past had removed the other four. On the top shelf there were documents and a few piles of banknotes, three thousand rand maybe, a pack of dollars, a pack of euros, maybe a thousand each. There was a rusty red stripe on the sill of the safe at the level of the document shelf. It looked like dried blood someone had smeared there by accident.
‘Blood,’ said Branca.
Emma leaned closer to look. She didn’t comment.
‘There are two safes. Everyone knows about the one in the storage shed, where we keep the other weapons. Only Frank and I knew about this one. If he had anything for you, he would have kept it here. That’s why I looked here this morning, after your call. That’s when I found it.’
‘Do you think…’ She stopped, upset by the various possibilities.
‘Do you still have Frank’s message?’
She nodded and took her phone out of her handbag. She pressed the buttons and held it out to him. From beyond the grave Frank Wolhuter repeated, ‘Emma, this is Frank Wolhuter. I believe you were right. I found something. Call me, please, when you get this message.’
Branca’s face was strained when he passed the phone back to her. ‘After you left the day before yesterday, Frank unlocked Cobie’s room. He was busy there the whole afternoon. I went to say goodbye before I left to visit my girlfriend at Graskop. That was the last time I saw him.’
Emma stared at the streak of blood. ‘That night… Was anyone else staying here?’
Branca shook his head. ‘Only Frank and Cobie and I lived here. The workers’ quarters are on the slope of the mountain and the volunteers live two kilometres away in the dormitories. When I came home after midnight everything was quiet. I thought Frank was asleep – he was early to bed, early to rise. The next morning Mogoboya found him with Simba.’
Branca took out a handkerchief and used it to push the door of the safe closed. ‘I’ll get Phatudi to come over…’He made a move for the door. ‘I haven’t been in Cobie’s room yet. Would you like to come with me?’
‘Please.’
He fetched a bunch of keys from Wolhuter’s office and together we walked to the little building half hidden in the mopane trees at the edge of the rehabilitation centre. Branca pointed at a broken window. ‘That’s where they tried to break in last week.’
‘Who did?’ asked Emma.
‘Who knows. We think it was Phatudi’s people. At night you can’t see the burglar bars. Frank heard the glass break and he turned on the lights.’
He unlocked the door, first the doorknob lock, then the Yale. I wondered whether they all were as security conscious. The cottage was dark inside, the curtains drawn. Branca switched on a light.
Spartan was the word. A single bed against the wall, pine bedside cupboard, two worn armchairs and a tall built-in cupboard of faded white melamine. The walls were bare; on the floor was an old woven carpet with an African block motif. Two doors, one to the kitchen, where a square dark wooden table and three wooden chairs, an ancient electric stove and a bookshelf were visible. The other led to the bathroom. Everything was relatively tidy and clean for bachelor’s quarters. A pair of jeans hung over the back of the armchair. Emma rubbed the material between her fingers while she looked about. Branca crossed to the single bed, where something lay, a book perhaps.
He picked it up and opened it.
‘Photographs,’ he said.
Emma went over. It looked like a small photo album, just big enough to hold photos of the regular size.
‘That’s Melanie Posthumus,’ Emma said. ‘These are Cobie’s photos.’
‘Who’s Melanie? The girlfriend?’
‘Yes.’
‘Two, three, four photos. He must have liked her a lot.’
‘And that is Stef Moller,’ Emma said.
Branca turned the page and pointed ‘And here’s Frank. And me. And this was a Swedish volunteer. She liked Cobie a lot. We thought …’
‘What?’
‘Maybe, you know …’
‘What?’
‘Well, we saw her come out of Cobie’s house early one morning. But she left. Like they all do.’
Branca had paged right through it. ‘That’s it.’
‘Wait,’ said Emma, and took the album from him. She opened it. ‘Look here.’ She pointed it at me. ‘There are two pictures missing. Right at the front.’
I looked. On both sides of a page there was only transparent plastic with a white background and the faint outline where two postcard-sized photographs had been.
‘This room … Is it exactly as Frank left it?’ asked Emma.
‘Must be. No one else has been in here,’ said Branca.
‘What about cleaners?’ She went into the kitchen.
‘Frank and I have a maid, but we’re slobs. Cobie did everything himself’
The kitchen wasn’t big enough for everyone. Branca and I stood in the doorway. Emma inspected the bookshelf.
‘So it could have been Frank who left the album on the bed?’
‘Could be.’
She turned. ‘Maybe he took the photos out to show me.’
‘Maybe.’
‘Did you look in the safe? For anything?’
Of course he had looked in the safe, just after he had removed the four rifles.
‘No. When I saw the blood, I didn’t want to tamper with possible evidence.’
He was lying. And he was good at it.
‘Can we have a look? We can be careful.’
‘OK,’ he said.
They walked towards the door. I quickly scanned the bookshelf in the kitchen. There were magazines on the lower shelf, the yellow spines of
The photographs weren’t in the safe. There were title deeds and records of donations and financial statements and cash.
‘What’s the money for?’ Emma asked.
‘That’s the cash float. For incidentals and emergencies.’
‘Is there any other place where he might have put the photos?’
‘I’ll have a look. In his room, maybe. But it’ll take time. There’s so much to do now. I don’t know what’s going to happen. If I find something, I’ll let you know.’
‘Thanks.’
We said goodbye and left. Emma wanted to track down the black child who had brought her the message.
She took out the note again, read it and refolded it. She kept it in her hand. When we turned on to the tar road, there were no policemen waiting to protect us. I did a thorough survey of any possible tails and I wondered why I felt so uneasy. I concentrated on the road, trying to ignore a voice that kept whispering that I ought to tell Emma that Branca was hiding something. That didn’t work. I tried to rationalise it away: it was none of my business, it would make no difference. In all probability it had nothing to do with her search for Jacobus le Roux.
But the note in her hand worried me. It made no sense. It didn’t fit into the scheme of my original suspicions.
‘Why did he only send me the letter now?’ Emma wondered aloud. ‘We’ve been here three days
