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

“Except that we don’t have a hundred and twenty bars,” said Robyn before Chandler could use the breath he had taken. We all turned to her. When Robyn’s in a bad mood, it’s as if her skin turns to marble and her eyes glow like coals in a dying fire.

“I counted them,” said Fat-Boy, who was not intimidated by the eyes.

“We don’t have a single bar,” said Robyn.

“What Robyn means,” said Chandler, who liked to bring these meetings to order before the children started throwing things, “is that we don’t have the bars in our possession.”

“Logistical,” said Fat-Boy, who might have had a similar briefing to my own.

“There is a plan then?” asked Robyn.

“There is indeed,” said Chandler. He waited a moment for the applause to die down. “The Angel has an idea.”

“Angel?” scoffed Fat-Boy and gave me a glare. “I’m not doing any plan of the Angel. It’s him that got us into this trouble.”

“That’s not entirely true,” said Chandler.

“Is too,” said Fat-Boy. “He didn’t shoot straight. It was his job to kill that man, not shoot his leg off. If he hadn’t done that we’d be on the beach living the good life by now.”

Chandler sighed.

“We’ve discussed this, Fat-Boy. You know that is rubbish. Killing Breytenbach was never a part of the plan.”

“But whose side is Angel on? What’s the bet his new idea is something he wants us to do for those government pigs? He’s just a yes-man to them, that’s all he is.”

“The Angel is on our side,” said Chandler. But he said it without conviction, and we all heard it. “Here is the plan: we collect our shiny yellow bars from BB’s kind protection.” A satisfied look to remind us it was his idea to leave our bounty hiding in plain sight. “We then use Angel’s idea to bring said bars down to Cape Town, store them here temporarily, then take them out to sea when the time is right.”

“Get them here how?” said Robyn.

“Shall we hear the Angel’s idea?” said Chandler in a voice that was beginning to fray around the edges.

“We’ll never get through all the roadblocks,” said Robyn. “That’s why there’s been this delay. How do we explain the heavy boxes we don’t want them to open? Do you know how many road blocks there are between Mpumalanga and here? And what about getting them into the docks? The security has been beefed up at all the ports. You know that.”

“If we give the Angel a chance to speak,” said Chandler, his enthusiasm flagging a little against Robyn’s persistent headwind.

I cleared my throat, but Fat-Boy jumped in.

“Tell me you’re not working with those lousy government pigs,” he demanded.

“They have approached me,” I said. “And asked me to work with them. But this has nothing to do with them, except for an opportunity that it might provide.”

Fat-Boy glowered at me through his lazy eye, then turned to Chandler. “I won’t be the grovelling slave no more, colonel. The black guy in the dirty overalls getting kicked around by all you privileged whities.”

“You won’t be, Fat-Boy.”

“I wanna be the main player.”

Chandler took a deep breath, produced a reassuring smile for Fat-Boy, and turned to me.

“Robyn is correct,” I said. “Moving the gold has been impossible under the state of emergency. But there is one group of people who can move anything they like. Who are immune to the roadblocks.”

“No one’s immune,” said Fat-Boy. “They stop everyone.”

“You mean the army,” said Robyn. “They are immune.”

“I do. When the army needs to transport something, no one takes a second look at it.”

“Not even Breytenbach,” agreed Robyn.

Fat-Boy made his trumpet sound again. “You saying we get the army to transport our gold?”

“I am.”

“How the fuck do we do that?”

“By asking them,” I said.

We found some broken deckchairs and old cans of paint to sit on, and I told them about the Van Rensburg family. About the playboy Hendrik who was starting his own army, and his father, Piet, who had the government in his pocket.

“You want this man Piet to ask the army to load our gold onto their trucks?” asked Fat-Boy.

“Onto a ship,” I said. “Trucks are vulnerable. Too many stops while the drivers drink coffee and the truck sits outside in the rain waiting for someone to look inside.”

“Why would this man Piet do this for us?”

“Because he’s done it before.”

“Asked the army to move gold bars for him?”

“Not gold bars. Animals.”

“The army moved animals for him?” said Fat-Boy. “That’s insane.”

“Not insane at all. Van Rensburg’s licence to keep carnivorous animals on his game farm has recently been restored. He has a collection of hungry carnivores waiting to be shipped down here. He encountered the same logistical problems as us, so he went to the government and asked them to give him a rubber stamp and get the army to expedite his transport.”

“They did that?” asked Robyn.

“First shipment arrived a few weeks ago.”

“But animals is one thing. Gold is another,” said Fat-Boy.

“Exactly. But they use specially modified crates. It turns out that the animals are not the only thing they are transporting.”

“Do you have to talk in riddles, Angel?” asked Fat-Boy. “It’s annoying.”

I explained the report that Dirk had written that suggested that the large crates used to transport wildlife to the Van Rensburg farm as it transitioned from sheep farm into game farm had been used to smuggle weapons for Hendrik’s stash.

“But if they’re smuggling weapons,” said Robyn, “why does the army allow it?”

“They don’t know about it. Only a few people saw the report.”

“But they’ll stop it now. His next load won’t get through.”

“On the contrary, the next load won’t even be looked at by the customs inspectors. They’ll wave it through.”

“Why?” asked Robyn.

“Because they don’t know where they’re stashing the weapons. They want them to bring more in so they can follow them.”

“Track them,” said Fat-Boy.

“All the way to the secret stash.”

“How do they know there will be another load?”