Murderous by David Hickson (best ereader for comics .txt) 📕

was dropped from ultra-luxury to mere luxury, and finally how he ended up spending a night in the sickbay of the school at the Village of Future Hope or Toekomstige Hoop, an Afrikaans title that was surely an ironic reference to the nearby town of Minhoop. That final downgrade had occurred later in the weekend after an altercation between Dirk and his buddy Hendrik, an altercation that followed Dirk’s crowning moment in his short-lived field agent career. Shortly after Dirk had seen with his own eyes and touched with his own hands the sought-after stash of weapons.

Dirk’s triumph occurred on the back of Hendrik’s over-indulgence. As the weekend festivities gained momentum, Hendrik’s consumption of alcohol reached a point at which the line between little-known, long-forgotten classmate and trusted comrade-in-arms became blurred. Dirk found himself swept up in one of Hendrik’s notorious nights out, and the two of them headed out from the luxury lodge for the ‘Hopeful Village’ to find Hendrik some young, dark-skinned female companions upon whom he could unleash some of his abundant sexual frustration – Dirk suggested that the underwear model with the diamond ring occasionally withheld her favours. En route to the village, as Hendrik extolled the virtues of the females to be found there, Hendrik stopped to collect something that would encourage the females to accept his proposal of a night of unbridled passion. That something turned out to be an AK-47, which Hendrik assured Dirk was the best way to convince young females to do pretty much anything. And so Hendrik had accidentally shown Dirk what the budding field agent described in his report as ‘a disappointing wagon-load of guns’. Hendrik boasted there were many more weapons stored in a concrete bunker. Dirk said how much he would like to see the concrete bunker, but Hendrik did not seem inclined to show it to him. Hendrik complained that getting weapons was becoming harder by the day, and Dirk offered a scribbled phone number for the notorious arms dealer Richard Mabele, whom he claimed was an associate of a distant cousin. Hendrik accepted the number, but still made no promises about showing Dirk the concrete bunker.

Having secured the best-known pacifier of young, dark-skinned females, the evening took an unfortunate turn. The details that Dirk provided became a little hazy. Hendrik lost control of the vehicle as they entered the village, and one of the young females was injured when he struggled to find the brake pedal. The pacifying AK-47 was fired a few times, but it did not seem to have a pacifying effect. At this point Dirk, a teetotaller and now substantially out of his depth, intervened before someone was badly hurt. Unfortunately, but true to form, it was Dirk who was badly hurt. He remembered Hendrik not taking kindly to his intervention. He remembered Hendrik using force to express this, and he also remembered regaining consciousness with a splitting headache and some memory loss in a sickbay of the Village of Future Hope school.

Hendrik’s absence when Dirk awoke was blamed on the excessive alcohol consumption by Hendrik, who had fled back to the luxury camp. Dirk was encouraged to spend the night in the sickbay by the school nurse, and as there was no way of getting back to the luxury side of the property until the next morning, Dirk had little choice.

Khanyi had added a note that they had sent him for X-rays on the Department’s insistence and that he had spent a night under observation in hospital. He had a nasty bruise on the side of his head, and showed signs of mild concussion, but no bones were broken; Dirk accepted that things occasionally got a little rough in the field.

The Village of Future Hope was described in an attached press release, together with a glossy colour brochure, provided by the ever-efficient Khanyi as a postscript to Dirk’s regrettable foray. In the press release, Piet van Rensburg explained that the imbalances of the past were being redressed in the Village of Future Hope. It was a grass-roots educational centre where young, previously disadvantaged people would be provided with the education that had been denied them in the past. An education that included vocational training, and sped up the development of young people in the region to produce well-balanced members of the future, hopeful generation. It was the rhetoric that had abounded after the political changes in the 1990s and early 2000s – before cynicism crept in. But according to further notes from Khanyi, the Village of Future Hope had lived up to at least some of its promise, in the form of several alumni who had progressed to further educational institutions and had assumed leading roles in their community.

Dirk returned from his first field experience with a bruise, concussion, memory loss, and a vague idea that Hendrik van Rensburg had indeed stashed a collection of weapons on his father’s farm.

The weekend had one positive outcome. Hendrik, suffering from a nasty hangover, or perhaps feeling emotionally bruised, had placed his large hand on Dirk’s shoulder and suggested that he would like to see Dirk’s sister again. Dirk had optimistically interpreted this as an apology for the previous night’s altercation, although Hendrik made no mention of that.

Dirk had concluded that Hendrik was volatile, possibly a dangerous person to be around. But on a bigger scale, he was inclined to think that Hendrik was a harmless fool.

I wondered how accurate that interpretation was, but pushed the report aside when Aldo brought the risotto al mare, and I made sure that none of the photographs of dead people were visible to him as he topped up my Verdicchio and bemoaned the sad state of the country.

Dirk’s story devolved into an awkward recounting of his pathetic efforts to rekindle a friendship with Hendrik over the final two weeks of his life. He showed progress when the fake sister received Hendrik’s calls, but that lasted only three days, until a leading swimwear company adopted her