The Prey (43 page)

She blew a stream of smoke towards the ceiling. ‘The mine’s closed, pending the review of the air quality samples, and we know how that’s going to turn out; the unions are threatening to stop work in Global Resources’ other operations; the government’s ordered an inquiry into the company’s fitness to mine coal here; and, I’m almost sorry to say, we’re not likely to be hearing from Dr Hamilton or Mr McMurtrie again.’ Tertia lifted the duvet and swung her legs over the side of the bed and stood.

Chris yawned and scratched his head, then down below. He was sore. She had been insatiable, as always. They’d had a bottle of wine and some spirits before lunch and retired to her house for an afternoon of making love, golden sunlight bathing her pale body as they sated each other. He had fallen into a deep postcoital nap. He watched her walk across the room to a desk, where her laptop was open. She was full-figured, womanly, sexy, not like the younger girls who sometimes threw themselves at him. Tertia knew more than any of them; how to please him, what she wanted. He felt himself stirring as she sat and turned on the computer.

‘A friend of mine just SMSed me. Told me I must check News24.’ She tapped at the keys, opening her internet browser. ‘Yes, here it is. Dr Kylie Hamilton and Cameron McMurtrie have been killed in a plane crash in Zambia.’

‘What?’ Chris threw off the covers and jumped off the bed. He darted to her side. ‘Let me see. Oh no. My God, Tertia, no.’

She looked up at him. ‘Yes.’

How could she grin? he wondered. He knew how much she hated the company, but these were people he knew – Cameron especially. He read the story online over her shoulder, twice. ‘He has a daughter.’

‘Yes, well I’m sorry about that, of course. But McMurtrie was going to head up their new mines division. He would have overseen the destruction of our beautiful paradise, Chris.’

She took his hand. He gripped it, out of grief rather than sympathy with her cause. Cameron was a good man and Chris couldn’t find
anything to celebrate in his death, no matter what it meant for Lion Plains or Tertia.

‘He was just doing as he was told, Tertia. I got the feeling his heart wasn’t in this project at all, or in his new job. He never wanted to leave the mine.’

She let go of his hand. ‘Just following orders? Grow up, Christiaan. That’s what the Nazis used to say. He would have happily turned this place into a pit of coal dust.’

He didn’t like being spoken to as a child, or admonished. He hated it when his mother called him Christiaan, and it had the same effect when Tertia used it. ‘He was a good man, Tertia.’

She shrugged. ‘Well, I can’t say I will miss him, or that woman. She was a cold fish. The company’s in chaos and their CEO from Australia, Jan Stein, is flying out to try and prop things up out here, but there’s nothing he’ll be able to do. Their share price has collapsed.’

She put an arm around his naked body and reached for his semitumescent member. ‘Things will work out fine, and you can leave the mine and come and run this place with me. It’s what you want, isn’t it, baby?’

He stared at the screen. It had been what they had talked about so often, but Cameron’s and Kylie’s deaths had taken the shine off things. It wasn’t how it was supposed to happen.

Her hand closed around him. It didn’t seem right, given the news. He stared at the words on the screen and felt her hand move up and down his length. Looking down at her he saw her shift on the office chair, opening her legs. Her right hand moved to her pubis. She started stroking herself, not looking up at him, and the sight of her doing that made him harder. She leaned her body against him as her fingers moved faster, on him and herself, bringing them both close to the edge.

Tertia threw her head back, gasping as she arched her back. Chris was worried he might come over her computer, but she pushed him aside, gripped her desk and pulled herself to her feet. She bent across the screen and led him to her. ‘Fuck me.’

He exploded as soon as he entered her.

They stayed there for a little while, panting, as she lay under him, across the machine. ‘We need to shower,’ she said at last.

They never used condoms. She was forty, eleven years older than he, but she told him she wanted a child, with him. It was, she said, proof of her love for him. He could have been some young stud just fucking her for sport, he thought, but she seemed to know how she had captivated him. It was why it hadn’t scared him off, the idea of them having a child together. It had made things, he’d thought, somehow honest, as though they were doing what they did to ensure the future of Lion Plains for the next generation.

He followed her to the shower and she turned on the water and stepped in. ‘What’s to stop the community simply doing a deal with another mining company, even if the Global Resources coalmine doesn’t go ahead?’

She massaged shampoo into her sopping red locks and grinned at him. ‘Two things … money and a little something I’m going to show you after we’re finished in here.’

He stepped into the shower, still annoyed at the way she had been before: her glee over Cameron’s death and her treating him like a child. But when she said turn, he did, and she scrubbed his back.

‘Tell me more,’ he said.

‘When we’re outside, on the game viewer. Away from prying ears. And we have to wait until it’s dark outside.’

She must have sensed his hostility towards her, because she dropped to her knees, in order to finish washing him.

Dried and changed, he followed her outside to her game viewer. Night had fallen. A scops owl called to its mate. Tertia stopped by her office to pick up her rifle in its protective sleeve, a heavy Pelican waterproof plastic camera case which she gave him to carry, and a pair of bulky-looking binoculars, which she slung over her shoulder. It was only six o’clock and the other vehicles were out, taking the lodge’s few guests on their evening game drives. They wouldn’t be back until seven-thirty, for dinner.

‘So, are you going to tell me why you’re so sure you’re out of the woods?’ The movement of the open-topped vehicle produced an instant breeze that ruffled her drying hair.

‘You know the property behind us, Kilarney?’

‘Yes.’ He’d studied maps of the area many times and the company had researched the neighbouring properties. Kilarney was a game farm that had once made its income from trophy hunting, but it had been mismanaged, and pilloried in the press for offering canned hunts. Stoffel Berger, the intransigent old man who ran it, had successfully fought the land claim on his property and, such were the vagaries of the land commission, he had won where Tertia had failed. Tertia suspected the community and its lawyers had put more effort into winning Lion Plains because it was bigger earning, through tourism, than Stoffel’s rundown, shot-out wildlife butchery. The coal discovery had been the icing on the cake. ‘It’s almost valueless. There’s no game, the fences are falling down, and no one will buy it as it’s going to have a coalmine between it and the Sabi Sand Game Reserve.

‘I’m going to buy it. For a song,’ she said.

‘You’re mad.’

She shot a look at him, before returning her attention to the rutted road. ‘Am I? When the mine is cancelled I’ll have my own land, which no one can take from me. The community will have no mine, and never will. I’ll tell them I’ll drop the fences between Kilarney and Lion Plains so the game can repopulate Stoffel’s place, and their reserve will in effect double in size. I’ll offer them a deal where I’ll still manage the lodge on Lion Plains but I’ll have my own place as well. Stoffel always resisted joining up with the rest of the Sabi Sand Game Reserve because he still wanted to hunt, and they wouldn’t allow that. I’ll merge Kilarney with the game reserve and the community will continue to get an income stream, and more jobs from my new lodge, which is what they care about, and no one will ever be able to try and mine on Lion Plains again, because the property will now be enclosed by the game reserve as opposed to being on the edge of it.’

‘I can understand all that, in an ideal world, but first you’ll have to ensure that the Global Resources deal is dead and buried and, even before that, buy Stoffel’s place while it’s still virtually valueless on paper. I don’t know how one woman can do that.’

‘One woman can’t, but with the help of a little fisherman, she can.’

‘I don’t understand.’

‘Patience, my boy, patience.’

They passed the dam where Kylie has seen her first lions, and it saddened Chris, again, to think of the tough Australian dead. He’d found her sexy, in the same way he was aroused by Tertia’s confidence and directness. But now she was dead. As much as he hated the idea of the Lion Plains mine, and even though he had done all he could behind the scenes to stop it from going ahead, it seemed somehow unfair now that Kylie and Cameron were gone. Selfishly, though, he was glad Cameron would never find out where Chris’s allegiances had really lain. In his dreams, Chris would be Tertia’s husband and the ranger in charge of her game reserve. This was what he wanted in life, not to spend his days overseeing the health and safety of miners so that they would be fit and strong enough to rape the earth.

Tertia took a turning that Chris knew ended in a cul-de-sac. She stopped at the end of the track and they got out of the Land Rover. Tertia reached behind the seats and pulled out the gun case. From it she took her .458 hunting rifle. She loaded five rounds from the pocket of her shorts into the breech. The sight of the firearm made Chris nervous and reminded him of the terrible din of the underground gun battle, and bodies bleeding in the dark. He swallowed his nausea and followed her down the pathway.

‘Bring the camera case.’

A raised wooden walkway led to a bird hide, but Tertia went past that and carried on into the thick bush along the river that fed the dam, following what appeared to be a well-worn game trail.

‘Watch out for buffalo.’ She patted the worn and pitted wooden stock of her hunting rifle. ‘That’s why I’ve got this. I’ve come across dagga boys here a few times.’

He nodded. Dagga boys, lone male buffaloes who took their name from the slang for the mud that plastered their hides, were probably the most dangerous animals to encounter on foot. Tertia stopped, sniffed the air, and cocked her head. ‘Elephant.’

He could hear the snap of branches and the crunch of vegetation being chewed. Chris sniffed the air, and finally picked up their earthy scent.

‘They’ve moved away from the river. They won’t bother us.’

The path led them to the water’s edge and Chris took a step back in fright when he heard something rustling in the reeds beside him, followed by a splash. Tertia grinned at his face. ‘Crocodile.’

She knew the reserve intimately, but still Chris felt nervous. He wondered if she had changed since he had first met her, or if he was simply getting to know her better. She was certainly very animated when she was in the bush, but when she grinned at him like that he saw something else in her eyes. She was like another predator out here, and he thought that if it ever did come to bulldozers arriving on site, she might try to go out fighting. He loved her passion, but sometimes, as now, it frightened him.

A bird made a loud booming call, which also caused Chris to start, and he was surprised when Tertia pointed to the tiny black crake wading at the water’s edge. It made a hell of a racket for something so small.

A chorus of frogs tuned up for their evening concert and Chris slapped at a mosquito that buzzed in his ear. The sun was almost gone. ‘Tertia, shouldn’t we get back to the vehicle before it gets totally dark?’

‘The guy we’re looking for only comes out at night. Relax, I’ve got a light.’ She unclipped a small LED torch from the belt on her skirt and turned it on. Like the crake’s call, the powerful beam belied the size of its source. Chris still didn’t know what use it would be against a charging buffalo or, even worse, a hippo out on its nightly foraging expedition. One of the behemoths grunted and laughed ahead, confirming his fears were justified.

‘What guy?’

‘Shush.’

She led on and Chris closed the gap between them. He’d never walked in the bush at night. It wasn’t as terrifying as being underground, but he was out of his depth and he would rather be back in bed with her. Tertia said she had something important to show him, but as he stumbled on he wished she had forgone the dramatics and just told him what it was.

Tertia stopped and leaned her rifle against a green fever tree. She unslung the bulky binoculars from her shoulder and pressed a button on top of them.

‘Night vision,’ she said as she lifted them and scanned the river-bank opposite. She handed the binoculars to him.

Through the eerie lime green wash of the night vision he tracked a pair of Egyptian geese, late home to bed, that squawked and honked as they flew low up the river, the beat of their wings rippling the steely surface. Around him the night birds were starting a new shift. He heard the shrill chirp of a scops owl, and a moment later the reply of its mate further away from the river.

‘Sit.’ Tertia said. ‘We may have a little while to wait. He’s shy.’

Chris handed the binoculars back to Tertia. He looked behind him and kicked leaves and imaginary scorpions away from a patch of trodden earth and eased himself down. If a buffalo, hippo or elephant came now they would be well and truly finished. Far off a lion roared, its throaty wheeze rolling across the bushveld. Chris shivered.

‘Get the camera out of the case,’ she commanded.

He did as she asked and checked out her Nikon and the unfamiliar lens.

‘It’s also night vision,’ she said, lowering the binoculars and noticing him fiddling.

He sat the camera down in the foam of the open case. ‘Do you think it was an accident, what happened to Kylie and Cameron?’

She resumed raking the far bank with the glasses, too preoccupied to lower them. ‘What? Oh, that. It’s Africa. Shush.’

Admonished, again, he plucked stems of grass. They were her enemies, but still he couldn’t understand her callousness. Cameron had been civil with her and even though she had rejected the compromise, of her setting up a wildlife research place near the mine, Chris thought she might have had some lingering respect for the way Cameron had handled himself. Cameron had risked his life, as had Kylie, to save him from Wellington. Chris felt his rising tide of nausea intensify, the more he thought about the loss of his colleagues.