Killer Country (26 page)

‘All right. Okay,’ said Mace. ‘Just let me work this thing out. Then I’ll do it.’

‘You are making a promise?’

‘Sure.’

‘For the sleeping pills and for Dr Hofmeyer.’

‘Both.’

She looked at him. The sceptical tilt to her head Mace had seen plenty of times when she wasn’t sure if he was playing straight.

‘Genuine,’ he said.

Oumou pulled her knees up under the duvet. ‘Oui, I am going to believe you. But what is your English saying that we will wait and see.’

‘You will,’ said Mace, at that moment convinced he meant it. He opened their bedroom door. ‘Want some tea?’

Oumou shook her head, settled herself again. ‘Do not stay up for too long.’

Mace looked in on Christa, a tight ball beneath the duvet. She didn’t stir at the click of her door opening. The cat did, made a strange strangled meeou, leapt off the bed, rubbed against Mace’s legs. Mace stared at his daughter, the spray of her hair across the pillow. Thought, even when you were with them, you couldn’t protect them.

In the kitchen he dunked a rooibos bag in a mug of boiling water. Stood at the counter in the dark with the blinds open so that he could see the city: the bright lights pooled in the bowl. The yellow strings around the bay.

Cat2 sprang on the counter, pushed against him for attention. He rubbed the skin between her eyes, thinking about the short dreads hitman. About why he hadn’t killed them? There was no reason. Two more deaths on such a hit list couldn’t be a bother. No. He’d let them live because he could. He didn’t care. It was a favour. A backhanded donation. The way you’d flip a coin into a beggar’s tin. Without thinking. Walking past in your own life, untroubled.

Mace got riled at the thought. At the arrogance. To be dished out charity by a self-styled Mr Death. And then to rub it in.

He spooled through the nightmare again, image for image. Being chased across a stony terrain: the ground rock-strewn, huge piles of boulders scattered about like silent mausoleums. His legs heavy, the muscles too fatigued to move him one step after another. Like he was staggering through soft sand. Panting with the effort. Pylon ahead, looking back to urge him on. The sound of gunfire. Of men shouting. And the face of the short dreads hitman suddenly at his shoulder. The man laughing, showing his teeth he laughed so hard. Bringing up a pistol with a silencer. Pow. Pow. Not gunshots, but the hitman’s joke imitation.

Mace felt the sweat break out across his chest and back again. 

She had visited him in hospital. Looked in on him while he slept, a vulnerable man taped to tubes and drips. His cheeks rough with beard, his face almost peaceful with his eyes closed. Those eyes that were like glass. Cold blue ice. Nordic, like her own. Which appealed to her. Gave them something else in common.

She thought to leave a rosebud. A single stem in an elegant glass vase on the table beside his bed. It would anger him. Maybe even put a chill in his blood. Although she believed Mace Bishop hid whatever troubled him in violence.

She smiled to think of his reaction. Imagined he would backhand it off the pedestal. Summon nurses, security, demand explanations.

Describe her. How? Tall. Striking. High cheekbones. Perfect lips, deep plum lipstick. Her brilliant eyes. Her dark hair, glossy and bobbed. The stylish suit. The black glove on her left hand.

Try to have her banned from the ward. For leaving a rosebud! His insistence that he be taken seriously. The puzzled expressions of the nurses and doctors, nodding, patronising, infuriating him.

For that alone it would’ve been worth it but she had other plans. Instead she stood at the foot of the bed, photographed him.

She brought up the photographs on her laptop. A series: a long-distance of a stretcher being lifted from an air ambulance; another, closer, of the wounded man on the stretcher being placed in an ambulance, a woman and her daughter standing anxious, looking on; the ambulance under the portals of a hospital, its doors open, the stretcher being rushed into casualty. Two photographs of Mace Bishop in his hospital bed. The next of him leaving hospital on crutches. The photograph tightly framed, sharp enough to catch a wince of pain on his face. Then: Mace walking the promenade, his arm in a sling; Mace at a café, his arm free; Mace at the upper cable station, a photograph taken from behind with the bay in the background. Another of Mace approaching the photographer: a figure in the landscape on a path leading between rocks over low scrub. The top of the mountain, behind the figure the cliffs of Chapman’s Peak dropping to the sea.

In recent weeks she had a number of photographs of Mace on the mountain. At first she’d wondered at his sudden taking to the heights. Then noticed they tracked what the papers called the mountain maniac’s attacks. How sweet, she thought. He’s playing vigilante. Unless he was the mountain maniac himself. The notion brought a smile to her lips.

Leaving the pictures she poured herself a cold white wine, sauvignon blanc, went to stand on the balcony. Above the horizon a sinking sun held little heat. From below rose the voices of tourists on a sunset cruise, heading for the Waterfront. A few waved at the sight of her. She ignored their gesture. Then turned to face into her apartment: the crimson of a westing sun flushing its whiteness. She liked this time, this autumn season, with its hint of winter.

She went in. Plugged the iPod Spitz had sent into her sound system and scrolled through the playlist to a section he’d called Songs of Murder. At first she’d found them too sentimental, too emotional. But on a second listening she’d heard something else: a simplicity that appealed to her. These were songs about people who lived by their own laws. They were ruled by their hearts.

She liked that.

Sheemina February turned the music louder, Love Me Someday, flopped down on a couch. She heard the song through, Jesse Sykes putting out an invitation. And the next. Soft Hand. A driving beat, got her foot tapping. Then the voice, full-on sex. Singing about a soft hand to ease him in. She could imagine doing that. Skin against skin. Reversing the roles. Sitting on him. Her thighs splayed over his. His slow thrusting into her. His hands on her breasts. Her hands around his throat. How gently he could be squeezed into death. She could see him on her laptop, the face of Mace Bishop staring across at her, puzzled.

The song ended and Sheemina February took a swallow of wine. Agitated, went back onto the balcony. The sea was empty now, a breeze scratching its surface. She could hear the music faintly still: another murder, another broken heart. Spitz’s anthems. I’ll Follow You Down. He Will Call You Baby.

She’d been irritated when he’d sent the iPod. Phoned him. Asked him what he thought he was doing? ‘It is nothing,’ he’d said in his weirdly formal English. ‘A gift precisely.’

‘Alright. But this is it, understand.’

Waiting for him to say, ‘I understand.’

‘I’ll be in touch,’ she’d said. ‘Presently.’

Sooner than she’d thought, as it turned out.

She selected his number on her cellphone. The phone rang once only.

‘Everything is fine,’ Spitz answered. ‘There is no need for any concern.’

‘I wouldn’t have thought otherwise,’ she said, disconnecting.

Judge Telman Visser reached across the table and spooned lemon sorbet into the young man’s mouth. Smiling, his eyes fastened on the eyes of the young man, his coach, Ricardo, such emerald eyes, such a name. The young man sucked the ice off the teaspoon. With his own spoon scooped a helping from the ball of sorbet in the dish between them and held this towards the judge, the judge opening his mouth in anticipation, his teeth gleaming with saliva.

‘A palate cleanser,’ said Judge Visser sitting back in his wheelchair, following the tang of the sorbet with a sip of riesling. A 2001 vintage, crisp and clean. His second glass on a starter of grilled haloumi fingers. One of his most successful hors d’oeuvres, a word he used twice as Ricardo carried the plates to the dinner table, pronouncing it the French way. He touched his upper lip with the tip of his finger. ‘Sorbet,’ he said.

‘Ag.’ The young man coloured, wiped at his moustache with a serviette.

‘And how was that?’

‘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.

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 Justice 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.