by Tony Park
Paterson licked his lips, like a snake sensing danger, or prey, and Hudson knew he had him. He backed away from him, giving him a little space. He half wanted Paterson to make a move on him, so he could plug him. Hudson reached into his pocket, took out his phone and tossed it to Paterson, who caught it.
‘Push the button. Check the screen.’
Paterson looked down, reluctantly.
‘That looks to me like a nice combination of aerobic and weight training, though Rosie’s only a little thing, isn’t she? Easy enough to lift her up and hold her against the wall like that. ’Course, the fact you’re both naked might make the future Mrs Paterson a little dubious.’
‘What do you want, Brand? Money?’
‘Sure.’
‘Really? That’s it?’
‘Yup. You know me; it’s probably all in your files. I’m broke, my rich ex-mercenary girlfriend got it on with Mario, and even if I wanted to forgive her she’s up and disappeared. Say, what did ever happen to Mario? I figure a psychotic killer like him probably likes working for you. You using him to rub out rival poaching gangs?’
Paterson simply stared at him.
‘Also,’ Hudson continued, ‘Anna, Shadrack’s mom, is not only heartbroken, she’s poor, like everyone where she lives, and she’s got a daughter in varsity. She needs money; I need money.’
‘I’ve got my wage. It’s good, but I’m not rich.’
‘Oh, you’re plenty wealthy, James. You’re the CEO of the Scorpions, Africa’s biggest organised crime outfit, and it’s going to just keep on getting bigger, isn’t it? In fact, it’ll probably expand at about the same pace as Julianne’s portfolio of safari lodges. I think that maybe an alpha male like you doesn’t like the thought of his future wife having bigger assets than him, so you’ll start expanding again once things quieten down. This time, though, you’ll target your poaching gangs’ activities to areas where Julianne doesn’t have a presence, so she looks good. I see the number of elephants getting killed in Hwange in Zimbabwe and Chobe in Botswana is on the up again, so maybe you’re already back in business, taking up where your partner, Nikola Pesev, left off.’
‘You’re suggesting . . .’
‘I’m suggesting you were the head of the Scorpions all along, and Nikola Pesev was your deputy, or partner, or whatever. I’ve got a recording Sonja made of Peves speaking Russian, at his lodge. I’m fairly sure he was talking to you; it was something about “plans being in place for a boat trip”.’
‘It wasn’t me.’
Hudson shrugged. ‘Maybe, maybe not, but it was kind of odd how you told us you would email Sonja’s recording of Peves speaking Russian to someone you knew, who could translate it. I was talking to Tom Furey, Sannie van Rensburg’s husband, a couple of days ago. Remember him? He remembers you, from that sting operation you were involved with in the UK, where you posed as an arms seller – a Russian arms seller. Seems you learned to speak Russian fluently during your service with the intelligence corps.’
Paterson glared at him. ‘It’s rusty.’
‘Whatever. I figure you told Peves that you wanted to get your girlfriend, Julianne, to stop her crusade against poaching, but also to compromise her. So, you two cooked up this idea where you’d launch a phony operation against Peves, he’d get wind of it, and you would be “kidnapped” in inverted commas. Peves would force Julianne to deal with him, to further his aims and yours, and to secure your freedom. By forcing Julianne into a deal with the devil – Peves – you’d both have some dirt to use against her in the future if, say, the marriage went sour. She didn’t know that you were using your poaching gangs, the bad guys, to help her bottom line as well; she just thought you were targeting bad guys. You’re quite a catch, James – a security man with his own private army that can wreak havoc on the legitimate competition to your wife’s business interests, and at the same time turn a few million bucks in ivory and rhino horn and whatnot on the side.’
‘You can’t prove any of this.’
It was Hudson’s turn to shrug. ‘Probably not, and I know the police will find it hard, too. I figure that things started to go wrong at Kipili when Mario escaped the dragnet that you and Peves had envisaged. He went rogue, and for you it would work out in your favour whatever went down. Either he’d get caught and killed by Peves’s men or – and here’s the interesting part – Mario might come and rescue you and kill Peves. He got me to help out with that part, and it suited you just fine. When Mario, Ezekial and I got the upper hand, you didn’t care if Peves was killed. Julianne got to claim that she destroyed the Scorpions and she didn’t have to make any grubby deals. You got complete control of the Scorpions; win–win.’
Paterson forced a laugh. ‘You should write a novel.’
‘I wondered,’ Hudson said, ‘why would you deliberately steer Rosie towards Peves?’
‘It’s your fantasy, you tell me.’
‘Maybe you were playing Peves, telling him the media was on to him, and all the while it was you using Rosie to set him up. You told Peves he was about to be exposed and that made him more willing to try your phony deal with Julianne. Rosie, the South African Police, other enforcement agencies – they were all closing in on the Scorpions and Peves, your lieutenant or whatever he was, was a perfect lightning rod to keep attention away from you.’
James shook his head. ‘You’re deluded.’
‘I know you’re the head of the Scorpions, and Sannie van Rensburg buys my theory as well, even if she can’t prove it. She’s coming for you anyway,’ he checked his watch, ‘in about fifteen minutes, for the murders of Goodness and Patience Mdluli.’
‘Rubbish.’
‘Is it? Sonja and Tema said Patience was hit, but she wasn’t in a life-threatening condition when you and Doug Pearse picked her up in Julianne’s chopper that night of the ambush. Doug was flying but you were giving combat first aid – that’s what Sonja told me during our drive to Tanzania. Patience didn’t make it.’
‘I did my best. You’ve been in combat. You know that sometimes you just can’t save someone.’
‘Yep, I do, but you didn’t even try because you weren’t on that flight to the hospital. I called the Mediclinic – I used to date a nurse there. She was on duty that night and she told me there was only the pilot, a white man, and another black man on board. Who was the other guy? I figure he was one of your team of poachers who you got Doug to pick up so that it wouldn’t look so strange if he arrived at the hospital alone with a dead girl in the back.’
He watched James and waited, but the other man simply shook his head.
Hudson nodded in reply. ‘Doug’s got a FLIR, a Forward Looking Infra-Red camera on that chopper. You found her, stumbling around in the bush, and he put you down, so you could track her down and kill her. Your other guys you had dismissed, told them to make their way out of the reserve on foot, but you had a job to do and you wanted it done properly, so you did it yourself. You were in charge of the whole operation, leading from the front. You wanted to lead the team that took on the Leopards – Sonja was a worthy adversary for you – and you wanted to be the trigger man on the RPD as well, just like with those IRA guys on the boat off the coast of England, except this time you’d be taking down a national parks helicopter with a machine gun. I know you, James, you’re not the backroom guy you pretend to be. You like the killing. Tom Furey told his wife, van Rensburg, all about you. You were on Julianne’s chopper after the contact long enough to pick up Patience and then go looking for her sister Goodness while Patience died. Why James? Why didn’t you just accept that wounding Patience would have been enough to seal the fate of the Leopards? Did you really have to kill both those poor girls?’
‘Doug didn’t tell you any of this.’ Paterson was looking up now, his eyes defiant. ‘Because it’s all lies.’
‘Y’all got that first part right. Doug got a call from the police yesterday, a s
imple request asking if he’d mind going through the events of that night, and he didn’t show up for work this morning. You can check at the office if you like. He’s flown the coop, literally, with Julianne’s helicopter. He’s left you hanging, James.’
‘Nonsense.’
‘Yup, deny, deny, deny.’ Hudson glanced at his watch again. ‘My deal’s gonna expire soon, Jimbo.’
‘What deal is this exactly? There is no way the police will be able to link me to the killings of either of those two women.’
‘You got a point there, James. It’s not a slam dunk. Van Rensburg was ready to bring you in to test your DNA against the blood samples the crime scene guys took off the razor wire on the perimeter fence of the Sabi Sand reserve. But, guess what?’
Hudson watched his face carefully.
‘What?’
‘The samples have gone missing. The police are investigating, but Sannie thinks someone was paid off to get rid of the evidence. That sort of thing happens here, in South Africa, right?’
He shrugged. ‘So there is no evidence linking me to the killings.’
‘Just your boots. The ones with the slash in the sole.’
‘I told you about those boots. I gave them to Shadrack, as a gift.’
‘Yeah, I remember, and Julianne told van Rensburg that same bullshit story you fed to Peves, that Shadrack’s cousin was the shooter and he tried to frame Shadrack by giving him back the boots he’d stolen from him. You miscalculated, though, James. You probably thought the South African police would have released the bodies of Shadrack and his cousin by now, but me starting an investigation and Sannie getting on board stalled that process. The cops took a look at the cousin’s body and there was no cut on his back, or anywhere else.’
‘I gave those boots to Shadrack,’ said Paterson.
‘Somehow, you don’t strike me as the altruistic kind, James. You ever given anything to any of the workers at Hippo Rock before?’
Paterson tugged at his right earlobe, looked up, as if trying to recall something. It was a telltale sign of a lie. ‘Yes, I’m sure I have.’
‘I’m sure you haven’t.’
‘How would you know?’
‘Cameron and Kylie who own the house I live in asked me to thin out their kitchen cupboards, to de-clutter the crockery. The place came fully stacked with old stuff when Cameron inherited it and they got themselves some nice new stuff as gifts when they got married. I gave the old plates and cups and saucers to a couple of the maids. I also gave Shadrack one of my old sweaters when it was really cold, back in July; he was freezing his ass off outside.’
‘So?’ said Paterson.
‘So, you don’t know the rules, but Sannie van Rensburg, another generous person, and I do.’
‘Rules?’
‘James, James, James. It’s a shame you’re such a tight-ass. What you don’t know is that all of the staff from Hippo Rock, even the tried and true, longest serving ones like Shadrack’s mom, get searched every day when they leave work. If they are given a gift by an owner, they have to produce a letter from said householder saying what it is they have been given, and that they have permission to take it off the estate.’
Paterson opened his mouth to speak, but couldn’t form the words.
‘Oh, I know what you’re going to say, James. You’re about to tell me you did write Shadrack a note, and that it must have got lost. Which is odd, because there’s a whole folder of those letters at the Hippo Rock security gate going back at least the last three or four years. Old Solly at the gate is a stickler for that kind of stuff.’
‘What do you want?’
‘That’s the spirit.’ Hudson reached into his shirt pocket with his free hand and pulled out a piece of paper. He tossed it to James, who unfolded it and read it.
He looked up at Hudson. ‘A printout of a letter from me, to Hippo Rock security, explaining that I gave Shadrack a gift of an old pair of combat boots, one with a damaged sole.’
Hudson nodded. ‘I figure an anally retentive ex–British Army officer like you would have made a duplicate, and that if you’re asked by, say, a certain blonde detective captain, that you’re somehow able to find this in your papers. Of course, I’m sure you actually gave the boots to Shadrack’s cousin, and told him to frame Shadrack, but then things went haywire when Tema and the local cops stumbled on the cousin taking his AK-47 around to Shadrack’s place. The cousin panicked and shot a policeman, so you then arranged for Sonja and her team to wipe out the pair of them in the heli-borne ambush you staged.’
Paterson stared at him, but said nothing.
‘Toss me the phone back.’ Paterson complied and Hudson caught it.
‘Open your shirt,’ Paterson said.
‘Want to know if I’m wearing a wire? Sure.’ Hudson unbuttoned his safari shirt and showed him his bare chest. He turned, quickly, and flicked up the tail. ‘I can drop my shorts for you as well, if you like.’
‘No need. How much for the letter?’
Yes, thought Hudson, now they had him. ‘A million rand. Half of that will go to Anna, half to me.’
‘I don’t have that much cash on me.’
‘I know you’re good for it. And if you don’t pay I don’t need to go straight to the police. Phase one will be showing Julianne this little pic of you and your workout buddy Rosie.’ He waved the phone at James. ‘What have you got here?’
‘A hundred thousand.’
‘Where?’
‘In my study.’
‘Then let’s go have a look-see, nice and slowly. We’ve still got some time before the cops come calling.’
Hudson backed off as James stood and led the way. Julianne’s house was a modern confection of glass and steel, designed to give uninterrupted views across the open grassy plain and waterhole below, and up into the granite koppies that rose behind the building. Those rocks were prime leopard country, Hudson thought as they walked on the polished wooden flooring, the perfect place for a predator to set up her lair.
Paterson entered his personal office area. He pointed to a minibar refrigerator, next to his modern stainless steel writing desk. The office was divided by a row of old-fashioned metal filing cabinets – Paterson was obviously old-school when it came to compiling dossiers on people. On the other side of the cabinets were a low coffee table and two armchairs.
‘Cold hard cash, a man after my own heart. Let me see first; I used to keep a .38 special in my fridge.’
Paterson bent, opened the refrigerator door and stepped back.
‘Beer, wine, vodka and canned peaches?’
‘Money’s in the fruit can. I’ve got a hundred thousand in cash in there. Consider it a down payment.’
‘Works for me. Nice and slow, now, take it out.’
Paterson dropped to one knee and reached into the fridge.
‘Tell me, what part did Julianne play in all this?’ Hudson asked.
‘Nothing,’ James said, not looking back. ‘She was – is – innocent. She had nothing to do with the Scorpions. Sure, she was keen for me to set up the special unit to track down the so-called poaching kingpins, and didn’t cry when the team starting killing people, but it was never her idea to set up a hit squad. She viewed it all as coincidence, collateral damage.’
Hudson felt his phone vibrate in his free hand. Paterson had the fruit can out and was reaching into it so Hudson risked a quick look at the SMS message on the screen. He saw the sender’s name first, Sonja.
Hudson knew she was somewhere close by. She had gone rogue, not answering his calls or messages, but it was Sonja who had taken the pictures of James and Rosie having sex in the gym, which she had emailed Hudson. She could even be watching them right now.
Grenade, said the message.
Hudson heard the click of a spring-loaded lever flying off the hand grenade that James had just slid
from the empty fruit can. Paterson’s body moved in a blur and there was a crash as he barrelled into one of the upright metal filing cabinets and sent it sprawling.
Hudson fired a double tap, and saw the towelling of Paterson’s loose-flowing robe being snatched by the bullet, but the other man was crawling behind the cabinets before Hudson could take aim again. Between him and Paterson, rolling slowly on the floor, was the hand grenade.
*
‘Gunfire. Go!’ Sannie said.
Julianne Clyde-Smith had been sobbing in her office from the moment it became apparent that Hudson Brand and Captain Sannie van Rensburg had been right about the man she had planned to marry.
Hudson was not wearing a wire, but bugs had been planted under the deck of Julianne’s home and in James’s office. Julianne had just found out that the electricians who had been called to repair faulty wiring in that end of her suite a few days earlier were actually police officers. The problems they had been called to fix were a result of sabotage carried out by Tema Matsebula.
Julianne had immediately denied any involvement with the Scorpions, or with setting up a hit squad, and had threatened to call in her lawyers. However, Sannie had outlined the case they had put together against James and convinced her to listen in to the bugs, to hear what James had to say to Hudson. Sannie had told her she believed James had paid off someone to lose the DNA evidence that would link him to the killing of the woman in the Sabi Sand, and that they had sent Hudson in undercover to try to draw James into a confession.
Now she felt heartbroken, foolish and angry.
The policewoman drew her gun and her husband was on his feet, following her out of the lodge’s main office, along the pathway to Julianne’s private residence. The officers had a head start on Julianne, and as she came out into the sunshine she heard an explosion.
*
Hudson Brand, ears ringing, back feeling like it was on fire, rolled over, sat up, and raised his Colt .45. He emptied the magazine at the figure in white, who leapt out the gaping opening where a floor-to-ceiling plate-glass window had just disintegrated.