Memo From Turner

by Tim Willocks

  ‘Turner couldn’t even do us that favour,’ said Hennie.

  ‘Where is Turner?’ said Margot.

  ‘I’ve got three men in town to spot him, ma’am,’ said Simon. ‘Strictly surveillance only. They’ll let me know if he tries to hook up that laptop. Four more set up on the road a kilometre south with H&Ks. They’ll stop his car on my order.’ He looked around. ‘Why isn’t Winston here?’

  ‘He’s sitting this out,’ said Hennie. ‘Squeamish about offing a fellow officer. Hear no evil, see no evil, as if he was kidding anyone.’

  ‘Has he turned on us?’ said Simon.

  ‘Then he’d be kidding himself,’ said Margot. ‘He’ll do what’s necessary after the fact.’

  Margot’s phone rang. Number withheld. She passed it to Hennie.

  ‘Venter?’ said Hennie.

  Dirk walked into the room. He wore tennis gear and carried a racket bag. Hennie walked quickly to the open door and out onto the terrace. Dirk smiled at Margot and her heart melted. So tall, so handsome, so brilliant.

  ‘Sorry to interrupt,’ said Dirk, ‘but you promised me three sets.’

  ‘Darling, I completely forgot,’ said Margot. ‘I’m sorry.’

  ‘If it’s a bad time –’

  ‘No, no,’ said Margot. ‘I wouldn’t miss it for the world. I just need fifteen minutes to finish up here and get changed.’

  ‘Anything I can help you with?’ asked Dirk.

  ‘No, you practise your serve. I’ll be right there.’

  Dirk exchanged a smile and a nod with Simon and left by the glass door. Hennie clapped him on the shoulder as he passed. Hennie came back inside and gave Margot her phone. He went back to his stool where two phones lay on the granite top. One of them rang and vibrated.

  ‘This is secure, right?’ said Hennie.

  ‘It’s all set,’ said Simon.

  Hennie reached for the phone. On impulse Margot snatched it up first.

  ‘No,’ said Hennie. ‘We agreed, I’ll do it, you stay clean.’

  ‘It’s my son, my fight,’ said Margot. She answered the phone.

  ‘This will be short and sweet,’ she said. ‘Especially sweet for you if you play your cards right. If you play them wrong you’ll never sleep soundly again, because the purpose of my life will be to fuck you.’

  ‘I –’

  ‘Shut up. You will listen to my one-time offer. You will accept it or reject it. There will be no haggling. If you accept, I buy your absolute obedience. Is that clear?’

  Hennie jabbed a finger at his ear. Margot tapped the speaker on.

  ‘Absolute obedience is a bit much,’ said Venter. ‘We need to set some parameters.’

  ‘The unfortunate death of Warrant Officer Turner, should it occur – and that depends on you – will require investigation,’ said Margot. ‘That investigation will be conducted by the local authorities. You will come to Langkopf and take part in that investigation, to ensure that the Cape Town authorities will be satisfied with the result. Is that within your power?’

  ‘It is,’ said Venter.

  ‘You will also close the investigation into the homicide of the unknown girl, committed by Jason Britz, again to the satisfaction of the Cape Town authorities.’

  ‘No problem,’ said Venter.

  ‘You will share all relevant intelligence as and when we need it.’

  ‘Relevant, as and when. I can do that.’

  ‘Those are your parameters. When it’s over, we can each take our own path to Hell.’

  ‘That’s your end,’ said Venter. ‘What’s mine? I asked you to make a calculation.’

  Margot glanced at Hennie. He raised his right thumb above his fisted hand and shook it.

  ‘Three hundred krugerrands,’ said Margot.

  A silence. Good. Her instincts had been correct. No Swiss accounts. No footprints. Just solid gold. Its power over the human soul had not waned in millennia. She knew. She had a safe in the panic room half full of it.

  Venter coughed, nervously. ‘I’m not sure what that’s worth.’

  ‘At current rates,’ said Margot, ‘it’s worth 400,000 US dollars.’

  ‘Help me out again,’ said Venter. ‘What’s that in rand?’

  ‘In rand?’ Margot laughed. Hennie’s grin caught her again. She channelled his coarse energy. ‘You poor fucking peon,’ she said. ‘I thought you were a big city boy. Who gives a fuck about the fucking rand?’

  ‘I need to put it in a context I can grasp,’ said Venter.

  ‘Something over five million,’ said Margot.

  Another silence. This one longer. Venter was stunned.

  ‘That’s eight kilos of twenty-two-carat gold,’ said Margot. ‘If you’ve got what it takes to pick it up. Do you?’

  ‘I’m sure I could get it to my car,’ said Venter.

  ‘Yes or no. In or out.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Venter. ‘I’m in.’

  ‘Where’s Turner?’ said Margot.

  ‘I’ll try to find out. I suggest you send some men, good men, to cover the Cape Town road and –’

  ‘The deal’s off,’ said Margot. ‘You’re going to jail, Captain Venter. This conversation has been recorded.’

  Margot hung up and put the phone down. Seconds later it rang again. She answered.

  ‘Where’s Turner?’ she said.

  ‘I don’t –’

  ‘Shut up. Turner is uploading his video to Cloud, which is why you won’t tell me where he is. You think it will give you some lever-age but you are an idiot. Turner is not an idiot. When he mails the file to you he will mail it to one or more others as backup, as would any half-intelligent person in fear for his life. Yes?’

  ‘It’s a reasonable supposition,’ allowed Venter.

  ‘Once that video is out, I’ve failed – so I won’t need you any more. I’ll pay my lawyers and Dirk won’t go to jail. The other thing I won’t need any more is to kill Turner, because killing him won’t change the case against Dirk. Instead I will send Turner my own mail, with the recording of you and me plotting his murder. Then I’ll pay my lawyers again. And I won’t go to jail either. But you will die there. If Turner doesn’t get to you first.’

  ‘He said he’s in the bookie’s,’ Venter almost shouted. ‘The bookmaker’s in town. You’ve got – twenty minutes. Then he’ll run.’

  Hennie grabbed his phone and walked towards Simon. He stopped as he passed Margot and leaned towards her. She muted the phone. Hennie kissed her on the lips.

  ‘You’re beautiful,’ he said.

  The double compliment touched her. He looked her in the eye to be sure she was sure.

  ‘Last chance,’ said Hennie.

  Margot said, ‘Get rid of him.’

  Hennie grinned. He turned to go but she stopped him.

  ‘Take Rudy with you.’ She saw the question in his face. ‘He’s a wild card with a badge and a gun, he’s out of control. I don’t want him hanging around here and I don’t want him causing chaos elsewhere.’

  She watched Hennie and Simon stride out of the door.

  ‘Hello?’ said Venter. ‘Hello?’

  Margot un-muted the phone. ‘We agreed: all relevant intelligence, as and when.’

  ‘I was wrong, I apologise, but –’

  ‘You broke our deal,’ said Margot.

  ‘Nothing’s changed –’

  ‘Oh yes it has. Your purchase price just dropped by a third. To two hundred krugerrands.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘How does it feel to lose a couple of million rand in less than a minute?’

  She listened to Venter’s silence. She enjoyed his pain. She could feel its dimensions. The basic visceral horror. The bitter self-torment that would rankle till the end of his days. The battle with his own cowardice.

  ‘I assume you consider that fair,’ she said. ‘I consider it more than generous.’

  Venter uttered strange, grunting gasps, like a man fighting to control his bowels.

  ‘Bear in m
ind that if you betray me again, I will use a small portion of the money you just squandered to have you killed.’

  ‘It’s fair,’ whispered Venter.

  ‘Text your number to this phone, now,’ she said. ‘Be ready to travel on my word. I’ll tell you when to be here in Langkopf.’

  She rang off. She picked up Hennie’s orange juice and drank it. She didn’t feel bewildered any more. The world would turn wherever it would turn, for her or against her, as it had turned before. She remembered Meursault and the four shots he need not have fired. The corpse of his mother that he chose not to see. The memory gave her an odd comfort. She put the empty glass down on the granite counter. This wasn’t just about Dirk. Perhaps it wasn’t about Dirk at all.

  Margot went to change into her tennis outfit.

  23

  The road from Margot’s compound to the highway north of town was seven kilometres long and private all the way. One of the things Hennie didn’t like about this part of the world was that all the bloody roads were straight as bloody arrows. You could go to sleep at the wheel in one town and wake up an hour later in the next. So when they had planned the road to the new house and compound he had insisted on incorporating a variety of chicanes to give him some driving pleasure. The builders hadn’t liked it but when experienced from the controls of a 5L supercharged Jaguar engine the results were spectacular. Today he could have done without the bends but he couldn’t help laughing from his belly as he screeched through the curves, straining the onboard computer and daring the two-ton Camargue-red behemoth to roll over. It was a shame he hadn’t thought to time the run.

  Simon Dube sat next to him, as cool as a glass of lager in Alexandria. He had a Benelli M4 tactical shotgun propped between his knees, muzzle down. Rudy sat in the back, grunting at each roll of the car. In normal circumstances he would have gritted his teeth and kept quiet, but his nerves were shot from his encounter with Turner. The left arm and leg of his uniform were blotched with dried blood, none of it his. Hennie had told him not to get it on the leather or the seat belts.

  Simon opened a box of surgical-quality latex gloves and took out three packets. He passed one to Hennie, who shoved it into his shirt pocket. He tossed one to Rudy and opened the third for himself.

  ‘Rudy, put the gloves on,’ said Simon.

  ‘I don’t take orders from you.’

  ‘Oh dear,’ said Hennie. ‘It’s Rudy’s time of the month. I hope he’s not going to fuck things up for us. You’re the man to go to for fuck-ups, aren’t you, Rudy?’

  ‘Jason’s lying dead on the stoop of the old family farm –’ said Rudy.

  ‘So Jason knows what I’m talking about.’

  ‘I’m not in the mood for your famous fucking British humour.’

  Hennie glanced in the mirror. Rudy’s face was a portrait, in various shades of red, of grief, rage and carsickness. They entered another chicane.

  ‘Well, that’s put me in my place,’ said Hennie. ‘I feel quite chastened.’

  ‘Where are we going?’

  ‘We’re going to finish what you started, so you’ll do exactly what Simon or I say. You might be a joke but Turner isn’t.’

  ‘Let me take him,’ said Rudy.

  ‘You couldn’t take Turner if he was nailed to a tree with a bag over his head. You couldn’t take Coco the Clown. You’re here strictly as an observer.’

  ‘Jason said you were a turd. I said anybody who knew you could tell me that.’

  ‘One more word and I’ll leave you by the side of the road.’

  Hennie watched him try to summon up a comeback line. The side of the road would be the best place for him but they couldn’t afford the time. If Rudy decided to sit there like a big stubborn ox, they’d have to shoot him to get him out.

  ‘Listen, Rudy,’ said Hennie, in his friendliest voice, ‘we have to take Turner alive and well and without a mark on him. Get it?’

  Hennie watched him work it out.

  ‘OK,’ said Rudy. ‘A bullet would be too good for him anyway.’

  Hennie came out of the last chicane. The last kilometre was straight. He put his foot down.

  ‘The bookie’s,’ said Simon. Down to business.

  ‘Never been in there,’ said Hennie. ‘Tactics?’

  ‘Turner’s using their Wi-Fi. If he gave them a few rand, he might just be sitting there with the customers. That would suit us, we could just walk in. Civilian cover, he won’t want to shoot it out. But he’s got a badge and gun. If I was him, I’d clear the shop and lock up.’

  ‘Let’s assume he has.’

  ‘The windows are painted and grilled,’ said Simon. ‘We can’t see inside. The back door will be locked. Assume he’s locked the street door too. There’s a door at the betting counter, locked from the inside. No high security, Winston’s too cheap.’

  ‘You’re very familiar. You like a flutter, do you?’

  ‘Winston asked my advice. That’s how I know how cheap he is.’

  Hennie braked sharply and turned onto the highway. They’d be there in under five minutes.

  ‘I can make a silent entry through the back,’ said Simon. ‘You’ll have to take the front door down.’ He patted the stock of the Benelli. ‘This has two breaching rounds ready to go. When you blow the lock, I’ll throw down on him from behind. You don’t have to come through the door. Turner will be in the far left-hand corner of the room.’

  ‘Timing?’

  ‘Keep your phone on vibrate. When I’m ready to go through the counter door I’ll text you: twice for go – on your own time, I’ll be ready. Once for abort. Wait for the second buzz. If it’s not going to happen I’ll be back outside and I’ll ring you with an update – that’s a different vibration, longer, right?’

  ‘He is a shooter,’ said Hennie.

  ‘We don’t know his mindset. If the video’s flown – and the timing of that is unpredictable – then as Margot said we don’t want him dead. He may have worked that out, but he doesn’t know if we have.’

  Hennie had not quite got his head around all that, but deferred to better brains than his. ‘In short, if he has to go, he has to go.’

  ‘It’s his choice.’

  ‘How good is he?’

  ‘As good as you or me, maybe better. We’ve been out of practice, he hasn’t. But there are two of us.’

  ‘What’s this video about?’ said Rudy.

  Hennie decided it was easier to tell him. ‘Dash-cam. Turner filmed Jason talking about what happened in Cape Town. We don’t know what he said but we’ve got to stop Turner posting it to his people.’

  ‘I want to see it.’

  ‘We’ll deal with that later.’ Hennie turned to Simon. ‘Where’s the bookie in this? Is it just him, or a girl on the till, or what?’

  ‘Just the bookie. I’ll improvise.’

  ‘What do you want me to do?’ asked Rudy.

  ‘You stay in the car,’ said Hennie. ‘We’ve had enough of your improvisations for one day.’ He rubbed the back of his hand on his beard. ‘Not ideal, this. Lots of holes.’

  Simon looked at his watch. ‘Whatever Venter meant by twenty minutes, we’ve got less than ten left.’

  Hennie had an idea. ‘I’ll make sure the bastard doesn’t shoot.’

  He drove up to the rear of La Diva. He got out with the shotgun, turned back to wag a finger at Rudy, and shut the door. He put his phone in the pocket of his shirt. He pulled his latex gloves on.

  Simon was already working on the lock of La Diva. He inserted a small tension wrench into the keyhole and held it taut, then slid in the thin steel rod of a snap gun. He clicked it five times and the tension wrench swung up and the door opened. Simon moved on to the rear door of the bookie’s. Hennie walked into La Diva.

  Any of the women inside would do, Hennie thought, but Iminathi knew him so she’d be the easiest to handle, if she was there. If Winston was there, he’d better not argue or Hennie would lay him out. Hennie passed through the kitchen. It stank of curry.
He pointed the shotgun at the floor, no need to terrify her, and entered the office. Iminathi sat at the table, her back half towards him, texting on her phone.

  ‘Hello, Imi.’

  She jumped to her feet with a short cry and dropped the phone on the table.

  Hennie smiled, he hoped reassuringly. ‘I need you for five minutes.’

  She looked at the shotgun. She was scared. Fair enough.

  ‘I haven’t done anything,’ she said.

  ‘I never said you did. I just need you to come with me for five minutes.’

  She shook her head, too scared to speak.

  ‘I’d prefer you to be conscious,’ said Hennie, ‘but unconscious will work too. Now be good and you’ll come to no harm. Come on –’

  He gestured towards the salon. She walked in front of him, her body stiff with tension.

  ‘Right out to the street,’ said Hennie. ‘Say to the ladies: “There’s no problem, girls, this is a friend of mine.”’

  They passed through the corridor and into the salon. Four faces looked at him in the mirror.

  ‘No problem, girls, this is a friend of mine,’ said Imi.

  Hennie smiled into the mirror. Iminathi opened the door to the street. He seemed to remember she was a keen runner. She certainly looked fit. He grabbed her firmly but gently by her wrist and they stepped outside. Not too busy. Maybe a dozen pedestrians up and down the street. Langkopf was never busy. He rarely set foot in the town. Whenever he did he remembered why. It was a craphole. He stopped her just short of the bookmaker’s window.

  ‘What do you want from me?’ said Imi.

  ‘Keep very quiet. All I want you to do is to stand in front of that door.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘I’m going to shoot it open.’ Her eyes widened with horror. ‘The shells fire a kind of powdered steel mixed with wax. No ricochet, no danger, perfectly safe.’

  ‘So why do you need me?’

  ‘What’s important now is that you stay cool. No sudden movements or no one will be safe.’

  ‘You motherfucker.’

  ‘I deserve that so I’ll let it pass, but let that be enough.’

  Hennie’s phone vibrated in his pocket. Short. A text. He pulled Iminathi past the window and stationed her in front of the bookmaker’s door. The lock was level with her collarbones. He raised the Benelli high by the pistol grip and canted the barrel down at forty-five degrees to the horizontal and forty-five to the plane of the door. The muzzle touched the wood just above the lock. He was peripherally aware of pedestrians turning round or crossing to the other side of the street. He reached around her and took hold of the fore stock with his left hand. Iminathi was now completely encircled by his arms and the shotgun. She covered her face with her hands, hyperventilating. The second text arrived.