Dark Heart

by Tony Park

  The police in Rwanda and the team of ICTR investigators who flew to Kigali from Arusha, belatedly, had prevented Henri and Carmel from leaving until their statements had been taken, several times over. Carmel had begged the investigating officers to be allowed to fly to South Africa for the funeral, but she had been stonewalled.

  Henri, it turned out, had a wine farm just outside Franschhoek, in the Western Cape, about forty minutes’ drive from Cape Town. He and Carmel had eventually been allowed to leave and had flown there from Kigali, via Nairobi and Johannesburg. This would be the first chance Richard would have to see his former lover in seventeen years. He downed his water and wiped his hands on his trousers. ‘Let’s get this over with.’

  Collette set down her glass, which she’d barely touched. ‘My stomach is churning. You’re right, let’s finish this.’

  Richard nodded. They walked outside and got into the hire car they’d picked up yesterday. Franschhoek, he was learning, was the sort of place that could experience four seasons in a day, even in summer. The low misty cloud they’d encountered when they arrived had cleared to reveal a clear view of the craggy grey faces of the mountains that flanked the Franschhoek Valley. They headed to the end of Cabriere Street, where Richard turned left and then right into Huguenotweg, the little town’s main street. The police station was on the corner. He looked at Collette and she said nothing. Richard gripped the wheel tighter. He could feel his heart racing.

  He turned right at the memorial to the town’s founders, French Huguenot refugees, glancing at the statue of a young woman on a pedestal and the semicircular parade of arches behind her. Franschhoek had been a refuge for the people who came here and the woman held a broken chain and a Bible in her hands, signifying religious freedom and the breaking of bonds. His heart ached when he thought of Liesl, and how she had died. She had stayed on in Hess’s macabre torture chamber, trying to save the animals imprisoned there, and God alone knew what she had been through before her death. Her life had been troubled, but she had been courageous to the end and while he wished he had been with her, he now knew that Collette had needed him, too.

  The vineyards began as soon as he cleared the town. Richard checked his rear-view mirror and saw two Mercedes sedans. The road began to climb into the foothills of the mountains. It was spectacular countryside and Richard wondered how much a wine farm here was worth. More than he could ever afford, that was for sure.

  Four kilometres further on he took a turn-off to the right, through a gate and along a red dirt road. Rows of grapes flanked the driveway, which led up a slope towards a grand Cape Dutch farmhouse. Richard stopped about two hundred metres from the building, turned off the engine and got out. He started walking the rest of the way towards the house.

  A dark-haired woman walked out of the house and raised her hand to shield her eyes. Richard recognised her immediately. His pace faltered. She put her hands on her hips and he saw her face. She was as beautiful as he’d thought her the day he’d met her, at an army base in the tropical north of Australia. She stood there, looking at him.

  He couldn’t turn back. There was too much at stake. Richard resumed his stride and as he came closer Carmel took a couple of tentative steps down the wide stone staircase that led down from the stoop. Henri Bousson walked out, shrugging off a white cook’s apron. He wiped his hands on it and followed Carmel down the steps.

  ‘Hello, Richard,’ she said, and stopped out of his reach.

  ‘Carmel, hi. I –’

  ‘Save it.’

  ‘Yes. All right.’

  ‘Hello. You must be Richard?’ Henri moved past her and extended a hand. He squeezed Richard’s hard. It was the grip of a woman’s new lover meeting her former partner, a test of strength. Richard looked him in the eye.

  ‘It is good to meet you,’ Henri said. ‘I heard what you did here in South Africa, for Liesl’s parents. She died a brave woman.’

  ‘Yes, she did.’

  ‘Where is your car, Richard? You should have driven all the way up.’

  ‘The road’s steep, and wet from this morning’s rain. I wasn’t sure if it would make it all the way up here. It’s parked down in the vineyards.’

  Henri waved a hand. ‘Ah, no need to be so timid. The road here is fine. We can get it later, but for now I have made coq au vin for lunch, so you must come in and eat.’

  ‘Yes.’ Richard stood there, looking at him.

  ‘A shame I couldn’t meet your travelling companion – the Rwandan girl. What was her name?’

  ‘Collette. Collette Ingabire.’

  Henri didn’t blink and Richard held his stare.

  ‘She has gone back to Australia, yes?’ Henri said.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘I am sure she will be safe there.’

  Richard wondered how the man could be so calm. ‘Why shouldn’t she be now Hess is dead?’

  Henri shrugged. ‘I don’t know. It is a safe country, from what I know, yes?’

  ‘Unless you hire some local muscle to kidnap someone, torture them, then try to kill them.’

  Henri looked over his shoulder towards his grand home. ‘I don’t know what you are talking about, but I need to go check on my chicken.’

  When Henri turned back around Collette was walking up the road towards the farmhouse. He looked at Carmel, back at the house, and then at the woman walking towards him. Finally, Richard saw Henri’s resolve flicker. He blinked.

  ‘Is this him?’ Richard shouted, not daring to take his eyes off the Frenchman.

  Collette came up behind him. ‘Yes, it is him.’

  ‘I don’t know this woman,’ Henri said. ‘Is this your Rwandan?’

  ‘Don’t speak of her like she’s an object, Bousson, or whatever your real name is. She’s a person. A human being, just like the million people who were killed by the people you and Karl Hess were working for.’

  ‘Preposterous. I know nothing of what you say. I am going inside. You should leave.’

  ‘Stay where you are.’ There was the warning blip of a siren and two BMW M3 sedans roared up the driveway. The doors opened and a mix of uniformed and plainclothes police, headed by Captain Fanie Theron, bundled out and surged forward.

  Bousson looked from Richard to Carmel. His body sagged a little. ‘How did you know?’

  ‘It took a while,’ Carmel said.

  Richard couldn’t read her expression, but he thought she looked sad and weary.

  ‘I thought you were genuine, the real thing, Henri. But you made some mistakes, and so did your business partner, Karl Hess. When Hess kidnapped us the sensible thing for him to do would have been to kill you. You had nothing to do with the investigation and the photograph. He had no reason to keep you alive, but you were accomplices. I’ve also been doing some checking of your wildlife “orphanage”. I had an investigator talk to some of your past volunteers. There were several stories of people turning up to work to find that perfectly healthy animals had died in the night and had been removed under cover of darkness. Captain Theron also found your phone number, and one that was subsequently linked to a phone found in Hess’s house, in Aston Mutale’s mobile phone records. I took a picture of you on my phone, when we were still in Rwanda after Liesl died, and emailed it to Richard, who showed it to Collette. I stayed with you long enough to make sure you didn’t disappear.’

  Bousson snorted. ‘This would have all been around the time you stopped letting me fuck you.’

  Richard’s fist shot out and took Bousson square in the middle of his face. Blood spurted from his nose as he staggered back.

  The police advanced, guns drawn, before the fight could escalate. ‘Henri Bousson, you are under arrest for contravention of the endangered species trafficking act, and you are also wanted for questioning over the shooting of a Robert Banda in Livingstone, Zambia.’ Theron read Bousson his rights as two policemen moved to him and took an arm each.

  Bousson stared at Collette. ‘You recognised me.’

  ‘Yes,’
she said. ‘You were the other white man who used to come to our house. You were the friend of that man Hess. You were the one who took the picture.’

  ‘Yes, OK, I was there, but I played no part in downing the Rwandan president’s aircraft. I don’t know who Hess was working for, or who the men he met with were working for. I was Hess’s guide in the mountains and I dealt with him in smuggling out wildlife before the genocide . . . that’s all.’

  ‘That’s all?’ Richard shook his head.

  Bousson wiped blood from his nose and turned beseeching eyes to Carmel. ‘You saw me, I killed Hess. He was a madman.’

  ‘Yes,’ Carmel said. ‘That was what made me think you weren’t who you pretended to be – the way you killed Hess. He was an animal, but I don’t believe in summary justice and I couldn’t love a man who does. Several of his bones were broken by the gorillas and he wasn’t going anywhere, but you shot him in the head, for no reason other than to protect your identity. And then, after the police investigation, you said the chimp you’d gone to Rwanda to rescue had died in captivity and you didn’t need to see the people who’d been caring for it. You were going to get the baby gorilla, weren’t you?’

  Bousson simply stared at her.

  ‘You also killed the man who came to your lodge in Zambia – a man you set up or Mutale set up on your behalf – just to make me trust you. Plus, you and your business partners killed Mike Ioannou, and set up the raid on Liesl’s parents’ farm. Hess’s man tried to kill the Nels and you knew Hess was going to kidnap and torture Liesl to find out what we knew about him. You thought you’d covered your tracks, Henri, that I’d be fooled by your lies.’

  Richard admired her steel, as she stared Bousson down and the man turned his face away from her. She had stayed with him to ensure his arrest, placing herself at greater risk in order to do her job. She had honoured Liesl’s sacrifice and her courage made him reflect on his past weakness.

  Theron cuffed Bousson and he and the other officers led him to the waiting cars. When they were almost at the car Bousson said something to Theron. The policeman nodded and Bousson stopped and turned. ‘Collette?’

  She looked at him.

  ‘For the record, a week after the meeting when I took the picture, I overheard Hess and Colonel Menahe discussing your father. Your father was there as a military intelligence and weapons expert and they thought they could trust him. But he was opposed to the plot to shoot down the president’s jet. He fled his post and went into hiding, but I heard he was eventually tracked down and killed at Kibeho. He played no part in fomenting the genocide or carrying it out, as far as I know.’

  Collette nodded, and Theron led Henri by the arm to the waiting police car.

  Carmel and Collette formally introduced each other and shook hands. ‘I feel like I know you,’ Collette said, sniffing and wiping her eyes.

  ‘How so?’

  ‘Richard has talked of little else these past few days.’

  Carmel looked at him. ‘Really?’

  Richard extended his hand to Carmel and after a moment’s hesitation she took it. Collette stepped back from them and looked out at the mountains that surrounded them, tilting her face to the afternoon sunshine. She wiped a tear from her cheek.

  Richard didn’t let go of Carmel’s hand. ‘Yes, really. I was a fool to cheat on you, Carmel. I didn’t love Liesl, I loved you.’

  ‘Yes, well, that’s all ancient history, isn’t it?’ she said.

  ‘It is. I’m sick of going over the past – all the terrible things that happened and all the stupid things I’ve done in my life. Collette’s flying back to Johannesburg and then on to Sydney this afternoon. I was wondering if you’d like to have dinner with me.’

  She held on to his hand and looked into his eyes. ‘Maybe.’

  ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

  This is a work of fiction based on some tragic real-life events and a mystery. I do not know who shot down President Juvenal Habyarimana’s aircraft in 1994 and even as late as 2011, when I was researching this book, another enquiry was re-examining circumstances of this event, which is widely regarded as the spark that ignited the Rwandan Genocide.

  Likewise, the UN International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR) was still recording prosecutions of high-profile génocidaires while I was writing this book, some seventeen years after the massacres took place in 1994.

  I visited Rwanda in 2011 while researching Dark Heart and found it to be a pleasant, orderly, safe, clean (plastic bags really are banned in Rwanda, and it shows) and well-run country. My wife, Nicola, and I had a wonderful experience tracking mountain gorillas in the Volcanoes National Park and at the time of writing I would recommend a visit to this beautiful country in a heartbeat.

  In the capital, Kigali, we visited the genocide memorial and museum. While this excellent facility gives some historical context to the genocide I think that we, like most visitors to peaceful Rwanda, were still left confounded as to how such horror could have transpired there.

  In the course of my research I read several books about the genocide and spoke with Rwandan survivors of the genocide; men and women who had served with the United Nations Assistance Mission, Rwanda (UNAMIR); and civilian and military photographers who documented the terrible events of 1994 and 1995. Some of these people wish not to be named, and I thank them and respect their desire for privacy.

  I would like to particularly thank the following: Craig McConaghy QC who served with the Australian Army as the legal officer for UNAMIR II and later as a prosecutor with the ICTR; Kevin O’Halloran, who witnessed the Kibeho massacre as a platoon sergeant with the 2nd/4th Battalion of the Royal Australian Regiment and later documented that event and others through the eyes of Australian veterans of the UN mission in an excellent book, Pure Massacre; and photographers Steven Siewert and Robyn Bird.

  Doctors Neil Bonginkosi Lawrence Taverner and Gary Peiser read and corrected the passages concerning medical procedures and the life of a doctor in the Kruger National Park (and some of my Afrikaans). As with the other areas where I have sought research assistance any mistakes are mine not theirs.

  John Lemmon of the Australian-based wildlife NGO Painted Dog Conservation Inc and Emma Loewenson provided information about the illegal trade in endangered wildlife. I drew on various media reports for information about the trade in animal and human body parts for use in traditional African medicine. While such reports are an almost daily occurrence in parts of Africa, I should point out here that at no time in my research did I ever uncover any suggestion of illegal or improper conduct by members of the Zambian Battalion (ZAMBATT) deployed to Rwanda as part of the UN peace keeping mission; indeed, the opposite is true.

  Keili Jefferies and Di McGill filled in the gaps in my memories of Townsville, Chris Lloyd suggested the location of the gangsters’ lair in Marrickville, and Amanda and Edward Vorster kindly allowed me to draw on descriptions of their wonderful home and lands at Letsitele in my description of the Nel family’s fictional property. Rupert and Barbara Jeffries’ lovely home bears a striking resemblance to Henri Bousson’s pad on the Zambezi.

  As in my previous books a number of good people paid money at charity auctions to have their names used as fictional characters. I would like to thank the following and the organisations that they supported: Richard Dunlop and Carmel Robertson nee Shang (courtesy of her daughters Isabelle and Emily), Painted Dog Conservation Inc; Rick Green and Katrina Driver, The Grey Man; Michael Ioannou, ZANE (Zimbabwe, a National Emergency); Collette Clemenger (courtesy of Jason and Denise Manning), St Michaels Catholic School, Hertfordshire, UK, which supports a school in Rwanda.

  As usual my heartfelt thanks go to my unpaid unofficial editors, Nicola Park, Sheila Hawkins and Kathy Dowling, who read the book and made many valuable suggestions. Thanks, too, to Annelien Oberholzer and another wonderful person (who wishes to remain anonymous) who read the entire manuscript and corrected my cultural and linguistic errors.

  At my publishers, Pan Macmillan,
I would like to thank my friends, publishing director Cate Paterson, managing editor Emma Rafferty and freelance copy editor Julia Stiles.

  Writing is, as they say, a lonely business so it is nice to be able to socialise and kick ideas around with some great Aussie authors, especially Peter Watt, Di Blacklock and David Rollins. If you like my books, buy theirs.

  And thank you. You’re the one who counts the most.

  About Tony Park

  Tony Park was born in 1964 and grew up in the western suburbs of Sydney. He has worked as a newspaper reporter in Australia and England, a government press secretary, a public relations consultant and a freelance writer. He is also a major in the Australian Army Reserve and served six months in Afghanistan in 2002 as a public affairs officer. He and his wife, Nicola, spend six months of every year in Sydney, and the remainder in Africa. He is the author of eight other novels set in Africa, Far Horizon, Zambezi, African Sky, Safari, Silent Predator, Ivory, The Delta and African Dawn, and co-author of three biographies: Part of the Pride, with Kevin Richardson; War Dogs, with Shane Bryant; and The Grey Man, with John Curtis, as well as The Lost Battlefield of Kokoda, with Brian Freeman.

  www.tonypark.net

  Also by Tony Park

  Far Horizon

  Zambezi

  African Sky

  Safari

  Silent Predator

  Ivory

  The Delta

  African Dawn

  Part of the Pride, with Kevin Richardson

  War Dogs, with Shane Bryant

  The Grey Man, with John Curtis

  The Lost Battlefield of Kokoda, with Brian Freeman

  MORE BESTSELLING FICTION FROM TONY PARK

  African Dawn

  Three families – the Bryants, the Quilter-Phippses and the Ngwenyas – share a history as complex and bloody as Zimbabwe itself.