Tony Park - Silent Predator

‘You said you had a son?’ he said.

‘ Ja, a son and daughter. My boy is nine and my girl is five. My mother lives with us and she looks after them when I’m away.’

Sannie changed lanes and accelerated, pushing the speedometer up to a hundred and twenty kilometres. ‘Are you divorced, or do you just take your wedding ring off when you travel, like…?’ She glanced across at him.

He looked down at his left index finger. He’d only taken it off six months ago. He’d figured it was time, but he, as had Sannie, noticed there was still a faint tan line and an indentation caused by fifteen years of wear.

‘Alex died a year ago. Breast cancer.’

‘Oh, man, I’m so sorry. I knew you’d lost someone, but I didn’t realise it was your wife.’

‘How did you know?’

‘Not talking when I told you what happened to my husband and baby. It’s the people who haven’t known real grief who think words can make it easier. It doesn’t really go away, does it?’

‘Not that I can tell.’ He wanted desperately to change the subject. ‘What you were saying before, about taking off a wedding ring when travelling, you said “like”. Whose name were you about to add?’

‘Forget it,’ she said.

‘Like Nick?’

‘Look, if he’s a friend of yours, I’m sorry. And I’m sorry he’s missing.’

‘But?’

‘What?’

‘I sensed there was a “but” coming then. Our wives knew each other better than we did. Nick’s a colleague, Sannie. I do want to try to work out what happened to him, but I can’t say I know him well enough to guess why he went missing — if it was a voluntary thing.’

‘Okay, well, I first met Nick about four years ago, when my husband was still alive and when Nick was still married.’

‘And?’

‘And he tried to hit on me.’

‘Really?’

‘ Ja. First trip, in the car on the first drive, just like you and me now. I couldn’t believe it. He says to me, “What goes on tour stays on tour.” I can tell you, I gave it to him big time.’

‘Did he ever try again?’

‘Once more, last year, after his marriage is over and my husband’s dead and my miscarriage, and he thinks I’m now available. We were in a pub with some other police. My friends were at the bar and we were alone and he says, “Is the time right now, baby?”’

‘What did you do?’

‘I told him that the time wouldn’t be right if we were the only two people left in the world, and then I klapped him, good and hard across the face.’

Tom smiled, but he was learning more about Nick and it wasn’t good.

‘I’m so gatvol of men these days.’

‘ Gatvol? ’ he asked. She had pronounced the ‘g’ as though she was about to spit at him, so the word, whatever it meant, seemed to match her sentiment.

‘Like “I’ve had enough” in English. But no offence, hey?’

He laughed. ‘None taken.’

From a map he’d glanced at, he knew the airport was on the eastern fringe of Johannesburg, and the factories, warehouses, mine slag heaps and outlying gated communities of townhouses hiding behind high whitewashed walls soon gave way to open grasslands and farms. Sannie explained that Johannesburg was on the highveld — at a higher altitude than where they were headed. Kruger was in the lowveld. ‘Hotter there. Stickier. I hope you brought your mozzie muti with you.’

‘Insect repellent?’ he checked.

‘It’s malaria country where we’re going, and quite bad this time of year — it’s the wet season.’

When they neared the exit for a town called Wit-bank he noticed his first car-jacking sign. It said, Warning — hijacking hotspot. Do not stop beneath a huge exclamation mark.

‘What do you do if you break down?’ he asked.

‘Pray,’ said Sannie, ‘and aim for the centre body mass.’

In Tom’s experience, most people living in supposedly dangerous parts of the world tended to talk down the perceived threat, usually issuing a few common words of warning such as, ‘Avoid such-and-such an area at night and you’ll be okay,’ or, ‘It’s not as bad as the media makes out’. From what Sannie had told him so far, the reverse seemed to be true in South Africa. People here were under no illusion about their local crime problem.

‘A lot of it is organised crime here, and the whites aren’t blameless. Also, we have people from all over Africa living in this country. The Zimbabweans who cross the border are dirt poor and some of them turn to theft — same with the Mozambicans. The Nigerians are the worst — they control the drug scene. It was different in the old days, when I first joined the police — back then we had the death penalty.’

And riots in Soweto and police opening fire on civilians, Tom thought, but said nothing. It was her country and he wasn’t here to make judgments.

‘I know what you’re thinking. But we’re not all mad racists, you know. I didn’t agree with a lot of what happened under apartheid, but we did have the crime problem under control.’

‘Depends on who you classed as the criminals.’

She smiled.

Sannie stopped for fuel at a service station just past the Middelburg toll plaza. It was exactly like one of the large complexes he would have encountered on a British motorway. Tom got out to stretch his legs. He yawned, but was feeling okay. There was little time difference between the UK and South Africa and he had slept well on the aircraft. It was good to feel sunshine on his face. Sannie returned with a couple of Cokes and some crisps. ‘How far?’ he asked.

‘ Ag, shame, man, you sound like my kids. It’s about another three hours if we drive fast.’

And drive fast they did. Tom glanced over and saw that the speedometer rarely dipped below a hundred and ten kilometres per hour. The locals had an interesting form of traffic etiquette, where slow vehicles pulled to the left — South Africans drove on the same side of the road as he did in England — to let faster cars pass them. The overtaking vehicle — Sannie in every case — put on its hazard lights as a way of saying thank you, while the car which had just been passed flashed its headlights as if to say, ‘You’re welcome’. It was like a parallel universe, Tom thought. Similar to England in some ways, but so completely different in others.

The road they were on — the N4 — took them eastwards, towards the border with Mozambique, according to the signs to that country’s capital, Maputo. Tom knew Mozambique was a former Portuguese colony, had suffered a long civil war and supposedly had good beaches. Beyond that it was just a name on a map. He thought he would find some books on Africa before he returned with Robert Greeves.

Sannie had the radio tuned to a station called Jacaranda FM, which played easy-listening music, mostly from the eighties and nineties. The announcers and newsreaders switched from English to Afrikaans, sometimes midsentence. ‘Do you and your kids speak Afrikaans at home?’

‘ Ja, and English. There are about a dozen official languages in the new South Africa. My kids are learning Xhosa at school. I figure it’s good for them to be able to speak the language of the ones who are in charge now.’

‘I suppose it’s been tough on… on people like you, since the Africans took over the country.’

She shrugged. ‘First of all, I am an African. I just happen to be a white one. Sure, there was a lot of affirmative action after the ANC took over. I suppose I’m lucky that I’m a woman.’

‘What do you mean by that?’ Tom asked. Traffic had slowed marginally as the road started to descend through a series of sweeping bends.

‘In the new South Africa it’s all about empowerment. Black women have had a hard time, so they’re now at the top of the list for good jobs or promotions, followed by black men. Then it’s coloureds and Indians and then us white women, followed by white men, who are now at the bottom. It used to be the other way around.’