Piranha. Rudie van Rensburg

the horn away from the nose with some neat cleaving around the base. Time was of the essence in any poaching operation.

      Along with the highly effective silencers on the .303s which Theodore and his people had had specially designed in Cape Town, Freedom and his cohort – his two brothers and a cousin – had become a formidable poaching unit. Theodore, meanwhile, had honed his skill as operations planner to a fine art and was always a step ahead of the rangers.

      What had impressed them most about Freedom back then was that he refused to reveal who he’d been working for. There’d been stories that a group of white men known as the Musina Mafia was involved in the zebra-skin trade and that it had relied on several Zim gangs for its supply. Freedom denied working for them, and wouldn’t reveal anything else.

      That was what had convinced Theodore: if Freedom’s team were ever caught, he’d be safe. Theodore had promised them that if anything happened, he would pay for the best defence lawyers available and would cover all legal costs. Not that that was a major concern. It had become a joke among poachers how easy it was to get off in the South African courts.

      Theodore got up from the camping chair and stretched his arms above his head. Now and again the loneliness and the silence of the bush got to him. He shook his head. He wasn’t going to indulge in self-pity. His choice had been made a long time ago and he simply had to live with it.

      He walked back to the tent and stretched out on his bed. The hardest part was living with the knowledge that he was responsible for the death of so many rhinoceroses. That fact was starting to eat at him like a cancer.

      And now he’d been instructed to make a donation to a conservation organisation on behalf of the company, ostensibly to position themselves as ‘an organisation that cares for nature’.

      He sighed. That gimmick was going to be of zero help the day they got caught.

      * * *

      Back then, the white high school in the south-west of Uganda had even fewer pupils than the little primary school. Most children were sent back to England for their high school education. But a few prosperous white farmers, including Smiley’s father, had delved deep into their pockets to establish a viable high school for the British settlers.

      When I was sixteen, there were only seven of us in my class. Vicci was the only pretty girl in the school, which made it inevitable that she would become Smiley’s girlfriend. He was handsome, intelligent and the best sportsman by a long shot. He didn’t only rake in all the athletics trophies, but sometimes even played for Kampala club’s first rugby team, a sport the settlers had made popular among the locals.

      I was rather jealous of what Smiley and Vicci did together when they were alone. Sex was limited to my dreams. I hadn’t even kissed a girl at that point.

      In fact, the first time I saw a woman’s breasts was on a weekend I went to the farm with Smiley and Vicci. Smiley and I always cleaned up in the reed-sheltered outdoor shower after a swim in the dam. That Saturday afternoon, Smiley whispered that he was going to shower with Vicci and that I was welcome to sneak a peek through the bamboo fencing. I watched with a thumping heart and a growing erection as Smiley took off her bathing costume. I couldn’t see the bottom half of her body, but the image of her tiny, firm breasts supplied me with weeks of fodder for wet dreams.

      After that day, I even considered starting a relationship with the fifteen-year-old Mary Davies despite her acne and her thick glasses. She wasn’t badly built. I was desperate for physical contact. But she wasn’t interested in boys. I started making peace with the fact that my hand was going to be my only bed mate for the foreseeable future.

      But in the last term of that year a new missionary arrived on the scene, and he had a stunning daughter. It was like a fairy tale.

      Sophia.

      And then my life was turned upside down.

      5

      The late afternoon winter sun made patterns on Captain Kassie Kasselman’s desk at the Newlands police station. He stacked a few loose papers in a neat pile and put a docket in one of his desk drawers. Quarter to five. Almost time to go home.

      His thoughts were not on the things he was busy with. Instead, they were on his triangular Cape of Good Hope stamps which were currently being exhibited at the world postage stamp exhibition in Australia along with hundreds of other well-known collectors’ sets.

      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