She recognizes Robert Atlee on the plane. She follows him to his hotel. She informs Nu by telephone of Atlee’s location. Nu commandeers a ministry helicopter, flies to the Township, lands somewhere outside. As Daniel Tsuto had pointed out, this could be done with no one the wiser.
Nu goes to Atlee’s hotel. Kills him.
Why?
According to Daniel Tsuto, Nu had known Mayani. Mayani and Atlee were in the same G.S.U. company. Nu, therefore, had known Atlee.
Later, after the highjacking, Nu was in the township looking for Mayani. Mayani and Atlee had fled together. Suppose Nu found not Mayani but Atlee. Suppose he and Atlee worked a deal. Atlee’s life, and a share of the gold, in exchange for the rest of the gold and Mayani’s whereabouts. Nu kills Mayani, then helps Atlee escape.
Why help Atlee? Why not simply kill him?
Atlee, somewhere, has left a record of the transaction. If he dies, the facts will be revealed.
Yes. And so, for over thirty years now, Nu and Atlee keep their shameful secret. That they betrayed Mayani and stole the gold.
And then Atlee returns. Why?
Guilt? Greed? His share of the gold gone, he returns to threaten Nu with exposure?
No matter. Nu kills him.
But if the gold is gone, why then this secret hunt for it?
Ah, but how secret was it? Precisely secret enough to provide a major topic of gossip for the Township. The ministry helicopter landing at the airport in the middle of the night. Sergeant Mbutu snooping about the town, asking “discreet” questions which themselves were answers.
Not foolishness, as Daniel Tsuto had said, but slyness. The slyness of a jackal. If Nu pretends to believe the gold still exists — and by now the entire Township thinks he does — what motive has he for killing Robert Atlee?
All of this, if true, left Andrew in an interesting position. If he could find any proof to support these conjectures, he would soon have to accuse the Assistant Minister of the Interior, not a pleasant man at best, of murder.
When Andrew entered Bwana Teggay’s hotel room late that afternoon, to ask a series of what he hoped were carefully disguised questions, he saw that the man was packing. In a trim safari suit of beige Egyptian cotton, Teggay stood bent over his suitcase, arranging the clothes inside.
“Ah, Mbutu. Good to see you. You’ve heard, I suppose.”
“Heard?” Andrew said.
“About the confession.”
“Confession?”
Smiling his thin smile, carefully folding a pair of brown twill slacks into the suitcase, Teggay said, “So you haven’t heard. Well, you’re off the case. It’s closed. We got a confession just an hour ago. Apparently Atlee’s return had nothing to do with the gold. It seems he spent it all. Came back here for reasons of his own. Picked up some chippie on the beach, took her to his room, and tried a bit of rough and tumble. She stabbed him. It’s as simple as that. I’ve already called the minister and told him. He agrees it’s time to fold our tents.”
Believing what he did, Andrew would have found this story dubious in any event. That it sounded much like one of Cadet Inspector Moi’s notorious summaries only increased his distrust. He asked, “Who is the woman who confessed?”
Teggay shrugged. “A nobody. Some local nurse.”
“Do you know her name?”
The man told him, and Andrew suddenly understood.
Holding the library book, Andrew knocked at the front door. He waited for quite some time. No one came. He knocked again. Waited.
At last he turned away and followed the sandy path round the house and into the small enclosed back yard. Wearing the same clothes he had worn earlier, his hands in his lap, his shoulders slumped, the old man sat beneath the blossom-laden trellis, staring off at the wall of rosebush. The light was thinner now, the colors faded, the roses diminished. Soon the sun would set.
The old man sensed Andrew’s presence, for he looked up, squinted, then nodded once, expressionless. He looked off again at his roses.
Andrew said, “May I sit down, m’zee?”
“Yes.” Indifferently, without a glance.
Andrew sat, putting the book in his lap. For a moment he said nothing. In the trees somewhere a bird squawked, low and shrill.
Finally Andrew said, “Your granddaughter has confessed to the murder of Robert Atlee.”
“Yes,” said the old man.
“She was walking, she says, along the beach in front of the Sinbad when he approached her. They spoke. He asked her to his room. She went. He told her who he was. He was bragging, she says. He told her that he and Mayani had separated, Mayani leaving the gold with him. That he had taken the gold into the south and finally escaped, by freighter, to the United States. He told her he had wanted to see Africa one more time.”
The old man had not looked at him, had not moved. He might have been sitting alone, there in the lengthening velvet shadows of his garden.
“And then,” said Andrew, “he attempted to assault her. A powerful man, he subdued her easily. He removed his clothes. As he approached, she saw the knife on the nightstand, grabbed it, and used it. Then she left.”
The old man said nothing.
Andrew said, “None of this is true, m’zee.”
The old man frowned. He turned to Andrew.
Andrew said, “I spoke today with Elizabeth Harrambee, the matron at Uhuru Hospital. She was a nurse here during The Troubles. It was she who told Ronald Nu, thirty years ago, about seeing Mayani near your house. She knew not only Mayani, she knew Robert Atlee. Two days ago, she was on the same plane from the capital. She recognized him.”
Eyes blank, the old man watched Andrew.
Andrew said, “After I spoke with her today, m’zee, she came here. She was seen doing so — I made inquiries.”
Nothing from the old man.
“Your granddaughter is a nurse. It was as a nurse that she spent her exchange year in Sweden. Previous to that, she worked at Uhuru Hospital. I know this, m’zee, for I examined their records before coming here. I believe that she became friendly with Matron Harrambee.”
Only the blank watchful stare.
Andrew shifted slightly in his chair. “M’zee, everyone knows that you are the only person left alive in all the Township who had any connection to Robert Atlee and Mayani. I believe that when the matron saw Robert Atlee on the airplane, she notified your granddaughter. Out of friendship, perhaps. Perhaps out of a sense of guilt for what she had done before.”
Still nothing.
Andrew looked down at the ragged grass, darkening now as light seeped from the sky. He looked up. “M’zee, so far as the police and the ministry are concerned, this case is closed. The gold is gone, Robert Atlee is dead, your granddaughter has confessed.”
The old man watched.
Andrew took a deep breath and let it slowly out. “I would like to agree with this,” he said.
Without moving, his face still without expression, the old man spoke. “What will happen to her? To Joanna?”
Andrew shrugged. “It is her word against the word of a dead man. He was a hero, yes, but the story of taking the gold will tarnish the legend. She removed her fingerprints from the knife and placed Atlee’s on it. Not good, but she claims she was in panic. She is a local woman, and well-respected, and she confessed voluntarily. I expect that her story will be believed. At the very worst, manslaughter. Perhaps a year or two of jail. At the very worst. More likely, a suspended sentence. Assuming there is even a trial.”