The Fallen

by Jassy Mackenzie

  Another realisation hit Jade like a punch in the gut.

  In all likelihood, there had been a wet summer the year she was born. But now she remembered that her mother’s death certificate had been dated early August. Right at the end of a cool, dry South African winter, a time when the risk of malaria would have been at its lowest.

  So her father had gently guided her into believing a blatant untruth.

  Jade found this almost impossible to accept. Commissioner De Jong had been a man of great integrity; a follower of the truth at all costs, no matter how long the hunt or how hard the result.

  There was only one reason he could possibly have kept the real facts from his only child—he thought they would be too difficult for her to accept.

  Jade swallowed hard. She met Dr Abrahams’s enquiring gaze and looked directly into his hawk-like eyes.

  ‘So what did cause my mother’s kidneys to fail?’ she asked.

  47

  The doctor moved aside, rather impatiently, as two more orderlies pushing wide linen carts approached.

  ‘Perhaps we should talk somewhere else,’ he said. ‘Come this way.’

  The doctor strode off down the corridor and Jade followed, staying behind him, just like his business-suited retinue had done the day before. She guessed that was what Dr Abrahams was used to—what he expected.

  Their zigzagging walk through increasingly quieter and newer-looking corridors took a couple of minutes. Then Dr Abrahams stopped in front of a door marked ‘Supervisor.’ Taking a bunch of keys from his pocket, he quickly selected the right one and opened the door.

  The small office was home to a desk, two chairs, piles of cardboard boxes, which Jade assumed from their labels contained spare uniforms and stationery, and shelves upon shelves of ancient-looking files.

  There was a window at the back of the office, shaded by off-white blinds. Dr Abrahams walked over to the window and drew them up. Morning sun streamed in, dust motes dancing in its rays. Outside, Jade saw green lawns stretching away to a high, face-brick wall.

  They sat down, the doctor on one side of the desk and Jade on the other.

  Dr Abrahams cleared his throat.

  ‘Your mother was very ill by the time the ambulance brought her here,’ he said. ‘When she arrived, she was suffering from hyperpyrexia. That’s a dangerously high fever. Hers was one hundred and seven degrees Fahrenheit, and she was semiconscious. She was also vomiting—and passing—blood. She had a number of other even more unpleasant symptoms. But by then there was very little we could do for her. She was too far gone—she was dying.’

  ‘I see.’ Her words came out in a hoarse croak.

  ‘We placed her in isolation immediately and ran a battery of tests. We attempted to get her fever down as a matter of urgency, but it spiked even higher—to one hundred and nine, which is an extremely dangerous level. The human body simply cannot cope with sustained high temperatures like that. The brain swells, causing long-term damage and vital organs to fail. The doctor on duty packed her in ice, but by then she was comatose.’

  ‘Was my father there?’

  Abrahams shook his head. ‘He was at a police conference in Johannesburg. He returned as soon as we notified him that his wife was ill.’

  ‘Did you … did you ever find out what it was?’

  Abrahams shook his head.

  ‘We thought at first that it might have been a type of viral haemorrhagic fever similar to Ebola—as you may know, the very first recorded case of the Ebola virus occurred in Zaire at around the same time. There are a number of different strains in existence, all contagious and some up to ninety per cent fatal. They make the news every so often. Most recently, you may have read the news reports about the tourist who died in a hospital in Johannesburg after falling ill in Luanda. A few days later, the paramedic who was with her during the flight became fatally ill, and a nurse at the hospital where she was treated also died. They called that one the Lujo virus, because its only occurrences were in Luanda and Johannesburg. No other cases have been reported before or since.’

  ‘Was my mother’s illness never diagnosed, then?’

  ‘No. We still have no idea whether it was an Ebola-type virus or something completely different. Although, according to your father, Elise hadn’t travelled outside of South Africa after you were conceived, or, as far as he knew, come into contact with anybody who had visited West Africa. Of course, he had been away from home.…’ Abrahams inclined his head. ‘It was unlikely that she’d gone anywhere, he said, because of course she had a small baby. Although when he arrived at the hospital, he was extremely distraught, because you had disappeared.’

  Jade blinked.

  ‘How do you mean?’

  ‘He told us his baby daughter was missing. He didn’t know where you were. He visited Elise briefly—she was in complete isolation by then, so he couldn’t actually have any direct contact. Then he rushed back home where, I presume, he must have discovered you alive and well.’

  Jade stared at him.

  Her father had never told her any of this.

  What had happened during those few days at their house in Richards Bay? How had her mother fallen so suddenly and seriously ill? And why had she, Jade, been missing when her father arrived back from his conference?

  She would have been less than a year old. She’d obviously lived through the experience, although she had no memory of it. Perhaps there had been a simple explanation. Maybe Elise had asked a neighbour to look after her child when she started getting sick.

  ‘How long did she take to die?’ Jade asked. The question felt awkward on her lips. She didn’t even know why she asked it. Morbid curiosity, perhaps. Or simply not knowing what else to say.

  ‘She was dead within twenty-four hours.’

  ‘Oh.’

  Jade was going to ask where she had been buried. Perhaps, due to the mysterious and lethal nature of the illness, her father had not been allowed to bury his wife’s body in a public cemetery. But before she could ask this, another thought occurred to her.

  ‘If it had been an Ebola-type virus …’ she began.

  The doctor lifted one bushy eyebrow.

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘You said those viruses are contagious. I remember reading about the paramedic who died after transporting the woman from Luanda. If my mother was the only one who died from this, then surely it couldn’t have been?’

  Dr Abrahams looked her in the eyes.

  ‘You’re wrong,’ he said.

  ‘How do you mean?’

  ‘She was not the only one.’

  Jade felt cold inside.

  ‘Who …?’

  The doctor held his right hand out in front of him with the palm facing Jade, as if he was about to swear an oath.

  Then, with his left hand, he counted off the fingers.

  ‘The day after she died, the paramedic who had attended her in the ambulance became critically ill. He subsequently died. The following day, her doctor and two of the triage nurses developed the same symptoms and were dead within thirty-six hours. The doctor’s wife and the husband and children of one of the nurses were also fatally infected. Fortunately, by that stage, we already had the families in isolation and the virus was contained.’

  Jade nodded wordlessly.

  ‘Eight deaths. That’s how many we had, before it ran its course. Eight deaths in less than a week, each one in our newly built isolation ward. By the time the nurse’s family was admitted, the ward had been sealed off completely and the team of doctors and nurses were working in full biohazard gear, with oxygen packs strapped to their backs.’

  Abrahams pushed back his jacket sleeve and looked at his watch in what was a deliberately obvious gesture.

  ‘What happened afterwards?’ she asked.

  But the doctor misunderstood her question.

  ‘There wasn’t much about it in the news,’ he said. ‘In those apartheid days, news was censored and the government didn’t want this made public. Di
dn’t want to cause a national panic, especially not when they had no idea what the cause was. It was kept entirely under wraps.’

  ‘No. I meant—what happened to the bodies?’

  ‘Ah, I see. We had no say in the matter—the government told us what to do. We were informed that on no account were the bodies to be removed from the hospital premises. Instead, they were to be incinerated on site.’

  He paused and turned towards the window, now unwilling to look at Jade while he spoke.

  ‘The bodies in their body bags went in together, in one big load. We needed to get everything done as quickly as possible, because we couldn’t risk anybody else falling ill. In the next load, we burnt their clothes, all items that had come with them to the hospital, their bedding, every single used swab and medication. And then the mattresses went into the incinerator. The staff involved wore biohazard suits throughout the process. And then, as ordered, we dug a deep grave and lined it with thick concrete. The boxed ashes were placed at the bottom and covered with one and a half metres of concrete. A wall was built around it, the one you can see over there, in fact. That’s where your mother is buried. Under that.’

  Jade gazed out of the window at the high brick wall. Now she understood why Dr Abrahams had chosen this room for their meeting.

  Her mother’s remains were part of a jumbled mass of cremated corpses, clothes and bedding.

  As was her ring.

  With the urgency of her admission, there would have been no opportunity to remove it. And when Elise de Jong’s body had been dumped into the hospital incinerator, her ring would still have been on her finger. Perhaps it had come out the other side as a deformed, half-melted chunk of silver, with the jade stone long since detached, its shiny green surface scorched and blackened.

  The ring would have been swept up and interred with the ashes and bone fragments, Jade supposed.

  Commissioner De Jong had been a great believer in respect; in doing things the right way. It must have broken his heart to have his wife’s body burned side-by-side with the other corpses, her final resting place being somewhere he could never visit, never leave flowers to honour her memory.

  ‘Can I go there?’ Jade asked Dr Abrahams.

  Both his eyebrows lifted a half-inch.

  ‘Over there?’ He turned his head towards the window again.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘You can go up to the wall, I suppose, as long as you’re quick. The exit at the end of this corridor will give you access to those grounds.’

  ‘I’ll go in a few minutes, if that’s all right with you.’

  ‘I have another meeting now. Good luck for the future, Jade.’

  ‘Thank you very much for telling me about my mother.’

  Jade shook Abrahams’s hand. His grip was firm. He didn’t look at her. He held the door for her while she walked out and, as she made her way back towards the hospital reception area, she could hear the sound of him locking it again.

  The little kiosk next to the cafeteria sold flowers. There wasn’t much choice to be had. Only some wilted-looking pink rosebuds and some mixed bunches with sunflowers and chrysanthemums and other flowers whose names Jade didn’t know. Still, they were colourful and pretty, and cheerful.

  And, in any case, by the evening they would be dead.

  She paid for the biggest mixed bunch she could find and walked back through the hospital, following the twisting route that Abrahams had taken. She made one wrong turn and had to retrace her steps, but soon she was walking past the door he had so recently locked behind them, and up to the narrow exit door that had an opaque, reinforced glass window. It let light in, but you couldn’t see out.

  Outside, the lawn was neatly mowed all the way up to the foot of the brick wall. Jade couldn’t see over its top, but she walked all the way around it. It didn’t take long, because each side was only about ten metres in length.

  Jade guessed that the concrete square inside would be dirty, dusty and spattered with bird droppings. She wondered whether a few tenacious grass seeds might have germinated inside the walls and taken hold, sprouting thick yellow-green shoots. She would never know, because there was no way in. The concrete-covered grave inside was barriered off—if not for eternity, then as close to it as the Richards Bay hospital could manage.

  She didn’t say anything, in the end. No quips about needlework. She just closed her eyes and thought of the photo she now kept in her cottage.

  Her mother, looking down at baby Jade in her arms, her eyes filled with love.

  Her death had been a mystery, as had her life. A woman who had worked as a killer, an assassin. A woman who had given up her career at some stage, but whether it had been before she had met Jade’s father, or whether that meeting had prompted her to turn her back on her old life, Jade would never know.

  How had she contracted that strange illness?

  She guessed that too would remain a mystery.

  Jade opened her eyes again. Then she drew her arm back and flung the bunch of flowers, high and hard, over the wall.

  A couple of seconds later, she heard the soft thud as it landed.

  She turned away and walked quickly back into the hospital, through the maze of corridors and out of the main entrance. She didn’t stop for coffee after all. She just got into her car and drove out of the gates, along the main road and past the town cemetery.

  48

  To Jade’s annoyance, when she drove to the yard where her hired car had been towed, she found that the original of her gun licence was no longer in the glove compartment. The manager of the panel-beating company apologised, rubbing his hands together in a washing motion that Jade thought he might be doing to subconsciously absolve himself of any responsibility.

  The car’s bloodied seats had already been removed, he said, and the interior thoroughly cleaned and scrubbed down with industrial disinfectant. Many people had been in and out of it. It was impossible to say what could have happened to one folded piece of paper.

  Jade had no option but to go home without her gun, apply for a new licence and then see whether her Glock had managed to do the same kind of disappearing act under the guardianship of the bent Metro cop.

  As she headed west along the highway, Jade found her thoughts returning, almost obsessively, to the events of the past few days. That wasn’t surprising, of course. She’d intended to have a relaxing, peaceful, relationship-nurturing holiday, but in every one of those areas it had been nothing short of a disaster. And her original plan of finding out more about her mother had backfired in a shocking and unexpected way, leaving her with the uneasy knowledge that what had happened to her mother before her death was a mystery that would never be solved.

  To top it all, she hadn’t even managed to master scuba diving. What a complete waste of a trip to one of the most beautiful coastal areas in South Africa.

  Thinking of what might have happened—the worst-case scenario of the scuttled tanker—Jade gripped the wheel harder. In her mind, she replayed the firecracker burst of the exploding cellphone. Wired to kill, just moments after Bradley had dialled the number to detonate the bigger and even more deadly explosion out at sea. Jade wondered whether his employers had actually intended for him to set off the explosives at all. Or whether they would have done it themselves at a time when they were a safe distance from the doomed tanker, and then let Bradley dial the number afterwards.

  Both Chetty and Zulu had drowned when they’d gone down with the tugboat. Their bodies had been discovered that morning, together with the bodies of two other men. Harbour workers, the police guessed.

  The two bosses had run a tight operation. Without Jade’s intervention, every witness would have been disposed of, every loose end tied up.

  Except for one.

  Over and over again, Jade found her thoughts returning to Amanda Bolton’s bloodied body, sprawled on the floor of her chalet. There had been a reason for every other death or attempted murder that had occurred. This was the only one that seemed entir
ely senseless.

  With a stretch of the imagination, Jade could believe that Amanda had been killed in error. Monique, her neighbour, had made an amateur attempt at blackmailing Bradley and he had sent Kobus along to dispose of her. In error, Kobus had murdered the wrong woman.

  Jade pulled into the fast lane to pass a slow-moving lorry.

  But Kobus had stammered out a denial just before Bradley had shot him.

  He hadn’t killed Monique. That was what he’d said.

  Jade knew only too well that when faced with the business end of a gun, people were not necessarily going to tell the truth. They were far more likely to blurt out exactly what they thought the shooter wanted to hear.

  Even so … It didn’t make sense to her.

  And then, of course, there was the door, with its lock splintered, but not broken. As if Amanda had opened it to somebody she knew.

  There must be an explanation for her murder. Of course there must. But pinpointing it was like trying to focus on a dark object at night. Every time you looked directly at it, it disappeared. Only when you stared at a point nearby could you make out its shape.

  Jade tried to think about something else, but it was impossible. She turned on the radio and caught the scratchy remains of East Coast Radio playing a song by Freshlyground. Not even the cheerful lyrics of ‘Buttercup’ managed to distract her from her thoughts, which were churning over and over in her mind, as if on permanent loop.

  She stopped at a petrol station just before lunch. After filling up with fuel, she went over to the Steers next-door to the garage shop and ordered a giant-sized coffee and a greasy toasted cheese sandwich with extra chilli sauce. She drank the bitter coffee and ate her sandwich at a window seat and watched motorists coming and going. Most of the cars had GP number plates and were also heading west, holiday over, back to Gauteng. Grim-faced at the prospect of returning to work, with their tank tops and shorts revealing deep sun tans and post-holiday flab. Arms as bloated and brown as cooked sausages, feet slapping along in flip-flop sandals. Kids trailing behind them, bored, restless and yelling.