‘Listen to me, Inspector. Contact Furey — I don’t care how you do it — and call him off. If he gets to Cape Maclear we will know first. He will die and your children will disappear — forever. Your children are already out of South Africa. When Furey is in London they will be released and you’ll be told where to find them.’
‘No, please… let me talk to them and I’ll — ’
‘You can stop this, Inspector. Tell Furey that Robert Greeves is dead and there is no way he will ever find the men who abducted him. He can, however, save your children.’
‘Wait…’
The phone line went dead. Sannie wiped the tears from her cheeks, smearing her makeup, and rammed the car into gear. She dropped the clutch and floored the accelerator. A car horn blared behind her as she barged her way back into the traffic, but she ignored it.
On the way home she called Wessels and, through her sobs, explained that her kids were gone. Despite the kidnapper’s warning she blurted out what she knew of Tom’s travels. This was no time to hold back information from her boss. Wessels told her he was on his way to her place and would dispatch some uniformed officers immediately.
Sannie stopped two hundred metres from her home, drew her pistol and cocked it. She walked the rest of the way to her gate and pressed the remote. She darted in as soon as the gap was wide enough and, weapon raised in front of her, kicked open the back door, which had been left ajar.
‘Police! Mom? Where are you?’ With her left hand Sannie cuffed away errant tears and steeled herself for what she might find.
She moved through the kitchen and checked the kids’ rooms and hers. She saw Ilana’s Barbie on the floor and two of Christo’s toy cars. She choked back another sob and kicked open the bathroom door, bringing her pistol to bear.
Elise was sitting on the toilet, fully clothed, but her hands and ankles were bound with plastic cable ties and her mouth was gagged with masking tape. Sannie holstered her pistol and ripped off the gag.
‘Oh, baby, I’m so, so sorry.’ Her mother started to cry.
Sannie tried to calm her as she knocked makeup and pill bottles from the bathroom cupboard in search of a pair of nail scissors. By the paleness of her mother’s face it looked like she was in shock. Sannie snipped through the ties and helped Elise stand. ‘It was only one man, Sannie, but he had a gun and…’
Sannie ran a hand through her hair. Now was the time for her to bottle her own emotions and get a good description of the kidnapper. She had to calm her mother down and extract every scrap of information she could from her — as though she were any other witness.
‘I’ll put the kettle on, Mom. Get some paper and a pen and start writing down everything you can remember, right from the start. Especially what he looked like. Did you get a good look at him?’
‘Sannie, I’m so, so sorry. If he hurts them I’ll kill myself and
…’
Her mother was becoming hysterical. ‘Sit down! Write, Mom, and then I’ll ask you some questions.’
Outside she heard the wail of a siren.
‘He said he was a journalist, from England, and that he knew Tom. He said his name was Daniel… um, let me think of his surname. Daniel
…’
Sannie turned from the stove and felt the blood draining from her own face. She swallowed hard. ‘Daniel Carney?’
‘Yes, that’s it. Daniel Carney.’
After having a couple of beers, Tom went to reception and picked up the telephone handset. Nothing.
‘Ah, but it is broken,’ the woman said.
‘I don’t suppose you have any idea when the line will be fixed?’
She shook her head.
Ah, Africa, he thought. He said goodbye to the receptionist and walked back out into the night. The sky was clear and the moon was on the rise. He walked around the hotel to a security fence which isolated a patch of beach for hotel guests only. A light breeze decorated the lake’s surface with silvery ruffles. Tiny orange lights winked further out. Fishermen, he supposed. In other circumstances it might have been lovely. But not tonight.
When Tom returned to the Land Rover he slid out the toolbox and placed it on the front seat. He took out the nine-millimetre pistol and unwrapped it, and loaded the two spare magazines with eight bullets each from the box Sannie had given him and put them in the zippered internal pocket of his shorts, which he would wear again tomorrow. He carried the pistol up the ladder into his rooftop tent. He didn’t think he would need the weapon tonight, but he might tomorrow.
*
Wessels was trying to be comforting and professional while at the same time struggling with his obvious anger at Sannie for not telling him earlier about Furey’s safari to Malawi.
‘Does the bloody fool think he can take on a gang of terrorists by himself?’
Sannie shrugged. ‘I wonder if there are any terrorists at all.’
‘What do you mean? Of course there are.’ Wessels sat beside her on the couch in her lounge room. Elise had recovered enough to make tea for the uniformed officers, and a forensic team busied itself taking prints and looking for other evidence that Daniel Carney might have left behind. ‘They killed Robert Greeves, Sannie.’
‘I think Tom thinks that Greeves is still alive. The kidnapper told me to tell Tom that Greeves was dead, as though that would make him stop whatever he’s been doing.’
Wessels sighed. ‘But why would the terrorists keep him alive, and why fake his death? He’s worth far more to them as a live hostage.’
‘Greeves’s wife told us her husband often talked about retiring to Malawi. That’s why Tom’s gone there, I think.’
‘He didn’t retire, he was executed. The English police have it on video.’
‘They also have the death of another man on video, Nick Roberts, Greeves’s first protection officer.’
‘ Ja, so what?’
‘I’ve just been over and over the description of Daniel Carney that my mother gave, Henk.’
‘And?’
‘When we get the passport photo of Carney from the British Foreign Office, I’m pretty sure I’m going to know who he really is.’
Tom woke before dawn, folded the rooftop tent and secured it, and hid the pistol beneath the driver’s seat of the Land Rover before locking the vehicle. He walked in bare feet through the hotel to the lake shore and, after a few minutes of stretching, started to run.
He ran harder and faster, alternating sprints with slow jogging. When the lake gave up the first shimmering sliver of the new day’s light, he turned and ran into the clear water, striking out towards the unseen far shore, much to the amusement of two paddling fishermen. The water was cold, and it shocked his nerve endings to life. He knew that in a few hours he would be baking and sweating in the Land Rover, so he enjoyed the invigorating coolness while it lasted.
He jogged across the beach and back to the camping ground. There was no need to shower after his dip in the clear fresh water. Lake Malawi, like everything else he had encountered in Africa, was not as he had expected. He’d had visions of muddy, turgid water — perhaps a huge inland cesspit. However, he’d discovered it was more like the world’s largest swimming pool, with a white sandy beach. A beautiful place. He watched the male and female eagles pass the red sun, and wished Sannie was here with him to share the moment.
Sannie had stayed awake all night, but there had been no more phone calls. Wessels dozed on her couch and the uniformed police had just left, replaced by two from the morning shift. Her mother was asleep in her room, thanks to a tranquilliser administered by a police doctor who had called in during the night.
She paced the linoleum tiles of her small kitchen, another cup of black coffee in her hand. Try as she might, Sannie couldn’t stop herself from imagining the horrific things someone might be doing to Ilana and Christo. As a police officer she knew just how evil adults could be to children. Even though she wasn’t patrolling the streets any more, hardly a day went by when the media wasn’t reminding her by reporting the rape or murder of a child. Some
