Windhoek, Namibia, the present day
Anja was worried. The light in her room in the guesthouse was on.
She was environmentally conscious so never left a tap running nor a light burning for any longer than required. Could she have forgotten? Never.
Perhaps there was a maid in there, or one had visited while she was at Joe’s, to turn down the sheets.
No, she told herself. The guesthouse was not classy enough for a turn-down service and chocolates on the pillows. Instead of heading to her room she went to reception, but found the small office closed. She pushed a button on an intercom marked ‘night service’.
‘Hello, night manager,’ a voice said.
‘Hello,’ Anja said, ‘it is Miss Berghoff from room eight. I think someone might be in my room, an intruder.’
‘A what?’
‘A thief maybe. The light is on.’
‘Ah, you must have left the light turned on,’ the manager said. ‘Happens all the time.’
‘No, it does not happen all the time, not with me at least. Please come.’
There was a pause. ‘All right. Give me five minutes. I am coming.’
Anja waited, and felt nervous. She patted her pockets and unzipped her small daypack as she waited. With her she had all her cash, credit cards, her iPad and passport, and a portable hard drive with a backup of everything that was on her laptop. She never felt unsafe in Namibia, but she took the same precautions with her valuables as she would have done if travelling in Europe.
She checked her watch, and after seven minutes of tapping her foot the night manager showed up, his white shirt half out of his black trousers. He carried a wooden baton with him.
‘All right, let’s go.’
Anja fell into step behind the man, who was reassuringly bulky, with thick forearms. They went up the steps to her room, which was located on the upper floor of one of two blocks of rooms. The man stopped near the top and held up a hand.
‘What is it?’ Anja whispered.
‘The door is open.’
Anja swallowed and felt her heart rate increase. ‘I would never have left a door unlocked.’
The man took a phone out of his pants pocket and scrolled through his contacts. ‘Here is the number for the police. Get ready to call it. Wait here.’
With his little club held at the ready the manager crept slowly up the rest of the staircase. When he was at the door he called out. ‘Come out, whoever is in there!’
There was no reply. Anja held her breath, her finger poised over the green ‘call’ button.
The manager used the tip of the baton to open the door a little wider. It creaked on unoiled hinges. Anja went up the steps until she was just behind the man. When he turned to look back he gave a start at how close she was.
‘You scared me.’
‘I scared you?’ she said. ‘I’m terrified.’
The man stepped into the room and shoved open the bathroom door, just inside on the right, and put his head and club in there.
‘No one,’ he said.
Anja followed him in. As relieved as she was that there was no intruder, the room was a mess. Her bag had been opened and her clothes tossed on the bed. Some had fallen to the floor.
‘He’s moved the mattress,’ the man said, pointing with the baton, ‘to see if you hid anything underneath. Did you?’
‘No.’ Anja walked around the room. As she feared, her laptop was gone from its pocket inside her main carry-on bag. ‘Damn. My computer.’
‘Give me the phone, please.’
She handed it back to the porter, who called the police. He got halfway through explaining what had happened when the call ended.
‘What’s wrong?’ Anja asked, taking a break from sorting through her clothes.
‘Damn MTC – the network’s gone down.’ He tried again. ‘No signal.’
She checked hers. ‘Same. No signal.’
‘I need to go back to the office and call them on the landline. Do you want to come with me?’
Anja looked at the mess the thief had left; the growing feeling of having been violated assaulted her senses. ‘No, thanks. I’m going to sort my things and pack them.’ She had spent enough time in Africa to know that the police would not be accompanied by a crime scene investigation team, so she had no qualms about going through her possessions. ‘Please don’t take offence, but I am not going to stay here tonight. I will come to your office as soon as I am packed. I am going to stay at one of the bigger hotels.’
‘Suit yourself.’ The man turned on his heel and walked back downstairs.
So much for caring for his customers, Anja thought. She would not be giving the place, or its security, a favourable review on TripAdvisor.
Anja put her hands on her hips and surveyed the mess again. She felt a lump rise in her throat, but then told herself to be strong. She needed to do a full inventory of what was left and work out if anything other than her computer had been stolen.
As she folded each item of clothing she imagined a strange man’s fingers on her things, her underwear. Anja retrieved her wheelie backpack from the floor and when she laid it on the bed she felt the tears well up. The thief had slashed the linings of each compartment. What on earth had he thought she was hiding in there?
She wiped her eyes. Claire Martin had gone through a war and been imprisoned in a stinking concentration camp and she had been able to go on. Anja drew a deep breath and tried to put the situation into perspective. Claire, she thought to herself again. Anja sorted through her belongings and looked around the room – all of the printouts of Claire Martin’s letters were missing. Anja swore.
Why had they stolen those? It made no sense. She had lost a laptop computer, which hurt, but at least she had her hard drive in her daypack. She also had travel insurance, which presumably would pay for a new laptop.
Most importantly, she told herself, she had not been harmed. Burglaries happened every hour of the day in every country in the world; Anja had simply been unlucky, and her situation could have been much worse.
Anja sat down on the bed, picked up the phone on the bedside table and dialled reception. ‘It’s me, Anja Berghoff, do you have any news for me?’
‘The police say they will be here in about twenty minutes. They have asked if you will wait. I have called the Hilton and they have a room. I spoke to the German lady who owns this place, and she says she will pay for your accommodation at the other hotel. I am to organise you a car when you are finished with the cops.’
Anja was taken aback, and touched, at the unknown woman’s kindness and understanding. ‘Thank you, I’ll stay put until the police get here.’
*
Anja looked up from her iPad when she heard the door to her room squeak.
She jumped up and lunged for the door but it flew open, hitting her in the arm. Before she could scream a man barrelled into her, spun her around, twisted her left arm painfully behind her back and clamped his other hand over her mouth. The hand was white, the skin mottled with age, and there was a scar near where the thumb and forefinger met. From the glimpse she had got of him he was dressed in black and wearing a ski mask. She heard the footsteps of another entering the room. She yelled into the man’s palm and he twisted her arm harder.
Her kicking and clawing were having no effect, other than increasing the pain in her arm. Just as she tried to rake down on the man’s shins the second man came into view again and grabbed her ankles. Together they lifted her onto the bed.
God, no, she thought.
‘Don’t say a word.’ The man who had first grabbed her kept one hand on her mouth. In his other hand was a squat black pistol whose barrel he pressed firmly between her eyes with enough pressure to cause her instant pain. She looked up at him, wide-eyed. ‘Hold out your hands or I will kill you now.’
She did not want to submit in any way, but she was terrified they would kill her.
‘Roll her over,’ the man with the gun said to his accomplice. ‘If you scream, you die.’
Removing his hand from her mouth, they turned her and the second man wrenched her hands behind her back. She heard duct tape being peeled from a roll and torn before her hands were bound. The pistol was in the back of her head now, at the top of her spinal column.
‘Please, what do you want?’
‘Search her bag,’ the first man said. ‘Quickly.’
‘Purse with cash, two credit cards; phone, iPad, hard drive,’ said the other.
‘Good, take it all.’ The gunman pressed the barrel harder into her head and Anja cried out in pain. ‘Tell me the PINs for your credit cards.’
She hated the thought of him taking all her money and, worse, her only backup hard drive. But the important thing was to stay alive, and to not anger these men. Cards could be cancelled and she would not be liable for money stolen. She told them the four-digit number.
‘Same for both cards?’
‘Yes.’
He pressed even harder. ‘The truth?’
‘Yes, yes, it’s the same number for both cards. Please don’t hurt me. My hard drive . . . please, can you leave it and the printouts you took. They are of no value.’
The man gave a short laugh. ‘You don’t get to ask for anything. Now stop whining or you’ll get something else from us.’
‘No, please.’
‘Shush,’ the gunman said, ‘not so loud. We know the cops are coming. This will be quick, and as painless as you want to make it. What are the passwords for your computer and email?’
‘What?’
‘Don’t question me, bitch. Pull her jeans down,’ he said to the accomplice.
Anja felt the other man’s hands on her bottom, then reaching under her, fumbling for the buckle of her belt and the top button of her jeans. Fear almost paralysed her.
‘I’ll tell you!’
‘Of course you’ll tell us. You’re not stupid, are you?’
Anja heard a muffled vibration and the man who had been working on her jeans moved his hands.
‘Cops are heading down Nelson Mandela Avenue,’ the second man said.
The gunman grabbed a handful of her hair. ‘Do you want to be brave? Do you think we’ll run now that the police are on their way? I have plenty of time to kill you. Ask yourself, is there anything on your computer that is worth you dying for?’
She gave him the passwords.
‘Good.’
The gunman held her head up, by her hair, while the second man fixed a piece of tape over her mouth. Hurriedly, they bound her ankles, then left the room.
The tears poured down her face and soaked into the cheap nylon bedspread.
Anja did not know how long it was before the police and the night porter arrived in her room, but it was almost too long to bear. Her mind raced with visions of the men returning to assault or kill her.
A female detective and a uniformed male officer cut her bindings and then the detective ordered the night manager to make her a cup of coffee, or get her something stronger. Anja asked for tea and a brandy then gave the detective a statement about what had happened and what had been stolen.
While waiting for the drinks, Anja called her bank in Munich and cancelled her credit cards. The customer service officer told her, to her relief, that none of her funds had been withdrawn or spent by the thieves.
The detective reviewed her notes. ‘You say they asked for your email password?’
Anja nodded.
The detective tapped her pen against her notebook. ‘That’s a new one for me, but in this age of identity fraud who knows what the criminals are after next.’
‘I need to change it as soon as possible,’ Anja said, fighting back tears, ‘but they have taken my iPad, my laptop, my purse and all my cards, my phone, my hard drive. I feel like everything I have, everything in my life, is gone.’
The female detective reached out and took her hand in hers; the touching gesture made Anja want to cry again.
‘You weren’t hurt seriously, be thankful for that, praise God,’ the detective said. ‘Why would someone be interested in your PhD research papers?’
Anja thought about the question. ‘I don’t know. People say I’m overprotective of my research material, but I didn’t think they were worth being assaulted for.’
‘What is your research about?’ the detective asked.
‘The desert horses of the Namib, the Anglo-Boer War and the wars against the Herero and the Nama.’
The detective pursed her lips. ‘When we investigate crimes we look for motives. Can you see anyone making money out of your work?’
Anja shrugged. ‘No, not that I can think of. I’m protective of it, but is it worth stealing? Probably not. The research papers can be easily found in the German archives.’
‘What can you tell me about the men who attacked you? Height? Build? Race? Eye colour.’
‘At least one was white, with brown eyes, I think. They wore black clothes, ski masks, and gloves,’ Anja said. ‘Average height, I suppose, both very strong, muscled. They were behind me or had me face down nearly all the time.’
The detective looked up from her notebook. ‘Nearly?’
Anja nodded. ‘I got a glimpse of one man’s hand. His skin had those liver spots that are common on older people, and he had a scar.’ Anja described the location.
The detective made notes.
Anja couldn’t see any sense in this attack. Her logical brain also told her that the two men who had robbed her were not starving street urchins. Having ransacked her room they had hidden somewhere, on the grounds of the guesthouse probably, and calmly waited for her to return. They had been quick and ruthless, and, as terrifying as the ordeal had been at the time, she now realised they had not been overly violent, but had rather used just enough physical and mental force to get her to give them what they wanted. In short, they had been professional. She explained as much to the policewoman, and detailed as much as she could remember of what they had said.
‘I expect they wanted your email and computer passwords to find out your banking details.’
‘I’ll cancel the accounts.’
‘Anja,’ the detective said, leaning closer and lowering her voice a little, ‘is there anything incriminating on your computer, something you wouldn’t want someone to see? Sometimes blackmail is a motive.’
She shook her head. ‘Nothing. Perhaps they confused me with someone else? Perhaps they had been told to raid the hotel room of a rich German tourist and all they got was some credit cards with low limits and a laptop full of notes and a draft of my thesis?’
The detective sat back, closed her notebook and gave Anja a business card.
‘Call me if you can think of any other reason why these men attacked you, in particular, and what they might have wanted in your papers and your computer.’
‘I will.’
When the police left, Anja’s composure cracked and she started to cry.