Memo From Turner

by Tim Willocks

  He pulled in, parallel to the bins, and jumped out. Between here and the main street a hundred metres away, there were enough obstacles, cars and low walls, to conceal his Land Cruiser.

  At the last moment he hesitated. Could he trust her? He had detected nothing in her words or behaviour that suggested she’d conspire to murder him. Even Mokoena didn’t want any part of that and Turner believed him, because it was the captain’s only intelligent choice. And Turner wanted more from her than the Wi-Fi.

  He hammered on the door. He went back to the Land Cruiser and retrieved his laptop and returned to the door and hammered again. As he took out his phone to call her, Iminathi opened the door.

  ‘I need a favour,’ said Turner.

  ‘But you didn’t trust me enough to ask on the phone,’ said Imi.

  ‘It’s a big favour,’ said Turner. ‘I want you to save my life.’

  20

  Turner hooked up his Mac to the Wi-Fi network in Winston’s office and resumed the upload. Forty-one minutes estimated. A long time to dangle in the wind. He closed the laptop on Winston’s table to free some bandwidth.

  ‘Anything else running on the Wi-Fi here? Music, radio?’

  ‘There’s another laptop in the salon,’ said Imi.

  ‘Can you take it offline for forty minutes?’

  ‘Why? What’s this about? How is this saving your life?’

  ‘I’m not going to explain,’ said Turner. ‘The less you know, the better it is for you.’ He walked towards the back door. ‘Off the other laptop for me. I’ll be back in five.’

  He left before she could ask more. He got in the Land Cruiser, reversed back up the alley, turned in the street and drove back to the medical centre. A second sign with an arrow pointed to a car park. He drove into it and stopped. He took the R5, the SPAS-12, the car keys, the gun he’d taken from the guard and the second phone in his hat and dumped them in the boot. He locked the car. There was nothing in sight worth stealing and the gaping driver’s window, still rimed with broken glass, made it look like it had already been robbed. If the third spotter found it, a medical centre was a place where a police might ask to piggyback some Wi-Fi. The decoy would give him more time; he hoped enough to make a difference.

  He jogged back to the rear door of La Diva. He saw few people and no one who took any notice of him. He’d left the door open. He went back into the office, through the kitchen. Imi stood by the table. She was anxious and a little angry, the one feeding off the other. She waved her mobile phone at him.

  ‘I’m going to call Winston, but I didn’t want to do it behind your back.’

  ‘Winston doesn’t want to be called.’

  Turner glanced at the upload. Thirty-four minutes still to go. He took the original SD card from his pocket.

  ‘If the Wi-Fi reaches the salon it must reach the bookmaker’s next door,’ said Turner. ‘I’m going to take the Mac and finish the file transfer there. If trouble comes, I don’t want it to land here. If anyone asks, tell them I used the Wi-Fi last night, with Winston’s permission. They’ve no reason to question that. You’ll be out of the picture.’

  ‘What picture?’

  ‘An ugly one. I want you take this.’

  He handed her the SD card. She hesitated, then took it.

  ‘That’s not for my benefit,’ said Turner. ‘It’s for Dirk’s.’

  ‘What’s on it?’

  ‘A dash-cam video of Jason putting Dirk behind the wheel of the Range Rover when the girl was crushed.’

  ‘Jason turned against Dirk?’

  ‘Not as he saw it. It’s complicated. The video is ugly, too. By the end of it Jason is dead. I killed him.’

  Imi swallowed as she looked into his eyes. She was appalled. She must have known Jason at least reasonably well. Something in her retreated from Turner. She didn’t speak.

  ‘If Dirk watches that and he’s half the man you say he is, he will turn himself in and there will be no more violence. No more conspiracies, no more crimes. It will be over.’

  ‘Why should this fall on me?’ said Imi.

  ‘Because no one else has the courage to reach out to him.’

  ‘You mean go against Margot.’

  ‘That’s why Dirk needs to see it. As Winston said, he won’t go to jail. It’s the best thing anyone can do for him. His mother is keeping him in the dark.’

  ‘She’ll never let go of him.’

  ‘He needs to let go of her. If he doesn’t, he’s going down. All the way down.’

  Turner picked up the Mac. Thirty-one minutes.

  ‘Think about it,’ he said. ‘And thanks for your help. I owe you.’

  He carried the open Mac to the door into the corridor. He looked back at her.

  ‘You want some advice?

  ‘Not really.’

  ‘If I were you I’d sell up and get out of this town. Whatever it’s got to offer, you don’t need it.’

  Turner walked through into the salon. Two stylists were blow-drying hair. Four pairs of eyes watched him from the long mirror. He smiled.

  ‘Good morning,’ he said.

  He walked past the chairs as the greeting was returned and opened the glass front door. He stuck his head out and scanned the street, up and down. Hot and bright. No one was moving fast enough to be a spotter trying to find the Land Cruiser. Turner walked out onto the street and pushed open the door of the bookmaker’s.

  Five punters inside. They all stared, motionless, at the word POLICE on his vest. A narrow, smoky room, bare except for two counters sheathed in red plastic running down either wall, where punters could write their bets. The floor was littered with used betting slips and cigarette ends. A TV suspended from an armature bolted to the ceiling displayed a cricket match. At the far end a Plexiglas window, heavily grilled, with a narrow slot at the bottom above the counter and a small mesh screen through which to speak to the bookie. At the right side a door clad in metal. The bookie, a wiry mid-forties, was smoking a cigarette. He watched Turner with the kind of blank stare essential to his trade.

  Turner checked the Wi-Fi signal. It hadn’t diminished. Twenty-nine minutes to go. He put the laptop on the left-hand counter. He brandished his badge.

  ‘Everybody leave, right now. No questions, no problems.’

  The five punters bumped into each other as they straggled for the door.

  Turner walked towards the bookie’s window. The bookie didn’t move.

  ‘Put your hands on the counter.’

  The bookie put his hands on the counter behind the glass. His expression didn’t change. Winston wasn’t paying him enough to do anything rash. Turner pocketed his badge and dug out a hundred-rand note. He pushed it under the glass.

  ‘For the inconvenience. Stay cool. You’re not being robbed. Twenty minutes and I’m gone. Give me your phone.’

  The bookie took the hundred and slid his mobile under the slot. Turner put the mobile on a side counter.

  ‘Lie on the floor, belly or back, whichever’s most comfortable. If I hear you try to leave, I’ll shoot you. If the landline rings, ignore it. If you try to make a call from the landline, I’ll shoot you.’

  The bookie lay flat on his back behind the counter and continued smoking. Turner walked to the front door and tripped the lock. A standard cylindrical pin tumbler. No bolts. He checked the upload screen. Twenty-seven minutes.

  His phone vibrated. It was Captain Venter.

  21

  Eric Venter sat on the toilet in the senior officers’ bathroom and tried to overcome the panic that had already overwhelmed his gut and threatened to do the same to his mind. He’d been prone to irritable bowel since the protracted legal proceedings for his second divorce. In his youth he had acquired a taste for prostitutes, which had then lain happily dormant for twenty years. In his late forties, provoked in part by Internet pornography, the taste had returned as a compulsion, and not for the sex itself but for the thrilling self-disgust it had evoked. That pleasure too had waned, the last hurr
ah of his sexual life, leaving only catastrophic cost in its wake.

  He was uncomfortably aware that the disgust he felt now, at the prospect of feeding, or rather selling, Turner to the wolves, was perversely similar.

  His self-image was that of a man of principle in an unprincipled world. That was the reputation he had cultivated, but he knew it flattered him. More accurately, he was simply a man who followed the rules. He had always been nagged by a mild sense of shame about that. He had been of the generation that had lived through the glory days of the anti-apartheid struggle, and had never taken part. He did not consider himself a racist. It was self-evident that God had distributed all human abilities and failings with perfect equality across the human race. Hatred, it was equally self-evident, did not need racial difference to flourish. If the entire human species had been the same colour, it would still have had all the other innumerable and microscopic differences in religion, politics, language, class and kinship to justify mutual loathing. The evil and stupidity of apartheid had been apparent to even the meanest intelligence, yet throughout his early career he had played his part in enforcing its laws with only mild reservations. When the rules changed he had changed with them. The rules were the rules.

  Transgressing those rules now excited him. Calling Margot Le Roux that morning had excited him. But excitement and terror were merely markers on the same road. The distance between them could close with astounding speed. There was the money too, of course. He had found the suitcase in the desert, almost literally, and it was full of cash. He knew how that story was supposed to end, but that was just the Sunday school morality of fiction; history and reality refuted it at every turn. Of course it was possible to get away with betrayal, murder and corruption. He had to be clear in his mind. He was not battling with a moral dilemma. A moral man would have no dilemma. He’d crossed that boundary when he’d called Margot, without thinking it through, as if accepting a dare from some inner self previously concealed from him. He had to think it through now, here, with his thighs going numb on the rim of the toilet seat.

  The choice towered before him in his noxious cubicle. He hadn’t yet crossed the Rubicon. A single unrecorded conversation, in which he had merely made allusions, all deniable. All he had to was, well, do nothing and he was safe. The attempt on Turner’s life had shocked him into reality. Turner could actually be killed. They weren’t fantasising up there; they were acting; they were firing guns. Like Turner, he didn’t think Margot would shoot unless Venter agreed to help with the cover-up. In effect it was up to him to pull the trigger. The cover-up itself would be easy enough, if, as seemed the case, he could count on Mokoena’s help. And the rogue actions of Sergeant Rudy Britz had strengthened Venter’s hand. Margot now needed him more than ever. Why, then, was he hesitating?

  Fear, pure fear. He had never been seriously tempted to corrupt himself before, but he had never before had so much as a glimpse of the suitcase. There had never been such a prize to tempt him. Most criminals were poor; even poorer than everyone else. A regular trickle of cash from some miserable tinpot king-pin was insane: the constant danger, twenty-four/seven, of discovery and disgrace simply wasn’t worth it. But this was a one-off opportunity with no ongoing commitment. It would be over in a week. Margot would have nothing on him that he didn’t have on her, and she had the most to lose. And if he got Turner’s video, he would have even more security. He wouldn’t have to cower in the suburbs, eking out his pension, paying the mortgage on a house he hated.

  It was time to shit or get off the pot.

  Venter stood up, his legs tingling with pins and needles, and flushed the toilet a second time. He pulled up his pants and washed his hands. He left the bathroom and took the elevator down to the car park and sat in his car. A welcome, if relative, quietude had settled on his bowels. Decision was always more painful than action, a strange truth. He took out his regular phone and called Turner.

  ‘Captain,’ said Turner.

  Venter could hear the dull murmur of what sounded like a TV or a radio in the background.

  ‘Where are you?’

  ‘I’m at the bookie’s.’

  ‘The what?’

  ‘The bookmaker’s here in town. I’m uploading the file. You’ll have it in twenty-seven minutes.’

  ‘Your safety is my top priority. If the risk is too great, forget the bloody file and get out of there right now.’

  ‘I’ll call you from the road.’

  Turner hung up. Venter felt a stab of guilt. No. He mustn’t hesitate. He’d made his decision. He took out the anonymous phone he had bought that morning. He looked at Margot Le Roux’s number. It was the only number in the phone. To get it had required a chain of six calls to three different cities and good deal of delicate dishonesty. He pressed dial. A male voice answered.

  ‘Venter?’

  ‘Who is this?’ said Venter.

  ‘I’m going to give you another number. Memorise it and call us back.’

  A white Englishman. London. Margot’s husband, Hennie Hendricks. Other voices in the background. Venter’s anxiety spiked. The voices receded. Hendricks gave him the number. Venter didn’t like the idea.

  ‘This wasn’t the arrangement. Where’s Margot?’

  ‘Listen, you little worm, there is no Margot. There is no arrangement either. There never was. Call the number or don’t call the number, I couldn’t give two shits. But if you don’t, you’ll wake up some dark night and find me smiling at you.’

  Venter’s irritable bowel flared.

  ‘Could you repeat that number, please?’

  22

  Margot leaned both hands on the granite top of the kitchen island and stared between her arms at the oak floorboards. She had to order her thoughts, and without emotion.

  Rudy Britz had driven up to the gate in a bullet-riddled car and announced that Turner had killed four more men. Twenty-four hours before she had been in bed with Hennie enjoying an indulgent Sunday morning. Now the flotsam of a small war had washed up at her door. This was worse than the water riots, the clearance of the shanties, the strike crisis. No one who had died then had had any status or authority; some didn’t even have names, or none that anyone cared to know. Their deaths had caused no more ripples than their lives had. Turner, living or dead, was a tsunami.

  She was bewildered. What she had wanted had not seemed – still did not seem – very much. She wanted Dirk to avoid a lifelong stigma, a stigma which would affect no one but him and which would benefit absolutely no one else. For that she was prepared to pay handsomely. She despised those who took bribes; of course she did. She felt no pride or pleasure in giving her money to devious scum. Everything she had she had earned through guts, commitment and labour. She was hard-pressed to name a single national leader worldwide who was not, either actually or morally, a criminal. Criminality and injustice were woven through the fabric of civilisation. Everyone swallowed this, unperturbed, every time they watched the news. For Dirk to avoid the penalty for his actions, a penalty that, within the law, would be no more than symbolic, was, yes, a crime, but a miserably small one. To atone, instead, by building a clinic in a hellhole was more than reasonable; it was enlightened. She was willing to pay the blood debt, the ancient, the intelligent, way of making things right, but not with Dirk’s reputation.

  The thought of Turner rejecting her clinic made her angry again. Don’t me let stop you, he’d said. The bastard. As if she hadn’t built many such projects already – irrigation, roads, medical centres, schools – with more to come. Now Turner had killed five men and he was right and she was wrong? She shook her head to clear her mind. She didn’t know how to proceed. She looked up at Hennie, who sat watching her from a high stool, a glass of orange juice in his hand. He was at risk, too.

  ‘I need some help here,’ she said. ‘What are my options?’

  ‘Seems pretty clear-cut to me,’ said Hennie. ‘Either we own up and face the music for the dead girl, which wouldn’t kill us. Or we kill Turner. If
we can get Venter in the bag, that’s a done deal. Turner had his chance, he threw it in your face. He’s shut out all the options.’

  ‘Hennie, I’ve got a bad feeling.’

  ‘So have I, but not about stepping on him. He’s a maniac, a mass killer.’

  ‘I thought we’d left this kind of thing behind us.’

  ‘You have. This is on me. It’s been on me since the start. Margot, you’ve done nothing wrong. You’re clean. You’ll stay clean.’ Hennie’s pirate grin gleamed through his beard. It was his grin she had fallen in love with. ‘Remember, I like getting my hands dirty.’

  ‘What about Rudy’s fiasco, these men he hired?’

  ‘Men?’ He laughed. ‘Four unemployed tik freaks? No one will know they’re gone, much less care. Anyway, it was nothing to do with us. It does put the grocer’s thumb on the scales for killing Turner. If we let him get away, he’ll be after Rudy too. That could be awkward. Then Rudy might have to be found in that stolen car, that’s to say, a sixth body to Turner’s credit. Then we’d be back to square one – plus this damn video of Jason you say he’s got.’

  Jason, another maniac. Why had he betrayed Dirk? What was in it for him? Was he simply that stupid? The bullets in his muscle-bound corpse proved that, she supposed. She felt entangled in the whims of morons and lunatics.

  ‘I want that video,’ she said.

  Hennie gestured with his chin beyond her shoulder. ‘Simon’s on it.’

  There was a knock on the glass door. She turned. It was Simon. She waved him in.

  ‘Rudy’s in the gatehouse drinking hot sweet tea,’ said Simon. ‘He’s in shock but suffered nothing worse than glass cuts. Looking at the car, it’s a miracle.’