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

as we settled back in the leather seats of the jet as it reached cruising altitude. “You know that, Gabriel? Incorrigible. Why must you always do that with the women?”

“Do what with the women?”

“Steal the other man’s.”

I checked to make sure that Robyn was asleep. Fat-Boy was wearing an enormous pair of headphones from which we could hear a rhythmic beat.

“It was eighteen months after we buried Brian that I stole his woman,” I said. “Is that what you mean by stealing?”

“We didn’t bury him,” said Chandler. Which was true, because the land mine had left nothing to bury. There had been a ceremony of sorts. Dark suits and sunglasses and organ music. And I had held Robyn for a minute and promised myself I would never do what I did eighteen months later.

Chandler poured a tumbler of vodka and handed it to me as a peace offering. Vodka was Chandler’s standard prescription after a physical fight.

“We’re going to get ourselves into trouble with all this amateur theatre,” said Chandler.

“I thought Fat-Boy was a triumph?”

Chandler shook his head.

“Billy Mabele might have been a hit, but it was like amateur hour at a village theatre. William the Conqueror, where the hell did he get that from? And Robyn could hardly string a sentence together. We’re lucky they were so distracted by that dead body you found.”

His pale eyes held mine as he wondered whether to give me a hard time about that, but he stretched his mouth into a straight line to show me he would let it go.

“It might have been amateur theatre,” I said, “but we are playing to an amateur audience. As long as they bought it, we’re still on track.”

Chandler considered this.

“Complacency,” he said. “That will be our downfall.”

“We’ve not got far to go,” I said. “We might just make it.”

Chandler raised his glass.

“Here’s to entering the home straight,” he said, then threw back his own vodka and showed me how it made his eyes water.

Seventeen

“Why does that man insist on hitting members of my staff?” complained Fehrson after I had explained my swollen eye. He sniffed. “Does he have some kind of vendetta against the Department?”

“It was a misunderstanding,” I said.

“Isn’t it always.” said Khanyi and her eyebrows arched accusingly.

Fehrson turned from my black eye and gazed at his clocks behind me. I had noticed that they were all telling very different times, and it looked as if this was bothering him.

“We will need a report,” said Fehrson. “Something in writing. Cannot have members of the public hitting staff like this. Put it into a report. Isn’t that what we are paying you for?”

“If you like,” I said, “although I was not there as a member of your staff.”

“Why were you there?” asked Khanyi.

I had called the Department and asked for this meeting. Which was so unusual that it was arousing Khanyi’s suspicions. She was trying to find my ulterior motive.

“I was exploring an opportunity to locate Hendrik’s stash of weapons,” I said.

“The White Africans’ weapons?”

“Their concrete bunker,” I confirmed. “Are you still interested?”

“You know we’re interested,” said Khanyi.

“We cannot have you out there drawing attention to yourself,” said Fehrson. “Did he hit you because you were snooping around?”

“Not at all. Hendrik van Rensburg was being a little overzealous in keeping his fiancée from telling any of his secrets. That is all.”

“I should have guessed there was a woman involved,” said Khanyi.

“What secrets?” asked Fehrson.

“His propensity for violence, for one thing. And she mentioned that Hendrik’s origins are a little obscure.”

“Obscure?”

“He lived with his mother until the age of ten.”

Fehrson sniffed again. “You will have to put it all in the report,” he said.

“Of course,” I said. “It’s what you’re paying me for after all.”

There was an awkward silence.

“You did not need to be paid,” said Fehrson confidently. “Isn’t that what you said?”

“Tell us about the concrete bunker,” said Khanyi, who was not distracted by irrelevant details.

“If you could provide the tracking devices that Dirk proposed, we could follow Hendrik to his concrete bunker.”

“Follow what, exactly?” asked Khanyi. “Hendrik himself?”

“Hendrik’s new weapons.”

“You are providing those white supremacists with weapons?” spluttered Fehrson. “I hope to goodness they are fake weapons.”

“It was Dirk’s idea,” I said. “And a good one.”

“We would need to coordinate several departments,” said Khanyi. “That operation involved customs inspectors turning a blind eye and advanced tracking technology, if I remember correctly. Not the kind of thing we could do alone.”

“And costly,” pointed out Fehrson.

“Impossible in our current situation,” agreed Khanyi. “But I suppose we could get the police on board.”

“Of course,” I said, and restrained myself from any mention of getting into policemen’s beds.

“We have asked Khanyisile’s policeman to give us a report,” said Fehrson as if he had read my mind. “We can discuss it with him then.”

“A report?”

“On that body you helped them find. He is with the pathologist now. What on earth were you doing digging up rotting corpses on their game farm?”

“Have they identified it?”

“It’s Q’s brother,” said Khanyi, and she pursed her lips to show that she was not at all impressed that I had predicted it would be.

“And there is something else,” said Fehrson.

“The gun,” said Khanyi, like they were doing a comedy act and drawing out the punch line.

“What gun?”

“They found an AK-47 with the body,” said Fehrson.

“Ballistics have confirmed it’s the gun that was used in the church,” said Khanyi. “The brother appears to have died from a bullet wound, perhaps from the same gun. They are suggesting he might have turned the gun on himself.”

“He killed himself?” I said. “With the gun he’d used in the church?”

“He might have,” said Khanyi. “Although the pathologist says it’s unlikely. Something about the angle of the bullet.”

“We said you would join Khanyisile’s policeman at the pathologist’s lab,” said Fehrson.

“Now?”

“The pathologist has some information the police captain feels you should hear.”

Fehrson looked up at his clocks. “We said you would be there by four.” He frowned.

“That was half an hour ago,” said Khanyi, who had fewer timepieces, but