The Fallen

by Jassy Mackenzie

  ‘Oh, dammit,’ he said, in a voice that Jade thought didn’t sound altogether sincere. Putting his fork down, he pushed his chair back and went to find his phone.

  A minute later he was back, his face serious.

  ‘Problem, Jadey.’

  ‘What?’

  She lowered the piece of naan bread she’d been holding. Her mouth was burning from the spicy food, but she didn’t find the feeling uncomfortable. In fact, she found it enjoyable. Who was it who had told her once that chillies were addictive? Her father, most probably. The stern Commissioner De Jong had routinely eaten dinner—whatever it might be—with a small bowl of chopped raw chillies by his plate. He would add one or two chunks to every mouthful, nodding with pleasure as he chewed, and it wasn’t long before she had asked to try them too.

  ‘Guys next door think they’ve seen an intruder.’

  ‘Whereabouts?’ she asked, already on her feet.

  ‘I’m not sure. Somewhere close, though, because they saw him from their window. They’ve already phoned the police and they’re getting hold of Neil. I’ll go over there via the staff quarters and ask the domestic workers to come along too. Safer that way, I think. We’re going to do a search.’ He stopped, looked again at Jade, this time seeming to notice that she was no longer eating her dinner. He let out an impatient sigh. ‘You want to come along, I suppose?’ he asked in a tone that suggested she would be wiser to do the opposite.

  ‘Of course I’m coming,’ Jade responded, with some irritation. ‘What else am I going to do—sit here and wait for you? You do realise if this is the same intruder that was around last night, I’m the only one who’ll be able to ID him.’

  Jade hurried into the bedroom and took her holster from the top shelf of the cupboard. David was already opening the safe and removing their guns. He held out the Glock to her, but when she tried to take it from him, he held onto the barrel, causing a brief tug-of-war. Looking at his face, Jade guessed he wanted to say something. A warning, perhaps? But he didn’t. Just gave another of his annoying sighs, let go of her gun, and strapped his own service pistol around his waist.

  Then he collected his Maglite from the kitchen counter.

  ‘Let’s get going,’ he said. ‘See if we find anything out there.’

  They stepped out into the night.

  19

  Elsabe looked terrified. She was huddled on the couch, hugging her knees with her slender arms. Craig had his arm around her, obviously trying to offer her some comfort. When he saw Jade walk in, he quickly removed his hand from her shoulder.

  They were soon joined by David, who brought Nosipho and Vusi the handyman with him. Nosipho looked exhausted and scared, ill at ease among the people whose rooms she cleaned. Despite Craig’s offer, she didn’t sit down, but stood near the door, rubbing her eyes and adjusting her headscarf.

  ‘Where’s Neil?’ David asked.

  ‘I called him,’ Craig said. ‘He said he wasn’t going to come along.’

  ‘Not coming?’ David frowned. ‘Did he say why?’

  ‘Nope.’

  David’s frown deepened. ‘Oh well. It’s his damn resort. We’ll go out in pairs, then. Nosipho, will you stay here with Elsabe? Vusi, if you’d like to come along on the search, you can pair up with me. Craig, you can go with Jade.’

  It was a sensible way to split their available resources, Jade thought. One light for each group and one gun for each, because neither Vusi nor Craig had a firearm.

  ‘Lock the door and bolt it as soon as we’re outside, and if you hear or see anything suspicious, phone one of us immediately. Understood?’

  Elsabe craned her neck to look up at the tall police superintendent. Under her mane of hair, her face looked very pale.

  ‘Understood,’ she said in a small voice.

  ‘Let’s all head over to the place where you thought you saw him,’ David said. ‘We can split up from there.’

  Before she left Craig and Elsabe’s chalet, Jade walked over to the kitchen sink, squeezed some Sunlight washing-up liquid onto her hands, and carefully washed away every trace of grease that was left on her skin from handling the buttery naans. Slippery fingers wouldn’t help her if she needed to use her gun fast.

  As she moved towards the door, Elsabe muttered something she couldn’t make out.

  ‘Sorry.’ Jade turned around, wondering if the comment had even been directed at her. ‘What was that?’

  ‘Huberta.’

  The red-haired woman was staring at the wooden key ring carved in the shape of a smiling hippo that dangled from the hook on Jade’s belt.

  ‘What about her?’

  ‘She died.’

  Jade blinked. ‘How do you mean?’

  Now Elsabe looked up, straight at her. Her freckled face was as narrow as a rat’s and deep rings formed purple smudges under her eyes.

  ‘She was shot. Did you know that?’

  ‘What are you talking about?’

  ‘I overheard you telling the story to your boyfriend yesterday.’ She emphasised the word ‘boyfriend’ slightly and Jade wondered with a guilty pang if she somehow knew, or if Craig had told her, that they’d slept together. ‘But you didn’t tell him the end of the story.’

  ‘I didn’t know what the end was.’

  ‘Well, she was shot dead by three hunters a month after she arrived in King William’s Town. Someone saw her bloated body floating down the river. The hunters were found and fined twenty-five pounds each for destroying royal game.’

  ‘Oh.’

  ‘Later, she was stuffed and put on display in a museum. But it couldn’t bring her back, of course. Nothing could. That’s the tragedy of murder, isn’t it?’

  Jade didn’t know what to say in response to that, so she said nothing. She simply walked outside and set off towards the tangle of shrubs and bushes where the men were heading, moving as quietly as she could.

  Recalling what Craig had told her about the horrific crash that had brought them together, she thought it quite likely that Elsabe’s odd behaviour was shaped by grief.

  All the same, why did she have to tell her about the damn hippo being killed? Jade would much rather not have known. She’d thought the story had had a happy ending, but she’d been wrong.

  Behind her, she heard the rattle of bolts as Elsabe locked the door.

  She hurried past the first of the two new outside lights that Vusi had installed near the chalets.

  Then she jogged over the uneven grass to catch up with the others.

  Craig was standing near the back wall of the staff quarters, roughly halfway between the two lights and a good twenty paces from the perimeter.

  ‘He was standing somewhere around here,’ he said. ‘In this area.’

  Jade watched the torch beams criss-cross the ground as the two men scanned the area for any sign that an intruder had been nearby. But although they walked right to the perimeter, the coarse green grass offered up no discernible footprints, only sharp black shadows.

  ‘Neil really should consider getting this place fenced off,’ David suggested, echoing what Jade had been thinking ever since she arrived. ‘Palisades, chicken wire, electric wire, whatever. Just something to prevent every man and his dog from roaming inside the resort. He’d need to run it all the way round the property. Put a gate at the top and another leading down to the beach.’

  Vusi nodded solemnly. ‘I will tell him what you said, but I do not know if he will listen to me. There has never been a problem until now. This is a peaceful place.’

  ‘Well, he should listen, because you’ve got a problem now.’ He paused, scanning the area with his torch beam once more. ‘No sign of him here, so let’s widen the search. We’ll go right, you go left.’

  Taking the right-hand route would lead David down to the beach. Jade guessed he had opted to go this way because it was darker, more deserted and potentially more dangerous.

  Turning left, she and Craig headed up the long, winding driveway. He shone the light a c
ouple of metres in front of them, but every few paces he raised the torch and swung it slowly from right to left and back again. As he did this, Jade was suddenly reminded of their walk last night, which had followed almost exactly the same route; what had happened before they left, and what had happened between them afterwards.

  Neither of them had spoken since they set off together, and this time the silence felt uncomfortable. Jade wondered if Craig felt guilty, too. She’d seen the way he looked at Elsabe. She was sure that if he’d had the choice, he would have opted to spend the night with his ‘friend’, not with her.

  As they headed towards the entrance gate, they passed Neil’s house, where Jade noticed that a couple of lights were on but all the curtains were tightly drawn. Neil was hiding away from the world.

  Along the access road, the torch beam lit up the nearest palm trees, their fronds spiky-pale in the glare, and banana trees, slender-stemmed but with leaves so broad a man could have hidden behind them. Their shadows stretched darkly away from them before being swallowed by the forest.

  Jade had no idea what else was growing in this bushy jungle. She didn’t have green fingers. She didn’t understand plants and, like her father, she had no interest in identifying them

  She followed the beam. Looking for anything—a footprint, the compact cylinder of a cigarette butt.

  There was a strong likelihood that this search, like the previous one, would be a waste of time. There was only a slim chance that they might find evidence of the intruder, if he even existed. There was virtually no chance they would locate the stranger himself.

  Even so, despite Neil’s protests that everything had been safe until now, the grim reality was that they were no longer secure.

  In Jo’burg, nobody felt secure. That was why everyone lived in impenetrable fortresses, behind high walls topped with ten-thousand-volt electric fences. There, people were prepared for the war against crime, but here they were not. Ironically, it was sometimes only in the most dangerous places that you were the best protected.

  Perhaps the unlikeable Larry and Roxanne had made the right decision by leaving.

  ‘Just like yesterday, isn’t it?’ Craig’s whispered words broke the silence.

  ‘Let’s hope it doesn’t have the same outcome as yesterday,’ she whispered back. She’d been thinking of the murder, but felt the blood rush to her face as she remembered how the night had ended for her and Craig.

  Jade was glad Craig couldn’t see her blush. He didn’t reply. In silence, they continued walking along the forest-lined access road.

  A movement in the bushes ahead jerked Jade away from her distracting thoughts. She looked towards it and froze, her hand automatically closing round the grip of her gun.

  ‘Something there,’ she whispered. ‘In front of us and to the right.’

  A moment later, the flashlight found its source and lit up the area to reveal nothing more than a sleek ginger cat with a still-struggling rat in its jaws. Seemingly unfazed by the beam of light, it gave them a baleful look, its eyes flashing bright green.

  ‘Phew,’ Craig whispered. ‘I expected the worst there for a moment.’

  And then the cat tensed and darted off to the left, fleeing deep into the undergrowth. Before Jade could even begin to wonder what had caused the animal to panic, she heard another, much louder, noise coming from roughly the same area. The sound was massive—half roar, half scream, accompanied by the gunshot-like reports of cracking branches. It was so huge and so entirely unexpected that, for just a moment, Jade was certain the source of the noise was a charging hippo.

  A heartbeat later, she realised how wrong she was when she saw the gleaming metal body of a large, dark truck burst from its hiding place. Its engine howled, and branches snapped as the vehicle gouged a path through the undergrowth.

  The thick metal bull-bar on the truck’s bonnet swung in her direction. At first she thought the vehicle was heading for the entry gate, but then she realised it was showing no signs of turning to the right. It continued to surge straight forwards, straight at her. Jade knew if she didn’t move within the next few seconds she would be crushed by a two-ton piece of machinery as deadly as any wild animal due to the intent of the person behind the wheel.

  ‘Craig! Get out of the way!’ Jade screamed, as she flung herself desperately to the side of the road. She landed hard on her left shoulder and rolled through the wet undergrowth, twigs clawing at her face. The truck passed so close to her that its front wheel caught her left elbow, ramming it with such force that her shoulder was almost jolted out of its socket.

  Arm on fire, Jade struggled to her feet and stared at the truck’s retreating taillights. It was moving so fast over the uneven road it was impossible for her to read the whole number plate, but she did manage to get the last two digits.

  ‘Jade? You OK?’

  Craig’s voice sounded shaky. A moment later, the torch beam—also rather unsteady—found her. Jade cupped her right hand over her eyes and turned her head away from its light.

  ‘I’m not hurt. Are you?’

  ‘I’m fine. But that truck was going straight for you.’

  ‘It didn’t knock me over. Just grazed my elbow. No lasting damage. It’ll probably just bruise.’

  Craig shone the torch on Jade’s muddied arm and they both examined the large, red-stained weal. She flexed her arm and opened and closed her fingers. Then, using her right hand, she took her cellphone out of her pocket and dialled the number for the flying squad.

  20

  The meeting was an emergency one this time. Bradley was in the same tiny shed with the same plastic table and rickety chairs. There were three differences, though. One, it was night, so the place was less of a furnace than it had been during the day, although it was still stuffy, filled with suffocating humidity after the rain. Two, he had screwed up a second time, so he was sweating even worse than he’d done the day before. Three, Chetty didn’t look as if he’d come from a relaxing day on his yacht. This time, his pants were crumpled and his face was drawn and anxious.

  Zulu, however, looked exactly the same; expressionless.

  Somehow, Bradley found that the worst of all.

  He was rubbing his thumbs and forefingers together in a non-stop back and forth rhythm. He couldn’t stop this action, so he’d put his hands under the table. At least his two bosses wouldn’t see him doing it, and hopefully they couldn’t hear the tiny whispering sound of flesh against sweaty flesh.

  ‘How could you let this happen?’ Chetty asked him in a voice that made Bradley think of knives.

  Until he’d walked into the shed five minutes ago and Chetty had briefed him on the latest shocking developments, Bradley hadn’t had the faintest clue that anything was wrong.

  He hadn’t known about the latest screw-up; his screw-up.

  Bradley shook his head helplessly. ‘I don’t know how it happened. Kobus was properly briefed. I made sure of it. Everything was under control.’

  ‘No. It wasn’t.’

  Bradley blinked rapidly, feeling his face start to twitch.

  ‘He didn’t tell you about it?’

  ‘Not a word. I didn’t know until you told me.’

  ‘Why?’ Chetty barked out the word, furious. He slammed his fist down on the table so hard that Bradley thought the flimsy plastic might crack. ‘Why would he do such a thing? It’s so bloody stupid. He was supposed to stay out of sight. Find the girl, grab her and go. Now we’ve got the wrong person dead and the local police force swarming round the area. If they find her before we do …’

  ‘He was well briefed,’ Bradley muttered. The heavy phone hanging around his neck seemed to be pulling his head down, keeping him from being able to look the Indian in the eye.

  ‘Do you realise how this could jeopardise the operation?’

  Now Bradley found the strength to raise his head, to look into Chetty’s narrowed eyes and Zulu’s dark ones.

  He’d sat in countless boardrooms before now, and looked at i
nnumerable faces. He’d always been able to read them well. He’d had excellent instincts in the past and, in spite of his recent troubles, he’d thought they were still good. And that made his stomach curdle, because what he was seeing now in the eyes of both men was doubt. Serious doubt.

  A screw-up this bad in his previous days may have been a career-damaging move, but not a life-threatening one. But this was different. If these guys were starting to mistrust him, well … he was finished.

  Taking a deep breath, Bradley fought hard to hide the panic he felt.

  ‘They won’t trace anything back to the harbour. How could they?’

  There was a pause. Neither of the other two replied, so he continued. ‘It may even be a good thing, having an unexpected distraction like this. It’ll occupy the investigators’ attention. Focus them on what’s happening at the resort.’

  More silence. His confidence growing, Bradley continued.

  ‘I understand that this isn’t the main issue. The main issue is that Kobus did something he was not ordered to do, and I can’t have anyone working on my project who doesn’t follow orders to the letter. So I’m going to fire him, as of now. He’s off the team. We can manage without him now. There’s so little time left to go in any case.’

  Chetty nodded.

  ‘A good idea,’ Zulu said gently. ‘But please, leave the firing to me.’

  He said it in such a manner that Bradley was left in no doubt about the intent behind his words. He would have liked nothing better than to let the black man have his way, but he daren’t.

  ‘No,’ he said.

  Zulu raised an eyebrow. At least, Bradley thought he saw it twitch.

  ‘Why not?’

  Bradley wiped his sweaty forehead with the back of his hand.

  ‘Because the guy’s an old-school racist. I spent time with him—lots of time, in fact—back when we were inside. He doesn’t trust either of you. If you call a meeting with him, he’ll automatically suspect something is up, because he’s always taken orders from me.’ Bradley swallowed, burned by the knowledge that his ex-prison buddy had let him down in the worst way possible. That he had not, in fact, followed Bradley’s orders, despite all his promises. ‘Kobus is a dangerous man and he has a gun. This is my job. It has to be.’