She had been wary of discussing her plan with Alex. This was partly because there was always a chance it might not work, but also to give herself the opportunity to back out if she changed her mind. Although, as she found herself drawing nearer and nearer to Trelawney Stewart’s London office, she realized she was becoming surer of what she was doing. She’d call him after the meeting, perhaps arrange to see him that night or the next.
She had no idea how the relationship would develop. But she smiled to herself. She was looking forward to finding out.
Calder spent the day at the airfield. It was a perfect morning for flying, and he had taken the opportunity to put his little red Pitts biplane through its paces, performing a series of barrel rolls, outside loops, Cuban eights and Immelmann turns over the Norfolk sky. But a stiff crosswind picked up in the afternoon, making take-off and landing impossible. He decided to meet Kim at the hospital. After his stray thoughts of the previous evening, he wanted to see Todd again, remind himself as forcefully as possible that Kim had a husband and he was in a coma.
As he pulled the Maserati into a parking space, he saw Kim unlocking her rented car on the other side of the car park. He got out of his own car and waved to her. She saw him, and came over to him, smiling.
‘Are you here to see Todd?’
‘Yes,’ said Calder.
Kim looked at him strangely. She couldn’t really ask why, but she could think it. ‘I’ll come back in with you.’
‘Any change?’
‘None. I spent the whole day with him, though. I got some reading done.’ She lifted the thick paperback she was carrying.
‘Any sign of the other van Zyls?’
‘Cornelius took a helicopter down to London first thing. Caroline was here this morning, but she’s on her way back to California now. We talked a lot. I like her.’
They walked through the familiar corridors to the private room where Todd had been transferred. By the head of his bed was the figure of a woman crouching on a chair, bent over towards his face. Calder saw her straight away, but Kim didn’t notice her at first. As they moved closer, the woman turned. She was young and strikingly pretty, with yellow hair in a bob, white teeth and an upturned nose. Her big blue eyes were red and brimming with tears. When she saw Kim her jaw dropped and her face, red from crying, lost its colour.
‘Donna?’ Kim said.
‘Oh, my God,’ the girl said in an American accent, and put her hand to her mouth. She stumbled to her feet, pushed past Kim, and headed for the exit.
‘Donna!’ Kim shouted after her. ‘Donna!’
Kim’s face was pale. Her lips were trembling. A nurse appeared to see what the fuss was about. ‘Has that woman been in here before?’ Kim asked the nurse. ‘Have you seen her before?’
‘Here, have a seat, Kim,’ the nurse said. She was a solid woman with a strong Norfolk accent.
‘She has been here before,’ Kim said. ‘Hasn’t she?’ She glared at the nurse, demanding an answer.
The nurse nodded.
Kim’s cheeks, so pale a moment before, reddened. She switched her glare to her unconscious husband, entangled in tubes, oblivious to the drama around him. Then she stared at Calder, her face a mixture of anger and bewilderment.
‘Let’s go,’ Calder said, putting an arm round Kim and leading her from the room. A tear ran down her cheek and then another. They walked in silence down to the hospital café, and Calder got them both a cup of tea.
‘Who is she?’ he asked.
‘Donna Snyder. Art teacher at the school.’
Calder nodded. There was no need to ask what she was doing in England, or why Kim was so upset. For a moment he considered suggesting that there was a misunderstanding, but one look at Kim convinced him that that was pointless.
‘She must have waited until she saw me leave,’ she said. ‘I wonder how long she’s been here, skulking in the car park, watching.’
‘I’m sorry,’ Calder said. ‘I’m so sorry. What a terrible way to find out.’
‘I should have realized,’ Kim said. ‘I knew they liked each other. They would always talk to each other at school functions, joke together and so forth. I suppose I was mildly jealous, Donna does have those big baby-blue eyes after all, but you can’t go through life being jealous of every attractive woman your husband is friends with.’ She sighed. ‘Or maybe you can. Maybe that was my mistake. Anyway, I noticed about a month ago at a dinner party given by the principal that they were avoiding each other. Stupidly I was relieved. I thought they’d fallen out, had one of those staff-room squabbles, something like that. But that’s what happens when flirtation turns into an affair, isn’t it? Ignore each other in public, but in private …’ She broke down in sobs. Calder leaned over the table to touch her arm. There were a few other visitors in the café, and they looked on in sympathy. Grief is what you expect to see in hospitals.
Calder drove her home, promising to bring her back the next day to pick up her own car. He cooked some supper. Kim went out for a long walk through the marshes alone. When she returned, there was a little colour in her cheeks but her dark hair was a mess. Calder had a bottle of white wine open. She took a glass thankfully.
‘I don’t know, Alex, I don’t know what to think. I mean, I love him, I love him so much. And I see him lying there every day, so helpless, not knowing when he’s going to recover, if he’s going to recover. And all the time she’s outside, tearing herself up with her own grief. I feel like such a bloody idiot. I want him to get better but I also want to strangle him. And the terrible thing is, if he doesn’t get better, then I’ll know that at the end he was in love with her, not me. I couldn’t face that, I just couldn’t face that.’ She buried her face in her hands.
Her agony was painful to watch. Calder would not wish Todd’s condition on anyone, but his anger was building too. It had turned out that Todd was like all those other good-looking charmers after all. He had used Kim and he had hurt her. Except that this time Kim looked as if she had been hurt so badly it would be difficult to recover.
They ate supper and moved outside to the bench in the garden. Calder opened another bottle of wine. It was a warm evening, despite the clouds overhead, but to the west there was a band of clear sky into which the sun was dipping, throwing its long shadows across the garden. The rooks kicked up their evening fuss. Kim talked and drank. Calder listened and drank.
They talked about university, the other schmucks. Calder spoke about an old girlfriend who had dumped him. They opened a third bottle of wine. He put his arm round her and she buried her head in his shoulder. The sun sank beneath the horizon and the windmill on the ridge retreated into the darkness. The rooks settled down. He kissed her, or did she kiss him? They broke away. She rested her head on his shoulder again. Then she turned her head up to his and they kissed again.
They made angry, passionate, drunken love, there, on the grass, under the apple tree.
*
Calder heard the car draw up outside the front of the house. Then he heard the engine splutter and stop. Then he heard the door knocker. It took him several moments to react. He looked frantically around for his clothes. Kim was lying semi-naked on the grass, her mouth open, asleep. Calder grabbed a shirt and some trousers and pulled them on. Who the hell was that?
‘Hello?’
Christ! He recognized the voice. It was coming closer, around the side of the house, checking the garden.
‘Hello?’
‘Sandy!’ he shouted, frantically zipping up his trousers. ‘Sandy. Wait there! I’m in the garden. I’ll be right round.’
Kim stirred, and raised herself on one arm. ‘Huh?’
‘Alex?’ The voice was nearer. The little side gate to the back garden squeaked open. ‘Alex? What the hell …?’
Calder stood barefoot, shirt hanging out of his trousers. Sandy stopped by the side of the house, speechless. Kim was sitting on the grass, blinking, her top half still clothed, but her jeans and panties in a ball at her feet.
<
br /> ‘Oh, my God!’ Sandy put her hand to her mouth and turned and ran. Calder ran after her. ‘Sandy, stop! Wait!’
‘Didn’t you get my message?’ Sandy said as she opened her car door.
‘What message?’
‘I left you a message. That I was coming up to see you. Oh, God.’ She jumped into the car.
‘Sandy, stop!’
But Sandy slammed the car into gear, spun it round and drove off back to the village and the road to London.
Calder stood there, watching the tail lights disappear round the first bend.
‘Alex?’
It was Kim, still blinking, but now wearing her jeans. ‘Who was that?’
‘Sandy,’ Calder replied.
‘Jesus,’ Kim said. ‘I’m sorry.’
Calder looked at her, his alcohol-sodden brain torn between confusion and a rising surge of panic.
Kim pulled her arms around herself. ‘Alex? What have we done?’
14
‘Can I have some of that?’
Kim motioned towards the pot half-full of coffee. Calder poured her a mug. She sat down. It was eight o’clock. He had been up since six, stewing.
Kim sipped at her mug and stared straight at Calder. ‘We’ve messed everything up, haven’t we?’
Calder had been running over in his mind all the things he would say to Kim, the explanations, the excuses, the self-recrimination. In the end, she had made it easy for him.
‘Yes,’ he said.
A tear ran down her cheek. She took a deep breath. ‘I can’t believe I did that. With Todd in the hospital.’
‘You were drunk. And I led you on,’ Calder said. ‘It was my fault.’
‘It was both of us,’ Kim said. ‘We created this mess together. But I can’t use the drink as an excuse. I wanted to get drunk. I was angry and I wanted to get back at Todd. I used you to do it.’
Calder didn’t answer, but stared into his coffee.
‘So that was Sandy?’
‘“Was” is the right word.’
‘I’m sorry.’
‘So am I.’
They sat in silence. All night Calder’s brain had shifted between two images: Todd, lying prone in his hospital bed for days, and Sandy standing staring at him. He had listened to the messages on his mobile. There were three. The first was from her, saying she had some good news and she wanted to tell him in person. She’d rent a car and drive up to Norfolk to see him. She should be there by nine. Could he call her at her hotel to say he had got the message? Then there was a message from his sister asking if she could bring the kids up for the weekend. And finally there was a second message from Sandy saying she hadn’t heard from him, but she was coming up anyway, she had been delayed and she might not get there till ten.
He wished he had checked his mobile the night before, but he had been too wrapped up in the shock of seeing Donna Snyder and Kim’s despair.
What was Sandy’s news? It must have been something dramatic, something that would allow them to rekindle their relationship. Maybe she had decided to give up the law. Or she had got another job. Or a transfer back to England. Something that was good news for her, good news for both of them.
And then there was Todd. Calder had never had sex with a married woman before. It was wrong. Perhaps there might be special circumstances when it was OK: when the couple were irrevocably separated, for example. But the husband being in a coma was definitely not one of those, no matter if he had cheated on her.
Calder’s father was a strict Presbyterian; his grandfather had been a minister, and his English mother had had her own strong sense of right and wrong that she had inculcated in her children. What Calder had done was wrong. Incontrovertibly, irrefutably wrong.
He glanced at the married woman in question. She didn’t seem very pleased with herself, either.
‘I should find a hotel,’ she said.
Calder was about to protest, to feign hospitality, but he simply nodded. ‘The pub in the village will have some rooms. I’ll take you there this morning. When we’ve fetched your car from the hospital.’
‘I’m not sure I can face seeing Todd today,’ Kim said. ‘I know we did wrong, but I’m still furious about Donna. What if she’s there, lurking in the car park? And what will I say to Todd? I talk to him, you know. Even though he’s unconscious.’
Calder took a deep breath. In some ways it was easier to deal with Kim’s problems than his own. ‘How about this? Don’t see Todd today. Spend the day alone. Try to sort yourself out a little bit and then tomorrow go and see him. I’ll find Donna and get her to go away.’
‘How will you do that?’
‘I’ll do it,’ Calder said. ‘Don’t worry. That’s my problem.’
His mobile phone rang. Calder picked it up. ‘Hello?’ His voice was hoarse. At first there was silence down the line. But Calder knew who was there. ‘Sandy?’
‘Alex. I just want to say it’s quite OK that you have another girlfriend now, it’s been, what, two months since we last saw each other, and I don’t own you –’
‘Sandy –’
But she had her speech prepared and she was getting it out as fast as possible. ‘I guess I made a mistake. A big mistake. We were communicating badly and I guess that was my fault. But I’ve realized my mistake now and I know where we stand, and I’m sorry if I caused you some embarrassment last night –’
Her voice was speeding up, breathless and beginning to crack.
‘Sandy, you haven’t made a mistake –’
‘As I say, I know where we stand, and I won’t embarrass you again, I can assure you of that.’
‘Look, can we talk about this –’
‘So, goodbye, Alex.’ The phone went dead.
Calder stared at it for a second, and then called the number of the hotel Sandy had left him in her message of the day before. It was the Swissotel Howard in London. He asked to be put through to her room. The phone rang once before it was snatched up.
‘Yes?’
‘Sandy?’
The phone went dead again.
Calder slumped back into his chair. ‘Well, I’d say that was the end of that.’
‘Are you sorry?’ Kim asked.
‘Yes,’ Calder said. ‘I’m very sorry.’
‘Shall I talk to her? Call her up and explain the situation?’
Calder’s anger flared up. ‘What, that I was shagging someone else’s wife, that it didn’t matter, the husband was in a coma and may never wake up? That will explain it all.’
Kim’s mouth dropped open and then she burst into tears.
Calder reached over to touch her hand. ‘Oh, God, I’m sorry, Kim. I’ve just fucked up so badly.’
Kim removed her hand. ‘I’m going upstairs to pack.’
Calder poured himself another cup of coffee as she left the room. But however many cups of coffee he poured, this wasn’t going to get any better.
‘Thank you for coming,’ Andries Visser said to his two guests. His voice was unusually hoarse. The three men were sitting in armchairs around his living room cradling glasses of brandy and Coke. Logs burned in the grate. Outside, beyond the burglar bars and the high fence, the night air whispered in the long yellow grass of the veld.
His guests were fellow members of the Laagerbond, both in their sixties, men who had been brought up in a different South Africa. Daniel Havenga had recently retired as professor of journalism at the University of Stellenbosch. Freddie Steenkamp had been deputy director of the feared Military Intelligence and was the current deputy chairman of the Laagerbond. Despite the fact that Steenkamp had operated at the brutal end of the apartheid regime, he had continued to serve his country’s security services until the late 1990s, when he had retired with a generous pension.
Neither man was relaxed. They knew that if their chairman had dragged them out to his farm at such short notice, something must be up. ‘What’s the problem, Andries?’ Professor Havenga asked.
‘I think there’s a r
eal threat to Drommedaris,’ Visser said.
‘To the current plan or to the whole operation?’
‘The whole operation.’
‘But isn’t Todd van Zyl still in a coma?’
‘He is, but his wife has persisted in asking more questions about his mother’s death. She has recruited a friend in Britain to help, an ex-banker with Bloomfield Weiss. Evidently they are quite determined.’
‘But it’s too long ago, surely?’ Havenga said. ‘If the TRC couldn’t find anything, will they?’
‘I think they might,’ Visser said. ‘I fear we might be losing control of the situation.’
‘That’s something we cannot allow,’ Steenkamp said. He was a tall imposing man, balding, who sat upright even in the most comfortable of Visser’s armchairs. ‘As you know, I sometimes wish that we did not commit quite so much of our resources to Drommedaris. But it is now such an important part of the Laagerbond’s activities that we cannot allow it to be compromised.’
‘What do you think, Daniel?’
The professor sipped his brandy. His sharp brown eyes set deep in his round face assessed the others. He tugged at his beard. ‘As a general rule, I think the lower the profile we can maintain, the better. I’d rather not do anything that will draw attention to the Laagerbond. We know the British police are already investigating Todd van Zyl’s … accident.’
‘If we don’t act, and act quickly, then others will draw attention to us,’ Steenkamp said.
The professor sighed. ‘I have never liked this aspect of our activities.’
‘In my experience,’ said Steenkamp, ‘the sooner one acts in cases like this, the less messy the outcome is in the end.’
‘You should know,’ said the professor. ‘So what do we do?’
‘That, gentlemen, is what I brought you here to discuss,’ Visser said. He paused to allow a violent cough to convulse his lungs. ‘Kobus is back in England, awaiting our instructions.’
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