Pale Horses

by Jassy Mackenzie

Jade didn’t answer him, but glanced back at the cardio equipment.

  ‘Do both those treadmills over there work?’

  ‘They do, but the one on the left is stuck at a twenty-degree incline.’

  ‘You can take that one then, seeing as you’re quite the gym addict these days. Come on. Let’s run while we talk.’

  The treadmills stirred into life. David set his machine at a pace that kept him at a slow jog. Jade was going much faster. She was running on the damn thing. But then, David told himself, her machine was not set at a savage incline.

  ‘OK, why do you need my help?’ he asked, trying not to sound breathless. ‘I gather you’re investigating a police case. Weren’t you able to charm your way onto the team?’

  He asked the question jokingly, since in most cases, if an investigator co-operated with the police, they were more than willing to share certain information. But her reply sounded serious.

  ‘It’s a death by misadventure-stroke-culpable homicide investigation, and it’s going to be difficult working with the detectives on it.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Because they’re part of Captain Moloi’s team.’

  David said nothing for a while, just focused on not falling off the belt while he considered her words.

  ‘And you hate each other’s guts,’ he said eventually.

  ‘Not at all. I think Moloi is a very diligent officer.’

  ‘Which, in translation, really means?’

  ‘He’s a narrow-minded old fart.’

  ‘Old fart? He’s two years younger than me.’ Even to his own ears, David sounded aggrieved.

  ‘You know what I mean. He lacks imagination. In any case, my personal opinion of him notwithstanding, he won’t work with me.’

  Jade didn’t even sound out of breath as she talked, David noted. Now unashamedly gasping for air, he stabbed at the ‘Slow’ button on the console, bleeding off the speed until he could drop back into a brisk walk.

  ‘Moloi believes you should be in prison,’ David said.

  ‘That’s his opinion.’

  ‘And you know what? I can’t argue with him there. His opinion is based on fact.’

  Now Jade was silent. She stared ahead, chin set determinedly, her ponytail bouncing as she ran. She was dressed for the gym, he noticed. Black close-fitting tracksuit pants, training shoes, a red gym top. Now that she’d removed the black sweatshirt she’d been wearing, he could see the way the stretchy red fabric hugged her breasts, their shape perfectly outlined against the …

  ‘Dammit!’ David missed a step on the treadmill, putting his foot down on the edge of the machine by mistake, which caused him to overbalance and nearly fall. He grabbed the support rail and managed to pull himself upright and stop the machine before the belt could sweep him ignominiously backwards and off.

  Now Jade looked round in concern, stepping onto the sides of her own treadmill.

  ‘You OK?’

  ‘Yes, fine. Just mistimed a stride.’ His heart was racing, and not only from the near miss he’d just had. He could never work out why having a simple conversation with Jade gave him such a rush – a feeling of nervous delight, similar to what he remembered experiencing when he’d ridden roller coasters as a boy.

  Of course, to explore the analogy further, David knew only too well that this particular roller coaster was just as likely to fly off its rails and crash in a buckled heap of metal as it was to complete the ride safely.

  They’d barely spoken since getting back from the ill-fated trip to the St Lucia Wetland Park, where he’d broken the news to her that Naisha was pregnant. Now, ridiculous as it sounded, he didn’t want to take any wrong steps in this conversation.

  ‘I’ll help you, if I can. But I’m not breaking any rules for you, Jade.’ he said.

  ‘Great. Thank you.’ She speeded her machine up again. ‘Anything I find out that I think could be helpful to the investigation, I’ll pass on to you and you can tell Moloi.’

  ‘You want to tell me what it’s about now?’

  ‘Everything you need to know is in that folder.’ Jade indicated with her thumb towards the yellow cardboard file lying on top of a pile of weights.

  ‘I might not be able to give you all the details. Not if they are privileged.’

  ‘I know. I won’t ask you to do that. In any case, I’m a few steps ahead of Moloi already. He needs to put some fireworks up his team’s backsides. They only arrived at Sonet Meintjies’s workplace today, a week after her death. Tell him to send them up to the building’s top floor. There are footprints there that need examining, and someone needs to dust for fingerprints, too.’

  ‘But Jadey …’

  ‘And they need to find out her current home address – she moved recently and her colleagues aren’t sure where she went. If I find out first, I’ll tell you.’

  ‘Jadey, the department is at a standstill right now. Moloi’s three men short and the caseload is frankly overwhelming. I’m sure he’ll get around to it soon.’

  ‘I’m sure he will. And I guess a case of death by misadventure-stroke-culpable homicide isn’t exactly top of the list,’ Jade agreed.

  ‘You want to do me a favour in return?’ David found himself asking.

  ‘Sure.’ She glanced at him before returning her attention to the humming treadmill. ‘What is it?’

  ‘Last time I was here, somebody came in and switched the lights off, put the treadmill on full speed and turned up the music. I don’t know who, because I was on the damn weights bench as usual. I gave them enough time to leave and after I’d turned the lights back on and checked my belongings, I found a note tucked into my clothes.’

  ‘That sounds spooky.’

  ‘Damn right it was.’

  ‘The note was addressed to you?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Handwritten?’

  ‘No, printed.’

  ‘What did it say?’

  ‘It said, “Do you know you have a double?’’’

  ‘Cryptic.’ Jade slowed her machine and scratched her head, clearly giving it some thought. ‘It was just one person?’ she asked.

  ‘One set of footsteps came down the stairs.’

  ‘What did they sound like? You must have had some impression of them from the way they walked. Old, young? Heavy, light?’

  ‘Definitely not heavy. Quiet, but purposeful. That’s about as much as I can tell you.’

  ‘You have a double.’ Jade repeated, sounding thoughtful. ‘That’s funny. I always thought you were unique. One of a kind, in fact. If there was anyone who wouldn’t have a double, I’d think that person would be you. If this is a taunt or a threat, is it meant for you personally, or could it be something to do with a case you’re working on?’

  David made a face. ‘No idea.’

  ‘It sounds personal in tone to me.’

  ‘You think?’

  ‘Perhaps you should change gyms,’ Jade suggested wryly.

  ‘I always thought this one was as private as you could get. Now it seems the world and his wife know where it is, and when I’m going to be here.’

  Jade laughed. ‘Seems that way. I’ll give the note some thought. Let me know if you get any others.’

  ‘Believe me, you’ll be the first to know,’ David said. And the only one, he thought. He wasn’t going to burden his overworked team with this, and he certainly wouldn’t be telling Naisha. Not after her abrupt refusal to communicate with him about his work issues.

  ‘Well, that was fun,’ she said, bringing her treadmill to a halt. ‘Thanks for the workout. I’ll be in touch soon, OK?’

  She climbed off and walked up to David. For a moment he thought she was going to hug him and he felt his heart leap into his mouth as he imagined how she would feel in his arms, wondered whether he’d be able to stop himself from letting his hands clasp her body, pressing his lips against hers …

  But Jade simply squeezed his hand briefly before letting go.

  ‘Nice seeing you again,’
she said, before turning away and jogging up the stairs. A few seconds later he heard the front door slam behind her. And then she was gone.

  12

  Jade wasn’t finding it at all difficult to understand why Michiel van Schalkwyk, Sonet’s ex-husband, was in fact an ex. More confusing to her was why on earth the woman had married him in the first place.

  Van Schalkwyk lived in one of the suburbs surrounding the small town of Bela-Bela. To get there, she had to take the N1 highway north, drive for well over an hour, and go through two toll gates. The route took her through miles and miles of flat, brownish farmland. At this stage of winter, nothing was growing and nothing was ploughed.

  Once she had reached the town itself she turned off and followed the directions he’d very reluctantly given her. They led her down a zigzagging road and through narrow blocks of identical-looking small houses.

  Van Schalkwyk’s was notable for having an unkempt garden, an unwashed and ancient Mazda parked in the driveway, and a doorbell that didn’t work, which forced Jade to hammer on the front door with her fist. After several minutes, it was finally opened by a dark-bearded giant of a man who glowered down at her as if she was selling something that he not only didn’t want but actively disapproved of.

  ‘You the P.I.?’

  ‘Yes, I’m Jade de Jong.’ She held out her hand but he didn’t shake it; he just turned and walked through the rather dusty hallway and into a cramped and surprisingly warm living room. He settled himself in an old leather armchair, his blue-jeaned backside fitting perfectly into the two deep dents in its seat.

  He hadn’t offered her a seat but Jade perched herself on a wooden chair surrounded by piles of magazines and newspapers, letters and pamphlets, some opened and some still in their envelopes. CDs as well as old-fashioned LPs littered the threadbare carpet. An old guitar was propped in a corner and Jade noticed two empty bottles of Captain Morgan rum half covered by a discarded blanket.

  Van Schalkwyk let out a long, frustrated-sounding sigh that fluttered the edges of the discarded papers lying near him in the stuffy room.

  ‘What do you want to know?’ he asked. ‘I’m sorry she’s dead, of course, but I don’t have much time. And to be honest, I don’t really want to discuss this.’ She guessed he was naturally an Afrikaans speaker, because his English sounded thick and accented.

  Jade sensed a smouldering anger inside this man – a deep resentment that left him unwilling to show her even the most basic politeness. Was this caused by his ex-wife, or something else? Who knew. She had a long list of questions to ask but, for the time being she put them aside and found herself asking something that was, in essence, a variation on the question uppermost in her mind at that stage – namely how on earth the two of them had ended up married.

  ‘What brought you and Sonet together?’ Jade said.

  Blindsided by a question he clearly wasn’t expecting, Van Schalkwyk blinked rapidly before clearing his throat.

  ‘Music,’ he said.

  ‘Music? In what way?’

  Van Schalkwyk’s gaze slid towards his guitar and his hard expression softened slightly. ‘We met at a Steve Hofmeyr concert when I was twenty-one.’

  ‘How old was she?’

  ‘Sixteen, but she told me she was older.’

  ‘Steve Hofmeyr – is he a favourite of yours?’

  ‘Not really. But back then in the platteland, the countryside, you know, we didn’t get much choice. In that little out-of-the-way dorpie where I grew up, the only other choice was the old juke box at the Kasteel – that was the local pub.’

  ‘So you two dated?’

  ‘For a short time. She wasn’t taking any precautions. She had no sense of responsibility even back then.’

  Jade thought it wiser not to ask why Van Schalkwyk hadn’t been taking any precautions himself. Instead, she shifted her position on the uncomfortable chair and waited for him to carry on with the story.

  ‘So the next thing I knew, she was pregnant and I had her crazy preacher father just about banging my front door down. Yelling about the Book of Revelations, and how sinners like me would be cast out into the darkness.’

  He rubbed his beard. ‘I soon found out that was nothing new for him. He did it all the time. Ran a church outside town that was more like a cult. Put the fear of God into people by ranting on about the Apocalypse. Once Sonet was pregnant, I had to listen to him for hours, Sunday after Sunday. He even did it at our wedding. Loosened the congregation’s purse strings, I suppose. Not that it helped. They were forever getting evicted for not paying their rent.’

  While listening to Van Schalkwyk, Jade found herself glancing down at the piles of letters on the floor. A lot of them looked like bills, and she saw more than one final demand. Van Schalkwyk’s sour comment about purse strings was no doubt prompted by this fact. Near the bills was a crimson pamphlet with yellow writing which she found difficult to read because it was facing the wrong way and clearly in Afrikaans. Something about the ‘Boere Krisis Kommando’ was all she could make out.

  ‘So she married you at sixteen?’

  ‘She was seventeen by then. But yes, we got married. I often wonder if she got pregnant on purpose, just to get away from home. In any case it worked. We had a shotgun wedding; a month later she lost the baby. For a couple of years we tried again, but the same thing happened. Miscarried each time. So since having a family was obviously out of the question, she went to college. I paid for her to study. She qualified as a project manager or some such crap, and then went off to work. We hardly saw each other after that.’

  ‘Why? Did she work a long way from where you lived?’

  ‘Her job – well, she had a few different ones over the years, but she mainly worked in Johannesburg. My farm was in Theunisvlei, the other side of Bronkhorstspruit, just after the second toll gate. Not dangerous or difficult to get to at night, and not too far from Jo’burg to drive either. But for Sonet it was too far. She made it too far in her own mind, which was ridiculous for someone who loved dangerous sports as much as she did. How can you jump off a skyscraper but be afraid to drive home in the dark? It was just an excuse not to come home. Anyway, she ended up staying in the city most weeks.’

  ‘So she was a thrill-seeker back when you were married?’

  ‘Oh ja. She loved to parachute and to base jump. She’d spend all her – our – money doing jumps, travelling to crazy places, buying equipment. Sometimes she wouldn’t come home on weekends because she was off with skydiving friends or finding another bridge to jump off.’

  Thrill-seeking behaviour. Now Jade wondered again exactly what Sonet Meintjies had been trying to escape from every time she climbed to another precarious summit before leaping off.

  ‘And you are a farmer?’

  ‘I was.’ He snapped out the words.

  ‘Did you sell your farm?’

  Her question was answered with an angry shake of the head. ‘There was a land claim. The Siyabonga community told government the land was theirs. That their ancestors had lived on it and they had a right to it. Which was bullshit. The farm had been in my family for generations. Ever since the Boer War.’

  Jade fought back the impulse to point out that indigenous communities might well have been living there a thousand years before that. There was no point, she decided. In Van Schalkwyk’s world, history had only started in 1880, when the first Anglo-Boer War had been fought.

  His mention of the Siyabonga community was ringing a bell, though, but for the time being she couldn’t think why.

  ‘Their claim was successful,’ he continued. ‘I got thrown off my own damned land. It was handed over to a bunch of ignorant savages, including a few of my ex-workers.’

  ‘When was that?’

  ‘Four, five years ago now. And what they did to it, you don’t want to know. Within two years it went from being a successful commercial maize farm to being little better than a desert. Overgrown, full of weeds, bugger all done in the way of maintenance, and completel
y unproductive, of course. The only agricultural activity that was happening there was that they had cattle busy overgrazing the land. And every time they needed anything from bricks to light fittings to plumbing equipment to window glass they’d ransack the old farmhouse. They trashed it – it’s just a shell now. Ignorant, useless savages,’ he spat out again.

  ‘You must have been paid out fair compensation for it, surely?’

  Van Schalkwyk looked down. ‘Farming’s all I knew, but I wasn’t going to go back to it. Didn’t want to end up getting robbed of everything I’d built up, all over again. I used the payout to start up some other projects but nothing worked out.’ He spread his hands in a helpless gesture that spoke of business ventures on the rocks, successive failures eroding his capital away. Jade wondered whether he realised that the anger he was directing at the new occupants of his old farm was probably done so he wouldn’t have to direct it at himself, for all the same reasons.

  ‘In any case, Doringplaas was special. Nothing could replace that land,’ Van Schalkwyk said. ‘It was part of our history. My great grandmother and grandfather were buried there, you know. I don’t know what’s happened to their graves. Probably sold their bloody headstones by now.’

  Doringplaas? Now Jade realised why the name of the tribal community had sounded familiar.

  ‘I’m sure I saw a recent photo of your farm at Williams Management, the company where Sonet was working when she died.’

  And it hadn’t looked like a desert, but more like a well-run, small-scale, commercial venture. Not that Jade was going to point that out to him.

  Van Schalkwyk offered Jade a hard and cynical smile.

  ‘Oh, yes. That was what put the lid on the coffin as far as our marriage was concerned. I couldn’t believe it when Sonet told me she’d nominated Doringplaas for one of her charity projects. That she was actually going to help the thieves who’d stolen my property.’

  ‘But weren’t you glad, at least for the sake of the land?’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘That it’s now being properly farmed again, well maintained, and looked after as it deserves to be.’

  Van Schalkwyk gave a twisted, mirthless smile.