Danger Woman Read Online Free Page B

announcing the imminent arrival of someone from DIS sent the local constabulary scurrying. Superintendent Mwambe sent out for a snack.
    â€œDo they think I am not up to the task?” he asked Derek between bites of chicken sandwich. Derek shrugged. As he owed his position with the local police more to his uncle’s beneficence than to his own competence, he was in no position to say. He did know from experience that the people to be sent from Gaborone were far more likely to solve the growing problems in the Chobe than his uncle. Even if the superintendent were the famous Sherlock Holmes himself, this rash of disappearing bad men and body parts turning up in the park was well beyond any one man’s capabilities. And his uncle was for sure not Mr. Sherlock Holmes.
    â€œI have been a policeman for thirty years and the superintendent of this district for more than a decade. I never had a…There has never been a single time when I had to have help in doing my job, Derek. Not until this game ranger stuck her woman’s nose in. That Sanderson, she is the problem. She is telling them in Gaborone that there is trouble here and they listen to her.”
    â€œUm, Uncle, it was the people in forensics who notified the capital. They wanted to have a DNA test done on the bones and the billfold analyzed and we—”
    â€œIt was the woman, Derek. That is the fact of the situation. You may believe what you will about who made a call. If you investigate, you will discover it was Sanderson who did this to me.”
    Mwambe paced the floor, his fists clenched behind his back, a dab of sauce on his upper lip. Somewhere in the distance he heard laughter. Were his men sharing a joke? It made him frown even though he felt sure they were not laughing at him. Or perhaps they were. Had the news reached the ready room and were his officers being amused at his expense? Something had to be done.
    â€œDerek, I am putting you on special assignment.”
    Derek snapped to attention, or as much as he could manage while sitting down. “Sir?” He wondered what new sort of new trouble his uncle had in store for him now.
    â€œI am assigning you to permanent duty with the game rangers. They will find bodies and so on…Well, that is police business, is it not? I want you to be there and keep a watch, to be a monitor. Find out what this woman is up to and tell me if she has plans.”
    ***
    Botswana is a country about the size of France. Gaborone, its capital, is as far from the Chobe as Calais is from Marseilles. To be stationed in Gaborone and sent north would be considered a major disruption of one’s life. Or at least Joseph Ikanya thought so. He stepped out of the director’s office. He seemed anxious. No, more than that, distressed. “Old Reliable,” as he was called after a rough English translation of his surname from Setswana, was anything but. He had arrived at the level of Inspector due to his time in service. His assignment to the diplomatic sector of the capital had meant he had little need of any particular skill in solving crimes. His job involved traffic control, security patrols, and police escorts. But his name went on the roster with everyone else, and if something special came up he was as likely to draw the assignment as anyone. Today he’d drawn one such—the source of his distress.
    What has happened, Joseph?” Kgabo Modise had been called to the director’s office as well and sat in the anteroom waiting to be called.
    â€œI am to go all the way up to the Chobe on temporary duty?” Ikanya said. “My wife is due any day now and it is her first. My mother-in-law is not so fond of me, you know, and this will not be wonderful news in my house.”
    â€œI am sorry, for you, Joseph. I, personally, am very fond of trips to the Chobe.”
    â€œReally? But there is nothing of interest up there except tourists and animals.”
    â€œIt is a beautiful