The Hunt and the Kill

by Holly Watt

  ‘Yes.’ A faint spark. ‘I hope you’re losing money on that, by the way.’

  Maurice Delacroix laughed. ‘Never, Casey, never. But I was going through the documentation on the oil rights, and it turns out Slopeside Inc. used to own them. I saw the name on some old loan agreements.’

  Casey shifted forward on the hard plastic, forcing herself to concentrate. ‘When?’

  ‘Slopeside owned the rights just before they were transferred to Garrick,’ said Delacroix. ‘You know how these rights bounce around for years before someone actually starts drilling. So I called my Moldovan friend. You remember him? You were a guest of his in Miami. He does a lot of business in that part of Africa. Knows all the players. I asked him if he knew who was behind this Slopeside company.’

  Delacroix stretched out the silence.

  ‘Who is it?’ Casey cracked.

  ‘He didn’t know,’ Delacroix said idly. ‘Never tried to track it down.’

  ‘Maurice … ’

  ‘But Slopeside is also connected to a certain ranch in Zimbabwe,’ said Delacroix smoothly.

  ‘The Njana ranch?’

  ‘I knew,’ he spoke with satisfaction, ‘that you would know about it. You’re really not bad at this job, Casey.’

  Slopeside, Casey realised, van de Berg. The old Dutch name for a family who came from the mountains. It made a sort of sense.

  ‘I don’t know what you are working on, Casey,’ Delacroix went on. ‘And I am not even sure why you are so interested in this Garrick McElroy. But it is clear: whoever owns this ranch also used to own the oil rights. And now this company owns the rights to Corax, too. A sort of swap, if you will.’

  Elias Bailey, Casey thought. Elias Bailey had snapped up the Slopeside holding company in the fire sale after Jacques van de Berg had died. The oil rights must have been part of a job lot of African assets held by Slopeside Inc. Piled high, sold cheap. Just a small fraction of the billions of pounds’ worth of African natural resources traded like playing cards by rich men who rarely even saw the diamond mines or the oil wells or the vast tracts of timber, slashed and burned.

  And Bailey had handed the rights to his son like pocket money, to see if the boy could make something out of them. Something for Garrick to do. She wondered when exactly Garrick had warned his father about a Carrie asking too many questions. Bailey’s men had approached the Amersham house with enough care to identify Miranda, so they knew by then.

  They must have found the new padlock on the laboratory door the next morning, the suspicions sparking to a blaze in the hot savannah. The sting’s sting.

  ‘I see,’ said Casey.

  ‘I’m glad it makes sense to you,’ said Delacroix.

  ‘I could never understand,’ said Casey, ‘how Garrick had come to hold those rights. It wasn’t his field at all.’

  ‘No,’ he said.

  Those loyalties, thought Casey. Invisible, and enduring. Garrick half-hated his father, but he hadn’t been able to walk away. And Bailey had taken him back into the fold after Pergamex, tying Garrick close again. That dependence, encouraged.

  She had assumed the Llandudno break-in would be the final straw for Bailey. But he must have controlled his rage somehow, buried his fury.

  But when they found the padlock, Bailey knew his errant son held the secrets. And when Bailey needed to know, Garrick had told him everything. The whisper travelling around the emptiness, so much further than anyone could know.

  Casey couldn’t sit any longer. She strode round the airport, past the tired passengers, past the bored men, past the big windows looking out over the runway. She needed to get to Cape Town. Needed to get out of this dusty building.

  She wondered if Garrick had told Bailey everything before she and Drummond had even left the reserve. Probably not, otherwise they might never have made it out alive.

  But perhaps he had already known. And bought up every other seat on that flight out of Harare just to trap her here. And now she was heading to Cape Town, just as he had ordered.

  Casey’s phone buzzed again.

  She stared down and felt her heart twist.

  It was Noah Hart’s number.

  Casey couldn’t read it. She looked away from the phone, gazing across the shabby concourse. She thought about that pale face, that fawn hair plaited back tightly. The gleam of hope in the deep brown eyes.

  What was the point in any of it?

  Casey felt her eyes prickle, the sense of despair rising, choking.

  Then she took a deep breath and opened the message. It was brief. To the point.

  I thought you would want to know that Flora died this morning. I wish it could have been different. We kept her comfortable at the end. N.

  And Casey stood in the sparse crowd of the airport and cried.

  68

  Delphine arrived with a sharp knock on the door. Casey had checked into a hotel in Camps Bay, the reception filled by tourists with burnt noses talking about cricket and Robben Island and District Six.

  ‘Miranda called me.’ Delphine walked briskly into the room. ‘What the hell is going on, Casey?’

  ‘I—’

  ‘You’ve been crying, Casey.’

  ‘A girl I knew … I don’t want to talk about it.’

  Delphine shook her head. ‘There’s an article on that bloody Papercut site, Casey. It says you had a meltdown somewhere abroad. That you deleted everything from your computer, hacked your colleague’s email and resigned from the Post. It says you’ve gone completely batshit.’

  The man had stood over her as she typed out the email to Dash. ‘I would like to tender my resignation with immediate effect … ’

  Dash had called her several times since, but she had ignored him. Zac had called too, Casey pressing the red button again and again: end call, end call, end call.

  ‘I know.’

  ‘Who briefed Papercut?’

  ‘I don’t know … They have an email account to receive anonymous tips,’ Casey muttered. ‘Anyone could have told them. And it’s half true, anyway.’

  The most dangerous sort of truth.

  ‘What? What’s happened, Casey? Tell me.’

  ‘Bailey wants the Post to write an article.’

  ‘An article?’ Delphine’s voice was high-pitched. ‘About what?’

  ‘I—’

  Delphine sat down on the bed. ‘Casey, I’m worried. Tell me. What the hell is going on?’

  ‘Elias Bailey wants us to write an article about an antibiotic,’ Casey said robotically. ‘A small piece about a brilliant new antibiotic that Adsero are working on at a special site in Zimbabwe.’

  ‘I don’t understand.’ Delphine’s face sagged with confusion. ‘It doesn’t make sense.’

  ‘The article must appear in the business section of the Post,’ Casey recited. ‘It isn’t to be a big piece, you understand. It must just be a brief interview with the Adsero chief executive.’

  ‘But why?’

  ‘In this article, there will be a passing reference to the fact that the lab in Zimbabwe has been relatively informal,’ said Casey. ‘Bailey’s hobby, almost. But overall, it will be a positive piece.’

  She spat out the last two words.

  ‘And then what?’

  ‘Nothing,’ said Casey. ‘That is the last story the Post will ever write about Adsero or Bailey.’

  There was a long pause.

  ‘But you can’t.’ The colour had faded from Delphine’s face. She leapt to her feet, unable to stay sitting down. ‘You can’t do that, Casey. You know what Bailey has done.’

  She strode to the window, staring out over the ocean.

  ‘I know, Delphine,’ Casey said to her back. ‘But I don’t know what else I can do. If I don’t publish the article, he won’t give me the Corax. And if he doesn’t give me the Corax, Miranda will die. I can’t let that happen. I can’t. So it really is that straightforward.’

  There’s no one left for them to threaten. The self-pitying words of months a
go popped into her mind again. There had been someone left, it turned out. She just hadn’t realised.

  Delphine spun around. ‘But there must be something else we can do.’

  ‘There isn’t,’ Casey said. ‘All the way down here on the plane, I tried to come up with something else, and I can’t think of a single way out of this. He’s taken all my notes, wiped everything. Burned the documents. We can’t take down Adsero based on memories and hearsay. We have no proof of anything.’

  Delphine pressed her fists to her mouth, her eyes blazing. ‘But he will get away with it. He will get away with everything. Those murders.’ The word was a shout. ‘He can’t be allowed to get away with it, Casey.’

  ‘I can’t prove anything.’ Casey spoke through her teeth, ‘Without those documents, it’s only circumstantial. We are to publish the article tomorrow, and then that’s it. It’ll be over. Miranda’s going to talk to the business section now.’

  Delphine moved towards the bed, her steps jerky. ‘But we are so close.’

  ‘I know.’ Casey felt as if she were comforting Delphine. ‘But it’s Miranda, Delphine. Miranda.’

  ‘And this article will say that Corax will be available soon?’

  ‘No,’ said Casey. ‘That’s the point. It will just say that Adsero are working on an antibiotic, not even specifying if it’s saepio or Corax or something else. And that it will be available at some undefined point in the future. This article will run under our Cape Town stringer’s name. The Post’s stringer, I mean,’ she corrected herself.

  ‘But why? Why does Elias Bailey want you to do this?’

  ‘Because how many times have you read a puff piece in the business section about some antibiotic breakthrough?’ asked Casey. ‘It’s quite boring, isn’t it? Your eyes move on to the next thing. It doesn’t tie them in.’

  ‘Casey,’ Delphine subsided onto the bed. ‘I don’t understand.’

  ‘It’s hiding the story in plain sight,’ Casey said slowly. ‘If the Post runs a piece saying Adsero is doing brilliant – albeit slightly unorthodox – research, it would be very hard to turn around three days later and say it’s actually criminality on a grand scale. We’d need proper evidence for that sort of shift, and … ’ Her voice dropped slightly, ‘I’ve deleted all the evidence.’

  ‘Never ask why,’ Delphine’s mouth twisted into a smile. ‘As we always say. You can look at this story from one angle, or another.’

  ‘It’s where you point the spotlight,’ said Casey. ‘You know how it works, Delphine.’

  ‘I do.’ It was a sigh.

  ‘It puts everything we can prove into the public domain,’ said Casey. ‘Exactly the way he wants it out there. And nothing else will ever see the light of day. Especially now that I’ve resigned.’

  ‘And the business team will publish this piece tomorrow?’

  ‘Miranda will tell them that Bailey is demanding it immediately, given my behaviour,’ said Casey. ‘Harassment, they’re going to call it. Harassment.’

  ‘Dash will take you back,’ said Delphine. ‘Miranda will explain, and you will explain. When this is all over.’

  ‘Maybe,’ said Casey. ‘But that is why Bailey is making me wait four days for the Corax, isn’t it? In four days’ time, this will be history. The Papercut article saying I’m an obsessive, unreliable lunatic will have bounced all over the Internet like a virus. And that story … ’ Casey almost smiled, ‘has an element of truth to it too. My job depends on my word being reliable. They can’t possibly publish an article based on just my memories after all this. The Post will publish a nice positive piece about Bailey and Adsero, and that will be the end of it. Bailey will get away with it, Delphine.’

  Delphine jumped to her feet. ‘He can’t, Casey. He just can’t.’

  ‘But that’s the thing. He can.’

  ‘When are the Post going to do this interview?’ Delphine asked. ‘With Bailey.’

  ‘I don’t know. I suppose Miranda will talk to Isla as soon as possible.’

  Isla Suchopar was the Post’s stringer in Cape Town. As budgets contracted, staffers had been axed all around the world. Instead, the Post’s foreign desk relied on a network of stringers. Freelancers available at the push of a button to write articles about murder and riots and hunger. ‘No one bloody reads the stories at the back of the paper anyway,’ Ross would shrug. ‘Any muppet can write those.’

  ‘I know Isla Suchopar,’ Delphine nodded.

  ‘I suppose I’ll check it, to make sure she gets everything right. Then Miranda will send it to the business desk.’

  ‘I could do the interview instead of Isla,’ Delphine suggested. ‘I’m a bit rusty, but it’s not a tricky piece to write.’

  ‘Bailey would google you,’ said Casey. ‘And see that you used to work with Miranda. We can’t do anything to rock the boat right now.’

  ‘Just say I’m Isla,’ said Delphine. ‘I’ll go up there instead. I know Isla, and she’s a gossip. If she got even a hint that there was something weird going on with this article, it would be halfway around Cape Town by teatime.’

  ‘Isla wouldn’t really have to know there was anything odd about it,’ said Casey slowly. ‘She’ll just be commissioned to write 800 words about Bailey. But I suppose it doesn’t make any difference if you do it.’

  ‘Cool,’ said Delphine. ‘I’ll pop home to get my stuff. Tell him I’ll be there in two hours?’

  ‘I will.’

  Miranda rang later. ‘Is everything OK?’

  Casey was lying on her bed in the hotel, flicking lackadaisically through the television channels. She kept hearing Flora Ashcroft’s laugh and seeing those little piles of blankets in small white cots: a tiny brown arm reaching up to the ceiling.

  ‘Everything’s fine,’ Casey said listlessly. ‘Delphine’s just on her way to do the interview. She left her house in Constantia half an hour ago.’

  ‘Constantia?’ said Miranda. ‘She lives in Camps Bay.’

  ‘Sure,’ said Casey, not listening. ‘She said she’ll be at Bailey’s soon.’ She glanced at her watch. ‘So any minute now.’

  ‘And are you all right?’

  ‘As well as I can be. How are you feeling?’

  ‘Fine,’ said Miranda. ‘Dash is getting a bit demented though. I’ve told him I’m off sick, but he won’t believe me. He gave Hessa a right going over this morning too.’

  ‘She didn’t say anything?’

  ‘No. Just hinted that you’d overstepped the mark with Bailey, and best not to ask any further questions.’

  ‘He must be spitting tacks.’

  ‘He is. The Papercut article hasn’t helped. He wants to know where you are.’

  ‘Don’t tell him. I’m putting stuff on my own credit card, so it’s none of his business.’

  ‘I won’t tell him,’ Miranda sighed. ‘Tell Delphine to file to me, and I’ll put it through to the business desk. Probably best if we leave Dash out of this one. Nicky’ll be pleased with a decent Adsero story. She won’t ask any questions.’

  ‘I hate it.’

  ‘I know.’

  ‘He’s going to get away with it.’

  ‘For now, yes. You don’t land every story, Casey. Some of them get away.’

  ‘But this one … ’ Casey felt the tears rise again. ‘It’s Ed, Miranda. How can I let Bailey get away?’

  69

  Casey couldn’t stand the hotel room any more. She pulled on flip-flops, shorts, a flowery top that seemed absurd, and stepped out of the hotel room.

  In the lift, she listened to bickering about Kirstenbosch and the Cape of Good Hope and how you’d expect a cooked breakfast in a place like this, really. And then she was across the lobby and out into the sunny courtyard, breathing in the scent of the pale pink roses.

  A sudden movement on her left, and she flinched, turning with a jolt of realisation.

  ‘Oh.’ Casey came to a halt. ‘You.’

  ‘Yes,’ he said sardonically. ‘Me.’

 
‘I thought you’d gone back to Mauritius.’

  ‘Well, no, evidently.’

  ‘You should. Go back to Mauritius, Zac. Or get on your yacht and hide somewhere in the ocean for a bit.’

  She tried to sidestep him, but he moved too fast. Too tall and too strong, blocking her path.

  ‘What happened in Zimbabwe, Casey?’

  ‘Nothing happened.’

  ‘Casey.’

  ‘I don’t want to talk about it.’ She tried to feint past him again, but he cut her off. ‘Stop it, Zac. Leave me alone.’

  ‘I don’t understand,’ said Zac. ‘The last time I spoke to you, you said you were off to Harare and you looked ready for anything. You were on the hunt, Casey. And now look at you.’

  Casey recoiled from his stare. She wished, vaguely, that she had washed her hair, and then she shoved the thought away.

  ‘We’re not doing the story,’ she said. ‘I got it wrong and it’s over. Now leave me alone, Zac.’

  ‘Tell me what’s happened, Casey.’

  Casey thought of the bacteria racing around Miranda’s bloodstream. Their numbers doubling, quadrupling. ‘No, Zac. There’s nothing to say.’

  ‘I haven’t heard from Garrick.’ He changed tactics.

  ‘Tough,’ she said. ‘I don’t think you will. And I think he told Bailey everything anyway.’

  ‘He probably did,’ Zac shrugged. ‘But he is his father, Casey.’

  ‘I know. But I’m done. I’m not having anything else to do with Bailey.’

  Casey pushed roughly past Zac, sensing dubious looks from the hotel receptionists. Zac caught her arm, spinning her back around again.

  ‘Casey, I’ve seen this look in people before, remember? In Garrick, in Noah. In my own sodding mirror. What has Bailey done to you?’

  ‘Nothing.’ She yanked her arm away, ‘Leave me alone, Zac.’

  The bellboy took a step towards them, unsure whether to intervene or not. Casey remembered – just – that she didn’t want to attract attention. She hesitated and turned towards Zac, forcing a smile on her face, and quickly trawling for an excuse.

  ‘I’m just going to pop out and see Delphine.’