‘It’s over, Nick.’
‘Yes, right, Mr Bruce Willis, sir. Next you’ll be telling me you’ve got me surrounded and a crack Malawian police weapons team are on their way.’ Nick laughed again.
Tom heard the motor die, then held the handset away from him. He was getting the noise in stereo. ‘You’re close, aren’t you,’ he said. ‘I can hear you.’
‘Well, if you’ve got the phone, you’ve probably got Khan’s AK as well, so I ain’t coming ashore. Is Janet still alive?’
Tom said nothing. He raised his head to look out over the lake and saw a darkened boat, betrayed by the glimmer of its wake, which hadn’t yet settled. It shone like a pathway leading back to the mainland. Tom moved at a crouch, to the trees between the lodge and the first bungalow, and followed the cover down towards the water.
‘If she isn’t dead, you should kill her. That way, those spoiled brats of hers will inherit their millions and think both their dear old mum and their sick-fuck old man were killed by the big bad terrorists. Everyone will be happy.’
Tom was near the shoreline. He could see Nick now, silhouetted against the sky, talking on his phone.
‘Where are you, Tom? She’s paying me a lot of money, matey. I could give you a share if you keep quiet. You want to know the rest of that password “the sun will shine on those who stand”? The rest of it is: “before it shines on those who kneel under them”. I’m still standing, Tom, and you’re still fucking kneeling. Come stand with me.’
Tom wanted to keep Nick standing, talking in the boat. ‘Why, Nick? Was it just the money? Was it Janet?’
‘Hah! Nice try. It was both — and neither.’
Tom paused. The way Nick had tailed off into silence made him think the man wanted to talk, to unburden himself.
‘The wife was desperate — horny as a fucking rabbit — and also determined to keep Greeves in politics. I didn’t say no to the sex, and I needed the money after my missus split. But there was more to it. Crossing the line. Knowing I could now get away with whatever the fuck I wanted to when on tour — booze, coke, women. More. And no one could hold me accountable. If Khan’s dead — or Greeves, or Janet, or all of them — then you know what I’m talking about when I say it’s a rush. It’s the fucking ultimate, isn’t it? The power to take life. I’ll tell you what, Tom… if you keep quiet about me I’ll give you a hundred grand. Pounds, not dollars.’
Tom stayed silent.
‘Of course, Thomas, if you shop me, I’ll find you. I’ll fucking do you, and I’ll rape that stuck-up cunt Van Rensburg in front of her children before I cut her throat. What’ll it be?’
‘Come into shore. Let’s talk about it,’ Tom said. He understood now — Nick was mad.
There was silence for a few seconds. ‘Nah. Tommy’s a good boy, aren’t you, Tommy? Wouldn’t be here other wise. The others would have offered you money, too. You’re the white knight, aren’t you, Tommy? Nope. I’m going to have to go to South Africa now and finish that bitch off myself.’
Tom heard the engine start. Nick would get back to the mainland before he could. If the Malawian police didn’t catch him, it was feasible that he could get back to South Africa — to Sannie and her children — before Tom could reach them.
Tom placed the phone down beside him and raised the assault rifle to his shoulder. He looked down the open sights and took a breath. It was a long shot, but not impossible. About two hundred metres, he reckoned. He’d put a bullet into the centre mass of a target at longer ranges. He took a breath and curled his finger around the trigger. Nick bent to reach for something, and Tom heard the boat’s engine roar to life.
As Nick stood straight again, Tom started to squeeze. Before he could fire the shot he was knocked forwards, as if a prize fighter had come up behind him and punched him square between the shoulderblades.
Janet Greeves shuffled along the verandah of Pervez Khan’s luxury lodge, the two-two silenced pistol hanging limply by her side. ‘Nick
…’ she croaked.
The nose of the speedboat lifted and the pitch of the engine escalated to a whine as it left a fantail of spray behind it.
Tom gasped for air, trying to refill his winded lungs. Each gulp brought a new stab of pain. He tried to reach up his back with his hand, to feel for blood. His fingertips touched a piece of still-hot metal, but there was no wetness.
From Christo van Rensburg Snr’s stash of security gear in the garage, Tom had also borrowed a slimline body armour vest, which he’d donned under his long-sleeve T-shirt. It couldn’t have stopped a shot from an AK 47, but the two-two round had done little more than wind and bruise him. Tom rolled painfully over onto his side and picked up his AK 47.
‘Put down your weapon, Janet,’ he called to her, the words causing him more pain.
She looked at him. ‘He’s gone.’ She coughed, and blood oozed from her mouth, down her chin.
Tom saw the soaking red stain on the right side of her blouse. He must have hit her with his first spray of fire from the AK, while he was wrestling with Khan. ‘Let me get you to a doctor, Janet. Put the gun down.’
She turned to him and dropped the pistol. Tom stood, his strength returning, and jogged across to her. When he was three steps short, she collapsed to her knees. She had an arm outstretched, towards the lake, and the disappearing boat.
‘I lied,’ she croaked, as Tom took her in his arms.
‘Hush.’
‘I loved him. Not Robert…’
Tom held her as she died.
Epilogue
‘Farming life agrees with you,’ Sannie said as she ran a hand over his bare tanned bicep.
Dressed in a short-sleeve blue and tan bush shirt and khaki shorts, Tom was at least starting to look the part of a lowveld farmer. ‘It certainly agrees with you,’ he said, dropping a hand to her firm bottom, caressing it through the thin cotton of her sundress. She giggled and slapped his hand away, then turned her face to his so he could kiss her.
They resumed trudging up the hill, the rich red earth clinging to Tom’s boots and squelching through Sannie’s toes. Since he’d seen his first cobra he always wore hiking boots on the farm, but no amount of persuasion could get Sannie or the kids to follow suit.
It had been two months since the shoot-out in Malawi and Sannie’s harrowing fight with Wessels. Christo had been to see a child psychologist a few times but, apart from an occasional nightmare, he seemed to be coping. Both Tom and Sannie had told him over and over that he had saved his mother’s and sister’s lives, and that his father would have been proud of him.
Still, Tom knew the boy would wrestle with his demons for some time, perhaps for the rest of his life in some form or another.
Tom had returned to England as soon as he knew Sannie, Elise and the kids were safely ensconced on the banana farm they had bought outside Hazyview, not far from the one Sannie had grown up on. Even so, he had spent the bare minimum amount of time in London, where the first snows had fallen more as grey, gritty sleet.
Shuttleworth had escorted him to a meeting with the Prime Minister in which he had been assured that, subject to signing a confidentiality agreement in which he promised not to mention any of the circumstances of Greeves’s death, he would be reinstated in his old job and considered favourably for promotion.
Tom had declined, settling instead for early retirement. When his home in Highgate was sold they would be able to pay off the bridging loan on the farm and live very comfortably for many years to come. Tom bagged his cold-weather clothes for charity and packed the album of pictures of him and Alexandra, which Sannie had said she wanted to see. He’d kissed the silver-framed photo of her taken on their wedding day and said, ‘You’d like her, Alex.’ He’d boarded the evening BA flight to Johannesburg with no regrets.
