by Tony Park
Liesl carried on around the outside of the lodge until she came to a pair of shuttered French doors. She tried the door handle and it was unlocked. She slung her camera over her shoulder and eased the door open. Inside this room she saw a double bed, side tables, and an open door leading to a darkened corridor beyond. From the lack of clothes or clutter in the room she supposed this was a guest bedroom – a lucky find. She crept into the hallway, moving silently on a thick Persian runner. She could hear the crackle of the fireplace and feel the warmth radiating through the wall beside her. She guessed the lounge area where she’d seen Hess and Aston was just on the other side. The long corridor led to another entrance and around the corner to the right would be the kitchen she’d passed earlier. Dark wooden Congolese masks adorned with strands of hair stared down at her. She heard the men’s voices and moved closer towards the sound, until she stopped by a doorway.
‘They are not going anywhere. They are in the guesthouse and waiting to go on a gorilla trek tomorrow,’ Liesl heard Aston say.
‘We’ll get them tomorrow morning. You know this will signal the end of my operation up here, once they go missing,’ Hess said in reply. ‘Your mistakes have cost me dearly, Aston. I’m not happy about this.’
‘The errors were not of my making.’
‘No,’ Hess persisted, ‘but you chose the men who failed. You are lucky I don’t dispose of you.’
‘You need me,’ Aston said. ‘What will you do about the Frenchman?’
‘We have to take him, along with the others tomorrow. He has to disappear as well. We can’t have him being interviewed by the press. There cannot be any witnesses left, Aston.’
‘I understand. But there will be much media coverage anyway. The lawyer is Australian, and even the South Africans will want to know what happened to their famous photographer. That will draw attention to you, surely?’
Liesl’s eyes widened. They were talking about killing all of them – her, Carmel and Henri.
‘I’ve thought about that,’ Hess said. ‘You should know by now that I leave nothing to chance. I’m going on the trek as well. I’ve already told all the staff here that I’m going to see the gorillas tomorrow and that they should take the day off. My Rwandan business manager back in Kigali will have to deal with the fallout of my “disappearance”, and that of his clients.’
‘What about me?’ Aston asked.
‘There will be no one left alive to link you to the missing westerners. You can take your harvest with you back to South Africa and oversee the shipment of the dogs. I hope I can trust you not to fail at that mission, as you have failed at everything else. You’re late, already, with the dogs.’
‘An unavoidable delay. You must have seen the media coverage of the floods in South Africa. But it is arranged, and, no, I will not fail,’ Aston said, bridling. ‘I have my man on the scene and he has been monitoring the farm. The veterinarian should be on his way to him by now. The wild dogs are still in their enclosure in Letsitele and they will be in the air within twenty-four hours, on their way to Dubai.’
‘Good,’ Hess said. ‘And the same thing goes there, on the farm – no witnesses left alive.’
Liesl put a hand against the wall to steady herself. She felt as though she was about to faint. She and Richard had known there was someone watching them at her parents’ farm at Letsitele, but what she hadn’t realised was that her parents, and by the sound of it the painted dogs they were caring for on behalf of the state, were also a target. It all made sense. Hess and Aston were still involved in wildlife smuggling, as well as whatever else they were mixed up in previously. If the dogs were to be shipped to Dubai there would be a huge amount of money involved. She’d seen stories in the newspapers about the illegal trade in live wildlife, and remembered that private zoos and collectors in the Middle East and Asia paid serious money for African wildlife. She took out her cellphone and started tapping out a message. She heard the scratch of claws slipping on polished stone floors and looked up to see a black Doberman running towards her. The dog growled, low and menacing, and then ran at her. She tried to escape, but screamed as she felt its massive jaw close around her leg.
28
Richard felt the phone buzz in his pocket. He took it out and the screen illuminated his face in the darkened hallway of the former residential house in Roodepoort where Aston Mutale operated his traditional healing ‘surgery’.
‘Turn that off,’ Theron hissed.
Richard shook his head. The only person he’d been sending and receiving messages from in the last few days was Liesl, and this one was from her. He held up a hand to Theron, who was beckoning him down the hallway, and quickly read the message: Hess and Mutale working together. Plan to kidnap us and raid my parents farm and kill them and steal do . . . He read it again. ‘Shit,’ he whispered.
‘What?’ the detective asked. Richard handed the phone to Theron so he could read it for himself. ‘What’s do?’
‘I don’t know, but we have to get to Letsitele now. That’s where Liesl Nel’s parents live.’
Theron nodded. ‘Ja. I know of the Nels. Everyone in the wildlife conservation world does.’
‘We have to leave now.’
They’d broken into Aston’s office, Theron using a lock pick to open the door. Richard had asked him first if he was worried about an alarm, but the detective had assured him that no thief would break into the residence or surgery of a traditional healer, for fear of the evil that would befall them. Theron had posted Collette at the door as a lookout and, despite her years of western education, she’d been happy to wait by the door. ‘No way I’m going inside that place.’
‘We’ve come this far, let’s have a look,’ Theron said. ‘We don’t know when they plan to kill the Nels, or what for. Something here might tell us.’
Richard took a deep breath and exhaled. ‘All right. But I want to call them to warn them. Can you get police to their farm?’
Theron shrugged. ‘Maybe. They don’t call Letsitele the “slow veld” for nothing, and resources are short everywhere. I need firm evidence a crime is about to be committed.’
‘All right then, what are we waiting for?’ Richard said.
They moved through a waiting area, furnished with cheap wooden lounge chairs with foam cushions. A coffee table carried the last few days’ tabloids and some old copies of Drum magazine. The air smelled of stale cigarette smoke. The lock of the first door yielded almost instantly to Theron’s pick. ‘Looks like the reception area. Have a look in here,’ he said to Richard, ‘but leave everything as you find it.’
Richard nodded. He was wearing thin latex surgical gloves that Theron had pulled from a bag in the boot of his Mercedes. They’d driven through the night streets of Johannesburg to get to Roodepoort, which was in the western part of the city. Richard had never grown used to the big city and had a healthy respect for its reputation as a crime capital. Far off he heard the wail of an ambulance or police siren. The house itself was in a quiet street where most of the residents had been forced out – perhaps because of crime or falling property values, or both – and businesses had moved in. A dog barked in a neighbouring house.
‘I’m going to check Mutale’s office and the rest of the house.’
‘OK.’ Richard rolled back the office chair pulled up to a timber veneer desk. He smelled perfume in the air. On the desk, next to the screen of a desktop computer, was a studio picture of three small children. The woman’s desk was clean, but for a desk calendar blotter and black and red pens, and a small bottle of Gilbey’s gin with three wilted flowers in it. Richard slid open the large filing drawer on the right. Inside were two trays – Aston’s inbox and outbox.
He lifted the trays and slid out the contents, keeping them in piles. In the outbox were three sealed envelopes – one addressed to Eskom, the electricity authority, and two to men with African names. All needed stamps, so Richard assumed this was the next day’s post. He shuffled through the inbox and found junk mail, bill
s for the renewal of a car licence and water rates, and an invoice from the cargo division of a Middle Eastern airline.
‘Hello,’ Richard whispered. The invoice was for the shipment of twelve dogs from Maputo, Mozambique, to Dubai. The breed of the animals was listed as ‘German Shepherd’. The cost was staggering, but Richard had never heard of someone transporting so many pets at one time. He thought of the do at the end of Liesl’s unfinished SMS message. He got up and moved as quickly and as quietly down the hallway as he could.
Collette looked back at him and he nodded to her, then went in search of Theron. What was clearly Aston’s office was empty, so Richard headed to the back of the dwelling. The kitchen of the house was as it must have been originally, but Richard was assailed by a strong smell of meat almost at its use-by date as he entered. Theron was standing over a large deep freeze, the lid raised.
‘I’ve found it,’ Richard whispered to the detective’s back. ‘I know what they’re after.’
Theron turned and looked at him, and blinked. ‘What is it?’
Richard handed Theron the bill of lading for the dogs. ‘Liesl’s parents have twelve African wild dogs on their farm that they’re looking after until they can be released back into the wild. Judging by Liesl’s SMS, they’re going to steal the dogs and kill her parents. That makes sense, as her mum and dad have also seen the picture of Hess in Rwanda. The shipment date for those dogs is tomorrow afternoon. I think they’re going to hit the farm tonight, if they haven’t already.’
‘Eish,’ Theron said. ‘And have a look in here. We’re messing with a bad oke, all right.’
Richard peered around the bulk of the detective, who shone a Maglite torch with a red filter into the freezer. Inside was a human arm, severed at the elbow, with the hand and just three fingers left on it. Next to it was a plastic bag with what looked very much to Richard like someone’s heart and lungs. ‘Muti.’
‘Ja. God knows what else we’ll find in here.’
‘Liesl said Aston’s planning on kidnapping her and the others. What do you think he’s going to do to them, Captain?’
Theron closed the lid of the freezer. ‘I don’t want to imagine. But at least she’s on to them, so hopefully they can turn around and get away from Hess and leave him to us.’
‘I’m worried about the way the message cut out,’ Richard said.
‘Send her one back, man.’
Richard nodded. He tapped out, Are you all right?
Theron opened the freezer again and rummaged inside it. He found the head of a baboon, which he lifted out to show Richard. ‘These guys are definitely still into wildlife, as well as people.’
Richard’s phone beeped. All fine here. Sorry re last message. Have SMSed my folks. They are fine. Not at farm – staying at friends’ place. Poppa released dogs into wild yesterday. Emergency averted, but can you go there and wait for me to return tomorrow?
‘What does she say?’ Theron asked, closing the freezer again.
‘She says everything’s all right and that her parents are now fine.’
‘What do you think?’ Theron looked at him.
Richard tapped another message and pressed send.
*
Aston stuffed a handkerchief in Liesl’s mouth and tied it tight with a length of cord he took from a curtain in Hess’s lounge room. It was worrying that the woman had been eavesdropping on them, but he was pleased that they would soon be rid of her and the other witnesses.
Hess told his dog to sit, patted its head for the good job it had done savaging Liesl’s leg and arm, and then went to the kitchen and dismissed the staff, telling them that nothing was wrong; he had caught an intruder but would deal with it. The cooks wiped their hands, turned off the food, took their coats and hurried off to the staff compound.
As Hess came back into the room where Liesl lay, face down and bound, he held up the reporter’s phone. ‘I’ve just been exchanging messages on this young lady’s behalf with Doctor Richard Dunlop in South Africa,’ he said to Aston. ‘I’ve sent him an SMS telling him to go to the Nel farm. I’m sure he’ll comply.’
‘My man will stay behind and take care of him when he arrives,’ Aston said.
Liesl’s phone beeped and Hess checked the screen ‘Hmmm.’ Hess squatted and grabbed Liesl by the hair, turning her head so she was facing him. ‘He says he will go to the farm, and that he loves you, Liesl. Isn’t that sweet?’
The woman glared up at Hess, and Aston saw the mix of hatred, fear and impotent rage. Hess thumbed the phone’s keypad and spoke slowly as he typed. And I love you too, Richard, with all of my heart. X, O, X. How’s that?’ Hess allowed himself a chuckle.
Aston took out his phone and SMSed Jan his new orders. His phone beeped in reply a minute later. ‘He says affirmative. He’s about to go in now and get the dogs – and the old couple.’
*
Liesl writhed and screamed into the gag. She replayed Hess’s words . . . He loves you, Liesl. Richard didn’t love her, nor she him. Clever Richard, she thought. If he’d messaged her telling her he loved her, she would have replied, Get over yourself, or something similar. He was suspicious, and now he would know it wasn’t her on the other end of the phone.
Hess looked down at her, hands on his hips. He lashed out with the toe of his boot and Liesl winced and tried to curl into the foetal position as he connected with her ribs. ‘You want her alive, I presume, to do your business?’
Aston nodded. ‘Yes. I can’t tell you how valuable she is. I’m thinking I might video her as well.’
Hess rocked his head from side to side, weighing up the comment. ‘Cover her face with a hood then. You don’t want a videotape identifying her doing the rounds of the internet or porn websites.’
‘Yes, of course. I’m not an idiot,’ Aston said.
‘I just hope your superstitions don’t bring you undone.’
‘Where can I do it?’ Aston asked.
‘Outside, in the storage building with the rest of the stock.’ Hess dropped to his knees beside her and touched her cheek with the back of his hand. ‘Just another animal to be traded. Shame. That’s what you get for sticking your pretty nose where it shouldn’t be. I’m afraid you’re going to wish you’d been killed by the man who carjacked you in Jozi.’
Liesl kicked and writhed as the two men grabbed her, taking an elbow each, and lifted her painfully to her feet. Her hands and ankles had been bound with electricity extension cords. To move her, they dragged her along on her toes. Her arms felt like they were being torn out of their sockets. As they went outside she caught a glimpse of the lodge behind her, full of well-heeled tourists who had come to see the endangered mountain gorillas. Hess and Mutale took her the other way. Aston steadied her while Hess unlocked the gate in the high razor wire-topped fence that led to the low stone building in the next yard. As they dragged her through the gate Liesl tried to throw herself to the ground, hoping she might somehow loosen her gag or bindings by rolling in the wet grass. Hess caught her, stopping her from falling, and rewarded her effort with a slap to her face that left her ears ringing.
‘We should drug the bitch,’ Hess said. ‘I’ll give her some Ketamine.’
Aston shook his head. ‘No. I want her conscious. It’s better for the muti that way. Her fear and pain are the power source. She needs to be aware of what’s happening when I operate.’
‘Very well,’ said Hess. ‘I’ll indulge you on this because I want to see it myself, but make sure she’s well gagged. I don’t want the staff barging in.’
‘Of course.’
Hess opened the door to the stone building and Liesl heard the screech and chatter of birds and animals inside, and smelled their mess. It was almost overpowering. They dragged her in and Hess flicked on a fluorescent light. There were rows of cages and the light and the movement set the reptilian, avian and mammalian captives into a renewed frenzy of squawking, hissing and chattering. Liesl saw a rare golden monkey; a black and white colobus; a python as thick
as her leg, raising its big head to check out the commotion; and a dozen different types of birds. Leathery black fingers poked through the chicken wire of a wooden cage and shook the door. As she focused on the creature, Liesl saw it was a young mountain gorilla. The fuzzy infant was probably no more than a year old. Hess had collected a goldmine of endangered fauna.
Beyond the animal cages was a wall that looked like it was made of steel, or aluminium, and set into it was a heavy door. Both the door and the frame were cushioned by thick rubber seals. Through the door Liesl could see a stainless-steel operating table, and a trolley next to it that was glittering with a terrifying array of surgical instruments, syringes and medicines. Nearby was a large deep freeze.
Hess and Mutale dragged her into the next section, where the floor was slippery and off-white, instead of the compressed earth of the animal-holding area. ‘For your information,’ Hess said, ‘this is a completely soundproof refrigerated shipping container once I close the door, so no one is going to hear your cries for help.’
Mutale had mentioned the word muti. Traditional medicine. From her time working on South African newspapers Liesl knew that human body parts regularly went missing from morgues and hospitals across the country, and graves were robbed so bodies could be dismembered. Muti could be made from plants and animals and birds, but the most powerful medicine came from human beings. She knew that even more powerful than organs and limbs and eyes that had been harvested from the dead were those that had been cut from a living, screaming person, just before their tortured death.
‘Let’s get her on the table.’
Liesl kicked out at Hess and yelled into the rag in her mouth. But as fit as she was, she was no match for the two men, who hefted her onto the veterinary operating table and secured her ankles to rails on the side with thick leather straps. Hess grabbed a handful of her hair in one hand and, holding the tip of a scalpel against her jugular, forced her to sit up. ‘I’ll happily kill you now, but there’s a chance you can walk out of here if you tell us what we want.’
