by Tim Willocks
‘Ride it till it crashes.’
‘What else can you do?’ said Hennie.
‘How many men has Simon got working for him?’
‘If he called in all the shifts at once, about a dozen.’
Hennie groaned as the wheels mounted the tarmac. Turner drove towards town.
‘Is this vehicle on a tracking network?’
Hennie nodded. ‘Standard security practice.’
‘Good,’ said Turner. ‘They’ll come to me.’
40
On the tarmac the Range Rover was astoundingly smooth. He felt better than he had an hour ago but now that his body sensed safety – the coolness and luxury, the immense comfort of the seat, his sudden return to a world where speed and distance cost nothing – he felt closer to collapse than ever. His exhaustion insisted on rest; but if he rested he would die.
He found that he had no strong feelings about dying, or anything else. He was too depleted for fear or anger. He was hollowed out. Numbed. Yet survival had become a relentless drive within him, as if it were a force independent of his will, as if it were not him. If it had been up to him he would have pulled over and gone to sleep; but it wasn’t. He had to obey. He had to go on.
‘How did you do it?’ asked Hennie.
Turner didn’t answer him. He swallowed a mouthful from the bottle.
‘Call it a last request,’ said Hennie.
Turner remembered Rudy’s last request.
‘For fuck’s sake you beat me,’ said Hennie. ‘You put me on my knees, my mouth’s full of dirt. Be fucking gracious.’
‘I took two and a half litres of water out of Rudy.’
Hennie blinked and stared and thought about it. ‘His blood?’
‘Blood, heart, lungs, guts. Brains.’
‘Jesus Christ.’ Hennie thought further. ‘The plastic bags. The shovel.’ Hennie laughed and pain lanced through him. He fought it off. ‘Fuck me. They should put you on TV.’
‘When you left him, he was still alive. We talked. He knew what was coming.’
He felt Hennie’s eyes on him. Turner glanced at him. Hennie was not horrified. He seemed in awe.
‘The law of the land,’ said Turner.
Hennie stiffened with another spasm as his entrails leaked enzymes and filth into his peritoneal cavity. His fists clenched and his back arched and he bared his teeth. It passed.
‘Out, out, damned candle.’
‘Brief,’ said Turner.
‘What?’
‘Out, out, brief candle.’
‘Right. Right,’ said Hennie. His eyes gleamed with unspilled tears. His voice was hoarse with emotion. ‘And all our yesterdays have lighted fools the way to dusty death.’
The power of the words, their beauty, struck them both silent, and for a while an unspoken communion reigned between them which seemed like peace. Or something more mysterious and precious.
Hennie went rigid again and against his will he cried out. He reached out instinctively towards Turner and Turner grabbed the big man’s hand and met the awful strength of its grip with his own. It was a long time before the wave of agony crashed and ebbed. When it did, Hennie still kept hold of Turner’s hand.
Hennie’s phone rang in his shirt pocket and activated the Bluetooth device. Turner saw the caller ID on the instrument panel message centre.
‘It’s Margot. Do you want to take it?’
‘I won’t get another chance.’
Turner thumbed the control on the steering wheel and accepted the call.
‘Hennie?’
‘Hello, love.’ Hennie tried but failed to conceal his torment.
‘Hennie, what’s wrong?’
‘I’m with Turner.’
A fraught silence. Then: ‘Where?’
‘In the Range Rover. He put three 9×19s through what feels like my colon. Not up to his usual standard, but it did the job.’
Something like a strangled sob came through the speakers.
‘Will he get you to the hospital?’
‘Only in his dreams.’
‘Turner?’
‘You’ve got lawyers,’ said Turner. ‘Call them.’
‘If Hennie dies, you die. As God is my witness.’
‘Forget it, love,’ said Hennie. ‘Walk away.’
‘I can’t walk away from you. I’d have nowhere to walk to.’
Hennie ground his teeth, grunting with the effort to conceal another swell of pain. He failed and let out a terrible childlike cry.
‘Hennie, tell me where you are, I’m on my way.’ Margot’s attempt to convey calm revealed only the depths of her desperation.
‘You can both hear me,’ rasped Hennie. ‘You’re my witnesses. On my soul. Deathbed statement, right? That counts for something, right, Turner? It carries more weight, legally.’
Turner saw the despair in his eyes. He saw no reason for cruelty. He nodded.
‘I killed the girl in Cape Town,’ said Hennie. ‘I killed Rudy Britz. Everything that’s happened – trying to kill you, Turner – it was all my idea and my doing. Margot Le Roux had nothing to do with it. Any of it. She’s innocent. She’s clean –’
Hennie broke off and twisted in his seat and gargled. He squeezed Turner’s hand.
‘Save your strength,’ begged Margot.
‘I love you,’ said Hennie.
Some thread inside him tightened to and beyond its limit.
‘Don’t let go,’ pleaded Margot.
‘Time to hit the road to Dreamland.’
The thread snapped and Hennie’s thick fingers relaxed and his racked body went slack. Whoever he had been had flown. Turner felt the instant of his leaving, his spirit passing by. It was unmistakable. The love, the hatred, strength, the pain; the Shakespeare. It was there and then it was not. He wondered how all that could vanish so quickly. He let go of Hennie’s hand.
‘Hennie? Hennie!’
‘He’s gone,’ said Turner.
This time her sob wasn’t strangled. It was a lamentation, tailing off as if she’d fallen into somewhere dark and infinitely deep. Then silence. When her voice returned, it was even.
‘I’m going to have you eaten alive.’
Turner felt an ache of sadness. For all that they had done to him, he couldn’t find it in himself to see Margot, or Hennie, or the rest of them, as evil. They had done evil things. But so had he. They were all of them more than their deeds. Weren’t they? They could rise above them if they chose to. He tried to find the energy to explain this. But he was too weary, and he knew he would not succeed. He could only join her on the road to catastrophe.
‘Simon will tell you where to find me,’ he said.
Turner cut the call off.
The road became the main street of Langkopf.
No sanctuary here. No one who could help him. Or no one who would. Winston Mokoena. Eric Venter. The young doctor from Bloemfontein.
He could call Colonel Nyathi in Cape Town. Nyathi would call Venter. Venter would fold his hand and call Mokoena. Between them, they might well hold Margot off. Then the lice would scuttle away from the light. Turner saw nothing he could prove against Venter or Mokoena or Margot. And Nyathi, and his superiors, would not want such proof. Venter would be forced into quiet retirement. Turner would be commended, and if necessary threatened – hadn’t he murdered Sergeant Britz and eaten his liver? – then gently shunted off. A promotion – to the suburbs. The machinery of justice would grind on.
And no one else would die.
There it was: the correct thing to do. The right thing to do. The good thing.
Yesterday, perhaps, he would have swallowed it. Swallowing went with the job. But that was the man who had been driven into the desert. The man who had walked out would not hide behind the lice who had betrayed him. He would rather have not walked out at all.
Turner drove straight through town. As he reached the curve that swept around the hill he made a right. He headed back to Jason’s farm to make his last stand.
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sp; 41
Margot beckoned Simon into the kitchen through the glass. She had left him at the table outside when she realised Hennie was hurt. She didn’t know why she had bothered. Pride. A sense of decorum. Simon knew everything. His delicacy was superb. She had long admired and appreciated him without ever feeling or showing any warmth towards him. Now he was the only person alive that she trusted.
‘Hennie’s dead. Turner –’
She didn’t finish. She didn’t want Turner’s face in her mind. She couldn’t remember the last time she had told Hennie that she loved him. He had told her every day. She wanted to fall against Simon and weep but couldn’t allow herself such weakness. It wasn’t a decision or a choice, just something she could not do despite wanting it. The very thought turned her mind into ice. The only place she could go was into the hardness of heart that had always been her final refuge.
‘I’m sorry,’ said Simon. ‘Neither Mark nor Khosi is answering his phone. We have to assume they’re dead too.’
‘How did that bastard survive?’
‘I have no idea.’
‘I want every man on our payroll armed and ready to move in twenty minutes. Pull them off the mine, get them out of bed, whatever you have to do. And find Turner. He’s driving the Range Rover.’
She left Simon working his phone and walked through the house to Hennie’s den.
It had the atmosphere of what she imagined a traditional British club to be. A snooker table. Vintage leather armchairs. Big-game trophies mounted on the walls. Bookshelves filled for the most part with military histories. Memories flooded into her and she pushed them away as tears slid down her cheeks. Time for all that later. She took a key from a silver cup she had won in a skeet competition and opened the gun case. She took out her Mossberg 930 autoloader and a box of double-zero shells. She set the box on the snooker table and opened it and slotted nine rounds into the shotgun.
All her life she had been enraged by inferior people. Or rather, inferior people telling her what she could or couldn’t do. Her parents. Her teachers. Willem. Any number of bankers, lawyers and engineers. People who could not see who she was, who could not see beyond their own narrow minds and limitations and projected these onto her. She had proved them all wrong. Now a ghetto cop had shoved his precious integrity down her throat, turned her son against her, killed the only man she had ever loved. She had offered him every concession, tried to make peace. He had brought death. He had made the house that she and Hennie had built into a mausoleum. How could she live here knowing she’d let Turner walk away? How could she live on at all?
She carried the Mossberg through the house towards the front door. She didn’t take spare shells. If nine wasn’t enough, she’d be dead. The thought did not cause her any fear. Everything she most feared had already happened.
She doubted she could ever forgive Dirk. If Hennie had been in that plane, as he’d intended, he would still be alive. He died to save Dirk’s integrity. And what was all this integrity? Blind obedience to the rules of someone else’s rigged game. A game designed to keep the sheep in their pens. Power subverted it, exploited it and pissed on the sheep, at every moment of every day and without a twinge of conscience. Dirk should have known that; but the truth was she hadn’t taught him. She had shielded him from dark doings. The bribery and violence. The murder of his girlfriend’s father. She’d fed him a fairy-tale version of her success. The one in the magazines. She should have taken him in, dirtied his hands, tainted his soul. Too late now. He had tainted hers.
As she reached the front door her phone rang. It was Dirk. She stared at the name on the screen as the ringtone chimed. She didn’t want to hear what he had to say. He wouldn’t want to hear what she had to say to him. He was out. She’d kept him out. Let him stay there. She thumbed the red icon. The chimes stopped. She opened the door and stepped onto the porch.
Simon’s white Toyota 4Runner TRD Pro was parked down the driveway. Two security guards stood waiting. Simon, dressed in combat fatigues, was loading guns into the back. His phone rang and he answered it, exchanged a few words. As he saw her he rang off and walked towards her, his expression troubled. He looked pointedly at the Mossberg in her hands.
‘What’s the problem?’ she said.
‘With respect, you should stay here.’
‘That’s not up for discussion. Are we ready?’
‘I’ve got eight more men on the road. They’ll meet us in town.’
‘Where’s Turner?’
‘The tracker in the Range Rover says he’s at Jason’s farm.’
‘Why there?’
‘He must be in bad condition. On the open road he’s a rabbit. In town he exposes civilians. At Jason’s he’s got food, water, a good place for a siege. It’s what I’d do.’ He pointed at the guards and the Toyota. ‘This isn’t what I’d do.’
‘What do you mean?’ she said.
‘My duty is to protect you. My advice is to back off. As far as I can see, you haven’t done anything yet that you can be charged with.’
‘You have.’
‘Let me take my chances. Mokoena and Venter won’t want a circus. Turner’s made his point. Maybe he’s had enough.’
‘He’s killed nine men. He won’t stop now. Neither will I. Hennie’s death changes everything. There’s only one way to finish this and I’m going to be there.’
‘Let me take him alone.’
‘That makes no sense. This isn’t a matter of honour. I want him killed like a rabid dog.’
‘Our men are trained to protect your property and your personal safety. They’re not trained for tactical combat. In a big city the police would give this to the Special Task Force. Full armour, headset communications, snipers, gas, stun grenades, drone surveillance. Teamwork like clockwork, massive support, medical backup. We’ve got a bunch of amateurs and we’re two hours from the nearest trauma surgeon. We’ll have a high risk of casualties.’
‘I’ll take that risk. We’re twelve against one and he must be more than half dead already.’
‘He was outnumbered and more than half dead when he shot Hennie.’
‘Hennie must have been careless.’
‘Please, let me go alone.’
‘No.’
‘What if I refuse to go through with this?’
‘Then I’ll go alone.’
Simon looked at the shotgun again. She backed away two steps.
‘The only way you’ll stop me is if you and your men tie me down. Try that, and casualties are guaranteed.’
She was never more serious in her life. Simon knew it. He also knew he could disarm her in less than second. So did she. The threat was stupid. She let go of the hand grip and let the stock of the shotgun swing to the ground, holding the barrel with her left. The threat was withdrawn. But she didn’t surrender.
‘I apologise. But, Simon, you’re the only person left I can depend on. Hennie depended on you. You were the only real friend he had out here. The only man he regarded as his equal. He would never have put it this way – you know what he was like – but he loved you.’
Something shifted in Simon’s eyes. She was making no secret of bending him to her will, yet she had spoken no less than the truth.
‘I need you.’
He considered her for what seemed like a long time. Weighing his heart – his loyalty, his pride, his honour – against his head. She didn’t feel that she was being manipulative. She had heard him. She appreciated his advice. But she had weighed her own balance and made her choice. He was a free man; so could he. Simon nodded.
‘You give the orders, Mrs Le Roux.’
42
Mokoena had just finished a large breakfast when Iminathi rang.
It promised to be another long day. Heat, dust, corpses. The amassing of sufficient evidence to support the telling of a tall tale.
The writing of that tale, in a way that would satisfy curious and powerful readers in two separate administrative judicial regions, would occupy several da
ys more.
And all of it in the company of Eric Venter, whom he had loathed from the moment he had shaken his limp, moist hand. Of one thing Mokoena was certain: Margot didn’t pay him enough. A bonus would be forthcoming, but what would he spend it on? The prospect of a word with Iminathi, whose assistance in these tasks he would sorely miss, was therefore more than welcome. He accepted the call.
‘Imi, how is Kimberley?’
As he spoke he identified the drone of a propeller.
‘I’m not in Kimberley. I’m in a plane with Dirk.’
Mokoena instantly cancelled his schedule. The fact that Imi had evidently deceived him altered his fond feelings for her not one whit. He was many species of villain but not a hypocrite. Her news might even be welcome. He was a reluctant participant in Margot’s latest scheme and had always thought it folly. That Imi could be back in league with Dirk pleased him; he had rarely seen a more harmonious match. He had been disgusted by the way it had ended and moved by Imi’s grief and shame. If he felt any anxiety, it was only for Imi’s safety.
‘Congratulations, my dear. Tell me what I can do for you.’
‘Hennie’s dead. Turner’s on the run, to Jason’s farm. We think Margot will go after him.’
‘How do you know all this?’
‘Dirk called Simon and asked him to stop her. Simon said he would try, but we just saw his truck on the road from the compound.’
Mokoena computed the possibilities, as much with his gut as his mind, like a conductor who could comprehend the meaning of entire operas in a flash of perception. The many operas in which Mokoena had played were, on the whole though with noble exceptions, tragicomedies of suffering and the struggle for power. He had latterly confined his own roles to modest portraits of greed, a much maligned vice which he considered a virtue next to anger, pride, vanity, envy and other flagrant invitations to self-destruction.
That Simon had failed to dissuade Margot from her course was a given. Only desperation could have led Dirk to believe that any other result was possible.
Meanwhile, if Turner managed to survive, Mokoena believed that he himself could walk the resulting tightrope without falling off. He had been wise to play as small a role as possible in recent events.