Hot Ice (23 page)

His face was emotionless, but Kelly’s voice gave him away. He was grieving. He still feels for the man.

‘Visser was a changed man when he came out…bitter…tough…vicious. He took a job dredging diamonds on
Rainbow’s End
. It’s rough work, especially for someone like Visser with his big ideas. There’s bad currents that can throw you a hundred yards on to sharp rocks. The suction pipe is powerful…hard to hang on to. At times it whips you around like a rag doll and when a rock is dislodged it can thump into you hard enough to break your ribs. I guessed Visser wouldn’t last long at the game.’

‘And he didn’t. He died,’ Chris says, watching Kelly’s expression.

‘So they say,’ he admits after some hesitation.

After this Chris tries to get him talking again, but she can’t get another word out of him.

There is something else worrying her: should she tell Kelly who she is? She’s hurting because her father didn’t recognise her. Not even a glimmer of intuition. Nothing. He doesn’t particularly like her, she senses. He certainly doesn’t trust her. Suddenly it sinks in that if her father had wanted a daughter he would have come looking for her. He’d always known where she was living. If only she hadn’t searched for him, she could have hung on to her hopes and dreams. As it is…

She tries to swallow her disappointment and get some sleep.

She wakes to the sound of a helicopter hovering close by and lurches to her feet.

‘Keep still. They haven’t seen us,’ he shouts above the roar. The plane moves on. A beam of light, like a kite’s tail, drifts over the sand.

‘Someone is very keen to find you. Is he a friend or an enemy?’ Kelly asks. ‘And is he connected with Visser?’

‘I don’t know,’ she says in a quiet voice. ‘I have two lines of enquiry. Two entirely different sets of potential crooks. One of them might be for real, but they’re both keeping tabs on me. The trouble is…I don’t know who to trust.’

‘Two heads are better than one. Why don’t you
tell me how far you’ve got? Perhaps I could help you.’

‘That’s what they all say,’ she says miserably. Curling into a foetal position she tries to get some sleep.

There is something different about the veld, there are far more birds, the bush is becoming denser with shrubs, tufts of dried grass and a few sparse trees. They are moving into more fertile territory.

Uncomplaining, Chris plods along Kelly’s trail, but her outward passivity is entirely false. She feels like an overheated boiler threatening to blow. They’ve walked for twelve hours, but Kelly hasn’t said a word all day. She guesses that he regrets his confidences of the previous evening, consequently she’s getting nowhere. She feels light-headed and resentful, her legs ache abominably and as the day draws to a close her temper rises.

‘We camp here,’ Kelly announces, pausing beside a small copse of thorn trees. He hesitates, gazing around at the spoor. Then he pulls out an axe and lops off a tangle of leaves and thorns surrounding
the lower branches of the nearest tree. ‘If you get scared, climb up this tree.’

‘It’s full of thorns.’

‘Dead right.’ He lights a fire which is blazing within seconds. ‘Stay here. Keep the fire going.’ He points to a pile of dead sticks under a thorn tree. ‘By the time I get back you need to have enough burning embers to fill a couple of buckets. I’ll shoot us some supper.’

She examines the tree. The thorns are almost as long as her hand: big, thick, villainous barbs that could cut through flesh like a razor. Better than being eaten by some ravenous beast, but Chris hopes she won’t have to face the choice.

Kelly is gone for over two hours. Not that it worries her, but she might have been frantic with fright. He’s still getting back at her for daring to be there. Except for the firelight, it’s pitch black under the trees, but for every dancing flame there’s a moving shadow right behind her and she’s surrounded with thick bushes that rustle and creak. Fear puts her on a high and tonight she’s soaring. The moon is close enough to touch, each sound strums within her heart. She feels vibrant with life and part of everything. The soft warm wind carries the musical chimes of frogs and the incessant strum of cicadas. Then she hears the high-pitched call of hyenas, not far off. She knows she will never forget this magical night
in the veld as she crouches close to the fire.

Kelly returns eventually with a half-grown wild boar slung over his shoulder which he has already skinned and gutted. He sets up a rough trestle by stringing some branches together, skewers the boar and hangs it over the flames.

‘Were you afraid?’ Kelly wants to know.

‘Fear puts me on a high. I was flying.’

‘You, too?’

Naturally, me, too, she ponders, but when is she going to tell him he’s her father? She no longer expects a happy reunion. Perhaps she won’t bother. By now she dislikes him. He has no right to be so mean. Not to anyone.

Kelly is making himself comfortable with his head on his haversack. He says: ‘Wake me when the meat’s cooked.’

‘Kelly…are you awake?’ she asks, some time later.

A muttered curse is her only reply.

‘I read an old newspaper article…perhaps you saw it in the local newspaper. It claimed that a woman told Zuckerman about your mine…the one you lost in the court case. Was the woman Marie van Schalkwyk?’

He groans and turns, lifting himself on one elbow. ‘Why don’t you stick to diamond laundering? It’s a great story.’

‘I’m interested.’

‘Ask Zuckerman. Yes, why don’t you?’ He glares at her.

‘I don’t know him. For God’s sake…’ She’s about to blow her top. She knows this and she tries to reason with him. ‘What’s wrong with you? Do you have a touch of paranoia? Senile dementia brought on by years of loneliness?’ She can feel her pent-up rage getting the upperhand. ‘Or are you deliberately riling me? I can’t believe that you think I’m a spy from a mining company!’

‘That’s exactly what I think.’

‘But Zuckerman…for God’s sake. He was
fifty-plus
then. He’s pushing ninety now, if he’s still alive.’

‘How do you know that?’ He asks in a voice that’s throbbing with temper. ‘They didn’t put his age in the newspaper. Now I know for sure where you’re coming from.’

This is the moment when the boiler blows. Her pent-up fury is impressive. ‘Do you…do you really…? Well you’re right…I have inside information, but not from Zuckerman. I’ve had enough of you, Dan Kelly. You and your sanctimonious, holier-than-thou attitude to people. You think you’re a great guy, but you’re not. You’re cruel and hard and you’ve ruined two people’s lives with your stupid phobias. I came here to find you, but I wish I’d never bothered. You’re not my father…never will be. You’re the sperm donor…nothing more. No wonder you live alone. Who’d want you around? You’re the villain of the story…not me. My mother never harmed you, and
neither will I. God! When I think of all those years I’ve longed to find you…imagined our reunion…all those nights alone in those rich schools you paid for…and what do I find? A mean-minded, pompous bastard like you. I’m ashamed that you’re my father. Fuck you, Kelly.’

She has to break off. There’s a lump in her throat so big she can’t swallow, let alone talk. She pulls up her knees and rests her arms on them, it’s as good a place as any to hide her face.

Kelly doesn’t answer. After a while Chris raises her head and stares at him. He’s gazing at her with horror in his eyes. She might be a suicide bomber about to blow. Chris turns away to hide her sadness.

Kelly swears softly to himself. After a while he gets up and walks away.

The embers die down and Chris sits alone in the dark, too sad to think about danger. Reality intrudes with snarling and the crackle of paws on dead leaves. Something is after their supper. She snatches some sticks and puffs at the dying embers. The tinder is dry and flares up. Whatever is out there recedes when she grabs a long stick and thrusts it into the flames. She’ll have a weapon ready if it lunges at the meat.

Much later, something big and heavy blunders through the bushes. It’s coming towards her. It better look out. She’s in a mean mood. She grasps
the burning stick and hurls it towards the sound.

‘You’ll start a fire!’ Kelly says, stamping out the embers. He retrieves the stick and throws it on the fire. ‘I’m sorry. Christine…’

‘Chris.’

‘I’m sorry…what more can I say?’ Moments later she’s being pulled to her feet and hugged tightly, just as she used to imagine when snuggling under her duvet at school. She can even feel his wet cheeks, but something’s missing. Her feelings aren’t there. Who is this man? Do I want to know him? Then she cries, too, but silently, deep inside.

‘You’re not the only one to dream of a reunion,’ Kelly is saying. ‘For years I longed to see you, but I couldn’t face your mother. She always made me feel murderous.’

Chris scans him. He looks contrite.

‘You’re quite a girl, Chris. I’ve been secretly admiring you. You’ve got guts and you’re smart. Obviously there’s more of my genes in you than anything else. June was a city girl. We couldn’t go into the garden without her complaining about ants and spiders. I always knew you’d come and find me…if you wanted me. I’d given up hope by now, of course. Then, when you came looking for me, I didn’t even recognise you…that hurts. I should have. Your mother used to send photographs to my lawyer and you looked like me…my hair…my eyes.’

‘It’s all right. Calm down, Kelly. It’s cool.
Meeting like this, I mean. How could you know?’

‘The truth is, I couldn’t see further than my damned mine. Not for the wealth, believe me. The claim I lost because of your mother was worth millions, but it was the spite that hurt the most.’

‘Mother would never…’ She breaks off as she remembers the guilt in her mother’s eyes. What was it Mother had said?
‘The past…whatever I did…is buried. It must stay that way.’

‘The meat’s burning. Throw some water on the flames, Chris. We should eat.’

They are both behaving as if their fight never occurred, she by putting on her very best face, perfected for dealing with difficult clients, he by showering her with glances of the utmost approval.

‘I have some whiskey in my pack…to commiserate, or celebrate. What’ll it be?’

‘Celebrate,’ she says firmly.

Kelly digs into his pack and passes Chris a flask. ‘It’s rye whiskey. Great stuff. When I saw you climb out of the helicopter I thought to myself: How the hell did Zuckerman persuade a lovely girl like her to do his dirty work?’

‘For goodness’ sake forget Zuckerman. He’s probably in a wheelchair.’

‘I hope the bastard’s dead.’

Catching sight of his expression, Chris believes him.

‘You see, Chris, honey, I’ve found a claim even better than the one I had back in ’seventy-five. I’m
keeping the place secret, even though I own the mineral rights. It’s all tied up by a top lawyer. One day it will be yours, naturally. That was always my plan.’

Chris tries to look pleased. A diamond mine in the middle of a desert is not on her list of priorities.

‘We’d better clear the air. I wasn’t lying to you. June betrayed me. She gave everything to Zuckerman.’ Kelly’s voice is rough with emotion. He is gazing intently at the boar, his knife poised in his hand as he plans the first cut with his Swiss army knife.

She says: ‘I’d like to hear the truth for once. You’d better start at the beginning.’

‘Right after we’ve eaten.’

A flat stone, brushed clean of earth and resting on embers, is their warming tray. Kelly is piling slices of pork on to it. Chris is famished and the meat smells great. She burns her fingers grabbing a piece and tucks in. ‘I’ve never tasted anything so good.’

‘Hunger helps, but I’ve never found better meat than wild boar, particularly when it’s
braaied
in the bush and eaten under the stars. It took a while to find one.’ For a while they eat in silence. Chris cleans her hands on some wipes she brought along. Then she rolls up her spare clothes to make a pillow and lies down, sensing she’s in for a long night.

Kelly passes her the flask again. ‘Don’t fall asleep on me, Chris, honey.’ He takes a long time
getting started and Chris senses his reluctance.

‘I don’t want to turn you against your mother.’

‘I’ve already heard Mum’s version and it didn’t turn me against you.’

‘From what I can see of you, June’s done a great job rearing you. Of course she had good material to start with.’

Except that I was never at home, always at boarding school, perhaps that’s why Sienna and I grew so close. We only had each other. But this is not the time to think about Sienna and it’s not something she can discuss with Kelly. She lies back and gazes at the sky, but she’s seeing Sienna’s face, rapt and excited, just as she always looked when they played truant for a shopping expedition, or the movies, or to meet guys at the local pub. Chris tries to shake off her terrible sadness. Staring wildly at her father she struggles to make sense of whatever it is he’s saying.

‘Way back in the early Seventies, I gambled the last of my cash to buy a concession to dredge diamonds off Port Nolloth. I was almost skint, so I converted a fishing boat into a dredger and I did the diving myself. I used to dive for seven months, October to April, and in winter, when the sea was too cold and the storms too rough, I tramped all over the northern territory…Botswana, South West and Angola. I struck lucky fairly early on by discovering one of the richest diamond pipes I’d ever come
across, situated on a karakul farm. I kept the location secret while I sold my off-shore concession and the dredger for a million dollars.’

So her father lost everything…not just the mine. Perhaps he had the right to feel bitter.

‘It wasn’t enough, so I went looking for money and I was introduced to Herman Visser, a Dutch accountant who had come to Africa to make his fortune.

‘Going anywhere with Visser was hazardous. He had some sort of hold over women…they flocked after us…he had the looks…blue eyes, blond hair and the physique, but it was something about his eyes that pulled the girls in. His eyes were full of secret humour. He seemed to look at the world with amused tolerance and you had the feeling that he and you were buddies and whatever you were up against wasn’t all that serious. Ask women what the big draw was and you never got the same story twice.’

Kelly is lost in the past. His eyes have a
trance-like
glow, he looks happy. Chris guesses they were good times for both of them, until they crashed.

‘He’d inherited over two million dollars. I had a million, plus the know-how and the mine, so we teamed up on a fifty-fifty basis, but while our negotiations were going on, the old sheep farmer, Van As, became comatose. He was dying of cancer, so we signed up the mineral rights with his nephew, Jan.’

‘If only I’d been there. I wouldn’t have let you do that.’

‘Geologists aren’t lawyers, hon. We worked hard, bought and installed the equipment we needed and began excavating. We’d been developing the mine for five months when we heard the rumour about Van As having a bastard son in the village. Visser and I went looking for the boy. His name was Wanee Hendrickse, he’d never been to school and he worked as a labourer on a neighbouring farm. We offered the boy a good sum to sell us the mineral rights, on the off-chance that he might become the heir, but his mother kept upping the price. There was no real proof that he really was Van As’ son. Finally I drove up to Johannesburg to see my lawyer and ask him how I could clinch the deal with Hendrickse.’ Kelly sighs as if regretting that move.

Chris stirs uncomfortably. Is this going to be like her divorce cases? Is she going to be nagged for a moral judgment? Will Kelly try to get her on his side?

‘I arrived on Friday and drove to the mining house where June, your mother, worked. As soon as Zuckerman heard I was back, he insisted that we accompany him and his girlfriend, Marie, to the company’s game park for the weekend. A leopard had mauled a couple of kids and it was essential to kill the beast right away, but no one had been able to track it. My appointment with the lawyer was on
Monday, so we locked my papers, with all the details, in June’s safe for the weekend.’