Shooting Butterflies (43 page)

He bent down and he sealed their pledge with a kiss.

26

The Bush Drum

Kujana Farm, Hluhluwe, South Africa

12th February 1999

Jamison's telephone rang at twelve minutes past one in the morning. He dived out of bed, and rushed to silence it before it woke the children.

A loud scream came from the nursery, and Ebony groaned as she too rose from their bed, and trudged down the passage to the nursery. ‘That better be a life and death situation,' she said.

‘Hello,' Jamison said.

The operator on the other side was asking him to accept a reverse charge call from Gibson Ncube.

‘Yes, put him through,' Jamison said, and he ran his hand over his eyes to try and dislodge some of the sleepiness.

If his cousin Gibson was calling him at this time of the morning it was important.

He sat down on the stool, and put his elbows on the dressing table as he waited.

He could hear Ebony in the nursery as she put Joy back to sleep, and quietened down Blessing, who had woken at the alien noise in the house.

‘Hello,' Gibson said.

‘Gib,' Jamison replied.

‘He's coming for you,' Gib said. ‘He left the farm in his sheep
bakkie
yesterday, and before he left, he went to his shrine. I followed him.'

‘His shrine?'

‘I'll check properly when he is gone for a day or so more, but he collected something from his mushroom shed before he went and was muttering about the time being right to find the angel to save Impendla.'

‘Where are you?' Jamison asked.

‘I walked to the main road, then caught a bus into Tsholotsho last night. I waited until there was no one around, and then I came to use the pay phone here in the street. I didn't want anyone in Nyamandhlovu seeing me using a phone.'

‘So you are safe?'

‘Yes. He is gone. But I think he knows where you are.'

‘How? After all this time?'

‘Last week, we took a road trip back to Chinoya and we visited Amarose again. This time he went as a hunter. He took three days just to shoot a lion. Three days. I tracked it in one morning, but he was in no hurry. He was talking to all the staff about how he once knew you and how good you were at your job, and how he wanted to employ you, had to find you …'

‘Oh no …'

‘He spoke of hearing how you had built up the farm for the Widow Crosby so many years ago, and how he was looking for someone like that, someone reliable.'

‘And?'

‘Someone told him that they think that when Moeketsi had left, he might have gone to South Africa to find you. To join you.'

Jamison hung his head.

Not now. He looked down the passage where Ebony had just snuck out of the nursery and came towards him. His family.

Tara's operation had been a success, and she had married Wayne, and moved to Kujana. Josha was so happy at the farm, and he was beginning to refer to Wayne as his dad to everyone.

He pinched the top of his nose between two fingers. ‘Moeketsi is from a large family. Did he take anyone from his clan?'

‘I don't know. Buffel dropped me home, and then he went off again for another two days alone. I suspect he went back, because he came to his farm really late at night, and went straight into his mushroom shed. That is never a good sign. I will dig around a bit in there soon too, but I have to be careful that the other two workers here don't get suspicious of me. They all know me as his tracker. No one knows that I was once a policeman. That I am your cousin.'

‘You stay safe, Gibson. You hear me?'

‘You too.'

Jamison put the phone down. He stared at Ebony.

‘He's coming, isn't he?' she said.

‘I think so. He had already been gone for over twenty-four hours before Gibson could call this time, so he might already be here.'

He crossed the short distance to his wife, and hugged her close to him. ‘Eb,' he said, ‘look at me—' He raised her chin gently with his finger. ‘We have state-of-the-art security now, an alarm that would wake a hippo underwater, and smoke detectors, Eb, he can't get to us in our house. We have game guards positioned outside, and travelling with you. We are armed to the hilt. We have made sure that we have everything we needed in this new house. He can't get in without us being able to react. But I need to warn Wayne.'

‘I know. Poor Wayne and Tara, just when they are so happy. Now he is coming,' Ebony said. ‘Go call him. I'll be here waiting for you.'

27

The Trigger

Game Auction, Hluhluwe Outskirts, South Africa

17th February 1999

10:30am

Buffel stood at the edge of the crowd at the onsite game auction. He had on the felt hat he always wore when he was going hunting, only now it was pulled down low over his forehead. He had forgone his usual safari suit and worn denims with a white shirt. To anyone else he looked like a farmer who had come to the game farm for the auction, to buy game for his own ranch.

But he was here for a different prey.

The brother of Moeketsi had sung like a Burchell's coucal, warbling on about how Moeketsi had a better life now that he had moved away, and he was now a professional hunter, and he lived on a farm that belonged to a white man who treated his black workers like kings, all the while he and his family were almost starving under his Zimbabwe government. About how unfair life was that he was getting beaten up for his lucky brother again. Just like when they were children together.

Buffel hadn't even needed to torture him for the address. He had given it freely.

Kujana Farm, Hluhluwe, South Africa.

But live men tell tales, so he'd had to be silenced.

Buffel smiled at the memory.

A telephone book, and two phone calls, and Buffel knew where Shilo was going to be. The farm had been easy enough to find, off a main road on the back of Hluhluwe, and everyone in the small town had known the Wild Translocation trucks, pointed them out to him. They had even told him that they would be at a local game auction the next day.

Small tourist towns. The people were always so easy and helpful, especially to strangers.

The ostriches in the boma near him were having a commotion about something. Their loud protest defied anyone close by to have a conversation. He looked at the hessian sacking wrapped around the temporary boma enclosure, but he couldn't see anything out of the ordinary causing their distress.

He checked down the boma line, to where some sable antelope were penned. The meanest bastards to a hunter. A wounded sable would fake death when you shot him, only to impale the hunter with its scimitar-sharp horns if he wasn't careful when he went up to it for a photograph. Aggressive as hell, the sable was an antelope many underestimated in the safari trade and the hunting business. He strolled towards the pen, feigning interest. Counting minutes, straining to see Shilo in the crowd as they milled around him.

The viewing panel in the solid part of the boma was about the size of a standard pillowcase. Made with corrugated iron, it rattled loudly when he opened it. Within a moment, he saw the big black bull rush from the one side of the boma, and slam into where he stood. Only the strength of the boma spared him the wrath of the animal. He stepped back as the attack happened, but eagerly stepped up towards the window to see what damage the sable had inflicted upon itself.

Nothing.

The base of its curved horns was thick, yet this cornered beast was fighting for its freedom, with no regard as to how much pain and suffering it could give itself.

He was magnificent.

Buffel looked at him through the eyes of a hunter, thinking how proud he would look on his wall in his trophy lounge.

The sable slammed at him again. He closed the viewer window, not wanting to draw attention to himself, and not wanting to spoil the trophy beast.

He noticed Shilo the moment he walked around the side of the boma set up outside the tent. In the six years since he had last smoked him out, he had not aged much. He looked from Shilo to his companions.

The farmer. He walked with the swagger of a confident military man. One who was at ease in the bush and in any shithole of war around the world. His short blond hair was typical of one who had served or still served within the SADF.

But it was the person who held his hand who suddenly drew Buffel's full attention. He held his breath. Trying to stop his beating heart. Trying to hold his mouth closed. Stop himself from grinning like a baboon having too many marulas. It was impossible.

His white-haired angel. He knew it was her.

Impendla's saviour. The Butterfly.

Tara Wright was just as beautiful in adulthood as when she had been just about to blossom into a woman. She wore an impractical white dress, close fitting to show off her body, it left her shoulders free for the African sun to kiss lightly. She had on dark sunglasses, but he didn't need her to remove them to know that the colour of her bright blue eyes wouldn't have changed. They would be the same as when they had first looked at him across his veranda table when she was too young.

The same eyes that tormented his dreams.

The same eyes that had the power to call all the butterflies together, and to save Impendla.

He looked to her right, and striding next to her was a boy. He had the same white hair she did, and his eyes were shaded by sunglasses. He walked tall and although he looked a bit like the farmer there was no mistaking he was her son. Bordering on manhood, the boy walked with a purpose that many of the younger men lacked now.

Pride. He strode, he didn't simply walk, he held himself tall.

A worthy warrior to accompany the Butterfly on her journey, he thought.

The last man in the party walked on the other side of the boy. He looked out of place with his denims, and his shirt rolled at the elbows. His hair looked like it had been styled with a dryer, and he held the boy's hand.

Buffel bristled. A
moffie
or a male model. Not a man's man, but a man who thought more like a woman.

He spat in the dust.

Then he turned slightly to the left, so that when they passed by they wouldn't see him. He turned and watched as they walked into the huge white marquee that sat like a giant bullfrog in the middle of the farm. The auctioneer was already inside, and a general hum like millions of bees could be heard from the tent. He walked slowly behind the party.

He couldn't help grinning. He could quieten Shilo and get his angel and her warrior in one clean sweep.

All he had to do was be patient, and strike like an Egyptian cobra when he made his move.

It had to be on his terms.

He had to plan.

28

Sensory Overload

Game Auction, Hluhluwe Outskirts, South Africa

17th February 1999

11:00am

Moeketsi ran to catch up to the others. Having turned back to the vehicle for his hat, he now wished that he had left it where it was. He was already sweating from the heat, and adding the physical exercise to it, he was going to look like he had run under the sprinkler when he went inside the auction tent.

He noticed the man standing by the boma, and he slowed. Instead of catching up to Jamison and Wayne, he hung back. He had seen the sketch that Gabe had done of the man they thought was responsible not only for Tara's father's death but for the disappearance of a heap of white girls.

He couldn't tell if it was him, but the similarities were too many to dismiss. The height, the set of his jaw. His overall size.

The man turned away as Wayne and his family passed, then he stood staring at their backs for a while. Eventually, he pulled his hat lower on his head, and followed them inside the huge tent.

Moeketsi lifted dirt from the floor and let it drip slowly through his fingers. It stayed vertical, no deviance from ninety degrees.

No wind.

No reason to pull a hat further onto your head.

Unless you were trying to hide under it.

He walked to where the man had stood and began to track his footprints around the boma.

‘Come on, Africa, show me his story,' he muttered as he bent to check if he had the print correct, and continued to track what the man had done before standing watching the Wild Translocation party.

Moeketsi followed the spoor to a white king cab
bakkie.
The back was grated, designed to carry animals, like sheep or even small buck, and raised on a higher suspension than normal. Customised. The back had obviously been cleaned and laid with fresh hay for the auction. There were three thick-cut sticks in the back, like a Zulu fighting stick in size with big knobs on the end, but heavier than a normal knobkerrie.

He memorised the Zimbabwe numberplate.

He walked around the vehicle, and tried each door, but it was locked. Peering through the deeply tinted window he couldn't see anything amiss in the
bakkie
, only a small old-fashioned duffel bag that sat on the back seat. In a city, the car would be broken into and the bag stolen, but here the farmer knew that his possessions would be safe at the auction.

Moeketsi walked slowly back towards the tent. The scalloped white edge didn't move as there was still no wind. He looked for the stranger, but couldn't see him outside hovering anywhere. He slipped into the back, letting his eyes adjust to the naturally dim interior.

The auctioneer stood in the front of the tent, a portable steel game pen visible behind him. Farmers in khaki sat in the rows of white plastic chairs which filled the area in front of him. Some were rocking on the back legs of the chairs as they waited for the lots that interested them. Women waved the program, fanning themselves.
The auctioneer's voice rose in pitch as the figure being offered grew higher and higher.