Memo From Turner

by Tim Willocks

  ‘Our security firm is licensed for prisoner transfers,’ Simon continued. ‘We could ship Jason straight to a Cape Town cell tomorrow. He’ll be wearing orange while Turner’s still looking for someone who’ll talk to him. As long as we keep Dirk and Hennie out of Turner’s way, there’s nothing else for him to do up here.’ Simon dipped his head to Margot. ‘But you give the orders, Mrs Le Roux.’

  Margot looked at Winston. ‘Can you get Rudy behind this? Jason won’t agree to it without him.’

  Winston nodded but didn’t look any happier. ‘Margot, please reconsider. We are embarking on a serious criminal conspiracy. Not for the first time, to be sure, but it is the first time without extensive preparations. Simon’s plan is strong but far from foolproof. There are too many imponderables. The potential consequences are catastrophic. If you get the lawyers in and Dirk makes a plea there will be minimum damage at virtually no risk. Turner can’t stop a plea bargain, that’s out of his hands. He already expects it.’

  ‘Minimum damage?’ said Margot. ‘My son will not be convicted as a killer. I will not put that weight on his back. If you won’t help us, we’ll take alternative measures, as Hennie suggested.’

  That shut Winston up. He gave Margot a fatalistic nod.

  ‘I’ll talk to Jason in the morning,’ said Margot. ‘Better still, I’ll see him in person. Winston, you set it up so he knows it’s official. A lawyer will be waiting to bail him out. We’ll keep him in Cape Town until he pleads. Make it clear he’ll be well looked after. Protection inside, whatever else is necessary.’

  ‘Sorted,’ said Hennie.

  Margot stood up. So did the others. It was over. Winston still had doubt on his face.

  ‘How will Dirk feel about Jason taking the blame? I understand they’re close friends.’

  ‘Dirk won’t know anything about it. He’s going back to Pretoria on Wednesday to start his new job.’

  Winston blinked. Hennie himself was impressed by her cold-bloodedness. Winston half turned away and paused, as if another thought had struck him. He turned back.

  ‘Does Dirk even know that he killed this girl?’

  ‘My son knows nothing about the whole affair,’ said Margot. ‘That’s the way it’s going to stay.’

  Winston hesitated. He looked like he was carrying a thousand tons of bricks on his back.

  ‘Speak your mind,’ said Margot.

  ‘I don’t have the moral authority to say that Dirk is entitled to know – and would want to know – that he has taken a life –’

  ‘No, you don’t,’ said Margot.

  ‘But I will say, as your admirer and I hope your friend, that a secret – a deception – as dark as this one, is a dangerous bargain to make with someone you love.’

  ‘We are friends,’ said Margot. ‘I appreciate that you offer this advice in that spirit. But don’t imagine I am unaware of the nature of the bargain I am making, or of its dangers. And never again presume to tread on the relationship between me and my son.’

  They exchanged a long look. Winston nodded.

  ‘Goodnight, Margot.’

  ‘Goodnight, Winston.’

  ‘Let me know when you want me to make the arrest.’

  Winston walked across the terrace and down the steps and disappeared into the dark.

  Hennie judged it best to keep his mouth shut. He reached for the blue bottle.

  ‘Mrs Le Roux?’ said Simon.

  ‘Simon.’ She was all business again, the cold rage gone like that.

  ‘Turner will try to make direct contact with Dirk. If he’s got Jason’s phone, he’s got Dirk’s number. We should take Dirk off the radar.’

  ‘Can you do that without his consent?’ said Margot.

  ‘His phone is on a company contract. I can kill his service with a call right now. In the morning I can spin him a story and give him a spare until the problem is fixed. With your permission.’

  ‘Do it,’ she said.

  ‘Then there’s email, Facebook, Twitter, or a dozen other online routes, and Dirk can access those from any computer, yours for instance. The only solution to that is to shut down the Wi-Fi to the whole compound, for a day or two.’

  ‘How much of a problem is that?’

  ‘It isn’t a security problem. What would be a problem, if I understand the situation, is if Dirk were to get a message from the police asking him to present himself for questioning. They don’t have to say why. That’s all it would take to let the cat out of the bag.’

  ‘Where is Dirk tonight?’ said Margot.

  ‘He’s playing Texas Hold ’Em,’ said Simon. ‘At Lewis’s garage.

  He went in his Audi. I sent a man with him to drive him home.’

  ‘Have him brought home now. Shut down the Wi-Fi.’

  She nodded to dismiss him. Simon rose to leave.

  ‘And, Simon?’ she said. ‘Thank you.’

  Simon was too cool to show he was pleased. He was already tapping on his phone as he left. Hennie basked in the reflected glory. Why not? Simon was his man. Cyber security? Christ. What had happened to the days when it was all about the barrel of a gun? Chairman Mao, now there was hard core. Where was the Chairman Mao de nos jours? Hennie missed the old days. Who didn’t. Including the youngsters who didn’t even know what they’d missed. Turner was an underpaid nobody. It was a shame Hennie wouldn’t get the chance to put that bastard in his place. A man with no price, OK, he did know the type. He’d been that type himself, once upon a time, just like Winston. But that kind of – whatever it was, integrity? honour? principle? – was a weakness to be conquered, it was immature, it was out of touch with reality. It did more harm than good. Look at the fucking Americans. He blamed the movies, all the lies they peddled, all that good and evil bollocks.

  He looked up from his single-malt reverie and found Margot watching him. He saw that she loved him. He wasn’t always convinced of that, but that’s how she kept him on his toes. Sharp as a scalpel. That’s why he loved her. But now there was something more. She needed him. His heart expanded to the limits of his massive chest. That was a feeling worth dying for. She held out her arms. What a woman. He put his glass down and stood up, perfectly steady of course, and grabbed her hands and pulled her against him. She seemed at the same time so small and yet twice his size. He stroked her short blonde hair.

  ‘Should I call Herzfeldt?’ she said.

  ‘He wouldn’t tell you any different than Winston,’ said Hennie. ‘He’d just charge a lot more. Unlike Winston, he’ll only bend the law as far as it won’t hurt him, and we’re bending it well beyond that. Let’s keep it tight and play it by ear. We haven’t reached any point of no return.’

  She turned her face up towards him.

  ‘I don’t know if I’m doing the right thing,’ she said. ‘By Dirk.’

  Hennie laughed, from his belly. Not a shadow of a doubt clouded his judgement.

  ‘You always do the right thing, love.’

  13

  Turner drove back towards town on the empty road. His eyes were gritty. His back ached. He’d been on the move for over sixteen hours. He needed to find a hotel, a shower, a bed. First he had to find out what Imi was after, and if she had anything for him.

  Imi was a puzzle. After her studious silence in Mokoena’s den she had proved herself quite a talker. She was relaxed around men, dangerous men. She was beautiful, in that way only a mixed-race woman could be, or a man, come to that. Something you couldn’t classify or describe, a face you couldn’t compare to any other, as if it were the first face you’d ever seen. She didn’t seem to know it, or didn’t know how to use it, or she’d decided that that just wasn’t the way she wanted to be or how she wanted to make her way, which increased her allure no end. Her mother had died when she was a child and her father had been a miner, taking her with him from pit to pit, one tumbleweed town to the next, a hard road to travel, so maybe no one had ever had time to tell her she was something special.

  She was driving through the
night with a strange cop from the big city and was as cool as if she’d been going to the movies with an old friend. He had some idea of what it might be like to sit beside someone like him. A job got into you, any job. A cabbie, a doctor, a soap star, the owner of a mine. You carried it whether you liked it or not. Homicide was a lot to carry. His colleagues were heavy; it had nothing to do with their size. What they knew was heavy. Their vision was dark. They weren’t easy company. They had fewer reasons than most to admire the human race. Meanwhile, Imi just watched from the passenger seat, waiting to hear what he had to say about her father’s death.

  Her father had collapsed from dehydration and had roasted to death in the sun ten metres from the road. His body, or rather the vultures taking it apart, had been spotted by a passing truck driver.

  ‘What was the coroner’s verdict?’ said Turner.

  ‘Accidental death,’ said Iminathi. ‘Misadventure.’

  ‘That satisfied Winston.’

  ‘Papa died about a month before Winston came here. Rudy Britz said he died from stupidity and bad luck, in that order.’

  ‘Rudy has a way with words.’

  ‘He didn’t even ask why Papa was thirty kilometres off-road in his 1993 Suzuki. It made no sense. Papa hated the desert. He had the desert in his lungs, under his fingernails, in his teeth.’

  ‘He was working for Le Roux Manganese?’ said Turner.

  ‘On the first shaft they dug.’

  ‘Any sign he was coerced?’

  ‘You could find cuts and bruises on him any day of the week. There’d been violence at the diggings, strike meetings. Papa was an organiser for the AMCU.’

  ‘Translate that for me,’ said Turner.

  ‘Association of Mineworkers and Construction Union.’

  ‘Rivals to the NUM.’

  ‘The NUM is rotten to the core.’

  ‘Marikana,’ said Turner.

  ‘Right,’ said Iminathi. ‘Marikana.’

  The Marikana massacre had taken place five, six years ago as he remembered it. A platinum mine near Rustenburg in the north-west. An elite police unit armed with assault rifles, in support of company security forces, had killed over thirty striking miners, some already in handcuffs, and shot down dozens more. The strikers were AMCU. The National Union of Mineworkers and the Communists defended the police. The company share price rose. No one was punished. The media sucked the bones dry and everyone moved on.

  ‘An unfortunate incident,’ said Turner.

  ‘Are you quoting Zuma?’ A flash of anger. ‘Or is that your take?’

  ‘I’m not a political man.’

  ‘We’re all political,’ she said. ‘Whether you like it or not.’

  ‘Was your father at Marikana?’ he asked.

  ‘No. Platinum is about the only thing he never dug for.’

  ‘Were they striking at Le Roux when he died?’

  ‘They were talking about it.’

  ‘A union man snaps a timing belt in the desert and dies of thirst. No bad headlines there.’

  ‘It didn’t even make the local paper,’ said Imi. ‘The strike never happened.’

  ‘And then Winston arrived. Maybe they were clearing the decks for the new management. At that stage they couldn’t be certain he’d stand still for that.’

  ‘So you agree my father was murdered.’

  ‘If it’s not filed as murder it wasn’t murder. They did a good job.’ A bullet would have been kinder, but he didn’t say so. He glanced at the pain in her eyes.

  ‘There’s nothing I can do about it,’ he said. ‘There’s nothing anyone can do. Even in cases of unequivocal murder, the conviction rate is under twenty-five per cent. For the perpetrator, the odds are that good.’

  ‘That’s what Winston said.’

  ‘So why tell me?’

  ‘I wanted you to know you’re dealing with more than a drunk driver.’

  ‘I appreciate the warning. Why should you care?’

  ‘They’re all on your list.’

  ‘The men you believe murdered your father?’

  Imi nodded. ‘Hennie, Simon and Mark. Rudy Britz.’

  ‘Are these known knowns or just your theory?’

  ‘I’ve seen the way Hennie looks at me. He’s seen the way I look at him.’

  Turner believed it. Murder was routine.

  ‘Back then I was a hairdresser, I didn’t know anything about them. Bit by bit I picked up enough to see it. Hennie’s a bully, a thug. He was a sergeant in the British paratroopers. He likes to boast about his mercenary days, but it was mainly shouting at recruits in training camps. He likes getting his hands dirty. I think it makes him feel young again. The decision to kill my father wouldn’t have been taken any lower than him.’

  ‘Margot?’

  ‘I don’t know. She wouldn’t have to give an order. If she complains about the heat, Hennie turns up the air con. She’s a control freak. After the strike danger went away, she boosted the wages anyway and raised safety standards sky-high. There hasn’t been a fatality at the mine in three years. She’s proud of that. Things have to be done her way.’

  ‘Maybe she felt guilty.’

  ‘I don’t think Margot does guilt,’ said Imi.

  ‘You seem to know her well.’

  ‘I admire her.’ It galled her to say it. ‘How couldn’t I? She’s a woman, she hires women, she’s built this business, she’s generous to charities, and she started out as a widow with a ten-year-old son and two hundred sheep. And she isn’t a racist.’

  Turner doubted that. Everyone was a racist when the moment demanded it, himself included, but it wasn’t a subject that much interested him any more. They were stuck with it, like the desert waiting for rain.

  ‘But she had the air con turned up on your father.’

  Imi paused but didn’t bite. ‘Simon Dube is ex-army, no line he won’t cross if he’s told to. Mark Lewis’s family has the contract to service all the company’s motor vehicles, including plant at the mine. Mark was the mechanic who wrote the report on my father’s truck.’

  ‘And the others?’

  ‘Jason’s too unreliable. He has roid rages and smokes tik. And he’s not too bright. His uncle must have been involved, but not Jason.’

  Imi shifted in her seat. She seemed uncomfortable.

  ‘So tell me about Dirk,’ said Turner.

  ‘Dirk’s a rich mama’s boy. She’s always kept him clear of the business. She made him study law in Pretoria.’

  ‘She made him?’

  ‘Margot’s always had a plan for him, Dirk’s always followed it. But he won’t do that forever. He wants to go into politics.’

  Her tone sounded more complex now. A familiarity, threads of regret, frustration. He remembered the way she had studied Dirk’s photo.

  ‘Will he own up to it?’ asked Turner. ‘The death of the girl?’

  ‘You’re sure it was him?’ she said.

  ‘That’s what I’m here to find out.’

  Imi thought about it. Some inner conflict tightened her lips.

  ‘Dirk wouldn’t leave a girl to die. He’s not that much of a coward.’

  ‘I’ve heard better character references,’ said Turner.

  ‘That wasn’t fair – I mean I wasn’t being fair. He’s a good guy. A genuine white left liberal. A twenty-first-century post-apartheid man. He can afford to be but it doesn’t mean it’s not real. I know him, it is. We need his kind. We’re drowning in our own lies. We need him. So he got drunk. If he knew he’d killed her, I believe he’d do the right thing. So I don’t think he does know. Is that possible?’

  ‘That’s why they call it blind drunk.’

  Imi controlled her distress but it was real. ‘Let him go,’ she said.

  Turner wondered why people imagined he had a choice in the matter.

  ‘I know what that might mean to you,’ she said. ‘I know what I’m asking.’

  ‘I don’t think you do.’

  ‘Dirk’s not a killer,’ sh
e said.

  ‘I never thought he was. But he appears to be a person who has killed.’

  ‘I appreciate the distinction. But the real killers walk free. The Hennies, the Simon Dubes.’

  ‘Hendricks has a case to answer,’ said Turner. ‘He’ll answer.’

  Imi said, ‘Because you’re a killer, too.’

  ‘We’re not talking about me.’

  ‘You’re right, we’re not. Why is that?’

  ‘You got in my car, you asked me to drive, I’m driving.’

  ‘Give Dirk a pass. He’s not a bad person.’

  ‘What do you have going with Dirk?’

  Her face closed up and she looked away. ‘I don’t have anything going with Dirk.’

  So Dirk was her ex. That had to explain something. Turner wasn’t sure what, beyond the confusion he was feeling. He was probably picking that up from her.

  ‘Who broke it off ?’ he said. ‘You or him?’

  The lights of the town rose out of the darkness ahead.

  ‘Will you drive me home?’ she said.

  ‘Sure.’

  He waited while she fought whatever battle she needed to fight with herself. She must have fought it before, but such battles existed to be re-fought. Her ex-boyfriend was the scion of the family she believed had murdered her father. A hero father who had not had much chance to be there for her and was probably not so inclined. She hadn’t let his death stop her forming a relationship with Dirk, or working for Mokoena who worked for Margot. She’d educated herself. She was more than just surviving, much more.

  He would have been confused as well. He often was. Keep it clean and simple; carry it hard and true. He drove down the main street and she indicated a turn and he took it.

  ‘You can pull over here, please,’ she said.

  Turner stopped outside a short terrace of three new single-storey brick houses. Small, functional security bars over the windows. Classy by local standards but utterly without character. A few potted plants struggled for life along the pavement outside.

  ‘I broke it off,’ said Imi. ‘Because Margot persuaded me to.’ She looked at him. He didn’t speculate on what she was feeling. ‘Dirk asked me to marry him.’