Calder’s father was a strict Presbyterian; his grandfather had been a minister, and his English mother had had her own strong sense of right and wrong that she had inculcated in her children. What Calder had done was wrong. Incontrovertibly, irrefutably wrong.
He glanced at the married woman in question. She didn’t seem very pleased with herself, either.
‘I should find a hotel,’ she said.
Calder was about to protest, to feign hospitality, but he simply nodded. ‘The pub in the village will have some rooms. I’ll take you there this morning. When we’ve fetched your car from the hospital.’
‘I’m not sure I can face seeing Todd today,’ Kim said. ‘I know we did wrong, but I’m still furious about Donna. What if she’s there, lurking in the car park? And what will I say to Todd? I talk to him, you know. Even though he’s unconscious.’
Calder took a deep breath. In some ways it was easier to deal with Kim’s problems than his own. ‘How about this? Don’t see Todd today. Spend the day alone. Try to sort yourself out a little bit and then tomorrow go and see him. I’ll find Donna and get her to go away.’
‘How will you do that?’
‘I’ll do it,’ Calder said. ‘Don’t worry. That’s my problem.’
His mobile phone rang. Calder picked it up. ‘Hello?’ His voice was hoarse. At first there was silence down the line. But Calder knew who was there. ‘Sandy?’
‘Alex. I just want to say it’s quite OK that you have another girlfriend now, it’s been, what, two months since we last saw each other, and I don’t own you—’
‘Sandy—’
But she had her speech prepared and she was getting it out as fast as possible. ‘I guess I made a mistake. A big mistake. We were communicating badly and I guess that was my fault. But I’ve realized my mistake now and I know where we stand, and I’m sorry if I caused you some embarrassment last night—’
Her voice was speeding up, breathless and beginning to crack.
‘Sandy, you haven’t made a mistake—’
‘As I say, I know where we stand, and I won’t embarrass you again, I can assure you of that.’
‘Look, can we talk about this—’
‘So, goodbye, Alex.’ The phone went dead.
Calder stared at it for a second, and then called the number of the hotel Sandy had left him in her message of the day before. It was the Swissotel Howard in London. He asked to be put through to her room. The phone rang once before it was snatched up.
‘Yes?’
‘Sandy?’
The phone went dead again.
Calder slumped back into his chair. ‘Well, I’d say that was the end of that.’
‘Are you sorry?’ Kim asked.
‘Yes,’ Calder said. ‘I’m very sorry.’
‘Shall I talk to her? Call her up and explain the situation?’
Calder’s anger flared up. ‘What, that I was shagging someone else’s wife, that it didn’t matter, the husband was in a coma and may never wake up? That will explain it all.’
Kim’s mouth dropped open and then she burst into tears.
Calder reached over to touch her hand. ‘Oh, God, I’m sorry, Kim. I’ve just fucked up so badly.’
Kim removed her hand. ‘I’m going upstairs to pack.’
Calder poured himself another cup of coffee as she left the room. But however many cups of coffee he poured, this wasn’t going to get any better.
‘Thank you for coming,’ Andries Visser said to his two guests. His voice was unusually hoarse. The three men were sitting in armchairs around his living room cradling glasses of brandy and Coke. Logs burned in the grate. Outside, beyond the burglar bars and the high fence, the night air whispered in the long yellow grass of the veld.
His guests were fellow members of the Laagerbond, both in their sixties, men who had been brought up in a different South Africa. Daniel Havenga had recently retired as professor of journalism at the University of Stellenbosch. Freddie Steenkamp had been deputy director of the feared Military Intelligence and was the current deputy chairman of the Laagerbond. Despite the fact that Steenkamp had operated at the brutal end of the apartheid regime, he had continued to serve his country’s security services until the late 1990s, when he had retired with a generous pension.
Neither man was relaxed. They knew that if their chairman had dragged them out to his farm at such short notice, something must be up. ‘What’s the problem, Andries?’ Professor Havenga asked.
‘I think there’s a real threat to Drommedaris,’ Visser said.
‘To the current plan or to the whole operation?’
‘The whole operation.’
‘But isn’t Todd van Zyl still in a coma?’
‘He is, but his wife has persisted in asking more questions about his mother’s death. She has recruited a friend in Britain to help, an ex-banker with Bloomfield Weiss. Evidently they are quite determined.’
‘But it’s too long ago, surely?’ Havenga said. ‘If the TRC couldn’t find anything, will they?’
‘I think they might,’ Visser said. ‘I fear we might be losing control of the situation.’
‘That’s something we cannot allow,’ Steenkamp said. He was a tall imposing man, balding, who sat upright even in the most comfortable of Visser’s armchairs. ‘As you know, I sometimes wish that we did not commit quite so much of our resources to Drommedaris. But it is now such an important part of the Laagerbond’s activities that we cannot allow it to be compromised.’
‘What do you think, Daniel?’
The professor sipped his brandy. His sharp brown eyes set deep in his round face assessed the others. He tugged at his beard. ‘As a general rule, I think the lower the profile we can maintain, the better. I’d rather not do anything that will draw attention to the Laagerbond. We know the British police are already investigating Todd van Zyl’s... accident.’
‘If we don’t act, and act quickly, then others will draw attention to us,’ Steenkamp said.
The professor sighed. ‘I have never liked this aspect of our activities.’
‘In my experience,’ said Steenkamp, ‘the sooner one acts in cases like this, the less messy the outcome is in the end.’
‘You should know,’ said the professor. ‘So what do we do?’
‘That, gentlemen, is what I brought you here to discuss,’ Visser said. He paused to allow a violent cough to convulse his lungs. ‘Kobus is back in England, awaiting our instructions.’
15
August 3, 1988
I had a horrible night last night. As soon as I went to sleep, the images came back to me, the images from those photographs. The boy’s back, the young woman’s lifeless eyes. At one point I scrambled to the bathroom and threw up. It didn’t make me feel any better.
I’ll do what the man said, of course. I won’t mention the Laagerbond to anyone ever again. I can’t risk what that monster might do to Caroline. I wish I’d never opened Daniel’s briefcase, never laid eyes on those papers. What is Neels doing with people like that?
I’ve got to get out of here. I want to go home. I want to be home. I’m going to book a flight to Minneapolis right now.
Later...
I’ve got the ticket, leaving tomorrow night. Doris is back from Port Elizabeth, so Caroline will be all right with her, especially now Zan’s around as well.
August 5
I’ve caught him. And I feel terrible.
It happened like this. At the last minute I decided to stop off in Philadelphia on the way to Minneapolis. I don’t know why I did this. I told myself that it would be good to spend a couple of days there with Neels, see how Philadelphia was for us together, make some attempt at conciliation. I hadn’t figured out what I would say to him about the Laagerbonder, Moolman, or whatever his name is. On the one hand I desperately needed the comfort of Neels’s strong arms around me, on the other I didn’t know whether I could trust him. And if Moolman ever found out I had spoken to him...