The Prey (52 page)

‘I am so happy to hear from you,’ Luis said. He knew there was an element of self-interest in his words, but it seemed a gift from God that Kylie and Cameron had survived.

Cameron’s voice was calm to the point of coldness as he told Luis that he was on his way back to South Africa and would be flying to Barberton, in secret. He wanted to find Wellington, and he believed his daughter was still alive, underground. Luis wanted to believe Jessica was unharmed, but he knew Wellington’s modus operandi: he exterminated witnesses and anyone who was not of use to him. Luis
doubted the girl had been kidnapped, but he, too, wanted Wellington, and Cameron and Kylie were probably the best chance he had of making something of his life again and providing his son with a future.

‘I will come to Barberton as soon as I can,’ Luis said.

‘You weren’t so keen when we left you in Mozambique,’ Cameron said. ‘Can I count on you? You know the illegal workings at Eureka better than anyone.’

‘I will come. You have my word. Things have changed here.’ Luis ended the call. He needed to move fast but almost had second thoughts when he saw Jose’s eyes as he told him of his plan.

‘
Why
do you have to leave again,
Pai
?’ Jose asked him when he told him he had to return to South Africa. Father and son walked the pavement outside the Mercado Central, the main market in a fetching but dilapidated building in the
baixa
, the lower part of town.

‘There is business I must finish. Important business. I want you to behave well for your grandmother, stay away from the boys she says have been leading you astray, and study hard. Your exams are close.’

Jose looked down as they walked. ‘You have only just come back. My
mae
was wrong to go looking for you.’

Luis stopped and his son carried on another three paces before he stopped and looked back. Tears began to well as he thought of his cherished wife and Jose’s
mae
, mother. ‘Nothing
your mae
ever did was wrong. I wish I could say the same for myself.’ He swallowed hard. ‘You are old enough to know the truth. Come, let us get coffee and I will tell you.’

And he did, of his work in the mines in South Africa as a legal miner and, later, after circumstances changed, as a
zama zama
. ‘Nothing good comes from crime, Jose. Remember that. Even though the money is appealing, and I fell for that, in the long run it cost me a price too terrible to bear.’

‘Are you going to commit more crime now?’

Luis thought about the question. ‘I am going to right a wrong, and to stop further crime. Hopefully, too, I will make a deal that will help all of us, you, me and your grandmother, to live honestly and well for
the rest of our lives. If anything happens to me, though, you must go to your second cousin Alfredo, the policeman in Xai Xai. I have been doing some business with him and I have asked him to ensure you are taken care of. Your grandmother has some money I brought with me from South Africa, enough to see you through your next year at school.’

Jose looked at him with wide eyes that started to blink. ‘You’re not coming back, are you?’

Luis felt his own tears forming and knew he must leave. ‘I have to do this.’ He paid the bill, hugged his son, and walked to the bus depot. He couldn’t look back at the boy.

*

Jan drove back to the mine from the guesthouse in Barberton where he had been staying. ‘Get one of the armed security men to come to the manager’s office. Now,’ he said to the guard on duty.

Eureka’s administrative offices were empty. A skeleton maintenance staff was keeping the mine running and, probably, Jan thought, keeping the
zama zamas
supplied with anything they needed while they ramped up their operations underground.

Even as he waited in the office he felt a tremor rise up from the earth below. Wellington was blasting. There was a knock at the door. ‘Come in.’

‘Yes, boss,’ said the security guard.

‘Get me an R5 and five magazines of ammunition, and a set of camouflage overalls.’

‘But boss –’

‘Do as I
fokken
say or you’ll be out of a job like the rest of the stupid bloody miners who’ve gone on strike.’

‘Yes, boss.’

*

Colonel Sindisiwe Radebe closed her eyes as she lay on the massage table in the spa treatment room at Cybele Forest Lodge, nestled in the hills between White River and Hazyview.

She had decided to treat herself to an afternoon off and was feeling pleasingly mellow as a result of the wine she had drunk at lunchtime while having business negotiations with her cousin, a builder, who was about to get the contract to repaint the police station.

Sindisiwe was face down, just a towel draped over her buttocks. She heard the girl enter the room and sighed in anticipation of the warmth of the hot stones that would soothe the tension from her knotted muscles. She felt feminine hands on her shoulders.

‘Be gentle with me.’

‘Of course, Colonel.’

Sindisiwe opened her eyes. She hadn’t introduced herself by her rank and she had been in civilian clothes over lunch. Perhaps the girl recognised her from the recent spread in
Lowveld Living
, but she sounded foreign and white, with a strange accent. She twisted her neck to try to see the masseuse, but her movement was checked by cold steel.

‘Don’t move. It’s a gun and it’s in the side of your head.’

‘Do you know who I am? If you do, then you must know you are already dead, and if you don’t, well, let me tell you, you are already dead.’

‘You’re cool, I’ll give you that.’

‘What do you want?’ Sindisiwe asked. ‘My keys and credit cards are in my purse on the sideboard. But you already know that.’

‘You can’t buy your way out of this. It’s information I want.’

Sindisiwe nodded into the sheet. She could pick the accent now, and she had seen the woman on television.
Wellington, what have you done
, she thought.
Or, rather, what have you failed to do?
‘All right, I will tell you what you want to know. Just don’t hurt me.’

‘That’s a long way from “you’re already dead”.’

‘What do you want?’

‘Get dressed. We’re going for a drive in the forest. If you try anything, I’ll shoot you.’

Sindisiwe rolled over and swung her legs over the side of the massage table. It was the Australian woman, all right. Hamilton.
The one who was supposed to be dead. She was holding a Sig Sauer. ‘You’re not from here; you won’t shoot me.’

‘I killed a man underground, and this time a girl’s life is at stake. You’re going to take us to where she is.’

‘She’s dead. The murderer confessed before he killed himself.’

Kylie shook her head. ‘We don’t think so.’

‘This is preposterous. How dare you insinuate that I, a police commander, would have inside knowledge of the commission of a crime?’ Sindisiwe put on her pants and fastened her bra. She would fix this meddling bitch, in time. Sindisiwe was worried for Wellington, but more so for herself. The fact that the girl was alive worked in Sindisiwe’s favour. If she could somehow wrest her back from Wellington and his master Mohammed and produce her live, it might save her own skin, if not Wellington’s. ‘Listen to me. I am a law enforcement officer. I am not a criminal. Perhaps together we can find McMurtrie’s daughter, if you truly believe she is still alive. If you have information, you must share it with me and together we can save the girl. I will even forget about you pulling a gun on me; we all have the child’s safety as our number one priority.’

‘That’s just what I thought. She
is
alive, you know where she is, and you’re going to bargain your way out. That suits us just fine.’

‘Us?’

‘Finish zipping your skirt and put your Jimmy Choos on, Cinderella. Time for you to go to the fucking ball.’

Kylie Hamilton draped a towel over her gun and dug it into the small of Sindisiwe’s back. Sindisiwe heard the resolve in the Australian woman’s voice and doubted she would be able to talk her into handing over the gun. It was ignominious, being taken like this, but she could negotiate with them. As much as she had enjoyed the money and the sex that Wellington provided, it looked like it was time to cut her losses.

Cybele was set in a sprawling forest of eucalypt trees. The Australian motioned towards a Corolla sedan. The rear door was
opened from inside and when she climbed in she saw Cameron McMurtrie, dressed in miner’s overalls.

‘Colonel.’

‘Cameron.’

‘It’s time for you to start talking, Sindisiwe, or we’re going into the woods and you’re not coming back.’

‘So I’ve been told.’

‘What happened to Wellington?’

‘He escaped from custody.’

‘That happens a lot from your holding cells.’

She shrugged her shoulders. ‘You won’t escape once I have you arrested and charged.’

‘Spare me the defiance and the righteous indignation. Is my daughter alive?’

Sindisiwe looked into the mine manager’s eyes and she shivered. ‘You daughter’s killer confessed in a note before taking his own life.’

‘Bullshit. I knew Timothy well. He was crooked, but he was no killer or rapist. Wellington set him up,’ Cameron said.

For all Sindisiwe knew, Wellington had reneged on his part of the deal and raped and killed the girl himself. She loved his strength and his impetuosity, but she had no doubt about the evil he was capable of.

‘Give me the gun,’ Cameron said.

Kylie passed the weapon to him and Sindisiwe, a trained interrogator, saw the change in the woman’s expression. It went from cocksure to horrified surprise. The Australian was reading Cameron’s face and both women saw the same thing in his eyes as he raised the pistol and rested the end of the barrel against Sindisiwe’s right temple. ‘Get out of the car, Kylie. You don’t want her blood and brains all over you.’

‘Cameron, no …’ Kylie said.

‘Get out of the car. We can’t let her live; she’ll have us arrested and locked up. I’ll make it look like a suicide, just as Wellington must have done with Timothy.’

Kylie opened the car door, hesitated a moment and got out.

‘Wait,’ Sindisiwe said. ‘She was alive, last I heard.’

Kylie slid back into the seat beside Sindisiwe, and she allowed herself a couple of breaths.

‘What did you have planned for her?’ Cameron asked.

‘
I
had nothing planned. I have a confidential informant who told me that Wellington is holding the girl somewhere in the mine. He has given orders that she is not to be touched or harmed in any way. Perhaps … perhaps he has someone interested in her.’

‘Jesus,’ Kylie said.

‘That’s all bullshit, about the informant,’ Cameron said. Sindisiwe felt the gun dig into her skin.

‘So what,’ she said, looking sideways at his crazy eyes. ‘Do you want to try and get your daughter back or not?’

‘I’m listening.’

‘She’s in the mine. That is all I know. You’ll have to find her. I’m not sending any of my men down there.’

‘You don’t have to. You’re coming with us.’

*

Jan opened the doors of the cage when the lift stopped at level fourteen. He raised his R5 assault rifle and started moving down the tunnel. Candles flickered in alcoves in the wall. He heard
zama zamas
talking further down and smelled marijuana smoke.

Already, he could see, the criminal miners had been blasting out the support pillars. They had turned this viable working into a deathtrap. Even if Eureka was reopened to the legitimate mining company it would never be safe to work this area.

Jan turned off to the right down a side tunnel and it became darker the further he moved away from the illegal workings. He was a world away from his corner office on the thirtieth floor overlooking Sydney Harbour. He was back in his native Africa where the strong survived by killing the weak. It was time for Wellington Shumba to die.

A wave of air washed over him, nearly knocking him down, followed a split second later by a deafening boom. Dust rushed up the tunnel behind him. Jan coughed and spat. The fools were blasting too close to where they were still trying to work. It was no wonder so many of them died. Jan carried on through the fog of grit and smoke.

Ahead of him he saw a light flaying across the side wall. He flattened himself against the rock and raised the R5 to his shoulder. A
zama zama
walked around a bend, an AK-47 held loose in his right hand. Jan knew that an armed man would be a guard or a sentry, not a worker, and this told him he had taken the right turn. Wellington would be close.

Jan stepped into the middle of the tunnel and levelled his rifle at the man. ‘Make a noise and I’ll kill you,’ he whispered.

The man laid down his AK and followed Jan’s gesticulations with his rifle to kneel. ‘Put your hands on your head.’ Standing behind him, Jan slung his rifle over his shoulder and took a Leatherman from its pouch on his belt. He unfolded the serrated blade, reached around the man, put his hand over his mouth and cut his throat.

He held the man as the life thrashed from him, then silently lowered the body to the ground. Jan wiped his hands on his camouflage fatigues and moved on into the darkness.
I haven’t felt this alive for decades
, he thought.

*

Cameron stopped the Corolla on the road between Komatipoort and Malelane at the place he and Luis had discussed.

‘You must let me go,’ Sindisiwe Radebe said again. ‘I have no idea where the girl is underground.’

‘Shut up or I’ll gag you,’ Cameron said.

Luis emerged from the bush at the side of the road, looked left and right and climbed into the car, in the front passenger seat. His eyes widened when he greeted Kylie and Cameron and saw Kylie pointing a gun at the Barberton police commander.

‘Thank you for coming back, Luis,’ Cameron said.

‘When I heard about your daughter, I had to come. This man has caused too much sorrow and it is time to end it for good.’

Cameron nodded and turned the car around and drove back towards Barberton and Eureka. They said little on the drive, though after fifteen minutes Luis said: ‘If it is all right, Dr Hamilton, there is something I would like to discuss with you, once this business is done.’