Pale Horses

by Jassy Mackenzie

  She took care with her make-up, too. Black eyeliner, smoky-grey eyeshadow, mascara, a coat of shimmering taupe lip gloss. She so seldom wore make-up that her face felt coated with it, her pores clogged and sealed with the powder and foundation and blusher. Finally, she added a spritz of the Issey Miyake that David had given her two years ago and which was still almost full. Its sweet, floral scent filled the air.

  She had no pocket to carry her wallet and phone so she put them into a black velvet clutch.

  Glancing at the clock on her kitchen wall, she realised that her preparations had taken longer than she’d expected.

  Pulling her cellphone out of her bag again, she dialled Victor Theron’s number.

  He answered after eight rings, just as she was beginning to think she would have to leave a message.

  ‘Victor? I’m on my way now. I’m sorry I’m running a little late. I should be there in twenty minutes.’

  His reply sounded strangely subdued, although his voice was tight with tension.

  ‘That’s OK. That’s fine, Jade. The markets have been up and down like yo-yos all day and I’m still closing out positions in the Dow Jones. If you wanted to make it in half an hour, that would be better.’

  ‘Would it be more convenient to meet you somewhere?’

  ‘No, no. Come to the flat. It’ll be … it’ll be great to see you. To be honest, I wasn’t planning on going out.’

  ‘You weren’t?’ Jade wondered if he could tell that she was smiling.

  ‘No.’

  ‘But you’ve asked me for dinner?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘I never figured you for a cook, Victor.’

  ‘No. No, you’re right. I’m not much of a cook at all.’

  ‘So are we ordering in takeaways, then?’ Heels clicking, Jade walked towards the hook on the wall and collected her car keys.

  ‘No, no. I’ve got some wine here, and plenty of stuff in the fridge. Really good food, I mean. Restaurant-quality dishes. You see, I have a domestic worker who cooks. She’s actually got ambitions to become a top chef.’

  Ntombi shoved the phone back at the pedestrian.

  ‘Take it, quick. Go now. Please, run!’

  She sprinted back to the car and collapsed into the seat just as the front door swung open and the dark-suited man reappeared, carrying the same woman as before.

  As he settled her into the back seat her body lolled to one side. Roughly, he shoved her into a semblance of an upright position. Then, grasping her shoulder to hold her in place, he pulled at the seatbelt and fastened it tightly around her.

  He looked up and saw Ntombi watching and issued the same warning he had done before, his voice icy. ‘Remember, this is our friend. She has had too much to drink and we are taking her home. No other story, if we are stopped.’

  ‘I understand,’ Ntombi said.

  The killer got into the front of the car and settled himself down. Once again, the smell of his unwashed body hit her and she had to struggle not to gag.

  It was only after she’d fastened her own seatbelt that he pressed the buzzer to open the gate.

  ‘Where are we going?’ she asked.

  ‘Where I tell you,’ he responded.

  He dialled a number on his phone and in a moment she heard him speaking to her employer.

  ‘I will have the goods with you in thirty minutes,’ he said. He waited, listened. ‘Yes, cash. Have it ready. No, I won’t need a taxi to the airport. The Gautrain will still be running.’

  He pocketed the phone and told Ntombi to turn left.

  Left.

  Towards Sandton.

  It was a ten-minute drive from where she was now to her employer’s garage. Ten minutes. No longer, not at this time of the evening, when rush hour was already over.

  But the man sitting beside her had told her employer thirty minutes, and Ntombi knew that there was only one possible reason for this. Only one job he had still left to do, after which a taxi or a train would whisk him away to the airport.

  The man had done everything asked of him. Except for one last job.

  She felt a terrible coldness fill her. She knew she should attempt to escape. Try to undo her belt, wrench the door open and simply run. But there wouldn’t be enough time. The seatbelt would slow her down and he would grab her and then …

  Ntombi didn’t want to think about the screams she’d heard in the Karoo the previous night, piercing the silent, star-filled night sky.

  Instead she thought of Khumalo in Umhlanga, being looked after by Portia. She was a responsible woman, and a wealthy one. Ntombi had no doubt that Portia would arrange for Khumalo to be well cared for. Her child, at least, would be all right. More importantly, he was safe for now.

  ‘Turn left here.’ The man’s voice broke through her reverie and she obeyed automatically, turning off the main road and down a tree-lined side road where she saw notice boards advertising another construction site. This one, though, looked old and abandoned. The boards were faded; their wood splintered, leaning at tired angles on rusted metal poles.

  This was the place, then. The end of the road, and in more ways than one.

  The bite of the seatbelt, holding her prisoner inside the car.

  Portia’s words in her head. The woman’s voice, loud and confident and kind.

  ‘If you are ever hijacked, my sister, this is what you must do …’

  Faintly, in the distance, Ntombi could hear the sound of approaching police sirens. Too late for her, though.

  ‘Khumalo,’ she said aloud.

  The killer’s head whipped round, but she was too quick and too sure. She stamped with all her force on the accelerator and heard the car’s engine scream as its sixteen perfectly tuned cylinders responded with a brutal thrust of power.

  The car flew across the road, Ntombi’s hands tight on the wheel, aiming the accelerating vehicle squarely at the centre of the biggest, thickest tree trunk she could see.

  She had feared the moment of the crash almost as much as she feared her passenger’s retribution, but for her, neither happened.

  There was only her husband, for one blissful moment, his dear, familiar face smiling at her as he held out his hands in welcome.

  52

  Exactly thirty minutes after their phone conversation, Jade arrived at Victor Theron’s apartment and rang the bell.

  A full minute passed before the door opened.

  Unlike herself, Victor hadn’t smartened up. He was wearing an old Pringle sweater and a faded pair of Guess denims. His jaw was unshaven; gaunt and hollow, skull-like, as if a terrible anxiety had devoured the very essence of his being.

  He stood in the doorway and looked at Jade as if he wasn’t really seeing her at all. He made no comment on her appearance but simply just stepped aside and said, ‘Come in.’

  She entered his showpiece apartment for the second time. It was unchanged. Every piece of furniture immaculate and in place. No cluttered surfaces. It had more in common with a hotel suite than a home.

  ‘Are you finished with the markets for today?’ she asked. The words fell heavily into the awkward silence.

  ‘Yes. Yes, I think so. Positions are closed out and everything.’ Jade noticed the electronic trading gadget he’d paid so much attention to in the past was lying, face down, as if forgotten, on the couch. Instead, Theron’s hand strayed continually to the cellphone on his belt and he kept frowning down at it as if willing it to ring.

  ‘Did you trade successfully?’

  ‘No, not really. Not today.’

  ‘I’m sorry, Victor,’ she said.

  ‘That’s OK.’

  For a moment the tension in his face softened and he squeezed her shoulder. A rough caress. She could feel the wiry strength in his hands.

  ‘Shall we go onto the balcony?’ he asked. ‘We could have a glass of Champagne out there. There’s a great view. Sandton is quite a spectacle at night.’

  Jade walked ahead of him across the carpeted lounge and up to th
e glass sliding doors. She stood aside to allow Victor to open them and then he stood aside to let her go out first.

  Jade stepped carefully off the carpet and onto the tiled floor. The balcony was small, enclosed by a simple waist-high metal rail with Perspex panelling below. Out of the artificially warm cocoon of the apartment, the air was bitingly cold. She shivered.

  The lights of Sandton were spread out below her in a shimmering blanket. Victor was right. The view was spectacular. Stepping closer to the rail, Jade looked down, all the way down the dizzying sixteen-floor drop to the sidewalk below and the nearby road, where distant headlights wormed their way along.

  ‘Are you cold?’

  ‘A little.’

  Behind her she felt Theron’s hands close around her shoulders and move down over her arms. His skin was surprisingly warm. Heat radiated from him and she could feel the tension in his grasp.

  ‘Do you really have the guts to do this, Victor?’ she asked him, and felt the breath huff out of him as if she’d elbowed him in the solar plexus. His fingers tightened around her biceps, their wiry grip making her think of an eagle’s talons.

  ‘Wh … what are you talking about?’ he stammered.

  ‘Your plans have gone wrong.’

  ‘My plans?’

  ‘You weren’t supposed to be alone when I arrived here, were you?’ she told him. ‘Your hired gun was meant to be here too. After he’d dealt with Ntombi Khumalo and Zelda Meintjies, I guess his final assignment would have been to dispose of me.’

  Victor was silent. Totally rigid. She couldn’t even hear him breathing.

  ‘He was supposed to bring you the seeds,’ Jade said. ‘But the seeds aren’t here, are they? And he hasn’t called in.’

  She was quiet for a moment.

  ‘Who were you going to sell them to?’ she asked. She didn’t expect a reply and Victor didn’t offer one.

  ‘My guess is that you made a deal with a terrorist organisation – some sort of extremist group. The asking price wouldn’t even have been that important to you. After all, a weapon like this has such incredible potential to destroy, doesn’t it? I think they were going to take those seeds up into Central Africa somewhere and plant them. There’s plenty of space there, after all. In a continent whose area could swallow up North America and India and China, and still have room left over, who’d ever notice or care about a few hectares of maize?’

  Victor’s grip clamped down harder. Jade didn’t know if he was even aware of his telltale physical reaction to her words.

  ‘They’d be able to create a sort of 9/11 all over again if that deadly crop got into the food chain in the States. Consumed directly it would cause mass fatalities, but that would only be necessary once. Then sow just a few of those seeds into a field and you’d be able to contaminate the entire harvest. Even the risk of their presence would render a crop unusable.

  With farms and fields covering thousands of hectares, who could ever tell the lethal plants apart from the safe ones? Millions of acres of maize would be left to rot where it grew, in the black soils of the heartland. The US farming industry would collapse, followed by the economy. Famine, disease and death – it would be the apocalypse all right. And you, Victor, safely tucked away here in your precious Da Vinci Towers – you’d be OK. In fact, you’d be laughing all the way to the bank if you’d taken a short position on maize futures. While the bottom dropped out of the market, you’d make millions.’

  Finally, Victor Theron spoke.

  ‘How did you work it out?’ he asked quietly.

  Jade took her time answering. She was silent for a while, thinking of the short phone conversation she’d had earlier with Ntombi Khumalo. Who had left her home after her husband had died, bereft and terrified, the only survivor of the plague that had swept through her community.

  She had come to Johannesburg to look for work, and she had told her new employer the story of what had happened. Had shown him the sample of the seeds she had brought along with her, which she suspected had produced a toxic crop. Had asked him to help her find answers, to get the authorities involved, to find out why this had occurred, why the harvest that was supposed to feed her people had made them terminally ill.

  Straight away, Victor Theron must have seen his chance. He had stumbled upon a potential goldmine. An irresistible opportunity for a man who, long ago, had sold his soul to Croesus. He had taken the information Ntombi had given him, contacted Sonet and Zelda, organised for the seeds to be cultivated in Koenraad Meintjies’s greenhouse, and strung all of them along while making his own plans.

  Global Seeds had hired a group of gunmen to eradicate all evidence of the diseased community.

  Theron had hired somebody far worse to help him pursue his own ends once the harvest was ready to be reaped. That man had murdered Sonet, kidnapped Zelda, and demanded a ransom from her brother for her safe return.

  The ransom had been the crop that Koenraad Meintjies had so innocently been growing.

  Zelda’s safe return had never been on the cards.

  The base-jumping episode in Sandton Views had provided a useful excuse to get Sonet alone at a convenient time, and stage her dramatic death.

  From the footprints Jade had seen in the dust on the top floor, it was clear that Sonet had never walked along those dusty floorboards. In the semi-darkness there would have been no way that Theron could have placed his feet in her footsteps so accurately that no trace of Sonet’s prints remained. More likely she had been carried, hopefully unconscious, by the killer who then pushed her over the parapet to fall to her death.

  Theron himself, Jade thought, had probably never ever base jumped; still less packed Sonet’s parachute. But, by making himself a suspect in the eyes of the police, he had given himself credibility in this regard, and nobody had doubted his story. He had confessed to a crime he never committed, and that confession had misled them all.

  Until now.

  ‘I looked into your past,’ Jade continued. ‘I found out that your wife was shot in an attempted robbery just a few days after the 9/11 market crash. You were caught on the wrong side of the markets back then, weren’t you? You lost every penny, but you managed to keep from going under by putting out a hit on her and cashing in her life insurance policy. You paid out your panicking clients and you used the rest to start again. But you never quite got back to where you were, did you? Not until this opportunity came along.’

  Now Jade heard him exhale; a long, shuddering breath that tickled the hairs on the back of her neck. But still he didn’t say a word.

  ‘When the buyer signed the deal, you took Zelda hostage and then you had Sonet killed because, by doing that, you could control her brother. With Zelda’s life at stake, he would do what he was told, up to and including handing over a bag of seeds from the corn he was growing in the greenhouse to back up his sister’s story. ’

  Now Theron spoke. ‘I see.’ His voice sounded hoarse.

  ‘It’s all gone wrong for you now,’ she said. ‘The reason I know is that I spoke to Ntombi Khumalo earlier on. She told me about the seeds that your hitman was bringing to you.’ Jade fell silent for a moment, allowing time for the words to sink in. ‘She didn’t have time to say much – she was terrified – but she told me that neither the hitman nor the seeds would reach your flat. That she would do what she had to do to stop them. A brave lady and, it seems, one who kept her word.’

  Now Jade turned slightly so she could look up at Theron while she spoke. His hands remained on her shoulders but did not prevent her from moving in his grasp.

  ‘I didn’t know what would happen when I came to your flat tonight. I didn’t know what I would find or who would be waiting for me here. Whether it would be you, or the killer you hired. So why did I come at all? Did you wonder?’

  ‘Seeing as you’re so smart, why don’t you tell me?’

  ‘I said when I met you that this case had come at a bad time in my life. I was not exaggerating. I’ve done some evil things recently
. Crimes I know I can never atone for. And when I look at where my life is going, all I see is more evil ahead. I guess what makes us different is I have done everything myself. Not once have I paid somebody else to do my dirty work for me. But you have. In fact, you’ve never done it any other way.’

  Now her throat felt dry, too.

  ‘You could push me over the balcony and say I jumped, or even fell. And the police might well believe your story. But like I said, you’d have to do it yourself. And I don’t know if you have it in you. It’s a gamble, I suppose. Like playing the markets.’

  Jade paused for breath.

  ‘So, do you, Victor?’

  53

  The Randburg Chronicle, 19 June, page 2:

  PASSENGER DIES IN VEHICLE ACCIDENT

  By Junior Reporter Busiswe Lephele

  An unidentified male passenger died on Thursday evening after being thrown through the windscreen of a BMW when the vehicle swerved out of control and hit a tree on Patridge Street and burst into flames. The man, who suffered severe head injuries, was declared dead at the scene.

  Two pedestrians managed to free the driver, Mrs Ntombi Kumalo, and the female passenger, Miss Zelda Mainkies, from the burning wreckage. Attending paramedics rushed the two to the Sandton Clinic. Both were suffering from concussion, bone fractures, minor burns and smoke inhalation. A spokesperson for the hospital reports that both women are out of ICU and recovering well.

  By the time the fire brigade arrived, the car had burned out beyond recognition.

  The Sandton Gazette, 21 May, page 5:

  SUSPECTED SUICIDE IN DA VINVI TOWERS

  Mr Victor Theron, a resident of the Da Vinci Towers, Sandton, fell to his death from the balcony of his 16th floor apartment in what appears to be an act of suicide. Residents of this exclusive apartment block say they are shocked and distressed by the news. A visitor to Theron’s apartment, Miss Janet de Jong, said: ‘Victor had become very stressed and depressed after the recent accidental death of his close friend Sonnet Meintjies, who fell to her death while base jumping after her parachute malfunctioned. As an independent financial trader, he had been having a difficult time with the markets as well, and had mentioned more than once to me in the past that he did not see a way out.’