Detective Kate Gomolemo looked at the body of the young woman on the cold, steel table. “What could have done this?” she asked the doctor.

The short, middle aged woman hesitated before answering. “These three scratches,” she said pointing to the deep wounds starting at the neck and ending below the navel. “It looks like some kind of animal. I really can’t say. We found no hair samples, so I don’t know what to make of it all. Shaking her head she continued, “I’m confused by those scratches. At first I thought they were form some sort of knife. But they’re more like claw marks, ragged on the edges. A knife is cleaner, not like claws where the edges of the wounds are ragged. But what animal doesn’t leave at least one hair behind?”

Detective Gomolemo shook her head. She had no idea. If it was some kind of animal, it had to be a big one. The three deep wounds down the young woman’s chest were not inflicted by a house cat. It took a strong, large animal to do that. But what kind of animal lives in Gaborone that would attack a person? They hadn’t yet identified the victim. She’d been found early that morning by a man on his way to work. “Did you find anything else yet?”

“Well, it’s still early but the marks on her neck look like she was strangled by something. And……” The doctor hesitated wondering if she could be right.

“There’s bruising which looks like she might have been raped. We’ll know when the lab results come back.”

“What kind of animal rapes and strangles its prey?’

Doctor Moeng said, “The only animal I know of that could kill a person in such an inhumane way is a human animal and this one looks like a very deadly one indeed.”

“Let me know what you get from the lab, Viv.” Kate left and headed back for the police station. Her new partner was set to arrive after lunch and she wanted to clear up a few things before he got there. She didn’t want him to see her office as it was now, like a tip dumped over in it, even if it was the normal state of affairs. Best to start off on a good foot, she thought, even if it was a lie.

“I want to report my roommate missing, “Chanda said to the woman behind the desk.

The young police officer put down the cellphone she’d been talking into. “How long has she been gone?” she asked without interest.

“She walked home alone Saturday night from the club. It looks like she never arrived.” Chanda started to cry. She knew something terrible had happened to Keletso and this police woman didn’t seem very interested. When she arrived at their room from the club Saturday night, Chanda could see that Keletso had not been there. Since then she’d been calling everyone they knew and no body had seen her. She knew something terrible had happened, she just knew it. She also knew it was her fault. She should have walked home with Keletso. But like usual she was selfish, only thinking of what she wanted. Now Keletso was missing and this police officer was not at all interested in helping her get found.

The police woman put her cellphone in her handbag. Then she winked at the tall, policeman next to her who smiled back and got interested in the game. “Maybe she went to her boyfriend’s, you never know with these young girls nowadays. Sometimes disappear for months and show up later, usually pregnant.” The policeman laughed, shaking his head.

“Listen,” Chanda said, raising her voice so that people in the reception area stopped what they were doing to turn and listen. “She’s not like that. Something has happened to her. I’m telling you something is seriously wrong!”

Kate had just walked into the police station and heard the young girl’s plea for help. She stopped at the desk, giving her two juniors a stern look of warning. They quickly moved away from the counter and busied themselves with paperwork in the back room and let her handle the now distraught young woman.

“Hi,” Kate said. “I’m Detective Gomolemo. You seem a bit upset, let’s go in my office and you tell me what the problem is.” Kate put her arm around the young, pretty girl and ushered her into her small office at the end of the hall.

“Take a seat.” Kate closed the door and went around to the other side of the desk and sat down. The clock said 12:00. She knew her new partner would find her office in its usual mess since this girl would be taking up the time she’d set aside for cleaning it. There was nothing that she could do about it now, and in a way it was a relief. She’d been dodging cleaning her office for months. Now she had a reason to leave it exactly as it was, a legitimate reason, not just the normal reason that she was too lazy to do anything about it. “So tell me, what’s wrong?”

“Saturday night my friend and I, her name is Keletso, Keletso Thapo, were at Lights Out, a club on the north side of town. She wanted to leave early so she could study… she wanted to spend yesterday studying. I wanted to go with her but she said she’d be okay, she told me to stay at the club… that she’d be fine. When I arrived at our room on Saturday night she wasn’t there. I thought maybe she went to study with her other friend Annah. But Annah said she never saw Keletso at all this weekend. I know something terrible has happened. I don’t know why I let her go home alone.” Chanda started crying into her hands.

Kate didn’t want to think it, but her mind drifted to the girl lying dead in the mortuary at Princess Marina with three claw marks down her chest. Unknown dead young women were not that common in Gaborone. “How old is your friend?”

“She’s 20, the same as me. She’s thin with short hair. She was wearing jeans and a leather jacket Saturday night.”

Kate wrote the information down in her notebook and as she described her friend, the evidence mounted to confirm that the girl lying on the cold steel table was Keletso Thapo. “What time did she leave?”

“I think it was about 11:45.I feel like you know something. Did you find her somewhere? Please… do you know something about Keletso?”

“No,” Kate lied. She knew this girl would not be able to identify her friend, not in the state she was in, it would tear her up and she might never recover from it. “Where is Keletso from?”

“We’re from Kalamare, both of us. Should I call her parents? God! Do you think we need to call them?” She was getting more upset.

“No, why don’t you give me their number and I’ll let them know what’s going on. You go back to school. Write your number down too. I’ll call you as soon as we know anything.”

Chanda wrote the information down in the small notebook Kate gave her. “Are you sure you’ll call me?”

“Definitely,” Kate said.

She walked with Chanda to the entrance of the police station. When she was sure the girl was gone, she turned to the switchboard operator. “Get the Mahalapye Police on the phone. I want to speak to the station commander. I’ll be in my office when the call goes through.”

Kate quickly shoved papers into files and tried to move the various files into different piles to make it appear as if things were in some sort of order.

“Koko!” Kate looked up to see a heavyset, middle aged man in civilian clothes.

“Hello, can I help you?” She really didn’t need this now. She had a dead university student and her upset friend to deal with and a new partner who would be turning up any second. What did this man want now?

“Dumela Mma.” He greeted with a slight bow.

“Dumela Rra, can I help you?” She knew these types. They would need to go through the entire procedure of greeting before they’d cut to the point. Probably just in from a nearby village.

“O tsogile jang, mma?”

Kate could see that Gaborone-time hadn’t caught up with this man yet. She was busy but she tried hard to hide her impatience. “Ke tsogile sentle, rra. Wena, O tsogile jang, rre?

“Ke tsogile sentle, mma.”

“Would you like to take a seat?” Kate asked realising a quick dealing with this man was not going to be in the cards so she might as well succumb to it.

“Ke a leboga, mma.”

“So what can I do for you today, rra?”

“I am Ntoko from Tutume. Detective Motswagole Ntoko.”

It took a moment for the new information to sink in. For the slow talking man from the village to change into her new partner she’d been waiting for. So this was her new partner? She expected someone younger; someone more citified… someone more trainable to her way of doing things. “Oh… Detective Ntoko. Excuse me I didn’t know that you would be so…. so experienced. They gave me the impression that I was getting a partner just from school.” Kate shook his hand.

“No, no I’m not just from school.” Detective Ntoko smiled and his eyes crinkled at the edges and reminded Kate of her late father. “Though I did take a bookkeeping course last year, maybe that’s what they meant,” he said without a smile.

The phone rang. “Excuse me.” Kate picked up the phone. “Hello. Yes, Asst Sup. Nchadi. I have a problem this side. I’ve got a dead girl, a UB student who I think might be from Kalamare. The name is Keletso Thapo. I need a relative to come down to ID her. She’s got a friend here from Kalamare but I don’t think she’d take it well. Good. When do you think you might get someone down here? Tomorrow sounds great I’ll let the pathologist know that you’re coming.”

Kate put the phone down. “Sorry about that. So when did you get to the city?”

“We actually arrived two days ago. My wife and I were unpacking everything. They said I could take a day or two to get sorted out. I hope it didn’t inconvenience you.”

“No, not at all. Did you find a house okay?”

“Sure we have my late in-laws house. Maybe you knew them, Rra Monnnayame? He ran a bus between Lobatse and Gaborone?”

Kate smiled. “No, can’t say I did. Gaborone is very big. It’s difficult to know everyone.” Did this man really think everybody still knew everybody in Gaborone, a big modern city where people spent all of their free time behind high cement walls? Who was this man and where had he been hiding for the last 40 years?

Ntoko laughed a deep rolling laugh that vibrated pictures hanging on the wall and gave Kate a shock. “Yes, yes indeed.”

What could she do with this man? Kate didn’t even know where to start. “Maybe I can give you a tour and see what they’ve given you for an office,” she suggested.

Detective Ntoko remained seated. “Aren’t you forgetting something?”

Kate was confused. She was finding this man difficult to understand. She seemed to be always caught of guard. What would he want from her already? “Would you like some tea first?” she tried.

“No. You forgot to call the pathologist. Ngwanake, it’s better to do things in a timely fashion lest you soon forget, that’s what our teacher, Mr. Rafferty, used to say at Moeng College.”

Kate went back behind the desk feeling like a chastised student. She was not sure how she was going to manage with a partner like this one. Already his old fashioned ways were annoying her and he seemed to follow a path of thinking that was so different from hers that she felt she was on some sort of anthropological study. “Yes, you’re right, of course, or rather Mr. Rafferty was right. Let me ring Viv before I forget.”

***

Tell us what you think: What do you think happened to Keletso?