The Last Hunt

by Deon Meyer

  ‘But not nearly as good,’ said Cupido.

  ‘I’m sure,’ said the professor.

  He invited them to sit down, told them he had looked at everything and it was a very intriguing case. But could he ask a few questions first?

  ‘Sure,’ said Cupido.

  ‘Where did this sample come from?’

  ‘Presumably from a footprint, on the floor of a crime scene.’

  ‘Interior? Exterior?’

  ‘From inside a house.’

  ‘Okay. Was there any drilling done outside the house, or nearby?’

  ‘What sort of drilling?’ Griessel asked.

  ‘Drilling for water. You know, a borehole.’

  ‘Not that we’re aware of.’

  ‘And when do you think the footprint was made? What day?’

  ‘Tuesday. Why, Prof?’

  ‘One moment, please.’ Ford turned to his computer, manipulated the mouse and keyboard, studied something they couldn’t see. Then he propped his elbows on the desk. ‘Right. If you’ll indulge me, I’d like to explain this like . . . What’s that wonderful expression you have, about how to eat an elephant?’

  ‘Bite by bite,’ said Cupido.

  ‘That’s the one, mate. First of all, there’s the texture of the sample.’ He reached for one of the microscope photos he’d printed out earlier. ‘Look here. These are chips of a very distinct shape. Not granules, not normal flaking. That’s very typical of the form created by drilling. Your forensic report identifies it correctly as limestone, a common layer beneath this part of the Western Cape. And then look at the colour. Bluish-grey, typical of the unexposed De Hoek limestone unit, which is so distinctive in appearance. Especially subterranean. Moreover, they regularly target this layer for drilling because, when fractured, it often holds water. The other interesting aspect is that the limestone chips are mixed with lesser quantities of various other commonly found rocks, which is another pointer to a borehole going through the various layers. There’s also the complete absence of the sand granules you’ll find closer to the coast. And, last, this stuff will only stick to your shoes when it’s fairly wet. Now, I won’t say this in a court of law, but if you’ll allow me a Jack Irish moment, I’d venture to say—’

  ‘Jack who, Prof?’ Cupido asked.

  ‘Jack Irish? The character from the late great Aussie crime-fiction author Peter Temple’s books?’

  They just shook their heads. ‘We don’t read crime fiction, Prof,’ said Cupido. ‘It’s just too . . . airy-fairy.’

  ‘Right,’ said the professor, mildly deflated.

  ‘What were you going to say, Prof?’ asked Griessel.

  ‘Well, it’s just a deduction, based on the sample analysis, and what you told me now. And I might be wrong, but I think this guy walked in the effluent of a borehole being drilled, or just after it was drilled, less than two hours before he left that footprint.’

  ‘Why?’ asked Cupido.

  ‘The effluent needed to be wet to stick to the sole of a shoe. And I don’t think it would take much longer than an hour to dry, maybe ninety minutes. I asked you on what day it happened, so that I could check if it rained. Rain would obviously make a difference in terms of the moisture and stickiness of the sample. But it only rained on Wednesday, after almost a week of no precipitation. So . . .’

  ‘That Johnnie Irish would have been proud of you,’ said Cupido.

  ‘Jack,’ said Ford, with a broad smile. ‘Jack Irish. I rather think so too.’

  Chapter 72

  Daniel could instantly identify the ambassador’s residence in the rue Cimarosa as the South African flag was flapping lazily in the light, cool breeze. The camera prominently installed at the front door was the only sign of security. Daniel had expected more than that while the president was in the country; a small police presence, even. But there was nothing. Just the metal barriers that marked reserved parking in front of the residence and the Argentinian embassy directly opposite, probably permanent, and for official vehicles.

  He remembered the information provided by the young playwright in the yellow dress that the president was in Versailles today. And tomorrow all day in meetings at the embassy, a few kilometres away. Was that why there were no eyes or security here?

  It didn’t really matter. This street offered no opportunities. It was too narrow, the neighbouring buildings too low to offer good vantage points and firing angles, unless he was prepared to expose himself on one of the rooftops. There would be intelligence operators in the Argentinian embassy too, and a system that monitored the rue Cimarosa.

  He pulled his hood a little lower and walked on. For a moment he wondered what it looked like inside, in the ambassador’s residence. Was it a friendly place where countrymen could converse, where the indigenous languages could sometimes be heard, and politics hotly debated? Were there paintings and photos of South Africa to soothe the homesickness?

  Griessel asked Professor Ian Ford if it was possible to tell from the soil-sample analysis where the borehole had been sunk.

  ‘I thought you’d ask that. The answer is probably not what you want to hear,’ he said, picking up a large cylinder from the top of a cupboard behind him, unrolling it and spreading it flat on the desk. It was a map showing the Peninsula and neighbouring areas. Ford ran his hand over an area stretching from the west coast to near Malmesbury. ‘Your De Hoek limestone unit covers a lot of subterranean territory, and emerges above ground about here.’ His finger prodded near Riebeek-Kasteel. ‘So, my best bet would be that the drilling took place west and south of this point. Perhaps this area here.’ He pointed at an area between Moorreesburg and Durbanville. ‘But I understand that it doesn’t help you a lot. It’s a big area to cover.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Griessel. It was just him and Cupido; they had no other help. And they had only today, Saturday and Sunday before they had to return to work. It was a very big area.

  ‘And your problem doesn’t end there. The WWF estimates that in the Western Cape somewhere between fifty and a hundred boreholes are being drilled every day because of the drought. That’s a potential of some seventy-two thousand boreholes in the last eighteen months, which scares me a lot as a geologist when I think about the water table. This morning I also had a quick look at the various drilling companies offering their services now, and I identified twenty-nine. There might be more, mom-and-pop operations . . . But you’ll need to find out who was drilling in this area on Tuesday, and you’ll probably only have to investigate about a hundred different drilling sites. But that shouldn’t be a problem, right? I’m sure you guys have the manpower to cover them all.’

  The only place for an assassin to hide, should he plan to shoot the president while he was leaving the car at the Hôtel Raphael, was just one block from the Arc de Triomphe. Right at the end of the wide boulevard, diagonally on the opposite, furthest corner, there was a building in the process of being restored: number six avenue Kléber.

  There was scaffolding, tarpaulins covering windows, ladders leading upwards. There was a mixture of metal-sheeting and steel-mesh fencing, a metre and a half of it, barricading the building site from the sidewalk. The only access was through a steel gate. On Sunday it would certainly be securely locked. But if Daniel could get through the gate or over the fence – not an insurmountable problem – it would be easy to find a vantage point high up.

  As long as he wasn’t seen.

  On Sunday the site would be deserted. With a watchman, perhaps. Who could be persuaded with a few thousand euros to look the other way, if all else failed.

  It would be a shot of about 120 metres. A very short distance for the CheyTac. An easy task should the trajectory be clear and uncluttered.

  But it wasn’t. As with all boulevards in Paris, there were trees on either side of the street. Mostly planes. At this time of year they were in full leaf. And they were tall enough to interfere with his sight, and influence the flight of the bullet.

  Daniel had reached the Hôtel Raph
ael. He went up to the steps of the entrance, stopped a moment and looked at the roof of the building at number six. He gauged it with his eye. Too many leaves and branches.

  He walked up the steps, stopped just before the door. At least he would have a clear line from there.

  It meant he would have two or three seconds to aim, and fire. While the president was taking the two steps between the last step and the door.

  Little time. Very little time.

  He walked down again, walked on, crossed the street.

  He needed to see how he could get into the building site.

  In the parking lot of the University of Stellenbosch, under large bare oaks, the two detectives sat in Cupido’s car. Their discussion was serious and they were barely conscious of the students streaming past in the late winter sun, on their way to lunch.

  They had used the list of the twenty-nine drilling companies the professor had given them to divide the task between them. Now they were discussing the challenges of the search. Each of the businesses might have four or more drilling rigs and teams, and each had to be asked: did you drill a borehole at a house or a smallholding or a farm between last Saturday and Tuesday, where a black BMW X5 was present?

  It was possible that the people might never have seen the vehicle, but that was all the information they had to go on. It wouldn’t help to ask if they had worked on a government property because the State Security Agency was known to use front companies, trusts and false personal details, all in the name of state security to make deals and buy or rent property.

  It would help to focus first on boreholes that had been sunk north of Dunoon, as that was where the X5 had last been seen, on the road to Malmesbury. It was still a great deal of work for two people to get through in only two and a half days.

  ‘I’ve got a gig tonight,’ said Griessel. ‘With the band.’

  ‘That won’t matter. Most of these companies won’t answer the phone outside office hours. I’m worried about tomorrow too. You know the Cape. People don’t like to work on Saturday.’

  They agreed that each would work from his home, and let the other know if there were any developments. By six o’clock that evening they would confer telephonically again. Cupido would ask Mavis, the Hawks’ reception and switchboard operator, to transfer all possible incoming calls to their phones or refer them to their numbers.

  ‘It’s a shot in the dark, Benna,’ said Cupido. ‘But we gotta try.’ Then, with a crooked smile, when Griessel got out: ‘Who would have thought, partner, that our docket was gonna depend on rocky science.’

  Daniel went into the EXKi Kléber, a health-food take-away shop beside the building site, because he could see some of the workmen in their neon orange work jackets ordering drinks there. He pushed his hood back, asked one if there was a job vacancy on the site.

  The man looked him up and down, smiled in sympathy. ‘General manual labour? There’s a waiting list, my friend.’

  ‘Will it help if I go and see the foreman?’ He badly wanted to get through the gate to look at the configuration and layout.

  ‘He’ll just refer you to the website. That’s where they advertise jobs. But I’m telling you now, if you’re not some or other artisan, you can forget about it.’

  Daniel studied the work jacket. It bore the logo of Dumez Île-de-France, the contracted construction company. But apart from that it was the usual sort you could buy at the right workwear shops. He looked at the man’s trousers, shoes and the yellow hard hat. He thanked him and left.

  He walked slowly around the edge of the site, studying the vehicle gate, the steel-mesh fence, the sheet-metal section. He saw the blue-and-white sign on the fence, with the icon of a camera and the words Site sous vidéo surveillance. He searched for the cameras. He could see only one in front at the gate, on the boulevard – a turnstile with a small intercom box and a card reader.

  Only once he was past, on the side of the Arc de Triomphe, did he see the best place to get over the fence. He would have to be blatant – and agile. And hope for the best.

  The biggest problem was that the only entrance would also be the only exit.

  By four p.m. Benny Griessel suspected that the fingerprints were not going to produce any results, as Arnold still hadn’t called. That would mean they belonged to an SSA spook. Their worries about last night’s discovery would be in vain.

  By five he was sick and tired of parroting the same two lines over and over.

  The first: ‘Hello, I’m Captain Benny Griessel of the South African Police Service Directorate for Priority Crimes Investigation, the Hawks. I need to talk to your operators who were drilling between Sunday and Tuesday in the Western Cape. No, unfortunately I can’t say what the investigation is about, but it’s a priority crime. Yes, they can phone me back anytime. I can give you the number, or you can look it up in the book or on the internet if you want to check I am who I say I am.’

  The second, when the drill operator called back: ‘We have forensic evidence that means we suspect a crime scene can be linked to a borehole that was drilled on Sunday, Monday, or Tuesday. We believe that there was a black BMW X5 on the scene as well. Can you help?’

  By six he was finished with his list of drilling companies. Now he could only wait, hope that a drill operator had seen something and would ring him back. He called Cupido to hear if his colleague had any news.

  ‘Nearly done with my allocation, but no news, partner.’

  By seven o’clock Griessel was on the stage with the other members of Rust; he got lost for a while in the pleasure of the music. The audience, too, were happily swept up in it.

  By eight, when they took a breather, he saw he’d missed a call from Arnold. He called back immediately.

  Arnold said: ‘Yip, we had a hit in the population register.’

  He gave Griessel the name.

  Griessel phoned Cupido and said: ‘It’s what we were afraid of.’

  Chapter 73

  Saturday, 2 September

  Griessel didn’t sleep well. He’d tossed and turned over the news of the fingerprints, the uncomfortable implications. He and Cupido had agreed last night. Benny must call Mbali Kaleni and tell her they wanted to talk. And Griessel must also confess that they’d continued the investigation against her orders. According to Cupido, she wouldn’t come down on Griessel ‘like a ton of bricks – she likes you more than me, partner.’ He knew flattery was sometimes his colleague’s manipulative weapon of preference.

  Kaleni was going to blow her top. He knew it. She was going to totally explode over all this.

  He phoned her at just after eight to avoid incurring added wrath for waking her up. ‘Can we come see you, Colonel?’

  She was silent for a few seconds. ‘I thought you were taking a break, Benny.’ Her voice was sharp, as though she knew something was brewing.

  ‘Colonel, something has come up.’

  Another silence. ‘Meet me at the office. In an hour.’

  The previous night Daniel Darret had sent an email to Vula. He said their recommended operating theatre wasn’t perfect, but he could make it work.

  This morning they replied:

  That is very good news. Go ahead. You are in our thoughts.

  When he left the flat with Lonnie’s rucksack – a large wad of the remaining cash and one pistol in it – he took two hours ensuring that he wasn’t being watched. He drew on all his stores of knowledge, acquired here so long ago, using it as he wound through the streets and alleys of Le Marais, then on the Métro system, and eventually in the Château Rouge district in the shadow of the Sacré-Coeur, where a potential Russian agent’s pale face would be much easier to spot.

  There was no hint of anyone following him. For the first time he felt relaxed, the insecurity and paranoia firmly under control.

  At the Gare du Nord he put the rucksack into a locker. Then, when the city’s shop doors opened he went into an internet café near the station and downloaded the logo of the construction company Dumez
Île-de-France. He asked the manager to print it out for him in full colour.

  He hailed a taxi, and went to visit an office-supply store near the Quartier de l’Horloge, where he had the logo mounted in a plastic badge.

  Just east of Bastille Métro station, in the eleventh arrondissement, he located a shop that sold construction workers’ gear. He bought an orange jacket, sturdy boots, blue work trousers, worker’s gloves and a hard hat.

  He went back to the flat on foot, and packed away everything that was in the big shopping bag. Next he drove the Peugeot to the avenue Kléber. Yesterday he’d seen that the only possible parking spot from which he could survey the building site was in front of or near the EXKi take-out restaurant. He had to drive round the block seven times before he found a suitable place to park, where he could watch the site from the side- and rear-view mirrors.

  He sat there for three hours, until his body ached and his neck was stiff.

  He had seen enough to know that what he was planning was going to be difficult. But not impossible.

  He felt the faint tension of expectation – of the final phase – settle in his body.

  Tomorrow it would be worse.

  He was getting old.

  Mbali Kaleni did not explode.

  Griessel told her about the fingerprints. But not about the borehole possibility. He and Cupido thought it was redundant now. The colonel heard them out, listened to their reasons for disregarding her orders, then what they had done, illegally, to have the prints tested against the population register. And the visit to the house the day before yesterday.

  She didn’t bat an eyelid. No protest, no indignation, no rebuke. She didn’t even look at the documents Cupido unpacked on her desk while Gliessel was talking. She just seemed to shrink more into the big desk chair under the photo-montage, with its fresh gap in the middle.

  The detectives felt even more guilty and uneasy.