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

There were a handful of other police officers in the tin box of a room, all involved in a cameo of crisis management, two of them at a map of the area, another one sorting through a pile of photographs with yellow wax marks to show the bullet trajectories, two huddled over a computer which looked as if it was processing fingerprint files, an older man on the phone, and an obese woman who had fallen asleep at her desk, her head flung back, snoring loudly. We left them to it and stepped out into the cold.

“I’ve given up,” said the captain, when I’d lit his cigarette and he’d blown smoke at the church.

“On the case?” I said.

He shook his head and indicated the cigarette which he held in his closed fist, the burning end sticking out between his second and third fingers.

“Me too,” I said. “Gave up a while ago.”

The two of us stood there like naughty children smoking behind the school pavilion.

“Andile,” he said. “Andile Dlamini.”

“Freddy,” I said. “Freddy Moss.” Because you can never be too careful, and Chandler had insisted that my disappearance should be absolute. “You have a fingerprint?” I asked.

“Partial,” he said. “No match, though. Nothing yet. It takes time, too much time. We’ve got DNA from hair and blood found on a pew. Doesn’t belong to any of the victims. Different racial group. But there’s nothing on record that matches it. DNA’s no good unless you have something to match it to.”

“Do you know anything about the Van Rensburg farm? They call it Ukuthula.”

“Sure.” He nodded. “Big game farm. Luxury lodges. They have a development program there.”

“The Village of Future Hope?”

“That’s the one. Two of my men went round there yesterday. Troubled youngsters. Thought it was worth checking out. But it’s over an hour’s drive. The shooter couldn’t have come from there. Too far to walk, and if they came by car they’d have to get through all the game fences and gates. Someone would have noticed.” He sucked on his cigarette.

“Is that what they are? Troubled youngsters?”

“It’s how they start. It’s a development program, isn’t it? They get taught life skills, come out untroubled. Least, that’s what they say. My guys said it all looked kosher. Nicely made beds, clean faces, everyone looking untroubled. Why do you ask?”

I told Andile about the Van Rensburgs’ pitot tube. He listened in silence, then raised his cigarette to his face. When he drew on the cigarette, he held his entire hand against his face as if he was reacting to some terrible shock and trying not to cry out. But the tip of the cigarette glowed and crackled from the strength of his inhaling breath.

“Someone protecting the Van Rensburgs?” he said. Another pull on the cigarette. “Or just coincidence?”

“Perhaps someone grateful to the Van Rensburg family, who made sure they weren’t in the church when he went to kill all the others?”

“It seems unlikely.”

Andile flicked the butt of his cigarette onto the grass.

“I’ll need another of those,” he said, and cupped his hands around mine as I lit it. He looked up at me as I tried to get the lighter to catch. “Your fancy boss, that black beauty. The one who called to say you were coming in.”

“Khanyisile.”

“She’s sneaky, that one.”

“She is.”

“What are you? Secret service? She flashed her ID the other day, but I didn’t look too closely.”

“Government,” I said. “Civil service. Don’t feel bad about it. There aren’t many people who look at Khanyi’s ID too closely.”

Andile nodded as if that was an answer.

“She said this was unofficial. If it helps us find the killer, I’m to keep quiet about it. What does that mean?”

“It means she is feeling the pressure of those words on the wall. She is saying things she should be keeping quiet about.”

“She said you were a loose cannon.”

“I am. But she’s the one who keeps packing in the gunpowder and lighting the fuse.”

“She’s sneaky, but kind of interesting.”

“She’s not really my boss,” I said.

“She told me that too.” The lighter caught, and he gave the cigarette a desperate suck. “She also gave me a different name,” he said. “Not Freddy Moss. But I’ve learnt never to listen to the names you government people give.”

He held the cigarette up to his face, and his exhausted eyes twinkled through the smoke. I was getting to like Andile Dlamini.

Seven

Nelspruit thought of itself as a city, although many would have called it a town. To add further insult, Nelspruit’s airport had been moved when the local leaders realised that the world was a good deal more interested in the wild animals than they were in their town. The airport now provided easy access to the internationally renowned Kruger National Park and was where wealthy guests parked their private jets while they roughed it in the luxury bush camps.

The new Kruger Mpumalanga International Airport was a fitting gateway to the magnificent wonder of the natural world. The terminal building was like a fantasy tree house, built out of raw timber poles that reached up three storeys to the thatched roof to give one a taste of the genuine African hut experience. A series of award-winning photographs of roaring lions, charging elephants and menacing hyena lined the avenue where haute couture shops rubbed shoulders with adventure shops selling survival gear to the intrepid foreigners for whom the idea of sleeping under canvas, or relying upon paraffin lamps for lighting was something they updated their life insurance to accommodate.

Melissa van der Westhuizen was not a foreigner who was worried about surviving the bush experience. She was an Afrikaans girl who had the bush experience built into her DNA. Born and raised in Pretoria, she had accompanied her father on his hunting trips, had been trained to hold his Remington 12-gauge as soon as her arms had the reach, and by the time she was a teenager she was using her own knife