Sibanda and the Black Sparrow Hawk

by C Elliott, C M Elliott

Genres: International Crime & Mystery

Synopsis

'Fans of Alexander McCall Smith will love Scotty Elliott's Sibanda series. . . Sunday Times

When a gruesomely vulture-mutilated corpse is found in the Park near Thunduluka Lodge, DI Jabulani Sibanda - a hard-boiled, bush-loving, instinctive crime fighter - is on the case.

With Sibanda are his sidekicks: Sergeant Ncube, an overweight, digestively challenged, severally married angler and mechanical genius, and Miss Daisy, an ancient, truculent and eccentric Land Rover that is the bane of Sibanda's life and the love of Ncube's.

Sibanda and Ncube pursue the investigation in the African bush following the mysterious clues they found at the crime scene: tyre tracks, a knife inscribed with the letter 'B', and a sliver of blue metallic car paint...

Praise for Sibanda and the Rainbird:

'Fans of Alexander McCall Smith will love Scotty Elliott's Sibanda series . . . They have the same dry humour and warmth as the No1 Ladies' Detective Agency stories, the same palpable affection for the people and the landscape, and detectives who solve crimes more by hunch and legwork than with forensics and technology' Sunday Times (SA)

'Her plot keeps readers guessing right to the end, when the monster meets a truly satisfying fate . . . Elliott's skill as a writer lies in her ability to create and flesh out characters that are so lifelike, they thrum in your head for days after finishing her books' Business Live

'Will have you hooked' The Gremlin

Release date: January 21, 2021

Publisher: Little, Brown Book Group

Print pages: 272

Sample

Detective Inspector Jabulani Sibanda stood for some moments over what remained of the mutilated body. He stroked his chin several times, a habit which his fellow police officers understood to mean, ‘Don’t interrupt me, I’m thinking’.

‘What happened in this remote patch of bush, Ncube?’ he addressed his sergeant.

‘Sir, it’s an open and shut case. The victim has been attacked and killed by wild animals.’ They both continued to stare at the disfigured corpse hardly recognisable as a human being. Sibanda glanced across at the flocks of vultures roosting in the nearby acacia grove. He controlled a wave of disgust. They had much to answer for, having digested this man’s identity for breakfast.

Gubu Police Station had received the call early from the manager of Thunduluka Safari Lodge. ‘We’ve found a body in the valley,’ he had said over the crackling line. ‘Our morning game drive came across it a few minutes ago. They’ve just radioed in. You’d better get here in a hurry. It’s disappearing fast. The vultures have found it.’

Sergeant Ncube, who answered the phone, replied, ‘Tell them to remain at the spot and guard the corpse. We will be sending a detail as soon as we can.’ The sergeant had been on the night shift about to knock off. There would be no sleep for him today.

‘Sorry Sergeant, I can’t. The vehicle is full of sensitive clients. Our guide says they are talking “law suits” for exposure to “gratuitous carnage”. They are on their way back to camp. We have litres of strong coffee and a trauma counsellor waiting.’

‘A trauma counsellor?’ Ncube hadn’t a clue what ‘trauma’ was or why anyone would need counselling.

‘My wife is a trained nurse. She adopts whatever terminology suits the moment. People seem to find security in titles.’ The manager continued to offer his apologies and assistance, but was eager to terminate the call and prepare for the arrival of his guests. They had seen an African kill they weren’t banking on. ‘Sorry we couldn’t be more help. We are always available to help if you need us,’ he said as he hung up.

Ncube stared at the phone for a moment, as if will power alone could erase the message and replay time until he had knocked off. He sighed and punched in the number of the detective about to come on duty. He would need a trauma counsellor himself by the end of the conversation. The man’s words often stung like a hive of angry hornets. They would pain the ears that had been preparing for the sweet welcoming murmurs of his wives. He relayed the gist to Detective Inspector Sibanda, home in the bathroom allowing the trickle of tepid water that passed as a shower to attempt to launch him into the day.

‘Listen Ncube,’ he said irritably, as he towelled himself dry, ‘phone the lodge back, advise them that we need to interview those clients. They must stay put.’ Tourists were a fickle lot: Here today, in the Serengeti tomorrow. The detective knew that an American and his planned itinerary are rarely parted.

‘And you stay put too, Ncube. Organise the transport,’ he hesitated for a moment before snapping, ‘and make sure it can get us as far as the crime scene.’ Ncube sensed a hint of future suffering infused in his words. Failure was not an option.

Sibanda arrived at the police station in near-record time. Speed was the crux. He estimated forty-five minutes to the scene. Scavengers and the blistering heat were going to destroy whatever evidence remained if they didn’t get a move on.

The rattletrap Land Rover serving Gubu Police was running when he arrived. Given its usual allergy to any form of locomotion, this was an auspicious start. He suspected Ncube had rounded up everyone within a couple of hundred metres of the station and had them pushing the obstinate beast up and down the road to coax a spark of compliance. He was grateful.

Sibanda drove as fast as the engine would allow. He had long ago, against the explicit instructions of police internal regulations (at best a maze of unfathomable, unworkable minutiae), hammered the governor into submission. It was now a flattened disc beneath the accelerator, unable to do its intended job of preventing the pedal from fully depressing, and the driver now had some semblance of acceptable forward motion.

As the detective approached the valley, he could see no need to call in at the lodge for directions. Vultures were circling high on the morning thermals. Beneath them would lie the ill-fated corpse.

‘I suppose it’s too much to ask that the safari vehicle might have come across the scene earlier, before the vultures had begun their feast. I doubt there’s much evidence left,’ he complained to Ncube, who had arrived a few minutes before him. He’d driven an even older Spanish Land Rover substitute. It travelled sideways like a crab, was shunned by most of the station staff and required exquisite driving skills to keep on the road. A real bitch. Not Sibanda’s bitch if he could avoid it.

‘Yes, sir,’ replied Ncube, although he couldn’t imagine what more evidence they needed. This unfortunate person had wandered off into the bush, maybe got lost, and died a hideous death in the deadly jaws of a lion. Much of the flesh was digesting in the vultures’ guts and being passed in dollops of white droppings that splashed the branches and painted the leaves.

Sibanda reviewed what he knew of vulture feeding patterns. First the Bateleur eagles would arrive. At the vanguard of death, they were rewarded by the choice pickings of the eyes. Bateleurs and the heavy-bodied vultures only managed to get going when hot air formed thermals to support their soaring weight. They were late starters.

The huge lappet-faced vultures, from their mile-high cruising altitude, were often next at the kill. With three-foot wing spans and wickedly curved beaks, they did most of the butchering. Their beaks had become adapted over millennia to rip open even rhino hide, making it easier for their smaller cousins, the white-backed vultures, to move into the opened body cavity, eating away at the soft-tissue organs and entrails. Often hundreds of these birds and others of their ilk gathered at a large carcass and disposed of it in minutes. Sibanda realised they were lucky that anything at all of the body remained.

The detective closed his eyes. He imagined the scene. The internecine squabbling would have been ferocious as each bird jockeyed for position both on and in the body – a wrestle of competitive heaving, pulling and tugging. The body would have quickly given up its stinking gases and secret fluids to those featherless heads adapted over time for their internal task. He could hear the sucking noises as they fought to separate heart, liver and lungs from the thorax. He saw behind his lids the macabre tug-of-war over ropes of large and small intestine. Death was never pretty, but this was a gruesome final scene. Vultures feed only during the daylight hours. Sunrise had come at 5:11 am; thermals around 8 am. They had made short work of their victim in the hour that followed.

Ncube was restless. He was shifting from leg to leg. His left arm rested on his hip, his right scratched his head. Sibanda knew that his legendary and discerningly delicate digestive system would be complaining. Gore was not Ncube’s forte. He had probably spent the night wolfing down his wives’ baking along with an assortment of fizzy drinks as an antidote to night-shift boredom. A glutinous, volcanic concoction was now travelling down his gullet and along a well-worn path to his bloated abdomen. He would, no doubt, pay the price. Sibanda tried to distract him from the butchered body.

‘Sergeant Ncube,’ he asked, ‘in your opinion, what caused the death of this individual?’

‘Isilwane, a lion, sir,’ replied Ncube with conviction.

‘And why do you suppose the lion barely touched his supper, and allowed the vultures to finish it for him?’ asked Sibanda, exasperation creeping into his voice.’

‘He was disturbed perhaps?’ ventured Ncube, beginning to sweat. He ran his finger between his neck and the stiff uniform collar in an attempt to loosen it and let in some air. The sun was high and the flies that were attracted to the putrefying corpse had recognised a ready source of moisture on his brow. Swatting had little effect on the swarms. He was nervous, expecting lions to attack from behind every tussock, shrub and anthill. Ncube had nearly died of fright when a partridge-like francolin had suddenly taken flight from its shelter in the long grass accompanied by a loud chek, chek, chek alarm call.

Sibanda’s tone became patronising. He couldn’t help the sarcasm, although he did recognise it as a diversionary tactic from his own frustration at the clueless scene. ‘What animal do you suppose scared off the lion?’

‘A pack of hyenas, sir?’

‘Good man,’ said Sibanda, in ominous tones, ‘now you are starting to think – through your backside, you idiot,’ he finished with a disparaging snarl, irritated by the Sergeant’s ignorance and less concerned by his troubled bile duct. ‘Now get yourself back to the vehicle and chase up the body box.’

Sibanda had allowed his frustration to erupt and he regretted it. It wasn’t Ncube’s fault that he had grown up in the city and had never seen a cow, let alone a lion. Why HQ insisted on posting urban dwellers to the bush he would never know. On the upside, though, Ncube was a good back-up man and he could keep that rubbish, skoroskoro, Land Rover on the road against all predictions of its demise.

On arrival at the scene, Sibanda had looked for the spoor of any major predator. Other than the small prints of a pair of side-striped jackals that must have chased off the vultures and tried to gain access to the body via the anus, there was nothing: No lion spoor, no hyena spoor. He searched for signs of the offal having been buried away from the kill; the first indication of big-cat activity. Before he even double-checked, he knew no lion had been anywhere near this corpse.

The musculature that remained indicated an African male, probably between twenty and forty years of age, but he couldn’t be sure. Forensics would have to take care of that. They were going to have a hard time with identification. Nothing remained on the body, no personal items, just a few shreds of a cotton shirt and a strip of remnant denim from his jeans. No shoes. Fingerprints would not be an option, they had been torn away. The face had gone. Eyes, nose, lips and ears were all missing. The jaw and teeth remained, but this man had a perfect set of teeth that had never visited a dentist. Even his mother wouldn’t recognise him, but as someone’s son, brother, perhaps husband and father, he deserved an identity.

Sibanda had wanted to be alone with the victim. Solitude would help him concentrate. Sergeant Ncube and several policemen had already compromised the scene with their own genetic detritus and government-issue boots. Sibanda doubted any forensic breakthrough. The body-botherers would only approximate a time of death.

He sat on his haunches and examined the body once again. He stared down at the bloody mess that used to be a face. Featureless and ravaged, the scavenged bones gave up no clues, but something niggled Sibanda about this corpse like the persistent whine of a hungry mosquito.

Faces, even dead faces, fascinated Sibanda. The Pythagorean ratio, the golden ratio of 1.618 to 1, dictated the structure of the facial bones – where the nose sat in relation to the mouth, how close together the eyes. As long as a face conformed to those related numbers, give or take the odd millimetre, the look would be acceptable to fellow inhabitants of the earth. The closer to the proportion, the more symmetrical and handsome the owner.

He thought then about the most perfectly beautiful face he had ever seen. A familiar sick feeling churned in the pit of his stomach. Most times he kept the face from haunting his working day. What was the point anyway? Those perfect features were as lost to him as this corpse was to its family. Sibanda blanked out the image and refocused on the mauled visage in front of him. He mulled over characteristics. Did the victim’s lip curl, his eyebrow arch? Did he frown, squint, scowl or was he a smiler? He would probably never know. Whilst on a scholarship at Nottingham Police College, the courses drummed into him that identity was the key to all crime.

‘Identify the victim, identify the criminal: that’s all there is to a murder,’ the lecturer used to incant. ‘Sound simple?’ he would ask. ‘Well it bloody well isn’t, unless the victim has his wallet on him and the murderer leaves a calling card.’

Sibanda had dabbled in forensics and done his final paper on identity and anthropometry. He focused in particular on the work of Alfred V Iannerelli and his theory on ears and ear prints. No use here though. The victim was an African male. His eyes would have been brown – round or oval, prominent or sunken? Not even the eagle that had punctured them could tell him that. Were the lips full or mean? And the ears? Ears were recognised by Iannerelli, in his work, as one of the best indicators of identity. They had the most distinctive and unusual features. Every human ear was individual, like a fingerprint, hardly changing since birth. Lobes and whorling cartilage vary vastly in shape and size. Had this man’s ears survived the onslaught they might have given up a clue, but there was nothing left on the side of the head, just some neat holes waiting for the first of the flies to deposit their larvae in the conveniently exposed openings.

‘Agh,’ the detective slapped his forehead with the heel of his hand, ‘now who’s the idiot? I should have picked this up earlier.’ In an instant Sibanda mentally opened a murder docket.

This victim didn’t just land in the middle of the valley. He must have been carried or dragged here without any help from carnivores. His breakfast-deprived, instinctive gut had known this all along.

Sibanda stood and glanced around. The morning had aged while he thought. The dew had dried. The light had softened, become sleepy. A buzz of insects hovered before setting off for pollen troves and water spots. Wasting no time, Sibanda tipped his head sideways. He used the rays and their angle to backlight the grass and any disturbance to the pattern. The sun was against him at this late hour, but there had to be spoor and tracks of some kind to indicate how the dead man reached this spot.

You can’t fool grass. Before the rains arrived, the grass was brittle and inflexible with empty seed heads tangled and stalks muddled. They didn’t spring back to their usual combed perfection and they always pointed in the direction of the traveller. No matter what anti-tracking techniques are used, grass is implacable.

He almost missed the signs in the climbing light. A slight but faint indent led from the dirt road to where the body lay. The grass still had a tinge of green, and had made a weary effort to return to the vertical, helped by some hand or hands eager to disguise their traces. Sibanda rose from his haunches and jogged back towards the dirt road, skirting the disturbance, looking for a possible entry point. In places the earth had been scuffed to camouflage shoe prints and the heel-drag of the victim. When he reached the dirt road, he turned back towards Ncube and the vehicles. His sergeant stood deeply engrossed in conversation with the other officers.

‘I tell you, that man can be very disagreeable at times,’ Ncube said to the nearest police officer, punctuating each word with a forced belch in an attempt to deflate the build-up of wind threatening to dislodge the contents of his unhappy paunch. ‘He needs to eat more. Look at him, he’s as lean as a village dog in a drought. That cannot be good for his disposition and he makes life too complicated, always looking for trouble, doubting his own eyes.’

‘What do you mean, sir,’ the young policeman asked, ‘isn’t he some kind of a genius at solving crimes?’

‘Yes, yes,’ said Ncube, dismissing the detective’s remarkable reputation with a further swat at the flies that had followed him from the vultures’ breakfast table, ‘but anyone with eyes can see this was just an unfortunate incident. Here we are in the middle of lion territory with a corpse torn to shreds like a woman’s monthly rags, and he doesn’t want to believe it.’

The young officer flinched. ‘A gruesome sight, sir?’ he asked.

‘Stay well away if you want to sleep without nightmares. You don’t want to view a person’s inner bits exposed and mangled in a soup of blood and shit. The smell is…’ A piercing whistle halted Sergeant Ncube as he was about to entertain his audience with further unsavoury details. They both eyed the whistler.

‘I think Detective Sibanda is calling you, sir.’

‘I am not deaf, young man,’ said Sergeant Ncube, and he turned and hurried as best as his weight would allow to where Sibanda was examining the ground. The grey perspiration-soaked shade of his shirt matched his sickly complexion. Sibanda took note, but had no time for sympathy. ‘What do you think, Ncube? I followed those tracks back to the road,’ Sibanda indicated the broken stems and bent clumps of grass he had picked out against the light. ‘The body was dumped and whoever off-loaded it entered the valley right here.’

Ncube peered at the disturbance. He knew better than to question the detective’s observation so he just nodded his head and watched as droplets of perspiration pitted the sandy ground.

‘What do you make of those?’ Sibanda asked, pointing to patterned imprints in the dust of the road.

‘Desert Duellers,’ the sergeant replied, like a schoolboy reciting his alphabet. Even he recognised the common print. Every second vehicle in the bush seemed to be a Toyota Land Cruiser with the same make of tyre on them. ‘Sir, this isn’t going to help,’ he added. ‘If, as you suggest,’ and he laid heavy emphasis on the doubt implied, ‘we are talking murder here, we’ll never prove it, not from what is left of…’ he hesitated, ‘the thing in the valley.’

‘How old are these tyre tracks, Ncube?’ Sibanda asked, ignoring his sergeant’s misgivings.

‘I couldn’t say, sir,’ he replied. He certainly did not want to hazard a guess. The detective was a magician in the bush. He understood and observed things that a normal human person born of an earthly mother could not possibly know. Ncube remained tight-lipped. Another vague answer might anger him further.

Sibanda bit his tongue this time and held back the stinging comment he had at the ready. Ncube had township in his blood. He had never herded cattle and goats as a child, never needed to track them when they got lost or wandered off. A severe beating awaited he who put them at risk. You learned or you took a hiding. He knew he had something of a legendary reputation for his tracking skills. When asked how he had become so skilled, he replied, ‘Ngangiselusa, I was a herd boy.’

‘Take a good look, Ncube,’ he said, bending closer to the tyre tracks, ‘at how crisp the edges of the prints are. That tells us the sun hasn’t dried them out yet. Once they become dry like dust, they start to crumble in on themselves and become less distinct. ‘Here too,’ he said moving further along the path of the track, ‘the only spoor over the top of the Duellers is in miniature.’ He pointed to a tiny pattern of dots sprinkled across the tyre tread. ‘Those are mouse tracks, Ncube, and mice are nocturnal. Those tyre tracks were put down in the night. Given their definition, I would say this vehicle passed here in the early hours of this morning, maybe five or six hours ago. Now, if it had been a shrew…’ but he decided he had dispensed enough detail for Ncube to take in at one go.

‘We need to go back to the body,’ said Sibanda, ‘and I’ll show you why I’m convinced,’ the detective underlined his certainty, ‘this man was murdered.’ Ncube’s face turned a bilious shade of putty. Sibanda recognised that Ncube didn’t want to go back to the crime scene. He felt some remorse for his sergeant’s troubled stomach, but would need to get the full picture for himself. He pulled up a long stalk of elephant grass as they backtracked, to use as a pointer.

‘Examine the ears, Sergeant’, he said, using the grass to touch the place where the ears used to be, ‘look how clean and perfectly rounded those holes are. No ripping or nibbling. They have been severed cleanly with a knife. I expect the eyes, nose and lips were cut away too and the body dumped here in full knowledge that the vultures would do an expert clean-up job and disguise the handiwork.’

Ncube caught on immediately. ‘So you suspect witchcraft then?’ he sighed. He would get lumbered with all the paperwork. A witchcraft case involved endless reports and filing. It would be complex and worst of all sickening in its detail. He could see himself tied up at a desk for several weeks. Witchcraft-related murders had hogged the headlines in the last few months. The police had found decapitated victims. Heads were highly prized for umuthi, magic medicine, across the border and brought big rewards.

‘Ncube, do you remember the incident last year at the Plumtree border post?’

‘Yes, sir,’ said the sergeant cradling his aching stomach at the memory, ‘several men were arrested carrying three human heads in cooler boxes disguised under frozen slabs of beef.’

‘Since then, the gang has clearly had to downsize, leave the head and just take the features. You could stuff bits of a face in one packet of frozen peas and no one would be the wiser,’ said Sibanda. Ncube blanched further at this thought.

Sibanda motioned to his sergeant. ‘Help me lift the torso, Ncube, I want to look underneath.’

‘Are you sure that is necessary?’ he protested, wanting nothing more to do with the human travesty at his feet, let alone move it. ‘Isn’t it highly irregular to disturb a murder scene before Forensics arrive?’

‘Ncube, both you and I know it could be hours, even days, before that lot pitch up this far out in the bush, by which time this body will be maggot fodder and the trail will have gone cold.’

Together they levered the body using a couple of dead branches. A miasma of engorged flies swarmed up and buzzed angrily as the body moved. Copulating, and depositing eggs in such a rich incubator was opportune and not to be disturbed. Ncube gagged. He turned his head away, but not before he caught sight of a tiny blue speck. He wondered later if he couldn’t, perhaps, have somehow disguised the splinter of paint clinging to the dead man’s right shoulder, flicked it away with sleight of hand. Sibanda, with eyes that swivelled in all directions was on to it in a flash.

Why couldn’t it have been white? Ncube inwardly wailed. Every man and his dog owned a white Toyota Land Cruiser. The kingfisher-blue metallic paint shard winking at them in the morning light indicated one owner. His name might as well have been tattooed on the victim’s shoulder. The only Toyota Land Cruiser with such a distinctive paint job belonged to the most powerful politician in the district. He was both the governor and a highly connected minister in government.

Ncube had been in the area long enough to learn you didn’t mess with Micah Ngwenya. The lump of fly-blown mincemeat at his feet had probably been a political thorn in Ngwenya’s side. At least that would narrow down identification for whoever survived the fallout from this case. Everyone knew it didn’t pay to be Ngwenya’s enemy.

Ncube stared at Sibanda, who was stroking his chin again, and prayed against all odds his boss would forget what he had seen, but the detective’s eyes were resolute.

‘Why did I ever get up this morning?’ the sergeant thought. ‘In a few years’ time I am to retire and fish to my heart’s content. Now the only fishing I’m likely to experience is my head, on a line, trawling for injuzu’, a mermaid-like fish that fed on gold at the bottom of the ocean and converted the fish bones to bullion. The mermaid could only be baited with a human head. Ncube had dreamed of such a catch since childhood. The sergeant’s fearful thoughts continued, ‘my private parts will be transported in a bag of frozen French fries and fed to some poor unfortunate impotent, my eyeballs sliced and fed to those in need of foresight, and my tongue dried, ground and sold as a powder to induce sweet words. I am going to be carrion.’

Ngwenya would never be arraigned. He would pay some poor AIDS victim to take the fall and lop a few months off his life in order to secure his family’s future. For those who chose to test the governor’s authority and attempted to get some mud to stick, the outcome would be bleak.

The terrified sergeant turned to his boss. ‘Sir?’ he queried out loud, and in his inflection he included many questions, not the least of which was: Can’t we pretend a lion killed him?

Sibanda stared hard at his sergeant like a cheetah assessing an impala. Ncube thought for one moment there might even have been the hint of an apology and regret in those steely eyes. The moment passed. He said in a voice so unwavering it would have intimidated the great Mzilikazi, ‘Sergeant, get a grip. We need to investigate this killing for the sake of the victim and his family.’

As he walked back to the Land Rover, Sibanda’s concerns were less for vehicle paint colour and more for the personal difficulties he would face. Today he was to meet his fiancée’s mother. It had been arranged for weeks, but crime had no respect for a cop’s plans. He would contact his uncle, who was acting as his sodombo, his go-between, in the marriage negotiations. Changing arrangements would make Khanyi, his fiancée, anxious. He doubted there would be phone coverage here in this wild valley. It would have to wait until they reached Thunduluka Lodge.

‘Come, Sergeant, you can hop in with me. Let’s see where these tracks lead.’ The sergeant sighed. He gingerly hauled himself into the passenger seat of the Land Rover. Travelling with the detective meant he could not loosen his belt or fart at will. Not even an impentsho, a little accidental squeak from between the buttocks. He would have to wait some time to dispense his gaseous burden.

The Land Rover started reluctantly. Sibanda recognised that any indication of life from this heap of junk was a miracle. He accepted the unexpected gift without comment. They travelled west following the tyre tracks until the blue Toyota turned off the bush road, out of the game park, through some ranch land and back on the tar, leaving no indication of direction.

‘I’m heading back to Thunduluka,’ said Sibanda. ‘The governor will keep.’ The tension in Ncube’s body dissolved. Its prodigious bulk sank back into the seat with relief.

‘Good idea, sir,’ he said.

The old woman clung to the stick with both hands. It braced her journey across the bare, sandy earth. Her shuffling gait indicated the arthritic stiffness in her joints . . .