Silent Predator

by Tony Park

  The car pulled into the road and accelerated rapidly, trying to catch them. ‘Duncan, how far to the turnoff to the concession?’ Tom asked as he scribbled down the licence plate number of the Corolla.

  ‘A kilometre.’

  ‘Get on your radio and tell the lead truck to put his foot down.’

  ‘It’s a fifty kilometre an hour limit in the park on tar roads.’

  ‘Then tell him to wind it up to fifty. Now.’

  Duncan complied and Tom felt the breeze on his face stiffen as they accelerated. Tom looked around. The car was closing on them, and the driver had put on his right indicator.

  ‘Move right, Duncan, as if you’re going to overtake the lead vehicle. I don’t want this guy passing us before the turnoff.’

  The four passengers in the lead vehicle all turned around at the sound of the Corolla’s horn, and Greeves looked puzzled at the sight of Tom and Sannie’s Cruiser driving on the wrong side of the road.

  The Corolla driver steered with his left hand and held his camera, fitted with a telephoto lens as long as Tom’s forearm, out the window. The tricky manoeuvre caused the man to swerve, then overcorrect, losing speed in the process.

  ‘Maniac.’ Tom was pleased to see Greeves’s head snap around to the front, so he wasn’t facing the photographer.

  ‘Turnoff’s coming up, Tom.’ Duncan started to drift back onto the left-hand side of the road, then suddenly said something in his own language, which sounded to Tom like swearing.

  Tom looked left and saw the photographer accelerating hard to overtake them on the near side. ‘Careful.’ Tom wanted to keep the photographer at bay, but certainly didn’t want to cause a traffic accident in the process.

  The lead vehicle swung right, just as the Corolla pulled level with Duncan’s Land Cruiser. Duncan turned the wheel hard and they were off the sealed onto the dirt. The Corolla braked twenty metres up the road and started to reverse. Tom looked back as the driver started to turn onto the track and then saw the No entry sign. Tom smiled.

  The lead vehicle rounded a bend, and when they were out of sight of the main road, the truck carrying the VIPs pulled over. Duncan acknowledged a radio call and pulled up beside the other Land Cruiser.

  ‘Looked like our friend was from the press,’ Greeves called to Tom over the idling engines.

  ‘Yes, sir,’ Tom said, unsure what Greeves would make of his actions. He had been a bit heavy-handed.

  ‘Well done, Tom, and nice driving, Duncan. Thank you.’

  All in all, Tom thought, it was turning out to be a good afternoon.

  They stopped at the same small riverside clearing where Duncan had taken Sannie and Tom previously. The two officers were on duty now, so alcohol was out of the question. She smiled at him over her glass of mineral water, then returned to her conversation with Indira. Tom was standing opposite Sannie in the circle of dignitaries and flunkies, intermittently scanning the clearing and surrounding bush. He noticed Carla walking towards him.

  Carla had been at the drinks spot ahead of the main party, having travelled there in a third Land Cruiser, along with a barman and two maids who had already set up trestle tables covered in starched white tablecloths. The girls were ready with silver platters of biltong, droëwors, chips and nuts when the other trucks arrived. Carla had changed into a green safari skirt which ended six inches above her knees.

  ‘Excuse me, Tom, I’ve got something to show you. It arrived by email while you were on your drive,’ she said, holding up two sheets of paper. Tom excused himself from the circle.

  ‘It’s very important,’ Carla added.

  ‘News about Nick?’

  ‘No, not quite.’ She led him to the end of the line of parked Land Cruisers. Darkness was falling rapidly and Tom wanted to make sure he could still see Greeves. They stopped on the far side of the lead vehicle and Tom took the papers from Carla. He noticed she was smiling.

  The first page was a blank fax cover sheet with the Tinga letterhead. He looked at her quizzically.

  ‘Read the next one.’

  He smiled and shook his head. On the second page she had written, in a bold girlish hand: I’m going to fuck you tonight, after dinner.

  He laughed, but felt her take his hand. This was silly; though, he had to admit, slightly arousing. He felt himself begin to stir. Carla looked up and down the line of trucks and drew his hand to the hem of her skirt.

  ‘Stop,’ he tried, but he let her move his hand. She used it to raise the fabric. He felt her. Bare skin. The folds, the heat, the wetness. God, it had been so long.

  Carla stood on tiptoes, letting go of his hand. He knew he should move it, but it was an intensely erotic moment, made even more so by the risk of getting caught. ‘No,’ he said, finally removing his hand. He thought of Sannie, the way he had finally broken through her resolve and convinced her nothing had gone on between him and Carla.

  She ground her lips against his, trying to open his mouth with her tongue. Tom broke the kiss and turned at the sound of a footfall.

  ‘Time to go,’ Sannie said, emerging from between the second and third Land Cruisers.

  Sannie sat on the bench seat behind Tom for the trip back to Tinga. She ignored his pathetic attempts to explain away exactly what she had seen. Fondling that bloody woman and kissing her while the man he was supposed to be protecting was not ten metres away.

  ‘What were you thinking? You’re a protection officer!’ It was the only thing she said to him for the whole drive.

  ‘I told you, she made the move on me. I told her to stop it, and I always had Greeves in sight.’

  She ignored him. To think she had almost let him into her life and, worst of all, had almost let him into her children’s lives.

  Sabbie had meant what she said to Tom earlier, about taking it slowly and just being friends for now, but she had allowed herself the briefest fantasy about what he might look like out of his shirt. His skin was pale – typically English – but his face and arms were showing the beginnings of an African tan. With his dark hair and thick eyebrows she guessed he had some Celtic blood in him. She felt stupid now, not only for allowing herself to have feelings for the man, but for the way she felt betrayed by someone she had no legitimate claim on.

  Tom tried to apologise again when they all met in the reception area for pre-dinner drinks, to convince Sannie he’d done nothing wrong. He failed, spectacularly. She turned on her high heels and walked away from him.

  ‘Lovers’ tiff?’ Bernard sauntered over with a gin and tonic in his hand.

  ‘Misunderstanding.’

  ‘I’d go for the raven-haired one, if I were you. Better dress sense and I think she’d go off.’

  Tom smiled and shook his head. He, Bernard, Indira, Carla and Sannie were seated together for dinner, while the two politicians dined at another table with three senior officials from the Kruger National Park and one of the lodge’s owners.

  Sannie took the seat opposite Tom, but an elaborate silver candelabra made face-to-face conversation with her impossible, even if she had wanted to talk to him. Instead, Sannie chatted to Indira, whom Tom knew she disliked intensely, and Bernard, who managed to make her laugh a couple of times over dinner.

  Carla was seated next to him, and he was sure he caught Sannie giving him the evil eye at the precise moment that Carla was squeezing his thigh under the table.

  Greeves stood, clinking his glass with his fork, and made a short speech of thanks for the hospitality shown to them all by the staff at Tinga, and the South African government and National Parks Board. Dule responded, alluding to the ‘positive talks’ the pair had had on a range of issues.

  After coffee, Greeves and Dule excused themselves at the same time. Carla winked at Tom, but he ignored her, as both he and Sannie followed the lodge security guards who were allocated to escort Greeves and Dule back to their rooms.

  ‘Thanks, Tom.’ Greeves opened the door to his suite. ‘Good work eluding that photographer today. Go get yourself a
nightcap and I’ll see you at six in the morning. Don’t be late.’

  ‘Night, sir.’

  Sannie was walking towards him, having just seen her principal safely off. ‘If you let me buy you a drink I’ll explain to you that this was all a mistake. There’s nothing going on between me and Carla.’

  ‘Then why was she stroking your cock during dinner? Goodnight, Tom.’ She made his name sound like a four-letter word as she left with her guard.

  ‘Bloody women,’ Tom said to himself. He could have gone back to his suite then. Should have. ‘Take me back to the lodge,’ he said to the security man instead.

  Bernard and Indira had turned in, but Carla was behind the bar. She waved him over, then bent down, out of sight. By the time he reached her she had a frosted glass of lager waiting on the polished counter.

  ‘I shouldn’t,’ he said.

  ‘Go on. One won’t kill you.’ She poured herself a glass of wine.

  Tom picked up the now dewy glass and took a long drink. She was right, one wouldn’t kill him. ‘You were pretty outrageous today, out in the bush.’

  ‘You haven’t seen anything yet.’ The security guard was hovering nearby, near the reception area. ‘Thanks, George,’ she called. ‘You can leave for the night. I’ll see Mr Furey back to his room.’

  They walked to his suite and, when they stopped outside, he kissed her. A beautiful woman wanted him to make love to her. Sannie didn’t want to speak to him. He felt light headed, but put it down to dehydration, and maybe her perfume.

  He needed Carla, right now, but when they got inside she excused herself and went to the bathroom. He felt dizzy, and had trouble parting the mosquito net. He cursed and sat heavily on the turned-down bed. He put a hand to his eyes. No. This wasn’t right.

  When she returned she was naked, her hairless body gleaming gold in the soft light of the bedside lamp. The protest died on his lips as she lowered herself to her knees and undid the buckle of his belt.

  9

  Today

  The Kruger Park Times was a small newspaper which served the national park and the private game reserves and local communities bordering Kruger.

  Shelley du Toit was six months out of varsity and counted herself lucky getting a journalism job anywhere in the country. A white city girl, she was no expert on the bush and had only visited the lowveld a few times on school holidays. Shelley was determined to make up for lost time, however, and had gladly relocated to the other end of South Africa to get her first job as a reporter.

  She was determined to become an expert not only on her country’s wildlife, game reserves and South Africa’s flagship national park, but also to practise the skills she had been taught at Rhodes University. Shelley was interested in hard news, as well as the usual puff pieces about fundraising activities, school sports and regurgitated press releases that filled any local newspaper. She had made it a priority, soon after getting the job and moving to the tiny dorp of Hoedspruit, to get to know Kruger’s police chief, Isaac Tshabalala.

  Isaac, naturally, wanted to paint a picture of Kruger as a crime-free paradise, which was kept that way by the vigilance of his hard-working officers and, of course, himself. He wanted stories carrying regular reminders about the road rules in the park, and announcements of holiday blitzes on speeding and unroadworthy vehicles. That was all well and good, and Shelley was happy to oblige, but she had recently heard about a scam where park supplies – everything from toilet paper and soap, to sheets and towels – were being smuggled out and sold to middlemen in neighbouring communities. It was a black market in government property. A real-life, honest-to-goodness hard news story. Perhaps the first step on the road to her dream to work as an investigative reporter on a daily newspaper, initially in South Africa, and later abroad.

  She had asked to see Isaac, to put some hard questions to him about theft of park supplies, and he had offered to pick her up early from Orpen Gate, the nearest entry to the park to Hoedspruit. He was going to check on the operation of some state-of-the-art speed cameras and told Shelley he would be happy to answer her questions on the condition she brought her camera with her and did a story on the new enforcement cameras. It sounded like a fair deal to Shelley.

  ‘How concerned are you, Isaac, about this wholesale theft of government property?’ she asked him. In journalism school she’d been taught how to ask open questions, ones that couldn’t be answered with a simple ‘yes’ or ‘no’, and to load her queries with emotive words that made for good copy.

  Isaac Tshabalala had been talking to reporters for many, many years. ‘Shelley, the South African Police Service takes any reports of the loss of property extremely seriously and investigates all such matters to the full. Now, as I was saying to you on the phone yesterday, our new speed cameras provide a valuable tool in the fight against dangerous driving in the Kruger Park.’

  Shelley frowned. He was going to be a tough nut to crack, but she liked Isaac and would play along with his lame speed camera story for the moment to keep him happy. ‘How many people were charged with speeding in the park last year?’

  ‘Well, there were –’ Isaac’s mobile phone played a rap tune.

  Shelley smiled. The guy was old enough to be her father.

  ‘Talking on your phone while driving is also illegal, unless you have hands-free. I just had mine installed,’ Isaac said as he pushed the green button to take the call. ‘Captain Tshabalala.’

  ‘Isaac, hi, it’s Sannie van Rensburg. We’ve got a big problem.’

  Shelley sat up straight in the passenger seat of Isaac’s Toyota Venture.

  Isaac looked across at her, his face creased with a flash of panic as he swerved off the sealed road onto the dirt verge. He reached out for the phone, but appeared to be unfamiliar with the locking device which held it in its new hands-free cradle. The woman on the other end of the line said, ‘Isaac, are you there? Greeves is missing. And an aide – it looks like they’ve been kid –’

  Isaac wrestled the phone free at last. ‘Sannie, I’ve got a reporter with me. Say that again. I might have to call you back.’

  Even with the phone pressed to Isaac’s ear, Shelley heard the woman on the other end of the line swear in Afrikaans.

  ‘Oh, dear god, Tom,’ Sannie said, and it was more prayer than blaspheming. They were in Greeves’s room.

  ‘I’ve just called Captain Tshabalala,’ she went on. ‘He’s sending some uniformed officers here.’

  Tom nodded. He would have to contact London. It was a call he had hoped he’d never have to make in his career but, as much as he dreaded it, he knew speed was of the essence. He dialled the number he’d saved for just such an emergency.

  ‘Reserve room, DC Hyland,’ a male voice said on the other end of the line in New Scotland Yard. The night duty officer yawned.

  ‘This is DS Tom Furey, providing close personal protection to the Minister for Defence Procurement, Robert Greeves, in South Africa. We have a situation here. The minister is missing.’

  ‘Do what?’

  Tom repeated himself and the man seemed to become fully alert. The night duty officer worked in the reserve room of the Counter Terrorist Unit. Tom wasn’t calling him because he suspected this was a terrorist action – not yet, at least – but because this number was manned twenty-four hours a day. The duty officer would now consult the night duty binder, a list of names and numbers of everyone who needed to know about an incident such as this. The man would be busy for some time. Tom gave him the details he had, left his cell phone number, then hung up. Next he called his immediate superior, at home.

  ‘You’re calling early,’ Shuttleworth said.

  Tom repeated the facts.

  ‘Good god almighty. Are the South Africans on the job?’

  ‘Uniforms are on their way, and the detectives will be called next, I expect.’

  ‘What are you going to do next?’

  ‘I’m going to bloody well find him.’

  ‘Keep your cool, Tom. If a cri
me’s been committed in South Africa you’ve no jurisdiction. We’ll need you there, in contact, as our link man. I’ll be on the next available flight. There’ll be two detectives coming with me, to start our investigation. Jesus Christ, Tom.’

  There was no way Tom was going to sit on his hands and play receptionist. ‘Okay. I’ll sit tight,’ he lied. He ended the call.

  Sannie walked back into the living area of the suite from the bathroom where she had been making calls on her mobile phone. ‘Tshabalala’s on his way, but he’s up near Orpen, so he’ll be a couple of hours. He’s got two officers at Skukuza, and they’re closing up and heading here now-now.’

  Tom had learned already that repeating the word ‘now’ meant immediately in Africa. Two officers. ‘What about detectives?’

  ‘According to the plan, Tshabalala will be mobilising a team from Nelspruit – the nearest big town.’

  ‘Good.’

  ‘I thought you had Greeves’s room alarmed?’ Sannie said.

  Tom nodded. ‘It didn’t go off. I checked the laptop that controls the passive alarm, but it hasn’t registered a thing, and I didn’t hear it in the night – obviously. I don’t know how they got around it.’

  ‘Um, there’s something else, Tom.’

  ‘What?’

  Sannie told him about the reporter in the car with Isaac, and the fact that she had overheard at least part of Sannie’s message.

  ‘Jesus. I was hoping we could keep a lid on this for a little while longer. What’s the chance that Isaac can keep the reporter quiet?’

  ‘If you were a twenty-two-year-old journalist straight out of varsity and you found out a foreign government minister had been kidnapped in your backyard, would you sit on the story?’