Pale Horses

by Jassy Mackenzie

  ‘Well, this is trashed,’ David said ruefully, shaking out his shirt which was mottled with sweat and very much the worse for wear. ‘I might as well throw it in the next bin, if we ever find one.’

  But he didn’t. He folded the garment up carefully and put it on the back seat of the car. ‘You said you bought shirts at the airport? I think I need a replacement now.’

  He pulled on his boxers and trousers. Jade saw that his torso was more muscled and the slight paunch that she’d noticed had started to develop over the past year was all but gone. The obsessive exercise was producing results.

  ‘I did. No idea what’s on them, though,’ she said, taking out the plastic bag. ‘I need a fresh one as well.’ She peered down at the plastic-sealed packages. ‘This one’s mine. Let’s see what I got.’ She ripped it open. ‘Surfer Girl’, it read. The lettering writhed its way in neon pink cursive across the blue fabric of the T-shirt. Not her style, but better than nothing.

  ‘Hmm. Very nice. Chuck mine over, will you?’

  Jade threw it across to David, and as he tore it open and unfolded the garment, her eyes widened and she clapped her hand over her mouth, trying unsuccessfully to muffle a snort of laughter.

  ‘Oh, David, I’m sorry. I really am. But that was the only one they had in extra large so I grabbed it without …’

  But David wasn’t listening to her. With a panicked expression, he was staring down at the logo.

  In proud black-and-red lettering on the white background, the T-shirt announced, ‘I LOVE George’.

  ‘Jesus,’ he muttered, and then something that Jade didn’t hear properly but sounded suspiciously like ‘coming out of the damn closet’.

  When Jade had got her laughter under control, she did her best to placate him. ‘Don’t worry. Undercover’s what it’s all about, isn’t it? I’m sure George is a fabulous fellow. You must introduce me sometime.’

  ‘And it’s too tight,’ David grumbled, ignoring her last comment, as he shoehorned his torso into its close embrace.

  ‘Well, it only adds to the effect, doesn’t it?’ She punched him on his arm. ‘Come on. Let’s get going before you start singing “YMCA”.’

  41

  As Jade and David climbed into the car’s warm interior and drove away from the cellphone tower, the light-hearted mood evaporated, and in its place Jade found worry creeping in. Thinking of the gym bag and its bloodied contents, now stowed away in the boot, she was starkly reminded of what was at stake.

  It was as if neither of them dared speak; unwilling to risk shattering the last fragile remnants of what they had so recently shared.

  Eventually, though, Jade had to talk in order to give him directions.

  ‘Turn right here.’ She indicated the dirt turn-off that was hardly worthy of the term ‘road’. A couple of faint, flattened tracks that stretched away from them, winding through the sparsely covered terrain and around the rocky side of the donga.

  ‘Right it is. Shouldn’t be much further then,’ David responded. And just like that it was back to business again.

  ‘There’s a fence ahead. Just past the donga. Look.’ Jade pointed to some low triple-strand barbed wire. Hardly sufficient to keep human intruders out, this was no security barrier. It must be a simple method of keeping animals within adjacent farms’ outer boundaries. Her guess was confirmed when they drove between two simple metal gateposts, although the gate, equally low and made of a metal frame with a simple plain wire mesh, was wide open. Any livestock could easily have strayed off the property.

  ‘The boundary of his land. Koenraad Meintjies, or whoever the hell is crazy enough to live out here. A postbox with a name on it would be helpful,’ David offered with a wry smile.

  ‘No such luck. We’ll know soon enough, though. I can see the farmhouse in the distance.’

  ‘Drive up to a place like this, the owner will probably take potshots at you. I’m sure that’s what passes for security out here. He’s probably seen us coming already and when we get closer he’ll run outside holding a gun.’

  But David’s words lacked conviction.

  They approached the house slowly, but despite their conservative speed, a trail of dust still kicked out from the wheels, announcing their arrival to anyone inside and whoever else might be watching.

  The farmhouse was a whitewashed building made from thick blocks of sandstone, with a gabled front and a tin roof that had once been painted white. The paint jobs appeared to have been done a long time ago.

  The front garden was demarcated by a neat row of small rocks arranged in a rough square and extending a short distance from the wide, covered porch. Not that there seemed to be very little difference between what grew within the garden and what grew outside.

  ‘Guess it’s difficult to get a good lawn going in this climate,’ David said in a deliberately casual tone, stopping a few metres from the line of stones. Strapping his holster around his waist, he clicked the safety catch off his pistol and slowly got out of the car, motioning her to stay inside. He was taking no chances with what kind of welcome might be waiting for them; not after what he’d found in the dumped bag.

  The front door of the farmhouse stood ajar. That fact did nothing to dissolve the knot of unease that had tightened itself in Jade’s stomach. She realised that she was dreading what they might find and clinging to the hope that this was not in fact Meintjies’s place; that it belonged to another farmer, whose smiling wife would appear at the door, asking them in Afrikaans if they were lost. She would be wearing an apron and a freshly baked apple pie would be cooling on the kitchen counter-top.

  ‘Hello?’ David called. He reached inside the car and pressed the horn. The blast of sound shattered the stillness, but nobody appeared at the door and Jade’s last hopes of a friendly local dissolved.

  She climbed out. It was hot now, although the slight breeze made the temperature bearable.

  Jade sniffed the air. Was it her imagination or did it carry a sickly reek of decay?

  David squared his shoulders. ‘OK. Let’s have a look, shall we?’ he said.

  They walked towards the farmhouse and through the open door.

  A distinctive tang assaulted her nostrils as soon as Jade stepped inside. It was not the stench of rotting flesh she thought she’d picked up earlier. This was the coppery odour of blood recently spilled, congealed perhaps, but not yet dried.

  Glancing to her right, she noticed to her surprise that a rifle with a wooden handle stood propped in the corner between the hall table and the wall. It was an old-looking, well-worn weapon. The type of firearm that a farmer might own in a territory where the biggest threat was the occasional night-time predator.

  ‘Stay back, Jadey,’ David cautioned. But she ignored his words and followed him through the doorway into the kitchen, where morning light streamed in through the yellow curtains and the smell was so much stronger. The shocking sight of the body bound to the toppled chair caused both of them to stop in their tracks.

  Jade looked down at the floor, where more blood had spilled, and then hastily focused her gaze on one of the windows. She tried to breathe deeply and only through her mouth. She tried to blank out the ruin of the man’s body, what had been done to him, and the buzzing and feasting of the hundreds of flies.

  Where an apple pie should have been steaming on the counter-top, there was only this in the room … and yet, there was something about it …

  ‘I’d better take some photos,’ David said, his voice hollow.

  She forced herself to look again, to analyse what she was seeing while fighting the urge to retch.

  What had been done to Harris back in Jo’burg had been brutal. Callous. Cruelly creative and would certainly have resulted in his death had Jade not got there in time.

  Meintjies’s agonised demise was a different story entirely. His torture had been slow, methodical and intentionally painful.

  Worse, there was a shocking artistry to it. It was as if whoever had done this had wielded his
tools with evil joy and accomplished expertise. Slicing into flesh, mutilating organs efficiently and expertly, causing maximum agony while ensuring that his victim remained alive.

  There was no way you could compare the two scenes.

  ‘Right. I’m just about done here.’ David sounded drained from the effort of training his camera on the horror in front of him. ‘I don’t think there’s anything else in here, so let’s not contaminate the scene any further. I think we should take a quick look around the house in case there’s anything obvious, and then call forensics and get out of here.’

  ‘The scullery door’s open,’ Jade said.

  ‘You want to step out for a while?’

  ‘I want to see what’s back there. What’s in those big plastic structures.’

  They left the kitchen and stepped outside. Jade was grateful for the air on her face, but also aware that it too was tainted, stronger this time, by something unidentifiably unpleasant. She could tell David had picked it up, too.

  ‘I can’t take much more of this,’ he snapped. ‘What the hell’s been going on? This place smells like a slaughterhouse.’

  ‘No slaughterhouse in evidence. There’s a barn beyond the greenhouse,’ she said. She guessed a farmer would need to grow fresh produce in a sheltered environment in order to be self-sufficient in this harsh climate. Not much would survive outside.

  She was surprised, though, by how new, clean and shiny the plastic structures looked. As if they had been put up only a few months ago. Unlike the old windmill to the right, whose blades looked weathered and rusted by comparison. They turned slowly in the light breeze, letting out a harsh creak every so often.

  ‘Well, the smell’s not coming from in here.’ David sounded relieved as he pulled open the greenhouse door and stepped inside. ‘Nothing in here except …’

  ‘Except nothing,’ Jade said, surprised.

  It wasn’t much cooler under the plastic covers, but it was more humid.

  The ground was thick with damp, fertile-looking soil, and from the plastic pipes she could see, it appeared that a complex irrigation system was in place. But instead of the rows of vegetables and herbs she’d expected to find, all she saw was a series of short, brownish, truncated stalks that were withered and dying.

  She gave David a questioning glance. He shrugged in reply.

  They turned away from the entrance to the greenhouse and Jade followed David around the tall side of the massive structure. The plastic rippled in the breeze, making a hollow, flapping sound.

  Behind it was a barn and a small paddock, the latter encircled by steel posts and more of the barbed-wire fencing that surrounded the farm’s perimeter. This too was empty, although Jade could see a steel water trough that looked almost full by the open gate.

  ‘So, no plants. No livestock. One dead farmer. And what on earth’s that building been closed up for?’ David asked, pointing ahead to the barn.

  The tall wooden doors to the solidly built barn were tightly closed, and a length of steel piping was wedged through the handles to ensure that they could not be pushed – or pulled – open. It was difficult to see with the sun in her eyes, but Jade thought the barn’s high windows looked strangely blank, as if they might have been boarded up from the inside.

  The smell of rot was definitely stronger here. It seemed to be emanating from the structure, seeping out from the chinks and gaps in its stone wall and tin roofing.

  ‘Do we really want to know what’s inside?’ David muttered, in a tone that suggested he was expecting the worst. He strode over to the doors and studied the rusted piping and steel handles.

  ‘Those won’t hold fingerprints,’ he said, sounding almost disappointed. He grabbed hold of the steel and wrestled it out of the narrow gap. It loosened reluctantly, with a screaming of metal.

  With some difficulty, David forced the doors apart. As they opened, they brought the smell out with them, causing them both to gag as they stepped up and stared into the poorly lit interior.

  ‘Jesus Christ,’ he said, shock in his voice.

  Jade stood beside him and stared at the charnel house in front of them.

  It was almost dark inside the barn because the windows had indeed been boarded up. Even so, she could see the motionless forms, bloated and stinking, their coats saturated with now-dried blood.

  ‘Sheep,’ she said softly. ‘It looks like an entire flock was slaughtered.’

  ‘Were they, Jadey?’ David spoke in the same low voice. Just like her, he was taking small breaths in through his mouth to escape the almost tangible stench of putrid flesh.

  ‘I – how else could they have died?’

  ‘It’s just that I don’t see evidence of slaughter.’

  Trying not to breathe at all, Jade stepped forward to take a closer look at the lamb closest to the doors. It lay on a pile of straw close to a steel water trough, limbs stiffly extended. The trough was almost completely full of water, so it hadn’t died from dehydration. Or starvation, either. In terms of meat on their bones, the animals had not been in poor condition.

  ‘You’re right. Their throats haven’t been cut,’ she said. ‘But I can’t see any other sign of how they might have died.’

  It was difficult to see what damage the sheep had sustained, with the buzzing mantle of flies and maggots that covered the carcasses.

  Settled, it seemed, in certain preferred areas. The flies were crawling around the mouths of the animals, as well as their bellies. Jade could see that some of the short wool around the dead sheep’s muzzles was also discoloured by what appeared to be blood.

  They must have died recently because they were still bloated and the rot had not yet fully consumed them. She supposed a few days from now, in this heat, they would be little more than writhing piles of maggots.

  ‘Where there are flies, there’s rot,’ her father had said once. Those words she had always remembered, even though at the time she’d been young enough to know he wasn’t really talking about flies, but not old enough to know what it was he had actually meant.

  Now here she was looking at the physical proof of his words.

  ‘Perhaps they were sick,’ she said.

  ‘Would’ve had to have been an epidemic. Maybe they were poisoned. In fact, is that blood around their nostrils?’

  ‘I think so. I can’t think of anything else it could be.’

  The heat was stifling in the enclosed space. The sun was beating down on the metal roof now, sending the flies into frenzies of activity.

  ‘Could that be why this place was all closed up? So predators couldn’t get to the carcasses.’

  ‘The flies seem OK.’

  David snorted. ‘When have you ever known a bloody fly to die from sitting on anything toxic?’

  ‘True.’

  ‘Well, I guess we’ll also have to ask the Crime Scene boys to take some of these bodies away for analysis. Now let’s get out of here, Jadey. If they were poisoned, I don’t want to stick around.’

  ‘Wait,’ Jade said. Thoughts were swirling in her mind; the evidence of what she had seen both in this gloomy barn and out in the deserted settlement of the Siyabonga community. The rusty bloodstain on the rock. The words that the nursing sister at the hospital had spoken to her.

  A long shot … a scenario she didn’t even want to visualise but which maybe, just perhaps, made sense.

  ‘What?’ David asked. He was already at the door.

  ‘That gym bag.’

  ‘What about it?’

  ‘Were there any unused knives inside?’

  ‘There were a few, yes.’ Now he sounded unsure, as if he was regretting even having given her that answer. Quite probably she would end up regretting it too. But she had to try.

  ‘Please could you bring me one?’ she said.

  42

  David hesitated for a moment as if deciding whether or not he should comply with Jade’s bizarre request. Then, without speaking, he turned and strode off, heading not towards the hired car but
towards the empty farmhouse.

  A few minutes later he returned holding a long, shiny carving knife.

  ‘I found this in the kitchen,’ he said, and from his sickened expression Jade knew how much it must have cost him to go back in there.

  ‘Thank you.’

  ‘Better you use one of the farmer’s knives. Those others – even if they weren’t used, they might still have prints. But Jade, what on earth are you going to do?’

  ‘I want to see if my hunch is correct.’

  She walked over to the lamb. Its stiffened legs jutted at awkward angles and its beady eye stared unseeingly up at her. Now she could clearly see the blood that flecked its muzzle.

  ‘Surely you don’t have any experience of this,’ she heard David say. His voice seemed to be coming from somewhere well behind her.

  ‘I don’t. I’m hoping that I won’t need a lot, though.’

  Jade bent down, grasping the handle of the knife more firmly than usual. She didn’t want to touch the dead creature with her hands, but putting a foot on it to hold it down seemed somehow disrespectful.

  ‘Could you pass me one of those sacks?’ she asked David. ‘There are a couple there in the corner.’

  The sacks had been used for carrying feed here. David shook out a dry corn cob before passing the topmost one to her.

  Jade grasped the animal carefully, feeling the delicate bones of its rigid limbs through the weave of the sack. Even though she knew the lamb was already dead, she felt herself hesitate, as if unwilling to defile it any further. Which was ridiculous, given that she had, in the past and on more than one occasion, eaten and enjoyed free-range Karoo lamb.

  She brought the knife down to its stomach and wiggled the stiletto-sharp tip of the blade through the dense wool. She shook her head, blowing away the endlessly buzzing flies. Then she pressed down, hard and decisively, into its distended belly and was rewarded by a rush of gas and foul-smelling, blackish, soupy liquid that spilled onto the straw in front of her.

  ‘God, Jadey. What are you looking for?’ David sounded as if he was going to be sick.