The Hunter (24 page)

They stopped outside the house. It was single storey, whitewashed and nondescript. The grass looked like it hadn’t been mowed in a while and the gardens were overgrown with weeds – typical of a place rented by three criminals. ‘Good, no security fence or gate,’ Sannie noted. They got out of the car and Sannie opened the boot and pulled two pairs of latex surgical gloves from a box, handing one set to Mavis. ‘Put these on.’ They walked around the house. At the rear she noticed one of the windows was open. The police who had arrested the trio had clearly not been diligent about securing the place, which was a good thing; Sannie didn’t want to alert any nosy neighbours by smashing a pane of glass. She opened the window fully and boosted herself up on the sill. She prided herself on her fitness, and her figure. Tom used to compliment her on her body all the time, but since the fights had become more frequent the appreciative comments had fallen away. She thought of him at home on the farm; he would be getting ready to go and pick up the children from school. She felt a moment of shame then, because as much as she loved her family with all her heart she knew she was happier here, with Mavis, illegally entering a house.

Sannie climbed through the window and slid over a kitchen bench top. She unlocked the back door of the house and let Mavis in.

‘This is fun,’ her partner said.

‘No, it’s against the law, and I don’t want you doing this sort of stuff when you’re not with me.’

Mavis laughed. ‘A fine mentor you are.’

They checked the kitchen and lounge room together, then split up to search the bedrooms.

‘This must be Fortune’s, it stinks of sweat and cheap cologne, and much worse stuff,’ Mavis called.

‘Shush, we don’t want the neighbours hearing.’

‘OK.’

Sannie had found herself in a woman’s room, but the size of the lacy purple bra she found on the floor told her this was probably Lungile’s, unless Linley was similarly endowed.

‘In here,’ Mavis hissed from the next room.

While Fortune and his sister’s rooms were strewn with dirty clothing and the beds unmade, Linley’s was well ordered and neat. There were throw cushions on the duvet, which had been pulled tight so that not a crease showed.

‘I wish my place was this tidy,’ Mavis said.

Sannie began searching the drawers in the pine bedside table. Linley’s underclothes were folded and sorted into bras and pants. There was nothing fancy or frilly here; it all looked like sensible, affordable, practical stuff from Mr Price.

Mavis had opened the built-in wardrobe and was sliding clothes along the rack. ‘Some nice stuff here. Expensive, stylish, conservative.’

‘
Ja
, it fits with the image they presented in their previous jobs, of rich housewives out house hunting. Linley must have put her share of the profits into her identity. Interesting.’

‘Unlike Fortune; his room stinks of weed and his clothes are all knock-offs. He also has an impressive collection of porn. A real player. What exactly are we looking for?’ Mavis asked.

‘Passport, ID book maybe. The uniforms said she left in a hurry, so hopefully she didn’t have time to take her important documents with her. They couldn’t tell if she had a handbag with her when she jumped over the back wall.’

‘Three bags in here – Gucci, Prada, Luis Vuitton. All empty though.’

‘They’re probably props, part of her disguise, and look how they’re all oversized. I bet this is what she stuffed the stolen goods in.’ Sannie pulled each of the drawers out of the bedside table and sat them on the perfectly made bed. She lifted the contents out of them, placed each item on the duvet then turned the drawers over. ‘Here.’

‘What have you found?’ Mavis asked.

Affixed to the bottom of the middle drawer with sticky tape was an envelope. Sannie peeled off the tape and opened it. ‘Cash. A few thousand rand and a passport. Maybe she didn’t trust her partners in crime.’

‘I wouldn’t trust Fortune.’ Mavis peered over Sannie’s shoulder as she opened the passport. It was Zimbabwean. ‘Linley Brown. That’s our girl.’

Sannie looked at the picture. The girl was blonde, pretty – very pretty – but her eyes looked tired, sad. The passport was new, issued just three months earlier, and flicking through it Sannie could only find one stamp, when the woman had entered South Africa shortly after the travel document was issued.

It was, Sannie thought, one thing to hide your cash from the other criminals you were sharing a house with, but the fact that Linley had hidden her passport as well told the detective that Linley was smart. She probably knew there was the prospect that the police would come calling one day, and wanted to keep her identity a secret as long as possible. Also, she wouldn’t want to carry it with her all the time in case she was caught pulling a job. But Linley hadn’t been smart enough to fool her. She would catch this woman, quickly, and then get back to the cold case that was increasingly becoming the focus of her life. Sannie was a good detective, but she felt like she had failed Nandi Mnisi, the woman who had been butchered and dumped near the Kruger Park. She wasn’t convinced Hudson Brand was the culprit, but if he was she couldn’t bear the thought that he had outsmarted her once before; if he was guilty he would not escape again. The sooner she caught Linley Brown the sooner she could delve into the Cape Town killing.

Sannie’s phone vibrated in her bra; she had turned off the ringer. She took it out, unfolded it and said quietly, ‘Van Rensburg.’

‘Sannie, it’s Jay Suresh, how are you?’

‘Fine.’ She read out the date Linley had entered the country.

‘How did you know that?’ he asked.

‘I’ve got her passport in my hand. But you can help me with something else, I hope.’

‘Name it,’ Jay said.

‘I think Linley Brown might try and cross back into Zimbabwe. Can you put her name on the watch list, please?’

‘Zimbabweans are technically not allowed to hold dual nationality. You can only vote there if you relinquish claims to any other citizenship and you can’t get a passport if you’re entitled to another country’s passport unless you get a letter from that other country’s embassy saying you have not been issued a passport.’

‘I’m not sure I follow,’ Sannie said. ‘Are you saying there is no way she can have another passport?’

‘Legally, no, but I’ve got a white Zimbabwean friend who was entitled to South African citizenship as his father was born here. He got a letter from our people saying he didn’t have a South African passport, in order to get his Zim passport, but our embassy told him that once he got his Zim document he’d be welcome to simply apply again for a South African one and not tell the Zimbabwean government about it.’

‘I see,’ Sannie said. ‘Linley Brown’s passport was issued about three months ago.’

‘Hmmm. Well, it’s feasible she could have had another passport issued in that time. I’ll do a check to see if she’s been issued one, and I’ll put her name on the watch list in case she’s been able to get another one. A lot of Zimbabweans have British heritage and plenty have moved to other countries, such as Australia, New Zealand and Canada.’

‘Thanks, Jay.’ Sannie ended the call. She explained to Mavis the complexities of Zimbabwean passports.

‘So she can’t leave the country?’ Mavis asked.

Sannie shrugged. ‘Maybe, maybe not. If she’s entitled to another passport she might be able to get it issued here in South Africa. We need to find out more about this woman. Try that Zimbabwean police officer again from the car.’

‘OK. No laptop or iPad in the drawers?’

Sannie shook her head. ‘No.’

‘And not in the wardrobe either. There was one in Lungile’s room, though. We should check it; if Linley didn’t have her own she might have been using her friend’s. Everyone needs email access.’

‘Good thinking, but now it’s time for us to get a warrant and do this properly.’

Sannie replaced the packet of cash under the drawer, but pocketed the passport. She put the contents of each drawer back, then slid all three into the side table.

‘You’re keeping her passport? I thought you wanted to do this properly?’ Mavis chided.

‘Lungile and Fortune might get bail, and we wouldn’t have the manpower to put surveillance on this place in case Linley sneaks back in. But now we know where her stash is, when we get our warrant and come back for the laptop we’ll know if she’s been here looking for her passport. I don’t want her leaving South Africa. Also, we can scan the ID page of her passport and then release her picture to the media once we announce that we’ve arrested and charged Lungile and Fortune.’

‘Ah, so what you’re saying is there’s “proper” and then there’s “clever”,’ Mavis said.

‘Exactly. Let’s check outside before we leave, and retrace Linley’s steps.’

They went out into the yard and Sannie closed and latched the window she’d entered. There were monkeys and baboons around the suburbs of White River and she knew from personal experience on the farm what a colossal mess these primates could make if they broke into a house. There was no point in making things worse for the owners of the property, who would have to re-let it now the criminal gang who had been their tenants had vacated.

Sannie led Mavis down the path into the backyard. ‘There’re some creeper vines that have been broken on the fence. That must have been where she climbed over.’

‘Well spotted,’ Mavis said.

Mavis used the pointed toe of her boot – flat heeled and more sensible these days, unlike those she had worn when she was first partnered with Sannie – to check the uncut grass and weeds at the base of the fence. ‘Hey, look.’ Mavis knelt down and pulled an iPhone from the overgrown garden bed.

‘Bingo,’ said Sannie.

‘Can we take it with us?’ Mavis asked.

Sannie knew that without a warrant she should leave the phone where it was, but it would have Linley Brown’s fingerprints on it, and her call log may give them some valuable clues as to the woman’s whereabouts or intentions. ‘Give it to me.’

Sannie tried to switch on the phone but the battery was flat.

‘It’s a similar model to mine,’ Mavis said, looking over her shoulder. ‘I’ve got a car charger in my handbag.’

‘OK, let’s get it started.’

The two detectives went back to the car and Mavis plugged the phone into the cigarette lighter. After about a minute there was enough charge in the phone for it to be turned on. Sannie checked the log of incoming and outgoing calls. There were not many. She took out her notebook and wrote them down.

‘She was probably changing SIM cards,’ Mavis said.

The iPhone beeped; it was the message bank call-back. Sannie dialled the number and listened to the last message.

‘
Bliksem
!’

18

‘J
ust wait until you taste Naomi’s homemade rolls – they’re to die for,’ Bryce told the American tourists, then beamed his perfect smile at me as he climbed into the front seat of the game viewer. ‘They’ll be ready, along with dinner, just as soon as we get back from the afternoon game drive, won’t they, Naomi?’

When Bryce had called me Naomi the first time, I’d had to think twice before I remembered that it was the false name I had given to him; my head was a mess. On the cooking front, I could barely boil an egg, so the prospect of making bread on a campfire in a blackened steel pot was as likely as me coming up with a cure for AIDS. I felt like revoking my no-shooting policy and capping him. ‘I hope you like cold baked beans,’ I said out of the corner of my mouth.

One of the tourists in the back of the Land Rover overheard me and chuckled at my joke, but the others may have detected that it was no laughing matter. Bryce drove out of Balule camp and I contemplated the unlikely prospect of whipping up dinner for eight – the six tourists and Bryce and myself – with no electricity in the middle of the Kruger National Park. I sighed. I had got myself into this mess – well, Fortune had got me into it – so I had to make the most of it.

Maybe Bryce wanted me to make a hash of dinner so that one of his tourists would call Greg and Tracey, Bryce’s employers, and report my appalling cookery. Or perhaps he would borrow one of the Americans’ phones while he was out on the drive and call them himself, or perhaps he’d just call the cops. I still had Bryce’s Nokia, but had promised him I’d let him know of any life or death messages, and agreed that he could use it in my presence.

I was feeling glum as I plonked myself into a camp chair and rested my chin in my palms, elbows on my knees. I stared at the plastic storage boxes of food, pots and utensils, wondering where to start. The thought of stealing a car and leaving the park crossed my mind, but I had seen on the way into Kruger how the security guards also checked people’s paperwork on the way out of the national park. Also, Balule was in the east of the reserve, on the Olifants River near the Mozambican border, so a vehicle would be reported missing long before I made it to the nearest exit gate.

‘
Wat doen jy
?’

I looked around. There was an elderly lady behind me in a lime-green pants suit and sensible shoes. She was stooped and leaned on a walking stick. ‘Sorry, I don’t speak Afrikaans,’ I said.

‘I asked what you are doing.’

I shrugged. ‘Nothing. I’m supposed to be the camp cook.’

She smiled. ‘Well you better get started if you’re going to feed all those big fat tourists.’

I should have laughed, but instead I felt the hot sting of tears welling behind my eyes. I wiped them away with the back of my hand. She hobbled over to me and put a bony hand on my shoulder. ‘What’s wrong, girl?’

‘Nothing,’ I lied. Her touch and the concern in her voice made the tears flow. I tried to stem them with the hem of my T-shirt, but they wouldn’t stop. I convulsed in her spindly arm as she stood there, drawing me into her as she leaned over me. She smelled of baby powder and an old-fashioned perfume.

‘There, there. It will be all right.’

I sniffed and managed to stop the tears. ‘I don’t know how to cook.’

‘That’s nothing to cry about. You let
Tannie
Rina help you. You’ll be all right. We’ll make a
lekker
meal for your people.’

I felt silly, crying in front of this kindly stranger. It had been a long time since I’d wept like that. I had been through so much, been so close to, well, not wanting to be around any more, but I thought I had emerged stronger. I’d stopped crying but I could feel a lava flow of emotion welling up inside me, waiting to burst out. I was off the drugs, but the problems that had led me into dependency had not gone away. Now that the chemical balance in my brain and body was returning to normal there was nothing to dull the pain of the memories and the fears that had driven me away from home and into a life of crime in the first place. If I could just get my money and get on a plane I would be fine, but I didn’t have my passport. I’d hidden it carefully in the house in White River, but even if the cops didn’t find it under the drawer in my bedroom I couldn’t get back there to retrieve it. I’d have to apply for another as soon as I could, but it was Sunday and I knew the high commission’s visa section would be closed.

The old lady introduced herself as ‘Aunty’ Rina du Toit. ‘Linley,’ I said to her, realising as soon as the word was out of my mouth that I’d forgotten my alias, Naomi. I was juggling too much in my dishonest life and I hated it. Rina’s husband, Attie, was asleep in the Jurgens caravan on the other side of the campground, she said. Bryce had explained to the Americans as we were driving that Balule was one of the smallest and quietest of the rest camps in the Kruger Park. It had been a good game drive – we had seen elephant, giraffe, zebra, wildebeest and a magnificent trio of male kudus with impressive spiralling horns, but the tourists, predictably, were chirping about wanting to see cats. Bryce had shown the group how to erect their green canvas bell tents when we’d arrived and I’d hovered uselessly on the edge, impressed by his professionalism and organisational skills, not to mention his bum in his short green shorts. He’d winked at me from behind the back of an overweight man wrestling to clip his tent to its bowed metal poles. Bryce was over the initial shock of being hijacked, and now I think he was curious about what was motivating me; perhaps he wouldn’t shop me to the police while he was out on his game drive after all.

Rina shuffled to the camping trailer that Bryce had towed behind the Land Rover. She opened the refrigerators. ‘What have we got here? Hmmm, steak,
wors
,
potjiekos
.’ She lifted a packet. ‘
Blou
wildebeest?’ She wrinkled her nose. ‘Well, I’m sure the tourists will like it. Do you know how to make a
potjie
?’

A
poikie
, as it sounded to me, was, I knew, a slow-cooked stew. There was a black steel pot with three legs in the trailer and I knew that was what it was cooked in, but that was the extent of my knowledge and interest in South African bush cuisine. ‘No,
Tannie
,’ I said, using one of the few words of Afrikaans I knew.

‘Shame. Well, you’re never too old to learn. And that cheeky boy, the good-looking one with the curly hair, he said something about rolls. You don’t know how to cook bread?’

I shook my head.

She grinned and her watery eyes sparkled. ‘My kids are all grown up now. My two daughters live in Australia and my one boy is in
England
.’ Her mouth puckered as though she’d just sucked on a lemon. ‘My grandkids don’t want to learn to cook; they’re too busy on the computer and the iPhone. Do you want to learn?’

I did. I wanted to do something other than lie and steal and cause misery to other people. I wanted a sleeping husband and a caravan and for any kids to have the fairy-tale childhood I’d never had.

Rina fossicked in the cargo boxes for condiments and staples and talked me through how to light a fire in the campsite’s
braai
stand. ‘You know this camp used to be for blacks only?’ she asked, lowering her voice.

‘No, I didn’t.’

‘Yes, during the apartheid era, but someone decided maybe we should let them into the Kruger to see some animals, and this camp, Balule, was the only place they could stay. It’s only got the six rondavels, the small roundhouses, and none of them even has windows. Can you imagine how hot the people was in the summer? All the other camps in the park have electricity, but not this one, still. The funny thing is that now this is one of the most popular camps in the Kruger.’

People wanted to get away from the trappings of modern life, it seemed, and a place once regarded as Spartan and primitive, second class, was now sought after. South Africa had been turned upside down in the mid-nineties and it had changed. I wondered if I could change, really.

‘People said the blacks would rise up and kill us all when Mandela took over, and then when he died, but they didn’t. Change happens,’ Rina said, reading my mind as she laid out a can of tomatoes, a couple of onions, and opened the packet of wildebeest neck, ‘and however bad you think life is now there is always hope.’

I swallowed, feeling the tears welling again, and while I chopped the onions, under Rina’s instruction and correction, they did flow, but she rubbed my back and I managed a smile. ‘Good girl. You’re getting the hang of it. You see, it’s not so hard, nothing to cry about.’

I heated oil in the steel pot on the fire and cooked the onions, then added the pieces of neck, which we had coated in flour. Once they had browned I opened the can of tomatoes and poured them in. ‘Shit. Sorry,
Tannie
,’ I hastily added, seeing her disapproving scowl. My white blouse was splashed with tomato slop and oil, and when I tried to wipe the stain away the dirt and soot on my hands from the pot just made the stain worse. ‘Sh . . . sugar,’ I said.

‘We worry about that later. Now, add some white wine, not red; it helps break down the fat and tenderise the meat.’

I found a bottle already chilling in the camping fridge, unscrewed it, and tipped some in until Rina held up her hand. ‘You have to save some for the cook.’

‘Would you like a glass?’ I asked. She cast a wary eye at the caravan then winked at me.

‘Just a small one.’

We sat at the fold-out aluminium table and I poured her half a glass. The sauvignon blanc was cold and crisp, and for a moment I took a look out beyond the low, non-electrified fence and marvelled at the beauty of the African bush for the first time in a long while. Inside the camp were big sausage trees, so named because of their long, heavy fruit. Birds called from the thickets around the camp. It was a lovely place.

‘If you don’t know how to cook, what are you doing working on a safari? Are you a guide?’

‘No,
Tannie
.’
I looked at my feet. I wasn’t even dressed for the part, in my jeans, trainers and grubby white shirt.

‘Are you running away from something?’

I nodded. I did not want to burden her, but I could not lie to this strange, gentle woman either.

‘You can’t run forever,’ she said.

Her advice was so simple, so clichéd, yet so right. I was sorry for the crimes I had committed, but I could not bear the thought of going to prison in South Africa, or any other country for that matter. I needed to disappear, just as Kate Munns had disappeared, though not in the same way. I was past wanting to kill myself – at least, I was pretty sure I was – but I knew there was something more I had to do in life, whatever happened to me. With money, I could do it all. I regretted not calling Hudson Brand back when I first had the chance. All the paperwork for the claim was in order and even if he was an investigator rather than an assessor, I had nothing to hide. I was so used to running and hiding I’d become overly paranoid. But I had lost my phone out of my pocket when on the run from the house in White River and I didn’t have his number written anywhere or committed to memory. ‘I know,
Tannie
,’ I said to Rina, ‘believe me, I know.’

She leaned over, put her hand on my knee and squeezed it. ‘You will be fine, but first you have to learn how to make bread. Go stir the
potjie
.’

Bread making made even more of a mess of my shirt, and soon my jeans too were covered in flour and sticky dough, even though Rina had tried to stop me from wiping my hands on my thighs. Mixing and kneading the dough was tricky, but in the end, with a couple of retries, I had a dozen little rolls rising in another pot placed on the camping table in the afternoon sun.

‘You should change now, before your people get back from their game drive,’ Rina said.

I looked down at the mess I’d made of my clothes. ‘I don’t have any other clothes,
Tannie
.’ Annoyingly, I felt the prick of tears again. I had made up my mind long ago not to feel sorry for myself, but here were those emotions, constantly bubbling to the surface. It had been so long since I’d last cried and now I couldn’t seem to stop.

‘Do you have money?’

I cuffed the back of my eyes, sniffed, and shook my head.

‘But you’re going to get paid for working on this safari, yes?’

‘Yes,’ I lied.

‘Then that young man can give you an advance on your pay. Better still, his company should be paying for you to have a
lekker
little uniform like his one.’ She hobbled back to her
bakkie
and opened the door. I slumped in a camping chair, still feeling sorry for myself. What kind of a thief was I? I could demand some cash, at gunpoint, from Bryce when he got back, I supposed.

Rina returned carrying a blue handbag in her free hand. She put it on the camp table next to me and reached in for her purse. She unsnapped the lock and pulled out a wad of hundred-rand notes. ‘Here. Go buy yourself some nice clothes. You can pay me back later.’

I looked up at her, blinking, fighting back the urge to weep again. ‘
Tannie
, I can’t –’

‘You can. And you will.’

‘Why are you being so kind to me,
Tannie
?’

She folded the notes, put them in my hand and closed it around them. Her dry, papery skin touched my heart. ‘I think in this new South Africa the problem is we forget the simple message that Mr Mandela left us: that people must be nice to each other. Everyone wants, wants, wants, either because they had nothing in the past and their government let them down, or they had so much and now they know what it’s like to be discriminated against. You look like a good girl to me, Linley, but one who is in trouble. Believe it or not I remember what that was like, a long time ago.’

She looked the picture of grandmotherly honesty and innocence, but, then, I suppose we never really know the true stories behind the façades we see. ‘Thank you,
Tannie
. But, really, you should take this back. Besides, Bryce, the guide, won’t be back until dark so I’ve got no way of getting to a shop.’