The Hunter (26 page)

‘What does this mean for Linley Brown now?’ Brand asked.

‘I still doubt the company will get the police involved, but worse case, she can kiss her money goodbye. Whatever happens, there won’t be a decision for a few days at least.’

‘OK,’ Brand said. ‘At least this buys me some time. If I can manage to make contact with Linley Brown then I can legitimately tell her she’s got some explaining to do and that she should meet with me. I’ve got the Cliffs breathing down my neck and no idea how to find one missing white woman in a country of fifty million people.’

‘I’m sure you’ll think of something, Hudson. Do the Cliffs have any theories about why Kate would have wanted to fake her own death?’ Dani asked.

‘We talked a bit today and last night, but Anna seems bereft and Peter is a prickly man. Neither of them can think of any reason why she would have needed to disappear.’

Brand’s phone beeped and he looked at the screen. ‘I’ve got another call coming through, Dani. It’s from a South African landline. I’d better take it in case it’s Linley.’

‘Well, good luck with that. I’ll call you on this number if I hear that Linley’s been in touch with the insurers.’

‘OK.’ Brand hung up and answered the incoming call. ‘Hudson Brand.’

‘Mr Brand, it’s Captain Sannie van Rensburg.’

*

Sannie’s husband, Tom Furey, was in the kitchen of their farmhouse adding spaghetti to a pot of boiling water. Little Tommy came up to her to show her a picture he’d drawn of her at school. The blonde woman in the drawing was holding a gun.

Tom came to her rescue as Hudson Brand answered the phone, scooping up their son. The older children, Christo and Ilana, were doing their homework in their bedrooms. Sannie stood up from the lounge and walked outside onto the timber deck that overlooked the banana farm and the valley and the town of Hazyview beyond. She felt bad for Tom, bringing her police work home, but all the same her pulse quickened.

‘Captain Van Rensburg; my favourite detective. How are you?’

‘Fine, and you?’ she said, ignoring the sarcasm in his voice.

‘Dandy.’

‘Where are you, Mr Brand?’

‘Zimbabwe.’

‘Mr Brand, what’s your interest in Linley Brown?’

She could tell by the seconds of silence that followed that Brand was taken aback. ‘Why do you ask?’

‘I’m a detective, Mr Brand, unlike yourself, who is a safari guide. It’s my job to ask questions. What do you want with Linley Brown?’

‘What do
you
want with Linley Brown, captain?’

‘That’s police business. I don’t need to share that with you.’ Inside the house, Tom called to the older children, telling them dinner was almost ready.

‘Well, my business with Linley Brown comes under the realm of client confidentiality.’

‘You’re a jeep jockey, Mr Brand, not an attorney or a priest. You have no legal right to claim client confidentiality as an excuse not to assist the police. You’re looking for Linley Brown, and so am I. This is your opportunity to help me.’ Sannie looked inside. Tom was behind the kitchen bench, where she should have been. He looked annoyed. She held up a hand, indicating five minutes. Her fixation with the cold murder case was already driving a wedge between them as it occupied more and more of the time she should have been spending with Tom and her kids. Now Brand was part of her current investigation as well, and here she was talking to him when she should have been sitting down to dinner with her family. It annoyed her, not least of all because she could feel the adrenaline jolting her as she spoke to him. She turned her back to Tom.

‘You haven’t exactly helped me, captain. You falsely accuse me of rape and murder, and leak my name to the press during an investigation, which resulted in no charges, and now you want me to help you do your job? I don’t think we have much to talk about.’

Sannie had not given Brand’s name to the media. That had been someone else in her office, though she didn’t know whom and she had been annoyed at the leak. She was sure it was not Mavis, but other cops were cosy with journalists and sometimes reporters paid for information, or traded favours. She knew through her investigation that Brand was an outsider in the tight-knit community of safari guides, a loner with few friends among either the white or black guides. He was brash, as most Americans are, and by all accounts – some grudging – an excellent guide, and he had a reputation as a ladies’ man. ‘You left more than one voice and SMS message on Linley Brown’s phone saying she must sign some papers to expedite an insurance claim relating to the death of a woman named Munns. We do need to have a conversation about this.’

Again, the pause on the line. ‘How did you access those messages?’

‘Linley Brown’s phone was taken as evidence earlier today as part of the execution of a search warrant in relation to an ongoing police investigation.’

‘I see.’

‘Really? I don’t see, Mr Brand. This Brown woman is wanted for questioning in relation to several crimes and now you pop up on my radar again, doing some deal with this woman.’ Sannie felt she had him now. Tom was serving up the meal and Ilana and Christo were chatting to their stepfather at the dinner table. Her heart hurt and she began to feel not excited but annoyed that she had finally got through to Hudson Brand.

‘I’m not doing a
deal
with her, captain, I’m working on a case for an insurance company. Linley Brown is the beneficiary of a policy for two hundred thousand British pounds.’

‘Life insurance, like those other cases you investigate?’

‘Yes. Kind of. A Zimbabwean-born British woman, Kate Munns, was killed in a car wreck on the way to Lake Kariba and Linley Brown is the beneficiary of her policy.’

‘Hmmm,’ Sannie said. ‘And you were checking to see if Linley Brown is who she says she is, and not Kate Munns faking her own death.’

‘Linley Brown’s for real, and Kate Munns is dead,’ Brand said.

‘So it would appear. Do you really need Linley Brown to sign some papers or was that just a pretext for you to meet her and confirm she was who she said she was?’

‘Very astute, captain,’ Brand said. ‘There are no papers for her to sign, but the insurance company is going to want an explanation from Brown if she’s going to get her money.’

Brand gave her a run-down on the fake death certificate, the initial call to the insurance company and on the Cliffs and their need to make contact with the last person who had seen Kate alive. Sannie felt for the couple who had travelled from London. Kate Munns’s best friend was a criminal who could become rich, by African standards. Linley Brown would need that money to pay for a good lawyer once Sannie got hold of her.

‘It’s clear we both want to talk to Linley Brown,’ Sannie said. ‘She’s not going to turn herself in to me, but if you try again, nicely, you might get her to come to you, and I could be there to have a word with her.’

‘So, you want me to help you run a sting operation?’ Brand said.

‘You’ve been watching too much American TV. I want to catch a criminal, but if you help me get to Linley Brown, I’ll give your clients half an hour with her before I take her into custody.’ There was silence, again, and Sannie wondered if the connection had been broken. ‘Mr Brand.’

‘I’ll put it to them. I have to warn you, though, Linley Brown probably won’t fall for it. She obviously checked me out the first time I tried to contact her. She’s wary, and now that she’s on the run she’ll be even more careful.’

‘Yes, but she’ll also be more desperate. We need each other, Mr Brand,’ Sannie said. ‘Between us I think we can find her. I’ll call you back tomorrow, and don’t email or call Linley Brown until we’ve talked again and worked out how, when and where we will meet her.’

Sannie ended the call and walked inside off the deck. She paused for a moment and took in the scene of her three children and her husband laughing at a shared joke or funny story of someone’s day. She felt like an outsider.

‘Come, dinner’s ready,’ Tom said curtly.

On impulse she went to her husband and put her arms around him. He was stiff, but softened to her kiss, put down the ladle and encircled her with his arms.

‘
Mom
,’ Ilana groaned. She was just entering a difficult age
and Sannie knew they were in for a bumpy ride. ‘It’s so gross seeing old people making out.’

Sannie tousled her daughter’s hair as she sat down next to her. It was the little things Tom did, like making dinner and not hassling her, no matter how annoyed he was, that reminded her every day how much she loved him.

‘I told the kids to start, before it got cold,’ he said.

She didn’t mind, but she held out her hands, either side of her. Ilana took her left and Christo her right, and they in turn joined hands with Tom and little Tommy. ‘Tommy,’ Sannie said, ‘in
Engels
.’

Their little son, his face frowning in concentration, nodded his head. ‘
Dankie
– thank you – God, for the food and our family. Amen.’

‘Amen,’ she said. Tom wasn’t religious, but her family had always said grace when they were growing up. They each kissed the fingers of the hands they were holding, then Sannie wound the spaghetti and sauce onto her fork. Tom was a good cook; his first wife had died of cancer and he had lived as a bachelor before he had come to South Africa, as a police protection officer – bodyguard as they were called in the movies – and met Sannie, who was doing the same job at the time. ‘I’m sorry, about being on the phone.’

Tom shook his head. ‘No problem, love. I know what it’s like, I know what you’re like when you get on the scent of someone.’ She could tell he felt otherwise, that it
was
a problem, perhaps because it was her and not him who was on a suspect’s trail.

She explained how Brand had once more come into her sights.

‘Did you ask him about the Cape Town business?’ Tom asked.

Tom was being oblique in his questioning so as not to raise the subject of rape and murder in front of the kids. She often talked about her cases with him, as he’d had to qualify as a detective before being selected for protection duty in the London metropolitan police’s Special Branch. He had an analytical brain and she wondered, despite his reassurances of how much he loved farming, if part of him missed police work. ‘No, I don’t want to scare him off. I know he was in Cape Town when the second incident happened, and I want to question him about it, but I need his help, first.’

‘I wouldn’t want to have you chasing me,’ Tom said.

Sannie reached across the table and laid a hand on his. ‘I’m always chasing you, baby.’

‘
Mom!
’ said Ilana. ‘Get a room.’

‘Kids, take your plates to the sink and you can go watch some TV. Your mum and I have work to do,’ Tom said.

Sannie raised her eyebrows. ‘What kind of work?’

‘I thought that maybe I could have a look at your files on the cold case.’

‘Really?’ She was surprised. He’d never shown much interest in her work in the past. She had thought, for a moment, he was going to suggest they quickly escape to the bedroom. Part of her felt instantly resentful that he might be insinuating that she had missed something in the files, but then she realised that if the case hadn’t been solved because she
had
overlooked some small detail then her detective husband could possibly help out with a fresh set of eyes. Her resentment washed away and she was glad to have someone other than Mavis who she could talk to – really talk to – about this case that had burdened her for so long.

‘It’s OK, I understand if you don’t want to,’ he said quickly. ‘After all, I’m not a detective any more and it wouldn’t be proper.’

‘No, no, no. I’ll get the case docket.’

20

T
he next day the captain of the
Lady Jacqueline
took them back to the mooring in Binga and Brand drove the Cliffs to Victoria Falls. It was late afternoon before they got to their hotel, The Kingdom, which was part of a casino complex.

Not long after he’d unpacked, Brand’s room phone rang. ‘Hudson, we’re not going to make it to dinner tonight, sorry,’ Anna said. ‘I’m not feeling the best and Peter has been, well . . . I think we’re both out of sorts. He’s gone to play blackjack – he’s always been a bit of an amateur gambler. I thought I’d order in room service. You could pop in for a drink, if you like?’

Brand thought about the kind of man he took Peter Cliff to be, and remembered the way Anna had flirted with him downstairs on the houseboat, and how she’d asked him to hold her. He didn’t need to get himself stuck in the middle of a marital tiff, or have a client succumb to khaki fever, where tourists swooned over their safari guides. ‘Sounds like it’s best if you get some rest, Anna. Thanks for the offer of a drink, but I think I’ll turn in early.’

Brand hung up and contemplated a night in front of the TV. He got up off the bed and left his room. He walked past the pool bar; there was a function going on, perhaps a conference of some kind, and the delegates were overwhelming the barman.

He headed into the interior of the hotel’s main building, where the casino was located. It was early and there were no more than a score of people there, mostly playing slot machines, but he did see Peter Cliff sitting at a blackjack table with two other men, in front of a pretty croupier.

Cliff was staring intently at the cards coming out of the shoe and didn’t notice Brand. Brand didn’t want to talk to him just then, and went to another bar, out of sight of the tables. He took a seat and ordered a Zambezi Lager.

He caught a whiff of perfume and turned around. ‘Excuse me, do you have a light?’

The woman was attractive, tall, wearing a simple black cocktail dress and heels. She held the cigarette up to him between long, elegant fingers tipped with deadly scarlet nails. Brand reached into his pocket for his Zippo and flicked the wheel. She put her hands on his to steady the flame.

‘Thanks.’

‘My pleasure.’

‘Mind if I join you?’ She placed her bag on the counter and climbing onto a bar stool.

It was a casino. He was a guy sitting alone. She was good looking, though her eyes were cold obsidian. He guessed she was a hooker. He didn’t have enough to pay for her, even if he’d wanted to, and besides, he needed to think about Van Rensburg’s call and how he should play her request, or, rather, order.

‘Sister, if you’re selling, I’ve got to tell you, you’re out of my league.’

She blew a stream of smoke just past his left ear. ‘I should slap your face for that remark.’ She reached for her clutch bag and began sliding off the stool.

He felt like a jerk. ‘Hey, sorry. I didn’t mean to . . .’

She stood, rocking her head from side to side, as if wondering if she should accept his apology. ‘I’m not a whore, although I do work in advertising, so you could say I’m not a million miles away from that profession. I lie to sell people things they think they can’t live without.’

She returned his smile. ‘Hudson Brand.’

‘Melanie Afrika.’

Her hand was soft. ‘Drink?’

‘What are you having?’ she asked.

‘Bell’s on the rocks.’

‘Same.’ She sat back down on her stool, put her bag on the bar again and crossed her legs. ‘I’m with the conference out there.’ She gave a disdainful toss of her head. ‘Zesa, the electricity company. They can’t supply power to the country, but they can afford to waste money on booze and food here.’

‘And on advertising.’

Melanie grinned. ‘You’re full of compliments for a girl. What’s that accent? Are you American? You look, I don’t know, Latino or Spanish.’

‘Half Texan, half Portuguese Angolan.’

‘Ah, my father was Scottish. My mother’s Ndebele, from Bulawayo, but I live in Harare now, away from my people, whoever my people are. Do you find it hard, not knowing which half is more you, which half you want to be?’

‘Sometimes.’

‘You want a smoke, Hudson Brand?’ She held out the packet.

‘I’m trying to quit.’

‘Good for you.’ She put them back in her bag. ‘I wouldn’t want to be your undoing.’

He sipped his Scotch. There was a tattoo on her ankle, of a cross. Her cleavage was enticing. He went back to her eyes. Again, they let the rest of her down. But it wasn’t unusual in his experience. There was a flinty quality to women in Zimbabwe, a hardness about them that was missing from the pampered
kugels
and black diamonds of South Africa. No one lived in this country any more without having to make sacrifices or compromises. ‘Shouldn’t you be getting back to your conference, do a little schmoozing?’

‘I came in here to escape it. This conference was supposed to be about me having some fun.’

‘You don’t seem to be enjoying the party.’

‘Getting groped by overfed civil servants who can’t deliver the service starving people pay for, or drinking with a rich, handsome tourist? What’s a girl to do?’

‘You got one out of three right. I’m not rich, and I’m not a tourist. I’m a guide.’

‘Hence the khaki ensemble. All you need is a pith helmet. Shouldn’t you be getting back to your tourists?’

‘They’re squabbling. One’s gambling and the other one’s drowning her sorrows with room service Nederburg.’

A portly man in a shiny suit weaved his way to the bar. ‘Ah, Melanie, there you are, baby. What’s going on, you said I’d see you later?’ He put his hand over his mouth to try and cover a burp.

‘Um, you will. For sure. I’m just catching up with my, um, cousin here. He’s in the Falls on business.’

‘Oh,’ said the man, looking embarrassed. ‘Sorry, maybe later then?’

‘
Ja.
We just need to go talk some family business for a while.’

Melanie slid off her stool and grabbed her bag. She started to leave the bar and looked over her shoulder. ‘Coming, cousin?’

Brand nodded to the disappointed bureaucrat and followed Melanie out of the casino and into the dusk. Her dress shimmied hypnotically over the pert mounds of her buttocks. ‘Where are we going?’ he asked when he caught up with her.

Melanie laughed. ‘There’s a nightclub I know, from previous conferences.’

The deep bass throb announced the club’s presence long before they reached it. Inside it was hot, lights strobing, a mixture of colours as backpackers and locals writhed to the beat, the dance floor already crowded despite the early hour. Hudson spotted a river rafting guide, still in shorts and sandals, with a sunburned Nordic blonde grinding against him. ‘Let’s dance,’ Melanie yelled above the noise.

She put her hands on his hips and he mirrored her, ignoring the smarter, newer moves of the younger people around him. Melanie was much younger than he, but she seemed content to stare into his eyes and sway slowly to the rhythm. He drew her to him and she moulded her body into his. She looked up, eyes full of mock horror as she felt his hardness press into her. He would have kissed her, then, if he hadn’t turned and seen the man at the bar.

‘Shit.’ Brand pressed his lips to Melanie’s ear. ‘I need a drink.’

‘What’s wrong?’ she called as he broke their embrace.

Brand threaded his way through the crush of bodies. The squat, muscled man in shorts and bush shirt turned to say something to the young woman behind him in the queue at the bar, confirming Brand had not been mistaken. Patrick de Villiers laughed at something the girl said.

‘Hudson?’ Melanie tried again over the noise.

As far as Brand could see Patrick was alone, without his thuggish older brother to back him up. Brand walked up to the bar, where Patrick was being served. ‘Excuse me, ma’am,’ he said to the girl the guide had been chatting to.

‘Hey, no cutting in,’ she said.

He ignored her and tapped Patrick on the shoulder.

Patrick looked around and his face showed annoyance mixed with surprise and, Brand hoped, a trace of fear. ‘What the fuck do you want?’

‘You,’ said Brand.

‘What are you doing here?’ De Villiers said.

‘Babysitting tourists on a road trip instead of walking in the bush, thanks to you, you little shit. Outside.’

De Villiers took a shot from the barman and downed it. ‘
Ja
, right. Time to finish what I started last time.’

‘What you and your brother started, you chicken-shit runt.’

‘Hudson!’ He shrugged off Melanie’s hand from his arm.

‘Still got a taste for coloured whores, I see. Remind you of mom?’

‘Outside,’ Brand said through gritted teeth. He started to wend his way back through the crowd when he felt the short, sharp stab of pain in his kidneys. He buckled, then the bottle smashed on his head, sending shards of glass flying into the crowd like shrapnel, and backpackers screaming.

De Villiers had suckered him, but Brand had crouched and rolled as soon as he felt the kidney punch, lessening the impact of the bottle. He skittled a pair of girls in short skirts sitting at a table. As one of the pair toppled backwards Brand grabbed her chair and swung it at Patrick, catching him in the chest and knocking him backwards. However, De Villiers fell into the arms of a couple of Irishmen who started yelling, ‘Fight, fight, fight, kill the
fooker
.’

People were jeering and screaming above the constant blare of the music as Patrick was catapulted back into Brand’s range. He swung a haymaker that landed squarely on Patrick’s jaw, and had the satisfaction of seeing the younger man drop to his knees.

‘Get up, you sorry son of a bitch,’ Brand said.

Patrick spat blood onto the nightclub floor and shook his head. He raised his hands. ‘I’m done.’ He coughed.

‘Hudson, let’s go before the police get here,’ Melanie said.

Brand balanced on the balls of his feet, both fists clenched. De Villiers was down, and as much as he wanted to finish him off, Melanie was right – he didn’t need trouble with the local cops. Patrick retched.

‘Get up, you piece of shit.’ Brand reached out a hand to the other guide. Patrick was a useless coward without his brother for backup, and, by the look of it, he had a glass jaw.

Patrick spat more blood. ‘Just getting my handkerchief.’

Brand grabbed hold of his shirt by the shoulder and started to heave. Patrick’s right hand flashed out of his pocket and arced upwards. Brand caught sight of metal glinting in the strobing nightclub light.

Brand stepped back, but the point of the knife slashed his shirt and scored the skin of his abdomen. ‘Crazy fucker.’

De Villiers came at him, slashing the pocketknife from side to side in wide swinging arcs. The crowd surged back in fear as Brand kept out of range. Brand put a hand to his belly and felt the hot, wet blood seep through the fabric of his shirt. He needed a weapon – another chair or something to use to keep Patrick at a distance until he could finish him off. His nostrils flared in anger.

Too late, Brand realised he was standing on an empty beer bottle. His right ankle rolled and he started to fall. Patrick lunged forward, eyes blazing with hatred. Brand tried to reach for the bottle that had tripped him, but his fingertips just brushed it, unable to find purchase.

Above him, Patrick bellowed, but this time not in rage. He straightened and reached around behind him, scrabbling for something. Melanie Afrika darted around Patrick and reached out her hand to Brand. He grabbed it and she helped drag him to his feet. Her hand was wet and sticky and when he looked down he saw blood.

‘Fucking bitch!’ Patrick bellowed in agony.

Brand saw the cause of De Villiers’s outrage as the other man turned his back to them. Melanie had stuck a pocketknife of her own into the muscle just below Patrick’s right shoulder.

‘Run!’ Melanie cried.

Brand needed no further urging. People crowded around Patrick, who was still frantically clawing at his back. Brand and Melanie pushed their way through the mass of screaming bodies, catching a wave of those rushing for the door now that blood had been spilled. The muggy warmth of the Victoria Falls evening felt like crisp alpine air compared to the fug of sweat, perfume and tobacco smoke inside the club. They ran down the street towards The Kingdom, only slowing to a walk when a police Land Rover rushed past them in the opposite direction, blue lights flashing.

Brand felt the sweat drying on him as they walked. Melanie put her hand in his. Back in his room, he pushed her against the wall as soon as he’d opened the door. Her tongue was deep in his mouth, searching as she clawed at the buttons of his bush shirt.

He fumbled with his belt buckle and broke from her to quickly fish one of the free condoms he’d picked up in Bulawayo from his open bag. He unzipped, rolled it on and grabbed her again and lifted her. She was skinny, light, and he hooked a finger under her lacy thong, pulling it aside and feeling her readiness. Melanie bit and kissed his neck as he pushed up into her, steadying her against the wall as he raised up onto his toes, thrusting deeper. She muffled her cries into his skin as she bucked on him, and squeezed him tight with her arms and her body as he came.

They stayed like that, alternately kissing and panting for a while until he recovered his strength and his wits and carried her to the bed. She sat on it.

‘Your stomach?’ she asked.

He opened his bush shirt. The wound was superficial, though it still oozed blood. ‘It can wait.’ Melanie stood, smiled and slowly stripped for him in the light of the bedside lamp as he lay on his back, languidly stroking himself back to readiness.

When he was there she took a new condom from her clutch bag, put it onto him and straddled him. Brand played with her dark brown nipples, kneading them and gently tugging on them as she arched her back and closed her eyes. When she sensed from his breathing that he was nearing climax she stopped riding him.

‘What’s the matter?’ he breathed.

She rolled off him. ‘Take off the condom.’

‘Why?’

‘Mark me.’