The Hunter (17 page)

He looked into her dark eyes and tried not to be moved by her pleading look. ‘What do you know about Linley Brown?’

A smile formed on her lips. He had thought he had her, but now the tables were turning. ‘I know all about her. I tell you, tonight. Maybe you buy me dinner – my last before police come take me away, or send me back to Cuba.’

He couldn’t stop the smile this time. She probably wouldn’t show, but he wasn’t the police. Elena Rodriguez put her hand on his again and raised a foot to run her toes up the inside of his calf muscle. ‘Please,’ she whispered, and that settled it.

12

B
rand sipped a brandy and Coke at the long bar of the Bulawayo Club and looked at his watch for the third time. He wondered if Elena Rodriguez was in another country by now.

‘I sorry I late.’

He swivelled on his stool at the sound of her accent and was surprised at what awaited him. She was wearing a black sleeveless cocktail dress that ended mid-thigh and long black leather boots with high heels; they didn’t suit the sticky weather but Brand thought the doctor looked as sexy as hell.

Her hair was teased out and she brushed a strand behind her ear, as she had done in the surgery that afternoon. ‘You going to say something?’

‘You look different.’

‘I take that as compliment.’ She opened her black patent leather purse and took out a packet of Zimbabwean Newbury cigarettes. ‘Want one? You can smoke in here. I not sure how long they allow this; two year ago women were not even allowed in this bar, so rules do change, sometimes for better.’

‘I’m trying to give up.’ Seeing her fossick in her bag some more he took the Zippo from his pocket, rolled the wheel on the fabric of his chinos and held the flame to her. She leaned forward to light her cigarette and he smelled perfume. He didn’t smoke any more, but he still carried his lighter; he’d had it since Angola and never went out without it.

‘
Gracias
.’ She blew a stream of smoke upwards and it twisted its tendrils around the slow-moving ceiling fan. ‘You look surprised still. You think I not come?’

‘I thought you’d come wearing your baggy doctor’s coat.’

She laughed and picked a speck of tobacco from her smooth, even white teeth. When she ashed the cigarette into the heavy stone ashtray the bartender slid across to her Brand noticed she had painted her nails blood red. ‘You going to order me drink?’

‘Of course. What would you like?’

‘Cane and Coke. Is closest thing here to Cuban rum; cheap and potent. You been to Cuba, Mr Brand?’

He ordered the drink, and another for himself. ‘Please, call me Hudson. No, I haven’t, but I did try some Cuban rum, once, in Angola.’

She nodded. ‘Aha. You fight there in the war?’

‘Yes. South African Army.’

‘Let me guess.’ She drew on her cigarette again and when she placed it on the rim of the ashtray he saw the fresh circle of lipstick, the same shade as her nails. ‘Three-two battalion? Buffalo soldiers.’

He took the drinks from the barman and passed the cane and Coke to her. They clinked glasses. ‘How did you guess?’

‘You speak like American, but you look like you got some Portuguese, maybe black African in you. Three-two was South African mercenary battalion, with Portuguese-speaking officers and black Angolan traitors to revolution.’

Brand smiled. ‘How do you know so much about South African military history?’

‘I was there, as nurse. Angolans were short of doctors so Cuba sent assistance. I assist with some surgery in field and decided I want to be doctor when I finish my army service.’

‘You don’t look old enough to have served in Angola.’

She laughed. ‘Now
you
flirting. I was nineteen.’

‘I wasn’t much older. I can’t for the life of me think now why I was keen to find a war somewhere in the world.’

Elena leaned close to him and he could smell her perfume again as she lowered he voice theatrically. ‘I can’t for life of me think now why I wanted to help my socialist brothers and sisters in that shithole.’

He laughed. ‘I’ll drink to that,’ he said, and they clinked glasses again. ‘We were both fighting for long-forgotten causes. You wanted to create a socialist utopia in Africa and I was a part African American helping defend a system that oppressed black people and doesn’t exist any more. I read recently that Luanda has the most expensive hotel rooms in the world, thanks to the interest of oil and gas company executives fighting over somewhere decent to stay.’

‘There nowhere decent to stay in Luanda. It like Zimbabwe, only worse.’

She drained her glass and finished her cigarette and he ordered her a fresh cane and Coke and lit her second cigarette. He smelled the smoke and felt the craving. ‘You sure not want some?’ She uncrossed her legs then crossed the other one, giving him a glimpse of smooth thigh.

‘You were going to tell me about Kate Munns.’

She stubbed out her cigarette after just a couple of puffs. ‘What I tell you is, how you say, off the record, as far as police go, OK?’

He shrugged. He wasn’t in Zimbabwe to do Sergeant Khumalo’s job for her. ‘It would be unusual, doctor, for the police to go to the insurance company and subpoena my report, but it could happen. For their part, the company rarely presses charges when fraud is uncovered.’

Dr Rodriguez pursed her lips; she was sexy even when she was vulnerable, he thought. ‘Call me Elena. To tell you truth, I can probably buy my way out of a prosecution. There not enough doctors in Zimbabwe. Just don’t make their job easier for them than it needs to be. In any case, no crime committed this time.’

‘What do you mean, “no crime”? You sold Kate Munns a fake death certificate.’

Elena looked at the floor in a moment of contrition, then back at him. ‘You see my surgery. You hear that family complain that I no got drugs.’

He nodded.

‘I have something to show you.’ She opened her purse again and pulled out a sheet of paper.

Elena passed the page to Brand and he saw that it was an invoice from a South African pharmaceuticals company. The total at the bottom of the list of various drugs, some of which Brand recognised as painkillers and antibiotics, was twenty thousand rand, or about two thousand US dollars.

‘Kate pay me two thousand dollar for my services.’

He didn’t need to ask what those services were. If he believed her, she was telling him she had used all that money to buy drugs for her patients. Playing Robin Hood didn’t excuse crime in the eyes of the law, but Brand had some sympathy for her.

‘I not sorry for anything I do in life,’ she said.

He saw the defiance in her eyes, and something else. She had been to war, as he had, and seen the horrors of a struggle consigned to the irrelevant section of history. She wasn’t cowed by him or his investigation. ‘Tell me about Kate. What was she running from?’

Elena sipped her drink and shrugged. ‘I not know. All I know is money not for herself alone. She have friend with drug problem, addicted to painkillers.’

‘Linley Brown?’

‘Yes, that one. She come with Kate to my surgery. Linley like many people in Zimbabwe, just hanging on, you know?’

He nodded.

‘Plus, she need to go to rehab in South Africa and that cost long bucks.’

It was interesting hearing African slang coming from a sensual Cuban mouth, he thought, then forced his mind to stay on the job. ‘OK, but why did Kate need to disappear from her life in the UK, forever? This can’t just have been about a friend in trouble; this was about her changing her life for good.’

Elena stirred her drink with her finger then licked it. ‘I not know. I ask her, as I have same suspicion as you. But in this kind of
service
you not ask too many questions, you know?’

He could imagine. ‘So, you wrote Kate a false death certificate, saying she had died of a brain haemorrhage, and the certificate was lodged at the Provincial Registry Office.’

She sipped her drink again, but said nothing.

‘And then there was a car accident three days later, in which Kate really was killed.’

This time, Elena nodded. ‘I am amazed when I read it in the
Chronicle
, local newspaper. You know, is sad that this girl is really killed. I ask around and find out Dr Fleming is friend of family. I call him – that old man he no like me – and I ask him if he sign death certificate. He ask me why I want to know, but he say yes, he identifies Kate positively from pin in her bones, you know? He very honest man, that one.’ She looked down at her drink and added, softly, ‘Not like me.’

Brand nodded. It was tragically ironic that Kate had been killed just a few days after receiving her death certificate. Perhaps, Brand speculated, the girls had been celebrating their good fortune as they made plans for Linley to lodge a claim on the life insurance policy once Kate’s will was read.

‘You going to tell police about me?’

Brand thought about his answer. As attractive as Elena Rodriguez was, she had committed a crime and he had told Sergeant Khumalo he would keep her up to date with his investigation. Elena had broken the law in Zimbabwe by selling the fake certificate, but the crime had gone no further; if Linley had not used the bogus document to lodge the claim then the payout that she was now awaiting
might
still be approved. On the other hand, Brand knew insurance companies were always looking for an excuse not to pay. The moral dilemma he now faced, about whether to hand Elena over to Sergeant Khumalo, was made more difficult by Elena’s perfume and the way she ran her tongue across her teeth every now and then. The insurance company, he knew, would not want to press charges, which was something in Elena’s favour. Goodness Khumalo, however, would want nothing more than to see the good doctor in cuffs and in court.

Elena reached out and put a hand on his on the bar. ‘Please, don’t make this harder for me, or easier for the police. Like I say, I can buy my way out of prosecution, but I have little money and what I do have I need to buy drugs and medical supplies. Anyone who live in Zimbabwe and say they have not broken one law is liar. Please . . . Hudson.’

He looked into those sad, ambushing eyes, and he wondered how many fake certificates she had issued, how many hundreds of thousands of pounds she had helped people defraud from overseas insurance companies. There had been at least one attempted prosecution of Elena, according to Cecelia. Perhaps she did spend all the proceeds of her criminal endeavours buying stuff to help her patients, or perhaps she was just a good liar. He slid his hand out from under hers.

She put her hand back in her lap, beneath the bar, pouted, then looked at him. ‘I can pay you.’

‘I don’t need your money.’ In fact, he did, as this case would be short on billable hours now that it was drawing to a close, but he did have the uncomfortable prospect of a safari with Kate’s sister and brother-in-law in order to keep his bank balance out of the red.

‘I no mean to offend you.’

‘No offence taken. This is Africa, after all.’

She smiled at that. He couldn’t judge her, he decided, but nor would he take her money to keep her name out of the investigation. He could use a good contact in the Zimbabwe police, an up and coming detective such as Goodness Khumalo, but did he have the heart to hand the doctor to her? ‘Are you still in contact with Linley Brown?’

‘No,’ Elena said.

‘What did you make of Kate?’

She frowned. ‘I no understand.’

‘How did she act? Was she nervous; did it seem like she was scared? Did she have any real medical problems?’

‘We have thing called doctor–patient confidentiality. Maybe you hear of it?’

‘Elena, you’re hardly in a position to assert your moral authority over me.’

She looked away, along the bar, and when she turned back to him he saw that her cheeks had coloured with a mix of anger and embarrassment. ‘She nervous, of course; she and me about to break law. I ask her if she want to talk about why she want to disappear and she say it none of my business. She say her friend, Linley, has drug problem and this Linley she nods, but says very little. Kate ask me if I can give some painkillers, OxyContin, for her friend, to keep her going until she can get to rehab, but I have to just laugh at that. You know I no got any drugs.’

Brand nodded. He still couldn’t fathom why Kate would think she had to disappear from her life in the UK in order to fund her friend’s recovery. No, Kate Munns had needed not only money but a new life. He knew the only person who could fill in the gaps in this story was Linley Brown.

‘I would buy you a drink, except I got no money. If you got no more questions for me, maybe I go now.’

‘How are you going to bribe your way out of a police prosecution if you can’t afford a drink?’ he asked her.

She opened her cigarettes – something she clearly did have money for – and shook one out. Brand lit it for her. ‘If I no got money there are other ways to change men’s minds.’

‘I happen to know the investigating officer will most likely be a female.’

Elena inhaled and winked at him as she released the smoke to the ceiling fan. ‘I think I can change woman’s mind as well.’

‘Bartender, same again, please,’ Brand said.

*

‘Coming, coming,’ Brand croaked. The pounding on the door of his room at the Bulawayo Club was reverberating around the inside of his skull. He coughed and checked his watch on the bedside table. It was nine o’clock.

He opened the door and saw the maid and her cleaning trolley. ‘Sorry, I’ll be out in ten minutes. I overslept.’

Brand found the light switch and flicked it on, illuminating evidence of the chaos of the night before. The heavy curtains kept the daylight out and muffled the sounds of traffic on the street outside, but he rarely slept this late. He sat down heavily on the bed.

The sheets were scrunched and rumpled, revealing the mattress below. His safari shirt and chinos were by the door. He needed water, but the glass beside the bed was empty. Elena had brought him water, somewhere around three in the morning, he recalled. He could smell her, on the bed, on him. He coughed again as the night’s events replayed themselves on the screen of his tightly closed eyelids.

He had bought her dinner, even though he could ill afford the expense, in the open-air dining area in the courtyard in the centre of the club; Dani would pay, he had told himself. They had drunk more while waiting for their food, then split two bottles of wine with the meal. Elena had gone back to cane and Coke after that and he had matched her, drink for drink.

When the waiter, eager to close the dining room, had asked them if they wanted coffee or dessert, Elena had said, ‘Let’s have coffee in your room.’