The Fallen (2 page)

Now she realised she must have inherited her father’s dislike of the ocean.

At last she broke the surface and pulled off her claustrophobic
mask. Treading water, she looked up gratefully at the cloudless sky and felt the coolness of the air against her face. It wouldn’t have this effect for long—not in this heat, with the humidity smothering the estuary like a pillow, but the first few minutes out of the water always felt refreshing.

Miles of sea all around her in every direction, stretching all the way to the horizon on the seaward side, and the faraway rolling outline of the forested dunes on the shoreward side. The vastness of that distance didn’t worry Jade too much. It was the depths below her that gave her the shivers.

Then Amanda surfaced beside her.

‘Short break?’ she suggested.

Jade nodded and they swam over to the dive boat waiting nearby and clambered on board.

‘Well, that seemed to go better,’ Amanda said in an accent that Jade had originally thought was from southern England, but which she had laughingly confessed was pure East End. ‘Fifteen minutes under, this time. That’s two minutes longer than on the last dive, and you went further, too. Quite an improvement, I think. How do you feel?’

Jade frowned.

‘It still doesn’t feel like my environment. I’m just not comfortable going so deep, although I know by scuba standards six metres is barely under water.’ Bending over, she eased her fins off, then unzipped the wetsuit, which was already feeling too warm, and pulled it down off her shoulders.

‘You’ll get there, don’t you worry. Most people take to it like a fish to water, ’scuse the pun, but some never get the hang of it. Others learn how to do it, but just don’t like it.’

‘Does that ever change?’ Jade asked, glancing longingly at her T-shirt and shorts that were folded up on the bench.

‘Oh, it often does.’

Amanda sounded so chirpy that Jade had no idea whether she was humouring her or not.

‘Just you wait. In a couple more days, we’ll have you out on the big boat, diving in a group with your boyfriend. That’s where you really want to be, isn’t it?’

Jade didn’t miss the sympathy in her voice. But she couldn’t argue with her, because the scuba instructor was spot on. One hundred per cent correct. She didn’t want to be here, taking private lessons that were being offered at no extra charge, thanks to Amanda’s kind-heartedness. She did want to be out on the big boat with police Superintendent David Patel, who might or might not be her boyfriend, but who was most definitely going to be her partner on this trip.

David already knew how to scuba dive, so Jade’s plan had been for her to complete the diving course with a couple of other beginners at the resort, which rejoiced in the name of Scuba Sands, and then to join David in exploring the rich coral reefs that lined the estuary in the iSimangaliso Wetland Park—reefs that Jade had been interested to learn were the southernmost in the world.

But nothing had gone as planned.

Jade’s own fear of open water had held her back. The other beginners had completed the course without trouble and had left that morning for a full-day’s diving out on the reef with Monique du Preez, the other instructor.

And David wasn’t even at the resort yet. He’d been supposed to drive down with Jade at the start of the week, but he had been delayed in Jo’burg after a drug-smuggling case he was working on had, in his own words, ‘hit the bloody fan harder than a shit-bomb’.

He’d messaged her last night to say that he was getting an afternoon flight from Jo’burg today and would be landing at King Shaka International Airport in Durban at four-thirty. As soon as she and Amanda got back to shore, Jade would set off to fetch him. But before that, she had one more dive still to get through.

She stepped over to the prow of the boat and grasped the metal railing. Just a few minutes out of the water and she was already starting to feel sweaty in the oppressive humidity. The sea was as flat and still as a pond, and the sun burned down from a metallic sky.

‘I’m not used to failing,’ she admitted. It was easier to say the words when she wasn’t looking at the other woman. ‘Up till now,
I’ve always managed to do everything I’ve wanted to do. Some things have been easy, like …’

She stopped herself. She’d been going to say: like shooting. That had come naturally to Jade. The first gun she had fired at the age of twelve had been a rifle almost as tall as she was, and she’d hit her target—a Coke can—at a distance of more than a hundred metres.

Admittedly, that gun had had telescopic sights. But the handguns she’d fired since then had not. Guns felt like an extension of her own body; shooting was almost as instinctive as breathing.

She had made a promise, though, that she wasn’t going to talk about her work activities on this holiday. Not with David there. Her ability to shoot, and what she had used it for, had caused problems between them that, at one stage, Jade had feared were permanent and would never be resolved.

Amanda laughed, obviously misinterpreting Jade’s sudden silence. ‘Yeah, I know. You can never remember all the things you can do easily when you’re thinking about the one thing you can’t.’

‘Cycling,’ Jade said, picking a safer subject. ‘I love to cycle. I bought a mountain bike a while ago and I try to get out on it at least three times a week. I’m good with uphills. They don’t bother me at all. Not when I’m cycling or when I’m running. I do that as well, and I’ve been training myself to run barefoot.’

‘Well, that’s incredible. Hills just about kill me, whether I’m on a bike or my own two feet. But I can see you keep yourself fit.’

‘I’d like to do the long cycle races one day. The 94.7 kilometre one up in Jo’burg and the Cape Argus.’

‘Ah,’ Amanda said. ‘And have you done the L’Eroica Chianti cycling race in Italy? I was wondering when I saw your shirt.’

Jade glanced across at her faded T-shirt that had, indeed, been a free gift to all entrants from the race organisers a few years back. She hadn’t completed the ride, though. She’d been assigned as security detail to a wealthy British businessman’s wife who’d gone there hoping to cycle the medium-distance route. But the woman hadn’t put in nearly enough training for the tough, 135-kilometre course over rough, hilly terrain, and she’d been forced to retire before she’d even reached the halfway point.
That meant that, as her bodyguard, Jade had had to swallow her disappointment and put her own bicycle in the back of the pickup van together with her client’s when it came round to collect the stragglers.

‘I didn’t finish it,’ she said. ‘I was there with a client who pulled out before the halfway mark. I was disappointed, but there was nothing I could do. It felt like a failure, too, even though it wasn’t my fault.’

Amanda gave a small nod and a shadow crossed her face.

‘Failure’s never easy to cope with,’ she said in a soft voice. ‘Especially when it’s not your fault.’

Her hand strayed to the small gold airplane pendant that she wore on a chain around her neck, and she slid it from side to side; an instinctive gesture that Jade had seen her make before, but thought Amanda herself was unaware of.

Taking comfort from the familiar action, perhaps.

Jade wondered what failure Amanda had experienced. Whatever it was, she clearly didn’t want to talk about it, and Jade wasn’t going to ask.

Changing the topic, she said, ‘That’s a pretty piece of jewellery.’

The dark-haired woman smiled.

‘My mother gave it to me when I started work at Heathrow.’

‘Flight attendant?’

Now Amanda’s smile widened. ‘No. Actually, I’m an air-traffic controller. I started out in England and then travelled around the world. That’s what I’m qualified to do; what I’ve always done. The scuba diving is just a hobby, really.’

Jade nodded, hoping her surprise didn’t show on her face. She’d never have imagined that the woman who had been so patiently teaching her to dive had held down one of the toughest and most responsible jobs in the world—co-ordinating the approach and departure of airplanes at what must be one of the world’s busiest commercial airports.

‘I see,’ she said. ‘Sorry.’

‘For what?’

‘Underestimating your abilities.’

‘You wouldn’t be the first one to do that. People see a dive
instructor in her thirties, working in a little resort like this, and they assume she’s a drifter who never had any ambitions in life. At least you asked.’

Jade smiled.

‘That was my old life,’ Amanda continued. ‘Up until last year. I’ve been here almost six months now.’

‘Are you enjoying the change? It must be far less stressful.’

Jade had thought Amanda would agree, but instead she looked away.

‘Not really,’ she said.

Her words struck a chord with Jade. Made her reflect on her own situation. She was qualified as a bodyguard and had years of experience as a private investigator, working on her own and with big firms. But that might well have to change now.

She knew David didn’t approve of the work she did, because of the danger to which it exposed her. Not to mention the fact that in solving her cases she often chose to go beyond the law, or that some of the cases she handled were not legal at all.

Could she do what Amanda had done? Turn her back on her previous life and start afresh doing something else? And if so, what on earth would that new career involve? Would it be too late to finish the law degree she’d started long ago, before she had decided that her heart and her talent lay elsewhere?

One thing was for sure—becoming a scuba-diving instructor was definitely out of the question.

‘Shall we go under again? Aim for sixteen minutes this time?’ Amanda asked.

Jade dug her fingernails into the palms of her hands. One more dive. Another visit to the depths. The time stretched ahead of her, endless as a prison sentence, but she had to do it. The only thing she feared more than being under the water was giving up on trying.

‘
OK
. Let’s give it a go,’ she said.

The tin roof of the small meeting room amplified the heat a thousand times over. Bradley felt as if the corrugated metal was a magnifying glass, and he was the bug trapped underneath.

Sweat poured through the close-cropped hair at the back of his neck. It had long since drenched the armpits of his starched shirt, sluicing straight through the thick layer of antiperspirant he’d applied earlier that morning and causing him to stink like a pig.

His chest was also slick with sweat, but his tie was still dry. More importantly, so was the large and heavy cellphone that hung on a lanyard around his neck.

He was sitting on a plastic chair in a room with a closed door, a sealed window and a broken air-con unit that seemed to be actively taunting him.

Bradley had been used to air conditioning that worked. Plush meeting rooms with upholstered furniture, audio-visual equipment, jugs of iced water and bowls of perfectly ripe fruit. There, in those cool and airy spaces, he would impress the chairman of the board, the directors, the committee members. Always aiming to be under budget and ahead of schedule, whatever marine engineering project he tackled.

He’d never found himself dripping with sweat in those meetings. And he’d never had to go into them with the kind of bad news that he had to break now. He’d always reported on successes, not problems, not that he could remember, anyway. And particularly not problems that he himself had caused.

Across the table from him, Chetty, his current employer, lifted a stubby-fingered hand and scratched his balding head. Chetty
wasn’t wearing a suit and tie, only a shabby golf shirt and a pair of chinos. And Chetty wasn’t sweating. Chetty was the kind of man who looked like he never broke a sweat. ‘So everything’s on track?’ he asked.

‘Ahead of schedule,’ Bradley said, starting with the positives. ‘All ready for action. You have a full team of workers now, ready for the final assignment.’

‘The work on the
Karachi
’s hull?’

‘Finished. And all the—er—special equipment you requested is in place.’

‘Any other issues?’

And there it was. Should he tell them or not? Bradley had no idea. His employers had said they needed to know about everything and anything that could possibly affect the outcome of this project. But this problem was personal, something that involved him. Did they really need to be informed?

Not if he could handle it, and make it go away. But what would happen if he couldn’t?

Chetty rocked back on his chair, a small smile on his pudgy face, looking for all the world like he was out relaxing on the deck of an international cruise liner and not stuck inside this suffocating little room.

‘Are we good?’

In that instant, Bradley decided he wouldn’t mention what was worrying him. He would sort it out by himself, in his spare time. It would be better if he kept his employers in the dark, he thought.

‘There is something, isn’t there?’ a voice said softly.

The words came from the third person in the room. A muscular giant of a man whose tight black T-shirt and jeans blended so well with his body that Bradley could hardly tell where skin ended and fabric began.

Bradley knew him only as Zulu. A code name or a surname—he didn’t know which, and he wasn’t going to ask. Even on this sweltering day, the man still gave him the shivers.

Zulu looked directly at him, as if he could see right into Bradley’s guilt-stained core.

‘What aren’t you telling us?’ he asked.

Chetty rocked forward on his chair. Its legs hit the floor with a thud.

‘Well? Is there a problem?’ His voice sounded suddenly sharp.

Bradley’s stomach churned with sick dread. He snatched a breath and started speaking, aware that his voice was now fast and panicky.

‘
OK
, I had a text message yesterday.’ He glanced down at his knees. ‘Not on this work phone. On one of my old numbers. It’s nothing to do with the job—almost certainly—but it seems that an old friend, well actually an old acquaintance, is attempting to blackmail me.’

‘What?’

Chetty shouted so loudly that he earned a glance from Zulu.