Deon Meyer - Blood Safari

So where had it come from? And what could it buy?

I thought myself into a corner. I was tired of thinking, I wanted action. I wanted answers to clear the whole thing up, to lift the heavy dark curtains of deceit and lies and let the light shine on everything, so I could know who to grab by the shirt and could smash my fist in his face and say, ‘Now tell me everything.’

On the R541 beyond Badplaas I had to slow down to spot the Heuningklip gate in the dark, since there was no ostentatious gateway, just the ghostly game reserve behind the high game fence. I drove a kilometre beyond the little signboard and parked the Audi as far off the road as I could in the long grass. I got out, pushed the Glock into my belt and checked my watch. A quarter to three in the morning. Gestapo time.

I climbed over the gate, which was three metres high. I would have to follow the track. I couldn’t afford to get lost in the thickets. There might be lions too. Melanie Posthumus had said that Cobie told her when Moller had seventy thousand hectares of continuous land, he would introduce lions and wild dogs. That was a couple of years ago.

The road wound for the three kilometres up to the humble homestead and outbuildings. I walked. I felt exposed, but on either side the grass was too long and impassable. I walked with my hand on the pistol and listened to the noises of the night. I heard a hyena chuckle, a jackal howl. Dogs barked in the distance. I didn’t know whether wild dogs barked, I knew only that they hunted in packs, chasing their prey for miles and biting chunks out of them until they collapsed from loss of blood and exhaustion. Then the whole pack would join in the orgy of feasting.

I walked faster, keeping to the middle ridge where my feet made less noise.

A night bird flew up with a clatter right in front of my face, then another one, three, four, five. They gave me a fright and I stood and swore with the pistol in my hand. It took long minutes for the racket to die down.

I set off again.

At last, up the hill, there was the farmyard shrouded in darkness. Not a single light burned.

Would Stef Moller be home yet? Or did he go to Mogale with Branca?

I would search the homestead first.

I crept along the shadows. There was the house, the shed and another long outbuilding. Beyond the rise were four labourer’s cottages, little buildings with off-white brick walls and corrugated iron roofs. Stef Moller had nodded in their direction when he referred to squint-eyed Seppie as his only workman.

I walked slowly across the veranda to the front door of the house and turned the knob carefully with my left hand, pistol in the right.

It was open.

If a door is going to creak, you don’t want to prolong it. I pushed it open quickly, went in and closed it. No appreciable noise.

It was very dark inside. I couldn’t see the furniture clearly and I didn’t want to collide with any. I would have to wait for my eyes to adjust. To the right was a big room. Was it the sitting room? In front of me was a hallway. I walked down it quietly.

The first door to the left was the kitchen. There were no curtains and I could see the white enamel of an old stove. There were two more doors, left and right, both open. Bathroom to the left. Bedroom to the right.

I listened at the bedroom door. Nothing.

I went on. There were another two doors on both sides. Both were bedrooms, the one to the right was the biggest. Stef Moller would sleep there. It was impossible to see anything. I took a step into the room and stood straining my ears, but all I could hear was the beating of my heart when I held my breath.

I came out, putting the ball of my foot down deliberately, then the heel, softly, silently, until I was in the third bedroom.

It was empty. There was no one in the house. Moller was still on his way, or perhaps he was sleeping over somewhere. I walked back to the front door more quickly, since there was no one to hear me. I went out and stood on the veranda. The yard was eerily quiet. The labourer’s cottages lay to the east on my left. There were about a hundred and fifty metres of open ground and crunchy gravel to cross. The tall grass was mowed to two metres from the cottages. I would just have to get there and I would have cover.

The cottages were on the side of the hill in a crooked row, clearly visible in the soft light of the setting crescent moon and stars, an amazing firmament out here where no other light burned. I would begin with the one on the left, closest to the homestead. I had a problem. Squint Septimus lived in one and I didn’t want to wake him. But which one? It was impossible to say. Probably not the very first one – you don’t want to sleep too close to the boss. I bet on the second one.

And the man I was looking for? The fourth or the fifth cottage?

It could be either. I began the long trek across the hard-baked open ground, pistol ready. I thanked the gods for the absence of watchdogs. I put each foot down quietly, so it would not disturb a sleeping man. I aimed for the long grass just left of the first house, taking my time carefully, wondering whether he was asleep in house number three or four, and guessing what he would say when I pressed the Glock to his temple and gently shook him awake.

Fifteen metres to the grass, then ten. I had to concentrate in order not to rush the last five. Mustn’t make a noise. When I was safely there, I squatted down and stared at the windows of the first house. No curtains. Upper and lower door of wood, the paint peeling.

I walked, crouching, through the grass to the next house. Dirty white lace curtains with a long rip in them. Where was Septimus? There was Septimus, sleeping, unconscious and unimportant. I crept on another seven metres and squatted on my haunches. I saw the faded yellow curtains in the window of house number three and I remembered Melanie Posthumus saying she had bought some pretty yellow material that was nice and cheerful and I knew where he was sleeping.

I’ve found him, Emma le Roux, I’ve found the elusive pimpernel Jacobus le Roux, also known as Cobie de Villiers. Murderer, missing person, activist and enigma.

Something cast a sudden shadow beside me in the thick grass and someone pressed a gun barrel softly against my cheek and said in a very nervous voice, ‘Put down the pistol before I blow your fucking head off.’

38

Sudden rage or fright stimulates the medulla to excrete the hormone epinephrine. I knew this because I had read up on it in jail in my eternal search for answers. Epinephrine speeds up the heart rate, raises blood sugar levels and blood pressure, constricts the pupils and the capillaries in the skin, so blood loss will be decreased should you be hurt. It prepares the body to better manage a physiological crisis and is referred to as the ‘fight or flight’ response.

The books don’t say what it does to the brain, which is that it ignores the temporary madness, the red mist.

But with a delicately vibrating gun barrel at your temple, fight, flight or madness are not useful responses. All you can do is fight for control and to try to neutralise the effect of the hormone with absolute concentration by breathing slowly and deeply and sitting dead still.

That was not what the shadow beside me wanted.

He banged the barrel hard against my skull and said, ‘Put the fucking thing down.’

His tone was not that of a man in control. It was filled with anxiety and a shrillness that I didn’t like. I slowly lowered the Glock and put it on the grass.

‘Who are you?’

I wanted to look at him, but he pressed the firearm harder to my temple.

‘I am Lemmer,’ I said soothingly.

‘What do you want?’

‘I work for your sister, Jacobus. For Emma le Roux.’