Shooting Butterflies (44 page)

It was easy to spot his colleagues. Madam Tara's hair was very white compared to any other blonde there, and as she sat alongside Wayne and Jamison, she looked tiny. Josha was next to her, not quite as tall as his dad yet but getting there.

His eyes continued their search.

Finally in the opposite back corner he spotted the man.

Still wearing his hat, despite being indoors, he nursed a Coke up close to his face as he stood on one leg, the other crossed over forming a V as his toes tapped an irritated rhythm in the dirt. He didn't seem to be listening to the auction, but his focus was on the back of Tara's head.

Moeketsi watched him for a while, ensuring that he had the trajectory of the stare right, and then he slowly made his way to where there was a spare seat next to Gabe. He sat down and held his position for about thirty seconds, feigning interest in the auction, then he leant forward and snapped his fingers low at knee height to gain Wayne's attention.

Wayne leant towards him to listen.

‘He is here. Back left corner, wearing a hat. Madam Tara is being watched.'

Slowly Wayne sat up, then he spoke in hushed tones to Jamison who sat next to him. ‘Moeketsi says Tara is being watched by the man in the left corner with a hat. Do you recognise him at all?'

Jamison stretched up his arms above his head and as he yawned, he bent backwards and glanced over his shoulder to the left. Slowly he turned his head back to Wayne and brought his hands down. He didn't have a bidder's card so he didn't need to worry about the distraction to the auctioneer.

‘It is him,' Jamison said in a voice just above a whisper.

Wayne felt the adrenaline surge through his body. He let go of Tara's hand and flexed his fist.

‘What is it, Wayne?' Tara whispered. ‘What's wrong?'

‘You and Josha stay with Gabe and Moeketsi, no matter what happens,' Wayne said as he bent towards her and kissed her mouth. He stood up as Jamison did, as if to shield Jamison with his body from Buffel's view, then together they made their way down the aisle of white plastic chairs, and up the passage on the right-hand side. Wayne allowed only his eyes to move to check if the killer was still there, and as he checked, the man ducked out the flap of the tent.

He broke into a run.

Jamison right beside him.

Wayne stopped as he exited the tent, looking left towards where the man had gone, but he saw nothing. Jamison ran to the flap and immediately dropped to his knees. Trying to decipher which footprint belonged to him.

He picked one, and began moving fast, towards the outside of the boma. He motioned to Wayne to split up and head along the other side.

As Wayne obeyed his hand signal, Jamison followed the spoor around to the gate area.

The man was running, the imprint of the footprints were no longer clear and sand was flicked from the front of his foot towards the back.

Jamison increased his pace.

He heard the screaming before he got to end of the long boma.

The shouts of people warning of a danger. Then the sound of hooves beating the hard ground.

He rounded the boma, and could see chaos in front of him as people clung to the sides of the temporary fencing, up out the way of panicked animals. People streamed out of the tent, like ants from a burning log, running to get out of the way. He could see the back end of the herd of sable as it had been funnelled between the boma, and the car park, and directly into the tent.

The sable were unpenned and they were making a break, running for their freedom.

The auction attendees were running for their lives.

‘Jamison,' Wayne's shout carried above the noise. He homed in on him as he jumped down from the boma. Wayne pointed towards the car park area.

Jamison ran for the car park.

Wayne ran towards the tent.

Tara head the screaming and the shouting and suddenly there were black buck tearing through the tent. Sable antelope, she realised as one reached the end of the tent where the auctioneer stood and turned around. It hesitated for only a moment before putting its head down and charging to the right, towards an open air flap, and disappeared out the tent. The others followed, some jumping over people who sat on the edge near the aisle between the seats. Farmers and patrons threw themselves to the middle of the seating, giving the beasts room to run freely down and out the other side.

Women screamed.

Men shouted.

One sable stopped halfway down, almost opposite where they crouched on the ground. Gabe had his arm over both her and Josha and somehow Moeketsi had jumped from his seat near Gabe and now shielded her with his body from the side where the sable was.

Tara screeched as it looked like it was about to charge at them.

Someone came barrelling over the chair next to them as the sable started to run, and at the last moment Moeketsi saw the man. He sprung upwards to try to deflect him away and over the top of Tara, tried to help pull him over them, so that he didn't land on her, but the man's boot kicked her in the chest.

Solid steel-capped leather connected with breast bone.

For a moment Tara saw stars as pain shuddered through her whole body. Radiating out from her chest, through her neck up and down. Heaviness pressed in on her.

Moeketsi pushed the man totally off her, and he was apologising and thanking them at the same time, but Tara lay still. Plastic chairs went flying as the sable hooked one onto its horns. Spooked by the white chair, it turned towards the crowd trying to leave. But
the men threw their arms in the air, shouting, and the buck snorted and unusually chose flight over fight. It turned around and fled after the rest of its herd, out the top end of the tent, the chair still stuck like a crown above its head.

Slowly people got up off the floor, and dusted themselves down.

Gabe knelt over Tara. ‘You okay? Tell me you are okay.'

‘Oww,' she said. ‘Man that hurts.'

‘Oh thank God!' Gabe said.

‘Mum!' Josha called as he threw himself down in the dirt next to her.

‘Josha, I'm okay. I'm okay. I just feel like something huge is sitting on my chest. Are you hurt at all?'

‘I'm good, Mum,' he said and he clung to her.

Wayne burst through the crowd that had begun to mill around. ‘Tara! Josha!' he shouted.

‘Here, we are here,' Josha said jumping up. ‘Mum's hurt. Some guy scrambled to get out the way of the buck and kicked her in the chest.'

Wayne pushed past the people filing out and eventually got to her. ‘Shit,' he said, as Moeketsi moved out the way so he could kneel next to her.

‘I'm fine, just a bit sore, that's all. It's going to be a bruise from hell but I can breathe again so I should be okay. Just bruised.'

He hugged her, mindful of her sore chest, and he reached for Josha and hugged him too. ‘Oh my God, I was terrified that you guys would be caught in a stampede. What the sable could have done to you …'

‘One got a chair caught on his horns, and eventually ran out the other side after the rest,' Josha was saying. ‘It looked like a crown, but he was as mad as a snake!'

‘What happened?' Tara asked, looking at Wayne.

‘It was him. Buffel. He was here, he let them out. He's seen you and definitely now knows where you and Josha are.'

‘Dad, I can't breathe,' Josha said, ‘you are squeezing me in tight here.'

Wayne let Josha and Tara go. He sat down on the plastic chair.

Moeketsi asked. ‘
Baas
, where is Jamison?'

‘He followed Buffel into the car park—'

‘We must hurry to help him,' Moeketsi said, ‘I know where his
bakkie
is parked and he can get out fast.' He began running away, dodging the crowd.

Wayne was torn, to stay with his family, or to go and help Jamison. He knew that in that second, he had to choose because he couldn't do both.

But inside the tent with Gabe and with the crowd, they were safe. Buffel wouldn't try to come back in. Tactically it made sense that he could leave them. But that didn't make the decision any easier.

‘I have to go. Jamison needs me,' Wayne said to his family. ‘Stay here where there is a crowd. Gabe, don't let them go out of this tent, stay within a crowd!'

He ran after Moeketsi, saying ‘excuse me,' to dazed patrons as he passed.

‘We will have a short half-hour break, then we will be right back with the auction.' The auctioneer was speaking into his microphone, but Tara didn't think that anyone was listening.

She sat on the chair, and put her head in her hands.

Buffel was here.

They were in immediate danger and Wayne had just rushed out to help Jamison.

Jamison was in danger too.

Gabe asked, ‘How sore on a scale of one to ten is your chest, Tara?'

‘Eleven and counting,' she admitted, ‘but I think I'll be okay, Gabe. I don't think the animals are supposed to get out and run through the auction. Seriously, when last did you ever see such chaos—'

‘Until you got kicked in the chest it was running into the home video's funny rank, but I agree with you on the chaos theory,' he said, as he sat down next to her.

She watched Josha as he put his backside on the chair in front of them and he rocked, and bounced the chair. ‘You sure you're okay, Josha?'

‘I'm good, Mum, you're okay, so I'm good.' He wiggled and put his feet up on the chair in front of him.

She took a few deep breaths. ‘Gabe, did you hear Wayne?' she asked quietly, trying to make it so her voice didn't reach her son.

‘About Buffel being here. I heard him. I'm staying close, keeping you guys inside the crowd.'

‘He's really here at the auction. He's really the one after me. Even after Jamison wouldn't speak his name. You said it, and I still couldn't believe it was him.' She looked around wildly. But people milled around aimlessly, standing to vacate seats as they grouped together to natter and some filed out into the sunshine.

‘Mum, we should go back to Cape Town if he is here,' Josha said.

Tara ran her hand over her son's cheek. ‘You weren't supposed to hear that,' she said, ‘But thank you, Josha, I think we are safer here. I think that Wayne, Jamison and all the game guards in Kujana can keep us safer on our own home ground.'

‘You could have a point there,' Gabe said.

Tara continued to rub her chest. Looking around a bit, scanning every face in the crowd.

‘When we leave here today, it would be good to have you checked out, Tara, make sure it's just superficial bruising.'

‘What's a doctor going to do?' she asked.

‘Make sure there are no broken bones. Normal doctoring things,' Gabe said.

‘I hate it when you are so practical,' she said. ‘There is nothing broken as far as I can tell, just a bad bruise. I'll take some Panado if it's still sore then, and Wayne can rub some onika oil in later.'

‘When did you become Miss Tough Nut again? Oh wait, that was when you became a farmer's wife, I remember that day …'

She smiled at Gabe. ‘You should. It was just a few months ago and you walked me down that aisle!'

‘Oh yeah, that part I would never forget.'

Tara smiled weakly. ‘Gabe,' she said. ‘How feeble have I become that I'm sitting here inside hiding, and Wayne is out there tracking my own father's killer? I should be strong and out there with
them. He has been my burden all these years. It's not fair that I have passed the problem onto Wayne.'

‘Not passed, shared. That's what family does, Tara, they share good and bad,' Gabe said.

‘Poor Wayne, I seem to be sharing more bad then good.'

‘Rubbish. The two of you look like a couple still on honeymoon. You are perfect for each other and I'm so glad that you got back together.'

‘I wouldn't have it any other way, Gabe, you are still my best cousin in the whole wide world, and I wouldn't have had this happiness if it wasn't for you,' Tara said.

She watched as Gabe looked around too. Looking for a ghost from their past that was now haunting their future.

‘Gabe, I still can't fathom just what the hell Buffel is doing with those girls,' Tara said.

‘Jamison won't tell me, he clams up every time I ask him. It's like whatever is happening is so bad that a grown man can't talk about it,' Gabe said. ‘My gut is still telling me muti trade, a white man selling white human parts on the market … it's plausible.
Sangoma
s would come from far and wide to buy muti from him. A white Karoi.'

Movement caught his eye at the front of the tent. ‘They're back,' Gabe said and she looked over to where Wayne and Moeketsi hurried towards them.

She could read fear, stress and trouble on Wayne's face.

‘Where is Jamison?' she asked.

‘He took him. We saw him hit Jamison across his head with a thick stick, and toss him into the back of his
bakkie.
He got away,' Wayne said. ‘We need the police to help us. He has kidnapped Jamison in front of witnesses now, we have proof to follow him to the ends of the earth.'

29

Radio Waves

Hluhluwe Police Station, South Africa

12:30pm

The SAP sergeant behind the counter rubbed his chin. ‘Kidnapping. No, that happens in America, not here in Africa.'

‘He hit him over the head, and took off in his
bakkie
, I'd say that what he did was kidnapping,' Wayne argued.

The sergeant nodded.

‘He has my business partner, I gave you his numberplate, what more do you need to find him?' Wayne asked.

The sergeant scrounged around the counter looking for a pen.

‘Oh for Christ's sake,' Wayne swore. ‘We are not asking you to solve world peace, just stop him killing Jamison. We have to find him—'

‘We will. His
bakkie
is easy enough to spot with his Zimbabwe number plates,' the policeman said. He took the piece of paper that Moeketsi had written the numberplate down on, and disappeared into the back room.