Murderous

by David Hickson

  “Is it true, Rudi?” said Piet, his voice shaking.

  Roelof turned to Piet, and he opened his mouth to say something. He didn’t notice Melissa reaching down between her legs and drawing out the blade she’d been so pleased with that evening on the farm. She flicked it, and Roelof heard the slide and click. He turned back towards her, and Melissa clasped herself against him, trapping the hand with the Ruger, and she pressed the blade into his neck, below the ear and behind the jaw. A small burst of blood spattered over her delicate hand.

  “Look at me, Roelof,” she said. “I want to see you die.”

  Roelof opened his mouth, and tried to back away, but if there was one thing Melissa was good at, it was draping herself over a man. She sliced downward and to the side, and Roelof made a horrified gasping sound. His head came forward as if that might stop the gushing blood. Melissa dropped the knife and placed a second hand around her first to keep the button depressed. Roelof tried to say something, but no more than a gurgle came out with the blood. His legs sagged, and Melissa helped him down to his knees, keeping both her hands around his trigger hand. When he was kneeling, he looked up at me as if pleading with me to end it all, and for a moment I thought I would. Out of kindness. But there was no need. He subsided onto the plush carpet and his body started to twitch.

  “What have you done, girl?” said Piet.

  Melissa looked up at him from her kneeling position beside the twitching Roelof.

  “What have you done?” repeated Piet, and his voice quavered with the horror of it. He dropped his glass, and it bounced on the soft carpet with a small clatter of ice cubes.

  Melissa couldn’t find words for what she had done, but she looked down at her hands clutching Roelof’s hand over the trigger. I went to her side, and helped her peel off first one of her thumbs, then the other, placing my thumb over Roelof’s. I found the latch and carefully slid it over the button. Roelof’s hand dropped to the floor. He was still making gurgling noises and was twitching more violently. He moved his hand as if he was going to try to crawl out of the room, but it found Melissa’s ankle and clutched at it. Melissa sobbed and turned to me. I wrapped my arms around her.

  “What the fuck!” said Piet suddenly, and it was a desperate cry. I looked up. Piet was staring at the widescreen television and his mouth was hanging open as if there were more words to come, but he’d run out of breath.

  On the screen was a long shot of a man in jeans and a dirty rugby shirt staggering onto the field. He looked terribly drunk, and already the crowd was jeering. He stopped and threw his head back as if he was about to howl.

  It was Hendrik.

  Hendrik had told us it was his greatest dream to walk through the tunnel at Newlands. But I imagined it must have been a disappointing fulfilment of that dream as he limped through the tunnel today.

  All alone. There was a security guard who had shouted something at him but had been too terrified to approach this man covered in blood, swaying from side to side as he struggled up the ramp and onto the field. There was no team around Hendrik, it was just him and his fifteen kilograms of explosive, and his thoughts of the pinpricks of blood that he had seen on the buttocks of his girl and the lies she had told him about those pinpricks. And perhaps the memories of his father’s many harsh words and the constant humiliation of having failed to gain his father’s respect.

  He emerged onto the field and was probably taken aback by the sudden sense of space and openness. Certainly the close-up camera shots of his unexpected arrival that played on the big screens in the stadium, and on the widescreen TV in the Media-Mark box showed him hesitate as he reached the field and blink as he looked around. The floodlights were on because, although it was early, the heavy rain clouds had spilt a dark ink into the sky, and from his position at the edge of the field it might have seemed to him that Roelof had released the button and that he was standing on green grass that would take him directly to the difficult questions he would face at the gates of heaven.

  Hendrik squinted up towards the boxes in the North stand. He was probably wondering why Roelof had not been true to his word. Wondering why his deviation from the planned route had not had the effect that had been promised. A shadow of a confused frown passed over his face, but by then the crowd had identified him and a great wave of jeering applause was making its way across the stadium. Hendrik started a slow limping jog onto the field. Security had moved in already to protect the players who were being herded to the far side, and from behind Hendrik a trio of security guards sprinted after him.

  They must have called out, because he turned to see them, stumbled and landed on his knees. The guards approached him, but he struggled to his feet and in one smooth movement removed his sweat-stained shirt. The crowd cheered at the prospect that this was going to be a nude ‘streaker’. Hendrik’s reputation for unpredictable behaviour and excessive alcohol consumption promised something entertaining. Hendrik looked around at the uplifting sound. The cheering of the capacity crowd might have momentarily eased his desperate need to be noticed and appreciated. I like to think so. Maybe his heart beat a little faster as he felt the adulation. But as the lifting shirt revealed Roelof’s handiwork and the crowd realised that Hendrik’s state of undress would not be all they had hoped for, they fell silent.

  A few whimpers and cries burst into the silence.

  Hendrik raised his arms above his head as if he was holding up a trophy and showing it to us all. He turned slowly about. The security guards who had been about to drag him from the field backed away. Hendrik found the North stand and looked up at the boxes. A camera below us provided a closeup of his swollen pink face. He was crying now; the tears clearing a path through the bloodstains. His mouth opened, and the world tried to read his lips.

  “What the fuck is he doing?” said Piet in Afrikaans. “What … what is he saying?” His voice was strained through a throat that allowed no air to pass, as his confusion turned to horror.

  Another camera showed us a slightly wider view of Hendrik. Under the duct tape over his heart, a single blue light shone. It started to flash.

  Hendrik looked down. I don’t know whether he saw the flashing light, but he reached down with both hands and grasped the wires that Roelof had insisted should not be removed. He looked back up towards the box and happened by chance to look directly into the lens of the camera with the closeup.

  Then he pulled the wires out.

  Roelof was not yet dead, but I think he was far enough down the path to the place he was going that he didn’t see the expression of loss on Piet van Rensburg’s face.

  But I did.

  I couldn’t look at the bright flash and ensuing fireball that removed a ton of Newlands’ pristine field and mixed it with Hendrik’s flesh and scattered it a hundred metres in all directions. Instead, I found myself looking at Piet’s face, and saw for myself the wave of horrified realisation pass over it. It started in the eyes as the pupils dilated and the tear ducts overcompensated. A slow-motion blinking of the eyelids in a desperate attempt to hide the truth and block the passage of time. Then the mouth opening to say something, but there was no breath because by then the mind had seized up and a paralysis had struck at his lungs and his heart. His voice box was an empty, echoing chamber with no breath and no muscle control. A small, stifled moan passed through his lips and his knees collapsed so that he dropped to the floor. For a moment he was kneeling before the burning altar, his eyes fixed on the place where only a moment before had stood his son, and then his head sagged and he crumpled to the floor.

  Twenty-Eight

  Chandler regained consciousness from his medically induced coma at 11 that night. The surgery to remove the metal splinters from his shoulder had been successful, and the evidence of his body’s ability to recover from previous more severe injuries had encouraged the earnest, young doctor caring for him to speed up the process.

  His eyes opened, and he stared at the ceiling for a full minute.

  “Our boy ma
ke it?” he asked.

  “The infection was severe, but they say he’ll pull through. He’s still sleeping.”

  I went to stand by the bed. He couldn’t turn, but his eyes moved onto my face.

  “We fucked it up, didn’t we, corporal?”

  “A little.”

  Chandler closed his eyes and let out a sigh.

  “We’re alive, that’s what counts.”

  “Yes,” I agreed.

  “We lost the gold,” said Chandler, “but that’s all.”

  “Our lives are worth more than all the gold,” I agreed.

  He opened his eyes and looked at me. “It was never really about the gold, was it?”

  “Fat-Boy might disagree.”

  “Be there when he comes around,” he said. “Explain it to him gently. He’ll be fine.”

  I turned to leave. When I had the door open, Chandler called out: “Corporal Gabriel.”

  I looked back at him.

  “Good job, corporal.”

  Fat-Boy groaned when he woke and called out something in anger. His eyes took some time to focus, and when they did, he showed no pleasure at the sight of me. When I had broken the news to him gently, as Chandler had suggested, tears rolled down his cheeks and he sobbed.

  “Why the fuck did you come after me? You shoulda gone back for the gold. I’m gonna tell the colonel when I see him.”

  When he had settled down, he told me he remembered very little of his ordeal. He did remember that the white prick had helped him off the truck and into a car. After that, everything became a blur.

  “You lost a lot of blood,” I said. “It’s no surprise you don’t remember.”

  “Those things I said,” said Fat-Boy. “In that room … that room we were in … I didn’t mean them.”

  “Of course not, Fat-Boy. I knew that.”

  Robyn opened her eyes the next morning, and for a moment her face was blissfully relaxed. She focused and smiled, so beautiful with her dark eyes and fine features against the sunflower pillow. But it was only a moment, and then the weight of the world returned. She propped her head up on an elbow, unconcerned that she was not wearing anything.

  “It’s a good thing,” she said to me. “That gold was cursed, I’m sure of it. We’re better without it.”

  “Sure,” I agreed. “Poorer, but better.”

  “It gives us a chance to start anew.”

  “I suppose so.”

  “That gold got in the way of everything, Ben. It confused us.”

  I nodded.

  “We’ll start again. From the beginning.”

  Robyn’s eyes held mine.

  “The beginning was a long time ago.”

  “All the way back,” she said. “No gold. No Brian. No false promises. Just you and me.”

  “That sounds like a better way of doing things,” I said.

  Robyn smiled, and I realised she might be right. Perhaps the gold was cursed.

  Twenty-Nine

  Fehrson turned the final page of the report and was surprised to find there wasn’t more. He picked up the sheaf of papers, held it by the paper clip in the corner and shook it as if hoping something more might fall out. He tossed it back onto the table with a heavy sigh.

  “It does not mention all those medical costs,” he complained, and looked up at me. “I am being charged for the treatment of a platoon of complete strangers. I see no mention of that.”

  “I thought it best to keep some details out of the report,” I said. “Given the sensitivity of the situation.”

  Fehrson sniffed, then leaned back in his chair and turned longingly towards the window as if it was calling to him. “Don’t know what you mean,” he said, but he avoided my eyes.

  “We did agree, Father,” said Khanyi in her early morning silky voice, “that it would be better if Mr Van Rensburg remained unaware of the Department’s involvement.”

  “The Department!” he scoffed. “These people are not employed by the Department.” He reached for a page bearing the crest of Groote Schuur Hospital.

  “Black man, name unknown, treated for severe infection and loss of blood from a bullet wound to the abdomen. I am being charged for that. And I can tell you it was not an economical infection. When I queried it, they referred me to a Miss Gabuza.”

  Fehrson tossed the page back onto the table and glared at Khanyi.

  “A Miss Khanyisile Gabuza.”

  Khanyisile Gabuza smiled and cleared her throat. “That man was found unconscious at the stadium, Father. He had collapsed from his injuries. A bag of explosives was strapped to him.”

  “Which is another thing I do not understand. The bomb attached to an unknown man was defused and safely removed, but the one that actually detonated happened to be the one strapped to Van Rensburg’s son. Do we care about the man carrying the bomb that did not explode? No, we do not! But I must pay for the medical charges of the people who collapsed under the weight of their unexploded bombs. And the bomb that we really care about, that we did not want to explode, did! Not only did it explode, the detonation was caught on camera, and has been going infectious.”

  “Viral,” said Khanyi.

  “Hendrik van Rensburg saved many lives by going onto the field,” I said.

  “Hmmph,” said Fehrson.

  “Piet van Rensburg has admitted to bribing doctors to allow the release of his nephew,” said Khanyisile.

  “Well, as the conclusion to an operation it can hardly be described as a success,” said Fehrson. “Which is what makes these medical bills particularly unpalatable. Who is this joker, who wandered into the hospital five hours after everyone else … three broken fingers, two broken ribs and a gunshot wound in the leg?”

  Fehrson took a moment to study the brace fitted around my three broken fingers and then raised his eyes to glare at me.

  “The whole thing is an incomprehensible debacle,” he concluded. “Wounded people popping up everywhere and expecting me to pay for them. And the one person who should not have died did so in spectacular fashion before an audience of millions.”

  A disappointed silence settled over us. Fehrson looked at the window again, but it had little to offer in the way of comfort. Heavy black clouds had rolled in over the city, and it felt as if an endless night was settling in.

  “I’m pleased that the Department has been reinstated,” I said. “That counts as a positive.”

  Fehrson grunted.

  “That is an aspect of the operation that could be considered a success,” agreed Khanyi. “And the White Africans have announced they are disbanding. The police have seized the collection of weapons on the Van Rensburg farm and the vast stash of weapons at Newlands Stadium.”

  “And the fear of genocide has faded?” I asked.

  “It has,” said Khanyi. “Although ironically the United Nations have raised the level of genocidal threat to white South Africans. Nothing to do with Minhoop, however. The Minhoop killings were murder.”

  “And one could argue that we did prevent a repeat of Minhoop,” I said.

  “Hmmph,” said Fehrson, then he turned to me. “Five hours,” he said. “I am expected to believe that this man was wounded in the course of the same abortive operation? What on earth do you think a man with three broken fingers, two broken ribs and a gunshot wound to the leg was doing for five hours?”

  “I cannot imagine.”

  “And we have this request here.” Fehrson riffled through the papers in the folder in front of him. “Here we are: Mister Riaan Breytenbach has made a claim from his hospital bed … something about government employees involved on that day in assisting in the perpetuation of a crime … let me see …” Fehrson frowned and adjusted his spectacles. He ran his finger down the page. “Request permission … search a warehouse … gold bars … docks … It is all very confusing.”

  “The department will be responding to Mister Breytenbach’s allegations?” I asked.

  Fehrson removed his spectacles and placed the paper to one side
.

  “Regrettably,” he said, “… no. We know of no government employee who might have been engaged in any such activity over that period.”

  “That’s a shame,” I said.

  “There will be no medals,” said Fehrson, “no ceremonies, or anything of that sort. Honestly, I will be happy when we have swept the whole debacle under the carpet.”

  “I will endeavour to do better next time,” I said.

  Fehrson gave a mocking laugh. “There will be no next time, my lad. This really is the end of the road for us. There was a time when I thought you showed promise. Perhaps it is a sign of my age, but everything nowadays seems so slap-dash, just messy incompetence. There was a time when I could rely upon a job to be done properly. None of this accidental blowing up of prominent society members.”

  “It would be unfair to place all the blame on Gabriel,” said Khanyi.

  “Would it? We never used to have operatives whose feelings were hurt or who protested the fairness or otherwise of our just criticism. It is the quality of operative that is the problem. Not what it used to be.”

  “Perhaps,” I suggested, “that is because your levels of remuneration are not what they used to be?”

  “Ah,” said Fehrson, and he straightened himself in his seat and gave a meaningful look at Khanyi. “Over and above your friends’ medical expenses which, with reluctance, I will bear, we do have your remuneration.” He nodded to Khanyi, who withdrew a printed sheet from the folder before her and passed it to me like it held the secret to life itself.

  “A ten figure remuneration,” said Fehrson, and he chuckled at his little joke. “Ten figures,” he repeated when neither Khanyi nor I joined in the hilarity.

  The phone number that Khanyi had smudged with her pink highlighter only a few short weeks ago was clearly displayed, and all ten digits of the number had been transcribed in bold black pen so I could read them without my glasses. I looked at the number and wondered whether I still wanted to know who it belonged to. When I had first seen it, I would have done anything to know. Now I wasn’t so sure.