Murderous David Hickson (best thriller novels of all time TXT) 📖

to split the skin of wildebeests in such a way that the intestines could be removed and the skin could adorn the floor of her parents’ Waterkloof Ridge mansion.

But she had stopped all that when she had emerged from her teenage chrysalis and her mother no longer liked the enthusiasm with which her father’s hunting colleagues encouraged her to accompany them into the bush. The modelling agency said that blonde hair, blue eyes, a well-proportioned chest and narrow hips were all the rage in Paris, and so Melissa spent most of her time in Europe saying no to sugar and yes to all the non-fattening things that answered to the name of sugar. And when she was back in South Africa, her new boyfriend brought her back to the bush so she didn’t lose touch with who she really was. Sometimes their private jet was delayed on the return trip, and all she could do was wander around the terminal building, look at the glossy magazines, and gaze longingly at the shelves of candy in Sweets from Heaven.

On this occasion she did not have the necessary small change to pay for her Coke Zero, only the big notes that the shop assistant refused to accept. She fluttered many of them in the face of the shop assistant, adding insult to injury, and Melissa, who had probably never been particularly good at understanding why less fortunate women than her did not take to her, was building up to a tantrum by the time I arrived beside her at the checkout counter with a bar of dark chocolate, my Armani linen suit with silk tie, Giorgio dark glasses tucked into my hair, a little oil to tame it, and a range of notes, including the necessary small denomination ones.

“That is so kind of you,” she said, emphasising the word ‘so’ by dragging it out to an absurd length. Her baby-blue eyes were surprisingly pale and clear and didn’t so much look at me as reach out to caress me. She tossed her long blonde hair and gave me the under-the-eyebrow look the Parisian perfume manufacturers liked so much. “These people just don’t do customer service,” she said and looked sad because as well as criticising she could sympathise with them. She did not clarify what she meant by ‘these people’, but the unfortunate lady behind the till probably qualified in many ways. Unlike Melissa, she was not pretty, nor thin, wealthy or white.

Melissa insisted that Hendrik would want to pay me back. “My fiancé,” she said, placing a light hand with delicate fingers and an embarrassingly large diamond on my arm, “would be furious with me if I let a strange man buy me a drink. Just furious,” she repeated, and leaned in closer and stroked me with her eyes again.

“I’m not as strange as I look,” I said, but I didn’t complain. Chandler had been right to suggest that Melissa was the best way to make contact, and it was beginning to worry me how easy it had been.

Hendrik van Rensburg looked like a sulky five-year-old boy who had been inflated with a bicycle pump. He had the unfortunate build of the Afrikaans farmer who has eaten too much meat, has drunk too many beers, and who played rugby in his youth, but has allowed all the muscle to turn flabby. He had a mop of unruly but thinning blond hair above a swollen face with a squashed nose and ears that had taken more pressure than they should have in his rugby days; they now looked a little like cauliflowers shoved into each side of his head. His flushed complexion and furious mood did not improve his visual appeal. Melissa grasped his muscular arm and turned him towards me as if she was revealing something she was tremendously proud of. Hendrik wasn’t quite as pleased to be presented. He pulled his arm away from her angrily, but then presented a public face of decency and doused the irritation when he saw that she had brought a strange man back with her.

“Can’t take off,” he said in a brusque tone to me after we’d exchanged names and he’d squeezed my hand in a demonstration of his muscular superiority. Melissa pointed to their Learjet sitting on the apron so I could be impressed and tell her fiancé how impressed I was.

“It’s affected us too,” I said, and tried not to sound too English or too well spoken because I guessed that both would irritate him.

He flexed his jaw muscles and looked beyond me as an indication of how little he cared that others were suffering.

“Something with air traffic control,” I said. “Why don’t you join us upstairs? We’re done with our meeting, we have the private bar all to ourselves, Vusi mixes a mean rum and coke, and honestly you shouldn’t be expected to put up with this.”

I looked around the Fever Bar as if it was a thoroughly distasteful setting. The Fever Bar had a four-star rating and was highly praised for its decor and quality of service, but Hendrik van Rensburg needed five stars.

Hendrik shook his head.

“Nah,” he said, “we’ll be fine. Won’t be long now.”

Melissa made a pout and said: “Aw, skattie,” to Hendrik, as if he’d broken her favourite toy, then gave me a look that made me think she had seen through my ruse and was sympathising with its failure. But it was probably just the strain of being forced to mix with normal people that motivated her to join us in the private bar. The Fever Bar was filling up with passengers for the flight to Johannesburg, and a group of Japanese tourists were being herded like a flock of sheep by someone waving a red flag in the air. They had congregated near the Van Rensburg entourage, not realising that the Van Rensburgs considered themselves special, and required several metres of open space between them and the rest of humanity. And that was