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

It takes a particular kind of man to squeeze a trigger when pointing a gun at another man’s face. An abnormal man, someone whose empathy responses are damaged.

Hendrik was such a man. He squeezed the trigger of his Beretta.

The bullet struck the man in his face, and his body crumpled to the ground. The Vektor R5 clattered loudly into the echoing silence that followed the shot.

The second man looked down at his comrade with horror. He turned back to Hendrik, his Vektor raised. But Chandler cried out sharply, and the man’s eyes turned to find he was pointing a Glock at him. His eyes flickered back to Hendrik, and then to me. I was pointing my Glock at him as well. He wavered.

“Put it down,” shouted Chandler at the top of his voice, and the man lowered his weapon.

Hendrik was gazing in stupefied shock at the body of the man he had shot. I took hold of his Beretta, and removed it from his limp grasp. Fat-Boy stifled a moan with the back of his hand. Piet uttered a choking sob.

“What have you done, boy?” Piet gasped.

Chandler stepped up to the second man and took his Vektor from him.

“Get out of here,” he said to the man. “Tell your boss we have nothing that belongs to him.”

The man backed away from Chandler and climbed into the car. His eyes still on Chandler, he engaged reverse gear, and the car backed away from us, the doors still hanging open. He accelerated, then braked suddenly and the two doors slammed shut. Then he shoved the car into first gear and crushed the accelerator. The wheels spun with a shriek; the man executed a tight turn, and the car bounced over the uneven surface of the quay as he made his escape.

“You let him go,” protested Roelof.

“What did you want to do?” said Chandler. “Shoot him too?”

“You killed a police officer, boy,” said Piet, his face pale, and he swayed as if his knees were about to collapse. Kenneth reached out to support him.

“They weren’t police,” said Chandler.

“Who were they?” asked Roelof.

“Private racketeers. Now get the hell out of here, all of you.”

“We haven’t seen all the weapons,” said Roelof.

“If you wanted to see all the weapons, you shouldn’t have provided this retard with real bullets,” said Chandler. “Get your boss and his son back to your hotel. We’ll clear up the mess you’ve made.”

I removed the magazine from Hendrik’s Beretta and racked the slide to eject the round in the chamber. I handed the empty pistol to Kenneth.

“But …” said Roelof.

Chandler stepped up to him and placed his face an inch in front of Roelof’s. His voice was barely above a whisper when he spoke.

“You have one minute,” he said, “or we throw you all into the sea with the man you killed.”

Roelof closed his mouth. Hendrik was still staring down at the body of the man he had shot. Roelof grabbed him by the arm and pulled him away. He reached out his other arm for Piet, who grasped at it like it was a lifesaving ring. He didn’t let go of Kenneth with the other hand, and the four of them shuffled back into the city of crates like a wounded eight-legged creature.

Fat-Boy gave a muffled sob and stared at the body of the man sprawled between us.

“You were right about that one,” said Chandler after a minute of silence. “Something very wrong with him.”

“Something very wrong with all of them,” I said.

Chandler nodded. He looked down at the lifeless body of the man from BB’s private army.

“Were they looking for the gold?” asked Fat-Boy, looking up finally from the dead body.

“No,” said Chandler. “They didn’t know we had the gold. You heard him. They tracked the vehicle. But it wasn’t the vehicle, it was the number plate. Why didn’t I think of that? That number-plate scanner wasn’t checking the numbers, there’s a tracking device in it.”

“What do we do?” asked Fat-Boy.

“The two of you make sure the Van Rensburgs have cleared out. Then take the damned jeep up the coast. Find a stretch of beach and abandon it. Call us, we’ll pick you up.”

“What are you and the Angel going to do?” asked Fat-Boy.

“What do you think?” said Chandler. “You want to try to revive this man?”

Fat-Boy took another look at the dead body, and then the two of them walked down the quay to where he’d parked the jeep.

“I shouldn’t have let him use that damn jeep,” said Chandler, and he shook his head with irritation. “I’m getting complacent.”

“We had no way of knowing they were tracking it – why didn’t they come for it earlier?”

“I’d guess they only noticed we’d switched the plates when the other jeep tried driving through those gates. If Fat-Boy hadn’t taken it to go lie in his hot tub, they’d be driving it back to SA. Poor bastard.” He looked back down at the dead man. “Another of Breytenbach’s employees lies dead.”

“Not by our hand,” I said. “Not this time.”

“You sure about that?”

We looked at each other.

“Let’s put the poor sod in the sea,” said Chandler. “Then we figure out what other mistakes we’ve made.”

Twenty-One

The Van Rensburgs were a huddled collection of lost sheep in the business lounge of Maputo airport the next morning, waiting for a dog to herd them to their private jet. Hendrik was feeling righteous in a new rugby shirt and shorts a size too small. Piet was putting a fresh linen suit through its paces and Melissa had slept on her new hair-do and her eyes were puffy. She cried when I told them we had sorted everything out, and I wondered what she had been told about the previous night. Roelof had the morning Beira Post open on the page with the English version of the article about the discovery of a dead body floating in the harbour.

“Who were they?” asked Roelof. “Those two men.”

“We don’t know. Probably local