Chapter 23
“You know that horrible man, do you?” said Belinda.
“That horrible man is out to kill me,” said McBride, munching toast. “Don’t raise your eyebrows. I’m serious, and it’s a long story. I must get back to the bungalow, and sort my painting gear out for later.”
“Are you painting again this morning?”
“Well, I thought I might go swimming with Dusty Miller. He’s acting as my bodyguard while I’m in danger, so I ought to hang about with him occasionally. He might think he’s redundant and clear off.” McBride smiled to show it was a joke. “I’ll be down at the dam this afternoon if you want to catch up with me.”
She smiled. “Sure do,” she said.
Bungalow seven was locked, which McBride thought strange, since it was half past eight. Unless Miller was at the restaurant. He hadn’t been at the café. He used his key, calling out in case Miller had overslept. There was no response, so McBride tapped on his bedroom door, and pushed it open.
The bed was empty, sheets awry. On the side chair, Miller’s clothes lay as he had taken them off the night before. There was a faint medical smell. McBride couldn’t quite place the smell. He looked round the rest of the house, but no sign of Miller. Something else was odd. He tried to remember. Yes, the hire car wasn’t outside. Had Miller been in a hurry, got up and dashed off in the car, without any clothes on? Perhaps fresh clothes, the others not put away. He went back to the bedroom, pulled open drawers. It told him nothing. As he was pulling open drawers, he had seen something else. Miller had not taken his cell phone. It was on the bedside table.
Whatever the reason, whatever the panic, nobody would forget their cell phone, surely?
McBride made his way to the reception office. One guy manned the counter, somebody he hadn’t seen before.
“I’m staying at Bungalow seven with a colleague, called Miller. He seems to have disappeared. He hasn’t been in here? His car has gone, but I thought the camp was shut at night?”
The man leant on the counter. “The gate opened at six a.m. I opened it myself. Straight after I opened it a Range Rover went out. The guy waved, and I waved back. Don’t know who it was.”
“The car that’s missing is a Range Rover. What did the driver look like?”
”I couldn’t get a good look. He was black though.”
“Nobody else in the car?”
“Not as far as I could see. Remember thinking at the time that he was on his own.”
“I need to get hold of the police. I think he has been kidnapped. That is what it looks like.”
“It’s true there are a lot of kidnaps in South Africa. Here, use this phone dial 10111. You get a call centre for all emergencies.”
McBride’s call was picked up straight away. “Which emergency service?”
“Police. Somebody has been kidnapped, and a car stolen, too. I’m at Berg-en-Dal in the Kruger National Park. The man that has been kidnapped is Brigadier Miller. He was supposed to be guarding me.”
At this stage, the woman transferred the call to the police station nearest to the campsite. They told him that they would send a car and an officer straight away. He should remain at the reception centre. The officer would be there within the next halfanhour. McBride was unhappy at the thought of wasting half an hour twiddling his thumbs in the reception. He decided to phone Dusty’s employer. The king ought to know about it. It took longer than he thought trying to get hold of the king, who was currently out on a royal appointment somewhere in his realm. McBride left his cell phone number, with a message for the king to phone him at the earliest opportunity. He put his cell phone away in his pocket, and at that moment a man entered the reception area. He had the look of confidence those in any police force in the world had.
The officer was a smartly dressed Zulu. Tall and muscular, but not overweight. “Who wants to report a kidnap?” He pointed at McBride, who was the only person on the customer side of the counter. “Was that you?”
“It was.” He told the officer about their hire car being driven out of the gate at six this morning, with only the driver visible. How he had searched the bungalow. The officer pulled out a notebook, and at the same time a junior policeman came in. He had parked the police car so that it didn’t block the reception.
“You staying with this man in the bungalow? Whose name was Brigadier Miller. That his rank, or his first name?”
“His rank in the Maswatiland Army. He’s a mercenary, British. First name Michael. But he gets called Dusty. Because of his last name. You know, Miller as in flour miller. So anybody named Miller generally gets called Dusty.” McBride thought the explanation had gone over the policeman’s head. “He was guarding me. I thought somebody was trying to kill me.”
“So, why did they take your bodyguard instead of you?” Sharp and to the point. This cop was no slouch.
“Perhaps the guy who took him didn’t know what I look like.”
“Where were you at the time?”
“I thought we would get to that question. I’m not proud of it, but I was spending the night in a young lady’s bungalow.” McBride could feel his face redden.
The police officer beamed. “Some people have all the luck, eh? Have you searched the camp?”
“I searched the bungalow. The car was gone. His clothes were there. On a bedside chair. He left his cell phone on the bedside table. I went straight down to the reception in case he had been there. That was where I was told that the car left the campsite at six this morning, driven by a black person. Miller is white.”
The officer leaned against the counter and stared at McBride. “How do you know that he wasn’t doing the same as you – spending the night with a woman? The car theft might be a coincidence.”
“True. I’ve been a bit panic-stricken. I can tell you who was trying to kill me. He’s at the camp with his chauffeur. He’s big, overweight, and white. Name is Markham, Robert Markham. So-called financial advisor. You might like to question him. He’s staying at the lodge. I saw him at the café this morning.”
“You didn’t think to ask him about the kidnap?”
“I didn’t know about the kidnap, I hadn’t been back to the bungalow at that stage.”
“The first thing to do is search the camp. The next thing to do is grab your suspect. Third we go to your bungalow, and look for clues. I’ll just report back to the station, they can start a kidnap search. Perhaps in a radius of twenty-five miles. Derelict buildings and so on.”
“Shouldn’t we grab Markham first?”
“Hardly. We don’t know that there has been a kidnap. Perhaps Miller is in the pool or in the bar.”
“Point taken,” said McBride. “Let’s get on with it.”
They searched the public areas, the swimming pool, the bar, the café, the large restaurant. They finished up in Bungalow seven. McBride slumped in an easy chair in the living room, despondent. The two cops searched noisily in every nook and cranny.
The big Zulu officer, who had said his name was Major Mazombe, and called his side kick Sawu, came into the living room.
“Okay, so he’s not in the camp, this man Miller. Let’s go and pick up Markham, who you say is in the lodge.” They all trooped out of the bungalow, McBride last, and he locked up.
At the lodge, the guy on the desk, probably a porter, since the bookings and records got done down at reception for the whole camp, looked up at three men, all in civilian clothes.
“We want to speak with Mr Markham,” said the police major.
“He’s in room five, if he’s in. His key’s not here, but most people don’t turn them in at the desk, so who’s to know?”
“What about his chauffeur, call him Bo something? What room’s he in?” said McBride.
“He’s in room six. But I haven’t seen him this morning.”
The three men tramped upstairs in single file.
Both doors were locked. Nobody responded to knocking on the doors.
Major Mazombe s
aid to Sawu: “Go ask the porter if he’s got a pass key. Tell him it will save replacing the doors.” Sawu was quickly back with a pass key in his hand.
“Start with Markham’s room,” said the major. He entered first, with his pistol in his hand, a 9mm, McBride thought, which could cause a fatal injury without trying.
The room was empty. Nothing to indicate that Markham was a kidnapper.
Both the policemen searched rapidly through Markham’s belongings, breaking his suitcase lock to gain access. They were the police after all.
McBride remembered something that he had noticed in Miller’s bedroom.
“Did you smell anything odd in Miller’s room? It reminded me of a hospital sort of aroma, very faint.”
The major stopped searching, and stood upright. “No, but you were in the room a long time before us. The smell could have been fading. Do you think he had been drugged to stop him struggling?”
“That was the smell. Ether, or something similar. We did a course on drugs in the army. Like an operating theatre, it smelled.”
“I think it was a long time ago since they used ether. Even in these backwoods. Professional,” mused the major. “You couldn’t buy it in a small town. Maybe in Jo’burg you could.”
They turned over room six. In the waste bin they found an empty cardboard box that had contained cartridges.
The major asked McBride: “If the chauffeur did the kidnap, and he used your Range Rover, well, the one you hired, how did they get here in the first place, Markham and his man? Surely they had a car. And where is it, There’s no car outside the lodge.”
“Can’t help you there,” said McBride. “Surely reception will collect car details of visitors. Better get the details of my rental Range Rover. I think Miller must have the papers, but I don’t know where.”