Ghosts of the Past

by Tony Park

  Claire joined him and stared down at the prints in the mud and the squiggly trail the tail had made.

  ‘Get your rifle out and cover me. Watch for the eyes – that’s all you’ll see of it, if you’re lucky.’

  ‘If you’re lucky, you mean.’

  Blake sat down on the sand and pulled off his boots. He tied them to Bluey’s saddle and unbuttoned his shirt. He started to undo his trousers, then appeared to think better of it.

  ‘Don’t stop on my account, Mr Blake, I shan’t watch,’ Claire said, turning away, ‘this time at least.’

  Blake shrugged again and undid the fly buttons. He tied his clothes into a bundle and secured them to the saddle as well. Then he took the hunting rifle from its bucket and grabbed Bluey’s reins with the same hand that held the weapon, and plunged into the water without hesitation.

  Claire turned back, scanned the river for crocodiles and secretly marvelled at how easy he made the task of swimming the river appear.

  She averted her eyes when he started to emerge from the water, but not before sneaking a peek at his body. Broad shoulders, muscled buttocks. It was just as well he was too far away to see the colour in her cheeks.

  ‘Decent now,’ he called.

  She looked up and saw he had his trousers and boots on. He had dried himself with his shirt and it was now draped across his horse’s saddle, drying. The hunting rifle looked like a toy in his big hands. His normally wavy black hair was plastered flat, making his face look less wild, more sleek and refined.

  ‘Your turn to look away, now, Mr Blake.’

  He turned.

  Claire stripped down to her stolen chemise and bloomers, rolled her riding clothes into a bundle and fixed it to the saddle as Blake had done. She also tied her new Mauser rifle high on the saddle. She waded into the water, but her horse was less willing than Blake’s. She doubled back and, looking down, noticed how the silk bloomers clung to her thighs. ‘Don’t turn just yet.’ She finally coaxed the horse into the water. ‘All right, Mr Blake.’

  Claire tried hard not to panic, but as she began to swim she couldn’t help but swallow mouthfuls of river water as her horse thrashed about. The third time it happened, she coughed wretchedly and at that moment the horse whinnied and tossed its head. The movement pulled her down again. She struck out wildly with her free arm and eventually got her head above water. ‘I’m all right,’ she called, but she felt herself beginning to lose control.

  *

  Blake turned and saw that Claire was having a hard time of it right from the start. Occasionally her head dipped below the water’s surface and, when she re-emerged, she coughed and spluttered. He took a few steps closer to the water’s edge.

  Blake laid the rifle down on the sand and started to pull his boots off again.

  ‘I’m fine,’ she repeated.

  Blake ignored her and waded into the water up to his knees. Then he stopped, swore, and turned and ran back up the bank.

  He scooped up the rifle.

  ‘What is it?’ Claire called.

  Blake brought the heavy rifle up into his shoulder in one fluid movement and pulled the trigger. The rifle kicked his shoulder and a geyser of water erupted not six feet from Claire’s face. She shrieked and flailed her arms faster. In the process he saw that the wet leather reins had slipped from her hand.

  ‘Crocodile!’ he yelled.

  Blake had been tracking the beast’s eyes, but now they were gone. He doubted he had hit it with his first shot. It would have seen the horse and would be diving now.

  ‘Forget the horse, Claire. Swim!’

  He paced down the bank and saw the snout break the surface near the horse’s rump. Blake fired again, sending up another spout of water. The bandolier of ammunition was tied to the saddle.

  The gunfire had spooked Claire’s horse and the frightened animal thrashed in the water. Claire went under again.

  Blake dropped the rifle, ran down the bank and dived into the water. When he broke the surface he saw that the horse was between him and Claire. The crocodile appeared again, but this time, to Blake’s horror, the killer was suddenly behind Claire.

  Blake struck out for her, cutting off the horse. The confused animal turned and started swimming alongside Blake, towards Claire. Blake grabbed the horse’s mane and let it carry him towards her. Claire stopped swimming and looked around.

  ‘Keep going!’ Blake commanded.

  ‘Something brushed my leg!’ she screamed, her mouth filling with water as she slipped below the surface.

  Blake reached across the saddle, grabbed the Mauser and then kicked away from the horse. He flailed his way towards her. ‘I’m coming!’

  He was aware of the crocodile’s bulk off to his right now, creating a mini bow wave as it effortlessly navigated its interception course towards the floundering woman. Blake reached Claire first, though, and trod water by her side. He grabbed a handful of her hair and pulled her to the surface. ‘Swim, damn it,’ he ordered her, and thrust her towards the bank. He followed her in until his feet touched the sandy bottom.

  Blake turned and saw the eyes again. He backed up the bank, but stumbled and fell over Claire who was on all fours, coughing and retching up river water.

  Blake rolled over and worked the bolt action of Claire’s rifle as the crocodile propelled itself from the water, jaws wide again.

  The rifle was still by his hip but Blake pulled the trigger and the Mauser jumped in his hands. The bullet entered the soft flesh of the crocodile’s upper jaw and exited out the top of its snout. Its head snapped to one side and the reptile rolled back into the water.

  Blake used the weapon to help himself stand. His hands were shaking. He walked unsteadily up the bank.

  Claire got to her feet and was staring at him, mouth half open. The colour had drained from her face. He dropped the Mauser and folded her into his arms. They held each other tightly.

  ‘It’s all right now,’ he said.

  As his heart rate slowed he became aware of the heat of her body, the hard nipples pressed against his chest through the wet silk. It had been too long since he had held a woman. Just the feel of her made him feel better, made him want her.

  Seeming to remember herself, Claire stiffened in his embrace and placed her palms on his chest. ‘Please! Mr Blake,’ she coughed again. ‘Thank you, but excuse me!’

  She turned and stormed off up onto the grassy bank. She sat down and drew her knees up to her chest and wrapped her arms around her legs. Blake stood on the sand, hands on his hips. He heard splashes and turned to see Claire’s horse disappear beneath the surface of the water.

  Blake retrieved Claire’s sodden bundle of clothes which had come loose during the attack and snagged on the branch of a sycamore fig tree overhanging the water. He carried them back to where she sat. ‘At least we didn’t lose these. Let’s get going.’

  She looked up at him, took a deep breath, and nodded. Blake saw that tears had started to brim in her eyes.

  ‘You all right?’ he asked.

  Claire looked away from him as though embarrassed by her show of weakness.

  ‘I love horses. It’s my dream to have a big farm, a stud, and breed them, one day.’ She looked at the river where her mount had vanished. The tears began to flow.

  Blake came to her and took her in his arms, and she sobbed into his chest.

  Chapter 23

  Komatipoort, South Africa, the present day

  Nick looked around the single-storey outdoor shopping mall complex. He tried to imagine what it might be like to tangle with one of the crocodiles that he had already seen in the Sabie River.

  Cyril Blake had rushed into the river without hesitation and taken the beast in almost hand-to-hand combat. He must have had feelings for Claire, or was it simply a soldier’s instinct to protect someone in trouble?

  Nick
wondered if he would have had the courage to do something like that.

  He went back to his little car and set off for the Kruger Park again. After a few minutes his phone rang and he pulled over to the side of the road. His heart skipped as he fished it out of his pocket, hoping it was Susan calling to say she had reconsidered her decision. Instead it was a number he didn’t recognise.

  ‘Nick speaking.’

  ‘Mr Eatwell?’

  ‘Yes, who’s calling?’

  ‘It is Anja Berghoff here, Mr Eatwell. I am wondering if you can please agree to share the information you have about your relative Cyril Blake who fought in German South West Africa in 1906.’

  Why should I? was the first thought that popped into Nick’s head. The woman had been downright rude to him in her reply and he did not think her tone had been something that had been lost in translation. ‘Why is it so important now?’

  ‘Because . . . because I have lost all my research material.’

  He heard her voice crack. ‘So you said in your email. How did you lose it?’

  ‘Well, not lost, exactly; it was stolen from me. Last night, in Windhoek.’

  ‘Didn’t you have a backup of that as well, on a portable hard drive or on email?’ It was the sort of question, he realised, people always asked when someone had lost a file or their photos. He knew, full well, that he was the last person who could criticise – he was hopeless at backing up his work.

  She sniffed. ‘My laptop and my hard drive were both taken, and the criminals forced me to give them my email password. The thieves accessed my account and deleted everything.’

  ‘That’s too weird.’ This did not sound like an opportunistic crime. ‘You say they “forced” you?’

  ‘Two men came to my hotel room, robbed it while I was out, and when I came back they attacked me. They . . . tied me up and threatened to kill me. They didn’t touch my credit cards or bank accounts, although I was able to cancel the cards very quickly.’

  ‘Bloody hell.’ Susan’s final words, a warning to be careful, came back to him, and he wondered if she’d meant more than just to be careful of the wildlife. ‘Who would want that stuff?’

  Anja blew her nose. ‘I don’t know. But they threatened to kill me.’

  ‘Over some stuff about desert horses?’

  ‘Yes, but my current research material covered much more than that. It dated back to the conflict in German South West Africa and the Anglo-Boer War. I was tracing the life of a woman called Claire Martin, who is linked to my study on the origins of the desert horses.’

  ‘Claire . . . yes.’

  ‘Your papers mention her?’

  ‘Yes.’ She had gone from borderline distraught to pushy quickly. ‘Susan Vidler gave me your email address. She said that you snubbed her when she asked you to share information.’

  ‘That woman is a journalist. She is rude and she just wants a sensationalistic story.’

  Nick was not sure how he felt about Susan right now, but he bridled at Anja’s blunt criticism. For one thing, it was the pot calling the kettle black as far as he was concerned. ‘Whatever. Have you tried calling or emailing Susan since you lost all your data?’

  There was a brief pause. ‘Yes. Both. She has not replied to me and there is no answer when I call her phone, which is not surprising, as I also did not return her calls or emails in the past. She is ignoring me.’

  You and me both, Nick thought. ‘So you came to me.’

  ‘Yes. This is not easy for me, Mr Eatwell, Nick. I know I could have been more polite to you, but I have worked very hard on my thesis and now it’s gone. Please understand, I have spent months amassing this material and Susan wanted me to just give it to her so she can write an article. I was not even sure if the information I had on Claire Martin was eventually going to help with my thesis, but finding it was like conducting an archaeological dig – you brush away the layers and hope you will uncover something of value.’

  ‘OK,’ he said uncertainly.

  ‘I am sorry, Nick. Please accept my apology. I am lost right now. Please can you help me?’

  His earlier anger melted; he sensed apologies were not something Anja Berghoff issued every day.

  Before he could answer she carried on. ‘Please. Whatever I have, if I can find it again, you can look at, if it helps you. May I please ask what it is you have?’

  ‘It’s a manuscript of some sort, written by a German doctor named Peter Kohl, long after the war against the Nama. In his foreword he says he is writing while a prisoner of the South Africans and the British during the First World War, in 1915.’

  ‘That is very interesting!’

  ‘You sound excited,’ Nick said.

  ‘Oh, yes. Peter Kohl was Claire Martin’s second husband. Her first husband killed himself. If Peter Kohl is writing about your ancestor, then he must have known him,’ she said. ‘What time is it there?’

  ‘About the same time as where you are, I expect?’

  ‘Oh,’ she said, sounding surprised. ‘You are in Namibia?’

  ‘South Africa. I’m having a look at where my ancestor fought during the Boer War, in the Kruger Park. I was supposed to be travelling with . . . a friend.’

  There was silence for a few seconds. ‘With Susan Vidler?’

  She had a quick mind, Nick thought, but he didn’t really feel like explaining to a stranger how he had just been dumped. ‘Maybe. I mean, we had no fixed plans, but she said we would catch up.’

  ‘Hmm.’ Anja said nothing more.

  ‘What?’

  ‘This is strange,’ Anja said. ‘I get robbed, for my research, it would seem, and you are supposed to meet with a journalist who is interested in material we each have and who is now not returning either of our calls.’

  ‘You think there’s a connection?’

  ‘I don’t know, but something else just occurred to me. My mother’s house was almost robbed, just before I left for Africa, by a man pretending to be from a gas company.’

  Nick checked his watch; he calculated that he needed to start driving again if he was going to get back to Skukuza camp before the evening sunset curfew, when the camp’s gates were closed and tourists needed to be back at their place of accommodation. ‘I need to drive.’

  ‘Where are you now?’

  ‘At a place called Komatipoort. You know it?’

  ‘Yes, yes I do,’ Anja said. ‘Claire Martin referred to it in the documents I have – had. She was a spy for the German government, you know?’

  ‘I gathered she was a spy of some kind,’ Nick said. He wanted to know more but he wondered if she was playing him. ‘We don’t drive and talk on mobile phones where I come from, and this cheap rental car of mine doesn’t have Bluetooth. I need to get on the road, Anja.’

  ‘It is the same in Germany,’ she said. ‘Talking and driving is frowned upon, but in Africa everyone does it. That is possibly why there are so many accidents. But if you want to know more about Claire Martin, I am happy to tell you what I know. Do you have plans to come to Namibia?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ he said, truthfully. The whole trip had been a half-baked idea, though Susan had dangled the prospect of journeying to the place where Cyril Blake had been killed, in southern Namibia, near the border of South Africa. ‘Maybe.’

  ‘I know the area where Blake died in 1906,’ said Anja, as if reading his mind. ‘Claire Martin and her husband had several farms not far from there at the time.’

  He didn’t bite. ‘I need to get moving. I’ll think about your request, Anja.’

  ‘One more question, please, Nick. Who else has a copy of your manuscript?’

  ‘My aunt – she has the original, and a young woman in Australia who is helping me with translations.’

  ‘Maybe tell them to be careful. I could be worrying for nothing, but thank you, Nick, I hope
to hear from you. I have a new email address as the thieves hacked my old one. I will send it to you via SMS and maybe you would consider emailing me an electronic copy of the manuscript if you have one?’

  ‘I do have a PDF copy.’

  ‘Good. This is the right thing to do, to share our information,’ she said.

  Then why didn’t you when you had the chance? he wondered.

  Nick ended the call, put the car in gear and raced to the Crocodile Bridge entry gate as his phone pinged with the message Anja had just promised.

  An hour into his driving a big male lion walked across the road in front of him.

  Nick was transfixed by the sight of rippling muscles, the fulsome red-gold mane, the eyes that sent a chill down his spine when they seemed to lock onto his through the open window of the little car. He sensed movement in his peripheral vision and turned to see a tawny-coloured lioness emerge from the long grass on the opposite side from where the male had come from.

  The lioness walked up to the male and bumped heads with him. When the big boy did not respond she raised a paw and swiped at his face. The male growled. The female turned and presented herself to him, lowering herself to the tarmac in front of Nick’s car. The male came behind her, squatted down and entered her, biting down on the lioness’ neck as he did so. It was over in seconds and the female snarled and stood, gave Nick a filthy look, then walked back into the grass.

  Nick checked his watch. Despite the thrill he’d felt at what he’d seen, he needed to go.

  He thought of Susan, and how nice it would have been to share something so exciting, so intense with someone else.

  Chapter 24

  Sydney, Australia, the present day

  In Sydney it was midnight and Lili was feeling the buzz and giddiness of one too many shots at the Manly Wharf Hotel.

  With the ferries finished for the evening she had taken a bus from Manly to the city and then changed to a train that would take her to her share house in Newtown. She was regretting not taking an Uber, although her credit card was possibly already over the limit after tonight’s partying.