Please Do Not Disturb by Robert Glancy

Author:Robert Glancy
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781632864314
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
Published: 2016-02-15T09:16:31+00:00

Jack

A simple plan. Fantastic went off to track for a hunting group and in the excitement of the returning safari, I was to slip out and hand over the case. The time alone was torture. Crouched in the bush, about a mile from the safari lodge, my hands slick with sweat. Reviewing the damage done to the case, I tried desperately to fix the fliplocks. But every time I pushed them down they yawned back open. I squeezed chewing gum into the slits to glue them. A pathetic solution but it would buy me time, even a few seconds. He’d hand over the money, take the case, start to check it and I’d bolt. Surely he wouldn’t shoot me in front of a group of tourists? My stomach boiled. The anxiety was a feeling well known to me. I experience it moments before all my major mistakes. Even when my dumb head was too slow to figure things out, my body was forever warning me exactly how much trouble I was in. Even as a kid I remembered this cold dread. The time I dismantled Dad’s watch. As dirt-poor farmers, that watch was the only object of any worth in our lives. Probably cost more than our house. It lived in its own box, a golden oyster wrapped in tissue. I twisted off the screws, prised a knife into the gap and shucked it open as springs and cogs spewed out, rolling and vanishing under furniture like silvery ants. I knew in the instant after the fact that I couldn’t fix it. The harder I tried to get it back together the more pieces I snapped, lost, broke. Knowing it was broken was bad. But the waiting, waiting for my father to come home and beat me, my guts churning endlessly over themselves, that was the feeling I had now.

And this would end in worse than a beating. This guy Willem was an ex-soldier with a rough reputation; he’d make me pay. Would he kill me? You can’t be sure what a man will do until the time comes.

I waited until I saw the minibus vanish into the bush, driving a few feet from where I crouched. When it returned with the kill, I took a breath and walked down the road, following in its dust. I assumed a few people would be there, maybe a party of three hunters. So I was stunned to see a large group, big men with walkie-talkies, tall girls in tight jeans laughing and smoking, people standing around with mobile phones, one guy even had a film camera. I nearly turned and ran but in the distance Willem had spotted me. He jogged over, pulled me into the fringe of the bush. ‘Yah, you made it, howzit, Jack? Everything go well? Let’s have a gander?’

I held out my hand and he nodded. ‘Sure, sure, here.’ He handed over a fat white envelope, tied with elastic bands. I tore the edge, saw the notes, and he said, ‘It’s all there, eh.

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