Deon Meyer: Blood Safari

A few kilometres before Grabouw, I decided to make certain once and for all. Shortly before the T-junction, I put on the indicator, slowed down as though I intended to turn off and watched the white car. No reaction, it kept on going. I put off the indicator and accelerated.

‘Do you know the way?’ Emma enquired politely.

‘Yes, I know the way,’ I replied.

She nodded, satisfied, and rummaged in her handbag until she found her sunglasses.

Cape Town International was chaos – not enough parking owing to the building additions, too many people, a beehive of anxious Christmas season travellers on their way to somewhere and keen to get the journey over as quickly as possible. Impossible to spot shadows.

We checked in Emma’s large suitcase and my black sports bag.

‘What about your firearm?’ she asked on the way to Departures.

‘I don’t have one.’

She frowned.

‘Carel just assumed,’ I said.

‘Oh.’ Not happy. She wanted the assurance that her protector was suitably equipped. I kept quiet until we were through the baggage scanner, when we waited at the Nescafe coffee shop for a table to become vacant.

‘I thought you were armed,’ she said with faint concern.

‘Guns make things complicated. Especially travelling.’ It wouldn’t help to tell her that my parole conditions forbade the possession of a firearm.

A table became available and we sat down. ‘Coffee?’ I asked.

‘Please. Cappuccino, if they have it. No sugar.’

I went to stand in the queue, but in a position to see her. She sat with her boarding pass in her hand, staring at it. What was she thinking? About weapons and the level of protection she expected? About what lay before us?

That’s when I saw him. His eyes focused intently on Emma. He weaved between the tables. Big, white, neat beard, mustard T-shirt, pressed jeans, sports jacket. Early forties. I moved, but he was too close to intercept. He reached out a hand to her shoulder and I blocked him, gripped his wrist and swung back his arm, got my weight against his back, pressed him up against the pillar beside Emma, but without violence. I didn’t want to attract attention.

He made a noise of surprise. ‘Hey,’ he said.

Emma glanced up. She was confused, her body taut with fright. But she recognised beard-face. ‘Stoffel?’ she said.

Stoffel looked at her, then at me. He pulled back, trying to free his arm. He was strong, but uncoordinated. An amateur. I stayed fluid, gave him a bit of leeway.

‘Do you know him?’ I asked Emma.

‘Yes, yes, it’s Stoffel’

I loosened my grip and he jerked his arm away.

‘Who are you?’ he asked.

I stayed very close to him, intimidating him with a look. He didn’t like that. Emma stood up, holding her hand in the air apologetically. ‘This is all a misunderstanding, Stoffel. Nice to see you again. Please sit down.’

Stoffel was indignant now. ‘Who is this guy?’

Emma took his hand. ‘Come say hello, it’s nothing.’ She pulled him away from me. He allowed it. She offered her cheek. He kissed it quickly, as if he still expected me to do something unexpected.

‘Coffee?’ I asked in a friendly tone.

He didn’t reply immediately. He sat down, slowly and solemnly, so he could restore his dignity. ‘Yes, please,’ he said. ‘Milk and sugar.’

There was a little smile on Emma’s face, the anxiety forgotten. She glanced fleetingly at me, as though we shared a secret.

The flight to Nelspruit was on SA Express’s fifty-seater Canadair jet. I sat beside Emma, on the aisle; she sat by the window. The plane was nearly full. There were at least ten passengers who, according to age, gender and level of interest, could qualify as members of Emma’s imaginary opponents. I had my doubts. To place someone on a plane as a tail is overkill, because the point of departure and arrival is known.

Before we took off she said, ‘Stoffel is an attorney.’ I hadn’t sat with them over coffee. There were only two seats at the table and I preferred to stand for a wider view and a final chance to stretch my legs. I expect Stoffel wanted to know who I was and she had avoided the question.

‘He’s a good guy,’ she said now. And added, ‘We dated, a few years ago …’ With nostalgia that indicated a history. Then she took the flight magazine out of its slot and flipped it open.

Stoffel, the ex.

My assumption had been otherwise – I thought he was a business acquaintance, or the husband of a friend. He hadn’t struck me as the kind of man she would be attracted to. And their interaction was so … friendly. But I could picture it: they meet at one of the social or cultural watering holes where the rich gather after sundown. He is well spoken and intelligent, with a cutting self-mockery and a fund of judicial inside stories that he tells with flourish. His attention to Emma would be subtle, he would have a method with women, a recipe he had perfected over twenty bachelor years. She would find it pleasant. When he procured her number from a mutual acquaintance four or five days later, she would remember who he was. She would accept the invitation to the top-ten restaurant. Or the art exhibition, or the symphony concert. She would know from the start that he was not really her type, but she would give it a chance. By her mid-thirties she would have learned enough about people in general and men in particular to know that her type had complications. A woman like Emma would be attracted to the Men’s Health cover man – a finely sculpted Greek god only half a metre taller than she was. So that they would make a fine picture as a couple.

Her sort was a metrosexual with a dark fringe, pale eyes and the perfect smile. The sporty, fit, outdoor kind that went jogging on the beach with his Staffordshire terrier, and parked his old, secondhand Land Rover Defender in front of Camps Bay’s hot spots, the spade prominent on the rack along with the jerrycans. After four or five relationships with clones of Mr Men’s Health she would know that the soulful silences and the laconic devil-may-care chats were mostly camouflage for self-absorption and average intellect. So she would allow the Stoffels of the world a chance, and after a month or so of entertaining, albeit unexciting dates she would gently tell him it would be better if they were only friends (‘you’re a good guy’) while secretly she wondered why this sort of man could not set her heart alight.

We took off into the south-easter. Emma put the magazine away and stared out of the window at False Bay, where the white horse breakers galloped into the shore. She turned to me.

‘Where are you from, Lemmer?’ With apparent interest.

A bodyguard does not sit with his client on planes. The bodyguard, even on a solo mission, forms part of the greater entourage. Usually he travels in a separate vehicle, always in a seat, to perform his duties anonymously and impersonally. No intimate contact and conversation, no questions about the past. It is a necessary distance, a professional buffer, so ordained by Lemmer’s First Law.

‘The Cape.’

It was not enough to satisfy her. ‘Which part?’

‘I grew up in Seapoint.’

‘It must have been wonderful.’ What an interesting assumption. ‘You’ve lost the accent.’

‘That’s what twenty years in the public service does for you.’

‘Brothers and sisters?’

‘No.’

Some part of me enjoyed this, the attention, the interest. I felt like her equal.

‘And your parents?’

I merely shook my head, hoping it would be enough. It was time to shift the focus. ‘What about you? Where did you grow up?’

‘Johannesburg. Linden, in fact. Then I went to Stellenbosch University. It was such a romantic idea, compared to Pretoria and Johannesburg.’ She stopped for a second, thoughts drifting off. ‘Afterwards, I stayed in the Cape. It’s so different from the Highveld. So much … nicer. I don’t know, I just felt at home. As if I belonged. My dad used to tease me. He said I lived in Canaan while they were in exile in Egypt.’