I could hear the faucet running upstairs when the phone started to ring. It was Alice Sususa, and she sounded pretty unhappy.
“Can you come here, Abel?”
“Now?” I glanced at my watch. “I’m with my kid.”
“Yes, I’m sorry. But there’s something here you ought to see. I’d rather not tell you on the phone.”
I was exasperated, but she seemed entirely serious. Fortunately, my neighbors were in.
“How do you fancy spending the night with Manzi and Tessa?” I asked Josh.
“Yay!”
The highway was much quieter as I sped back down it. I arrived quickly at Morning Ridge. The mortuary was set behind a wide grass strip, and there was some movement visible on the neatly mown turf.
If you want to see Zimbabwe’s remaining wildlife, outside of the reserves, the suburbs at night are the best places to find it. Small monkeys rustle through the trees. Jackals and caracals have adopted the same survival trick as Western foxes, moving into built-up areas. And we’ve never been able to get rid of every single snake.
The building’s front door was unlocked. I went through to the examination theater. Alice was beside one of the stainless steel tables, gazing down at the collection of bones and ripped skin on it.
“Is it Mr. Nkomo?”
“Dental records confirm it.”
“Thank God the ants can’t eat enamel,” I opined.
She looked up at me, squinting unhappily. “I think something might have fed before they did.”
“Meaning what?”
“Did anybody tell you? There’ve been several cattle mutilations in Binaville the last couple of years.”
I waited.
“There’s a dairy farm about half a klick from the Nkomo place. Three times that I know of a cow has been badly maimed. One actually had its throat tom out. No one’s ever found out what did it.”
“Feral dogs?” I suggested. “Even those baboons up in the mountains?”
“Baboons don’t attack cattle.” She grinned, amused by my city-dwelling ignorance. “But come here, look at this.”
She indicated some deep gouges on an exposed clavicle. “What would you say these were?”
They didn’t look like knife, or even chisel traumas. “Teeth marks?” I attempted.
“Absolutely. There are more on the femurs, and the pelvis, and the ribs. Pretty big ones.”
“Okay, so...” I still couldn’t understand what she was so concerned about. “Once the corpse was dumped, some dogs, even some wild hyenas, fed on the remains before the ants finished it off”
“I thought so too. But here we have something a little different.” Her attention drifted to the stripped right arm. “Do you know what these are?”
There were three narrower and shallower indentations, running parallel. I shrugged.
“They’re claw marks. Dogs, even hyenas, don’t have claws like these.” She frowned. “I thought at first, buzzards. I had to check back through the records quite a way before I found something that really matched. And when it did...”
Her voice faltered. Her entire manner became stiff, embarrassed. “The only marks that match this, Abel? They came from a cat.”
“A big cat?” I almost laughed out loud.
Alice looked perfectly serious, however. Serious enough to make me want to check it out.
I called Police Plaza. Had any big cats escaped from a zoo in, say, the last couple of years? I asked them. Or from the wildlife reserves, although the latter was highly unlikely. Every large animal in the reserves has a tracer implanted. Besides which, the nearest park with big cats is Hwange, more than three hundred klicks away.
I was shaking my head when I put my phone away. Alice’s embarrassment deepened, her eyes going damp.
“You got it wrong, Dr. Sususa,” I told her, trying to do it gently.
Just as wrong as anyone could ever get. The habitat which sustained big game is now completely gone. No elephants out there, nor rhinos. No buffalo, zebras, wildebeest anymore. Industrialization wiped the crocodiles and hippos from our rivers. And there are certainly no big cats.
“I’ll have to think again,” Alice conceded after a while, her head lowered and her voice a whisper.
“Yes, I think that’s best.”
I should have been annoyed at her for dragging me out of my home on such a far-fetched premise. But she looked so forlorn, I didn’t have the heart.
There was more about Nkomo on the eight A.M. bulletin the next day. Followed by even worse news. Earlier this morning, a colleague of Alice’s had gone through her sat-com records of last night, found the stuff about the big cats, and reported it to their superior. Who had suspended Alice on the spot. The story had leaked out.
The newscasters were practically in fits about it, calling her “Dr. Alice in Wonderland.”
“If Simon Nkomo were still alive, Dr. Sususa, there’d be one question he’d ask: What’s eating you?”
“What’s the connection between Dr. Alice Sususa and Tweetie Pie?” Steve Petrie asked me, when I picked him up from his house around nine. “They both tawt they taw a puddy-tat!”
I didn’t laugh.
Things in Binaville had pretty much returned to normal. There was police tape all over the place, of course. And a few kids hanging around there. But the whole circus that had surrounded the corpse’s first discovery? Those things vanish just as suddenly as they appear. The tides of time were closing over poor Mr. Nkomo, without leaving any ripples.
There was one small thing that was different. Over near the scrubland where the body had been found, a group of about a dozen homeless men had gathered. Ragged, bearded, old beyond their years. Most of New Harare’s derelicts wind up out on the edge of town. They’re less hassled by cops and hoodlums, and there are plenty of easy pickings on the farms.
A stretch black limo with reflective windows suddenly came rolling up the street. It pulled right off the pavement, went across the grass toward the little band.
I immediately recognized the tall, middle-aged guy who got out from the back. You could hardly not do, dressed the way he was.
America has its militias, Europe its neo-fascists. Africa has assholes like this so-called “Chief Manuza,” leader of the tiny but vociferous Tribal Party. Excuse the language, but these people make me terribly annoyed.
He was wearing old-style tribal robes. There were open sandals on his feet, and balanced on his round head was the kind of pillbox hat Kissi used to wear to the Federation Day races. He was carrying a fly-whisk, and he twitched it in his hand as he walked over to the hobos.
Then he did something that left me amazed, coming from a man so arrogant. He actually squatted down before the filthy derelicts. And started up a conversation with them.
Steve started across toward them, but I grabbed his arm, holding him back. All I wanted to do was watch.
After a while, Manuza started nodding. Then he handed them some objects — it was too far away to make out what. And, next moment, he did something even more peculiar.
Got up to his feet, and threw himself into a hopping dance, twirling around on the spot. The hobos watched him intently, following his every movement.
Once done, he bade them farewell, then got back into his limo. All the ragged men stood up, began to melt away into the landscape.
Steve turned to me. “What the hell was that about, Abe? Why didn’t you go talk to him?”
I shook my head softly. “We’d have found out nothing. You know what Manuza’s like around authority. And with you here? Even worse. Imagine how that racist pig would act, confronted by a white policeman.”
Then I clapped him on the shoulder.
“Let’s see if we can turn up any of those hobos he was talking to.”
We searched through the brush for twenty minutes, but they were gone. I called to Petrie, and we went back to my car.