Murderous

by David Hickson

“Mismanagement. Corruption. The full monty,” said Fehrson.

  The two of them looked at me as if expecting some consolation, or perhaps a joining of hands and group silence in memory of the Department that was.

  “We were not invited to the church this morning then?” I asked. “You two are in mufti? I would never have guessed.”

  Neither Khanyi nor Fehrson thought that was funny. Fehrson sniffed and sipped at his whisky.

  “Who is the school friend?” I asked.

  “Name of Hendrik van Rensburg,” said Khanyi.

  “Another Van Rensburg? A descendant of the prophet?”

  “They like to claim so. But there are numerous Van Rensburgs around; open any phone book and you’ll see. Not as many as Van der Merwe, or Smith, but it’s a big family tree.”

  “You have probably heard of his father,” said Fehrson. “What with your … videos that you do. Is that what we call them?” he glanced at Khanyi.

  “Documentaries,” said Khanyi. Fehrson enjoyed expressing his contempt for the work I had engaged in since leaving his employ, and rarely missed an opportunity to do so, but Khanyi’s look dissuaded him from taking this one.

  “Big chief of Media-Mark?” I said. Piet van Rensburg was a name known to most South Africans. Recent scandals about the collusion between Media-Mark and the government had brought his name to the attention of anyone who liked to monitor the murky cesspool of South African politics.

  “Ex big chief,” said Khanyi. “He still owns the company, but the day-to-day running has been handed over.”

  “No wonder it’s blown up. Mess with Piet van Rensburg and you’ll have the entire government falling over themselves to show support for him.”

  “He is a powerful man,” admitted Khanyi. “Controls the media in this country. Control the media, and you control the people.”

  There was another brief silence.

  “You do not bite the hand that feeds you,” announced Fehrson, as if that was an idea he had just thought of.

  “And to be clear,” I said, “you’re not asking yourselves whether the Van Rensburgs took offence at your fresh-faced, naive and under-trained employee snooping around, and had him killed?”

  “No, no,” said Fehrson. “Not at all. That would be ludicrous.”

  “But you’re not sending fresh recruits in to the White Africans. You’re going for the unconventional veterans now?”

  Fehrson sipped his whisky and gave what I imagined he thought was a smile, intended to engender feelings of camaraderie. I cannot say it had the intended effect.

  “We are not sending anyone in, young man. Pending the outcome of the investigation into the Department, we cannot do anything.”

  “What is it you want me to do?”

  “Yesterday afternoon Piet van Rensburg made a phone call,” said Fehrson. “To a number provided to the younger Van Rensburg by Dirk Fourie. A number allegedly for a certain Richard Mabele.”

  “The arms dealer?”

  “Indeed,” said Fehrson.

  “Piet van Rensburg has been transporting animals to his game farm,” said Khanyi. “Dirk believed they were concealing weapons in the animal crates. Now it would seem they are looking for more weapons, in light of what happened yesterday.”

  “But it was not Richard Mabele’s number?”

  “It was one of ours,” said Khanyi. “You saw the writing on the wall. If what happened in that church yesterday was only the beginning, we are going to have a civil war on our hands before you can say ‘white supremacy’.”

  “And I could stop that?”

  “You met that policeman,” she said, “the nice one you encouraged to smoke. He needs to know about the younger Van Rensburg’s White African group.”

  “More of a private army,” suggested Fehrson.

  “We need something concrete. Some hard evidence that links the killings to the White Africans. If we could provide that, the nice policeman could do his duty.”

  “You want me to find some evidence?”

  “We are under investigation,” said Fehrson. “And you have a knack for doing things outside the constraints of the legal system.”

  “I see.”

  “We need to do something,” said Khanyi. “We cannot simply sit back and wait for this to happen again.”

  “Khanyisile will leave you with her file,” said Fehrson. “Take a look at it. That is all. If anything occurs to you, let us know. If not, there will be no hard feelings. We are mindful of the threat painted on the wall of that church, but if there is nothing we can do in this situation, we will have to leave it to the official bodies.”

  “The official bodies who have ordered the graffiti painted over before the journalists are allowed in?”

  “The same,” said Fehrson. “And they might not be wrong. The fragile state of our nation is like tinder waiting for the spark. Sometimes a little whitewash is necessary.”

  Khanyi closed her buff folder and slid it a full two inches along the table, as if she was about to perform a reluctant hand-over ceremony.

  “Make sure you go through all of it,” said Khanyi, her hand still resting on the buff file.

  It occurred to me that there might be something they weren’t telling me. Something that provided that extra glint in Fehrson’s eyes, the hint of nervousness in Khanyi’s voice.

  Above the cotton wool bed of cloud the familiar flat-topped shape of Table Mountain was floating towards us. The constant hum of the engines dropped, and the Beechcraft started to sink.

  “You might wanna check those belts again,” called the pilot. “Those clouds aren’t as friendly as they look.”

  Fehrson and I sat in the cabin's gloom and I poured us both a final whisky as he watched Khanyi being escorted to the hangar under the umbrella of our chivalrous pilot.

  “I told Khanyisile that you would not bite,” said Fehrson after a silent toast to nothing in particular. “But she insisted your recent windfall would make no difference.”

  “My recent windfall?”

  Fehrson held his glass up to the dribbling windows and tried looking at the outside world through it. It did not seem to improve his mood.

  “Breytenbach has been complaining through official channels about those gold bars taken from his ranch.”

  “Oh?”

  “The ones that disappeared about the same time you visited him.”

  “Official channels? I didn’t think that the law allowed him to store gold bars on his private property.”

  “It seems he might have stretched the law a little.”

  “He’s probably just trying to scam the insurance.”

  “He has admitted that it is more than a few bars. Speculation puts it at millions of US dollars. Tens of millions.”

  “I’ve been reading about it in the papers,” I said.

  “You were nervous,” he said. “At the roadblock.”

  I sipped at my whisky, adopted a calm expression and gave him a confident smile. Fehrson’s eyes held mine steadily, looking for the gaps.

  “You buy into that theory?” he asked. “That Breytenbach is privately funding all the road blocks simply to make it impossible for the thieves to transport the gold?”

  “I think it’s a load of nonsense.”

  “It is only a matter of time before they catch them.”

  “If there are any thieves. It might just be an elaborate insurance scam.”

  Fehrson sighed and looked out at the rain sweeping across the apron. He lacked the conviction to accuse me directly.

  “Khanyisile has a lot riding on this,” he said. “She is hoping to pull a rabbit out of the hat and prove the worth of the Department before it is closed down.”

  “How long does she have?”

  “A month, two at the most. They have cut the umbilical. We are coasting on what is left in the tank, then it is all over.”

  He turned back to me, and his clear, blue eyes warned that, perhaps for the first time today, he was speaking the truth. “I a
m giving her full control, Ben. But the truth is I am handing her the reins to a horse that has four broken legs. This Van Rensburg business has ruined us. However, if we can prevent a repeat of Minhoop, it could prove to be our saving grace. Khanyi has some risible idea that you can do the impossible. I tried to disabuse her of that belief, but you know what she is like. Do not let her down, Ben.”

  A sleek, black Mercedes nosed its way out of the hangar and across the apron towards us. Fehrson finished his whisky and checked his jacket pockets to be sure that he had not misplaced anything. He’d be travelling back to their office in the heart of Cape Town in style. I had a ten-minute walk through the rain to my rusty Fiat with its broken heater. I had not thought to bring an umbrella.

  Three

  The Cape Peninsula is a small barnacle attached to the southernmost tip of Africa, surrounded by water on three sides, and on the fourth side by a range of mountains that prevent the rain clouds from heading inland, forcing them to dump their heavy loads over the city of Cape Town and surrounding suburbs. For some reason, the winter rains always take Capetonians by surprise. They pride themselves on being in touch with the natural world: they like to stare for long periods at the flat-topped Table Mountain and track the capricious weather on their barnacle in great detail. But every year major highways are flooded, and in the smaller streets one has to ford rivers created by inadequate drainage, avoiding people clustered around cars that haven’t made it, their hazard lights blinking through the curtain of falling water.

  My apartment is in Three Anchor Bay, a jumble of houses and apartment blocks built up the slopes of the rump of Lion’s Head, the smaller mountain to the side of Table Mountain. There is never any parking nearby, and so I was thoroughly drenched by the time I reached the front door. I left a trail of water on the stairs and dripped all over the welcome mat as I discovered that I couldn’t insert my key because Robyn had left her key on the inside of the lock when bolting the door behind me.

  I rang the doorbell, hoping that Robyn hadn’t been drinking. She had been teetering closer to the edge of the abyss the past week, and I had seen the warning signs. The hunger in her eyes, the irritable moods as she denied the growing need within her. The days her will collapsed and she could not stop, then the crushing shame that followed. She had been in bed when I’d left that morning, had grumbled when Khanyi’s call had woken us, and had sat up and watched me dress, her short hair tousled and her eyes sleepy. She had pulled the duvet around her and insisted that she was not getting out of bed until the weather improved. I had hoped it might be a good day. But I’d seen the desperation in her eyes and had known that trouble was coming.

  I could hear no sign of movement in the apartment, and so I pressed the doorbell again. My neighbour’s door opened, and an anxious head poked out.

  “Is everything alright, Ben?”

  “Robyn must have her headphones on,” I said, and gave the button a prolonged push as I smiled.

  My elderly neighbour’s face tightened a little. Robyn was beautiful, well-mannered and refined. She was everything a protective neighbour like Mrs Hutchins could approve of. But Robyn was also fiercely independent, struggling with an addiction to alcohol, had a criminal record, and had served time behind bars. These details must have expressed themselves subtly because Mrs Hutchins, whose son had taken his own life during military service many years ago, and who assumed a motherly role for all men within range, could read those signs. She appeared to like Robyn, but there was something she could not quite put her finger on, and I saw it pass behind her eyes whenever Robyn was mentioned.

  My door opened, and Robyn stood there. She was dressed in an elegant eastern-style high collar square-cut dress like an Oriental business woman. She smiled at me, and the relief at seeing her sober was a physical sensation that caught my breath. Her black eyes danced a little. They were damp and red. She had been crying.

  “I’m sorry, darling,” she said, then turned her smile to Mrs Hutchins. “We’re thinking of you today, Mrs Hutchins,” she said and her face was solemn.

  I was confused for a moment until I remembered that Robyn had told me today would have been the fortieth birthday of Mrs Hutchins’ late son.

  “Of course we are,” I said.

  “Thank you, my dears,” said Mrs Hutchins, and she gave me a smile. Robyn was rewarded with another anxious glance, and Mrs Hutchins retreated into her apartment.

  “You know I love you,” said Robyn, and my heart dropped to the floor and broke. “I mean really love you,” she said.

  I had showered and changed out of my drenched clothes to discover that Robyn had packed her belongings into a suitcase that was standing at the front door. We were having coffee now at the breakfast counter, and I was trying not to acknowledge that the world was ending. Robyn had explained that she was losing her battle with addiction and refused to drag me down with her. It was something she needed to do on her own. She had smiled and used the back of her hand to wipe away her tears. The rain beat steadily against the balcony door. The sun had abandoned us forever.

  “We cannot be together, Ben,” said Robyn. “We have always known it.”

  “We have had several good weeks,” I said.

  “More than we deserved. Neither of us is normal.”

  There was certainly not much about Robyn that could be described as normal. She caused people to stop in their tracks and turn back to look again. It was not her beauty, of which I thought there was no shortage, although others might not have agreed. It was her style, her vulnerability which lay hidden behind an outer shell that was inviolable. She needed no one, and yet she needed everyone. She was an angel of innocence, and yet she was a convicted felon.

  “And don’t blame Brian. Not for this.”

  Brian Starck had been a friend of mine. And he had been engaged to marry Robyn. When Brian first introduced me to Robyn I knew I was in trouble. The build-up to our meeting had been extensive. An entire tour on the mines in Uganda with Brian clutching at me and explaining in a voice with too little breath how he had been bewitched by a girl who had spent three years in a state prison. How would he ever be able to explain that to his elderly parents back home in Yorkshire? The defence lawyers said she had been duped by a boy who was killed in the shootout when they left the bank. But that was no more than a bucket of horse shit. She could no more be duped than the Pope could have children. She was no fool, Brian said, I would see that when I met her. And I did see it. That and a lot more.

  Brian and I had served together in the British Special Forces for years, and we were the best of friends. More than that, we each owed our life to the other for the countless times we had covered one another, held the other back or pushed them away from danger. In Afghanistan, Iran, Uganda. But after meeting Brian’s ‘witch of a felon’ I started avoiding him on the breaks from our tours of duty on the mines in Uganda. I left parties early, turned around and walked out of bars when I saw him, made up excuses, declared quarantine on imaginary illnesses, spent days and nights of our leave on my own. All to avoid being struck dumb in Robyn’s presence. To avoid lying awake at night trying to rid my mind of thoughts of my best friend’s partner; the ghosts of the smiles, the moments of downcast eyes, the regretful shrugs.

  But Brian insisted I become their third wheel and share in every moment of triumph and failure in their relationship. I was the friend they called upon at three in the morning to share the champagne, and the friend who told Brian in his darkest moments on the Ugandan gold mine that it would all work out. That Robyn loved him. That I could see it. Because I could: she did love him.

  But then Brian stepped on a land mine in the Kivu region of the Congo and spattered bits of bone and blood over our captain and me. I lost my best friend and Robyn lost her fiancé. Our lives changed, and we drifted apart. It took another eighteen months for our paths to entwine again, and for me to discover that I had not been the only one with inappropriate feelings.

  “Don’t blame Brian,” said Robyn
again, bringing me back to the present with a bump, “and don’t blame your Sandy either.”

  “She’s not my Sandy,” I said, but I was just playing for time, and Robyn knew it. She finished her coffee and placed the empty mug on the counter as if we had to be careful not to make any noise. She stood up and waited for me to embrace her, which I did. Her shoulders were like the frail wings of a bird. She wheeled her suitcase to the front door and put on her Audrey Hepburn sunglasses to hide the tears.

  After she had left, I stood at the balcony door and watched my sliver of sea dance beneath the trails of rain on the glass. It looked as if the rain was settling in. It looked as if it might keep raining forever. I allowed myself ten minutes of staring out to sea, and then I sat down to make a long overdue phone call.

  Four

  Giovanni’s is a small Italian place down the road from my apartment, where a table at the window provides a better view of the sea than from my balcony, and where Aldo doesn’t count the glasses he pours. He poured me another because I was alone and this bothered Aldo. He was a man of mismatched sizes. Huge hands, narrow shoulders, a bulbous nose and a large stomach that he carried before him with pride. His name should have been Giovanni or the restaurant should have been called Aldo’s, but that would have sounded Portuguese, he told me, and he wouldn’t have wanted that. He was Italian. He stood by my table and topped up my glass again after I’d taken a sip and told him it was the best Verdicchio I had tasted. I was pretty sure it was the same Verdicchio that I enjoyed at every meal, but we did not let that impede our comfortable routine.

  “Like the United States,” he said, with an Italian click of the tongue. “Man walks into a church with a gun. Why are they doing it here now?” Aldo had delivered the afternoon papers to my table and was staring gloomily at the first photographs of the inside of the church where the Minhoop massacre had taken place. The walls had some blood splatters, and the marks where the victims had fallen were visible, but behind the altar the walls were white. There were no badly drawn hyenas, and no threatening words in Zulu.