The Fallen (20 page)

‘Those pills,’ he gasped.

‘Yes?’ Bradley was rummaging through a bag emblazoned with a pharmacy logo on the tattered-looking Formica counter, from which he produced disinfectant, gauze and Elastoplast. Kobus blinked. Had the guy been shopping specially for him, or what?

‘I need them. Now.’

‘Hang on a minute. I’ll get them for you now.’

Bradley opened a drawer and pulled out a big white box of prescription painkillers. Kobus could read the label, but in his haze of pain the words made no sense to him. All he could see were the tablets themselves. A foil package containing two rows of pills.

Bradley snapped two of them out of the foil and poured a glass of water. He gulped them down.

‘How long do they take to work?’

‘Not long.’

‘Wait a sec. I can’t deal with this. I don’t want you to touch it until they’ve … Hey! What the hell’s that?’

Bradley had produced a medical syringe, which he was filling from a small brown bottle.

‘Local anaesthetic. This will numb the area fast.’ He peered down at Kobus’s arm; at the shape of the bullet pushing up against the skin. Then he looked back up at Kobus, his face serious.

‘Are you sure you want me to take that out for you?’

Kobus didn’t want the slug left inside him, that was for sure. And surely he couldn’t be in worse pain than he was already?

‘Do it,’ he said, forcing the words out through clenched teeth. ‘Then let’s go and get the bitch.’

When Jade arrived back at the resort with Inspector Pillay in the late afternoon, the first thing she noticed was the smart security boom that had been erected at the bottom entrance gate. Nearby, four uniformed security personnel were offloading a mobile guard booth from a short, flat-bed truck. Before Jade and Pillay were allowed through the boom, one of the guards hurried over and asked to see their identification.

Pillay stopped outside the chalets and, before Jade climbed out, offered her a brief warning.

‘Please think carefully about leaving the resort,’ he said. ‘I would prefer it if you stayed in the chalet area. If you want to go and visit Patel in hospital later, let me know and I’ll try to get one of my officers to accompany you.’

Then he executed a neat three-point turn and drove back the way he had come.

Looking around, Jade noted that Neil’s Beetle was nowhere to be seen.

Craig came out of his chalet and hurried over just as she was unlocking her door. From the worry she saw on his face, Jade knew that the news of the shooting had preceded her arrival.

‘I heard what happened,’ Craig said. ‘Inspector Pillay phoned me on the way to the scene. I’m so sorry. Is there any news on David?’

‘Nothing yet. It’ll be an hour or two before he’s out of theatre.’

‘Do you need transport? You can use my Land Rover if you like. Or Elsabe’s car. I’ve got her keys here and she says it’s fine for you to borrow it.’

‘Thanks,’ she said, forcing a smile. ‘If you don’t mind giving me Elsabe’s keys, I’ll take you up on that offer as soon as I’ve had a shower.’

‘You’re going to go and see David at the hospital, I guess?’

‘No.’

She took the keys and turned away, leaving Craig open-mouthed in surprise.

The right choice.

It’s not always the obvious choice, or the easy one, or the one you want to do. That was what her father had told her many times. Choices are difficult. And sometimes the only way to know whether you are making the right choice or not, is to think about what would happen if you did the opposite.

Jade went into the chalet and closed the door, locking it behind her and sliding both of the newly attached bolts firmly across.

If she went to the hospital now, she’d be doing what she wanted to do. She’d be as close to David as she could get, pacing the room anxiously, waiting for news of him. If he survived the surgery, she might even be allowed into
ICU
to see him, if she could convince the nursing sister on duty that she was his common-law wife and, therefore, close family.

What good would it do?

David would live—or die—whether she was there to watch him or not. If her face was the first thing he saw when he opened his eyes, it wouldn’t make any difference in the long run.

But right now, it would make a difference to her.

Staying in the hospital with David would make her feel better. It would also waste valuable time—time she didn’t have. The men that had ambushed her and David were still out there. They had shot David and now they would be after her.

Jade stepped into the shower and turned the water on full, letting the cool needles of water lash her skin.

She remembered how the blond man with the phone around his neck had glanced back at her on his way up the stairs of the rundown apartment building, heading for flat number eighteen. Less than half an hour later, a tall man had flagged them down,
wearing a badly fitting Metro Police uniform, stopping Jade’s car for long enough to allow his accomplice to start shooting.

The Metro cop had also had a phone around his neck.

It was the same man. Jade was convinced of it.

The question was why.

Jade towelled herself dry and pulled on some clean clothes. Dark clothing. Black pants, charcoal top. She buckled her gun’s holster around her waist and clipped the Glock inside before knotting a sweatshirt over the top.

She picked up her sunglasses from the table and put them on. Then she pulled David’s phone out of the charger. She wasn’t going to risk being caught without a working cellphone again, which meant she’d have to use his, because her battery was still flat.

Jade locked the door behind her and walked over to Elsabe’s car. The interior of the compact sedan was impeccably clean, with a box of tissues on the passenger seat and a white cotton jacket on a coat hanger in the back.

The jacket partially obscured Jade’s view out of the rear passenger window behind her, so she took it off the coat hanger and laid it carefully on the back seat.

Then she climbed in, reclining the seat to make herself more comfortable behind the wheel.

Jade turned onto the main road, keeping a sharp eye out for anyone who might be following her. She’d expected that the criminals might have a vehicle patrolling the area. What she hadn’t expected was to be stopped by the police just before she reached the main highway into town.

This time, Jade wasn’t pulled over by a lone traffic cop. She was directed into the emergency lane at what looked like an official roadblock.

Even so, she couldn’t help it. When she saw the orange traffic cones and the white cars parked up ahead where the two-lane road narrowed into one, she started to sweat.

She slowed right down, straining to see whether she could make out any official signage on the vehicles. Whether these were real Metro Police, or whether this was another trap.

There were more police vehicles here, which was reassuring. She counted three cars and one large van parked on the same side of the road as her, and another car, this one with a clearly visible official logo on the door, on the opposite side.

Jade breathed deeply and tried to reassure herself that this was a normal roadblock. Especially in view of the fact that there were two drivers already at the barricades ahead of her and another slowing down behind her. Safety in numbers, or so she hoped.

Even if it was a routine police operation, that didn’t mean she was out of danger. The blond man had been wearing a genuine, if ill-fitting, uniform. That meant officials in the Richards Bay Metro Police force could be taking bribes in exchange for assisting criminals, and that any one of the officers manning the roadblock could also be informers.

Swallowing her anxiety, Jade pulled over and wound down her window in response to the urgent waving of a harassed-looking woman officer.

‘Driver’s licence, please.’

Jade eased the card out of her wallet sleeve and handed it over. The woman read it carefully, but did not hand it back immediately. Instead she walked round to the front of the car and examined the licence disk. Jade found herself praying that Elsabe had kept her car’s registration up to date; that she wouldn’t end up being delayed by factors that were out of her control.

To Jade’s disappointment, the policewoman walked over to a large police van that seemed to be doubling as a mobile office, still holding her driver’s licence. After a short wait, another cop, a fit-looking black man, appeared in the doorway.

He spoke in Zulu to the lady cop, who then marched back to Jade’s car.

‘Lady, you have outstanding traffic fines,’ she said.

Jade stared up at her. Impossible, surely. She’d paid all the ones that Rent a Runner had notified her about and it had been a month since David had last borrowed her car.

‘Fines in my name?’ she asked.

The lady cop shook her head. ‘They have put your car’s number plate into the system. This vehicle has outstanding fines.’

‘It’s not my car,’ Jade replied, as politely as she could manage under the stressful circumstances. ‘I borrowed it from my next-door neighbour at the resort where I’m staying.’

The woman officer shouted this information to the large black cop. After giving it a moment’s thought, he strolled down the steps that had been set up at the van’s back entrance and across to her car.

‘This vehicle has got outstanding fines totalling two thousand rands,’ he said.

Two thousand rands’ worth of traffic offences committed by a woman who hung her cotton jacket on a coat hanger and did needlework in her spare time? Surely impossible.

Jade spread her hands in a gesture of appeal. ‘Officer, it’s not my car.’

‘Wait here.’

Holding her driver’s licence, he walked back to the mobile office.

Inwardly seething with frustration, Jade turned off the car’s engine, silencing the irritating chatter of the DJ on the local radio station. This delay was exactly what she hadn’t wanted. If anyone had paid a local cop to be on the lookout for her, they’d now know what vehicle she was driving and in what direction she was headed.

After what seemed like an interminable wait, the cop returned.

‘You are clear,’ he said. ‘You yourself have no outstanding fines. But this vehicle does, and they go back five months.’

He folded his arms in a gesture that made it clear he was not willing to forgive this breach of the law.

Jade didn’t believe for one minute that the borrowed car had outstanding fines. No doubt, if she were to insist on seeing all the documentation, the black cop would discover that an administrative ‘error’ had occurred in the system.

But that would take time, and it would be time she didn’t have. The quickest and easiest way out of this was also going to be the most expensive. ‘Can I pay them now on behalf of the owner?’

‘You may do that. We have a credit-card machine in the office if you need it.’

Jade cursed silently as she climbed out of the car. She hurried over to the office, which was manned by a total of three cops and had two people waiting to pay fines. The black cop stood at the door for a while and then walked away. Jade wasn’t sure, but she thought she could hear him speaking into his cellphone.

The man in the queue in front of Jade was clearly there to argue, rather than pay. She started to wonder whether kicking his ankles would speed up the process. Or perhaps she should offer to pay for his fines too. Anything to get out of the cramped office that reeked of sweat and was uncomfortably warm despite the overcast evening.

She was worried that the black cop was on the criminals’ payroll. The roadblock was clearly a routine operation, but they’d got lucky and that meant her luck was running out.

Eventually it was her turn to pay. The lady at the desk allowed her to get a discount on the more recent fines, but even so it cost her fifteen hundred rands to pay the amount that, according to
the system, had in fact been incurred by the car’s legal owner, Ms Elsabe Marais of 64 Mowbray Road, Emmarentia.

She was about to leave the office when the black cop returned. He was pocketing his cellphone and, from the way he glanced immediately at her right hip, Jade knew that he’d been speaking to one of the people who had organised the earlier shooting.

‘You are carrying a firearm,’ he said.

‘Yes, I am.’ Jade’s stomach was clenched so tight it hurt.

‘Is it licensed?’

‘Of course.’

‘Please show me your documentation.’

‘It’s right here in …’ And then, to her dismay, Jade realised it wasn’t.

The original of her gun licence was in the cubbyhole of her hired car, where she’d put it after showing it at a roadblock when she was on her way down to the coast.

Her hired car—the one that had been towed away after the crash. In the chaos that had followed David’s shooting, she’d forgotten to take the licence out of it.

‘I was the victim of an attempted hijacking a couple of hours ago,’ she said. ‘I was with a police detective from Jo’burg. He was shot and is now fighting for his life in hospital. My car was badly damaged and it was towed to a panel beater. My original licence is in the glove compartment. I do have a certified copy here, in my wallet …’

The cop remained unmoved by her hijacking story. Probably because he’d just heard about it from another source.

‘We do not accept copies,’ he said. ‘I must see the original.’

‘I’ll be able to bring the original to a police station within the required seven days,’ Jade said. ‘Please correct me if I’m wrong, but I understand that according to Section 106 of the Firearms Control Act, I’m permitted to do that.’

She didn’t think quoting the law to a police officer was a good idea, but she was out of options.

The cop shook his head, looking smug, as if she’d started a game he knew only he could win.

‘Section 107 of the Firearms Control Act allows a weapon to be seized without a warrant and held in police custody until the correct documentation is produced. Hand me your gun now and wait here while I fill out the receipt.’ He turned to the lady officer who was waiting outside the van. ‘And in the meantime, search her car thoroughly for any other unlicensed firearms.’