Blood Trail

by Tony Park

  ‘Anybody!’

  ‘Hello!’ she called.

  ‘Sannie?’

  ‘Henk.’

  ‘Can’t . . . can’t swim. Hands . . .’

  Sannie barrelled along down the tunnel. She caught a brief glimpse of the entry to the offshoot tunnel but realised something was wrong. The wave of water she was riding was not continuing down the side tunnel. Rather, it had stopped and was washing back. She realised that the hand-dug tunnel, far less structurally sound than the concrete pipeway she was in, might have collapsed, or else some other equipment might have blocked it, damming the water.

  She ended her wild ride in a fast-filling chamber at the end.

  ‘Help!’

  The water was rising and in the dark Sannie could feel she was bumping into floating items – a camping chair, a camping stretcher. This must be the office-cum-campsite Virtuous had mentioned, she deduced.

  ‘Henk? Talk to me.’

  Sannie felt something move below her and grab her leg. She screamed.

  Sannie kicked and reached down, ready to strike at whatever was about to kill her, when she felt fingers brush hers then grasp her again. Henk lost his handhold. Sannie took a deep breath and duck-dived. Unable to see anything, she blindly groped around underwater.

  Her fingertips brushed something and whatever it was bucked away at her touch. She flailed about some more and felt the collar of a shirt, a neck, short-cropped hair. She hauled Henk upright and kicked for the surface.

  She lifted him, hands around him now as she went. Henk’s face broke the surface of the water, but he seemed unresponsive.

  Mercifully, the water began to recede. Perhaps whatever blockage had been caused in the side tunnel had now cleared itself, as the level dropped with a gushing rush. Sannie locked Henk in a Heimlich manoeuvre hold and lifted and squeezed, realising now that his hands had been cuffed behind him, preventing him from swimming. To her relief, he vomited water and began coughing.

  ‘Eish,’ Henk said. ‘Jissus, I thought I was fokked.’

  Sannie slumped against him and laughed weakly.

  ‘Look out!’ Mia arrived, half running, half floating as the waters carried her towards them.

  The lighting above them came on, glowing red. None of them spoke. It could, Sannie thought, have been some electrical malfunction righting itself now that the water had passed – or someone who knew how to operate the lights was in the tunnel.

  Now and then a fish flipped and splashed at their feet, but other than that, silence was returning. The tunnel-boring machine had stopped, having reached its terminal destination.

  The three of them, Sannie, Henk and Mia, stood together, wet and, now that the rush of adrenaline had passed, shivering. They heard a splashing noise and all of them spun around.

  Jeff walked down the tunnel towards them, an LM5 rifle held up and ready to fire.

  ‘It’s over, Jeff,’ Mia said. ‘Graham escaped – we all did. We all know where the tunnels start and finish.’

  ‘The best chance you have now is to come to the surface with us,’ Sannie said. ‘Put down your gun. Come on, Mia’s right. This is the end.’

  ‘The end?’ He looked to Mia. ‘How long do you think I’d survive in a South African prison?’

  ‘To tell you the truth, Jeff,’ Mia said, ‘I don’t care.’

  ‘I climbed down the central entry shaft,’ Jeff said. ‘And pulled the manhole behind me. No one knows where I am. I came down here to get away. Throw me the keys to your car, Captain.’

  Sannie reached into her pocket, took her remote out, shrugged and tossed it, so that it splashed in the water in front of Jeff.

  He crouched, keeping the rifle held in his right hand, finger on the trigger, as he felt for the keys.

  In her peripheral vision, Sannie saw Mia raise her hand to her mouth. Henk was wide-eyed, unable to hide the fact that he was looking around Jeff at something in the tunnel beyond. Sannie didn’t dare breathe.

  Jeff noticed the looks on their faces, and broke into a grin. ‘What? The old “behind you” trick? You think I’d fall for that?’

  Epilogue

  One month later, Lion Plains Game Reserve

  Tommy Furey sat in the grass next to Bongani Ngobeni, the tracker who had spotted a leopard for them all on the drive into the game reserve. Tommy’s big brother, Christo, sat on his other side, messaging their sister, Ilana, on WhatsApp.

  It was late afternoon and the bark on the big maroela tree was turning a red-gold colour.

  Tommy’s mother and Mia, the ranger who had driven them all into the reserve, were led out of the bush by Virtuous, the sangoma, who carried a metal bowl which she set down on the ground. Both women wore simple, cheap cotton nightdresses that they had bought especially for the occasion. Their feet were bare and their hair was wet, slicked back, as though they had both just had a shower. His mother caught his eye and winked at him.

  Bongani pointed to the cleared patch of bare earth on the ground in the shade of the maroela. He spoke softly: ‘This place, under the tree, has been cleared and swept clean by the sangoma so that it is purified, so that there are no bad spirits here, Tommy.’

  He nodded. His mother had told him not to be scared of anything that he might see today, or anything that he might see her go through or hear about.

  His mother had been so sad ever since his father had been killed overseas. Tommy had been sad as well, and cried at night sometimes. His mother had also had some nightmares lately. She had told him and Christo that the sangoma, with whom she had become friends, had suggested that the cleansing ritual they were going to witness today might help her.

  ‘Really?’ Christo had asked. Tommy didn’t think Christo believed it would help. ‘You’re a practising Christian, Mom. How’s this stuff going to make any difference?’

  ‘Trust me, boetie,’ she said, using her nickname for Christo, ‘it can’t make me feel any worse.’

  Tommy had met the sangoma once, when she came to tea at their house last week, but then she had worn western clothes. Now she was wearing a more traditional outfit, swathed in red, black and white patterned wraps and also barefoot. Her wrists and ankles were decorated with thin, knotted strips of animal skin, still with the hair on, and several bracelets made up of red, black and white beads.

  ‘Where were Mom and Mia just now?’ Tommy asked Bongani.

  ‘In the bush,’ Bongani whispered, ‘away from the purified area. The two women were washed, using water that contains various herbs, to cleanse the outside of their bodies. Then, the sangoma gave them a special drink, to cleanse their insides.’

  That took a moment to sink in. ‘You mean, like they made themselves sick?’

  Bongani smiled and nodded.

  ‘Really?’

  ‘Don’t look so horrified, Tommy. What your mother and Mia went through, the things they have seen recently, have polluted their spirits. They needed to get rid of this evil from their bodies, from their souls.’

  Tommy nodded. The newspaper had reported that one of the criminals who had been responsible for the poaching and the tunnels, a man from Canada, had been killed by a crocodile underground, when the dam burst. Tommy had asked his mother if she had been there when that had happened, and she had nodded, but said nothing more about it. Her ex-friend, Mrs Karandis, was in jail, and Tannie Elizabeth’s husband, Piet, had been killed. ‘My mom’s been having some nightmares lately.’

  Bongani nodded again. ‘So has Mia. She has been deeply troubled. You know she killed a poacher?’

  ‘Yes,’ Tommy said. ‘I read that. She’s famous, online. She’s now the number one guide on Stayhome Safari.’

  ‘Be that as it may,’ Bongani said, ‘she will be haunted by the spirit of the man she killed until she is able to cleanse herself of his memory, of his death. This happens sometimes, to soldiers and rangers, w
hen they see terrible things or kill someone, even in the line of duty. The spirits, the evil, stays with them, and they have terrible dreams. Sometimes these dreams are so bad they may even take their own lives.’

  ‘I think I understand. I’ve heard about people – police officers and soldiers – having those troubles.’

  Tommy hushed himself as Virtuous began speaking. Her voice, however, was different from normal, deeper, almost like a man’s.

  ‘She is speaking a different language, not Xitsonga,’ Bongani whispered to him. ‘It is as if she is talking to the spirits.’

  Tommy felt a chill, despite the sun’s warmth, but watched on in fascination as Virtuous bent and reached into the bowl and took out an animal’s organ. ‘What’s that?’

  ‘The gall bladder, from one of the goats that I killed.’

  He said it matter-of-factly. On the drive here, Mia had explained that elsewhere in the bush, while she and Tommy’s mother prepared for their cleansing ceremony, Bongani would have the honour of killing two goats, using a spear driven into each animal’s heart, to prevent it suffering. The goats were sacrifices, to appease their ancestors, one for Mia and one for Sannie, Mia had explained, and while Tommy wasn’t sure how that worked, he was told they would all be having goat on the braai afterwards, so the killing was not done in vain or taken lightly.

  Virtuous went to Mia and, squeezing the gall bladder that had come from ‘her’ goat, anointed her forehead, the back of her neck and her back with the liquid bile that came out.

  Tommy watched on, fascinated, and Christo had stopped sending messages. Tommy glanced at the others sitting in the grass. There was Oscar, one of the rangers, who had been shot, but was now out of hospital. His friend, Graham, had his arm around Oscar’s shoulders as he also watched the ceremony in fascinated silence. Miss Clyde-Smith, the owner of the reserve, and a woman called Sue, and her daughter, Laura, who had been kidnapped, were also there, as was Lilly, a girl who had just won a scholarship to Tommy’s school, and her friend, Thandi. Lilly saw him looking and smiled at him. Tommy smiled back.

  Tannie Elizabeth – he was allowed to address her as ‘aunty’ again now – sat in the grass dabbing a handkerchief to her eyes. On the afternoon his mother had come back from those terrible two days in Killarney and the game reserve, she had done so with a police tactical unit, and they had pointed guns at Mrs Oosthuizen and her mother had accused her of kidnapping Tommy. It turned out that Tannie Elizabeth was innocent, but Mrs Karandis, who really was a skelm, had pretended Mrs Oosthuizen was in on the act. Tommy remembered Tannie Elizabeth’s surprise when she was told that her husband was not off in Dubai with his girlfriend. She had been angry, and cried, because she also found out her stepson, from Canada, was in on the plan to kill rhinos. They were friends again, his mother and Elizabeth, but his mother never left him with anyone other than Christo these days.

  ‘Why is the sangoma doing that, with that stuff?’ Tommy asked, as Virtuous repeated her ministrations, this time for Sannie, using the second gall bladder.

  ‘The ancestors live in our minds, and in our bodies, and the bile is a means of sending something to them, a message, asking them for help with our troubles.’

  Tommy thought of his father and looked up at the blue sky. He hoped his dad would always be in his head and his heart, just as he lived on in his body and blood.

  When the sangoma had finished speaking, the ceremony was over and she gave Tommy a strip of skin from the hind leg of the goat killed in his mother’s name, and tied it around his right wrist.

  ‘This bracelet is what we call isiphandla, Tommy,’ the sangoma said. ‘It is a connection between you and your ancestors – your dear departed father and all who went before him. As the son of the captain you must wear this until it falls off. By that time your mother will have moved on another step in the process of healing her heart. This symbol shows her, and the community, that you are here for her, Tommy, that you are supporting her in these troubled times and that you remember and respect your ancestors. Do you understand?’

  ‘I do.’

  His mother came to him and she smelled fresh and clean, except for the stuff on her head. She kissed him. Mia was being hugged too, first by Graham and then by Bongani.

  Somewhere in the distance a lion called. His mother held him tight and drew Christo into their embrace.

  ‘Your father loved that sound,’ she said, ‘and so do I.’

  Acknowledgements

  Warning: if you are, like my wife, the sort of weird person who reads the end of books before the beginning, there are some spoilers ahead.

  The idea for this book came from a conversation I had with an academic over a cup of coffee in the town of Hoedspruit some time ago. That person told me of work being done to study the use of umuthi by both poachers and national parks rangers in South Africa.

  I’m incredibly grateful to that first contact, who wishes to remain anonymous. That discussion led me to Dr Tony Cunningham, an expert in this field who patiently answered my many questions about umuthi and belief systems, and read the relevant sections of the manuscript. Tony was keen to stress how African traditional beliefs aligned with similar views, practices and religions around the world. I’d like to thank him for his help and stress that any mistakes in my representation of these often-complex ideas are mine alone.

  I envisaged a story about poachers disappearing into thin air, but how was I going to pull this off? I didn’t know, when I started writing. I did think about poachers being flown out of a reserve in a helicopter, climbing trees and even pole-vaulting fences and spruits, but it was a real-life story which gave me the idea for how my criminals could come and go undetected.

  I wrote this story during a COVID-19 lockdown, at my home in Australia, and was surprised to wake to the news online one morning that thieves in South Africa had circumvented that country’s lockdown restrictions on alcohol sales by tunnelling into a liquor store in Johannesburg from a neighbouring building.

  I mentioned this story to my friend Dr Chris Wessels, a neighbour of mine in the real version of ‘Hippo Rock Private Nature Reserve’ (it’s based on the place where I live in South Africa) and he then emailed me a link to another real-life story about one of South Africa’s great unsolved crimes – a bank robbery in Krugersdorp, in 1977, in which thieves also dug a tunnel to gain access to the bank’s vault. I used this as part of the back story for the fictitious Piet Oosthuizen, though fudged the date of the real theft.

  My biggest challenge, how to write a novel set in Africa from the spare room of a two-bedroom apartment in Sydney, Australia, was solved the same way that many of us overcame the challenges of COVID-19. I reached out to people and talked to them.

  My sincere thanks go to my friend and renowned artist Abbey Ndlovu, in South Africa, who talked to me at length via Facebook Messenger while I was doing my research. Abbey told me of his traditional beliefs and his experiences of visiting a sangoma.

  Thanks also to Beryl Wilson, head of Zoology at the McGregor Museum in Kimberley, South Africa, for her information on the reptile trade and other conservation matters.

  Like many die-hard safari fans, I got my ‘fix’ of the African bush remotely during 2020, watching live webcasts of game drives from South Africa. Tayla McCurdy, field guide, presenter and one of the former stars of the real-life inspiration for ‘Stayhome Safari’, WildEarth safariLIVE, also answered my questions during lockdown about tracking, and life as a woman in a traditionally male-dominated industry. Tayla also kindly read a draft of the manuscript and provided valuable feedback and career-saving corrections. Thank you!

  Likewise, my anonymous friend and source read the book and made several (many, in fact) sensible and sensitive corrections, not only about umuthi, but also about my depiction of life in rural South Africa. Thank you.

  Annelien Oberholzer, my go-to person for all things African and Afrikaans, provide
d corrections and feedback and once more proved she can pick up typos that the best editors (and average authors) miss. Baie dankie, mate. Thank you, as well, to my long-time reader and supporter Sara Skjold for her advice on Norwegian swear words. Thanks also to my friend, psychotherapist Charlotte Stapf, who answered my questions on Mia and Sannie’s expressions of grief.

  While writing this book I was honoured to be asked to read and endorse an excellent non-fiction book, Changing a Leopard’s Spots, by master trackers Alex van den Heever and Renias Mhlongo. Their real-life story helped a great deal with my creation of Mia, Bongani and the fictitious places where they live and work, and their approach to tracking.

  Thanks once again to my Miss Fix-it in South Africa, Michele Ferguson, who seems to know just about everybody employed in just about every facet of wildlife and nature conservation. Michele put me in touch with Charmaine Swart from South African National Parks’ Environmental and Corporate Investigations unit and I am extremely grateful to Charmaine for providing corrections and advice about Sannie van Rensburg’s role in Blood Trail.

  Noel Kerr and Alison Windle from Bothar Boring came to my rescue on the technical side of things, providing explanations and videos of tunnel boring machines in action. I’m sure they thought I was crazy, or a criminal, or both, when I contacted them asking how someone might tunnel into a national park. Any mistakes or exaggerations in my depiction of this amazing technology, or indeed, about anything else I’ve covered in this novel, are mine and mine alone.

  As with most of my novels I outsourced the naming of characters in this one to several worthy charities. The following people paid good money to good causes to have their names or those of loved ones, friends or relatives assigned to characters. I hope they like their fictional identities, even if they’re baddies (you are all goodies in my eyes). Thanks to: Mia Greenaway, Sara Skjold and Jeff Beaton (Painted Dog Conservation Inc); Sue Barker (Belmont Rotary in support of the young people’s mental health charity, Headspace); David Byrne on behalf of Bongani Ngobeni and the late Alison Byrne (Nourish Non-Profit Organisation, a community sustainability project in South Africa); Elizabeth Oosthuizen and Samantha Karandis (South African National Parks Honorary Rangers, K9 fund); and the Foster family, on behalf of Graham Foster (Conservation and Wildlife Fund, Zimbabwe).