Shooting Butterflies (37 page)

Gabe stood up.

Tara frowned.

‘Jamison, what are you talking about?' Wayne said.

‘Wait. You were with the killer. At our dam? Watching
me
swim. This is about me? My father and Uncle Jacob were shot because of me?' Tara asked, as she realised what Jamison was telling her. She took in ragged breaths.

‘It was always about you, Miss Tara. From the first time you visited his farm.'

Gabe pulled the wicker chair closer to her bed. He sat down, letting her know that he was there for her, in this time too.

Wayne still sat on the bottom of the bed next to Josha.

Mauve sat next to Jamison on the couch, but she leant forward. Listening.

‘Jamison, tell me that it wasn't Buffel,' Tara said quietly, rubbing her spare hand on her forehead.

‘Wayne and I can keep you safe from him, and if he finds you again, we can kill him.'

She raised her voice. ‘I had tea at his house! He lived right there next door to us!' Tara began to hyperventilate, her breathing erratic, and she clutched at her throat. ‘I can't breathe. I can't breathe.'

Wayne was on his feet, standing in front of her, he held her shoulders. ‘Breathe with me. Breathe in. Slowly. Breathe out. Slowly. Look at me. Focus on my mouth and breathe with me.'

‘Calm down, Tara.' Gabe reached for her hand. He patted it. ‘Come on, just breathe with Wayne.'

She took a moment, but soon she was breathing along with Wayne. The suddenly she moaned. ‘I think I'm going to be sick!'

Gabe instructed, ‘Josha, go fetch Lucretia, tell her to bring some Cyclimorph from the bathroom.' He got the sick bowl from next to her and held it near her mouth just in case, but she only dry heaved.

Josha ran out the room, and soon returned with Lucretia, who shooed everyone out.

Wayne stood in the doorway and watched as the maid stuck a needle into Tara's arm. Within moments, Tara's arm relaxed, and almost dropped off the side of day bed as if she was now passed out. Lucretia lifted her arm and tucked it under the light blanket she spread over her. She wiped her eyes, and stood watching over her charge for a while.

Wayne turned away, his own head imploding from the bombshell that Jamison had just dropped on them. Now not only was Tara in danger of dying, but some madman from her past was hunting her, and perhaps Josha as well.

And Wayne had brought Jamison right to Tara.

Perhaps Tara had been right when she'd hidden herself and Josha from him.

At least then she'd been safe.

He shook his head to dislodge that thought. He didn't believe it. Now that the threat on her life was out in the open, he and Jamison could plan to fortify the security around them.

Together they could protect her and Josha.

Because now that Tara was back in his life, there was no way that he was going to let some madman take her away. Their love had been strong enough to survive all these years apart, to beat all that they had been thrown against, and there was no way he was losing his soul mate now.

22

The Net Narrows

Cape Town, South Africa

3rd March 1998

Gabe, Wayne and Jamison sat in Gabe's study. Mauve had taken Josha shopping with her to get him out the house while the adults talked. He had gone with her only reluctantly. Wayne would have liked to spend the afternoon with his son, but for the time being he needed to work out what their next move would be against the new threat in Tara's life.

Gabe was sitting behind his desk. It seemed old fashioned in the modern house, with its leather inlay in the top, and its large dark front panel. It dominated the room. The wood shone as if polished often. The desk obviously meant something to Gabe. He even had an antique-looking desk lamp for more light, despite the panoramic sea view one could see through the huge windows.

Jamison stood by the window. His feet apart, his arms crossed.

Wayne sat in one of the leather armchairs, his legs crossed with his foot up, resting on his opposite knee.

Jamison turned from the window. ‘I'm sorry, this threat should have waited for your reunion day to be over at least, but I didn't expect her to recognise me after so many years. I thought she would just see me as Wayne's friend, and then, after her operation, when she came back with Josha to visit at the farm, then I could remind her. It wasn't my intention to add to her worry.'

Gabe pushed back in his chair. ‘In all honesty, Jamison, I think it's a relief to her to know you are here. That day is like a noose around her neck, and it tightens every year that goes by with her father's killer still out there. She's good at her job as a consulting psychologist, but I think she would have been a better police investigator. She often helps me with research, and she's sharp. She's wanted to return to Zimbabwe so many times and look for you, and I have always talked her out of it. I'm glad now I did, hearing the little bit of what's happened, but I am dying to hear more of your side of the story.'

‘Me too,' said Wayne.

‘I'm sorry, Wayne,' Jamison said. ‘I couldn't tell you and see you go through even more anguish while you looked for her, knowing that he might have got to her first. I couldn't do that to you.'

‘I understand, sort of,' Wayne said. ‘It's just been a hell of a twenty-four-hour ride. Find Tara. Meet Josha, then be told that not only could she still die after her operation, but there is a madman after her.'

‘And perhaps Josha,' Jamison corrected. ‘I wish he didn't look so like her. His age now is what she was when he first tried to kill her. But I don't think he's mad, I think he is mentally unstable. Sometimes he's in control, other times he is vacant.'

‘Oh, whatever you do, don't use those words near Tara, she will think she can fix him!' Gabe said.

‘No one can fix him,' Jamison said shaking his head. ‘He is missing some pieces inside.'

‘Pieces. My God! The girls. I might be right!' Gabe said suddenly as he began opening drawers in his desk, looking for something.

‘What girls?' Wayne asked.

Gabe slammed another drawer closed. ‘Buffel. He might be the same killer we have been looking for. I saw the pattern in the description of the girls, but dismissed it. We thought we were only seeing it because we were thinking of Josha!'

‘I don't understand what you're talking about,' Wayne said.

‘Me neither,' Jamison said.

Gabe looked around frantically, then he grabbed a file off the pile on his desk and opened it. ‘Look,' he said. ‘It's the pattern. They look the same as Tara looked when she was about twelve. They all have blue eyes, blonde hair. They are all slight in build.'

‘What is that file?' Jamison asked.

‘This is a story I have been working on for a few years,' Gabe said. ‘This is Tara's and my file on a collection of disappearances here in South Africa. It's a personal file, not an official investigation by the paper yet, but something that I have had a gut feeling about for years, so I kept trying to find out more. These are the girls I was talking about. The lost white girls of South Africa.'

He took out a packet of smaller files from inside. He laid them on the desk. The pictures told the story. ‘All these girls have been abducted and never found.'

Jamison sat on the couch. Guilt heavy on his shoulders. ‘If this is his work, I should have stopped him.'

‘No one can stop someone who is like him, Jamison, except himself,' Wayne said.

‘I second that, you can't babysit a grown man,' Gabe said. ‘Something has always drawn me to these girls, Tara and I discussed it and she thought it was because they looked like she did when she was younger.'

Wayne said, ‘I remember seeing some of these on milk cartons years ago, and turning the carton around because I thought that too, but I always assumed I was just a lovesick boy, and that's why they looked like Tara to me.'

‘This is just my theory, none of it is substantiated,' Gabe began, and he explained how he had grouped the girls, and how Tara had profiled the killer.

‘We suspect he either has undiagnosed PTSD and is trying to control it himself, or he is a psychopath. Tara wants it to be the first theory because she thinks that the man needs help and compassion, not a lethal injection.'

‘He's a killer and my biggest regret is that I never put him out of his misery that day when I realised he was hunting Tara a second time,' Jamison said. ‘Tara was the real target on the day her father and uncle were murdered. She should have been killed. Only she didn't know that. I was too late to save her family, but because of her father's well-trained war horse she was taken away from the murder scene fast. I could help her when she became trapped like a rabbit at the gate, but I couldn't save her family. I didn't get there in time, I couldn't run fast enough through the bush to stop him.'

Wayne sat on the edge of his chair. ‘Her father was murdered and she was there?'

‘She never told you?' Gabe said.

‘Once she said to me that she'd seen so many things that she should never have seen, but I didn't think it was anything like that. She said her father died, and that's why her family came to South Africa. At the time I never asked for more details. I was a teenager – details weren't important.'

‘So,' Gabe said, ‘Jamison, you need to fill in a few more details about this man, and if he is the killer then we need to get the authorities—'

‘No police. No one can know that we are onto him, he is elite. The law doesn't touch him. The reach of PSYOPS is far and wide, it runs in Zimbabwe and South Africa, and spreads overseas like a disease. If one of us talk about our own, they will silence us, permanently.'

Gabe stared at Jamison. ‘Tell me you were not from the 1
^st
PSYOPS unit in the Rhodesian army.'

‘I cannot,' Jamison said.

‘Shit!' Gabe said.

‘What the hell! Jamison, do I know you at all?' Wayne said. ‘PSYOPS!'

‘You know me better than any other man except my childhood friend Kwazi,' Jamison said. ‘But I could not put you in danger and increase your worry for Tara for no reason. That is why you never knew my true background.'

Wayne hung his head. ‘How did Tara get mixed up with PSYOPS?'

‘By accident. What I tell you stays in this room. I put my life on the line here for breaking my oath.' Jamison checked with each of them as they nodded. ‘And only to save Tara.'

‘I was a paratrooper, but PSYOPS sort of adopted us into their unit after a mission, after we had seen things. Bad things.' He rubbed his eyes as if trying to scrub the memories away. ‘After the war ended, we were integrated back into society. Some men, they went to South Africa, some went back to their normal jobs, or were put into other jobs in high places. No one knew that they had ever been part of such a unit. But I knew that one man in the unit wouldn't integrate and would keep killing. And he almost always killed the children, those on the edge of adulthood.

‘So I looked out for the children in Nyanandhlovu, and kept them away, made sure I was constantly with him, and that he did not get close to any child. Except one day Madam Maggie came from next door, and she brought Tara with her. And then the killing started again. Only this time, he realised that I knew what he had done, and the crime was not covered by any war crimes pardon. In a moment of – I don't know what it was, he let me leave the farm. But he realised later his mistake, and he began to look for me. In 1992 he found me, and he hurt Ebony. He was trying to shut me up, but he needed to know first if I knew where Tara was. We ran, I took Ebony from the hospital, and I fled to somewhere he wouldn't find us. Then, when Ebony was better, we moved to Wayne's farm. I know he will find me again, it's just a matter of time. And now that Wayne has found Tara …'

‘But why Tara?' Wayne asked. ‘I don't understand, what did she do?'

‘At first, she did nothing. It's not about her, it's about him and his demon. But it is also because she saw him, even if she can't
remember it. She knows who killed her father. She can identify him. She is a witness.'

‘Oh, I wish Tara was up to listening to this, she is going to be so angry when she hears it,' Gabe said.

‘If she involves the police, if you try to use my word against his, I will be killed for breaking the PSYOPS oath. He is like a jackal, he is cunning, and patient, and he will disappear. Then we will never find him. At least for now I have a cousin who is with him most of the time. A tracker, he is also a little
penga
in the head, so he doesn't mind being there. He has lived with him for more years than I ever did. I mostly know where he is and when he leaves his farm.'

‘If it is Buffel, then he is the best lead we have so far. Look at this timeline. If what you say is true, then it started after Tara left Zimbabwe and came to South Africa. He knew she was coming here, everyone knew. And he followed, only he couldn't find her, so he takes a substitute …'

‘It's far-fetched,' Wayne said. ‘Jamison, why does he still want to kill Tara, and why Josha?'

‘My cousin says that he dreams a lot now, and he rants around his house and his mushroom shed about finding his light-haired angel Tara to save someone called Impendla. But Josha because he looks like a younger Tara, and because he is the right age now that he always used to kill.'

‘Impendla. I know that name,' Gabe said, and he began looking through his files on his desk again, only this time he didn't find the file he was after. ‘Dammit! The article I'm looking for is at work.'

‘How can we protect them from him?' Wayne asked Jamison.

‘If we do like I did for years, we just hide. Stay out of the paper. He doesn't know where she is, and now she has us to protect her in case he finds her, and just like Goronga and Moeketsi watch over Ebony while I'm away, we give Tara and Josha each an armed guard. Their own militia.'