Solo

I’m down! He’s over here!’
    Bond crept forward as Dawie continued his shouted instructions, guiding Henrick towards him. Then he saw Henrick’s jerky torch beam as he ran through the trees.
    Bond took his time, making sure he advanced in total silence. Dawie was moaning in pain and Henrick was crouched over his writhing body, looking for the wound. Bond took his nickel-and-dime cosh out of his pocket and slugged Henrick full on the crown of his head. He went down like a cow hit by a humane killer. He was so still Bond wondered if he’d delivered some kind of fatal blow. He held his fingers to his throat. There was a pulse – a thready one.
    ‘I’m dying. Help me,’ Dawie said. Bond turned Dawie’s fallen torch on him and saw that he’d been hit low and to the side of his abdomen – not fatal, though he was already pallid from blood loss. Bond said nothing, grabbing his collar and dragging him – groaning – to a tree, where he bound his arms behind it. He checked Henrick again – still breathing but out cold. He roped his wrists together and turned him on his side so that he wouldn’t drown if he vomited. He fired both their guns into the air a few times then slung them away into the darkness. He wanted whoever was still in the house to think the guards were engaged in a firefight in the furthest reaches of the park. When it all went quiet they would begin to worry – maybe panic: they had no idea how many potential assailants were out there.
    He took one last look at Dawie and picked up his walkie-talkie.
    ‘I got him!’ Bond yelled into the microphone. Then switched it off.
    ‘If you shout loud enough someone will come for you,’ Bond said to Dawie. He knew it wasn’t true – he just wanted a few distant incoherent bellowings to be heard back at the house.
    ‘Don’t leave me, man,’ Dawie said plaintively, then added with surprising poetry, ‘I can feel my life flowing out of me, leaving me. I can feel it.’
    Bond said nothing and headed off towards the house.
    Some of the ground-floor windows were lit up, others had their curtains drawn, Bond observed as he approached. Through a gap in the curtains of the large oriel window of the main drawing room Bond saw Kobus Breed – his jacket off, his tie loosened at his throat – talking urgently on the phone. From time to time he broke off to shout into the walkie-talkie then hurled it away – obviously the lack of response from Dawie’s channel was making him furious.
    Bond paused outside – he didn’t want to go into the house as he had no idea who else might be in there. Better to try and lure Breed outside into the darkness. Then he decided it might be a more efficient plan to climb and maybe break in on a higher floor and he began hauling himself quickly up one of the heavy lead downpipes that drained the roof gutters. In a few seconds he found himself up on the faux battlements with their Gothic buttresses, polygonal chimney pots and profusion of carved stone finials. Bond’s mind was working fast – sensing opportunities, weighing up options, minimising risk. He headed for a dark window and accidently bumped into one of the finials decorating a stumpy brick chimney stack. He felt the masonry slide and grate and the round stone ball on the top almost wobbled free. Bond steadied it. It was about the size of a medicine ball and must have weighed close to fifty pounds. He smiled to himself – he had an idea.
    He removed Dawie’s walkie-talkie from his pocket and switched it on. He turned the channel frequency selection knob very slightly to one side so that it kept connecting and then cutting out. Through gritted teeth and strangulating his voice he repeated certain phrases into the microphone.
    ‘Come in – over – Bond – I have him – come in, come in – not receiving – Bond, repeat Bond, I have him, over.’
    He assumed this garbled message would be picked up by Breed and others listening in. Then he searched his pockets for loose change in vain, before he remembered he was carrying a sock full of nickels and dimes. He unpicked the knot and helped himself to a small handful. He crept round the battlements until he had a good angle on to the drawing room’s oriel window. He leaned out and flung the small coins down at the glass and heard them rattle and ping as they hit. Then he threw another handful. He raced back to the finial he had nearly dislodged and, with both arms functioning as a cradle, heaved off the