The African Diamond Trilogy Box Set

by Christopher Lowery

  “I think we can work this out,” she said, and took him by the hand towards the staircase.

  An hour later, Ray rode off from the house on his bicycle to make his last deliveries. He’d avoided being fired and probably going to jail, but he wasn’t too happy about the weekly duties expected of him by Sra. Lindosa.

  FIFTY-SEVEN

  1996 - 1998

  Durban, South Africa

  After finishing at Trelawney, where he gained a pass in modern languages, Adam returned to Durban in 1996, two years after Mandela’s swearing in. Apart from holidays, he hadn’t lived with his family for twelve years. He had missed living through the most tumultuous times in recent South African history. When he left, his homeland was divided by race and mutual hatred. It seemed that the country would be torn apart by a storm of violence and go the way of so many other African nations, towards civil war. The nation had to endure another ten years of trauma before Mandela’s African National Congress won the first non-racial democratic election and he was sworn in as President of the country. Adam came home to a democratically governed republic. The storm had abated.

  His sisters, Catrine and Birgitta, were now married, with a little boy and two girls respectively. Their husbands both worked in Hanny’s business as store managers. And Greg, who had returned three years previously, was engaged to be married and also working with his father, preparing to take over the business.

  Hanny, who was now fifty-six, was working less and playing a lot of golf. He’d encouraged Rachel to take it up and she was a natural golfer, winning many competitions, to the envy of the other ladies at the Chukka Country Club.

  “You should see her, Adam. Your mother’s got the most natural swing I’ve ever seen. She hits the ball further than me and straighter, too.” Hanny still thought that his wife, at fifty-one, was the cleverest and loveliest woman he’d ever known. They were perfectly happy together.

  Rachel had taken up her cancer research work again after Adam’s birth. With some help from her father and Hanny and a modest financial contribution, she had convinced the Royal Albert Hospital to introduce a cancer research programme. Twenty-two years later she was still involved as a regular consultant, having an unusually deep knowledge of the disease.

  Two years before, she had conceived the idea of opening a hospice. She set up a registered charity to finance the project and with the help of all the family, she organised dances, dinners, sports days and every possible kind of event where she could raise money, either through contributions, or lotteries, or sponsorships. Within a year she had raised enough to convert an old warehouse that Hanny still owned from his grandfather’s days into a comfortable, well-equipped rest home for terminal cancer patients.

  At all of the functions she addressed the audience, exhorting her friends and the other attendees to give generously. “We owe it to our community to provide a place where terminally ill patients can be cared for during their last days. Where they can end their lives in comfort and with dignity, surrounded by family who care about them.”

  Rachel would use her personal experience as an example. “My own father has just died after a long fight with cancer. He was one of the fortunate few whose family could look after him, even though my mother had already passed away. But he was in a lucky minority. There are thousands more sufferers who have nowhere to go to and we must do something about it.”

  Research was all very well, but Rachel wanted to become personally involved. To invest her knowledge in a more direct, more caring way. She was so happy when the first ‘guests’ came to stay in the newly appointed accommodation. She spent more time than she should at the hospice. But when Hanny saw how much satisfaction it afforded her, he didn’t mind.

  And when her family asked her how she had the energy to start the project and see it through at her age despite all of the obstacles in her path, she replied to them as she had done many times before, simply reflecting her basic philosophy of life, “If you decide that something needs to be done, you can’t put it off for ever. Now’s the best time. It always is.”

  Back at home, Adam once more felt the pressure of competing with his brother. His parents had never deliberately favoured their eldest son but he envied Greg his place as top dog and still felt that he looked down on him. He wanted to succeed on his own and show everyone what he was capable of, to prove himself to his parents as a winner, not a second best.

  He rented an apartment and a nearby office in downtown Durban and working with some funding and advice from his father he set up a trading company specialising in gemstones, gold bullion and other precious metals. His reputation as a smart businessman quickly spread in a highly competitive and ruthless industry. He showed that he could be as competitive and ruthless as the best of them. His success was admired by his family and friends but he constantly sought for more. He was a very ambitious man.

  “Old Willy Martin called me. He’s closing up, he’s tired. He must be eighty years old if he’s a day. He’s offered me some nice stuff, very good prices.”

  It was March, 1998. Hanny had arranged to buy a selection of jewellery from a Joburg dealer who was retiring. He had been dealing with the man for many years, so he was buying the merchandise sight unseen. He prevailed upon Greg to drive up there to pick up the goods.

  “This leg’s bothering me a bit. It’s that bloody thrombosis that I had last year. I’m just going to sit in the garden this weekend. Your mother will play golf then we’ll have supper on the terrace. A perfect weekend. You don’t mind, son, do you?”

  Adam had a customer there whom he could visit so he and Greg agreed to go up together. It was Friday afternoon when they set off, aiming to spend the night in Joburg, do their business on the Saturday and return on the Sunday.

  “Right, Adam. Two shifts, three hours each and we’ll be more or less there.” The two men climbed into Greg’s battered Range Rover and drove off, en route for Joburg.

  Adam was taking the first shift. He was wearing the driving gloves which were one of his affectations. He had several little foibles like that. He needed to appear different from the crowd and got upset when anyone questioned his habits. He had gone out with a lovely girl called Judith for several months the previous year but she had dropped him for that very reason. She said that he wanted to appear eccentric but he ended up looking peculiar. Adam had gone bananas and screamed at her to apologise. She left him instead. He was glad to see the back of her. What did she know? It was strange that all of his short relationships with women had ended the same way. Stupid bitches, he always thought to himself.

  They arrived in Joburg late that evening and spent the night in a hotel near the dealer’s store. On the Saturday, after depositing the three boxes of valuables in the hotel safe, they went for supper to the Long Bar, a popular establishment near their hotel. At the table, Greg noticed that his brother was sporting a gold ring on his right hand that he’d never seen before. This wasn’t surprising, since they didn’t spend much time together. Greg preferred to pass his leisure time with Alison, his fiancée.

  “That’s a nice ring you’re wearing. Where did you pick it up?” He reached over to turn his brother’s hand around for a closer look.

  Adam pulled his hand away quickly. “Just a bauble I picked up in London on a business trip. I’ve got several of them. Little artisan in the city. Makes nice stuff, very wearable and not expensive.” He jumped up. “Must visit the gents. Back in a sec.” He went down the stairs to the toilets. When he returned, Greg noticed that he had removed the ring. He decided not to mention it again for the moment, it might spoil the weekend.

  Driving back to Durban, with the merchandise safely stowed in the back of the Range Rover, they found themselves in the middle of a torrential rainstorm. Greg slowed down to the pace of the other cars. The vehicles were bunched into small groups at intervals along the road, the cars in each little convoy going nose to tail in the difficult driving conditions. Dirty water was being thrown up from the slick, muddy su
rface by the vehicles in front. With this and the driving rain, the windscreen wipers could hardly keep up.

  The incident with the ring and his brother’s erratic behaviour had jogged Greg’s memory as he lay in bed last night. He remembered clearly the business with young Stanford, five years previously at Trelawney. From the brief glimpse he’d gotten last night, the ring that Adam had taken considerable trouble to conceal looked like a gold ring with an embedded yellow diamond. Greg was a very upfront man. He didn’t like subterfuge of any kind, especially where he had been personally involved.

  “So, Adam, that ring last night. You got it from a jewellery designer in London?”

  “Oh, that ring. Yes, a little artisan down in the east end of town, near Hatton Garden.”

  “Do you have it handy? I liked the look of it. It would probably sell well in our shops.”

  “It’s in the case with my stuff. Remind me when we get home.” Adam switched the radio on. “Let’s see if we can listen to something other than the windscreen wipers.”

  Greg was not to be put off. “How much does he sell them for?”

  “The rings you mean? About four or five hundred quid, depends on the stone, of course.”

  “Is that in bulk, or just a one off?”

  “I’ve only bought the one, so I don’t know for sure. But I suppose you could do a deal.”

  “Really? I thought you said last night that you’d bought several of them.”

  “You must have misunderstood me. That’s the only one I’ve bought.” Adam shuffled uneasily in the passenger seat.

  “Well, I don’t usually forget what someone has told me within twelve hours of hearing it. And now that you mention a misunderstanding, it seemed to me that your ring looked very much like the one that was stolen from Stanford at Trelawney five years ago.”

  “What in hell’s name are you talking about? You never even saw Stanford’s ring, it was nothing like the one I was wearing. What are you trying to insinuate?”

  “Dr. Clarence described the ring to me and it was similar to your ring. And you told me that it was yellow gold with a tourmaline in it. That’s like a yellow diamond. Isn’t that right?”

  At this, Adam almost jumped out of the car. He turned to his brother with a furious expression. “Listen you suspicious, sanctimonious bastard, I’ve just told you that the two rings were nothing alike. If you don’t believe me you can go and screw yourself.”

  Greg forced himself to remain calm and concentrate on the treacherous road. Maybe I picked the wrong time for this discussion, he thought. “Alright, keep your shirt on. I’m just interested in buying some of those rings for the business. What’s the name of the jeweller in Hatton Garden?”

  Suddenly, Adam lashed out at Greg’s head. “You lying prick, you’ve always had it in for me. You’ve hated me ever since the day I was born. You think I’m inferior to you. I’ve known it for years. Now you’re trying to implicate me in something that happened five years ago, just so you can add another trophy to the Greg Peterson collection. You’re a bloody retail jeweller, not Sherlock fucking Holmes. Leave me the fuck alone.” He took another swipe at his brother.

  “Jesus Christ, Adam. What in hell do you think you’re doing? Are you insane?” Greg took his left hand off the wheel to defend himself from the blows. Adam grabbed his hand, twisting it as if to break it. Greg pulled violently away and fell sideways against the driver’s door, his foot pressing down on the accelerator. They had just come over a rise and were now headed downhill. The heavy vehicle speeded up, starting to sway on the road, closing up on a white truck ahead of them. Greg pulled himself back up and grabbed the wheel again. They were about to ram into the truck. He braked and pulled the wheel to the left.

  “Shit!” Adam saw the smash coming up and grabbed the armrests to hold himself steady.

  With a screech, the Range Rover spun around on the slick asphalt and its back end smashed into the truck. The vehicle rebounded and Greg almost managed to bring the wheels back in line on the road. He glanced in the rear view mirror and saw there was a black Jaguar behind him. The driver had also stepped on the brake and it was sliding towards them on the slippery surface. It struck them on the rear left-wing, thrusting the car towards the ditch at the side of the road. The front near wheel dropped into the ditch and the Range Rover turned over sideways, tumbling through the bushes lining the road. Rolling over again they smashed into a tree stump and came to rest on all four wheels in a muddy banana plantation.

  Both brothers were wearing safety belts, but the car was an old model and there were no airbags. Because Greg had been gripping the wheel so tightly he had been able to hold himself in position in his seat. Apart from bruising in his shoulders and legs where he had been thrown about by the rolling vehicle, he was unhurt. He unfastened his seat belt and turned to his brother. Adam was bleeding from the forehead and the nose. He had been smashed against the doorframe when the car had rolled over. The passenger door had been pushed in onto him and his legs were twisted under the folded metal of the door. He was unconscious.

  Greg reached over and felt his pulse. It was beating regularly. He made no attempt to try to move his brother, but left him as he was. He grabbed the carphone and it fell to pieces in his hand. He didn’t have a mobile phone but he knew Adam did. He looked desperately around for Adam’s mobile. It was nowhere to be seen in the jumbled interior of the vehicle. It must be in his pocket, he told himself, but he didn’t want to disturb his brother. Greg knew that some other driver would have one. He jumped out of the vehicle into the pouring rain and clambered up the muddy bank to seek help.

  The scene was chaotic. There were cars all over the place, on both sides of the road. It seemed that one of the cars behind them had slid right across the tarmac and collided with the oncoming traffic. He could still hear the noise of other cars coming from both directions, as they screeched to a halt, trying to avoid the multiple collision.

  Greg ran to the Jaguar. It was damaged in front where it had hit his Range Rover and there was another vehicle rammed into its rear. The driver was still sitting at the wheel, rubbing his neck as if he’d suffered a whiplash. Then Greg saw him pull out a mobile phone. He ran around the front of the car to speak to him.

  Julius Oösterhoozen was beat. He’d been up for 24 hours straight, driving his semi-remorque up to Joburg from Cape Town to pick up a container that had to be in Durban by Monday morning. His lorry was in front of a group of eight cars making up the convoy some distance behind Greg and Adam. They were travelling at only seventy kilometres an hour, approaching the top of a long straight rise, with no other vehicles on the road. Conditions were so bad on the slippy road that the cars behind hadn’t dared to overtake the long vehicle. He rubbed his eyes and reached down to get his thermos, still half-full of sweet, strong coffee.

  As he came over the rise, starting on the descent, he saw the jumble of cars in front of him, emergency lights flashing. He slammed his foot on the brake, struggling to hold the massive vehicle in line. The trailer jack-knifed behind the cab, sliding sideways and pushing him across into the path of the oncoming traffic which now appeared, coming up the slope. He hauled the wheel over and the trailer reversed direction, turning him around backwards, then the twenty foot container slammed into the first of the cars in front of him. The cars were pushed forward in series by the impact, like dominoes. The black Jaguar was the third car in the line.

  As he passed in front of the Jaguar, Greg heard a bang and the car suddenly shot towards him. His immediate reaction was to turn to try to push it away. The car fender hit him in the knees, breaking the kneecaps and femurs in both legs. Although the car was moving at less than twenty kilometres an hour, the counter-reaction of his upper body to the impact against his legs caused his hips to dislocate as he fell violently forward onto the bonnet of the car. Three of his ribs were broken and his head smashed down onto the metal surface, breaking his jaw and nose and cracking his skull, just above the right brow. The top of the gr
ill pushed into his stomach, almost tearing the kidney from the renal artery and severing the pancreas from the small intestine. He bounced off the bonnet onto the ground and the car wheel crushed his shoulder and broke his right humerus as it rolled over him. He lay still, half under the Jaguar, sprawled in the mud in the beating rain.

  One of the doctors from the Emergencies Admissions Dept. came into the waiting room where Hanny, Rachel and the whole family had been sitting for almost two hours since receiving the telephone call from the police. They all jumped up apprehensively.

  The two brothers had been rushed down to the General Hospital in Durban and had gone straight into surgery. Eighteen cars on both sides of the road were involved in the multiple collision due to the appalling visibility and treacherous conditions. The first police had arrived on motor cycles within a couple of minutes of receiving the call from the Jaguar driver and immediately ordered up a helicopter from the accident rescue service. The jumble of vehicles on the road prevented the ambulances from arriving for over an hour.

  Greg had been taken to hospital in the helicopter, while the remaining rescue team was forced to wait until the fire brigade could get through to cut the door off the Range Rover, to extricate Adam from the wreck and transport him by ambulance. The road was closed for three hours, but because the traffic had been moving fairly slowly there were no other serious injuries, apart from one or two cases of whiplash and some minor cuts and bruises.

  The family had not been given details of the condition of the injured brothers. The police had simply described the circumstances of the accident. It was ironic that Greg had emerged unscathed from the crash in which Adam had been injured, only to be knocked down by a car that was hardly moving.

  The doctors had been working on both men in separate operating theatres since they were brought in. The doctor who came in now had been operating on Adam.