Ghosts of the Past

by Tony Park

  ‘I’m not staying in this house of death a moment longer than is absolutely necessary,’ she whispered in English, so that Blake could understand them. ‘And anyway, what can be worse than the filth and suffering in here?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ Peter said, ‘but he says, “you have been warned”. It’s something to do with another research project.’

  ‘Doctor,’ Claire said aloud in German, striding towards Bofinger and feigning a nonchalance she certainly did not feel, ‘I appreciate your concern but I have a strong constitution. Please lead on.’

  Bofinger nodded and opened the door for her. With a sweep of his arm he ushered her outside towards the women stirring the big, black cast-iron cooking pot, which stood waist high to the reed-thin inmates. The women looked at her with blank eyes.

  ‘This is a project being supervised by my colleague, Dr Eugen Fischer,’ Bofinger said to Peter and Claire, including them both now. Blake stayed to one side, his expression blank with incomprehension. Claire noticed, though, that his eyes kept moving, taking in everything around him. ‘He is studying racial characteristics, ground-breaking work which will scientifically prove, once and for all, the superiority of the white European peoples over Africans.’

  Quite what that had to do with food preparation, Claire had no idea. Behind the women tending the pot, she saw, were half-a-dozen more, standing with their backs to the visitors but clearly working on some sort of processing or preparation at a long table. She noticed that one of the woman was holding a fragment of glass wrapped in a rag, perhaps some kind of simple knife or scraper.

  Behind those workers was a detail of four German soldiers who were stacking round objects the size of footballs, wrapped in leather by the look of it, into a wooden packing crate the length and width of a coffin.

  Intrigued, Claire moved towards the pot, to see what was going on here.

  ‘Perhaps not too close, Frau Kohl,’ Bofinger said.

  ‘Nonsense.’ She spoke to the women in German. ‘What are you cooking there?’

  One of the women looked away, while the other’s lower lip started trembling.

  ‘I can’t say it smells like fine cuisine; rather meaty.’ At least, she thought, these poor people might get some protein in their diet.

  She waved away the steam from the boiling vat so she could get a better look, and when she leaned over and peered inside she saw, bobbing in the boiling water, three human heads.

  Chapter 46

  Shark Island, Namibia, the present day

  ‘Heads?’ Nick said. ‘You’re fucking kidding me.’

  Anja looked up from her iPad. ‘I’m afraid not, Nick. Have you not read anything about the history of Shark Island?’

  ‘Not enough, clearly.’ He looked out over the barren rocky outcrop. He could barely imagine how a thousand people could fit on the promontory, let alone the atrocities that had gone on there. ‘However, I shouldn’t be shocked. There were British scientists taking the skulls and skeletons of Australian Aboriginal people for research back in the day. The whole supposedly civilised world has a lot to answer for.’

  Shark Island was now a national park and they had paid a modest entry fee to a parks officer at a little wooden cabin on the causeway that linked the island to the mainland. Nick and Anja sat on a bench in a paved observation area on a high point, where the island proper began.

  The only physical evidence that something brutal had happened there was a white tombstone-like memorial to one of the Nama rebel leaders, Captain Cornelius Fredericks, and the men and women of his Bethanie Nama clan who had died on the island. There was a carved picture of Fredericks holding a smoking rifle. Nearby was a smaller bronze plaque depicting the bespectacled trader, Franz Adolf Lüderitz, who founded the settlement for Germany.

  Ironically, this place where thousands had sought shelter amid the boulders, under flotsam and old blankets, and had died of illness, overwork and exposure, was now a camping ground. Nestled among the rocks was a South African couple with a Land Cruiser and an off-road caravan. Despite the early hour – it had just gone eleven – the man sitting in a fold-out chair had just opened a can of Castle Lager and was reading a novel.

  They got up and walked along a track that led to other camping sites and the end of the island.

  ‘Dr Eugen Fischer was exporting the skulls of dead Herero prisoners to universities in Germany. Like Bofinger said, there were studies going on at the time to try and prove the superiority of the white races. This sort of thing predated Hitler and the Nazis by thirty years, but there’s a book that theorises that what happened at Shark Island and other forced labour camps at Swakopmund and Windhoek were a trial run for the Holocaust.’

  ‘My God,’ Nick said.

  ‘The women in the camp were given the job of boiling the heads of dead prisoners and the softened skin was scraped off by other inmates using shards of glass. Some of the skulls have been returned to Namibia, but not all of them.’

  They walked briskly to counter the effect of the cold wind. Nick wondered what it would be like just trying to sleep on this island without shelter, with wind and rain howling in from the Atlantic, let alone to keep up one’s strength after long days of hard manual labour and scant food.

  ‘How many people died here?’ Nick asked.

  Anja shrugged. ‘We don’t know exactly. So many people came and went, and died on the railway and other work projects. It’s thought that maybe half of the seven thousand people who passed through the island died. It’s hard for me, as someone of German background who was born here in Namibia, to come to terms with, but even harder for the Nama and Herero people.’

  ‘This country,’ Nick said, pausing and looking around, searching for words, ‘from what I’ve seen it just seems so peaceful, so quiet.’

  Anja nodded. ‘It is. Our saving grace is that today Namibia is, by African standards and even by world standards, a peaceful, tolerant country. Everyone’s culture and history is respected, mine included.’

  Other than the South African campers there was no one else on the island, and they both turned at the sound of a vehicle pulling up in the car park behind them.

  Nick recognised the man who got out of the BMW. ‘Scott Dillon.’

  ‘Yes,’ Anja said. ‘That’s the man I met in Windhoek.’

  He looked around, saw them, and walked over. Dillon smiled as he approached them. ‘Anja.’

  ‘Hello again, Scott,’ she said.

  ‘This is a pleasant surprise.’ Scott put out his hand and she took it. He looked to Nick. ‘Hello there.’

  ‘Hello, Scott,’ Nick said.

  ‘Do we know each other?’

  He was smooth, Nick thought. ‘Maybe if I talk a bit more you’ll recognise my accent.’

  Dillon’s eyes widened. ‘Nick . . . remind me?’

  ‘Eatwell.’

  The smile left Dillon’s face. He looked to Anja. ‘I didn’t know you two knew each other.’

  ‘You do now,’ Nick said. ‘Do you want to tell us what’s going on?’

  ‘I’ve come here to meet Anja, that’s all. But if you two are busy, I’ll be on my way.’

  Nick held up a hand. ‘Not so fast. What are you doing here, exactly?’

  ‘None of your business,’ he said.

  ‘I’d like to know, Scott,’ Anja said. ‘Did you know I was assaulted and robbed just after I saw you in Windhoek?’

  ‘My God, I’m sorry to hear that,’ Dillon said. ‘I wish I’d walked you home.’

  Nick admired Anja’s cool and Dillon’s acting ability. He sensed that he should keep quiet and let her play the role of the good cop in questioning Dillon. He was too angry – he kept thinking of Susan.

  ‘So what brings you to Lüderitz, Scott?’ she asked.

  ‘It’s that development I was telling you about.’

  ‘The golf esta
te? I thought that was in Windhoek.’

  ‘It is,’ Scott said, ignoring Nick for now. ‘It’s important to me, but to tell you the truth I’m having trouble getting approval from the environmental and planning authorities. A . . . well, a potential business partner has come up with a plan that might help smooth the way.’ He looked at Nick. ‘It’s a little trick I learned in Australia – when you have a big property development application, the local councils over there sometimes expect an investment in some sort of community facility, such as a library or parkland. I know Lüderitz pretty well – I come here for the crayfish season in May sometimes – and it always struck me as a shame that there wasn’t more information here about what happened on Shark Island, with the camp.’

  ‘You’re right,’ Anja said. ‘Apart from a couple of plaques there isn’t a lot here for tourists or even local visitors.’

  ‘Exactly,’ Scott said. ‘I’m going to propose to the government that I build an interpretive centre here. Nothing too big or over the top, but a nice, tasteful building that explains the history of the island and its significance during the Herero and Nama wars. It’ll function like a combined memorial and a museum and there will be a gallery space for local artists and craftspeople to showcase their stuff for tourists.’

  Nick studied Scott. The man was impeccably groomed, well dressed in a polo shirt, chinos and loafers, and as handsome as his online profile picture. The BMW had Namibian plates so Nick assumed it was rented. The word was that Scott Dillon was nearly broke, but Nick assumed the man needed to project an image of confidence and wealth if the government and his investors were going to take his development plans seriously. The interpretive centre sounded like window-dressing to Nick, a slick bit of PR that ticked all the boxes – culturally sensitive, politically correct, uplifting for the local community and probably tailor-made for some politician’s family company or cronies to make a profit out of the construction work.

  ‘Lüderitz is a long way from Windhoek, where your golf estate’s supposed to be,’ Nick said.

  ‘Yes, but as a journalist, Nick, you’ll know the issue of compensation for the Herero and the Nama is in the news once again in Namibia. Even with a substantial contribution I can’t afford to build the centre here by myself – my co-investor thinks we’ll be almost guaranteed of funding from the German government. They might be stopping short of paying compensation to individuals, but they’ve shown they’re willing to acknowledge what happened during the wars and to try to make amends.’

  ‘Where exactly would you build it?’ Nick asked.

  Scott looked around. ‘That’s one of the reasons I’m in Lüderitz, to do a preliminary survey. As you see, it’s a rocky island. Ideally, to save money, it would need to be on the flattest ground we can find.’

  ‘The causeway,’ Nick said, pointing to where they had driven onto the island, ‘built during the development of Shark Island as a concentration camp.’

  Dillon looked as if he hadn’t thought of that. ‘Maybe. Not a bad idea, actually.’

  ‘Scott?’ Nick said.

  Dillon showed him his even, perfect white teeth. ‘Yes, Nick?’

  ‘Why did you kill Susan Vidler?’

  *

  Even though he was two hundred metres away, Hannes Nel could hear every word the two men and the woman were saying. It was a beautiful sunny day and the cool breeze off the Atlantic was not enough to distort the audio coming through his headphones from the long-range directional microphone.

  The allegation of murder was what he was waiting for. He shifted the crosshairs on the telescopic site atop his Sako hunting rifle so that they were over the chest of the Australian, Nicholas Eatwell.

  Hannes knew Scott Dillon well. Even though Dillon was an Engelsman, a soutpiel with one foot in South Africa, the other in England, and his prick dangling in the Atlantic, Dillon had been accepted into Koevoet as a member of that elite police unit and had proved himself a good operator and a more than capable killer during the Border War in South West Africa in the late eighties. Hannes and Scott had fought side by side and killed more than their fair share of communist guerrillas, but those same terrorists were running the country now known as Namibia. Dillon might present like a Cape Town moffie in his pink polo shirt, but Hannes knew Scott was a ladies’ man, most certainly not a homosexual.

  Hannes was the overall commander of the operation and it was he, along with Wessel, another old comrade of his and Scott’s, who had robbed and intimidated the German woman, Berghoff, in her Windhoek B&B. Charl, another former comrade, had posed as Eatwell’s neighbour in Skukuza and Hannes had used WhatsApp to send orders to Karl, now living and working as a greenkeeper in Sydney. Poor Karl – his wife had forced him to take her and the children from South Africa to Australia and Karl had found the country very expensive. He needed cash, and burgling Eatwell’s aunt’s house and roughing up the German girl had been easy, well-paid work for the old soldier. Wilfried, in Munich, had botched the robbery on Berghoff’s mother – there would be no more work for him.

  They had thought that Eatwell and Berghoff would fold, that the failed journalist would not have the balls to go after Scott and the scientist woman would have spent so much time in Germany that she would have lost her Namibian toughness and become soft and fearful of confrontation.

  Not so.

  But that was why Hannes was there, with his sniper’s rifle and his directional microphone. He took a breath, aimed, took up the pressure on the trigger and fired.

  *

  Anja realised someone was shooting at them before Nick did.

  ‘Get down!’ she said.

  Nick was looking around, trying to work out what had made the noise and why the fragment of rock next to him had been exploded away from the boulder. Scott Dillon was running from them.

  ‘What is it?’

  Anja grabbed Nick’s collar and pulled him down, behind the rocks.

  ‘Someone’s shooting at us.’

  Anja crawled and Nick followed her. The island was so desolate that whoever was targeting them must be somewhere on the mainland. Anja peered around an outcrop and was rewarded with a shower of stone fragments.

  ‘He’s up there, in the direction of the Felsenkirche,’ she said, pointing. The old church sat atop a hill that dominated the small port town. It made sense, Anja thought, that a sniper would look for high ground with a view.

  They heard a high-revving car engine.

  ‘Dillon,’ Nick said. ‘He’s bugging out. You think he ordered this?’

  ‘Of course he did!’ Anja said. ‘It happened as soon as you mentioned Susan’s name. Maybe Scott gave some signal, or maybe the whole thing was a set-up.’

  Nick’s phone beeped. They seemed safe enough at the moment, though his heart was racing. He took out the phone and checked the screen. It was a message from Joanne Dillon, saying she had arrived in Lüderitz and asking him what was happening.

  He tapped, quickly: Your ex-husband set us up and we are being shot at on Shark Island.

  Shot at? she replied.

  Yes.

  ON MY WAY!

  Chapter 47

  Shark Island, Namibia, the present day

  Joanne Dillon raced up to the Shark Island car park in a Toyota Fortuner a few minutes later. She must have been close by, Nick reflected, but then again nowhere was far from anywhere else in Lüderitz.

  Joanne manoeuvred the car as close as she could to them, even driving the front wheels up onto a smooth boulder to give them extra cover as Nick opened the back door and bundled Anja in ahead of him.

  Two bullets fired in quick succession sent stone chips ricocheting into the bodywork of the SUV as Joanne reversed.

  ‘Go!’ Nick shouted.

  Joanne stayed low behind the wheel as she accelerated away along the causeway, past the port authority buildings and fish market and then, tyres scr
eeching, left into Hafen Street.

  ‘Where are we going?’ Anja asked from the back.

  ‘Out of town, I think that’s the safest, don’t you?’ Joanne asked.

  ‘Yes,’ said Nick.

  ‘Tell me what’s going on,’ Joanne said as she watched the road ahead and indicated to overtake a four-wheel drive with a roof tent. ‘Why did Scott spring a trap on you?’

  ‘He must know what we know,’ Nick said, thinking out loud, ‘as we have to assume he is working off the same information that we are, a manuscript written in 1915, but set mostly during the Nama and Herero wars.’

  Joanne nodded. ‘And you think Scott wanted it because he thought there was a reference to Kruger’s gold in it?’

  ‘There is definitely mention of the gold,’ Nick said. He thought about what they had read so far. Anja, meanwhile, had taken her iPad out of her daypack and he could see she was reading ahead.

  ‘Is there a precise location given for the gold?’ Joanne asked.

  Anja looked up. ‘There’s more information here. I’m nearing the end of the document.’

  They left town and Joanne accelerated to a hundred and twenty on the smooth blacktop.

  ‘Listen to this,’ Anja said.

  Lüderitz, German South West Africa, 1906

  Blake and Claire left Lüderitz and rode into the desert where they made camp for the night. Claire said she couldn’t bear to stay in a town full of drunken soldiers within sight of the misery and horror of Shark Island for another minute. Blake agreed.

  Blake had escorted Claire off the island after she’d nearly fainted, but Peter had stayed behind to talk to Bofinger. He had told Claire that he would catch up to them.

  ‘Find Liesl,’ Blake had whispered to Peter as he left.

  ‘I will, I promise,’ Peter had replied.

  The emptiness of Africa had at times confounded him and driven him close to madness, but now he relished its clean sands, its open, unpolluted skies and cool, crisp air. He remembered the cooking smell coming from the big pot and his stomach turned. He saw the lifeless eyes staring up at him and wondered what would be the worse fate for Liesl: being worked until she died in a brothel or on the railway, or dying of disease on the island, her head cut off and sent to Germany to be studied. He shuddered.