The Fallen (18 page)

‘I was not speeding,’ David muttered, changing down a gear. ‘The limit’s eighty here, isn’t it? The one time I’m actually keeping my speed down, I get pulled over.’

‘Maybe he just wants to see your licence.’ Jade said, even though she thought it unlikely. This didn’t look like a routine roadblock. Roadblocks had traffic cones and backup vehicles and groups of policemen on duty.

This was a typical speed trap. Just one police car on duty, half hidden from view.

David indicated left and carefully pulled onto the verge. Every bit the upstanding citizen, although it was surely a case of too little too late. Checking the wing mirror, Jade noticed a car some distance behind them. A black truck, which seemed to be driving very slowly. What irony it would be if this was the truck Pillay was looking for and the Metro policeman allowed the man they were hunting to go free, because he was busy writing out a speeding ticket.

David stopped the car and turned off the engine. The police car was parked with its bonnet deep in the bushes, a big white
BMW
that looked more than capable of giving chase to even the speediest offender.

‘I’d get out and speak to him face to face, if I were you,’ Jade advised.

David nodded. ‘Good idea. I’ll show him my
ID
and explain I’m busy with an important investigation. Hopefully that’ll get any fine waived.’

Shifting onto his right buttock, he dug in his left back pocket for his wallet.

Jade watched the Metro policeman stroll over towards their car. Big, dark wraparound glasses covered his eyes. His Metro Police uniform was ill-fitting; the collared shirt was too tight across his shoulders and the trousers too short. They showed off his beige socks and his shiny black shoes.

And something else was unusual. What was that around his …?

Alarm bells started to ring in Jade’s head.

She glanced again at the
BMW
. It was difficult to see from this angle, but the car didn’t appear to have any Metro Police signage on its sides. It definitely didn’t have any on its back and it didn’t have a rear number plate, either.

The alarm bells were ringing louder and faster now. She should
have realised something was wrong earlier. Would have, if she hadn’t been so preoccupied and out of sorts.

David opened the car door, but, as he was about to swing his legs out, she grabbed his arm.

‘David, wait. Don’t get out. I think …’

She was going to say—I think this might be a hijack attempt, but she didn’t have time. As David hesitated, she heard the roar of a powerful engine. She looked round to find the solid bull-bar and grinning steel grille of the black truck rapidly filling her view. It was speeding straight towards their vehicle, but at the last minute it braked hard and swerved to the right. The truck passed so close that its thick bull-bar caught the edge of the driver’s door and ripped it right off its hinges. Jade’s little car slewed to the left, rocking violently. Tyres screamed as the driver forced his truck into a tight handbrake turn and stopped just in front of their car. The driver’s window was wide open and through it, Jade could see a deeply tanned man aiming a gun.

A neat, effective trap, and they’d driven unsuspectingly into it.

‘Down!’ Jade screamed. She tried to duck down, away from the pistol’s steel muzzle, but her seatbelt had jammed, holding her in a mercilessly upright position. For a moment, all she could think was that this was the way her father had died, trapped by his seatbelt and unable to escape his fate.

And then she realised that David wasn’t ducking down either, and it wasn’t because he had a belt holding him back. In fact, he was leaning over towards her side.

Leaning in front of her, offering a human shield.

‘Get down!’ Jade shouted again. When the clasp magically released its hold and the belt slid up and out of the way, she dived down at exactly the same time the gun went off.

The sound of the shot was gigantic. It exploded in her ears; the force of it splitting the air, but it was followed by a blood-chilling noise—David’s shout of pain.

Oh Christ, he’d been hit.

In her doubled-over position, it was hard to wrestle the Glock out of her deep pocket, but she managed to wrench it free as another shot went off.

It took a huge effort to suppress her panic, to sit up in one smooth, easy movement and aim her weapon unflinchingly at the place she’d last seen her attacker. There he was—stopped just a few metres away, leaning out through the window of the truck and frowning with concentration as he moved the muzzle of his gun towards her. In her peripheral vision, she could see blood. Blood on the soft fabric of his short-sleeved checked shirt, seeping through his tightly clenched fingers.

Don’t think about it, don’t look at it. Focus.

Jade squeezed the trigger.

With a short cry, the deeply tanned gunman dropped his weapon. She fired again immediately, but his reactions were cat-quick. He ducked out of harm’s way and her bullet sped through empty air. The truck’s engine roared and, with a belch of exhaust smoke, the injured man sped away down the road.

The other man—the fake cop—where was he?

Gone. The white
BMW
was no longer half hidden in the bushes. Only two shallow tyre tracks remained.

Jade put her gun down and turned her attention to David.

He was slumped in his seat, eyes half closed and a river of blood welling from between his fingers. His breathing was fast, but shallow.

‘They’ve gone. We’re safe for now. Move your hands so I can see what’s going on,’ she told him, but he wouldn’t and she had to prise his slippery fingers away.

‘Jesus, Jade,’ he whispered. ‘My chest. I’m not …’

He tried to press his hand back onto the wound, but his arm just slid back into his lap.

‘Shhhh. Don’t talk,’ she implored him. ‘Try to keep still.’

When David tried to say something else, he coughed, and a splatter of bright blood landed on Jade’s sleeve.

Oh shit, the bullet had pierced his lung. She needed to plug the wound with something, and fast. But what was there to be had, in this poxy hired car? All she could see was the biltong packet, and that wouldn’t do.

After a frantic search, she found an old chamois leather under the back seat. She folded it lengthways, then widthways, and
pressed the wadded fabric hard against David’s chest. Then she gently tipped him forward. She didn’t want to look, but she knew she had to. When she saw the fist-sized exit wound in his back, she couldn’t stop herself from gasping in dismay.

The shooter had used a hollow-point bullet.

The back of the seat was soaked with blood, and she could see the gash in the fabric where the slug had pierced straight through.

She didn’t want to think about the damage that had been done to David’s lung as the bullet had flattened and mushroomed and tumbled its way through his body, ripping and tearing an ever-widening path until it shattered his shoulder blade on its way out.

A sucking chest wound. And there was little else she could use as a plug. Except the clothes on her own back.

Jade pulled off the
T
-shirt she was wearing. With difficulty, working one-handedly, she balled it up and then, with her right hand, packed it into the exit wound.

‘Is it … bad?’ David’s whisper was punctuated by shallow, gurgling breaths.

‘A good vet should be able to save it,’ Jade said, using a phrase that David occasionally used when telling a waiter how rare she liked her steak. He gave a weak smile, acknowledging the joke.

‘You should have ducked. Got away from him,’ she said.

‘Couldn’t … or he … would have … shot you.’

Suddenly, Jade felt as if she couldn’t breathe.

‘Tell Kevin …’ David mouthed the words. ‘Tell Kevin I …’

‘You can tell him yourself,’ Jade snapped, but David’s words had left her cold with fear. She lowered him gently back onto the seat again, keeping firm pressure on both the entrance and the exit wounds. Her muscles were beginning to ache and she was so hot she felt like she was in a sauna. Her face was dripping with sweat, and the warmth of the air flowing in through the gap where the driver’s door had been wasn’t helping. In contrast, David’s skin was alarmingly clammy and cool.

Her major worry was that in order to phone for an ambulance she’d have to take her hand off the chamois plugging the entry wound. She’d have to press her knee into the front of his chest while she did this, because maintaining pressure on his chest
wall was all that was preventing David from suffocating as his lung collapsed, or from bleeding to death.

Jade shifted herself round, ready to make the switch.

And then, as hard and shocking as a bull-bar crashing into a car door, she realised the truth. Her phone’s battery was dead and David’s was charging back at the chalet. She had no way of calling the ambulance.

This was checkmate. She couldn’t leave David; couldn’t take her hands away from his wounds for even a moment. All she could do was wait to see which arrived first—help, or death.

‘Take your hand off the wound and let me see,’ Bradley said.

Kobus had his left hand clamped around his right forearm and his injured hand in his lap. His pants were rusty-dark with blood.

‘I was a fool,’ he hissed. ‘Should have put the girl down first. But how was I to know she was a goddamn shooter? I thought the man was more dangerous.’

‘You did right to take out the man first.’

They’d both driven straight to Bradley’s flat—it was the nearest safe place—and were now parked in the building’s dank underground garage. The smell of the urine-stained concrete wasn’t as bad as the strong, metallic stink of Kobus’s blood. Leaning into the passenger side of the black truck, Bradley tried hard to breathe through his mouth and wondered how long he could keep himself from throwing up. He had never been good with blood.

He reached up and turned on the car light. As gently as he could, he prised Kobus’s hand off the bullet wound. Now he had blood on his own fingers, too. The stuff was everywhere.

‘Got him, square in the chest.’ Kobus’s eyes squeezed shut. ‘Good goddamn shooting for someone who hasn’t handled a gun in twenty years.’

Bradley didn’t know if he was telling the truth about handling the gun, but if so he suspected that the shot had been more blind luck than anything else. Squinting in the yellowish light, he examined the injury.

From what he could deduce, the bullet had entered the outside of his arm just above the wrist and ploughed its way through his flesh, before lodging at a point on the inside a couple of inches
further up where Bradley could actually see its shape through the bruised and reddened skin.

Kobus had managed to drive the black truck this far, one-handed, but Bradley suspected he’d been on an adrenaline high. Now, the man was bent over in agony.

Bradley couldn’t help thinking that if the bullet had hit Kobus in the head instead of the wrist, it would have saved him from having to do an unpleasant job later on.

A job that he should already have done.

Why was he delaying it? Any minute the heavy phone around his neck could start to ring, and Zulu or Chetty would be demanding to know if he had carried out their most recent orders.

By deliberately knifing the wrong girl at the resort, Kobus had let him down in the worst possible way. And yet, back inside, he had been the most loyal of cellmates. He had saved Bradley from serious injury a number of times. From rape as well. When the weather-beaten Afrikaans man had taken him under his wing, protecting him from the violent lifers in the maximum-security wing, Bradley had known that this debt could never be fully repaid.

Tonight, he told himself. I’ll do it tonight. For now, I must wait. I still need him.

‘We need to get you to a hospital,’ he said. ‘The bullet must have hit bone. It could have splintered inside you.’

‘Can’t.’ Kobus stared down at the still-bleeding wound. ‘The doctors will call the cops. Besides, nothing’s broken. Look, I can move my fingers.’ With an effort, biting his lip so hard Bradley thought his teeth would rip right through it, Kobus slowly closed and opened his hand.

‘You could tell the doctors it was an accident. That you were cleaning your gun.’

‘No. Too dangerous. They might already have a description of me, thanks to that bitch. We need to go and finish her off now. Get this bullet out of me and give me some painkillers. I know a
GP
who will give me antibiotics later, no questions asked.’

Bradley shook his head, unhappy with the situation.

‘Go on,’ Kobus urged.

‘All right.’ He didn’t want to let Kobus inside his flat, because that was his private world. But he had no choice now. This was urgent. How the hell had the woman from the resort discovered who he was and arrived at the flats where he lived, barely an hour after Chetty had told him that she and Patel, the Jo’burg police detective, had been snooping around at the harbour? He wanted to ask her, to get the truth out of her, but finishing the job efficiently took priority. Failure was not an option that Bradley wanted to entertain.

And Bradley had some strong painkillers in his place, because he suffered from terrible, blinding headaches. Dilaudid, Fentanyl, Dolophine. One or more of those might just be able to keep the agony at bay.

‘Come on, let’s sort this out upstairs,’ he said. ‘The stuff I’ve got will have to do. Here. Put this jacket over your arm. Try to walk normally, and don’t let anyone see you’re bleeding.’

‘David,’ Jade said.

She sat in the passenger seat, half turned towards him, pressing as hard as she could on the makeshift plugs that covered his wounds.

Sweat beaded David’s upper lip and trickled down his temple. As she spoke, he gave a shallow cough, and another bright spatter of blood landed on his chin and dripped down onto the front of his shirt.

‘We don’t have a phone. I’m going to have to drive us to the hospital. I’ll need you to help. Do you think you will be able to work the accelerator and the clutch?’

‘Can … try.’

This was going to be an impossible task, but she had to try, because the only alternative was to sit here and watch him slowly dying.