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The hyena moved off when the men shouted. It stood about
fifty metres away, watching them with its head low between
powerful shoulders, wary, not fearful, waiting for its chance
to retake the field. The men stood in silence, staring at what
the hyena had been eating.
Yellowed bones pierced through areas of sinew and
desiccated skin. The head, separated from the spine, lay
about a metre away. Remnants of skin on the upper face
stretched in a death mask over the skull and pulled at the
scalp. The lower part of the face had been torn away, and the
back of the skull was smashed by jaws hungry for the brains.
The eye sockets were empty, save for dried blood; one of the
vultures had already had a turn. Snapped ribs lay scattered,
but the backbone and pelvis were intact. One leg remained
attached; the other was gone. The lower half of one arm
was missing; the other, freshly crunched by the hyena, lay
a short distance away. There was a cloying smell of carrion,
unpleasant but not unbearable. The scavengers had removed
most of the flesh and the desert sun had desiccated the rest.
The flies, less cautious than the hyena, had startled to a
buzzing swarm but now resettled, fat green jewels on the
dirty bones.
‘It’s definitely a man,’ said Andries unnecessarily.
Bongani was staring at the bodiless head.
‘It’s not one of our people,’ Andries continued. ‘Would’ve
heard that somebody was missing. It’ll be one of those
bloody poachers that have been causing trouble up north.
Damned cheek, coming this close to the camp.’ Andries gave
the impression that the man had got his just deserts, given
this lack of proper respect for the authorities.
Bongani looked at the area around the corpse. Thorn
acacias, trees typical of Kalahari stream verges, were scattered
along the edges of the dry river. Vultures brooded in the
branches, waiting for another chance at the remaining scraps
should the men and the hyena withdraw. The riverbanks
consisted of mud baked to hardness by the sun. From there
scattered tufts of grass spread away from the bank, becoming
less frequent as they battled the encroaching sand. Beyond
that the desert had won, and the first slope of loose sand ran
up to the Kalahari dunes, which stretched endlessly into the
haze.
The two men stood under one of the trees, its canopy
cutting off the heat, its roots sucking moisture from the
subterranean water. The body sprawled on the edge of a
mess of twigs, leaves, and branches, which had fallen to the
ground over the years. Behind it lay the sand bed of the
long-vanished river, patterned with tracks of animals, some
old with the edges of the imprints crumbling, and some as
recent as the disturbed hyena.
Bongani spoke for the first time since they had spotted
the vultures circling. ‘Do you have problems with white
poachers here?’
Andries just looked at him.
‘Look at the head. There’s still some hair left on the scalp.’
Andries knelt next to the skull and examined it more
closely. Although the hair was fouled with blood, he could
tell it was straight and perhaps five centimetres long. This
was a disturbing development. These days game reserves
survived on tourists rather than conservation imperatives,
and bad publicity would be unwelcome.
‘You wouldn’t expect to find a poacher down here anyway.
You just said so,’ Bongani pointed out. ‘And why on his
own in a dangerous area? They don’t operate like that.’
Andries was reluctant to give up his simple diagnosis.
‘Some of them aren’t in gangs, you know. Just hungry people
trying to get some food.’ But he knew it would never
wash with that straight hair. ‘But not the white ones,’ he
admitted. ‘It’ll be some damn-fool tourist. Has a few too
many beers in the heat and decides to take off into the dunes
to show how macho he is in his four-by-four that he’s never
had off-road before. Then he gets stuck.’ The retributive
justice of this new idea made him feel a little better.
Bongani focused farther up and down the river. The
wind, animals, and the hard stream verge could explain the
lack of footprints, but a vehicle track would last for years in
these conditions. It was one of the many reasons why visitors
had to stay on the roads.
‘Where’s the vehicle?’ he asked.
‘He’ll have got stuck in the dunes and tried to walk out,’
Andries replied.
Bongani turned back to the body. The lengthening
afternoon sun highlighted the dunes and concentrated his
attention. ‘Wouldn’t he follow his vehicle tracks back to the
road?’ he asked.
‘No, man, he’d realise that this stream would join the
Naledi farther down – nearer the camp – and take the short
cut. You’d be four or five kilometres at least from the road up
there,’ said Andries waving vaguely upstream, ‘and you’d be
climbing up and down through the dunes all the way.’
Bongani grimaced and turned to stare at Andries. ‘So
let’s see. Your tourist has too much to drink and sets off
into the dunes, probably in an unsuitable vehicle – by
himself since no one reports him missing. He gets stuck and
then has enough knowledge of the local geography to realise
that following the watercourse will be the easy way back
to camp. However, he doesn’t realise how much dangerous
game he may encounter in the river. And, by the way,
he’s working on his suntan at the same time because he sets
off naked.’
Andries looked down. ‘What makes you think he was
naked?’ he asked, ignoring the rest.
‘Well, do you see any cloth scraps? The animals wouldn’t
eat them, certainly not with bone and bits of sinew still left.
And what about shoes? Animals won’t eat those either.’
Bongani continued to watch the changing light on the sand
dunes while Andries silently digested this new challenge.
‘Let’s take a look up in those dunes,’ Bongani said at last.
‘Maybe he came from up there. Let’s go round the side of the
tree, though. I don’t want to disturb the area between the
body and the dunes.’
Something in the way the sand looked struck him as
not quite right. For once Andries didn’t argue. They
clambered up until they could see beyond the crest of the
dune above the stream bed. Two sets of tyre tracks stretched
away from the river, the fat-shoe tracks of vehicles designed
for the desert. The tracks came towards the dune and then
stopped abruptly as though the vehicles had been lifted into
the sky.
‘Oh shit!’ said Andries. ‘It drove out here and then went
back. It was one vehicle, not two.’
‘Yes,’ Bongani agreed. ‘And they had to turn around on
this dune when they saw that they’d come to the river. They
smoothed the area where they turned so that you couldn’t
see the tracks from the river bed.’ They walked together
towards the spot where the tracks disappeared. Once there,
they had no further doubts. There were boot prints aplenty,
and close up they could see the sweep marks on the sand that
the wind had not fully erased. Whoever had been there had
been careful to use the hard ground and debris from the trees
to hide their progress into the river course.
‘They knew what they were doing, these people, whoever
they were.’ Bongani had grudging respect in his voice. ‘They
wanted that body destroyed, and they knew that was more
likely to happen along one of the river courses than in the
relatively dead dunes. And they left it naked because that
way nothing would remain to show it was human. In
another day or so they would’ve had what they wanted. And
in case by bad luck the remains were found, they took care
to hide the tracks, which might be visible from the river.
Your tourist, or whatever he was, was murdered, Andries. I
think we have a big problem.’
Andries nodded. ‘We can use the camera in the truck to
take some pictures. We’d better bring the tarpaulin to cover
the remains. And we’ll have to wait here until we get some
men to keep guard. They’ll have to spend the night here.
The police won’t get here until tomorrow morning.’
Sitting in the sand with Bongani and a corpse for several
hours was the last thing Andries felt like doing, but there was
no choice. The hyena was still waiting. It had moved much
closer when they climbed into the dunes..

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