I seem to spend all my time in this meeting room, Kubu thought. All we hear is that there’s no progress on anything. We’d be better off shaking the bushes to see what slithers out.
He looked around at the group—all good at what they do, all working hard, but seemingly unable to break the cases. He wondered whether they would ever solve any of them—none looked promising at the moment—and the least promising was the murder of his father.
“Where’s Detective Khama?” Director Mabaku asked as he walked into the room. “She’s always on time. Has anyone heard from her?”
There was silence from around the table.
“She’d better have a good excuse.” He sat down and spent a few minutes giving an account of the president’s visit to Shoshong. “I think he calmed things down, but unless the jobs appear very quickly, the situation could turn ugly again.”
“What about the Chinese?” Edison asked. “Were they there?”
Mabaku nodded. “Including the ambassador. And Shonhu was as thick as thieves with the director of mines as they left. Probably talking about how much money they were going to make now that the American company was out of the running.”
“When will the decision be made?” Zanele asked.
“I’m not sure,” Mabaku replied. “Probably next week sometime. And given our current lack of progress, they’ll probably be uncontested and get permission to expand.”
“Can’t you go and talk to the Minister of—” Before Zanele could finish her sentence, the door to the meeting room opened, and Samantha walked in with a tall woman who looked very uncomfortable at being there. There was a gasp from Zanele, who was the first to react to the woman’s swollen and bruised face.
“I’m sorry I’m late, Director,” Samantha said, “but I was helping my friend here. This is Bongi Modongo—she goes by the name Jasmine.” She introduced all of the detectives at the table and indicated to Jasmine that she should sit. “Please sit down,” she said quietly, and sat down beside her.
“What is she doing here, Detective Khama?” Mabaku was obviously not impressed.
“I’ve been so frustrated about our lack of progress,” Samantha replied, “that I wanted somehow to help things along. The only thing I could think of was the hair Zanele had found in Kunene’s car. But we had nothing to match it with. So I decided to see if I could get a hair from Shonhu’s head.”
She rummaged in her purse and pulled out a plastic bag. “I did it!” she said, pulling a plastic bag from her purse and holding it up. “I got a hair from Shonhu. Two in fact.”
“And how did you do that?” Mabaku asked acidly. “And who is this woman?”
“Director, you may not know that I volunteer every weekend at a women’s shelter. Most of the women who come in have been assaulted, either by their husbands or boyfriends. But many of the women who come in are prostitutes. The men who pay them think that assault is included in the price.”
She paused.
“Of course, the police do nothing about most of these cases. Probably because the police also beat up on their women.” She looked around at the men. “Or they think it is a traditional Botswana value,” she added sarcastically, “and not worth pursuing.”
She put her hand on Jasmine’s arm.
“So I called the Mahalapye shelter on Saturday and asked if any of the prostitutes who had come to them for help had ever mentioned having Chinese clients. They told me that Jasmine had come in a few times, badly bruised, complaining about her Chinese lover.”
She took a sip of water.
“I called her, and she told me that the Chinaman was, in fact, Shonhu. I explained our situation and asked her to invite him back to try and get some of his hairs. When I promised that the police would take her seriously and that we’d prosecute the man, she agreed.
“One of the Shoshong constables and I waited in the neighbor’s house in case there was trouble. When she screamed, the constable rushed over, but it was too late. Jasmine had been punched in the face and kicked, and Shonhu had fled through the back door.”
She turned to Mabaku. “I can’t tell you how sorry I am that she got hurt. That was never meant to happen. Her injuries are all my fault. We need to make it right for her.”
She lifted the plastic bag. “So it was actually Jasmine who got the hairs, not me.”
“He could have killed her,” Ian said. “Has she seen a doctor?”
Samantha nodded. “I took her to the hospital in Mahalapye. She has a slight scratch on her cornea and those bruises.”
Kubu looked at Mabaku, who was clearly furious. Will Samantha still have a job here tomorrow? Kubu wondered.
Mabaku stood up. “The meeting’s over,” he said. “Zanele, get the hairs from Detective Khama, and see what you can find. Get back to me as soon as possible.” He turned to Samantha. “Take this woman to Princess Marina for another check; then come and see me as soon as you get back.”
When Mabaku, Samantha, and Jasmine had left, the room buzzed. The general reaction was that Samantha had done a very stupid thing but could possibly have broken the case open.
Kubu stood up. “Don’t get too excited,” he said. “Hair matches are often not conclusive, so I’m not sure we’ll be able to use them anyway.”
He walked toward the door, then turned to the group.
“However, as Samantha says, just because Jasmine is a prostitute, that gives no one an excuse for violence. So we can go after Shonhu on an assault charge! Then we can get his fingerprints and search his home. And only then, we may have him.”
With that, he turned and walked out.
* * *
MABAKU GLARED ACROSS his desk at Samantha. “So what did the doctor say, Detective Khama?”
“She confirmed what the doctor in Mahalapye said. A slight scratch on the cornea of Jasmine’s left eye and facial bruising.”
“So, what the hell did you think you were doing? This man Shonhu could be a murderer. You could’ve got that woman killed.”
“We weren’t getting anywhere, Director,” Samantha replied. “You said yourself that they’d get away with it unless something turned up. I made it turn up. Jasmine knew exactly what she was getting into and was prepared to take a chance to get Shonhu charged. So I thought—”
“But you didn’t think this thought of yours was worth discussing with anyone?”
“When I had the idea, it was already Saturday,” Samantha replied.
Mabaku whipped out his phone and held it in front of her face. “This, Detective Khama, is called a cell phone. I have it with me at all times. I often wish I didn’t, but it’s part of my job.” His voice rose. “In case you hadn’t noticed, my job is to direct the CID. That means I make the decisions about operations. We don’t all just do what we think is a good idea at the time. We work as a team.”
Samantha leaned forward and asked, “And if I had asked you, Director? Would you have allowed me to do it?”
“No! Absolutely not. This man is probably a trained killer. Putting a civilian woman at risk? She was lucky to get away so lightly. And what if she had been killed? We’d have been taken to the cleaners by the law and by the press. And you’d probably be off the force.”
Mabaku battled to get himself under control. “What you did was incredibly stupid. CID work isn’t about daredevil antics and flashes of brilliance. It’s about working as a team, planning, attention to detail, one step at a time. And you’re part of that team.”
“But we weren’t getting anywhere! We had the tapes, but Shonhu wasn’t giving himself away. He’s too clever for that. We had to have some physical evidence. And I was the only one who could do that.”
Mabaku shook his head. “You’re not hearing me, Samantha. Here at the CID, we do things … BY … THE … BOOK.” He thumped the table in time with the last three words. “I’m going to let this go because I think you could become a decent detective. But never again. The next time you get a great idea…” He held up his cell phone again. “And if you don’t, you’ll be directing traffic in Ghanzi.”
Samantha swallowed an angry retort; she still felt she deserved credit for what could be their first real breakthrough on the case. She started to say so but was interrupted by Mabaku’s desk phone ringing. He grabbed it, listened for a moment, and said, “Send her in.”
Zanele came in, smiling. “It’s a match, Director. I think those hairs are from the same person. I’ve sent Samantha’s samples and the hair found in the car to Johannesburg, where they have a specialist on this sort of thing, but I’m convinced. I checked all the key features under a comparison microscope, and they all matched.”
Mabaku nodded. “Can we do a DNA match as well?”
Zanele shook her head. “The hair found in Kunene’s car didn’t have follicle cells attached.”
Mabaku shrugged and turned back to Samantha. “Kubu suggested we use your fiasco to our advantage. Go and lay a charge against Shonhu for assaulting Jasmine. We’ll pull him in on that count. Then we can take his prints and get as many hairs as we want. And we’ll see if the commissioner can swing us a search warrant for Shonhu’s home and office in case he’s left something there.”
He pulled a folder toward him—a sure signal that the meeting was at an end.
“And if the fingerprints match,” he said as the two women reached the door, “it won’t be long before we’ll have Shonhu singing like a bird about his boss, Hong, and about the director of the Department of Mines.”