Pale Horses (27 page)

‘So tell me about the horsemen,’ she said.

‘The imagery is vivid, which is why it’s stuck in my mind. In the scriptures, the white horse appears first. His rider has a bow and a crown, and he is the conqueror. Then the fiery red horse comes out. I suppose you’d say that one was war, because the rider was given power to take peace away from the earth and to make men kill each other. He carries a sword, obviously.’

‘Who’s next?’

‘Next is the black one, and the rider carries a pair of scales, but I can’t for the life of me remember what his role is. He says something about measures of crops for a penny. Wheat and barley, and he also talks about oil and wine.’

‘Sounds like the origin of the futures markets,’ Jade commented, remembering Theron’s drawn and intense expression when he’d spoken about his work.

‘Anyway, finally, the pale rider and his pale horse appear. The rider is named Death, and Hell follows close behind him. They have the power to kill by sword, famine and plague, and by the wild beasts of the earth.’

Jade found herself hugging her arms as if to ward off a chilly draught while she considered his words.

‘Its rider was named Death, and Hell followed close behind. They were given power to kill by sword, famine and plague.’

Jade wondered what it would’ve been like to grow up under the iron rule of an abusive preacher who, through his interpretation of those disturbing verses, had gained both power and control over his followers.

‘So now Sonet’s dead and Zelda’s disappeared. She seems to have been helped with her research by a man called Danie Smit. I don’t know anything more about him, but I do know that a Danie Smit was found dead in his car in Fourways Mall last week. Suspected suicide through carbon monoxide poisoning.’

‘Now there’s a coincidence.’

‘Anyway, a parcel was posted off to the Tankwa Karoo post office a week ago on Zelda’s behalf, addressed to her brother. Which is why this set of co-ordinates is worth investigating.’

David nodded slowly.

‘Well, let’s go see what we can find out,’ he said.

At George airport, Jade and David were met by a red-uniformed Avis representative holding a card on which their names were laser-printed. While David signed the paperwork and went to retrieve his firearm, Jade headed over to the only kiosk that was still open and bought a couple of T-shirts from the limited selection available. One for her in medium, one for David in extra large, just in case they needed a change of clothes. The kiosk’s stock didn’t stretch to toothbrushes so she had to settle for a packet of sugar-free gum.

After taking possession of the air-conditioned
VW
Polo, they drove out of the airport and headed to one of the three-star ocean-view guesthouses that Jade had contacted just before takeoff.

They were travelling in style, courtesy of Victor Theron’s sizeable payment. He’d be glad that at last she was incurring some significant expenses on his behalf. He’d been getting edgy, Jade thought, probably
believing that if she wasn’t spending much of his money, she couldn’t possibly be doing an effective job.

But then again, as she’d discovered, it didn’t take much to make Theron edgy. Perhaps that was what intrigued her most about him. He wasn’t a typical base jumper, that was for sure. She’d known extreme sports fanatics in the past and most of them had been so laid back that they’d might as well have been horizontal.

She and David had booked separate rooms and Jade paid their bill in advance, as the night porter checked them in, explaining that they had a very early start the next day. The plushly decorated en-suite room she’d been assigned felt as lonely as an isolation cell, and she couldn’t help remembering the early days of her friendship with David, when he had first moved to Johannesburg and joined the investigation team headed up by her father. On their infrequent trips away together, she and David had occasionally shared a room, and a bed, sleeping companionably back to back and fully clothed.

Of course, turning back the clock now was impossible.

Jade set her alarm for four-thirty a.m. and fell asleep listening to the sounds of the ocean, which she could hear, but not see.

She didn’t get a chance to see it in the morning either, although the crashing rhythm of the waves resonated through her as soon as she woke.

Peering through the curtains she saw it was still pitch black outside. She dressed quickly, putting back on the clothes she’d taken off the night before, and headed downstairs. David appeared ten minutes later.

‘Sleep well?’ she asked. He gave an annoyed headshake in response.

‘Damn waves kept on breaking on the rocks. I can’t sleep if I’m too close to nature. I kept on listening out for normal, everyday noises. Gunshots, sirens, screaming.’

The air outside felt heavy, dense and laden with salt after the thin, dry winter air of Johannesburg. The wind was gusting, driving rain and spray into their faces as they braved the short dash to the car.

‘Would’ve liked to have had breakfast,’ David remarked as they drove onto the road. ‘They do the works here. I saw the menu outside the dining room. Eggs, bacon, boerewors, chips, mushrooms, melted cheese and grilled tomatoes on a pancake.’

‘We can stop for breakfast later,’ Jade said.

David put the windscreen wipers on high.

‘Damn rain,’ he observed.

‘Enjoy it while it lasts,’ Jade said. ‘I don’t think there’s going to be much of it where we’re headed.’

She felt a sudden queasiness in her stomach. Part excitement, part nerves. There was always a chance, she supposed, that the SMS was a trap. That somebody was baiting her with a cryptic clue, waiting to finish the task the hired thugs had failed to accomplish.

There was more of a chance that it was genuine, because of the one loose end that she hadn’t yet explained fully to David.

Khumalo’s wife. The woman she’d been trying to contact. The woman the hospital receptionist had told her they’d managed to track down just a few hours before the message came through.

And, as far as she knew, the only traceable person once part of the Siyabonga community.

This woman must have some of the answers.

If her husband had been hospitalised with cancer at the time, perhaps she had been in the ward with him. Perhaps that was how she’d escaped whatever fate had befallen the rest of the village.

Perhaps she’d travelled, or been transported, to the farmhouse in the Karoo to keep her safe.

Although why, then, if she was so safe, had she expressly requested that Jade not contact her?

That fact was only one of several that worried Jade, making her doubt that her proposed solution to the puzzle was as simple and straightforward as she was hoping it would be.

It was still dark when they joined the highway and drove out of George, over the Outeniqua mountain pass, heading away from the lush subtropical coast and into the rain shadow.

An arid expanse of land. From the glimpses Jade could see in the headlights, it was flat and stark and becomingly increasingly dry as the kilometres ticked by.

It was barely approaching dawn when David pulled over, hazard lights flashing, and came to a standstill on what was now just a single strip of tarmac.

‘We’ve got a problem here,’ he said.

‘What’s that?’

‘We’re starting to move away from these co-ordinates. We were getting closer until a few kilometres back. There must have been a turn-off we’ve missed somewhere; unless it’s up ahead.’

‘No other road was signposted,’ Jade said. ‘Perhaps we need to turn onto one of those sand tracks.’

‘Yup,’ David said, sounding gloomy.

‘So let’s backtrack, slower this time,’ Jade tried not to emphasise the word ‘slower’ too much, ‘and take a closer look. If it isn’t back there then it has to be up ahead.’

The side road they were hoping for was approximately three kilometres back, and Jade only spotted it because of a bank of sand that had been washed alongside the main road when, months and months ago, it must have rained.

David eased the car over the ridge. Jade watched the GPS closely. The degrees and the minutes were identical to those on the strange text message. It was only the seconds, now, that were slowly changing as they navigated the uneven terrain.

On the eastern horizon, Jade noticed the start of a faint pink glow. A minute later the landscape in front of her had lightened to a sombre vista of various shades of grey. The horizon was occasionally punctuated by a rugged, flat-topped hill.

There was absolutely no sign of what she’d been hoping the co-ordinates would lead them to – an old-fashioned, gabled Karoo farmhouse.

‘David, stop the car here,’ she said, sounding worried.

‘Sure,’ he responded. Giving her a questioning look he carefully – for once – brought the car to a halt and they both stepped out into the morning’s temporary chill and stood in a silence that was vast, enduring and absolute.

‘I thought it might be better to walk the last stretch,’ Jade explained. She spoke in a low voice, even though there was nobody else around to hear. ‘If we carry on driving, we might miss something.’

What, she didn’t know. Signs of a struggle? A message in a bottle? What was she hoping to find out in this uninhabited and peaceful-looking place?

Even the air smelled of nothing. Dry, pure and clean.

She took the GPS out of the car and carried it with her.

The road they walked on was little more than bedrock and stones,
but every so often there were swathes of sand. It was in one of these that Jade saw the imprints of another vehicle’s tyres.

‘Someone’s driven through here recently,’ she observed. But of course they must have. After all, that someone would have had to embark on an extremely long and lonely walk from the main road to have reached these co-ordinates on foot.

David stumbled over a protruding rock and slipped on some gravel as he tried to right himself. He ended up sprawled on his side on what passed for soil. Getting up and dusting himself off, he cursed under his breath. ‘That damn stone would take out the sump of most cars,’ he grumbled. ‘When was this road last graded? During the Anglo-Boer War?’

Jade resisted the temptation to ask if he was all right, knowing she could only expect a grumpy response. Instead she studied the GPS, and now with some concern, as it was signalling that they were almost at their destination.

Then the co-ordinates flicked over to match the numbers on Jade’s cellphone. And, at the same time, David remarked, ‘Looks like they pulled over up there.’

A little further ahead, heavy tyre tracks curved off the road, such as it was, and through a tract of sand. Slowly walking closer, Jade noticed a set of footprints, most likely a man’s if the size was anything to go by.

‘Someone got out here. And got back in from the looks of it.’ David bent down to scrutinise the prints, stepping carefully so that his own feet remained on a stony surface.

‘Got out from the left side. The passenger side.’

‘Or the driver’s side if it’s a left-hand-drive vehicle.’

‘But why get out here? To do what?’

David gazed at the landscape, turning slowly, taking in the endless horizon, the sparse, stunted foliage, the shape of their car visible half a kilometre away. The only other sign of civilisation was the tall, redand-white-painted cellphone tower now visible much further down the road.

‘To take a piss?’ he suggested. ‘Jade, I just don’t know. But somebody thought it was important enough to send you the co-ordinates. Perhaps we should take a look round. Comb the area. Just in case …’

He didn’t complete the sentence but Jade understood his fear: Just in case a body had been dumped somewhere.

‘You look on the right-hand side of the road, Jadey. He might have crossed over. I’ll take the left.’

There he went again. Protecting her. Volunteering to search the side where they both knew it was far more likely that something might be waiting to be found.

She didn’t know whether to feel touched or annoyed.

To her right there was another deep stretch of sand but she couldn’t see any footprints in it. Still, a search was a search.

She walked for fifty paces alongside the road, scanning the ground carefully, seeing nothing but rocks and sand and the occasional desiccated clump of grass.

Then she turned round, stepped four paces off the road, and walked back a hundred paces, looking carefully to the left and the right. When she’d reached a hundred she took another four paces away from the road and walked the line again.

Her grid-like search took her ever further from the road and deeper into the beginnings of the semi-desert. Opposite her, she saw David following the same methodical pattern.

About twenty minutes later, Jade heard him shout.

Jade abandoned her search efforts and jogged in the direction of David’s voice. He was almost out of sight now, standing on the other side of a stony ridge in the ground. Here lay a deep channel, presumably a result of centuries-old water erosion, back when the Karoo had had a different climate.

At the bottom of the channel lay a black gym bag.

It was a new-looking item, and it must have been dumped recently because it was free of dust and sun damage.

Jade found herself unable to tear her gaze away from it.

This was what they were looking for, what they had been informed about.

Surely it had to be.

David climbed down into the trough, causing rivulets of sand to cascade down its sides, and unzipped the bag. Jade craned her neck to see inside but his body was blocking the view. Then he zipped it up and heaved it out. From the way he was holding it, it looked heavy.

Back up next to Jade, he placed it on the ground and glanced at her, his face grim.

‘Not good,’ he said.

‘Why? What’s in there?’

‘Wire. Pliers. Blades. Other stuff … Jade, it’s bloodstained, and the blood’s not old. I can still smell it. You probably can, too.’

Jade bent down closer to the bag and inhaled. David was right. The scent was unmistakable and unpleasantly familiar.

‘But there’s no body,’ she said flatly