by Tony Park
‘Sure. Are you hungry?’ He wanted to try to take her mind off the evening’s traumatic events.
Sonja reclined in her chair again and raised her glass. ‘Eating’s cheating, that’s what the Australians say. Did I tell you about these Aussie guys I got drunk with in Afghanistan? All illegal, of course. They weren’t allowed to have alcohol.’
‘Dinner’s in the oven, but it’s as dry as biltong now. I saved you some.’
‘What?’
She sat up, like a cat with its hair raised. His first impression of her, when he’d met her in Etosha National Park in Namibia two years earlier, was of a feral animal. She had that look about her again now. ‘Nothing.’
‘You’re pissed off at me because I wasn’t home right on the dot? Is that it? Well, let me tell you, while you were here playing MasterChef, I was out fighting the fucking war.’
‘It’s OK, Sonja.’
She drained her drink, in only her second mouthful. She went into the kitchen. He heard the tinkle of more ice in her glass. ‘I’ll take a beer, if you’re offering,’ he called after her.
Sonja said nothing. He waited a minute then got up. She was standing by the refrigerator, her glass in her hand, staring at the sink and the two wineglasses, two plates, and the empty bottle of La Motte Shiraz that were in it.
‘Sannie van Rensburg came over for a sundowner. You remember, I told you she might drop by?’
She blinked at him a couple of times. ‘You mentioned a police captain named van Rensburg, not that she was a she.’
‘I met her working a case. I was a murder suspect – not guilty. Long story. She and her husband had a banana farm, but sold up and bought a house here at Hippo Rock a while ago. She’s the officer in charge of the anti-rhino poaching squad at Skukuza Police Station now. I’ve been meaning to get her over for dinner for some time and I thought as you were in anti-poaching she’d be a good person for you to meet.’
Sonja poured Coke into her glass until it was half full. Hudson stepped aside as she walked back into the lounge room.
When he wasn’t working as a safari guide, driving tourists around the Kruger Park in his open-sided Land Rover, he did private investigation work. He knew how interrogations worked – sometimes the best way to get someone talking was to be quiet and let them fill the void. He had nothing to feel guilty about so he was happy to talk while Sonja added more brandy to her drink.
‘Sannie’s husband’s away. Tom’s an ex-cop. He was a protection officer, a bodyguard, and he got a gig doing some UN work in Iraq. He flies over there for a few weeks at a time. Money’s good.’
Sonja sipped her drink and walked to the sliding door that led out to the balcony, overlooking the Sabie River and the national park on the other side. Hippo Rock Private Nature Reserve took its name from a pair of granite boulders that shone in the moonlight, in the middle of the rushing river. Hudson followed her out. There was a chill in the air and the floorboards were cool under his feet. He cracked the beer he’d taken for himself.
‘I asked Sannie to stay for dinner. Her kids are in boarding school now, at Uplands, during the week. I thought the three of us could have a nice night.’
She looked from the river back to him.
‘Sonja.’
‘It’s OK. I know you have a lot of female friends. There’s that detective in Zimbabwe; the Cuban doctor, Elena; the woman who runs the bar in Hazyview . . . I forget her name.’
‘Hannah.’
‘Yes, she’s an ex, right?’
He nodded. ‘I told you, when we went for a drink there.’
Sonja walked back inside, draining her drink as she went. She put her glass down on the bar as she passed it, nearly spilling the ice out, and went to the room they’d been sharing for going on eight weeks now.
Hudson waited in the lounge room, wondering if she’d gone to use the en suite bathroom. The resident wood owl asked who, who, who are you from the weeping boer bean tree out by the deck. Good question, he thought.
When Sonja came back she was carrying her camouflage rucksack and green vinyl dive bag. It was everything she’d brought with her to Africa.
‘Sonja, where are you going?’
‘I’ll check in to the Protea Hotel, by the Kruger Gate, for tonight. I got a call from the owners of Lion Plains on the way here; the Leopards’ training program has been indefinitely suspended, so I’m not sure if my gig will continue there. The experiment to arm the women seems to have failed at its first hurdle.’
The Leopards, Hudson knew, had originally been formed as an unarmed anti-poaching unit to walk the western boundary of the Lion Plains Game Reserve in daytime to look for overnight breaks in the electric fence, and to search vehicles coming into and out of the area. Sonja had been brought in to convert them to a gun-toting paramilitary force.
He reached out a hand to take her bag. ‘You can stay here as long as you like. Listen, nothing happened between Sannie and me. We’re friends and she’s happily married.’
Sonja looked over her shoulder, down the hallway to the open door of the master bedroom and the rumpled, turned-back sheets.
She shrugged his hand off her. ‘I’ve been offered a job that will take me away. Julianne Clyde-Smith wants me to train her anti-poaching people.’
‘Sonja, please, nothing happened. Let’s sit down and talk. We can chat about what happened tonight if you like. And I’ve got a good therapist in Nelspruit. She’s really nice.’ Hudson knew enough to recognise that Sonja had issues, but her reaction to him having dinner with Sannie was off the Richter scale.
‘She?’
‘Yes. Look, Sonja, you’re tired. You’re reading too much into all of this. I . . . I want you around. We have fun, don’t we?’
She stood there, by the front door, a little unsteady on her feet. ‘You think that’s what life is all about? Fun?’
‘For crying in a bucket, Sonja, no, it’s not all fun. I know that as well as you. We’ve both served, both lost friends, but doesn’t that make it all the more important to enjoy life when we can?’
‘I need to sleep, but not here. Bye, Hudson. Have fun.’
She closed the door slightly harder than was necessary and he stood there, listening to her start up the Toyota Hilux that had been donated to the anti-poaching patrol. It wasn’t good that she was driving in her state, but at least the hotel was only a couple of kilometres down the road and there would be little or no traffic at this time of night.
Brand took his beer outside to clear his head and thought about what had just happened and how he had handled the situation. He had never read the instruction book on relationships and hadn’t had one yet that had worked. He and Sonja had slept together when they met in Namibia two years earlier, and while there had been chemistry, she had returned to where she had been living in the States. They had been in touch, off and on, and when the volunteer position with the Leopards had come up, Hudson had been looking forward to seeing her again.
Theirs had turned out to be one of those friendships that survived long absences, with the pair of them falling straight back into conversations as if they had been apart for days, not years. The sex had come back easily as well, but try as she might to be happy, Hudson knew she was still smarting from the death of her partner, Sam. When he’d first met her in Namibia she had seemed to him like a feral cat, all hissy and ornery, but in the house in Hippo Rock after a while, she’d been like a lioness in a zoo – restless, pacing, maybe looking for a way out. He ought not to be surprised Sonja had walked out, but it had happened sooner than he’d expected.
He leaned on the railing of the deck. Somewhere over in Kruger a lion called, soft and far away. The wood owl kept asking.
Hudson wondered who he was and why Sonja might even want to hang out with him. Fun? No, life wasn’t just meant to be about fun, but Hudson had seen enough killing to know that while ha
ving a good time might not be the secret to happiness, neither was getting shot or shooting people. Sonja Kurtz might not have got that memo yet.
He finished his beer. He felt blue enough to have another, but he had an early start the next morning, driving a party of American birders around the park. He didn’t want to drive with a hangover, so he went back inside, closed the doors and climbed into bed.
Hudson replayed the evening’s brief conversation with Sonja over and over in his head, seeking some meaning, wondering what he could have done differently. She had seemed so intent on walking out, without giving him the chance to defend himself – not that he had done anything wrong. Why?
Their lovemaking had been in turns wild and passionate, and slow and tender. He loved her body and she’d said she dug his, but that wasn’t enough. The only time he’d seen her eyes soften and her lips curl into a real smile was when she talked about her daughter, Emma, who had graduated from her archaeology degree and was living and working in Australia. Sonja had said more than once that she was pleased Emma had ended up in such a safe country.
Sonja, however, couldn’t seem to function in a place without danger. He’d talked last week about them getting away for a while, to the beach in Mozambique, or spending a few nights in Kruger together, but she had always changed the subject back to her work. She didn’t seem to want to make plans with him. He didn’t know exactly what it was that they’d had, but now she was gone he knew he wanted her to stay.
He felt hurt, hard done by, and a little angry. He hadn’t intended on setting up house with anyone, but he had enjoyed it. And now she had walked out on him over nothing.
Sleep didn’t come easy, but when it did he dreamed of Sonja.
Chapter 3
Captain Sannie van Rensburg wanted to retch. She was no stranger to death, but the body of the woman in the camouflage fatigues lying at her feet had been partially devoured by vultures. It wasn’t the first time she’d seen a human in this state, but it still shook her.
Sannie had investigated several murders in the course of her work as a detective in Nelspruit, but she had hoped she would see few dead bodies – except for those of poachers – when she transferred to the SAPS, South African Police Service, rhino poaching investigation unit, based at the Kruger Park’s main camp, Skukuza.
‘We might never have found her out here in the middle of nowhere if it wasn’t for those vultures,’ said her partner, Warrant Officer Vanessa Sunday.
Vanessa was from the Cape and had transferred to Skukuza with her husband, who was an ecologist with South African National Parks. She was young, smart and keen.
‘You’re right. Lucky the morning game drive from Lion Plains found her when they did.’
Sannie straightened, put her hands on her hips and looked around her. The bush was quiet, save for a grey go-away bird who gave his eponymous call from somewhere nearby. A handful of vultures had taken up position in a leadwood tree and watched her enviously.
‘Where exactly are we again in relation to the contact between the female anti-poaching unit and the rhino poachers?’ Vanessa asked.
Sannie pointed to the south. ‘We’re on the Lion Plains property now. The shootout happened over there, to the north. The lodge at Lion Sands, the neighbours on the Sabie River, is actually closer than the one on this property, so the women headed there for safety.’
Vanessa shook her head. ‘I was used to seeing bodies on the Cape Flats with all the gang wars, but I didn’t expect my first case up here to be a multiple shooting.’
Sannie knelt again, trying to ignore the horribly mutilated face and the empty eye sockets, and checked the woman’s pockets. ‘As we suspected, the ID book is that of Goodness Mdluli. Her sister was wounded in the contact with the poachers and died in a chopper on the way to Nelspruit.’
‘Shame.’ Vanessa circled the body, looking for tracks. Sannie noted how she moved to keep any tracks between her and the sun, to use the shadows to help her read the signs on the ground. ‘We’ve got boot prints all around.’
‘Those poor tourists on the morning drive, having to see this.’ Sannie took a deep breath and rolled the body onto its side. Two entry wounds in the back. ‘She was shot down while she was running.’
‘You’d think the poachers would have run back to Mozambique after the contact. Instead they took the time to hunt down this girl.’
Sannie nodded. ‘Yes, and it meant them moving further away from where they came from to get her, assuming they did walk through the park from Mozambique.’
They both looked around at the sound of an approaching vehicle. Its engine stopped but Sannie and Vanessa were out of sight of the nearest game-viewing road.
‘Coming in,’ said a woman’s voice.
Sannie stood and peeled off her rubber gloves. Two women, one white and one black, wearing fatigues that matched the dead woman’s, appeared through the bush. The older woman looked to be in her forties, with auburn hair tied back in a ponytail, blue eyes and a fit figure.
‘Miss Kurtz.’
‘It would have been Sonja if we’d met last night. You’re Captain van Rensburg.’
‘Sannie. It’s odd that we meet this way.’
‘Not in my world, probably not in yours. Hudson Brand told me you once investigated him for murder.’
‘Yes, I did.’
Sonja looked to the woman next to her. ‘This is Tema Matsebula. She was with me last night.’
‘Good morning, madam,’ Tema said. ‘How are you?’
‘Fine and you?’
‘I am also fine.’
Sannie introduced Warrant Officer Sunday to the women.
Sonja looked at the body on the ground. ‘Goodness Mdluli.’
Sannie held up the identification card. ‘So it says here. She was shot from behind. When last did you see her alive?’
‘When she ran away from our patrol, leaving her sister, Patience, bleeding and screaming in the bush.’
Sannie raised her eyebrows. ‘So you think Goodness got what she deserved?’
Sonja looked at the ruined face, the bloodied uniform. ‘No one deserves to be shot in the back.’
‘Front’s OK, though?’
‘Her sister wasn’t a great trainee, neither of them was, but she was caught in an ambush. Looks like someone hunted Goodness down and executed her.’
‘Why?’ Sannie asked. Two more detectives from the SAPS rhino poaching investigation unit and the South African National Parks environmental crime investigation unit were busy working the crime scene where the poachers had been killed and Patience initially wounded. Sannie hoped they’d be able to provide some answers.
‘I don’t know.’
‘I’m in overall charge of the investigations,’ Sannie said. ‘I’ve spoken to two other members of your anti-poaching patrol this morning. One of them told me you and the Mdluli sisters had argued, more than once, that they resented you giving them certain orders and that you criticised them in front of the others.’
Tema cursed in xiTsonga under her breath.
Sonja held up a hand. ‘It’s fine, Tema. The truth is, neither of them would have passed the course. Their lack of commitment wasn’t reason enough for me to shoot Goodness in the back, Captain, and neither was her running out on her sister and her comrades. That would have earned her a klap from me.’
‘Klapping staff, even para-military recruits, isn’t allowed in the new South Africa,’ Sannie said. ‘I may need to interview you.’
‘I’ve given a witness statement to the other detectives just now,’ Sonja said. ‘If you want more from me you’ll have to arrest me. They’re not charging me over the deaths of the two poachers I killed, and I’ve got to go see someone about a job.’
‘No, we’re not charging you or any of your people. Not yet, anyway. We’ll open an inquest docket into the killings of the poachers.
All your statements, from what I know of them, indicate that the poachers fired first. They’ll most likely have illegal firearms, which also counts in your favour. Unless we turn up any discrepancies there probably won’t even be a coronial inquest. We’ll open murder dockets into the deaths of Patience and Goodness.’ Sannie didn’t think Sonja Kurtz had gunned down her own recruit in cold blood, and the location of the body and the timeline didn’t support such a theory, but it was her job to cover all eventualities. ‘If I need to question you more can I find you at Hudson Brand’s house?’
‘No.’ Sonja’s phone rang. She answered it and moved a few paces away.
Sannie shook her head at Sonja’s abruptness. She looked at the girl dressed in camouflage who had been standing next to Sonja, and realised she was familiar. ‘I know you.’
‘Yes, madam.’
‘You don’t have to call me that. You worked at Hippo Rock?’
‘Yes. I was a maid. I cleaned your house once.’
‘That’s right, when we first moved in. You came with Shadrack, the labourer.’
‘Yes. Shadrack Mnisi, he is my next-door neighbour.’
‘My husband and I still get Shadrack to come and sweep and trim back the bush around our house. He’s a machine, that guy, and cheery, too. There’s a waiting list of owners who want to have him work at their places.’
Tema nodded. ‘Yes, he is a lovely guy. People think that because he is a little slow that he can’t work, but he would do anything for a friend. We grew up together.’
Sannie felt a little bad that she hadn’t recognised Tema at first. ‘How do you like this work, anti-poaching?’
‘It is good. It was scary, last night, but also . . .’
‘Exciting?’ They nodded in unison.
Sonja was still talking into her phone as she came back to them. ‘Ja, come along Ivory Drive from little Serengeti, you’ll see my bakkie, a cop car and the vultures.’
‘Who’s that?’ Sannie asked when Sonja ended the call. ‘I hope you’re not inviting sightseers; this is a closed crime scene.’