by Roger Smith
He heard the low rumble of a generator kick in and the marquee glowed with yellow light. Minibus taxis arrived in swarms, spilling the rural poor out into the area around the tent, where bonfires burned. A buzz of excited chatter hung on the night air.
BMWs, Mercedes-Benzes and SUVs with up-country plates bumped to a halt at the rear of the tent. Dell watched through the cheap binoculars as the dignitaries took their places on the plastic chairs facing the platform and the microphone. Armani and Gucci rubbed shoulders with tribal gear. Beemer keys and cell phones dangling from the waistbands of animal-skin kilts.
Dell heard sirens and a convoy of vehicles, blue lights flashing, slid in from the night. Flashbulbs strobed as the minister of justice, resplendent in hyena tails and leopard skin, led his number-one wife, a hefty woman in a giant white Maidenform bra and towering headgear, into the tent. The sound of cheers and ululating rolled across the plain.
Dell checked the pistol. He'd fired it twice at the gas station. Six rounds left. Enough for what he had to do.
Dell approached the marquee, hanging back out of range of the lights and the fires. The minister's deep voice, an amplified bellow, thundered Zulu into the night, whipping up the crowd, who were dancing and chanting, fists raised. Taking Dell back to the illegal political rallies he had attended back in his twenties, both as a reporter and as a participant. The lines between his job and his convictions blurring in those days, when a newsman could get arrested as easily as a black kid hurling a rock.
Dell found a spot in the shadows. He could see past the raised fists, onto the speaker's platform. The minister in his traditional garb, belly swelling over his loin-cloth, raised his clenched fist. Loud music blared from the speakers. A Zulu war chant, set to a street beat. The crowd picked up the words and the minister joined in, stamping his feet, toyi-toying, clenched fist raised.
He left the platform and stepped down into the audience, swallowed whole by the adoring crowd. Dell caught glimpses of the minister's bodyguards, men in dark suits, fighting their way through the mob, following their master's sweating bald head, gleaming like a beach ball in the sea of admirers.
Dell followed, too, moving along the side of the tent, skirting guy-ropes. The crowd spat the minister out near one of the raised tent flaps and the big man stepped into the dark alone, the bodyguards trapped by the mob. The minister gripped one of the tent poles, chest heaving, battling to catch his breath.
Dell moved fast. Drew the pistol, rushed the sweating man. He put the barrel to the minister's head and felt his body tense. "Move," Dell said.
"Who are you?" the Zulu asked.
"Just move."
Dell pushed the bald man beyond a generator truck, away from the bonfires. He heard the voices of the bodyguards, shouting out into the night. "Nkosi! Nkosi!"
It would have to be now. "On your knees."
The minister looked at him, the moon catching his glasses, enough light to see his mouth was a twisted slit. Not a man used to obeying orders. Dell still wore the dead farmer's heavy boots. Raised his foot and kicked the Zulu in the kneecap, heard him suck air. The minister sank down onto one knee. Dell kicked him again and had him kneeling. Heard the shouts of the searching men.
"Tell me who you are," the minister said.
"My name is Robert Dell. Your dog killed my family."
The Zulu's head jerked in recognition, seeing beyond the boot polish. "Whatever Moses Mazibuko did, it was without my blessing."
"Shut the fuck up," Dell said. Cocking the gun. Pushed the barrel against the bald head.
"Please. I don't deserve this." Something high and weak cracking the baritone.
No, you deserve something much slower, you fucker. Dell felt the trigger beneath his finger. Ready to squeeze. But he couldn't do it. His finger refused to obey. Heard his father: you just flat don't have the goddam balls, do you boy?
The gun drooped away from the minister's head and the man said something but Dell was in the morgue with what remained of his family, his nostrils thick with the stink of charred flesh and when he heard the shot he thought he was being fired upon. Then he felt the recoil still flowing up his arms and understood what he had done.
Panicked shouts rose above the noise from the marquee and the minister sagged until his chest and chin touched the ground, fingers crawling like a spider across the sand, breath coming in wet rasps. Dell shot him again and he was quiet.
Dell heard the men's voices coming closer and he turned and walked off into the night. When he left the tent behind he slowed, looked back as flashlight beams sliced the darkness, Zulu shouts echoing across the plain.
Dell slid the magazine from the pistol and threw it far into the dark. Dropped the gun into a deep crease in the earth. Made his way back to where the Ford was hidden on the sand above the main road.
As he started the truck, exhaustion flattened him. He killed the engine and slumped onto his side, folding in on himself, bringing his knees to his chest like he was a child. Letting the moans of the sirens lull him to sleep.
Zondi sat beside the open casket. Three white candles dripped wax onto a grass mat, the flickering light creating the illusion of life as it played across the girl's face. She looked older in death. Even more like her mother.
The coffin was the most expensive Giraffe had to offer. He'd displayed it proudly, fat fingers caressing the polished oak, the gleaming bronze handles and the plush velvet interior that reminded Zondi somehow of a bordello.
He knew it was absurd. Empty symbolism. The girl could just as well be buried in a pine pauper's coffin but he'd handed over his credit card, no match for the voices of tradition that were still hardwired into him. Sitting now, in a sort of vigil, in the small room Giraffe had set aside for him at the funeral parlor, the smell of death and embalming fluid creeping in under the door.
Zondi remembered these funeral vigils from when he was a kid. All the mirrors in the hut covered by cloth. He couldn't remember why. The coffin was brought into the hut and set down on a mat. The three candles were lit. So the ancestors could see the dead person and guide him on his journey, he seemed to recall. The elders would sit beside the coffin, receiving visitors who brought condolences and gifts.
He'd come down from Jo'burg on the day of his mother's funeral, too late for the vigil. Intentionally. Not wanting to be trapped in the cramped hut, stifled by superstition. But here he sat. Alone. No visitors to receive. Paying lip-service to something he'd scorned. He rubbed a hand over his shaved head and stared at the candles, dust motes circling the flames.
Then he heard sirens. Too many for anything other than a calamity. Fucking Dell. Heard the clatter of helicopter blades coming in low, the high whine of the engine powering back. Within minutes the chopper lifted off, rattled the tin roof, and took its noise away into the night. Zondi wondered what else it took with it.
He didn't sleep but subsided into a kind of stupor. Didn't notice the sunlight seeping into the room from the one high window. Took a while to hear the knocking at the door. "Yes?" he said, standing. His body stiff from the hard floor.
Giraffe entered, in a charcoal suit with a dove-gray vest and matching necktie. The rings on his fingers shining like embers against his black skin. "Have you heard, Zondi? The minister is shot?"
"Dead?" Zondi asked.
Giraffe nodded. "Yes." He adjusted the hang of his coat, smoothing the lapels. "I would have offered my services, naturally, but they flew him down to Durban." His rubbery face wearing a look of disappointment.
"I heard the helicopter," Zondi said. "Have they got the gunman?"
Giraffe shook his head, still far away in a world of missed opportunities. "No, no. He made his escape." Flashing a professional smile. "So, you're ready to leave for the graveside?"
"Yes, I'm ready," Zondi said.
He watched as Giraffe tugged up his pants, leaking breath as he kneeled beside the casket. The fat man lowered the lid and the girl was gone.
Zondi felt a sudden panic and
hurried from the room, down the corridor and out the back door, his silhouette disintegrating in the fierce sunlight.
Dell awoke to dark faces peering in at him through the smashed side window of the Ford. As he sat up, waiting for the bullets, three skinny kids yelled and fled, darting wild-eyed looks over their shoulders, legs pumping beneath their torn shorts as they disappeared into the eroded earth like moles.
Dell opened the car door, hinges screaming for oil, and stood up. While he took a piss he looked down at the marquee which was under siege by the fancy cars and SUVs the media favored. A helicopter circled low, blades kicking up dust, a news cameraman sitting in the open doorway, feet braced on the skids. The lens caught the sun and winked at Dell as he shook himself dry.
Police and military vehicles circled the marquee and Dell could see roadblocks at both bridges that allowed access to the town. Somehow he had been overlooked. What did they say about hiding in plain sight?
He went back to the Ford. Sat a while, door open. And now what? he asked. When nobody answered he slammed the door twice before it caught, turned the key in the ignition and listened to the engine cough like an old dog. Jammed the gearshift into first and took off across the rutted sand, avoiding the media scrum outside the tent. His colleagues in another lifetime.
As Dell reached the main road a police vehicle sped past him, siren blaring, disappearing into the jumble of breezeblock buildings. He drove to the mortician's and parked at the rear door. Went inside to find Zondi.
The man in overalls and rubber boots was on his hands and knees, scrubbing blood from the concrete floor with a grass brush and a bucket of foamy liquid. Dell asked him where Zondi was. The man mimed that the funeral party had gone. Gesturing toward the hills.
Dell saw a small green chunk of Sunlight soap lying on the floor beside the bucket. He pointed at the soap, then at himself. The man nodded and Dell took the soap and went back outside.
He turned on the faucet and dragged the hose, hissing and spitting, over to a thorn tree. Dell slung the hose over a branch, just high enough to dribble water down onto him. Pulled the Lacoste over his head and hung it from the branch. Stood under water that was hot from the sun and washed himself. He scrubbed at his skin but the black boot polish still clogged the grooves in his arms and hands, and he knew that he would have the face of a coal miner for days to come. He shrugged the shirt on over his wet body and killed the hose.
Dell got the Ford started and as he headed out he glimpsed his reflection in the windshield. The hair dye had faded, revealing his salt and pepper streaks. His face was covered in gray stubble. He looked almost like his old self.
On the road Dell had to stop and wait for a military convoy to rumble by. A cow stood in a mess of garbage at the roadside, rooting for food. A herdsman, thin and bent, whipped the cow and the animal moaned and shambled forward, udders swinging lazily. The cow's hooves scuffed through the trash and Dell saw the minister smiling from a poster that had come free of its pole.
A vehicle slid up beside Dell. Silver SUV. The driver stared down at Dell. A white guy, around his age. A senior reporter on Durban's largest daily paper. He and Dell had often argued politics during the endless junkets they had covered. They'd never liked one another. Dell saw the shock of recognition in the man's eyes.
Dell looked away. The convoy passed and Dell took off, checking over his shoulder to see whether he was being followed. The SUV was on his tail. Dell swung the Ford onto the track that traced a path toward the graveyard. He glanced back through his dust. No SUV.
The preacher muttered away in Zulu, most of his words lost in a beard that grew like steel wool from his chin. Zondi wasn't listening anyway, knew it was some mongrelized blend of Christianity and traditional beliefs. Giraffe had dug the bush Christian out of a hole somewhere, with his threadbare cloak and bare toes curling through the cracks in his shoes.
Even if Zondi had wanted to listen, the sermon would have been drowned out by the woman with the withered leg, who wailed like a skinned cat. She'd been putting on a show since the taxi had dropped her at the bottom of the hill, barely letting her set foot on the dirt before it spun in a U-turn and took off back toward Bhambatha's Rock.
Zondi, standing at the graveside, had watched her struggle up the slope, dragging her leg behind her. At last she arrived on the ridge with its growth of uneven white crosses.
The woman looked at Zondi, looked at Giraffe, took in the preacher mumbling away to his makeshift god, then her eyes were drawn to the coffin, shiny as a Cadillac on the lip of the grave. She let out a wail that would have scared bats from a cave and threw herself at the casket. Sobbing, beating her fists against the wood. "Open this box! Let me see her! Let me see the child of my sister!"
The preacher stuttered to a halt. Giraffe stepped forward and seized the woman beneath her armpits and lifted her to her feet as if she were a glove puppet.
"Please, ma. This is not the time."
"Why was I not allowed to sit vigil? For my own flesh? My own blood?"
"Ma. Please."
"After all that I have sacrificed?"
And there it was. The opening gambit. This was all about money. Zondi dug his wallet out of his pocket and removed a wad of cash. Walked across to the woman, who had sunk to the ground again, her cheek pressed to the wood of the casket.
Zondi held the money out to her. "Take it."
She sniffed, calculating the value of the bills in his hand. Found it wanting. "I have done so very much for this child."
Zondi crouched next to her, shoved the money into her hand. "Take it and shut up, or I'll throw you down the hill."
She stopped wailing, fixed him with a bloodshot eye. Saw he was serious. The money had disappeared beneath her black blanket and she'd stood, confining herself to a low keening. Still loud enough to drown the mutters of the preacher but not the misfiring engine. Zondi turned and saw the Ford approaching, trailing dust.
Dell stopped the Ford next to a black pickup truck, identical to the one that had sent his family to their deaths. But this one carried the mortician's gold logo on the door. He left the Ford and climbed the hill, up to where he'd gunpointed Zondi two days before. Walked through the crosses toward the small group gathered around the coffin.
A bald Zondi stood beside the undertaker, impassive, hands clasped in front of him, eyes hidden by his shades. Dell took his place at the graveside, staring down into the earth. Realized he was waiting for some voice to speak to him. To make sense of the last few days of his life. He heard nothing but the mumbles of the preacher and the wails of the skinny woman in the blanket.
The preacher raised his arms wide and lifted his face toward the sky. Stood frozen for a minute, eyes closed. Then he lowered his arms, opened his eyes and nodded at the undertaker. The fat man beckoned four gravediggers who squatted in the sand, waving away flies. They rose and approached, reaching down for the ropes that snaked beneath the coffin. The men pulled the casket toward the hole and grunted as they lowered it, sweat flowing from their faces onto their torn and dusty clothes.
Zondi stepped forward and took a fistful of sand and threw it onto the coffin. It made a sound like hard rain on the wood. He turned and walked away from the grave and started down the hill. Dell fell in beside him.
"So, it's over?" Zondi said.
"Yes."
Dell stopped on the footpath, watching a convoy of white police vehicles boiling up out of the dust on the road below. "I think that's my ride," he said. Zondi looked at him. "I was recognized in town. One of the media people."
"Are you ready for this?" Zondi asked.
"Yes, I'm ready." Dell handed the Ford keys to Zondi and went down the hill.
The vehicles stopped, uniformed men spilling out, taking up shooting positions. A loud chatter from above as the news helicopter circled like a vulture.
Dell was near the bottom of the footpath when he heard a voice made hard and metallic by a loudhailer, "Robert Dell, get down on the ground."
The first round was like a punch to his right shoulder and Dell stumbled but held his course. More cops opened fire and their bullets spun and danced him and then he was on the sand, face down, arms flung wide like he was about to be crucified.
As the men approached, weapons growing from their fists, shadows black as paint on the sand when they encircled him, the helicopter swooped low, blades stirring up the dust that settled on Dell like a shroud.
About The Author
Roger Smith was born in Johannesburg, South Africa, and now lives in Cape Town. His thrillers Mixed Blood and Wake Up Dead have been published in six countries and both are in development as feature films in the U.S. His books have won the Deutscher Krimi Preis (German Crime Fiction Award) and been nominated for Spinetingler Magazine Best Novel awards. Dust Devils will be published internationally in 2011. Website: www.rogersmithbooks.com
Table of Contents
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30