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

a warning because she could see me watching the way she and Andile greeted each other, and her psychic abilities enabled her to know that I was thinking about tough nuts and Andile’s struggles to crack them. Fehrson completed the foursome, and we sat down at the table like he was about to deal the cards. Then Andile said that he would be fine without any of Belinda’s coffee or her biscuits, which was a relief to us all.

“The pathologist tells us that the brother’s body was frozen before it was left in the bush,” said Andile as an opening move.

“Frozen?” said Khanyi incredulously.

“That’s what he says,” said Andile.

“Why on earth would anyone freeze the body?”

“Good question,” said Andile, and he rewarded Khanyi with some cigarette breath. “It implies that the brother was killed some time before the church killings because the level of decomposition tells us that the body had been there at least that long. If it was frozen, he must have been killed before the church killings, and the body preserved.”

“Preserved for what reason?” asked Fehrson.

“An even better question,” said Andile, but he didn’t reward Fehrson with as many teeth or as much cigarette breath. “The obvious answer is that the body was preserved in order to provide us with a suspect for the church killings. A dead suspect, someone we couldn’t question. And the weapon was then planted with the body.”

“If the brother was lying in a freezer somewhere, then whoever put him there had access to his DNA,” said Khanyi.

“Exactly,” said Andile. “The whole thing was set up. The brother was killed, and his body stored so we could be taken on a mystery tour of false leads. The DNA evidence we found in the church was probably planted. A trail of breadcrumbs laid out for us to discover.”

“And ballistics have confirmed?” said Khanyi. “The weapon used in the church also killed the brother?”

“Yes,” said Andile. “The same weapon. An AK-47 that probably belongs to the White Africans.”

“Hendrik van Rensburg was firing an AK-47,” said Khanyi. “The night he went to the village.”

“And Xolani followed him back to the lodge,” I reminded them. “Q went to the lodge and accused Hendrik of killing his brother.”

“Stop right there,” said Fehrson, and he held up a hand as if that would stop me. “It sounds as if you are suggesting that Hendrik van Rensburg killed the brother. Then put him into a freezer, and then – and this is where you lose me – he walked into a church and killed those people? A white supremacist killed all those white people?”

Fehrson gave a scoffing laugh, but none of us joined in. He turned to Andile.

“You need to go in and arrest the lot of them,” he said.

“On what grounds?” said Andile. “We have nothing to go on. It’s all circumstantial.”

“There’s this body found on their farm. The frozen body.”

Andile shook his head. “We have no evidence that had anything to do with them. Besides, it was Hendrik van Rensburg who called it in. Hurt himself in the process.”

“Hurt himself?” said Khanyi.

“He was on his way to hospital for X-rays,” said Andile. “Took a fall climbing down a hill to get to the body.”

Khanyi turned to me and her eyes narrowed as she looked at my bruised cheek. But she turned back to Andile.

“There is something we need your help with,” she said. “Something which might enable you to arrest all of them. Why don’t you tell Captain Dlamini about the weapons?” she suggested to me.

“The Van Rensburgs are bringing weapons into the country,” I said. “If we could smooth the way, arrange that customs inspectors turn a blind eye, and track the weapons, we could find their secret stash.”

“A secret stash?”

“They have a store of weapons in a concrete bunker,” said Khanyi. “If we found it, we could have grounds to arrest the lot of them.”

“Which border crossing are they using?” asked Andile.

“They’re coming in to Cape Town harbour,” I said.

“We could probably arrange it,” said Andile.

Khanyi turned to Fehrson. “What do you say, Father? Shall we go ahead?”

“It sounds costly to me,” said Fehrson. “But I suppose if the captain will share in the costs we could consider it.”

Andile nodded. “Of course, major,” he said. “These White Africans have caused enough trouble. I’ll start the paperwork.”

“Not that it has been a particularly expensive operation so far,” I pointed out. “There is the outstanding issue of my remuneration.”

“The police service would have to pay half of that,” said Fehrson, brightening perceptibly at the thought.

“We’d be happy to do that,” said Andile, and he smiled in a way that made me wonder whether he had already done the math and knew that half of nothing was still nothing.

We were finishing up with the African handshakes when Silindile appeared at the top of the stairs and stood there with a buff folder and an expectant look on her face. Silindile was one of Khanyi’s assistants, a cherubic-faced Xhosa with braids that looked like a bunch of tightly coiled springs bursting out of her head.

“I found one,” she announced.

“Found what Sili?” said Khanyi.

“A survivor. You asked me to go through them and find other survivors. I found one.”

She beamed at us and brandished her folder. Andile and Fehrson disengaged from their handshake and we returned to the table where Silindile spread the contents of her buff folder. The familiar press clippings augmented with Khanyi’s pink highlights were accompanied by additional typed pages.

“Someone survived,” said Silindile. “There was no mention of it in the official reports, but when I looked closer, it was obvious.”

“Is this the Van Rensburg farm?” asked Andile, looking at a press cutting.

“It is now. Look at this.” Silindile handed Andile a press cutting with a black-and-white photograph of a family. “And here is the report.” She passed Andile a typed page, which he studied carefully.

“A boy,” he said after a pause. “Where is the ten-year-old boy? There are two sisters and a younger boy in