by Tony Park
The girl leaned back in her chair and sipped her drink. When she put it down, she said, ‘What are you, another stalker or something?’
‘Another?’
Ivana said nothing.
‘Is she working tonight?’
‘This is not official business, I think.’
Tom checked his watch. ‘Like I said, it can be, very easily.’
Ivana sighed and flicked back from her face a long, straightened strand of jet black hair. ‘She called in ill.’
‘When was her last shift?’
‘Last night. Are you going to stay here all night and spend that tipping money you bought?’
Tom looked at the laminated play money on the table. ‘You said, “another stalker”; was there a man bothering her?’
Ivana laughed, and Tom thought how pretty she really was. ‘Men bother us every single night, Mr Policeman.’
‘You know what I mean.’
‘There was a regular customer, a guy who came maybe five, six times in last two weeks – always booked private shows.’
‘What did he look like?’
Ivana finished her vodka, slurping as she sucked the dregs through her straw. She smiled sweetly but said nothing.
Tom slid over the tipping money and she palmed it off the table.
‘Glasses, red hair, freckles. Midtwenties. Short – about five-six. Looks like academician or maybe IT geek.’
Definitely not Nick then. Tom described the other detective.
‘That could be any man who comes in here,’ Ivana shrugged.
She was right, and Tom knew it. Someone would have to bring back a picture. He wanted to know more about the girl. ‘She’s black – the girl, Ebony?’
‘Now I know why they make you detective.’
‘Hah, hah. Where’s she from, the West Indies?’
‘South Africa.’
That was a bit out of the ordinary. ‘Is she an illegal immigrant?’
‘Who are you after, her or this big guy with black hair?’
‘Has she been acting differently lately?’
‘She went home early last night. I assume it was the sickness that kept her away tonight, but I was doing private show when she left, so I did not talk to her.’
‘Were any of the other girls on tonight working last night?’
Ivana looked around the club. ‘No.’
Tom thought from her studied nonchalance that she was probably lying – perhaps to protect her co-workers. He liked that about her. Honour among strippers. ‘There were no other regulars that you know about?’
Ivana shook her head and looked at her watch. ‘I am finishing work soon. You like private show?’
Tom smiled at her. ‘No, thanks. How long has Ebony been in the UK?’
‘About a year, I think.’
‘How old is she?’
‘Young – but not under-age, if that’s what you’re thinking. About nineteen, I think. Boss here is very strict on some things. No drugs, no kids.’
Tom wondered if Nick had seen Ebony, and if he had been the reason she had left work early the previous night. He didn’t want to draw attention to himself by asking the receptionist.
‘You got wife, Mr Policeman?’ Ivana asked, intruding into his thoughts.
‘No.’
‘Girlfriend?’
‘That’s none of your business.’ He drained his beer.
‘I thought not. Policemen lousy at relationships. My policeman boyfriend in Russia, he beat me, so I stab him.’
‘Bad relationship, indeed. Call me if you remember anything else.’ He gave her a card and left the club.
It was nearly two in the morning before he opened the door to his warm but empty home. His face still stung from the cuts and he thought about the explosion again, and the death of the computer guy, Steve. He stripped off and climbed into bed between cool sheets. He looked across at the picture of Alex and smiled at her. He realised it could have just as easily been him caught in the explosion.
Part of him wished it was.
‘South Africa.’
Tom wasn’t fazed as Shuttleworth said the words, neither about the destination nor the lack of notice. He’d been to the Sudan with a foreign secretary and to Morocco with a former PM, but never to southern Africa. He looked out across the Thames, towards the Palace of Westminster. The sky was a dirty grey. Some sunshine wouldn’t be bad.
‘With Nick missing, I need you to do an advance recce prior to Robert Greeves’s visit. Flight leaves this evening, BA from Heathrow to Johannesburg,’ the Scotsman said. ‘Greeves is a frequent visitor, both for business and pleasure, and on this trip he’s doing a bit of both. He’s an animal nut – loves the game parks – and he’s staying in a luxury lodge he’s used before. While he’s there he’ll be meeting with his South African counterpart, a Mr Dule, to talk about them buying some jet training aircraft from a UK defence contractor.’
‘I read something about that.’
‘Yes, well, you’ll find no shortage of material on the internet to read on your flight.’ Shuttleworth pushed two thick folders across his uncluttered desk towards Tom. They were Nick’s files on the Minister for Defence Procurement’s past visits to Africa. ‘Your advance trip is little more than a formality for his visit. He’s stayed at the lodge before and you’ll be working with the same people from the South African Police Service who’ve done the last few visits with Nick.’
‘What’s the lodge called?’ Tom asked, not that he would know one safari camp from another.
‘Tinga. It’s in the Kruger National Park. Five-star luxury, topnotch. Only the best for our Robert.’
‘My taxes at work.’
Shuttleworth frowned. ‘What did you find at Nick’s place last night?’
‘Nothing much. A card from a strip club and a message on his phone from some bird called Ebony asking to meet him at a club of some sort, where she would be “on”.’ Tom had decided to come clean about the only clue to Nick’s possible whereabouts; he figured that as he was now picking up his missing colleague’s work he owed him no special favours. Also, as he was leaving the country, it was time for someone else to follow up on Nick’s disappearance.
‘You went to the club.’ Shuttleworth didn’t even bother framing it as a question, Tom noted, though he saw the disapproval in the by-the-book chief inspector’s eyes.
‘Yes, but it was pretty much a dead end. There was a stripper named Ebony who worked there, but she’d called in sick. The girl I spoke to didn’t recognise Nick’s description.’
‘Hmm. I’ll send Morris and Burnett around to investigate officially. Interesting that she called in sick the same evening that Nick did a bunk.’
‘We don’t know he’s done a runner. Could be something worse.’
‘Aye; well, it’s damned inconvenient whatever the explanation. Do you know much about his personal life? I remember you said he seems to have a different bird every few weeks.’
Tom shook his head. ‘Only heard rumours. I haven’t socialised with him since he split up with his wife. His house looks more like a seventies bachelor pad these days, so it could be he’s enjoying single life to the full.’
‘Write up your notes and a statement about last night. Once you’re done you can get home and pack. It’s warm in South Africa this time of year.’
Tom took the files back to one of the hot desk workstations used by the protection officers and turned on the shared computer. He would have to digest the files now, as they couldn’t leave the building. He was flying to South Africa tonight, spending the next day and night in the country, then flying back to the UK the following afternoon. After little more than twenty-four hours to rest up he would then be on Greeves’s personal protection team, and getting straight back on another plane to Africa. If there were more resources available he would have simply stayed in-country and waited for the minister and the rest of the team to arrive.
He read a sheaf of email print-outs from the file. The protectio
n for Greeves was very lean, and that was cause for some concern. Not that he could do much about manpower issues. The recently raised security alert meant that even junior ministers such as Greeves were being afforded close personal protection at home and abroad. He didn’t have a view yet on how serious a target the man in charge of defence procurement might be, but he was getting a bare-bones service from the Met.
As he read messages Nick had typed to his counterpart in South Africa he wondered again where, when and how his colleague would turn up. He’d half expected, when he let himself into Nick’s home, that he would find him dead in the bathroom, his brains splattered on the tiled wall.
That’s how he would do it, if he made the decision. Easier to clean the place for the lawyer or doctor or accountant who moved in. Tom was one of a rare breed – a Catholic in the old Special Branch. He kept his religion to himself, not because he was worried about jibes or prejudice, particularly when the enemy were Irishmen of his own faith, but because he no longer really believed. It was ironic, he thought. If what the nuns had taught him as a child were true, then one day he and Alex would be reunited in the afterlife; however, if he took a short cut to get to her by committing suicide he would be damned in hell for committing the sin of taking his own life.
3
‘Tea, sir?’
Tom blinked and shook his head to clear his senses. The flight attendant was giving him a smile that almost passed for sincere as she hovered waiting for him to answer.
‘Please,’ he replied, pulling himself up from the flat business-class bed to a semi-sitting position. Someone had opened the shutter beside him and golden sunlight flooded the cabin of the British Airways 747.
‘Did you sleep well?’ she asked as she placed the cup on his side table.
‘Like the dead,’ he said. The late night at the club and early start had been a blessing in disguise, as he had fallen asleep soon after the meal. He’d long gotten over the novelty of travelling business or first class on long-haul flights. He did, however, appreciate the advent of fully flat beds in business.
A short time later the aircraft captain announced the cabin crew would be preparing the cabin for landing. By the time Tom returned from the toilet, where he had run a battery-powered shaver over his chin and combed his tousled grey-flecked hair, his bed had been transformed back to a seat. He leaned over and stared out the window at Africa.
The countryside was greener than he had expected, though the captain announced that rain was forecast at their destination. As well as open grasslands below there were circular farmed fields of some irrigated crop or other. What Tom knew about farming would fit on the back of a London Transport travel card. He knew even less about big game and wildlife. In the parts of Africa he had visited the populace were more at risk from AK 47s than from lions or leopards.
Tom had read his internet print-outs – some general information on South Africa, Tinga Legends Lodge and the Kruger National Park – before falling asleep on the flight. He had a lot to learn about the country he was about to set foot in, but in some respects that didn’t matter.
There would be a South African Police Service inspector at the airport to meet and accompany him out to the safari lodge, which he had read was about four hours’ drive away. Robert Greeves would actually fly to the park on his visit, but in the meantime SO1 could spend their money better elsewhere than on an internal flight for Tom on this advance visit. He didn’t care, as a road trip would give him a better chance to get a feel for what people referred to as the ‘new’ South Africa.
However, there were things about this job that were already starting to concern him. For a start, he shouldn’t have been on his own. A protection team was normally made up of a bare minimum of two members. Another Met policeman, Detective Constable Charlie Sheather, was already in South Africa, but he had leapfrogged ahead to check out the Radisson Hotel in Cape Town, where Greeves would stay after his visit to Tinga. Charlie would do the advance for that leg of the trip, but he and Tom would not be working together until Tom flew to the Cape. It was against standard operating procedures, but the existing staff shortages had suddenly been made worse by Nick’s disappearance. Also, Greeves was a junior minister – defence procurement was important but didn’t keep the politician in the headlines, unlike the Defence Secretary, who still rated a full team.
There was a distant clunk somewhere back beneath economy class as the wheels were lowered and the flaps extended. Out the window he glimpsed rows of detached houses on small plots of land, some with swimming pools – suburbia. No elephants or zebra. He smiled to himself. Hot air rising from the sun-warmed African landscape produced some ‘bumps’, as the pilot referred to them, and Tom peered out the window as Africa rose up to greet him.
Tom registered little about Johannesburg International Airport, other than that the terminal was bigger, busier, more modern and more efficient than he had imagined it would be. The few South Africans he had met in London seemed to like nothing better than to berate the new rulers of their former homeland about corruption, increasing crime and a deterioration in services since the advent of majority rule in 1994. Tom wasn’t naïve enough to judge a country by its arrivals hall, but it was a reminder that he should leave his prejudices at the entry gate. He was a man who dealt with facts, not anecdotes or rumours. He doubted he would have a chance to form deep or lasting impressions of African and South African democracy from one recce, but he would keep his eyes and ears open.
‘Detective Sergeant Furey?’
‘That’s me.’ Tom had looked past the blonde-haired woman in a smart business suit, with nipped-in jacket and skirt. She was about five-nine, four inches shorter than he, though her heels made up most of the difference. Her hair was cut short in a bob but the first thing he really noticed about her, other than her height, was her blue eyes. He knew he was staring at her, but couldn’t help it. He forced himself to blink.
She smiled away his awkwardness politely. ‘I’m Inspector Susan van Rensburg. People call me Sannie.’
When she extended her hand her grip was firm, the polished bronze skin soft and cool. He detected the Afrikaans accent before she got to her surname. She looked in her midthirties. No wedding band, though there were two rings on her right ring finger, one studded with diamonds. Where he came from, not many female coppers wore lip gloss on the job. ‘Tom. Nice to meet you. You got the email about Nick Roberts, then?’
‘Yes. Any word of his whereabouts?’
‘Nothing yet. You worked with him before?’ She led him to the terminal doors, ignoring an African man in a bomber jacket who asked them if they wanted a car. Tom had his travel bag over one shoulder, and he said, ‘No thanks,’ when a porter offered to carry it for him.
‘Yes, I’ve worked with Nick,’ she said, not volunteering any more information, no expression of concern that Tom could trace.
‘Are you usually assigned as liaison when Mr Greeves visits?’ Tom asked.
‘Yes. He’s a nice guy. Have you worked with him before?’
Tom shook his head. Interesting that she would volunteer a personal opinion about the minister but not the man she had worked most closely with, and who was now missing.
‘Well, I’m ready to go if you are.’ Tom carried a second Rohan travel suit, two short-sleeve business shirts, underwear and his toiletries in a carry-on bag, along with a pair of jeans, loafers and shorts and a casual shirt. He followed Sannie out through the arrivals hall. It was warm, though not unpleasantly hot, and shards of blue sky were opening cracks in grey clouds still heavy with rain.
‘Here we are,’ Sannie said, pressing the button on the key-chain remote. The lights flashed on a Mercedes. Not the latest model, but far from old. She popped the boot and he tossed his bag in and closed it.
‘It’s just the two of us,’ she said. ‘We’re short-staffed and there’s an Organisation of the African Union meeting on in Cape Town today and tomorrow. Still, we don’t need anyone else here for the recce as your
Mr Greeves has been to Tinga and Kruger many times.’
‘I know what you mean about being short-handed. We’re running a bare-bones operation on this trip. I contacted the British Embassy’s security officer and even he’s too busy to come out to meet us today.’
Sannie shrugged. ‘I’ve met Giles a few times, but there’s nothing a security officer will be able to tell you that I can’t. Have you ever been to South Africa?’
‘Never. Is the crime problem as bad as the media makes out?’ Tom slipped off his coat and climbed into the passenger seat.
Sannie also took off her jacket and hung it over the back of her seat. As she got in she pulled a Z88 nine-millimetre pistol from the holster clipped to a narrow belt at the top of her tailored skirt. She smiled at him and placed the weapon in a slot in the centre console where most people would keep their sunglasses.
‘Right,’ Tom said. He’d thought it wasn’t necessary for him to bring his Glock on the recce – just more paperwork – but now he wasn’t so sure.
‘It’s loaded and racked, by the way. We in the police tell the general public not to try to fight back or use their weapon if they get car-jacked.’
Tom had read that armed car hijacking was a serious problem in Johannesburg and other parts of the country, with robbers often shooting their victims. In the UK the people with guns were usually underworld criminals who tended to use them on each other rather than innocents.
‘So what’s your plan if we get stopped by a thief?’
‘If the car-jacker shoots me before I get him, I want you to kill him, okay?’
‘You’re serious?’
She smiled as she indicated and accelerated into the traffic outside the terminal.
‘Is this a wind-up?’ he persisted.
Sannie looked across at him, unsmiling now, and said, ‘My husband was a police captain, also in protection. He had worked with Nick Roberts, protecting Greeves. I was still at home on leave, pregnant with my third child. He was off duty, on his way to pick up our son from a friend’s place. He was shot at a robot – traffic lights – before he had a chance to go for his gun. It was two years ago. I lost the baby.’
