There is no perfect crime

I read in the newspaper the other day about police shooting dead a gangster whose speciality was killing law enforcement officers.

It is said that by the time he died, he had shot dead ten people among them six police officers. The story reminded me of larger-than-life criminals of the past such Wakinyonga, the Kangemi-based gangster of the 1970s who revelled in daring and baiting police officers.

In my village, we had our own version of Wakinyonga. At his prime, Nkonge seemed immune to arrest and even defied police bullets. Like an outlaw of the American Wild West, he was famed for staging well publicised break-ins in Igoji and beyond.

He would write to the commanding officer at the local police station informing him that he would be breaking into the best-stocked shop in the area on a particular day. He even gave the specific time.

Having learnt to take him seriously, the OCS would detail police officers to guard the premises.

Unknown to the law enforcers, however, by that time Nkonge would already have gained entry into the shop through the roof and as the police laid an ambush, he would sneak out through the roof and make good his escape.

Attempts to arrest him were often frustrated with equal cunning. Those were the days of the walk-in mobile cinema and among the popular movies of the time was the Tarzan series.

In those movies, which were purportedly shot in the jungles of Africa, Tarzan often escaped from hostile white game rangers by constructing elaborate aerial transport systems using vines tied to tree branches that he used to swing his way through the jungle.

Borrowing a leaf from Tarzan’s book, Nkonge built his own aerial transport system in a valley near our village that enabled him to cock a snook at police officers whenever they came looking for him.

He was not always so effective at making a fool of the police and evading the long arm of the law, especially as the years took their toll on his ingenuity and agility.

Sometimes he would get arrested and handed lengthy sentences, but such was his luck that he would always be released from jail after a short while.

Such was the case when the engine of a neighbour’s Land Rover was stolen and one of Nkonge’s accomplices fingered him and led the local chief and Administration Police officers to his shamba, where it was found in a hole in the ground.

Also found in the hole was an array of stolen goods including a couple of bicycles and even a motorcycle.

At Nkonge’s house, his wife and children denied knowledge of his whereabouts and claimed to have last seen him two days before when he left on a journey to an undisclosed destination.

The chief and APs decided to search the house nonetheless, and were almost leaving after failing to find him when the chief noticed a sack with some stuff under a bed.

When he prodded the sack with a walking stick, the ‘stuff’ inside proved soft in a suspicious manner. When he prodded harder, the ‘stuff’ shifted and grunted!

Further investigation revealed that the sack contained the elusive Nkonge. Apparently, he had got into the sack and had someone, probably the wife, tie the open end after him.

When he left jail, he swore to anyone in the village who would listen that he had finally mended his ways and would steal no more.

A leopard does not change its spots however, though it may grow old and find it hard to hunt with the old vigour.

People soon realised that their cows, no matter how well fed, were not producing as much milk as they did previously, even as Nkonge’s old skinny animal seemed to be producing prodigious amounts of milk daily.

Villagers also noted an increase in the theft of food from their granaries. They eventually took matters into their own hands the day a widow’s bag of beans was traced to Nkonge’s house.

They got together and ‘sent him upstairs’, as the local saying goes. Thereafter cases of theft in my village went down dramatically.