Dark Heart

by Tony Park

  ‘Yes. They swim from the Zimbabwe side, from the national park, to our side, because they know that beyond the riverfront lodges there are maize farms. The farmers don’t like it, but the elephants can’t resist. There is conflict – sometimes a farmer has had enough and he shoots an elephant.’

  ‘That’s terrible,’ Carmel said.

  ‘That is life,’ he said gently. ‘Man and nature cannot live side by side easily. So much of my work is picking up the pieces – animals orphaned because their parents were a problem, others run over by cars, birds poisoned. It never ends.’

  It pained her to hear the despair in Henri’s voice when they were witnessing such a beautiful spectacle. The matriarch of the small elephant herd was leading her daughter, her grandchild and her own tiny new calf down to the water’s edge. A big bull tailed them, on spec. The matriarch tested the air with her raised trunk. She then sucked water up into it and drank from the Zambezi.

  All the elephants had waded into the water and the younger ones seemed tentative, but when the matriarch walked further out into the flow the little ones followed her, until all were swimming.

  ‘Are they going to cross?’ Carmel asked.

  ‘Yes,’ said Elvis.

  He started the outboard again and turned and motored across the elephants’ intended path so that they were upstream, with the setting sun in the pinking western sky behind them. Carmel snapped away with her camera as the elephants paddled across the wide river, their trunks held up like periscopes.

  Carmel realised she was taking the same picture over and over again, so she laid her camera in her lap, accepted a refill of Sprite from Henri and just sat back and enjoyed the spectacle of the herd crossing an international boundary.

  Elvis kept the boat upstream, and far enough away from the elephants to avoid spooking them. When they neared the Zambian side he increased the throttle and hooked around downstream of the herd and nipped into the wharf at the base of Henri’s house.

  ‘Quickly,’ Henri said as he jumped off the boat and tied it to a post. He held out his hand and Carmel took it as he helped her onto shore. ‘Leave the cooler box and your things. Elvis will bring them. Come, let’s go.’

  Barefoot, as she had slipped off her sandals in the boat, she ran alongside Henri, across the manicured lawn, giggling nervously at the prospect of tracking wild elephants. They passed the main building and the two separate suites on the far side until they were within sight of the western fence of the property, which ran along what looked like a creek that flowed in a deep gully down to the Zambezi.

  Henri held up his hand. ‘Quietly now . . . here they come. Hear them?’

  The light was fading and the sky was a neon red. Carmel was as far from city civilisation as could be, and she loved it. She stopped and heard the sloshing of the giant creatures leaving the water, and the rumbling of their bellies as they urged each other on.

  ‘I see them,’ she whispered.

  Henri nodded, and stood still, beside a tall jackalberry tree. ‘My neighbour fenced her property on the far side of the stream, so we have left a corridor for the elephants and any other game in the area to move to and from the river.’

  Carmel nodded. ‘That’s great.’ The fencing was tacit acknowledgement that the elephants would visit the Zambian side and raid the local farmers’ crops, but it was pointless trying to fence the entire riverbank. It was an acceptance of wildlife, she realised, though not a solution to the villagers’ problems. Right now, however, she was just content to watch these huge creatures, blackened from the water like commandos on their cross-border raid, silently creeping past her and blocking out the sunset.

  ‘Beautiful, oui?’

  ‘Oh, yes,’ she whispered. Carmel took a step to one side to get a better view and stood on a sharp stick. ‘Ow!’ She lifted her foot and momentarily lost her balance.

  Henri grabbed her free hand to steady her. ‘OK?’

  Carmel nodded, and checked her foot. It was fine. He gave her hand a little squeeze and she returned the gesture. She was amazed by how quiet the elephants were as they moved up the narrow confine of the stream. She was also surprised by how soft Henri’s big hand felt. He had relaxed his grip. She knew it was time to let go, but she didn’t want to.

  Henri eventually released her hand and moved to the fence as the last of the elephants passed them. She followed him.

  ‘That was fantastic,’ Carmel said. ‘I’ve never been so close to them on foot before. I can’t believe how big and yet how quiet they were!’

  ‘Their feet are like big sponges, you know. They creep around everywhere.’

  The last elephant disappeared into the deepening shadows. Carmel didn’t want the moment to end.

  ‘Come, dinner will be ready soon,’ Henri said.

  They walked back across the lawn to the main building where Elvis was waiting for them. He had placed Carmel’s daypack and sandals by the coffee table. ‘Your phone is beeping, miss,’ he said.

  ‘Thanks, Elvis.’

  ‘I’ll get us some water and some snacks,’ Henri said.

  Carmel opened her bag and took out her iPhone. She was a little annoyed that she had signal here on the banks of the Zambezi. She saw she had received three new emails, one of which made her pulse quicken. It was from Richard Dunlop. She had sent him a message advising him that she was taking over Mike Ioannou’s investigations, but it had irked her that she had to have any dealings with him at all. Would his reply be friendly, jovial – as if he hadn’t cut her heart out and stomped on it – or would he be contrite over the way he’d treated her, or perhaps embarrassed to hear from her again? It didn’t matter. It was just work, she told herself.

  She looked over her shoulder to make sure Henri was still in the kitchen. He was chatting and laughing with a plump African lady who, judging by her apron, was the cook. The smell of roasting chicken wafted out. Carmel was starving, but her stomach was churning for another reason.

  She looked at the subject line of Richard’s message: Urgent – need to talk about threats. Carmel opened the message.

  Hi Carmel,

  Someone tried to kill Liesl Nel and me last night. We have the photograph that Mike Ioannou was asking us about. I tried calling his mobile number and got his wife – or should I say widow. When you emailed Liesl you might have cc’ed me and mentioned your fellow investigator appears to have been murdered.

  Sorry if this sounds terse, but I am. Terse and tense.

  Liesl and I have no idea who the men are in the picture, but when you open the attachment, have a look at the weapon the white man is holding. I thought it was an RPG, as I told Ioannou. Liesl’s dad says it is a Russian-designed SA-7 man-portable surface-to-air missile. Does this mean anything to you?

  Please tell us what is going on and what we should do.

  How are you, by the way? I still think about you.

  Regards,

  Richard

  At the bottom of the message was his South African mobile phone number, and an icon for a jpeg picture. Carmel moved the cursor and clicked on it. The download started.

  It was a big file – too big to fit on the phone’s small screen and she hadn’t had the phone long enough to work out how to make the image fit the available space. Instead, she had to shuffle the cursor up and across. She moved it until the frame was at head height with the first of the three men in the picture. There was a black man in uniform on the left. She shifted the cursor to the right. The next African man was also in camouflage uniform and sporting one of those jaunty French military-inspired berets that looked like you could land a helicopter on it, but he had his back to the camera so she couldn’t see his face.

  All Carmel knew about the photograph was from an email Mike Ioannou had sent to their superior in Arusha which had said that he was trying to track down an enlarged copy of the picture Liesl had taken at Kibeho, of a dying man holding out another picture. Mike had said that he believed he had ascertained the identity of the dying man, who h
ad some involvement in the plot to shoot down President Juvenal Habyarimana’s aircraft. While the man holding the picture was dead, Ioannou had theorised that the people in the picture might also be connected to the plot, and might still be alive. Given that it was a picture of a picture, taken in the midst of a massacre, and that the man holding the original was probably shaking and dying at the time, the quality was surprisingly good.

  She didn’t recognise the black man whose face she could see, but felt sure she would be able to find someone in Arusha or Rwanda who did. She shifted the cursor until the left shoulder and arm of the white man came into view.

  ‘You are not working, are you?’

  Carmel started, and lowered her head, moving the phone out of Henri’s line of sight. ‘No, no . . . nothing really.’

  Henri passed her a glass of iced water. ‘The curse of those devices is that you can never truly escape, can you?’

  ‘You’re right.’

  ‘Nothing serious, I hope? You look a little worried.’

  ‘No, everything’s fine.’ She needed to sit down. Richard had said someone had tried to kill him and Liesl. My God, she thought, did this mean Mike’s death was really related to what he’d uncovered in his investigation? She knew his questions about the dead man holding out the photograph to the camera had caused some commotion in Arusha, but she was still getting on top of what it was all about.

  She had been ordered by the chief prosecutor in Arusha to keep him up to date on anything and everything she was able to piece together about Mike’s leads. Carmel slipped the iPhone back into her pack.

  ‘Well,’ Henri spread his hands, ‘dinner is ready.’

  They took seats opposite each other at a dining table out on the verandah. It was a gorgeous setting, with the Zambezi glittering in the darkness and frogs calling in the background, but Carmel couldn’t relax and enjoy it. She pushed her food around her plate.

  Henri dabbed his mouth with his linen serviette. ‘Do you want to talk about it?’

  ‘What? Umm, no, everything’s fine.’

  Carmel took a mouthful of chicken. It was delicious, and she concentrated on enjoying it. When she looked up she saw he was still sitting quietly, his plate empty, watching her. She finished chewing and swallowed her food. ‘It’s this investigation I’ve inherited – the one I’m working on.’

  ‘It’s causing you worry, I can tell.’

  She knew it would prey on her mind all night, and that she would be terrible company. Perhaps it might help to get his opinion; after all, he had been born in Rwanda and had been there at the time of the genocide. It was a long shot, but he might even recognise the two people in the picture whose faces were visible. It was a candid shot, as none of the men was looking right at the camera, and Carmel wondered if it had been taken covertly.

  ‘Would you be interested in having a look at something for me?’

  ‘Of course.’

  13

  The red sun was hovering close to the tops of the mopane trees as Liesl and Richard drove back towards the farmhouse. Not knowing what else they could or should do, Liesl had suggested Richard might like to see her parents’ game farm. Liesl drove an old open-top Land Rover game viewer, which bounced along the gravel road.

  ‘I was expecting a hundred hectares of fenced bush with a few zebra and kudu,’ Richard said.

  She laughed. ‘Yes, people who haven’t been here before are surprised when they find out Poppa owns four thousand hectares of bushveld.’

  ‘Apart from buffalo, are there any animals your father doesn’t have?’

  Liesl grinned. She was saving the best until last. ‘We’ll see.’ The afternoon light was glorious even though this time of year was normally frustrating for a professional wildlife photographer. Once the rains began, the sky tended to be cloudy early in the morning and late in the afternoon, which were the prime times for shooting in the dry season. The so-called golden hours, just after dawn and just before dusk, were a rare occurrence in the summer, and not to be wasted – even in the face of death threats.

  Within the game reserve were a few large enclosures, usually used when new animals were brought in, in order to acclimatise them to their surroundings before they were let loose into the rest of the park. Liesl came to one of these and stopped. She climbed down out of the game viewer, went to the rear of the vehicle and lowered the tailgate. ‘Come give me a hand, please.’

  Richard looked around.

  ‘You’re safe here – well relatively.’ He got down and she walked to a big marula tree. ‘I need you to help me with this.’

  ‘Bloody hell.’ Richard stared down at the dead impala ram behind the tree. ‘What happened to him?’

  ‘Shot, half an hour ago, by Koos the game reserve manager. He knew we’d be coming.’

  ‘I hope you don’t expect me to gut and skin and braai this. Is this some kind of Afrikaner initiation ceremony?’

  ‘No.’ She held a hand up. ‘Listen . . .’

  From the other side of the fence she heard the high-pitched yelps and barks. She grinned when she saw Richard’s eyes widen as the first of the dogs bounded up to the fence. Soon the animal was joined by three other adults, and then eight pups. Liesl noted the dogs were in fantastic shape – much better than they’d looked in the photos her father had sent her when they’d first been brought to the farm. Their coats, a palette of black, brown, white and mustard, were shiny and free of ticks and mange.

  ‘Wild dogs! Bloody hell, Liesl. What’s your dad doing with these?’

  ‘I’ll explain, but first we need to prepare dinner.’ Liesl instructed Richard to take the dead impala’s hind legs, while she took the front. They heaved the ram up into the back of the Land Rover, then Liesl climbed back into the vehicle.

  ‘Stay there and get the gate,’ she said. ‘There used to be seven adults in this pack and they roamed the area between here and the Kruger park,’ she went on.

  ‘That’s a big distance,’ Richard said to her through the open window.

  ‘Ja, but wild dogs have a huge range and the pack needs to eat every day. That doesn’t endear them to livestock farmers or game farmers, but the pack used to roam through my parents’ property every few months and my folks were willing to live with the loss of a few impalas and kudu in exchange for having one of Africa’s most endangered predators as visitors. Not everyone’s as sympathetic, though. As you probably know, painted dogs were considered a vermin up until recently and nearly wiped out.’

  Liesl started the engine of the Land Rover and drove the few metres to the gate. The dogs were yelping excitedly and leaping up on their hind legs at the prospect of food. ‘OK, open the gate then slide it closed once I’m inside. Don’t worry, though – they won’t try to escape as they know I’ve got their food.’

  ‘I’m not worried about them escaping, I’m worried about being mistaken for the first course.’

  She laughed. ‘Relax, Richard, there’s never been a recorded incident of wild dogs attacking a human.’

  ‘Not recorded because the victims never lived to tell the tale.’

  ‘Open the gate, chicken.’

  Richard frowned, but slid the gate open then rammed it shut again as fast as he could once Liesl had driven inside.

  ‘Are you sure you’re safe in there?’ he called.

  Liesl clambered over the rear two rows of seats to the open load area at the back of the game viewer. She unfastened the tailgate, kicked it open then started to slide the dead impala out. The alpha male and alpha female of the pack were ready and eager to help her. As they grabbed the impala’s snout and forelegs, Liesl snatched up her camera and started shooting it. Then she slung the camera around her neck and jumped down.

  ‘Liesl!’

  She waved to him. ‘Come in, Richard. It’s fine. They won’t hurt you.’

  Liesl stayed about four metres from the pack, mostly to avoid being splattered with blood and gore rather than out of any sense of fear. She knew the dogs were totally
engrossed in feeding and couldn’t care less about her. When she looked up momentarily from the viewfinder she saw Richard slide the gate open a fraction and then squeeze through the tiny gap. She went back to her job, crouching and moving to capture as many frames as she could of the dogs tearing the impala apart.

  The pups were now old enough to feed from the carcass themselves. When they were younger the adults would have left them in the den with a babysitter, gone out and made a kill, scoffed it, then returned home and regurgitated part of the meal for the pups to eat. Now the adults let the pups in for their share. It was a gory feast. Liesl snapped a pup making off with a trail of intestines that looked like butchers’ sausages.

  Liesl sidestepped as one pup chased the other, bearing a leg bone, and nearly tripped her over as it brushed past her. She pulled back a little then dropped to the ground.

  ‘Liesl!’

  She ignored Richard’s shout, willing him to be quiet. She had a fantastic angle, looking up at the alpha female and two of the other adults playing tug of war with the remains of the carcass. The light was perfect. It wasn’t the same, she knew, as if she’d caught the kill in the wild, but as stock pictures these would be worth something. She might even see if she could get the Escape! editor to do a story on her father’s work with the local conservation people to get the pack back up to strength.

  Within three minutes there was nothing left of the impala save for a bloodstain on the grass. The dogs carried off the remaining skin and bone into the bush inside the enclosure. Liesl stood and brushed herself down. When she looked at her hands she saw they were shaking. It wasn’t the excitement of seeing the dogs in action, or being so close to them; it was the blood and bone. When she watched things happen through the viewfinder she was calm, detached, professional. Afterwards, when she thought of what had happened, what she’d seen, she started to unravel.

  ‘Well, that was amazing,’ Richard said.

  She felt unsteady on her feet and his voice sounded distorted.

  ‘Liesl? Are you OK?’

  Liesl turned and walked over to the Land Rover, opened the driver’s side door and sat down heavily. She set her camera down on the passenger seat then wrapped her arms around herself, but no matter how tightly she gripped, she couldn’t stop the shakes from taking over her whole body.