Sannie turned off the N12 on the R21 exit, barely checking her speed. It was late morning so the traffic wasn’t too bad. Though she was trying to be calm for Tom’s benefit she was dreadfully worried about Christo, who had been named after his father. With her job and its irregular hours she felt guilty sometimes that she did not see enough of him and Ilana. Her mother picked them up from school most days and was with them three or four nights a week. What could she do? She had to put food on the table and that was enough of a struggle on her basic wage, even with the overtime she earned protecting dignitaries at nights and weekends. She didn’t want to go back into uniform, or into homicide or any other detective branch for that matter. She loved what she did and, as usual, told herself she would just have to live with the guilt.
When she arrived at the primary school in Kemp-ton Park, Christo’s teacher, Mrs De Villiers, was there to meet her. Sannie holstered her weapon and told Tom he should wait in the car, but he said he would come with her. That was a nice gesture, but Sannie could see the enquiring look in Mrs De Villiers’s eyes when she was introduced to Tom. ‘Tom’s a work colleague, on assignment here from the UK,’ she explained, putting paid to any rumours before they circulated around the school staffroom and the other mothers.
‘Hello, you’ve been in the wars, eh?’ Tom said to Christo when they found him lying on a bed in the sick room. Christo looked down, shy in front of the stranger.
Sannie hugged him then held him at arm’s length to inspect the cut under the Band-Aids. His dark thick hair — a legacy from his father and yet another constant reminder of him for Sannie — was matted with dried blood and the gash looked quite nasty. ‘Are you okay, my boy? How do you feel?’ she asked him in Afrikaans.
‘Fine, Mom,’ he replied.
‘ Ag, you’re so brave. Still, we have to get you to the doctor to make sure everything is fine.’ Sannie switched to English. ‘This is Mr Furey, Christo. He works with Mommy. He’s from England.’
‘Hello,’ Christo said, holding out his hand, which Tom shook. Sannie was proud of his manners. ‘Do you play rugby in England?’
Tom laughed. ‘Not me. I used to play football — soccer.’
‘That’s funny,’ Christo said. ‘Do you know Kaizer Chiefs?’
Then Sannie laughed, and said to Tom, who was shaking his head, ‘Soccer’s mostly played by the black Africans in this country. That’s why he’s interested in you playing it. Come, let’s go.’
Mrs De Villiers returned a few minutes later with little Ilana, whose hair colour and cut, nose and mouth were all carbon copies of her mother’s. ‘Christo fell over, Mommy. Who’s this man?’ she asked in Afrikaans.
Sannie repeated the explanations and introduced Tom, but Ilana maintained a shyness act in front of the British policeman. Sannie said goodbye to Mrs De Villiers and bundled the kids into the back of the car.
The doctor’s surgery was in a small shopping centre, surrounded by a fence of spike-topped metal poles and patrolled by security guards, low-key by Johannesburg standards. Tom went into the waiting room with Sannie and sat with the kids while she spoke to the receptionist. Fortunately the doctor would be able to see them quickly, after his current patient. She thanked the woman and went back to her family. Ilana, she noticed, was showing Tom a picture of a lion in an old copy of National Geographic. Tom asked her what sort of noise it made, and the five year old let out a mighty roar that caused an old lady sitting across from them to burst into laughter. The kids seemed at ease around Tom already and Christo was asking him if he had any scars.
‘I’m so sorry to drag you through all this,’ Sannie said to him.
‘Like I said, I’ve got nowhere else to go and nothing to do until my flight. Would the kids like an ice cream? I saw a shop next door.’
The two small faces turned to her, nodding their approval. They hadn’t had lunch so normally she wouldn’t have agreed, but with Christo injured and the kids so settled in his company it couldn’t hurt. ‘You don’t have to, Tom, but I’m sure it would cement the friendship.’
Tom left them. A cell phone started ringing in her handbag, but the ring tone was unfamiliar. It was Tom’s. In her state of concern over Christo she’d instinctively scooped up Tom’s phone from the Merc’s console, as she never left her phone open to view in a car park, even one with security. She looked over her shoulder out the window of the surgery and saw Tom had disappeared into the ice-cream shop. She could let the call go through to voicemail, but it could be something important. She answered.
‘Tom Furey’s phone.’
‘Hello? Oh, Sannie, is that you?’
‘ Ja.’ It was a woman’s voice. Just as she recognised it, the caller continued.
‘It’s Carla. Are you two still together?’
‘I’m taking him to the airport.’
‘Oh, cool. Look, would you be a dear, please, Sannie, and ask him if he saw one of my gold earrings this morning? I’ve looked everywhere and the maids can’t find it. The only other place it could have come out was Tom’s suite. It might have got mixed up with some of his kitundu when he was packing this morning.’
‘Sure, no problem. I’ll pass the message on,’ Sannie said and hung up. She felt queasy. Perhaps it was the smell of the doctor’s surgery. Perhaps not.
Tom sat in the BA lounge at OR Tambo International Airport, sipping a bloody mary he’d just fixed himself from the self-service bar. The lounge was in tranquil contrast to the bustling departure terminal upstairs.
He’d realised straightaway that Sannie’s change in attitude towards him was due to the message Carla had left. He’d tried, twice, to tell her what happened, but Sannie had shut down the explanation before he’d had time to get it out.
‘I told you, Tom, it’s got nothing to do with me. We’re all adults here. What you do in your off time is your business.’
She was right, of course, and he was a bit pissed off that her tone suggested he’d done something wrong when, in fact, he hadn’t. It was a shame, though, that their time had ended coolly, just when he thought he was getting to know her better. While he hadn’t pushed things over dinner, he wanted her to like him — and not just in the professional sense as two colleagues who would still have to work together closely. The kids had surprised him, as well — how much he enjoyed the brief time he spent with them. Ilana had pretended to read to him from a magazine while they waited for Christo to get his head stitched, and the boy had proudly showed off his sutured wound to Tom when he and Sannie had at last emerged from the doctor’s room. He felt a sense of loss now, as though he’d let something precious slip through his fingers.
The Daily Mail he was flicking through must have come in on the morning’s flight as it already had a small piece about the explosion in Enfield. The Home Secretary was reported as saying: ‘Security service officers had this house under surveillance because its occupants were suspected of having links to a terrorist organisation.’
Tom frowned. That was a bit of an oversimplification. The house was occupied by suspected people smugglers who had possibly provided refuge to terrorist suspects. The fact that Steve had found pornography on the computer also led Tom to suspect the illegal immigrants who moved through the house were bound for the sex trade. Still, he knew politicians liked to simplify things and the ‘T’ word was always good for a headline. He thought again about the computer expert who had lost his life. What a bloody waste. They’d probably never know what it was that he had been so excited about.
One thing there was no doubting, the occupants had to have been hiding something very sensitive in the house — presumably on their computer — to blow it up. He wondered if they were, as the government was speculating, in the process of planning another ‘spectacular’ in the league of the Twin Towers or the London Underground bombing.