That soothing sing-song voice rose again, but this time ended in a sharp, frustrated cry, and Ness bounded into action as an ostrich hammered past, not ten feet from her. With a start, Tom realized she wasn’t trying to avoid the bird, but was making a grab for it.
The last of his drug-induced cobwebs were brushed aside as he hauled himself out of the car. The ostrich had dodged Ness, but had stopped only a few yards past her, its head poking this way and that as if it were weighing up its options.
A hundred yards away, off the Honda’s left flank, was Harold Robbins. The boy was jogging towards Ness now, and Tom could see he was in the same clothes he’d worn when he came to the barn, and held a square plastic storage container in one hand. As he approached Ness, he dipped his hand into the container and held out something to the bird, his sing-song appeal coming again.
‘Leeemon! Heeeeeere, Leeeeeeeemon!’
Lemon scooted away a few paces and now Tom could see that the bird was definitely limping – much worse than before. No wonder it had let them get so close.
Harold reached forward but Lemon stalked off slowly, staying just out of reach. Tom noticed the boy didn’t try to make a hopeless grab at the narrow leash dangling from the bird’s head. That would surely have spooked Lemon into flight. Instead the child – with the apparent patience of a saint – merely sauntered over again, while Ness circled widely behind Lemon, like a sheepdog cutting off an escape route.
Tom didn’t know whether to help or just enjoy the odd spectacle of the skinny child and the woman trying to capture a racing ostrich in the middle of the desert. Then Lemon skittered sideways again and Tom trudged towards the action. Lemon had the look of a bird that was sick of running and was only protesting now for show.
Ness and Harold glanced at him as he made the third point of a rough triangle around Lemon.
‘Hello, baas,’ said Harold, conversationally.
‘Hi, Harold.’
‘We’re trying to catch Lemon,’ the boy added, somewhat redundantly, and once more pressed on towards the ostrich. The bird now realized that Ness and Tom were closing in behind it and did a confused, lopsided little dance on the spot. Tom wondered fleetingly whether it might bury its head in the sand, even though he’d heard that was a myth. Still, it would be cool to see.
But Lemon didn’t bury his head. Tom and Ness stood still about ten yards either side of his flanks, and Harold licked his lips and moved in. Lemon let him get just a single step too close this time: when he made a break for it, Harold grabbed the leash and shook the container at him. Lemon resisted for one last moment, then dug his beak hard into the grain.
Ness broke into spontaneous applause and Harold’s beam split his face with delight.
Ness and Tom approached, although Harold deflected them quietly. ‘He will kick you, madam!’
Now they were closer, Tom could see dried blood on the big bird’s left leg. The wound was up under the feathers and out of sight, but it must be large to have caused the amount of blood it obviously had.
Harold saw Tom staring and his smooth forehead creased in concern. ‘He is hurt, baas?’
‘Looks like it.’
Harold turned to Ness. ‘Will you hold Lemon, madam? I will catch his leg.’
Ness took the leash warily and, without a moment’s hesitation, Harold ducked under the bird’s chest and grabbed its scaly left foot with the giant dinosaur claws and pulled it up. Incapacitated, Lemon stood stock-still as Tom carefully moved in and parted the jet-black feathers.
There it was. The almost vertical gash was about four inches long, open and festering. At the bottom of the wound and between the rough quills, Tom could feel something hard under the skin.
Lemon hopped and staggered sideways and Harold cooed reassuringly to him as if the huge bird was a kitten. Tom found the place again. ‘There’s something stuck under the skin,’ he said, with disgust. ‘The whole thing’s infected.’
‘Can you take it out?’ Ness was looking at him with hope and expectation, and he realized, with a sinking feeling, that now he’d have to take the damn thing out. Now he’d have to perform makeshift surgery on a leftover dinosaur in the middle of a fucking desert, all because Ness had given him the best blow-job of his entire life.
That was what it came down to.
Tom shook his head in amazement. Sometimes life was so bizarre that it didn’t bear close examination for fear of insanity ensuing. ‘Sure,’ he said, sounding a lot more confident than he felt.
He pulled his Swiss Army knife from his pocket. It was nothing fancy and he couldn’t remember ever having unsheathed the blade, although the bottle-opener was a godsend.
Parting the feathers once again, Tom licked his lips and wondered about the best way to do this. He was uncomfortably aware that both Ness and Harold were gazing at him with identical expressions of confidence, and that the longer he delayed, the less confident they’d all become.
Fuck it.
‘Hold on tight!’
Feeling slightly sick, Tom dug the knife into the bird’s flesh, quickly continuing the existing gash to expose a lump of something, before a fresh supply of blood welled up and hid it from view. But Tom grabbed it quickly, wincing at the sudden pain in his hand, and took it out of the bird with a single movement. ‘Got it!’
Lemon – contrary to all logic – merely twitched and quivered, then dug his beak back into the grain that Ness was now holding.
Harold dropped Lemon’s leg, and he and Tom stepped rapidly away from the bird.
‘What is it?’ said Ness, as she handed the leash back to Harold and came over to peer at the bloody lump in Tom’s hand.
He picked at it, turning it over, suddenly surprised to see a glint of metal through the blood.
Ness saw it too. ‘Is it a bullet?’
At that, Harold craned to see, pulling a reasonably compliant Lemon with him.
Tom saw that his plaid shirt was already bloody from the impromptu surgery, so he wiped the lump on the tail of it.
The air left his lungs in a single harsh whoosh. His practised eye told him instantly that what he’d dug out of an ostrich called Lemon was a flange bolt from the CFM56 engine of a Boeing 737.
*
They had left Harold walking Lemon happily to God knew where. He had thanked them effusively, waved goodbye and set off purposefully as if he knew exactly where he was going. Tom assumed he must, however unlikely it seemed.
Ness had tipped most of a bottle of Scotch over the wound. She’d bought it at LAX and left it in the car. They’d had just a couple of nips each, Tom thought mournfully. He tried reminding her it was a single malt, but she shook the rest over the ostrich for good luck.
Tom sighed. It seemed Ness had a stubborn streak.
For comfort he turned his mind, and his fingers, back to the bolt in his jeans pocket. He couldn’t leave it alone – had to keep touching it. He drew it out for the tenth time since they’d set off again, looking at the three bright gouges in the shank, and the way it was cranked – just a little kink in the smooth line under the head. The grazes on the flange faces had told a story. That story had been stolen. But the same story was retold here on the bolt: the story of the disc ring shifting back and forth at least three times, each movement leaving those fresh-metal witness marks on the shaft of this bolt.
If Tom had found a diamond in Lemon he couldn’t have been happier.
They barely spoke on the drive back to Cape Town. Tom’s mind was whirring as he turned the bolt over and over like worry beads. Ness seemed preoccupied too, which suited him fine.
It was dark by the time they got to the city and booked into a hotel. This time Tom requested a double and Ness smiled. Despite her ministrations at the hospital, he was still relieved and a little disbelieving that this was happening. Some small – okay, not so small – cynical part of him had been wondering if, back at the hospital, she’d simply seen he had a problem and done him a favour. Strictly medicinal. Like he’d pick up her groceries if she were ill – that kind of thing.
Once he put it in that context, he realized how stupid it sounded. No woman went down on a guy as a favour between friends. Not unless Ness were some new and exotic kind of woman brewed up in a fantasy lab run by unattractive, halitosis-plagued virgin geeks.
Still, it had been a relief when she’d smiled.
Ness showered and Tom was just debating whether she was the kind of woman who’d welcome company – or kick his soapy ass out of there – when his phone rang. The thought that it might be Pete with a job made him scramble about looking for his cell and he banged his hand on the table as he answered.
‘Motherfucker.’
‘Tom?’
