The Fallen

by Jassy Mackenzie

  Moloi parked behind the dented bumper of a Toyota Corolla and climbed out. Before he even began to make his way over to the building’s entrance, the caretaker he had spoken to on his previous visit hurried across.

  He was gripping a cellphone in his right hand.

  ‘Thank you for getting here so fast, Captain. Thank you so much for coming,’ he gabbled. ‘It’s terrible, just so terrible, what has happened here.’

  Moments later, when Moloi heard the blare of approaching sirens, a feeling of impending doom descended on him. He followed the caretaker into the building and up the stairs to the door of the shabby flat that he had knocked on just a couple of days ago.

  Now the door was open and several shocked-looking people were gathered on either side. One of them, a woman, was sobbing. A couple had their hands cupped over their eyes as if attempting to block out the reality of what they had just seen.

  Moloi could smell the blood before he even reached the flat.

  He looked inside; stared at the badly butchered body sprawled on the floor of the cramped bedsit.

  He was too late for Themba Msamaya.

  51

  The block of flats in Dunbar Street was easy for Jade to find—a tumbledown three-floor building just a block away from the crossroads she had driven through.

  But as soon as she saw it, she realised that something was wrong.

  A cluster of onlookers was gathered outside on the pavement, keeping a respectful distance from the two police cars that were parked near the entrance, their blue lights flashing.

  Jade parked nearby and walked towards the main entrance. Litter wafted past her feet, fluttering in the breeze. Empty crisp packets, plastic bags. A torn white envelope addressed to Mr Themba Msamaya caught her eye. She stopped and picked it up, handling it carefully, because it had a dodgy-looking brown stain on it.

  It was from an organisation called ATCSA Human Resources, with an address in Kempton Park. Business correspondence, she supposed. Perhaps Msamaya had applied for a job with them. She didn’t know, because the envelope was empty.

  Jade tossed it into one of the steel bins nearby and, since there were no policemen controlling access to the block of flats, started walking up the stairs only to hear heavy footsteps above her. Just as she reached the first landing, she saw Moloi at the top of the next flight, with a uniformed cop closely behind him. He was on his cellphone, gabbling out instructions.

  The policeman was the first to see her.

  ‘Lady, go back downstairs. Out of the building, please.’

  Moloi looked up and saw Jade. He paused, turned to his colleague and held up a hand while continuing with his phone conversation.

  ‘Yes. Then get hold of Inspector De Wet from Organised Crime. Tell him I’m going to have to reschedule our meeting.’ He paused. ‘Yes. Yes, the team briefing is still on. Same time. OK. Thanks.’

  He pocketed his phone and walked down the stairs to Jade.

  ‘What are you doing here?’ For once, the usual disapproval in his tone was missing.

  ‘I came to talk to Themba Msamaya.’

  ‘Well, you can’t, because he’s been murdered. Earlier this morning, from the look of it.’ The stocky detective turned to the uniformed policeman. ‘You go on down. I’ll be a while here.’

  She took a deep breath. ‘What happened?’

  ‘He was stabbed. Twice. First in the stomach, then in the chest. The knife’s still in the chest wound.’

  Jade’s breath caught in her throat. In her mind’s eye, she could see the bloody scene where Amanda’s body had been found. She had suffered two knife wounds, just like Msamaya. A stomach wound and a fatal chest wound.

  ‘It’s a pattern,’ she said. ‘Amanda Bolton, the scuba instructor who was stabbed to death in Richards Bay, was killed in exactly the same way. The only difference is that the murderer removed the knife.’

  Moloi’s expression hardened. It wasn’t difficult for Jade to guess what he was thinking.

  Serial killer. A detective’s worst nightmare.

  ‘We need to find the link,’ Jade said. ‘They know—knew—each other. He sent Amanda a postcard. There is a connection there.’

  Moloi nodded, but didn’t speak.

  ‘I’ve been thinking about what happened down at St Lucia,’ Jade continued. ‘We got caught up in a big crime. Something that had been planned for months beforehand. The people behind it were ruthless and clever, and they were careful. They were so careful, in fact, that we should never have known about it.’

  Moloi’s face remained expressionless. Jade carried on talking, but she couldn’t help wondering what the stocky cop was thinking.

  ‘The only reason the criminals’ attention was drawn to our resort was because of a blackmail attempt made on one of them by a mystery person—apparently a woman.’

  On hearing this, Moloi’s gaze sharpened.

  ‘I don’t think it was really blackmail, though,’ Jade continued. ‘It was purposely done to bring trouble to the resort. Someone knew—or found out—that the other scuba instructor, Monique, had been involved with an ex-convict with a history of violence towards women. I think the blackmail attempt was made in order to deliberately provoke that man and, at the same time, to let him know where his old victim was working.’

  ‘And why would anybody do that?’ Moloi’s voice was soft.

  ‘Because it provided a very handy smokescreen for Amanda’s murder. Monique was terrified of Bradley. She was hiding from him. The killer found that out, and twisted the situation to their advantage. They now had a previous victim—Monique. They had a known criminal who’d done serious jail time—Bradley. They baited the trap by organising the fake blackmail attempt, and then waited for Bradley to walk into it. Knowing, of course, that if the police investigated another murder that had occurred at the same time, he would end up being the first suspect.’

  Jade met Moloi’s gaze. She had no idea what he was thinking. His face gave nothing away.

  ‘Carry on,’ he said.

  ‘This person probably had no idea that Bradley was involved in a massive criminal operation or that the situation would explode the way it did. For them, that was just an extra piece of luck.’

  ‘And what would have happened if Bradley had not taken the bait?’ Moloi asked.

  Jade shrugged. ‘I think Amanda would have been murdered anyway, just like Themba Msamaya was. But by creating that smokescreen, the killer bought some time. More time to commit the next murder, and perhaps more time to make a successful getaway, since no formal suspects have been arrested yet.’

  Moloi rubbed his chin with stubby fingers, still listening intently.

  ‘You said the blackmail attempt was made by a woman?’

  ‘According to the criminals, yes. But I don’t know who she could be. Excluding me, there were only two other women at the resort, and neither of them had any obvious grudge against Amanda. No motive to murder her, still less to kill Themba Msamaya. So either you’ll have to dig deeper into their backgrounds or you’ll have to look for somebody else. Perhaps a man did it, and contacted Bradley by email or text message.’

  Moloi gave a small, humourless smile in response to her suggestion.

  ‘You made your biggest mistake there, Jade.’

  Jade frowned. What was Moloi talking about?

  ‘How do you mean?’ she asked.

  ‘You got too clever. Too brazen, as I think the expression is. You left too many clues and you were too obvious.’

  Moloi’s voice was hard and mocking, but the expression in his eyes told Jade that he was deadly serious. Captain Moloi had come to entirely the wrong conclusion about the identity of Amanda’s killer.

  ‘It wasn’t me, for God’s sake. I liked Amanda. She gave me private lessons. Because I had problems with going deep underwater, I couldn’t go out with the rest of the group.’

  ‘Convenient.’

  With a sick feeling, Jade realised that yes, it did sound that way now. She had booke
d the holiday, too. It had all been her idea.

  ‘Look, Moloi, what motive could I possibly have to …’

  ‘As both of us know, you don’t always need a motive to kill.’

  Jade felt her blood rush to her face. She opened her mouth to argue this point, but realised she could find nothing to say in her defence.

  ‘Jade de Jong, I am going to hand you over to the officer in charge of this investigation. You will accompany him to the police station, where in due course I hope you will be formally charged with the murder of Amanda Bolton.’

  ‘No! You can’t possibly make an arrest with such flimsy evidence.’

  ‘In this case, I don’t have to,’ the black detective answered smugly.

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘You already have an outstanding arrest warrant in your name. You fled a roadblock in KwaZulu-Natal after being found in possession of an unlicensed firearm.’

  ‘But I didn’t …’ Jade felt her mouth drop open in shock. The bent Metro cop who’d confiscated her gun and alerted the criminals to her whereabouts had actually had the gall to lay charges against her for leaving the roadblock after he’d disappeared.

  But how to explain all this to Moloi when he was so firmly convinced of her guilt?

  ‘We were going to send an officer round to your house today to bring you in for that,’ the detective told her. ‘Thankfully, you’ve saved us the trouble by turning up here. And by the time your forty-eight-hour custody period is over, I am more than certain that we will indeed have sufficient evidence to charge you with this other, more serious crime.’

  Before she knew what was happening, Moloi had reached out and grasped her right arm with his meaty hand and frogmarched her downstairs.

  52

  Outside, the officer in charge clipped a pair of handcuffs around Jade’s wrists. The cold clasp of the metal was uncomfortably tight and, glancing up, Jade was aware that the many bystanders were watching, fascinated, as the scenario played out. She dropped her eyes again, furious and ashamed.

  The officer made a show of frisking her for weapons and then opened the van’s back door. Moloi, who was still holding her tightly, then picked her up like a kitten by the scruff of its neck and dumped her inside.

  The door slammed shut and Jade heard a snicking sound as it was locked behind her. A moment later, the engine started with a rattle and the van lurched into motion.

  The floor was made of hard, ribbed metal with a thin layer of rubber matting over it that Jade supposed had been put there for the comfort of the prisoners. It didn’t feel very comfortable to her. As the officer drove fast down Yeoville’s potholed streets, every bounce and rattle was transferred directly to her spine.

  The window separating the driver’s cabin from the back of the van was covered with a sturdy sheet of steel mesh, as was the small and grubby window in the van’s rear. The interior was gloomy and it smelled strange. Jade thought perhaps it smelled of fear.

  She could do nothing to escape. All she could do was to brace her feet against the tyre well and her shoulders against the opposite wall, and try to find the best way of riding out the uncomfortable journey.

  Tipping sideways as the van turned a tight corner, Jade felt something hard in her jeans pocket press against her hipbone.

  Her cellphone. Although he had frisked her for weapons, the officer hadn’t taken away her phone, car keys or wallet. Jade had no doubt that these possessions would be removed as soon as they reached the police station. But for now, if she could get the phone out of her pocket.…

  With her hands cuffed behind her, it was an almost impossible exercise. Almost. Jade was very flexible and, by stretching her right arm all the way backwards until it felt like her elbow might snap, she was able to get her left hand far enough into her pocket to touch the solid shape of the phone with her fingers.

  But then the van swerved. Without her arms to balance her, Jade fell hard onto her side. She didn’t care. She had her index and middle finger firmly scissored around the phone. After some painful twisting and tugging, she managed to work it out of her pocket.

  She grasped it tightly in her left hand.

  There was only one person who could get her out of this situation, and she hoped to hell that he was not medicated, asleep or receiving a bed-bath at that moment.

  Twisting her arms round her body as far as they would go, with her muscles and tendons at screaming point, Jade was able to see the bright screen of the phone. She managed to scroll through her recently dialled numbers to find David’s. It took three tries for her to press the ‘Call’ button. Then she placed the phone, screen side up, on the rubber floor of the van, shuffled backwards on bent knees and lay down on her side, balancing herself uncomfortably on her left shoulder and pressing her ear to the phone.

  Faintly, above the rattle of the van’s transmission, she could hear ringing at the other end. It rang five, six, seven times. To her enormous relief, just as Jade was thinking it was about to go through to voicemail, her call was answered.

  ‘Kevin and I went to visit his cousins last night,’ Naisha said chattily.

  Lying, propped up on pillows, in the high-care ward, David watched her stroking the dark, shiny hair of the boy by her side—not a young child any longer, he realised with a jolt, but a boy who had started to sprout upwards like a runner bean and was only a couple of years away from being a teenager.

  Naisha’s other hand rested protectively on the small bump beneath her red blouse. She shifted her feet, as if finding standing uncomfortable.

  ‘Go and get that plastic chair in the corner, please, Kev,’ she said.

  The boy fetched the chair and placed it carefully next to the bed.

  ‘Watch out,’ David warned. His voice was still hoarse and weak, and talking still made his chest hurt. ‘Those seats are quite flimsy.’

  Naisha lowered herself carefully down onto the seat with a sigh of relief and smothered a yawn.

  ‘Kev wanted to go to the beach for a swim today, but I don’t think we’ll have time,’ she told him. ‘We’re flying back tomorrow morning, and we have to see Auntie Bhavna and Uncle Sanjay for lunch, and then I said I’d go round to my mother this evening after we’ve visited you again.’ She turned to look at her son. ‘Maybe next time, OK?’

  ‘Let him swim,’ David croaked, taking in his boy’s disappointed face. ‘Can’t you make time … in the afternoon? I’m sure … he won’t want to spend all day … with relatives.’

  ‘Well, it’s not often that we get down to KwaZulu-Natal, you know,’ Naisha snapped, her tone defiant. ‘I have family obligations. And my relatives all live in Durban, which is a long drive from here and it’s already half past ten.’

  David exchanged a sympathetic glance with Kevin. He remembered visiting Bhavna and Sanjay years ago. They lived in a tiny house in Pinetown. The interior had been hot and airless, stuffed with enough furniture and knick-knacks to stock a fair-sized shop, and overrun by three small, yappy dogs. Framed photographs and artwork covered the walls. For some obscure reason, there was a huge painting, done in garish acrylics, of Christ on the Cross. Pillar-box red blood ran down his face, which had been contorted in a rictus of agony.

  After choking down a plateful of Bhavna’s extra spicy lamb vindaloo, David understood how he’d felt.

  ‘Maybe Kevin could swim … in Durban,’ he suggested.

  God, the hole in his chest. It hurt so damn much, and he knew that the badly damaged, bruised and swollen flesh would continue to cause him pain for months as it healed.

  He closed his eyes for a moment, tuning out Naisha’s chatter.

  Again, he thought of Jade and the moment when the gunman turned his weapon on them.

  Struggling with her seatbelt, she hadn’t looked scared. Not Jade. He clearly remembered the expression on her face being one of pure frustration.

  He could so easily have ducked down out of harm’s way. But the thought had not even occurred to him. He’d simply leaned forward
to present himself as a more appealing target for the deeply tanned man.

  Why had he done that? He was a married man, soon to become a father of two. What he had done was completely irresponsible.

  It had been crazy.

  ‘… And you are looking tired. Your face is quite drawn. Do you need more pain medication?’

  Naisha’s voice intruded once again into his troubling thoughts.

  ‘Think I’m OK, thanks,’ he managed.

  And then his cellphone started to ring.

  He opened his eyes and lifted his right hand—slowly, as if he was moving through glue. The movement caused him to hiss in agony.

  ‘Here, let me. Let me.’

  Pushing herself up from her chair, Naisha hurried round the bed to the table where David’s phone lay.

  She picked it up, glanced down at the screen.

  David’s stomach clenched in dread as he saw her expression darken.

  The police van hit a pothole with a bump that knocked the phone away from Jade’s ear and sent it sliding down underneath her chest. She wriggled along the floor, hoping to hell that David wouldn’t hang up and force her to repeat the whole painful process again.

  ‘Hello?’ she said, squirming to get her ear close enough to the phone. ‘Hello? You there, David?’

  Jade recoiled as a woman’s voice spat down the line at her.

  ‘I cannot believe your cheek. I just cannot believe the cheek of you, Ms Jade de Jong, you inconsiderate floozy. Calling my husband on his cellphone while his family is visiting him in hospital.’

  Jade’s eyes closed briefly and she suddenly felt sick.

  It was Naisha who’d answered and with every word she spoke, Jade felt her hopes of rescue slipping away.

  The squeak of shoes moving over linoleum. No doubt, Naisha was walking away from David’s bedside to continue the conversation in a more private place so that she could speak her mind freely.

  ‘You are a nuisance,’ she heard the other woman announce. ‘Nothing but a blasted nuisance, running after my husband like a … like a …’ Clearly unable to find an appropriate simile, Naisha continued, now in full flow, ‘Do you know how hurtful it was for me to find out that you invited him on holiday? And all this while I am expecting his child? If he hadn’t gone down to St Lucia, he wouldn’t have nearly been killed. You do realise that, don’t you? Now, do me just one favour, please. Leave our family alone. Do not contact David again. I will be turning his phone off now. He needs to rest. Are you understanding me, girl? Are you?’