Pale Horses

by Jassy Mackenzie

  Zelda.

  He had been betrayed, and now, after he had been unable to protect Sonet from her fate, he had failed Zelda too.

  Let her not die the same way, he prayed. Let him spare her or, if not, let her end be quick at least. But please not this … not this. I cannot stand it. Please God, let it end.

  And, as if in answer to his prayers, he suddenly saw a clear image, although with his ruined eyes he had no idea how.

  Two grey Arabian mares had lived in the veld near their farmhouse, roaming the dry ground and picking at the sparse grasses. They were skinny and rough-coated, but they were wild and proud, and over the years Zelda had tamed the broodmare and her daughter so that they had no fear of humans and would come when she called, arching their necks as they approached and stretching their soft muzzles forward in curious greeting.

  Zelda had named them too. The mare was Shazeer and her daughter Serenade.

  And now, there were Shazeer and Serenade, just as he remembered them, galloping towards him with a drumming of hooves. He gasped as he saw their beauty, nostrils flared, pale coats shimmering, manes and tails streaming out behind them like water as they ran. Their legs flashed forward in perfect rhythm, every stride strong and sure and true.

  This time they did not stop to greet him but galloped past, ears pricked and heads high, and he was swept up with them and carried along, his pain forgotten, laughing in sheer joy at the exhilaration of speed, at the freedom he had suddenly found.

  In the farmhouse kitchen where the overhead light still burned, the wooden chair tipped slowly sideways and then toppled to the ground, taking Koenraad’s lifeless body with it.

  35

  Ntombi had not driven very far from the farmhouse when she was once again ordered to stop the car.

  Immersed in her own frantic thoughts, she barely noticed her passenger had spoken, and he had to repeat his request again, this time in a sharper voice.

  ‘Pull over.’

  When she stopped, he lifted the gym bag and its bloody contents out of the back seat and strode away into the night.

  Ntombi buried her face in her hands.

  How could she not have seen this coming? All the questions her employer had asked … the interest he had shown in her predicament … and then the arrival of this man and the start of her nightmare.

  He had been following up all along on what she’d originally asked him to. But he hadn’t been doing it for her. Like the farmer, she too had been betrayed. He had used the information against her and now the consequences would be more terrible than she could ever have imagined.

  ‘How many people will die?’ she breathed.

  Then, with a jolt, she remembered the phone number she had been given that morning.

  This might be her only chance. How to do it? And how much time did she have?

  She fumbled around in her bag for her cellphone and keyed in the number with shaking fingers. She wasn’t going to risk a call. She could not. But on this basic model, although there was a record of calls made and received, there was no record of SMS messages sent. It would be her only way.

  ‘Pls don’t sms or call me,’ she typed. What next? The location of the farmhouse. She had very little idea where it was, but the man had left the GPS on the seat. She turned it towards her and keyed in the coordinates she saw there now.

  Now what?

  How could she condense into just a few short words, sent to a stranger, the catastrophic consequences of what she feared was going to happen?

  And then she realised she wasn’t going to have the chance, because she could hear the sandy crunch of footsteps. Before she could have second thoughts, she stabbed ‘Send’ and dropped her phone back in her bag as if it were red hot.

  He wrenched open the passenger door and sat down heavily. He no longer had the bag with him. He must have disposed of it somewhere out there in the darkness.

  She waited, heart thudding, expecting at any moment to hear the trill of her cellphone or the beep of an incoming message responding to what she had sent. But everything remained quiet.

  ‘Drive back to Johannesburg,’ he ordered her impatiently.

  Sick with fear that the woman she had so recklessly contacted would call or message her back, despite her request to the contrary, Ntombi wordlessly complied.

  36

  ‘Pls don’t sms or call me.’ Jade considered what the words might mean as she listened to the phone ring and ring and ring.

  Eventually her call was answered.

  ‘Jadey.’ David sounded tired and stressed and as if his sense of humour had been rerouted to a foreign country where it was battling to get through Customs.

  ‘You didn’t respond to my message.’

  ‘Sorry. Only saw it now. I’m driving past Newtown as we speak. I’ll meet you at Sophiatown restaurant.’

  Even over the phone Jade could hear the squeal of brakes and blaring of hooters that typically accompanied David’s split-second driving decisions.

  Ten minutes later she was back in Newtown and walking between the flaming oil drums that lit the outside seating area and into the restaurant. Black-and-white décor, oversized images of jazz musicians on the walls, plain wooden tables. David had two glasses of red wine already waiting. Jade sat down opposite him.

  ‘I’m sorry. I watched the gym but nobody went in.’

  ‘No notes for me today,’ he said.

  ‘It would’ve helped if you’d told me you were going.’

  They clinked glasses. The house wine tasted rough and sour. A reflection of her mood? Perhaps.

  ‘I thought you had enough on your plate. In any case, you seem to have your own methods of finding out.’

  Was that a smile trying to breach the grim battlements of his face? Jade wasn’t sure.

  ‘This time, yes. But unfortunately, surveillance being what it is, one stakeout doesn’t usually pinpoint a suspect. Next time give me some warning.’

  ‘I will,’ he said, but again she had no idea whether he meant it.

  ‘I’ve got something curious to show you,’ she said as she took her cellphone out of her pocket.

  ‘Look at this,’ she said, handing him the instrument.

  David read the message.

  ‘Odd. Know who it’s from?’

  ‘No idea.’

  ‘Tried calling it?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Because the sender asked me not to.’

  ‘And you think they might have a good reason?’

  ‘Good enough for me not to want to risk compromising them.’

  ‘Still, if the sender doesn’t want you to respond, then what’s the point of sending the damn message in the first place?’

  ‘That’s what I’m trying to work out.’

  ‘The message itself is clear enough. What the hell is that jumble of numbers after it, though? Three-two-two-three-four-zero-comma-two-zero-three-nine-four-two. Hmmm. Not a phone number.’

  ‘It’s information, of a sort. It must be. Date, time, place …’

  ‘Two sets of numbers. The comma separates them.’

  They fell silent for a moment, listening to the background strains of the plaintive saxophone.

  ‘You got any guesses who it’s from?’

  ‘I’ve got one guess.’

  ‘You want to tell me?’

  ‘Not yet. I need some information on the investigation, though.’

  David sighed.

  ‘I spoke to the detective in charge today. Captain Nxumalo, who’s working under Moloi.’

  ‘Has he sent a team out to interview Sonet’s ex-husband yet?’

  ‘Yes. He went there personally today, with one of his constables.’ ‘What did Van Schalkwyk say?’

  ‘He’s been taken into custody pending further questioning.’

  Jade sat up straighter. ‘Really? Did that decision have anything to do with his leaflets about the Boere Krisis Kommando?’

  ‘No. It was because when Nxumalo ask
ed Van Schalkwyk if he’d ever participated in vigilante action or was a member of any vigilante groups, he lost it. Started getting violent and tried to punch him. So, with some difficulty, Nxumalo and his constable subdued him and he’s now in a holding cell at Bronkhorstspruit police station, awaiting further questioning.’

  ‘Will you let me know what happens?’

  ‘If I can, Jadey. And don’t make faces like that. This isn’t red tape. I know what you’re going to say. This is just following due process. And you do know that I’m going to be obliged to tell Nxumalo about this message you’ve received. It may be pivotal to the investigation.’

  ‘I understand,’ Jade said. ‘But I can’t let you give the team this phone number, David. I can’t risk passing on the number of someone who expressly asked me not to call them back. Not even to the police. What if someone in Nxumalo’s team dials it? You know how these things happen.’

  ‘It can only be helpful to Nxumalo, and he’ll treat it confidentially if I ask him to. He’s a good guy. He’s only been recently promoted to captain and he’s inherited a total screw-up of a backlog thanks to the previous captain’s incompetence.’

  ‘Sounds a lot like your situation when you were promoted to superintendent.’

  ‘Very similar. You helped me out. Do a favour for a friend and help him too.’

  ‘I’ll give it some thought.’

  ‘Well, think quickly. My wine’s nearly finished. And in the meantime it would be helpful if you could summarise for me everything you know so far about this case.’ David’s face was serious.

  Jade counted off the points on her fingers as she spoke.

  ‘On the fifteenth of this month, Victor Theron and his base-jumping partner Sonet Meintjies entered the Sandton View skyscraper illegally and climbed onto the roof in order to jump off it. According to Victor, he jumped first and Sonet fell to her death a few minutes later. Right?’

  ‘Is there usually a delay of a few minutes between one person jumping and the next?’

  ‘No, there isn’t. Victor said he’d begun to worry within a minute of being on the ground. He was wondering if she’d lost her nerve or had some sort of a problem. He was on the point of phoning her when she fell.’

  ‘And then?’

  ‘Dead on impact. The investigators subsequently discovered that her chute had been sabotaged. The canopy was cut through. And it was Victor who’d packed it for her.’

  ‘That didn’t have to happen when it was packed. Could have happened up there at the top of the building, especially if there was a delay up there. Someone with a knife … Grab, slice and shove.’

  ‘If you had a knife, why not just stab her and leave her up there?’

  ‘Perhaps there was a struggle,’ David said. ‘Perhaps they meant to stab her but didn’t manage.’

  ‘Oh, come on, David. If someone’s up there with a knife and they had time to cut her parachute, they had enough time and resolve to kill her. Either they wanted to make it look like an accident, or …’ Jade paused for a moment, thinking. Across the room a fashionably dressed black woman, in conversation with her business-suited partner, threw back her head and laughed loudly. The sound was unforced, spontaneous, merry. It was infectious, too. Other people around her turned and smiled. Not Jade and David, though. The sound was deflected by the darkness of their conversation and had no impact on them.

  ‘Or?’

  ‘Falling to your death with a damaged chute is a lot more dramatic, more frightening than a simple stabbing. That’s what I’ve realised was troubling me during my last meeting with Victor Theron. Her death was shocking. Attention-grabbing. So what’s it drawing attention away from?’

  ‘What are you thinking?’

  ‘I’m wondering if her death was a warning or a message to somebody else. A threat of some kind: “Look what we can do. We can get to her at the top of Sandton Views, on a base-jumping mission nobody knew about, and we can ensure she dies in terror, falling a full sixty-seven storeys.” That’s a long way. Plenty of time to scream.’

  David exhaled sharply as if he didn’t want to dwell on that scenario.

  ‘And who would the threat have been aimed at?’

  ‘Well, her sister Zelda disappeared at around the same time.’

  ‘Right.’

  ‘Sonet worked for Williams Management, a charity specialising in setting up sustainable farming ventures in impoverished communities.’

  ‘Go on.’

  ‘The Siyabonga community, who set up a farm in Theunisvlei, seemed to be doing well. Then they all disappeared. Practically overnight. Every last one of them. Nobody seems to know what happened. The fields are empty. Arid. In fact, they look as if they’ve been sown with salt. Their houses have been razed, as has the mill down by the river that they were using to grind the maize.’

  ‘Bizarre,’ David shook his head.

  ‘Zelda is a journalist. I think Sonet asked her to poke around and see if she could find out what happened to them.’

  ‘A journalist? What sort? Features?’

  ‘She’s alternative. Off the beaten track. Rather extreme in her views – a bit of a paranoid conspiracy theorist.’

  ‘You’re not a paranoid conspiracy theorist if they’re really out to get you,’ David observed.

  ‘Well, this is true.’ Jade found to her surprise that she had drained the last of her wine. It seemed the red hadn’t been as undrinkable as she’d originally thought. ‘Anyway, Zelda wrote, or writes, on food mainly. She’s militant on organic, non-GM, non-irradiated foodstuffs. Big on the power struggle surrounding food and farmland. She has a nice sideline going on the health risks of pesticides and herbicides and genetically modified organisms – well, anyway, after reading one or two of her articles I’m not sure what to put in my trolley the next time I go shopping.’

  ‘Is that all she writes on? I can’t see how that’s relevant.’

  ‘Well, that’s not all. She has also written on land reform.’

  ‘Land reform? Now there’s a thorny subject.’ David leaned forward, his face intent.

  ‘It just so happens that Theunisvlei, the land the community was farming, used to belong to Sonet’s ex-husband. It was given back to the Siyabonga community after a successful land claim.’

  ‘You’ve interviewed the husband?’

  ‘Yes. He was the one who told me about it. He’s very bitter.’

  David considered her words before speaking again.

  ‘You think he might have had a hand in destroying the community’s farming operation? And that’s why he became violent when Nxumalo questioned him?’

  Jade shrugged, her hands palm up.

  ‘If the theory held water, then every piece of the puzzle would fall into place. The angry husband who wanted revenge on the community who had taken “his” land and at the same time get back at his ex-wife for helping them set up their operation. I guess a farmer would know what to do to make sure a harvest failed. Somehow he managed to damage the farming operation to such an extent that the community upped and left.’

  ‘And you say it doesn’t work because?’

  ‘Well, the piece of land they took over is huge. Thousands of acres. Only a small part of it had been cultivated, a big field near the river. The rest of the land looked fine. Why didn’t they start again on a new piece? Or complain to Williams Management and ask for help and protection? Why would an entire community leave the beautiful farm that was their heritage and their tribal right, and disappear?’

  ‘Perhaps they were encouraged to leave.’

  ‘Or perhaps they were made to disappear.’

  ‘You’re talking genocide here?’ David sounded alarmed.

  ‘It’s a possibility.’

  Jade thought again of the wind whistling through the deserted barn. Of the single rock she had found with the dark, rusty residue of what might have been blood.

  ‘Would have been a hell of an operation,’ David said. ‘One man with a grudge couldn’t have done it a
lone. And there must have been survivors. There always are. How many people were in that community? A couple hundred?’

  ‘Yes, judging by what remained of their housing.’

  David shook his head again.

  ‘Impossible.’

  ‘It is. The place is creepy. It had a sad and desolate air about it. I know it sounds ridiculous, but I wished that the land itself could speak; that it could tell us what happened to the people who farmed it. I thought …’

  ‘Go on?’

  ‘Sorry. I just thought of something while I was telling you about the land.’

  ‘What’s that, Jadey?’

  ‘Distance. Place. Those numbers in the text message … they could be GPS co-ordinates.’

  David thought it over.

  ‘Let’s see the message again.’

  He reread it and took out his own phone.

  ‘If those numbers are co-ordinates, they’re definitely nowhere near Jo’burg. Much further south. I’ve got an app that can pinpoint them, if I can make it work, that is.’

  David pulled a face in response to Jade’s raised eyebrows.

  ‘An app,’ he repeated. ‘Listen to me. I sound like Kevin. Why did I decide to get a bloody iPhone and turn into such a geek?’

  ‘Well, it’s certainly proving useful tonight.’

  ‘Don’t speak too soon,’ David warned.

  But his phone proved co-operative and within a couple of minutes it had come up with the goods. ‘It’s mapped the co-ordinates,’ he told Jade, in tones of equal triumph and disbelief.

  ‘Pass it over and let’s see.’

  David slid the phone across the table.

  ‘It’s not working,’ Jade said. ‘This is just a blank screen. There’s nothing here.’

  ‘That’s because there is nothing there.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Zoom out. Yes, with your finger, like that. You can see now, right? Those co-ordinates are somewhere near the Tankwa Karoo national park. The vastest, emptiest, most barren area in the whole of the country. So, the numbers must mean something else. We’d better start thinking again.’

  ‘No,’ Jade said.