The Fallen

by Jassy Mackenzie

  ‘Monique?’ Craig sounded surprised.

  ‘I doubt it. But when I was down on the beach, I noticed a man heading towards the resort—he looked like a vagrant or a tramp. He came up this way.’

  ‘You want to go check?’

  ‘Do you have a torch?’

  ‘In my chalet.’

  As they walked back past Monique’s room, Craig glanced down at the champagne bottle that Jade had left outside the door. ‘Could I … would you like me to put that inside for you?’

  ‘Thanks.’ Jade picked it up and handed it over. She was glad to be rid of it.

  Craig walked the short distance to his chalet, unlocked the door and stepped inside. He returned a minute later holding a torch, with a yellow waterproof jacket slung over his shoulders.

  In his hand, he held another jacket, this one leather, which he handed to Jade.

  ‘You want to put this on? It’ll help keep out the worst of the rain.’

  ‘Thanks.’

  Jade had expected that the jacket would be Elsabe’s—a woman’s size—but when she slid her arms into it, the sleeves were far too long, and she realised that this garment must also belong to Craig.

  ‘Where exactly did you see it?’

  ‘Right there.’ Jade pointed.

  Craig shone the torch onto the shadowy foliage that lined the two brick-paved lanes of the driveway leading up the hill. The beam lit up nothing out of the ordinary.

  Jade wrapped the jacket tightly round her shoulders, glad for the protection from the worsening rain, especially since her legs were bare. Craig was also unsuitably clad for the weather in his khaki shorts and Teva leather hiking sandals.

  The leather jacket smelled spicy and smoky, making her think of red wine and log fires.

  They walked up the driveway, Craig shining the torch to and fro.

  ‘You know, there are no fences here,’ Jade said. ‘This place is not well secured. It bothers me that anybody can walk off the road or off the beach, right up to the resort.’

  Craig nodded. ‘A lot of the smaller resorts here are pretty laid-back about security, especially compared to the big cities. There isn’t the same level of crime here. You get petty theft, the occasional burglary. Maybe, if you’re unlucky, a smashed car window.’

  ‘Are you from around here?’

  He shook his head. ‘From Cape Town, originally. I’ve spent some time doing fieldwork here, though.’ Prompted by Jade’s questioning glance, he continued. ‘There have been some large-scale ecological studies commissioned here, and that’s my field of expertise. Marine ecology.’

  ‘Sounds interesting,’ Jade said. ‘So was there an oil spill here recently, then?’

  ‘An oil spill? No, heaven forbid. Absolutely not. Why?’

  ‘I’ve noticed black streaks in the sand around here. I thought they might be oil. I didn’t know if I should try to avoid them when I walk on the beach.’

  ‘No, those are mineral deposits, mostly titanium ore. They occur naturally in the sand around here. The ore originated in the Drakensberg mountains. It was eroded over time, transported to the sea by the rivers, and then washed north by the current to end up in these dunes.’

  ‘Oh, OK then. That makes sense.’

  ‘That’s why the leatherback turtles come here to breed.’

  ‘How do you mean? Because of the dunes?’

  ‘Because the sand is so incredibly mineral-rich. They swim thousands of miles every year to lay their eggs here.’

  ‘I haven’t seen any of those yet. They sound like amazing … er … animals.’

  Was it correct to call a turtle an animal? Or should she have referred to them as reptiles? Jade wasn’t sure.

  ‘There should be some loggerheads around now, although it is early in the season. They are incredible. The world’s fourth-largest reptile. But sadly, they’re an endangered species.’

  So she’d been wrong. They were reptiles. Oh well. Turning her attention back to their surroundings, Jade watched as the torch beam swept over the dark tree trunks, brightening the foliage from shadowy grey to deep green. She kept her gaze fixed on the trees, listening to raindrops spattering on leaves, scanning the narrow strip of forest for any signs that somebody might be hiding there. There would be giveaways. A flash of colour from clothing. Sudden movement that was not caused by the wind.

  ‘The mineral wealth in the sands is a mixed blessing, because it has historically made this area an endangered one,’ Craig continued. ‘Back in King Shaka’s time, we know that limited mining took place here, because there are remains of metal weapons in the old Zulu settlements—weapons made from minerals mined from these dunes.’

  ‘And what about more recently?’

  ‘In the mid-1990s, there was a massive outcry when a company wanted to strip-mine the dunes.’

  ‘I’m sure I remember hearing about that in the news,’ Jade said.

  ‘It made headlines all over the country. All over the world, in fact, because it would have been an ecological disaster. One of my very first projects was working to oppose that strip-mining operation. It was successful.’

  ‘What was the outcome?’

  ‘The St Lucia wetlands area, or iSimangaliso, as it’s now known, was proclaimed a world heritage site, the first one in South Africa. That put a stop to all such operations within the park, although a couple of areas were mined nearby. And now the dunes are under threat again.’

  ‘Why’s that?’

  ‘There’s increasing pressure from developers to have the 1996 legislation overturned, to allow mining to take place in the park, and to open up the area to industrial development.’

  The forest area was jungle-like in its density, the area under the trees thick and matted with ferns, lichens and other plants that Jade didn’t recognise. She supposed Craig would know their names. And she assumed that if anybody had tried to hide in here, they would have left an obvious path behind them as they battled their way through the overgrowth.

  Craig was still chatting casually about the local ecosystem. It was fine for him to do that, because that was his work. But Jade’s work was different. She knew only too well that locating a hiding fugitive could literally mean the difference between life and death. She couldn’t allow herself to relax, or get too distracted by a conversation that she had to admit was beginning to pique her interest.

  ‘What’s the justification for scrapping the old laws?’ she asked, despite herself.

  ‘Well, the argument for declaring the area a national park was that ecotourism could bring as much benefit to the area as mining. But that hasn’t ended up happening as fast as it should have done, for a variety of reasons.’

  ‘What are those?’ Jade paused to wipe the rain from her face.

  ‘Practically, the lack of roads is the biggest problem. And, of course, you can’t even build an ecolodge in an area that has sensitive vegetation or problematic soils.’

  ‘That would be pointless,’ Jade agreed. Even she could see that would be a non-starter.

  ‘Meanwhile, the local communities have their own problems. They’re among the poorest in the country and they rely on natural resources to survive. With the park a protected area, it means that the forests outside its boundaries are starting to become depleted. They’re pressurising the authorities to open up the areas within the park, because they need more space and materials for subsistence farming.’

  ‘That’s depressing.’

  ‘Not as depressing as the fact that the developers have now managed to get a review on the titanium-mining ban. They have requested an ecological reassessment of the area to be done, which will be starting next month. It’s a real worry that the results of that report could tip the balance and see industry winning over the environment again.’

  ‘I can see how that could happen.’

  Craig sighed heavily. ‘It’s a beautiful, peaceful part of the world. But under the surface, it’s a simmering pressure cooker of conflicting interests, and we’re all
hoping we can keep the lid from blowing off.’

  Ahead, Jade could see the wooden gateposts that marked the boundary of Scuba Sands. They’d walked the length of the driveway. No sign of the person she’d seen earlier. Perhaps he’d simply been using the resort as a shortcut and had gone on to take shelter from the rain somewhere else.

  Then Jade recalled how she’d noticed the change in the man’s demeanour; from his aimless wandering along the beach to the focused purposefulness with which he’d then headed up towards the chalets.

  And then she caught her breath. She’d seen movement, illuminated for just a moment in one of the passes that the torch had made.

  ‘Over there,’ she said. ‘Something’s there.’

  11

  ‘You’ve seen something? Where?’ Craig swung the torch back in the opposite direction.

  ‘Over that way.’ Jade pointed to a clump of trees. ‘More to the right. Yes, there. Look.’

  The beam picked up the gleam of two eyes amid a brown-grey wall of skin. Its shape and size were unmistakable. Out of the water, it looked almost comically porcine—very different in real life from the smiling, cartoon-like animal on the doormat outside the Huberta room.

  Jade’s legs felt suddenly unsteady. She knew only too well that these mammals were responsible for more human deaths than any other.

  ‘It’s a hippo,’ she whispered. ‘And it’s moving.’

  Craig slowly arced the torch back across the trees. ‘It’s OK—it’s heading away from us, I think, into that thick bank of bushes.’

  They strained to hear it making its way through the undergrowth, but above the clamour of the wind and rain Jade wasn’t sure if the tearing sounds she thought she could hear were real or her imagination playing tricks on her.

  ‘Still, we’d better get out of here,’ Craig said softly. ‘We certainly don’t want to get between it and its intended destination.

  ‘The brochure in the chalet did say to be careful about going out at night. Now I can see why,’ she whispered.

  They turned and headed swiftly back down the road, Jade still feeling lightheaded from adrenaline and wondering if it would be possible to outrun three tons of angry hippo moving at more than forty kilometres an hour, should the beast decide to charge them. Thinking about it more logically, though, surely all she would have to do would be to outrun Craig?

  One thing was for sure—with hippos on the loose, she didn’t think that many vagrants would be choosing to bed down for the night anywhere near their chalets.

  They walked along for a while in companionable silence and, as she saw the lights of their resort ahead, she felt herself start to relax.

  ‘You’ve got good eyesight, Jade,’ Craig said. ‘At that distance, in that light, I’d never have spotted it on my own.’

  Jade nodded. ‘I’m lucky that way. Twenty-twenty vision. And I can see well at night.’

  ‘Just like my father. I didn’t inherit his eyesight, unfortunately. I wear contact lenses.’

  ‘What does your dad do?’

  There was an awkward silence and then an abrupt response from Craig. ‘Not much. He’s dead.’

  ‘I’m sorry.’

  ‘It still … it’s still shocking when I think about it. It’s barely been six months.’

  ‘What happened?’ Jade felt a coldness inside her. She didn’t want to ask the question, but she knew that now it would be expected of her. That Craig was already preparing himself for the pain of answering it.

  ‘A crash up in northern Africa, in a town called Freedom. The stuff nightmares are made of. I went to go and identify his body, but it was so badly damaged that I couldn’t.… They had to do a DNA comparison. That was how I met Elsabe—at the crash site. She also lost family there, including a child. Half a year on and I’m still trying to deal with it. It’s even worse for her.’

  Jade didn’t reply immediately. She had also lost her father in a horrific crash. Emotion overwhelmed her as she remembered seeing the smashed and buckled car in which he had been a passenger. He’d been trapped inside the stalled vehicle, unable to undo his jammed seatbelt, as a huge truck had come hurtling down a side road and smashed into it.

  Only later did Jade realise that his death was no accident, that it was murder, an organised hit hastily arranged to protect the criminal whose identity her father had uncovered as he investigated a sensitive case.

  The driver of that car had been the first man she had ever killed.

  Had her father suffered? Had he died in terror, watching the truck’s large, angry grille thundering towards him?

  Jade had prayed that his death had been quick, that he had been distracted by the deliberately jammed belt, unaware of the approaching vehicle. That it had happened in an instant. One moment alive, dead the next.

  She wondered if Craig had prayed for the same.

  ‘I’m sorry to hear that.’ Her voice was shaky. ‘I’m so sorry, Craig.’

  He sighed deeply. ‘Time heals, apparently, but I’m still waiting.’

  Jade didn’t think it was possible for the rain to get any harder, but suddenly it was as if the floodgates to the Gariep Dam had been opened. Icy water fell in torrents from the sky. Hailstones stung her bare legs and ricocheted off the back of the leather jacket.

  ‘Inside!’ Craig shouted.

  They raced to his chalet. A brief fumble with the padlock and they were inside, standing in the middle of the lounge, water dripping off them and down onto the tiles. As the door slammed behind them, Jade found herself waiting for Elsabe to call out from one of the bedrooms or appear in the passage, asking what all the noise was about.

  She eased the jacket off her shoulders and hung it on the back of a dining-room chair. It had provided some protection against the rain, but her T-shirt was now sporting huge damp patches and her shorts were soaked. Luckily the heat that the storm had chased away outside was still lingering inside, so she wasn’t cold.

  Looking round, she realised that both the doors in this bigger, two-bedroom chalet were open.

  ‘Where’s Elsabe?’ she asked.

  Craig shrugged. ‘She went into town to visit a friend. Said she wouldn’t be back tonight.’

  The reluctant way in which he said it made Jade think that the person Elsabe had gone to visit might be more than a friend, and that Craig himself was upset by this.

  ‘Well, thanks for lending me the jacket,’ she said. ‘I’d better be going.’

  ‘Wait. Your champagne.’

  He’d put it in the fridge. Now he took it out and handed it to her. Strong, tanned fingers clasped the neck of the bottle. Water trickled down from his sodden blond hair.

  Jade shook her head. ‘You might as well keep it,’ she said.

  Now his eyes met hers and she saw concern in them.

  Hazel eyes. Brown, with flecks of green and yellow.

  Again, she noticed the twinge in the pit of her stomach she’d felt the first time she’d spoken to him. Not unease … something else.

  ‘Don’t you …?’ he said, then stopped himself as if he’d been going to ask her something personal but had decided against it.

  And then, after a pause, he continued. ‘Don’t you want to drink it?’

  ‘What, now?’

  ‘Yes. Now.’

  Jade could feel the tension in the air, like the way everything had felt before the thunderstorm, as he waited for her to answer.

  She hadn’t looked away from him. She found that at that moment she couldn’t.

  ‘OK.’

  Craig moved over to the door. The key rattled as he locked it.

  The pop of the champagne cork sounded very loud in the otherwise silent room.

  12

  Jade dreamed about drowning that night. She was far under the water, which was warm but pitch black. She had no scuba gear on, no diving apparatus at all, and, in the gloomy depths, she couldn’t tell which way was up. She knew she had no more air left, that the next breath she would take in would send water
rushing into her lungs, but somehow the knowledge wasn’t frightening.

  ‘Follow the bubbles,’ a woman’s voice whispered.

  ‘But it’s too dark,’ Jade responded, although how she spoke the words she had no idea. ‘I can’t see any bubbles. Can’t I just stay here with you?’

  ‘No. You can’t do that.’ Suddenly a slender, pale arm appeared in front of her. Its hand opened and the index finger flicked out. ‘There they are.’

  A stream of silvery bubbles flooded upwards and Jade followed them, speeding through the blackness like a shooting star. She broke the surface and she was out, into the clear, beautiful air. She was blinking water out of her eyes, and in her ears she could hear the scream of seagulls.

  The birds’ loud, intrusive calls continued as they wheeled above her. They grew shriller and shriller until the irritating noise pulled her right out of the dream.

  It was fully light on a grey, rainy morning.

  Her hair was tangled and her mouth felt dry. She could taste stale champagne and fresh guilt.

  And the shrill ululations were still coming from somewhere nearby, audible even above the splashing of rain and the more distant booming of the sea. Rubbing her eyes, Jade sat up, trying not to wake the sleeping man lying next to her, and listened.

  She was sure that somebody, probably the cleaner, had opened Monique’s door and been startled by the devastation inside.

  Jade swung her legs over the side of the bed, stood up, and pulled on her clothes. In the bathroom, she ran her hands through her shoulder-length hair, splashed some water on her face and drank some from the tap, then unlocked the front door as quietly as she could.

  As soon as she opened it, the spray-soaked wind snatched her hair away from her face. Ahead of her was the restless ocean, which, if Craig’s facts were correct, was flanked not by a beautiful national park, but by a war zone. A territory where developers and miners, the indigenous population and ecologists, fought for the upper hand every day.

  Above the sound of the rain, she could still hear the cries. They were, if anything, louder than they had been. Jade started to feel uneasy.

  She was starting to fear that her first guess might have been wrong.