‘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 crime’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
