Blood Safari

came to flirt, Susan came to tell us about the letter. We saw Edwin at the gate, as large as life. Then we drove to Mogale. Looked through Cobie’s house with Branca, looked at the blood smear on the safe and left. Then the attack.

What was I missing?

How had they known about Edwin and the message? How had they known where we were in order to ambush us?

I went back to that morning. We get the letter from Edwin. Emma questions him. Gives him money.

Could someone have seen us while we were talking to Edwin at the gate of Mohlolobe? Were there eyes somewhere that saw the letter being handed over?

Game fence, high fences, dense bush on both sides of the road. No vehicles parked at a distance. I would have seen them. But even if there were a hidden spy with binoculars, they couldn’t have known the contents of the letter.

We drive away. Emma stares at the letter. Reads it over and over. Speculates over the style of writing.

Then her cell phone rings.

There was a call. Carel the Rich. She told him everything. Everything. About the letter too, and then I knew how they did it. I hit the bathwater with my fist, the water splashed against the fish and seaweed. A dolphin grinned at me with an open mouth and I grinned back, because I knew.

They were listening. The fuckers were tapping the phones and cell phones. How, I didn’t know yet, and I didn’t know who yet, but I knew they were doing it.

Emma’s phone. Somehow or other they were listening in on her calls and her messages. Phatudi’s too? Maybe. But definitely Emma’s.

So many questions. How had they known they should monitor her calls? How long had they been doing it? Were they just lucky? What did it take to tap a cell phone? Did a bunch of khaki-clad bunny-huggers in the Lowveld have access to such technology? Or were they part of something bigger, something more sophisticated?

Don’t worry about what you don’t know. Focus on what you do. They were listening, I was sure of it. That gave me an advantage.

How could I use it?

I looked for soap to wash. There wasn’t a traditional cake. I ran my fingers down the row of bottles. The two in front contained liquid soap in pump dispensers. I squirted some into my palm and washed.

How could I use my new knowledge?

How could I get them? How could I find them?

There was one way. I had to play my cards right. If I was clever and thought it through carefully, it might work. I must fetch Emma’s cell phone. It was in her handbag in the VIP suite at the hospital.

Don’t go looking for them.

Let them come to me.

I pulled on my shorts and lay down on the single bed with my arms behind my head and thought for forty minutes, until I had the whole thing planned.

Then I got up because I knew I wouldn’t be able to sleep. My head was too busy. I went into the sitting room. Tertia’s bedroom door was ajar. Or was she Sasha when she was home? I leaned against the door frame and looked in. There was a large, dramatic four-poster bed with more Indian fabric draped over it and a horde of cushions. From the ceiling hung a framework of silver birds in flight. There were more paintings against the wall, an easel and paintbrushes in the corner, heavy-duty curtains, a dressing table full of bottles and jars. A bedside cupboard with books, an exercise apparatus, one of those they advertise on morning television to keep the body in shape and stay young.

What did Emma le Roux’s bedroom look like? What was her house like inside?

I sat in the orange-lava-lamp twilight of the sitting room.

Emma’s home would be different from Tertia/Sasha’s. More subtle. Open and clean and light. Her clothes would be white and cream, her furniture of Oregon pine with a little glass and chrome. Her curtains would be open wide to let in the light of day. At night the lamps would be bright.

How people differed.

The things that made us what we were.

I got up and went to Sasha’s bookshelf. Paperbacks from end to end. Dog-eared from being read over and over, or bought second hand? The Four Agreements: A Practical Guide to Personal Freedom. Ask and It Is Given: Learning to Manifest Your Desires. The Power of Now: A Guide to Spiritual Enlightenment.

Searching Sasha.

Your Immortal Reality: How to Break the Cycle of Birth and Death. Earth Angels: A Pocket Guide for Incarnated Angels, Elementais, Starpeople, Walk-Ins, and Wizards.

Did she really believe this stuff? Truly? Or was it a sort of game, a way of escaping reality now and then, a form of fantasy?

The Unicom Treasury: Stories, Poems, and Unicom Lore. Dragons and Unicorns: A Natural History. Man, Myth and Magic: The Illustrated Encyclopedia of Mythology, Religion and the Unknown.

And then Linda Goodman’s Love Signs: A New Approach to the Human Heart. And Sexual Astrology: Sensual Compatibility.

I pulled out the last book and opened it. What was Emma’s star sign? She had said she shared a birthday with the old South Africa: 6 April. Another Aries, just like me. I looked in the index and found the reference. Aries and Aries. An excellent match, with an intense sexual attraction and mutual erotic satisfaction, but it is a high-maintenance sensual relationship: both man and woman demand lots of sexual attention. Potential for a long-term rehtionship is far above average.

A load of bullshit.

I looked up what the book had to say about the Aries woman: Turn off the lights, and she will become a tiger, anywhere, any time. But be warned, she is more focused on her own pleasure than on yours.

I shut the book. I went to the bathroom, urinated and then returned to my single room. I closed the door, opened the window in the hope that the night would cool down and turned off the light. I had to sleep. Tomorrow would be an interesting day.

At midnight the racket woke me. I went back to sleep. Not deeply. Restlessly.

At one o’clock I heard drunken voices and a fumbling at the door of the chalet next door.

At half past one the blue door opened. After a while I heard taps running in the bathroom. Between sleep and waking I couldn’t keep time. I smelt the sweet scent of marijuana, heard her in the sitting room. A last joint before bedtime. For the New Year.

Heard the door of my room open quietly.

Then nothing. I opened my eyelids a crack.

Sasha stood in the doorway, shoulder against the door jamb and a hand on a tilted hip. Behind her nakedness was a vague soft light. Not the orange of the sitting room. Something else. Candles. She stood and looked at me. Her face was in deep shadow, unreadable.

‘Lemmer,’ she said very softly, nearly inaudibly.

I don’t like my surname. It rhymes with gemmer, or ginger. It hints at the Afrikaans word for blades, and knife fights in back alleys. Thanks to Herman Charles Bosman it has a certain backward connotation that in my case lies too close to the truth. But it’s better than ‘Martin’ or ‘Fitz’ or ‘Fitzroy’.

My breathing was artificially shallow. A familiar game, for new reasons. I shut my eyes completely.

She stood there for a long time. Once more she said ‘Lemmer’, and when my breathing did not change, she clicked her tongue and I heard her footsteps recede.

Her bed creaked.

Searching Sasha.

A week ago I would have accepted this invitation with gratitude.