Silent Predator

by Tony Park

  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 otherwise. 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.

  He knew nothing about banana farming, but Sannie and Elise were teaching him what they knew, and their neighbours were filling in the gaps. He’d thought they would eventually move to the coast – perhaps Durban or Cape Town – but Sannie had rejected both of those options. The longer he stayed, however, the more he thought of the farm as somewhere he could live, rather than just hide out.

  ‘When are you going to stop wearing this?’ Sannie asked, lifting the tail of his shirt which he habitually wore hanging out to hide the Glock in its holster.

  ‘You know when,’ he said.

  Tom slept fitfully.

  The electricity was out – again. Whether it was load-shedding or the failure of an ageing substation, he wouldn’t know until the morning, but either way it annoyed him. He had no regrets about moving to Africa, but it was sometimes not easy learning to live without things he took for granted in England.

  A mosquito buzzed around his ears. No matter how often he slapped himself, he never hit it.

  Sannie lay on her back, her chest rising and falling rhythmically. Her golden hair was in disarray, one bare leg sticking out from under the sheet. They had made love when they’d gone to bed. If she’d said she wanted to move to a malarial swamp in the upper reaches of the Amazon, he w
ould have gone with her. He loved her.

  He smacked his cheek again, swore quietly, then got up.

  He padded on bare feet to the farmhouse’s kitchen. Instinctively he flicked the light switch, but nothing happened. He turned on the rechargeable battery-powered camping lantern on the bench. Inside the fridge was a bottle of water that was still cold. He poured a glass and moved to the window to drink it. He looked out over the seemingly endless rows of banana trees and marvelled at how his life had changed. For the better.

  Roxy’s basket was empty. He wondered if she was off chasing a bush baby – one of the small, bushy-tailed primates that lived in the native trees near the house and cried like human babies most nights. But all was quiet.

  Normally the big Rhodesian ridgeback was good at sensing movement, and would have been at the kitchen door, tail wagging, hoping for a midnight snack. She only barked at black people – a legacy of the former white owners of the farm who had trained her – but she was usually alert to anyone who was up and about after hours.

  Tom took the keys from their hook inside the pantry and unlocked the door. He reached for a mosquito that had hitched a ride on his shoulder blade, missed and scratched. ‘Roxy?’ he called softly.

  He walked along the verandah that surrounded the nineteen-fifties whitewashed house. He loved sitting out here with Sannie in the afternoons, watching over the rim of his beer glass the sun go down. He didn’t want to wake the children, but he was sure Roxy would find him by the time he reached Ilana’s bedroom.

  He was about to turn back towards the kitchen, giving up on the stupid dog, when he saw the curtain.

  Ilana’s window was open.

  He lengthened his stride. The fabric hung limply out of the window. The sliding flyscreen should have been down, and the strut that held the window open latched firmly in place. Sannie checked it every night. She was more careful about protecting her children than her husband-to-be from insects.

  Tom felt his heart beat faster. He held the curtain to one side and looked in.

  ‘Ilana!’

  He retraced his steps and ran inside. Sannie already had her shorts on and was sitting on the bed pulling a T-shirt over her head when he entered the room. ‘What’s wrong, Tom? Did you call me?’

  Tom moved to his side and pulled the Glock from under his pillow. As always, it was already racked. He took a breath. ‘Ilana’s gone.’

  Sannie put a hand to her mouth. ‘My baby! Christo?’

  ‘He’s . . .’

  ‘Mommy? Where’s Ilana?’ Christo walked into their room. ‘She’s not in her bed.’

  Tom saw the dawning fear and realisation on the little boy’s face. ‘Is it that man?’

  Tom had his mobile phone out and was dialling a number. He held it up to his ear as Sannie opened her wardrobe and reached under a pile of winter jerseys. She slapped a magazine into the butt of her RAP 401 and cocked it.

  ‘Mommy?’

  ‘Mommy and Tom are going to look for Ilana, Christo. I want you to . . .’

  Elise walked into the bedroom, tying a robe in front.

  Tom had the phone to his ear and was waiting for an answer. ‘Sannie, you’re not thinking straight. You stay here and look after Christo. I’ll get . . .’ He held up a hand to silence her protest. ‘Hello, Duncan? You’re awake already?’

  Duncan Nyari had left his job as a guide at Tinga and was helping Tom and Sannie out on the farm, and running a small freelance tour business from the old manager’s house, where he now lived. ‘Birds making too much noise down the fence, Tom. Thought it might be that leopard that killed the dog on old Du Toit’s farm.’

  Tom told him Ilana was gone and ordered him to come to the house to help him look for spoor.

  ‘Yebo,’ Duncan replied. ‘I’ve got the shotgun.’

  Sannie took Christo’s hand. ‘Come, put some clothes on, my boy.’

  ‘I have to get you to safety,’ Tom said. He dialled the emergency number for the police.

  Sannie looked up at him. ‘I’ll take Mom and Christo to the Du Toits next door. Then I’m coming back to help you.’

  Tom nodded. He didn’t want any of them out of his sight, but he and Duncan had to pick up the trail of whoever had taken Ilana. She was a happy little girl and he was under no illusions that she might simply have run away from home and would come back when she was hungry. Tom got through to the police and told them what had happened.

  He walked outside with Sannie, Elise and Christo, and put them into the Land Rover. When he looked at the terror on the little boy’s face, he hated himself for bringing more misery to this family. No, his family. They were his responsibility now.

  ‘Call me when you get to the Du Toit farm and stay there, Sannie.’

  The four-by-four blew diesel smoke as she started the engine and revved it. ‘Don’t tell me what to do. Once I’ve dropped Mom and Ilana, I’m coming . . .’

  Two shots from the darkness made Elise scream. Christo started to cry. The noise came from down the hill, away from the track that led to the main gate.

  ‘Go!’

  The wheels spun for a second until the chunky tyres dug into the mud, and the Land Rover hurtled away from the house.

  Tom had seen the footprints in the mud, but had not pointed them out to Sannie, in case she decided to send her mother off with Christo and join him on the hunt. He needed to know that they, at least, would live, even if he couldn’t save Ilana. Sannie wouldn’t think that way, though.

  Tom raised his weapon and moved towards the noise, staying in the first few rows of banana trees rather than using the pathway. It didn’t take him long to find Roxy’s body. She lay on the path, her throat cut. The kidnapper must have lured her close – perhaps with food – and been ruffling her head, keeping her silent, when he cut her throat. Tom knew it was a white man. An Englishman.

  Further along, he heard groaning from the grove on the other side of the path. ‘Duncan?’

  ‘Tom . . . I’ve been hit.’

  ‘Stay quiet; save your strength,’ Tom whispered.

  He peered out from the banana trees and looked down the track. It seemed clear, and he sprinted from cover and slid in the mud to Duncan’s side. Duncan winced as Tom opened his bloodstained shirt. ‘Shoulder and gut.’ He pulled off his T-shirt and pressed it to Duncan’s stomach wound, which was the more serious of the injuries. ‘Hold this. I’ll call an ambulance.’

  ‘He . . . he has Ilana . . . He is a white man.’

  ‘I know. I’m going to get him.’

  ‘Tom . . . she was not moving. He was carrying her over his shoulder. I couldn’t get a clean shot.’

  Tom nodded. He called the ambulance service and spoke quickly, quietly, to the operator, then hung up.

  ‘That way,’ Duncan croaked and raised a hand to point. ‘He is running.’

  Leaves slapped Tom’s face as he ran parallel to the track, following the lengthened stride of his quarry’s footprints in the mud beside him.

  Sannie stopped the Land Rover outside the front gate, got out, and told her mother to get behind the wheel.

  ‘But Tom said . . .’

  ‘Just do it, Mom! Take Christo next door and stay there.’ Sannie shut the door and walked down the fence line, her body hunched like that of a stalking lioness tensed for the kill. Her mother drove off into the night, in the opposite direction from where the gunfire had come.

  The man, or men, must have climbed or cut the fence, as there were no fresh footprints on the driveway, and the gate had been locked. If Sannie found the person who had taken Ilana, she would kill him.

  Off to her right, the farmhouse, visible on the hill, was still in darkness. Good old Eskom, she thought. If the power came on now, the security lights placed at intervals along the fence might illuminate her. She prayed, for the first time ever, for the darkness to continue.

  Sannie saw the break in the wire mesh and stopped to listen.

  Footsteps.

  She heard rustling in the ban
ana trees and dropped to one knee. Steadying her shooting hand by cupping it in her left, she aimed through the gap in the fence at the noise.

  Was he carrying Ilana in his arms or over his shoulder? Sannie would have little time to decide whether to aim for the head or the centre body mass. She was a good shot. She would not miss.

  Sannie could hear the man’s laboured breathing now. She saw the hand holding the pistol. She started to squeeze the trigger, taking up the slack.

  ‘Tom!’

  He broke from the cover of the banana trees and stopped in front of her, holding his weapon up. ‘Jesus, you scared me.’

  Sannie stood and fought to calm her breathing. She looked at the ground and cursed herself for not having done so before. ‘He’s already gone.’

  They scanned the mud and flattened grass more closely, then walked across the tarred road. There were no corresponding footprints on the other side. ‘He’s headed up the road,’ Tom said.

  They started to jog, side by side, on opposite sides of the darkened country road, but slowed when they heard the revving of an engine, the grinding of gears.

  A double-cab bakkie crested the rise in front of them. Its headlights were out and the driver was weaving, as if he wasn’t concentrating fully.

  Sannie held up her free hand, gesturing for the driver to stop, but the vehicle accelerated towards them, its engine whining. ‘Tyres, Tom,’ Sannie called. ‘Ilana’s somewhere inside.’

  Tom nodded and stopped, feet apart, his right hand resting on his left. Sannie mirrored his stance and they opened fire as the vehicle bore down on them.

  The bakkie jinked left and right, and when Tom saw Nick Roberts’s wide-eyed face he wanted to put the next bullet through his head, but it wasn’t worth the risk. If Nick lost control completely, Ilana might die. He fired twice more, and knew that either his or Sannie’s shots had found their mark. Rubber screamed on bitumen, and the pick-up slid off the road, ploughing through mud and grass, and heading for the gum trees planted on the other side of the road from Tom and Sannie’s bananas.