“Wi-fi cameras,” he said. “Hendrik bought a bunch of them, wanted security on his stash of guns. I helped him install them in his storeroom and the corridors around it, even put one in the Railway Bar so we can watch his buddies getting pissed.”
He looked down at the screen and swiped his finger across it. The image changed to show a wide corridor, Roelof swiped again and the interior of a bar appeared. A motley collection of young men in khaki sat at the bar tables with tankards of beer.
“Or we can watch them getting killed,” said Roelof.
“They’ll have security cameras,” I said. “How are you planning on getting into the bar?”
“That’s the whole point.” Roelof smiled again. “Remember the bombings in Sri Lanka? The videos they showed afterwards, the black guys with the rucksacks carrying the bombs.”
“You expect my friend to carry a bag of explosives for you?”
Roelof shook his head. “Not carry it. They are strapped to him. And to Hendrik. I’m not making any mistakes this time. The black guy with the bag is how the media will explain it.”
“I wouldn’t be so sure. The police aren’t as stupid as you think.”
“Oh, but it’s not about the police,” said Roelof. “It’s about the media. It’s always about the media. It’s what Piet’s little journalists say that counts.”
“What will they say?”
“It’s genocide, isn’t it? They’re killing us. Every day a farmer dies. Not just any farmer – a white farmer. And the world ignores it.”
“But it isn’t genocide. You killed those people in the church. You locked the door, killed them all and then slipped out the back. Did you help break down the front door to show the world what you’d done?”
“The world is full of stupid people. They need to be told the truth: it is genocide.”
“And Piet van Rensburg will tell them?”
“Piet controls the media. When Hendrik dies, he will tell them. He puts up this big act of being disappointed by poor little Hennie, but the only person who means anything to Piet is that nasty little snivelling piece of shit. Thirty-three people – he didn’t care. A hundred people, fifty thousand … Piet won’t care. But one beloved son. Believe me: he will sit up and take notice.”
“That must be hard for you,” I said. “To see how he dotes on his son.”
Roelof’s eyes were dancing a little from the mounting tension.
“As his nephew,” I added.
“Nephew?” Roelof was not able to hide his surprise.
“You are Piet’s nephew, aren’t you, Roelof? Piet’s sister’s son. It was you who survived the attack on the farm. Did you break out of the mental home they put you in? Or did your uncle come and get you?”
“They locked me away.”
“I know they did, but then your uncle gave you freedom. A new start, a new name, a new life. And now you reward him by killing his son.”
“I saved his son the last time. I made sure he wasn’t in the church. And what thanks did I get?”
“But today? You plan to kill Hendrik today?”
“Piet didn’t understand what happened in the church. Still didn’t see it. He will understand when Hendrik dies.”
“Hendrik must die so that Piet starts a crusade and spreads the myth of white genocide?”
“What myth?” Roelof’s face hardened and his eyes glinted. “There’s no myth, only ignorance.”
I said nothing.
“There’s no myth,” said Roelof again, and his voice was rising with anger. “They are killing us in our homes, on our farms, in our beds. They are killing us!” He took a deep breath and let it out in a sigh as emotion finally cracked the shell. “Don’t tell me it’s a myth. I’ve seen it. I know all about it. I was ten years old. My mother was holding me when their gunshots took her life from her. She was looking at me, lying beside me where she had fallen when their bullets tripped her up. She was trying to hold me closer, and then it was only her eyes and her blood. She was gone forever, and they did it because she was white. Don’t talk to me about myth. I’ve seen it.”
Roelof stood abruptly and took his tablet up to the wall of glass. He looked out over the neat green field, the empty stands, and dark looming clouds. He held up the device like he was raising a glass for a toast. He lifted his thumb to hear the clicking sound again.
“Piet will see it,” he said. “He won’t see it close-to, but it will make an impression. And I’ll be standing right beside him. It won’t be a small bang. There’s enough explosive strapped to Hendrik and your fat friend to put on quite the show. It’s going to be impressive. Won’t be much left of them.”
“It won’t be put down to genocide, though. It’s a mixed crowd.”
“Not over there.” Roelof indicated the western stand. “That bar in the Railway stand is where Hendrik goes before the game. Him and all his little buddies. It’s their thing, meeting here every week, and everyone knows it. The darkies stay clear.”
I said nothing.
“Martyrs to the cause,” he said. “They’ll achieve far more dead than alive. Have you seen the ‘White Africans’ press releases? They’re embarrassing.”
He turned to me. “Who are you?” he asked suddenly. “Malcolm – the pilot – said you were snooping around after the church thing. Before Kruger, before you hooked onto Melissa and she brought you in like a lost puppy dog. What are you? Police?”
I gave no answer. We stood in silence for a moment, then Roelof made a scoffing sound.
“No, not police; your friends aren’t police, that’s for sure. Who cares, it will all be over soon. Piet’s little journalists can figure out who you are when they list the dead. I’ll read all about it then. Come on, it’s getting late, let’s go see the boys.”
Twenty-Six
We emerged into the plush corridor with the antique photographs and Roelof scanned up and down to make sure we were alone. At the far end of the corridor was a service access door, which Roelof expected me to push open. It revealed a staircase of raw concrete. Roelof asked me to wait and pointed his small Ruger at me.
“Raise your hands,” he said, and the hand with the Ruger shook.
I raised my hands. The Ruger is not a very impressive gun, but at close range it’s a good enough reason to do what the bearer asks.
“I guessed that black gun was yours,” he said. “The fat guy didn’t know what to do with it. You know what was funny?” Roelof placed his Ruger against my chest and leaned in towards me. His eyes were dancing with the tension. “Do you know what was funny?” he repeated.
I shook my head. It occurred to me I could end the charade now, with Roelof teetering out of control. But I had no idea where he was holding Fat-Boy and Hendrik, and turning the tables on him would only jeopardise them. From what I knew of Roelof, he would have something up his sleeve in case anything went wrong. Roelof saw something in my eyes, and backed away to safety.
“Don’t try anything stupid. You need me alive; and conscious. If I die, they die too. You understand?”
I understood.
“What’s funny,” he said, “is that Hendrik helped me bring the fat guy in. He said to me: ‘What the fuck are we bringing this kaffir for?’” Roelof gave a barking laugh. “You know what I said? ‘He’s injured,’ I said, ‘we need to help him.’”
Roelof tried to laugh again, but it got stuck in his throat. Disappointed that I wasn’t showing any hilarity, he gave me a push, and I stumbled down the stairs. Roelof was so overexcited he didn’t realise he still hadn’t checked me for weapons.
Hendrik and Fat-Boy were strapped to broken metal chairs, and had strips of towel bound through their mouths so they couldn’t call out for help. They were sitting side by side facing the door of a narrow room, the sides of which were lined with cupboards and piles of boxes.
“Welcome to Hennie’s little stash,” said Roelof. One of the cupboard doors was slightly ajar, revealing racks of automatic weapons.
It looked as if all the air
had been let out of both Hendrik and Fat-Boy in the way they both slumped low in their seats. Exhaustion and pain were written all over Fat-Boy’s face, but when he looked up and saw me, his eyes filled up. Hendrik’s reaction was less emotional but made up for that in confusion.
“Look who stopped by,” said Roelof, as he locked the door carefully behind him. “Mossie’s joining in, so we must take some of your sweeties away, Hendrik.”
Hendrik was not wearing his shirt. His broad chest had been plastered with layer upon layer of grey duct tape. Beneath the tape were rectangular shapes and linking them were a series of red and black wires.
“So, I’ll go over the rules again,” said Roelof. “We don’t want any mistakes, do we? I’ll do this in English or do you want it in Afrikaans, Hennie?”
Hendrik was staring at the floor. Roelof tired of his unresponsive audience, and gave a small sigh. As the tension in him built, his madness grew and the opaque shell of personality he had created for himself started cracking. What was emerging was a very different Roelof. Whereas the shell had been cold, reserved, but palatable, the new Roelof was mean, conniving and somewhat resembled the slimy translucent larva of a subterranean worm. He placed his Ruger back into a holster beneath his arm, went behind Hendrik and untied the strip of towel.
Hendrik took a gasping breath, looked at me and said, “Fuck.”
“Rule number one,” announced Roelof as he ripped a strip of the duct tape off Hendrik’s back. “No deviation from the route. Deviate and you die. It’s simple. Because I see everything, remember? Everything. We’ve got cameras in the corridors, and if you step off the route, I press the button, and you die sooner. You get it?”
Roelof held up the piece of duct tape he had ripped from Hendrik’s back and stared at it in horror.
“You’re disgusting, Hennie. You know that? Look at all this hair!” He held up the duct tape for me to see the swathes of hair that had stuck to it, then waved the tape in Hendrik’s face. Hendrik closed his eyes and said “Fuck” again.
“Oh forget it,” said Roelof. “I’ll just shoot Mossie. I won’t deal with your hygiene issues now, Hennie. Not now, so close to the end.” Roelof threw the offending strip of duct tape to the floor and tore another length off the roll.
“What the fuck you doing?” he shouted suddenly and fumbled his Ruger out of its holster to point it at me. I was kneeling in front of Fat-Boy and was lifting the blood-soaked shirt off his belly. Fat-Boy’s big eyes watched me fearfully. His overalls had been pulled down to the waist and the top half hung behind him like the skin of a moulting reptile. The bulletproof vest had been taken off and lay on the floor beside him with a bag full of explosives taped to it, an improvised suicide vest.
“I need to stop the bleeding,” I said.
“You’ll do nothing.” Roelof’s voice had pitched up, and he waved the Ruger at me.
“I thought that you wanted him to carry a bag into that bar? At this rate, he’ll be unconscious before he gets to the door. We need to take the towel out of his mouth so he can breathe.”
The Ruger wobbled as a fresh wave of anger washed over Roelof. “You can carry the bag, Mossie, and he can lean on you, for all I care,” he said.
“That’s not really going to work for your closed-circuit cameras, is it? What kind of suicide bomber has someone else carry the explosives while they help them into the target zone?”
“He’ll shout,” said Roelof, as if we were running through all the permutations. “People will hear.”
“He’ll not shout.” I stood up and moved behind Fat-Boy. Roelof backed away, but held the Ruger up as if he was going to use it. I ignored it, untied the towel and pulled it clear of Fat-Boy’s mouth. He let out a sigh as if the air had been trapped in him. Then he drew a rasping breath. He didn’t shout.
I used the towel to wipe the blood off his stomach and found the entry wound. A neat hole that was filled with pulsing dark blood. It was a little off to the side, and difficult to tell at what angle the bullet had entered. It could have ruptured any number of organs, which could prove life threatening. The only thing I could do now was stop the blood loss. The worst case was probably that stomach acid or intestinal bacteria had leaked out, which could cause peritonitis, an infection that would kill him within about twelve hours. I’d seen that happen in Afghanistan. I ripped a piece of the towel and told Roelof to pass me the duct tape. I plugged the hole with the towel and Fat-Boy howled with the pain. Roelof struck him on the head with the butt of the Ruger. Fat-Boy swallowed the cry.
“For fuck’s sake,” said Roelof, and he held his head up to listen for trouble. I wrapped the duct tape several times around the belly and bound it tight. I looked up to find Fat-Boy’s eyes on me.
“That’s the last time,” said Fat-Boy with a weak voice. “The last time your lily-white fingers touch me, you hear me, white man?”
I felt a rush of relief.
“Stand the fuck up,” shouted Roelof. “Get away from him.” He was losing control now. His glasses had been knocked slightly skew when striking Fat-Boy, and his eyes were dancing with tension. I raised my hands and waited for him to calm down. He puffed out his cheeks and panted rapidly, like he was about to swim underwater.
“Let’s all calm down,” I suggested. “You don’t want to be firing that Ruger of yours just yet, Roelof. It will attract attention, so we’ll all just calm down a little.”
Roelof puffed a bit, then he lowered the gun and straightened his glasses. He beckoned me over to him and laid his gun on the shelf while he bound my hands behind my back.
“My father will kill you,” said Hendrik suddenly. Roelof paused in his knot tying, and he laughed. A forced laugh with no humour in it.
I was facing Hendrik and saw the way he slumped in his chair, his chin low and his gaze on the floor in front of him. There is a dangerous moment when the unwilling subject of an interrogation suffers from a loss of hope. The moment the subject loses the last thread of hope that there is a way out of the situation, something worth fighting for. When that happens, everything changes. And I suspected that Hendrik had lost that hope. Roelof was unaware of it. He had no training, and like most bullies thought that the harder he pushed, the better would be the results. But seeing Hendrik’s drooping head and hearing the dull, flat tone of his voice, I wondered whether he had been pushed too hard. And that was bad news for us.
Believing that we could survive was our only chance at survival.
Roelof had planned his day down to the smallest detail, but it was what Chandler would call a ‘dry’ plan. It hadn’t accounted for any of the ‘wet’ stuff. The other human beings that were involved. And Roelof was not good with other human beings.
His plan was a simple one. Fat-Boy and Hendrik would leave the storeroom shortly before the whistle blew for the main match of the day. The crowds would be mostly settled by then. Roelof would accompany them to the fire exit door into the main corridor. There he would leave them, to take his place in the box with Hendrik’s father, where he would monitor their progress towards the bar. Hendrik’s fellow activists would be anxiously awaiting his arrival, thanks to an urgent and intriguing message that Roelof had forced Hendrik to send to his second-in-command. Any deviation from the plan and Roelof would release the button.
In case we didn’t understand what releasing the button would mean, Roelof conducted his final checks in front of us. He placed a small receiver box on the floor and switched it on. Roelof’s nifty little joystick device was also switched on and he depressed the button. The receiver had a small LED light which glowed a menacing red. Roelof counted down for us all, and a little before zero he released the button. The red LED changed to green and a small spark jumped between the two wires that Roelof held close together for increased effect.
“You’ll not get away with this,” I said. “It’s not too late to call it off.”
Roelof made an effort to laugh at that, although it sounded like the yapping of a small dog.
“The police know Q’s brother was frozen,” I said. “They know the DNA was planted.”
Roelof’s eyes blinked quickly in surprise.
“How do you know what the police know?” he asked.
“Did you kill Q’s brother?”
Roelof shook his head. “Hennie did. When Nqobeni came to the lodge, shouting and screaming, I knew Hennie had gone too far. You did it, Hennie, didn’t you? You killed that priest.”
Hendrik stared at the floor and said nothing.
“He only told me after I’d calmed Nqobeni down and sent him back to the village. The stupid brother had chased Hennie all the way to the lodge.” Roelof turned to me. “Hennie said he only gave a warning shot, but I went out to be sure, and found him lying there in the bush. Hennie had panicked and dragged him off the road.”
“Why did you put him in the freezer?”
“I’d had an idea, you see. A way to show the world the truth, but I needed time. He had to die only after I’d finished in the church so everyone would know it had been him. So I put him in the big freezer at the lodge. That way he didn’t rot away before I was ready. I found his phone on him and sent a message to Nqobeni. They spoke my language, Zulu. I told him not to worry, said ‘I’m going to become a saint’. I made his brother a saint. He should have thanked me.”
“And you killed Q too?”
Roelof gave a small smile.
“Bribed a prison guard. It wasn’t hard. Nobody really cared.”
“You will not get away with this,” I said.
“Now this is the important bit,” said Roelof, ignoring my comment. He pointed at a small box taped to Hendrik’s chest. It looked like the kind of portable battery you could buy in the airport duty free for charging mobile devices. It had two rows of tiny blue LED lights.
“You know what this is, don’t you, Hennie?”
Hendrik stared at the floor. Roelof realised he couldn’t see the box on his chest, so he reached for the suicide vest he had prepared for Fat-Boy. He showed us the same small box attached to it.
Murderous Page 29
