Vengeful: A Conspiracy Crime Thriller (The Gabriel Series Book 3)

by David Hickson

  “Leilah is a poor liar,” I said.

  The door to the room opened abruptly, as if someone was expecting to discover us in a compromising position. It was flung so hard that it swung all the way to smash against the wall with a bang. Sandy jumped at the sudden sound. I turned to see Johannes Stephanus Erasmus standing in the open doorway, wearing his black robes with the white cleric’s collar, his dark hair carefully parted, his pale blue eyes burning with an icy rage.

  “What is this?” he demanded of the room.

  Neither Sandy nor I provided an answer. He clenched his jaw and breathed out through his nose like a bull snorting before it charges. Then he stepped into the room and closed the door behind him with measured movements, as if he was struggling to keep his anger in check.

  “Why don’t you lock the door behind you?” said Sandy. “Like you do when those young women come to visit.”

  JS turned to her and blinked with surprise.

  “You will address me as Father,” he said. “What is going on? Who is this man?”

  “I will not address you as Father,” said Sandy. “Never again.”

  JS blinked again. “This is the man who threatened me,” he said. “Do you know him?”

  “I do know him,” said Sandy. “He is a good man – one of the best – a man I loved deeply. And now he might be the only man who stands between you and your death.”

  “My death? What do you mean, woman? Are you saying he’s going to try to kill me?” He turned his furious eyes onto me. “Just let him try.”

  “Not him,” said Sandy. “Me. I am going to kill you.”

  JS uttered a contemptuous laugh, then closed his mouth and his lips trembled with anger. He took a few steps further into the room, and gave the laugh again, forced and unconvincing.

  “Do you know who I am?” asked Sandy. “Have you ever asked yourself who I am?”

  “I know who you are,” he said dismissively, but didn’t prove it.

  “No, you don’t. Brother Isaiah probably never told you that the two men he sent to kill me failed.”

  “What two men?”

  “Brother Isaiah paid two men to kill me, but they didn’t succeed. Was that something he kept quiet from you?”

  JS Erasmus swallowed and found no words to say.

  “That is who I am,” said Sandy. “I am the woman you thought you had killed. The sister of one of the girls you did kill. At a party at which you wore a mask on your face, alongside the judge and the politician. Together, you men of power raped her and you killed her. And today I am going to kill you.”

  “How are you going to do that?” asked JS, in a voice that was stretching a little thin across his anxious throat.

  “With this,” said Sandy, and she brought her hands before her to show him the surgical scalpel she was holding. The stainless steel handle glinted as the sun tried to make a return from behind the cloud, but failed again.

  JS laughed for a third time with weakening conviction. “You’re going to kill me with that?” he scoffed.

  “It’s a knife that belonged to Judge Rousseau,” said Sandy. “It’s so sharp that it will slice through your neck like a hot knife through butter. The skin just peels away. That’s what it did with the neck of Rousseau, and the neck of Jessop Ndoro.”

  JS Erasmus turned to me.

  “What are you doing? Are you going to stand there, insulting the robes of my church, and do nothing while this pathetic woman threatens me?”

  “You should leave, Ben,” said Sandy. “Leave me to finish this, and lock the door behind you.”

  But I did not leave, and I did not lock the door, which was something I would regret later. Instead, I stood still. There comes a moment in any situation where the smallest thing could tip the balance and cause an avalanche of events. I sensed we were approaching such a tipping point now and wanted to be ready in case the avalanche went the wrong way. Sandy was not focusing on me or whether I was leaving or locking the door. Her eyes were on JS Erasmus.

  “I understand you,” she said to him. “Because I come from a family that services men – a long line of prostitutes – that’s what we are, a long, long line. But now it is time for you to pay for the service my family and others like us have provided.”

  JS was watching her with increasing trepidation. It might have been that he realised she was going to use the knife, or perhaps his sins were finally coming back to him. It looked as if he was feeling his grip on reality slip. He kept his eyes on Sandy, but shouted suddenly at the top of his voice, a desperate cry for help. The surprise of his sudden call deprived me for a moment of hearing the words, but then he shouted again: “Brother Isaiah!”

  That sudden shout tipped the balance. The silence that followed it was a brief suspension of time, a pause before everything that ensued.

  Sandy leapt across the space between them like an animal launching at its prey. JS Erasmus held up his hands to block her strike, but all he blocked was the hand without the knife, which she used to swipe aside his flailing arms and clear the path to his neck. The hand with the scalpel plunged forwards and upwards and a burst of blood sprayed into her face as she pressed the blade deep into the side of his neck. The carotid artery is only a few centimetres below the surface at its shallowest point, and by sheer chance Sandy found that point.

  JS Erasmus staggered backwards, his head tilted back, driven by the momentum of Sandy’s leap. He dropped to his knees, and Sandy fell onto him. I moved towards the door, hearing the rush of heavy steps approach down the corridor. A moment later the door burst open, kicked by Brother Isaiah, who was pointing his Sig Sauer uncertainly before him. The barrel wobbled, and I swung my foot to kick at it, aware of Sandy’s head coming up to look at him. His eyes were wide and frightened as he took in the sight of his master on his knees, and the blood on Sandy’s face. The Sig bounced in his hand as he squeezed the trigger, firing a single shot before my foot connected, breaking his fingers and flinging the gun across the room. Brother Isaiah turned his huge forehead to me with dazed confusion and I punched him on his nose, breaking it with a nasty crunch and a spurt of blood. His eyes opened wider, and he pulled back a hand to punch me in return, but he was wide open and no fighter, despite all the sin in his heart, and my next punch connected with his jawbone halfway between the chin and the ear. I struck him so hard that I cracked the bone. The two nerve clusters beneath his ear would have delivered a shock to his brain stem that caused such an overload that he lost consciousness before he hit the ground.

  Sandy had been struck in the chest. The force of the bullet had pushed her backwards, and she was lying in a crumpled heap, her eyes staring up at the ceiling, and her mouth moving as if she was trying to say something.

  JS Erasmus had fallen to his side, a pool of blood spreading beneath him. I didn’t spare time for him, but knelt beside Sandy and gently lifted her so that I could feel for the wound. It was in the centre of the chest and blood was seeping out of the exit wound on her back. I held her as tightly as I could.

  “I said you wouldn’t stop me,” she whispered.

  “Don’t speak. Save your energy.”

  “Nothing to save,” said Sandy. “It’s too late.”

  “No, it’s never too late.”

  But I knew it was. I have seen too many people die, and the fear was fading now from her golden eyes.

  “I understand,” said Sandy, her breath losing its force, her voice only a whisper.

  “Understand what?”

  “Why you said nothing. Don’t take the blame, Ben.”

  Her warm blood was trickling through my fingers, and her eyes flickered like a candle blown by the wind.

  “Don’t take the blame for their deaths.”

  “Don’t talk,” I said, but she kept whispering even though her breath was all but gone.

  “Sometimes,” she coughed and blood came out of her mouth and trickled down her cheek. “Good men must stand aside and do nothing in order to triumph over evil.”

>   The flickering of her eyes slowed, then stopped. They stayed open, and I looked into them as her life expired. There was the slight sigh of the last gasp as it left her body. Then she drooped in my arms. I closed her eyes and lay her gently on the floor.

  The lifeless eyes of Johannes Stephanus Erasmus gazed up at me as I stepped over him to reach the sash window. I tugged at the handles and the window slid upwards. There was a four-metre drop to the garden below, a well-tended garden with a lawn that came right up to a narrow gravel path that skirted the building. I could hear the sounds of footsteps approaching down the corridor, and I considered making the jump.

  But instead, I returned to Sandy’s side.

  Thirty-Three

  In Pollsmoor Prison they provided me with accommodation of my own. That was probably for my own safety, not because of the danger I posed to those around me, although I did wonder.

  And then I waited.

  I sat in silence, stared at the chipped plaster wall and listened to the sounds of despair that were the white noise of one of the most notorious prisons in the world.

  I had a lot of time to think about the mistakes I had made, the things I could have said to Sandy, to Robyn, and even to Fat-Boy and to Chandler. I replayed Sandy’s last moments several times and thought of the things I could have expressed, but then let it all go. Familiar enough with the dark spiral of regret and recrimination that the death of someone close can cause, I have learnt many of the ways of fighting my way back out of that deepening spiral, but a prison cell is not the optimum place to fight that battle. By the third day of my incarceration, I had slipped further down into the dark chasm than I liked to admit. Things that Robyn had said to me about her own struggles came back, and I was grateful for the rungs of support they provided. I was mulling over that, and the two women in my life and what we each did for one another, and didn’t do, when three guards arrived at my cell door. They fitted me with handcuffs and leg-irons which trailed chains across the floor as I shuffled between them towards what they euphemistically called a ‘meeting’ room.

  “You got a meeting with your lawyer,” said one of the guards, as if he was trying to cheer me up by telling me about the treat that awaited.

  “I don’t have a lawyer,” I said.

  He pursed his lips and raised his eyebrows, which was as far as he was going to go towards resolving that existential puzzle.

  My lawyer had a black eye and a nasty cut on his cheek that had required stitches. But he was dressed in an Armani suit, with a pink silk tie and his cropped white hair and military bearing made up for the flesh wounds and presented a fairly convincing display of legality.

  He was standing behind a wounded chair on the other side of a perspex screen in a row of interview booths. A guard stood behind him with the look of a man who would not be listening in on our conversation.

  We sat down together like the choreographed move in an old etiquette movie and reached for our handsets. He looked at me and concern spread across his face as he took in my diminished state. He said nothing for a beat, so I spoke first.

  “What happened to your eye?” I said.

  “Good job,” said Chandler, ignoring my insolence, “with the whole keeping a low profile thing. Sorting out your issues with the police, and all that.”

  “You should not have come here,” I said.

  “Fat-Boy cannot believe you killed the woman as well. But Robyn says she was your journalist, and you might not have killed her.”

  “You should not be here,” I said again.

  “They’ve been denying you legal representation, wouldn’t let me see you until now. Seventy-two hours!”

  “There is a reason for that. They have been waiting.”

  “Waiting for what?”

  “For you.”

  Chandler said nothing.

  “They have asked me no questions, there have been no interrogations, not even a standard arraignment. There is a reason, Colonel, that you are the first person I have seen.”

  I closed my mouth and cursed myself – I had called him Colonel.

  “Colchester,” said Chandler, who also realised my slip. “Colonel Colchester.”

  He would have had to present identification to be here, but it appalled me that he should have played that card again.

  “Colonel,” I said. “I am relying on your knowledge of the law to understand their reason for waiting. Please act accordingly, and quickly. I hope it is not too late.”

  Chandler nodded and I could see the cogs turning as he realised the implications of what I was saying. I let the guard know we were finished and avoided further eye contact with Chandler lest I interrupt his thoughts. As I shuffled back down the corridor, I hoped the cogs would turn fast enough. Because if I was right about the reason the police had not interrogated me over the murder of JS Erasmus, and had stretched the delay to the seventy-two-hour limit, then it seemed likely that someone was now paging with interest through Chandler’s old army files – making connections to me, perhaps to Robyn and to Fat-Boy; drawing neat little organograms of heist team structures. And if I was right, Chandler’s arrival here today had provided them with the last piece of a complicated puzzle they had been trying to solve. And that would mean that it would not just be me paying the price of my sins.

  My second social engagement occurred less than an hour later, which seemed like an ominous confirmation of my suspicions. I was fitted with all the chains again, and guided down the corridor to a different meeting room. The same guard walked beside me, but he didn’t raise any further existential questions and made no effort to cheer me up.

  Captain Andile Dlamini was sitting on a wobbly chair at a stained wooden table. I shuffled in, while his weary eyes watched me as if refusing to believe the evidence of my depravity. He wasn’t looking much better himself. It didn’t look as if he had slept since I had last seen him, and he was obviously too tired to return my smile. The guards left us alone because Andile had that kind of clout, and then Andile stared at me for a good minute before saying anything.

  “What on earth were you doing?” he asked. “Were you trying to stop her, or were you there to help her?”

  I opened my mouth to reply, but he held up a hand of nicotine-stained fingers.

  “Don’t,” he said. “Spare me the sales pitch, Gabriel. It would be hurtful to have to endure any more lies.”

  We sat in silence for another full minute as if we were mourning something – perhaps the end of a promising friendship – then he looked up at me, his eyes red with exhaustion.

  “At least your disappearing journalist reappeared,” he said.

  “She did,” I said, “yes.”

  “You were trying to persuade her to come in and speak with me? When you visited her at the religious leader’s fortress?”

  “I was. But she didn’t think it was a good idea.”

  Andile had a folder on the table before him. He flipped it open and stared at a bunch of handwritten pages as if he was mustering the energy to read them to me.

  “We had men there,” said Andile. “In the house.”

  “I thought you might,” I said.

  “Recognised you when you came through the gate.”

  “Did they?”

  “Then they lost you. They were out in the gardens while you were inside.”

  I did my best to look regretful about that.

  “You are lucky they reached you before those men in the dresses.”

  “I think they prefer the term ‘robes’.”

  “The whole thing raises some questions,” said Andile, “about other members of the church, and how many of them knew what their leader was up to.”

  “Sounds like a good thing,” I said. “There are many questions that should be raised about what was happening in that church.”

  Andile held up his hand again to stop me from getting ahead of myself, and his eyes scanned the handwritten notes. He looked up after a pause.

  “There is someone who has c
ome forward,” he said. “Since your arrest.”

  “Ah yes?” I fervently hoped that someone would not turn out to be the foolish Colonel Colchester. He had been using that false identity for way too long.

  “Yes,” said Andile, and his eyes held mine to see whether they would give anything away. They didn’t. He looked back down at the handwritten notes and I looked at them more closely. I realised with a rush of relief that it was Sandy’s handwriting. Perhaps the reason they had delayed pressing charges against me was not that they were waiting for Chandler to wander in.

  “Claims to be the father of your journalist. Identified the body for us, and further claims that he knows you.”

  He looked back up at me.

  “He does,” I said.

  “Thought his daughter had died some time ago, it seems. Provided us with some notes that she made. Helped us work out what had been going on.”

  Andile dried up at that and seemed to wait for a response. I didn’t provide one.

  “Nasty business the whole thing. Trafficking of underage girls, luring them in with drugs, a party where they killed a girl – it’s hard to believe.”

  “Very nasty,” I agreed.

  “We will reduce the charges against you to ‘aiding and abetting’. Carries a lower sentence, might even be suspended. You’ll be released in a couple of hours. Someone has paid your bail.”

  “Someone?” I said.

  Andile sighed with some regret.

  “You have friends in high places. Why don’t you go and see your ex-employers, Gabriel. They wield more influence than you realise.”

  “The Department paid my bail?”

  “I’m only suggesting you see them because we have a personal relationship, and I feel you deserve a nudge in the right direction.”

  “Did it take you seventy-two hours to decide to reduce my charges? Or has there been another reason for the delay?”

  “Speak to them, Gabriel. That’s all I will say about it.”