The Prey (34 page)

‘What?’ Cameron looked at her.

Kylie pointed at the young scammer. ‘I think he just pickpocketed me!’

Cameron reached for the man and grabbed his forearm, but the tout shook it off and backed away, his hands up. ‘Not me, boss. I no take anything.’

‘Officer!’ Kylie shrieked at the customs lady. ‘This man just robbed me.’

The portly woman let go of the elastic rope on the pickup’s cover and started waddling towards them. Cameron lunged at the boy again and he broke into a sprint. The woman yelled in Portuguese to a man in green army uniform and beret who saw the running boy and unslung his AK-47.

‘No!’ Kylie ran after the tout and put herself between the fleeing boy and the man with the gun, who was starting to bring his rifle to bear. She didn’t want the boy to be shot. The youth was looking over his shoulder, his eyes wide in panic, and didn’t see the security guard in front of him who wrapped his arms around him and tackled him to the ground.

Cameron, Freddy and the customs officer caught up with them as Kylie went to the security guard, who had his knee on the tout’s back, keeping the youth pinned on the ground.

‘I’m sorry, I’m sorry,’ Kylie said. She reached into another pocket and drew out her nylon travelling wallet. ‘I’ve found my purse. I was mistaken. This man is innocent.’

Freddy translated for the benefit of the security guard and the customs lady stood there, hands on plump hips, shaking her head at the ruckus, which had by now drawn another half-dozen onlookers.

Kylie apologised again to the young tout, who just scowled at her. She pulled a hundred rand from her wallet and gave it to him. He turned his back, shaking a fist in the air, and walked away from them.

Freddy said something to the customs officer and she shrugged as she replied.

‘Is everything all right with the truck?’ Cameron asked.

‘She says we are keeping her from her duties.’

‘Tell her this is to compensate her for her lost time,’ Kylie said, taking out another hundred and pressing it to Freddy. He slipped it into the custom’s lady’s hand as he shook it. She waved, dismissing them.

When they were back in the Toyota and passing through the security barrier, Kylie punched the air. ‘Whoo!’

He looked at her and grinned as he changed gears. ‘You enjoyed that?’

She laughed. ‘In a funny way, I did. I’ve never consciously broken a law before.’

‘Welcome to Africa.’

*

Cameron waited until they made it to Matola, on the outskirts of Maputo, before he turned off the EN4 onto a dirt road that led to a building site, a housing complex under construction.

More new housing estates, such as this one, were springing up every time he came to Mozambique, and old Portuguese villas and bungalows, once the homes of civil servants and businesspeople, were being renovated and repainted in Mediterranean pastels. Mozambique was still a desperately poor country, but it was moving forward. This was as good a place as any to release Luis from his stifling imprisonment.

Cameron got out of the truck and looked around. It was midday and he presumed the construction workers were having a siesta in the shade somewhere out of sight. He unhooked the elastic cord securing the vinyl cover of the cargo compartment. Luis raised his head and also checked around him before sitting up fully. His shirt was drenched in sweat and he blinked at the harsh sun. It always seemed hotter, brighter, here in Mozambique.

Cameron unlatched the tailgate and Luis swung his legs over the back and stood, taking a moment to straighten himself out before extending his hand. ‘Thank you.’

‘I’m sorry, again, for your loss, Luis. But Wellington is in custody and we will make sure he stays there, with your help.’

He nodded and Cameron saw the faraway stare. Grief, he knew from his time in the army, manifested itself in many forms. One of them was revenge.

Luis nodded again. ‘Goodbye, madam.’

Kylie shook his hand, awkwardly mimicking the three-part African handshake that Luis and Cameron had just exchanged, and Luis forced a small smile in thanks for her effort.

‘We’re at Matola, where you asked to be dropped,’ Cameron said. ‘You’re sure we can’t take you further?’

‘No. There may be roadblocks. I can get a
chapa
from here. I must get to the funeral home, and then to my son, and tell him what has happened to his mother.’

Kylie went to him and put her arms around him. Luis didn’t cry, and seemed embarrassed to return the hug. He looked out over her shoulder and Cameron saw it again, the look he’d seen in the eyes of men who had killed, and men who wanted, needed, to kill again.

‘I want Wellington to rot in prison as badly as you do,’ he said to Luis.

Kylie took a step back and put her hands on her hips. She nodded in agreement. ‘He’s killed three of our people, too.’

Luis pushed his rimless spectacles up his nose, turned and walked up the dirt driveway to the EN4. Cameron waited until Luis had
flagged down a minibus and then he and Kylie got back into the
bakkie
.

‘What now?’ she asked.

He exhaled and started the engine. ‘I don’t know about you, but I could use a drink.’

‘You’re driving a company vehicle, on company time.’

‘I am.’

‘We’ve got a crisis brewing back at Eureka and I have to read through my briefings on Zambia. We still have a flight to catch tomorrow.’

‘I know.’

‘Do you know somewhere nice?’

He smiled. ‘I do.’

*

Kylie closed her eyes and stamped her foot into the footwell of the pickup as Cameron swerved to miss a minibus taxi that had slammed on its brakes in front of them.

Cameron laughed and she opened her eyes and looked at him.

‘You have to laugh,’ he shrugged.

‘That’s the first time I’ve heard you laugh. Ever.’

‘This place,’ he raised his right hand from the steering wheel and waved. ‘It can get you down, cripple you with its tragedy and sorrow. Like poor Luis and his wife. But people have to carry on. They find a way to survive.’

Cameron found his way through the congested, chaotic, thumping, bumping traffic of downtown Maputo, dodging other cars and pedestrians who all jived to a set of rules Kylie could not begin to understand. That’s if there were any road rules, she reflected. Maybe that was the secret to this place. Chaos reigned but, remarkably, she didn’t see anyone lose their temper, or hear a horn tooted in anger.

Maputo’s buildings were a mix of old Portuguese colonial grandeur and 1960s and 70s concrete monoliths. Everywhere there seemed to be construction or renovation happening and Cameron
filled her in on the country’s history. The country now known as Mozambique had been a trading port for the Dutch and British before the Portuguese had concreted their claim to its long stretch of Indian Ocean coastline. Even though the Portuguese had abandoned their former colonies in 1975 after going through their own domestic revolution, every sign Kylie saw and every snippet of conversation she overheard as they stopped for traffic jams and, occasionally, for red lights, was in Portuguese.

Cameron entered a grand square dominated by a whitewashed building topped with a domed cuppola. ‘That’s the train station,’ he said. ‘Designed by Gustave Eiffel, he of the tower in Paris fame.’

‘Wow. What was he doing here?’

‘I don’t know that he ever made it here,’ Cameron said, cruising slowly past the stately old station building.

She shook her head. ‘To design something so beautiful and never see it in the flesh … This place is incredible, Cameron.’

‘I know.’

He manoeuvred them out of town and onto what he explained was the Rua da Marginal, the coastal road that ran along the sand-fringed waters of Maputo Bay. Young boys splashed in the shallow water and one did cartwheels on a sand spit. Roadside traders sold beers and soft drinks from carts and when Cameron lowered his window she smelled chicken peri-peri sizzling on charcoal braziers. On their left, inland, was more construction – villas and shopping complexes.

Cameron indicated left and pulled into a car park in front of an art deco building washed in lime green and white. Tables were emptying on a sheltered verandah as patrons finished long or late lunches.

‘This is us. For lunch. The Costa do Sol’s been here since the 1930s and never stopped serving, even through the civil war.’

A waiter greeted them and ushered them to a prime outside table. Kylie put on her sunglasses to cut down the glare from the bay. ‘This is a beautiful spot.’ The waiter took their drinks order, with
Cameron asking for a Dois M beer and Kylie a glass of white wine and a sparkling mineral water.

‘I love it here. I used to bring … I come here whenever I’m passing through Maputo.’

She looked at him over the top of her glasses, but he cast his eyes down to the menu. She was sure he had been going to say that he used to bring his wife here.

He had finally seemed to relax a little, which was odd given what they’d been through. Perhaps he was a man who thrived on risk and danger. She wondered why his wife had left; maybe it was his pig-headedness and inability to communicate his feelings.

‘I was about to say, before, that I used to bring my wife here.’

Kylie was surprised. Before she had a chance to say anything the waiter was back with their drinks.

‘That would have been not long after the civil war ended, right?’ she said when the waiter had left.

He laughed. ‘A few years after the fighting ended, yes. The country was in a terrible mess back then. Maputo was rundown, but it had existed as a kind of neutral safe zone during the war, with both sides agreeing not to shell it or shoot it up.’

‘She must have been quite adventurous, your wife, back then.’

He looked at her for a moment as if trying to decide whether she was mocking him, but he rolled his shoulders and nodded. ‘She was. I was. I wonder if she left because she just got bored, with me and my work.’

She saw the pain creeping back into his eyes. Her mother and her best friend said she worked too hard and that was why she didn’t have a husband. She would angrily reply to both of them that she didn’t have a husband because she hadn’t met the right man, not because of some slavish commitment to her job. They painted her as a caricature of the hard-nosed career woman, which, in her mother’s eyes at least, secretly translated to being less of a woman. They were wrong. At least she thought they were wrong. ‘There’s nothing wrong with being dedicated to your work.’

Cameron flipped through the menu, not reading it, but perhaps not wanting to meet her eyes, either. ‘I wonder. You know, she left me for some guy on the internet, an American she’d never even seen in the flesh. What does that say about me?’

She felt a need to put her hand on his, on the table, but she checked herself. ‘I think you need to ask what it says about her.’

He looked up at her now. ‘I thought she was happy. I was wrong. I can’t put all the blame on her for leaving us – me and Jessica. If I wasn’t fulfilling her needs, then I’ve got to shoulder part of the blame, it’s just that …’

Cameron shifted his gaze out over the bay. Kylie wasn’t good at relationships. She hadn’t had one that had lasted more than a couple of months, and had never lived with a man. A woman in human resources had hit on her at an office Christmas party a couple of years back. Kylie had politely declined the invitation to go back to the woman’s flat, and on the way home, alone in a taxi, wondered how many more of her colleagues thought she was a lesbian. ‘Don’t beat yourself up too much.’

He waved his hand in front of his face. ‘It’s nothing. We need to talk about Wellington.’

She was glad he had changed the subject. While it was nice to see him open up a little, she knew she had no real advice to give a man whose wife had left him for a stranger. Oddly, though, she did feel this need to comfort Cameron. She had never felt this way about a work colleague. Perhaps it was because of what they had been through together – it had the effect of creating a bond. Or perhaps it was because she felt that he didn’t really like her, so she had some basic need to make him like her or, at least, respect her.

The waiter returned and Kylie asked for a seafood platter. Cameron said it was a good choice and ordered the same.

Kylie sipped her wine, a Portuguese Lagosta vinho verde. It was cold and crisp. ‘Wellington must still want Luis dead.’

Cameron nodded. ‘Luis is a risk to him alive, because he knows too much.’

Kylie thought about Luis, and how he had behaved in the wake of his wife’s murder. ‘Luis is keeping something from us.’

‘What makes you think that?’ Cameron asked.

‘I know men and different cultures handle grief in different ways, but Luis wasn’t just bottling his emotions, he looked like he was planning something. The look in his eyes wasn’t sad, it was cold.’

‘You think maybe Luis will get word to Wellington somehow that he’s in Mozambique?’

Kylie shrugged. ‘Would he do that, to keep Wellington away from us?’

‘He’s a good guy, but that would be suicidal. Especially if Wellington gets out on bail. That could be what he wants, a showdown.’

‘What
we
need,’ Kylie said, ‘is to go higher up the food chain in South Africa and find an honest cop we can brief about Wellington and his crimes.’ Their food arrived and Kylie scooped the flesh from a butterflied prawn almost as long as her hand. It was succulent and tasted of garlic and lemon. ‘You … we … can’t keep carrying on like vigilantes.’

Cameron chewed a mouthful of seafood and chased it with beer. ‘I only had to carry on like a
vigilante
because all you Australians in head office stopped me from running armed security operations underground two years ago. It was after that when Wellington’s operations went from small scale to full production.’

Kylie ignored the criticism. She and Jan had agreed that the armed patrols should cease after a security guard had been wounded in the leg during a brief firefight with a
zama zama
. Their legal counsel had worried about possible actions against Global Resources. As Jan had said, Global Resources wasn’t in the business of operating a paramilitary force, and the detection, pursuit and arrest of criminals was best left to the police. Kylie had now seen and heard first hand just how reluctant the police were when it came to enforcing the law of the land underground. She had to concede that as unorthodox as Cameron’s previous policies were, and as out-of-step as they were with Global Resources’ corporate culture, they had worked.
Three good company men and Luis’s wife had been killed because Wellington had been allowed to expand his underground fiefdom to the point where Cameron had to go to war to stop him.