The Protector, page 5
‘Who says I do?’
He raised his eyebrows above the top of his Ray-Ban Wayfarers. ‘You’re an exporter?’
‘Not everything must go through China, especially, as you mention, since COVID. Other avenues for moving goods had to open.’
‘Via India?’
She said nothing, pleased that she had been able to cover the fact that she was selling to no one, just busting poachers.
‘The Middle East?’
‘You may need me . . .’ she said.
‘Call me John. And you are . . .?’
‘Indira. As I say, John, you may need me and some more stock, but I have my network. What good does it do me to sell cheap to you, or to shut down my network?’
‘We should combine forces,’ John said. ‘Look at some economies of scale. Perhaps,’ his eyes roamed over her, ‘even become friends. What would the guy in the car think about that?’
‘Oh, him?’ She gave a little flick of her head. ‘He’s nothing. Just muscle and a gun. I’m sure you know the importance of keeping business within one’s family.’
John nodded. ‘I do. So, you don’t have the merchandise here.’
‘No, and I am guessing you don’t have the money here either.’
‘No, but it’s a few minutes away. I, too, have to be careful.’
‘How do I know you’re who you say you are? You contacted me. It sounds more like you’re trying to entrap me than vice versa.’
John sighed. ‘Very well. Come with me.’
Doc fought the urge to look back over her shoulder at Jurie and, instead, walked purposefully behind John to the back of his Audi. He used a remote to open the boot and inside Doc saw his luggage – a Gucci wheelie bag and matching carry-on – and a wooden crate.
John lifted the lid off the crate and Doc noticed there was a hammer and packet of nails in the boot as well, presumably to secure it after whatever deal he had done with her. The crate filled the space not taken up by the luggage, and was easily large enough to hold a live pangolin. Doc also noticed a fisherman’s tackle box tucked away in a corner. She had seen wildlife veterinarians use these to store syringes, drugs and darts for air guns used to tranquillise animals.
Next, John reached into the crate and lifted out a cardboard box, which looked quite heavy. He glanced over his shoulder to make sure no one was nearby, then set the box on the ground. He took off the lid.
Doc bent at the waist to look inside and had to fight to hold back a gasp. The box was full of pangolin scales.
‘You see.’ He smiled at her as she straightened and he replaced the lid. ‘I am serious.’
‘So am I.’ Doc took off her baseball cap, their agreed signal.
Jurie started his engine and drove towards them.
‘What now?’ John looked slightly bemused.
‘We’ve actually got the goods, and we’re bringing it, now.’
Jurie stopped short of them, got out of the vehicle and drew his pistol. ‘Police! On the ground, face down, hands behind your back.’
John shook his head and looked at Doc, who had also drawn her Glock. ‘You cannot be serious. You’ll regret this.’
‘No,’ Doc said, ‘you will.’
John reached into his blazer, under his left armpit and then his head snapped backwards and he fell onto his back as though he had just been punched in the face.
Doc looked around, at Jurie.
‘What the fok?’ Jurie said.
Sara was grinding through the gears of her van as she raced towards them, and out of the corner of her eye, Doc could see Sue, Zola and Geoff running towards them as well. There was danger. They’d promised to stay where they were.
‘Go back! Get down!’ Jurie waved at the students. ‘You too, Doc.’
Doc stared down at the pangolin buyer. He had a gash down the right-hand side of his skull, along his temple. He opened his eyes and tried to sit up.
‘Doc!’ Jurie strode towards her. ‘Get to the car, take cover!’
Jurie had his pistol raised high and was moving in a 360-degree arc, looking for where the gunshot had come from. He took a look at John and seemed to be able to work out the line of fire. Jurie went past John and Doc, like he was trying to put himself between them and the gunman, still searching.
‘No!’ Doc said.
‘Get to cover and call an ambulance,’ Jurie ordered, his voice level, calm and authoritative. ‘Now, Denise.’
Doc took a step backwards, and the next bullet went through Jurie’s heart and between John’s eyes.
*
On the dusty upper floor of an empty factory 1,500 metres away the Sniper picked up the two empty cartridges with his gloved hands and put them in his pants pocket.
He felt her presence, next to his heart. He shouldn’t have brought her picture with him – whenever he went on patrols in Afghanistan he made sure he carried no photographs, no diaries, nothing that would give an enemy something to exploit if he was captured.
The Sniper had broken that rule this time, because this was no military mission – this was a quest, driven by love. He stripped his rifle into its component parts so that it fitted nicely into the black nylon sports bag, which he slung over one shoulder.
He hurried down the stairs, out of the factory compound and through the gate whose padlock he had picked. He wrapped the chain around the bars to give the illusion that it was still secured. He walked a kilometre through the industrial estate, low-flying jets passing over him.
He came to his vehicle, a white Toyota HiLux with stolen number plates on the front and back affixed with double-sided tape. He would remove them when he was on the other side of the city. It was only when he was inside the cab and had double-checked the rear-view mirror to make sure no one had followed him that he slipped the picture from his left breast pocket and looked at it. She smiled back at him and he drew a deep breath.
‘For you.’
Chapter 4
Three months later
Ian Laidlaw walked out of the upmarket Woolloomooloo Finger Wharf development on Sydney Harbour. Saleem, Ian’s regular limousine driver, was waiting in his suit beside his Audi Q8 luxury wagon ten minutes early, as usual.
Saleem opened the door for Ian and took his wheelie bag from him. ‘Good morning, sir, how are you today?’
‘Fine, thanks, Saleem, and you?’
‘All good, thanks, Ian. You are going to the international terminal today?’
‘Yes, please.’ The car was spotless, as always, a crisp new edition of the Financial Review folded on the back seat, just how Ian liked it.
Ian flicked through the newspaper, but there was no news on any of his clients, or pertaining to them. He’d already checked the online sites for the other major media outlets at 5.30 am, as he did every day, so he knew he had nothing to worry about, but it was by force of habit.
‘Business or pleasure, sir? New York again?’
Ian gave Saleem a sad smile in his rear-view mirror. ‘Those days are over.’
‘Should I be sorry to hear that, sir?’
Ian wasn’t sure. ‘Let’s just say that long-distance relationships are hard, but when you live in Sydney and your girlfriend’s in America, and even busier than you are, it becomes just about impossible. I’m going to Africa. Alone.’
‘Very good, sir.’
Ian looked out the window at the morning traffic. A tradie in his ute chugged down an iced coffee as he drove; a businesswoman did her lipstick in the Mercedes next to him as they waited at the traffic lights. An executive with kids in private school uniform was doing the morning school drop-off. And here was he, Ian, by himself, all but done with work and another relationship.
Judy worked as a senior vice president – he could never quite get his head around US corporate rank structures – for the PR company that had bought out Morningstar, Ian’s boutique lobbying and public relations company. Ian had met Judy at one of Goldberg PR’s global conferences and he’d been taken by her dry humour, not to mention her figure. She was forty, fourteen years younger than him, and wedded to her job, but with ‘time to play’.
Ian had sold out two years earlier, and part of the deal was that he would stay on as chairman of the Australian operation, to oversee the transition to new management. But he didn’t see eye to eye with Goldberg’s imported hotshot and the more he complained to Judy, the more he found she made excuses for her employers and took their side. Judy visited the Australian office often, but the distance wasn’t helping things between them either.
He’d sold for a good price, but now, as Saleem manoeuvred his way closer to Sydney’s Kingsford Smith International Airport, he found himself feeling detached from the commuters and businesspeople on their way to work or to catch flights with purpose. It was as if the further he drifted away from work, the more his identity was slipping away from him. Soon he would be, what? Retired before the age of fifty-five?
When he reflected on his career, as first a journalist, then political adviser, PR consultant and lobbyist, he tried to remember the successes, but in truth, there were few. Yes, he’d helped a few high-profile people, some of them friends, out of sticky situations, and helped steer a couple of governments towards re-election, but had he ever actually achieved anything?
He hadn’t cured cancer or alleviated poverty, or built a new wing on a hospital or a library. He had, however, paid a ridiculous amount at a charity auction six months earlier to go on a two-week tour of southern Africa.
‘Where are you going to be travelling in Africa?’ Saleem asked.
Ian paused a moment to recall the itinerary. ‘South Africa, Zimbabwe and Namibia.’
‘Oh, are you going on safari?’
‘Yes.’
‘And will you see lions?’
‘I suppose so,’ Ian said, ‘and pangolins.’
Saleem caught his eye in the rear-view mirror. ‘What is a pangolin?’
Ian shrugged. ‘I don’t know, really. It looks like a cross between an armadillo and a baby crocodile. Some kind of scaly anteater.’
‘I see.’
‘The thing that caused COVID, apparently,’ Ian added, drawing on the last vestiges of what he could remember from the event. He’d gone with Michelle, a graphic designer he’d met at the Goldberg Christmas party, the same event where Judy had suggested they take some time out. Michelle had been to Africa before and was mad about the continent’s wildlife. Ian had paid for the tour, a ticket for one, thinking that it might impress her. She had been impressed – but they hadn’t clicked. They had gone on a couple more dates, but Michelle was in her mid-thirties and made it clear that she wanted two children before she was forty.
Michelle had declined his offer to pay for her to come on the pangolin tour with him, and although she had not spelled it out in so many words, Ian had been left with the impression that she thought he was too old for her.
So here he was. Alone, on his way to Africa to spend time with pangolins and some South African professor woman who got into shootouts with criminals, according to Michelle and some other Africaphiles who’d been at the fundraiser.
‘Sir?’ Saleem said.
‘Yes?’
‘May I ask . . . why?’
Ian folded the Financial Review and set it on the seat next to him. ‘You may. I’m just not sure I have the answer. For a start, I haven’t been on a proper holiday for three years, and I’m not even sure that this counts. I know nothing about where I’m going or what I’ll be doing and that, in itself, is like a holiday.’
‘I see.’
*
Doc closed her eyes and leaned her head against the window of the South African Airlink airliner as the captain told the crew to secure the cabin for landing at Hoedspruit’s Eastgate Airport. The short flight from Johannesburg was almost over.
In years gone by she might have had her nose pressed to the Perspex to try and catch a glimpse of a giraffe or an elephant on one of the private game reserves they crossed on approach. For now, she prayed that the gentle vibrations might soothe her.
They didn’t.
The aircraft landed with a bump and taxied to a stop, where Doc tried to ignore the excited chatter of some American tourists behind her, who were wrestling to extract oversized camera bags from the overhead lockers. She let the conga line of khaki, green and leopard print flow down the aisle before she summoned the will to stand and retrieve her own small daypack.
She was last down the stairs, by which time the tourists were already shaking hands with their safari guides and the Johannesburg set were striding through the small, mostly open-air terminal towards the car park where their holiday home Land Cruisers and Land Rovers were waiting for them.
Geoff waved to her and she walked towards him.
He took off his Khaya Ngala baseball cap. He was so polite and old-fashioned. ‘Hello, Prof, it’s lekker to see you.’
She couldn’t match his smile. ‘Howzit.’
‘Good. Can I take your bag?’
‘I’m fine, thanks.’
‘Cool. Do you, like, have any check-in bags?’
‘No. Hopefully the college still has a bag I left here last time. I was coming and going so often before . . .’
Geoff nodded, as though he understood what she meant: that she had been a regular visitor to the Southern African Wildlife College, just outside the Kruger National Park, before Jurie had been killed. Doc had been a guest lecturer at the college, which focused on training rangers and conservationists, and her students sometimes stayed there when they needed accommodation in the area.
The last time she’d seen Geoff and the others had been at Jurie’s funeral on a bitterly cold Highveld day, at the crematorium in Johannesburg. She shuddered.
Jurie’s wife, Suzette, had looked at Doc as though Doc had been the one who pulled the trigger on the rifle that had killed him. And she’d had every right to. Given what had happened between Doc and Jurie not long before his death, Doc could barely summon the courage and strength to go to the service.
Doc had hung back from the crowd of mourners who filed past Suzette and the kids, shaking her hand or kissing her, before and after the service.
Captain Sannie van Rensburg had been at the service and had given Doc a long hug and told her that she had offered to help the Johannesburg Hawks in any way she could. Doc had thought she’d escaped having to confront Jurie’s widow – the service had been full to overflowing with police, other law enforcement officers and family and friends – but Suzette had sliced through the crowd like a leopard stalking its prey, just as Doc had said her own final farewells to everyone.
‘Denise.’
‘Oh, Suzette. Sorry, I didn’t want to intrude. I’m so sorry for your –’
‘It was your fault.’
Doc had stood there, biting her lower lip, feeling the first tears squeeze from her eyes as Suzette voiced exactly what Doc knew, and what she feared might destroy her.
‘He shouldn’t have been on that operation. I’ve had people, some his friends, tell me that. You didn’t have the paperwork and it wasn’t authorised.’
‘But –’
Suzette had interrupted whatever feeble defence Doc was going to give. ‘And I know he was fucking you.’
Doc had hung her head, then looked up at her. ‘We never did anything while he was still living with you.’
‘I don’t believe you,’ Suzette had said, ‘but I’m sure he left us because of you.’
*
‘How was the flight?’ Geoff asked.
Doc returned to Geoff and the present. ‘Oh, fine.’
‘The plane looked full. It’s got busy out here at Hoedspruit, ever since COVID when everyone moved from the city. And the house prices, eish, you won’t believe them.’
Doc didn’t have the inclination or patience for small talk, but she could tell Geoff was just trying to be nice. No doubt there was more he wanted to know, so she saved him the trouble of asking. ‘The police still don’t have any leads on who would have wanted to kill the buyer or Jurie.’
Geoff nodded decisively, taking the hint that it was OK to ask about it. ‘And what about the theory that you and John were the targets, and that Jurie just got in the way?’
‘It’s possible,’ she said, ‘and that line of investigation would still be in play if anyone in the SAPS gave a damn. Even though Jurie was a well-respected detective, on average one policeman a day is killed in South Africa, Geoff. Things have moved on. It’s almost a cold case now. Frank Galloway and the Hawks are sticking with it, but he’s got nothing new.’
‘I see.’
Doc wished she could see something – anything. The investigation had determined that based on the trajectory of the shots that had hit John and Jurie, the shooter had been located on the first floor of an abandoned factory in the industrial area that surrounded Emperor’s Palace, across the road from the casino some seven hundred metres away.
After much pleading, Frank had agreed to gain access from the building’s owners and take Doc to the site. The old factory was going to be demolished to make room for a new office building. The Hawks had been all over it, several times, so there were no magical missing clues to be found. The shooter had broken into the building – his tracks had been easy to follow along the dusty downstairs floor from where he had smashed a window.
Other than the fact that the shooter was likely a man, evident by the size 11 shoe, and wore a generic brand of men’s sneaker available at Tekkie Town and a dozen more chain stores, all they knew about the killer was that he was a good shot.
At least they thought he was a good shot. Geoff, who like all of them had been interviewed extensively by the police, had obviously picked up on the idea that Doc might have been one of the targets.
‘The fact was, Geoff,’ she said, wanting to get the guilt off her chest and out in the open for him to pass on to the others, ‘that Jurie was moving at the time he was shot and, yes, after walking through the events dozens of times, looking at lines of sight and bullet trajectories using laser pointers and sticks and computer modelling, it is quite possible that I was going to be the shooter’s second target because Jurie did walk between me and the firing point at exactly the moment he was shot, just as I took a step backwards. You may recall I was covered with a fair amount of his blood.’
