The Fallen (22 page)

Then she came back on the line.

‘I’m sorry. We do have a Mr Patel who was admitted earlier this evening, but he’s still in theatre. I don’t know when he’ll be out.’

Jade felt a huge, crushing relief. Premature, she knew, but at least David was still alive, and safely out of harm’s way.

She quit the Internet browser and stood up, car keys in hand. Engrossed in their online world, the other occupants of the café didn’t give her a second glance. For a disconcerting moment, she wondered whether they would show any surprise if the
people following her burst into the shop and gunned her down at the door.

She walked back into the fast-food outlet. Aware that someone had followed her out, she turned to look, only to see a spotty youth whose attention was firmly fixed on a dark-haired teenage girl on a bar stool near the counter. His testosterone-fuelled swagger made Jade think yet again of the zebra stallion.

She bought two plastic half-litre bottles of water and, declining the offer of a carrier bag, strolled as calmly as she could out into the car park.

Elsabe’s car was a familiar brand. Jade had driven a Corsa many times before. In her experience, the older models tended to overheat easily. One of the hired cars she’d had a few months ago had developed a water leak, forcing Jade to pull over every few kilometres to top up the radiator. It had been a fiddly experience, and she still had the scar from where her forearm had brushed against the scaldingly hot engine block.

Better to take some water along just in case, and to check the radiator level before she set off. She was about to attempt some evasive driving, and an overheating engine would present a deadly risk.

As soon as the target left the Internet café, Kobus got going again.

The Mazda might be old, but it didn’t lack power. Recently overhauled, the original engine had been replaced by a three-litre monster from a newer model.

The result was a car that looked like an old skedonk, but could keep up with just about any vehicle on the road. The perfect vehicle for a tail.

‘She took her time in there,’ Kobus observed, gently rubbing his fingers over the blood-stained bandage on his arm. It hurt like hell, but, thanks to the cocktail of medication that Bradley had given him, it was as if he was a watcher, rather than a participant, in the pain. Weird, but he wasn’t complaining.

Johan shrugged. ‘She was having supper.’

Kobus laughed. ‘Meat is meat and a girl must eat. Think she’s seen us?’

‘No.’ Johan spoke the word slowly, thoughtfully. ‘Not yet. But I think she will see us. Or at any rate, she’ll expect somebody to be following.’

Kobus nodded. ‘My guess is she’ll make a run for it. She’ll try and lose us when she’s out of town.’

‘She looked under the bonnet before she got going. Did you notice that?’

‘I did. Wonder if she’s been having engine problems.’

Up ahead, the brake lights of the Corsa lit up and Johan slowed his own vehicle, keeping as wide a distance between them as he dared.

‘So we get her when she’s on the main road?’

‘Yes. If she takes the main road back to the resort, we’ll wait till it’s quiet. Just her and us. Then force her off it. The harder she crashes, the better. That might do it. If she’s still alive afterwards, we’ll go in and finish the job.’

‘Right.’ Johan stared ahead, into the thickening mist. ‘And if she goes another way?’

‘Then we make another plan.’ Kobus tapped a dirty-nailed finger against the holster of his gun.

They knew the girl didn’t have a gun. It had been taken from her at the roadblock, thanks to the swift thinking of the Metro Police sergeant who’d also supplied them with the uniform. She wasn’t carrying, she didn’t have another weapon stashed in her car. All the dice were loaded in their favour.

‘Orange light ahead,’ Kobus warned. ‘Slow the hell down, man.’

‘Sorry, but I have to jump this one. Otherwise we won’t be able to see if she takes the highway turn-off or the main road.’

The Mazda surged forward. Hooters blared as they roared through the light a couple of seconds after it had turned red.

‘Look. She’s spotted us.’

The girl was turning on the main road, accelerating back towards the resort, and at a frantic pace. Driving too fast, braking hard when a light turned red and pulling away like a drag-racer when it turned green again. It made her easy to follow. They could have tailed her by the whine of her engine alone.

Kobus could feel himself grinning as they pursued her towards the main road. The girl was panicking and the girl was running.

Now it was just a case of playing the waiting game, letting the right moment present itself—which it would do soon, because the roads out that way were quiet and traffic wouldn’t be a problem for much longer.

Then he saw the flash of her emergency lights.

Johan slowed immediately, hitting the brakes hard and pulling over onto the verge. The Mazda juddered and bounced on the uneven ground. The two cars following them swished past. In the distance, Kobus saw a few sets of headlights approaching.

‘Kill your lights,’ Kobus ordered, and Johan complied. He didn’t want her to see them waiting.

‘You think we should do it now?’ Johan asked. He was whispering now, as if she might be able to hear them, even though they had stopped well back.

‘Not right now. Too many people around. We need to wait. If she’s got engine trouble, she’ll be calling the
AA
, won’t she? They’ll take at least twenty, twenty-five minutes to get here. Gives us plenty of time.’

‘She’s opened the bonnet again.’

Luckily for them, the girl had stopped right under a street lamp. If Kobus squinted, he could see her fiddling with something. He wondered whether they should try and take her now.

But then Johan spoke again.

‘She’s closed it. She’s getting back inside.’

A second later, the emergency lights were turned off. The brake lights flashed red, then disappeared. The Corsa was pulling away.

Johan turned his own lights back on and followed. As the Mazda passed the spot where she’d stopped, Kobus glanced down and saw, discarded on the verge, the distinctive blue-labelled shape of an empty plastic water bottle.

Now he was grinning again.

‘Looks like she’s been overheating. Shame.’

‘That could make things easy for us,’ Johan agreed.

A few minutes passed, Johan keeping his distance, staying patiently back as they left the last of suburbia behind.

And then they were out of town, with only the ocean and the forest to keep them company. She was in the danger zone now. In the killing zone. And they had an empty highway up ahead. Not even the glow of oncoming headlights in the distance.

‘Let’s do it,’ Kobus said.

He’d never killed a white woman before. Only black ones, a few of them, up north in the old days.

Kobus wondered if it would feel any different.

Johan flattened his foot on the accelerator and Kobus watched the red taillights ahead of him get bigger and sharper as they drew ever closer to the fleeing Corsa.

Suddenly, Kobus realised she was going more slowly than he’d expected. She’d dropped her speed right down and, when he saw the reason for it, he couldn’t help but laugh.

Swathes of steam were erupting from the Corsa’s bonnet. He even thought he could hear the loud hissing as the overheated engine boiled away all the water it had left in its cooling system. The vehicle was crippled. This was a gift—the best bit of luck they could have possibly hoped for.

And she wasn’t stopping. She was pressing on, which meant that even if she was lucky, she only had a couple more minutes before the last of the water was gone and the engine reached an unsustainable temperature. Then it would seize. The pistons would fry, jamming themselves together, welded by heat into an immovable mass.

When that car stopped, it would be stopped for good.

A thought occurred to Kobus.

Could she have called for help earlier? He hadn’t seen her use a phone when she’d pulled over, but perhaps she had made the call before that. Was she hoping she could keep going until backup arrived?

They would have to make it quick, he decided.

‘What’s wrong?’ Johan asked.

And then Kobus saw it.

The moment he’d been waiting for. The sudden, wobbly deceleration. She tried to move her crippled car over to the side of the road, but barely managed to get halfway before it finally juddered to a halt.

Once again, the emergency lights began to flash.

Johan hit the brakes as another car came past them, headlights on full beam. Kobus had no need to worry about whether this was help arriving, because the driver was clearly no Samaritan. Without so much as touching the brakes, he—or she—swerved into the oncoming lane to avoid hitting the disabled vehicle and disappeared into the distance.

‘Nothing,’ he said. ‘Nothing’s wrong.’

He would have liked to stop beside her car, to open his passenger window and pump her full of bullets without worrying about
collecting up the casings afterwards. But they weren’t going to play it that way. Bradley had said that one shooting on the main road out of town could be regarded as a freak incident, but two would be more closely investigated—and by police who weren’t on their payroll.

In any case, the car had stopped at the wrong angle to allow him to do that.

They were going to grab her. Do the job by hand and, when it was done, send her and her car over the cliff at the top of the coastal road. That made more sense, Bradley had said, and Kobus agreed. Driving badly because she’s worried about her boyfriend and scared of being out on the road alone, such a thing could easily happen.

As they pulled off the road behind her, Kobus found himself grinning like a wolf. It had been twenty years since he’d done a job this way, and he’d forgotten how good the excitement felt.

Man, he was flying.

Or perhaps that was the painkillers, too.

He wrenched his door open and jumped out. Beside him, Johan mirrored his movements.

Now to overpower the girl.

‘You take …’ He was going to say to Johan, you take the passenger door.

But then two white pinpoints winked into life in front of him, and before he could think—
reversing lights?
—he heard the rough spin of wheels and the howl of an engine racing. The next moment something dealt him a hammer-blow and hurled him backwards. He slammed into the ground and the world exploded into blackness.

The law of thermodynamics.

Jade was no scientist, but her father had explained a part of that law to her long ago, when they’d gone camping in the Magaliesberg.

They’d taken along what her father had called ‘padkos’ or food for the journey; a brown paper bag filled with tender chunks of biltong, two bars of chocolate and about eight bottles of fizzy drink. They’d eaten over half the biltong before they were even halfway there, washing it down with mouthfuls of orange Fanta. They’d shared the rest the following afternoon, at the top of the steep hill that had wonderful views of the area. Then, without saying why, her father had taken the brown bag and, instead of crumpling it up and shoving it in his backpack with the chocolate wrappers, he’d folded it carefully and put it into his pocket.

That evening, Commissioner De Jong had set about making a beef stew inside the small, heavy, cast-iron potjie that they’d brought along with them. After adding a pinch of salt and a heaped tablespoon of chilli powder to the chunks of meat and sliced vegetables, he had held his hand over the top of the campfire, testing its heat. Clearly satisfied with the temperature, he placed the steel grill over the fire, balancing it on two wide brick supports.

Then he’d reached into his pocket and taken out the paper bag. He’d shaken the last crumbs of biltong out of it and asked Jade to pass him one of their water containers.

Mystified, Jade had handed the bottle over to him and Commissioner De Jong had carefully proceeded to fill the sturdy paper bag half full with cool water.

‘What do you think will happen if I put this on the grill?’ he’d asked her.

Jade frowned. Was this a trick question? It couldn’t be. She could see the flames licking the steel. The answer was obvious. Or so she’d thought.

‘The bag will start burning,’ she’d said. ‘But don’t do it, Dad. The water might spill onto the fire and put it out.’

Her father had smiled at her words. ‘Think so?’

‘Of course.’

Then he had torn a piece off the top of the bag and put it onto the grill. In a second, the brown paper had crisped and charred, flaming briefly before falling through the diamond-shaped gaps.

‘Now look,’ he’d said.

Jade had watched expectantly as he’d placed the water-filled bag in exactly the same spot. She hoped they’d be able to light the fire again when the water put it out, or what would they do for supper? To her amazement, though, the brown paper hadn’t ignited.

‘The water inside the bag is keeping the outside cool. It won’t burn through. Not even when the water’s boiling. That’s part of the law of thermodynamics, Jadey,’ he’d told her.

He’d gone on to explain in more detail—she remembered him talking about entropy, the exchange of energy and temperatures—but what Jade remembered best was her shock at seeing the top of the bag, above the water level, catch fire when a high-leaping flame caught it, creating a charred, u-shaped gap that ended just where the water began. But the bottom didn’t burn. Instead, the water inside the bag had started to produce little wisps of steam. Then a bigger plume of steam. Finally, she had heard it start to bubble.

At that point, Commissioner De Jong had wrapped a tea towel around his hand and lifted the paper bag carefully off the grill, tilting it so that the water didn’t slosh out of the burnt section. Then he’d poured the water into two enamel mugs and made them each a coffee.

That was what Jade remembered best about that camping trip. That law of thermodynamics. The bubbling water inside the brown paper bag, seemingly impervious to the leaping flames.

And the fact that her coffee had tasted, not unpleasantly, of biltong.