Riedwaan started the car and took the road that wound towards jagged hills some way off. There was no light anywhere. He listened to the rain thrumming on the roof. If only it could tell him what Rita Mkhize’s killers had wanted from her. If he found it first, he might just ace them. If he didn’t, he’d get what he deserved.
There was a lull in the rain, but no break in the clouds
when Riedwaan stopped near the gate. He parked off the road, in an acacia thicket. A nightjar called. Riedwaan opened the gate, a handgun just visible under his jacket. He walked up the drive, keeping to the trees that skirted the road. There were lights on in the house. A single vehicle was parked in front.
No dogs.
Thunder growled, not yet exhausted.
Riedwaan eased open the kitchen
door and moved down the passageway towards a light. The study.
A man was sitting at a desk, in front of a window. His laptop was open, but his large hands lay idle.
Malan.
‘You’re a long way from home,’ said Riedwaan placing his gun against the back of the lawyer’s head. ‘Time to finish the conversation we started in Keerom Street.’
‘Faizal,’ he said, an edge to his voice. ‘You
don’t have a warrant.’
‘That’s a technicality I’m sure we can get around,’ said Riedwaan, drilling the barrel of the gun into Malan’s skull. ‘Put your hands behind the chair.’
Riedwaan yanked a curtain tie-back off the wall and bound the man’s hands to the back of his chair.
‘I thought we should talk about the links between some senior politicians, Mpumalanga Holdings, and the Gallows
Hill property deals.’
‘It’s your unit’s imagination, Faizal,’ said Malan, sweat beading his forehead. ‘There is no link.’
‘Except one,’ said Riedwaan. ‘You are the connection. The whole family tree of business, bribes, tenders. There’s a vrot web there that little Rita Mkhize brought into focus.’
‘You don’t know what you’re talking about,’ said Malan.
‘Oh, I do, Mr Malan. I’ve
been looking through your documents, at all the conveyancing you’ve done on government properties in the last three years.’
‘There’s no paper trail,’ said Malan. ‘Because there’s no wrongdoing. All the deals have been done legitimately.’
‘The companies were hijacked here, right here in your office,’ said Riedwaan. ‘Once we cross-checked, it’s easy to see that all these transfers came through
your office. Different names, yes, but all the same origin.’ He gave the chair a shove. ‘But it all unravelled in Cape Town, didn’t it?’
‘Allegations, easy,’ said Malan. ‘Evidence, easy. Laying a charge, easy. Making it stand up in court long enough for a conviction, not going to happen. Do you know what you’re up against?’
‘I know,’ said Riedwaan.
‘Bright boy,’ he said. ‘How much
do you want?’
‘You’re not the one doing the bargaining,’ said Riedwaan. ‘I am.’
‘The men you are fighting are your own bosses.’
‘With two police chiefs already in custody,’ said Riedwaan. ‘We can make it a hat-trick.’
‘They’re expendable,’ said Malan. ‘You’re expendable. Plenty more gangsters willing to put on a shiny uniform,’ he said, the sibilance in his voice more menacing
than a shout. ‘You’re dead wrong,Faizal. Your unit, even your own boss expendable. Finished. You fucked up with Gallows Hill. Made the wrong people angry. Made the wrong man angry. The announcement will come on Monday. You’ll be a desk jockey when you get back – somewhere in the gat end of South Africa.’
‘A South African prison. Not a place I would choose to retire to. It’s up to you. You
help me,’ said Riedwaan, winging it. ‘You walk. I’d really think about it if I were you, Malan. Otherwise you’ll spend time with people who make Hond Williams seem like a puppy.’
‘That stupid little police sergeant took some stuff that belonged to us,’ said Malan.
‘That’s why you killed her? That’s why your thugs watched while she was dying?’ Riedwaan shoved the chair again, harder this
time. ‘What were you looking for?’
Malan was savvy enough to keep quiet.
‘What did she have that you wouldn’t be able to deny in a court of law?’
Sheet lightning illuminated the dense bush, followed by a roll of thunder. A squall of rain flung itself at the house. The lights flickered.
A trickle of dust fell onto his shoulder. Riedwaan looked up.
The fan was motionless, the
blades segmenting the air into exact triangles, like a sliced orange. A sliced fucking piece of orange. Riedwaan felt in his trouser pockets. Not there, not fucking there. Then he remembered he’d tucked it into his breast pocket, his last link to Rita. He pulled it out. Exactly how he remembered it: not a doodle, though. A message for him, done in a hurry.
He looked up at the ceiling again.
Rita Mkhize had been here in the last few hours of her life. Rita, who in order to survive, always weighed the odds with absolute precision, who had learnt from young to hide her belongings. The cop who’d learnt the art of survival as a kid, among the shacks of the Cape Flats. Rita, who had learnt to hunt for invisible tracks, had left him this parting gift.
Riedwaan grabbed a chair.
There was a tear in the ceiling – the fan had been repositioned. He touched it, took out his knife and easily unscrewed the fan, so that it hung suspended from an electric cord.
‘What the fuck are you doing?’ said Malan. ‘I’ll throw the fucking book at you. Breaking and entering, assault, damage to property –’
‘Shut the fuck up, Malan,’ said Riedwaan.
He put his hand inside the opening
and felt around.
Nothing.
Rita was much smaller than he was. Of course. She’d have tossed it inside the hole. He stretched upwards, on the balls of his feet. His fingers brushed against something hard. He grabbed at it, tugged gently.
A package tumbled out, covered in dust and rat shit.
Riedwaan ripped open the paper.
Rita’s iPod.
‘This is what you were looking for,’ said
Riedwaan. ‘This is what she came back for. This is what you killed her for. She’d recorded you, you motherfucker.’ He zipped the device into his inner pocket.
‘No warrant,’ said Malan. ‘Can’t be used as evidence.’
‘No,’ said Riedwaan. ‘But it’ll help me to know where to start. Must be something here you wanted to keep to yourselves. A leak to the press would do the trick, I think. Voices
we can all recognise, discussing deals the country has read about in the papers. Deals that piss them off. Gallows Hill, for one, you fucker.’
Malan’s eyes shifted focus.
Riedwaan flung himself aside as the bullet punched a hole in the centre of Malan’s forehead, the back of his head hit the wall.
‘Hey, you shot the lawyer,’ Mtimbe’s jarring voice.
‘You can always get another one,’
said Williams. ‘Even the expensive ones are cheap.’
Riedwaan looked at the burly men forming an arc behind Williams. Uneasy in their shiny suits.
‘How’s that little lady friend of yours?’ asked Hond, rubbing his crotch. ‘Still jars?’
A man behind him sniggered.
The lights dipped in the storm, flickered on again. Thunder cracked. The room was plunged into darkness.
The dog snarled.
Riedwaan fired. The animal howled and was silent.
Glass showered into the mud as Riedwaan hurled himself at the picture window behind him. He hit the ground and rolled under the stoep just as lightning lit up the sky.
Hond Williams had come after him, he could hear his footstepsabove. Riedwaan fired twice, three times. Missed.Two sets of footsteps above him.
Riedwaan lay and listened.
He took aim. First, take out Williams. Mtimbe wasn’t a priority.Too fat to move fast, and didn’t seem the type who did his own dirty work.
Turning onto his side as he lay on the ground, Riedwaan looked up through a gap in the floorboards. Williams was in his sights.
Riedwaan fired. He swivelled the barrel.Williams grunted and fell.
‘He’s hit Hond twice in the chest, the poes,’ shouted
one of Williams’s men. The man fired into the darkness, the gun held upside down, gangster-style.
As the thunder rolled, Riedwaan sprinted into the driving rain. Ahead of him, across a stretch of 40 metres, was a shed. Beyond that the bush, dark and wet as a womb. Riedwaan longed to crawl into it, but first there was the open ground ahead of him.
The bullets whistled past Riedwaan in the
blessed darkness. Another gun, the shots going wide. Riedwaan made it to the trees, kept running. They’d be moving out of the house, now. Looking for him.
Think.
His mind did not respond.
The bush beckoned, promising to hide him.
Act.
Whoever was following him knew this terrain better than he did. He looked back. The house loomed in the rain.
Two men raced towards an opening
in the bush opposite the house. Riedwaan waited for them to see his tracks, but the driving rain had already obliterated them. Then he ran, zigzagging across the lawn towards the tree line.
The men were gone, for the moment anyway, and Riedwaan dashed to the car. He got in, turned on the ignition, took the brake off, and rolled down the track. Only a couple of kilometres to the road.
Riedwaan sensed a movement to his right, ducked down, the bullets taking out the rear passenger window. He started the engine and sped towards the gate, knocking it sideways as he drove through. They’d be on him in minutes.
The road was dark and desolate.
Du Randt was his only hope. He had the farm next door.
Lights flashed on the top of a rise, heading his way.
He had no other
options. He turned and drove up a dirt track. On the left was dense bush, he got the car off the road and parked in a thicket. In the distance he heard the gunning of an engine, they were after him. He patted his pocket, Rita’s iPod still there, and set off on foot up the hill. There was a single light on the back stoep.
Riedwaan was cold and wet and hungry, but he was still alive.
Then
a pistol shot blasted him off his feet.
Two traffic cops were first on the scene.
‘Lady.’ One of them put his hand on her back.
She was warm. She was bloody, but she was breathing. The cop brushed the dirt off her face. She opened her eyes.
‘Ma’am,’ he said. ‘Can you hear me?’
‘Don’t shout,’ Clare murmured. ‘My head hurts.’
‘You’re alive.’
She moved her fingers.
‘I must be,’ she tried to smile. ‘These
work.’
‘Lie still,’ he said. ‘The paramedics are here.’
Clare extended her arms.
‘Those work too.’
‘Please, ma’am,’ he said. ‘Do what I ask you.’
‘That bastard was going to kill me,’ she said, trying to sit up.
‘Please,’ he begged. ‘Wait for the medics. Let them check you.’
‘I’m fine. I’m alive. Help me up.’
‘What happened?’ The cop gave up and helped her to her
feet.
‘He was waiting for me,’ she said. ‘I didn’t check. I was stupid.’
‘It’s not your fault,’ he said. He looked about eighteen.
‘He put a knife to my throat,’ she said. ‘Made me drive, take this turn-off to the bush.’
The cop put an arm around her shoulder. ‘Shame, man. What happened then, lady?’
‘When he made me turn here, I saw the bush up ahead, I pulled the wheel to
the left, and threw myself out this side,’ said Clare. ‘I thought if he gets me out there, who’ll find my body if he dumps me there.’
‘You mustn’t think about it,’ he said.
‘Did you find him?’ asked Clare.
‘We found you. There’s an ambulance coming.’
‘Help me back into the light.’
They scrambled up the embankment, getting to the top as the medics arrived. Blue lights appeared
up ahead on the hard shoulder, illuminating a gathering crowd. Police. Behind them, a mess of shacks, makeshift homes that sprouted on every available piece of land.
The car had come to rest in a shack, wrecking its flimsy front. A middle-aged man lay on the ground, his arm sticking up at an unnatural angle. A woman knelt beside him, cradling a child in her arms. It was mewling like a wounded
kitten. Two girls in pink dressing gowns stood behind her, wide-eyed at the destruction of their home.
The smell of petrol was thick in the air, the threat of a fire a match-strike away.
Clare looked at her car. The passenger door hung open, the driver’s door was closed. Keys in the ignition, her handbag still in front.
‘Can you give that to me?’ Clare said to one of the officers.
‘I need my phone.’
She tried to dial, but her hands were shaking too much.
‘Can I help you, ma’am?’ asked the officer.
‘Dial Riedwaan, please,’ she said.
‘What shall I tell him?’
Clare tried to get her mind to work. ‘Say I’m okay.’
The officer dialled. Shook his head. ‘Just says that the user is not available, that you should please try later.’ He handed her the phone.
‘Is this yours, lady?’ another officer asked, pointing to a sports bag next to the car.
Clare looked at the bag. There was blood on the strap.
‘Not mine,’ said Clare. ‘The man who abducted me, maybe it’s his.’
The officer pulled out a pair of gloves and put them on. He opened the bag with care. A box cutter. Blades. Cable ties. Rope. Duct tape. A roll of black bags. A single key.
There was also a Makro cash slip and a petrol receipt. Horror movie equipment.
She looked around her. Dazed. Confused.
A girl stepped forward.
‘He ran that way.’ The girl pointed towards the bush. ‘Sipho, all of them, they chased him, but he was too fast. He’s in the bushes. They won’t find him there.’
Her little sister tugged her sleeve, said something in rapid Xhosa.
‘What
is she saying?’ asked Clare.
‘She says he wasn’t the driver. She says the man was in the back. There was nobody driving.’
More blue lights coming off the highway. The crime-scene specialists that the cops had called.
‘This is a fokken car accident.’ The head of forensic services slammed the door of his bakkie. He glanced at the Mazda, and the destruction in its path.