Blood Safari

37

I had to restrain myself. I wanted to get up and grab Stef by the throat and shake him. ‘So why are you lying to me about where Cobie is?’ But he must have known what my reaction would be.

‘We don’t know where he is, Lemmer. He phoned out of the blue. He said that he’d heard that Frank Wolhuter was dead. We must be very careful, because the people who did it are very dangerous. We must take precautions; we must arm ourselves and make sure we are never alone. I asked him where he was and he said it didn’t matter. I asked him about Emma and he said he had no family, he didn’t know anyone like that.’

‘Did you ask him why he shot those people?’

‘I didn’t need to. We know it was him.’

‘But Frank and Donnie swore it wasn’t him.’

Donnie Branca half rose indignantly. ‘What did you expect, Lemmer? Be realistic, for Christ’s sake. Frank didn’t believe it was Cobus. What did you want me to do? Go tell everybody, “Yes, Cobie shot them in cold blood, the bastard”? I mean, Jesus.’

‘Sit down, Donnie.’ But it didn’t help. He was angry. He got up, walked a circle in the dark and came back to stand in front of me.

‘Fuck you, Lemmer. What are you going to do? Shoot me? I’m sick and tired of you. If there’s something that proves Cobie is Emma’s brother, it’s not our business. The stupid fuck went and shot innocent people and put twelve years’ work at risk. Twelve fucking years. That’s how long Stef worked to get Hb going, to make it work. You shake your fucking head when we talk about the threat to the environment. You’re just like everybody. The media, the government, the fucking public, everybody is in denial. You have no idea what’s happening, Lemmer. All over the world. It’s a fucking mess. I dare you, go do your homework. Go look at the facts. Go read the scientific material. All of it.

Not just climate change. Everything. Loss of habitat, deforestation, population growth, pollution, land abuse, urban sprawl, development, poaching, smuggling, poverty, globalisation. And then come back and tell me that there’s no crisis. Go to the media. Expose us. See if you can stop it.’

‘Donnie,’ Stef Moller placated him.

‘Jesus, Stef, I’ve had enough of this fucking fool. Read my lips, Lemmer. We did not touch Frank or Emma. And if you don’t believe that, you can go fuck yourself.’ He stalked off to the side of the pick-up, opened the door and said, ‘Come on, Stef, let’s go,’ slammed the door and started the engine.

Stef Moller slowly got up and walked past me. ‘He’s right,’ was all he said. He got into the pick-up and I had to move out of the way, because it didn’t seem as though Donnie Branca was going to stop for me.

I’d believed that Emma was lying to me and I’d been wrong. My belief in my built-in lie detector had been shaken. I stood in the dark and watched the red lights of the Toyota disappear in the distance and I thought Donnie Branca was telling the truth and that Stef Moller was still hiding something.

If you want to know whether someone is lying, look at his eyes. It was difficult with Moller because of the constant blinking and the thick lenses. That night I couldn’t see his face in the dark and I had to listen to his voice, its rhythm and intonation. He wasn’t telling the whole truth.

Or was it my imagination?

I went back to my nest.

Tall Stef Moller with his bald pate and glasses and his slow, solemn way of speaking. I thought he was harmless the day we’d met him. Even though something had bothered me in the shed, something I had missed.

Tall, dispassionate men are not high on a bodyguard’s list of threats. The assassins of history have been short, busy little men. Lee Harvey Oswald, Dmitri Tsafendas, John Hinckley, Mark David Chapman.

I hadn’t expected Moller here tonight. It was his voice which had convinced me to come out from cover and call to them, because I didn’t identify him with cold-blooded attacks and violence. It wasn’t just an instinct. Stef Moller had an aura of the oppressed and wounded about him.

But I did know that he was lying. About something.

What bothered me about the shed?

Branca hadn’t been involved in the attack on Emma and myself. I believed him.

Who was it, then?

And why was Moller lying? Had he sent someone else? Didn’t he trust Branca enough, and were there other Hb troops willing to do dirty work?

The people who did it are very dangerous. We must take precautions. We must arm ourselves and make sure that we are never alone.

Had he said that with authority or a bit of fear? Even so, they hadn’t brought weapons with them tonight. Or were they concealed in the pick-up?

What had I seen in Moller’s shed?

I sat down with my Twinkies and Energade. I could not relax. I had to stay alert, ready.

The day Emma and I were there, the shed had been fairly gloomy, the only light coming through the double doors. There were steel shelves on the walls, big drums of diesel or oil, workbenches covered with spare parts, oil rags, tins and cans, nuts and bolts, tools and …

I picked up a bottle of Energade and took a swig. I shut my eyes and concentrated.

On the workbench two metres from Moller there had been a carburettor and the cover of an air filter with the broken air filter beside it and … a tray.

An old reddish-brown tray with a cork base and a sugar bowl and coffee mugs, that’s what caught my attention.

The coffee mugs.

Why?

Because there were three of them. Three coffee mugs, two empty, one half full.

I stood up in the dark forest, bottle in one hand, Glock in the other.

There’s only Septimus and myself, no other labour. That’s what Stef Moller had said. But there were three ugly khaki brown mugs with their teaspoons standing upright in them and someone hadn’t finished their coffee. Two people, three mugs, it didn’t add up. Someone else had been in that shed when Emma phoned from the gate. Someone who didn’t want to be seen.

I collected my things and began jogging to the homestead. I had a good idea who that third person had been.

I believed he was still at Heuningklip and that was why Stef Moller was lying to me.

It took nearly three hours to drive the two hundred and fifty kilometres to Heuningklip. There were heavy trucks in the mountain passes and sharp bends invisible in the night up the escarpment.

I drove through Nelspruit and wondered how Emma was, wanting to make a detour to hold her hand. Talk to her. I wanted to ask her what she had been thinking when she came and stood beside my bed, but I also wanted her to remain silent so I could preserve the possibility of multiple answers.

I turned right on the R38 just beyond the Suidkaap river and thought about Stef Moller, the shy rich man. Melanie Posthumus had said he’s this billionaire that bought all these farms and made them nice, but nobody knows where his money came from.

So where had it come from? And what could it buy?

I thought myself into a corner. I was tired of thinking, I wanted action. I wanted answers to clear the whole thing up, to lift the heavy dark curtains of deceit and lies and let the light shine on everything, so I could know who to grab by the shirt and could smash my fist in his face and say, ‘Now tell me everything.’

On the R541 beyond Badplaas I had to slow down to spot the Heuningklip gate in the dark, since there was no ostentatious gateway, just the ghostly game reserve behind the high game fence. I drove a kilometre beyond the little signboard and parked the Audi as far off the road as I could in the long grass. I got out, pushed the Glock into my belt and checked my watch. A quarter to three in the morning. Gestapo time.

I climbed over the gate, which was three metres high. I would have to follow the track. I couldn’t afford to get lost in the thickets. There might be lions too. Melanie Posthumus had said that Cobie told her when Moller had seventy thousand hectares of continuous land, he would introduce lions and wild dogs. That was a couple of years ago.

The road wound for the three kilometres up to the humble homestead and outbuildings. I walked. I felt exposed, but on either side the grass was too long and impassable. I walked with my hand on the pistol and listened to the noises of the night. I heard a hyena chuckle, a jackal howl. Dogs barked in the distance. I didn’t know whether wild dogs barked, I knew only that they hunted in packs, chasing their prey for miles and biting chunks out of them until they collapsed from loss of blood and exhaustion. Then the whole pack would join in the orgy of feasting.

I walked faster, keeping to the middle ridge where my feet made less noise.

A night bird flew up with a clatter right in front of my face, then another one, three, four, five. They gave me a fright and I stood and swore with the pistol in my hand. It took long minutes for the racket to die down.

I set off again.

At last, up the hill, there was the farmyard shrouded in darkness. Not a single light burned.

Would Stef Moller be home yet? Or did he go to Mogale with Branca?

I would search the homestead first.

I crept along the shadows. There was the house, the shed and another long outbuilding. Beyond the rise were four labourer’s cottages, little buildings with off-white brick walls and corrugated iron roofs. Stef Moller had nodded in their direction when he referred to squint-eyed Seppie as his only workman.

I walked slowly across the veranda to the front door of the house and turned the knob carefully with my left hand, pistol in the right.

It was open.

If a door is going to creak, you don’t want to prolong it. I pushed it open quickly, went in and closed it. No appreciable noise.

It was very dark inside. I couldn’t see the furniture clearly and I didn’t want to collide with any. I would have to wait for my eyes to adjust. To the right was a big room. Was it the sitting room? In front of me was a hallway. I walked down it quietly.

The first door to the left was the kitchen. There were no curtains and I could see the white enamel of an old stove. There were two more doors, left and right, both open. Bathroom to the left. Bedroom to the right.

I listened at the bedroom door. Nothing.

I went on. There were another two doors on both sides. Both were bedrooms, the one to the right was the biggest. Stef Moller would sleep there. It was impossible to see anything. I took a step into the room and stood straining my ears, but all I could hear was the beating of my heart when I held my breath.

I came out, putting the ball of my foot down deliberately, then the heel, softly, silently, until I was in the third bedroom.

It was empty. There was no one in the house. Moller was still on his way, or perhaps he was sleeping over somewhere. I walked back to the front door more quickly, since there was no one to hear me. I went out and stood on the veranda. The yard was eerily quiet. The labourer’s cottages lay to the east on my left. There were about a hundred and fifty metres of open ground and crunchy gravel to cross. The tall grass was mowed to two metres from the cottages. I would just have to get there and I would have cover.

The cottages were on the side of the hill in a crooked row, clearly visible in the soft light of the setting crescent moon and stars, an amazing firmament out here where no other light burned. I would begin with the one on the left, closest to the homestead. I had a problem. Squint Septimus lived in one and I didn’t want to wake him. But which one? It was impossible to say. Probably not the very first one – you don’t want to sleep too close to the boss. I bet on the second one.

And the man I was looking for? The fourth or the fifth cottage?

It could be either. I began the long trek across the hard-baked open ground, pistol ready. I thanked the gods for the absence of watchdogs. I put each foot down quietly, so it would not disturb a sleeping man. I aimed for the long grass just left of the first house, taking my time carefully, wondering whether he was asleep in house number three or four, and guessing what he would say when I pressed the Glock to his temple and gently shook him awake.

Fifteen metres to the grass, then ten. I had to concentrate in order not to rush the last five. Mustn’t make a noise. When I was safely there, I squatted down and stared at the windows of the first house. No curtains. Upper and lower door of wood, the paint peeling.

I walked, crouching, through the grass to the next house. Dirty white lace curtains with a long rip in them. Where was Septimus? There was Septimus, sleeping, unconscious and unimportant. I crept on another seven metres and squatted on my haunches. I saw the faded yellow curtains in the window of house number three and I remembered Melanie Posthumus saying she had bought some pretty yellow material that was nice and cheerful and I knew where he was sleeping.

I’ve found him, Emma le Roux, I’ve found the elusive pimpernel Jacobus le Roux, also known as Cobie de Villiers. Murderer, missing person, activist and enigma.

Something cast a sudden shadow beside me in the thick grass and someone pressed a gun barrel softly against my cheek and said in a very nervous voice, ‘Put down the pistol before I blow your fucking head off.’