The African Diamond Trilogy Box Set

by Christopher Lowery

  If Emma hadn’t been so concerned and fearful about the fate of her son, she would have found the ensuing conversation almost amusing. After trying to convince Mr. Lawrence that a missing British teenager in Johannesburg who had been seen unconcious in a wheelchair being pushed out of Soccer City constituted an emergency, she finally gave up. And her refusal to answer questions she preferred not to answer didn’t help her case at all. She thanked the man and rang off after ten minutes when she saw she was getting nowhere.

  Emma lay back on her bed, her mind going over and over the problem, trying to find solutions until her head was splitting. If she couldn’t trust the police and if the British Foreign Office was incapable of acting without an in depth interrogation, who could she turn to? Finally, she just couldn’t think any more. Physically exhausted and emotionally drained, she switched off the light and lay in the dark, crying softly and thinking of her son. After a while, she fell into a troubled sleep.

  It was six hours since Leo had been taken.

  SEVEN

  Johannesburg, South Africa

  It was seven fifteen in the morning. Emma was hanging on for grim life as Coetzee drove his Land Cruiser at over one hundred forty kilometres an hour down the De Villiers Graaff Motorway towards Diepkloof. Coming off the highway to the left they flew past Ridgeway and Glenanda, then turned up towards the South Rand Hospital. Coetzee stopped in front of the A&E Department and they jumped out of the car.

  “Leo Stewart?” He called to the attendant, who pointed down the corridor to the right, “Room seven.”

  They sprinted down the corridor and pushed the door open. The room was full of equipment; pulleys, automated medicine dosage machines, monitors, breathing apparatus, some of them making strangely musical sounds, like slot machines in an amusement arcade. A doctor was standing by the side of the bed, making notes on a tablet. The sheet on the bed was pulled up over the head of the occupant, who was lying motionless. There was no sign nor sound of breathing.

  The doctor looked over at them. “I’m sorry,” he said. “You’re just too late.” He pulled back the sheet to reveal the young boy lying there, still and lifeless.

  “NO!” Emma sat up, sweat pouring down her face. “NO!” She cried again, then fell back on the bed, her body convulsed with helpless sobbing, her tears seaping into the bedsheets, already soaked from the sweat of her nightmare. She lay crying for several minutes, a vision of Leo in the wheelchair, unconscious and helpless, burning in her memory. Finally, she wiped away her tears on the bed sheet. I must stay in control, she told herself. It wouldn’t help Leo for her to lie there wallowing in self pity. She got up to shower and clean her teeth. It was just before seven, she’d been asleep for less than four hours, but she had too many things to do to waste time on sleep.

  Emma made herself a cup of tea with the hotel kettle and tea bags. There was no sugar, but a plastic capsule of cream and a biscuit. She realised she was starving. It was over twelve hours since she and Leo had shared a pizza in one of the cafés at the stadium. There was fruit in the room and she peeled herself a banana and went next door to her son’s room. There was nobody about, but she locked the doors just in case. The empty room seemed dark and oppressive and she opened the curtains to let the early morning light in. She went through Leo’s things meticulously, looking for anything that seemed out of place or unusual. Folding up his clothes carefully and gently, she placed them on the bed, unwilling to pack them into his suitcase. She found nothing untoward in the room that might explain his disappearance. Looking at the small pile of her son’s belongings, tears started to prick at her eyes again but she overcame her emotion and went back to her room.

  Emma finished the fruit while she went back through her notebook. Rereading her notes from the previous night, she was even more convinced that Coetzee and Nwosu were involved in Leo’s abduction. What was more, they hadn’t made a very good job of covering it up. Presumably they didn’t expect to be challenged by a feeble English woman who wrote crime novels for a living. Their positions as security chief and police officer were guaranteed to give them credibility over a distraught mother crying conspiracy.

  As she progressed with her line of thought and notemaking, her mind went off on another tack. Kidnappers didn’t take people without a reason and the most common reason was money. In Leo’s case there couldn’t be any other explanation. He wasn’t a celebrity or socially important, mixed up with a terrorist group or had any political connections. He’s just a bright schoolboy who likes football. But why would they assume I’ve got money? They must think crime writers make a fortune selling TV rights and movie scripts to Hollywood all day long. I wish! But I suppose as long as these people, whoever they are, think they can get money, Leo will be safe and looked after. You don’t damage your only asset if you’re putting it up for ransom. Ransom, that must be what we’re looking at here. How am I going to face up to negotiations over the value of my son’s life?

  Another thought suddenly came to her mind. A worrying detail she’d buried beneath the events of last night. She opened the safe in the wardrobe and took out their travel documents. Their BA return flights via London were booked for Wednesday evening, the day after tomorrow, and she was certain they were not flexible and non-refundable, even though they’d cost a fortune. She looked at her watch, it was now after eight. Quickly going online she got the BA office number at Johannesburg airport and called. The employee informed her that the bookings could only be changed in the event of a death or with a doctor’s certificate of illness causing inability to travel. If she and Leo didn’t turn up for the departure, they lost their tickets. One way tickets at short notice would cost almost a thousand pounds each, but all the flights were full for the next few days, it was World Cup week. Emma thanked her and rang off without trying to explain the circumstances, it was just a waste of time.

  She took up her notebook again, assessing her financial situation. The cost of changing the tickets was more than she had with her and would eat up most of her bank account balance in Lloyds. In her purse she had almost four thousand rand - about three hundred pounds, plus another hundred and fifty in sterling. Four hundred and fifty pounds total, plus about seventeen hundred available in her UK account and a thousand on her credit card. This trip had cost her almost two thousand pounds, so she was getting very low on available funds. Her pension plan had been hammered by the crisis in 2008 and was starting to build up slowly again, but definitely not a cash option. Her apartment in Newcastle had a fairly low mortgage but raising money on it would take time she didn’t have. She was due some royalties on September 30th and the first draft for her new novel was almost finished. That would bring in a deposit of forty or fifty thousand, which would assure their solvency until the end of the year, but in terms of ready cash, she had just over three thousand pounds.

  Emma felt ill at the thought. She had to find someone who could advise or help her. Turning to a new sheet in her notebook she drew a line down the page to split it into two columns. She headed one, MONEY, and the other, ADVICE.

  She went through a mental list of her friends and acquaintances, people who she could trust and people who had money. It was a very short list. The first name that came to mind was her publisher, Alan Bridges, owner of an independent publishing house in Edinburgh and her on-off boyfriend for the last five or so years. She put his name into both columns, although she knew he’d be full of sympathy and good advice, but not very forthcoming with money. He wasn’t that well off himself. Maybe an advance on her royalties, but nothing earth shattering. A couple more names came to her, which she added, without much conviction. Friends who would probably declare their dying love and devotion but would be totally useless to help unless she could convince them to spring a small loan. And a small loan, she was beginning to realise, was not what she needed.

  In terms of family, her options were even more limited. Both of Emma’s parents had passed away, she was unmarried and apart from Leo, she had only one surviving rel
ative, her sister, Jenny, who was three year’s younger than her, born in 1972. That was before their parents’ acrimonious and devastating divorce. She wrote Jenny Bishop in both columns, then sat back, thinking about her sister.

  Jenny had lost her husband in a hit and run accident a couple of years ago. It had been a horrible time for her, since her father-in-law had then died in an accident in his swimming pool in Spain. She had gone down there for a couple of weeks and apparently everything had been sorted out without further incident. Emma knew Jenny’s father-in-law was a wealthy man and she had told her, on a recent shopping trip in London, that she had ‘come into a little money’. She had demonstrated this by being unusually generous with Emma. Obviously she knew not all writers are millionaires, most of them, like her, were just struggling to pay the mortgage.

  In addition, Emma had come to recognise that her sister was a lot smarter than she. Originally a junior school teacher with a handful of ‘A’ levels and a BA in teaching, she had taken two years off to graduate from the London School of Economics with a degree in Sociology, then gone back to Sunderland to teach kids with learning difficulties. This had greatly impressed Emma. Her own forays into the NGO world of humanitarian endeavour had been instigated much more by a desire to escape from her unhappy childhood than to use her limited abilities to save the planet.

  Jenny had then married well and after being widowed in tragic circumstances seemed to have reorganised her life. Emma had always thought there was more to her than met the eye. Jenny didn’t say much, she just got on with things.

  She was often at the house in Spain and had asked Emma to come down for a visit with Leo, but she had somehow not got around to it yet. She was too busy writing her books just to survive and provide her son with a stable home life and a good education. He was the clever one in her family, but now it was her turn. She had to be clever enough to find Leo and get him back from whoever had taken him.

  Emma sat on the side of her bed in her shabby three star hotel room in Johannesburg as she tried to get to grips with the enormity of what was required of her. She looked in the wardrobe mirror and saw her pale reflection in the early morning light and she felt frightened and totally helpless.

  It was ten and a half hours since Leo had been taken.

  EIGHT

  Ipswich, England

  Jenny Bishop was waiting with her suitcase at the open door of her semi-detached in Ipswich when the house phone rang. She looked at her watch, it was just coming up to seven. Who would call me at this hour? When it continued to ring she stepped back into the hall and picked up the receiver. She immediately recognised the lilting north-east accent of her sister.

  “Jenny, Jenny, it’s Emma. Thank God you’re there, I thought you might be away. I need to talk to you. Something terrible’s happened and I don’t know what to do. Can you call me back on my mobile? I’m still in South Africa and calls are so expensive and I’ve got no money.” Her voice cracked and Jenny heard a sob.

  “Calm down, Emma. I’m just leaving for the airport, but I’ll call you straight back.” She pressed the number on the screen and her sister came back on the line. “What on earth is wrong?”

  Emma took a deep breath. “It’s Leo. He’s disappeared and I’m sure he’s been abducted. It’s all so complicated it’ll take me ages to tell you. When can you call me back? Things are happening very fast here.”

  “What are you talking about? How can ….” Jenny looked outside. “Just wait a minute. I’m on my way to Stansted airport to fly down to Spain and my cab’s arrived. Let me get in and I’ll call you straight back again. Is that OK?”

  “I won’t budge until you call. Thanks, Jenny.”

  A black minicab drew up and the driver put her case into the boot while Jenny locked the front door then got into the back seat. Since she had ‘come into a little money’ she’d given up the coach ride to Stansted and negotiated a good price with a local taxi company, not much more than the coach fare but a lot more comfortable. She was still a low-maintenance person, but she’d decided she could afford a little more comfort. However she continued to fly with EasyJet, there were some things she wasn’t yet ready to change. It was a grey morning and the countryside rolled past in a dreary blur, like a black and white movie slightly out of focus.

  She checked her mobile, it was over ninety per cent charged up and the drive to Stansted was at least an hour, enough for a long conversation. She pressed the recall button. What’s happened with Leo? She wondered, as the call went through. Emma’s not the type to panic, but she’s definitely in a panic right now.

  “Jenny. It’s so good to hear your voice. I’m at my wit’s end.”

  “No problem, Emma. Now just calm down and tell me what’s wrong. I’m in this cab for an hour and I’ve got nothing else to do but talk to you.”

  Jenny’s first comment, after listening to her sister’s story for thirty minutes, was, “This is too incredible to be true, it sounds like something from one of your books. You’re absolutely sure of it?”

  “That’s exactly what I thought. Then I double checked my notes and went back through my memory and I’m absolutely convinced I’m right. You have to believe me. Leo’s been taken by these people. I don’t know why and I don’t know where, but I know that’s what’s happened. What am I going to do? I’ve got no husband, no real friends, no idea of what I should do. You’re clever. You know how to fight adversity, get things done.”

  Like her sister, Jenny had the habit of making notes about everything, though she’d recently started using an iPad and the Notes App. She looked down the couple of pages she’d written in the cab and asked a few relevant questions. Listening to her quiet and authoritative tone, Emma started to feel better. She answered in a calmer voice, remembering and describing every detail that supported her story.

  “There’s no question that I’m right, Jenny. Otherwise, where is my son? He can’t suddenly have decided to go walkabout. He’s got no money and doesn’t know anyone. Twelve hours ago he disappeared and he hasn’t returned. If he hasn’t been abducted, where is he?”

  “Right, you’re right. We have to assume you’re not losing your mind. I’m sorry, I didn’t mean that. It’s just that it’s all so unbelievable, such a shock. Who in God’s name would want to kidnap Leo? I wish I was there with you, I know how helpless and alone you must be feeling. But I’m just on the end of a telephone, so between us I’m sure we can get this sorted out.”

  She paused, thinking hard. “If Leo has been taken, we’re dealing with well organised and ruthless people, so you’re going to have to be brave and decisive and we need to start taking some decisions right now. When are you supposed to leave?”

  “The night after tomorrow. And if we miss the flight, it’ll cost me two thousand quid which I don’t have. This was a major decision for me, to bring Leo here for the football. It took all my savings and now I’m down to the bare bones.”

  Jenny made another note – No money, no flights. “What’s the position with, er,” she scrolled up a page on the iPad, “Coetzee and Nwosu?”

  “I’m supposed to see them this morning, but I really don’t want to listen to any more lies from them.”

  “Wrong, Emma. That’s exactly what you do need to do. You need more details about what happened and they’re the only two people who can provide them. You’ve got to fool them now just as they’ve been fooling you. What time is it now?”

  “We’re one hour ahead of you, so it’s just before nine here and I’m supposed to be picked up at ten. What do you suggest?”

  “Let’s go through our notes again and pick out the points you can check. We need to be absolutely sure your theory is right and we need to try to work out how they did this and how we can prove it. We’ve got two days to find out what happened and contact someone at a higher level to intervene, otherwise we’ll get nowhere.

  “Now,” she continued, “what about the guard who saw Leo in the wheelchair?”

  NINE

&
nbsp; Diepkloof, Gauteng, South Africa

  Coetzee and Nwosu were in the policeman’s office, also on the phone. The speaker volume on Nwosu’s mobile was low, so they had to sit close to the phone and to each other. Coetzee wasn’t keen on being so close to the black man, but their conversation wasn’t for public consumption.

  Coetzee was getting a tongue lashing from the person on the other end of the line. His short temper boiled over and he leaned across to the phone. “I already told you. I had to send that photo around. The woman might have asked one of the guards herself. And there was supposed to be a diversion on the other side of the corridor. The guard shouldn’t have seen a thing. I ‘m not responsible for other people’s incompetence!”

  The voice from the speaker was slightly deformed by some kind of acoustic software. But it was definitely a man’s voice, chillingly quiet and calm. “Mr Coetzee, I do not appreciate my employees shouting at me on the telephone. Don’t do it again. The fact is that the incident in the stadium was entirely under your management and it went wrong. There is now a witness to the event and I consider that to be an unwelcome deviation from our plans. In addition, Mrs Stewart should not have been aware of the circumstances of her son’s disappearance until much later. It makes things very awkward.”

  “Once the guard had told us he’d seen the boy, I had to let her look at the recording. She’d already asked to see it. She’s an intelligent woman.”

  “You’ll have to arrange for the guard to be, let’s say, unavailable for further information. He could be a fly in the ointment in our subsequent arrangements, or if he adds two and two together he might even try to profit from the opportunity. Please see to it immediately.”