Memo From Turner

by Tim Willocks

  Turner called him. He listened to the ringtone. He imagined Rudy seeing the unfamiliar number and making the appropriate deduction. The voice that answered trembled with hatred.

  ‘Save your dirty black breath,’ said Rudy. ‘You are a dead black motherfucker.’

  ‘We’re veteran police. Let’s act the part.’

  ‘Oh, I intend to, mate. I’ve got a tyre and a can of petrol in the back of the truck. I’m going to necklace you, dead or alive.’

  ‘I thought that was an ANC trick.’

  ‘You’d be surprised,’ said Rudy.

  ‘I’m sorry I had to kill Jason.’

  ‘He didn’t have a chance.’

  ‘He threw away all his chances when he fired that 12 gauge,’ said Turner. ‘We both let him down so let’s do what’s right. Let justice be done.’

  ‘Fuck off. And drop this “we” business. I’ve no more in common with you than with a pile of street shit.’

  ‘Get out of the car, lay down your arms, and send whoever’s with you home. I’ll take you to Mokoena and you can take care of Jason’s body.’

  ‘Are you out of your fucking mind?’

  ‘I don’t want to spill any more blood.’

  ‘Then you lay down your arms,’ said Rudy, ‘and leave the rest to me.’

  Turner had tried. His best chance was to goad Rudy into coming at him.

  ‘How many paid guns have you brought with you?’ he asked.

  ‘More than enough,’ said Rudy.

  ‘Jason went to it like a man.’

  ‘Jason was a fool.’

  ‘He adored you.’

  ‘Shut up.’

  ‘If it’s any consolation it was quick. Two in the chest and one in the throat.’

  ‘I said shut your fucking black mouth.’

  ‘It was you, Rudy. It was you.’

  ‘You bastard.’ Hoarse with guilt and rage.

  ‘You killed him. Now you’re hiding like a bitch.’

  ‘It’s on,’ said Rudy.

  ‘I’m here,’ said Turner.

  The line went dead.

  Turner got out of the Cruiser with the SPAS-12 and propped it against the front wing. He walked to the boot and opened his lock box. He briefly glassed the road again and saw the two vehicles start into motion. He had maybe three minutes. He set the binoculars down and strapped on an Armor Express Razor Level II ballistic vest. He unsheathed the regulation R5 assault rifle from its case, loaded it, and shoved two spare 35-round magazines into the thigh pocket of his pants. The R5 was a licensed copy of the Israeli Galil. The 5.65mm cartridge was lethal at a thousand metres.

  He watched the two cars start along the road towards him and accelerate. The Freelander in front. Say twenty metres per second. No easy target for light weapons; until they slowed. He was not afraid of gunfire from a moving vehicle. They weren’t Special Forces. Turner slipped the two-point tactical rifle sling across his chest and set the R5 to fire single rounds. He went down on one knee behind the engine block and watched through the binoculars.

  The Freelander had three men on board. Rudy was driving. The rear window was down and a rifle barrel angled outwards; it looked like an AK. The truck was a Hyundai, two black men in the cab; another assault rifle. At about a thousand metres the Hyundai swerved off the road and crashed through the jackal-proof fencing onto the yellow grassland, the long wheelbase see-sawing as the wheels hit uneven ground. A crude pincer movement. Their coordination was poor. The Freelander slowed to give the truck time to draw level.

  Turner felt calm. Everything was clear, visible. No civilians to consider. Focus on technique. It would be over in three minutes that would feel like three seconds. In terms of stress, it hardly compared to a night search of a crack house in Nyanga. At four hundred metres automatic gunfire rattled from both vehicles. The bullets came nowhere near the Cruiser that he was aware of. He saw Rudy open his mouth, red-faced, shouting, probably at the waste of ammo. Turner laid down the binoculars and shouldered the rifle and tightened the sling. At two hundred metres he started firing at the Freelander.

  Due to the angle of the car’s approach and the need to lead it, his point of aim was into the thin air above the horizon. Educated guesswork. On the fourth shot he saw a white blur burst in the windscreen. With the seventh shot another. Then another. The Freelander swerved back and forth in a violent zigzag. Turner heard more gunfire from the truck approaching to his left. He ignored it. The Freelander at a hundred metres: he tracked the left edge of the windscreen with the front sight, firing a steady two shots per second.

  The windscreen was two sheets of curved glass with a layer of plastic laminated between them. A bullet hitting the surface tumbled as it went through, deflected downwards. He’d put a dozen slugs through the moving car’s interior. Noise and destruction. The ripping of furniture and flesh. Ricochets from metal and plastic. To be inside such a car is an experience of terror and helplessness magnified by speed. The car is now as deadly as the gunfire. The panic contagious. The driver plunged into indecision. Faster or slower? Left or right? A mist of pulverised glass. Blood.

  Rudy gave up the zigzag and accelerated straight ahead to escape the fire. Turner swivelled, pumping rounds through the doors as it swept past. A rear side window blew. Turner continued the swivel three hundred degrees until he sighted the Hyundai bearing down fifty metres beyond the Cruiser.

  A gunman leaned head and shoulder from the passenger window, trying to draw a bead with an AK. The rough ground gave him no chance. Turner fired as fast as he could aim and squeeze. Six shots. The windscreen turned opaque. Flame and smoke from the barrel of the AK. Ten shots. The bolt snapped empty. The shooter fell back into the cab. The truck braked and swung in a desperate arc, lumbering back towards the road and flight.

  Turner slid the rifle behind his back and cinched the sling tight with the speed tab. He grabbed and shouldered the SPAS-12. Twenty metres. He could see the driver through the side window, his blood-flecked face grimacing as he heaved the truck into the swerve. Turner shot him twice through the door and saw him slump against the wheel. As the truck lost speed and rolled towards the fence Turner swivelled again to check the Freelander.

  Rudy had ploughed through the fence on the far side of the road and was skidding through the grass in a wide turn, back towards town. A hundred metres. Turner sprayed the Freelander with two rounds of buckshot and watched it pick up speed and pull away. The Hyundai had nosed into the fence and come to a stop without breaching it.

  Turner loped over behind the truck from where he could cover both doors and moved in. He glanced into the flatbed and saw the tyre and the jerry can. He heard groans of pain. The passenger door swung open.

  A pair of legs and the barrel of a rifle swung clear of the seat. An AK barrel. Turner aimed and fired. The lower thighs exploded into gore and raw meat as the close-grouped buckshot half severed one leg and ploughed on into the other. The AK fired a burst, a reflex, the bullets clanging through the truck’s door. The shooter slithered out, gibbering, his legs folding beneath him like blood-soaked laundry, his left arm extended back inside the cab as if trying to pull himself back in. Turner shot him through the armpit. The body slid down into a bleeding heap.

  Turner didn’t look at his face. He swapped the shotgun to a left-handed grip and moved in, aiming, listening. He heard the drone of the engine but nothing human. He looked inside. The driver’s face was cradled in a gap in the steering wheel. His torso was drenched in blood. He was dead.

  As Turner walked back to the Land Cruiser he put two fingers to his neck and checked his pulse. It was fifty-four. He reloaded his guns and stowed them inside and collected his binoculars. The Freelander was back on the tarmac, making speed towards Langkopf. Rudy was a lucky man. Turner climbed behind the wheel and started after him.

  Just short of the intersection with the main road Turner saw two bodies sprawled by the fence. He got out and examined them. One had been shot twice, through the face and the upper left ches
t below the collarbone, by his own 5.65 rounds. The second body had a rifle wound in his left shoulder and a close-range gunshot – a starburst wound and scorched hair – in the side of his head; probably a 9 mil. He couldn’t have been over twenty years old. Rudy hadn’t needed the aggravation. The Freelander was long gone.

  Turner got a bottle of water from the boot and drank. He stood in the blinding sun and thought about what he had done. He thought about the life, and the world, that had required him to do it. He thought about the fact that he was thus capable. He would live with it. He capped the bottle and put it back.

  As he got behind the wheel, Venter rang.

  ‘Turner? I’m still waiting for that video file.’

  Turner collected himself.

  ‘Turner?’

  ‘If I can find a connection without getting shot you should have it within an hour. Rudy Britz tried to hit me with a team of low-rent locals.’

  Venter was silent for longer than Turner might have expected.

  ‘How many?’ Venter seemed too shocked to be amused.

  ‘Four dead. Rudy got away.’

  ‘Jesus Christ. Are you hurt?’

  ‘No. Amateur hour.’

  ‘You think Le Roux was behind this? I mean Margot?’ Venter sounded nervous.

  ‘No, but now that Rudy’s jumped the gun she might try. He says he can take their ship down with him.’

  ‘Can you get clear?’

  ‘I intend to.’

  ‘Can you find a safe place to hide until I get you some backup?’

  ‘I’d feel like a mouse in a bathtub. Better to get out and run. But if they’ve decided to take me down they’ve got faster wheels than me and three hundred kilometres of desert road to do it in. If I can get that file to you, at least I’ll know it won’t be for nothing.’

  ‘Where’s your local support?’

  ‘There isn’t any. Winston Mokoena is watching the cricket.’

  ‘Cricket?’

  ‘He’s sitting on the fence.’

  ‘What can I do for you?’ said Venter.

  ‘Nothing until I finish this upload. Once that goes through, I can talk my way out of town.’

  ‘When you find that connection, call me. Don’t take any chances you don’t have to.’ Venter hung up.

  Turner glanced at the laptop in the footwell. There would be no Wi-Fi hotspots in Langkopf. An Internet shop, probably; much of the population wouldn’t own computers. The hotel. The police station. Various local businesses. A lawyer’s office? He could get access with a badge. But each of these possibilities would occur to Simon Dube as well. Turner tapped a number on his phone.

  Iminathi answered. ‘Turner?’

  ‘Where are you?’

  ‘I’m at La Diva. Why?’

  ‘Is Winston around?’

  ‘No, I’ve been trying to find him, too. In the mornings he’s usually at the station but he’s not there either. He’s not answering his phone.’

  ‘He’s probably dancing around a cauldron with Margot.’

  ‘You should hear this as well,’ said Imi. ‘A girl came to the salon. She asked me if Winston would talk to her boyfriend. A friend of his knocked him up out of bed and she heard them talking about stealing cars, getting guns. She doesn’t know what they’re planning but she doesn’t want him to go to jail again.’

  Turner thought of the youngster Rudy had executed; the three men he had killed.

  ‘She’s probably better off without him.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  There was no point trusting her more than he had to.

  ‘When you make contact with Winston, tell him to call me.’

  Turner hung up and headed on towards town.

  19

  Turner spotted the lookout at the petrol station on the edge of town. It was the car that first caught his eye, a small, white three-door hatchback, looked like an Aygo, very clean, maybe two years old. In a small, rural mining town it struck him at once as a company car, the kind security firms include in their fleet as a cost-efficient patrol vehicle. It was parked by the air pump and a black man, thirties, stood beside it holding the hose and pressure gauge. No uniform but his white shirt was crisp, his khakis pressed, his black boots polished. As Turner saw him, and he saw Turner’s big black Toyota, he crouched down in a pretence of checking his front tyre, but kept an eye on the road.

  The private security industry in South Africa was huge. In manpower it outnumbered the national police force and the army combined by more than two to one. At the top of the pyramid would be someone like Simon Dube, expert in a wide range of surveillance, protection, tactical and combat skills. At the base were hundreds of thousands of low-paid, low-skill guards, expert only in the endurance of boredom. Standing at gates, checking ID, checking padlocks, doors, fences, industrial machinery.

  Turner made a sudden right-angled swerve into the forecourt, blipped the accelerator for a burst of speed and braked to a halt a metre short of the startled guard, who dropped the air hose and staggered two steps back. Turner slid out and the guard saw POLICE emblazoned in white on his vest. Turner pointed at the car’s bonnet.

  ‘Hands on the car, sir.’

  The man obeyed with the sullen grace of one caught out. He didn’t ask any questions, confirming the diagnosis. He wasn’t carrying a gun. Turner patted his shirt and pants and took his mobile phone.

  ‘Stay where you are.’

  Turner opened the driver’s door. A hip-holstered Z-88 pistol lay on the seat. Turner took it. No in-car radio. Just the mobile. He took the keys from the ignition. He shut the door and looked at the man.

  ‘How many more of you?’

  The guard shrugged and made a sound with his tongue and teeth. Turner jabbed him with a spear hand in the liver 13 meridian point, just below the tip of his right floating ribs. The guard collapsed flat across the bonnet and slid down to his knees. He vomited onto the radiator grille. Turner tossed the gun and the keys into the back of the Land Cruiser. He crouched down by the guard, who gasped as the wave of agony ebbed from his gut to a tolerable level. It would linger there, lapping at the edges of diarrhoea and nausea, for a good half an hour.

  ‘You don’t get paid enough for this,’ said Turner. ‘How many more?’

  ‘Two.’

  ‘Where?’

  ‘I don’t know. In town.’

  ‘How many more?’ Turner repeated.

  ‘Four others, down the road. On the other side of the hill.’

  Turner hauled him up by one arm and guided him, hobbling, to the driver’s seat. As he shoved him inside, Turner jabbed him in the liver again. The guard doubled over the wheel so fast he bashed his face on the rim.

  ‘Better sit this out,’ said Turner.

  The guard began to heave again. Turner shut the door.

  He got back in the Land Cruiser and reversed to face the road. Two more spotters. Where would they put them? One in the hotel car park: from there he could cover the police station and a fair length of the main street to the north. The second further down the main street, probably on foot, mingling with the pedestrians. They weren’t here to intercept him, just to warn Dube.

  Turner nosed up the road. The nearest oncoming traffic was half a kilometre distant. He swung into the right-hand lane, against the traffic, and accelerated hard. He drove three hundred metres in the viewing shadow of the hotel before the far corner of the car park appeared. He slowed and went up onto the pavement and gained another fifty metres. The entrance to the hotel was from the car park, not the street. He stopped as close to the hotel wall as he could and still get the door open. He grabbed a canister of pepper spray from the centre console and put his white sun hat on.

  He walked to within two paces of the corner of the building before he saw the nose of a 4×4 on the edge of the car park. White. Clean. Thirty metres. A four-second sprint. Doors almost certainly unlocked. The spotter would need to think and move fast to hit central locking. If he did, it would be a bullet to shatte
r the window. He wouldn’t have time to make a call.

  Turner sprinted.

  The spotter – who else would be spending Monday morning watching the street from a white 4×4? – didn’t see him until he was halfway there. He saw POLICE running at him. The guy was still thinking about what to think when Turner opened the passenger door, stuck his arm inside and hosed his face and head with five seconds’ worth of bear-repellent-strength capsaicin. He kept his own head outside, above the roof of the car, listening to the bellow of shock transmute into racking and uncontrollable coughs. He stepped back and glanced inside. The driver was coughing so hard his chest was slamming into the steering wheel, one hand clasped to his blinded vision as his eyelids bubbled and boiled and searing pain swamped his face, scalp and throat.

  Turner circled the front of the 4×4, pocketing the canister. He opened the driver’s door. A mobile phone fell from the spotter’s right hand and onto the tarmac. Turner took his hat off with his left hand and used it to yank the keys from the ignition. He picked up the phone the same way and wrapped phone and keys in the hat. He shut the door and left the spotter to recover; a minimum fifteen minutes before he could stagger to the hotel, more to make himself understood, much more to come up with the phone number he had probably never memorised, and most likely straight to the bathroom, where the water he would splash on his face would bring him no relief.

  Turner drove back into the left lane. Most of the town sprawled in a grid on the flat land to the west, opposite the hill. He drove as fast as he dared down the main street. Not many pedestrians in the heat. He saw no obvious reactions in the rear-view mirror. The road ran straight beyond town, where he had driven Iminathi the night before. When he reached the last turn to the left he braked and took it. It was unlikely to fool the last spotter into thinking that he’d headed north, but it put him in as much of a maze as Langkopf offered. He took the second left and headed back, parallel to the main road.

  The town had expanded onto cheap land so it was laid out with plenty of space. Streets where buildings faced each other alternated with alleys lined with parched gardens and the backlots of shops and businesses. He passed a new building with a sign reading ‘Le Roux Medical Centre’. He drove on and took an educated guess and chose an alley and slowed down to study the backs of the properties. About where he expected it to be he saw an empty parking space and two wheeled garbage bins. Above the bins a plastic sign screwed to the wall read ‘La Diva – Deliveries’.