Amie carried it to her bed. For a while she fiddled with the locks but she couldn’t get into it. The only way to open it was to rotate the three circles of numbers to free the tumblers. There were ten numbers on each dial if you counted the zero, and that made a total of ten x ten x ten chances. Amie wasn’t sure of the odds, but did that matter? The only way she could see to get the case open was to try every combination one at a time. She started at triple zero and began to work her way through the sequences.
After an hour she was ready to throw the case out of the window. Her fingers and thumbs were sore from pushing the levers in and she was getting nowhere. She began to pace the room to get her thoughts in order. She was now alone in a foreign land, supposedly dead, with no passport, no papers of any kind, no airline tickets, no money and no way of even getting back to Apatu.
She couldn’t see which way to turn. One thing emerged from her jumbled thoughts, she had to find out where Vivienne was, maybe she’d been injured and was lying in a hospital somewhere.
Amie didn’t want to ask the Spa owner just yet, how could she explain she didn’t even know Vivienne’s full name? But wait, when they checked in, the Spa had photocopied their passports. She needed to look at the copies.
She had a quick shower while she worked out her story then made for the front hall, hoping that her feeble excuse wouldn’t raise too many suspicions. To her relief there was a different receptionist manning the desk. Taking a deep breath, Amie approached her with a big smile on her face.
“I wonder if you could do me a favour?” she asked.
The young girl wearing a name badge that told the world she was called Eleanor, smiled. “Sure, how can I help you?”
Amie leant on the counter partly to stop herself from shaking and also to get closer to her quarry. “I just love giving people surprises, Eleanor,” she gushed, “and I think it’s my room-mate’s birthday very soon. She kind of hinted at it. I want to get her a present, but I need to make sure of the exact date.”
The receptionist looked puzzled.
“I remembered that you make photocopies of the guests’ passports, and if I could take a peep at hers then I would know for sure and get the right day.” Amie stopped, she was beginning to ramble on and even to her own ears she didn’t sound very convincing.
To her relief, Eleanor smiled and nodded. “No problem. Wait a moment I’ll find it for you.” She disappeared into the back office.
Amie shuffled from one foot to the other hoping and praying no one would walk in and discover what she was up to.
Eleanor soon reappeared holding a sheet of A4 paper. “It’s Veronica Keppell right?” she asked.
“What?” for a moment Amie was stunned. “Uh, are you sure you have the right one? Her name is Vivienne.”
“Room thirty-five, right?”
“Yes.”
“Wait,” Eleanor disappeared again and returned with a second photocopy. She put them both on the counter top. “See here, one passport for Felicity Mansell and the other for Veronica Keppell together in the file under room thirty-five.”
Amie looked in dismay at the copies. Eleanor was right, the picture matched. It looked as if Vivienne was also travelling under an assumed name. She recovered quickly.
“Well, I never knew that! Can you believe you can know someone for ages and never know their proper Christian name? I guess she doesn’t like to be called Veronica.”
“It’s a bit old fashioned, isn’t it?” Eleanor tittered.
“Yes, it is rather.” Amie took a quick look at the birth date and place of issue. London! That told her nothing but Vivienne or Veronica or whatever her real name was didn’t have a birthday anytime soon.
“Thanks so much for your help, Eleanor – very kind.” Amie smiled and beat a hasty retreat to room thirty-five.
She spent another fruitless hour trying to open the suitcase and then decided that she simply must stop procrastinating and find out what had happened to her erstwhile jailor. It was long past the time she could expect her to walk through the door. If she wasn’t in the shopping mall and she’d not come back to the car, then the only other conclusion was she’d been injured.
Amie put her hand in her pocket for a tissue and felt the card that Gerrit had given her. He was a medic, and maybe, he could take her to the hospitals so she could ask about Vivienne, although she had no idea what name she should to ask for.
She eyed the phone on the bedside table, dialled 9 then punched in the numbers from Gerrit’s card. It went straight to his voice mail asking the caller to leave a message and he’d get right back when he could.
Amie wished she had a mobile phone especially since Vivienne had mentioned that over 90% of South Africans had one, they called them cell phones here. But her minders were not going to trust her in case she was tempted to phone home. Not that she’d had a chance before today; not a moment on her own since they’d left the embassy. Vivienne had done an excellent job as a guard. There was no point in leaving a message. She didn’t know the phone number for the Spa and she wasn’t going to sit around and do nothing in the hope he might get back to her.
She thought she should phone round the hospitals, but she didn’t have any numbers or know how many of them there were in a city this size, so she returned to the reception desk. This time there was no one in sight. She eyed the bell but decided not to draw attention to herself. She paused, dithered for a minute and then returned to the room. She sat on the bed, her hands shaking, she couldn’t think straight, what was she going to do? Pull yourself together Amie she muttered. Go out and find the nearest hospitals and see if she’s been taken for treatment. There can’t be too many of them, can there?
She drove back to the same hospital where she’d had all those tests. Was it only a few days ago? After enquiring for a, Vivienne or Veronica Keppell and explaining what had happened, she drew a blank.
“Why don’t you phone the other hospitals?” the friendly lady at the desk asked her. “It’s not safe to be out alone on your own after dark, there are a lot of skebengas (villains) around and car hijacking is common these days. You said you’re here on holiday so you don’t know your way around. My dear, you could end up in a township by mistake.”
Amie gave a start. She’d not for a moment considered the dangers, and apparently, townships were dangerous? Now she thought about it, they’d always returned to the Spa before sundown.
“I don’t have a phone,” she said miserably.
“Here, borrow mine I’ve plenty of free minutes, or would you like me to make the calls for you?”
“Oh, yes, please, if you would,” Amie heaved a sigh of relief.
“Take a seat and I’ll see what I can do. Better still, go get a coffee and relax for a few moments, you look quite frazzled.”
Much as Amie adored coffee, she felt she could do with a stiff drink instead but there was no alcohol in the hospital coffee shop. She sat nursing the cup while glancing at the helpful receptionist. She saw her make a couple of calls then stop while she booked in a patient before dialling out again. After what felt like hours, she looked up and beckoned Amie over.
“I’ve drawn a complete blank, I’m afraid. The most likely place to find her is in one of the state hospitals, King Edward or Addington. But if she was, uh, fatally wounded they would have taken her to the morgue.”
Amie gasped. It hadn’t occurred to her that Vivienne could be dead.
“I can make some more phone calls for you if you like,” the lady was beyond being helpful, “but without any kind of identification it’s going to be difficult to find her.”
“She had her handbag with her, so she’d have had all her documents in it.”
“No unattended bag will last two seconds around here, it’s almost certain someone will have made off with it, that’s the way things are. Removing possessions from bodies is ...” she paused and leaned over and touched Amie’s arm. “Oh, I’m so sorry, how thoughtless of me. I’m just trying to explain that it�
�s unlikely anything of value would be found.”
Another avenue closed, thought Amie. “I really don’t know what to do. Do you know what happened at the mall?”
“No one is talking about anything else. It was an armed robbery and the last I heard there were about ten killed and several more injured. We understand the police shot the robbers, so they got them all. Have you been to the police and spoken to them? I think that’s your best bet.”
Amie didn’t know how to answer her, how to explain she was here with no paperwork, unsure of the real identity of her missing room-mate, and she was one of the walking dead herself.
“No, I wasn’t sure if ...” Amie’s previous brushes with the law in Africa had not been among her best experiences.
“Isn’t there anyone else who could help you?”
Amie pulled out Gerrit’s business card. “I think he might help. Could you phone him for me please? He’s a paramedic and he was there. He might know something.”
The kind lady looked as if she was about to run out of patience. Did she feel that there was something a little strange about the young girl who was asking so many questions? Amie held her breath as the receptionist shrugged, took the card and dialled the number. Would Gerrit answer his phone this time? The lady behind the desk handed her the receiver.
“Hello?”
“Hi, is that Gerrit?”
“Yes, how can I help you?”
“It’s er ... Felicity here, we uh, met outside the mall and you gave me your card. I was the girl talking to you by your ambulance, during the robbery. I was waiting for my friend to come out, only she didn’t ...” A wave of acute anxiety swept over Amie and she dropped the phone on the counter.
The receptionist picked it up and spoke to Gerrit before disconnecting the call. “He said to tell you he’d be round in a few minutes. Take a seat and here ...” she handed Amie a box of tissues.
Amie wiped the sweat off her face and blew her nose. She’d come this far, she mustn’t lose it now. She slumped onto one of the comfortable sofas and put her head in her hands. She had no idea what she was going to say to Gerrit, but maybe he could at least help her to track Vivienne down.
When Gerrit appeared a few minutes later Amie didn’t recognize him in shorts and t-shirt, but he remembered her. He walked over and sat down on the couch next to her.
“I am so sorry this has happened to you on your holiday. It must be so awful.” He took her hand.
At the sound of his kind words, Amie relaxed a little. Here was someone who would help even if she couldn’t tell him the whole truth.
“You need to find your friend, right?”
“Yes, Vivienne ... er ... Veronica. Maybe you know where they might have taken her, if she was injured or ... but the kind lady here has tried all the hospitals and that only leaves the morgue.”
“Let me take you round there, and I’ll go in and ask for you. Strictly speaking we can’t pick up patients if they’re deceased. The police handle that, but I’m sure we’ll find her in one of the hospitals. Come on, we’ll get this sorted out.”
Gerrit helped her to her feet and led her out to his car. “We’ll start at the morgue and work backwards,” he said pulling out into the traffic and heading for Durban.
When they arrived outside a two-storey brown building in a residential road he turned to Amie. “I’d rather you didn’t wait out here in the car,” he said, “so come in with me, but you can stay by the door.”
Amie grimaced. The last thing she wanted to do was visit a morgue. Watching CSI on the television was one thing, the real-life scenario was quite another.
“It’s not too bad trust me.” Gerrit got out and came around to help her out of the car. What a gentleman, she thought as she reluctantly followed him in through a green door.
As soon as they walked into the outer office, she was hit by the strong smell of antiseptic mixed with an underlying odour she couldn’t identify.
Gerrit pointed to a row of seats and told her to wait for him before disappearing down a corridor.
Amie tried to breathe through her mouth while she waited, swallowing the bile which threatened to make her gag. Most of the chairs were occupied by people looking nervous while several more stood silently with their backs to the wall. One elderly lady was weeping pitifully while another young man was banging the door frame with his fist over and over again. The rest sat quietly.
Gerrit returned in a few minutes with another man dressed in a green gown and cap, his mask pulled down to his chin.
“Felicity, there are five females here from the shoot out this afternoon, three black ladies and two white. Your friend might be one of those. None of them had any identification on them. The only way to tell is for you to take a look. Do you think you’re up to that?”
Amie shuddered. This was more than she’d bargained for. She’d seen dead bodies before, but that was in a war situation and that was different. She swayed slightly as she stood up. “Can we do this quickly?” she whispered.
Gerrit took her elbow and they followed the morgue attendant along a corridor and into a room lined from floor to ceiling with steel doors. He looked at a chart on the wall, opened the first door, slid out the tray and peeled back the sheet. Amie breathed a sigh of relief when she saw that it wasn’t Vivienne. She wasn’t here, everything would be all right, she was probably in a hospital with a broken leg and would be out tomorrow. It was when the second tray slid out and Amie looked at the corpse that her heart sank.
“Yeah,” she gulped. “That’s her. That’s my friend.” She buried her face in Gerrit’s shoulder. She didn’t know if she would ever forget what she’d just seen. Vivienne had been shot in the head and the damage done to one side of her friend’s face was horrific.
“There are forms to fill out if you don’t mind.” The attendant covered the body again, slid the tray back into the cabinet and secured the door.
He briskly led them into an office lined with filing cabinets and motioned for them to sit on one side of the desk while he went around the other side and shuffled some papers.
“Can I have her full name, please?” He looked up and gave Amie a small smile. “I know this is difficult, but you understand ...” he trailed off.
“Yes, of course. Her name is Veronica ...” for a moment Amie panicked. She couldn’t remember the surname from the passport. What was it? She sat there mute, racking her brain.
“I’m sure this is a most unpleasant experience and I can only offer my condolences.” The attendant put her hesitation down to the stress of identifying her friend’s body, but Amie was stressed because she couldn’t remember a name.
“Keppell,” she replied. “Veronica Keppell.
“Address?”
Now, what was Amie going to say? It was highly unlikely she would jet off on holiday with a great friend with whom she was sharing a room, and not know where she lived.
“Uh, just put down the British Embassy in Apatu. That’s the capital of Togodo,” she replied at last. “I believe she gave up her flat before her posting. She’s an only child and her parents died in a car crash a long time ago.” Amie became more inventive as she added, “and that’s where she lives. I’m sure the staff there will be able to help you fill in more details. I work there as well and we just decided to take off on the spur of the moment and come down for a break.”
If either Gerrit or the morgue official believed any of her story was difficult to guess, but the details were soon scribbled down, along with Amie’s details. She gave her new name and the same address, and then they were outside. Amie bent double, filling her lungs with great gulps of fresh, clean air.
“I could never work in a place like that.” Her voice was shaky. “I hope she didn’t suffer.”
“Unlikely. It would have been instantaneous from a wound like that,” answered Gerrit as he guided her back to the car. “I don’t suppose you feel up to going for a drink somewhere quiet, right now?”
“No, I’m sorry Ger
rit, it’s all been a bit much. I only want to go home and climb into bed.” The moment the words were out of Amie’s mouth she was aghast at how they might sound. “Oh, I didn’t mean ... er ... well you know, perhaps a small one. I could do with a little brandy after that ordeal.” Maybe it was not a good idea to be on her own right now.
Gerrit laughed and said, “Fine, a small brandy it is,” and he drove to a quiet hotel not far from the Spa resort.
Amie followed him into the bar area and sat in a far corner. “I’m not sure what to do,” she said. “Vivienne had all the papers on her and probably the airline tickets and I don’t even have a cent. They must have taken her bag, or do you think it might have been handed in?”
“Very unlikely, it will be long gone by now. Bags get stolen all the time, you need to keep a firm hold on them, you don’t even put them on the ground if you’re having a cup of coffee. Talking of which let me get you that brandy.” He touched her gently on the shoulder and strolled to the bar.
Amie snuggled down into a plush bucket chair and had a good look at Gerrit while he chatted to the bar maid and ordered their drinks. He had broad shoulders, a powerful-looking back, and was a good eight inches taller than Amie. She hadn’t realised how big he was, and for a moment the trials of the day disappeared into an unaccustomed fantasy of safety and comfort in the arms of a relative stranger.
He grinned at her while he balanced the drinks in one hand before placing them on two paper coasters. Had he read her thoughts? Amie gave herself a mental kick and told herself not to get carried away on just one brandy. Back to the Spa immediately after.
The first sip sent warmth coursing through her body and she sighed with pleasure.
Gerrit chuckled. “Tell you what, Felicity. My shift finishes at noon tomorrow. I could pick you up at the Spa and take you to the British Consulate. Perhaps they could sort out all your paperwork and you can order money from home. How would that be?”
Amie in Africa Box Set 1 Page 78
