Tony Park - Silent Predator

‘I lied,’ she croaked, as Tom took her in his arms.

‘Hush.’

‘I loved him. Not Robert…’

Tom held her as she died.

‘Farming life agrees with you,’ Sannie said as she ran a hand over his bare tanned bicep.

Dressed in a short-sleeve blue and tan bush shirt and khaki shorts, Tom was at least starting to look the part of a lowveld farmer. ‘It certainly agrees with you,’ he said, dropping a hand to her firm bottom, caressing it through the thin cotton of her sundress. She giggled and slapped his hand away, then turned her face to his so he could kiss her.

They resumed trudging up the hill, the rich red earth clinging to Tom’s boots and squelching through Sannie’s toes. Since he’d seen his first cobra he always wore hiking boots on the farm, but no amount of persuasion could get Sannie or the kids to follow suit.

It had been two months since the shoot-out in Malawi and Sannie’s harrowing fight with Wessels. Christo had been to see a child psychologist a few times but, apart from an occasional nightmare, he seemed to be coping. Both Tom and Sannie had told him over and over that he had saved his mother’s and sister’s lives, and that his father would have been proud of him.

Still, Tom knew the boy would wrestle with his demons for some time, perhaps for the rest of his life in some form or another.

Tom had returned to England as soon as he knew Sannie, Elise and the kids were safely ensconced on the banana farm they had bought outside Hazyview, not far from the one Sannie had grown up on. Even so, he had spent the bare minimum amount of time in London, where the first snows had fallen more as grey, gritty sleet.

Shuttleworth had escorted him to a meeting with the Prime Minister in which he had been assured that, subject to signing a confidentiality agreement in which he promised not to mention any of the circumstances of Greeves’s death, he would be reinstated in his old job and considered favourably for promotion.

Tom had declined, settling instead for early retirement. When his home in Highgate was sold they would be able to pay off the bridging loan on the farm and live very comfortably for many years to come. Tom bagged his cold-weather clothes for charity and packed the album of pictures of him and Alexandra, which Sannie had said she wanted to see. He’d kissed the silver-framed photo of her taken on their wedding day and said, ‘You’d like her, Alex.’ He’d boarded the evening BA flight to Johannesburg with no regrets.

He knew nothing about banana farming, but Sannie and Elise were teaching him what they knew, and their neighbours were filling in the gaps. He’d thought they would eventually move to the coast — perhaps Durban or Cape Town — but Sannie had rejected both of those options. The longer he stayed, however, the more he thought of the farm as somewhere he could live, rather than just hide out.

‘When are you going to stop wearing this?’ Sannie asked, lifting the tail of his shirt which he habitually wore hanging out to hide the Glock in its holster.

‘You know when,’ he said.

Tom slept fitfully.

The electricity was out — again. Whether it was load-shedding or the failure of an ageing substation, he wouldn’t know until the morning, but either way it annoyed him. He had no regrets about moving to Africa, but it was sometimes not easy learning to live without things he took for granted in England.

A mosquito buzzed around his ears. No matter how often he slapped himself, he never hit it.

Sannie lay on her back, her chest rising and falling rhythmically. Her golden hair was in disarray, one bare leg sticking out from under the sheet. They had made love when they’d gone to bed. If she’d said she wanted to move to a malarial swamp in the upper reaches of the Amazon, he would have gone with her. He loved her.

He smacked his cheek again, swore quietly, then got up.

He padded on bare feet to the farmhouse’s kitchen. Instinctively he flicked the light switch, but nothing happened. He turned on the rechargeable battery-powered camping lantern on the bench. Inside the fridge was a bottle of water that was still cold. He poured a glass and moved to the window to drink it. He looked out over the seemingly endless rows of banana trees and marvelled at how his life had changed. For the better.

Roxy’s basket was empty. He wondered if she was off chasing a bush baby — one of the small, bushy-tailed primates that lived in the native trees near the house and cried like human babies most nights. But all was quiet.

Normally the big Rhodesian ridgeback was good at sensing movement, and would have been at the kitchen door, tail wagging, hoping for a midnight snack. She only barked at black people — a legacy of the former white owners of the farm who had trained her — but she was usually alert to anyone who was up and about after hours.

Tom took the keys from their hook inside the pantry and unlocked the door. He reached for a mosquito that had hitched a ride on his shoulder blade, missed and scratched. ‘Roxy?’ he called softly.

He walked along the verandah that surrounded the nineteen-fifties whitewashed house. He loved sitting out here with Sannie in the afternoons, watching over the rim of his beer glass the sun go down. He didn’t want to wake the children, but he was sure Roxy would find him by the time he reached Ilana’s bedroom.

He was about to turn back towards the kitchen, giving up on the stupid dog, when he saw the curtain.

Ilana’s window was open.

He lengthened his stride. The fabric hung limply out of the window. The sliding flyscreen should have been down, and the strut that held the window open latched firmly in place. Sannie checked it every night. She was more careful about protecting her children than her husband-to-be from insects.

Tom felt his heart beat faster. He held the curtain to one side and looked in.

‘Ilana!’

He retraced his steps and ran inside. Sannie already had her shorts on and was sitting on the bed pulling a T-shirt over her head when he entered the room. ‘What’s wrong, Tom? Did you call me?’

Tom moved to his side and pulled the Glock from under his pillow. As always, it was already racked. He took a breath. ‘Ilana’s gone.’

Sannie put a hand to her mouth. ‘My baby! Christo?’

‘He’s…’

‘Mommy? Where’s Ilana?’ Christo walked into their room. ‘She’s not in her bed.’

Tom saw the dawning fear and realisation on the little boy’s face. ‘Is it that man?’

Tom had his mobile phone out and was dialling a number. He held it up to his ear as Sannie opened her wardrobe and reached under a pile of winter jerseys. She slapped a magazine into the butt of her RAP 401 and cocked it.

‘Mommy?’

‘Mommy and Tom are going to look for Ilana, Christo. I want you to

…’

Elise walked into the bedroom, tying a robe in front.

Tom had the phone to his ear and was waiting for an answer. ‘Sannie, you’re not thinking straight. You stay here and look after Christo. I’ll get…’ He held up a hand to silence her protest. ‘Hello, Duncan? You’re awake already?’

Duncan Nyari had left his job as a guide at Tinga and was helping Tom and Sannie out on the farm, and running a small freelance tour business from the old manager’s house, where he now lived. ‘Birds making too much noise down the fence, Tom. Thought it might be that leopard that killed the dog on old Du Toit’s farm.’

Tom told him Ilana was gone and ordered him to come to the house to help him look for spoor.

‘ Yebo,’ Duncan replied. ‘I’ve got the shotgun.’

Sannie took Christo’s hand. ‘Come, put some clothes on, my boy.’

‘I have to get you to safety,’ Tom said. He dialled the emergency number for the police.