Blood in the Water (A Zoe Carter mystery): Zoe Carter Mystery, #3

Blood in the Water

Pamela Lamb

Published by Agneau Press at Smashwords

Copyright 2013 Pamela Lamb

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Chapter One

The body lies face down in the middle of the dam. A shaft of early morning sunlight shines down into the green water where a swirl of blood spills from a gaping wound on the back of its head. I know who it is. Merrie Kaufmann. Children’s writer and pain in the arse. Last seen alive at dinner the night before. The big man at my side speaks in Swahili to his workers congregated on the muddy path. He turns to me. ‘They’re going to get her out. Come on, Miss Carter, let’s go back to the house.’

I follow his broad back up the slope to the house where, on the wide verandah, the boys are laying the table for breakfast. There’s a place set for Mrs Kaufmann, I notice, with her bottle of mineral water already standing next to her plate. Well, she won’t need that. Not this morning. One of the boys pulls out my chair. I sit down and wait while he pours my tea and hands me the jug of milk. Hot milk. Yesterday I asked for the milk to be cold and was answered by a blank stare. I was about to insist but the sound of Mrs Kaufmann’s mid-West twang as she specified her requirements stopped me in my tracks. If you want to know why someone hit her over the head and pushed her into the dam, there’s a reason right there. She was the most irritating woman I’d ever met.

I’d flown into Nairobi the day before on Brightsward business for my boss Eric van Eps. Eric wanted me to investigate the pollution of a freshwater lake in central Kenya. When I first heard about it I was tempted to refuse and maybe it would have been better if I had. But Eric had been good to me when I didn’t deserve it so, if he wanted me to do something, I wasn’t going to say no. At least, not straight away.

For the past year my boyfriend Martin and I had been living on Darlington Station in the remote Kimberley region of Western Australia. Following the death of Scott Lawrence, the previous owner of the property, Eric had put in a bid to purchase Darlington Station from Scott’s widow. It was lower than his original offer to Scott but Mrs Lawrence was only too happy to rid herself of the place with so little effort. Once the sale had gone through, she’d sent a truck and a couple of blokes from Perth and they’d emptied the homestead of all the beautiful furniture that had once belonged to Scott’s great-great-grandfather who had taken up the lease on the property over 100 years before.

Since then Martin and I had been camping in the house: perching on a couple of kitchen chairs in front of the fire in the drawing room, sleeping on a mattress on the floor of the front bedroom, opening tins and defrosting lumps of meat which we washed down with red wine from the carton on the pantry floor. With the nearest supermarket several flying hours away in Broome, it was only when the wine ran out that I could be bothered to do any shopping. Or when the tea bags and longlife milk ran out, which were Martin’s particular obsessions.

Brightsward’s long term plan for Darlington Station was to turn its one million acres into a wildlife conservation area but, in the meantime, we needed to pump some much-needed funds into the project. The first phase was to build a camp ground, some basic amenities and a few walking trails in the hope we could tempt tourists to venture 90 km from the Gibb River Road to pay us a visit. With another wet season looming, we had plenty to do and running off to Africa on some scheme of Eric’s was definitely not on the agenda.

When the phone rang I was bashing together some sandwiches to take to Martin who was supervising the clearing of the area we’d chosen for the camp ground.

‘D’you fancy a trip to Kenya?’ It was Madeleine’s voice.

‘Not particularly. Why?’

‘Opa wants someone to go over there to investigate the pollution of a lake. He thought you might enjoy the trip. You can take Martin, if you like.’

‘Martin won’t want to go. He’s too busy here. Anyway what’s so special about this lake that’s got Eric interested?’

‘Come to Brisbane and I’ll tell you about it. You’ll need to get your Yellow Fever shots anyway. Oh, and Zoe, don’t forget your passport.’

Looks like I’m going to Africa, I thought. I scraped together the scraps and went out into the kitchen yard, followed by our half-grown pup who was eager to see if I had anything for him. Next to the gone-to-seed vegetable patch, a hump of earth revealed the resting place of the old dog Bill who had followed Martin from room to room through the empty, echoing house until we woke one morning to find his stiff body lying on the smelly blanket next to our bed. I tipped back my head and stared up into the china blue sky. I loved this place. Unlike Martin, who’d grown up on his parents’ sheep station in western Queensland, I’d never had a home. Not a real one.

That afternoon Martin and I took a bottle of wine and the end of a piece of cheese that had been quite good in its time and drove up the bumpy track to the top of the crag that loomed behind the homestead. We sat on a slab of black rock, sharing the bottle between us as the sun slipped away behind the horizon, leaving the sky splashed with colour. It was a favourite place for both of us and I’d named it Shag Rock. It wasn’t a name Martin particularly liked, although he enjoyed the activity that had given it its name.

I wrapped my arms around my knees and stared out at the green landscape. ‘I’m going to miss this. By the time I get back from Africa the Wet will be here.’

‘You don’t have to go.’

I turned my head. ‘If Eric wants me to go, I’ll go. You know that.’

‘Fair enough. How long will you be away?’

‘A couple of weeks. Three at the most. Will you miss me?’

‘What do you think?’

Martin leaned towards me and I melted into his kiss. It was yet another opportunity to prove that Shag Rock had been well named.

A week later I was in Brisbane, staying with Madeleine in her neat little townhouse on the hill behind the Fourex brewery. The morning after my arrival she took me into Brightsward’s office in George Street and found me an unoccupied desk. I sat down in front of the computer and tried not to notice the dirt under my fingernails as I stretched my hands over the keyboard. Madeleine perched herself on the corner of the desk and crossed her flawless tanned legs. She was wearing a short black dress with a frill around the middle that only a girl with a figure like a stick could wear without looking like an overstuffed Christmas cracker and her long auburn hair was twisted up in some complicated style behind her head. Dressed in my usual khaki bush gear, I felt like a scruffy elephant next to her. It’s one of the reasons I could never wait to get out of the city and back into the bush where I belonged.

‘So what’s it all about, Madeleine?’ I twisted my head to look up at her. ‘Why does Eric want me to go to Kenya to look as some lake?’

‘A couple of weeks ago I received an email from someone called Jacob Maniago. He said he was a Masai warrior and he was worried about this lake. It’s called Lake Naivasha and apparently it was part of Masai traditional territory until the white men took over.’

‘A Masai warrior with access to email? Sounds a bit odd to me.’

I tried to think of what I knew about the Masai but jumping up and down - courtesy of a car ad on TV - was the best I could come up with.

Madeleine shrugged. ‘Lots of people are on the Internet these days, Zoe. Even Masai warriors.’

‘Did Jacob Maniago tell you why he was worried about this lake of his?’

Madeleine rolled her eyes. ‘It’s the usual story. Too much water being pumped out, too many poisons being pumped in.’

‘So why Brightsward? What does he expect us to do about it?’

‘He wants us to talk to the people who are doing the damage.’

‘Who are?’

‘Commercial flower growers mainly. Jacob says it’s a big industry in Kenya, selling cut flowers to the European market.’

‘Yeah okay, but why is Eric interested? It’s just another degraded lake.’

‘Because Jacob seems to know what he’s talking about. Eric thinks if Brightsward can come up with a simple, cheap solution that we can sell to the flower growers, Jacob will be able to keep the pressure on after we leave.’

I stared out of the window at the sun-struck buildings on the opposite side of the street.

‘There are plenty of simple solutions out there,’ I said finally. ‘It’s selling them to the growers that’ll be the challenge.’

Madeleine hitched herself off the corner of the desk and pulled down her skirt. She indicated the computer. ‘There’s heaps of stuff about Lake Naivasha on the Internet if you want to take a look. Don’t forget you’re due at the travel doctors at eleven for your Yellow Fever needle.’

I grinned up at her. ‘That’s always supposing I want to go to Kenya to meet this Masai warrior of yours.’

‘Of course you want to go, Zoe. When have you ever been able to resist a challenge?’

On Thursday morning, with my arms still sore from the various needles the travel doctor had persuaded me I needed, I took a taxi to the airport to catch the plane to Quilpie. Eric lived on a property in this unlikely location and was seldom tempted to leave it so, if I wanted to see him, that’s where I had to go.

I’m a helicopter pilot and flying in planes isn’t one of my favourite occupation. Three hours in the hands of the young fellow I’d seen climbing into the cockpit who looked as if he was yet to be introduced to a razor was not a prospect I particularly relished but it was better than twelve hours in a bus. Marginally better, I thought, as the plane bucked and jumped in the hot air currents rising from the brown country below our wings.

In the kitchen of Eric’s homestead I was greeted by a pile of sandwiches under a damp tea towel and the smell of roasting lamb coming from the oven. Johannes urged me to sit at the table and flipped off the tea towel. The bread was fresh, the ham home-baked and there was a bowl of sweet tomatoes and a jar of Johannes’ own onion relish on the table, in case the thick wedges of bread and meat weren’t enough to fill me up. It was a joke between me and Madeleine that Johannes’ aim in life was to fatten us up and, although I didn’t need as much fattening as Madeleine, it looked like I was going to have plenty of opportunity over the next few days to put on a little weight.

When I’d finished eating, Johannes loaded a tray with fresh coffee and some of the little almond biscuits he knew I liked and preceded me into the front room where Eric was dozing in a chair by the window. He placed the tray on a low table and sat down next to it. Although Johannes had been Eric’s manservant in the old New York days, now he was his business partner too and he moved effortlessly between the two roles. Besides, he was as fond of those little biscuits as I was.

The smell of coffee woke Eric. He sat up in his chair and I watched his mind click into alert mode.

‘So, Zoe, you are well? How are things on Darlington Station?’

‘Everything’s fine.’ I accepted my cup from Johannes. ‘The camp ground’s almost finished and we’re hoping to get the septic tanks