The Hunter (23 page)

When he’d asked if he could sit next to her she had said, in accented English, ‘Of course, no problem at all. How can I say no to such a handsome man?’

He wasn’t an idiot, and had travelled enough to know from the girl’s come-on and the bartender’s sly smile that she was on the game. He wondered if the man was getting a kickback to let her sit on her drink. He ordered her another of what she was drinking, a Cosmopolitan she claimed, and a Johnny Walker Blue on ice for himself.

She nodded her thanks for the drink. ‘You are here on business?’

‘Yes. Oil exploration.’ The less she knew about his real job, the better. Also, it was impossible to make small talk with people once they found out he was a cosmetic surgeon. He loathed the nip-tuck jokes and had heard them all a thousand times over. When he travelled he liked to be anonymous.

In the outdoor shower, as he soaped himself and the elephants slurped noisily, he remembered her smooth skin and her overly full, red lips. He closed his eyes and saw her kneeling in the hotel room, the red bow parting to take him into her mouth, his hand bunched in her dark, flowing hair.

‘How much to do something special for me?’ he’d asked as he removed himself from her and tilted her chin so she could see his eyes.

‘Depends on what is so special.’

Peter had told her, and she had shrugged and nodded her head and quoted him the figure, a fraction of what it would have cost in a British establishment, and the girl had given him a slow, wide smile, sealing the deal. He was hard at the memory of her and would have done something about his erection when he heard the
whizz
of a zip opening and footsteps on the timber floorboards inside the tent.

‘Who is it?’ he called, looking over his shoulder.

A maid had entered the tent’s en-suite bathroom. She stood there, her hand over her mouth. ‘Sorry, sorry,’ she gasped, and darted back into the bedroom.

He slammed off the mixer, grabbed a towel, wrapped it around him and strode in off the deck. ‘Why didn’t you knock?’

‘Sorry, sir, I did. I was just turning down the bed.’

He saw the chocolates on the pillows and the neatly folded sheets. ‘I’m sorry, you just gave me a start.’

She put her hand over her mouth again, lingering by the door. He was flaccid now, but he could see the smirk in her eyes. It angered him that he had been caught out. He reached into the pocket of his trousers and pulled out the two loose dollar bills he knew were there and handed them to the woman. She thanked him and let herself out of the room.

He debated getting back into the shower, but he was out now, and clean enough. He towelled himself dry and pushed the erotic thoughts from his mind. He really needed to get a grip, he thought, though not in that way. He put on clean underpants and cargo pants, and found a fresh shirt in his bag. He combed his hair, put new socks and his shoes on and let himself out of the tent via the sliding glass doors that had been built into the structure.

It was dark, but Peter called over a security guard who was escorting another guest to dinner; Brand had told them that after dark they would need to be accompanied by a guard because of the possible presence of elephant, buffalo and other dangerous game that could roam through the unfenced lodge at night.

As they approached the main building he spied Anna, sitting next to Brand on a sofa in what looked like a sitting area, or library. She was too close to the guide for his liking. As he left the guard and walked towards them he heard a girlish laugh. He moved slowly, using the canvas wall of the library to mask his approach. He trod lightly on the wooden deck that joined the bar, lounge and dining area. Anna was leaning in closer to the American now, putting a hand on his knee as if to emphasise a point. Or she was simply flirting.

Peter sucked in his cheeks and bit down on the skin until it started to hurt. He breathed in deeply through his nose. The bloody safari guide was coming on to her. They needed the guide; Peter knew he wouldn’t be able to track down the mythical Linley by himself and it would take them too long to find a replacement guide and vehicle. Besides, they had paid for him already.

He coughed as he closed on them, no longer muffling the sound of his steps. Anna leaned back into her chair and looked over her shoulder. ‘Darling. We were just talking about you.’

‘Amusing, was it?’

‘Anna was telling me about how you had a mishap falling off a camel in Egypt. They’re ornery beasts, and that’s the truth. I slipped off one on a beach in Mombasa. Damn near broke my leg.’

‘Quite. Well, I’m glad I’m good for a laugh.’

‘Don’t be churlish, Peter. Join us for a drink,’ Anna said.

‘I think we should have dinner. You should eat something now, since you’ve obviously been drinking,’ he said.

She frowned at him, but he stared her down before she could answer him back.

‘You’re feeling better, Peter?’ Brand said, hoping to defuse the situation.

‘Yes, probably just the change in water, I expect. I’ve taken some tablets. We doctors do tend to carry a comprehensive first aid kit.’

‘Well then, if you’re having dinner, perhaps I should get back to my tent and freshen up,’ Brand said. ‘I’ll leave you two to dine alone.’

‘Not at all, Hudson,’ Anna said. ‘You
must
join us. In fact, I’m fairly sure our brochure said the guide would join us at all meals.’

‘It said
most
,’ Peter said.

‘It’s optional, in fact,’ Brand said. ‘We’ll all be living in each other’s pockets the next couple of weeks and it’s perfectly OK if you guys need some quiet time alone. I’ll go with the flow.’

‘You’re dining with us, and that’s that.’

Peter heard the grate in her voice. He was in no mood for an argument; he had arrived just in time, though, and the American would be careful from now on. He knew Anna could be flirty after a couple of drinks. They had business to do with this man, and that was all. ‘Very well. I don’t want to be a spoilsport.’

Brand stood. ‘I will go take a shower, though, and get changed. I’ll see you back here in about twenty minutes. Will that be OK?’

‘Perfectly fine,’ Peter said, though he would have preferred it if the man had dined alone. He was annoyed at Anna for insisting that the guide join them. Brand took his leave of them, giving some cash to the bartender on his way out. Peter took the American’s seat. ‘You two seem to be getting along splendidly.’

‘Oh, Peter, drop that tone. For God’s sake, every time I have a laugh with a man you think he’s trying to get me into bed.’

He crossed his legs and folded his arms. ‘I do not. Anyway, what’s wrong with a husband being protective of his wife?’

She drained her drink and set it down and looked at him as though she were about to say something, but instead turned away to gaze out over the hotel gardens.

‘What were you talking about?’

She looked back at him. ‘A man hunt. Or, more specifically, a woman hunt.’

He nodded. ‘Good. That’s what we’re paying him for, Anna. Nothing else.’

17

S
annie van Rensburg and Mavis Sibongile stood back as the uniformed officer unlocked the cell door in the Nelspruit police lockup.

The prisoner, who they now knew as Lungile Phumla, sat at the simple metal desk. She glared at Sannie and Mavis as they entered. ‘
Goeie more
,’ Sannie said.

Lungile looked at her and shrugged.

‘
Verstaan jy Afrikaans
?’

Lungile stared at her.

‘You are not Tsonga, are you?’ Mavis said, confirming the suspicion she’d shared with Sannie before entering the cell that Lungile was not from one of the local communities.

‘We’re running a check on your South African ID book, Lungile,’ Sannie said, taking a seat opposite her. Mavis leaned against the door that the uniformed officer had just closed. ‘But my colleague here, Warrant Officer Sibongile, thinks it’s forged, and that you’re an illegal. I’m Captain Sannie van Rensburg, Nelspruit murder and robbery squad, and you are . . .?’

‘Lungile Phumla.’

‘You can save us some time, if you like, and maybe things will go better for you for cooperating with the police. If you want to mess us around, Lungile, we can mess you around. Believe me.’

The woman shrugged. She was pretty, Sannie thought, and had a vestige of confidence about her despite her predicament.

‘I have done nothing wrong,’ Lungile said.

Sannie leaned back in her chair and folded her arms. ‘You assaulted a police officer.’

‘Yeah, with a can of
fly spray
; I was sitting at home innocently and she burst in and pointed a gun at me. I didn’t see her uniform.’

‘Or hear her identify herself as a policewoman, I suppose?’ Mavis said.

‘It wouldn’t be the first police officer who was committing a crime.’

Sannie shook her head. ‘Don’t play smart with us, Lungile. I’ve got enough evidence to put you in prison without you saying another word.’

Again, Lungile shrugged. ‘I just heard my brother scream and then this woman with a gun burst in. I acted in self-defence.’

‘
Eish
, you were trying to escape police. You were lucky that officer didn’t shoot you,’ Mavis said.

‘My brother and I have done nothing,’ Lungile persisted.

Sannie uncrossed her arms, put her elbows on the table and closed the distance between herself and Lungile who, reflexively, leaned back. ‘Your brother’s being charged with car theft – a random patrol checked the plates on his BMW against the make and model and they didn’t match. He’s a fool – the patrol was only in the area because there had been complaints about you playing your music too loud too many nights in a row.’

Lungile shook her head. Sannie knew she was cursing her sibling, Fortune, who was not living up to his name right now. ‘And I’ll be charging you, as well, just as soon as I hear back from the detectives I’ve sent your mug shot to in Joburg. In order to wrap things up nicely, I’ll put you in a line-up for the local real estate agent who showed you and your friend the house in Steiltes, to confirm who you are.’

‘I don’t know what you’re talking about.’ Lungile’s voice was raised in anger. ‘I want a lawyer.’

‘Oh, you’ll get one soon enough, and I’m sure he or she will do their best for you, but the only chance you have at getting any kind of a reduced sentence, or maybe avoiding prison time, is to cooperate with me.
I’m
the only one who can speak for you when the prosecutors decide what penalty they’re going to recommend. Where are you from, Lungile? Your English is
lekker
, better than mine. Zimbabwe? Zambia?’

‘I’m South African.’

‘Whatever,’ Sannie said. ‘I’m sure your prisons are much worse than ours, but I can assure you, women’s prison in South Africa is still a very, very bad place, especially for a pretty girl like you.’

Lungile swallowed. ‘I still don’t know what you’re talking about.’

‘Did your brother tell you he didn’t fence all of the stuff you took from the Steiltes house?’

‘I stole nothing.’

Sannie smiled and sat back again in her chair. ‘Mavis?’

‘I checked the serial numbers on a MacBook and an iPhone found in the boot of your brother’s car with the owners of the house in Steiltes,’ Mavis said. ‘They’re a match. If he told you he sold them already he was lying; he either couldn’t find a buyer for them or he wanted them for himself.’

Lungile sat up straighter and jutted her chin out as she addressed the warrant officer. ‘So, maybe my brother bought some stolen goods. I won’t lie to you and tell you he’s above such a thing. But this has nothing to do with me.’

‘You never saw the MacBook or the iPhone?’ Sannie asked.

Lungile looked to her now. ‘No, I swear I didn’t.’

‘Then why are your fingerprints on both of them?’ Sannie said.

Mavis laughed. ‘Criminal mastermind.’

Sannie put her hands, palms up, on the table. ‘Look, Lungile, Mavis and I can help you. You hurt no one in your robberies, we know that, and I am sure you will be full of contrition when you go before the judge, and tell them some story of woe from Zimbabwe or wherever you’re from. But believe me, things will go a lot easier for you if you help us find your partner, the white lady.’

Lungile said nothing.

‘Salt,’ Mavis chimed in. ‘That’s the name
The Citizen
gave you, isn’t it? Salt and Pepper. You two had a nice operation going, sister. Shame your dumb brother screwed things up for you. Where is she?’

‘When the uniformed officer followed you out the back door,’ Sannie said, with the same patient but disapproving tone she used with her children when she was explaining to them what they’d done wrong and how they couldn’t fool a mother by lying about it, ‘she saw you boosting another woman in jeans and
tekkies
over the wall. She didn’t see any more of her than that, but the lady who lives in the house behind you said a white woman came running through her house and out onto the street. Who’s your friend, Lungile? Give me a name and I’ll do my best to keep you out of prison. Hell, you can sell your story to the
Sunday Times
and make some bucks. If your friend comes peacefully I’ll do what I can for her, as well.’

‘I don’t . . .’ Lungile trailed off.

‘You
do
know what we’re talking about. Tell us her name. Better we find her before she does something desperate. Tell us about her, Lungile. Does she have money, does she have a place to stay? She has no house to go to, no car that we know of. Why did you two steal – are you junkies? What can it be like for a poor young woman on the streets of South Africa with nowhere to go? How will she make money?’

Lungile lifted her head and stared hard at Sannie, and suddenly the detective realised she’d said something wrong. She thought she’d almost convinced Lungile that turning her friend in would help her, but a word – had it been ‘money’? – had galvanised the pretty young woman’s will.

‘Go fuck yourselves, and while you’re at it, get my lawyer.’

*

‘Fortune, we know you stole the car, in Johannesburg, two weeks ago,’ Sannie said to the young man in the next interview room as she took a seat and opened a docket in front of her. Again, Mavis watched on. Sannie wanted to make sure she didn’t repeat her previous mistake.

‘I bought the car off a guy in Nelspruit. I’m sorry, I didn’t know it was stolen.’

She had thought he would be arrogant and aloof, or at least react in some way to being interviewed by two women, but he was playing the nervous innocent. His voice, unlike his sister’s, was reedy and needy.

‘I’m so sorry, I’ve never been in trouble with the law before; please, you have to understand me.’

‘We know that, Fortune,’ Mavis chimed in. ‘We checked your record; you’re clean as a whistle. Come, brother, don’t be too hard on yourself, we all make mistakes.’

Sannie nodded. ‘You’ll have to help us find the man who sold you the car, of course, but I imagine that will be hard.’

Fortune mimicked her, nodding his head vigorously. ‘Yes, he seemed like a bit of a
tsotsi
. I should have known it was too cheap a price he was asking and now
I feel like such a fool.’

‘You know, of course,’ Sannie said in a concerned voice, ‘that it’s a crime to buy a stolen car, but it’s a grey area, because how is a man to know if a car is stolen?’

‘Um, perhaps I should have checked.’

‘Yes, you should have. There may be a fine for you, Fortune, but at least you didn’t assault the arresting police, unlike your silly sister,’ Sannie said.

Fortune raised his hands and shrugged his shoulders. ‘Ah, what am I to do about her?’

‘Well, there was no real harm done to the policewoman she sprayed with Doom.’ Sannie smiled and closed her manila folder on the desk and patted it, then pushed her chair back, as though the interview was concluded. She paused and looked at him. ‘Sorry, just one more thing. Where did you get the iPhone and the MacBook that we found in the back of the car? I presume they are yours?’

Fortune licked his lips. ‘Um, no. They actually belong to my sister.’

Sannie pulled her chair back under the table and opened the folder again. ‘Ah, OK. But I’m confused, Fortune. Those items were reported stolen from a house in Steiltes – a house robbed by two women, one white and one black, who posed as buyers. Do you think your sister might be a thief?’

Fortune’s eyes widened in mock surprise and he gave a theatrical shrug of his shoulders. ‘I don’t
think
so. If she is, she never told me.’

Sannie nodded. ‘I see. Mavis?’

‘
Yebo
.’

‘Please won’t you charge Fortune here with car theft and possession of stolen goods.’ Sannie stood.

He looked up at her. ‘Hey, wait a minute. You said you believed I bought the car in good faith, and I didn’t know it was stolen.’

Sannie sighed. ‘Fortune, you’re a criminal and a liar and you make a mockery of the expression “honour among thieves”. You sold out your sister in the blink of an eye. I hope you go to prison.’

‘No, no . . . wait, mama.’

‘I’m not your
mama
, you piece of shit.’

Mavis spoke some rapid Zulu to Fortune and though Sannie normally spoke Tsonga with her partner when she could, to keep up her fluency, she was able to get the gist of the offer Mavis was making. They had orchestrated this, almost to the letter. Mavis was offering to put in a good word for Fortune and admitting that they might find it hard to prove he stole the car, if he helped them out. She also said that Sannie, as the senior officer, was a nasty woman. Sannie fought back a smile.

‘Wait, please,’ Fortune said to Sannie again. ‘Please, I can help you. I
didn’t
steal the car, honest.’

Sannie crossed her arms. ‘Maybe you did, maybe you didn’t, but at the very least you had to know you were buying a stolen vehicle.’ She went to the door and started to turn the handle. She paused. ‘Who is the white woman who pulled the jobs with your sister?’ She looked into his eyes.

‘Her name is Linley Brown.’

Back in the detectives’ office, Sannie and Mavis set to work discovering what they could about Linley Brown.

‘There’s a news story online, from the Zimbabwean newspaper the Bulawayo
Chronicle
,’ Mavis said, looking over the top of her computer screen.

‘Tell me. I’m on hold.’ Sannie had called the Department of Home Affairs investigation branch. Her contact there, Jay Suresh, had helped her track down foreign visitors to South Africa in the past by supplying details of when and where they had entered the country, and if they had left.

‘It says here Brown was in a car crash; drove off a bridge. Her travelling companion, Kate Munns, who was visiting Zim from the UK, was killed – burned to death. There’s a comment in the story by a local cop, Sergeant Goodness Khumalo.’

‘Call her, and see if Brown has any family in Zimbabwe we can talk to by phone, or whether this Sergeant Khumalo can help us,’ Sannie said. Jay answered the phone then and she asked after him and his family and then got down to business. He told her he would check the immigration records and find out what he could about Linley Brown.

Mavis had found a number for the Bulawayo police station online. ‘It took me three tries to get through, and when I was finally connected the person on the desk told me the sergeant was out so I left a message for her. What do we do now?’

Sannie tapped the end of her pen against her teeth. ‘We could just sit around here and wait for people to call us back, or we can go and find this woman. Let’s go back to the house she shared with those other two. We’ll see what we can find there.’

‘Must we get a warrant?’ Mavis asked.

‘Unless she’s at home we’re not going to arrest anyone. I want to find out more about this Linley Brown.’

While Sannie drove out of Nelspruit and up into the hills towards White River, Mavis tapped the screen of her phone.

‘It’s Vusi,’ she said, smiling. ‘He’s a terrible flirt.’

‘And on police time, too.’

‘He’s off duty. I’ll stop it if you like.’

Sannie shook her head. ‘No, I’m only joking. It’s fine.’ Sannie was happy for the time to think. But her thoughts weren’t about Linley Brown. They would either find something in the house Brown rented that would help them identify her better, or track her down, or they would not. It was not a matter of life and death, but the other case occupying her mind was. If it had been the same man who had committed the strikingly similar rapes and murders in Hazyview and in Cape Town, then it was quite likely he had struck before, and would commit his foul crimes again. Brand was still very much a suspect, by virtue of the fact that he had been in both locations at the time of the killings. As a detective, she didn’t believe in coincidences.

Sannie turned on her GPS satellite navigation device and Mavis took a break from her texting long enough to enter the address of the house that Linley Brown, and Fortune and Lungile Phumla had rented. Sannie turned left at the NTT Toyota, onto the bypass road that led to Hazyview and the Kruger Park beyond, and then right into a side street that led to the house where the criminals had been living.