11
Sannie had her mobile phone to one ear, on hold to the air force base at Hoedspruit, and was talking to the Nelspruit detectives’ office on the landline when Tom walked in.
His exposed skin was blackened by soot and dirt and his shirt looked like it had been tortured with a lighted cigarette — there were burn holes everywhere. His shorts and left leg were encrusted with dried blood. He pulled his shirt off over his head as he entered, saying nothing to her.
‘I’ll call you back in ten,’ she said to the detectives’ civilian administrative assistant. She kept the mobile phone near her ear as she followed him to the bathroom.
‘We bloody lost them,’ Tom said. ‘We were so fucking close, Sannie, I could see them. They’re alive, though one of them — Greeves, I think — looked injured. He was limping badly. We got two of the bastards, though the fire will have destroyed the bodies.’
She had spoken to Tom as he’d driven back to Tinga, as soon as he had entered mobile phone range. He had passed on descriptions of the gang, so she already knew most of what he was saying. She heard the shower running.
‘What are you doing, Tom?’
‘What does it sound like? I’m getting cleaned up, changed and I’m going after them again.’
Sannie turned at the sound of the door to the suite opening. Isaac Tshabalala walked in, accompanied by a policeman in grey-blue fatigues. ‘They just told me that he’s back. Where is he?’
Tom walked out of the bathroom, a towel around his waist. ‘He’s here. What’s happening? Have you been able to organise some air support yet? They’re probably still on foot.’
Tshabalala moved his right hand to the butt of his holstered pistol. ‘Detective Sergeant Furey, the progress of this investigation is no longer your concern and — ’
‘Like hell it’s not my concern. I need a vehicle to get to the nearest border post.’
‘You’re going nowhere. Hand over your pistol, handcuffs, and any other weapons and ammunition you’re carrying.’ Tshabalala motioned for the uniformed officer to move forward and the man stepped towards Tom.
‘What’s this about?’
‘We found the coke, Tom,’ Sannie said.
She saw the puzzlement on his face. ‘Coca-Cola?’
‘The cocaine, in the bathroom,’ the African officer said.
Tom laughed. ‘Do what? I’ve never used illegal drugs in my life. What the hell’s going on here? Get out of my way.’
Tshabalala put a hand on his pistol. ‘Your gun and handcuffs. Now. You’re going to be charged with possession of an illegal narcotic, Furey. The suspected drugs Inspector Van Rensburg discovered in your bathroom go part of the way to explaining why you were late reporting for duty this morning, and how you managed to let the man you were supposedly guarding get taken from under your nose.’
‘Carla,’ he said, looking straight at Sannie. She felt uncomfortable and couldn’t meet his gaze. ‘It’s hers. She was acting wild last night. Ask her.’
The same thought had crossed her mind as soon as she’d entered the room. However, she’d immediately remembered that it had been Carla herself who had suggested setting up the command post in Tom’s room. She explained this to Tom, and the rationale that the woman would not be stupid enough to set herself up for arrest.
‘No, she’s only bloody set me up, is all,’ Tom said. ‘This’d be funny if it weren’t so daft. Where is she?’
‘Gone to Tinga’s other lodge, Narina. She’ll be back in an hour or so,’ Sannie said.
‘I’ve been taking complaints all morning about your little escapade through the park,’ Tshabalala said. ‘Menacing people with a firearm, breaking every national park rule.’ Spittle flew from Isaac’s mouth as his anger mounted. ‘You have no jurisdiction in this country and you cannot commandeer vehicles and men to do the job you should have done in the first place. This is not your little colonial fiefdom! Arrest him!’
Sannie felt as though an injustice was being done, but the evidence all pointed to Tom and, no matter how much she sympathised with the Englishman, everything Isaac Tshabalala had just said was correct. She heard a voice on her mobile phone.
‘ Ja,’ she said, listening to the air force captain on the other end.
Tom was staring angrily at Isaac as the uniformed officer retrieved Tom’s pistol, magazines and Asp collapsible baton.
Sannie ended the call. ‘That was Hoedspruit. They say they can’t send a helicopter into Mozambican airspace until they get permission from the defence minister’s office or higher. I spoke to Indira ten minutes ago and she said Dule was waiting for a call back from his counterpart over the border.’
‘Christ, you people couldn’t organise sex in a brothel,’ Tom said.
‘Who do you mean by you people?’ Tshabalala said.
Sannie shared Isaac’s sense of offence. Tom was in no position to be criticising the South African authorities. After all, he was the one who had lost Robert Greeves.
‘Cuff him,’ Isaac said to the policeman. ‘Sannie, keep an eye on the prisoner. I’m going to speak to Minister Dule, and then Ndlovu and I,’ he gestured to the uniformed officer, ‘are going to Skukuza to wait for the Nelspruit detectives to arrive and brief them. Call me if there are any new developments at this end.’
‘Yes, sir.’
‘Unlock these things, Sannie.’ He sat on the bed and held his hands out to her.
‘You know I can’t, Tom.’
‘Carla’s not coming back. You know that, don’t you?’ He brushed the hair back from his face with his manacled hands.
She felt a cold tingle of dread creeping up her spine. When Carla had come to the room and said she had to go to Narina to deal with a guest’s complaint, Sannie had been on two telephones. She had simply nodded.
‘She’s part of this. Can’t you see it? She set me up to take the fall and slow down the pursuit. It’s why she came on to me so strong, probably why she was sleeping with Nick Roberts. She used him to get information about this visit and took me out of the game last night. I haven’t been late for a job in my life and I didn’t drink enough to wake up feeling as bad as I did this morning. She must have slipped something in my beer last night. I bloody passed out after one drink. Either the alarm covering the entryways to Greeves’s room went off and I slept through it, or she nobbled it. For whatever motive, Carla’s part of this set-up. Give her a tug.’
‘What?’
‘Run a criminal check on her — see what comes up. Talk to her family and friends, maybe she’s found Allah late in life. She wouldn’t be the first European woman to get sucked into a foreign terrorist network. Maybe it’s all about money. I don’t bloody know.’
Sannie realised that she and Isaac had been blinded by the drugs and Carla’s deception, which now seemed heavy-handed. She believed Tom: he wasn’t the sort of man who would take drugs — and if he was, he wouldn’t have been stupid enough to leave them lying about. And Sannie wouldn’t put anything past Carla.
‘She suggested you use my room for the command post in order to lead you to the drugs. And how stupid would I be to leave a line of coke unused in the bathroom? You’ve got to help me, Sannie.’
She turned her back on him and paced across the thick Persian rug on the floor of the suite and stood, arms folded, staring out over the Sabie River. An elephant sucked up a trunkful of muddy water and showered itself with black goo. She, like Tom, knew that minutes counted at this point in a pursuit, and that valuable time was being sacrificed to the dictates of petty bureaucracy. Men’s lives were at risk while they waited for diplomats to get out of bed and return phone calls.
‘I’ve got to get to Mozambique, Sannie.’
‘Isaac’s just arrested you, man. If I set you free now I’m breaking the law. I’ll be branded a racist for going against a black superior and siding with you — whether you’re right or wrong. That’ll be it for me and the police service. I’ll end up working security at a Pick ’n’ Pay.’
‘Two men will die if we don’t move now.’
She shook her head. Damn him. He was right, and probably right about Carla Sykes as well. Tom had made a mistake by falling for the woman’s advances and Sannie had been almost as guilty in falling for her set-up.
