Komatipoort, South Africa, the present day
Nick looked around the single-storey outdoor shopping mall complex. He tried to imagine what it might be like to tangle with one of the crocodiles that he had already seen in the Sabie River.
Cyril Blake had rushed into the river without hesitation and taken the beast in almost hand-to-hand combat. He must have had feelings for Claire, or was it simply a soldier’s instinct to protect someone in trouble?
Nick wondered if he would have had the courage to do something like that.
He went back to his little car and set off for the Kruger Park again. After a few minutes his phone rang and he pulled over to the side of the road. His heart skipped as he fished it out of his pocket, hoping it was Susan calling to say she had reconsidered her decision. Instead it was a number he didn’t recognise.
‘Nick speaking.’
‘Mr Eatwell?’
‘Yes, who’s calling?’
‘It is Anja Berghoff here, Mr Eatwell. I am wondering if you can please agree to share the information you have about your relative Cyril Blake who fought in German South West Africa in 1906.’
Why should I? was the first thought that popped into Nick’s head. The woman had been downright rude to him in her reply and he did not think her tone had been something that had been lost in translation. ‘Why is it so important now?’
‘Because . . . because I have lost all my research material.’
He heard her voice crack. ‘So you said in your email. How did you lose it?’
‘Well, not lost, exactly; it was stolen from me. Last night, in Windhoek.’
‘Didn’t you have a backup of that as well, on a portable hard drive or on email?’ It was the sort of question, he realised, people always asked when someone had lost a file or their photos. He knew, full well, that he was the last person who could criticise – he was hopeless at backing up his work.
She sniffed. ‘My laptop and my hard drive were both taken, and the criminals forced me to give them my email password. The thieves accessed my account and deleted everything.’
‘That’s too weird.’ This did not sound like an opportunistic crime. ‘You say they “forced” you?’
‘Two men came to my hotel room, robbed it while I was out, and when I came back they attacked me. They . . . tied me up and threatened to kill me. They didn’t touch my credit cards or bank accounts, although I was able to cancel the cards very quickly.’
‘Bloody hell.’ Susan’s final words, a warning to be careful, came back to him, and he wondered if she’d meant more than just to be careful of the wildlife. ‘Who would want that stuff?’
Anja blew her nose. ‘I don’t know. But they threatened to kill me.’
‘Over some stuff about desert horses?’
‘Yes, but my current research material covered much more than that. It dated back to the conflict in German South West Africa and the Anglo-Boer War. I was tracing the life of a woman called Claire Martin, who is linked to my study on the origins of the desert horses.’
‘Claire . . . yes.’
‘Your papers mention her?’
‘Yes.’ She had gone from borderline distraught to pushy quickly. ‘Susan Vidler gave me your email address. She said that you snubbed her when she asked you to share information.’
‘That woman is a journalist. She is rude and she just wants a sensationalistic story.’
Nick was not sure how he felt about Susan right now, but he bridled at Anja’s blunt criticism. For one thing, it was the pot calling the kettle black as far as he was concerned. ‘Whatever. Have you tried calling or emailing Susan since you lost all your data?’
There was a brief pause. ‘Yes. Both. She has not replied to me and there is no answer when I call her phone, which is not surprising, as I also did not return her calls or emails in the past. She is ignoring me.’
You and me both, Nick thought. ‘So you came to me.’
‘Yes. This is not easy for me, Mr Eatwell, Nick. I know I could have been more polite to you, but I have worked very hard on my thesis and now it’s gone. Please understand, I have spent months amassing this material and Susan wanted me to just give it to her so she can write an article. I was not even sure if the information I had on Claire Martin was eventually going to help with my thesis, but finding it was like conducting an archaeological dig – you brush away the layers and hope you will uncover something of value.’
‘OK,’ he said uncertainly.
‘I am sorry, Nick. Please accept my apology. I am lost right now. Please can you help me?’
His earlier anger melted; he sensed apologies were not something Anja Berghoff issued every day.
Before he could answer she carried on. ‘Please. Whatever I have, if I can find it again, you can look at, if it helps you. May I please ask what it is you have?’
‘It’s a manuscript of some sort, written by a German doctor named Peter Kohl, long after the war against the Nama. In his foreword he says he is writing while a prisoner of the South Africans and the British during the First World War, in 1915.’
‘That is very interesting!’
‘You sound excited,’ Nick said.
‘Oh, yes. Peter Kohl was Claire Martin’s second husband. Her first husband killed himself. If Peter Kohl is writing about your ancestor, then he must have known him,’ she said. ‘What time is it there?’
‘About the same time as where you are, I expect?’
‘Oh,’ she said, sounding surprised. ‘You are in Namibia?’
‘South Africa. I’m having a look at where my ancestor fought during the Boer War, in the Kruger Park. I was supposed to be travelling with . . . a friend.’
There was silence for a few seconds. ‘With Susan Vidler?’
She had a quick mind, Nick thought, but he didn’t really feel like explaining to a stranger how he had just been dumped. ‘Maybe. I mean, we had no fixed plans, but she said we would catch up.’
‘Hmm.’ Anja said nothing more.
‘What?’
‘This is strange,’ Anja said. ‘I get robbed, for my research, it would seem, and you are supposed to meet with a journalist who is interested in material we each have and who is now not returning either of our calls.’
‘You think there’s a connection?’
‘I don’t know, but something else just occurred to me. My mother’s house was almost robbed, just before I left for Africa, by a man pretending to be from a gas company.’
Nick checked his watch; he calculated that he needed to start driving again if he was going to get back to Skukuza camp before the evening sunset curfew, when the camp’s gates were closed and tourists needed to be back at their place of accommodation. ‘I need to drive.’
‘Where are you now?’
‘At a place called Komatipoort. You know it?’
‘Yes, yes I do,’ Anja said. ‘Claire Martin referred to it in the documents I have – had. She was a spy for the German government, you know?’
‘I gathered she was a spy of some kind,’ Nick said. He wanted to know more but he wondered if she was playing him. ‘We don’t drive and talk on mobile phones where I come from, and this cheap rental car of mine doesn’t have Bluetooth. I need to get on the road, Anja.’
‘It is the same in Germany,’ she said. ‘Talking and driving is frowned upon, but in Africa everyone does it. That is possibly why there are so many accidents. But if you want to know more about Claire Martin, I am happy to tell you what I know. Do you have plans to come to Namibia?’
‘I don’t know,’ he said, truthfully. The whole trip had been a half-baked idea, though Susan had dangled the prospect of journeying to the place where Cyril Blake had been killed, in southern Namibia, near the border of South Africa. ‘Maybe.’
‘I know the area where Blake died in 1906,’ said Anja, as if reading his mind. ‘Claire Martin and her husband had several farms not far from there at the time.’
He didn’t bite. ‘I need to get moving. I’ll think about your request, Anja.’
‘One more question, please, Nick. Who else has a copy of your manuscript?’
‘My aunt – she has the original, and a young woman in Australia who is helping me with translations.’
‘Maybe tell them to be careful. I could be worrying for nothing, but thank you, Nick, I hope to hear from you. I have a new email address as the thieves hacked my old one. I will send it to you via SMS and maybe you would consider emailing me an electronic copy of the manuscript if you have one?’
‘I do have a PDF copy.’
‘Good. This is the right thing to do, to share our information,’ she said.
Then why didn’t you when you had the chance? he wondered.
Nick ended the call, put the car in gear and raced to the Crocodile Bridge entry gate as his phone pinged with the message Anja had just promised.
An hour into his driving a big male lion walked across the road in front of him.
Nick was transfixed by the sight of rippling muscles, the fulsome red-gold mane, the eyes that sent a chill down his spine when they seemed to lock onto his through the open window of the little car. He sensed movement in his peripheral vision and turned to see a tawny-coloured lioness emerge from the long grass on the opposite side from where the male had come from.
The lioness walked up to the male and bumped heads with him. When the big boy did not respond she raised a paw and swiped at his face. The male growled. The female turned and presented herself to him, lowering herself to the tarmac in front of Nick’s car. The male came behind her, squatted down and entered her, biting down on the lioness’ neck as he did so. It was over in seconds and the female snarled and stood, gave Nick a filthy look, then walked back into the grass.
Nick checked his watch. Despite the thrill he’d felt at what he’d seen, he needed to go.
He thought of Susan, and how nice it would have been to share something so exciting, so intense with someone else.