Recipes for Love and Murder (38 page)

‘There's Piet,' I said.

We pulled up behind Kannemeyer's van, only lightly hitting his back bumper. Maybe Georgie's prayers did work.

We all piled out and looked around at the wild veld and hills. Some zebras were silhouetted on a faraway ridge. The rusks and I stood close enough to the men to hear them talking. Piet was crouched on his haunches by the side of the road, looking at the muddy ground.

‘What you doing?' said Kannemeyer.

‘Watching ants,' said Piet.

‘Find anything?'

‘The rain was heavy.'

‘Tracks?'

‘Bike tyres and the Firestones. They stop. The Firestones turn around, go back.'

‘And shoe prints?'

‘Rain was too heavy.'

Kannemeyer moved from one foot to the other.

Piet carried on watching the ants.

Kannemeyer tugged at one end of his moustache.

‘Here are the volunteers to help with the search.'

Piet nodded and inched forward, following the line of ants.

‘Will you tell them where to go?' said Kannemeyer.

‘They are telling me,' said Piet, keeping his gaze on the ground.

‘Konstabel Witbooi,' said Kannemeyer.

Piet pointed.

We looked at the ants. There was a long line of them heading one way, and another long line heading back.

Piet trotted forward. Kannemeyer and I followed.

We followed the line of ants between some vetplantjies, and then behind a porcupine milk-bush. Piet prodded the earth with his foot. The ground was soft and disturbed.

‘There is something under here that the ants are eating,' he said.

Reghardt ran down the hill to us, his face streaked with scratches and dirt.

‘What is it?' he said. ‘What have you found?'

‘Get the spade from the back of the van,' said Kannemeyer.

The people from Group One had wandered across and were standing behind us. They used their hands to shade their faces from the afternoon sun. They moved aside as Reghardt pushed through with the spade. Kannemeyer tried to take it from him, but Reghardt wasn't letting go.

Piet pointed out the area to dig. Reghardt's spade dipped in fast but shallow. Like he didn't want to hurt what was underneath.

Beneath the sand, there was just more sand. The sweat ran down the side of his face. Then Reghardt struck something solid.
Thunk
. The sound made me jump, and the rusks rattle.

Reghardt closed his eyes and stood still a second. His face went white. Then he crouched down and peered into the hole. Piet was squatting on the ground. He reached in and touched the thing that Reghardt had hit. He brought out his finger and smelled it. An ant was walking across his fingernail.

‘Blood,' Piet said.

CHAPTER EIGHTY-THREE

Reghardt let out a small sound like he had been hit in the belly, but then he swallowed and started digging with his hands, like an animal clawing the ground. Piet was working beside him. Reghardt's hand gripped something and he tugged at it.

‘It's metal,' he said. ‘It's metal.'

Kannemeyer and Boetie joined them and they all dug together. They cleared the dirt away and pulled out a scooter. Jessie's red scooter.

I could see the ants and the dark sticky stuff on the seat of the bike. Piet ran his fingers across it. Touched his finger to the tip of his tongue.

‘This is from today,' he said.

Reghardt's face was now whiter than white.

‘She'd dead, isn't she?' he said. ‘Just tell me.'

Piet shook his head.

‘Can't say.'

Reghardt was breathing fast; I thought he was going to faint.

I clutched my tin of buttermilk beskuit. I wanted to give him something to help with the shock. But he needed something else even more than these broken rusks. Something we all needed: hope. We had to have hope.

‘Jessie was on her scooter, and he shot her,' I said, ‘with a bow and arrow. But when he caught up with her, she was ready for him. She sprayed him. With the pepper spray. I smelled it on him. He was blinded and she got away. She left her bike, but she got away, Reghardt. Then there was rain and it washed away her tracks, so he couldn't find her.'

Piet was nodding, but Reghardt was shaking his head, holding back the tears. I kept on talking.

‘She was like a wounded animal and he wanted to come back and look for her. He got a phone call that I was at his work and he came to get me. This morning he told me he had another hunt to do. He was talking about her. He hadn't found her. And he didn't find her.'

I turned to the people standing behind me.

‘Now he's dead and he didn't find her,' I said. ‘But we can find her.'

‘Konstabel Witbooi,' said Kannemeyer, ‘go back to where the scooter tracks stopped and see if you can find any foot spoor.' He turned to speak to the rest of us. ‘If she was injured, I doubt she'd have got further than two kilometres. She might have hypothermia too. Keep your eyes on the ground. Footprints are unlikely because of the rain, but you never know, maybe she walked after the rain. Also, look out for broken plants, blood, ants. You see anything unusual, raise your hand and call out for me or Constable Witbooi.'

As he spoke, I offered the tin of rusks, and people helped themselves. A young nurse in a white uniform took the tin from me and offered it to those who stood out of my reach.

‘Warrant Officer Snyman – you move in a wide circle around this point. Climb to the top of each of these hills around us. And use your binos to check out all the hiding places: bushes, trees, ditches.'

Reghardt was just standing there, but there was some colour in his face now.

‘Go!' said Kannemeyer.

Reghardt blinked and shot off like a racing dog.

When he was gone, Kannemeyer turned to the rest of us, and said: ‘We are also looking for soft earth.' He tapped the ground next to the scooter with his foot. ‘Like this. Where something is buried.'

Georgie's hand went to her mouth. She caught an
Oooh wooo
in her fingers.

The nurse gave me the rusk tin back and I offered the last beskuit to Kannemeyer. He looked into my eyes as he ate it, and my chest filled with a strange warmth.

Then he pointed to a hill with a row of spekboom trees at its base.

‘We're heading that way first. Walk two metres apart and follow me. I'll go ahead and sweep the area for anything obvious. You move slowly so you don't miss anything.'

I ate the last few crumbs of hope – then I left the tin in the car.

We spread out and walked behind Kannemeyer, our eyes on the ground. I heard him talking to Warrant Officer Smit on the radio, telling him to have an ambulance on standby, and to get the other groups to come and join our search. Hattie and Candice were on either side of me. Candy was slower than me in those heels, and Hattie a bit faster. But I hardly noticed them.

My eyes were drinking in everything in front of me. Looking for clues. I found the tracks of a snake after the rain. A mouse scuttling into some Christmas aloes. The footprints of a rabbit, and the heart-shaped hoof prints of a hartebees. Piles of big black shiny droppings. White stones, purple stones, stones the colour of dried blood.

The sun was low and blasting onto the side of my face. I kept on walking and looking. The other groups joined the search. There were lines of them walking across the veld and up the hills. But I was keeping my attention on the two metres that were mine.

I scared a bushbuck out from the shade of a wild plum tree. I looked in dongas, the sandy ditches where the cancer bush grew, its flowers dripping red. The little faces of the lion-mouth flowers looked up at me. I studied a sterretjiebos, because the dried star-pods looked like ants marching up and down its stalks. But they were not ants and they were not leading me anywhere.

I saw dung beetles, and spiders with golden bellies. I saw Karoo violets with velvet petals and little prickly plants whose names I did not know.

But none of them had signs of Jessie.

There were so many different kinds of life – insects, plants, creatures – that I had never really noticed before.

Life
, I found myself praying to the life on the land, like I had prayed to the sky and the rain.
Life of the land
.
Keep Jessie alive. Show us where she is. I beg you, Life, keep her alive.

We kept on looking and walking. The sun was setting now and the clouds were changing colours. Soon it would be dark. My heart was sinking with the sun. If we had not found her by nightfall . . . My eyes were sore from looking so hard, from seeing so many things, but none of them clues to Jessie. I put my fingers on my eyelids and closed them for a second. There was such a tiredness in me, I wanted to lie down on the ground and cry. I opened my eyes and saw Reghardt, reaching the top of a koppie. A herd of kudu were running away from him, down the slope of the hill. One kudu with big horns did not run. It stood staring at him, its horns gleaming in the light, while the others galloped away. Reghardt had his back to them, as he moved up to the peak of the hill. The running kudus came to a gwarrie tree that was growing between two big rocks and suddenly stopped. They turned and ran away from the tree, back up towards Reghardt. The big kudu barked, and the kudu herd ran down again, but on the slope away from the tree.

I raised my hand and shouted: ‘Henk! Piet!'

Kannemeyer was closest. I told him what I'd seen: the kudus were avoiding that tree.

‘What did they see or smell there?' I said.

He radioed Reghardt: ‘The big gwarrie tree, southwest of you.'

I watched Reghardt scramble back down the hill. Sliding on the loose gravel as he ran. He disappeared behind the rocks at the gwarrie tree. Kannemeyer and Piet were running now, up the slope.

Then I saw Reghardt's head appearing, as he walked out from behind the rocks. He was carrying a body across his arms.

It was too far to see for sure, but I knew it was Jessie.

He was shouting something. The people who were searching closest to the base of the hill ran towards him, and. soon they were shouting too, but I could not hear what they were saying. Then those a little closer to them heard the shout, and it got passed across the veld, between the thorn trees and the stones, until the words reached my ears:

‘She's alive. She's alive!'

CHAPTER EIGHTY-FOUR

I bowed my head in thanks:

Thank you, Rain, for hiding her tracks.

Thank you, Life, for keeping her alive.

Thank you for showing us where to find her
.

Tears were falling down my face when Hattie reached me and we hugged and cried together.

Then Candice joined us, stepping between the prickly plants in those heels of hers. Her legs were scratched and her face lined with dirt and tears, but when she smiled she was the most beautiful sight.

The ambulance got to Jessie before we could walk across the veld, and we saw Reghardt and Kannemeyer lifting her in. Reghardt got in too. A herd of mountain zebra galloped along the plain as the ambulance raced off, its
wee-waaah wee-waaah
tearing across the sunset sky.

We headed back to the cars, and Kannemeyer came to join us. We were smiling, but when we saw his face, we stopped.

‘What is it?' I said.

‘I'm no doctor,' he said, ‘but she is unconscious and it looks bad.'

A group of Seventh-day Adventists broke into prayer, and Hattie joined in with them. If there was a god, the Adventists and Hattie had his phone number, so I left them to it. I walked away and watched the darkening sky. The clouds were streaked with a deep red. I looked at the veld, soft in the evening light.

The sky and the land. I had prayed to them and they'd delivered. Could I still ask for more?

Should I not be doing some work myself? Helping Jessie get better. I was no doctor, but I was her friend. I let my heart fill with all the love I felt for her. My love was big and red like the sunset. It pushed out the worry and the fear in my chest. When my heart felt so full I thought it would burst, I sent all that love to her. I had her phone number. She would get my love.

There was a warm hand on my shoulder. It was Kannemeyer. But he turned and walked to his van before I could see his face. The searchers were back in the cars, waiting to go.

‘Oh, goodness,' said Hattie. ‘Do you think she'll . . . ?'

‘Turn on your lights,' I said. ‘She's a strong girl, our Jessie.'

We'd dropped the others off and it was just the two of us again, driving in her Toyota in the dark.

‘She may have lost a lot of blood . . . ' said Hattie, hooting by mistake as she turned on her lights.

‘Slow down,' I said.

‘She had injuries too. And maybe hypothermia— '

‘Watch out!'

A kudu leapt across the road and Hattie swerved into a thorny bush.

‘Oh, jolly hockey sticks!'

She got us out of the bush and carried on driving at the same speed.

‘So, darling, what's happening with you and the detective?'

‘Pasop! The gate!'

‘I see it, I'm not blind.'

I got out to do the gate and she reversed to give me space to open it.

When I got back in, she said: ‘I've seen the way you look at each other.'

‘I don't know, Hats.'

‘He looks after you very nicely, I must say. I was wondering . . . did he run that bath for you?'

‘He has been very nice. But he's just doing his job.'

‘I don't suppose he'll be camping at your house any more, now that . . . '

‘No. No, he won't.'

‘He's a jolly good-looking chap.'

And he could do much better than me, I thought.

‘I'm too old for that kind of stuff,' I said.

‘Never too old. Has there been no one since . . . Fanie?'

I shook my head. We were back on the tar road now, so the ride was a bit smoother. And although we veered around the road, thankfully there were no cars or animals.