Blood Safari (28 page)

Local watering hole.

From the biggest building a cracked panel hung slightly askew. A lifetime ago someone with no remarkable artistic talent had carved out the word ‘Warthog’ and a caricature of the same on the dark wood. A sign in the form of a vehicle number plate was screwed below:
BUSH PUB
. A white-painted plank fixed neatly square to the wall promised in red letters:
PUB LUNCHES! A LA CARTE DINNER! GENUINE GAME DISHES! TRY OUR MIXED GRILL! WARTHOG BURGERS!

In the window beside the large wooden door was a small faded advertisement stuck up with sticky tape like an afterthought.
CHALETS AVAILABLE
. I opened the door. The air conditioning was working. There was a long bar the length of the building. Wooden tables and benches filled the rest of the room. All were set. A silver banner hung from the open rafters,
HAPPY NEW YEAR!!!!!!!
The management was into exclamation marks.

The bleached wall was covered with graffiti.
Jamie & Susan were here. Eddie the German. Morgan and the Gang. Olaff Johanssen. Save the Whale, harpoon a fat chick. Free Mandela – with every box of Rice Krispies. Semper Fi. Naas Botha was hier.
Seker omdat Morné nie kom nie.
Make Love, Not War –
Steek, Maar Nie Met ’n Mes Nie. Cartoons, illegible signatures.

At five tables there were people in groups of eight or more. From the volume of the conversation I gathered they had begun the New Year celebrations. Behind the bar a woman was unpacking glasses from a plastic crate. When I sat down at the long bar she came over.

‘What would you like?’

‘Dry Lemon and ice, please.’

‘On New Year’s Eve?’ Amused laughter lines. She was on the wrong side of forty, but not unattractive, her nose and mouth worked well together. Her eyes were light, more grey than green, hair long and curled in brown waves to her shoulders. Earrings in the shape of the moon and stars. A sleeveless faded orange T-shirt covered her large breasts. Blue jeans with a dramatic belt buckle, African beads around her neck, a cascade of bangles, pretty hands with too many rings. Long nails painted green.

‘Yes, thank you.’

I watched as she went to a fridge with a sliding door. She looked good in the jeans. On the back of her shoulder she had a tattoo, an Eastern letter or sign. She took out a can of cool drink – a small one.

‘Two of those, please.’

She took out another, put both side by side, took a beer glass and filled it with ice. She brought them all to me. ‘Do you want to run a tab?’

‘Please.’

She snapped open the cans. I saw hundreds of visiting cards stuck to the shelves of bottles in long rows. Near the ceiling hung a row of baseball caps. Tractor and car logos. Currie Cup teams. Just another country pub in search of character.

‘Tertia,’ she said, and put out a beringed hand. The name did not suit her.

‘Lemmer,’ I said, and we shook hands. Hers was cool from the cans and her eyes were curious.

‘You don’t look like a tourist.’

‘What does a tourist look like?’

‘Depends. The foreigners wear safari outfits. The Gautengers, from Johannesburg and Pretoria, bring the wife and children. They put their cell phone down first, then a fat wallet beside it. Want to show off a bit, and not miss a call.

You’re working. You came in here for a reason. Waiting for someone? Could be, the way you looked around.’

Then she looked into my eyes. ‘Mercenary.’

I knew what she was doing. She was waiting for me to blink, the subtle narrowing of my eyes, the downward glance. I showed nothing. ‘Consultant. Military consultant.’ Nothing. ‘Smuggler.’

She knew then she wouldn’t get it. ‘OK,’ she said reluctantly. ‘The drink is on the house.’

‘Not bad,’ I said, and emptied my glass.

‘How close was I?’

‘Lukewarm.’

‘You think you can do better, that’s what.’

‘May I have another?’ I pushed the glass towards her.

‘Come on, show me what you’ve got.’ She went to fetch two more cans.

‘Do you have biltong? Or nuts or something?’

‘Maybe.’ She put the cool drinks down in front of me. ‘If you can do better than me.’

‘Tersh,’ someone called from a table. ‘More wine.’ A chorus of similar requests echoed around the room.

‘Coming,’ she said to them, and softly to me, ‘It’s going to be a long night.’

She went to get their wine. I poured for myself again. Watched the skill of her movements. She had the body of a younger woman and she knew it.

Another group came through the door, twelve white people, six men and six women, in their late thirties to mid-fifties. Greeting
rang back and forth. There was a festive atmosphere and an air of expectancy.

Tertia fetched an order book and went to stand at the new table. She laughed along with them, touching a man’s shoulder here, a woman’s hand there. Acquaintances, but her body language was slightly defensive, an unconscious statement of ‘I don’t really belong here’. An ‘outlander’, Melanie Posthumus would have called her.

I thought about the game Tertia wanted to play. Wondered how many hundred-rand notes she had won from travelling salesmen. It was easy if you had enough experience of people and knew how to ask your questions and make your statements. I could do better, because I knew them. I had met women like her in the Cape, when Parliament was in session and I could wander around Long Street and St George’s Mall and Green-market Square. They all had the same basic story. I had formulated a Law. Lemmer’s One-Night Law of Quasi-Artistic Women. More than one night and you became an insect in a spiderweb.

She was from the country, within a radius of two hundred kilometres of here at best. Lower middle-class Afrikaans. Intelligent. Rebellious at school.

After school she left for the city with a feeling of euphoria. To Pretoria, to flee her childhood home and position, not knowing that she would carry it with her. She lived in a tiny single flat somewhere in the city centre, took a clerical position with a big company, temporary only, as she fostered vague ideas of studying art. She began to read Oriental philosophy, study astrology.

She reassessed her life. Resigned from her job, packed her Volkswagen Beetle and drove alone to Cape Town. Moved into a commune in Obs or Hout Bay and made quasi-art pieces to sell in Greenmarket Square, wore loose dresses, sandals and coloured bandannas in her hair. Called herself Olga or Natasha or Alexandra. Smoked a bit of pot, slept around a little. She did not feel fulfilled.

Some time or other in the years to come she would relax her standards and say ‘yes’ to the short, middle-aged small businessman or beer-bellied banana farmer who had been asking her so long and politely. So she wouldn’t have to grow old alone.

Tertia didn’t ask me to guess about her again, because the restaurant filled up and the orders streamed in. Someone turned up the music. Pop music from the seventies. She put down a bowl of peanuts on her way past. She winked and shouted, ‘We’ll have to try tomorrow evening.’ Ten minutes later a second bar lady came on duty, ten years younger than Tertia, though I suspected her life story was not remarkably different. Red hair and freckles, smaller breasts. She compensated by not wearing a bra. Bigger earrings. They worked well together, never in each other’s way.

I shifted to the corner to make way for the crowd. I watched the people. The purpose with which they drank, the frenzy of their pursuit of pleasure. I could never understand this dedication to New Year, but perhaps it was because for so long I had spent it on my own or with Mona. Or just couldn’t understand the festivity of the occasion. Another mediocre year past. Gone, lost. Another one to come.

I wanted to get out. I couldn’t think here.

I realised that I had no place to stay.

Unasked, Tertia brought me a plate of food. I thanked her and asked her how I could hire a chalet for the night. She couldn’t hear me. She had to hold her ear to my mouth. I asked again. Her skin glistened and I smelt her perspiration and cigarettes. She laughed and frowned simultaneously. ‘On New Year’s Eve?’ and she went off to deliver four beers to a table.

I ate the spit-braaied mutton, potato salad, three-bean salad, cheese bread and grape jam. The racket continued to escalate. She came past again and plonked a set of keys down in front of me. The key ring was a silver dolphin with a blue bead for an eye. She
leaned over the bar counter, her mouth against my ear. ‘Straight down the road past the garages. It’s the last place on the left, with the blue door. Take the room with the single bed.’

Then she was gone.

I unlocked the blue door with my black sports bag in my hand.

A lava lamp glowed in the corner, its orange light threw long shadows across the sitting room. It was a busy room. Dark blue and green material with delicate Indian patterning swept down from the ceiling to the wall, which was hung with paintings, etchings and drawings. Mythical and fantastic figures, unicorns and dwarves. Princesses with incredibly long hair. Each was signed in big round letters: Sasha.

She was a painter, not a brilliant one, but not a bad one either. Somewhere in the gap in between.

The heavy curtains were drawn. There was a deep-pile carpet. A bookshelf stood against another wall. Sofa and two armchairs, a coffee table in the middle on which stood an ashtray, three books and a small woven basket. In the basket were more dolphins with blue-beaded eyes like the one on the key ring.

The whole room smelled of incense.

To the left were two bedrooms, to the right a small kitchen and a bathroom.

The bedroom with the single bed was somewhat more spartan. The duvet had big multicoloured blocks. There was a single painting on the wall. It was a moonlit scene, featuring a longhaired princess standing with her back to the observer and her hand stretched out to a unicorn foal. I put my bag down on the bed, unzipped it, took out the Glock and put it on the bedside cupboard. Pulled off my shoes and socks, found my washbag and put that on the bed. I picked up the cell phone and called the SouthMed Hospital. It took a few minutes before I got a nurse from intensive care on the line. She said there was no change in Emma’s condition. ‘But we live in hope, Mr Lemmer.’

I phoned B. J. since he was on night duty.

‘All quiet,’ he said.

Jeanette Louw answered on the second ring. ‘South-easter is blowing us away,’ she said. I could hear the wind howling. There were voices in the background, the faint rush of the sea. I wondered where and with whom she was celebrating on New Year’s Eve. ‘Your Jeep has a false number plate. Where are you?’

‘You don’t want to know.’

‘Are you making progress?’

‘No. But I’m working on it.’

‘I’m sure it will take time,’ she said.

I picked up my washbag and went to the bathroom. When I switched the light on it was blue. Every white tile was colourfully decorated by hand with patterns, fish, dolphins, shells and seaweed. On the toilet cistern there were fourteen candles. Only a bath, no shower. On the edge of the bath against the wall the bottles stood in a row: oils, creams, shampoo and herbal bath salts.

I opened the taps and undressed. I briefly considered experimenting with a bubble bath. Laughed at myself.

I got in and lay in the hot water.

In the distance I could hear the bass beat of the music – and now and again people screaming jubilantly. I checked my watch. Another two hours to midnight.

I closed my eyes and set my mind to work.

Forget about the frustration. Drop the urge to do something. Review everything. Objectively. Coldly. I arranged all the facts slowly and carefully in a row like dominoes. What had tipped the first one over; what started the whole chain of events? No matter how and where I looked, it all came back to one cause: Emma’s phone call to Phatudi.

I took it step by step from there. Four key events. The attack on Emma. The murder of Wolhuter. The attack on us. The murder of Edwin Dibakwane.

The thought process brought a new perspective to bear. At first there were only actions of eco-terrorism that were within the law and relatively harmless. Then there was a systematic escalation to illegal offences like arson and assault. Suddenly the big jump to murder, the ice broken by Cobie de Villiers, with attempts to
murder Emma and the death of Wolhuter and Dibakwane following shortly after.

Why? What was the catalyst? Why so suddenly?

I didn’t know, didn’t fret over it.

What made the big dominoes fall? First there was a telephone call. Then there was a second one. I sat upright in the bath and pressed my palms to my temples. Think now. Third one? Fourth one? No, no phone call. Or was there? How had the day gone, the day Emma stood in the rain?

We drank coffee on the veranda. Her head was a bit sore, but her self-mocking smile was beautiful. She had phoned Mogale. Branca had phoned back. Two calls. But we hadn’t learned about the letter at the gate yet. Dick came to flirt, Susan came to tell us about the letter. We saw Edwin at the gate, as large as life. Then we drove to Mogale. Looked through Cobie’s house with Branca, looked at the blood smear on the safe and left. Then the attack.

What was I missing?

How had they known about Edwin and the message? How had they known where we were in order to ambush us?

I went back to that morning. We get the letter from Edwin. Emma questions him. Gives him money.

Could someone have seen us while we were talking to Edwin at the gate of Mohlolobe? Were there eyes somewhere that saw the letter being handed over?

Game fence, high fences, dense bush on both sides of the road. No vehicles parked at a distance. I would have seen them. But even if there were a hidden spy with binoculars, they couldn’t have known the contents of the letter.

We drive away. Emma stares at the letter. Reads it over and over. Speculates over the style of writing.

Then her cell phone rings.

There was a call. Carel the Rich. She told him everything. Everything. About the letter too, and then I knew how they did it. I hit the bathwater with my fist, the water splashed against the fish and seaweed. A dolphin grinned at me with an open mouth and I grinned back, because I knew.