The Hunter (5 page)

Brand didn’t have time to think. His reactions had been honed in combat, decades earlier, but they were still razor sharp. He squeezed the trigger. The heavy projectile, designed to take down a charging buffalo or elephant, hit the poacher in the chest and sent him flying backwards. Patrick ran past Brand.

‘How many?’ Brand asked his back. Patrick said nothing.

‘Hudson, what do we do?’ Darlene cried as Patrick charged past her and the others.

‘Get back to the truck. Follow Patrick.’

Brand swore under his breath as he worked the bolt of his Brno and chambered another round. He wanted to run too, but his training told him he couldn’t. The poacher would not have been alone. He moved forward, hugging the bank of the riverbed, where the trees cast shadows that might give him some concealment. If there were more coming he needed to buy the tourists – and Patrick – some time. He gripped the stock of his rifle tight. His heart thudded; he’d been here before and he felt the calm settle over him, stilling his urge to flee.

As he came around the bend, where Patrick had foolishly been, he saw the carcass of the rhino. Two men were kneeling on the far side of the butchered grey bulk; one was sawing frantically. ‘
Foda
,
foda
!’ the other man swore and raised his weapon, a heavy-calibre bolt-action hunting rifle similar to Brand’s. Brand was quicker and squeezed off a shot. The gunman fell back, dropping his rifle and clutching his shoulder. The man with the saw got up and ran. If he was armed he had dropped his rifle on the other side of the carcass.

‘
Pare aí
!’ Brand called, but the man refused his order to stop where he was. Brand stared down the sights of his rifle, placing the blade in the centre of the running man’s back. He breathed through his nose, his chest rising and falling. The adrenaline was supercharging his system and the hunter’s instinct, the primal killer within, was screaming at him to pull the trigger.

The man on the ground who had aimed at him was screaming in pain. The mist cleared from Brand’s eyes and he lowered the barrel of his weapon. He could not shoot an unarmed man in the back. He jogged forward, passing Patrick’s abandoned rifle and a long scuff mark in the sand that told him the younger guide had probably tripped and fallen when the first poacher had fired at him. He came to the carcass and saw the second poacher lying on his back. His rifle was on the ground next to him and Brand picked it up and tossed it further out of reach. He frisked the wounded man, who clawed at him in his pain, but Brand smacked his hand away. He was clean. Brand knelt and ripped the man’s shirt off his back, balled it and pressed it against the wound in the man’s shoulder.

He placed the man’s hand on the makeshift dressing. ‘
Manter a pressão sobre isto, seu bastardo
.’ The bastard nodded and kept the pressure on the shirt to stem the flow of blood.

4

C
aptain Sannie van Rensburg sat opposite Hudson Brand in the small interview room in the Skukuza police station, at Number 1 Leopard Street. The building was near the post office, on the staff village side of the fence that separated the administrative area from Skukuza Rest Camp, the largest camp in the Kruger Park.

‘Nervous?’ Sannie asked him.

He stared back at her. She remembered the first time she had interviewed him, four years earlier, while the FIFA World Cup was still in full swing. Given the euphoria and hype of the event, the news media had barely reported the case of the prostitute who had been raped and murdered. Sannie had picked up Brand in the Kruger Park, where he’d been driving a group of British soccer fans. Brand had been angry when she had shown up at Lower Sabie Rest Camp, where he and his clients were having brunch. He had tried to tell her he couldn’t leave his tourists stranded.

‘A woman has been killed,’ Mavis had yelled at him.

Sannie had laid a hand on her young partner’s arm and gently remonstrated with her afterwards about making a scene in front of people, but Sannie had brooked no protest from Brand. He’d called Tracey Mahoney and she had sent another guide into the park. The Brits had seemed content enough to sit on the deck at the Lower Sabie restaurant drinking beers at eleven in the morning until their replacement guide arrived. Sannie and Mavis had driven to the same station where they were now, with Brand in the car.

‘What’s this about?’ he’d asked, and she could smell the stale alcohol on his breath across the same interview table where he sat now, in the police station. His eyes had been bloodshot then, his skin paler than its normal coffee-coloured hue. She’d thought he could be handsome if he wasn’t so hungover.

‘Nandi Mnisi.’

‘Who?’

He’d seemed genuinely confused but, Sannie had reflected at the time, a killer didn’t need to know the name of his victim, and as Nandi had been a working girl she had probably used an alias.

‘The prostitute you were seen dancing with last night, in a pub in Nelspruit.’

‘Which one?’ Brand had asked.

‘Which prostitute or which pub?’ Sannie had replied.

‘Pub.’

She’d told him and he’d nodded. ‘I was there. I danced with a lot of people.’

‘One in particular.’

‘Says who?’ he retorted defensively.

She hadn’t told him, but they’d got lucky and had received an anonymous tip-off. The most important period in a murder investigation was the first twenty-four hours and Sannie had to keep her excitement in check. It was her first murder case in a long time and adrenaline was kicking in. ‘I have information that you were seen dancing with Miss Nandi Mnisi last night around midnight, and that your vehicle was spotted stopped on the side of the road between three and four hundred metres from Kruger’s Phabeni Gate entrance on the road to Hazyview at around five am this morning.’

Brand had rubbed his hand up and down his face. ‘I’d ask for a lawyer if I was guilty of anything.’

She had shrugged. ‘You have the right to have an advocate present, but it will be simpler if you just tell me what happened.’

‘Simpler for who?’

She’d said nothing, which was often the best course of action in an interview. Brand eventually sighed, breathing more alcohol in her direction, and filled the void. ‘I danced with a few women last night; there was a big party after the game. This morning I had to be in the park early. I wanted to avoid the queues and catch an extra half hour’s sleep at the gate before the coach carrying my clients for today’s game drive showed up.’

‘Why did you stop by the side of the road?’

He’d looked at the ceiling, then at her. ‘So I could throw up.’

‘Were you
babelaas
, or did you see, or do, something that made you sick?’

‘Yes, I was very hungover, no I didn’t do anything, other than hurl. What happened? Who was killed? Was it this Nandi Mnisi?’ Brand demanded.

‘Yes, her body was found this morning. Ring any bells now?’

He closed his eyes, thought for a moment, then opened them. ‘Red dress, spangly, very short and tight?’

Sannie nodded. ‘The victim was wearing a red dress.’

‘Covered in blood,’ Mavis had shot from behind her. Sannie silenced her with a look.

‘I didn’t kill anyone. But yes, I was dancing with a girl in a red dress, until my girlfriend cut in.’

‘What’s her name?’

‘Hannah van Wyk. I went home to her place.’

‘What time did you get there?’

He’d looked at the ceiling. ‘Late. To tell you the truth I can’t remember exactly.’

‘Don’t worry, Mr Brand, we’ll be contacting this Hannah van Wyk.’

‘Knock yourself out. Hey, look, I’m sorry about the girl, really I am, but every minute you waste here grilling me is another minute that this case is cooling off,’ he had said.

His tone had rankled her, giving the impression he knew more about investigations than she. ‘Don’t tell me how to do my job.’

She and Mavis had called Hannah van Wyk and the woman had confirmed that Hudson Brand had spent the night with her; had gone home with her in fact and left her place at about half past four in the morning, after just two and a half hours’ sleep, to get to the Kruger Park. The man was a menace and should not have been driving foreign guests in the park while still drunk, but that was of less concern to her than catching a killer. She had impounded his vehicle and executed a search warrant, taking the clothes he’d been wearing at the bar the night before. His game viewer was clean and his clothes showed no trace of Nandi’s DNA. There was no physical evidence to connect him to the scene, other than his vomit by the side of the road, which he admitted to leaving there. There were no footprints near the location of the body, but Brand was a safari guide and knew a thing or two about tracking, so could have removed any sign of his presence. The bottom line was that she did not have enough evidence to charge Brand with, and she had eventually released him.

And here he was again. Sannie looked at Brand now, across the desk from her, four years on. He was sweating a little.

‘Nervous?’ Van Rensburg asked him again.

Brand wiped his brow. ‘Hot.’

Van Rensburg looked through the file in front of her. ‘Patrick de Villiers says the poacher fired first and that you ran away. You didn’t back him up, like a partner should.’

Brand leaned back in his chair. ‘We’re not partners. He got too far ahead of the group and went off following the poachers’ tracks on his own. I warned him not to.’

Van Rensburg nodded. ‘I’m sure you did the sensible thing, but was it the right thing, morally?’

She knew she was goading him, playing on his male ego. She hoped that he would fall for it.

‘My first duty was to the tourists in my care, and that should have been Patrick’s first duty as well.’

‘He says that you ran, ignoring the tourists.’

Brand scoffed. ‘And you believe that?’

She shrugged and closed the folder. ‘The other witnesses, particularly a Miss Darlene Jones, say you were concerned about them. Miss Jones spoke very highly of you indeed.’

Brand looked back into her eyes but said nothing.

‘For the record,’ he said eventually, ‘I didn’t run anywhere. I was moving the tourists back towards the vehicle, but when I heard the shot I moved forward to check on Patrick. He’d dropped his rifle and he ran straight past me and the tourists.’

‘He says he was shepherding them to safety.’

Brand shrugged. ‘Are you saying this wasn’t a righteous shoot?’

Van Rensburg shook her head. ‘
Righteous
? Only an American would describe a killing in such a way. But no, as of now there will be no charges laid against you or De Villiers, but there is still a national parks investigation to be carried out and your licences as guides in South Africa will be suspended until the outcome of that inquiry.’

Brand rolled his eyes. ‘Great.’

‘You killed a man and wounded another, Mr Brand. You don’t seem too remorseful or disturbed by that.’

‘It’s not the first time.’

‘I know. I’ve been checking you out since I first interviewed you, over Nandi’s death.’

‘I’m flattered,’ he said. ‘And a little disturbed. I didn’t know I was still the subject of an ongoing investigation.’

‘I’m confused.’

He raised his eyebrows.

‘You’re half American, half African. Your father was an oil man and your mother was a local woman, half Portuguese, half Angolan. The old regime classed you as a “coloured” when you obtained South African citizenship in 1990, after you were discharged from the army. Why on earth would a – what would you call yourself, an “African American” or an “American African”? – fight for a white apartheid regime’s army?’

‘Good question,’ Brand said.

‘That’s why I asked it. You were with 32 Battalion; that buffalo head tattoo on your arm is proof of that. I knew a couple of guys who served with them; it was a multiracial unit, with mostly white officers and black Angolan soldiers. There were also a few foreign mercenaries, like yourself.’

‘Mercenary seems like such a harsh word.’

She smiled. ‘One of the guys I spoke to told me he remembered you, that the word was you were ex-CIA, but you’d done something wrong and ended up in Africa without a job, which was why you joined 32.’

He shrugged. ‘Folks do love a good spy story.’

‘Were you CIA, Mr Brand?’

‘My past has nothing to do with the shooting of a poacher in the Kruger Park.’

‘But you were a mercenary, trained as a killer. I’ve been doing some reading. The Angolans called 32 Battalion
os terríveis
, the terrible ones. Anyone with a reputation like that could easily cross the line between soldier and psychopath. They might think nothing of raping and murdering a woman. Are you unwell, Mr Brand? Is it something to do with your service in Angola? Did you do things there you were ashamed of; do you secretly want to relive them? When we interviewed Hannah van Wyk back in 2010 she told us that you had confided to her that your parents had split after your father brought your family back to America from the oil fields in Cabinda province in Angola, leaving your mother to raise you alone. Life must have been tough. You must have been an outsider.’

He said nothing. He closed his eyes, tight, for a second, then opened them. He leaned forward, elbows on the interview table. ‘My father was a right-wing Republican and my mother hated the communists. She had Angolan cousins who were fighting for Holden Roberto’s FNLA and later Unita, the anti-government, pro-western rebels. I went to Angola on business and my work there dried up; I met my cousins and I served with Unita for a while. I’d served in the US Army, Rangers, and when I met some high-ranking South African military advisers they offered me a job. Unita couldn’t pay me, but the apartheid regime could. At the time I think I hated communism more than apartheid.’

‘I understand.’ She nodded.

‘I was being ironic. I was stupid.’

‘Both ideologies crumbled, yet the wars fought in their name left many men broken, physically and emotionally. My late husband served on the border, and it affected him deeply.’ There was a moment of silence between them.

‘What are you thinking about?’ Van Rensburg pushed. ‘What are you remembering?’

He shook his head. ‘Nothing. You know I didn’t kill that girl you found near Phabeni in 2010.’

‘I don’t know anything at all, Mr Brand. I know there’s a killer on the loose and that you were at the scene of that crime around the time it happened. Just because I didn’t have enough evidence to arrest you doesn’t mean I don’t think you are guilty.’

‘You had no evidence.’ Brand pushed back his chair. ‘If that’s all, I’ll be on my way.’

Mavis moved slowly out of his path. Sannie van Rensburg looked back over her shoulder without getting up. ‘I’ll be in touch with you again, Mr Brand. You can count on it.’

It had been a long day. Sannie and Mavis drove back to Nelspruit, and by the time they had finished their paperwork and Sannie had backtracked home it was well after dark.

Sannie and Tom’s banana farm was on the R40 in the hills just outside the small town of Hazyview, about an hour’s drive from her work at Nelspruit. She had been brought up on the farm, then had moved to Johannesburg, where she had met Tom, her second husband, and they had returned to the country, ostensibly for a quieter life.

‘You’re late,’ Tom said by way of greeting as she walked into the farmhouse. Beyond the deck, the lights of Hazyview sparkled in the gloom. When she was growing up these hills and valleys had been dark at night, sparsely populated save for a few farming families, but things had changed in South Africa. The breakdown of the restrictions of the apartheid era had brought new settlers to the area, many of them illegal immigrants from across the nearby border with Mozambique who were looking for a better future. The tourism sector had boomed, with the Kruger Park, just a dozen kilometres away, drawing visitors from around the world once South Africa had returned to the international fold.

‘I was interviewing the guy who shot the rhino poachers. Did you hear about it?’

‘It was all over Jacaranda; my only contact to the outside world is an easy-listening FM radio station.’ Tom drained a beer and got up, walked past her to the refrigerator and got himself another. ‘Wine?’ he asked as an afterthought.

They hadn’t even kissed. ‘Yes, please,’ she said without enthusiasm. The kids were in bed and she had missed yet another dinner with them. She resented Tom’s surliness, but the thing she – they – had feared was happening, more and more. Her decision to return to policing was taking a toll on the family. Sannie was tired of justifying herself, tired of snide remarks and full-blown arguments. She set the case docket down on the kitchen bench top.

Tom nodded to the thick folder. ‘More work?’

Tom had never been happy about her decision, but she was her own woman. She had raised her first two children solo for several years after her first husband, also a policeman, had died, so Tom didn’t get to call all the shots in her life. Now that her youngest, little Tommy, the son she’d had with Tom, had started school, she wasn’t tied to the farmhouse. Sannie knew her husband worried about her every time he said goodbye to her, but while Nelspruit had its moments it was not as dangerous as working in Johannesburg.