‘It can’t have been,’ I exclaimed.
‘It definitely was,’ Charlie said. ‘She was positive about it. It was Danilo’s own suggestion.’
‘Blast,’ I said.
‘He wouldn’t have suggested she send someone to investigate, if he’d been nobbling them himself.’
‘No... I suppose not.’
‘You sound depressed,’ she said.
‘I haven’t any other answers for Nerissa.’
‘Don’t worry. You weren’t anyway going to tell her her nephew was up to no good.’
‘That’s true,’ I agreed.
‘And it wasn’t difficult for Danilo to read her will. She leaves it lying around all the time on that marquetry table in the corner of the sitting-room. She showed it to me immediately, as soon as I mentioned it, because it interests her a lot. And I saw what keepsakes she is leaving us, if you’re interested.’
‘What are they?’ I asked idly, thinking about Danilo.
‘She’s leaving you her holding in something called Rojedda, and she’s leaving me a diamond pendant and some earrings. She showed them to me... they are absolutely beautiful and I told her they were far too much, but she made me try them on so she would see how I looked. She seemed to be so pleased... so happy... isn’t she incredible? I can hardly bear... oh... oh dear...’
‘Don’t cry, darling,’ I said.
There were some swallowing noises.
‘I... can’t... help it. She is already much worse than when we saw her before, and she’s very uncomfortable. One of her swollen glands is pressing on things in her chest.’
‘We’ll go and see her as soon as I get back.’
‘Yes.’ She sniffed away the tears. ‘God, I do miss you.’
‘Me too,’ I said. ‘Only one more week. I’ll be home a week today, and we’ll take the kids down to Cornwall.’
After the call I went outside and walked slowly past our rondavels and out on to the rough grassy area beyond. The African night was very quiet. No roar of traffic from any distant city, just the faint steady hum of the generator supplying Skukuza with electricity, and the energetic music of cicadas.
Nerissa had given me my answers.
I saw what they meant, and I didn’t want to believe it.
A gamble. No more, no less.
With my life as the stake.
I went back to the telephone and made one more call. Van Huren’s manservant said he would see, and Quentin came on the line. I said I knew it was an odd thing to ask, and I would explain why when next I saw him, but could he possibly tell me what size Nerissa’s holding in Rojedda was likely to be.
‘The same as my own,’ he said without hesitation. ‘She has my brother’s holding, passed to her by Portia.’
I thanked him numbly.
‘See you at the premiere,’ he said. ‘We are looking forward to it very much.’
For hours, I couldn’t go to sleep. Yet where could I be safer than inside a guarded camp, with Evan and Conrad snoring their heads off in the huts next door?
But when I woke up, I was no longer in bed.
I was in the car I had hired in Johannesburg.
The car was surrounded by early daylight in the Kruger National Park. Trees, scrub, and dry grass. Not a rondavel in sight.
Remnants of an ether smell blurred my senses, but one fact was sharp and self-evident.
One of my arms lay through the steering wheel, and my wrists were locked together in a pair of handcuffs.
Chapter Fourteen
This had to be some ghastly practical joke. Evan, being malicious.
This had to be Clifford Wenkins thinking up some frightful publicity stunt.
This had to be anything but real.
But I knew, deep down in some deathly cold core, that this time there was no girl called Jill coming to set me free.
This time the dying was there to be done. Staring me in the face. Straining already across my shoulders and down my arms.
Danilo was playing for his gold mine.
I felt sick and ill. Whatever anaesthetic had been used on me had been given crudely. Probably far too much for the purpose. Not that that was likely to worry anyone but me.
For an age I could think no further. The dizziness kept coming back in clammy pea-green waves. My physical wretchedness blocked any other thought; took up all my attention. Bouts of semi-consciousness brought me each time to a fresh awakening, to renewed awareness of my plight, to malaise and misery.
The first objective observation which pierced the fog was that I had gone to bed wearing shorts, and now had clothes on. The trousers I had worn the day before, and the shirt. Also, upon investigation, socks and slip-on shoes.
The next discovery, which had been knocking at the door of consciousness for some time but had been shut out as unwelcome, was that the car’s seat belts were fastened. Across my chest and over my lap, just as in the Special.
They weren’t tightly fastened, but I couldn’t reach the clip.
I tried. The first of many tries at many things. The first of many frustrations.
I tried to slide my hands out of the handcuffs: but, as before, they were the regulation British police model, designed precisely not to let people slide their hands out. My bones, as before, were too big.
I tried with all my strength to break the steering wheel, but although this one looked flimsy compared with the one in the Special, I still couldn’t do it.
I could move a shade more than in the film. The straps were not so tight and there was more room round my legs. Apart from that, there was little in it.
For the first of many times I wondered how long it would be before anyone set out to look for me.
Evan and Conrad, when they found me missing, would surely start a search. Haagner, surely, would alert every ranger in the park. Someone would come along very soon. Of course they would. And set me free.
The day began to warm up, the sun in a cloudless sky shining brightly through the window on my right. The car was therefore facing north... and I groaned at the thought, because in the Southern Hemisphere the sun shone at midday from the north, and I should have its heat and light full in the face.
Perhaps someone would come before midday.
Perhaps.
The worst of the sickness passed in an hour or two, though the tides of unease ebbed and flowed for much longer. Gradually however I began to think again, and to lose the feeling that even if death were already perched on my elbow I was too bilious to care.
Clear thought number one was that Danilo had locked me in this car so that I should die and he would inherit Nerissa’s half share in the van Huren gold mine.
Nerissa was leaving her Rojedda holding to me in her will, and Danilo, having read the will, knew.
Danilo was to inherit the residue. Should I die before Nerissa, the Rojedda bequest would be void, and the holding would become part of his residue. Should I live, he stood to lose not only a share of the mine, but hundreds of thousands of pounds besides.
As the law stood then, and would still stand when Nerissa died, estate duty on everything she possessed would be paid out of the residue. Danilo personally stood to lose every penny of the estate duty paid on the inheritance which Nerissa was leaving to me.
If only, I thought uselessly, she had told me what she was doing: I could have explained why she shouldn’t. Perhaps she hadn’t realised how immensely valuable the Rojedda holding was: she had only recently received it from her sister. Perhaps she hadn’t understood how estate duty worked. Certainly, in view of the enjoyment she had found in her long-lost nephew, she had not intended me to prosper out of all proportion at Danilo’s expense.