Pale Horses (26 page)

‘Is there usually a delay of a few minutes between one person jumping and the next?’

‘No, there isn’t. Victor said he’d begun to worry within a minute of being on the ground. He was wondering if she’d lost her nerve or had some sort of a problem. He was on the point of phoning her when she fell.’

‘And then?’

‘Dead on impact. The investigators subsequently discovered that her chute had been sabotaged. The canopy was cut through. And it was Victor who’d packed it for her.’

‘That didn’t have to happen when it was packed. Could have happened up there at the top of the building, especially if there was a delay up there. Someone with a knife … Grab, slice and shove.’

‘If you had a knife, why not just stab her and leave her up there?’

‘Perhaps there was a struggle,’ David said. ‘Perhaps they meant to stab her but didn’t manage.’

‘Oh, come on, David. If someone’s up there with a knife and they had time to cut her parachute, they had enough time and resolve to kill her. Either they wanted to make it look like an accident, or …’ Jade paused for a moment, thinking. Across the room a fashionably dressed black woman, in conversation with her business-suited partner, threw back her head and laughed loudly. The sound was unforced, spontaneous,
merry. It was infectious, too. Other people around her turned and smiled. Not Jade and David, though. The sound was deflected by the darkness of their conversation and had no impact on them.

‘Or?’

‘Falling to your death with a damaged chute is a lot more dramatic, more frightening than a simple stabbing. That’s what I’ve realised was troubling me during my last meeting with Victor Theron. Her death was shocking. Attention-grabbing. So what’s it drawing attention away from?’

‘What are you thinking?’

‘I’m wondering if her death was a warning or a message to somebody else. A threat of some kind: “Look what we can do. We can get to her at the top of Sandton Views, on a base-jumping mission nobody knew about, and we can ensure she dies in terror, falling a full sixty-seven storeys.” That’s a long way. Plenty of time to scream.’

David exhaled sharply as if he didn’t want to dwell on that scenario.

‘And who would the threat have been aimed at?’

‘Well, her sister Zelda disappeared at around the same time.’

‘Right.’

‘Sonet worked for Williams Management, a charity specialising in setting up sustainable farming ventures in impoverished communities.’

‘Go on.’

‘The Siyabonga community, who set up a farm in Theunisvlei, seemed to be doing well. Then they all disappeared. Practically overnight. Every last one of them. Nobody seems to know what happened. The fields are empty. Arid. In fact, they look as if they’ve been sown with salt. Their houses have been razed, as has the mill down by the river that they were using to grind the maize.’

‘Bizarre,’ David shook his head.

‘Zelda is a journalist. I think Sonet asked her to poke around and see if she could find out what happened to them.’

‘A journalist? What sort? Features?’

‘She’s alternative. Off the beaten track. Rather extreme in her views – a bit of a paranoid conspiracy theorist.’

‘You’re not a paranoid conspiracy theorist if they’re really out to get you,’ David observed.

‘Well, this is true.’ Jade found to her surprise that she had drained
the last of her wine. It seemed the red hadn’t been as undrinkable as she’d originally thought. ‘Anyway, Zelda wrote, or writes, on food mainly. She’s militant on organic, non-
GM
, non-irradiated foodstuffs. Big on the power struggle surrounding food and farmland. She has a nice sideline going on the health risks of pesticides and herbicides and genetically modified organisms – well, anyway, after reading one or two of her articles I’m not sure what to put in my trolley the next time I go shopping.’

‘Is that all she writes on? I can’t see how that’s relevant.’

‘Well, that’s not all. She has also written on land reform.’

‘Land reform? Now there’s a thorny subject.’ David leaned forward, his face intent.

‘It just so happens that Theunisvlei, the land the community was farming, used to belong to Sonet’s ex-husband. It was given back to the Siyabonga community after a successful land claim.’

‘You’ve interviewed the husband?’

‘Yes. He was the one who told me about it. He’s very bitter.’

David considered her words before speaking again.

‘You think he might have had a hand in destroying the community’s farming operation? And that’s why he became violent when Nxumalo questioned him?’

Jade shrugged, her hands palm up.

‘If the theory held water, then every piece of the puzzle would fall into place. The angry husband who wanted revenge on the community who had taken “his” land and at the same time get back at his ex-wife for helping them set up their operation. I guess a farmer would know what to do to make sure a harvest failed. Somehow he managed to damage the farming operation to such an extent that the community upped and left.’

‘And you say it doesn’t work because?’

‘Well, the piece of land they took over is huge. Thousands of acres. Only a small part of it had been cultivated, a big field near the river. The rest of the land looked fine. Why didn’t they start again on a new piece? Or complain to Williams Management and ask for help and protection? Why would an entire community leave the beautiful farm that was their heritage and their tribal right, and disappear?’

‘Perhaps they were encouraged to leave.’

‘Or perhaps they were made to disappear.’

‘You’re talking genocide here?’ David sounded alarmed.

‘It’s a possibility.’

Jade thought again of the wind whistling through the deserted barn. Of the single rock she had found with the dark, rusty residue of what might have been blood.

‘Would have been a hell of an operation,’ David said. ‘One man with a grudge couldn’t have done it alone. And there must have been survivors. There always are. How many people were in that community? A couple hundred?’

‘Yes, judging by what remained of their housing.’

David shook his head again.

‘Impossible.’

‘It is. The place is creepy. It had a sad and desolate air about it. I know it sounds ridiculous, but I wished that the land itself could speak; that it could tell us what happened to the people who farmed it. I thought …’

‘Go on?’

‘Sorry. I just thought of something while I was telling you about the land.’

‘What’s that, Jadey?’

‘Distance. Place. Those numbers in the text message … they could be GPS co-ordinates.’

David thought it over.

‘Let’s see the message again.’

He reread it and took out his own phone.

‘If those numbers are co-ordinates, they’re definitely nowhere near Jo’burg. Much further south. I’ve got an app that can pinpoint them, if I can make it work, that is.’

David pulled a face in response to Jade’s raised eyebrows.

‘An app,’ he repeated. ‘Listen to me. I sound like Kevin. Why did I decide to get a bloody iPhone and turn into such a geek?’

‘Well, it’s certainly proving useful tonight.’

‘Don’t speak too soon,’ David warned.

But his phone proved co-operative and within a couple of minutes it had come up with the goods. ‘It’s mapped the co-ordinates,’ he told Jade, in tones of equal triumph and disbelief.

‘Pass it over and let’s see.’

David slid the phone across the table.

‘It’s not working,’ Jade said. ‘This is just a blank screen. There’s nothing here.’

‘That’s because there is nothing there.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘Zoom out. Yes, with your finger, like that. You can see now, right? Those co-ordinates are somewhere near the Tankwa Karoo national park. The vastest, emptiest, most barren area in the whole of the country. So, the numbers must mean something else. We’d better start thinking again.’

‘No,’ Jade said.

‘Why?’

‘Does your phone have an app for booking last-minute flights?’

David blinked. ‘Um … yes, it does. It’s known as the facility to make a phone call.’

‘Very funny. I need to go there right now. I’ll explain why later. If there’s still a flight this evening then I’ll take it. If not, I’ll drive.’

‘You can’t just fly into the middle of the bloody Tankwa Karoo. You’ll have to fly to the nearest major town, which is probably George, and then hire a car. And it’s nearly seven p.m. already. This could be tricky to sort out. Let me phone Kulula and see if there’s a flight still available this evening. There’s no way you’re driving there and back on your own. It’s a fourteen-, fifteen-hour journey.’

Come with me, then, Jade wanted to say, but she didn’t.

Still talking on the phone, David signalled the waiter for the bill. Preempting him, Jade slid a hundred-rand note under the ashtray.

‘You’re in luck,’ David told her, covering the phone with the hand as he spoke rapidly. ‘They have later flights scheduled tonight and tomorrow because of the long weekend. Tonight’s leaves in an hour, which is touch and go in terms of timing, but I think it’s doable. They’ve got a couple of seats still available on it. You want one?’

Jade took a deep breath. Handed over her credit card.

‘Book them both,’ she said.

Strapped firmly into the passenger seat of David’s unmarked Toyota Yaris, Jade clung to the handle above the passenger door as David zigzagged the car through the almost-empty backstreets of Johannesburg, taking the shortest route to the airport highway.

She was still astonished he’d decided to go with her. He’d mumbled something about his workload, but the protest had been more for form’s sake than anything else. After all, his family was away for the weekend. He’d told her that the last time they’d met up. And although Jade knew things would change once Naisha had had the baby, for now she fancied herself in an unspoken contest with the woman, to see how much of David’s time she could monopolise.

Their marriage was on the rocks, Jade told herself. Another child wouldn’t change the situation for the better. She thought David was an idiot for staying in the relationship. An honourable, old-fashioned idiot for standing by his estranged wife after a single night spent with her during their period of separation had resulted in an unplanned pregnancy.

Unplanned, Jade thought cynically, on David’s side at least.

‘Right. Ten more minutes and we’re there.’ Engine revving furiously, the unmarked car veered onto the highway and shot across the lanes at what felt like a forty-five degree angle.

Jade closed her eyes, but finding it was even more terrifying that way, she opened them again in a hurry. No matter how much of a lunatic David was behind the wheel, she found herself compelled to keep an eye out for obstacles.

‘Taxi on the left,’ she warned, as the unwary driver began to drift into the fast lane. A blast from David’s hooter saw him hurriedly correct his course as they whipped past.

‘So are you going to tell me why we’re going on this crazy escapade with no luggage?’ David asked.

‘No. Concentrate on your driving. I’ll tell you when we’re at the airport. I’ve got to get on the phone now and book us a hired car.’

‘Pity we weren’t nearer Sandton earlier. We could have hopped on the Gautrain and got there faster.’

‘Faster? I doubt it. There in one piece? Yes, much more likely.’

David laughed.

They reached the airport, parked in the first available bay in the underground car park, and sprinted to domestic departures. They ran up the escalator ramps and arrived at check-in seconds before the flight closed.

‘Just in time,’ observed the attendant, as if she was slightly disappointed at not being able to tell them the flight was closed. ‘That’ll be the two of you travelling to George? May I see your IDs please?’

The race against the clock was not yet over. Another feverish rush to the secure check-in area where David signed in his service pistol for transportation in the gun safe. Then a frantic shuffle through security and a full-on sprint down to the boarding gates, where the last of the stragglers were handing over their boarding passes. The ground hostess was on the intercom, announcing the final boarding call for passengers De Jong and Patel.

Jade collapsed into her seat feeling as if she’d taken part in some sort of urban half-marathon. Beside her, David’s breathing reminded her of a pair of blacksmith’s bellows.

She hadn’t packed so much as a change of clothes. Between them, they didn’t even have a toothbrush.

It might all be a waste of time, but surely not every lead would prove to be a disappointment. Eventually one, no matter how unpromising it looked, would have to get her somewhere.

They were in the air when their conversation resumed.

‘You asked why we’re flying down to George,’ she said.

‘Yes. It did occur to me.’

‘Well, let me finish explaining the background to the case. Then you’ll understand.’

‘OK. Fire away.’

‘Zelda and Sonet were abused as children, apparently. There were three siblings – the two girls and a brother, Koenraad. Harris told me that the brother is off the grid, but I think tracing him is critical for the case, and perhaps for his own safety as well, given what’s happened to his sisters. They’re a very close family, Harris said.’

‘Aha.’

‘Their father was a preacher. Had a cult following. Used to rant and rave about the Book of Revelations and about the Second Coming and
how sinners would be destroyed in hellfire. It made me think – it sounds crazy, I know, but looking at that abandoned farm …’

‘What?’

‘It made me think of the four horsemen. Of the white horse, galloping across that landscape, leaving death and destruction behind.’

‘Death rode a pale horse, not a white one,’ David corrected her. ‘There’s a difference.’

‘There is? How do you know that?’ Jade asked, surprised.

‘Ages ago I dated a woman who was studying Theology.’

Jade bit back a surprised comment. She’d always thought of David as having had just two lovers in his life – herself and Naisha. She’d never wanted to believe he’d had more, even though logic told her otherwise. It was just surprising. Disconcerting. For a moment she felt oddly jealous that another woman had shared his time and had told him her stories. Pillow talk about the Book of Revelations … she could only hope the relationship had been short, and that they hadn’t started dating when she was reading the Book of Genesis.