Blood Safari

11

Emma stood in the big cage with a huge glove on her right hand, holding a strip of meat. The Cape vulture flew up from the ground with the noise of a spinning windmill and landed on the glove with extended talons. Its giant wings, spread wide for balance, dwarfed her, and it was so heavy that she had to support her outstretched arm with the other.

‘Hold that meat as tightly as you can,’ Donnie Branca said, but to no avail. The beak took hold of the strip and pulled it effortlessly from her grasp.

I stood behind the other visitors at the door to the cage, watching the childlike wonder on Emma’s face.

‘Jislaaik,’ she said, and the vulture flew off her hand, stroking her short hair with its long wing feathers. The crowd applauded.

Donnie Branca stood at the gate, just beyond the collection box, to thank the visitors and wish them goodbye. Emma made sure we were at the back. Branca smiled at her and put out a hand. ‘You were a real trooper with the feeding,’ he said.

‘Mr Branca.’ She shook his hand.

‘Call me Donnie.’ He liked her.

‘My name is Emma le Roux. I would like to talk to someone about Jacobus de Villiers.’

It took him a second to change gear. The perfect white teeth disappeared. ‘Cobie?’

‘Yes,’ said Emma.

Branca looked at her as if seeing her for the first time, with much-diminished interest. ‘Are you from the papers?’

‘I’m a consultant from Cape Town. Jacobus is my brother.’ She zipped open her handbag.

‘Your brother?’

Emma took out her photo. She handed it to Branca. He took it and studied it intently.

‘But Cobie … I thought…’ He passed the picture back to her. ‘I think you should talk to Frank.’

‘Frank?’

‘Frank Wolhuter. The manager.’

Frank Wolhuter’s office did not have air conditioning. It smelt strongly of animals, sweat and pipe tobacco. He got up and offered Emma his hand, blue eyes scanning her up and down. He was as sinewy as biltong, with ajan Smuts goatee and thick grey hair long in need of a trim. He introduced himself with the happy smile of a man expecting good news.

‘Emma le Roux, and this is Mr Lemmer.’

‘Please, sit down. What can I do for you good people?’ He must have been well into his fifties, his face deeply lined with character built by a life in the sun and wind.

We sat.

‘I suspect Cobie de Villiers is my brother,’ Emma said.

The smile froze and then systematically crumbled. He stared at Emma and eventually said, ‘You suspect?’

‘I last saw him twenty years ago. I believed he was dead.’

‘Miss de Villiers …’

‘Le Roux.’

‘Of course. Mrs Le Roux …’

‘Miss.’

‘Le Roux is your maiden name?’

‘Le Roux was Jacobus’s surname too, Mr Wolhuter. It’s a long story …’

Frank Wolhuter slowly sank back into the worn brown leather chair. ‘Jacobus le Roux.’ He seemed to taste the name. ‘You must excuse me, but under the circumstances you may find me somewhat sceptical.’

Emma nodded and opened her handbag. There was no need to wonder why. The photograph appeared. She put it on the desk and pushed it towards Wolhuter. He put a hand in his shirt pocket and drew out a pair of reading glasses which he placed on the bridge of his nose. He took the photo and studied it at length. Outside, a rehabilitating lion roared in its pen. Birds screeched. It wasn’t unbearably hot inside, perhaps because the curtains were half closed. Emma watched Wolhuter patiently.

He put the photo down, took off the glasses, placed them on the table, pulled open a drawer and took out a pipe with a long straight stem. Next a box of matches. He bit the pipe stem between his teeth, struck a match and held it to the tobacco. He sucked the pipe alight with practised ease and blew smoke at the ceiling.

‘Ag, no,’ he said, and looked at Emma. ‘That’s not Cobie.’

‘Mr Wolhuter…’

‘Call me Frank.’

‘Did you know Jacobus when he was twenty?’ I was amazed at the tone of her voice, so reasonable and pleasant.

‘No.’ Sucking his pipe.

‘Can you say with absolute certainty that that is not his photograph?’

Wolhuter merely looked over his pipe at her.

‘That is all I’m after. Absolute certainty.’ She smiled at him. It was a pretty smile. I was sure he would not be able to resist it.

Frank Wolhuter worked on a big ball of smoke and then said, ‘Tell me your long story, Miss le Roux,’ but his eyes were narrowed, an unbeliever.

She said nothing about the attack. A smart move, since I hadn’t found it all that convincing. But this time she told her story in chronological order. Maybe she was learning. She began in 1986, the year her brother disappeared. And how, twenty years later, she saw a face on television and received a mysterious phone call. It was in the same hesitant style of incomplete sentences, as if even she didn’t totally believe in what she was saying. Maybe she wa too afraid to believe. When she had finished, Wolhuter passed the photo to Branca.

‘I’ve seen it,’ the younger man said.

‘And what do you think?’

‘There is a similarity.’

Wolhuter took the photo back. He looked at it again. Gave it back to Emma. He put the pipe back in the still-open drawer.

‘Miss le Roux …’

‘Emma.’

‘Emma, do you have an identity document with you?

A little frown. ‘Yes.’

‘May I see it?’

She glanced at me and then put her hand in her bag. She took out an ID book and gave it to Wolhuter. He opened it at the photo.

‘Do you have a business card?’

She hesitated again, but dug out her purse, snapped it open and brought out a visiting card. Wolhuter took it between his lean fingers and studied it. He looked at me. ‘You are Lemmer?’

‘Yes.’ I didn’t like his tone.

‘What is your interest in the matter?’

Emma drew in a breath to answer, but I was quicker. ‘Moral support.’

‘What is your profession?’

It was his manner which led me to make a mistake. I tried to be clever. ‘I am a builder.’

‘A builder, you say?’

‘I do up houses, mostly.’

‘Do you have a business card?’

‘No.’

‘And what do you intend to build here?’

‘Friendships.’

‘Are you a developer, Lemmer?’

‘A what?’

‘Frank …’ said Emma.

Wolhuter tried to silence her with a good-natured ‘Just a sec, Emmatjie…’, using the Afrikaans diminutive. Bad choice of words.

‘I am not Emmatjie.’ For the first time since I had met her, there was ice in her tone. I looked at her. Wolhuter and Branca looked at her. She sat up straight, cheeks lightly flushed. ‘My name is Emma. If you don’t like that, try Miss le Roux. Those are the only two acceptable options. Are we all clear?’

I wondered fleetingly why she needed a bodyguard.

Nobody said a word. Emma filled in the vacuum. ‘Lemmer is here because I asked him to be. I am here to find out whether Cobie de Villiers is my brother. That is all. And we shall do that with or without your help.’