Random Violence

by Jassy Mackenzie

  The old man’s mouth tightened. “What case would that be?”

  “The murder of a Mrs. Annette Botha. We have reason to believe that somewhere along the line, a Mrs. Ellie Myers might be linked to it. Would that be your daughter, sir?”

  He nodded wordlessly, but volunteered no further information.

  “Would it be possible to speak to you for a few minutes?” Jade asked. “Whatever you can tell us will be most valuable.”

  Bill shook his head. “It’s not a subject I choose to speak about. It’s very painful to me and I can’t see how it’s relevant. My daughter was unlucky. She was a victim of crime and her hijackers were never found. I suppose I’ll have to answer your questions. But please be brief.”

  Jade took out her notebook. She wondered whether, for the sake of brevity, the old man would conduct the conversation in the doorway, forcing her to prop her notebook against the doorframe and David to stand behind her like some kind of guard.

  He looked at the notebook. “You’d better come in.” He turned and led the way down the passage.

  They followed him inside, David closing the front door behind them. Then they entered a little paradise.

  The tiled corridor opened into a spacious living room. The entire front wall was a giant window that looked out onto a sloping green garden and had an endless view of the sea.

  A plush-looking white leather lounge suite faced the window. A dark wood coffee table topped with glass stood on a blue and white carpet. A blue vase studded with what looked like lapis lazuli contained a bunch of white lilies. It stood on a polished cabinet next to the window.

  Two framed photos flanked the vase. Both frames were engraved. One was a formal portrait of an older woman with jet-black hair and a string of pearls around her neck. The other was of a younger woman. Also a studio shot. She was smiling at the camera. Her skin was tanned and her dark hair hung loose on her shoulders. Jade moved closer in order to read the scripts. The engraving under the older lady read, “Mary Scott. 12 May 1935–14 June 1997.” The younger girl’s script read, “Ellie Scott. 20 June 1966–22 February 2001.”

  Bill Scott’s loved ones. Both dead.

  Looking closer, Jade realized that the flowers in the vase were made of silk. Very life-like, but silk.

  Bill saw her standing by the cabinet. “My wife passed away after a stroke,” he explained. “Take a seat.” He gestured to the sofa as he lowered himself into the chair nearest the door.

  The sofa felt as plush as it looked. It was so blindingly white she was worried she would dirty it. David waited for a minute and then sat down next to her, in such a way that she thought he was also worried about leaving a mark. Jade leaned back into the cushions and looked out of the window, watching the waves roll into shore and wondering whether she would see a whale.

  “So. You want to know what happened?”

  Jade unclipped her pen. “Yes, please.”

  “She arrived home late one evening. The twenty-second of February. Five years ago. She stopped outside the gate while she waited for it to open.” The man sighed; a ragged, hope-less sound. “Ellie was pulled from the car and shot. She died before the paramedics arrived. They took the car, an Audi if you need to know. The vehicle tracking company found it twelve hours later in Linbro Park. Abandoned, undamaged and locked.” He raised his head and stared out over the ocean, where clouds were scudding on the horizon.

  David broke the silence. “Did the police find any evidence? Fingerprints? Any witnesses to the crime?”

  Bill shook his head. “The police found nothing.”

  “The car might have been abandoned if the hijackers sus-pected it had a tracking device. They’ll often hide a vehicle in a secluded spot and watch it for a day to see if anyone comes along,” David said.

  Jade glanced out of the window. The sky had turned gray and white-crested waves were forming. Ellie Myers and Annette Botha. Both hijacked in their driveways. Both shot dead. What was the connection between them? How had Annette known about Ellie? Why had she decided to trace her so long after her death, only to suffer the same fate herself?

  “Annette was murdered in similar circumstances,” David said. “We need to know if there was a link between the two women. We need to find a person who knew Ellie well. Do you know where her husband is?”

  He shook his head. “I don’t know where Mark is, and I don’t care much, either.” His voice became stronger. “I never approved of him. Ellie married him against my wishes.” He lifted his chin and Jade caught a glimpse of what he must have been like in his prime. An arrogant man. A dominating father. Somebody accustomed to getting his own way, no questions asked.

  “Why?” Jade asked. “Why did you dislike him?”

  The old man got to his feet and walked across the room. He lifted the vase and straightened the cork mat underneath. Then he adjusted the position of the two photographs. Jade hadn’t noticed anything wrong with them. She thought Bill was probably giving himself a moment to consider.

  He returned to his chair and looked straight at them.

  “I wanted my daughter to do better. Mark was a likeable man, don’t get me wrong. Good-looking, charming, pleasant company. But he was a freeloader. He lived off my daughter. I owned a highly successful law firm, and I made sure my family never wanted for anything. I would have liked Ellie to marry a man with similar principles. Mark dabbled in busi-ness. This and that. He was a good salesperson. He sold insur-ance at one stage. Then he lost interest, and it was something else. Next thing, he was selling houses. She bankrolled all his projects. None of them succeeded.”

  Jade glanced at David, remembering what he had told her about the development at 48 Forest Road. “If Mark sold houses, did he sell Ellie’s place after she died?”

  Bill shook his head.

  “Mark inherited the house. But he didn’t want anything to do with it after what happened there,” he said. “He spoke to me at her funeral. Said he was selling it at a giveaway price. He asked me for my banking details. He told me he didn’t want to benefit from it. He wanted the money to go to me.”

  “Did he ever pay you the money?” David asked.

  Bill straightened in his chair again. “I didn’t give him my banking details. I didn’t want the money. He knew my opin-ion of him. Giving me the proceeds from the sale of my daugh-ter’s house wasn’t going to change that opinion.” He pursed his lips. “A banker’s check for one million rand arrived in the post a month or so later. I tore it up.”

  Now Jade understood why the frame on the cabinet had been engraved with Ellie’s maiden name rather than her married name. Jade was beginning to feel sorry for his daughter. She’d drawn the short straw in the father department, that was for sure. Having family money wasn’t everything in life. And why couldn’t he have swallowed his pride for long enough to cash the check and donate the money to a deserving charity?

  “Could we get a list of her friends from you? University friends, work contacts, anyone else we could talk to?” David stood up, letting Mr. Scott know that they’d asked all their questions.

  “She didn’t have a job. With the trust fund I set up for her, she didn’t need one. But she kept busy. She played a lot of sports. I’ll send you the names of her friends, her sporting contacts. People who knew her.”

  “That would be great.” Jade got up too. She looked out at the changing weather. Rain was lashing against the window and the sea was dark and angry. David was already walking down the passage to the front door. As she turned to go, Bill grasped her arm.

  “Please find her killers. Find them for me. I want to see them brought to justice.”

  “We’ll try.” Jade covered his hand with her own and gave a gentle squeeze.

  “When Ellie died,” Bill paused, and his expression softened. “When she died, she was three months pregnant. She never told me. We didn’t communicate much after my wife died. That was my fault. I still blame myself today.” Quite unex-pectedly, his eyes filled with tears.

&n
bsp; Jade put her arm around the old man and hugged him. She felt his shoulders shake. She knew how he must feel, with paradise all around him but inside him, a living hell that wouldn’t end.

  While she tried to comfort him, Jade watched the rain pelting down and the swells building. Then she saw it. A huge dark shape leapt out of the water and flicked its enormous tail just before its massive body crashed back down into the churning water. A Southern Right whale, cavorting in the sea.

  30

  They sat in a coffee shop looking out at the worsening weather. Jade ran her fingers through her hair and shook it out. After the short sprint from the house to the car, and the equally short sprint from the car to the shopping center, she was soaked.

  “That’s Cape Town weather for you,” she said. “Four seasons in one day.”

  David shrugged his jacket off his shoulders, brushed off the raindrops, and hung it on the back of his chair.

  “At least you saw a whale,” he grumbled. “If I’d known you were going to spend half an hour hugging the old guy, I’d have stayed and looked out of the window, too.”

  They ordered some food. David chose a hamburger from the lunch menu. Jade opted for chicken and chips.

  “And bring the Tabasco,” David told the waitress.

  “Thanks,” Jade said.

  Rain pelted down outside.

  “It’s going to be a fun drive back to the airport,” David said. “For you, that is. I’m going to wind my seat back and have a nap. I always sleep well in the rain.”

  “Why did they both get shot?” Jade asked. “Why did Annette hire a detective to trace Ellie?”

  David nodded. “Were they really hijackings?”

  “According to your evidence, Annette’s murder was a hit arranged by Piet.” Jade stared accusingly across the table at him.

  “Don’t look at me that way, Jade. I have my doubts about Piet as a suspect in spite of evidence that could be good enough to send him to jail. That’s why I’m down here following leads with you, instead of up in Jo’burg pursuing the case against him. But still, how did a Diepsloot gangster with a criminal record end up in possession of his business card?”

  Jade frowned. She couldn’t answer him. They sat and ate, watching the sea, hoping to see another whale.

  The drive back to the airport was a two-hour slog. Traffic crawled along, and the gray sheets of rain limited visibility to a car’s length in front of them. They passed two accidents along the way.

  The congestion was no better inside the airport. The queues for checking in snaked round and round Cape Town Domestic. Jade heard tourists complaining in Dutch, German, French and Italian. When they finally reached the check-in desk, they were told that the airport had just been closed due to bad weather.

  “Your plane was grounded at Johannesburg airport an hour ago,” the stewardess explained to them in doleful tones. “It’s difficult for the smaller planes to land in this weather. If the airplane can’t land here, it can’t fly back again, you see.”

  Her logic was inarguable. Jade tried a different angle. “Any other flights? Could we go on standby anywhere else?”

  “There are a couple of planes that could take off tonight if the weather improves.” The stewardess indicated the crowded airport. “Unfortunately, I think that there will be lots of people wanting seats on those planes. I still have a few vouchers left for the Road Lodge, here at the airport. You can stay there overnight and I can check you in now for the first flight tomorrow morning.”

  Jade looked at David. He shrugged. “Unless you want to rehire the car and spend the next eighteen hours on the road driving back to Johannesburg, we don’t have a choice, do we?”

  The room at the Road Lodge was small, neat and clean, decorated in cheerful blue and red. It had one double bed. She remembered the times she’d shared a bed with David in the distant past. Three or four occasions, perhaps. In cheap motels and strange cities, where she’d accompanied him on investigations and accommodation was scarce. Sleeping companionably, back-to-back and fully clothed. Even if she’d always dreamt about what would happen if he rolled over in the deep of the night and kissed her the way she’d always wanted him to.

  Now, looking at the double bed, she felt awkward and embarrassed all over again.

  “Sorry, Jadey,” David said. “Do you want to see if there’s another room available?”

  The porter caught his attention. “All the twin rooms are taken, sir. Only the double rooms are open.”

  “That’s OK. We’ll live with it.”

  While David showered, Jade went downstairs and bought a selection of chips, chocolate and soft drinks from the vending machines. They could have a junk-food supper and fall asleep to the sound of their teeth rotting.

  After her shower, she put on the spare T-shirt she’d brought with her and folded her clothes ready for the morning. Then she climbed into bed as quickly as possible, keeping so far over to her side that she was worried she’d tumble out onto the floor.

  “So Mark Myers was a freeloader,” David said. He was sitting up, propped against his pillows, programming the alarm clock on his cell phone.

  “Sounds like it,” Jade agreed. “But you can never tell. We’ve only heard Mr. Scott’s side of the story. Mark might have been an honest, hardworking man who just wasn’t quite as rich as his wife.”

  David put his cell phone down and turned off the bedside light. “You’re right, Jadey. Two sides to every story.”

  Jade edged her feet down into the chilly depths of the sheets. David was so far away from her she’d have more chance of sharing body warmth with the person in the room next door. The discomfort of the cold bed prompted her to ask him an uncomfortable question. “What’s the other side to your story? Why did your wife leave you?”

  There was a tense silence on the other side of the bed.

  Just as Jade started to say “Sorry I asked,” David spoke.

  “She had an affair.”

  Jade’s head whipped round, facing the darkness where he lay.

  “What?”

  “She had an affair,” he said again. His voice wasn’t angry or sad. He sounded empty and emotionless. “With a neighbor. I knew him. He was a nice guy. They managed to keep it secret until I came home early one day and caught them.”

  “Oh, Jesus, how awful.” Jade’s heart was pounding so hard she wondered if he could hear it.

  David gave the ghost of a laugh. “I wanted to kill him when I saw them together. I threatened him with my service pistol. I actually had it against his head. I could have pulled the trigger so easily. I don’t know why I didn’t. He ran outside as soon as he had a chance.”

  “Wasn’t only his fault,” Jade said, and immediately wished she hadn’t.

  She heard the bedsprings creak as David turned over. Now he was facing her, she thought, but she couldn’t see him in the dark. The expanse of cold starched sheets between them seemed like an insurmountable barrier.

  “I know, I know. I told myself I’d caused it, that my working hours were crap and my job stress was through the roof, but yes, Naisha knew what she was doing. Although I never wanted to kill her. Only him.”

  “Where’s he now?”

  “They broke it off. He took a job in Pietermaritzburg and moved down there within a month. I don’t know if they’re still in touch. Then Naisha wanted some time apart from me, to sort her head out. She was devastated by what had hap-pened. So I found the place in Kyalami.”

  Jade didn’t say anything. She didn’t know what to say. She wanted to reach out to him and hold his hand, put her arms around him, offer him some comfort just as she had done earlier for Ellie’s father in the beautiful, lonely room by the sea. But she couldn’t. David cleared his throat. After another pause, he continued.

  “When we met in town, when I gave her the fingerprint disk, she told me she’d thought about it. She wanted us to try again. That’s what she said to me.”

  Jade suddenly wished she was somewhere else. She didn�
��t want to hear what David said next. Not while she was lying beside him in a hotel bed that felt as wide as the distance between two stars. She didn’t dare to breathe, as if by not breathing she could somehow influence a decision that had already been made.

  “What did you say to her?” she asked.

  “I told her no.”

  Now she really couldn’t breathe. “Why?”

  “Don’t know. Just felt like the right decision.”

  “Oh.” Jade stared up into the dark. She wished she could see his face.

  “If I had my time over,” David said. He never finished the sentence. The next moment Jade heard the bedsprings twang and felt his arm coil around her and pull her towards him. Then her face was bumping against his and his mouth was on her cheek, and then suddenly, urgently, on her lips.

  Jade found herself wrapping her arms and legs around him as he pulled her even closer.

  His breathing was rough as he touched her with trembling hands, stroking and caressing with a hunger that echoed her own. She heard him say sorry, and whisper her name over and over before he kissed her again. She knew there was no going back. Whatever the consequences, good or bad, right or wrong, she would always have this night.

  31

  When Jade switched on her phone again, she had three urgent messages from Robbie.

  She had spent the flight in a sleepy trance, reliving the memories of the night. The car journey back from the airport passed in much the same way. Back home, she climbed out as quickly as she could, before she could follow through on any inappropriate ideas like kissing David goodbye. He had to make his own choices now. There was nothing she could do.

  She phoned Robbie back. He sounded as if he was driving.

  “Where were you? I’ve been hunting for you.”

  “On the early flight from Cape Town.”

  “I’m coming to fetch you now. We need to get going with your friend Viljoen. Chop-chop. This morning.”