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

this Q monster. Find out what really happened to young Dirk. You heard the man – something happened that night that he is refusing to talk about.”

He came back to the table and sat down. “Go in with Gabriel. Let him do the nasty stuff.”

“Nasty stuff?” I said.

Fehrson reached for a biscuit and turned it around in his hands as if it was the first time he had encountered anything like it.

“Interrogation,” said Fehrson. “The kind of stuff you did for the British.”

“It is hardly nasty stuff,” I said. “If anything, non-accusatory interrogation is the opposite of nasty.”

Fehrson didn’t look convinced. He preferred to think that I did nasty things.

“If you could spare us an hour out of your busy video production schedule, we would be most grateful, would we not, Khanyisile?”

“I suppose we might as well get our money’s worth,” said Khanyi, reserving her gratitude for the moment.

“Money?” said Fehrson, and he looked back to me with surprise. “We are not paying you again, are we, Ben?”

“You are not,” I said. “Although remuneration was mentioned.”

“Good, good,” he said, in approval of the first part of my reply. He studied the biscuit, as if looking to see whether there was any external evidence of what had rendered it so tasteless. “Ben can get things out of people in a way that few others can. Is that not so?”

“I’m not sure that I can.”

“It is what you did in the army. I know you like to put all that behind you now, but there is no denying you have skills in the area. How that police officer learnt of them is anybody’s guess.”

He didn’t look at Khanyi, but his mouth clamped down and his cheeks tightened as if he was suddenly angry. But then the biscuit snapped in his fingers and I realised the grimace had been merely the effort of breaking last month’s biscuit in two.

“You can take that look off your face now,” said Khanyi as the lift reluctantly lowered us towards the ground floor.

“Which look would you prefer?”

“Father’s a good man, and he’s done extraordinary things.”

“I don’t deny it.”

“He’s not getting too old. I can read your thoughts, Gabriel, they’re written all over your face.”

The lift produced some worrying creaks and snapping sounds from above us. Khanyi looked up as if she might diagnose the problem.

“I thought he was handing over to you,” I said.

“He is.” Khanyi looked back down to me and eyed the cigarette I was holding in my mouth while I searched for the matches. She didn’t rise to the bait, though. I guess that gag had run its course. “It’s not the actor on the stage who’s in control,” she said, “it’s the director in the wings.”

“Or sometimes the bloke with the sandbag in the rafters,” I suggested.

“Father was right about you,” she said.

“About my not being paid?”

“About your lack of moral compass. Father thinks you’ve fallen into a life of crime. All this business of changing your phone number and stealing fake IDs for yourself. You could have had a stable and respectable job here and not be running away from the people you owe money to.”

“But then you’d have nothing to lecture me about. Where would the fun be in that?”

Khanyi gave a heavy sigh.

“If the Van Rensburgs found some weapons,” I said, “and planned to bring them into the country, would you still be interested in finding their concrete bunker?”

Khanyi tried using telepathy to get to the subtext of my question.

“Why?” she asked.

“Just a thought. Dirk mentioned it in the file. I have reason to believe they are thinking of bringing more weapons in.”

The lift stopped with a shudder a few inches above the ground floor. We waited for the doors to open, then stepped into the cool marble entrance foyer with the muscled security guards and humming X-ray machines.

“We might be interested,” said Khanyi. “Although we would need to involve the police, given our current status.”

“Fortunately, you’re getting into bed with the police now,” I said.

Khanyi’s eyes narrowed.

“Captain Dlamini is also a good man, Gabriel,” she said. “I know you think the way we do things down here is primitive. I can see the sense of superiority written all over your face. But he’s a good man, in a difficult situation. One day your conspiracy theories about all the good people around you will come back to haunt you when you find yourself all alone.”

“And good men are so hard to find,” I said. “I don’t think your ‘Father’ likes the way he looks at you though.”

Khanyi definitely turned a darker shade at that.

“You’re a bastard, Gabriel, you really are. I’ll call you when we’ve set a time to see that man.”

“I’ll polish my knuckledusters.”

Khanyi watched me all the way out of the building to make sure they were rid of me.

Eleven

Roelof, right-hand man to Piet van Rensburg, phoned the next evening as I was watching the progress of the flashing blue lights of a police boat moving along the queue of cargo ships entering the harbour.

“I saw the article in the Minhoop Times,” said Roelof.

“Which article was that?”

“You and Colonel Colchester on your yacht.”

“Ah yes,” I said vaguely. A brief silence as I inhaled on my last cigarette for the day. “It’s a colleague’s yacht,” I added unnecessarily. “Dicky Mabele.”

“Mister Van Rensburg would like to meet.” Roelof was not big on warm-up chatter.

“I’m sure we could arrange that.” My voice held little enthusiasm.

“You in Cape Town? They said the yacht was here.”

“We are.”

“So is Mr Van Rensburg.”

“What a coincidence.”

“We’re all here.”

“Even better.”

Roelof suggested an early start for the evening, and I held the phone away from my face while I sucked at the cigarette and pretended to consult the company diary. When I confirmed that the colonel and I could make ourselves available he told me about the Van Rensburg’s pied-à-terre in Cape Town: an address in Bantry Bay where a handful of the most expensive properties in the country cling to the rock face above