Ivory (23 page)

‘It must have been beautiful in its day.'

‘It still is.'

He was looking at her, searching her eyes. The last of the sun lit his face a golden bronze. He raised his glass to hers.

‘What are we drinking to?'

‘Africa?'

‘A bit corny,' she said. ‘Besides, you forgot the wind-up gramophone.'

He laughed. ‘How about to you, then?'

‘Inappropriate.'

He was flirting with her, and she knew it was wrong, but she was enjoying it as well – the risk, the location, the fact that he was not her boss or married. There was no future for her with a man like Alex Tremain. He was a criminal and a womaniser, judging by the fact she was wearing cast-off clothing from two different women.

‘Your skin looks beautiful in this light.'

‘Alex, please.'

‘No, I mean it. It's just an observation, nothing more. The photographers call this time of day in Africa, the ‘golden hour'. Just before dusk, and just after dawn. Beautiful.'

She felt her cheeks colour. Funny, that she had been thinking exactly the same thing about the way the light bathed his face. Don't do it, she told herself.

From far away came a low wheezing sound that rolled across the plain. It was a two-part moan rising then falling, which tailed off into a series of grunts. ‘What on earth was that?' She was grateful for the distraction.

‘Lion.' He didn't take his eyes off her. ‘It's not how it sounds in the movies, is it?'

‘I suppose few things are the same in real life.' She sipped her wine. His stare unnerved her, just as it churned her insides, in a good way.

‘It's a male, perhaps calling to his mate.'

She looked in the direction the sound had come from, but saw nothing. It felt as though every nerve ending in her body was tingling, from a mix of fear and excitement The noise started again and she thought it odd how even before she knew what it was, it had raised the downy hair on her arms and brought up goose bumps. Jane started to speak, to ask how far away he thought the cat was, but he stilled her with a hand on her forearm.

‘Listen. There's the female. Far off, but not as distant as you might think. Some people say a lion's roar will carry five or more kilometres, but that's rubbish. In my experience, it's no more than one at the most. They're close.'

They were sitting atop a concrete ruin with no fence or gate to protect them from the lions that might decide to come and reclaim ‘their' house. She was nervous about the animals, but her heart was pounding because Alex hadn't moved his hand. He was blatantly trying to seduce her and her logical lawyer's brain told her that it was just a different approach to Mitch's to get her to tell him what she had done with the package Captain MacGregor had given her.

‘Is it safe – here, I mean?' she said, looking down at his hand.

‘I'd never let anything hurt you, Jane.'

She wanted to believe him. She took a big sip of wine, breathed deep and was about to take another when he reached up and took the glass from her.

‘Hey . . .'

He raised himself up on his knees so his face was level with hers, and kissed her. She leaned back, the concrete digging into her spine, but she barely noticed. She'd been surprised, and pursed her lips initially, but the warmth inside her spread like lava and she opened her mouth to him.

She thought of George and his interest in the package. Damn him and damn Alex.

She broke the kiss, despite her body's betrayal of her resolve.

‘No, Alex. This isn't right.'

In the gathering darkness there was silence. He looked away from her into the gloom. No frogs croaked, no birds sang, no insects chirped.

‘The lions,' she said, once she regained her breath. ‘They've stopped calling.'

‘They've found each other.' He stood up and gathered the glasses and half-empty bottle.

M
itchell Reardon presented his passport to the bored-looking Mozambican official at the immigration desk at the grandiosely named Vilanculos International Airport. Alex really was a sap, he thought. If he were him he would have dealt with a dissenter with a bullet in the head.

No, that wasn't right. What Mitch would have done was cut Alex, then truss him up and drag him slowly through the water behind the
Fair Lady
, trawling for sharks. Mitch laughed to himself.

The immigration officer raised his eyebrows.

‘Nothing, bro,' Mitch said. ‘Just an old joke I remembered.'

The terminal building was small – the check-in area not much bigger than a suburban home's lounge room – and Mitch was able to brush his crotch discreetly against the denim-clad rear of a slim Italian woman as he sidled his way towards the staircase. He tramped through water, muddying the work of a woman who worked the concrete with a scrubbing brush.

Upstairs, at the small snack bar, he ordered calamari and a Manica beer and took a plastic seat under an umbrella. The tops of palm trees peeked above the blurred band of heat haze that boiled up from the narrow, pitted runway. The lone Pelican Air twin turboprop aircraft
sat waiting for the mixed bag of construction workers and rich foreign tourists to board.

A middle-aged couple in matching safari khaki emerged from the stairs. Mitch smiled at the woman, an attractive blonde with nice tits, but the stuck-up bitch ignored him.

He grinned behind his raised beer as he remembered the way the German woman on the yacht had begged for her life and agreed, tearfully, to everything he'd demanded of her, before he'd slashed her throat.

He felt himself start to harden in the dead man's trousers. As well as chinos and a button-down shirt he'd plundered shoes, and a set of expensive golf clubs, which were now in the airliner's hold. He couldn't help but grin as he remembered the way the bitch had directed him towards a stash of fake jewellery, a few hundred greenbacks and two imitation Rolex watches, stashed behind one of the seats in the yacht's galley. You couldn't fool a pirate that easily. He knew some pleasure sailors kept a stash of fake valuables – even wallets filled with expired credit cards – as a means of fooling bandits. That shit might work on some Somali fisherman, but not on a former US Navy SEAL. No sir.

‘Another beer,' he said to the waitress who collected his empty.

The blonde woman's husband was in the john and Mitch smiled at her again. She continued to ignore him, pretending to read a magazine. It would have been easy, once they were in Johannesburg, to tail her and her man back to their home or hotel. But he had other business on his mind.

Revenge.

Mitch had grown tired of playing second fiddle to Alex on the island and had become increasingly disgusted at the other man's weakness. What kind of pirate limited his takings to building materials and cars? They could have made a fortune ransoming or selling the ivory and rhino horn. The leopard would have been fun to hunt. He'd hunted three others of the big five – lion, buffalo and elephant – on trips to the mainland. He would have liked to see the big cat die.

He was certain he could take command on Ilha dos Sonhos if he could get Alex out of the way for good. Damn Alex. He would have had
some serious fun with that bitch, whether she'd told him the location of the diamonds or not. And then he would have done the sensible thing – killed her. Alex had no backbone, but the men respected strength. All had killed in the course of duty and none was squeamish. Novak was Alex's closest friend and ally and, while all would swear their allegiance to Tremain publicly, Mitch had already proved to himself that he could divide and conquer the gang. Henri had voiced some initial misgivings about torturing the woman, but he had also agreed with Mitch that Alex's softly-softly approach with her was a waste of time. Mitch had been able to talk the gay Frenchman around. The others would be difficult, but not impossible. The cracks were there . . . Mitch just had to bust them wide open.

Jose, as the man with some vague ancestral claim on the island, was another kettle of fish. He was intensely loyal to Alex. They were like brothers, but without an income Jose and the villagers would have to pack up and move to the mainland. Sure, they could fish for their supper, but Mitch had seen the way Jose liked to flash his gold chains, designer clothes and new BMW when he was around the ladies in Vilanculos. He'd grown used to the stream of income piracy had brought to the island. Alex had invested his share of the loot in that crumbling money pit of a hotel, more fool him, though he hadn't begrudged his local ‘partner' from spending his takings on material possessions. Nope, Jose had tasted western consumerism in all its glory and he would follow the dollar once Alex was dead. Kufa, the Zimbabwean, would do as he was told.

Alex's childish dream was that they would steal until there was enough money to reopen the resort and go legit. Supposedly Mitch and the others would then either retire gracefully or take up gainful employment as cabana boys and bartenders. Mitch wanted more in his old age than a redundancy payment, or the promise of tips and vacationing rich widows. He wanted it all: the island, Alex's sleek boat, and a licence to rob, kill and fuck at will.

‘Pelican Air Flight 401 to OR Tambo Airport, Johannesburg, is now ready for boarding,' said a voice through a tinny public-address system.
The aircraft's starboard engine whined and the propeller began to turn.

Mitch finished his beer slowly, unlike the tourist couple, who left their drinks half full and hurried downstairs. The man shot him a backward glance – his bitch wife must have said something. Mitch just smiled at him.

Yep, he thought, he wanted it all, and soon he'd have it.

 

‘A photo?' George Penfold tossed the glossy print on the table of the open-air coffee shop outside the Melrose Arch Hotel. He lowered his voice to a serpentine hiss. ‘You kill two people, and all you bring me is a bloody photograph? I was told you were the best, Van Zyl.'

On the street, an African in a Zegna suit eased himself awkwardly out of a low-slung canary-yellow Lotus and handed the keys to the hotel's valet parking attendant. George looked out across the mock-Italian cobbled square at yuppies with Bluetooth receivers in their ears, talking and gesticulating on their way to work like lunatics conversing with God. Nothing was understated in Johannesburg. The morning sunlight that glittered off a white woman's chunky gold necklace and diamante-encrusted sandals was diffused by the smoke from shanty-town cooking fires somewhere beyond Melrose's border.

Melrose Arch was like an industrial estate for bankers, jewellers and insurance companies – a mini suburb with cafes and upmarket bars and restaurants rather than supermarkets and fast-food joints. It was part Milano piazza, part Manhattan rush hour, part London drab. Like most fusions it had failed to create an identity for itself, but that didn't matter. Only money did.

Piet leaned back in the sculpted white plastic chair and sipped his cappuccino. ‘The Novak woman pulled a gun on me. It was self-defence.'

‘I read the newspaper on the plane. What was the maid carrying, a butter knife?'

‘I thought this was important to you, Mister Penfold, recovering your lost property and finding the English woman.' He laid his cup back in
its saucer and dabbed his lips with a serviette.

George pinched the bridge of his nose. He'd slept fitfully in first class on the overnight BA flight from London and he'd been up most of the previous evening, giving the blonde hooker the thrashing she so richly deserved and, he was sure, secretly craved. The sex and the punishment had not relieved his tension, nor lessened his concerns. The only bright light was that Jane was alive and would soon be joining him. She'd said on the phone that MacGregor had given her nothing, but George thought he'd detected a trace of dissembling in her pauses before answering. Time would tell. In the meantime, he was seriously doubting the wisdom of hiring Van Zyl. Not because of his ruthless disregard of human life, but because of his failure to deliver. ‘It is important, Mister Van Zyl. Which is why I am so monumentally unimpressed that all you bring me for the loss of two lives is a piece of paper with no names on it.'

‘One name. Check the sign on the front of the hotel. I enlarged the writing on my laptop. It says
Ilha dos Sonhos
– Island of Dreams.'

‘And where exactly is that?'

‘Off the coast of Mozambique, in the Bazaruto Archipelago. It's at the epicentre of fifteen recorded acts of piracy in the last twelve months. Novak, the South African, is second from the left. I can find out who the other men are, but the important thing is we have a location.'

George pursed his lips. The coffee was too cold to drink and his flight had been delayed an hour on the tarmac. Did nothing go according to plan on this godforsaken continent? ‘I'm listening, Mister Van Zyl, but only because I have no one else to see for the next hour.'

‘My men and I take that island. We take your pirates out of the game and we find out from those we take alive what they have done with your package, since you say the woman doesn't have it.'

George had read the reports of the damage done to his company's flagship – the vessel that was named after him. The criminals residing on the Ilha dos Sonhos would be an even greater thorn in his side to his legal and illegal cargo operations once he bought out the South African shipping company. They had to be dealt with. ‘Why should I trust you
to recover my property?'

‘You should have trusted me with your true agenda before sending my men and me to rendezvous with the
Penfold Son
. If you had, we could have tightened security on board. MacGregor was a fool to keep your goods in the ship's safe. It's hard to ensure the safety of something when you don't know it exists. My men and I are soldiers, Mister Penfold. We would, naturally, expect a finder's fee for goods recovered, but I'm also looking for a business partner, someone with the wealth to back other ventures I might have in mind in the future. I would think that a retainer arrangement would be of mutual benefit, now that I'm aware of, shall we say, the full suite of your shipping activities.'