Silent Predator (41 page)

‘Well, let’s drink to your next trip to Africa,’ Sannie said, raising her glass. ‘It can’t be any worse than your last!’

Tom laughed. ‘To Africa.’

They left the pub after their second drink. Tom said he would drive Sannie back to her hotel and he didn’t want to be over the legal limit. He’d asked her if she had any plans for dinner and, as she didn’t, she agreed to let him choose a restaurant.

Once he parked the car, Tom suggested that as it was still early they have another drink, in the hotel bar, before dinner. The first two had made her feel mellow and she agreed, although she switched to
white wine as too many gins sometimes made her feel maudlin. ‘Let me put it on my room,’ she said as Tom went to pull out his wallet. ‘The British government can pick up the tab.’

‘Might be the closest I get to a retirement present,’ he said, raising his lager.

‘Stop talking like that, Tom.’

He raised his eyebrows at her stern tone.

‘I mean it. Stop being so damned resigned to your fate.’ She could feel her cheeks reddening, a combination of the alcohol and her sudden growing anger. ‘You can’t go down without a fight, man.’

He set his drink down. ‘I’m just being realistic, Sannie, but I never said I’d stop fighting.’

‘Tell me what you’ve got cooking. Why this sudden desire to go back to Africa?’

He nodded, as though it was a fair question. ‘I’ll need a fresh start. No one will give me a job here – not even as a night watchman at Tesco. In a sense, I’ve got nowhere else to go, so I may as well try Africa.’

She shook her head. ‘I don’t believe you. What else? There must be another reason.’

He swivelled on his stool at the bar, so that his body was facing her. He looked as though he was about to say something, but then thought better of it. ‘Nothing,’ he said. ‘Let’s go get dinner.’

‘All right.’ She felt disappointed, as if he’d been about to say something that would affect her. ‘Okay, but I want to get changed.’

‘I’ll wait down here.’

‘You’ll be legless by the time I get back. Come up to my room and you can watch TV while I get ready.’
Why, Sannie wondered, as they walked across to the lifts, had she made such a suggestion? She could feel his eyes on her as she stood looking up at the illuminated floor numbers, waiting for the lift to arrive. It was too late now.

Once in her room she handed him the television remote. ‘Make yourself at home. I’m going to shower as well.’ Though she didn’t want to say it in front of Tom in case he was offended, there was something about London that made her feel grimy. Between the overly heated indoor areas, which made her perspire, and the drizzle mixed with exhaust fumes and grit, she felt as though her skin was coated with a greasy layer of muck. Her fingernails, too, were filthy. She already missed the sun, even though she knew she’d be complaining about the heat in a month’s time.

Sannie grabbed her toiletry bag, closed the bathroom door, slipped out of her shoes and stripped off her business suit. The high pressure blast of hot water invigorated her and she decided to wash her hair as well. She could hear the TV in the room, so she knew Tom would be fine.

It was odd, she thought, being naked in the bathroom, reapplying her makeup and knowing that Tom was just on the other side of the door. It wasn’t until she went to hang up her towel on the hook that she realised she hadn’t brought her clean clothes in with her. Her bag was still on the bed. She blamed the extra drink.

Sannie finished her makeup and wrapped the towel around her, knotting it between her breasts. The hotel was nice and clean, but was not the sort of place that offered fluffy white bathrobes.

‘Excuse me,’ she said, emerging.

Tom stood and looked at her. She felt his gaze on her, saw the way he tried to keep his eyes on hers. She was painfully conscious of the skin she was showing. Her legs, which she was proud of; and her arms, which could have used another day a week in the gym to keep them toned. She darted across the room and grabbed her bag. As she lifted it the flap fell open – she’d forgotten that she had opened it to get out her cosmetic bag.

‘Oh,
fok
!’

‘Here, let me help.’

Tom dropped to one knee, as did she, but Sannie had to use one hand to keep her towel held together. With the other, she scooped up bras and pants, shoes and strewn clothing. It was very embarrassing, but he started to laugh.

‘Here, give me that.’ She reached out and grabbed the white silk blouse he held.

They were close, kneeling on the floor, their faces less than a metre apart.

‘Thank you,’ Tom said, still holding onto the garment.

When she pulled it she felt his fingers through the sheath of silky material. ‘For what?’

‘For agreeing to come with me today, for everything you did in South Africa, for …’

‘It’s nothing.’ Sannie still held the blouse and he wasn’t surrendering it. She continued to feel the heat of his skin through her fingers as she wrapped the fabric around her hand. It wasn’t nothing, though. She’d risked her career, her future – again – for this
dark-haired handsome man kneeling next to her in a hotel room in a foreign land.

She was acutely aware of her own nakedness under the towel, and the growing feeling of warmth radiating from her core. It was him, the excitement, the recklessness, the remoteness of all this from her normal life. It was why she’d invited him into her hotel room.

Tom leaned closer and kissed her.

Time seemed to stand still then, and the kiss went on forever. They were two starving souls and they consumed each other, first kneeling on the floor, then sitting. She was aware of the towel falling away from her body. The feeling of his body against hers, the brush of her erect nipples against the cotton of his shirt, was electrifying. Her skin suddenly felt hypersensitive, tingling. When he moved his lips to the side of her neck and down her collarbone to the point where it joined her shoulder she thought she might faint in his arms. God, it had been so long since she’d felt this.

Sannie held it all together, every minute of every day. The demands of a job in a male-dominated profession in which she had to do it tougher, harder and better than any of them; the constant struggle to spend enough time with her kids and avoid the guilt of not being a stay-at-home mom; the moments of grief that still brought her to tears – sometimes it was all too much. But here, now, so far from home, she wanted nothing more than for him to take her away. Physically. Mentally. Sexually. She melted into him, but at the same time felt her body stiffening with spasms of pure pleasure with each touch of his lips to a new part of her.

He lifted her, as if he sensed that was exactly what she wanted, onto the bed, then shrugged off his jacket. He looked down at her and she opened herself to his gaze, revelling in the lasciviousness of it. He started to undo his tie and slip off one of his shoes. ‘Don’t bother,’ she breathed.

His feet were still on the floor, his hands either side of her, as he leaned down over her. She reached for him, taking a few moments to trace the outline through his trousers, before slowly unzipping and discovering him.

He moved his hand between them, parting her, then finding her clitoris. She moaned and arched her back to push against his touch. She guided him to her as she felt his fingers, first one, then a second, enter her. She was more than ready for him, and when he withdrew she moved the head of his cock between her swollen lips.

‘Sannie …’

‘Yes, Tom. Oh, please …’

He entered her, like that, and she locked her hands around his neck and her legs around his waist. She lifted her hips to meet his thrust and he drove harder into her, so that her bottom was raised off the bedspread at the end of the first long, slow stroke. Her eyes were locked on his as he paused there, and she felt weightless, balanced on him. A part of him.

Tom started moving and she almost didn’t want to let him go from that place, until the friction started to work its magic, again and again. Holding her in his strong arms, he lowered his face to kiss alternately her lips, her cheek, the side of her neck, her collarbone
again, on the spot that still burned from his first touch.

Sannie kept her eyes open as long as she could, imprinting every ridge and furrow of his face into her memory. If she didn’t see him again after she left London, she wanted never to forget the man who had made her whole again. His every thrust sent another wave of pleasure through her.

And he, feeling her body grip, tighten and ripple over his cock, hearing her start to cry out, took up the pace, driving harder, yet still controlled, into her. She closed her eyes and drew her body up to his, moulding perfectly to him as she held him tight and cried again. As he joined her.

The guilt came, as Sannie knew it would, as Tom lay, naked, beside her an hour later. ‘Room service will be here soon, I should get my clothes back on,’ he said.

‘I’ll get dressed.’

‘No, stay there.’ He stood and pulled on his trousers and sat beside her on the bed as he buttoned his shirt. ‘You’re thinking about Christo, aren’t you?’

She nodded, biting her lower lip.

‘Me too – thinking about Alex, that is. I know I shouldn’t be feeling guilty, it’s not like you and I are having an affair …’

‘I know, but …’

‘But it’s all right,’ he said and by his tone she knew that he was reading her mind. Nothing that felt this good, this right, could be wrong. Christo would never leave her heart or her thoughts – and she realised Tom
would cherish his wife forever, but he had made her complete again. She wanted to be back in his arms, to feel the safety of his embrace.

She reached out and grabbed his hand as he started to move. ‘Yes, it is. All right, I mean.’

There was a knock at the door, followed by, ‘Room service.’

Sannie made Tom take off his clothes again to eat dinner, despite his protesting that it was embarrassing. They sat opposite each other on the bed, eating cheeseburgers topped with bacon and egg, and a side order of fat greasy chips. If she was going to throw caution to the wind she might as well go all the way. Tom poured her champagne and they clinked glasses.

She told him more about growing up on the farm, and the first boy she’d ever kissed. When she admitted that Christo was the first man she’d ever slept with she saw realisation slowly spread across his face. To his credit, he said nothing after learning that he was the only man other than her husband whom she’d had sex with. He simply leaned forward, wiped some ketchup from the corner of her mouth with his finger, then kissed her.

They made love again after dinner and washed each other in a long, soapy bubble bath.

Later, with the lights off, he lay staring at the ceiling, one arm crooked behind his head, the other around her as she snuggled into him.

She ran her fingertips through the wiry hair on his chest. ‘Are you thinking about the inquiry?’

‘No,’ he said. ‘Africa.’

Tom weighed the folded pair of jeans in his hand then tossed them aside. His bag was nearly full, in any case, and he already had a pair of lightweight tan trousers in there.

The clock radio on his bedside table was tuned to an FM music station and the news came on at the top of the hour. He stopped his packing to listen. The second item was a direct lift from the morning’s papers. The inquiry had ended the previous day and it was likely that Robert Greeves’s bodyguard would not face charges over the Minister for Defence Procurement’s abduction, but would ‘remain on suspension pending the outcome of a departmental disciplinary hearing’. The bastard DJ that followed the newsreader had even made a joke about it. Tom snorted. None of it mattered.

The result was predictable, but Tom had been more interested in some of the evidence that had been presented than in the outcome. The inquiry had been held in the Boothroyd Room, one of the committee
rooms in Portcullis House, the modern administrative neighbour and handmaiden to the grand old Palace of Westminster.

The room was named after Betty Boothroyd, a former speaker of the House of Commons. There had been a bronze bust of the formidable-looking woman on Tom’s left as he had entered that first day. In front of him, through thick, bulletproof windows, was a view of the Thames that took in some office buildings, a quadrant of the London Eye and St Thomas’ hospital.

The committee members, drawn from both the major parties and the Liberal Democrats, sat at beech-coloured desks formed into a large U-shaped arrangement. The chairman sat at the bottom of the U, resting a folder of notes on a thick glass lectern. Behind him was a tapestry of country fields, though for some reason it was all in shades of blue. Tom took one of the few vacant seats in the front of several rows of cloth-covered seats reserved for members of the public. In this case, that obviously meant the press, as he noticed a flurry of note-taking as he entered.

Inside the U was a small table with a man and woman sitting at it. There were notebooks in front of them. They were the recorders, and their position was lowered so that their heads were barely at the same level as the desktops at which the committee members sat. A bizarre little piece of subservience, Tom thought.

Looking around, he saw four television cameras mounted on the walls. Even though the media’s cameras weren’t invited, the proceedings were being
recorded. Edited excerpts would be released to the media at the end of each day’s session.

Over the first four days, before he had a chance to speak, Tom sat through the testimony of a string of police, forensic scientists, military people and ‘foreign office’ staffers whose names were suppressed from the public record. Spies, in other words. Tom had assumed that MI6 people would have accompanied the SAS task force, and he knew from what Shuttleworth had told Sannie that the SAS was playing a lead role in the ongoing hunt for the terrorists. There was nothing, how ever – perhaps deliberately, perhaps not – to indicate they were any closer to catching them.

Of particular interest to Tom was the senior civilian crime-scene investigator’s testimony. Her name was Rachel Rubens. She told the inquiry she and a male colleague had been flown to the old farmhouse in Mozambique on an Oryx helicopter – back-loaded on the same aircraft which had brought Major Fraser, the first of his men and the body of Bernard Joyce to Hoedspruit air force base.