The Delta (62 page)

‘That's a monument to Uhuru, which is what the Kenyans call their independence from Britain.'

She liked that – independence. She was nearly eighteen and it was time for her to start living her life the way she wanted. She would finish her studies and enrol in university when it suited her, not her absentee mother, who had long ago forfeited the right to exert any control over her. ‘Tell me again about this house where we're staying. It belonged to your gran?'

‘My great-aunt, actually. I spent several summer holidays here in Mombasa when I was a boy, at boarding school. I loved it here – it was a great escape from England. She died a spinster and left it to me.'

‘Cool.'

The cab took them over another bridge and she started seeing signs for Nyali, and Nyali Beach, which she knew was where Martin's house was. She took a deep breath. Things were coming to a head. The houses here were more western than the crowded, jumbled bazaar of the city. They looked old, and while some were rundown, others were freshly whitewashed and enclosed behind fences festooned with bougainvillea. Emma liked it. It all seemed so romantic and reminded her of old movies she'd seen.

Martin told the driver to stop in front of a black steel sliding
gate set in a white-painted concrete wall that was topped with razor wire and a three-strand electrified fence. Martin pressed a button on the intercom and a few seconds later the gate rolled open. To her surprise, Emma saw two African men in green uniforms. Both had rifles slung over their shoulders. Martin had told her that crime wasn't a particularly serious problem in this neighbourhood so she didn't know whether to be alarmed or reassured by the presence of the security guards. He spoke to the men for a few seconds in what she guessed was Swahili.

She got out of the car, glad to be free of the sticky vinyl seat, and walked through the gate. ‘Oh, Martin, it's wicked!' She walked on a sparkling path of crushed coral flanked by manicured lawns and palm trees. Exotic flowers and creepers framed a sprawling single-storey white house with a red terracotta roof. The house seemed split into two halves and through the middle was a wide open space with cane furniture and huge puffy pillows. She could see the pristine sand of the beach and turquoise of the Indian Ocean beyond and she wanted to run to it. An African man in a starched white robe, said: ‘
Jambo
,' and smiled brightly at her.

‘Um …
Jambo
.'

Emma's new heels clicked on the polished tiled floor of the lounging area and she walked to the edge. The sand was no more than fifty metres away, on the other side of another strip of lawn, though another electric fence prevented intruders straying into the house. She heard his footsteps behind her and felt his hand on her shoulder. ‘It's beautiful.'

‘Not as beautiful as you, Emma.'

She looked past him and saw the servant and security guards had disappeared from sight. She tilted back her head and closed her eyes as he kissed her. Just like the last time, she opened her mouth to him, but this time he didn't stop. She felt his tongue and she liked it. He pulled her closer and she felt his erection swelling
against her belly. It excited her and scared her at the same time.

Still holding her, Steele smiled, then lowered his lips to her ear. ‘Do you remember the things we chatted about online?' he whispered.

‘Um … yes.'

‘Good,' he said. ‘Would you like to go for a swim now?'

She laughed. ‘Yes.' He was teasing her and it was maddening, but if he wanted to play games, then she could give as good she got.

He loosened his hold on her and seemed to study her face. It sent a shiver down her back. ‘You look so much like your mother when she was younger.' He reached out and brushed a strand of auburn hair from her forehead. ‘So beautiful.'

She felt the redness rising up her throat and into her cheeks. ‘Maybe I should go and change?'

‘Of course. Your room is down the hallway, second on the right.'

Emma walked quickly down the hallway and when she opened the second door she saw her backpack and shopping bags were laid out on top of a low, intricately carved blanket box at the foot of a queen-sized bed topped with a duvet in a starched white cotton cover. She closed the door, leaned her back against it and exhaled loudly. She was so turned on she thought she might melt.

Sam asked for a Coke from the attendant on the flight from Nairobi to Mombasa. He was too nervous to eat, and Sonja hadn't ordered anything either. She stared out the window at the African landscape far below.

She'd started to open up to him, on the flight from South Africa to Kenya, though she'd retreated into her thoughts again. Sonja's theory, about Steele, was that he needed her money. ‘I've been a complete bloody idiot,' she had told him. ‘I changed my
will before I left England and made Martin Emma's legal guardian until she turns twenty-one. I didn't trust my own daughter to spend my money wisely, if anything happened to me, and Martin has control over her and my bank accounts. I misjudged Emma, and by not crediting her with the brains and maturity to look after herself I've made her resent me even more than she did and set her up as a target for Steele. The bastard was trying to kill me, Sam, in Zimbabwe and at the dam – all for bloody money. He's a gambler. He's probably lying low in Mombasa waiting to see if I'm still alive before he pays off whoever it is he owes this time.'

Sonja had told Sam of her time in the British Army, and her service in Northern Ireland. She'd stopped the story when she told of the death of a young IRA man, Danny Byrne, whom she had befriended as a means of trapping the terrorist's brother. Steele had been involved in the raid in which both Byrne boys had been killed. She'd started the story in response to his question about how she had met Steele. It seemed odd that she even spoke about what he guessed was a sensitive military operation, but he sensed it had something pivotal to do with her past relationship with Steele.

‘You never finished telling me about your time in Northern Ireland,' Sam said now. She lifted her forehead away from the window and looked at him. ‘You said you and Steele were part of an operation where two IRA men were killed, but that you both had to leave the army soon after. Why was that? In the US Army you would have been given medals.'

She shook her head. ‘Northern Ireland would have been too complicated for the US Army, Sam. For any army. I used Danny Byrne to set up his brother, Patrick, who was responsible for blowing up the school bus. I was convinced Danny wouldn't have given his brother the explosives to make the bomb if he'd known the target. In fact, Danny wanted to roll over, become what we used to call a “super grass” and give up everyone he knew. He was sick
of the war, and sick of the killing. He agreed to invite Patrick to his cottage and let me know when it would be, on the condition that his brother be taken alive, and that I would be there.'

‘As insurance?' Sam said.

‘No. I don't think so.' Sonja looked back out the window again for a few seconds, remembering. She turned back and looked Sam in the eyes. ‘I think he loved me, Sam. And, maybe, I think I loved him too. We'd become very close. I slept with him. Martin had encouraged me to win him over – to do whatever I felt was necessary – but when Martin found out what I'd done I think he was furious. He never said as much, and tried to play the cold hard professional, but the way he looked at me made me feel like a whore, and I suppose he was right to think that. Part of me wanted to run away with Danny – he was going to be offered relocation and witness protection – yet the other half of me wanted to make things right with Martin. I was so young, and so confused.'

He felt for her. She had barely been out of her teens at the time. Sam had been at university, though still recovering from the shock of life in juvenile jail. Poor Sonja. He thought he'd had a rough start to adulthood, but it was nothing compared to what she'd had to deal with.

‘How the hell,' she continued, ‘did I trust this man with my daughter's future and my life? I wonder how much he owes the loansharks. Why didn't he just con someone or knock over a bank like a proper criminal? I don't know, Sam, maybe he hates me for ending his promising military career all those years ago.'

She blinked a few times, and he wondered if she was fighting back tears. He knew, instinctively, she needed to get all this out of her system. She would no doubt disagree, but he knew it helped to talk sometimes. ‘What went wrong in Northern Ireland … you were about to tell me?'

Sonja nodded and took a deep breath, then exhaled. ‘The night of the raid, Danny and I were in his room and his brother was in the next. Patrick thought we were in bed together, but we were both fully clothed, just waiting for Martin and Sergeant Jones to arrive. I'd thought there would have been a bigger assault force, but Martin had said he wanted to keep it within the unit. It didn't seem right to me, but he was the officer, and very experienced.

‘When the raid happened, Danny and I were wide awake and ready. The front door burst open, with no warning, and a stun grenade went off. The noise was terrible and we clung to each other, waiting. I knew Patrick had a gun somewhere, but the surprise worked. We heard Martin and Jones run into the house and kick open the door of Patrick's bedroom. He was swearing, but then I clearly heard Patrick say, “Jesus, don't shoot … Please … I'm unarmed.” Then I heard the shooting.'

Sonja paused and swallowed hard.

‘You don't have to tell me if you don't want to,' Sam said.

She shook her head. ‘Danny said to me that Steele had double-crossed him and executed his brother. He had a gun I didn't know about, hidden in his wardrobe, and he grabbed it. I told him to put it down, that everything would be all right. He told me to shut up and called me a lying bitch. I was speechless, Sam. I wasn't part of any betrayal, but he wouldn't listen to me. He opened the bedroom door and started shooting. He hit Jones and killed him. I knew he was going for Steele next. I had a pistol, and I drew it. I shot Danny in the back, Sam. I killed him.'

‘You were doing your job,' Sam said.

‘No!' She lowered her voice as the attendant walked past. ‘No, Sam. No one was doing their job that day. Steele had come to execute both men. It was an unauthorised operation. I should never have agreed to any of it. When we got back to England Steele concocted a story about how we had acted on the spur of the
moment, after discovering Danny and Patrick together in a pub. He hadn't reported any of our earlier activities. He was a glory hound who wanted to claim sole responsibility for killing the man who had blown up all those children. I was a pawn in his game. He used me, manipulated me into sleeping with Danny, then couldn't stand it once I did what he wanted. He seduced me when we got back to England and made me lie to cover for him. It's only now that this is finally becoming clear to me, Sam. At the time, I was happy that Patrick Byrne was gunned down in cold blood … I wanted to believe that the ends justified the means, and that Steele was right. The army saw through him, though, and they made him resign his commission because they knew he was a maverick, and they wanted to cover things up. I went along with the lies for too long.'

‘What year was that, again?' Sam asked.

‘Nineteen ninety-two.'

Sam did the arithmetic. It was pretty simple. ‘That must have been the year Emma was conceived.'

Sonja nodded. ‘I started to show after the investigation into the Byrne brothers' death was wrapped up. There were rumours about me circulating through the intelligence community. Steele and I were both forced out of the army and we ended up together, after we both served as contractors in Sierra Leone. He made a point of saying it didn't matter who Emma's father was; I was happy not to know, and physically Martin and Danny were pretty alike, so it was never obvious. A little over a year ago, though, Martin came to see me and told me he wanted to know, for sure. He said he was re-writing his will and had been thinking about Emma a lot. He'd grown close to her over the years and he wanted it out in the open once and for all, and if she was his, he would write her into his will. I guess I wanted to know, as well.'

‘What did you tell Emma?' Sam asked.

‘Nothing. When she was young I'd told her that her father had died in a car crash shortly after we'd started going out, and that my one regret was that we'd never had a picture of the two of us taken together. I bought a paternity testing kit online – all you need is to get a cheek swab and then send it to a lab. I didn't know how I'd get the sample from Emma without telling her what was going on, but I got lucky. Emma had braces at the time and would sometimes develop mouth ulcers. She asked me to take a look at one and I made up a story about needing to use an applicator this time to put on the numbing liquid she usually used. I switched swabs after taking a sample, and sent it off, with Martin's swab.'

Sam grimaced, but said nothing. How could he stand in judgement – his life had been equally messy.

‘Anyway,' Sonja continued. ‘The test came back negative. Danny Byrne was Emma's father. Martin said he still wanted to be close to Emma and me, but I could tell at that moment that things changed again between us. I wonder if finding out, for sure, made him hate me … made him …'

‘Want to kill you?'

She shrugged. ‘It looks like it. That, and the money. But I'm more worried that it gave him some kind of green light to do something worse, Sam. Emma's always liked him, but she's a sensible girl. She wouldn't have gone off with him if she knew I was coming to get her. I think something terrible is about to happen, Sam.'

He suddenly shared her fear.

They swam and sunbathed on the beach during the afternoon and one of Martin's servants brought them gin and tonics. She felt so sophisticated.