The Cull

by Tony Park

  ‘I disliked being set up for gunfights where the inevitable result every time was for me and my people to shoot our way out. That was not what I signed up for.’

  Julianne held up a hand in a conciliatory manner. ‘I completely understand, and I’ve had a long, hard discussion with James about that. From now on, if you still wish to re-join us, you will be involved in every level of planning from beginning to end and you will have an equal say.’

  ‘Except Paterson’s busy planning a mission now,’ Sonja said.

  ‘Well, that was in train before you called me. However, you’re more than welcome to thoroughly vet the plan before anything else happens. In fact, I’ll insist on it.’

  Hudson sat back and regarded the two women. Sonja was pushing a little hard, he thought, but, after all, the aim of their ‘operation’ was to find out what Julianne Clyde-Smith was really up to. Julianne was either lying very convincingly in claiming that she was not bankrolling a hit squad, or she was telling the truth.

  They had discussed it in the Land Rover on the last leg of the drive to Kuria Hills, from Kichwa Tembo. There was a possibility that Sonja and her team had just had a run of bad luck – or good luck, if your desired end state was wiping out every poacher and kingpin in Africa.

  As an investigator, though, Hudson didn’t believe in coincidences.

  Julianne looked up, past Sonja. ‘Oh, hello!’

  Hudson turned his head and his heart gave an unpleasant lurch as he saw Rosie Appleton, dressed in denim and khaki, walk into the bar.

  ‘Hudson!’

  He swallowed and stood. ‘Rosie.’

  She came to him and kissed him on the cheek. Through his peripheral vision Hudson saw Sonja’s face. She did not look happy.

  ‘Rosie, it seems you know Hudson. This is Sonja Kurtz, she’s also from South Africa.’

  ‘Namibia.’

  ‘Oh, yes, right.’

  ‘Sonja Kurtz. I’ve heard of you,’ Rosie said.

  Sonja, Hudson saw, was fixing her gaze on Rosie the same way a cobra did before it spat its venom into its victim’s eyes. ‘Ditto.’

  ‘Rosie,’ Julianne said, ‘we’re kind of in the middle of a meeting here, can I help you with something or get someone to look after you?’

  Hudson saw how the reporter’s professional curiosity was immediately piqued.

  ‘I was just coming for a drink, but I can sit elsewhere.’

  ‘Hudson,’ Julianne said, ‘since you two know each other perhaps you might like to wait with Rosie and have a drink while Sonja and I talk business.’

  ‘No,’ Sonja said.

  ‘We can go to my office, Sonja,’ Julianne said.

  Hudson looked back to Sonja.

  ‘No. Hudson’s in on this as well. He’s going to be part of my team.’

  I am? thought Hudson. That was news to him.

  ‘What team?’ Rosie asked, unable to hold back.

  Hudson wondered why Sonja had shown her hand by letting Rosie know that she was going back to work for Julianne.

  ‘Leave us,’ Sonja said to Rosie.

  The reporter put her hands on her hips. ‘Excuse me? I’m a guest here, and I will not be spoken to in that tone.’

  ‘Perhaps we can reconvene later,’ Julianne said placatingly. ‘For now, why don’t we all just have another drink?’

  Sonja stood and closed the distance between her and Rosie, until she was just centimetres from her nose.

  ‘I’m not reconvening for anyone. This is a private meeting. Get out of here before I throw you out,’ Sonja said.

  Rosie opened her mouth, but the reply died on her lips when she locked eyes, briefly, with Sonja again. Rosie turned on her heel and strode out of the bar.

  ‘Well, that’s one way to deal with the media,’ Julianne said.

  Chapter 20

  Captain Sannie van Rensburg let the African bush take over her senses as she walked through Hippo Rock Private Nature Reserve.

  Sannie had told the Hazyview detectives – and Hudson – that she would take on the job of investigating Shadrack’s movements before his death. Her first port of call had been the Hippo Rock administrative office where Avril, the receptionist who booked maids and labourers to clean and maintain owners’ houses, gave her some surprising news. Shadrack’s last day on earth had been spent cleaning up around the home of James Paterson, Julianne Clyde-Smith’s head of security.

  Sannie and Tom enjoyed their life in the Hippo Rock Private Nature Reserve on the border of the Kruger Park. They had only been able to buy the house thanks to the money that Tom was making working as a protection officer – a bodyguard – in the Middle East, but it annoyed her that he was away so much. She knew it was no easier for him, and they were both looking forward to the day when they could spend more time together. With the kids in boarding school it was only her work, back in the police service, that stopped her from going stir-crazy.

  Today she had an excuse to work from home, and as she walked along the red sandy road through the reserve, her walking stick clicking out a tattoo with every second step, she took a moment to savour the beauty of where they lived. Everyone who walked in Hippo Rock carried a stick; the theory was that if one came across a hyena or a leopard that standing tall and still with the stick in the air would scare the animal off. Sannie wasn’t sure if that would work, but it gave her some measure of comfort.

  Although it was terribly dry she loved the bush at this time of year, at the end of winter. The sky was perfectly clear and the day was warming nicely. Winter was mild in the South African lowveld; although the nights could be pleasantly chilly enough for a fire and a good night’s sleep, the days were carbon-copy perfect for the middle six months of the year.

  With the leaves fallen from the trees, and the bush thinned out by the occasional nocturnal raiding party of elephants from the neighbouring Kruger Park, Sannie had a much better view of the houses she passed than she would have in summer, when the bush was lush and green.

  Ahead of her was James Paterson’s luxurious bushveld retreat. Like the house that Hudson minded it was on the river, overlooking Kruger, and these were the most expensive homes on the reserve. Sannie and Tom’s house was located a couple of kilometres deeper into the Hippo Rock estate. It was nice, and set on a little spruit, or stream that flowed into the Sabie, but their house was far more modest than the mansions that lined the riverfront.

  Sannie had no warrant to search Paterson’s house or property, but as she came closer she worried less about legal ramifications of what she was about to do and more about the other owners who lived at Hippo Rock.

  She looked around her, to make sure there was no one sitting on their stoep or, like her, out for a walk to the communal picnic area where those who couldn’t afford a river house could watch the game over in Kruger.

  Sannie dealt with law-breakers every day, but she was certain she would be more civil towards a thief or a poacher she arrested than one of her elderly neighbours would be to her if they caught her trespassing on someone else’s plot. There were no internal fences between the properties in Hippo Rock and the law of the land, agreed to by all owners, was that one did not walk through the bush onto a neighbour’s stand without permission. People here guarded their privacy and the tranquillity of their bushveld paradise jealously.

  Taking another glance around, Sannie turned off the track and threaded her way through a dense stand of Tamboti trees. These trees with their distinctive black bark scored into little rectangles were a reminder that danger was a neighbour to beauty here in the African bush. Tamboti was never to be used as fuel for a braai because the smoke the wood gave off when burned, while sweet smelling, was poisonous. Sannie kept small pieces of Tamboti bark in her chests of drawers to keep bugs out of their clothes.

  She could see the house, and while she knew James Paterson was away in Tanzania, s
he paused to look and listen. He could have perhaps allowed friends to stay.

  All looked quiet, however. Sannie moved cautiously through the bush until she came to the rear of the house. It had the look of being recently renovated, with a heavy dark wood double-sized door and clear-view stainless steel security screens to keep out mosquitos and human – and animal – intruders, but allow a breeze through in warm weather. It was expensive security for a bush house on an estate with next to no crime, save for the occasional opportunistic burglary.

  Sannie walked around the house, scanning the ground as she went. She wasn’t exactly sure what she was looking for. There was spoor in the cleared ground between the house and the surrounding bush; all the houses had a perimeter like this in case of fire. She picked up the tracks of bushbuck, baboons, a monitor lizard dragging its long tail on the ground, and a hyena.

  The last person to visit this house, then, other than James Paterson and any company he may have kept, was Shadrack, who James had employed from the estate’s pool of people to clean up his grounds. Sannie had come across James Paterson a few times. The police based in the Kruger Park occasionally met with the security people in the Sabi Sand and other reserves on the border of Kruger, to discuss anti-poaching strategies and when investigating crimes committed on the reserves. Also, she’d seen James around Hippo Rock. They didn’t socialise, but were on cordial first-name terms. He had always struck her as professional, polite and proper.

  Completing her circuit, Sannie came back to the front door of the house, which was located on the side away from the river, in a similar layout to the home Hudson was house-sitting. She knew the effect of entering a house such as this – as soon as the door was opened the visitor was confronted with the stunning river view and the wilderness beyond. Sannie scanned the ground, keeping the tracks she was picking up between her and the sun as she cast further away from the house.

  Here, she saw tyre tracks and a man’s shoe print. It was faint, and it was not a workboot, such as the one Ezekial, Sonja’s master tracker, had picked up in the Sabi Sand Game Reserve where the two female anti-poaching operators had been killed.

  Sannie walked up the short access road that led from the house to Hardekool Street, the road that ran parallel to the river. They’d had a fairly heavy shower of unseasonal rain, Sannie recalled, just before the Leopards Anti-Poaching Unit had been ambushed.

  There was a patch of ground that held deeper, clearer tracks of game, including the large hooves of one of Hippo Rock’s resident giraffes. Sannie surveyed the road; this spot was in a small depression and it had obviously held the moisture from the rain and been quite muddy. Here, at the intersection of the roads, in the shade of one of the leadwood trees – Hardekool in Afrikaans, giving the road its name – was the clear, dried imprint of a workboot. Sannie took out her iPhone and focused the camera on the track. She snapped a picture then got down on one knee to study it and another two imprints.

  The man who had made these tracks had walked from Paterson’s house to the road. Sannie knew the maids and labourers generally waited by the side of the estate’s main roads to be collected in the afternoon by Thomas, the induna, or manager, who supervised the estate’s workers. The ground would have only been muddy for a short time, so it stood to reason that Shadrack, the only male worker at Hippo Rock who should have been at Paterson’s house during that period, had left it.

  But when Sannie took a closer look at the tracks she saw that both, one left and one right, looked to be from boots with good soles, with no sign of a cut or other damage.

  Sannie stood, brushed the knee of her pants and looked back at the house. She retraced her steps down to the house and decided to cast about once more, looking further around the house, though for what she still did not know.

  She heard a rustle above and looked up to see a vervet monkey peering down at her. Sannie wagged a finger at it – the monkeys and baboons were a constant source of worry for the homeowners. A window or door left carelessly open was a gilt-edged invitation for an invasion by primates and a guarantee of an appalling mess.

  Sannie walked around the house again, in a wider circle this time, and stopped at the side facing the river. Below the house’s brick stoep, which sat behind her at head height, was a narrow track that ran parallel to the fence that marked the actual boundary of Hippo Rock. The Sabie River gurgled around some smooth granite boulders about twenty metres from where she stood, hands on hips.

  The Hippo Rock security personnel patrolled this road, on foot and quad bike in the morning and evening and at irregular times during the day, looking for signs of intrusion by humans, and by elephant, who were easily capable of breaking through the three strands of electric wire that constituted the fence along the river frontage.

  Sannie detected movement in her peripheral vision and turned to see a big bull elephant with an impressive pair of tusks, shining clean and white after he’d waded across a stretch of river. The bull raised his trunk and sniffed the air, perhaps having picked up her scent.

  Sannie stayed perfectly still, enjoying the sight of this regal fellow. She marvelled, again, at how quiet these giant creatures were. The elephant, having detected no sign of danger, began feeding on some papyrus on an island in the river. It was not the most nutritional form of vegetation, but at the end of the long dry season beggars couldn’t be choosers. It was one of the reasons elephant were prone to break into Hippo Rock at this time of the year – because the reserve did not have resident elephant there were more trees here than across the river in the national park.

  People who lived on the river were treated to regular sightings of elephant – not to mention lion, leopard, rhino and buffalo. Sannie and Tom hoped they might one day have enough to buy a property along this multi-millionaire’s row. Sannie went back to scanning the ground.

  As she walked along the perimeter fence, the road dipped into what would have been a rivulet during the rainy season. Here, as at the intersection of the main road, the water had pooled during the recent rain and the soil had turned to mud. Sannie stepped over the patch, which also held a good amount of spoor, and once more positioned herself so that the tracks were between her and the morning sun.

  Ignoring the signs of animals, she zeroed in instead on another boot print. This could have been made by one of the security personnel, but if it had, then he had been stationary, staring out at the river.

  Sannie took out her phone and, once more, dropped to her knee to get a better look. This boot looked to be about the same size as the one that had left the imprint by Hardekool Street.

  Except that this print, quite clearly embedded in the mud, had been made by a boot with a slash across the sole.

  *

  Sonja turned off the taps of the outdoor shower on the deck of her luxury suite. Wildebeest snorted and brayed on the grassy slope in front of her as she towel-dried her hair under the sun and pulled it back in a ponytail.

  She dressed and walked out and up the hill towards the dining area. The sun was low and red.

  Hudson emerged from his suite – Sonja had made a point of insisting they had separate rooms – and joined her on the pathway. He said nothing.

  ‘What’s wrong?’

  ‘Me joining the anti-poaching team wasn’t part of the plan,’ he said.

  ‘No plan survives –’

  ‘First contact with the enemy; I know Erwin Rommel and Sonja’s Kurtz’s “art of war”, but you could have given me some warning.’

  Sonja was annoyed with herself. Hudson was right; their plan had been that he would continue his own investigations on the periphery, perhaps even back in Arusha, after she re-joined Julianne’s strike force, or whatever term they were using for the team now. It irked her that she had made the decision in an instant, and all because of jealousy. She hadn’t wanted Hudson slinking off with Rosie Appleton. She saw her emotions now for what they were – foolish and cou
nterproductive – but backing down was not in her nature.

  ‘And now I’ve got to socialise and work with that prick Mario Machado,’ Hudson added.

  Sonja sighed. She really had made a mess of this. She regretted bringing Mario onto the team, and what had gone on between them, but she was sure he would be enough of a gentleman not to put her on the spot. She had made this bed and would have to lie in it, with both of these handsome dark-haired men.

  She thought about Julianne Clyde-Smith. She was a powerful businesswoman, used to getting her own way, and it had been clear from their meeting earlier in the day that Julianne was pleased Sonja was back on the team, apart from her comment about Sonja leaving without notice in Zimbabwe. A couple of times during their talk, after Rosie had left, Julianne had leaned closer to Sonja and touched her on the arm to reinforce a point she was making.

  They walked up the hill to the lodge and Hudson stepped aside so she could walk through into the dining area of the lodge first. ‘OK. Let’s do this.’

  Tema stood up from a long table as soon as Sonja entered and walked around to her. They shook hands and then Tema hugged Sonja.

  ‘I’ve missed you so much,’ Tema whispered.

  ‘Don’t make it too obvious.’

  Sonja looked around. Mario had been at the bar. He looked to her, then Hudson, his face souring. Sonja saw Hudson return the look. ‘Where’s Ezekial?’ she asked Tema.

  ‘In his room in the staff quarters. He says he’s sick. He hasn’t spoken to me since the contact we had with the elephant poachers.’ Tema lowered her voice. ‘He doesn’t know that you’ve been getting me to spy on Mario, and I think that he thinks I’m some sort of cold-blooded killer like Mario. It’s killing me not to tell Ezekial.’

  ‘Not just yet,’ Sonja said softly. ‘Mario.’

  He came to her and offered his hand. ‘Nice to have you back, boss.’