Tony Park - Silent Predator

The rest camp consisted of a camping area and rows of bungalows, ranging from small rondavels, as Sannie called them, to larger, self-contained houses which would sleep a family of six. There were plenty of mature trees and the lawns were green and well kept, with some help, no doubt, from the trio of warthog that darted across the road in front of Tom’s Land Rover, their tails pointing straight up like antennae.

He found Sannie, Elise and the children at the top end of the camping ground, which occupied a series of terraces down one side of the complex. An electric fence, reinforced with thick metal cables to keep elephant at bay, surrounded the encampment.

‘Did you see the rhino?’ Ilana asked him.

He bent over and assured her that he had. The little girl had been warming to him over the past couple of days and he felt bad that he would soon disappear, as had the last man in her life. Sannie finished hammering in a tent peg, and stood and wiped her brow. She had made short work of setting up the nylon dome tent in which she, Elise and the kids would all sleep. She wore camouflage shorts, and a stretchy orange tank top that revealed her flat belly when she stretched and yawned.

With some direction from Sannie and the kids, Tom soon had his fold-out rooftop tent erected for the first time. It looked cosy, and he thought it would be even cosier if during the night Sannie climbed up the ladder to join him.

Tom engaged Elise while Sannie took the kids to shower, asking her to instruct him on the finer points of barbecuing — or braaiing, as the South Africans called it. He’d made a few attempts in his tiny back yard in London and on holidays in Spain, but none that could be classed as overwhelmingly successful, he told her. Elise laughed and talked him through the basics of lighting the fire, waiting for it to die down to glowing coals and then adjusting the circular grid which moved up and down on a metal pole attached to the wok-like fire tray. It seemed simple enough.

He cooked, with gentle encouragement and advice from Sannie and Christo, and the steaks weren’t nearly as burned as they might have been. It had been a long day for all of them, especially Sannie, and they were all in their tents by nine.

Tom lay in his rooftop bed and listened to the noises of the bush — the squeak of bats, the screech of an owl, the comfortingly familiar croak of frogs in the nearby dam. Far off, he heard the low groans of a lion calling to his pride. Sleep came slowly.

Sannie woke him at four, and chivvied him out of bed and into the Condor. At this time of year the camp gates opened at four-thirty. Elise was staying in camp, but Sannie and the kids were determined to go out and try to find the lion who had been calling again in the pre-dawn dark, closer to camp. They found him, no more than a kilometre away, lying on the bitumen road, still calling. He lowered his head and thrust out his snout, as if to squeeze every last little note out of his huge lungs. It felt to Tom like the metal panels on the Toyota’s sides were vibrating.

They drove to Skukuza, where Sannie had introduced him to Isaac Tshabalala. It brought back bad memories for Tom, but galvanised him for the long journey ahead. Sannie bought the kids burgers and ice cream for lunch and they all swam in a pool in a picnic site, located down the road from the camp on the banks of the Sabie River. It was, Tom noted, the same river that Tinga Lodge overlooked. As much as he enjoyed pretending he was part of Sannie’s happy family life, he found that he was itching to get on his way.

‘You’re distant,’ she said to him as they sat alone by the evening campfire. On Saturday night there was a wildlife documentary video screening at Pretoriuskop camp’s open-air cinema, and Elise had taken the kids so Sannie could have some private time with Tom. Hyenas whooped and cackled in the distance, but the noise was on the big screen.

He nodded.

‘Are you going to tell me or not?’

He looked at her. Every new angle, every nuance of the day’s lighting, seemed to reveal more of her beauty to him. Bathed in the orange glow of the fire it seemed as if the warmth he felt radiated from within her rather than from the smouldering coals. Part of him wanted just to hold her and let his body dissolve into hers.

She persisted through his silence, her exasperation rising. ‘Look, think of me. I’m still on the fringes of the investigation. If you’ve got a new lead, then tell me! I’ll give you a head start on this wild-goose chase you’re on, but if you find them you’ll need back-up. I can’t get a team of recce commandos to you with fifteen minutes’ notice, you know. What do you know about these terrorists that we don’t, Tom, that the British government doesn’t?’

‘If I find out anything new, I’ll call you,’ was all he said. He didn’t want her with him. He didn’t want to get her excited. He didn’t want her actions, no matter how well intentioned, to tip off his prey. For all those reasons, and for her protection and the future of her kids, he couldn’t tell her anything.

‘There’s no point risking your life on a private vendetta, Tom. The man you were sent to protect is buried in some unmarked grave in Mozambique. Even if you find the killers, it won’t bring Greeves back, or even resurrect your career. You must know that! Get it through your head, Tom — the man is dead!’

Tom’s face betrayed nothing — certainly not the one thing he was completely and utterly sure of.

Robert Greeves was still alive.

Tom eased his way into Africa.

Kruger was a National Geographic channel idyll of wildlife and scenery. He travelled north, leaving Sannie and her family behind to pack up and head back to Johannesburg. His mood altered with the changing landscape.

The south of the park was characterised by thick, dense bush, and plenty of humans on the road, in private cars and open-top safari vehicles. He was irritable as he inched around a traffic jam parked beside a rhino, but he realised part of the source of his frustration was leaving Sannie behind. Also, little Christo and Ilana had plainly been disappointed at his departure. He felt bad about having raised their expectations that there would be a new man around the house. He’d wondered what it would be like becoming a stepfather. It might have scared him if the kids hadn’t been so much fun and so well behaved — they were a credit to Sannie and the father they’d known so briefly. He pushed the thoughts of parenthood from his mind.

As he moved north, both the bush and the crowds thinned. Open grasslands replaced the long grass and thornbushes of the southern part of the park. He was gradually leaving what passed for civilisation, with all its attendant responsibilities, rules and commitments. For the first time in twenty years he was accountable to no one except himself. He missed Sannie, but he was free, too, to concentrate on the mission ahead.

He stopped at Satara camp, in the middle of the park, and camped near the perimeter fence. A trio of old male buffalos settled down to sleep just on the other side of the wire. Tom wondered if they thought they would be safer there, close to the camp. In the distance a lion lullabied him to sleep. He was getting more used to Africa by the day.

The next morning he rose early, but not to go in search of wild animals. He took the sealed road west from Satara to another of Kruger’s gates, Orpen. He checked his map of the park, which also included the private game reserves adjoining the national park. Wealthy South Africans had bought up land on the border of the public park during the apartheid years and developed a network of private reserves, run along similar lines to the national park but for personal gain. In the past, a fence had separated public from private land, but this had come down in recent years, allowing animals to migrate freely from Kruger into these adjoining lands. Some of the properties had been developed commercially, with lodges charging premium rates for foreign visitors to experience a luxury safari, while other tracts were held by individuals for their private use at weekends and holidays.