Killer Country

by Mike Nicol

  Spitz didn’t say anything. What Spitz didn’t like was coincidence.

  Nor did Mace. The white BMW had passed them an hour back going fast and reckless not even slowing to check for oncoming cars as they overtook on a blind rise. Mace had leaned on the hooter in anger and the driver’d given him the finger. Otherwise he wouldn’t have paid attention. But a white BM with two black brothers caused him to check the registration plate against Pylon’s sms. Same car. And as he and Christa pulled into the motel at sunset, the Willard Grant Conspiracy loud on the sound system, there it was too, parked outside the row of rooms. Coincidence. But Mace didn’t like it. He almost drove off to find somewhere else to spend the night. Except why? They were bloody booked in. He phoned Pylon.

  ‘They’re here,’ he said. ‘Merino Inn Motel. You can tell the cops.’

  ‘What a pleasure,’ Pylon said. Then: ‘Hey, Mace, it’s a helluva coincidence, don’t you think?’

  ‘Helluva.’ Mace disconnected and stared at his daughter coming out of the bathroom looking more like eighteen than thirteen. ‘We’re only going to eat at the local steak house,’ he said.

  She pulled a face.

  44

  ‘Please,’ said Sheemina February, pushing the contracts across the table to Obed Chocho with her gloved hand. ‘I need you to sign them now.’

  ‘They can wait. Come, what is the hurry?’ He left the paperwork lying in the middle of the table just beyond his reach, stretching over to pour more Cap Classique into her flute. The bottle was two thirds down. ‘Celebrations first.’ He filled his own glass. ‘Empowerment.’

  Sheemina February raised her glass. Again he leant across to clink the toast.

  ‘Empowerment.’

  ‘Salud, Obed,’ she said, feeling the bubbles burst against her upper lip as she sipped.

  It was their second toast. He’d come in loud, swaggering down the corridor to the boardroom. Following her, booze and cigarette smoke oozing from him, brandishing the bottle of méthode champagnoise. Any partners working late stayed behind closed doors.

  In the boardroom, Sheemina February took long-stem flutes from a cabinet. ‘Signing contracts does not need champagne.’

  ‘These do.’ Obed Chocho pulled the cork with a violent twist, the fizz exploding over the glasses. He snorted a laugh. ‘Mighty fine, mighty fine.’

  The first toast: standing opposite one another.

  ‘To success.’ Obed Chocho, making to clink her glass, but she drew back.

  ‘Perhaps we should be cautious. Not tempt the gods.’

  ‘To success.’

  And she had shrugged. Their glasses touched. She’d sipped cautiously at the wine. He took the bubbly in a swallow.

  ‘Here are the contracts,’ she’d said, moving to the far side of the boardroom table, taking the papers from a manila folder. Sitting.

  He’d drunk off another glass before he sat.

  ‘You must drink. Honour our venture.’

  She’d taken a swallow, pushed the contracts into the middle of the table. He’d filled their glasses, proposed the second toast. The contracts lay between them.

  ‘Empowerment.’

  He was watching her, grinning, leaning back in his chair.

  She held out a pen. ‘The contracts, Obed.’

  ‘Why do you wear that glove? Take it off. Show me what you’re hiding.’

  ‘No.’

  He reached for the pen and caught her hand, her good hand. ‘Show me. We are business partners. We have no secrets.’ He tightened his grip.

  ‘Let go.’

  ‘Show me.’

  ‘I said, let go.’ She wrenched her hand free.

  ‘Do not play with me.’

  ‘You’ve been drinking, Obed. You are in violation of your parole on that count. On another you are breaking the hours of restriction.’

  ‘To sign the contracts.’

  ‘We agreed you’d be here at three o’clock this afternoon. I have been waiting since then. For five hours.’

  ‘I had business.’

  ‘Nothing more important than these papers.’

  ‘Business.’

  ‘Drinking with your friends.’ She picked up the pen and held it out again. ‘Stop wasting my time. Sign and I’ll drive you home.’

  He took the pen. ‘Because of you my wife is dead.’

  ‘What!’ She came forward, her hands on the table pushing the papers at him, a bemused smile on her lips. ‘Oh come on. Get real.’

  Obed Chocho wagged the pen like an admonishing finger. ‘Because of you.’

  ‘No, Obed, not because of me. Because of you. Because you wanted Popo Dlamini killed. Phone Spitz. Phone Manga. Make the arrangements. Perhaps you’ve forgotten that.’

  ‘I did not say kill her.’

  ‘Nor did I. But you knew if she was with him, she’d die. You knew that. You didn’t try to stop her.’

  ‘I did.’

  ‘Well it didn’t work.’

  Obed Chocho drank off the rest of his glass, and refilled it. ‘You are a hard bitch.’

  ‘I am your lawyer, Obed. I am looking after your interests.’

  ‘Oh mighty fine. And whose name is this?’ He pointed at her name on the contracts. ‘The name of my business partner. The lady with the gloved hand.’

  ‘Sign, Obed.’

  He laughed at her, imitating her voice. ‘Sign, Obed. So that I can be rich.’

  ‘So that everything is legal.’

  She flipped the contracts through to their final pages. Obed Chocho scrawled his signature.

  ‘Drive me home,’ he said. ‘Work for your money.’

  ‘I intend to,’ said Sheemina February, filing the papers back into the manila folder. She held out her gloved hand, her fingers rigid. ‘The pen, Mr Chocho. If you don’t mind.’

  Saturday

  45

  The white BMW was parked where it had been. No sign of the black dudes. Mace hefted his bag into the boot of the Spider, thinking, bloody cops. What was so difficult here? He flipped open his phone and called Pylon, watching Christa come out of their room carrying her shoulder bag by the strap. Standing there in her knee-length jeans and red T-shirt, Diesel shades stuck in her hair, asking what she should do with the key. Heard the call going through to voicemail, said to her, ‘Leave it in the door’, and put a message on Pylon’s phone that the cops hadn’t followed up.

  He looked back at the BMW: a brother now leaning against the car, drinking from a mug, his eyes on them. Not the short dreads man.

  Christa flung her bag into the boot, rabbiting away about the heat so early in the morning.

  ‘It’s going to get worse,’ said Mace, folding back the top. He got in beside her. Started the Spider, let it idle to running temperature, aware of the man watching them. ‘Take about a hour to get there.’

  When the car was cooked, he headed past the lounger at the white BMW. The guy barefoot in the dust, wearing shorts and a creased T-shirt, beaming at them. Called out something Mace couldn’t catch.

  Christa waved, said to Mace, ‘He’s a happy man.’

  Mace said, ‘Don’t you believe it’ – wondering if Pylon would get any joy out of the cops second time round.

  They skirted the town, drove north on a secondary road, no traffic except a farmer in a double cab heading for market and a family walking next to a donkey cart, going north into an empty landscape. Scrub and white-thorn acacias and plains of dry grass.

  ‘Where’s their home?’ Christa shouted against the tyre drum.

  ‘Probably that’s it, their cart,’ Mace yelled back. ‘They’re cart-people. They move around.’

  Other side the Seekoei River, he slowed down picking up the judge’s markers: a plot of three graves on the left, the ruins of a house back among poplars on the right. Couple of hundred metres farther a rusted shell of a car that’d been out of production for sixty years more or less. Next gate on the right would have two whitewashed rocks either side of it, turn in there. Remember t
o close the gate. Sign on the fence said trespassers would be shot.

  The gravel track beyond had a high middle ridge overgrown with rank weed. The scratch and scrape against the Spider’s chassis gave Mace the rittles. Christa too, her hands clamped over her ears as the car bucked and bumped.

  ‘We should’ve had a 4x4, Papa,’ she shouted.

  ‘No kidding,’ Mace said.

  About three, four kilometres from the gate to the farmhouse, the judge had said. Across the stone flats, round a koppie, in a stand of bluegums a kilometre off they’d see the house on the slopes looking towards the river. Might be called Seekoei River but hadn’t been a hippo there in probably two hundred years, the judge had said. On the stoep though were some bones and teeth that’d been found in the river bank.

  Mace eased the Spider along the track so slowly they could have walked faster. You were thinking security, you’d think the approach alone might put off any but the determined. Farm murderers fancied getting out in a hurry. And no way you could do that without a high-wheeled rider. Mace wondered if the judge wasn’t overplaying the problem here.

  They came round the hill mostly in first gear, the temp gauge riding higher than Mace was happy about and no chance of gearing more than second tops. To the west of the hill the view opened up over black rock krantzes dropping to a slash of riverine bush. Beyond that thorn acacias, savannah grasslands, yellow in the morning light. A nice sight, except Christa screamed and Mace saw two Dobermans and a Rottweiler tearing up the track, the dogs silent, showing teeth.

  No time to bring up the hood. He kept the car moving towards the house among the eucalyptus trees. If they stopped, the dogs would have them: the Dobermans circling the car now, making snapping feints. The Rotty lumbering up, barking.

  Mace brought out Rudi Klett’s P8 and worked the slide, thinking to put a round in the air. But before he could two shots went off in the trees, shotgun twelve bore, Mace reckoned. The dogs backed off: the Dobermans still circling, the Rottweiler following red-eyed. Up ahead a thin man stepped into the open, feeding shells into the chambers, the shotgun broken over his arm. Mace brought the car up to him.

  ‘Mr Bishop,’ said the man, lanky in denims that sagged at the crotch, ‘you’ve come out here for nothing, my friend. I told Telman, this is not a good time. We have other matters to think about.’

  Mace cut the engine, got out of the car. ‘Nice gun, the Mossberg.’

  ‘It has its uses.’ The man locked in the barrels.

  ‘Like keeping the dogs in line.’

  ‘One of the few things they’ll listen to except my voice. If they can hear my shouting.’

  Mace pointed at the shotgun. ‘With those things I go for the side by side, myself. Looks more scary. May I’ – holding out his hand to take the gun. ‘You’re Mr Marius Visser, Telman Visser’s father?’

  ‘Justice Visser. Judges stay judges.’ Justice Marius Visser hesitated before letting Mace take the weapon. The dogs growled.

  ‘Lovely,’ said Mace getting the weight and balance of the shotgun, lifting it to his shoulder, steadying the barrels on a Doberman. The dog didn’t like it. Crouched, baring its teeth. ‘My preference’s a Remington. The classic SPR. Something about the spread of the barrels I suppose.’

  ‘You know about guns?’

  ‘A little.’

  Justice Visser nodded. ‘Like I said, there’s no purpose for you here.’

  ‘That’s not your son’s idea.’

  The farmer snorted. ‘I don’t listen to him. Most of the time I don’t have a son.’

  Mace let this go, looked past the old man, saw a woman come onto the stoep and wave. ‘That your wife?’

  ‘It is.’

  Both younger than Judge Visser had said. The woman a lot younger than the justice. More like the son’s age.

  She called, ‘Bring them in Marius. For coffee.’

  * * *

  They sat on the stoep: Salome taking Christa through the bone collection; the old man and Mace staring at the view down to the river, out across cattle country beyond. Except old man Visser didn’t run more than a small herd anymore, he told Mace. Too much hassle. Heartwater. Botulism. Brucellosis. TB. Ticks. Worms. A long list of trouble. What he did run was an orchard of apricots down on the river’s flood plains. A production of fruit that was beyond describing. Through all the talk, Mace noted the Mossberg wasn’t far from the judge’s reach. The dogs lying on the steps of the stoep.

  After coffee Mace called the old man’s bluff, said they’d be leaving, Marius getting a set to his jaw and Salome going, ‘Ag no, what’s this nonsense! Nee, man, Marius tell them to stay.’

  And Justice Marius Visser, moving off the stoep, saying, ‘Ja, wife, ja, okay’ and to Mace, ‘You will find me in the shed.’

  While Christa got their overnight bags from the Spider, Salome said to Mace, ‘We were expecting you. Don’t worry about him.’

  She took them into the lounge, down a dark passage to a bedroom. On every wall the heads of kudu, eland, hartebeest, springbok, jackals, caracal cats, warthog, otters. Skins instead of rugs on the floor.

  Christa said, ‘Did Mr Visser shoot them all?’

  Salome laughed. ‘No, sweetie, not any of them. Most of these animals you can’t find here anymore.’

  ‘It’s creepy,’ said Christa, ‘all these dead things.’

  ‘I’m used to it,’ said Salome. ‘On my father’s farm it was the same.’ She held out her hand to Christa. ‘Come, I have eggs to collect from the hens. You can help me.’

  Christa looked dubious.

  ‘It’s what your mother used to do,’ said Mace.

  Mace found the old man in the shed, tending a mampoer still. A heavy mustiness in the air, the only light coming in the open door barely brightened the gloom.

  ‘This’s what I use the apricots for, those I don’t sell,’ said the justice. He handed Mace a shot glass of clear fluid. ‘The best you’ll find between here and the Marico.’

  The still looked ancient to Mace. Like Marius Visser’s pastime wasn’t anything new on the farm. He took a sip at the juice. It hit his stomach with fire but the apricot taste lingered, a faint sweetness under the burn. Mace spluttered. Rotgut at midmorning gave him the sweats.

  ‘Good, hey?’

  ‘Strong,’ said Mace, clucking his tongue to get some feeling back. ‘Usually this stuff doesn’t taste of anything but alcohol.’

  ‘Because it’s kak. Good mampoer’s got to have smell and tang.’

  Justice Marius Visser took a bottle from a cupboard and topped up Mace’s glass, poured one for himself. He directed Mace towards a circle of old wingbacks, the fabric worn down to the thread in most of them. Dark stains between the wings where men had rested their heads over the years. Visser took a chair facing the door, placed the Mossberg beside him. The Rottweiler collapsed at his feet. The Dobermans, Mace reckoned, had to be looking after Mrs Visser. Which suited him. Mace sat at an angle to the old man and the door. He wondered if maybe he shouldn’t have left the P8 in the Spider.

  They sat in silence until Marius Visser said, ‘What happened to your face?’

  Mace touched at the plaster that covered the knife slit on his neck. ‘A mugging.’

  The justice snorted. ‘You need security, my friend.’

  ‘Appears so.’

  ‘Get out of the city. In the small towns there’re no problems.’

  Mace raised an eyebrow but let it go, took another sip at the moonshine.

  The two men fell silent until Marius Visser said, ‘That’s your daughter, the girl?’

  Mace nodded.

  ‘She’s coloured.’

  Mace shrugged, thinking if the justice wanted to get a rise out of him he’d have to try harder.

  ‘If she’s your girl what about the car?’

  ‘What about it?’

  ‘A bit moffie.’

  ‘I’m not queer,’ said Mace.

  The justice took his shot glass in one throw and refilled it
, holding the bottle for Mace. Mace followed him. The test here hardly subtle. The old man leaned over to fill his glass.

  ‘I’m not into black,’ said Marius Visser. ‘I’m a white chocolate man. That black’s better is bullshit. I’ve had black. A bit swampy otherwise seemed the same as white to me.’

  Mace made no comment.

  They sat in silence again. Mace could hear the voices of Salome and Christa in the distance. Nothing distinguishable but the excitement in Christa’s tone.

  Justice Visser took the level in his shot glass down to half. Mace left his standing on the side table between them.

  ‘I see your little red ninnie car coming round the koppie this morning,’ said Marius Visser, ‘I thought you had to be one of Telman’s bum chums. He’s sending his moffie mafia, I thought.’ He glanced at Mace. ‘You know my son, Mr Bishop?’

  ‘We met once. We’ve spoken on the phone.’

  ‘Your thoughts?’

  ‘He seemed concerned about you.’

  ‘Bah!’ The sound exploded from Marius Visser so forcefully Mace felt the blast. ‘From his mother’s death thirty years ago I don’t hear a word from Telman. Suddenly nine months back he phones. We talk. What do you want I ask him? Nothing, he says. To talk to you. You’re my father. I tell him he’s out of my will. Has been out for twenty-nine years, his talking to me’s not going to change anything. He says he doesn’t want the farm. That was Telman’s problem: no contact with the land. I think, ja, son, what scheme are you pulling. Salome says, loosen up. Talk to him, things change. It starts happening that every two weeks he calls. Once he comes here to see us. Nogal! In his chair. That was difficult for him and for me. But, ja… We get through it. After that a couple of times Salome makes me phone him. Like last Sunday. I phone him because my friend’s died. I ask him to come to the funeral. But no. I ask him to come this weekend. But no. Instead you rock up because he’s on about farm murders.’

  ‘You’re carrying that Mossberg around,’ said Mace.

  ‘Precaution.’

  ‘Why?’