The Hunter (37 page)

Brand thought about the new information. It was still an extreme move, for Kate to fake her own death, but he had a feeling Kate had been right to worry about Peter. Brand checked his phone. He had picked up a roaming signal in Mozambique. He dialled Tracey Mahoney at her home office.

‘
Howzit
, where are you?’ she said without preamble when she answered.

‘You don’t want to know. This line’s bad, I’m in an aeroplane. I need you to check something for me: you sent Patrick de Villiers to Cape Town in February, same time as I was there, right?’

‘You sound like Sannie van Rensburg. She was just asking about him as well. Why all the interest in Patrick?’

Brand decided not to break the news that Patrick was dead, as Van Rensburg clearly hadn’t. ‘It’s important, Tracey.’

‘All right, all right. No need to get your knickers in a twist. I’ll tell you what I told Van Rensburg; yes, Patrick was in Cape Town at the same time as you, and he was escorting a foreigner, name of Cliff, from England.’

‘And during the soccer World Cup, was he . . .’

‘Yes, yes, yes. Same answer. Patrick was looking after the same Mr or whatever Cliff during the World Cup as well, I’ve still got the name written in my bookings diary. What’s all this about, anyway?’

‘I’m losing you,’ Brand lied. ‘Bye, Tracey, thanks.’ He ended the call.

Linley looked at him. ‘What was that all about?’

‘I think Kate was right to be scared about Peter Cliff. I’ve got a feeling he and Patrick de Villiers – the guy killed along with the policewoman back at the airstrip – have been murdering prostitutes.’

She drew a sharp breath and put her hand to her mouth. ‘Oh my God.’ Linley was quiet for a few seconds, processing the information. ‘I think Peter is still looking for Kate,’ she said. ‘He won’t believe she’s really dead until he finds me. I’m worried he’ll have guessed that Kate told me everything about him when she was planning to disappear. He needed you to help him find me and if what you say is right I could be next on his list. I’m scared, Hudson, very scared.’

He regarded her. The morning sunlight streaming in through the aircraft’s window made it look like she was wearing a halo, but he knew this girl was anything but a saint. ‘So you should be, Kate.’

31

P
art of me was relieved, in a funny way, that someone else knew my secret. ‘How did you guess?’

‘Too much didn’t add up,’ Brand said.

The Indian Ocean was bright turquoise below us and as much as I wanted to feel like I was running away, I knew my past was hot on my heels. ‘Like what? I thought I covered my tracks pretty well.’

‘For a start,’ he said, ‘the police report said you were in the back of Linley’s car fetching a drink when the vehicle went off the bridge. You’d had a bad accident not long before and you’d been living in the UK – folks outside of Africa all wear seatbelts and I think you were so scared of getting hurt in an accident again that you rode in the backseat. An Austin A40 is tiny by today’s standards – you could reach anywhere in the back from the front passenger seat. Where is Linley?’

‘Dead,’ I said. ‘They cremated her as me.’

‘And you went to Dr Geoffrey Fleming to get your second death certificate because you knew the insurance company would find out about the accident and that your original certificate, from Elena Rodriguez, wouldn’t tally.’

I nodded. ‘Doc Fleming really did care for Anna and me, but he was reluctant at first to sign. In the end, I confess I played on his guilt. He knew there was something wrong in our family, but he didn’t push the issue. He’s a good man, Hudson, and I wouldn’t want to see him suffer. He got me into rehab in South Africa. Linley never had a drug problem; she was just dirt poor, like so many people in Zimbabwe. In return for helping me get away from my toxic life I was going to give her half the insurance money. She actually suggested the whole death-faking idea to me while I was chatting to her online one time. My life was spiralling out of control and I was becoming more and more suspicious and fearful of Peter. In my stoned state I thought everything would be better if I could just disappear off the face of the earth for a while. Linley pretended to lose her passport and got a new one, using my photograph. The plan was that I would leave Zimbabwe as her, so there would be no trail leading to Kate Munns, and get myself clean in South Africa. I told Doc Fleming about the pin in my pelvis and he agreed he would tell anyone who asked – Peter, Anna or an investigator like you – that he confirmed my identity that way after an autopsy.’

‘So there were always going to be two Linley Browns,’ Brand said.

‘Yes. For a couple of years, at least.’

He nodded. ‘The only thing that let down my theory, that you were really Kate, was the photograph.’

I swallowed. This was the one piece of evidence that confirmed to me that I was still in danger, and that this was far from over. I thought he was on to me straight away. However, my blood had run cold when I’d realised what had gone on.

‘It was sent from Peter, wasn’t it?’

Brand nodded. ‘He reversed the picture, easy enough to do in any digital photo program. I only had a casual look at it when I first checked it on my laptop, but I checked it more closely on my phone just now. My gut instincts were telling me you were really Kate, but the photo seemed to be proof that you weren’t.’

I nodded. ‘My heart nearly stopped when you showed it to me.’

‘You’re a good bluffer,’ he said. ‘You might have still had me fooled, but I zoomed in on the pic and as I was using the touchscreen to get to a close-up of your face I got stuck on a close-up of your hand. It was then that I saw that the face of your watch was back to front.’

‘Peter must have been confident that you would meet me at some stage, and that you’d report back that you’d met Linley Brown. That would be his private signal that I, Kate, was really alive. If you’d got back to him and said, “Hey, wow, I found Kate”, then he’d know I was really dead.’

‘What would he tell Anna?’

I shrugged. ‘Nothing. He’s a control freak.’

‘How would he keep the news secret from her, regardless of whether he thought you were Linley or Kate?’ Brand asked.

‘I think you know the answer to that.’

‘He’d kill you.’

I nodded my head. I had hoped I was smarter than Peter, but deep in my heart I knew that he would follow me to Africa and that he would probably see through me. He always did, and always would.

‘The stuff you told me,’ Brand said, ‘about how Peter treated you, Kate . . . was it all true?’

‘All that and more.’ I looked out the window for a little while, then down at my hands twisted together between my knees. I found it hard to meet his eyes.

‘What are you going to do?’ he asked me.

How the hell did I know what to do? ‘I had suspicions about the women who were killed in Cape Town and near the Kruger Park. He had an apartment, in London, where we used to meet, and one day I found some printouts from the internet about the murder of those women. I knew the killings had happened when he was in Africa, and the little of what was revealed in the stories about how they were killed matched some of the stuff Peter liked to do – and pretend to do – to me in the bedroom.’

‘Did Anna go with him on those trips?’ Brand asked.

‘No, though she used them as excuses to go abroad by herself. She sent me postcards – she was old-fashioned like that – from Singapore on one trip, Thailand on another.’ I thought about her reaching out to me like that, as though we lived in a different time. I had been avoiding her as much as I could, not returning phone calls and ignoring most of her emails, such was my guilt over what Peter and I had been doing, and my fear that I might confess all to her, or inadvertently let something slip.

‘Why didn’t you contact the police in South Africa, if you had suspicions about Peter and those murdered women?’

‘I was afraid of him. I didn’t know how it could be proved, or how an investigation could happen without Anna finding out. I felt so bad about her, I was terrified that she’d find out what I’d done with Peter.’ My guilt ran not only deep but in many directions, like blood flowing through an endless web of veins.

‘Even after she’d slept with your boyfriend?’

I shrugged. ‘I got over that. Part of what happened between me and Peter might have begun as revenge, but I kept it going because I was in thrall to a man who used drugs to keep me with him. What I was doing to Anna was far worse than what she’d done to me. Also, I was scared Peter might hurt her, too. I got especially worried after the girl was killed in Cape Town. Then I got talking to Linley online and she suggested the scam. By the way, I googled you after you first called me and saw that you had a connection with the murder of the girl during the World Cup.’

He looked at me, and for a terrible moment I wondered if Peter was actually innocent – of murder if not of being a philanderer and sadist – and this Hudson Brand really was a serial killer. ‘There’s something else you should know; two things, in fact,’ he said.

This couldn’t be good
, I thought. ‘What?’

‘Another woman, also a prostitute, was murdered in Victoria Falls. Whoever did it – Peter, Patrick de Villiers, or both of them – tried to frame me for it. But the funny thing is, Peter helped me escape over the border into Botswana.’

I gave his revelation some thought. ‘He’s clever. He might have killed her, but thought of a way to tie you to the case so that he could shop you later, after you’d found me.’

Brand nodded. ‘That figures. He must have paid Melanie, the girl, to do some specific things with me that would ensure there’d be evidence against me.’

Too much information, but I was right. Peter was brilliant as well as evil. He would have strung Brand along by pretending to help him, all the while using him to track me down. Brand had already told me about the dead policewoman at the Sabi Sand airstrip, and the dead safari guide, Patrick de Villiers. ‘You think Peter killed the policewoman, and Patrick, to stop him talking?’

‘That would fit. Peter may be feeling on the ropes, and killing his partner protects him. One thing concerns me, though, and it may affect you.’

‘What’s that?’ I asked.

‘When I was in the terminal at the Sabi Sand airstrip I made a quick SMS report to the woman in England who hired me, telling her about the dead bodies, and confirming that I’d had visual confirmation of you, albeit from a distance and with your wig on, as Linley Brown. My contact’s had to save my butt on previous cases and she’s also a friend of your sister’s.’

I could see his concern. ‘So if Anna called her friend she’d pass on the news to Peter that you’d seen Linley and Peter would know immediately that I was alive. He’s definitely coming to find me.’

‘How will he know where we went?’ Brand asked.

I thought about it. ‘He’ll get Andrew’s flight plan – bribe someone if he has too. Also, he knows the one place in Africa I always wanted to visit was in Kenya, the Masai Mara. Everyone who knows me knows this place is top of my bucket list.’

Brand looked dubious. ‘Peter might cut his losses and go back to England.’

‘No way,’ I said. ‘Not once your employer inadvertently confirms I’m alive. He’s obsessive. He’ll find me and I’m more worried than ever before for Anna’s safety.’ I took a deep breath. ‘I want him to come find me, now.’

‘But
why
?’ he asked.

‘So I can kill him.’

32

T
hey stopped to refuel at the Mozambican island of Pemba near the Tanzanian border, and from there they flew to Wilson Airport, Nairobi’s general aviation hub.

The customs search was perfunctory, and the officer didn’t find Brand’s or Kate’s pistols or Andrew’s nine-millimetre Glock, all of which the pilot had secreted behind a false panel.

After they had disembarked, Brand made Kate tell Andrew everything she’d told him on the flight while he walked outside to make some calls.

‘Who were you talking to?’ Kate asked him when he got back to the lounge, where they were all waiting for a minibus Brand had organised from mid-air to take them into Nairobi. A friend of his, Minaz, ran a safari outfit in Nairobi and was sending the bus and booking them accommodation in the Masai Mara.

‘Some people who I hope will help sort out this mess. I spoke to Van Rensburg, a detective in Nelspruit who’s investigating the murders, as well as you.’

‘She’s already got my best friend in the cells and she wants me,’ Kate said.

‘Well, you
are
a criminal,’ Brand reminded her.

She pouted. ‘Tell me, what about my insurance policy? I had every intention of sending money to all the people we robbed, if I received my payout. I’m assuming that’s out of the question now?’

Brand stared at her. ‘What do you think?’

‘What’s the harm, Hudson? No one’s been hurt; give the girl her money,’ Andrew said.

Brand didn’t reply to Andrew. He wanted out of Kenya and out of this crazy scenario, but the only way he’d be able to get back to Hazyview and live there as a free man was to help Van Rensburg solve the question once and for all of who’d been responsible for killing the women in South Africa and Zimbabwe.

‘Kate, tell us, what’s your plan if your sister and brother-in-law do get to Kenya?’ Andrew asked.

‘I meant what I said,’ Kate said. ‘I’ll kill him if I get the chance.’

Brand put his hand up. ‘There’s no way Van Rensburg can get here and arrest and extradite Peter; there wasn’t time to arrange a warrant and as far as she’s concerned I’m her best suspect for the murders. We’ve got no hard evidence against Peter; our case against him is all hearsay and circumstantial. If we can somehow get a confession out of Peter we can help the police put him away.’

A ground crewman came to the door of the terminal and beckoned to Andrew. Brand was grateful that he would be out of the conversation for five minutes.

Andrew paused at the door on his way out. ‘Kate, I can’t pretend I’m not disturbed by how all this unfolded. I thought you were simply a damsel in distress; I didn’t know the police were after you because you were a criminal.’

‘I’m sorry, Andrew. I was desperate. I can’t thank you enough for what you’ve done and I’m sure I speak for Hudson when I say we would understand perfectly if you wanted to just turnaround and go back to South Africa. I don’t want to get you in trouble.’

Andrew smiled. ‘I’ve always been a sucker for damsels.’ He walked out.

Kate drew a breath and turned back to Brand. ‘You’re right, of course. I can’t shoot him in cold blood, but if he gets away then you have to believe me that he’s either going to kill me or Anna or both of us, once she learns what he’s been up to. You’re in danger, as well. Bloody hell, Hudson, he killed a
cop
, as well as this De Villiers guy who he seems to have been working with.’

Andrew came back inside.

‘I’ve got a gun, you’ve got a gun and Andrew’s got one as well,’ Hudson said. ‘We just need to get Peter somewhere where we can get the drop on him and, to be fair, give him a chance to explain himself. Maybe he’s got a sound alibi for the killings, and maybe De Villiers was acting alone or with someone else. His brother Koos is a sick son of a bitch.’

Andrew cleared his throat. ‘Right, you two. Plane’s ready to go for tomorrow and our chariot awaits outside.’

They left the terminal and got into the bus. The driver, not knowing who they were or why they were there, assumed they were tourists. He delivered a sporadic commentary on Nairobi’s sights.

Dusk was falling and their progress slowed to a crawl as the evening rush hour hemmed them in. Marabou storks, ugly birds with fuzzy, balding heads and pendulous goitres, roosted on light poles and shop awnings in the centre of the city. Office workers scooted on foot between the traffic and women in
kikois
slashed the grass by the side of the road. Johannesburg, Hudson reflected, was fast and furious, whereas this African city was cluttered and chaotic, like the thoughts that bounced around his brain.

Kate looked at him. ‘Do you really think he might have an alibi?’

Brand shrugged. ‘I can check.’ He took out his phone and found the number for the Protea Hotel Kruger Gate in his contacts; he did regular pick ups and drop offs there as part of his guiding work. He called the hotel and asked to be put through to the concierge desk. ‘Thabo,
howzit
, it’s Hudson Brand here.’

Kate listened in as Brand asked Thabo what he recalled of the movements of the male and female guests he’d left at the hotel. Hudson listened, nodding, asked a couple more questions then hung up.

‘The concierge said Peter – he didn’t know him by name – went to his desk this morning after I’d left and asked if there was somewhere he could go for a walk. Thabo told him he could go down to the Kruger Park entrance gate and across the bridge over the Sabie River, but that he’d better watch out for lions.’

‘So he could have met up with Patrick de Villiers on the road?’ Kate said. Brand nodded. ‘Patrick could have driven him into the Sabi Sand Game Reserve, where they went to the airstrip and killed the detective? Is that what you’re thinking?’

Brand exhaled. ‘Yep.’

*

The next day they went back to Wilson Airport and flew to the Masai Mara. As they boarded a game viewer at the Musiara airstrip, set in the middle of an open grassy plain, Brand thought about how
best
to catch a serial killer.

‘I just want to say thank you, Andrew, for flying us here and picking up the tab for our accommodation,’ Kate said as the open-sided Land Cruiser bounced along a black earth road through the Masai Mara.

‘It’s nothing,’ Andrew replied. ‘I have many friends in the travel business and you know why I want to help you, Kate. I’m sure Hudson will pay his share back from his expenses.’

‘I can’t really believe I’m here,’ Kate said, bringing Brand back to the present. ‘I’ve wanted to come here and see the migration all my life; I just didn’t expect I’d be on the run from the police and my brother-in-law.’

‘The migration is almost gone,’ said their guide, Godwin, who had picked them up from the airstrip.

‘No animals?’ Kate asked.

‘No, no, no, there are still many animals,’ Godwin assured her, ‘but the majority of the wildebeest have crossed the Mara and headed back to Tanzania, though some will cross back.’

‘I don’t understand,’ she said.

Brand had led tours to Kenya before. ‘The migration’s a fluid thing,’ he explained. ‘Sometimes the wildebeest and zebra will cross the river, and then turn and cross back to this side.’

‘Why?’

‘It is like now,’ Godwin said. ‘There was a grassfire on this side of the Mara River and then some unseasonal rains. The fresh grass shoots are good grazing, so some of the wildebeest that crossed to Tanzania and found the grass was still dead there came back this way. As Hudson says, it is fluid.’

‘It’s like life,’ Kate observed. ‘Sometimes you take a decision and you think it’s the right one, and then you want to go back.’

‘You’re regretting faking your own death?’ Andrew asked her.

She shrugged. ‘It seemed like the only way out for me at the time, but Peter had me strung out on drugs. I wonder now if I should have just gone to Anna and confessed everything and asked for her help.’

‘She made no secret of the fact that she and Peter weren’t getting on,’ Brand said. ‘Even if she found out about you and Peter, she may not react as you think she will. You said yourself she knows Peter isn’t the white knight she once thought he was. What I don’t understand is why she stayed with him so long – they’ve got no kids.’

Kate shrugged. ‘My sister couldn’t handle being poor and Peter provides well for them. If she’s anything like me then she’s also scared to put herself out there, to try to trust another man in a proper relationship. She cheated with George, so for all I know she’s been having affairs with every man she’s met.’

Brand thought that maybe Kate was reading her sister better than she realised, but he decided not to say anything about Anna coming on to him. Godwin picked up the handset of the radio mounted in the dashboard of his Land Cruiser following a burst of staccato Maasai coming through a tinny speaker. He spoke rapidly into the microphone.

‘What is it?’ Kate asked.

‘Maybe nothing, but we will investigate. In the meantime there are some lions up ahead.’

‘Where?’ she asked.

‘I guess where all those vehicles are,’ Brand said.

The countryside was completely different from the thick bushveld of South Africa and Zimbabwe where Brand conducted most of his safaris. Here the gentle, rolling hills and open plains of the Masai Mara and the adjoining Serengeti National Park across the border in Tanzania were covered in short grass. The landscape here was more golf course than bush, though where the plains were bisected by rivers and creeks, lines of dense riverine vegetation sheltered predators.

Godwin took them a short distance off-road to where a queue of a dozen game-viewing vehicles moved slowly in a conga line that followed the course of a narrow stream.

‘There!’ Kate said, spotting the tawny form that contrasted with the dark green grass. A lioness lay on her back, legs in the air, belly distended. ‘Looks like she’s just fed.’

Godwin nodded. ‘Last night, they killed a wildebeest. The rest of the pride, including her babies, are at the base of those trees there in the shade.’

They peered through the foliage and Brand pointed out the tiny cubs, still showing the spots of their youth. One played with the bushy tip of the pride male’s tail until the father tired of the son’s antics and sent him scarpering with a short, sharp roar. Kate smiled at the spectacle, but Brand couldn’t relax. More than ever he wanted to rid himself of the Cliffs and Kate Munns, and the ghost of Linley Brown, but his own freedom depended on this deadly, twisted human pride’s reunion. If he could catch Peter Cliff he could clear his name in the eyes of the police, and put a serial killer behind bars.

Three more lionesses revealed themselves and Kate sat with her elbows on her knees, staring at the big cats, lost in their innocence. ‘They kill, but it’s the most natural thing in the world,’ she said. ‘I never understand tourists who feel sorry for the wildebeest or the other prey animals. The cats have to survive and people think they’re cruel because they’re good at what they do. To kill without remorse, just because you have to, in order to survive . . .’

Brand did not like the direction her mind was heading. ‘Do you think you’re safe here from Peter, and from the law? I know Van Rensburg; when she checks Andrew’s flight plan and finds out you’re in Kenya she’ll come find you eventually. Where are you planning on running to from here?’

Kate said nothing, continuing to stare at the big cats.

‘Or are you planning on staying here in Kenya?’ he persisted.

Kate turned from the lions. ‘I know I’ve reached the end of the line, and that there’s no point running now. I don’t want to be extradited to face the courts in South Africa, though Lord knows I deserve it, but I want this to end, and so do you. The only way you can clear yourself is by taking Peter out of the picture, one way or another,’ she said. ‘Anna will have called her friend in England, the one you work for, and she’ll have confirmed your earlier information, that I’m Linley. Peter will then know I’m really Kate and there will be no stopping him or Anna coming here.’

Brand gritted his teeth. She was right; bringing this to a head was the only way to clear his own name. He was one step ahead of Kate, though; he’d put in place his own plan to monitor the Cliffs’ movements. He would know if and when they arrived in the Masai Mara. ‘What about Anna?’

‘She’s in danger, too. I’m assuming you’ve told your police friends my theory about Peter?’

He hadn’t said anything to Kate, but she had guessed correctly. He had called Van Rensburg from Wilson Airport the previous day and told her there was strong circumstantial evidence that Peter was the killer and she should confirm with Tracey Mahoney that De Villiers had been Peter’s guide both times he’d been in South Africa. ‘Peter might already be in the police lockup in Nelspruit,’ he said, although he would have heard by now if this was the case, and he hadn’t.

Kate shrugged. ‘If he is, good. If not, he’ll come here and it will be up to us to stop him.’

‘I’m not a hired assassin, Kate.’

‘I’ve got nothing to lose,’ she replied. ‘I’m already dead, and as much as I hate what Anna did to me, it’s time for me to make amends with her, and to protect her if I can.’

*

Sannie van Rensburg and Tom Furey sat in a raised timber and thatch
lapa
, an open-sided shelter overlooking the Sabie River, at the deck bar of the Protea Hotel near the Paul Kruger entrance gate to the Kruger Park.

‘We’re missing something,’ Tom said as he attacked the last of his steak prego roll. They were taking a short break for lunch after interviewing everyone they could find at the hotel who may have had contact with Anna and Peter Cliff. The Cliffs had skipped out after the failed sting operation in which Mavis and Patrick de Villiers had been killed, and had boarded a flight from Nelspruit to Johannesburg and then on to Nairobi, Kenya, before the police could stop them for questioning.

‘I agree.’ Sannie drained her Coke Light. Her phone pinged and she checked her emails. There was one from Brand.

‘Anything interesting?’ Tom asked.

‘Huh! Just Hudson Brand telling us what we already knew, that the Cliffs may know Linley Brown is in Kenya and he suspects they may try to follow her there. That doesn’t help us.’ She tapped a reply to Brand, telling him what she had learned from the airlines, that the Cliffs had taken the midnight Kenya Airways flight to Nairobi. She read aloud to Tom as she typed the final lead: ‘
Do not try and apprehend anyone but keep us advised of Peter Cliff’s whereabouts. I have applied for authority from my superiors for an extradition order
.’ She hit send.