Tony Park - Silent Predator

‘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 colonial 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 — ’

‘Sod off,’ Tom said to the machine and stabbed the erase button.

The next message was from another woman and Tom was about to get rid of it before realising the person’s accent was so thick it was doubtful she was a British reporter. ‘Mr Furey, if that’s what I call policeman in this country, it is Olga Kamorov here.’

Olga? Russian, maybe? He didn’t know an Olga, but her voice did sound familiar.

‘We met in club, in Soho, few weeks ago. Oh, sorry, you know me as — ’

‘Ivana,’ Tom said aloud. The stripper he had interviewed when he’d been looking for Nick Roberts. Tom strained to hear the woman’s voice as there was music playing in the background; perhaps she was calling from the club where she danced.

‘I suppose you heard about Ebony — you are policeman, after all — but I wanted to talk to you about the man who used to come and see her dance all the time. Other police are not interested in talking to him, but I not so sure. Call me.’

Ivana — or Olga — left a mobile phone number and that was the end of his messages. Tom replayed the message and wrote down Olga’s details.

He sat on a stool at the stainless-steel topped breakfast bar and tapped his front teeth with the end of the pen as he thought. When he and Shuttleworth had discussed it on his return to England, they had assumed Nick had been set up by the black stripper, Ebony, and that it was she who had lured him into the terrorists’ clutches. Subsequent inquiries had showed that she never returned to work or her flat. She had simply disappeared.

Tom knew from Carla of Nick’s predilections for African women. Carla had presumably also passed this on to her comrades and they had used Ebony as bait to capture Nick.

Why, he wondered, was a black South African table dancer in league with Islamic fundamentalist terrorists? There hardly seemed a less likely fit, and the same went for the promiscuous Carla. Money would surely have been a more likely motivator for both women.

Tom tore off the page with Olga’s number and started making notes on a fresh sheet. He wrote Money at the top, then underlined it. Next he wrote the following:

Kidnap/ransom.

Why Bernard?

Why the Iraq angle?

A cover?

It didn’t make sense to him, and he scored a line through all of the points. He had talked himself out of the idea that Greeves had been abducted for money, though he was still unsure about the women’s roles.

He played Olga’s message back once more. ‘ I suppose you heard about Ebony.’

He hadn’t heard a thing about the dancer. What did she mean by that? Tom walked back upstairs, his stomach protesting all the way at its lack of food and coffee, and grabbed his cell phone off the bedside table. As he walked down again, he scrolled through the saved numbers until he came to the one he was looking for.

‘Morris,’ the voice on the other end of the phone said.

‘Dan, it’s Tom Furey. All right, mate?’ Detective Constable Dan Morris was another protection officer. He’d been one of the officers who was following up leads on Nick’s disappearance when Tom had left for Africa.

‘Oh, Tom. Hi. Hang on, I’m driving. Let me pull over.’

Tom waited, taking his seat at the breakfast bar again. He flipped the pad over to a new page and kept the pen in his free hand.

‘Sorry, mate. How’s life, anyway? Keeping your chin up?’

‘Just about. It’s no barrel of laughs, Dan, but I’ll know more after the inquiry.’

‘Well, you know all the lads are on your side.’

It was a statement rather than a question, but Tom thought it sounded like Morris was just going through the motions. ‘Dan, are you still following up this end on what happened to Nick?’