Silent Predator

by Tony Park

  ‘That’s right,’ Tom confirmed. ‘I would have told you to do the same thing – you would have told him to do it if the positions were reversed.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Come back, Bernard. We’ll go down to Sarel’s and get a cup of coffee, or something stronger,’ Sannie suggested.

  ‘A wake?’

  She shrugged.

  Bernard turned his gaze on Tom, who looked down at the automatic pistol hanging loosely by the other man’s side. ‘We let him down, Tom. You and me both.’

  ‘I know I did, but you didn’t. You were his best shot at freedom, Bernard.’

  ‘No, I let him down by doing the right thing. The right thing by the book. That was always me in the navy, you know. Plenty of them used to joke about it. They said I crapped by the manual. They were right. I always had to do it better than any other man, because of . . . because of who I am, what I am.’

  ‘Come on. Let’s go get a drink, Bernard.’

  Bernard looked back out to sea, towards the molten ball rising from the waters.

  ‘Beautiful, isn’t it?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Sannie.

  ‘I need to talk to you again, Bernard. I need you to take me through every hour, every minute, every second from the time they took you and Robert until the time you escaped.’ Tom stayed still as he spoke.

  ‘I’ve told you everything I know.’

  ‘There’s always something else. Trust me, I know. There’ll be some small detail that you’ll remember – something someone said or did, or didn’t say or do – that will nail them, Bernard.’

  Bernard turned back to him and smiled.

  ‘No, I’ve done quite enough already, Tom. Or, more to the point, I’ve done not quite enough. I shouldn’t have left him.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Yes, Tom. You know it and I know it. I ran.’

  ‘He told you to.’

  ‘I told Helen his last words. You know, he was thinking of his family, and spitting bloody murder at those bastards as I left him.’

  Tom nodded.

  ‘He was a brave man.’

  ‘He was,’ Sannie said.

  ‘I let him down.’

  ‘You didn’t, Bernard,’ Tom insisted.

  ‘I called you, you know?’

  Tom was confused. ‘On the phone?’

  ‘No. When it happened. When they dragged me out of my bed, at the lodge, I called your name. I didn’t know who else to yell for.’

  Tom felt the sickness rising from his stomach again, the blood draining from his face. Bernard had said nothing of this before.

  ‘I called for you, but you didn’t answer, Tom. I suppose you were asleep. Can’t expect you to be on the job twenty-four hours a day, though, can we?’

  ‘Bernard, toss the gun over here.’ Sannie sounded forceful, and took a step towards him, but Bernard started to raise the weapon and she checked her pace.

  ‘We let him down. You and me.’

  Tom was speechless, his mind still trying to process this new information. He had just about convinced himself that except for sleeping late – and possibly losing five or ten minutes of chase time – there was nothing more he could have done to prevent the abductions. He’d reasoned that there would have been no way he could have known what was going on, as he’d been in a separate suite both to Bernard and Greeves. This new revelation hit him like a blow in the solar plexus and threatened to drop him to his knees in the surf.

  ‘Sometimes the right thing, being in the right place at the right time, doing the right thing by the book, just isn’t good enough. I should have stayed with him, or taken on the single guard while he was fighting the fire before the others came back.’

  ‘You would probably have been killed, Bernard,’ Sannie said, filling the void left by Tom’s ominous silence.

  ‘I cared about him, you know,’ Bernard said, looking back out over the water.

  Tom started to move, his fists clenched by his sides.

  ‘Tom,’ Sannie whispered, but he ignored her.

  ‘He was a good man, who could have gone on to do great things for his country. Too good a man for politics. I used to tell myself that I would lay down my life for him.’

  Tom began to run, his feet raising geysers of water as he closed on Bernard.

  The other man turned, so that one side of his face was bathed red-gold by the sun as it breached the waters.

  Bernard raised his hand, placed the barrel of the pistol in his mouth, and pulled the trigger.

  21

  Three weeks later

  The phone rang, waking him. He looked at the red LED display of his clock radio and saw that it was nine in the morning. He coughed, and was punished by the smell of stale Scotch.

  ‘Furey,’ he said into the handset, after retrieving the phone from the floor. His voice was croaky, as he’d started smoking again.

  ‘Tom, it’s Sannie.’

  He raised himself on one elbow, earning himself a giddying head spin. He coughed once more. ‘Sannie, this is a surprise.’

  ‘Are you okay? You sound like you’re ill.’

  ‘Got a cold coming on,’ he lied. ‘Bloody London weather. Where are you, at home? I can call you back if you like.’ He remembered the references to her tight family budget, trying to raise her two kids on one income.

  ‘No, Tom, I’m at work. This is semi-official so they don’t mind me calling overseas.’

  ‘Oh, right. Of course.’ Not everyone had lost their job over the debacle in Mozambique. He chided himself for his oversight. ‘So this is business?’

  There was a pause on the other end of the line and he regretted his last words. Did he sound petulant, as though he had thought she might be calling for personal reasons?

  ‘Yes, it is business, though I’ve been wanting to call you, to make sure you’re okay. That everything’s all right with you.’

  All right? The man he’d been sent to Africa to protect was dead. Another had killed himself in shame, leaving Tom feeling like he should have done the same thing, and he was suspended from his job indefinitely, pending the outcome of an official government inquiry into Greeves’s death. ‘I’m fine. Enjoying the break.’

  ‘Tom, I know how hard this must be for you, but you’ll pull through.’

  ‘Right. Um, what is this about, Sannie?’

  ‘I’m coming to England.’

  That made him sit up in bed. ‘When? Why?’

  ‘I’ve been called to give evidence at the inquiry and my police service – and our government – has agreed to release me. It should be for about a week, they say. I’m arriving tomorrow morning.’

  ‘Oh,’ he said. He, too, had been called. He figured it would be the last nail in the coffin of his career. It irked him that while details about his late arrival on the morning that Greeves and Joyce had gone missing – and speculation about his drinking on duty the night before – had already been leaked to the media, there was no mention of the nation’s elite counter-terrorist unit storming a house full of primates. It was a good pointer to how and by whom the behind-the-scenes information battle was being waged.

  Tom had been inundated with calls from journalists on his return home, and had even had to suffer the ignominy of a few of them being camped on his doorstep until his resolute silence had finally had an effect. He would answer for his sins at the public inquiry, but he wouldn’t lower himself by trying to plead his case or slander anyone through the press. He would take his punishment and do the best he could to find a new way to live out his remaining years. And that was that.

  The resolve he’d felt in the immediate wake of the failed rescue mission, to find the perpetrators and bring them to justice, had disappeared with the plume of blood that flowed away in the receding tide of the Indian Ocean on that beach in Mozambique. Bernard’s revelation, that he had tried to raise the alarm and called Tom’s name in the night as the abductors grabbed him, still haunted him. There was no escaping the fact that he had failed in his duty
. Even though Greeves had told him to have a nightcap, he shouldn’t have taken the beer Carla poured for him, or let her into his room.

  ‘Tom? Are you still there?’

  ‘What? Oh, yeah. Well, it’ll be good to see you again, even if the circumstances are hardly ideal. Where will you be staying?’

  Sannie gave him the name of a hotel near Waterloo. He said he knew it and waited for her to make the next move.

  ‘Perhaps we could get together,’ she said after a brief pause. ‘To talk about things.’

  ‘Get our stories straight?’ He forced a laugh, but she didn’t reciprocate.

  ‘That’s not what I meant.’

  ‘Sightseeing, shopping?’

  ‘I know it must bother you, Tom – what happened to them, where they went afterwards, why no one’s heard from them since then.’

  If there was anything left in the bottle lying on the floor beside the bed he would have taken a deep swig right there and then. He hadn’t yet begun drinking before midday, but there was no time like the present.

  ‘They’ – the Islamic African Dawn or whoever the hell they were – had killed him, as surely as they had put bullets into Nick and Greeves, and as surely as their evil had driven Bernard Joyce to his death. The only difference was that Tom was doomed to a long, lingering death.

  They’d taken Tom’s gun from him when he’d returned home, but he had a shotgun in the house. It had belonged to his father, who’d been fond of grouse shooting. On the first night after his official suspension, Tom had swallowed half a bottle of single malt and loaded the gun. He’d taken off his right shoe and sock – to use his big toe to pull the trigger – and put his lips around the barrel, but he couldn’t go through with it. Too much of a coward – unlike Bernard Joyce.

  Of course what had happened fucking bothered him. It had eaten away at his soul, at his mind and body, over the past three weeks, like a high-speed version of the cancer that had devoured Alex. ‘Yeah.’

  ‘Tom? What’s wrong. Are you drunk, man?’

  ‘Wouldn’t like to get in a car for another couple of hours.’ He tried another laugh, but all his jokes were failing this morning, it seemed.

  ‘Well, whatever. I just thought I’d let you know I’m coming over. If you want to talk, you have my cell number. Just SMS me, if you like. I should let you get back to sleeping it off, I suppose.’

  He waited to see if there was anything else, but she didn’t say goodbye or hang up.

  ‘Tom?’

  He sat there, not knowing what to say to her next.

  ‘Well, okay. This is too weird. Goodbye and –’

  ‘Wait. Sorry, Sannie. I’m not drunk. Tell me what time your flight arrives. I’ll come get you from the airport.’

  ‘You don’t have to do that. They’ve booked a hire car for me.’

  ‘I could come out on the tube and help you navigate your way to Victoria. On your own, and without a GPS, it could be more dangerous than the African bush.’

  She laughed, and he flashed back to how pretty she looked when she smiled. He wouldn’t find salvation with Sannie van Rensburg – her visit was merely confirmation that he would be dragged through everything once again in a few days’ time – but it would be good to see her, whatever the circumstances. He didn’t want her to hang up. He’d thought about her a lot lately, even through the bouts of drunkenness and sleepless hours. If . . . if he hadn’t let Carla drug him. If he had caught up with the abductors sooner. If Willie hadn’t been wounded. If it had all turned out differently, he might have retired with his dignity intact and maybe pursued Sannie. There’d been a connection between them that transcended the professional on that wild drive through Mozambique. When he closed his eyes, he saw hers.

  ‘Okay then. Thanks. If it’s not too much trouble, that would be lekker.’

  ‘So, if you’re calling from work, you obviously didn’t get suspended?’

  ‘I did,’ she said, and he could hear her relief that the conversation was starting to move beyond one-sidedness. ‘But it was just for a week. My captain gave me an official reprimand for taking off with you across the border, but privately commended you for having the guts to do what you did. Hey, last night I left you a message on your phone. Didn’t you get it?’

  ‘Um, no, I got in pretty late.’ He’d been at his local pub until closing time. ‘Sorry. How are your kids?’

  ‘They’re fine, and thanks for asking. Christo asked me the other day if you and I would be working together again.’

  He didn’t know what to say.

  ‘What do you think?’ she asked.

  ‘About what?’

  ‘Are we still working together, Tom? I’ve been running some leads at this end. I’m on a small task force that is working with your people to try to pick up the trail of the terrorists. I’ve been checking national park entry permits from five days before the abductions happened. It’s tedious work, but so far I haven’t found a registration number that matches the Isuzu they used.’

  He thought he knew what she meant. She wanted to know if he was working on anything privately, from his end, even though he’d been suspended. He felt almost ashamed that he hadn’t been, that he’d followed Shuttleworth’s orders and kept his head down. What had happened to that determination he’d had in Mozambique, when his blood had still been up? It had disappeared; ironically, by doing what Bernard would have termed ‘the right thing’.

  ‘I’ve been told to stay away.’ This sounded even lamer than he thought it would.

  ‘Of course,’ she said. ‘Anyway, perhaps I can run some ideas past you when I see you.’

  ‘Sure.’

  ‘Do you think you’ll keep your job?’

  ‘No chance. Besides, who’d have me as a protection officer, even if I did survive?’

  ‘Someone with brains, Tom. Someone who’d look at the lengths you went to, the risks you took to try to get Greeves back. A good person, which I know is rare in our line of work. But we don’t get to choose who we take care of, do we?’

  He sat there, in his bed, and again looked down at the empty bottle on the floor, the dirty clothes strewn about the room.

  ‘You remember what I said to you? When we crossed back into Kruger after it was all over?’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘Then don’t forget it, Tom. I’ll see you in a few days.’

  Fraser and the SAS men had taken Bernard’s body with them and departed in the Oryx helicopters. Tom was offered a ride but begged off, saying he had to stay with Sannie and wait for the Mozambican police to arrive.

  The special forces guys had no wish to stay and share with a foreign police force their part in the disaster. ‘Suit yourself,’ Fraser said dismissively, then he ran for the helicopter.

  Shuttleworth was furious with Tom when he called in. Tom reckoned his boss needed him by his side to act as a lightning rod when he returned to the UK. Tom liked the guy, but could see no point in hurrying back to England to meet his fate.

  Bernard’s death had sapped his will. He was like a man in limbo, merely existing in the hours following the failed rescue mission. Sannie had done her best to keep his spirits up during the drive back to South Africa through the bush, retracing their earlier route.

  After they crossed the border, back into the park, Sannie slowed as they approached a trio of bull elephants. Tom had lost his taste for game viewing and was mildly annoyed when she stopped.

  ‘Look at them, Tom. What do you see?’

  ‘Apart from the obvious?’ He’d had virtually no sleep in the previous forty-eight hours.

  ‘Bodyguards. Protection officers.’

  He was confused, his mind dulled. She pointed out the two smaller bulls flanking the largest one, whose long, curved tusks reached almost to the ground. ‘Those two, the younger ones, are askaris.’

  ‘What does that mean?’

  It was a Swahili word, she explained, for sentry or guard, which had come into common use throughout the rest of Africa during c
olonial times. It had often been applied to native African troops employed by white armies and, in South Africa, to black agents working undercover for the white government in the days of apartheid.

  ‘If you take the word’s original meaning, the askaris look after the old one, the important one. They are his eyes and his ears as he gets older. Their job, like ours, is to protect.’

  ‘So? What are you trying to say, Sannie?’

  ‘I’m not a hundred per cent sure, but it works two ways for the elephants. The younger ones look out for the older one, but at the same time they learn from him, and they benefit from his patronage. They become a formidable team. When the old one eventually dies, the younger ones are stronger, wiser because of their time with him.’

  ‘You’re saying I’m a better person because Robert Greeves is dead?’ He laughed out loud.

  ‘Not better, but wiser. Tougher. Tom, everyone needs an askari watching out for them.’

  Tom hung up the phone and rested his head against the bedroom wall. He wondered who his askari was, and who was looking after Sannie these days.

  He got out of bed and went to the bathroom. As he rinsed his face and brushed the taste of Scotch and cigarettes from his mouth, he remembered what she’d said about leaving a message on his answering machine. He’d ignored the blinking red light as he’d stumbled through the door last night, thinking it was yet another reporter trying to get him to tell his side of the whole sorry story. That was journalist speak for giving him enough rope to hang himself.

  In lieu of a comb he ran a hand through his hair and walked downstairs to the kitchen. Checking his messages was the closest thing he had to a chore today.

  He delayed the inevitable by taking a half-empty carton of orange juice from the fridge and draining it. It was days old and bitter. He coughed as he pushed the play button.

  ‘Tom, it’s Sannie. I’m calling from South Africa – well, I guess you know that – but I’m coming to England for . . .’ Tom let the message play, simply because he liked hearing the sound of her voice again.

  The next message started. ‘Hello, Detective Sergeant Furey, it’s Mary Whitbread from Channel Four again and I’d just like to –’