Gallows Hill (28 page)

Clare walked
into the glare of his headlights. ‘I asked them to call you. I didn’t know what else to do.’

‘Clare,’ he said. ‘What happened to you?’

‘Wrong place, wrong time, Shorty,’ she said, ruefully.

‘Where’s Faizal?’

‘He’s in Mpumalanga,’ said Clare. Her legs gave way. She sank to the ground. ‘He’s not picking up.’

‘Come,’ said Shorty de Lange. ‘This doesn’t look like a happy crowd.’

He helped her to his bakkie, found a Coke, handed it to her. ‘Here,’ he said, ‘drink this. It’s warm, but the sugar will help with the shock.’

‘Thanks, I need it.’

He looked at the scene. ‘What a fokken mess. What happened?’

‘I was hijacked,’ said Clare.

‘So, where’s the bugger?’

‘Gone,’ she said. ‘Into the bush.’

The traffic police were shining their torches at the
scrub. The beams of white light only emphasised the darkness, the forbidding expanse into which the man had vanished.

‘They’ll have him soon, then,’ said De Lange. ‘Only two kinds of men could disappear in that bush. Soldiers, or the gangsters who live nearby.’

‘That’s where my money is,’ said Clare.

‘You still working with Faizal on this Gallows Hill business?’ asked De Lange.

‘Kind of,’ said Clare. She began to shake as shock set in. ‘He knew me.’

‘You know him?’

‘Never seen him in my life,’ she said. ‘But he called me doctor.’

A siren howled. The ambulance arriving.

‘Look here – he left this behind in the car,’ said Clare.

De Lange opened the bag.

‘This guy’s been watching
Dexter
way too fokken much.’ He turned to one of the uniformed policemen.
‘I want everything,’ he said. ‘DNA, prints, the lot. See if there are any hits. Hond Williams – this time I’m going to nail this boknaaier. Ag sorry but he thinks he owns the city just because he’s working with main ous who’re buying up land. Hey, Clare,did you phone Faizal?’ De Lange pulled out his phone.

‘He got a new phone number,’ said Clare. ‘I’d forgotten.’

‘Miracle that it’s here,’
he said, handing it to her.

Clare found Riedwaan’s new number and gave it to him.

‘Now go home, Clare. Stay out of trouble,’ said De Lange. ‘It’ll kill him if anything happens to you.’

The ambulance door opened.

‘We need to get you to casualty, ma’am,’ said the medic.

‘I’m okay,’ said Clare, but the fight had gone out of her.

The paramedics helped her in and shut the door.

Shorty de Lange walked down the embankment to where the skid marks ended. There were no tracks where the crowd had jostled, hoping for a closer look, for a body, maybe. There had been blood on the rear door of the car. People were drifting off now, the ambulances gone, the action over. Only a couple of cops still taking statements, though not many were forthcoming. A hard-scrabble life was
easier if one heard nothing, said nothing. De Lange walked on a bit, towards the ominous dark smudge beyond the shacks. Dense Port Jackson scrub. A man who lived by his wits might easily disappear into it.

He climbed a mound of sand and surveyed the open land that stretched towards the trees. It was a fair distance to the nearest road, a difficult a walk in the sand for a bleeding man, with
scrub clawing at his legs. Discarded cans and bottles glinted in the moonlight. There were countless breaches in the fence, the mouths of paths into the trees. De Lange stood in the shade of one of the larger trees. He lit a cigarette.

He tried to put himself in the man’s skin. It was not an easy fit.

The hijacker had waited for Clare, a spider waiting for its prey. The cable ties, the
rope, the duct tape – tools of a predator. De Lange moved along the concrete fence separating the shacks from the bush. He moved from breach to narrow breach, looking for a bloodstain, for a sign.

Nothing.

He surveyed the terrain again.

Still nothing.

‘He didn’t go that way.’

De Lange looked down. A ragged boy stood clutching a satchel to his chest. He had the body of ten-year-old,
the eyes of an old man.

‘You saw him?’

The boy nodded, his eyes looking up at De Lange.

‘Why aren’t you at home?’ said De Lange, looking at his watch. ‘Does your mother know you’re out here?’

‘My mother’s boyfriend is visiting her. He is drunk. It is better if I am not there.’ The boy hunched his shoulders, looked down, as if the shame of it was his. ‘I cannot help her when he
is angry. If I am inside, he is more angry. I come outside. Is safer.’

De Lange squatted down so that he was at eye-level with the child. ‘D’you want an officer to take you home, seuntjie?’

The boy shook his head, pushed his satchel towards De Lange. ‘I was here. The car. It crashed. I saw the man who had the white lady there. Please,’ he said. ‘You must take this away.’

‘Your school
bag?’ asked De Lange, perplexed.

‘It is the gun, sir.’

‘Whose?’ asked De Lange. ‘Your mother’s boyfriend’s gun?’

The boy shook his head again.

‘The man. He is in the back. He get out of the car. The people come. They want to kill him because the car crash into the house. But he is too fast. He went through the fence, yes, but he did not go to the bush. He come back over that side.’
The boy nodded towards a gap in the fence. ‘I pick up this. Then he come back. I hide. I watch. He is looking for something, hunting,’ said the boy. ‘Like a jackal, for this.’

De Lange held out his hand and the boy handed him the satchel. Inside was an old military-issue pistol. Army bases leaked like sieves if the price was right.

‘Where did you find it?’ asked De Lange.

‘Just there,’
the boy pointed to the fence. ‘But the people are looking, the boere in their uniforms too. I hide the gun. Then I see you.’

‘Where’d he go?’ asked De Lange.

‘He just walk there,’ pointing at an opening between the tightlypacked shacks. ‘Then he’s gone.’

De Lange looked at the maze of dwellings, the narrow alleys. A man with blood on his face would not draw too much attention here,
late at night.

‘Can you tell me what he looked like?’

He radioed the patrol vehicles, gave them the details, the child’s description – a thin black man, dark shirt, dark trousers, shoes. Ten thousand men matching that description in this area alone.

‘You’re a good boy,’ said De Lange, putting his phone away.

‘I don’t want him to find it, the gun,’ the boy said quietly.

‘Who?’
asked De Lange, looking down at the child.

‘My mother’s boyfriend,’ he replied, his voice low. ‘Last time when he was drunk, he only had a brick. So he couldn’t kill her properly. With a gun he can.’

De Lange walked back to his vehicle. He weighed the pistol in his hand, thinking about Clare Hart, how she had short-changed death. The gun was too clean to belong to a gangster, that he knew
from experience.

He sat in the car for a while after he had written up his notes, watching the sky. Then he started the car. He was closer to the Ballistics Unit and his office and a hot cup of Nescafé than he was to his wifeless, childless Goodwood house with sour milk in the fridge and fok-all else.

He turned onto the N2. He might as well go to work. He was only a couple of hours early,
anyway, and he liked to work alone, in stillness. A few test-fires of this little baby might turn up an interesting ballistic history. Besides, he owed Faizal a favour from a long way back, and he was not a man who liked to be in debt.

‘Sorry, Captain.’ Du Randt knelt beside Riedwaan. ‘I didn’t know it was you. A man gets so fokken jumpy, alone at night.’

‘You said it,’ said Riedwaan, gripping his shoulder. Blood seeped through his fingers.

‘Lucky I always fire a warning shot first. My training, mos,’ said Du Randt.

‘I’m grateful,’ said Riedwaan.

‘Come sit in the house, I’ll fix you up.’

A bachelor’s
kitchen. Dishes in the sink. A pot of stew on the stove. A bowl of rice in the microwave. A television at the end of the table.

‘What’re you doing here anyway?’ he asked, angling a light towards Riedwaan. ‘You look bad.’

‘Next door,’ said Riedwaan. ‘It’s a mess there.’

‘Let me fix you first,’ he said. ‘You’re bleeding. Lucky my wife left me. She’d have a fit with so much mess in the
kitchen.’

Du Randt poured him a brandy. ‘Swallow this,’ he said. ‘Then it won’t hurt when I clean this.’

He fetched a vet’s box and opened it up.

Riedwaan took off his shirt, gritting his teeth as Du Randt cleaned the flesh wound.

‘I need to stitch this.’

‘Do it,’ said Riedwaan.

‘It’s going to hurt,’ said Du Randt. ‘Drink some more brandy.’

He poured Riedwaan another
glass.

Three quick stitches, and it was done. Du Randt bandaged it up.

‘I’m really sorry,’ he said. ‘But I wasn’t the only oke trying to shoot you tonight. I was jumpy because I thought I heard gunfire. I was right.’

‘You were dead right,’ said Riedwaan. ‘And the others weren’t the type to fire warning shots.’

‘You were at Jakkalseinde?’

‘Ja,’ said Riedwaan.

‘It’s Aaron
Mtimbe’s land,’ said Du Randt. ‘Malan is his lapdog.’

‘Was,’ said Riedwaan.

‘He’s dead?’ asked Du Randt.

‘Bullet right through the middle of his forehead,’ said Riedwaan. ‘That would kill anyone, even a lawyer.’

‘Who shot him?’ asked Du Randt.

‘Hard to tell,’ said Riedwaan. ‘There was a lot going on.’

‘Malan made Mtimbe a lot of money,’ said Du Randt. ‘If you’re afterhim,
if you get in his way, he’ll kill you. There’s a list of people – ordinary people who’ve tried to stand up to him and his cronies. All dead. Every one of them.’

Du Randt poured a brandy for himself.

‘Mtimbe has the province tied up, and he’s expanding,’ he said. ‘No rainbow nation up here. The dream dies when Mtimbe and hisfriends come along. And if anyone challenges him, he says he didn’tstruggle
to be poor.’

‘He’s not the first man to use that line,’ said Riedwaan.

‘He didn’t struggle at all. He wasn’t even failing woodwork when the struggle happened. He’s sommer a parasite,’ said Du Randt, flicking on the TV, muting the news.

‘Your friend Aaron Mtimbe is expanding into Cape Town.’

‘Don’t tell me the story,’ said Du Randt. ‘Land for free, his the only tender considered.
Anyone who gets in his way is pushed aside. If they don’t get the message quick enough, they have a convenient accident that nobody bothers to investigate.’

‘Good summary,’ said Riedwaan. ‘Except, nobody’s dead yet.’

‘They will be soon,’ said Du Randt, ‘unless they’re good at running – like you. So, is the Mtimbe expansion thing the reason you’re up here?’

‘Following things back to
source,’ said Riedwaan.

‘Did you get what you wanted?’ asked Du Randt.

‘I think so,’ said Riedwaan, feeling the iPod zipped up in his inside pocket. ‘The start, anyway.’

‘Enough to put them away?’

‘More than enough,’ said Riedwaan. ‘Doesn’t mean to say it will happen, though.’

‘How do you keep going – same old story, over and over?’

‘How do you keep farming?’ asked Riedwaan.

A cricket chirped in the corner of the kitchen and a silence fell between the two men.

‘I suppose you need to get back to Cape Town,’ said Du Randt.

‘I do,’ said Riedwaan. ‘Fast.’

‘And alive,’ said Du Randt. ‘I’ll drive you.’

‘It’s over a thousand kilometres,’ said Riedwaan.

‘They’ll kill you if they find you,’ said Du Randt. ‘We can start now. We’ll be there tomorrow.’

Du Randt handed Riedwaan a set of faded overalls. ‘If you wear these, I’ll get you there. If I know these guys, there’ll be roadblocks up everywhere, looking for you.’

‘And wearing farm-worker blue is going to help me?’ asked Riedwaan.

‘Listen, around here, no one’s ever going to stop a farmer whose worker’s on the back of a bakkie in the rain, while he sits in front with his dog,’
said Du Randt. ‘You think we like to rush things up here?’

‘No,’ said Riedwaan. ‘Some things obviously take longer to change than others.’

‘It’s going to save your life,’ said Du Randt.

Riedwaan’s shoulder throbbed as he pulled the overalls on. When he pulled on the beanie that Du Randt handed him, and took off his socks, he almost looked the part.

‘Tell me if you ever need a job,’
smiled Du Randt.

‘Might be sooner than you think,’ said Riedwaan. ‘You got some headphones for me?’

Du Randt found some in a drawer. He gathered up what he needed for the road – biltong, water – and locked the kitchen door. The dog fell into step behind him. It hopped into the passenger seat when Du Randt opened the door. Riedwaan climbed onto the back. He sat with his back against a hessian
sack. His companions were three fat-tailed sheep. They eyed him with contempt.

The bush was impenetrable, a great green creature that had turned its back to the road. Riedwaan had no way of reading it. And he did not like to think of what was behind him, how long it would be before the alert would be out.

He plugged the earphones into the iPod and listened.

Aaron Mtimbe’s high-pitched
voice holding the conversation. Some of the others were also familiar, politicians whose voices he recognised from parliamentary news reports. Others he didn’t recognise, but he reckoned they’d be easy enough to identify. One of those voices, he suspected, was lying dead in the mud not too far away. Riedwaan listened to the recording of a meeting that officially never happened.

The pop of
a champagne cork. ‘Hey, comrades, this magnum of Dom Perignon is just right for this occasion.’ Mtimbe’s smug sing-song toast to arrangements that would consolidate a malignant web of deals. Tenderpreneurs, Rita’s blood-stained recording attesting to the fact that the octopus tentacles originated in a monstrous head much higher up than even he had imagined.

Riedwaan removed the speakers from
his ears. He wasn’t surprised that Rita was dead. What was surprising was that he and Clare were still alive.