Memo From Turner

by Tim Willocks

  He had planned this for the best part of an hour, ever since Rudy had left his prints on the dashboard of the car and the vision had come to him. The perfect logic. The moral reasoning. Survival. Self-defence against four men bent on murdering him by the same cruel method with which they had murdered at least one other. It was just. It was forgivable. Innocents by the thousand were bombed and slaughtered every week and the killers forgiven, celebrated, decorated. Yet his vision had been the palest fantasy of this reality. And the job was very far from done.

  His body rebelled and his stomach contracted. He lurched towards the hole containing Rudy’s head and bent over and vomited. Don’t waste the vomit. But his stomach was empty. A few threads of bile trickled onto the dead face staring up at him from the hole. He straightened. His mind cleared. The tendrils retreated. He had to get the most out of the body.

  He returned to the first hole. The leakage from the stump had waned. The blood was halfway up the depth, soaking in, but that was OK, it wouldn’t be wasted. He put down the knife and rolled the body onto its back, the neck still over the hole. He took Rudy’s right foot and cranked the leg upright, the boot against his hip, and kneaded the dead muscles of the calf and the thigh. The sensation in his fingers as he massaged the dead flesh disgusted him. He squeezed out perhaps another cup of blood. The veins had one-way valves; the blood wouldn’t roll backwards. He did the same with the left leg. He straddled the body and knelt on Rudy’s belly, another repellent sensation. He raised the dead arms, one by one, and wrung out what drops he could. A constant battle with revulsion, with nausea, with his own degradation. He put his palms on Rudy’s chest and with a perverted form of CPR he pumped out some more.

  Enough. The blood would be evaporating. He dragged the body to the second hole and positioned the open neck. He returned to the first. It was more than half full of bright red liquid mixed with bits of tissue, a skin already forming over the surface. He unzipped his pants and pissed into the blood. The urine was already amber. He had already wasted too much sweat. He took the bottom half of the plastic bottle and pushed it into the muck. It bobbed back up. Archimedes’ principle. He removed the dripping bottle. Think. Think. It didn’t matter what else was in the hole. The heat would evaporate the water regardless.

  He set the bottle down and took the knife. He slashed the laces of Rudy’s left boot and pulled the boot off. He pulled the sock off, too. He sank the boot into the hole. It sat at an angle. He crammed the bottle into the neck of the boot and propped it upright with the sock and the leather tongue. The blood covered the boot. The open top of the half-bottle was six centimetres below the rim of the hole.

  He ejected the magazine from the Z-88. He laid a sheet of plastic across the top of the hole and weighted the four corners to the ground with the gun, the magazine, the knife and his knee. With great care, he scooped dirt from the pile and heaped it along the four edges of the plastic to create an airtight seal, removing the weights as he came to them. By the time the whole sheet was pinned to the ground by the dirt seal, droplets of water were already forming on the underside of the plastic.

  The solar still, or moisture trap, used the same principles of physics as the creation of rain. The sun’s energy, shining through the plastic, evaporated any water in the organic material beneath. The vapour rose and condensed back into water on the under surface of the plastic. The water – pure and distilled – would drip down into the container. Turner had seen one built on Mrs Dandala’s TV. She loved reality shows.

  The last stage was to create a drip point on the plastic above the open half-bottle. He needed a weight to tent the surface downwards. He took one of the bullets and stopped. The nickel and brass was already warm after a few minutes in the sun. He feared that as it got hotter, it would melt through the plastic and destroy the still. Small stones would be best, but he couldn’t see any on the pan. It was as smooth as a billiard table. He glanced at Rudy’s remaining boot. The sole was black rubber. He could cut chunks off. He took the knife but as soon as he touched the rubber he felt the heat of that, too. He needed something that would heat more slowly.

  Over the rim of the second hole he saw the hair on Rudy’s head. He pulled the head back out and felt inside. Fragments of bone the size of the top of his thumb were still attached to the scalp. He peeled off two chunks and wiped them clean on the tail of his shirt and returned to the first hole. He placed the white chunk on the plastic right above the mouth of the bottle. It was just heavy enough to depress the thin plastic but he wanted a steeper slope so he added the second chunk on top of the first and pushed gently. The plastic sheet shifted but the seal didn’t break. The slope improved. The condensing water rolled down the underside of the plastic to the drip point created by the bone and started to fall, drop by drop, into the bottle.

  The first solar still was complete and working.

  The concentration had helped clear his mind. His soul had lost and his conscience was silent. Just as well. He took the knife and went to the second hole. He pulled the severed head out and put it in the third hole. He knelt over Rudy’s body and ripped his shirt open. The skin of his torso was many shades paler than his face. Turner felt calmer now. Coroners did this every day. One had told him that the word ‘autopsy’ means ‘see for yourself’.

  ‘Let’s see,’ said Turner.

  He made the classic Y-shaped incision he had seen so many times, from the tip of each shoulder joint to just below the sternum, and from there straight down to the pubic bone. He wrenched the flaps of skin apart and cut them off and threw them in the hole. He sawed through the cartilage connecting the left ribs to the sternum and put the knife down and used both hands to rip the entire ribcage wide open. The joints snapped where the ribs joined the spine. The heart and lungs lay exposed, glistening in the sun, the surface moisture drying away even as he looked at them. He had to hurry. He cut out Rudy’s heart and the big vessels going in and out of it. He tossed it into the hole. The lungs were mottled pink and varying shades of grey. He cut each one away from the air tubes connecting them to the trachea and peeled them away from the chest wall and tossed them in the hole. He put the knife down and slid both hands over the surface of the liver and tugged it down. Various vessels and ducts connected it from a central point. He cut them and wrenched the liver free and tossed it in the hole. He checked the hole. It was full of organs up to about a third of the way from the brim. He slashed and stabbed the liver and lungs to liberate as much moisture as possible.

  He wiped his hands on his pants, he didn’t know why. He had a choice. Aluminium can or half-bottle? The bottle held about three times as much. Was there more water in the organs or the bowels? He didn’t know, but the bowels seemed the better bet. He lodged the can among the organs, shifting them around until the can was solidly wedged upright in the centre. He took the second sheet of plastic and repeated the construction process to make the second still. Plastic, dirt seal, skull bone for a drip point. Again the condensation dappled the lower surface.

  By now he was just working. Not thinking. Not feeling.

  He removed the head and set it on the ground. He dragged the mutilated corpse over to the third hole. When he had made the vertical arm of the Y incision he had cut too deep and opened the sac containing the entrails. He had expected the smell to be worse than it was but he hadn’t yet cut the bowels themselves. The intestines bulged yellow and violet and grey. He rolled the torso on its side by the hole and propped it by bending the legs into a kind of recovery position. He reached into the abdominal cavity with one hand and scrabbled and pulled and a mass of intestines slithered out into the hole. They settled in the bottom, almost filling it. He stabbed and slashed at the morass to ventilate the tubes. He severed the top end of the gut and pulled as much as he could of the rest of it free of the cavity, cutting arteries and ligaments with the knife as necessary. He explored the deep interior with both hands and harvested the kidneys. Then he severed the lower end of the colon. Now the smell hit him hard. But
the worst was over.

  He dragged the eviscerated corpse to one side and rolled it prone. He considered cutting pieces of muscle. There was water in them. But he’d had all butchery he could take.

  He took the second half of the plastic bottle, the one that narrowed down to the neck and the cap. He seated it steady in the centre of the coils, which were already congealing in their leaking fluids into a kind of obscene pudding. He took the last plastic sheet and laid it down; he weighted it; he built the seal with dirt. He broke more bone with the haft of the knife and placed the pieces. He watched the droplets form and roll and drip.

  It was done.

  He stood back. Three stills. A severed head. A gutted corpse. Patches of blood-slaked sand already baked dry. He’d done what he’d done. He was what he was. Whatever and whoever that was, he did not know. He was drained. He was thirsty. He felt exhausted. He hoped he hadn’t spent more sweat than it was worth. The blood holes were crammed with kilograms of flesh. Fifteen at least, maybe more. That had to be worth two litres.

  He checked his pulse again. It was fifty.

  He was splattered with blood, his arms caked to the elbows in a hardening dark red paste. It clung to his skin with a tightening grip. It revolted him. He dug up two shovels of the salty dirt and used it like water, scouring his hands and forearms. He repeated the process until he was coated with only a crusty, dry dust, then he took his shirt off and rubbed his arms and hands clean. He dabbed a fingertip on an untouched section of the pan and tasted it. It tasted like sea salt. He recalled that such pans were mined for their salt. Would he need it? Would it poison him? A dead inland sea. Not just salt but the minerals of dead fish, seaweed, other organisms. He didn’t know the science. He’d think about it. He collected his Glock and its magazine and the ejected shell. The sun scorched his shoulders and back. He needed shelter from the sun while he waited.

  The Land Cruiser cast a narrow shadow to the east; the same side as the blood holes. He had perhaps five hours until sundown. He took a Mylar space blanket from the boot and opened both doors on the driver’s side of the car. He draped the blanket between them. Enough shade to squat in. He put another clean shirt on. Pale olive cotton. The clean feeling was good. He opened the lock box and took out the Kevlar vest. He put the vest on the ground beneath his shelter and sat on it cross-legged. He put his shades on.

  He thought about what had brought him here. A girl who meant nothing to anyone but him. Something stubborn in his soul insisted she deserved justice. She deserved it exactly because thousands like her never got it. That’s what she represented, and he represented her.

  Turner contemplated the horror he had wrought and asked himself what else he represented.

  29

  Mokoena heard the faint sound of an approaching vehicle and switched off the cricket match with the remote. Pakistan were ahead by 110 runs in the first innings with three batsmen left.

  He was glad to be mildly depressed by the match. It distracted him from darker concerns. He had been waiting for Margot or one of her minions to arrive since last he spoke to Turner. Six hours ago. He had not attempted to compute the possible scenarios. They were too numerous and none of them good. He would know the situation when he knew it and would act according to his interests. He retained sufficient memory of his former ideals, like the blurred remnants left upon a palimpsest, to feel mildly depressed at who he had become and what he had made of himself. But that feeling was familiar, and common to any man his age, no matter what their dreams had been.

  In the relative silence the note of the engine was that of a small car. Not something the high command would be caught dead in. He rose and walked to the front door and opened it. Iminathi’s Volkswagen pulled into the driveway. He walked out to greet her. The one tender spot that remained in his heart. He hoped she was here on some trivial errand. He hoped that she was not involved in whatever sordid events were currently in motion.

  Mokoena’s house was a large bungalow in the southern shadow of the long hill. His nearest neighbours were two hundred metres away in any direction and he owned most of the intervening land. He could have aspired to something grander, or more stylish, but had seen no point. It boasted all modern conveniences; it was clean, air-conditioned and comfortable. He had grown up in a shack made of tin cans. He was more than content with a simple material paradise.

  He had lived alone since his wife had died a decade ago, and he had come to like it. He found it a relief not to have to calibrate his emotions to those of another. To eat what and when he wanted. To be undisturbed. He had at last found the time for music and the solitude it required to be known with real intimacy. Pleasures shared were all well and good but he had learned that other psyches stood in the way. Over the last two years he had set himself the challenge of forming a relationship with Beethoven’s piano sonatas. A lifetime’s work, he had soon realised, but better late than never. How could he be free to sob like an abandoned child at the sheer and incomprehensible beauty of the ‘Waldstein’ with another person in the room? At such moments his existence at last seemed justified. His heart was torn apart and at the same time healed by some other rogue heart, beating yet across the centuries and the distance and the worlds that divided them. To feel this was to know that he had not entirely failed, that despite all he was not entirely lost.

  He reached Iminathi’s window and signalled her to wind it down.

  ‘Put your car in the garage at the back,’ he said. ‘I’m expecting other visitors who might not be happy to see you.’

  Iminathi nodded and restarted the engine. Mokoena went back inside to the kitchen and switched on the electric kettle. When it was boiled he warmed a teapot and dropped in three tea bags. He preferred PG Tips. He brought the water back to the boil and filled the pot. As Iminathi came in, he put the pot on the table and laid out two cups and saucers. He preferred them to mugs; he liked the thin lip. Iminathi pulled out a chair and sat down.

  ‘Biscuits? Cake?’ asked Mokoena. She shook her head. He sat down facing her. ‘Tell me everything.’

  He poured the tea. Like him, she took it with milk and two sugars. He listened. She told him everything. She moved him. It wasn’t her intention, but she shamed him. When she’d finished, she put Turner’s SD card, containing the video of Jason’s statement and death, on the table.

  ‘You take it,’ she said.

  ‘If I take it, I will destroy it.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Because it can only bring me grief. I’ve no reason to use it against Margot, though some would. If I show it to Dirk, my relationship with her is over. I like this town. I’m too old to move on and start again. And my loyalty to her is not merely venal. She has been, and I hope she will remain, an overwhelming force for good, in this district and beyond. If she were not hard she would have been crushed. She has risen above more than one tragedy of her own with extraordinary courage. That she hasn’t been able to rise above this one is a matter for bitter regret but I won’t damn her for it.’

  ‘What should I do, Winston?’

  ‘Listen to Turner. At your age you should move on and start again. I’ll miss you. But you can count on my most earnest endeavours to help you along any path you choose.’

  Her eyes filled. He saw her torment but he couldn’t offer false comfort.

  ‘What about Turner?’ she said.

  ‘What is he to you?’

  ‘He’s a good man.’

  ‘He’s not the first good man to cause chaos.’

  ‘That dead girl deserves justice.’

  ‘You’re a student of realpolitik. A lesser evil is often necessary to serve a greater good.’

  ‘There is no greater good in leaving him to die in the desert.’

  ‘Turner is not your father,’ said Mokoena.

  ‘How does that refute my point?’ She stared at him with a fire in her eyes. He conceded with a nod. ‘We could drive out there now and save him,’ she said. ‘All we have to do is follow the tracks.’
r />   ‘I told you, I won’t betray Margot.’

  ‘But you’ll betray Turner.’

  ‘Very few people are asked to risk something of value for what they believe to be right. Most of those who are asked refuse. Why shouldn’t I? Why shouldn’t you?’

  ‘If you don’t want to come along just let me use your car. I’ll go and find him myself.’

  ‘When they come here and my car is missing Margot will get the picture like that.’ He snapped his fingers. ‘If they find you on the desert they will kill you both. That’s one murder I wouldn’t bury, but even if they know that, I won’t put it to the test. I doubt I can bury Turner’s murder without Cape Town burying us. This is a war which neither side can win. That’s why you and I are going to stay out of it, at least until it’s over.’

  ‘There’s one person who can stop the war right now. And he would, I know he would.’ Iminathi held the data card in front of Mokoena’s face. ‘Take it to Dirk.’

  This time there was no mistaking the engine that approached the house. Five supercharged litres. With Hennie at the wheel. Mokoena stood up and took the SD card from Iminathi’s fingers. He opened a pedal bin with his foot and threw it in the garbage. He took his cup and saucer to the sink and rinsed them and put them away. He took hold of Iminathi’s arm and she stood up.

  ‘Wait in my study. Keep the door closed. Stay there until I come to get you.’

  She didn’t argue. He was relieved. He knew Iminathi had it in her to go up against Margot. He knew their history. The last time, Iminathi had compromised. Or surrendered. She’d never forgiven either herself or Margot. She’d grown up a lot since then. And now there was more at stake than a marriage. He led her to the study. He saw the look on her face as he reached to close the door.