by Tony Park
The ranger, who was leaning half in through the doorway, said, ‘The anti-poaching patrols store some of their equipment here, but they have not disturbed your daughter’s possessions. I am always here when they secure their weapons.’
Miranda’s possessions were stacked neatly at the far end of the room. Loose floorboards creaked under Jed’s feet as he approached the pile of belongings. He did a quick inventory. Most obvious were six aluminium trunks, the kind professional photographers used to ship expensive gear and, he realised, the kind the Army used to house breakable stuff, such as computers and radios and some weapons systems.
Next to the boxes was a purple backpack, which he remembered Miranda carrying on their camping trip. A lump came to his throat and he fought to retain his composure. There was a camping fridge, the kind that ran on gas, electricity or a car battery; two liquid petroleum gas bottles; a shovel; a folded camp bed; a rolled foam mattress covered in green canvas; two green plastic boxes with lids; and a bulging black plastic garbage bag tied in a knot. There were also two green canvas bags that, from their shape, he guessed contained Miranda’s folded tent and its accompanying poles.
He ran his hand over one of the metal cases. His fingers left a bright trail in the thin coating of dust. She’d been missing for nearly a week now. Was the trail impossibly cold? Before moving anything he noticed that the layer of dirt was uniform across everything. Nothing had been opened or moved since all the gear was deposited in the storeroom. Jed kneeled and stared at Miranda’s backpack for a moment. He was almost reluctant to open it. What good would it do anyway? He heard the floorboards creak behind him and turned. Chris stood, her hands folded across her front.
‘It’s OK,’ he said. ‘Come take what you want. I only want her personal things.’
Chris moved forwards and counted the boxes. She stood beside Jed and checked the fastenings on each box.
‘They’re all locked,’ she said.
‘Funny, so is the backpack.’ Jed fingered the tiny brass padlock. The lock was the cheap kind sold in airport shops, hardly a deterrent to any determined thief.
‘It was good of your staff to pack everything so neatly and lock all the baggage,’ Chris said to the ranger, who stood inside the building, still holding his bunch of keys.
‘No, Professor. Everything you see here is exactly as we found it, except for the tent, of course, which we packed after the police had finished their investigation. All of the boxes and the pack were locked and there were no signs of keys anywhere. The plastic bin bag has a few loose pieces that were in the tent.’
Jed reached for the bag and undid the knot. He opened it and peered inside. ‘Not much. A black tin kettle, a gas burner and some barbeque utensils. A gas-powered camp light and a torch.’ Next he lifted the lids on the green plastic boxes. ‘Plates, pots and pans, cutlery.’
Jed opened the pouch on his belt and pulled out his Leatherman. He unfolded the pliers and used them to grip the padlock on Miranda’s pack. The lock sprang open with one good twist and he unzipped the bag. Inside were neatly folded clothes, most of which seemed to be heavyweight items – woollens, jeans and a parka. He lifted a sweater and raised it to his face. It smelled musty. A quick sniff of a couple of other items of clothing yielded the same thing. ‘This bag hasn’t been opened for a long time.’
‘She wouldn’t have had much use for those clothes up here in the valley. They were probably her spare things,’ Chris said.
Jed rubbed the prickly hairs on his chin. ‘Presumably she used a laptop computer to record her research findings. I’d like to have a look at it, if you don’t mind, in case she kept some personal stuff on the hard drive.’
‘What? Oh, sorry, I was thinking about something else. The computer, ah, sure, no problem.’
‘Same with notebooks, letters, that sort of thing,’ Jed was watching Chris’s face.
‘Um, yeah. No problem.’ She looked back at the stack of locked boxes. ‘I’ll go through all this stuff later and do a double-check.’
‘Right,’ he said.
‘Right.’
Moses walked in, breaking the awkward silence that had descended. ‘I’ve brought some Cokes from the car fridge, Jed.’
Jed felt somehow comforted by the big man’s presence. ‘That’s great, Moses. Can you give us a hand to move all this stuff?’
‘Got to earn my money some way.’
Jed took a swig of the cold soft drink then asked the ranger, ‘Can you take me to my daughter’s campsite?’
‘Ah, of course, but it is getting late now, sir. The guides are all finished for today, but maybe tomorrow.’
Moses spoke rapidly to the ranger in Shona, then said to Jed, ‘I know this place well, where your daughter camped. I can take you there, no problem. But this man is right, it is getting late. I think we should wait until tomorrow morning.’
‘Today’s been tiring,’ Chris said. ‘I’m for calling it a day once we get this stuff stored in the lodge.’
‘OK,’ Jed agreed. However, his mind was anything but tired. It was racing.
Chris had rented a two-storey lodge on the banks of the Zambezi River.
‘I’m gonna take a shower,’ she told Jed. ‘Make yourself at home.’
Chris took a refreshingly cool shower downstairs, looking out at the bush through slits in the brick wall, which also allowed the last vestiges of the afternoon breeze to brush her wet skin. She had no concerns about anyone seeing her, as the lodge attendant had retired to the staff compound and the nearest building was a couple of hundred metres away, out of sight and earshot. Moses had politely declined her invitation to stay, for this first night at least, saying he had friends in the staff village he planned on visiting. Chris smiled to herself at his poor attempt to hide his embarrassment. The tracker’s inability to meet her eye told her that at least one of those friends was a woman. Good luck to him, she thought as she rinsed the soap from her body and struggled to shut off the rusting taps.
She towelled off and wrapped herself in a colourful African-print sarong. The shower was in the lodge’s open car port, and she walked back inside through the kitchen. The cooking area looked a little sad, with its cheap cupboards, scratched benchtops and antiquated gas cooker, but it did the job.
The paneless windows were covered in chicken wire and mosquito gauze to keep out primates and insects. She stopped by the big gas-powered deep-freeze in the dining area and grabbed two green bottles of Zambezi Lager.
She padded barefoot across the stone-floored lounge room, past low armchairs made of heavy dark wood. The zebra-print cushions on the chairs matched the curtains. The park’s lodges were simple and functional, not as tastefully decorated as their privately owned counterparts in safari camps, but they provided Zimbabweans and tourists with affordable accommodation and a measure of comfort in one of the wildest places on earth. Upstairs there were beds for eight people, with most of them arranged on a wide verandah under mosquito nets suspended from wooden frames.
She entered one of the two upstairs bedrooms and changed into a diaphanous long-sleeved blouse, khaki trousers and boots and socks. It was still warm even though the sun was behind the Zambian hills across the river, but she covered her body to protect herself from malaria-bearing mosquitos.
She unfurled the mosquito net hanging over her bed, tucked its edges securely under the mattress and then sprayed the net with insecticide. Outside, she lit citronella oil candles at intervals along the verandah. As an afterthought, she returned to her room and opened her toiletry kit. It was a green canvas zip-up affair, designed for a man. She found the old, nearly empty bottle of perfume and sprayed a little on her wrists, then wiped the residue behind her ears. Before leaving her room she checked herself in the mirror and decided there was nothing more she could do about her wet hair, which was tied back in a simple ponytail.
She knocked on Jed’s bedroom door.
‘Come in.’ He was sitting on the bed, the contents of Miranda’s backpack spread aroun
d him on the floor.
‘Brought you a sundowner.’ She held up the two beer bottles. ‘Although I’m afraid you’ve just missed the sunset.’
‘Thanks,’ he said, accepting a bottle. He gestured to the still-folded winter clothes around him.
‘This is all I have left of her. It’s her stuff, but there’s nothing of her here, if you know what I mean.
No pictures, no trinkets, no letters, no personal stuff. What have you found?’
‘Nothing yet. I’ll inventory the boxes tomorrow, but they only contain the monitoring gear – radiotracking collars, transmitters and receivers, that sort of stuff.’
Chris extended her free hand. ‘Come with me.’ Jed looked up at her, surprised, then reached out and let her gently lead him up off the bed and outside onto the verandah. The Zambezi shone like a river of red-gold lava in the last light of the departed sun. Exotic birds farewelled the day. The sting of the tropical sun was gone, but Jed was still hot.
He let his hand slip from Chris’s and stood, leaning on the verandah railing, staring blankly and sipping his beer. The dew from the bottle was wet on his fingers and soothed his brow when he went to wipe the sweat away. ‘What does it all mean, Chris? It’s like she vanished.’
‘She has vanished, Jed. There is absolutely no doubt about it. Miranda has gone from both of our lives.’
He turned to look at her. ‘But where are her day clothes, her personal things, her goddamned toothbrush? It looks more like she packed for a trip away and left without telling anyone.’
Chris finished her beer and stood next to him at the railing, closer. She looked straight ahead and said softly, ‘Jed, there are a thousand explanations for not finding all of her personal stuff, and you know it. The Africans who work here are good people, but this country is crippled by inflation and poverty If anything was to go missing from Miranda’s tent it would be things the park workers thought no one would miss – her day clothes lying across a chair, her food supplies, her toiletries, even her toothbrush. It doesn’t surprise me a bit. People here wouldn’t steal expensive electronic gear or break the lock on a backpack, because that would lead to an investigation.’
As she turned to look at him she could see the doubt in his face and the softening of his anger, along with the pain that lurked just beneath the surface. He rubbed his eyes and looked back out at the darkened bush.
‘You’ll still check her laptop for me, won’t you, for anything personal?’
She laid a hand on his arm. The muscle was hard as rock, but warm. ‘Of course, Jed. I’ll do it in the morning. The lodge attendant lit a fire in the barbeque before she left. It should be about right for cooking now. Let’s get some steaks on and open some wine.’
They walked down the creaking wooden stairs to the kitchen and Jed took two bottles of beer from the gas fridge to keep him going during his barbeque duty. Chris started fixing a salad and said, ‘I’ll come and join you soon. Take that with you,’ she added, pointing to a long black flashlight that reminded Jed of a nightstick. The cooking fire embers glowed a warm red in the darkness beyond the pale pool of light cast by an outside bulb.
‘Should I take a gun with me too?’
‘You may laugh. I’d take a knife if I were you, though.’
‘For the lions?’
‘For the steak.’
Chris heard and smelled the sizzling steaks as she stepped from the lodge carrying a bowl of green salad and a bottle of wine. She watched Jed staring intently at the hot coals beneath the meat. She wondered if checking through Miranda’s things had taken some of the fire out of him. He hadn’t asked her about her last meeting with his daughter, but there was still a look of puzzlement on his face as he placed the steaks on a platter and carried them to a large outdoor table whose top was a single slab of stone.
As he uncorked the wine, he said, ‘So you don’t think there’s anything unusual about all of her bags and equipment being packed away?’
‘That’s how I’d keep my stuff, particularly the valuables. If you leave stuff unattended and unlocked, you’ve really only got yourself to blame if something disappears. She might have been packed up in preparation for a day walk in the bush.’
‘You say you’d keep your gear secured, but don’t forget I’ve seen your hotel room. Forgive the observation, but you’d hardly be classed as anally retentive by a shrink.’
Chris faked a look of indignation. ‘You’re saying I’m a slob! Anyway, it’s one thing to be messy, but I always leave my valuables locked away.’
‘But don’t you see, that’s my point. Even if Miranda did lock away her expensive monitoring or photographic gear or whatever all that shit is, where was the rest of her stuff? The odds and ends that all of us leave lying around?’
‘I’d get Moses to ask around the staff village if I were you. Some of her bits and pieces could have found their way there.’
‘Don’t you think it’s at all unusual there was no trace found of the clothes she was wearing? No shoes, nothing?’
Chris finished the last of her steak. ‘Not really. What the lions don’t eat, the hyenas and the vultures pretty well clean up. It’s not unusual to find a victim’s clothes inside a man-eater – they don’t stop at anything when they’re in a feeding frenzy.’
‘Would it have done much damage to her tent, if that’s where it took her?’
‘Hard to say, really. We do know that lions don’t, as a rule, break into tents to get their victims, even though it would be easy enough for them to do so. The best defence for campers is to stay inside with the zipper shut and the lion will walk past, thinking the tent’s just another anthill or mound.’
‘Surely they have a good sense of smell?’
‘Oh, they do, but they don’t hunt by smell. Their olfactory senses are primarily for detecting other members of the pride and intruders in their territory, or for sniffing out carrion. Lions are great scavengers. They hunt by sight and sound. You’ve watched a domestic cat hunting birds or mice?’
‘Sure.’
‘It’s the same thing. The cat notices movement and that’s what gets it going. They see in black and white, so movement is crucial to allow them to detect something. Once they see that little twitch, or the prey making a dash for it, they charge and pounce – just like a little kitty cat back home.’
‘That’s why the guide books tell you not to run?’
‘Exactly If you stay rock still, the lion will, theoretically at least, lose interest in you or lose sight of you. However, if I’m ever out with you in the bush and we come across an angry lion, I’m going to run.’
‘Don’t tell me you can outrun a lion?’
‘No, but I don’t have to be able to outrun the lion – I only need to be able to outrun you.’
He laughed. ‘I’ll have to remember that one.’
‘Don’t try it on anyone over here. It’s an old joke, I’m afraid.’
‘Funny how we’re laughing about it like this. It’s the same as in the Army – using black humour to get through the worst of it.’
‘I’m sorry, Jed, I didn’t mean to …’
‘No, really, Chris, I mean it. It does help in an odd kind of way. I’m clinging to the hope that Miranda is still alive, somehow, somewhere, and that maybe this has all been a terrible misunderstanding, that she’ll pop up at her mother’s place in a week’s time, brokenhearted over a guy or something. But in the event that doesn’t happen, I want you to know that coming here … meeting you … well, it’s sort of helping me to come to terms with it, to prepare myself for the worst.’
‘Thanks, Jed.’ She reached forwards, across the table and touched his arm again. She really did feel for him. ‘Let me get us both another beer.’
Inside the lodge she stood in the kitchen, leaned against the sink and gripped the cool stainlesssteel edge with all her might. Oh, God, she said to herself, I don’t know if I can keep this up for much longer. Then she started to cry.
Chapter 12
; The beer was an anaesthetic; the warm Indian Ocean a soothing bath; the English girl’s kisses a soft, moist balm on his bruised skin. Luke Scarborough was in paradise, Zanzibar-style.
He opened his eyes and stared up through the mosquito net at the lazily rotating fan and painted white ceiling of the bungalow. She lay on her back beside him, all pink and warm and smelling of last night’s sex. She wasn’t overly attractive, but she was relaxed and experimental in bed and had a wicked sense of humour. He didn’t want to leave her. He reckoned he could easily spend a fortnight drinking, dancing and practising new positions, but he had work to do. He climbed out from under the grubby white gauze and padded across the linoleum floor, fine grains of sand sticking to the soles of his feet. He shifted her brightly coloured sarong, called a Zambian in this part of Africa, and her limegreen bikini from the chair and found his own clothes. He pulled on still-damp board shorts and a Tshirt that smelled of sweat, cigarette smoke and spilled beer.
He was technically on the island for business, but after a night at the budget beach bungalows at Nungwi, at the northern tip of Zanzibar, the visit had quickly slid into pleasure. He had arrived at Dar es Salaam on a flight from Dubai the previous morning. The swaying green palm trees, white sandy beaches, azure waters and industrious bustle of the Tanzanian port city were a world away from the barren mountains and deserts of Afghanistan. He’d taken the first ferry out of Dar – a catamaran constructed in his native Australia, of all places – and feasted on fresh cashews and Coca-Cola on the hundred-minute trip across to Zanzibar Island. A young African tout had attached himself to Luke as soon as he stepped off the ferry, offering him in a single breath a hotel room, hashish and a spice tour.