Killer Country

by Mike Nicol

‘Righteous, judge. I’ve never had that before. Legend food.’

  ‘Isn’t it,’ said the judge. He pointed at the bottles of red wine on the sideboard. ‘Will you do the honours?’

  The young man pushed his chair back. ‘Any one?’

  ‘I think the pinotage, something peppery to go with the duck.’ Watching the gym trainer’s movements, so lithe, so fluid. The white shirt with the pink stripes, riding up with each step to flash a neat bum in black trousers. Telman Visser imagined running his hand over the curve of that bum.

  ‘Let me invite you to supper,’ he’d said to Ricardo at the end of a session the previous week. They’d been out for dinner a clutch of times, met for coffee twice, the judge felt it was time to move things on. Normally he’d have gone in faster but he enjoyed the seduction of the young Ricardo. There was a frisson to be had from the slow unfolding. Also he wasn’t sure which way Ricardo swung. Probably back and front, he decided.

  ‘Where’d you learn to cook so well?’ said Ricardo, drawing the cork.

  The cork coming out with a soft plop like sex, to the judge’s way of thinking.

  ‘I took classes. But I’ve always liked cooking. Since I was a boy. My father hated the idea.’ And Telman blew out an amused ‘mmm’ through his nostrils.

  Ricardo brought the bottle of wine to the table, poured a little into the judge’s glass as he’d been taught.

  The judge swirled it. ‘Actually he hated me. Does your father hate you, Ricardo?’

  ‘Never,’ said Ricardo. ‘He loves me. He tells me that.’

  ‘You’re lucky. It’s not pleasant when your father hates you. He even tried to kill me in a car accident. Certainly put me into a wheelchair for life.’ He tasted the wine, sucking in air over the liquid pooled in his mouth. Swallowed. ‘Excellent. Try it, Ricardo.’

  Ricardo filled his glass and took a sip, not a mouthful as the judge had once told him.

  Judge Visser said, ‘I get deep richness. And there cocoa coming through, now the prickliness of the pepper. Lovely. Full.’

  ‘I don’t know,’ said Ricardo, ‘I can’t taste that.’

  ‘Take another sip. Hold the wine on your tongue… That’s the way, let it rest. And breathe in gently through your mouth. Now swallow and you’ll taste the chocolate.’

  ‘Hey, wow, I can,’ said Ricardo. Grinning looking down at the judge gazing up at him. ‘Amazing.’

  The first bullet put a hole in the big pane in the lounge window, buried itself in the opposite wall high up, plaster chips showering the table.

  Ricardo dropped his glass and the bottle, wine splashes spotting like blood across the judge’s shirt. Vivid on the pale blue. The judge ducked, turning his wheelchair to face the windows.

  The second shot came lower down, shattering the pane, embedding at head height in the wall between two of the judge’s prize Kentridges: both visions of horror and desolation. Both worth six figures. Glass shards tinkled after the bang.

  Ricardo screamed, dropping to the floor.

  The judge shouting, ‘Bastards, bastards,’ propelling his wheelchair at the window.

  The third bullet was high again, smacking into the wall above the picture rail.

  Then silence.

  Then a motorbike revving off at speed.

  Then a neighbour’s dog barking.

  ‘It’s over,’ said the judge, breathing hard. ‘They’ve gone. He’s gone.’ Turning his wheelchair to see Ricardo’s head appear above the table, the boy’s eyes large with fear. ‘Are you alright? Not wounded?’

  Ricardo shook his head. His mouth worked but no words come out.

  The judge said, ‘I think I’d better call someone.’ He dug in his pocket for his cellphone, called Mace Bishop.

  54

  Mace took the call on an intercity bus, a solid mama sitting next to him in the window seat who should have booked a double. Mace jammed between her thigh and the aisle armrest. Five hours he’d endured with another three to go. Not a spare seat in the bus he could escape to.

  He saw the judge’s name on the phone, said, ‘This’s a bit late, judge.’

  Heard the judge say, ‘I’ve been shot at, can you get here quickly.’

  Mace said, ‘Where?’

  ‘In my house, dammit.’

  ‘I meant where’re you hit?’

  ‘I’m not.’

  Mace paused, he could hear someone whimpering in the background. Wasn’t the judge. The judge’s voice was hard and angry. Said, ‘Get the cops, judge. I can’t help you. I’m out of town, fetching my car.’

  He heard the judge say, ‘Christ’ before the connection was cut.

  Mace thumbed off his phone thinking, what was the judge’s case anyway, ringing him? He had security. He had the cops. Strange coincidence though six weeks after his father’s killed someone takes potshots at the remaining Visser. Except, even in the middle of the night in the middle of the Karoo, Mace couldn’t see a link. Felt he was missing out on something. Or more likely the incidents weren’t related. More likely something to do with the arms deal commission the judge headed. For sure if the same person that had arranged the shooting of Justice Marius Visser was involved, then Judge Telman Visser wouldn’t be making phone calls.

  Mace shifted about in his seat trying to win a little space from the mama, but the woman’s thigh didn’t budge, the heat of it burning through his jeans. You could see why none but the desperate took the intercity buses. It would’ve been worth flying. Charging the expense to the judge. Sometimes saving costs wasn’t worth the pain.

  Almost four hours later, two o’clock in the morning, Mace stepped into a bedroom in the Grand Hotel. Flung himself down on the bed, slept in his clothes till reception woke him at eight. A Meneer Johan Pretorius was waiting for him.

  Mace said to reception, ‘Hell, man, I agreed eight-thirty.’

  Reception said, ‘Sorry, sir, he asked to tell you.’

  Meneer Johan Pretorius was sitting in the breakfast room, drinking orange juice when Mace got down, still in his travel clothes.

  The lawyer stood up, extended a hand. ‘Ag, ja, I hope I’m not rushing you,’ he said. ‘I have a tight schedule.’

  Mace wondered why a lawyer in a small town would have any schedule at all, let alone a tight one.

  ‘They do a good breakfast here,’ said Johan Pretorius, turning to the buffet. ‘You can eat as much as you like.’

  Johan Pretorius heaped scrambled egg, sausages, bacon and two fried tomatoes onto his plate. Ordered a rack of white toast. Mace did the same, passing on the toast and the sausage.

  ‘I’ve got your car outside,’ said Johan Pretorius, cutting carefully into the sausage to release a squirt of fat.

  Mace watched him, realising the trouble with boerewors was that the sausage looked like a turd, ruptured at both ends.

  ‘Nice car. Goes like a bomb.’ He winked at Mace. Grinned. ‘No, I didn’t drive it around, Mr Bishop, it’s okay, though there were a few poppies who begged for a ride.’ He winked again. ‘But I haven’t taken advantage. Your car’s all spick and span and valeted at the garage yesterday.’

  He reached across and patted Mace’s shoulder. ‘I’m pleased I can give it back to you. Sometimes the Lord’s not so obliging in who he spares. Like Justice Visser. Magtig, a helluva problem these farm killings.’ He lifted a forkful of sausage and egg to his mouth. ‘Val weg.’

  Mace hacked at the bacon. Just the way he didn’t like it: too thick, not crispy.

  Johan Pretorius said, ‘Tragic business, the Vissers.’ The lawyer bit into a slice of toast, leaving a smear of butter at the corner of his mouth. ‘You know the story about them?’

  He swallowed not waiting for Mace’s answer. ‘Let me tell you. That farm belonged to his first wife. She was a Malherbe. And I can tell you it was a Malherbe farm for about a hundred and fifty years before she got it. Maybe longer. Generations buried there. She was born in the old house, Suzanna, his first wife, an only child. On her death, the farm goes to Justi
ce Visser. That’s another story.’

  ‘I know,’ said Mace.

  Johan Pretorius paused with a forkful of food.

  ‘Justice Visser told me.’

  ‘Magtig, is that so?’

  ‘The bare bones.’

  ‘He never spoke about it usually.’

  ‘He didn’t say much.’

  ‘Probably he wouldn’t tell you that he remarried six months later.’ Johan Pretorius winked at Mace, a small smile on his lips.

  Mace tasted the scrambled eggs and wondered how it was possible to make it so rubbery, give it the texture of stiff porridge.

  Johan Pretorius was saying, ‘The first thing he does is he wills the farm to his new wife because of bad blood between him and his son. If there were Malherbes left they would have shot him.’ He sniggered. ‘Ja, well, I didn’t mean it like that.’ And chewed at a mouthful of sausage and bacon. Then lowered his voice, leaning towards Mace. ‘Let me tell you, a week before the attack, his lawyer’s, old Niemand’s office burned down. Old Niemand died too in the fire. Very tragic. But also all the man’s legal documentation was destroyed. Of all his clients. So when Justice Visser was killed he was intestate.’

  The lawyer leaned back. The smear of butter on his lips had melted. He stared at Mace. ‘Do you know what that means?’

  ‘Tell me.’

  ‘It means his son inherits the lot.’ Johan Pretorius wiped his mouth with his serviette. ‘There is a saying, not so, what goes around comes around? Here is an example.’

  The lawyer went through three mouthfuls of food before he said, ‘But the story doesn’t stop there. The farm is now for sale.’

  ‘Any buyers?’ Mace sipped at his coffee, thin and bitter, grimaced.

  ‘No one’s been to look.’ The lawyer spooned three sugars into his coffee. Brought the level up with milk. He drank off the cup, his Adams apple bobbing. He winked. ‘Farm murders, you know. Land claims. These days you buy land, you buy trouble. What can I tell you.’

  Mace took a drive to the farm. The gate wasn’t locked. Before entering he wracked a shell into the chamber of the P8, put the pistol on the passenger seat. He had an odd feeling about being there. Felt he was watched. Yet he had to go back. He’d always had to go back, revisit places that had gone bad. Places where he’d been and people had died. A mission in Sudan piled with killings. Villages in Congo littered with corpses. Boats in a Somali harbour where the seabirds ate at the dead refugees. Places where sometimes days, sometimes hours before a massacre, he’d traded arms. Places where he’d left ghosts.

  He drove slowly, scanning the veld and the koppie ahead for movement. On the stony approach to the house, flushed a flock of guinea fowl, sending them clattering into the eucalyptus trees. He stopped the car, slipped off the gun’s safety catch. Waited, watched. Put the gun between his legs, drove on into the shade. At first he kept the engine idling, scanned the shadows, alert for any movement. Then cut the ignition. The silence held until gradually the tick of insects and the movement of birds started again. Mace got out of the car, went up the steps onto the stoep.

  The door to the farmhouse was locked but he could see through the windows the black stains on the floor where Visser and his wife and the gunman had died. And the spread of his own blood across the floorboards. He shaded his eyes against the pane: without Christa he might have died there. Thank your daughter, the surgeon had said. His daughter. The child he was supposed to protect. The thought weighed on him. And he spun away from the window, walked fast off the stoep towards the shed where Visser had brewed his moonshine.

  The shed door was padlocked. Mace piled some logs under a high window, stood on these. He peered through the dusty glass, made out the still but the bottle racks were empty. Probably the cops hadn’t seen any sense in letting good liquor go to waste. While he stood there, balancing, the automatic in his hand, he caught a movement reflected in the glass.

  Mace dropped, crouching, the P8 clasped in both hands, sweeping slowly left to right, and back. Nothing. Except the silence, the birds quiet again.

  He stood, waited for the bird chirp and the insects.

  ‘Trying to spook yourself,’ he said aloud, walking towards where he’d seen the movement, his footsteps a soft sibilance over the dead leaves and fallen twigs. A shadow was how he imagined it, shifting between the trees. Gooseflesh prickled along his arms, crept at the base of his neck between his shoulder blades. A warning. It had kept him alive before.

  Twice he spun suddenly but no one lurked behind him. At the tree line, where a swathe of open ground separated the plantation from the cliff edge, he paused. Looked back through the trees at the house almost hidden in the shadow, then started along the path he and Christa had taken to the river. From the krantz top he had a wide view: nothing moved below.

  He sat on the rocks, gazed into the trees. Christa had felt they were being watched. He remembered that. Had imagined a man with the head of a buck, as the Bushman had drawn him. Mace shook his head, forced a soft laugh. And then he saw it, well back in the trees, unmoving. Tall, thin, horned. The light dappled about the body. A figure staring at him. Mace brought up the pistol, shouted, ‘Hey?’ – his finger putting pressure on the trigger. The shape not moving. Then Mace heard voices, far off to his right.

  And glanced quickly: saw two men on the top of the ridge walking towards him. And back: but the spectre was gone.

  Sometimes the light played tricks. You stared at shadows they changed shape. You looked from the sunlight into the shade, you saw things that weren’t there. Mace stuck the P8 into his belt, covered the bulge of the gun with his jacket.

  The men had seen him and stopped talking. He waved. One waved back. Young guys, probably in their late twenties, shorts, boots, rucksacks, floppy khaki hats. The one with a map in his hand.

  Turned out to be geologists, specialists compiling a scoping report on the lie of the land. Part of a government survey. Were headed to tell the Vissers of their presence.

  Mace thought, they don’t know. Thought, the justice would’ve had them with his Mossberg even before the Dobers and the Rotty got them.

  He recounted the situation. Flashed them his security card by way of explanation.

  The one who’d spoken, who had a quick smile, took his hat off to reveal a dreadlock hairstyle only not as neat as Mr Short Dreads’s, went solemn and said, ‘That’s not a good scene.’

  His colleague with the map kept a stern mouth. ‘I can understand it,’ he said. ‘The shit we get from farmers.’

  ‘You’d have had it from this one too,’ said Mace.

  The geologists went on. Mace watched them out of sight before returning to the Spider. He didn’t see the horned man again or even sense him. He drove slowly off the Visser land thinking that the geologist put him in mind of Mr Short Dreads. So did whatever he’d seen among the trees. Made him believe that what he had to do was find the hitman.

  55

  Obed Chocho stood in the sitting room of the Smits’ getaway cottage, the stoep doors open onto the path leading down to the beach. Low tide, beds of kelp lazy on the sea’s rise and fall.

  Perched on a barstool behind him, Sheemina February looked at his head, shaven and glistening, and the roll of neck fat resting on his jacket collar. The tycoon surveying his domain. Yet all the drive out he’d been bitching about his dead wife. After these many weeks still going on about it. Get a life. Pull another chick, she wanted to tell him. Wasn’t as if they weren’t clamouring over him. Drawn by the smell of money.

  ‘Mighty fine,’ he said, ‘mighty fine’ – turning towards her.

  ‘Mighty fine what, Obed?’ She clicked her fingernails on a piece of driftwood the Smits had used as a countertop. Faint traces of blue paint embedded in the patina. Not so much driftwood as a length of ship’s planking, a nice touch that gave the room a beachy feel.

  ‘It is taking too long,’ he said, ‘the paperwork.’

  ‘That’s bureaucracy.’ Sheemina February, brushed flecks of
pollen off her dress. ‘There’s a process.’

  ‘I am ready. I have sub-contractors waiting. People with bulldozers and trucks. Every day they’re not working I am paying.’

  ‘I warned you to wait.’ She watched the bluster build in his face. Couldn’t resist irritating him.

  ‘You told me it would be fast. With your contacts.’ His face puffed up with anger. ‘You told me no problem. Ten days, two weeks we would be on site.’

  ‘It’s not ten days. It’s been five working days by my count.’

  ‘Five. Ten. Mighty fine. This doesn’t matter. I am wasting money. Tens of thousands.’

  ‘Obed,’ Sheemina February came off the stool. ‘What was my advice?’ She raised her eyebrows at him. ‘My advice was put the contractors on notice. On notice, not on contract. Wait until the tender’s signed, I advised you. Not so?’ She walked out the stoep door onto the path of crushed shells. Smelt the air thick with salt. Turned back to him. Obed Chocho standing above her on the steps. ‘But what do you do? You get as excited as a boy with a toy.’

  Obed Chocho beat his fist against the step railing. ‘Mighty fine. To hell with you. Mighty fine. I will get another lawyer.’

  ‘If you want to. If that will make you feel better. Be my guest. But remember the paperwork, Obed. It’s a nightmare. The entanglements.’

  ‘Your nightmare. Because of you.’

  She ran her tongue over her lips, moistened the plum lipstick. Smiled. ‘What were your words, Obed? Lawyer us up, I think was the rather hip phrase you used. Your brief, remember. I acted on your brief.’

  Obed Chocho hissed out his breath.

  ‘Think about it.’ She climbed the steps until she stood opposite him, put a gloved hand on his arm. ‘In another five days, in a week, the bulldozers will be here.’ She withdrew her hand. ‘In the meantime tell the contractors if they want the job, they must wait. At their cost. Believe me they’re hungry, they’re not likely to run. Also they’ll want to stick close to you. Get in on the action.’