Free The Hunter by Tony Park

the thing she – they – had feared was happening, more and more. Her decision to return to policing was taking a toll on the family. Sannie was tired of justifying herself, tired of snide remarks and full-blown arguments. She set the case docket down on the kitchen bench top.
    Tom nodded to the thick folder. ‘More work?’
    Tom had never been happy about her decision, but she was her own woman. She had raised her first two children solo for several years after her first husband, also a policeman, had died, so Tom didn’t get to call all the shots in her life. Now that her youngest, little Tommy, the son she’d had with Tom, had started school, she wasn’t tied to the farmhouse. Sannie knew her husband worried about her every time he said goodbye to her, but while Nelspruit had its moments it was not as dangerous as working in Johannesburg.
    ‘ Ja . That murder investigation, from the time of the World Cup. The guy I interviewed today was a suspect back then.’
    Tom raised his eyebrows. ‘That American fellow? What’s his name?’
    ‘Brand.’
    He slid her drink across the bench top to her. ‘Christo got in trouble again today. He slapped another boy; the teacher called me.’
    ‘And that’s because I work late?’
    He ignored her sarcasm. ‘No, I just wanted to tell you. I’m OK disciplining him, but it would have been nice if you’d been home tonight.’
    Sannie heard loud and clear what Tom was leaving unsaid. Christo was not his natural son. Tom obviously felt she needed to be around more for her older children, given the difficult ages they were entering; Christo was thirteen and her daughter two years younger. But Sannie wanted to yell back at her husband, I also need to be here for Nandi Mnisi, who was brutally raped and murdered.
    ‘There’s nothing on TV,’ Tom said.
    She wondered if that was a peace offering, a hint of intimacy. If so, he had a funny way of going about it. The frequency and intensity of their lovemaking had dropped off sharply since the first year of their marriage, since her return to the job.
    ‘I don’t get time to review cold cases at work. There’s too much day-to-day stuff, and not enough people or resources,’ she said.
    He tipped his bottle of Windhoek Lager to his lips and took several gulps. ‘I’m tired, anyway. There’s still the farm to look after.’
    Men , she thought. It was as if he thought she spent her days at a desk doing her nails. It was so unfair. He knew what policing entailed and he seemed to think that because he was through with it that she should be too. Yes, her family was the most important thing in the world to her, but had he completely forgotten what it was like to make a difference to a community, to a country? Crime, whether a murder in a field in Hazyview or corruption at the top levels of government, was the number one problem in her country, and she, for one, wanted to do something about. Couldn’t he see that?
    ‘I won’t disturb you,’ he said, draining his beer. ‘I’m going to bed to read.’
    Sannie took a breath, trying to control her anger. They fought more often these days – hell, they hadn’t fought at all in that first year. She didn’t want raised voices waking the kids. She would look in on them before she went to bed.
    Sannie picked up the murder case docket and took it outside, through the sliding screen doors, onto the timber deck. It was a nice night, not too chilly. She sat at the wooden picnic table and sipped her wine as she opened the docket. She would go through the death of Nandi Mnisi again for – what would it be – the hundredth time?
    She read the notes and transcripts from the initial interview with Brand, and with the woodcarver. Hannah van Wyk’s testimony in relation to Brand’s alibi was there as well. Perhaps it would be worth visiting her again. Sannie knew the pair were no longer together and time apart may have softened any misplaced loyalty that Van Wyk may have shown to Brand. With the