Devil's Peak bg-1

by Deon Meyer

  “They have your daughter because I killed Sangrenegra. It’s my responsibility to fix it.”

  “How can you do that?”

  “We’ll see.”

  Griessel ruminated on that, then said, “Stop when you like.”

  Seventy kilometers on, on the long sweeping curves the N2 makes between George and Mossel Bay, something dropped onto the front seat beside Thobela. When he looked down, the assegai lay there. The blade was dull in the lights of the instrument panel.

  45.

  First came police in uniform and she was hysterically crying and screaming: “He’s got my child, he’s got my child!” They got the information out of her and tried to calm her down.

  More policemen arrived. They sent for an ambulance for her. Suddenly her flat was full of people. She wept uncontrollably. A first-aid man was cleaning her face while a black detective questioned her. He introduced himself as Timothy Ngubane. He sat beside her and she told her story between sobs while he wrote in his notebook and said earnestly: “We will find her, ma’am.” Then he called out orders and then there were fewer people around.

  Later the two from Social Services arrived, and then a large man with a Western Province cap. He showed no sympathy. He asked her to repeat her story. He did not take notes. There came a moment in the conversation when she realized he didn’t believe her. He had a way of looking at her with a faint smile that only lasted a moment. Her heart went cold. Why wouldn’t he believe her?

  When she had finished he stood up and said: “I am going to leave two men here with you. Outside your door.”

  She looked at him in inquiry.

  “We don’t want anything to happen to you, do we?”

  “But didn’t you arrest Carlos?”

  “We did.” The faint smile again, like someone sharing a secret.

  She wanted to phone Vanessa to hear how Sonia was and she wanted to get away from here. Away from all the people and the fuss, away from the gnawing tension, because it was not over yet.

  Another detective. His hair was too long and ruffled. “My name is Benny Griessel,” he said, and he held out his hand and she took it and looked into his eyes and looked away again because of the intensity in them. As if he saw everything. He took her out onto the balcony, and asked her questions in a gentle voice, with a compassion she wanted to embrace. But she couldn’t look him in the eye.

  * * *

  They turned off the N2 and drove into Swellendam. There was a filling station deep in the town, past a museum and guesthouses and restaurants with small-town Afrikaans names, deserted at this late hour.

  When Griessel got out Thobela saw the Z88 was not in his hand. He got out too. His legs were stiff and there were cramps in the muscles of his shoulders. He stretched his limbs, feeling the depth of his fatigue, his red, burning eyes.

  Griessel had the Nissan filled up. Then he came to stand next to Thobela, not speaking, just looking at him. The white man looked rough. Shadows around the eyes, deep lines in his face.

  “The night is too long,” he said to Griessel.

  The detective nodded. “It’s nearly over.”

  Thobela nodded back.

  “I want you to know we got Khoza and Ramphele,” said Griessel.

  “Where?”

  “They were arrested yesterday evening in Midrand.”

  “Why are you telling me this?”

  “Because no matter what happens tonight, I will make sure they don’t get away again.”

  * * *

  She lay on her bed and told herself she must suppress the urge to go and lie with the detective who was asleep on her couch, because it would be for all the wrong reasons.

  * * *

  Griessel’s cell phone rang and he answered and said, “Yes” and “Yes” and “Six kilometers” and “Yes” and “Okay.”

  Then Thobela heard him say: “I want to hear her voice.”

  Silence on the street in Swellendam. “Carla,” said Griessel. Thobela felt a hand squeeze his heart because of the awful emotion in the white man’s voice when he said: “Daddy is coming to fetch you, you hear? Daddy is coming.”

  * * *

  She needed to be held. She wanted him to hold her because she was afraid. Afraid of Carlos and of the detective in the rugby cap and afraid that the whole scheme was going to collapse in on her. Afraid that Griessel would see through her with those eyes of his, that he would expose her with that energy of his. It wasn’t right, because she wanted to lie with him to make him blind.

  She must not do that.

  She got up.

  * * *

  “Infanta,” said Griessel. “Six kilometers outside town the road to Infanta turns off. There will be a car there. They will drive behind us from there.”

  They got back into the Nissan, Thobela in front and Griessel behind.

  “Infanta,” he heard the man say, as if the name made no sense to him.

  On the instrument panel the numbers of the LCD display of the clock glowed yellow.

  0

  3:41.

  He drove out of town, back to the N2.

  “Turn right. Towards Cape Town.”

  Over a bridge.

  Breede River,

  the signboard read. Then he spotted the road sign.

  Malgas. Infanta.

  “This one,” said Griessel.

  He put the left indicator on. Gravel road. He saw the vehicle parked there, chunky in the lights of the Nissan. A Mitsubishi Pajero. Two men stood beside it. Each with a firearm, shading eyes from the headlights with their free hands. He stopped.

  Only one man approached. Thobela wound his window down.

  The man did not look at him, but at Griessel. “Is this the killer?”

  “Yes.”

  The man was clean-shaven, including his head. There was just a small tassel of hair below his lip. He looked at Thobela. “You die tonight.”

  Thobela looked back, into his eyes.

  “You the father?” Shaven Head asked Griessel and he said: “Yes.”

  The man smirked. “Your daughter has a nice little cunt.”

  Griessel made a noise behind him and Thobela thought: not

  now,

  don’t do anything now.

  Shaven Head laughed. Then he said: “Hokay. You ride straight. We will be somewhere behind you. First, we will look if you brought some friends. Now go.”

  They were in control, he realized. Didn’t even look for weapons, because they knew they held the trump card.

  Thobela pulled away. He wondered what was going on in Griessel’s head.

  * * *

  The two detectives from Witness Protection were carrying shotguns when they came to collect her.

  She packed a suitcase. They accompanied her down in the lift and they all got in the car and drove away.

  The house was in Boston, old and quite shabby, but the windows had burglar proofing and there was a security gate at the front door.

  They showed her around the house. The master bedroom was where she could “make herself at home,” there were groceries in the kitchen, the bathroom had towels. There was television in the sitting room and piles of magazines on the coffee table, old issues of

  Sports Illustrated, FHM

  and a few copies of

  Huisgenoot.

  * * *

  “That’s how they bring in the drugs,” said Griessel when they had been on the gravel road for half an hour.

  Thobela said nothing. His mind was on their destination. He had seen the weapons of the two in the Pajero. New stuff, hand carbines, he guessed they were Heckler & Koch, family of the G36. Costly. Efficient.

  “Infanta and Witsand. Every fucker with a ski boat goes there to fish,” said Griessel. “They are bringing the stuff in small boats. Probably off ships . . .”

  So that was how the detective was keeping his mind occupied. He didn’t want to think of his child. He didn’t want to imagine what they had done to his daughter.

  “Do you know how many there are?” asked Thobela.

  “No.”

  “You will
want to reload your Z88.”

  “I only fired one shot. In your house.”

  “Every round will count, Griessel.”

  * * *

  She was in the sitting room when there was a knock on the door. The two detectives first looked through the peephole and then opened the series of locks on the front door.

  She heard heavy steps and then the big man with the Western Province rugby cap stood there and he said: “You and I must talk.”

  He came to sit on the chair closest to her and the two Witness Protection detectives hung around in the doorway.

  “Let’s not make her nervous, chaps,” said Beukes.

  Reluctantly, they retreated down the passage. She heard the back door open and close.

  “Where is the money?” he asked when the house was quiet.

  “

  What

  money?” Her pulse beat in her throat.

  “You know what I’m talking about.”

  “I don’t.”

  “Where is your daughter?”

  “Ask Carlos.”

  “Carlos is dead, you slut. And he never had your daughter.

  You

  know it and

  I

  know it.”

  “How can you

  say

  that?” She began to weep.

  “Save the fucking tears. They won’t work on me. You should just be fucking grateful I was following him yesterday morning. If it had been one of the others . . .”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about . . .”

  “Let me tell you what I’m talking about. The team that was on duty day before yesterday said you went to his house in his BMW. And in the middle of the fucking night you take a taxi from the front of his house and you have all these Pick and Pay bags and you’re in a helluva hurry. What was in the bags?”

  “I cooked dinner for him.”

  “And took everything home again?”

  “Just what I didn’t use.”

  “You’re lying.”

  “I swear.” She wept and the tears were genuine, because the fear was back.

  “What I don’t know is where you went with the fucking taxi. Because my fucking so-called colleagues didn’t think to send someone after you. Because their job was to watch

  him.

  That’s what you get when you work with the policeman of today. Fucking black rubbish. But yesterday was another story, because I was in the saddle, my dear. And Carlos drove out of there as if the devil was on his tail, straight to your little flat. Ten minutes later he comes out with this big red mark on his face, but there’s no child anywhere. But the next minute the whole fucking radio is full of Sangrenegra and before I could do anything the Task Force was there and SVC and who knows what. But one thing I do know: your child was not with him. Not the night before last, and not yesterday morning. Of all the money in that strong room of his, there is a shithouse full of rands missing. Only rands. Now why, I ask myself, why of all the dollars and euros and pounds would someone only take South African rands? I guess it was an amateur. Someone who doesn’t want to bother with foreign exchange. Someone who had time to think about what she wanted to steal. What she could use. That she could carry in Pick and Pay shopping bags.”

  She realized something and without further thought she asked: “How do you know there are rands missing?”

  “Fuck you, whore. I’m telling you now; this thing is not over yet. Not for

  you,

  anyway.”

  * * *

  Griessel’s cell phone rang. He answered and told Thobela: “They say we must drive slower.”

  He reduced speed. The Nissan rattled on the dirt road. Behind them the Pajero’s headlights shone dim through the cloud of dust. The lights of Witsand twinkled on the Breede River off to the left.

  “He says we must turn left at the road sign.”

  He slowed even more, spotted the sign that said

  Kabeljoubank.

  He put on his indicator and turned. The road narrowed between two boundary fences. It ran down to the river. In the rear-view mirror he saw the Pajero was behind them.

  “Are you calm?” Thobela asked the detective.

  “Yes.”

  He felt the fizz inside him, now that they were close.

  In the headlights he saw three, four boats on trailers. And two vehicles. A minibus and a pickup. Figures moving. He stopped a hundred meters away from the vehicles. He turned the key and the Nissan’s engine fell silent. He deliberately kept the lights on.

  “Get out and hide that pistol of yours,” he said, and picked up the assegai, pushed it down behind his neck, under his shirt. There was barely enough room in the car, the angle was too tight. He heard the blade tear the material of his shirt, felt the chill of the blade against his back. It would have to do. He opened the door and got out. Griessel stood on the other side of the Nissan.

  Four men approached from the minibus—one was tall and broad, considerably bigger than the others. The Pajero pulled up behind them. Thobela stood beside the car, aware of the four in front, the two behind. He heard their footsteps on the gravel, smelt the dust and the river and the fish from the boats, heard the waves in the sea beyond. He felt the stiffness throughout his body, but the weariness was gone, his arteries were full of adrenaline. The world seemed to slow down, as if there were more time for thinking and doing.

  The quartet came right up to him. The big one looked him up and down.

  “You are the spearman,” he said as if he recognized him. He was as tall as Thobela, with long straight black hair down to his massive shoulders. He wasn’t carrying a firearm. The others had machine pistols.

  “Where is my daughter?” asked Griessel.

  “I am the spearman,” said Thobela. He wanted to keep the attention; he didn’t know how stable Griessel was.

  “My name is César Sangrenegra. You killed my brother.”

  “Yes. I killed your brother. You can have me. Let the girl and the policeman go.”

  “No. We will have

  justicia.

  ”

  “No, you can—”

  “Shut the fuck up, black man.” Spit sprayed from César’s lips, the drops making shiny arcs in the light from the Nissan. “

  Justicia.

  You know what it means? He made the trap for Carlos, this policeman. Now I have to go back to my father and say I didn’t kill him? That will not happen. I want you to know, policeman, before you die. I want you to know we fucked your daughter. We fucked her good. She is young. It was a sweet fuck. And after you are dead, we will fuck her again. And again. We will fuck her so long as she can be alive. You hear me?”

  “I will kill you,” said Griessel, and Thobela could hear his breaking point was close.

  He laughed at Griessel, shaking his head. “You can do nothing. We have your kid. And we will find the white whore too. The one who tells lies about Carlos. The one who steals our money.”

  “You are a coward,” Thobela said to César Sangrenegra. “You are not a man.”

  César laughed in his face. “You want me to attack you? You want me to lose my temper?”

  “I want you to lose your life.”

  “You think I did not see the spear you put behind your back? You think I am stupid, like my brother?” He turned around, to one of his henchmen. “

  De¨me el cuchillo.

  ”

  The man drew a knife from a long sheath on his hip. César took it from him.

  “I will kill you slowly,” he said to Thobela. “Now take out that spear.”

  46.

  When Superintendent Boef Beukes had gone, she went to the bedroom where her things were.

  She opened her handbag, took out her identity document and put it on the bed. She took out her purse, cigarettes and a lighter. She clipped the bag shut and lifted up her dress. She pushed the ID book and the purse down the front of her panties. She carried the cigarettes in her hand.

  She walked to the front of the house and said: “I’m going outside for a smoke.”

  “At the back,” ge
stured the one with the mustache. “We don’t want you to go out the front.”

  She nodded, went through the kitchen and out the back door. She closed it behind her.

  There were fruit trees in the backyard. The grass was long. A concrete wall surrounded the property. She walked straight to the wall. She put her cigarettes on the ground and looked up at the wall. She drew a deep breath and jumped. Her hands gripped the top of the wall. She pulled herself up, swung one leg over. The top of the wall felt sharp against her knee.

  She dragged her whole body up onto the wall. Beyond was another garden. Vegetables in tidy rows. She jumped, landing in the mud of a wet vegetable bed. She got up. One of her sandals stayed behind in the mud. She pulled it out and put it on again. She walked around the house to the front.