Pale Horses

by Jassy Mackenzie

  ‘Thank you,’ she said hurriedly and disconnected. Her armpits were soaked with sweat, and the phone nearly slipped to the ground as she tried to place it in the palm of the man’s outstretched hand without actually touching his skin.

  ‘It was the hospital calling,’ she said, picking up the bags and putting them behind her seat before she climbed into the car.

  ‘The hospital?’ His tone was mocking, as if he was looking forward to catching her out in a lie.

  Back in his own seat, his thick, strong fingers moved over the keys of her phone, checking the recent call list.

  The evil emanating from him was palpable. She could have touched it; it was a force all of its own. She knew what would happen if he found out she was withholding information from him.

  Think of your son …

  ‘Which hospital? Why did they call you?’

  Delving deep within herself, she found the strength to hide her fear and keep her voice calm.

  ‘The clinic at Theunisvlei. They said there is an outstanding amount of money due for my husband Khumalo’s medication,’ she told him. ‘The lady I spoke to said I owe them thirty-eight rands and forty-two cents, for some of the painkillers. That’s what she told me. I’m sorry, but this lady didn’t tell me her name.’

  The man grunted. He frowned again at the list of calls as if memorising it.

  Then he dialled the number and had a brief conversation with the hospital receptionist.

  ‘Next time you take the call in the car,’ he said, returning her phone. ‘You know the rules. Why didn’t you this time?’

  ‘I didn’t think to,’ she said. ‘I was too surprised that they were calling about Khumalo at all.’

  The man said nothing. Just twisted round and transferred a bag of food to his lap.

  ‘Get driving,’ he told her.

  Jade had expected to be woken by the soft beeping of the alarm, but instead it was the buzzing of her phone. She was awake in an instant, sitting up in the dark room and reaching for it as it vibrated on the wooden chair. Blinking down at its glowing screen, she saw that it was four-thirty a.m. and the incoming call was from a cellphone number she did not recognise.

  The caller sounded panicked.

  ‘I’m looking for Jade de Jong.’

  ‘Speaking.’

  ‘Jade, this is Ryan Harris. You gave me your card when we were at Zelda’s house yesterday evening. I’m sorry to call you at this hour, but I’m back at her place and there’s a huge problem here.’

  ‘What’s happened?’ she asked. She leaned over and switched on the bedside light to banish the shadows.

  ‘There’s been a fire. Rather, there is a fire. Randburg Guarding called me half an hour ago and I’ve just got here. The place is an inferno, Jade.’ He stopped, coughed, continued. ‘The fire brigade has arrived but they’re not going to be able to save the house. It’s all gone. Gone.’

  He sounded on the verge of tears.

  ‘Wait there,’ she said. ‘I’m coming.’

  Half an hour later, Jade parked again, a few streets away from Zelda’s house, but this time on the opposite side of the suburb. This side was closer to the main streets of Cresta. There were one or two other vehicles still parked there. A couple of casually dressed student types were walking tiredly to their cars. Waitresses, Jade guessed, who’d just cashed up, the last stragglers in the bars having finally finished their drinks.

  There was even a car guard sitting on the verge, wearing a battered-looking reflective vest, who got up when he saw her and waved her over to the side of the road.

  As soon as she climbed out she could smell the smoke, and in the darkness the vivid glow of the conflagration was clearly visible through the border of trees.

  Harris was standing next to the fire engine and literally wringing his hands. His face was ghostly. Only the ruddy glow of the flames gave it any colour.

  ‘How did this happen?’ he asked her. A pointless question, which she answered with one of her own.

  ‘Weren’t Randburg Guarding on duty?’

  ‘They had a guard stationed at the gate. He saw nothing until the fire started.’

  Jade nodded resignedly. The property was large, inadequately secured, and there was no way one guard in one position could realistically provide anything except a placebo effect. The intruder, or intruders, could easily have climbed over the wall around the corner.

  Smoke billowed out of blackened windows. The hissing of the high-pressure hoses was barely audible over the roaring of the flames. Even from as far away as the gate, the heat prickled Jade’s face.

  ‘They did a good job,’ she said, speaking almost to herself. Whatever secrets Zelda’s house had hidden were now lost in the smouldering rubble. If there had been notes concealed somewhere they were gone now.

  ‘Look, there was nothing you could have done to stop them,’ she told Harris.

  ‘I’ve let her down,’ he muttered. ‘I couldn’t keep her safe, and now her house is gone, too.’

  ‘Harris, you did all you could,’ she tried, but she could see that any attempt to console him would be futile. His grief insulated him from her words.

  Other people had arrived at the scene. Residents from the surrounding properties stood in groups, watching the spectacle with concerned faces. Some wore dressing gowns, others had pulled on tracksuits. Men with rumpled hair and women with faces free of make-up. Far too many people for her liking. There were townhouse complexes in the area housing hundreds of residents. In such a crowd it would be easy for their pursuers to hide and watch.

  ‘You need to go home,’ Jade told Harris. ‘There’s nothing you can do here now. Come back later when it’s light. Then you can see if there’s anything left to salvage.’

  He nodded but she wasn’t sure he’d really heard her words.

  ‘I don’t think it’s a good idea for you to be alone right now,’ Jade told him diplomatically. ‘You’re welcome to come with me and have an early breakfast somewhere, but otherwise is there a friend you could call? Someone who’d be able to offer you company?’

  ‘Yes, yes, there is,’ he said rather impatiently.

  Her offer of breakfast rejected, somewhat to her relief, Jade wished him all the best and walked away. At least she had his phone number now. She’d be able to contact him in a couple of days and see if he was more willing to talk about Zelda.

  Jade realised with a shiver that she was already thinking of the dark-haired woman in the past tense. The thugs who’d broken into her house had surely achieved what they had set out to do. They’d disposed of her and now they had destroyed all evidence of what she’d been working on.

  It was just starting to get light as she made her way back to her car with a heavy heart.

  27

  Jade had deliberately parked a fair distance from Zelda’s burning house. And she’d taken precautions to ensure nobody had followed her. However, somebody must have been on the lookout because it wasn’t long before she noticed a set of headlights behind her taking exactly the same course.

  She turned left and chose the busiest route to the highway, a double-lane main road lined with jacaranda trees and high walls that shielded expensive houses from prying eyes. Safety lay in numbers, which in this case was traffic, she decided. She didn’t want them taking the initiative before she was ready.

  Although there was ample room for it to overtake, the car stayed at a steady distance behind hers. It wasn’t the white truck. They’d obviously jettisoned that and were now using a luxury sedan, also white. She drove carefully, slowly and relaxed, not giving away that she knew they were following her. Inside, though, she felt a familiar clench of excitement and she eased the stolen gun from where she’d left it earlier, shoved out of sight down the side of the passenger seat, and stuck it into the belt of her jeans.

  She decided she’d get on the highway and head back towards her house. She’d go a different way though. She’d take a short cut through the large piece of land to the north tha
t had recently been bought by a developer and rezoned as a residential estate. Dirt roads had been created and notice boards had been put up, but the land itself was still vacant and construction had yet to start. It would be the ideal place to lead her tail into a trap, all the more so since the men had no idea she was armed, nor of her shooting capabilities.

  There was only one more detail she needed to know – how many men were in the car behind her?

  Three would be the best case, because then she’d be able to deal with all of them at once. Although if there were two she was sure they would be the same pair she’d seen at the hospital and not the other man, into whose hand she’d stabbed the prongs of the fork. He was definitely going to be on the injured list, and in any case she had the feeling that he was the most junior of the three.

  By now it was light enough to dispense with headlights. If she did that, perhaps the driver behind would follow suit and then she would be able to see who was in the car.

  As she took the slip road to the highway, Jade flicked her headlights off.

  After a couple of seconds, the car behind her did the same.

  As she followed the curve of the cloverleaf, she drove eastwards, heading directly into the rays of the rising sun. It shone through her windscreen, bright and clear.

  Looking in her rear-view mirror, she saw the driver’s face bathed in the same perfect light.

  Jade couldn’t believe it.

  She stared into the mirror, desperately hoping she was wrong; wrenching the wheel to the left at the last minute as her inattention sent her veering too close to the crash barrier.

  Her judgement had been faulty and she knew her mistake could prove disastrous.

  There was only one person in the car behind her and it was the man with the injured hand.

  One of the main advantages of being a woman, Jade knew, was that most men had certain preconceptions about the fairer sex. They believed women were weaker, which was true to an extent. Although they didn’t have the raw muscle power of men, the main problem was simply that they were unskilled at using their strength effectively. A fit, co-ordinated female could easily outrun and outfight the average man, bearing in mind that the average man was neither very fit nor brilliantly co-ordinated.

  Women were equally capable with firearms, although in ideal circumstances they would shoot more accurately when using a gun of the right size. This usually meant they ended up choosing a more compact model, like Jade’s preferred weapon, the Glock 19.

  Apart from that, it was down to talent, competency, and the cold-blooded resolve to kill. In that regard, females could be just as callous. In particular, when she’d been on a bodyguarding assignment in New York, Jade had met some women who’d trained in the Israeli army whose lethal talents and lack of conscience had scared the living daylights out of every man in their team.

  There had been many times when Jade’s adversaries had underestimated her simply because she was a woman, and had lived to regret it later.

  The men who’d broken into Zelda’s house and shot the elderly neighbour, though, were hired professionals. They’d tried and failed to get rid of her twice already. There was only one possible reason that the team could have sent its weakest member after Jade.

  And that was because they had had to split their forces because the other two were pursuing a quarry they considered even more important.

  Driving at a steady speed in the slow lane, Jade grabbed her phone, holding it low so that the driver behind her would not see she was using it. She punched the redial button and waited, holding her breath, for the endless seconds it took the call to connect.

  Answer, she prayed. Please answer.

  She felt a flood of relief when she heard Harris’s voice.

  ‘Jade, I …’

  ‘Harris, you’re being followed. Drive straight to a police station.’

  ‘What are you …?’

  ‘There are two men driving behind you. Don’t look and don’t slow down. Don’t let them know they’ve seen you. Just tell me where you are right now. This is extremely important.’

  ‘What?’

  Resisting the urge to bang her head against the steering wheel, Jade repeated the question. ‘Where are you?’

  ‘I’m on my way home. Vantage Road. I’m stopped at a traffic light.’

  ‘The car behind you. Give me its make, colour, and the number plate if you can.’

  Harris sounded confused. ‘But you’re wrong. There’s no car behind me.’

  And then the sound she’d dreaded. The explosive bang of a window smashing.

  Harris shouted again, his voice high-pitched and panicked. ‘Christ! Please, don’t … No!’

  Abruptly, the line went dead.

  Jade shoved her phone into her pocket. Her hand felt hot and she unclenched her fingers with an effort. She had been so close to helping him. So close, but yet too late. If she’d only realised a minute earlier. If she’d only switched her lights off before the highway … if only the men hadn’t chosen that moment to pull up next to Harris instead of staying behind him.

  No use beating herself up over might-have-beens. There was nothing she could have done. The men would have got to him anyway, although it had probably been thanks to her phone call that they’d acted so suddenly. Realising, as professionals would do, that Harris was being warned about their presence.

  Two thugs, in possession of at least one firearm, and they had him now. Worse, it wouldn’t be long before one of them phoned the man who was following her and told him that the game was up.

  Changing her plans, Jade took the next exit off the highway and increased her speed, driving fast along the main road towards Sandton City.

  28

  What the hell was the girl doing, Graeme wondered, as he swerved across two lanes of traffic to follow her, eliciting angry blasts of hooters from taxis and commuters in more comfortable vehicles. She’d suddenly turned off the highway, taking him completely by surprise. Now she was racing along in the direction of Sandton City as if she’d suddenly realised she was about to miss the start of the winter sale.

  Either that, or …

  His suspicions coincided with the ringing of his cellphone. He answered the call, grimacing with pain as his injured right hand was forced to take over the job of steering. The visit to the emergency ward in Sandton Clinic, involving eight stitches and a shot of antibiotics, had cost him two grand and the doctor had said he’d been very lucky that he hadn’t fractured a bone.

  He should be more careful next time when gardening at night, the doctor had warned. Most accidents happen in the home.

  ‘Yes?’ he said, snapping the phone open.

  It was Lance, his ‘boss’ and the one who’d personally hired him. They went back a long way. They had both worked as bouncers ten years ago. Rough stuff, like this job. Bring it on. He was used to it. In fact, he quite enjoyed it.

  ‘We’ve got the guy.’

  ‘I’m following the girl, but she’s running.’

  ‘He was on the phone when we got him. Might have been speaking to her. She could have heard something. I’ll find out.’

  Graeme listened to the meaty thud of a well-aimed punch. ‘Who were you on the phone to? Well, who? Tell us!’

  He heard ragged breathing and then a response, high-pitched and terrified. He was reminded yet again of the teens he’d dragged out of nightclubs. The fear in their eyes. The way they’d puked their guts out on the sidewalks, as pain finally sounded the alarm in their alcohol-dulled systems.

  ‘Ja. I think it was probably her on the phone,’ Lance said, speaking rapidly, his voice stressed. ‘Look, don’t let her get away. If you can sort her out now, do that. If you can force her to crash the car, great. If you can’t do either of those, then at least keep her in sight until we can come and take over. Right?’

  ‘Right.’

  Lance rang off without another word. Getting down to business on his side, Graeme knew. Now he had to get down to business here. He fl
attened his foot on the accelerator. Causing her to crash would be tricky in this traffic, and she was driving fast.

  Did she know he was behind her or not? Graeme really wasn’t sure. His confusion deepened when she crossed over Rivonia Road and signalled to turn right at the next set of lights.

  She was going into the Nelson Mandela Square underground car park.

  What the hell? Was she really going to the winter sale? Either way, it should be easy enough to grab her in the garage, before she went into the mall itself. Graeme wrenched the wheel sideways and pulled up at the entrance boom as she accelerated away.

  He mashed his thumb into the button for the parking ticket and waited for what felt like a year for the machine to feed the card into his hand. Of all the ridiculous things. Being held up by having to wait for a damned ticket.

  And it wasn’t going to be easy grabbing her either. What the hell were these car wash ladies doing? Clad in overalls and smocks, buckets and cloths and squeegees in their hands, they were all over parking level one like a rash, smiling at him and waving him into one of the available bays.

  Each one a potential witness.

  Resisting the urge to lean on his horn and send them scattering, he followed the girl’s receding taillights. She wasn’t parking on this level. She was heading further down. He followed, tyres squealing on the concrete as he took the car through some tight corners.

  Level two was much emptier. Far fewer vehicles and not a car washer in sight. So, she was going to stop here. That was much better, even though he’d still have to be very fast.

  And then his jaw actually dropped open in astonishment as she continued down the next ramp. Down again, to the third level. P3, with its yellow signage, which appeared strangely bright and light in these gloomy depths where there was hardly another car to be seen.

  She was panicking for sure, unaware that by doing so she was making his job so much easier.

  And there she was – stopping right next to the exit door that led through to the Sandton Towers lifts.

  She yanked the car door open and ran.