Blood Safari

19

The day that would end so dreadfully began so well.

We slept late. I was up first and made coffee. We drank it together on the veranda. The morning was bright, new and cool. She said her head was a little sore and she laughed at herself.

Later, she phoned Mogale to check whether we could see Donnie Branca. They couldn’t find him, said he would call back. We went for breakfast. Dick, Senior Game Ranger, spotted us on the way. ‘The game drive will be awesome tonight,’ he said to Emma.

‘We might not be here tonight,’ she said. ‘We might be going home.’

‘You’ll have to stay another day. There’s nothing like the Bushveld after the first real summer rain. The animals go wild. It’s a once-in-a-lifetime experience. Totally awesome.’

‘Awesome’ was clearly one of his favourite words. He spoke exclusively to her.

‘We’ll see …’

‘For you, I’ll delay the drive until six. Or seven,’ he flirted.

‘You will?’ She liked it.

‘Absolutely.’

‘Then we will do our best, Lemmer and I.’

‘Awesome,’ but a little deflated since she’d included me. ‘Have a great day.’

‘You too,’ and she smiled at him.

The call came while we were at the breakfast table. She answered her cell phone, listened and said, ‘Mr Branca,’ and, ‘My most sincere sympathies …’

She said she knew that it was a bad time at Mogale, but Frank Wolhuter had left her a message. She told him about it and then listened attentively for a long time. ‘Eleven would be great, thank you.’

She put the phone down. ‘He said he knew that Frank Wolhuter went through Cobie’s things for the first time after we left. Frank said nothing to him, but he knows where he would have put something. He’ll see us at eleven.’ She looked at her watch. ‘We’d better move.’

Susan came to our table and said, ‘Oh, Miss le Roux, someone just left a message for you at the gate.’

‘Who?’ asked Emma.

‘Gate security says it was a little boy.’

‘A child?’

‘Shall I ask someone to get the message for you?’

‘No, no, we’re on our way, ons sal dit daar kry, dankie, Susan. We’ll pick it up at the gate.’

‘O-kay,’ said Susan, and there was a small awkward moment before she turned away from us with a swish of her long blonde hair.

The message was on a piece of paper that was probably from a school exercise book or something like that. It had faint blue lines and a red vertical margin. It wasn’t in an envelope, just folded twice, with Miss Emma le Roux written on it in blue ballpoint.

We stood beside the little building at the gate where the guard, Edwin, Security Official, sat with his wide-brimmed hat and brilliant white smile. Emma unfolded the letter and read it. Then she passed it to me.

Miss Emma

You must better go home now. Here, it is not so safe.

A Friend

‘Who brought this?’ Emma asked Edwin.

‘A boy.’ Cautiously, as if he knew that this meant trouble.

‘Do you know him?’

‘Maybe.’

‘Please, Edwin, I need your help. This is very important.’

‘There are many boys here in the villages. I think he is one of them.’

‘Which village?’

‘I will try to find out.’

‘Wait,’ said Emma, and walked back to the BMW. She returned with a hundred-rand note in her hand. ‘Edwin, all I want to know is who gave the message to the boy. He is not in trouble. I will pay him if he can tell me. And this is for you. If you can find him, I will pay you more.’

‘Thank you, madam,’ he said as the note disappeared into a pocket. ‘Maybe I can find the boy.’

‘Thank you very much.’ She checked her watch. ‘We’re late,’ she said.

She sat with the letter in her hands while we drove. She stared at it for a long time.

‘Miss Emma,’ she said. ‘That’s what the man who phoned me at my house called me.’ She looked at me and then back at the note. ‘It sounded like a black man over the phone, Lemmer, and this reads like English is not the writer’s first language.’

I wasn’t going to respond. Luckily, her phone rang again and she answered and said, ‘Carel!’ He must have asked how it was going, because she said, ‘If you had asked me yesterday, I would have said badly, but I think I’ve got something, Carel. We’re on our way there now. And remember that phone call I received and couldn’t make out what the man was saying? I didn’t imagine it.’

My friend ‘Carel the Rich’ of Hermanus. Apparently, he wanted a full report, because she told him the whole story, all the way to Mogale.

A pretty young Dutch volunteer with a bush hat and long legs in shorts took us to Donnie Branca, who was sitting in Frank Wolhuter’s office. Emma tried to speak Afrikaans to her, but she answered exclusively in English. She said they were still in shock, the reality of Mr Wolhuter’s death hadn’t sunk in properly.

Branca pushed documents around on the desk. He was sombre and spoke in muted tones. Once the Dutch girl had gone he said, ‘It wasn’t an accident. Couldn’t be. The honey badger has gone in there before, but we would dart Simba with a tranquilliser. Frank would have done that. But the dart gun is in the store. He would never have done it alone either. Phatudi says there’s no evidence, but I found something just now. Come and see.’

He walked ahead of us through the interior door of the office. Behind it was Wolhuter’s living quarters. In the bedroom a bookcase stood open like a door. It was hinged to the wall. Behind it in the wall was a gun safe and the steel door was open. Branca stopped in front of the safe.

‘Look at this.’ He pointed.

The safe was two metres high and half a metre wide. It had two levels – below there was room for six weapons. There were only two hunting rifles. From the dust pattern it was clear that someone in the very recent past had removed the other four. On the top shelf there were documents and a few piles of banknotes, three thousand rand maybe, a pack of dollars, a pack of euros, maybe a thousand each. There was a rusty red stripe on the sill of the safe at the level of the document shelf. It looked like dried blood someone had smeared there by accident.

‘Blood,’ said Branca.

Emma leaned closer to look. She didn’t comment.

‘There are two safes. Everyone knows about the one in the storage shed, where we keep the other weapons. Only Frank and I knew about this one. If he had anything for you, he would have kept it here. That’s why I looked here this morning, after your call. That’s when I found it.’

‘Do you think…’ She stopped, upset by the various possibilities.

‘Do you still have Frank’s message?’

She nodded and took her phone out of her handbag. She pressed the buttons and held it out to him. From beyond the grave Frank Wolhuter repeated, ‘Emma, this is Frank Wolhuter. I believe you were right. I found something. Call me, please, when you get this message.’

Branca’s face was strained when he passed the phone back to her. ‘After you left the day before yesterday, Frank unlocked Cobie’s room. He was busy there the whole afternoon. I went to say goodbye before I left to visit my girlfriend at Graskop. That was the last time I saw him.’

Emma stared at the streak of blood. ‘That night… Was anyone else staying here?’

Branca shook his head. ‘Only Frank and Cobie and I lived here. The workers’ quarters are on the slope of the mountain and the volunteers live two kilometres away in the dormitories. When I came home after midnight everything was quiet. I thought Frank was asleep – he was early to bed, early to rise. The next morning Mogoboya found him with Simba.’

Branca took out a handkerchief and used it to push the door of the safe closed. ‘I’ll get Phatudi to come over…’He made a move for the door. ‘I haven’t been in Cobie’s room yet. Would you like to come with me?’

‘Please.’

He fetched a bunch of keys from Wolhuter’s office and together we walked to the little building half hidden in the mopane trees at the edge of the rehabilitation centre. Branca pointed at a broken window. ‘That’s where they tried to break in last week.’

‘Who did?’ asked Emma.

‘Who knows. We think it was Phatudi’s people. At night you can’t see the burglar bars. Frank heard the glass break and he turned on the lights.’

He unlocked the door, first the doorknob lock, then the Yale. I wondered whether they all were as security conscious. The cottage was dark inside, the curtains drawn. Branca switched on a light.

Spartan was the word. A single bed against the wall, pine bedside cupboard, two worn armchairs and a tall built-in cupboard of faded white melamine. The walls were bare; on the floor was an old woven carpet with an African block motif. Two doors, one to the kitchen, where a square dark wooden table and three wooden chairs, an ancient electric stove and a bookshelf were visible. The other led to the bathroom. Everything was relatively tidy and clean for bachelor’s quarters. A pair of jeans hung over the back of the armchair. Emma rubbed the material between her fingers while she looked about. Branca crossed to the single bed, where something lay, a book perhaps.

He picked it up and opened it.

‘Photographs,’ he said.

Emma went over. It looked like a small photo album, just big enough to hold photos of the regular size.

‘That’s Melanie Posthumus,’ Emma said. ‘These are Cobie’s photos.’

‘Who’s Melanie? The girlfriend?’

‘Yes.’

‘Two, three, four photos. He must have liked her a lot.’

‘And that is Stef Moller,’ Emma said.

Branca turned the page and pointed ‘And here’s Frank. And me. And this was a Swedish volunteer. She liked Cobie a lot. We thought …’

‘What?’

‘Maybe, you know …’

‘What?’

‘Well, we saw her come out of Cobie’s house early one morning. But she left. Like they all do.’

Branca had paged right through it. ‘That’s it.’

‘Wait,’ said Emma, and took the album from him. She opened it. ‘Look here.’ She pointed it at me. ‘There are two pictures missing. Right at the front.’

I looked. On both sides of a page there was only transparent plastic with a white background and the faint outline where two postcard-sized photographs had been.

‘This room … Is it exactly as Frank left it?’ asked Emma.

‘Must be. No one else has been in here,’ said Branca.

‘What about cleaners?’ She went into the kitchen.

‘Frank and I have a maid, but we’re slobs. Cobie did everything himself’

The kitchen wasn’t big enough for everyone. Branca and I stood in the doorway. Emma inspected the bookshelf.

‘So it could have been Frank who left the album on the bed?’

‘Could be.’

She turned. ‘Maybe he took the photos out to show me.’

‘Maybe.’

‘Did you look in the safe? For anything?’

Of course he had looked in the safe, just after he had removed the four rifles.

‘No. When I saw the blood, I didn’t want to tamper with possible evidence.’

He was lying. And he was good at it.

‘Can we have a look? We can be careful.’

‘OK,’ he said.

They walked towards the door. I quickly scanned the bookshelf in the kitchen. There were magazines on the lower shelf, the yellow spines of National Geographic, a series of Africa Geographies. The rest were books on animals, game- and veld management. Crammed. Not an inch where the album might have fitted.

The photographs weren’t in the safe. There were title deeds and records of donations and financial statements and cash.

‘What’s the money for?’ Emma asked.

‘That’s the cash float. For incidentals and emergencies.’

‘Is there any other place where he might have put the photos?’

‘I’ll have a look. In his room, maybe. But it’ll take time. There’s so much to do now. I don’t know what’s going to happen. If I find something, I’ll let you know.’

‘Thanks.’

We said goodbye and left. Emma wanted to track down the black child who had brought her the message.

She took out the note again, read it and refolded it. She kept it in her hand. When we turned on to the tar road, there were no policemen waiting to protect us. I did a thorough survey of any possible tails and I wondered why I felt so uneasy. I concentrated on the road, trying to ignore a voice that kept whispering that I ought to tell Emma that Branca was hiding something. That didn’t work. I tried to rationalise it away: it was none of my business, it would make no difference. In all probability it had nothing to do with her search for Jacobus le Roux.

But the note in her hand worried me. It made no sense. It didn’t fit into the scheme of my original suspicions.

‘Why did he only send me the letter now?’ Emma wondered aloud. ‘We’ve been here three days already.’

That was a very good question. I didn’t have time to think it through. At Klaserie, just beyond the railway line, something flashed in the veld to the left of us. Something that didn’t fit. I slowed down as we approached the T-junction where the R351 joined the R40. Out of the corner of my eye I saw the sun reflect momentarily on metal. I was going to turn and look, but I spotted the battered blue Nissan pick-up on the left shoulder of the road just before the stop sign. Two figures were inside, the doors opening in unison.

Balaclavas on their heads, firearms in their hands.

‘Hold tight,’ I told Emma as I floored the accelerator and checked to the right for oncoming traffic. I had to take the left turn at speed. Just get away from here.

‘What’s going on?’

Before I could answer, the left front tyre burst with a dull, shuddering thud.