Pale Horses

by Jassy Mackenzie

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Does your phone have an app for booking last-minute flights?’

  David blinked. ‘Um … yes, it does. It’s known as the facility to make a phone call.’

  ‘Very funny. I need to go there right now. I’ll explain why later. If there’s still a flight this evening then I’ll take it. If not, I’ll drive.’

  ‘You can’t just fly into the middle of the bloody Tankwa Karoo. You’ll have to fly to the nearest major town, which is probably George, and then hire a car. And it’s nearly seven p.m. already. This could be tricky to sort out. Let me phone Kulula and see if there’s a flight still available this evening. There’s no way you’re driving there and back on your own. It’s a fourteen-, fifteen-hour journey.’

  Come with me, then, Jade wanted to say, but she didn’t.

  Still talking on the phone, David signalled the waiter for the bill. Preempting him, Jade slid a hundred-rand note under the ashtray.

  ‘You’re in luck,’ David told her, covering the phone with the hand as he spoke rapidly. ‘They have later flights scheduled tonight and tomorrow because of the long weekend. Tonight’s leaves in an hour, which is touch and go in terms of timing, but I think it’s doable. They’ve got a couple of seats still available on it. You want one?’

  Jade took a deep breath. Handed over her credit card.

  ‘Book them both,’ she said.

  37

  Strapped firmly into the passenger seat of David’s unmarked Toyota Yaris, Jade clung to the handle above the passenger door as David zigzagged the car through the almost-empty backstreets of Johannesburg, taking the shortest route to the airport highway.

  She was still astonished he’d decided to go with her. He’d mumbled something about his workload, but the protest had been more for form’s sake than anything else. After all, his family was away for the weekend. He’d told her that the last time they’d met up. And although Jade knew things would change once Naisha had had the baby, for now she fancied herself in an unspoken contest with the woman, to see how much of David’s time she could monopolise.

  Their marriage was on the rocks, Jade told herself. Another child wouldn’t change the situation for the better. She thought David was an idiot for staying in the relationship. An honourable, old-fashioned idiot for standing by his estranged wife after a single night spent with her during their period of separation had resulted in an unplanned pregnancy.

  Unplanned, Jade thought cynically, on David’s side at least.

  ‘Right. Ten more minutes and we’re there.’ Engine revving furiously, the unmarked car veered onto the highway and shot across the lanes at what felt like a forty-five degree angle.

  Jade closed her eyes, but finding it was even more terrifying that way, she opened them again in a hurry. No matter how much of a lunatic David was behind the wheel, she found herself compelled to keep an eye out for obstacles.

  ‘Taxi on the left,’ she warned, as the unwary driver began to drift into the fast lane. A blast from David’s hooter saw him hurriedly correct his course as they whipped past.

  ‘So are you going to tell me why we’re going on this crazy escapade with no luggage?’ David asked.

  ‘No. Concentrate on your driving. I’ll tell you when we’re at the airport. I’ve got to get on the phone now and book us a hired car.’

  ‘Pity we weren’t nearer Sandton earlier. We could have hopped on the Gautrain and got there faster.’

  ‘Faster? I doubt it. There in one piece? Yes, much more likely.’

  David laughed.

  They reached the airport, parked in the first available bay in the underground car park, and sprinted to domestic departures. They ran up the escalator ramps and arrived at check-in seconds before the flight closed.

  ‘Just in time,’ observed the attendant, as if she was slightly disappointed at not being able to tell them the flight was closed. ‘That’ll be the two of you travelling to George? May I see your IDs please?’

  The race against the clock was not yet over. Another feverish rush to the secure check-in area where David signed in his service pistol for transportation in the gun safe. Then a frantic shuffle through security and a full-on sprint down to the boarding gates, where the last of the stragglers were handing over their boarding passes. The ground hostess was on the intercom, announcing the final boarding call for passengers De Jong and Patel.

  Jade collapsed into her seat feeling as if she’d taken part in some sort of urban half-marathon. Beside her, David’s breathing reminded her of a pair of blacksmith’s bellows.

  She hadn’t packed so much as a change of clothes. Between them, they didn’t even have a toothbrush.

  It might all be a waste of time, but surely not every lead would prove to be a disappointment. Eventually one, no matter how unpromising it looked, would have to get her somewhere.

  They were in the air when their conversation resumed.

  ‘You asked why we’re flying down to George,’ she said.

  ‘Yes. It did occur to me.’

  ‘Well, let me finish explaining the background to the case. Then you’ll understand.’

  ‘OK. Fire away.’

  ‘Zelda and Sonet were abused as children, apparently. There were three siblings – the two girls and a brother, Koenraad. Harris told me that the brother is off the grid, but I think tracing him is critical for the case, and perhaps for his own safety as well, given what’s happened to his sisters. They’re a very close family, Harris said.’

  ‘Aha.’

  ‘Their father was a preacher. Had a cult following. Used to rant and rave about the Book of Revelations and about the Second Coming and how sinners would be destroyed in hellfire. It made me think – it sounds crazy, I know, but looking at that abandoned farm …’

  ‘What?’

  ‘It made me think of the four horsemen. Of the white horse, galloping across that landscape, leaving death and destruction behind.’

  ‘Death rode a pale horse, not a white one,’ David corrected her. ‘There’s a difference.’

  ‘There is? How do you know that?’ Jade asked, surprised.

  ‘Ages ago I dated a woman who was studying Theology.’

  Jade bit back a surprised comment. She’d always thought of David as having had just two lovers in his life – herself and Naisha. She’d never wanted to believe he’d had more, even though logic told her otherwise. It was just surprising. Disconcerting. For a moment she felt oddly jealous that another woman had shared his time and had told him her stories. Pillow talk about the Book of Revelations … she could only hope the relationship had been short, and that they hadn’t started dating when she was reading the Book of Genesis.

  ‘So tell me about the horsemen,’ she said.

  ‘The imagery is vivid, which is why it’s stuck in my mind. In the scriptures, the white horse appears first. His rider has a bow and a crown, and he is the conqueror. Then the fiery red horse comes out. I suppose you’d say that one was war, because the rider was given power to take peace away from the earth and to make men kill each other. He carries a sword, obviously.’

  ‘Who’s next?’

  ‘Next is the black one, and the rider carries a pair of scales, but I can’t for the life of me remember what his role is. He says something about measures of crops for a penny. Wheat and barley, and he also talks about oil and wine.’

  ‘Sounds like the origin of the futures markets,’ Jade commented, remembering Theron’s drawn and intense expression when he’d spoken about his work.

  ‘Anyway, finally, the pale rider and his pale horse appear. The rider is named Death, and Hell follows close behind him. They have the power to kill by sword, famine and plague, and by the wild beasts of the earth.’

  Jade found herself hugging her arms as if to ward off a chilly draught while she considered his words.

  ‘Its rider was named Death, and Hell followed close behind. They were given power to kill by sword, famine and plague.’

  Jade wondered
what it would’ve been like to grow up under the iron rule of an abusive preacher who, through his interpretation of those disturbing verses, had gained both power and control over his followers.

  ‘So now Sonet’s dead and Zelda’s disappeared. She seems to have been helped with her research by a man called Danie Smit. I don’t know anything more about him, but I do know that a Danie Smit was found dead in his car in Fourways Mall last week. Suspected suicide through carbon monoxide poisoning.’

  ‘Now there’s a coincidence.’

  ‘Anyway, a parcel was posted off to the Tankwa Karoo post office a week ago on Zelda’s behalf, addressed to her brother. Which is why this set of co-ordinates is worth investigating.’

  David nodded slowly.

  ‘Well, let’s go see what we can find out,’ he said.

  38

  At George airport, Jade and David were met by a red-uniformed Avis representative holding a card on which their names were laser-printed. While David signed the paperwork and went to retrieve his firearm, Jade headed over to the only kiosk that was still open and bought a couple of T-shirts from the limited selection available. One for her in medium, one for David in extra large, just in case they needed a change of clothes. The kiosk’s stock didn’t stretch to toothbrushes so she had to settle for a packet of sugar-free gum.

  After taking possession of the air-conditioned VW Polo, they drove out of the airport and headed to one of the three-star ocean-view guesthouses that Jade had contacted just before takeoff.

  They were travelling in style, courtesy of Victor Theron’s sizeable payment. He’d be glad that at last she was incurring some significant expenses on his behalf. He’d been getting edgy, Jade thought, probably believing that if she wasn’t spending much of his money, she couldn’t possibly be doing an effective job.

  But then again, as she’d discovered, it didn’t take much to make Theron edgy. Perhaps that was what intrigued her most about him. He wasn’t a typical base jumper, that was for sure. She’d known extreme sports fanatics in the past and most of them had been so laid back that they’d might as well have been horizontal.

  She and David had booked separate rooms and Jade paid their bill in advance, as the night porter checked them in, explaining that they had a very early start the next day. The plushly decorated en-suite room she’d been assigned felt as lonely as an isolation cell, and she couldn’t help remembering the early days of her friendship with David, when he had first moved to Johannesburg and joined the investigation team headed up by her father. On their infrequent trips away together, she and David had occasionally shared a room, and a bed, sleeping companionably back to back and fully clothed.

  Of course, turning back the clock now was impossible.

  Jade set her alarm for four-thirty a.m. and fell asleep listening to the sounds of the ocean, which she could hear, but not see.

  She didn’t get a chance to see it in the morning either, although the crashing rhythm of the waves resonated through her as soon as she woke.

  Peering through the curtains she saw it was still pitch black outside. She dressed quickly, putting back on the clothes she’d taken off the night before, and headed downstairs. David appeared ten minutes later.

  ‘Sleep well?’ she asked. He gave an annoyed headshake in response.

  ‘Damn waves kept on breaking on the rocks. I can’t sleep if I’m too close to nature. I kept on listening out for normal, everyday noises. Gunshots, sirens, screaming.’

  The air outside felt heavy, dense and laden with salt after the thin, dry winter air of Johannesburg. The wind was gusting, driving rain and spray into their faces as they braved the short dash to the car.

  ‘Would’ve liked to have had breakfast,’ David remarked as they drove onto the road. ‘They do the works here. I saw the menu outside the dining room. Eggs, bacon, boerewors, chips, mushrooms, melted cheese and grilled tomatoes on a pancake.’

  ‘We can stop for breakfast later,’ Jade said.

  David put the windscreen wipers on high.

  ‘Damn rain,’ he observed.

  ‘Enjoy it while it lasts,’ Jade said. ‘I don’t think there’s going to be much of it where we’re headed.’

  She felt a sudden queasiness in her stomach. Part excitement, part nerves. There was always a chance, she supposed, that the SMS was a trap. That somebody was baiting her with a cryptic clue, waiting to finish the task the hired thugs had failed to accomplish.

  There was more of a chance that it was genuine, because of the one loose end that she hadn’t yet explained fully to David.

  Khumalo’s wife. The woman she’d been trying to contact. The woman the hospital receptionist had told her they’d managed to track down just a few hours before the message came through.

  And, as far as she knew, the only traceable person once part of the Siyabonga community.

  This woman must have some of the answers.

  If her husband had been hospitalised with cancer at the time, perhaps she had been in the ward with him. Perhaps that was how she’d escaped whatever fate had befallen the rest of the village.

  Perhaps she’d travelled, or been transported, to the farmhouse in the Karoo to keep her safe.

  Although why, then, if she was so safe, had she expressly requested that Jade not contact her?

  That fact was only one of several that worried Jade, making her doubt that her proposed solution to the puzzle was as simple and straightforward as she was hoping it would be.

  It was still dark when they joined the highway and drove out of George, over the Outeniqua mountain pass, heading away from the lush subtropical coast and into the rain shadow.

  An arid expanse of land. From the glimpses Jade could see in the headlights, it was flat and stark and becomingly increasingly dry as the kilometres ticked by.

  It was barely approaching dawn when David pulled over, hazard lights flashing, and came to a standstill on what was now just a single strip of tarmac.

  ‘We’ve got a problem here,’ he said.

  ‘What’s that?’

  ‘We’re starting to move away from these co-ordinates. We were getting closer until a few kilometres back. There must have been a turn-off we’ve missed somewhere; unless it’s up ahead.’

  ‘No other road was signposted,’ Jade said. ‘Perhaps we need to turn onto one of those sand tracks.’

  ‘Yup,’ David said, sounding gloomy.

  ‘So let’s backtrack, slower this time,’ Jade tried not to emphasise the word ‘slower’ too much, ‘and take a closer look. If it isn’t back there then it has to be up ahead.’

  The side road they were hoping for was approximately three kilometres back, and Jade only spotted it because of a bank of sand that had been washed alongside the main road when, months and months ago, it must have rained.

  David eased the car over the ridge. Jade watched the GPS closely. The degrees and the minutes were identical to those on the strange text message. It was only the seconds, now, that were slowly changing as they navigated the uneven terrain.

  On the eastern horizon, Jade noticed the start of a faint pink glow. A minute later the landscape in front of her had lightened to a sombre vista of various shades of grey. The horizon was occasionally punctuated by a rugged, flat-topped hill.

  There was absolutely no sign of what she’d been hoping the co-ordinates would lead them to – an old-fashioned, gabled Karoo farmhouse.

  ‘David, stop the car here,’ she said, sounding worried.

  ‘Sure,’ he responded. Giving her a questioning look he carefully – for once – brought the car to a halt and they both stepped out into the morning’s temporary chill and stood in a silence that was vast, enduring and absolute.

  ‘I thought it might be better to walk the last stretch,’ Jade explained. She spoke in a low voice, even though there was nobody else around to hear. ‘If we carry on driving, we might miss something.’

  What, she didn’t know. Signs of a struggle? A message in a bottle? What was she hoping to
find out in this uninhabited and peaceful-looking place?

  Even the air smelled of nothing. Dry, pure and clean.

  She took the GPS out of the car and carried it with her.

  The road they walked on was little more than bedrock and stones, but every so often there were swathes of sand. It was in one of these that Jade saw the imprints of another vehicle’s tyres.

  ‘Someone’s driven through here recently,’ she observed. But of course they must have. After all, that someone would have had to embark on an extremely long and lonely walk from the main road to have reached these co-ordinates on foot.

  David stumbled over a protruding rock and slipped on some gravel as he tried to right himself. He ended up sprawled on his side on what passed for soil. Getting up and dusting himself off, he cursed under his breath. ‘That damn stone would take out the sump of most cars,’ he grumbled. ‘When was this road last graded? During the Anglo-Boer War?’

  Jade resisted the temptation to ask if he was all right, knowing she could only expect a grumpy response. Instead she studied the GPS, and now with some concern, as it was signalling that they were almost at their destination.

  Then the co-ordinates flicked over to match the numbers on Jade’s cellphone. And, at the same time, David remarked, ‘Looks like they pulled over up there.’

  A little further ahead, heavy tyre tracks curved off the road, such as it was, and through a tract of sand. Slowly walking closer, Jade noticed a set of footprints, most likely a man’s if the size was anything to go by.

  ‘Someone got out here. And got back in from the looks of it.’ David bent down to scrutinise the prints, stepping carefully so that his own feet remained on a stony surface.

  ‘Got out from the left side. The passenger side.’

  ‘Or the driver’s side if it’s a left-hand-drive vehicle.’

  ‘But why get out here? To do what?’

  David gazed at the landscape, turning slowly, taking in the endless horizon, the sparse, stunted foliage, the shape of their car visible half a kilometre away. The only other sign of civilisation was the tall, redand-white-painted cellphone tower now visible much further down the road.