Tony Park - Silent Predator

‘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-sided-ness. ‘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.