by Tony Park
Sonja moved her hands to undo his belt buckle and zip. He kissed her neck, working his way down to her breasts as he reached around her and undid her bra. He let her pull down his shorts, then kicked them off. Sonja took a step back, just out of reach and slowly, teasingly, undid her own shorts.
She stopped when they were halfway down her hips and reached into her panties with one hand. She put her other one up, on his chest, stopping him from coming closer.
‘Watch.’
She half closed her eyes, licking her lips as she caressed her nipples. When she focused on him again she could see that he couldn’t help himself, he had his cock in his hand.
‘Stop. Don’t touch.’
He felt the desire flood him, telling his brain to take her, to ravage her, but he could see she was enjoying this. ‘OK.’ He let go and stood there, hard and ready as he watched her.
‘I want you to get to the point where you can’t bear it any more.’
He smiled. ‘I’m close.’
‘Not close enough.’ She lowered her shorts, stepped out of them and kicked them aside.
Sonja reached up and behind her, for the taps, and turned them on. Water started cascading down over her. She tipped her head back and let the flow run into and out of her mouth as she worked her fingers faster. She swallowed some water, quenching her thirst. Her breathing started coming faster.
Sonja pointed to the low stone bench built into the wall, beneath the showerhead. ‘We called these bonking steps, at the safari lodge where I grew up, in Botswana. You’ve probably heard of them.’
‘Yes. You can put one foot up . . .’
‘Like this.’ She stood, turned her back to him, wanton, offering, teasing. She reached between her legs and went back to touching as she looked over her shoulder, her eyes beckoning him.
He came up behind her, kissed her hard, on the back of the neck, like the mating lion had done to the female. She reached back, grabbed a handful of his butt and pulled him to her.
Hudson moved his hand to where hers had been and took up the rhythm.
‘Yes,’ she moaned, pushing back against him.
Hudson entered her. Sonja gasped, leaned her cheek against the wall and then started moving with him. She put her hands on the tiles and pushed back from the wall, meeting his thrusts.
Water poured from their bodies, amplifying the sound of flesh against flesh. Hudson closed his eyes, revelling in the feeling of being part of her, of her firm muscles under his fingers, of the warmth of her body and the water.
He reached a point where his arousal was finely tuned, where he was just at the brink and he wished he could stay there, with this woman, for the rest of his life.
‘This is good,’ she said.
‘Yes, it is.’
‘I wish we could stay like this.’
It had been too long since he’d felt such a connection. He felt his heart swell and the pure bliss of being with her ran through his body like a jolt of electricity. He wanted all of her, to consume her, to own her, to be hers. Hudson gripped Sonja’s hips tighter.
Sonja looked back at him, over her shoulder. ‘Open your eyes. I want to watch you.’
*
Mario had spied them as he crested the hill that separated the lodge from the village of Kipili. He had done his job, found someone who spoke English, and quizzed the old man about Nikola Pesev, the latest foreigner to buy property on the lake.
He had watched Sonja and Hudson walk to the showers. He had noted the way she paraded herself in front of him, like an animal on heat, and how Brand had slavishly followed her, nearly tripping over his tongue.
Mario wanted her and he was quietly enraged by the way she had discarded him, how she now flaunted herself in front of Brand.
He skirted the camping ground, using the big mango trees as cover, and made his way to the ablutions blocks from the opposite direction to Sonja and Brand. When they entered the shower, together, he crept across to their block, crouching to keep his head below the window level.
Now he was closer he could hear them.
The slut was putting on a show for him. Mario slowly raised his head until he could peek in through the mosquito mesh–covered window. They had their backs to him. Brand was touching her, moving behind her, but he could see the swell of her hip. He remembered the feel of her.
Mario felt himself harden at the thought of what he would do to Sonja, and to Hudson Brand. He reached into his shorts and started to massage himself.
Brand was increasing his pace, his hips thrusting, and Sonja, the whore, was driving back with equal frenzy. The American tilted his head upwards, unable to hold on any longer, and opened his mouth wide. Mario freed himself and imagined wrapping an arm around the American’s neck, then drawing his knife across it.
He wondered what it might have been like if he’d been able to sneak in there now, to kill him while he was deep inside her, then take over from him.
He thought of the pleasure she would experience, the pain he would inflict. He felt his own orgasm rushing on. Sonja was crying out, Brand was grunting like the pig he was. Sonja deserved better than a broken-down safari guide.
Brand had never had the stomach for the killing that was required in Angola. The enemy were ruthless and the men of 32 Battalion knew how to take the fight to them. Brand was soft on prisoners and civilians alike. He had broken the soldiers’ code and reported on Mario, accusing him of atrocities. Mario had taken the one thing, the woman, that mattered most to Brand. He remembered Ines, the way she had clawed and scratched at him like a wildcat, and how he had silenced her.
Brand had never been able to prove it was him, but the knowledge of the truth gave Mario a power over Hudson Brand, which he relished every time he saw the man or thought of him. Brand might have Sonja, here, now, but Mario would take her in time, and whenever the shooting started again, as it inevitably would, Hudson Brand would end up with a bullet in the back.
A knife would be more satisfying, more climactic, but a bullet would be easier to write off.
Mario watched Sonja slump against the wall and he unloaded against the warm brick exterior of the shower block.
He would not waste it the next time; he would fill her, have her begging for more of him.
‘Hello?’
Mario turned his head. There was an African man in blue overalls, a camp attendant perhaps, waving to him, wondering, no doubt, what he was up to. Quickly, he zipped up and moved away, around the block, back into the shade of the mango trees.
‘Who’s out there?’ Hudson Brand called from inside.
Me, Mario said to himself. And I’m going to kill you.
Chapter 24
Sannie van Rensburg sat down at her desk in the upstairs open-fronted loft area of her house at Hippo Rock.
This ‘office’, of sorts, looked over the Amanzini Spruit, a stream, barely more than a trickle now at the end of the dry season, that ran into the Sabie River some three kilometres downstream, near the house where Hudson Brand stayed.
She opened the screen of her MacBook, tethered her phone to connect to the internet, and logged into Skype. While she waited for her husband, Tom, to come online, she scanned the spruit for signs of life. A purple-crested turaco gave its distinctive honking call, and when she scanned the big jackalberry tree that shaded the rivulet she caught a brief flash of the bird’s red underwings. Down on the ground the rustle of bushes gave away the estate’s resident herd of impala. The bush was terribly dry this year – there had not been enough rain last summer – and the impala were braving the thickets of vine-enshrouded trees along the watercourse. They were extra vigilant in this close, almost jungle-like vegetation, as this was perfect leopard country.
Sannie and Tom had seen the big resident male leopard several times, on the opposite bank of the Sabie River, from Hippo Rock’s communal picnic area. T
he last time was while having drinks with Hudson, and Cameron and Kylie who owned Hudson’s house and were visiting from Australia. They were a nice couple. Sannie missed being part of a twosome when Tom was away. As much as she told herself it was nice to have time to herself, the truth was that with the kids in boarding school and Tom in the Middle East, she was often lonely.
A baby’s cry made her look up and she saw a flock of trumpeter hornbills, their distinctive wah-wah-wah preceding them, swoop through the treetops.
The Skype ringtone brought her back to the computer and she felt her heart give a little lurch when she saw it was Tom. It wouldn’t be anyone else calling, but even so these little digital triggers were enough to get her excited.
‘Hiya!’
Even after living in South Africa for nine years he still hadn’t lost his English accent.
‘Howzit, my liefie.’ She adjusted the laptop so she could see his handsome face better and blew him a kiss.
‘Hello, my love. How are you?’
She put one hand on her heart and reached out to the inbuilt camera with the other. They did this as often as they could, depending on their work schedules, but it never seemed enough. ‘I’m OK.’
‘Just OK?’
‘Ja.’ She waved a hand in a dismissive gesture. ‘Some work stuff that’s bugging me. How about you?’
‘Good news.’
She brightened, seeing his smile. Often he looked so very tired. His contract was to protect some UN officials in Iraq. Tom tried to downplay the danger, but every time Sannie watched the news on TV about the situation in Iraq and Syria she felt her anxiety levels rise. ‘Yes?’
‘I’m coming home early!’
‘Wow. That’s fantastic. I can’t wait.’
‘The UN mission is heading home to New York sooner than expected, but as we’re on a fixed contract I still get paid the full amount.’
‘That’s wonderful.’
Tom held up his hands. ‘Wait, it gets better.’
That was good enough for her. ‘Go on?’
‘I told you the company recently got a new CEO, didn’t I?’
‘Ja, a South African, right? Louis?’
‘Yes, Louis van der Merwe. He came to visit us and was briefing us on some new developments, here and around the world. They’re starting up an anti-poaching division and they want me to work for them, in South Africa, based in the lowveld.’
‘It doesn’t get much better than that,’ she said, ‘although at the moment there’s probably been more gunfire here in the bush than in Iraq and Syria combined.’
‘Tell me?’
She filled him in on the spate of shootings and ambushes in the war against poaching in their little corner of Africa. ‘The info we’re getting is that organised crime is responsible for more and more of the poaching here in South Africa, and also in neighbouring countries. There’s a syndicate that calls themselves the Scorpions, and we’re picking up reports of them working as far up as Tanzania.’
‘You think it’s true? If so, this would be something Louis really needs to hear.’
Sannie wondered if she had shared too much with her husband, but it was becoming more and more apparent to her that if there was such an organisation it was too big for just one police force or even just one country to tackle. It would require a whole new approach to policing wildlife crimes.
‘It seems that Julianne Clyde-Smith has decided to take on the war on poaching as her own personal crusade. The word is that she and her head of security, a guy called James Paterson, are funding sophisticated anti-poaching operations. I’ve had reason to question some of her methods lately.’
‘Paterson? Like the author but one “t”?’
Sannie thought for a moment. ‘Yes, that’s how he spells it.’
‘Ex–British Army?’
‘Yes, a South African who served with them, in Iraq and Afghanistan, and before that, Northern Ireland.’
‘I met him, years ago, when I was seconded from Special Branch to MI5. We were conducting undercover surveillance on the IRA in London and James Paterson, he was a captain back then, was the military liaison man. I haven’t seen him in what, twenty years maybe.’
‘Small world.’
‘Yes.’
‘What do you remember about him, Tom?’
Tom looked up and scratched his head, as he did when he was thinking. ‘Very bright, and very hands-on. In Northern Ireland he’d been undercover himself. When he was with us it was like he missed being in the field and kept telling us how to do our jobs. Any chance he got he was out on the streets, wanting to be part of the action.’
Sannie flipped open her notebook on the desk and jotted down some of what Tom was saying.
‘He finally got his chance to get into the game.’
‘How so?’ Sannie asked.
‘We were tailing some IRA men who were supposed to be organising an arms deal. They were looking to buy RPG-7s, rocket-propelled grenades. MI6 intercepted the arms seller, overseas, and made sure he didn’t make it to Heathrow. When they put him in the bag they had to quickly find someone who could pose as the seller. Paterson was the right man at the right place, so he went in as the salesman.’
‘What happened?’
‘Paterson went undercover, posing as the arms dealer, and set up a meeting with the IRA guys. They were after a light machine gun and Paterson had one, and a thousand rounds of ammo.’
‘Serious?’ Sannie said.
Tom nodded. ‘They wanted it for an ambush, to shoot up an army convoy, in England – soldiers on exercise. The idea was to take the fight to the enemy, on home soil.’
‘Sheesh,’ Sannie said.
‘Exactly. So the buy was set up and the IRA men came to him. The idea was that they would fire off some rounds, to make sure the machine gun was in good order.’
‘Where in England could you fire a machine gun without alerting an entire village?’
‘Out at sea. Paterson chartered a fishing boat and picked up the IRA guys at a little village in Cornwall. They went out; he had an MI5 guy with him posing as his henchman.’
‘And?’
‘And something bad happened. It was never made public, Sannie.’
‘I have no intention of making it so.’
‘OK. So, the IRA men became suspicious and the guy with Paterson, less experienced than him, said something – I don’t know what – that gave them away, and guns were pulled. Paterson’s sidekick was killed, but James took out the three guys who were there to make the buy. They say that when he got the boat back to port it was awash with blood.’
‘Oh my.’
‘Yes. The incident was hushed up. While the intelligence service lost an operator, an IRA quartermaster and two senior commanders were taken out and a major attack was averted.’
‘Tell me something, Tom.’
‘Yes?’
‘Would you trust Paterson?’
‘From what I’ve heard of him, yes. If Julianne Clyde-Smith was looking for someone to take the fight to the poachers then she found the right man in James Paterson.’
‘Thanks. I miss you.’
‘I miss you too, my love. I can’t wait to get home. I’m finished with this overseas stuff. I miss South Africa.’
‘I love the thought of you coming home for good,’ she said, ‘but this war against poaching is getting hectic. Sometimes I wish we still had the farm.’
‘Yes,’ Tom said, ‘I know what you mean, but the money I’ll get from this contract will help us, and having the security of a job in South Africa will mean we can stay at Hippo Rock. It’s all going to be good, love.’
Sannie heard a knock on the front door downstairs. She looked around. ‘Sorry, someone’s downstairs.’
‘No problem,’ Tom said. ‘I have to get going anyway, I have a mee
ting in five minutes. Bye, my love.’ He blew her a kiss.
Sannie returned the kiss, closed her laptop and went downstairs. When she opened the door she saw Anna, the estate laundry lady, standing there. Anna carried a pair of men’s boots in her hands.
‘Anna, howzit,’ Sannie said as she opened the door.
‘Fine, madam, and you?’
‘Fine. Ka hisa nomuthla, hey?’
‘Yes, madam, it is hot today. I am sorry if I am bothering you. I got your message.’
‘Oh, yes, right.’ Sannie had called Anna – she had her mobile phone number for when she needed to check if her washing was ready – and told her she had some questions to ask about Shadrack’s workboots. ‘Come in.’
Anna walked in, looking around the house. ‘I brought Shadrack’s boots with me, as you asked. I got your message when I was at the doctor’s, then went home to get these.’
Sannie looked at the boots that Anna held up. ‘I didn’t need you to bring them. I just wanted to ask you about the boots that he was wearing on the day that he was killed.’
Anna looked away for a moment and wiped an eye with her free hand. ‘These were his boots, the only pair of work shoes that he owned.’
Sannie was confused. ‘So what was he wearing . . . that day?’
‘I don’t know. When I saw . . . when the police came to get me to identify him, he was wearing nice boots, but they were not his. Do you think he stole them?’
Sannie felt her heart melt. Anna seemed to be shocked by the fact that her son could have stolen a pair of workboots; the fact that he was most likely an armed poacher suspected of killing at least one woman didn’t seem to register with her at all. ‘I don’t know, Anna, what do you think?’
The older woman looked bewildered. ‘I found these in his room, under his bed, just like this.’
‘The laces are tied together. Would he normally do that, like if he wore another pair of shoes or slops to work and maybe hung these around his neck?’
Anna shook her head. ‘No. He cleaned his boots every night and wore them to work here at Hippo Rock every day.’