The Prey (44 page)

‘There!’ Tertia snapped her fingers and pointed. ‘The camera. Now!’

He passed the Nikon to her, in exchange for the binoculars.

‘See that tree, the big jackalberry on the other side of the water?’

He blinked at the green glare in the viewfinders, then quickly became used to the bright but one-dimensional picture. He lowered the binoculars to sight the tree in the dark first, then found it through the gadget’s lenses. ‘Yes.’

‘The low branch, the one that hangs out over the river. Follow it from the trunk halfway. See him?’

Chris followed her directions, slowly moving the binoculars. At first he thought it was just a stubby offshoot from the main branch, but then it moved, ever so slightly. ‘An owl.’

Tertia’s Nikon clicked away on auto wind. ‘This is brilliant, Chris. I’m getting him. Yes, it’s an owl, but tell me what kind.’

He was no
fundi
, no expert on birds, but he knew most of the bigger raptors and the brightest coloured, most attractive birds of the lowveld. ‘Giant eagle owl, I suppose.’

‘Look again,’ she said over the whirring of her camera.

He studied it. ‘It’s odd. It doesn’t have ear tufts, but it’s helluva big.’

‘You’re getting close. Look, look …’

The bird swooped from its perch, but instead of flying off, or heading to the bank to take a mouse or a snake, it plunged into the water of the river, splashed about for a split second, then took off again. It returned to its perch with a shimmering, struggling fish in its talons.

‘My goodness, it isn’t …’

She lowered the camera and in the dark he could see her teeth glowing brightly as she grinned and nodded. ‘It is.’

He drew a sharp breath. ‘A pel’s fishing owl?’

*

Jessica stumbled and fell to her knees. Wellington grabbed her ponytail and yanked her hair to drag her back to her feet. She screamed into the gaffer tape that gagged her. It was dark and the bush had closed in on either side of the winding path that led up into the mountains.

He slapped her again. ‘You silly little bitch. Do you think I am stupid? Do you think that I don’t know you are trying to slow me down. It makes no difference. No one is coming to look for you.’

She didn’t believe him. Mandy and her mother would have gone to the mine after they’d picked up Mandy’s brother and they would know by now that Mr Coetzee hadn’t sent anyone. They would be looking for her everywhere, all over town and in the mountains.

‘You think your friends will raise the alarm. They will not.’ He glared at her with his yellow, bloodshot eyes, and their tiny pupils. She wondered if he was on some sort of drugs. ‘Coetzee did order someone from the mine to come and fetch you and the dominee, but he was my man. I paid him well for the information he gave me. He has gone into hiding. The hyenas who live in the nature reserve will take care of the holy man.’ Wellington laughed. He reached into his pocket and pulled out Jessica’s BlackBerry. ‘If you don’t believe me, have a look at this.’

He switched it on and held the glowing screen in front of her. ‘See, this is from you to your friend Mandy, the pretty girl with the pretty mother.
Sorry Mandy, I can’t take this. I’m catching a bus to Joburg to go stay with friends there. Luv u
.’

Jessica shook her head with anger. The creep had even copied the way she signed off her messages to Mandy. He must have checked her message log.

He looked back at the screen, scrolling down. ‘And this reply from your friend:
Come back soon babe
.’ Wellington laughed again.
‘Nothing from your mother, though.’ He shut the phone down. ‘That is because she is dead, like your father.’

Wellington prodded her in the back with his gun and she stumbled on. He moved alongside her, grabbing her by the arm, and they came to what looked like a dead end, a bush in the middle of the track. Wellington pushed her to her knees and put his gun in his jeans. He used both hands to grab the tree and shifted it to one side. It wasn’t living, but rather the camouflage for a black hole that opened in the side of the mountain.

Jessica screamed again and felt more tears springing from her eyes and rolling down her cheeks. This couldn’t be happening. Her whole family was gone. What did he want from her? Her dad couldn’t be dead. Suddenly she missed her mother as well. What had they done to anger this man so much that he would destroy all of them? Sooner or later Mr Coetzee would track down the man who had actually been sent to fetch her; someone would notice the dominee missing tonight. Someone would come. The nightmare would end.

L
uis’s cellphone rang. ‘
Ola
?’

‘
Ola
, cousin, how are you?’

It was Alfredo, the police captain. They exchanged pleasantries and then Alfredo said, ‘I have news for you, Luis. I have an address, in Maputo, for the cellphone number you gave me. Do you want me to get the local guys to send some officers around?’

Luis thought about that. It would be best to let the law deal with Wellington. That would be the sensible thing to do. ‘No.’

‘You’re sure? If this is the man who murdered Miriam I will see that he is arrested and never released.’

Luis reconsidered, but only for a minute. Despite his cousin’s machismo, Luis knew that the police in Mozambique could be bribed, and that the case against Wellington, even in a recognised court of law free from corruption, would be hard to prove. It would be impossible, too, for Luis to return to South Africa and get the police to open a docket on a man with a nom de guerre living in Mozambique. More likely, he thought, they would want to question him over the body of the gunman that had been left at the scene and the other thug, if his corpse had been discovered. Luis knew that Wellington had the local police commander, Sindisiwe Radebe,
in his pocket. Indeed, he had bragged that he had the colonel is his bed. No, there was only one way to handle this matter. ‘I’m sure. But you can help me with something else. Two things, in fact.’

When Luis explained what he wanted his cousin took a deep breath down the line and told him to come to Xai Xai.

Luis bade farewell to his mother and his son. Jose seemed withdrawn, the shock of his mother’s death still not fully registering. The father he barely knew was leaving him again. He had ruined their lives and could only hope that he might make it up to them, in time. ‘I will be back.’

Luis took a small daypack and walked from his village to the main road and boarded a
chapa
bound for Xai Xai. He whiled away the cramped, hot hours in the back of the minibus by reading the fading typed pages of his thesis. It seemed like a century ago that he had been a student, thirsting for knowledge and full of hope for his battered, shattered country.

As arranged, Luis called Alfredo on his cellphone when the
chapa
was a few kilometres from Xai Xai. Alfredo gave him the name of a cafe opposite the park a few blocks past the KFC. The minibus slowed to walking pace once they entered the clogged main street of the busy coastal town and Luis told the driver he wanted to get off. It was good to squeeze through the crush of bodies on board and breathe fresh, if somewhat exhaust-tainted, air. He walked through the crowds, envying these simple people with their simple lives. He turned his face from the throng to the clear blue sky, relishing its warmth on his face. He would be happy if he never went underground again. He longed to turn his back on crime and to provide a safe future for Jose. He was so close, but he was under no illusion that the hundred thousand rand that bulged in the pocket of his trousers would be enough to set him up for life.

He found the cafe and took a seat outside and ordered an espresso. Alfredo, who had changed from his uniform into civilian clothes, waved to him from across the street and came to him. They shook hands. His cousin carried a plastic shopping bag with something
wrapped in newspaper inside it. He placed the parcel at his feet as he sat opposite Luis.

Like every policeman in Mozambique, Alfredo’s wealth was evidenced in the rounded belly that protruded over his jeans, his chubby cheeks and his mirrored Ray Ban aviator sunglasses, which might, depending on how many bribes Alfredo had taken recently, be real or fake. Luis did not doubt that Alfredo was a good policeman. Serious crimes, such as murder and armed robbery, were rare in Mozambique compared to South Africa, and Alfredo had a good network of informants in the villages around Xai Xai and the town itself. If his cousin did not have a hand or a controlling interest in a local racket, then it was soon shut down.

They sipped the short, bitter coffee the waiter brought them. Alfredo used his foot to shift the shopping bag across the pavement so that it touched Luis’s ankle. Luis leaned back, so he could see under the table, and peered into the bag. He could tell by the shape it was the pistol he had asked for. ‘Ammunition?’

‘Two magazines,’ Alfredo said softly. ‘It’s a Russian Tokarev. You’ll remember it from the old days.’

‘Sadly, yes. Thank you, cousin.’

Alfredo slid a piece of paper across the table to Luis.

Luis checked it and saw an address in Maputo. It would be the registered address of the owner of the cellphone that Wellington had used to call the young men who assassinated his wife. Even if Wellington was not there now it would be a lead. Perhaps he would come back there, in time, to find Luis waiting for him. Luis savoured the small fantasy. But he had other things to do first. Revenge, the English said, was a dish best served cold. He could wait for Wellington, but his hundred thousand rand would not last long – Alfredo would require some of it now – so he needed a new source of income.

‘You know I am only charging you for my out-of-pocket expenses, cousin,’ Alfredo said.

‘Of course. How much?’

‘Five thousand rand, cousin, for the gun and for the woman at the telephone registration office. She did not come cheap.’

Luis counted the cash out beneath the table, out of the view of passers-by who might be tempted, or those who might recognise their rotund police captain in mufti. He passed the money to his cousin, who swiftly pocketed it.

Alfredo nodded his thanks. ‘The other information you asked for, about drilling rigs in the local area, comes free of charge. There is an NGO drilling for water at a village southwest of here, on the road to Massangir and the Limpopo Transfrontier Park. It is out of my
distrito
, but the Swedish man doing the drilling came here to report an accident. He hit a boy of fifteen with his pickup truck and the boy broke his leg. I am afraid that some of the youngsters around here may be deliberately throwing themselves in the path of cars driven by foreigners as they know that the drivers will pay them compensation in order to avoid prosecution. The boy’s family asked him for money, but the Swede insisted on coming to me. Naturally I am only here to see that justice is done. In the end the aid worker saw it was more sensible to pay the family some compensation rather than to risk prosecution for negligent driving.’

‘Do you have the Swede’s cellphone number?’ Luis asked.

‘Back in my office. He left it when he made his report. I can get it for you if you want it. Should I ask why you wanted this information about a drilling rig?’

‘Perhaps not,’ Luis said. They finished their coffee and ordered a second as Luis treated his overfed cousin and himself to omelettes. Luis was eager to get on the road, but manners insisted he stay a while and chat, now that the business was concluded. His cousin had done well out of him, but Luis could not complain. He was on the path to salvaging what remained of his life.

When they had finished Luis took his package in its innocuous shopping bag and boarded another
chapa
, which took him south, across the broad floodplain of the Limpopo River.

At Macia, he left the
chapa
and crossed the EN 1 and joined a throng of people waiting under a sign that pointed to the Limpopo Transfrontier Park. The park was an extension of South Africa’s Kruger National Park, and the road led back to the country that Luis had for so long dreamed of escaping.

Soon enough a minibus taxi arrived and Luis was jammed into the
chapa
with too many other passengers. The road inland took them through vast sugarcane fields, irrigated with a canal built by the Portuguese. Here and there white-painted farm villas with asbestos roof tiles painted to look like terracotta harked back to a colonial era that had not existed for nearly forty years but whose presence was still pervasive.

The commercial farms gave way to bush and small villages. It was dry, inhospitable country where people eked out a meagre subsistence. He opened the map Alfredo had drawn for him and saw they were approaching the village where the Swede and his team were drilling a new well. He got out in the village, outside a cellphone tower surrounded by a fence topped with razor wire.

Luis took out his cellphone, marvelling that he could pick up a four-bar cellphone signal in a place where people could barely feed themselves or find enough clean water to drink. He dialled the number Alfredo had given him.

‘Hello, Anders speaking!’

‘Good morning, sir, how are you?’ Luis said in English. ‘You do not know me, but I would like to enquire about hiring your drilling rig for three days.’

‘What?’

‘Your drilling rig, sir. I would like to rent it from you.’

‘What? You want to rent the rig. No, of course not. This is for the village water project, not for anyone to come along and use for his own purpose. This rig has been paid for by the people of Sweden.’

‘I see,’ said Luis. It was the answer he was expecting. ‘Thank you for your time.’

Luis walked across the street to a small roadside
spaza
store and looked inside, greeting the skinny female proprietor. There was not
much produce – some warm bottles of coke, Sunlight Soap, packets of biscuits, tinned pilchards and some brightly patterned cloth wraps. To the surprise of the woman, he bought one of the wraps. ‘
Mama
, where are the white people drilling for water?’ he asked in Tsonga.