by Tim Willocks
Jason took another chug on his smoothie and put the jug down. He wiped his mouth on the towel.
‘I warned him, so did Hennie, but Dirk was too pissed to know what he was doing. He shoved her in gear, it’s an automatic, and trod on the gas but the handbrake was on. I warned him again. He dropped the handbrake without moving his foot, so we shot backwards into a trash dumpster. Bang. That got through to him. Dirk turned off the engine and Hennie gave him a mouthful and made him move over. No big deal. That’s when I saw the girl on the ground, all mangled up, blood and bone.’
Jason paused. He coiled the towel in his hands into thick rope.
‘I knew it was bad. I couldn’t find my phone so I told Hennie to lend me his – that’s when he saw her lying there too. She couldn’t speak – shock I suppose – but you could see it in her face. Begging us for help. It was –’ He paused to choose the word. The memory moved him. ‘It was a shame. A rotten shame. I started to get out, see what I could do. I wasn’t really thinking, just doing it. But Hennie slammed the door on me. Then he climbed in the car and drove us away.’
‘Did Hennie say anything?’
‘Yeah. Hennie said, “Time to hit the road to Dreamland.”’ Jason flipped the roped towel over his head and sawed it against the nape of his massive neck. ‘Hennie knows everything. Dirk knows nothing. I did nothing.’ Jason shrugged. ‘Will that do it for you?’
‘You’ll swear to all that?’
‘I swear it before almighty God.’
‘Rudy said you’d be willing to come with me to Cape Town, today.’
‘For once in my life I’m going to follow Rudy’s advice. Let me get changed.’
Turner nodded. Jason dropped the towel on the table and went inside.
Any other witness, in any other place, and nothing might have disturbed Turner’s instincts. Most witnesses gave their honest version of the truth, even if they were often inaccurate or wrong. But something didn’t sit right, he didn’t know why. His habitual level of suspicion was high; Iminathi had cranked it higher. Maybe that was all. He lifted the tail of his shirt up and tucked it into his pants to clear the butt of the Glock 17 on his hip. He could have drawn it but it might spook Jason and the only way to get him back to Cape Town was if he wanted to go.
When Jason reappeared he hadn’t changed his clothes. He had to turn slightly sideways to get through the doorway, his left shoulder in the lead. As he cleared the door Turner saw he carried a Franchi SPAS-12 combat shotgun in his right hand, its extendable metal stock locked out and his bulging forearm crammed into the stabiliser hook for one-armed shooting. Semi-automatic; no pump necessary. He held it by his leg, the barrel pointed at an angle to the stoop. His grip on the weapon was familiar, confident. His eyes had a strange, euphoric glaze. His breathing was shallow and quick.
Turner could have killed him right then but Jason was the only witness he was going to get. Turner let his weight sink into his left foot without changing his stance and raised his left hand and extended his palm out. He kept his lateral vision on the muscles of Jason’s right arm. The muscles would move before the shotgun did. The SPAS-12 weighed about five kilos. With Jason’s strength he could raise it as fast as most men could raise a pistol.
‘I ask you to put the gun down, Jason. If I draw mine, I will kill you.’
‘If I wanted to put it down I wouldn’t have picked it up.’
‘You must have doubts or you’d have come out shooting.’
‘No doubts. But I’m not a coward. We go man to man.’
‘That doesn’t sound like Rudy’s advice,’ said Turner.
‘He says I can shoot an armed black on my own land without being charged with a bloody thing.’
‘In this town I expect he’s right. Is Mokoena backing this?’
Jason shook his head. ‘Rudy’s idea.’
‘I can see why he wanted to be here. You’re not a killer.’
‘I first killed a sheep when I was eight years old. My dad made me. Can’t be any harder than that was.’
‘You’re tougher than me,’ said Turner. ‘You must be, you live here. You’re stronger than me, probably faster. But I’ve done this before. You haven’t.’
‘Doesn’t matter to me. I’m tired of feeling smaller than I am.’
‘You think this will give you some size with Margot and Hennie? It won’t.’
‘Those fuckers think they’re better than me.’
‘They’re wrong. You tried to save the girl.’
‘That’s the point,’ said Jason. ‘I didn’t. I didn’t have the balls.’
‘If you want to show some balls, help me take down Dirk Le Roux.’
‘Dirk’s my friend. He’s the best friend I ever had.’
‘People like Dirk don’t have friends. They have servants. He even expected you to serve his time.’
‘No. Dirk’s not in on any of this. It’s all their idea.’
‘How can you be sure?’
‘I know him.’
‘So you know that if Margot told him to cut his own ears off, he’d ask her to pass him a knife.’
‘You black bastard.’
Turner cast a glance at the interior of his car. Jason didn’t miss the glance, but he didn’t read it as a feint. Turner made sure he didn’t by backing down.
‘OK, forget about the witness statement. Put the shotgun down and I’m out of here.’
If Jason would have let him, Turner would have gone. The dash-cam video would be enough to push a warrant through. He felt no pity for the hulking young farmer, but he had no desire to kill him.
Jason said, ‘Your only way out of here is in a plastic bag.’
‘We can both walk away from this. Dirk Le Roux isn’t worth dying for.’
‘Depends who’s dying, doesn’t it?’
Jason’s shoulders and neck tensed with anger. All three heads of deltoid were visible. The rage had simmered inside him for a long time. Others had provoked it and fed it, not Turner. But Turner was standing in front of him.
‘For once those rich cunts’ll be in my pocket.’
‘There are no pockets in a shroud.’
They looked at each other, across a narrow but bottomless abyss.
Turner had stood here before facing other sad young men. To have reached this abyss was his failure, because here he had no more choices. The choice was Jason’s. He could step across or he could fall. He was pumped up on iron and steroids and the need to prove himself to himself; yet for a moment Turner thought that he’d see reason. Then Jason blinked and glanced away with a frown, as if a sudden thought had annoyed him.
‘Shit,’ he said. ‘I should’ve put the music back on.’
Jason’s right deltoid and biceps flexed.
Turner shot him. Bam-bam-bam.
He dipped his left shoulder towards the open car, the pay-off of the feint. His weightless right foot stepped the opposite way and his body followed. At the same time he drew the Glock, raised the front sight to Jason’s chest, and fired three. The SPAS-12 boomed and blew out the window of the open car door. Jason’s tremendous thighs gave out like pillars of blancmange. He keeled backwards across the Olympic bar as two ropes of blood spiralled from his sternum, entwining around each other as he twisted and fell. Then his blood pressure collapsed and the blood merely flowed to pool across the red stones of the stoop.
Turner reckoned him dead before he’d fired the shotgun. A man of lesser strength couldn’t have squeezed the trigger. Turner put two fingers to his own carotid pulse. His usual resting heart rate was fifty. It was fifty now. He walked over and crouched to study the corpse.
The slogan on Jason’s shirt was stained red. The holes between his pecs were in a vertical line, three centimetres apart. Blood drained from a single exit wound in his back. The third shot had gone through the side of his throat and blown out through the bony angle of his lower left jaw. Turner checked Jason’s pulse. There was none. He noted the colour of Jason’s eyes for the first time. Its lustre
faded as he watched, as if the colour were being erased from the palette of creation. As indeed it was. A kind of baby blue, but Jason’s alone.
Turner holstered his gun and walked away.
He returned to his car and ejected the SD card from the dashboard camera and stored it in the safe pocket inside the waist of his pants. He took a spare SD card from the glovebox and reloaded the camera.
There was no one he could trust within five hundred kilometres of where he stood. Not even Iminathi. The Britzes could have devised this set-up by themselves or they could have been acting on orders, from Winston Mokoena, Margot Le Roux, Hennie Hendricks or any combination thereof. At the very least Rudy would be out for blood. Turner called Mokoena.
‘Warrant Turner, good morning.’
‘Not for Jason Britz. I just shot and killed him.’
A short silence followed while Mokoena weighed the pros and cons of this news. As to whether or not he’d been aware of the Britzes’ intention to murder Turner, his voice when it came gave no clue.
‘I’m sure you had your reasons,’ he said.
‘He threw down on me with a SPAS-12, at his farmhouse.’
‘Why would he do that?’
‘Rudy’s idea. To gain favour with Margot.’
‘Working towards the Führer,’ said Mokoena.
‘I’m not with you.’
‘It is said that one reason the Nazis became so insane is that everyone tried to come up with ideas that they thought would please Hitler.’ Mokoena sighed with disgust. ‘I’ll be right out there.’
‘No. Go to the hotel car park and wait for Rudy. Go now. I’m supposed to meet him there in seventeen minutes. Tell him Jason is in my custody and no longer at the farm.’
‘Two perfect half-truths,’ said Mokoena.
‘Just keep him away from me. I don’t want to kill two Britzes in one day.’
‘Stay at the scene until I get back to you.’
‘Play it straight, Winston, or you’ll rue the day you left Joburg.’
16
Turner snapped half a dozen photos of Jason’s corpse, the shotgun hooked to his arm, the fatal wounds. He felt a sudden nausea, a weakness in his limbs as his inner self reacted to the taking of a man’s life. He couldn’t think his way out of the moment, couldn’t rationalise the killing. Or rather, there was no point in trying. The feelings – the guilt, the horror, the anger – just had to be endured and absorbed. The burden had to be carried. He breathed and looked at the empty blue sky until the moment passed.
He hadn’t taken the time for breakfast or even coffee. He walked back to the stoop where the first flies had arrived. The pooled blood was trickling over the edge of the stones and soaking into the dust. He stepped around it and took the blender jug from the table and tasted Jason’s smoothie. It was good; the orange zest bitter and bracing. He drained the jug and set it back down.
He had used deadly force. He knew the procedure, if Mokoena wanted to follow it. That would take most of the day. He could leave by evening, drive through the night. Tighten up the case with the video of Jason’s statement before returning for Dirk. He saw nothing more to be achieved by staying in Langkopf, unless Dirk Le Roux decided to surrender. Jason had said Dirk knew nothing. Turner set his phone to record the conversation and dialled Dirk’s number, the one he’d taken from Jason’s mobile.
An automated message told him the number was no longer in use.
Dirk had gone dark. Turner could have called him yesterday but it wasn’t usually a good idea to give a prime suspect forewarning. He considered calling Hendricks, but couldn’t imagine what good that would do. He called Eric Venter. By the sound, Venter was in his car, hands-free.
‘Go ahead, Turner.’
‘I just killed one of our suspects, Jason Britz.’
‘Before or after breakfast?’
‘He didn’t leave me a choice. It’s all on the dash-cam.’
‘Give me the essentials.’
Turner gave him an account of the relevant events and personalities. Venter listened without interrupting.
When Turner finished, Venter said, ‘What are your intentions?’
‘Follow procedure with Mokoena and come back home. Work on the warrant for Dirk Le Roux.’
‘The dash-cam footage includes Jason’s testimony putting Le Roux behind the wheel?’
‘Yes, sir.’
‘He wasn’t coerced or entrapped?’ asked Venter.
‘Purely voluntary. He said nothing to retract it. Didn’t spot the camera. He just tried to shoot me.’
‘The statement could be gold. Can you send me the data file?’
Turner glanced at the satellite dish on the roof. ‘I think so.’
‘Do it as soon as you can. I’ll deal with the warrant application. Stay in Langkopf until I update you.’
‘If you say so, sir.’
‘Are you in danger?’
‘It’s the Wild West.’
‘You were warned,’ said Venter. ‘But if they kill you they’ll find our tanks camped on their lawn.’
‘See that my grave is kept clean.’
‘Send that file.’
Venter hung up.
Turner collected his laptop from his rucksack and went into the house. The front door opened into the living room. Clearly the digs of a young, single man. A large flat-screen TV was dominant; an Xbox and joystick. A shelf of DVDs. A balding blue velveteen sofa and two matching armchairs. Clothes draped here, boots piled there. A rugby ball. Bodybuilding mags. Unwashed glasses and plates. No photos, no art, no knick-knacks. An atmosphere of loneliness, or sadness; but then his corpse was still bleeding outside. On a scarred wooden table by the window was a laptop, a mobile phone several generations old, and a modem, its lights blinking.
Turner entered the modem’s password into his MacBook Air. He was online.
He went back to his car, where he could keep an eye on the road. The Wi-Fi signal held strong. He slotted the micro SD card into an adapter and inserted it into the Mac. He copied the video file of Jason’s statement and death onto his desktop. It was 1.3 gigs. He compressed the file. He sent it to Dropbox to upload to Cloud and emailed the link to Venter. He emailed the same link to Anand; he told him not to open it unless he heard he was dead. It was 8.25 a.m. He put the laptop on the passenger seat and left the file to upload. The timer fluctuated but it looked like the upload would take well over an hour. He was likely to be stuck here longer than that. He ejected the SD card adapter and pocketed it. He replaced the spent shells in his Glock.
He walked back to the house and into Jason’s kitchen. It was surprisingly neat and clean. He found a hand brush in a cupboard under the sink. Back at the car, he brushed shattered glass from the driver’s seat and footwell. He cleared the crazed glass still clinging to the window frame. He saw a whorl of dust in the distance where the dirt track left the tarmac, the dust more obvious than the vehicle.
He was expecting Mokoena; but it might be an enraged Rudy Britz. The timing would work for either man. Turner got in the Cruiser and turned it round to face the yard and the dirt road. He reactivated the camera system. The file was still uploading from his Mac. He left the engine running, got out of the car and left the door open.
He opened the black metal lock box in the base of the cargo boot and slid out the wide lower drawer. It contained a variety of gear including a vest, a night-vision surveillance monocular, ammunition, medical kit, a box of oatmeal energy bars probably past their sell-by date, and a standard issue R5 assault rifle in a brown canvas case. He took out a pair of 8×42 Athlon Optics binoculars and focused on the approaching vehicle.
The oblique rays of the sun flashed from its waxed paintwork. It was neither Mokoena nor Rudy Britz. It was the red Range Rover that had killed the girl.
17
Simon drove. Margot stared out of the passenger window at the landscape she had been staring at all her life. Nothing green. Pale yellow at best. A land so arid they were reduced to celebratin
g the camel thorn tree, though most of those had been cut down and burned for firewood.
When she was fifteen Margot had promised herself that she would leave Langkopf forever as soon as she could. This decision was provoked by stumbling upon a tatty paperback copy of Albert Camus’s The Outsider in English, at a church jumble sale. The portrait by Villon on the cover of a man with no eyes had terrified and excited her, an almost pornographic excitement for she knew that this was a book that her parents wouldn’t want in the house. That portrait haunted her still. She had identified intensely with the hero, Meursault. She was awed by his indifference to feeling, to the crushing banality of the society around him, to other people, to his own fate. The stifling heat, the ingrained colonial corruption. Meursault’s world was her world. She believed that his fate could also become hers but knew she lacked his heroism, and this frightened her.
She would go to university and study French. She would go to Paris and play chess in boulevard cafes with existentialists; even in the mid-eighties there had to be a few left. She wondered now why she had never dreamed of falling in love. Perhaps that was why she never had. Her elder brother, Pieter, had escaped to England, despite the bitter opposition of her father, so she knew it could be done. She had been too young, though, to understand the handicaps and hazards of being a girl in a remote, conservative sheep town in the Northern Cape.
Thirty years later she was still here.
She sometimes asked herself, had she been able to turn back the clock, if she would exchange everything she had – the power, the millions, the luxury and prestige – for the chance to have climbed on a bus, any bus, going anywhere, when she was fifteen. The answer always came within a single wrenched beat of her heart and tears would spring to her eyes. Then she would think of Dirk and, reluctantly, the answer would change.
Her parents had owned and run a grocery store, which had evolved into a small supermarket. She had never been a particularly happy child, though like any child she knew the meaning of pure joy. By that age the joy was almost exclusively confined to working through chess books in her bedroom – no one she knew was worth playing – and to being on the back of a horse. The latter pleasure was uncommon, once, sometimes twice a month. Horses were almost unknown in those parts. Expensive to feed and keep, not particularly useful, needless extra work. The farmers preferred Japanese four-wheel drives. But the Le Roux family had a mare called Lottie who belonged to their son, Willem. Willem’s sister, Annette, was in Margot’s class and he taught them both how to ride. He was eight years older than Margot. When she was sixteen, he raped her.