Blood Safari

13

The barrel of a gun changes everything.

It was quiet in the car when we drove away from Wolhuter and Branca. I pondered the way Emma le Roux had spoken just before we left. She had smoothly and expertly explained their mistake in brand positioning – no hesitant, incomplete sentences, no break in rhythm. With that lovely musical voice and the light of assurance shining in her eyes she had told them that Donnie Branca’s lecture to the public was outstanding, but it had one great failing. If they put that right the donations would increase considerably.

That got their attention right away.

She explained how branding worked, brand name positioning. Every product represents an idea in the mind of a client, a single concept. Take vehicle manufacturers: one occupies the position of ‘safety’ – Volvo. One occupies ‘driving pleasure’ – BMW. One represents ‘reliability’ – Toyota. But no brand name can have more than one position. The human mind does not allow it. When a brand tries that, it fails, without exception.

At Mogale, she had said with knowledgeable enthusiasm, the same principle applied. Vulture rehabilitation was perfect. It was original, unique, strong, fresh, decidedly different – everything required for strong positioning. Branca’s lecture was the perfect pitch – it entertained, educated, was emotional, and spoke straight to people’s hearts. Until he mentioned the other animals, the cheetahs, wildcats, leopards and wild dogs. Then, Mogale became just another brand trying to be everything to everyone.

‘You have two choices. Give the mammal programmes another brand name, or leave them out of the lecture entirely. You make the donors soft on vultures. They sit there thinking, “How much can I give to this amazing cause?” but then you go and multiply their choices suddenly, for no reason, and they don’t know how their money will be spent. If this was my concern, I would shift the other animals out, away from the raptors, set up another centre with another name, where the lecture and the tour focus on one species only.’

On the way out I considered it confirmation of my suspicion that she was – lying is not the exact word – about the other stuff, the attack, Jacobus.

It was my job for twenty years to spot threatening behaviour in people. The best indicator of that was a break in rhythm. Someone out of step with the flow of a crowd, someone whose breathing, movement or facial musculature danced to a different tune. The rhythms of speech – everyone has their own, but when there were great and sudden changes, it meant tension and stress, the bosom buddies of the lie.

Why she should lie, and about what, I could only speculate. People have many inexplicable, complex or simple reasons to lie. Sometimes they do it simply because they can. But Emma needed a motive.

The next item to occupy my mind was the formulation of a new Lemmer Law on Animal Fanatics, but I never got that far. When we drove out of Mogale’s gate the silver Opel Astra was parked across the road, noticeably and blatantly waiting for us.

There were two men in it, a black man in the driver’s seat, a white man in the passenger’s. But it was the barrel of a rifle that got my adrenalin pumping. It was propped vertically in front of the passenger, the barrel obscuring his face. The shape of the sight and muzzle identified it as an R4.

Emma was occupied with the road map, so she didn’t see them.

The firearm is the bodyguard’s single biggest problem; the unarmed bodyguard’s greatest fear. But that wasn’t my only concern. There was the possibility that I was wrong about Emma, about the threat, about her relationship with the truth. That had to wait, however.

I turned on to the tar road and drove off. In the rear-view mirror the Astra followed. No discretion. Two hundred metres behind us. A bad sign.

I accelerated gradually. I didn’t want Emma to know yet.

The road to Klaserie was straight and wide. Beyond 130 kilometres per hour the Astra dwindled, but then it began to close the gap. Past 150 and it was still there.

‘We’ll have to go through Nelspruit to Barberton and then take the R38,’ Emma said, deep in thought. ‘That seems to be the shortest route.’ She looked up and said, ‘We’re not in that much of a hurry.’

I lifted my foot from the accelerator. I knew what I needed to know.

She looked across at me. ‘Are you OK, Lemmer?’

‘I wanted to see what the BMW could do.’

She nodded, trusting me, and began folding the map.

‘What did you think of Wolhuter and Branca?’

Even if there hadn’t been an armed threat on our heels, that would not have been my topic of choice. I didn’t like Wolhuter and company. There is a Lemmer Law that states that he who needs to say ‘I’m no racist, but…’ is one. I knew for a fact that Wolhuter and Branca hadn’t told her everything they knew and I didn’t want to be the one to break that news to her. In my humble opinion, the Mogale Rehabilitation Centre was an ecological rearrangement of the deckchairs on the Titanic, like most green initiatives. But none of these things were important right now.

I had to deal with the Astra problem, and that meant telling her about it.

‘Emma, I’m going to have to do something and I am going to need your help.’ I kept my voice even.

‘Oh?’

‘But please, you must do exactly as I ask, without hesitation and without question. Do you understand me?’

She wasn’t stupid. ‘What’s going on?’ she asked in an anxious tone, and then she looked back. She spotted the Astra. ‘Are they following us?’

‘The other thing you must do is stay calm. Breathing helps. Breathe slowly and deeply.’

‘Lemmer, what’s going on?’

Calmly and slowly, I said, ‘Listen to me. Stay calm.’

‘I am calm.’

Arguing would be no help. ‘I know you are, but I want you to be even more calm. As calm as … as a cucumber.’ Not very original. ‘Or a tomato, or a lettuce leaf or something,’ I said, and that worked.

She laughed, short and nervously. ‘I think that’s the longest sentence you’ve spoken to me yet.’ Her anxiety had diminished. She took a deep breath. ‘I’m OK. What’s going on?’

‘The Astra has been behind us since the gate at Mogale. Don’t look back again. I’ll have to deal with it. Shaking them off isn’t an option. Opels can keep up and I don’t know the roads that well.’

‘Go to the police.’ So easy. Why hadn’t I thought of that?

‘We could, but the nearest police station is sixty kilometres away. And what would we say to them? What complaint would we have? The problem is, the passenger behind us has a rifle with him. An R4. He went to the trouble of showing it to us. That has me thinking why – and I don’t like any of the possible answers. The best thing I can do is to take the gun away from him. Then we can hear their story. But in order to do that, you must help me by doing what I ask. OK?’

Her reaction was not the one I expected.

‘Why is it that you can talk now, Lemmer?’

‘I’m sorry?’

‘For two days you pretend to be this silent, stupid type with nothing to say and no conversation, and now it comes pouring out of you.’

Silent and stupid. I’ll have to suck it up.

‘There I was, crying in front of you last night, and you sat there like a brick wall.’

‘Maybe this isn’t the best time …’

‘A builder? You can tell Wolhuter, but not me?’ Bitterly.

‘Can we talk about this later?’

‘Absolutely.’

‘Thank you.’

She did not react, just stared at the road.

‘There’s a filling station up ahead. We passed it this morning. If I remember correctly, there’s a café too. I’m going to stop at the petrol pumps and we’re going to get out and walk straight into the café. Not too fast, not too slow. Briskly, like people in a bit of a hurry. Right?’

‘OK.’

‘The important thing is that we must not look at the Astra. Not even glance.’

She didn’t respond.

‘Emma?’

‘I won’t look.’

‘You must wait for me in the café. Stay there until I get back. That’s very important.’

‘Why in there?’

‘Because it’s a brick building that will shield you from a bullet. It’s public. There’ll be other people around.’

She nodded. She was tense.

I took my cell phone out of my pocket. ‘Type in your number. Call your phone.’

She took it and typed the number.

‘Press “call”.’

It took a while before her phone rang.

‘You can hang up now.’

I took my phone back and put it in my pocket.

‘I didn’t have your number.’

‘Oh.’

‘Remember the breathing. Remember the cucumber,’ I said. Then I spotted the petrol station and put on the flicker.

She didn’t look for the Astra, despite what I’m certain was a strong temptation to do so. Together, we walked up the stairs to the café and went inside. There were three customers and a short fat woman behind the counter. The place smelled like salt and vinegar.

‘Stay near the back.’ I pointed at the corner where the drink fridges stood. A stopwatch was ticking in my head.

Thirty seconds.

I looked for the back door. A white wood partition allowed access to a small kitchen where a black woman was slicing tomatoes. She looked up in surprise. I put a finger to my lips and walked past her to the wooden door that I hoped led outside. I turned the knob and it swung open.

Outside, there were four or five cars in various stages of decay or repair. Two men stood at the open bonnet of one. They heard my footsteps as I passed them on the way to the edge of the mopane forest beyond.

‘The toilet is that way,’ one of them called.

I stuck a thumb in the air, but kept on without looking back, not rushing but focused. It was oppressively hot in the bright sun.

One minute.

They must not see me from the Astra, which was all that mattered. The garage and café buildings were between us.

I reached the treeline, walked another twenty metres straight on and then looked around for the first time. The bush was dense; I was invisible. I turned ninety degrees to the right and began to run. My foot burned where the glass shard had sliced it the previous night. There wasn’t much time. Hopefully, R4 and his mate had stopped. They would consider the situation and make a decision. The logical one would be to wait a while. Four, five, six minutes, to see whether we came out. That was all the time I had.

I ran far enough that the building would no longer hide the Astra. I turned right again, towards the road. Jogged now, back to the edge of the bush. Had to check where they were.

The Opel was visible through the long grass and trees. It was parked across the road, a hundred and twenty metres from the petrol station. The doors were still shut, but vapour trailed from the exhaust pipe.

Two minutes.

I would have to cross the road behind them. I jogged back deeper into the trees, turned parallel to the road, zigzagging between tree trunks in the dense growth. I counted steps in time with the seconds. Anthills, thick grass, trees.

Do you remember that one we found in the anthill last month? That was Dick this morning, talking about the black mamba. It put a spring in my strides.

Three minutes, seventy metres.

I found a footpath. Cattle spoor. I accelerated. Ninety metres, a hundred, a hundred and ten, hundred and twenty. Heat and damp in my shoe. The cut was bleeding again. I swerved towards the road. Dropped back to a jog, then to a walk. Sweat ran down my face, down my chest, and my back.

The bush opened up suddenly. I stopped. The Astra was thirty metres to the right, its rear facing me. The engine idled. They were watching the filling station.

Momentarily, I hesitated, breathing as deliberately and slowly as possible.

Four minutes. They’d be getting restless.

The sound of a car approached from the left. I could use that. I waited for it and when it was directly in front of me, I bent over and ran across the road behind the vehicle. It was a pick-up with railings and a bored-looking brown cow on the back.

I turned right towards the Astra and ran alongside a fence, hopefully in the occupants’ blind spot. I wiped sweat from my eyes. Twenty metres, ten, five, and then the driver turned his head, a black man, he looked into my eyes, his mouth made an ‘O’, and he said something. The passenger door opened and then I was there and opened it wider. The R4 was swinging around, I grabbed the barrel with my left hand, the sight scraped deep into my palm, blood and sweat made it slippery, I got a grip and jerked violently up and away. I hit the white man on the nose with my right hand as hard as I could. It was a forceful blow, pain shot up my arm and I felt his cartilage break. His grip on the rifle slackened.

It was an R5, the shorter version of the R4.1 got both hands on it and jerked it from his grasp. He made a noise as I hit him above the ear with the folding butt.

I spun the weapon around, cocked it and pressed my thumb against the safety catch. It was on. I clicked it off and pointed the rifle at the driver.

‘Afternoon, kêrels,’ I said.

The white man brought his hand unsteadily up to his bloodied nose, now bent against his left cheek.