Tony Park - Silent Predator

Tom could read the signs — he wasn’t blind. Carla was pretty, flirtatious, sexy and getting increasingly drunk. He played a straight bat and said, ‘We’ve got an early start tomorrow, so I really should get some shut-eye.’

‘The security guard’s just seeing the girls back to their quarters. I’ll escort you — if you trust me to ward off any dangerous game, that is.’

He wouldn’t trust Carla behind the wheel of a car right now, and he had no idea how she would see off a lion if she couldn’t walk a straight line, but he shrugged and said, ‘Of course I trust you.’

Carla took a torch and walked ahead of him. He couldn’t help but notice the pleasing way her pants clung to her firm bottom.

‘Here we are, home sweet home. Nice and safe from the predators.’ She leaned against the wall beside the doorframe as he opened the door.

‘Night, Carla. Thanks for everything.’

‘Night,’ she said, and he thought he saw the trace of a pout crease her lips.

Tom turned on the lights inside and slipped off his shoes. With only an hour’s time difference from the UK he wasn’t jetlagged and, despite the impression he’d given Carla, he wasn’t all that tired. The game drive had been a buzz and he still hadn’t come down from it. While he was tossing up whether to have a final beer or not, there was a knock at the door.

Carla stood there, a wicked grin curling the corners of her mouth. ‘I didn’t ask you if you wanted your bed turned down, sir.’

She put her palm on his chest and pushed him into the room.

‘You look a little bleary-eyed. Did you stay up late jolling?’ Sannie asked, looking up from her book and a plate of bacon and eggs.

‘If you mean partying, no. I got to bed soon after you,’ Tom said.

When the waitress came, Tom said he was famished and ordered a full cooked breakfast. Sannie asked nothing about Carla’s movements during the night and he volunteered the same as she finished her breakfast and he tucked into his.

The drive back to Johannesburg was uneventful and their conversation sporadic and mundane. Sannie thought he was being particularly guarded today, and wondered if he had something to feel guilty about. Carla had been all over him after dinner and had made Sannie feel like a third wheel. The line about having a policeman boyfriend to protect her from car-jackers had been the final straw. She recalled once telling the woman what had happened to her husband. Perhaps Carla had forgotten in her drunkenness.

Sannie was feeling a little guarded herself. She had talked too much about Christo. Perhaps it was the fact that Tom had also lost his partner that encouraged her to open up more than she normally would have. Perhaps it was just as well that Carla had intruded after dinner — who knows what else they would have gotten around to discussing and where it would have led. She certainly wasn’t the kind of woman who slept with a man the first day she got to know him, but she had recognised her own feelings of physical and emotional attraction to Tom. He was a good-looking guy, smart, sensitive and almost childlike in his awe at his first visit to the bush. She liked that about him the most. Also, he was still in pain, as she was, and maybe her maternal instincts were taking over, making her want to look after him.

Stupid, she thought. She had two kids already and didn’t need another dependent — or a one-night stand or a boyfriend who lived half a world away. When the time was right for her to be with another man she would know it. It had been wrong with Wessels and it definitely would not have been right with Tom last night. Her cell phone rang.

‘Hello?’ Sannie listened to the woman on the other end of the line. ‘Oh no!’ She shook her head. She told the caller in Afrikaans she would be there as soon as possible.

‘Everything all right?’ Tom asked.

‘That was my kids’ school. My boy fell in the playground and has cut his head. They’ve put some Band-Aids on him but they think he should see a doctor. My mom’s in Pretoria visiting my aunt.’

‘Well, don’t mind me. I’ve still got a few hours to kill before the flight.’

‘I’m sorry, Tom, but thanks. It won’t be far out of our way. Maybe I can pick him up, then drop you at the airport on the way to the doctor.’

‘Get your boy seen to first. I’ve got nothing better to do in the meantime. If worse comes to worst I can call a taxi later.’

She thanked him again and put her foot down. Bugger the speed traps, she thought. If her boy needed stitches he might be suffering a concussion as well. It was good of Tom not to make a big deal about getting to the airport. He asked if she had a car charger for a cell phone — his was the same make as hers — and she told him it was in the glove compartment. He set it in the console next to her Z88 pistol as she drove at breakneck speed to the school.

Sannie turned off the N12 on the R21 exit, barely checking her speed. It was late morning so the traffic wasn’t too bad. Though she was trying to be calm for Tom’s benefit she was dreadfully worried about Christo, who had been named after his father. With her job and its irregular hours she felt guilty sometimes that she did not see enough of him and Ilana. Her mother picked them up from school most days and was with them three or four nights a week. What could she do? She had to put food on the table and that was enough of a struggle on her basic wage, even with the overtime she earned protecting dignitaries at nights and weekends. She didn’t want to go back into uniform, or into homicide or any other detective branch for that matter. She loved what she did and, as usual, told herself she would just have to live with the guilt.

When she arrived at the primary school in Kemp-ton Park, Christo’s teacher, Mrs De Villiers, was there to meet her. Sannie holstered her weapon and told Tom he should wait in the car, but he said he would come with her. That was a nice gesture, but Sannie could see the enquiring look in Mrs De Villiers’s eyes when she was introduced to Tom. ‘Tom’s a work colleague, on assignment here from the UK,’ she explained, putting paid to any rumours before they circulated around the school staffroom and the other mothers.

‘Hello, you’ve been in the wars, eh?’ Tom said to Christo when they found him lying on a bed in the sick room. Christo looked down, shy in front of the stranger.

Sannie hugged him then held him at arm’s length to inspect the cut under the Band-Aids. His dark thick hair — a legacy from his father and yet another constant reminder of him for Sannie — was matted with dried blood and the gash looked quite nasty. ‘Are you okay, my boy? How do you feel?’ she asked him in Afrikaans.

‘Fine, Mom,’ he replied.

‘ Ag, you’re so brave. Still, we have to get you to the doctor to make sure everything is fine.’ Sannie switched to English. ‘This is Mr Furey, Christo. He works with Mommy. He’s from England.’

‘Hello,’ Christo said, holding out his hand, which Tom shook. Sannie was proud of his manners. ‘Do you play rugby in England?’

Tom laughed. ‘Not me. I used to play football — soccer.’

‘That’s funny,’ Christo said. ‘Do you know Kaizer Chiefs?’

Then Sannie laughed, and said to Tom, who was shaking his head, ‘Soccer’s mostly played by the black Africans in this country. That’s why he’s interested in you playing it. Come, let’s go.’

Mrs De Villiers returned a few minutes later with little Ilana, whose hair colour and cut, nose and mouth were all carbon copies of her mother’s. ‘Christo fell over, Mommy. Who’s this man?’ she asked in Afrikaans.

Sannie repeated the explanations and introduced Tom, but Ilana maintained a shyness act in front of the British policeman. Sannie said goodbye to Mrs De Villiers and bundled the kids into the back of the car.