Silent Predator

by Tony Park

  Carla Sykes had been all ears for Tom’s leopard story when Duncan had dropped them at the entrance to Tinga. He imagined she must hear guests talking about amazing game sightings every working day of her life, but she had seemed genuinely to be hanging on his words. She had laid a hand on his forearm and said, ‘You do realise how very, very lucky you’ve been tonight, Tom. I wonder how we’ll be able to top that experience?’

  Flirty, no doubt. It was little wonder she and Nick had hit it off.

  He dried and changed into chinos, brogues and a fresh shirt. He checked his watch. Seven-thirty. He opened the door of the suite.

  ‘Good evening, sir,’ said the uniformed African security guard and saluted him. The man held a torch as long as a night stick, and carried the real thing through a ring on his belt.

  ‘Evening,’ Tom said. He was impressed at the man’s punctuality. He’d followed the lodge’s rules and arranged for the guard to be at his accommodation at this time. As Carla had briefed him earlier, after dark the lodge encouraged guests only to move to and from the main building with a security escort. They obviously took the threat of encounters with nocturnal wildlife seriously. He didn’t know if Robert Greeves would expect an escort, but Tom felt a whole lot happier knowing there were people who knew the local scene available to perform this task. What would he, an Englishman in Africa, do if he and Greeves were bailed up by a leopard on the walkway? Draw his Glock and shoot it? He smiled at the thought and followed the man.

  Sannie was already in the dining room, at a table for two, reading a paperback novel and sipping a glass of white wine. She had changed into jeans and a loose-fitting peasant top, and wore a necklace comprising a shell flanked by chunky wooden beads. She looked relaxed and fresh, and smiled at him when he walked in.

  ‘Sorry about the book,’ she said, putting it away in her handbag. ‘Too much time waiting around by myself in this job.’

  ‘I know exactly what you mean.’

  ‘I’ve already ordered wine, do you want some?’

  He nodded and over a drink they talked through the remaining details of the joint ministerial visit – timings, routes, vehicles, communications, and recapped the emergency plan. After discussing business and over a meal of marinated kudu steaks – a bigger type of antelope than the leopard’s meal they had seen earlier, Sannie explained – she talked about her kids and asked him why he and Alex had never had any.

  ‘It didn’t start out as a conscious decision. It was the job at first, for both of us. She was a doctor – an intern when I met her – and we were both working crazy hours. When I went to what was then known as Special Branch, a lot of my work was undercover or on surveillance, back when the IRA was our main threat. We got used to going abroad for our holidays – spending our wages on ourselves – so I suppose we both eventually agreed children wouldn’t really fit us.’

  ‘Do you regret it now, now she’s gone?’

  He shrugged. ‘I would have liked to have had a reminder of her, I suppose, but I don’t know if that’s a good enough reason to have children.’

  ‘It was for me.’ Sannie frowned then sipped more wine to hide her sorrow.

  He wanted to reach out and hold her hand at that moment, but he didn’t. He knew his attraction to her was growing by the minute, but there were plenty of reasons not to follow his instincts. Firstly, he told himself, it was unprofessional. He told himself, too, that he should still be feeling guilty, even though Alex had been gone more than a year. Thirdly – and if he was honest, most importantly – he didn’t want to do anything too soon which could jeopardise what might just be growing between them. He didn’t want her to think he was using their shared experiences as a pick-up routine.

  After dinner Carla joined them for drinks. She had flitted from table to table during the evening meal, ensuring all was fine with the food and the service. The Americans had turned out to be demanding, asking for ‘plain grilled shrimp’ rather than the sesame-coated pan-fried prawns each the size of a small lobster which were offered on the menu. Two German couples had also arrived while Tom and Sannie had been on their game drive.

  ‘Meals for Mr Greeves and Mr Dule will be served in a private room,’ Carla explained as she sat down with a glass of wine in hand. She downed it quickly, Tom noted.

  With the last of the guests escorted to their rooms, it seemed Carla wanted to make up for lost time. She ordered two more drinks before Tom had finished his cleansing post-dinner lager. Carla was full of questions about London and mentioned that several of her friends had left South Africa for the UK to escape what she called the abominable crime problem.

  ‘Of course, if I had a big strong detective to look after me and protect me from car-jackers I’d happily stay in South Africa,’ she cooed.

  ‘I’m sorry, but I’m quite tired this evening; please excuse me. Goodnight and see you in the morning,’ Sannie said.

  Tom was sorry, too, to see her leave. He’d enjoyed her company all afternoon and evening and felt that Carla was intruding on something. Also, her crack about having a policeman to look after her was not only overtly flirtatious, but insensitive if she knew who Sannie’s husband was and how he had died.

  ‘It’s after eleven,’ he said, looking at his watch.

  ‘Party pooper,’ Carla chided him, giving him a light punch on the arm. It wasn’t the first time she had touched him during their conversation. With each drink she leaned a little closer.

  Tom could read the signs – he wasn’t blind. Carla was pretty, flirtatious, sexy and getting increasingly drunk. He played a straight bat and said, ‘We’ve got an early start tomorrow, so I really should get some shut-eye.’

  ‘The security guard’s just seeing the girls back to their quarters. I’ll escort you – if you trust me to ward off any dangerous game, that is.’

  He wouldn’t trust Carla behind the wheel of a car right now, and he had no idea how she would see off a lion if she couldn’t walk a straight line, but he shrugged and said, ‘Of course I trust you.’

  Carla took a torch and walked ahead of him. He couldn’t help but notice the pleasing way her pants clung to her firm bottom.

  ‘Here we are, home sweet home. Nice and safe from the predators.’ She leaned against the wall beside the doorframe as he opened the door.

  ‘Night, Carla. Thanks for everything.’

  ‘Night,’ she said, and he thought he saw the trace of a pout crease her lips.

  Tom turned on the lights inside and slipped off his shoes. With only an hour’s time difference from the UK he wasn’t jetlagged and, despite the impression he’d given Carla, he wasn’t all that tired. The game drive had been a buzz and he still hadn’t come down from it. While he was tossing up whether to have a final beer or not, there was a knock at the door.

  Carla stood there, a wicked grin curling the corners of her mouth. ‘I didn’t ask you if you wanted your bed turned down, sir.’

  She put her palm on his chest and pushed him into the room.

  6

  ‘You look a little bleary-eyed. Did you stay up late jolling?’ Sannie asked, looking up from her book and a plate of bacon and eggs.

  ‘If you mean partying, no. I got to bed soon after you,’ Tom said.

  When the waitress came, Tom said he was famished and ordered a full cooked breakfast. Sannie asked nothing about Carla’s movements during the night and he volunteered the same as she finished her breakfast and he tucked into his.

  The drive back to Johannesburg was uneventful and their conversation sporadic and mundane. Sannie thought he was being particularly guarded today, and wondered if he had something to feel guilty about. Carla had been all over him after dinner and had made Sannie feel like a third wheel. The line about having a policeman boyfriend to protect her from car-jackers had been the final straw. She recalled once telling the woman what had happened to her husband. Perhaps Carla had forgotten in her drunkenness.

  Sannie was feeling a little guarded herself. She had talked too much ab
out Christo. Perhaps it was the fact that Tom had also lost his partner that encouraged her to open up more than she normally would have. Perhaps it was just as well that Carla had intruded after dinner – who knows what else they would have gotten around to discussing and where it would have led. She certainly wasn’t the kind of woman who slept with a man the first day she got to know him, but she had recognised her own feelings of physical and emotional attraction to Tom. He was a good-looking guy, smart, sensitive and almost childlike in his awe at his first visit to the bush. She liked that about him the most. Also, he was still in pain, as she was, and maybe her maternal instincts were taking over, making her want to look after him.

  Stupid, she thought. She had two kids already and didn’t need another dependent – or a one-night stand or a boyfriend who lived half a world away. When the time was right for her to be with another man she would know it. It had been wrong with Wessels and it definitely would not have been right with Tom last night. Her cell phone rang.

  ‘Hello?’ Sannie listened to the woman on the other end of the line. ‘Oh no!’ She shook her head. She told the caller in Afrikaans she would be there as soon as possible.

  ‘Everything all right?’ Tom asked.

  ‘That was my kids’ school. My boy fell in the playground and has cut his head. They’ve put some Band-Aids on him but they think he should see a doctor. My mom’s in Pretoria visiting my aunt.’

  ‘Well, don’t mind me. I’ve still got a few hours to kill before the flight.’

  ‘I’m sorry, Tom, but thanks. It won’t be far out of our way. Maybe I can pick him up, then drop you at the airport on the way to the doctor.’

  ‘Get your boy seen to first. I’ve got nothing better to do in the meantime. If worse comes to worst I can call a taxi later.’

  She thanked him again and put her foot down. Bugger the speed traps, she thought. If her boy needed stitches he might be suffering a concussion as well. It was good of Tom not to make a big deal about getting to the airport. He asked if she had a car charger for a cell phone – his was the same make as hers – and she told him it was in the glove compartment. He set it in the console next to her Z88 pistol as she drove at breakneck speed to the school.

  Sannie turned off the N12 on the R21 exit, barely checking her speed. It was late morning so the traffic wasn’t too bad. Though she was trying to be calm for Tom’s benefit she was dreadfully worried about Christo, who had been named after his father. With her job and its irregular hours she felt guilty sometimes that she did not see enough of him and Ilana. Her mother picked them up from school most days and was with them three or four nights a week. What could she do? She had to put food on the table and that was enough of a struggle on her basic wage, even with the overtime she earned protecting dignitaries at nights and weekends. She didn’t want to go back into uniform, or into homicide or any other detective branch for that matter. She loved what she did and, as usual, told herself she would just have to live with the guilt.

  When she arrived at the primary school in Kempton Park, Christo’s teacher, Mrs De Villiers, was there to meet her. Sannie holstered her weapon and told Tom he should wait in the car, but he said he would come with her. That was a nice gesture, but Sannie could see the enquiring look in Mrs De Villiers’s eyes when she was introduced to Tom. ‘Tom’s a work colleague, on assignment here from the UK,’ she explained, putting paid to any rumours before they circulated around the school staffroom and the other mothers.

  ‘Hello, you’ve been in the wars, eh?’ Tom said to Christo when they found him lying on a bed in the sick room. Christo looked down, shy in front of the stranger.

  Sannie hugged him then held him at arm’s length to inspect the cut under the Band-Aids. His dark thick hair – a legacy from his father and yet another constant reminder of him for Sannie – was matted with dried blood and the gash looked quite nasty. ‘Are you okay, my boy? How do you feel?’ she asked him in Afrikaans.

  ‘Fine, Mom,’ he replied.

  ‘Ag, you’re so brave. Still, we have to get you to the doctor to make sure everything is fine.’ Sannie switched to English. ‘This is Mr Furey, Christo. He works with Mommy. He’s from England.’

  ‘Hello,’ Christo said, holding out his hand, which Tom shook. Sannie was proud of his manners. ‘Do you play rugby in England?’

  Tom laughed. ‘Not me. I used to play football – soccer.’

  ‘That’s funny,’ Christo said. ‘Do you know Kaizer Chiefs?’

  Then Sannie laughed, and said to Tom, who was shaking his head, ‘Soccer’s mostly played by the black Africans in this country. That’s why he’s interested in you playing it. Come, let’s go.’

  Mrs De Villiers returned a few minutes later with little Ilana, whose hair colour and cut, nose and mouth were all carbon copies of her mother’s. ‘Christo fell over, Mommy. Who’s this man?’ she asked in Afrikaans.

  Sannie repeated the explanations and introduced Tom, but Ilana maintained a shyness act in front of the British policeman. Sannie said goodbye to Mrs De Villiers and bundled the kids into the back of the car.

  The doctor’s surgery was in a small shopping centre, surrounded by a fence of spike-topped metal poles and patrolled by security guards, low-key by Johannesburg standards. Tom went into the waiting room with Sannie and sat with the kids while she spoke to the receptionist. Fortunately the doctor would be able to see them quickly, after his current patient. She thanked the woman and went back to her family. Ilana, she noticed, was showing Tom a picture of a lion in an old copy of National Geographic. Tom asked her what sort of noise it made, and the five year old let out a mighty roar that caused an old lady sitting across from them to burst into laughter. The kids seemed at ease around Tom already and Christo was asking him if he had any scars.

  ‘I’m so sorry to drag you through all this,’ Sannie said to him.

  ‘Like I said, I’ve got nowhere else to go and nothing to do until my flight. Would the kids like an ice cream? I saw a shop next door.’

  The two small faces turned to her, nodding their approval. They hadn’t had lunch so normally she wouldn’t have agreed, but with Christo injured and the kids so settled in his company it couldn’t hurt. ‘You don’t have to, Tom, but I’m sure it would cement the friendship.’

  Tom left them. A cell phone started ringing in her handbag, but the ring tone was unfamiliar. It was Tom’s. In her state of concern over Christo she’d instinctively scooped up Tom’s phone from the Merc’s console, as she never left her phone open to view in a car park, even one with security. She looked over her shoulder out the window of the surgery and saw Tom had disappeared into the ice-cream shop. She could let the call go through to voicemail, but it could be something important. She answered.

  ‘Tom Furey’s phone.’

  ‘Hello? Oh, Sannie, is that you?’

  ‘Ja.’ It was a woman’s voice. Just as she recognised it, the caller continued.

  ‘It’s Carla. Are you two still together?’

  ‘I’m taking him to the airport.’

  ‘Oh, cool. Look, would you be a dear, please, Sannie, and ask him if he saw one of my gold earrings this morning? I’ve looked everywhere and the maids can’t find it. The only other place it could have come out was Tom’s suite. It might have got mixed up with some of his kitundu when he was packing this morning.’

  ‘Sure, no problem. I’ll pass the message on,’ Sannie said and hung up. She felt queasy. Perhaps it was the smell of the doctor’s surgery. Perhaps not.

  Tom sat in the BA lounge at OR Tambo International Airport, sipping a bloody mary he’d just fixed himself from the self-service bar. The lounge was in tranquil contrast to the bustling departure terminal upstairs.

  He’d realised straightaway that Sannie’s change in attitude towards him was due to the message Carla had left. He’d tried, twice, to tell her what happened, but Sannie had shut down the explanation before he’d had time to get it out.

  ‘I told you, Tom, it’s got nothing to do w
ith me. We’re all adults here. What you do in your off time is your business.’

  She was right, of course, and he was a bit pissed off that her tone suggested he’d done something wrong when, in fact, he hadn’t. It was a shame, though, that their time had ended coolly, just when he thought he was getting to know her better. While he hadn’t pushed things over dinner, he wanted her to like him – and not just in the professional sense as two colleagues who would still have to work together closely. The kids had surprised him, as well – how much he enjoyed the brief time he spent with them. Ilana had pretended to read to him from a magazine while they waited for Christo to get his head stitched, and the boy had proudly showed off his sutured wound to Tom when he and Sannie had at last emerged from the doctor’s room. He felt a sense of loss now, as though he’d let something precious slip through his fingers.

  The Daily Mail he was flicking through must have come in on the morning’s flight as it already had a small piece about the explosion in Enfield. The Home Secretary was reported as saying: ‘Security service officers had this house under surveillance because its occupants were suspected of having links to a terrorist organisation.’

  Tom frowned. That was a bit of an oversimplification. The house was occupied by suspected people smugglers who had possibly provided refuge to terrorist suspects. The fact that Steve had found pornography on the computer also led Tom to suspect the illegal immigrants who moved through the house were bound for the sex trade. Still, he knew politicians liked to simplify things and the ‘T’ word was always good for a headline. He thought again about the computer expert who had lost his life. What a bloody waste. They’d probably never know what it was that he had been so excited about.

  One thing there was no doubting, the occupants had to have been hiding something very sensitive in the house – presumably on their computer – to blow it up. He wondered if they were, as the government was speculating, in the process of planning another ‘spectacular’ in the league of the Twin Towers or the London Underground bombing.