Piranha. Rudie van Rensburg

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      He was keen to know the judges’ opinions. But he was also anxious about not being able to be there. He didn’t like being parted from his most valuable stamps and he’d always handled his Cape of Good Hope triangles with even more forensic care than he did murder clues. He’d been assured that there would always be a watchful eye at the exhibition, but it wasn’t enough reassurance for him. He’d only be able to relax when the stamps were back in the safe in his flat.

      Sergeant Rooi Els’s muttering at the desk next to his interrupted Kassie’s thoughts. Rooi’s head was bent over a pile of accounts, and he looked exasperated.

      He looked up at Kassie and shook his head. ‘Geeznuts, Kassie. It sucks being a grown-up.’

      Kassie suppressed a smile with some difficulty. Since Rooi had got married two months earlier and moved to a bigger flat, the harsh reality of his new responsibilities had kicked in properly. The fact that Bugsy – Rooi’s pet name for his wife – had resigned because she was earning a pittance was contributing to his recent dark moods.

      ‘Bugsy not found a new job yet?’ Kassie enquired.

      Rooi sighed. ‘No. She’s so bloody picky. Meanwhile, we’re surviving on my overdraft.’

      ‘What about her retirement savings? She worked at that company for a long time, didn’t she?’

      Rooi snorted. ‘Most of it went towards a new fridge and a new stove … and the TV.’ He suddenly looked a bit guilty about his moaning. ‘On the other hand, we needed a new fridge and stove, and the old TV was pretty fucked.’

      The telephone on Kassie’s desk rang. He frowned. He wasn’t in the mood for a phone call just before knocking off, especially since the ring tone indicated the call was from the station’s switchboard. It could only mean trouble.

      ‘Kassie, there’s a woman on the line who insists she’ll only speak to you,’ said switchboard Betta.

      He sighed. ‘Put her through.’

      ‘Hello, Kassie,’ the woman said. ‘It’s Maria. Maria Wolhuter.’

      ‘Maria! Goodness! What a surprise. We haven’t spoken for ages. How are you? How’s old Barnie?’

      ‘I’m calling about him, actually. He’s disappeared off the face of the earth.’

      ‘Disappeared?’

      ‘Ja. It’s a long story. Can I ask you a really big favour?’

      ‘Sure, sure.’

      ‘You know where I live, right? Just around the corner from the station. Won’t you please pop around? I must speak to someone about Barnie. Today. If it’s not too much trouble …’

      ‘It’s no trouble at all,’ he lied. ‘See you in about twenty minutes.’

      He put the receiver down slowly. He’d heard that Maria and Barnie had marital problems. One of his colleagues at the Bellville police station had told him that Barnie had moved out some years before.

      Kassie had lost contact with the Wolhuters a long time ago. Barnie had been a colleague at Bellville’s detective branch and Maria had been in an administrative position there – which was where the two of them met. After Maria’s father died, she inherited a pot of money. She left the police and they bought a big house in Newlands. Barnie left the service a while later, apparently for a top-dollar job. And that was the last time Kassie had had contact with the Wolhuters.

      He’d never really liked Barnie much. The guy was quite a sharp cop, but he’d always been full of himself and he’d been quite loose with Maria’s inheritance in his final years at the police. He always wanted to show his colleagues that he was a little higher up the food chain than they were. After he got the big job, he cut all ties with his police friends.

      Kassie stood up, grabbed his windbreaker off the armrest and said goodbye to Rooi. His thoughts turned back to Maria. She was a lovely person, always friendly and thoughtful … She hadn’t deserved an asshole like Barnie.

      And now the asshole was MIA. Kassie shook his head. How could someone like Barnie just disappear?

      * * *

      Sophia Milton. British father. Italian mother. Brunette with extraordinary brown eyes, a friendly smile and long legs.

      On her first day of school, I couldn’t wait to chat to her at break. I noticed Vicci deliberately distracting Smiley so he wouldn’t join us. Sophia suddenly made all the other girls seem mousy.

      I planned to win Sophia over body and soul. I didn’t look too unattractive in the mirror and Sophia seemed to think the same. By the first Friday night, I’d already been invited to her house.

      We listened to her collection of Beatles records, music that was entirely foreign to me. I was used to the rhythms of Kadongo Kamu guitar music, which was immensely popular in Uganda at the time, but I oohed and aahed along with her about the Liverpool four.

      I was rewarded with a French kiss that made my heart beat like a Baganda drum in my chest, and after that Sophia was never out of my thoughts.

      Two weeks later we were officially a couple. By then, I’d been allowed the privilege of touching her left breast during an Alfred Hitchcock thriller in the dark little school hall, a fact I obviously shared with Smiley with great pride.

      I could see he was jealous and that he was dying to charm Sophia. But luckily Vicci, defending her territory against the Sophia threat with desperate perseverance, demanded all his attention.

      Sophia’s father was the only hurdle standing in the way of us getting to know one another in the Biblical sense. He guarded his daughter like a watchdog and regularly came in to check on us sitting on the couch in their living room listening to ‘A Hard Day’s Night’ and ‘Can’t Buy Me Love’. The goodbye kiss at the front door was never guaranteed, either – her father was invariably on the porch with his pipe when it was time to go home.

      So it was a dream come true when Smiley invited the two of us to their farm for the weekend. Vicci would be there too, Smiley said. Sophia’s strict father didn’t have a choice but to give in, seeing that Smiley’s father was the chairperson of the school governing body and one of the biggest contributors to the church’s limited funds.

      For the rest of that week, my mind was overrun with images of Sophia and me in the shower.

      6

      They hid behind a boulder on a hill. Natasha’s gaze swept over the bushveld below them, but Gert spotted them first through the binoculars.

      ‘Three of them,’ he whispered. ‘Just as we suspected. One of them has a gun.’

      Not far away, the leader of the SANParks anti-poaching unit had also spotted them. He waved his four teammates closer and spoke to them in whispers, though the poachers were still only tiny dots in the distance. He looked back at Natasha and Gert and pointed to where they were going to wait for the poachers.

      The men ducked and darted into the thick bushes, disappearing towards a giant baobab about a hundred metres from a group of five grazing rhino. They had to move silently not to alert СКАЧАТЬ