Deon Meyer: Blood Safari

‘There’s more ice cream,’ said Carel’s wife hopefully.

He invited me to his playroom. He called it his den.

‘Invited’ in the broadest possible sense. ‘Shall we have a chat?’ were the words Carel used, a grey area between invitation and order. He went first. A mounted kudu head stared out over the room. There was a billiard table and a cane bar, bottles on a shelf, along with a small cigar humidor. The pictures on the wall were of Carel-and-gun posing with dead animals.

‘Drink?’ he asked, and moved behind the bar counter.

‘No, thanks,’ I said, leaning against the billiard table.

He poured for himself, two fingers of brown, undiluted liquid. He drank from the glass and opened the humidor. ‘Cuban?’

I shook my head.

‘You’re sure? These are class,’ he said complacently. ‘They age them for twenty-four months, like wine.’

‘I don’t smoke, thank you.’

He selected a cigar for himself, stroking his fingers down the chunky cylinder. He snipped the end off with a large instrument and put the cigar in his mouth. ‘Your amateur trims it with that cheap rubbish that crimps it here at the end.’ He held up his clipper for my inspection. ‘This is what they call a .44 Magnum. Makes a perfectly round hole.’

He reached for the box of matches. ‘And then you get the fools who lick cigars before they light up. That comes from the days when you bought local cigars in the corner café. If the moisture content is properly maintained, you don’t lick them.’

He struck a match and allowed the flame to burn strongly. Then he held it to the cigar. He inhaled in short, rapid puffs while rotating the cigar in his fingers. White clouds of smoke floated up around him and a rich aroma filled the room. He shook the match. ‘They say the best way to light a cigar is with a Spanish cedar spill. You take a long thin strip of cedar, set that alight first and then use it to light the cigar. It has a pure, clean flame that does not influence the flavour of the cigar. But where would we get Spanish cedar? I ask you.’ He smiled at me as if we shared the same difficulty.

He drew deeply on the cigar. ‘Cuban, nothing can touch them. The Jamaican is not bad either, nice and light, the Dominican somewhere in between, Honduras is too wild. Nothing touches the cream of old Fidel’s crop.’

I wondered fleetingly how long he could maintain a monologue in front of a bored audience, but then I remembered that he was a Rich Afrikaner. The answer was: infinitely.

He drew an ashtray closer. ‘Some fools think you shouldn’t tap off a cigar’s ash. Total myth. Bullshit.’ He chuckled. ‘The guys smoke cheap cigars and then say the bitter taste is the result of knocking off the ash.’

Carel sat on a bar stool, cigar in one hand, drink in the other.

‘There’s a great deal of bullshit in the world, my friend, a great deal of bullshit.’

What did he want?

Another puff on the cigar. ‘But let me tell you one thing, there’s no bullshit in little Emma. None. If she says there are people out to harm her, then I believe her. Do you understand?’

I was not in the mood for this conversation. I did not respond. I knew he didn’t like it.

‘Don’t you want to sit down?’

‘I’ve been sitting too much today.’

‘She’s like a daughter in this house, my friend, like one of my own. That is why she came to me about this thing. That’s why you’re here. You have to understand, she’s gone through a lot in her life. Deep waters …’

I tried to temper my annoyance by thinking how fascinating a man like Carel van Zyl was.

Self-made Men all share a personality type – driven, smart, hard working and dominant. When the wealth grows and people start to defer to their power and influence, every Self-made Man makes the same mistake. They believe the respect is for them, personally. It polishes their self-esteem and tones down their personality towards geniality. But it remains a thin veneer; the original dynamo is still at work behind the self-deceit.

He was accustomed to being the centre of attention. He did not like standing on the sideline of this event. He wanted me to know that he was responsible for my involvement; he was the father figure serving Emma’s interests, therefore he was actually in control, and the arbiter of my services. He had the right to interfere and to be a part of this. Above all, he had Knowledge. And he was about to share it with me.

‘She came to work for me after she graduated. Most men would have seen just a pretty little thing, but I knew she had something, my friend.’ He punctuated his sentence with the cigar.

‘I’ve employed a lot of them, account managers, and they just see the glamour and the long lunches with clients and the fat pay cheques. But not Emma. She wanted to learn; she wanted to work. You would never say there was money behind her; she had the ambition of someone from a poor background. Ask me, my friend, I know. In any case, she had been working for me for about three years when the thing with her parents happened. Car accident, dead on impact, both of them. She sat in my office, my friend, poor little thing, crushed, I’m telling you. Crushed, because she had no one left. That’s when she told me about her brother. Can you imagine? So much loss. Turbulent times. What can you say?’

He reached for the bottle and unscrewed the cap.

‘But she’s strong, that one. Strong.’

Drew the glass nearer.

‘I only heard about the size of the estate later. And let me tell you now …’ He poured two fingers. ‘This is all about the money.’

A dramatic silence, cap back on the bottle, a sip from the glass, a short pull from the cigar. ‘There are a lot of vultures out there, my friend. A lot. The bigger the fortune, the quicker they sniff it out. Ask me, I know.’

He gestured with the glass: ‘Out there is somebody with a scheme. Someone that’s done his homework, someone who knows her history and wants to use it to get at her money. I don’t know how. But it’s about the money.’

He brought the glass to his lips again and then put it down on the counter with finality. ‘All you have to do is work out the scheme. Then you have your man.’

At that moment I could have told him Lemmer’s First Law. I didn’t.

‘No,’ I said.

It was not a word he was used to hearing. His reaction proved that.

‘I’m a bodyguard. Not a detective,’ I said before I walked out.

My room was beside Emma’s. Her door was shut.

I showered and set out clothes for the next day. I sat on the edge of the bed and sent Jeanette Louw an SMS: IS THERE FILE AT SAPS GARDENS RE ASSAULT/BREAK IN ON E. LE ROUX YESTERDAY?

Then I opened the bedroom door so that I could hear and I switched off the light.

5

Nobody followed us to the airport.

We travelled in Emma’s Renault Mégane, a green cabriolet. My Isuzu pick-up stayed in Carel’s garage. ‘There is more than enough space for it, Emma.’

He had ignored me this morning.

‘Do you drive, Mr Lemmer?’ she asked.

‘If it’s acceptable to you, Miss Le Roux.’ It was our last formal exchange. While I was familiarising myself with the automatic gearbox and the startling power of the two-litre engine between Fisherhaven and the N2, she said, ‘Please call me Emma.’

This was always an awkward moment because people expect me to reciprocate, but I never volunteer my first name. ‘I’m Lemmer.’

Initially, I watched the rear-view mirror with extra attention, because that was where the amateurs would be – visible and keen. But there was nothing. I varied the speed between 90 and 120 kilometres per hour. Ascending the Houw Hoek Pass, I wondered about a white Japanese sedan in front of us. Despite the precautions I had taken, it maintained the same speed as we did and my suspicion grew stronger as we descended the other side of the pass when I pushed the Renault up to 140.