Vendetta, page 25
‘Is it possible to arrange private dinners at the lodge, away from everyone else?’
‘Of course,’ she said, pleased to be on safe ground again. ‘We can have a table set up at your suite, on your stoep if you like, and one of the wait staff will bring your food to you. You can dine alone if you want a break.’
‘I want you to have dinner with me,’ he said.
She looked into his eyes and was fairly sure that was not all he had in mind.
‘You have dinner with your guests some nights, don’t you?’
Mia nodded. ‘Er . . . yes.’
‘So if you had a single guest it would not be unusual to dine with him, or her?’
‘Technically, you’re right, but it would usually be in the main area of the lodge, where everyone else eats.’
‘I like you, Mia, and I want to get to know you better.’
Mia glanced over at Lisa, who was, as Mia had half suspected, watching them. Perhaps she just liked to watch over her boss all the time, but Lisa was attractive and Mia wondered if there might still be something between her and Tony.
‘I want to tell you more about your father, Mia,’ he pressed.
‘Really?’ That sparked her interest. Maybe she was misreading him and his intentions.
The next morning was going to be Luiz’s funeral in the nearby town of Askham, followed by a service at the lodge for all staff. Mia had mixed emotions. She liked this handsome politician but wondered if anything could come of a relationship with a high-profile man with an incredibly complicated personal life.
Mia took a deep breath. ‘Let me run it past Shirley, as we’re technically not supposed to socialise with guests in their rooms.’
He grinned. ‘Thank you. It would make me very happy, if Shirley agrees.’
‘We aim to please at Dune Lodge,’ she said.
‘Mia?’ Lisa walked over to them. ‘May I please have another gin and tonic?’
‘Of course,’ Mia said, feeling relieved. For a moment she had thought Lisa was going to butt in and tell her to stop monopolising Tony.
Mia went to the front of the Land Rover. As she reached for the blue bottle of gin on the fold-out table fixed to the bull bar, the bottle exploded.
Mia snatched back her hand and spun around. Lisa dropped her empty glass and screamed. There was a clang and a hole appeared in the passenger door of the game viewer. Mia realised that someone was shooting at them. ‘Get down!’
Tony jumped up onto the Land Rover’s running board and reached over the seats for Mia’s rifle, which was in a green canvas zippered bag on the dashboard.
‘Tony, get down!’ Mia went to reach for him, but another bullet slammed into the vehicle just centimetres in front of her, forcing her to duck.
Tony leapt down, pulling the rifle from the bag as he backed into Mia. ‘You get down.’
Another shot rang out. Mia registered that the rounds were coming from a high-powered rifle, some distance away. Perhaps the shooter was using a silencer, she thought, as she could not clearly hear the report of each gunshot, just the sound of their impact.
Tony placed a hand on her, urging her to drop to the ground. ‘Take cover. I’ve got this,’ he said.
Tony was on one knee, his body shielding her from the direction of fire. Evan had hustled Shirley and Lisa to the far side of the Land Rover. Tony worked the bolt of Mia’s rifle as he scanned the dunes.
‘Got you.’ He raised the rifle to his shoulder and squeezed the trigger. The big .375 boomed and kicked back into his shoulder. Tony worked the bolt again with practised ease.
‘Tony! Give me my rifle.’
Another round punctured the skin of the Land Rover, less than a metre from Ferri. He ignored Mia’s command, took aim and fired again.
‘I think I might have hit him,’ Tony said. ‘Get everyone into the vehicle, Mia, now.’
Mia scanned the dune line, where Tony had been aiming. She saw nothing. She got up and went to the other side of the Land Rover, where the others were crouching. ‘OK, everyone get on board, and stay low, between the seats, on the floor.’
Evan helped Shirley and Lisa up into the vehicle. The two women lay on the floor, with Evan hunched low on a seat above them.
Mia climbed into the driver’s seat and started the engine.
‘Tony, get in!’
He looked over his shoulder at her. His eyes were wide and bright. ‘No, you go. Get over the next hill, I’ll cover you. Wait for me there.’
‘Tony, no!’
Tony strode away from them, in the direction the gunfire had been coming from, his eyes scanning the dunes. He had Mia’s rifle up in his shoulder.
‘Crazy, brave bastard,’ Mia said. She turned to check all the others were safe and under cover, and noticed Lisa was now standing up and had her phone in her hand. ‘What are you doing?’
‘Videoing him. This is priceless,’ Lisa said.
Mia shook her head, rammed the truck into gear, and accelerated away. Glasses, bottles and the sundowner snacks flew from the still-raised table on the front of the vehicle. She drove down the game-viewing road and over the hill Tony had indicated. When she was on the other side she stopped and took out her radio.
‘Dune Lodge, Dune Lodge, this is Mia, we’ve got an emergency here at the big tree sundowner spot. Call the police. Shots fired – someone was shooting at us, over.’
‘Copy that, Mia,’ said Meshach, their head of security. ‘I’m sending the APU now, copy?’
‘Affirmative,’ Mia said. The guys in the APU, the Dune Lodge anti-poaching unit, were heavily armed and experienced and they would get here much quicker than the local police.
Mia turned to her guests again. ‘Stay here. I’m going back for Tony.’
The two women climbed down out of the Land Rover.
‘I’m coming with you, Mia,’ Evan said.
Mia shook her head. ‘Thanks, but no. You stay here with the others, please, Evan.’ She took a handheld radio out of the cubby box between the front seats and handed it to him. ‘Stay in touch, and you can contact Meshach at the lodge on channel six.’
He took the radio and, reluctantly, got out. ‘OK.’
Mia took off again, driving back the way she had come, accelerating hard and changing gears fast. When she arrived at the big tree, she saw that Tony had continued to advance towards the gunman. She swung the steering wheel to the left and drove into the sand. Pausing to put the Land Rover into low range, she gunned the engine and ploughed up the gentle slope of the dune towards Tony.
He looked back at the sound of her engine and she drove up to him.
‘He’s gone, I think,’ said Tony.
‘Get in,’ Mia said. As much as she admired his heroism, he had taken her rifle and gone off like a lone wolf.
‘Yes, ma’am.’ He laughed and climbed into the front passenger seat.
‘I’m glad someone’s enjoying this.’
She drove on, slowly climbing as the gradient steepened. When they got to the top of the dune Mia stopped and they both got out.
‘I heard an engine, like a motorcycle or maybe a quad bike, just as you were leaving,’ Tony said.
Mia put a hand up to her eyes and scanned the horizon. She could see an indentation in the sand where someone had been lying, and blurry tracks led over the next dune. Mia saw the glint of sunlight on metal. They both walked to the place where the shooter had been lying and Mia crouched down to examine several empty cartridge cases.
‘A .300 by the look of it,’ she said.
Tony nodded. ‘Poacher?’
Mia shrugged. ‘We have a small population of desert black rhino here on the reserve, but they’re intensively monitored. We don’t have a problem with poaching here because we have a very well-resourced anti-poaching unit that tracks our animals constantly, and we benefit from being far away from towns and main roads. This calibre’s too small for rhino.’
‘I wonder what he was doing here,’ Tony said.
Mia looked at him. ‘Who’s after you, Tony, and why? First the guy in your suite, and now this.’
He shrugged. ‘A conspiracy theorist could come up with a hundred possibilities. Maybe the government sees me as too much of a threat; hell, it could even be someone in my own party who’s jealous – this sort of thing has happened in the ANC, with municipal councillors and candidates bumping each other off. It might even be a jealous husband for all I know.’
‘This is no time for jokes, Tony.’
He smiled. ‘Sorry.’
‘Sjoe,’ Mia exhaled. ‘You’re not taking this very seriously. A sniper just tried to shoot up a game-drive vehicle full of tourists.’
‘It’s serious, Mia, but . . .’
‘What?’
‘For a moment, there, with the sound of the bullets in the air, the weight of the rifle in my hand, it was almost like being back there, being in my twenties again.’
‘Angola?’
He nodded. ‘People can say what they want about the war and why we were fighting it, and whether we won or lost, but I have never felt so alive in my life. It all came flooding back, just then.’
She frowned. ‘Give me my rifle back, please.’
He handed it to her and she checked that the safety was on. Mia scanned the ground and set off, following the tracks in the sand.
Tony kept pace with her. ‘I think maybe someone is out to get me, Mia. Rather, they could be paying someone to kill me.’
‘A hit man?’
‘Again, it’s not unheard of in our country, right?’
‘Who wants you dead, Tony, apart from the long list you’ve already hinted at?’
He increased his stride to catch up to her.
‘I think it’s someone here, at your lodge, right now, Mia.’
She stopped and looked at him. ‘Who?’
‘Adam Kruger.’
Chapter 22
The sun was low when Sannie woke, alone, in Adam’s bed. She checked her watch. She had been more exhausted than she thought – the long trip and their lovemaking had meant she’d slept for two hours.
‘Adam?’ Sannie called out as she sat up, then saw the piece of notepaper on his pillow.
Gone for a run in the gym and a swim. Need to think. Back by 17h00, the note said.
He had drawn a heart at the end of the sentence. Sannie frowned. She thought about going back to her own room rather than hanging around waiting for him, but five o’clock was in twenty minutes’ time. He didn’t strike her as a one-night-stand kind of guy, and if he was, he’d be facing a long bus ride home to Pennington. She decided to wait for him.
Sannie went to the bathroom and turned on the tap in the spa. She still felt miffed that Adam had snuck out on her, but the little heart at the end of his note also convinced her to relax and wait. She took a sparkling water from the minibar, added some foaming bath salts to the bathwater and slid in.
Just before five she heard footsteps on the stairs outside the suite.
‘Sannie?’
‘In the bath.’
Adam walked in and smiled. He was wearing rugby shorts and a sweat-stained T-shirt, which he pulled over his head. ‘I skipped the swim.’
He unlaced his shoes, which she saw were dusty, and brushed sand from his calves before taking off his shorts. ‘I thought you were on a treadmill, in the gym.’
‘I was, for a while,’ he stepped into the tub, ‘but one of the staff showed me a perimeter track around the lodge that they use for exercise; I was able to do a few laps, which was better than being inside. It helped me think.’
She stiffened in the water. ‘Is this where you say “let’s just be friends”?’
He shook his head as he sat down, then reached out and brushed wet hair from her eyes. ‘Not at all, but what now?’
She relaxed a little, then shrugged. ‘We’re both free, single and well over twenty-one. How about we play it by ear?’
He smiled, but she thought it looked forced. ‘Sannie, I . . . I have nothing.’
She reached over now and put a finger to his lips. ‘You’re studying and carrying out valuable research. I have some money, and I still have my job. I’m not sure how long I’ll stay in the police, or even if I’ll retire to Pennington or find another job. But for now, let’s just see where this goes – whatever this is. You don’t need to support me, Adam.’
He nodded, but looked pensive. She wondered if it was his ego.
‘Thank you,’ he said, then leaned over and kissed her. ‘You’re beautiful. Turn around.’
Sannie shifted in the tub so that her back was to him. He put an arm around her and drew her closer, so she was lying against his chest. His right hand moved into the water and caressed her inner thigh. She shifted her leg and he found the right spot, and Sannie rested her head back on his shoulder and closed her eyes. She let her body respond to his touch.
Adam kissed her cheek as she began to shake. He held her tight against his muscled body until she relaxed against him.
Sannie looked at him and smiled. ‘I feel like a teenager again.’
‘I would have loved to have known you at seventeen, before . . . well, before the army and all that shit.’
‘Yes, and before I saw what I did in the police.’ She reached over to a side table and took up a face cloth and soap. Lathering the cloth, she took one of his arms and began washing him. ‘Do you think it’s possible to recapture innocence?’
‘I know that it’s impossible to run away from your past, but maybe we can start over.’
She nodded. ‘I like that idea.’
He sighed. ‘If I’d wanted to run away, I wouldn’t have come here. I wanted to kill Tony Ferri.’
The sun was setting outside, the sky patterned with red clouds that looked like shell bursts. Sannie placed the arm she had been cleaning back in the water and started on his other. ‘You probably shouldn’t say that to a detective, just after the man you’re talking about was assaulted in his suite and you were first on the scene.’
‘He wouldn’t be alive if I was serious.’
She craned her neck. ‘You were?’
‘At one point in my life, maybe. After Frank died; but no, not really serious.’
‘Phew.’
‘You believe me?’
‘I have to. We made love and I’m lying in a bathtub with you.’
He ran his fingers down over her left breast as she continued to soap him. ‘Frank was angrier than me. I wanted to leave the past behind – he couldn’t. I felt guilty after he died, that I hadn’t shared his passion for revenge, that I hadn’t helped him with his digging.’
‘Frank wasn’t the police, and nor were you. If he had concerns that one or more of the others in your patrol had committed a crime, then he should have gone to the police.’
‘And would they have investigated something that happened in the apartheid-era army in a different country twenty years earlier?’
She stopped her washing and shrugged against him. ‘I don’t know. The problem with SAPS is that you have to report a crime to your nearest police station and hope that it gets to the right people. You can’t just go shopping for a detective who you think might want to open an historic case like this.’
‘What about you?’ he asked.
‘The Hawks at Port Shepstone are hardly likely to approve my travel budget. If Ferri reports the assault on him, in his suite, it’ll be investigated by the detectives at Askham. From what Mia told me they weren’t interested in digging too deep into Luiz’s death. Given that Ferri is a high-profile politician they would have to take his case seriously, but as I understand it, he didn’t want Shirley to report it to the police.’
‘I’ve been thinking about Frank’s death, Sannie.’
‘Go on.’
‘He was so fired up, about investigating Ferri and finding out the truth; I always had trouble understanding why he would give it all up and kill himself. I think he might have been murdered. Can you check something for me?’
‘I don’t know, Adam, what is it?’
‘Can you ask some questions about Frank’s death?’
Sannie frowned. ‘Maybe. The truth is, I’m curious as well. And Mia is a friend – which is a good reason and a bad reason for me to open up someone else’s closed case. I can make a couple of calls. I wasn’t in the Lowveld when Frank killed himself, but I know some detectives from Hazyview and Nelspruit who would have been around at the time.’
‘I’d really appreciate that,’ Adam said.
Sannie reached for him, under the water. ‘How much would you appreciate it?’
She swivelled her head again and saw that he was grinning.
*
After they had made love again, Sannie and Adam dressed for dinner.
As they walked along the path to the main area of the lodge, two vehicles arrived – Mia’s game viewer with Ferri, Evan, Shirley and Lisa on board, and a bakkie with four heavily armed anti-poaching rangers close behind.
‘They’re back early,’ Sannie said. ‘Mia said they’d only return around six-thirty or seven pm, after an hour’s night driving.’
‘And what’s with the armed escort?’ Adam asked.
Mia gave her guests the option of going back to their rooms to freshen up or heading straight to the bar. They all opted for the latter.
‘Stay close, Meshach,’ Mia said to a tall man in uniform. She came to Sannie.
‘Something wrong?’ Sannie asked.
Mia explained that Meshach was the head of security and anti-poaching, and told Sannie and Adam how she and the guests had been shot at by an unknown gunman using a rifle with a silencer at about four o’clock, at the sundowner spot where Luiz had taken his life.
‘A guy being assaulted in his tent and now this,’ Adam weighed in. ‘I take it that this doesn’t usually happen at Dune Lodge.’
‘If someone gets stung by a scorpion it’s a major event,’ Mia said.
