‘To take a piss?’ he suggested. ‘Jade, I just don’t know. But somebody thought it was important enough to send you the co-ordinates. Perhaps we should take a look round. Comb the area. Just in case …’
He didn’t complete the sentence but Jade understood his fear: Just in case a body had been dumped somewhere.
‘You look on the right-hand side of the road, Jadey. He might have crossed over. I’ll take the left.’
There he went again. Protecting her. Volunteering to search the side where they both knew it was far more likely that something might be waiting to be found.
She didn’t know whether to feel touched or annoyed.
To her right there was another deep stretch of sand but she couldn’t see any footprints in it. Still, a search was a search.
She walked for fifty paces alongside the road, scanning the ground carefully, seeing nothing but rocks and sand and the occasional desiccated clump of grass.
Then she turned round, stepped four paces off the road, and walked back a hundred paces, looking carefully to the left and the right. When she’d reached a hundred she took another four paces away from the road and walked the line again.
Her grid-like search took her ever further from the road and deeper into the beginnings of the semi-desert. Opposite her, she saw David following the same methodical pattern.
About twenty minutes later, Jade heard him shout.
39
Jade abandoned her search efforts and jogged in the direction of David’s voice. He was almost out of sight now, standing on the other side of a stony ridge in the ground. Here lay a deep channel, presumably a result of centuries-old water erosion, back when the Karoo had had a different climate.
At the bottom of the channel lay a black gym bag.
It was a new-looking item, and it must have been dumped recently because it was free of dust and sun damage.
Jade found herself unable to tear her gaze away from it.
This was what they were looking for, what they had been informed about.
Surely it had to be.
David climbed down into the trough, causing rivulets of sand to cascade down its sides, and unzipped the bag. Jade craned her neck to see inside but his body was blocking the view. Then he zipped it up and heaved it out. From the way he was holding it, it looked heavy.
Back up next to Jade, he placed it on the ground and glanced at her, his face grim.
‘Not good,’ he said.
‘Why? What’s in there?’
‘Wire. Pliers. Blades. Other stuff … Jade, it’s bloodstained, and the blood’s not old. I can still smell it. You probably can, too.’
Jade bent down closer to the bag and inhaled. David was right. The scent was unmistakable and unpleasantly familiar.
‘But there’s no body,’ she said flatly
‘Nope. And this is the only piece of ground for miles that isn’t flat. If a body’s been dumped, this is surely where it would be. Whoever these tools were used on is somewhere else.’
‘In the car that stopped here?’
‘Perhaps.’
They stared disconsolately at the unforgiving landscape.
‘Well, better get going, I guess,’ David said. ‘We can take a drive a bit further down the road if you like, just to be sure. Then I’ll have to check this bag in with airport security. Get it sealed in plastic and fly it back to headquarters.’
‘Wait a minute,’ Jade said. ‘There’s something else I want to do. It won’t take long.’
Ten minutes later, they were parked further up the road, a few metres away from the cellphone tower. At close range it didn’t look so narrow, but it did look much taller. The four-legged tower was set into a deep concrete base. The struts that formed its legs were reinforced by a lattice of strips of metal welded at forty-five-degree angles. The structure was painted in broad stripes of now-peeling white and red paint and it was fenced off, but only by a few flimsy strands of wire.
‘What on earth do you think you’re going to find in there?’ David asked as Jade pushed the wire strands apart and climbed through.
Standing on the concrete, Jade touched one of the legs. The metal felt icy cold, chilled from the desert night. Perhaps by the afternoon it would be too hot to touch.
Looking up, she could barely see the top of the tower. From this angle it appeared impossibly tall, its tip piercing the endless expanse of sky. Just the thought of how it would look and feel from up there made her dizzy.
Lifting her right foot up high, she placed it onto the lowest bar of the support, reached above her and pulled herself up, the narrow edge of the strut digging into her palm. Now she was on the tower itself, her feet placed rather awkwardly in the ‘v’ formed by the lowest diagonal strut, her hands gripping the ‘x’ of the one above.
‘Jade, what are you …?’
She didn’t answer. David would work out the answer to his own question in a minute, if he hadn’t already done so.
She grasped the next beam and swung herself higher, again wedging her foot into the v-shaped corner of the strut.
‘Jade, we don’t have time for this. We need to go,’ David called out.
‘Sonet’s husband told me something that stuck in my mind,’ she shouted back down to him.
‘What was that? How to kill yourself by falling off a cellphone tower?’
‘You’re sort of right.’ She stretched, grasped, pulled herself up again. It was easy, she told herself. As long as you didn’t look down, she added, catching her breath when she caught a glimpse of David. She was only three or four metres above him, but it already looked like a sizeable gap. And she hadn’t even got a tenth of the way up.
‘He said that Sonet used to travel to the Karoo in order to do base jumping,’ she called down to him. ‘He said there was a site near her brother’s house that she used to jump from. I’m wondering if this might be it. And if I climb it, whether I’ll be able to see the house.’
David took a few seconds to respond.
Having digested Jade’s words, he shouted back. ‘OK, dammit, that makes sense. But Jade, bloody hell, why do you make me do these things?’
‘I’m not making you do anything!’
But her protests went unheard as David grasped the rail and, causing vibrations in the structure that she could clearly feel from her higher vantage point, swung himself up and planted his feet heavily on the bottom beam.
It’ll be all right if you don’t look down …
Easy advice to give, Jade found, but difficult to take, especially when she could feel the structure shuddering under his heavier weight.
As she climbed, so did the sun, spilling its morning brilliance onto the panoramic view she was doing her best to ignore. It was strong enough to provide light, but not heat, not at this early hour. It seemed that nothing could remove the chill from the metal struts.
Grasp, pull, climb, stabilise, clutch at the clammy metal with hands that she realised to her alarm were becoming sweatier and ever more slippery. Technically, the tower angled inwards because the structure narrowed towards its apex. Practically, though, and no matter how much she attempted to convince her brain and body otherwise, the inward gradient was so slight as to be meaningless.
The hard truth was that she was clinging to the side of what was to all intents and purposes a vertical wall of metal struts, and keeping herself from falling only by the strength in her fingers and arms.
She kept looking straight ahead, through the angled metal bars to the hazy point in the far distance where land met sky. She was too frightened to look down and unwilling to look up. She didn’t want to know how much was left to climb. She’d already passed the point where she could hope to survive a fall. If she slipped there would be a few seconds of terror and then that would be it. Game over.
Below her she heard David slip, lose his footing and swear. His body thumped against the structure and she heard a violent bang as he fought to retain his hold.
‘Are you OK?’ she c
alled shakily.
She risked a glance below and her stomach dropped away from her in a sickening rush, plummeting down the crisscrossed metal to the ground so very far below. The car looked tiny now, like a toy. She couldn’t even see the gym bag David had put down beside it.
To her relief, David had managed to regain a secure footing.
‘I’m fine,’ he said in a small, breathy voice that didn’t seem to belong to him at all. That was OK. She hadn’t sounded much like herself either.
As she forced herself to climb higher the breeze grew stronger, tugging at her hair and clothing, rattling at loose sections within the structure that she couldn’t see and didn’t want to think about. She was convinced that the tower was swaying gently in the wind. The struts seemed to be getting more and more slippery and, as her hands grew tired, every grip brought a fresh bolt of pain.
She climbed past a couple of abandoned birds’ nests wedged into the corner of the struts. The woven grasses were now unravelling, ancient, brown and dry. Jade wondered what type of birds had once made their home there – hawks, perhaps, or other birds of prey.
Then she was too high for the nests and climbing still higher. Her legs and arms were quivering now, as the effort caused her aching muscles and throbbing hands to progress from physical pain, which she could control to an extent, to weakness, which she could not.
Jade realised that if she lost her footing, she probably wouldn’t have the strength to hang on and save herself.
She forced herself to look up and see how much further there was to climb.
To her immense surprise, it was less than two metres away. Above her loomed the radio receptors, grey and bulky, and in their centre a small platform, a little over one metre square.
A thoughtful engineer had even provided a railing around the outside.
Jade soon had a tight grasp on the railing, but she was reluctant to place too much weight on it simply because it was narrow. Awkwardly, she manoeuvred herself onto the platform and sat there, staring blankly ahead, breathing hard as she felt the sweat pour from her body.
Within a minute David had appeared and they sat, shoulder to shoulder, getting their breath back.
‘Well, I can cross that off the “to do” list,’ he said eventually in a voice that sounded slightly more normal. ‘Not that climbing to the top of a bloody antenna was ever on it to start with. You realise we’ve still got to go back down, Jadey? No parachutes for us up here.’
‘Pity. I was hoping we could just stay on this platform for the rest of our lives,’ she responded.
Feeling braver, she took hold of the railing and eased herself to her feet, balanced herself on trembling legs and surveyed the astonishing view. The Karoo stretched to the horizon, its lunar landscape mostly flat but with occasional steep, rocky sections. Yellows and ochres eventually merged to form a distant sea of brown.
And far, far below them, the car. If she had a pebble up here she could throw it over the side, aiming for its matchbox-sized roof, and that pebble would take one … two … three … four … five … seconds to—’
‘Stop it,’ she said aloud, gulping
‘Stop what?’ David asked, sounding surprised.
‘Oh, nothing.’ Clutching the railing she knew, right then, that base jumping was not for her. There was absolutely no way that she could step over this narrow railing, grasp the rip cord of her chute and launch herself outwards into the thin, cold air.
And then suddenly she saw it.
Nestled in the shelter of a steep hill, the weathered roof blended perfectly into the landscape. The only reason she’d noticed it was thanks to the glint of the sun reflecting off a convex whitish structure that was almost hidden by the house itself.
‘There!’
She pointed excitedly and David got up to see what had caught her eye. They both moved over to the south side of the tower and stared at the only dwelling that was visible from their eyrie.
‘What’s behind it?’ David squinted into the distance. ‘That shiny stuff – what is it?’
‘I’ve got no idea. Roofing of some kind, perhaps?’
‘Look. From here you can see where the roads go. If we drive back the way we came, then look for a right-hand turn-off … I can’t see beyond that gully … but that track seems to carry on past there. Shouldn’t take us too long to drive.’
‘Easy enough,’ Jade agreed. Neither of them mentioned the distance that lay between them and the car.
‘We should have brought some water,’ David said.
‘It would have been a good idea.’
Their arms touched again and she could feel the warmth of his skin. She wanted to suggest starting the climb back down, but something prevented her from speaking. Perhaps David would take the lead, when he was ready.
And then, as simply and naturally as if it had already been discussed, as if it had always been the intended way of commemorating their risky climb, they turned towards each other. Jade locked her arms around David as she felt his own crush her tightly. Her lips found his and she kissed him hard, the electricity between them as powerful and instant as it had always been, like a light that had come suddenly back on after a break in power.
She pulled away, a minute later, breathing hard.
He dropped his hands to his sides. She looked for any sign of guilt or regret on his face but saw none.
‘Better get going, hey?’ he said.
‘I’ll go first,’ she offered.
‘No, let me. I’m no good with descents. Better that if I slip, I don’t fall on to you.’
‘All right,’ Jade said, surprised. She remembered from the hikes and climbs they had done together that David was better at the downhill bits. Despite his height, he was surprisingly agile. It was she who struggled with them, resenting the gradient, preferring always to climb up and up, pushing her body to its limits as she sought the elusive summit.
And then it hit her, yet again, that this was why David had insisted on going first. He wanted to be in a position where, if she got into trouble, he would be able to help.
Before she could say anything, he’d hooked a foot over the railing and lowered himself onto the metalwork.
She followed. The struts were warmer now and although the distance between her and the ground still yawned, she felt more settled, her fear manageable. It was as if, were she to fall now after that precious kiss at the top of the tower, she would at least be going out on a high note.
40
Jade was halfway down when a question occurred to her. At first she thought it would be better to wait until she’d reached the bottom before voicing it, so that she could speak with a clear mind and without gasping for breath.
Then she decided differently.
A hard question was surely best delivered in adverse conditions.
‘Tell me something, David,’ she called down.
‘What?’ His voice sounded strained, and the wind did its best to snatch it away from her.
‘Why did you come with me?’
‘How do you mean?’
‘Why did you fly down here with me? You didn’t have to, you know.’ She stopped climbing and hooked an arm through the bars, her gaze firmly fixed on the metal tower as she paused to breathe before continuing. ‘You’re not on this case. You didn’t even complain about how it was going to be too expensive, and you usually have something to say about costs. So, tell me.’
David didn’t utter a word. All she could hear was him puffing and the squeak of his shoes as he eased himself ever lower, from beam to crossbeam.
The shadow of the cellphone tower stretched darkly along the bleached ground, a black bridge spanning the desert.
Jade unhooked her arm and carried on down the tower. He didn’t have to reply. It was, after all, a tricky question. Perhaps there was no clear answer.
And then he spoke.
‘Tell me something, Jade,’ he called up to her.
‘What?’ she responded, taken aback by the unexpec
ted turn of the conversation.
‘Why did you ask me to book two seats on the flight?
‘Er … what do you mean?’ Playing for time, she knew.
‘You didn’t have to. You didn’t need me with you. Not for a two-hour flight and an hour and a half of driving. You’re not one for incurring unnecessary costs on a case either. So why did you ask me to come along?’
She tried to gather her thoughts, to provide David with a logical and appropriate answer, but they developed wings and took off into the dry, golden air, leaving her open-mouthed and struggling to come up with a coherent explanation.
Neither spoke for the rest of the descent. When Jade stepped down off the lowest strut, David was waiting to help her. He took her right hand and she put her left on his shoulder. But instead of him guiding her onto the ground, she found herself being pulled into his arms. He held her tight and they kissed again. Her lips mashed against his face and his day-old stubble burned her skin. He fumbled under her clothing with an urgency born of desperation and waiting too long.
She grabbed hold of his pale grey, collared shirt and pulled it open, snapping a couple of the buttons off in her haste. She twined her legs around his, digging her nails into his shoulders. She pressed herself hard against him, gulping in his smell, devouring the taste of his skin. She heard him groan. His arms crushed her close, fingers digging into her thighs so tightly she knew she would be bruised. There was no time for gentleness. Not out there under the empty sky, where no walls or ceiling could conceal the truth of what they were doing, or hide their transgression.
Afterwards, exhausted, they lay naked on David’s ruined shirt. Propping herself up on one elbow, she gently ran her fingers across his stomach and up over the puckered scar on his chest that was the last remaining evidence of a bullet he’d taken for her. She’d never before had the chance to touch it until now.
These were moments Jade wished could have lasted longer but she knew they could not. Once again, there was no time.
Reluctantly, they got up and dusted themselves down. The cotton shirt had provided some protection, but pale sand still clung to the back of her legs.
Pale Horses Page 22
