by Tim Willocks
‘It doesn’t matter to me if she put a man on Mars. Margot Le Roux isn’t a suspect.’
‘You can’t be that naive. Her mine has pulled billions of rand into the region. A smelter plant in Upington. New housing, a school. She’s created hundreds of jobs and her politics are impeccable. These are good people –’
‘I googled her,’ said Turner. ‘She’s a remarkable woman, a blessing to the community, and throws cash at the ANC. But I missed the part that said her son was above the law.’
‘There’s an old African saying,’ said Mokoena. ‘Where a woman rules, the streams flow uphill. Round here we have another: Margot gets what Margot wants.’
‘Captain, if you feel unable to cooperate –’
‘To the contrary. Take my advice and let me handle this. Relax. Imi can show you natural wonders galore. In a day, two at the most, I guarantee you a docile prisoner with an airtight confession. Your paperwork will flow. The court will be delighted. The machinery of justice will grind on undisturbed. Your Captain Venter will pat you on the back for a swift and efficient clearance.’
‘A pat on the back from Margot, too?’
The perfect solution. But Mokoena saw the glimmer of contempt in Turner’s eyes, heard it in his voice. He didn’t like this game. The disrespect was a toad in his throat, but he swallowed it. While there was still a chance, he had to play.
‘Why not?’ he said. ‘A generous contract, let’s say as a security consultant, would in no way be illegal.’
Turner stood up.
This game, at least, was over. The next would call out the rusted guns of pride.
Turner bowed to Iminathi. ‘Thank you for dinner.’
He nodded, once, to Mokoena. ‘Goodnight, Captain.’
Mokoena stood up. He leaned across the table. His voice was dark.
‘Be reasonable, Turner.’
‘There’s nothing reasonable in asking me to do wrong.’
‘I’m sorry the girl died under Dirk’s car last night, instead of next month in a ditch waiting for a doctor to show up. A hundred like her died while we were eating dinner. No one cares about them either – don’t tell me you do. If you want to make the world a better place, leave this to me.’
‘We carry the law,’ said Turner.
‘Have you any idea what the law required when I first took an oath? We were a Gestapo. Homosexuality was against the law. Interracial marriage. A man like you or me couldn’t walk down the street without breaking a law.’
‘The girl was killed,’ said Turner. ‘She’s entitled to justice.’
‘There is no justice. There’s just us. And a thin chance to get along without fucking each other.’
‘If the girl had rolled an SUV over Dirk and left him to die, Margot would mobilise an army to see her crucified, malnutrition or not.’
He was right enough about that. Mokoena tapped the ash from his cigar.
‘You know no one will go to prison for this,’ he said.
‘I don’t answer for the corruption of the courts,’ said Turner. ‘I answer for myself.’
‘I know things about Margot you won’t find on Google. When it comes to Dirk she would rather break than bend. I hope I’m wrong, but if you push this too hard, there might be bloodshed.’
‘If there is, that won’t be my fault.’
‘Fault, blame, guilt – these are irrelevant abstractions,’ said Mokoena. ‘My concern is with reality. In my town enforcing the law comes second to keeping the peace, and for that I make no apology. I like peace. I spent a lifetime wading in the alternatives and have come to appreciate its virtues.’
‘I respect your position,’ said Turner. ‘I respect you.’
‘Then I ask you again, from my heart, let me resolve this case.’
‘I can’t do that.’
‘Paris is worth a mass. This country knows that better than any.’
Turner’s gaze held no more compromise than the bore of a shotgun.
‘When I go back to Cape Town, the men who killed the girl will go with me. Or I’ll not go back at all.’
‘You’d rather break than bend, too.’
‘Anyone who tries to break me will die where they stand,’ said Turner. ‘Go and tell Margot.’
So there was his purpose. To test himself against the mighty. A law more ancient than any ever written down. Mokoena understood. He felt old. He felt sad. He was afraid. He looked at Imi. Her chin was upturned, a certain light – a fire – in her expression. She was for Turner. Mokoena knew why. There were lots of whys.
Turner held out his hand.
There was no more to be said.
Mokoena put his cigar in the ashtray. He shook Turner’s hand.
Turner dipped his head to Imi once again then turned and walked out.
Mokoena knocked back his whiskey. Turner’s refill was untouched. He drank that too.
Imi collected the autopsy report and the photos and put them back in the folder.
‘He forgot his file.’
‘He didn’t forget anything.’ Mokoena put the folder under his arm. ‘Thank you for a splendid dinner. And for keeping the peace.’
‘I don’t understand.’
‘I know you don’t,’ said Mokoena. ‘Lock up.’
He grabbed his phone and his car keys and hurried through the kitchen to the rear exit.
Outside, he paused to look up at the stars. They were of a brilliance and infinitude that could only be seen from nowhere. He did not miss Johannesburg. He thought of Turner. He liked the man more than ever. He felt afraid, but not for his own life. If the time came when that would be put at hazard, he would already have been witness to a bloodbath. To take sides in that was a choice he prayed he would not have to make.
As he opened the door of his Grand Cherokee, Mokoena speed-dialled Margot Le Roux.
10
On Sunday evenings Margot and Hennie played chess on the terrace while jazz drifted out from the open glass doors of the kitchen, right now Bill Evans live at the Village Vanguard. Margot had visited New York for the first time three years before and had made a pilgrimage to the club.
She’d been appalled; her fantasies shattered. You couldn’t talk at your table without being shushed by some floor manager, unless a glassy-eyed fan had got their own objection in first. You had to sit still and stare at the band as if you were in the front row of a papal mass. She had almost expected to be told to keep her elbows off the table. No one danced, no one circulated, no one dared move. No joie de vivre; not a whiff of the wild, devil-may-care good-time spirit she had imagined. She doubted anyone had kissed in there since 1973. If Evans rose from the dead and turned up there tomorrow, the staff would drag him off to detox halfway through his first set.
And of course you couldn’t smoke, though this was no surprise. The whole city had left much the same impression on her as the jazz club. Whatever it had once been, it wasn’t any more. How could anything original emerge from a city where you couldn’t smoke and drink at the same time unless you stood outside in the rain? She’d been wrong; you couldn’t do that either. A passing cop had told her it was illegal to drink in any public space, had checked if there were any warrants out for her arrest, and handed her a civil summons for twenty-five bucks, with the reminder that she was lucky because before the recent change in policy she would have been arrested.
Margot had been happy to return to the back of beyond.
She lit a Dunhill and took Hennie’s H6 pawn with her dark-squared bishop, which left the bishop hanging. If Hennie took it, he would be saying goodbye to his queen in four moves, and Hennie, from painful experience, suspected something of the sort but couldn’t see it. When they’d met he had considered himself a strong player, having played thousands of games in tents, bars and barrack rooms around the world. Since then he had matured into a decent player but had never learned to channel his innate aggression to best effect. Margot always gave him rook odds. He did manage to squeeze out the occasional win, about whic
h he would invariably brag for days afterwards.
Margot’s phone rang and she answered it while Hennie worked up a sweat. She listened to Mokoena.
‘We’re on the terrace,’ she said. ‘I’ll have Simon bring you up when you arrive.’
She hung up, tapped her phone screen and listened again.
‘Who was that?’ asked Hennie, still trying to calculate her next moves.
She didn’t reply. Simon Dube answered her call at once.
‘Sorry to disturb you, Simon. I need you to meet Captain Mokoena at the gatehouse and bring him up to the terrace. Ten minutes. Thank you.’
As she spoke she watched Hennie. At the mention of Mokoena, his interest in the game vanished. He looked up from the board. He made no attempt to disguise his worry.
‘Bollocks. What does that gloating bastard want?’
‘He just said it was important and that Simon should sit in.’
Hennie nodded. He scrubbed the flat of one hand over his crew-cut hair. Anxiety, embarrassment, resignation and anger flitted in quick succession across his reddened face.
‘You told me you didn’t want to risk any bother with the cops,’ said Margot. ‘What really happened down there last night?’
Hennie tossed both hands and let them fall to his thighs. ‘Dirk hit some girl with your Range Rover.’
‘Some girl?’
‘A teenage skinny lurking behind the car, probably up to no good.’
Margot felt a cold dread wash through her insides. She stared at Hennie and waited.
‘That fucker, Jason,’ said Hennie. His fists clenched. ‘Two minutes of chaos, that’s all it was. I had to take his gun, slap him down, pay the damages and get the lads out before it got ugly, and it could’ve been very ugly indeed. Dirk still had the car keys from the drive up. He got behind the wheel before I could stop him, I mean physically stop him, and he was in a mood. Wrong gear, left the handbrake on, revved her up and BANG. Reversed straight into a rubbish dumpster. Only drove two or three metres. But the girl got crushed in the middle.’
Dread clenched at Margot’s insides. She dragged on her cigarette. She needed to keep Hennie cool and to do that she needed to be cooler. She suppressed an impulse to lunge across the chess-board at his throat. All problems could be handled. She’d had a lot of practice. It would be fine. Dirk would be fine.
‘What state was the girl in?’
‘The surgeons would have had their hands full, but she was alive.’
‘So by now she might be dead.’
‘Sounds like we’ll find out soon enough,’ said Hennie. ‘They die like flies down there. Jesus, they’re dying like flies all over. Nobody’ll give a shit.’
‘If Dirk killed her we’d better start giving one.’
‘I’m sorry, Margot. I let you down. No excuses.’
Margot wasted no energy on recriminations. Hennie’s guilt was painful enough, even to witness.
‘I had two pissed-up rugger-buggers on my hands in the worst ghetto in the city. OK, going there was mistake number one, but they’re not children, it was Dirk’s weekend.’ Hennie picked up the black king from the board and squeezed it in his fist. ‘Point is, the cops just dream of getting their hands on the likes of us. Saturday night in the Nyanga tank? I’d have had to kill someone just to keep Dirk alive till morning.’
‘Hennie, you don’t have to justify yourself.’
The gratitude in his eyes was so intense she thought she saw a gleam of tears. Hennie had his faults but he was loyal as a war dog. She couldn’t have accomplished all she had without him, couldn’t have taken the first step. It was his savings that had drilled the first hole, when everyone else had thought her mad. He had never sought credit, never wavered in his iron faith, never tried to dissuade her from the awful risks she’d had to take. When she’d turned down a fortune from their Chinese partners he hadn’t raised a single objection, even though she knew there were a thousand places he’d rather be than here, in the Thirstland. ‘I’d be happy to live in a tin-roofed shack as long as it was with you,’ he’d say, and he meant it. The battles she had fought for the business were exclusively with men. Knowing that this man stood behind her, with his fearless vitality, his cheerful cynicism, and knowing that he was hers, had made those other men seem to her as soft as wormy apples.
Hennie rolled his shoulders to collect himself. ‘Besides,’ he said, ‘five minutes under the hot lights and Jason would have spilled his guts like a gored cow.’
‘Jason saw everything?’
Hennie nodded.
‘Anyone else?’
‘No. I told him to keep his mouth shut, but maybe he blabbed to Rudy.’
Margot stood up, walked over to him and put a hand on his shoulder. She felt his hand wrap over hers. She looked out into the darkness of the gardens. She heard a car engine in the distance. She heard it stop.
‘It’s not like Dirk to keep something like this to himself. What did you say to him?’
‘Dirk doesn’t know,’ said Hennie.
‘What do you mean he doesn’t know?’
‘He doesn’t know he hit the girl. Doesn’t know he pranged the car. He was as full as a frog. He doesn’t even remember the bloody gunshot.’
11
Iminathi opened the passenger door of Turner’s car and looked at him as she climbed in. He didn’t seem surprised. If he was, she doubted he would show it. She closed the door. Her breathing was steady.
She said, ‘Winston doesn’t know I’m here.’
‘Really?’ said Turner.
‘I didn’t run after you just to tell a lie.’
‘You’re not out of breath.’
‘I run ten K three times a week.’
‘Cool,’ said Turner.
‘You think he sent me to spy on you.’
‘No,’ said Turner. ‘And I don’t think you lied, but I’d think twice before presuming to know what Winston does not know.’
‘Known unknowns and unknown unknowns,’ she said.
‘It’s the things we know but don’t want to know that cause the problems.’
‘Can we go?’ She glanced at the windows of the police station behind them. ‘Before Rudy spots us?’
Turner started the engine and switched on the lights.
‘Which way?’
‘Take a left. I want to show you something. It’s out of town.’
‘They’ve already dug a hole for me?’
‘You’ll see why that’s not funny when we get there.’
They drove north on an empty road. The glow of the town vanished and absolute wilderness emerged from the dark, as if it had been lying in wait. Turner kept his eyes on the yellow wedge that streamed from the full-beam headlamps. Beyond the lights, the land reached as far as the stars.
She stole glances at Turner’s face. He was a portrait of ease but how could he feel easy? He’d arrived as if from nowhere and thrown Winston into as close a state of panic as she’d ever seen him in, and which she wouldn’t have thought possible. He had threatened to bring down a chaos he couldn’t imagine. He had no idea what or who he was dealing with.
‘You haven’t asked me where we’re going.’
‘I’m enjoying the suspense.’
‘Don’t you want to question me?’
‘What do you want to tell me?’
‘I’m not sure.’
He looked at her. ‘Tell me everything.’
She realised that she wanted to, badly, and with that desire came a loneliness she wasn’t aware was in her. She had no one in her life to whom she’d ever revealed very much, not even Winston. There was no point. In a world as small as the one she lived in, opening herself up would only make it seem smaller.
‘Winston’s been good to me,’ she started, without knowing how to go on. She said, ‘Don’t hurt him.’
‘Winston doesn’t want to get in my way. If that’s where he finds himself, he’ll step aside.’
‘You think he’s afraid of you?’ asked Imi.
‘Forty years ago Winston Mokoena ran a death squad for Umkhonto we Sizwe. They assassinated policemen, blew up Wimpy bars, tortured informers. But we won’t hold that against him. At exactly the same time, he was also building his career in the Johannesburg police force, the heart of the enemy empire. Cop by day, violent revolutionary by night. At any moment, for two decades, he could have found himself strapped to an interrogation chair. The ANC chiefs called him “the sharp edge of the spear”.’
‘How do you know all that?’
‘I’m a detective.’
She felt as if something had been stolen from her. Winston was the kindest man she knew.
‘Winston’s not afraid of me, or anyone else,’ said Turner. ‘He’s afraid for the status quo.’
‘But you don’t care about that.’
‘I’m here to arrest a drunk driver.’
‘When Winston arrived, four years ago, the town was out of control,’ said Imi. ‘Hundreds of men had come in from as far as Joburg and Durban, looking for work. There were nowhere near enough new jobs. They had nowhere to live, they built shanties on the edge of the desert. You could smell it. There were riots over water, food. It was the one thing Margot hadn’t prepared for, the sudden immigration, the scale of it. She lost control. And there was a dispute at her mine over digging the second shaft. Safety and pay. In theory Rudy Britz was the law but all he knew was how to crack heads. Rudy never had any control to lose. Shotguns and tear gas. A week wouldn’t pass without a killing. The company was spending more on security than on mining ore. So Margot had a captaincy created and brought Winston in.’
‘She picked him personally?’
‘I don’t know how those things work, but that’s what Dirk said.’
Turner looked at her. She felt uncomfortable.
‘So you know Dirk well.’
He didn’t phrase it like a question so she didn’t answer.