by Deon Meyer
‘It’s Lemmer. The news is not good.’
‘Where is Emma?’ It was more of an order than a concerned enquiry.
‘She’s in hospital, Carel. There was an incident.’
‘An incident, what kind of incident? What’s she doing in hospital?’
‘Carel, if you’ll be quiet, I can finish.’
He wasn’t used to that tone. Astonishment kept him quiet just long enough.
‘We were attacked on Saturday by three armed men. Emma was wounded and sustained a head injury. She is in the intensive care unit at SouthMed Hospital in Nelspruit. Her doctor’s name is Eleanor Taljaard. Call her if you want the details of Emma’s condition.’
He couldn’t restrain himself any longer.
‘Saturday!’ he shouted at me. ‘Saturday? And you’re only calling now?’
‘Carel, calm down.’
‘That’s three days! How dare you only call me now? How bad is Emma?’
‘Carel, I want you to shut the fuck up and listen. I owe you nothing. I’m phoning you as a courtesy. I know who attacked us. I’m going to get them, every one. Not for you. For Emma. I am on a farm by the name of Moüasedi, on the gravel road between Green Valley and Mariepskop. It’s just a question of time before I get them.’
I hoped he would ask the right question. He didn’t disappoint me. ‘Who? Who was it?’
‘It’s a long story and I haven’t got the time right now. I’ll tell you everything when it’s over. It won’t be long. I’m going to blow the whole thing wide open.’
‘You were supposed to protect her, it was your job.’
‘Goodbye, Carel.’ I cut the connection.
He would phone back immediately, I knew. I checked my watch. Nineteen seconds and Emma’s phone rang. The screen said ‘Carel’. I killed the call. Waited again. This time it was twenty seconds. Killed it. Another nineteen and it rang again. My money was on three times, but Carel was a determined Rich Afrikaner. He tried six times before giving up. I could see him in his den, angry and indignant, with a cigar between his fingers. He would pace up and down and try to remember what I had said about the hospital and the doctor and then he would phone them.
It was time for me to make my third call. I keyed in the number.
‘Serious and Violent Crimes Unit, how may I help you?’
‘May I speak to Inspector Jack Phatudi, please?’
‘Hold on.’
She put me through to an extension that rang and rang. Eventually, she got back on the line.
‘You are holding for?’
‘Inspector Jack Phatudi.’
‘The inspector is not in. Is there a message?’
‘Yes, please. Tell him that Lemmer called.’
‘Who?’
‘Lemmer,’ I spelled out my surname for her.
‘OK. What is the message?’
I lied blatantly. ‘Please tell him that I know who gave the note to Edwin Dibakwane.’
‘Edwin Dibakwane?’
‘Yes.’
‘I will tell him. How can he contact you?’
‘He’s got my number.’
‘OK.’
To make doubly sure, I also phoned the SAPS offices in Hoedspruit to leave him the same message, but to my surprise they said, ‘Please hold for Inspector Phatudi,’ and then he answered with an unfriendly ‘Yes?’
‘Jack, it’s Lemmer.’
A few seconds of silence. ‘What do you want?’
‘I know who gave the letter to Edwin Dibakwane.’
‘Who?’
‘I can’t tell you now, Jack. First, I want you to apologise for yesterday. Your manners leave a lot to be desired. I hope your mother doesn’t know how you behave.’
He lost his temper instantly. ‘My mother?’
‘Yes, Jack, your mother. I am sure she taught you better manners than that. Are you going to say sorry?’
He answered me in sePedi. I couldn’t understand the words, but I gathered from the tone that it wasn’t an apology.
‘Then I’ll say goodbye, Jack,’ I said. I cut off the call and switched Emma’s cell phone off.
The broad stretch of thick bush between the farm entrance and the homestead was a problem. The good news was that I would be invisible inside. The bad news was that I couldn’t watch the potential access routes and the house at the same time.
I chose a hiding place just over ten metres away from the edge of the thicket, where I could see the gate and more than a kilometre of access road plus a large stretch of the boundary fence without being seen. There were no shops selling binoculars that were open in Nelspruit. I would have to make do.
I removed stones and branches so I could sit comfortably against a tree. I placed the Glock within easy reach. I opened the box of ten Twinkies, took the contents out of the plastic and arranged them on the upturned khaki bush hat I had bought at Pick ’n Pay. It was food that did not crunch or otherwise make a noise. I put the four bottles of Energade down beside the Twinkies and opened one. Not ice cold, but good enough.
I checked my watch. Just under an hour since I had contacted Donnie. Theoretically they could turn up any moment. I didn’t think they would. He would have to call the other masked wonders first. They would have to discuss weapons and strategy. Up till now they had been night owls on escapades. My best guess was that they’d show up around midnight. Maybe later. In the meantime, I would wait. Just in case.
I ate one Twinkie. Drank Energade.
I read on the box that more than five hundred million of these confections were sold annually. Since 1930 Twinkies had attained cult status. President Clinton put one in a time capsule. The American Association of Press Photographers had recently held an exhibition of photos with Twinkies as the subject. People even made wedding cakes out of Twinkies.
I put the carton down. I wondered why Clinton didn’t put a cigar in the time capsule. That would have pleased Carel the Rich.
The piece of open veld out there was suddenly in shade.
The sun had set behind Mariepskop. It was going to be a long night.
35
When you’re hiding, you have to sit still.
I’m not good at sitting still. Despite my best attempts to make the hollow in the tree comfortable, after an hour it was full of irritations. When I shifted my body I did it slowly and deliberately, so my movements would not attract attention.
But I knew no one was watching me. It was a lesson I learned early on in my career as a bodyguard – people can sense when someone is watching them. I was usually the one watching, on constant alert for possible risk. Nine times out of ten the object of my observation became aware of it. It’s a primitive instinct, but it exists. Some people react quickly, their sense is well developed, the reaction swift and aggressive. For others, it is a slower process, a systematic awakening that is at first unsure and seeks confirmation. I had learned to watch more subtly. I experimented with sidelong glances, peripheral vision, and realised that it made no great difference. The observed feel the interest, not the focus of the eye.
In the bush around me the nightlife began to stir. It was a whole new series of noises made by insects, birds and unidentified animals, a rustling of leaves and twigs. Midges and mosquitoes showed interest, but the insect repellent I had rubbed on did its job.
Twice I stood up slowly to stretch my limbs and encourage circulation. I ate and drank, watched and listened. I was calmer now that events were set in motion and a new row of dominoes was set up. I wondered who would make the first one fall.
I thought about Emma and how badly I had read her, how prejudiced I was. I don’t like rich people. It’s partly envy, let me confess, but it is also experience, because I have been watching them for the past eighteen years. First, it was the wealthy influen-tials looking for the minister’s ear, more recently it was my ‘clients’, as Jeanette referred to them. The overwhelming majority of rich people were bastards, self-important and self-obsessed.
Especially the Rich Afr
ikaner.
My father had saved a bunch of yellowed photos in a flat tea tin on the top shelf of his wardrobe. Two were photographs of our forebears: my great-grandfather and his three brothers, four bearded men in white shirts and jackets. According to my father it was taken at the turn of the century after the loss of the family farm, when the Afrikaner had nothing. The four Lemmers’ poverty was obvious from the cut and simplicity of their clothes. But there was a look in their eyes of pride, determination and dignity.
Years later, I would recall that photograph when I drove to Calvinia for the Vleisfees, the annual mutton festival. It was an impulsive decision. I had been out of the service for one year and I wanted to get out of Seapoint for the weekend. I read an article about the festival and rashly set out on the Saturday morning. I was back at home by that night because I hadn’t liked what I saw: wealthy Afrikaners fresh from the city in their brand-new shiny SUVs, sitting and drinking, inebriated at three in the afternoon or jerking their drunken middle-aged bodies to the beat of ear-splitting music, while their mortified teenage children sat on the sidelines. I stood there thinking about the photos in my father’s tea tin and knew that poverty suited the Afrikaner better.
Therefore, I admit to a prejudice against the rich, and therefore against Emma.
But prejudice is a defence mechanism. Some prejudices are inborn, our instinctive search for the ducks from our dam, our nearest genetic brothers and sisters, like the New Guinea tribesman’s continual repetition of his family tree. It is also the unwitting origin of all the – isms, so very politically incorrect, but so very much our nature.
Other prejudices are learned. Those that spring from experience are just as set on protection. Like a child that learns that the hypnotic flame can burn, so we learn with every human interaction, we make thought patterns of cause and effect, we categorise and label so we can avoid the painful. We promulgate laws.
Small women equal trouble. Not only my mother; our synapses are not that easily programmed. There were others, girls at school, women that I watched in a personal or professional capacity until I could build a frame of reference that dictated that if she was small and pretty, she was trouble.
I rationalise only as much as the next man, but with Emma it must serve as extenuating circumstances. How was I to know that she was different? There was no initial evidence to the contrary. Rich, lovely and small. Why should she be the exception? It was just smart not to get involved, to keep a professional distance.
And now? Now I sat in deep darkness in the Lowveld jungle and the boundaries between personal and professional involvement had disintegrated. I needed them redrawn so that I could finish the job I started: to protect her. But now, the primary driving force was vengeance. Someone had to pay for the attack on my Emma. I wanted to find the answers to her questions and lay them at her feet in a plea for forgiveness and as an offering of attraction.
My Emma.
But yesterday I slept with a stranger.
Emma. I had carried her sleeping body into her room, I had comforted her, and I had shown her a part of myself at table that only Mona had seen before. I had held her bleeding body in a minibus-taxi with the terrible knowledge that she was dying, that much more than just my professional reputation would die with her. Koos Taljaard was right. I was in love with Emma, with who she was, despite her beauty and wealth. Despite her class and her intellect, she could ask me, ‘Who are you, Lemmer?’ with genuine interest and curiosity. After the Cape attack she had the courage to come looking here, believing through adversity that Cobie was Jacobus, her brother, her blood.
My Emma, to whom I was unfaithful last night.
I ought to have seen it coming. I was disappointed in myself. I should have seen the danger and the opportunity when Tertia said, ‘You’ve been fighting, Lemmer. Bad boy.’ There was a flicker in her, that observation had flipped a primitive switch in her subconscious with a ghostly hand. Women fear violence. They hate it. But a great percentage of them have a weakness for potential violence in a man. For the ability to physically assert over other men his right to reproduce, to protect his woman and her offspring from danger. Mona had it. During my court case there were a couple of women who came every day to listen, who sat and stared at me, who followed the testimony of the fight word by word.
And Tertia. Sasha.
I should have pushed the key with the blue-eyed dolphin back across the bar counter. I should have used my head.
I should have known that I would not be able to withstand the temptation. Because I should have known that she would have been able to cast off sexual inhibitions.
For me, for men, that potential to toss all inhibition overboard is the ultimate fantasy, the deadly noose: the woman who screams her ecstasy out loud and bucks like a wild horse, whose eyes hide nothing, who wants more and doesn’t ask but takes it with demonic purpose.
Tertia wanted me because I was not overtly interested. For her it was confirmation of her power to seduce despite the march of time, although it took longer, harder hours to keep the lovely body of her prime in shape. Just like my mother. Maybe it was another way for Tertia to escape from her boring existence. Maybe it was just a need to have a body to hold at New Year. Or did she want one more dance with the devil of potential violence, the fighting man, the mercenary or military consultant or smuggler?
When she was standing in my doorway with her hips and breasts on display, I wondered how long I had known it would happen. How soon was I aware that I would get up and go to her? How much of my hesitation was merely a concession to conscience? I knew I wanted it; I was hungry for it. For the intensity and pleasure and my own urge to fuck the rage away. The rage about the unreachable Emma, the rage about my weakness and predictability and helplessness. Lemmer and Sasha. In contrast to Martin and Tertia. In a certain way we were birds of a feather that had coupled like animals on an unlikely bed for two hours. The heat is what I would remember most. The heat of the night, the heat of her body, of being inside her, of my passion and her need. How she had cried out from gratitude or fear, over and over, oh God, oh God, oh God.
Lights at the gate broke my train of thought. Startled, I jerked back to the present dark night, the forest and the first domino wobbling.
I picked up the Glock and lay down on my belly and watched.
Somebody got out of the vehicle, which looked like a pick-up, and opened the gate, too far off to identify.
The pick-up drove through the open gate, lights on bright, and waited for the gate-opener to close it and get back in. Then it came up the track.
I avoided the bright light, trying to preserve my night vision, but I needed to know who was in the pick-up.
I hadn’t expected this. Not a direct assault. Out in the open.
There must be others; this would be the decoy to attract my attention. The others would stalk up through the night in dark clothes and balaclavas with night-vision scopes and sniper’s rifles. I turned my head away from the pick-up, my eyes and ears searching for stalkers. Let the pick-up arrive at the empty house, they would find nothing there.
The vehicle approached. It was dark inside the cab. I had a quick look. Couldn’t see who was inside. They drove past into the tunnel of trees, the lights flickering in the branches.
The others wouldn’t come in at the gate. They would climb over a fence, farther east perhaps, perhaps west. Five, ten or fifteen minutes later. I would just have to wait quietly. I checked the green phosphor of my watch hands: 20.38. Why were they so early? Why not wait until the early hours of the morning when I was fighting sleep?
Did they suspect that I was alone? Were they so confident, these experienced night stalkers, hunters of what they thought was unsuspecting prey?
The pick-up’s engine was hard to hear, and then it was completely quiet. They must have stopped at the homestead. Don’t go and look, don’t worry about them, just wait here. Wait for them.
Faintly, I heard them calling at the house. ‘Lemmer!’ The last syll
able stretched out. They called three times. It was quiet again.
20.43. Nothing but the night sounds.
My night sight returned to normal. I looked slowly up and down the front, holding my breath so I could listen.
Nothing.
20.51 came and went.
I couldn’t work out their strategy. Why send in the pick-up for any reason besides diversion? Were there another three or four lying flat on the back, as if in a Trojan horse? That made no sense. You diverted attention so that you could surprise from another direction, another place, but if the timing was off, it fell flat. You had to keep the focus on point A while your buddies infiltrated at point B. If the focus shifted, the strategy failed.
21.02. I had to suppress the urge to get up and stalk over to a vantage point to look at the homestead. What were they up to? Why were they so quiet?
Were they inspecting the terrain? Did they have two-way radios to give the others instructions? We can see there is only one road in; you must do such and such.
I would just have to wait. There was no other way. But I was growing less sure of that. No, that’s what they want. Doubt. It generates mistakes. I had the upper hand. I had to keep it.
I heard them calling again, around 21.08, my name and something else that I couldn’t make out. I ignored them. The dock’s grip was sweaty in my palm and the stones and tree roots pressed uncomfortably against my legs and chest.
Silence.
By 21.12 they had been there for half an hour and there had been no movement, no sound from the boundary fence or the roadside.
Three minutes later I heard the pick-up engine again, soft at first, then growing louder. They were coming back. I saw the headlights through the bush.
The lights were plain idiotic. It deprived them of vision; they would be blind in the darkness. Why did they do it?
They stopped in the middle of the bush, switched off the lights and then the engine.
‘Lemmer!’
It was Donnie Branca’s voice.
‘Are you there?’
The bush fell silent, the nightlife intimidated.