Tony Park - Silent Predator

However, there were things about this job that were already starting to concern him. For a start, he shouldn’t have been on his own. A protection team was normally made up of a bare minimum of two members. Another Met policeman, Detective Constable Charlie Sheather, was already in South Africa, but he had leapfrogged ahead to check out the Radisson Hotel in Cape Town, where Greeves would stay after his visit to Tinga. Charlie would do the advance for that leg of the trip, but he and Tom would not be working together until Tom flew to the Cape. It was against standard operating procedures, but the existing staff shortages had suddenly been made worse by Nick’s disappearance. Also, Greeves was a junior minister — defence procurement was important but didn’t keep the politician in the headlines, unlike the Defence Secretary, who still rated a full team.

There was a distant clunk somewhere back beneath economy class as the wheels were lowered and the flaps extended. Out the window he glimpsed rows of detached houses on small plots of land, some with swimming pools — suburbia. No elephants or zebra. He smiled to himself. Hot air rising from the sun-warmed African landscape produced some ‘bumps’, as the pilot referred to them, and Tom peered out the window as Africa rose up to greet him.

Tom registered little about Johannesburg International Airport, other than that the terminal was bigger, busier, more modern and more efficient than he had imagined it would be. The few South Africans he had met in London seemed to like nothing better than to berate the new rulers of their former homeland about corruption, increasing crime and a deterioration in services since the advent of majority rule in 1994. Tom wasn’t naive enough to judge a country by its arrivals hall, but it was a reminder that he should leave his prejudices at the entry gate. He was a man who dealt with facts, not anecdotes or rumours. He doubted he would have a chance to form deep or lasting impressions of African and South African democracy from one recce, but he would keep his eyes and ears open.

‘Detective Sergeant Furey?’

‘That’s me.’ Tom had looked past the blonde-haired woman in a smart business suit, with nipped-in jacket and skirt. She was about five-nine, four inches shorter than he, though her heels made up most of the difference. Her hair was cut short in a bob but the first thing he really noticed about her, other than her height, was her blue eyes. He knew he was staring at her, but couldn’t help it. He forced himself to blink.

She smiled away his awkwardness politely. ‘I’m Inspector Susan van Rensburg. People call me Sannie.’

When she extended her hand her grip was firm, the polished bronze skin soft and cool. He detected the Afrikaans accent before she got to her surname. She looked in her midthirties. No wedding band, though there were two rings on her right ring finger, one studded with diamonds. Where he came from, not many female coppers wore lip gloss on the job. ‘Tom. Nice to meet you. You got the email about Nick Roberts, then?’

‘Yes. Any word of his whereabouts?’

‘Nothing yet. You worked with him before?’ She led him to the terminal doors, ignoring an African man in a bomber jacket who asked them if they wanted a car. Tom had his travel bag over one shoulder, and he said, ‘No thanks,’ when a porter offered to carry it for him.

‘Yes, I’ve worked with Nick,’ she said, not volunteering any more information, no expression of concern that Tom could trace.

‘Are you usually assigned as liaison when Mr Greeves visits?’ Tom asked.

‘Yes. He’s a nice guy. Have you worked with him before?’

Tom shook his head. Interesting that she would volunteer a personal opinion about the minister but not the man she had worked most closely with, and who was now missing.

‘Well, I’m ready to go if you are.’ Tom carried a second Rohan travel suit, two short-sleeve business shirts, underwear and his toiletries in a carry-on bag, along with a pair of jeans, loafers and shorts and a casual shirt. He followed Sannie out through the arrivals hall. It was warm, though not unpleasantly hot, and shards of blue sky were opening cracks in grey clouds still heavy with rain.

‘Here we are,’ Sannie said, pressing the button on the key-chain remote. The lights flashed on a Mercedes. Not the latest model, but far from old. She popped the boot and he tossed his bag in and closed it.

‘It’s just the two of us,’ she said. ‘We’re short-staffed and there’s an Organisation of the African Union meeting on in Cape Town today and tomorrow. Still, we don’t need anyone else here for the recce as your Mr Greeves has been to Tinga and Kruger many times.’

‘I know what you mean about being short-handed. We’re running a bare-bones operation on this trip. I contacted the British Embassy’s security officer and even he’s too busy to come out to meet us today.’

Sannie shrugged. ‘I’ve met Giles a few times, but there’s nothing a security officer will be able to tell you that I can’t. Have you ever been to South Africa?’

‘Never. Is the crime problem as bad as the media makes out?’ Tom slipped off his coat and climbed into the passenger seat.

Sannie also took off her jacket and hung it over the back of her seat. As she got in she pulled a Z88 nine-millimetre pistol from the holster clipped to a narrow belt at the top of her tailored skirt. She smiled at him and placed the weapon in a slot in the centre console where most people would keep their sunglasses.

‘Right,’ Tom said. He’d thought it wasn’t necessary for him to bring his Glock on the recce — just more paperwork — but now he wasn’t so sure.

‘It’s loaded and racked, by the way. We in the police tell the general public not to try to fight back or use their weapon if they get car-jacked.’

Tom had read that armed car hijacking was a serious problem in Johannesburg and other parts of the country, with robbers often shooting their victims. In the UK the people with guns were usually underworld criminals who tended to use them on each other rather than innocents.

‘So what’s your plan if we get stopped by a thief?’

‘If the car-jacker shoots me before I get him, I want you to kill him, okay?’

‘You’re serious?’

She smiled as she indicated and accelerated into the traffic outside the terminal.

‘Is this a wind-up?’ he persisted.

Sannie looked across at him, unsmiling now, and said, ‘My husband was a police captain, also in protection. He had worked with Nick Roberts, protecting Greeves. I was still at home on leave, pregnant with my third child. He was off duty, on his way to pick up our son from a friend’s place. He was shot at a robot — traffic lights — before he had a chance to go for his gun. It was two years ago. I lost the baby.’

Tom nodded, staring out the windscreen. He was trying to find the right words to express sorrow for her loss, but he knew from his own experience that nothing anyone ever said was right — or made it easier. He looked across and caught her glancing at him before returning her piercing gaze to the road.

‘Thanks,’ she said.

‘For what?’

‘For not saying anything.’

It all looked so normal. The industrial suburbs on the border of the airport reminded him of Staines, near Heathrow. He saw as many white faces as black ones as Sannie took an on-ramp onto a six-lane freeway. Signs advertised mobile phones and department stores and a casino. Johannesburg — Africa — might look like other parts of the world, but the pistol lying between them spoke of the violent subtext of life in this part of Africa.

Sannie said nothing more and he watched the way she drove. Aggressively defensive, he would have described it. Watching her rear-view mirror, keeping her distance from the car in front. When the traffic lights — the robot, as she had called it — turned red she stopped five metres from the car in front, so she had room to manoeuvre if someone accosted them.