The Last Hunt

by Deon Meyer

  In Cupido’s office they phoned Samantha Albertyn, Johnson Johnson’s hostess on the Rovos train. They made the call with the speakerphone on. They could tell from her voice that she was nervous. In the background they could hear the click-clack sound of a train on the track. ‘I don’t know how long the signal will last – we’re just past Mafikeng.’

  ‘Mafikeng?’ asked Cupido. ‘Why Mafikeng?’

  ‘This is our Victoria Falls train.’

  ‘Okay,’ said Cupido. ‘Cool. We’ll call you back if the signal drops. Can we talk about Johnson Johnson?’

  ‘It’s so tragic,’ she said. ‘It’s . . . All our guests are so nice. It’s never happened. It’s just tragic . . .’

  ‘It is, Sam, and we want to catch the man who did it.’

  ‘Was it a man?’ Her voice carried respect for their skill.

  ‘We don’t know yet, Sam. It’s just my way of talking.’

  ‘Oh.’ Disappointed. ‘Okay. I’ve only got the one thing that I’m sure of.’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘His bed. He . . . When our guests go to dine, we refresh the compartments. Around seven. I made his bed . . . Mr Johnson was staying in a pullman suite. That means there’s a sofa we fold out in the evening to make a double bed.’

  ‘Okay,’ said Cupido.

  ‘Let me explain . . . We have a specific way of making up the bed, because the back is against the wall, a way of folding the sheets and the bedspread tidily.’

  ‘Check,’ said Cupido.

  ‘The next morning, when they eat breakfast, we service the compartment again. I saw that the bed was made. But not the way we do it. It’s . . . I don’t want to . . . It’s just what I think . . .’

  ‘It’s okay, Sam,’ said Cupido. ‘Just give it your best shot.’

  ‘It looked like he . . . or someone tried to make up the bed like it was. But I could see that it wasn’t our way.’

  ‘Okay.’

  ‘I could also see . . . I think . . . I don’t think he slept in the bed. The pillows . . . A person can tell from the pillows . . .’

  Chapter 19

  ‘That’s great, Sam. That’s very important,’ Cupido said to Samantha Albertyn. ‘That was the first night, hey? The Saturday night?’

  ‘That’s right.’

  Griessel spoke for the first time, identified himself, then asked: ‘You met him that morning in the lounge at Cape Town station?’

  ‘That’s right.’

  ‘Did you see him on the train again?’

  ‘Yes. I did his compartment briefing with him. We show them how everything works.’

  ‘Was that the last time?’

  ‘No. I saw him in the corridor, and at high tea, and when they were on the way to dinner. You tend to bump into people on the train – it’s not that big. And everyone uses the same corridor.’

  ‘We know it’s hard to remember everything, but could you see if his behaviour, his mood, had changed? Or if he perhaps . . . if something had upset him?’

  A momentary silence, so that only the sounds of the train could be heard. ‘No. He was just very nice, every time I saw him. That’s why it’s so tragic.’

  ‘Sam, Mrs Strydom said you had a few interesting things to share. Was it just the bunk?’ Cupido asked.

  ‘The bunk? Oh, you mean the bed.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘That’s the only thing I’m sure of.’

  ‘Is there something you’re not so sure of?’ Griessel asked.

  ‘I don’t know if I should mention it. What if I’m wrong?’

  ‘We’ll keep that in mind, but you must tell us everything,’ said Cupido.

  ‘Please,’ said Griessel.

  She was silent for so long that they thought they had lost the connection. Then they heard her take a deep breath. ‘When I was unfolding the bed . . . I thought there was a laptop on the . . . The pullman, there’s a little table, where you can sit on the sofa and work. When you open the bed, you have to unclip the table and pack it away in the cupboard . . . and there was a laptop because I remember thinking I’d better not knock it off. Once I bumped a guest’s iPad off the table and the screen cracked.’

  ‘That’s good, Sam. His wife said he had a little laptop, and we couldn’t find it in his house.’

  ‘Oh! Okay. So I wasn’t imagining it.’

  ‘What about the laptop, Sam?’ Griessel asked.

  ‘I found his case, on the Monday. It was pushed deep under the bed, and it wasn’t closed. I – I opened it . . . We still thought he’d got off somewhere.’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘And the laptop was gone.’

  They talked to her until the signal disappeared, but they didn’t learn much more.

  Griessel immediately phoned Brenda Strydom. ‘We’d like to know what happened to Mr Johnson’s luggage.’

  ‘You have it,’ she said.

  ‘We do?’

  ‘Yes. You came to collect it,’ she said. ‘The police in Pretoria.’

  ‘Do you know which station? Or which policeman?’

  ‘I’ll find out right now. They would have signed for it.’

  He thanked her and rang off. He told Cupido what she’d said.

  ‘Probably the village idiot from Beaufort West had it collected. Awkward Aubrey.’

  Griessel laughed. Cupido and names.

  There was a knock on the office door frame. Philip van Wyk of IMC walked in with a completed enquiry form. ‘The telephone number, Benny,’ he said, handing the form to him. ‘It belongs to Sergeant Kagiso Dimba of the VIP Protection Unit.’

  ‘Our Protection Unit?’

  ‘Yip. SAPS, Pretoria.’

  ‘That’s the last outjie Johnson phoned?’ Cupido asked. ‘The one whose phone is now dead as a dodo?’

  ‘That’s him,’ said Griessel.

  ‘This case is a mess,’ said Cupido.

  ‘And that memory stick,’ said Van Wyk. ‘There were three porn videos on it.’

  ‘Homemade?’ Cupido asked.

  ‘No. Professional stuff, probably downloaded from the internet.’

  Before he phoned, Cupido checked what time it was in the Netherlands.

  A man answered. ‘Goedemorgen.’ The phone was on speaker.

  ‘Goedemorgen,’ said Cupido, in his best Dutch accent. ‘May I please speak to Mrs Thilini Scherpenzeel?’

  ‘Het spijt me. Mevrouw Scherpenzeel is niet beschikbaar.’

  ‘This is Captain Vaughn Cupido of the South African Police Service in Cape Town. When will she be available?’

  ‘Slechts een moment, alsjeblieft, Kapitein.’

  The sound of the receiver being put down as he went off to call her.

  ‘Slechts een moment, alsjeblieft, Kapitein,’ Cupido echoed, in a drawling whisper. ‘It’s like Afrikaans for drunk people. In your drinking days you would easily have talked Dutch, Benna.’

  Griessel laughed.

  About thirty seconds later, politely: ‘Bedankt voor het houden, Kapitein. Ik verbind je door.’

  Another pause as the call was forwarded.

  ‘Kapitein,’ said Cupido. ‘Nice ring to it. Kapitein Vaughn Cupido. Van der Valke.’

  ‘“Van der Valke” sounds more like drunken German,’ said Griessel.

  ‘You ordinary people have no appreciation for us linguists.’

  ‘Yes?’ A strong woman’s voice over the small speaker.

  ‘Mrs Scherpenzeel?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Goedemorgen. This is Kapitein Vaughn Cupido. Van der Valke in Cape Town. How is the weather in Holland this morning?’

  Silence.

  Then: ‘I find it best to speak English with Afrikaans people, because of the risk of misunderstanding, especially when a call is as important as this one. I also find it highly irritating when people refer to the Netherlands as Holland. There is no Holland. There are two provinces, North Holland and South Holland. I am in neither. I am in the city of Utrecht, which is in the province of Utrecht. Now, shall we ta
lk about the very, very tragic death of Mr Johnson Johnson?’ All in the Queen’s English.

  ‘Yes, ma’am,’ said Cupido, meekly.

  ‘Good. If you furnish me with an email address, I will send you my prepared statement. It has been notarised and approved by my lawyer, and it should contain all the information you need. However, if it is in any way inadequate, I will be happy to take your call at your leisure.’

  ‘Between nine and twelve?’ Cupido asked.

  ‘No. I will take your call any time after nine in the a.m. and before nine in the p.m. This is very personal and very important to me.’

  In the silence after that call Griessel’s phone rang. He recognised the number. He answered: ‘Prof?’

  ‘How are you, Nikita?’ asked Professor Phil Pagel, chief state pathologist. He’d been calling Griessel ‘Nikita’ for the past fifteen years, since their first introduction when he’d taken one look at Griessel’s face and said: ‘That must be how a young Krushchev looked.’ Griessel had had to look up who Krushchev was.

  ‘Well, and you, Prof?’

  ‘When your Colonel Mbali Kaleni calls and tells us to get a move on, we realise there have been better days, Nikita. But I can’t complain. And you’ll be glad to know we’ll collectively move on immediately with the unfortunate Mr Johnson Johnson. There is just one tiny problem. As you know, I may not legally put my dissection knife into Mr Johnson before the body has been officially identified. Can you assist?’

  ‘Of course, Prof.’

  ‘Nikita, just a word of warning. The cadaver is in an advanced state. Please keep that in mind in choosing whom to send to identify him.’

  Chapter 20

  No detective liked visiting the state mortuary in Durham Street, Salt River. To begin with, it was ugly, in that unimaginative government-architecture style (if you could call it style): low brown-brick-and-red-roof buildings behind a dilapidated fence of concrete poles. It had a Spartan and depressing interior, the narrow corridors, cold, bare, tiled floors, the reek of formalin and phenol, disinfection and putrefaction. To stand by while a pathologist performed the post-mortem dissection was always a disturbing experience, regardless of how many times one had experienced it before. But it was at its discomfiting, upsetting worst when a body required identification, with the heart-rending emotions and raw grief of the next of kin.

  For that reason Vaughn Cupido took out a five-rand coin from his black leather wallet and asked Griessel to choose.

  ‘Heads,’ said Griessel. He knew he’d lose. He always lost when Cupido flipped the coin, even when he himself provided the money.

  Cupido launched it with skill, caught it, smacked it on the back of his left hand. ‘Sorry, Benna. Tails.’

  ‘Let me see.’ Because his colleague hated the identifications even more than he did.

  ‘O ye of little faith,’ said Cupido, and showed the coin to Griessel.

  Tails.

  ‘Fok.’

  ‘What can I say? The universe loves me.’

  After a pause, Griessel said: ‘I’m going to phone Robyn and hear if she has any objection to me asking the warrant officer from Brackenfell to identify the body.’ He knew what lasting harm it could do to the woman to see her ex-husband in that condition. And he wanted to spare himself the trauma of her grief.

  ‘Good thinking,’ said Cupido. ‘I’ll wait for the email from the kwaai aunty from Holland.’

  ‘The Netherlands, Vaughn, the Netherlands.’

  17 Soestdijker Road

  Den Dolder

  Utrecht 3734

  Netherlands

  To Whom It May Concern

  I am Mrs Thilini Scherpenzeel, a Dutch citizen permanently residing at the above address. I am 91 years of age, of sound mind and body. I confirm that the contents of this statement are true to the best of my knowledge and belief and that I make this report voluntarily, knowing that, if it is tendered in evidence, I would be liable to prosecution if I have wilfully stated anything which I know to be false or that I do not believe to be true.

  I have no conflict of interest of any kind in this matter.

  Herewith, my statement: I undertook a holiday to South Africa from 19 July (the date of my flight from Schiphol to Johannesburg) to 8 August (the date of my return flight from Johannesburg to Schiphol).

  During that time, I spent seven (7) days in the Royal Malewane safari lodge in the Greater Kruger National Park (20 July to 27 July), and nine (9) days in Cape Town as a guest of the Cape Grace Hotel (28 July to 5 August).

  From 5 to 7 August, I travelled with the Rovos Rail train from Cape Town to Pretoria. I found South Africa to be a beautiful, friendly, hospitable country, and I am deeply saddened by the events that transpired during my visit. I wish to extend my most heartfelt condolences to the family and friends of Mr Johnson Johnson, and would like to request the investigating officer to forward me the telephone number or email address of his family. I would like to offer my sympathy personally.

  During my stay in Cape Town, I had daily contact with the daytime concierge of the hotel, a lovely man by the charming name of Vinnie Adonis. I do apologise for not knowing his full and proper name. Mr Adonis was very helpful in organising the various day trips I undertook during my stay, inter alia to Cape Point, Stellenbosch, Franschhoek and up Table Mountain. He constantly urged me to be careful while exploring the city and peninsula, as men often do when confronted by a woman of my age, I presume. He also mentioned, on several occasions, the services of a personal security expert he could recommend.

  I would like to hereby clearly state that Mr Adonis never overstepped or intruded in any way, and was always at his most courteous and professional in all his dealings with me.

  However, being a well-travelled and world-wise nonagenarian, I surmised that this personal security expert was a friend of Mr Adonis, and that Mr Adonis was extending a helping hand in procuring employment for his friend.

  I am the widow of a well-known businessman and entrepreneur, the late Joop Scherpenzeel, who founded the SonnenBorgh Brewery in the Netherlands. Therefore, I am acutely aware of the necessity for private and personal enterprise. Furthermore, I am of the opinion that job creation is the cornerstone of a sound and prosperous economy. Thus, my sole reason for contemplating the employment of this private security expert was to make a small contribution to the wonderful people and the struggling economy of this marvellous country, as I had the means and opportunity. I did not require any personal protection or security. I am perfectly able to take care of myself.

  I met Mr Johnson Johnson in the lounge of the Cape Grace Hotel on the morning of 3 August, at my request. I enquired as to his background, his current profession, and his hopes and dreams. He impressed me as a thoroughly courteous, kind and ambitious individual. He showed me photographs of his beautiful daughters. During the meeting I took the decision to ask him to accompany me on the Rovos Rail journey to Pretoria in his professional capacity. It is a decision I have deeply regretted since hearing of the tragic fate of this family man, since I feel some responsibility for placing him on the train, in harm’s way, and triggering whatever circumstances transpired to engineer his very dreadful demise.

  Nonetheless, I contacted Rovos Rail, and was fortunate enough to procure a booking for Mr Johnson. I proceeded to call Mr Johnson, assisted by Mr Adonis, reserved his services, and met him in the Rovos Rail departure lounge on the morning of 5 August.

  Soon after departure, Mr Johnson joined me on the viewing deck in the very last carriage of the train. He indicated various landmarks as we travelled out of the city, showed me the proximity of his home as we passed through the suburbs, and lamented the sad state of public train transport in the Peninsula.

  He then escorted me to the lounge after I complained of the wind chill, and we spent most of the afternoon there, enjoying high tea and the magnificent views of the Breede River and Hex River valleys, meeting other passengers, and engaging in conversation with them. It was, to say the least, most agreeabl
e.

  In the late afternoon – I did not make any pertinent effort to check the exact time – the train stopped at the delightful historic village of Matjiesfontein, where Mr Johnson accompanied me on the guided tour. In the hotel pub, a man was playing the piano, and Mr Johnson impressed me with a fine singing voice as he indulged in Afrikaans traditional folk songs.

  He then accompanied me back to the train, and we both retired to our compartments to freshen up for dinner.

  At around seven thirty, Mr Johnson collected me from my compartment, and we proceeded to the dining car for what turned out to be a five-star meal. We were invited to share a table for four with a charming couple from Taunton in the United Kingdom, whom we had met at high tea. I am a former pupil of Queen’s College in Somerset, so had much to catch up on and discuss with them. Regretfully, Mr Johnson must have felt a little excluded by this conversation. Although he was quiet, he seemed at ease and relaxed.

  This brings me to the one thing of note that happened, during the latter part of dinner. I can only recount it as I remember it, but I must admit to being distracted by the most interesting conversation at the table. Thus, the following is based on an impression, rather than certainty: Mr Johnson seemed to recognise someone in the dining car. I distinctly remember him raising his hand as if to greet that person, but it was an uncertain gesture, as if he wasn’t exactly sure that he knew him or her. As we were sitting next to each other, we shared the same view. I recall following his gaze, but as several people were leaving dinner at the same time, I cannot identify the specific person his gesture was aimed at, man or woman.

  The moment passed, and I never enquired as to whom he apparently recognised, for which I am now very sorry.

  We retired to our respective compartments soon after, at about ten minutes to nine, as I wanted to call home from my compartment at nine o’clock. Mr Johnson escorted me to my door, in gentlemanly fashion, and wished me a pleasant night’s sleep.

  That was the last time I saw him.

  Chapter 21