‘Yes sir. But Swakop always windy. But cold now. Benguela current.’
David stared out at the endless enormous undulating dunes; they were a harsh yellow-white in the remorseless sun. Sand was blowing across the road – orange snakes of dust, writhing and dissolving.
Now they were here, the desire to find Eloise seemed a rather forlorn decision, almost quixotic. They were in a land of nothingness, a country of mighty desolation, with a population of barely two million scattered across a sun-crushed vastness the size of France and Britain combined; they were looking for one man and one woman. In the wilderness. Would this hotel even exist?
The cab driver was pointing. ‘Swakop!’
David stared at the cityscape as they rolled down the streets. The sense of dislocation was profound. Looming suddenly from the sand was a pastiche Bavarian town: gingerbread houses, spired German churches, little Teutonic shops with curlicued Gothic signs for German newspapers and Becks bier. Yet the pavements were busy with black people, and orangey-beige people, and a few couples that looked American or maybe Australian, as well as obviously German people wearing…lederhosen?
The cab driver took them to the hotel Eloise had named; he approved of their choice because of his brother who had once stayed there and ‘had so many oysters he was sick’. The hotel was big, white, scruffy and the paint was blistered by the wind but it was right on the sea, overlooking the pier and the wild, blue-grey ocean.
Some white guys were fishing off the pier, in thick anoraks and jumpers. Bloodstained buckets of oily fish showed their success. They were talking in German and laughing. They were munching black cake.
When David saw the fish in the pail he thought of the elvers that José had cooked: his last meal. Then the gunshots, the suicide, the obscene blurt of blood on the wall. The body liquor squelched across the cellar floor.
They bought fleeces at the hotel shop. Then they showered and changed and began their quest. At once. They were tired, to the point of exhaustion – but the need to find Eloise was urging them on. Driving the weariness away with two strong coffees, each, they attempted to do what they had come for. Find safety, find Eloise, find an answer.
Their ‘contact’ was a deputy manager at the hotel: Raymond. After a few minutes’ searching they located him, a small, rather sad looking Namibian, peering at an aged computer screen in the office behind Reception.
He took one quick look at them – a white man and a white woman asking for information about Eloise – and he nodded, gravely. Then he said:
‘I know what you have come for. But first you must tell me.’ He almost bowed. ‘What was Eloise doing the moment you first saw her?’
David came right back with the answer:
‘She was in her house, with a shotgun, pointed at us.’
A knowing nod was their response. Raymond turned, and reached down to the drawer of his desk to retrieve, and hand over, a slip of paper. Written on it was a row of digits and letters. David recognized the style.
‘GPS coordinates.’
‘Yes.’
‘But where?’
The deputy manager shrugged.
‘Damaraland? The bush. That is all I know…Now please I work, I am sorry – we are very busy. Swiss tourists.’
He glanced at them – with a sharp, wary expression. He obviously wanted these worrying people with these strange arrangements out of his office. This was fair enough, but it didn’t leave Amy and David much better off than before. A bunch of coordinates, pointing them into the wilderness? David knew from his reading that Damaraland was a truly vast expanse of desert and semi desert, north and east of Swakop. How could they find someone, one or two people, in the middle of that? Even with GPS?
They got straight to work, finding someone to take them in-country. But it was hard; it was impossible. They stepped into travel shops, car hire companies, outfitters for treks. When they explained their requirement, the shop managers and outdoorsmen openly laughed. One Australian guy, in shorts despite the cold, threw a manly arm around David’s shoulder, and said: ‘Listen, mate, Damaraland? There are no roads. You need an expedition. You need two or three fourbys, and a fucking bunch of guns. This isn’t Hyde Park. Try kitesurfing.’
And so it went, and so it continued, and then the fog came. They’d been there for two days of increasing anxiety and it