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

“Such a dreadful business,” said Chandler.

“They need to find the bastard,” said Piet. “I understand that. And I don’t mind them doing their DNA tests on our farm. Stupid idea though – we’re an hour by car from the town. Won’t find him there. Waste of time. Now they’ve arrested one of our guys. A good man. Brother’s a priest. Fucking idiots.”

“It could have been my Hendrik,” said Melissa, “and Oom Piet. It was their church. Hendrik overslept, otherwise he would have been in the church.” She worked the tear ducts again and produced two perfect tears which rolled down her cheeks to be caught by a tissue that she pulled from nowhere.

“We must go,” said Piet after a brief pause to admire her performance. He kept his eyes on Melissa in case she had any more in her and finished his rum with a clatter of ice cubes.

Roelof held out a hand to Chandler. The decisions might be taken by Piet, but the actions were clearly all taken by Roelof, while Hendrik lagged behind and made the jokes. Piet had not even managed to clamber out of the couch, but Roelof was straining at the leash to go. He had people he needed to shake and phone calls to make.

“A pleasure, Colonel Colchester,” said Roelof, and we heard the terminal building tannoy calling the Van Rensburg party to the information desk. Our time was up. Roelof was not going to need to shake anybody after all. Piet uttered a grunt of satisfaction, or perhaps disappointment: he had the look now of a man who needed to hurt somebody. We all took turns at shaking one another’s hands, Melissa touched cheeks with us both and let us inhale some of her French perfume, Piet left a large denomination note for Vusi once he’d managed to get to his feet, and tried to close his jacket, then discovered it didn’t reach, and Roelof accepted my card and tucked it into a pocket of his jacket. He did not smile.

“It’s a long shot,” said Chandler as we watched the Van Rensburgs climb into their jet. He had allowed us both a proper drink, finally. Vusi had rushed back to his bartending job downstairs with his large denomination note and a pile of our cash, and now Chandler was going through the whole thing and looking for holes. “That tight-lipped one speaks Zulu, you heard that?”

“Zulu or Xhosa?” I said. “He’s been the big guy’s right-hand man for fifteen years. It wasn’t a lie that he did the running of the company.”

“Maybe. But our focus remains that old man. He’s our mark, not the assistant. I’m not sure the old man is the sweet-natured, bumbling fool he pretends to be. There’s some nastiness deep down there.”

Hendrik had climbed into the jet first, probably because he wanted to claim the best seat. Melissa was helped in by Piet, who was smiling and gentlemanly again. The nasty business of the police arresting one of ‘his guys’ was being dealt with by Roelof who climbed aboard after Piet, relaying instructions from the big chief into his phone.

“I’m not sure there is a ship’s captain in the world who would call search and rescue if a rhinoceros fell overboard,” I said.

“Artistic licence,” said Chandler.

“How does a rhino fall overboard?”

“That one’s easy. He followed the signs to the exits.”

“And three helicopters?”

Chandler gave me the flat-lined mouth he called a smile. His grey eyes danced. There would come a time when he would take a step too far, his bluff would be called, and it would all be over. Hopefully that time hadn’t come yet. Kenneth was the last member of the entourage to climb into the jet. He scanned the apron for incoming bogeys as he closed the door.

“I’ll do a course,” I said. “I think it was Zulu they were speaking.”

Chandler nodded. “Damn right you will. Never go into the field without the language. That our plane there?” He indicated an airbus beside the one that was rolling away for Johannesburg.

“We’ve got time,” I said. “Doesn’t leave for a couple of hours.”

Our aeroplane might not have been as exclusive, but it was bigger and faster than Melissa’s.

Eight

The news of the arrest of a suspect in the Minhoop massacre hit South Africa that evening like a silent explosion. It swept people off the streets and bunched them together before television screens, silent and gazing with hatred at pixellated images of the man with his hands bound before him as he was guided into a police van on a farm in the Cape ‘not far from the mourning town of Minhoop’, and driven off to the holding cells. The suspect had a brother who the police were trying to locate, and who became an accomplice in the minds of the public, despite the fact he was an ordained priest. The thought that he was on the run sent shivers down the collective spine of the country.

Chandler drove us back to the docks, and we stopped at Charlie’s, an over-priced bar which had been optimistically squeezed into one of the old fishing-net stores under the stone quay that now formed the outer edge of the Victoria and Alfred Waterfront. At ground level, the bar was a glass cube with a cluster of tables and chairs and a barman who operated the dumb waiter that delivered drinks from below. Signs advised customers not to throw stones. Access to the lower level was by spiral staircase, and we descended into the aquarium gloom. Here we were a little below high tide level, and usually the customers would gaze over one another’s shoulders to keep an eye on the restless sea as it tried to crack the super-strength wall of glass that kept us all dry. But tonight all eyes were on the television in the corner. Even the barman watched the screen as he poured our drinks, and communication was largely by sign