That night Boago called Tito. He needed to talk things through, get some perspective on everything.
“Hey man, did you read about Conrad? Conrad Vandermere?” Boago asked.
“No, what happened?”
“He’s dead. It says in the paper they suspect the wife. There was a car accident, brakes tampered with and some big insurance policy.”
“That’s rough. I told you, neh? Women are a serious headache.”
“No, but Tito, what’s going on?”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean Vavi, then Warnick, now Conrad – all dead. Doesn’t that concern you?”
Tito considered this. “It’s odd, but what do you think? That someone is out to kill all of us?”
“Don’t you think it’s starting to look that way? It’s only me, you and Kevin left.”
“But who? And why?”
Boago had thought about this. They’d never found Nash’s body. That night, when they lost him in the lake, Warnick said they should just all go back to the hostels. They should say nothing. He would deal with things. And so they never told anyone about the swim. Nash was missing, that’s all anyone knew. They searched and searched and he was never found. Eventually it was decided he must be dead.
Only the Seven Strong Men knew the truth about what happened and they vowed to keep quiet. Boago was thinking maybe, somehow, Nash was not dead. Maybe it all made him crazy and he was back to kill them for their secret. It seemed incredible, but it was the only thing he could think of.
“Boago, Nash died that night. You and me both know that.” Then he thought a bit and said, “What happened to Kevin? Someone told me he sort of … went off the deep end after Lyon’s. No-one can find him.”
“Kevin? Yeah, I heard he got deep into drugs, heroin even. No-one’s heard from him. Why? You think he’s the one trying to kill all of us?”
“Maybe, who knows? Drugs make people paranoid,” Tito said. “It’s all pretty strange. At the very least we should try to find him. If someone is after us, he should have the chance to know a target is on his back.”
“I think you’re right. We need to find Kevin.”
*****
Boago began the search for his old classmate. With the police resources accessible to him it didn’t take long to find Kevin Lamark. He might have hidden well from the Fifth Anniversary Reunion Committee at Lyon’s, but he wasn’t going to hide from Sergeant Boago Leburu. Kevin was running a guest house in the Karoo, in the sleepy town of Calvinia, and had been doing that for nearly eight years.
Boago phoned Tito. “You up for a road trip?”
“Sure, sounds like an adventure.”
***
Tell us what you think: Could Nash still be alive? Or is Kevin the killer? Or is it all just coincidence?