night’ was their favourite game—well, Pinki’s. Being dark-skinned, Duski always played the hyena, like all the other ugly and charcoal-black kids in the village. Only the pretty and light-skinned ones like Pinki were allowed to play victims—or rather, always chose to play the hyenas’ victims.

Their mother’s pleas, from all those years ago, suddenly echoed inside her head. It always started that way—their mum telling her to be a nice hyena.

Duski, you can be a nice hyena instead. Please just go and play with your sister—make sure the others play nicely too.

Mama, Duski is refusing to be a hyena.

But mama, I’m always playing the hyena—it’s not fair.

In the end she’d give in.

And there were the school beauty contests too. Beautiful caramel-toned Pinki always wore the First Princess crown; Duski always and without fail occupied the runner-up seat. How ironic, Duski thought, tears welling up behind her sore eyes. Pinki was now a real victim of the hyenas—not a pretend one anymore.

Pinki’s smooth, caramel complexion had always made her everyone’s favourite, leaving Duski to be the dark shadow nobody noticed, except Pinki. On their fifth birthday, everyone who’d come to the house, completely ignored her; she’d been, as usual, a shadow they walked over, criss-crossed without a shred of guilt. All attention was on Pinki—everyone picking her up, playfully pinching and pulling her fat cheeks and going, Coochie coochie, what a beautiful little boochie—boo, oh, look at her.

Duski remembered listening to their baby talk, wondering how Pinki would ever learn to speak properly after all that goofy, high-pitched jabber, until she couldn’t stand it anymore. That day, she’d snapped, got hold of Pinki’s hand and bit it really hard, until she too got some attention, only it wasn’t the sort she was after.

She shook the memory out of her head, shelving it safely back where it belonged, in the deepest and darkest corner of her unconscious mind. It wasn’t something she wanted to remember. She’d blamed Pinki and had secretly hated her for it for quite a long time. But as they got older and wiser, she knew it wasn’t Pinki’s fault—this was a world of binary oppositions. Anything lighter or whiter was beautiful and saintly; dark, ugly and evil.

She brought her attention back to the crime scene.

The footprints of her parents and relatives, the police and the villagers, were all over the place—and now hers. The nearby boulders, once spattered with her sister’s blood, had been scrubbed.

Was this deliberate? She wondered. But she had to remind herself that in a village where there’d never been a murder, preservation of the scene of crime was an alien concept.

‘Whose idea was it to clean up the blood stains?’ Duski turned to look at Constable Pego, a police officer who’d accompanied her to the crime scene.

‘Was done before we got here, apparently to stop people from scraping it up for some nasty business or other,’ the officer said, as sensitively as possible. ‘You know how superstitious people are around here.’

She stared at a couple of fat lizards that had just taken cover from the blazing heat under a devil’s thorn bush nearby, wondering if they too were silent witnesses. She inhaled a lungful of the sweet scented air coming from its bright golden-yellow flowers, before she turned her attention back to the officer.

‘Has this place been thoroughly examined?’

‘We did our best. Your parents wanted the body moved before we got here—with a contaminated crime scene, there’s very little one can do.’ He shrugged. ‘You were born and bred here, Sarge. You know all the taboos, the superstitions. They couldn’t leave the body lying here till we arrived.’ He moved closer to her to put a sympathetic hand on her shoulder. She shrugged it off. ‘We searched the whole area for your sister’s…’ He paused to think of a different word, finding it hard to verbalise the H-word. ‘We couldn’t find it anywhere,’ he said eventually, deciding to omit it completely.

She stared at his mouth, trying to make sense of what he was saying.

‘Got to get back down, my colleague is probably wondering where I am. See you at the funeral this weekend,’ Constable Pego announced, ready to start the descent back down to the village.

Duski looked around for somewhere to sit, careful not to go anywhere near where her sister’s blood had spattered, careful not to slide all the way down to the cave where her body had lain. She perched herself on a beanbag-shaped boulder a few steps from the cave mouth—she was feeling quite light-headed.

She blacked out. It only lasted a few seconds.

Got to pull myself together; nobody is going to track down Pinki’s killer.

It was all up to her, she reminded herself, to make sure whoever was responsible didn’t get away with it. This was her mission and she had to complete it. The thought seemed to rouse her.

‘Sarge, are you OK?’ The constable hurried back to her, looking concerned. ‘You got to come down with me—now! You’re not well. Can’t leave you up here.’

She regarded him for a while. ‘What did you say your name was?’ she mumbled like a drunk.

‘Constable Pego.’ He moved closer, offering her a hand so he could help her up.

She ignored it and stared into the distance instead—past the beauty of the landscape before her. Her glazed eyes stared right through the haphazard layout of the village—a mixture of modern and traditional architecture—past the undulating ochre hills that surrounded the village, and over the deep-green canopy of Mashatu trees that adorned the Limpopo riverbank.

‘We used to come here a lot, Pinki and I, when we were little. We used to sit up here for hours on end, listening to music and admiring the scenery.’ She gave him a thin, weary smile. ‘This place will never be the same.’ She paused, studying him. ‘Are you from around here?’

‘Hukuntsi, Sarge.’ He glanced at his wristwatch. ‘I need to get going, Sarge—you coming or not?’

‘The funeral is on Saturday?’ she asked, her eyes again staring vacantly into space as if she’d not heard what he’d just said.

‘Your father wants the funeral held this weekend.’

‘Have we got the medical examiner’s report yet?’ A rush of bile made its way to her throat, threatening to choke off her words. Her vision blurred a little as another wave of dizziness and anger seized her.

She steadied herself.

‘No we…’ the constable started to say, but she interrupted him impatiently.

‘Is your office intending to find the person who murdered my sister?’

‘We’ve interviewed almost everyone in the village. Nobody believes your sister was murdered.’ He gave a nonchalant shrug. Except you, he wanted to add. ‘It’s more likely a suicide,’ he said instead.

‘Suicide!’ She laughed bitterly. ‘How did she manage that, Constable? Chopped her own head off?’ She looked at him, eyes flashing with anger. She regarded him for a time before reaching for a packet of Peter Stuyvesant cigarettes hidden inside her bra.

He shrugged again. ‘Apparently your sister used this place as a secret drinking spot. An empty bottle of Amarula was found next to her body.’

She sucked her teeth at no one in particular before she pulled the packet out and opened it to shake a cigarette free. ‘Want one?’ She pointed the packet at him.

‘I don’t smoke,’ he said, his face a picture of utter horror. ‘You’re not intending to . . . ?’

‘Yes,’ she interrupted, already sticking the freed cigarette between her pursed lips.

‘You can’t smoke here—this is a holy village!’ He looked on, horrified.

She ignored him and flicked the lighter, while he glared at the yellow flame as it ignited the end of the cigarette. She puffed on it at the same time. Duski shifted the cigarette to one corner of her mouth.

‘Did you take fingerprints from the bottle?’ She still found it hard to believe her sister would have done something like that. It would have been impossible to hide a bottle of alcohol from her parents—especially to bring it up here.

‘It had everybody’s fingerprints on it. Remember, we weren’t the first on the scene.’ He scowled at the smouldering cigarette.

‘Your scene of crime report doesn’t mention a handbag or carrier bag. Do you realise that to bring alcohol up here, she would’ve had to conceal it inside a bag, or something?’ She pulled the cigarette out of her mouth as if to extinguish it, her mind turbulent with the mystery surrounding her sister’s death. Instead she watched the amber glow spread itself around the burner, the smoke snaking its way skywards and the ash grow, before she tapped it off.

What made father move to this village? She wondered as she watched more ash forming at the tip of the smouldering cigarette. She could not quite remember what his reasons were for bringing them to this remote corner of Botswana. She sighed. She should be grateful to have had the opportunity to be born and raised in the holiest village in the country—land of the giants, with its endless, forever blue skies, the enormous Baobabs and giant Mashatu trees. But her thoughts were in turmoil. They’d had a unique upbringing here—special. But this, this thing that happened to her twin, had soured those wonderful memories, tainted the magnificent and stunning views.

‘There was nothing else on the scene but the bottle, Sarge. There really isn’t much we can do,’ the constable said just as she was about to bring the cigarette back to her lips, making her jump.

‘There’s a lot we can do.’ She stared at him, shocked that the local police weren’t even intending to investigate Pinki’s death, that they’d already closed the case.

‘Prayer’s what you need in times like this.’ Again he looked disapprovingly at the cigarette she was still holding.

‘Are you a Zionist constable?’ She stuck the cigarette between her pursed lips again and dragged on it as if her life depended on it.

‘I was baptised when I was fourteen.’

‘So was I, didn’t even get asked. We were just told one Sunday morning to take spare clothes to church.’ She stared vacantly over the boulders that still bore faint traces of Pinki’s blood as she talked.

Life in the village had at times been difficult, especially when she and Pinki hit their teens. Both being tomboys, they’d constantly been in trouble for breaking the village rules. Women weren’t allowed to wear trousers or short skirts, and they had to have their heads covered at all times. They both got away with wearing jeans till the age of twelve and fortunately, they’d left the village for boarding school at the age of fourteen.

Memories of their childhood played and replayed in her mind, bad and good ones, as she dragged on her cigarette until only the butt was left. She ground it out on a boulder and buried it.

‘No hyenas have ever been near this place,’ she suddenly said, changing the subject. ‘There are no paw prints anywhere around here.’ She lit another cigarette and hung it between her dried and chapped lips. Inhaling and exhaling the toxic fumes thoughtfully, Duski stood up to examine all the footprints around the slightly stained boulders. ‘They’re all human, unless the hyena in question is human too.’

Something stopped her dead.

Behind a lone shepherd tree, some significant distance away from the crime scene, tiny shoe prints glared at her—unlike the rest of the scene, they were undisturbed. Duski instantly recognised the distinctive Bata plimsoll prints; she’d bought them for Flora’s last birthday.

She must have witnessed the crime from here.

Duski’s heart was pounding like that of hounded prey.

This explains the PTSD symptoms.

She took out her cell phone and photographed the prints. Apart from the tiny imprints, there were no animal or other human prints. She turned round to face the constable, who’d been following her at a discreet distance like a guard dog.

‘Flora never came anywhere near the scene,’ she showed the constable the tiny shoe prints. ‘Whoever killed her mother didn’t know she was watching, but sooner or later they’ll find out.’ She looked at him, eyes full of fear, frustration and despair. ‘We’ve got to do something before she too gets killed.’

‘We need to get back, the case is in the hands of CID now,’ he said before he dragged her down the hill.

It had been a trying morning—too emotional. Duski’s shoulders heaved in uncontrollable sobs as she followed the constable down a well-trodden track she and Pinki had used too many times.

I won’t give up. I’ll examine her body and catch her killer myself If I have to. I’ll find a way of getting Flora to speak again.

Suddenly, she remembered the witchdoctor from Mogoditshane village. He’d helped her solve the voodoo dolls’ ritual murders. His toothless grin flashed inside her troubled mind like a beacon.

Surely he would be able to fix Flora, make her talk again and lead me to the killer. The thought performed miracles—she pulled herself together, despair and self-pity dissolving into determination.

She disentangled her hand from the constable’s.

How would mama and papa react to me taking Flora to a witchdoctor?

Duski was sure her mother might understand, but her father… she couldn’t even bring herself to imagine what his reaction would be. I have to find a way of taking Flora back to Gaborone with me. She scanned her mind for reasons her parents, especially her father, would accept without question or suspicion—reasons that would force them to see things from her point of view.

Two

‘A dead man may tell no tales, but his body certainly does,’ the forensic pathologist, a stocky and round-faced Malawian, boasted as they walked towards the hospital’s morgue. ‘I’ve seen enough dead bodies to last me a lifetime,’ he said, grinning. ‘I can tell what a victim died from, down to their last meal.’ Something made him pause. ‘Know the deceased?’ he asked, searching her expressionless face.

‘No,’ she said, hiding the truth with a shrug and a grin.

After examining the crime scene, Duski had decided to take matters into her own hands. She’d left the village with the constables, to pay the investigating team a visit, only to be told her sister’s body had been moved to a morgue in Selibe Phikwe, a nearby mining town. An autopsy was scheduled for that afternoon. Without hesitation, she’d boarded the next bus bound for the town, where she’d introduced herself as the investigating officer. The medical examiner had briefly, casually glanced at her