The Prey (48 page)

Nyati coughed. ‘Boss, about the girl …’

‘Chill, my brother. Have some more of my weed.’

Wellington drove into Barberton and turned left at the Toyota dealership and headed out towards the mine. ‘Like I said, all will be fine. I have been talking to the police, Timothy. We have come up with a way to make it look like someone killed the dominee and the girl and then killed himself. But I need your help again. Don’t worry, you will be paid, just as I have always paid you for your information.’

Nyati nodded. The drink and the drug seemed to have eased his
worries. ‘I have never killed anyone, boss.’

‘I know, Timothy, and I’m not going to ask you to. But I do need you to be my backup. Have you ever fired a gun?’

He shook his head and drank some more. ‘No, boss. But I have seen it done, on television.’

Wellington passed Fairview Mine and the turn-off to the Diggers’ Retreat and Sheba. He checked the Audi’s odometer and when he had gone far enough he indicated left and turned onto a narrow farm road. He stopped the car and got out. ‘Come, Timothy, let’s have some fun. Bring the bottle.’

Wellington started walking into the bush, careful not to let the thorns snag on his tailored shirt and designer jeans. When Timothy said, ‘
Eish
, boss, what is that smell?’ Wellington knew he had come back to the right place.

‘Some dead animal. Finish the Scotch and give me the bottle.’ Wellington waited while Timothy, already unsteady as he tipped back the bottle, finished the liquor and handed it over. Wellington then walked twenty paces and rested the bottle in the fork of a thorn tree. He went back to Timothy, took the unlicensed Sig Sauer nine-millimetre pistol from the waistband of his jeans, cocked it and handed it to the other man. ‘See if you can hit it.’

Timothy grinned like a boy and nodded. He held up the pistol and it wavered as the target swam in his vision. When he pulled the trigger the noise of the gunshot and the recoil took him by surprise. His hand jerked up and he closed his eyes instinctively. When he opened his eyes a look of dismay clouded his face. The bottle was still in the crook of the branch.

Wellington came up behind him. Timothy flinched away when Wellington put his hand on his shoulder. ‘It’s OK. Let me show you, brother.’

He placed his right hand over the younger man’s hand and used his left to show him how to steady the pistol. ‘Squeeze.’

Wellington eased his grip on Timothy’s hands and he fired again. The bottle shattered. ‘Yes!’

‘That is good, my brother. Now we have work to do, but first let us see what is smelling so bad.’

‘All right.’ Timothy handed the pistol back to him.

Wellington led them through the wait-a-bit bush, in between the trees. The stench became stronger and Wellington’s eyes started to water. ‘Look, there he is.’

‘He?’ Timothy moved up from behind him to get a look. Timothy retched and put his hand over his mouth and nose. ‘Ah! It is a human. Who is this, boss?’

‘It’s the dominee.’

Timothy gasped as he stared at the bloated body. ‘Who killed him, boss?’

Wellington raised the pistol and put it against Timothy’s right temple. ‘You did.’ He pulled the trigger.

*

The men sat around the meeting table in the mine manager’s office. Pictures of Coetzee’s wife and daughter had been placed on Cameron’s old desk.

This office would always remind Chris of Cameron, and now that he knew for sure he would never see the old mine manager again, he felt the sadness drag him down. Cameron had been a good man, respected by the whole workforce. He had been hard on men who broke the rules, but only because ignoring or flouting the regulations made for an unsafe workplace. He’d had a true commitment to the environment and pollution control and Chris thought this had gone deeper than just complying with the company’s rigorous standards. He was sure Cameron had been against the plan to mine Lion Plains, and that was a turning point for Chris. Chris had argued against the development, even as he was forced to tick the boxes of the development application as part of his duties as the environmental manager. Cameron had not stood up to the company, so Chris had done what had to be done. All the same, he would never have wished for Cameron, or Kylie for that matter, to be killed. He
suddenly felt sick to his stomach and his peripheral vision started to blur.

He was barely aware of what the other men on the executive team were discussing. Jan had ordered him to attend the meeting; even though he had verbally tendered his resignation he would have to work out his notice and hand over to a new environmental manager.

‘Chris?’

‘Yes. Sorry?’ he looked at Jan and realised he had not heard the question.

‘I asked if you have any news about the independent review of air quality in the mine.’

‘Oh, right. Sorry, boss. The team hasn’t been able to take samples yet.’

‘Why not?’

Chris looked at Coetzee, who remained impassive. ‘The
zama zamas
. They’ve come back to the mine. The monitoring guys bumped into two men yesterday, one armed with a pistol and the other with an AK-47 and the criminal miners told them to
voetsek
. The guys are too scared to go back down without an armed guard now.’

Jan looked to Coetzee, who coughed, clearing his voice. ‘I had to reprimand two of our guys this morning. I was doing a walk around and saw the compressors were running. I asked them why and one guy said one of the
zama zamas
had come to him, in the township, and pulled a gun on him. He said if he didn’t come into work and start the compressor, then the guy would kill his wife and child.’

‘
Bliksem
.’ Jan ran a hand through his hair.

Chris could see the big boss was stressed. He wondered if Jan’s lapse into the local vernacular was intentional, to make it seem like he was still one of them.

‘Do we get the armed security guys to come back?’ Casper, the geologist, chimed in.

Jan shook his head. ‘Not for now. We’ve been in the news too much in the last two weeks. I don’t want the media crawling all over
us again. We’ll wait until things die down and then send some teams down.’ He looked to Chris. ‘But we’ve got to get the independent monitors down there. Chris, you were with the illegals for quite a while; you know where they were mining.’

Chris held his breath. He felt the fear-induced adrenaline surge through his bowels. ‘No.’

Jan held up a hand. ‘Hear me out. This mess with the samples happened on your watch. You can’t explain how the pollutant readings were so high and you kept telling Cameron and Kylie and me that we were compliant, then all of a sudden it goes off the Richter scale. You know where they were operating and you can take the monitoring team to somewhere else underground.’

‘No. I told you, I quit. I’m not going underground again.’ He fought but couldn’t contain the panic in his voice.

‘We’d send armed security down there with you. Just to protect you and keep the
zama zamas
at bay, not to take them on like last time.’

Chris placed his palms down on the table to steady himself. ‘That didn’t work last time. Paulo Barrica and Themba Tshabalala were killed.’

Coetzee coughed again. ‘
Ag
, he did have a rough time down there, boss.’

Jan fixed him with a stare for a few seconds and Coetzee coughed again and looked away. ‘It’s a mine,’ Jan said. ‘It’s supposed to be rough.’

Chris pushed back his chair. ‘I’m sorry, I can’t take any more of this. I told you in the car, I
quit
!’

‘Sit down.’

Chris felt dizzy, and there was something about the quiet way that Jan had spoken that made the words sound more like a threat than an order. He lowered himself back into his chair and hated himself for being such a damned coward. Hein, Casper and Roelf were all sitting silently, watching him and the boss.

Jan stared at him across the table. ‘You know where those elevated contaminant samples came from, and you know how and when they were taken, don’t you?’

Chris swallowed back the stinging bile that was rising up the back of his throat. The room swam and his heart started pounding. ‘No, I … I mean, yes, they were part of the normal testing regime in the mine and they came from level eleven and …’

‘Bullshit.’

The others looked at him accusingly. Chris felt the perspiration beading his forehead. Even the eyes of the black miner on the wall, the painting that had been given to Cameron as a gift by the mining union, of all organisations, glared at him in accusation and disgust.

‘No …’ He choked on the rest of his flimsy protest and coughed.

‘Yes. You were carrying monitoring pumps when you and Tshabalala were ambushed by the
zama zamas
. You were with the criminal miners, underground, for a week before Cameron rescued you. We know the
zama zamas
care nothing for safety. You got the illegals to wear your pumps and you had the samples hidden on you when you were brought up to the surface.’

‘You don’t know what it was like …’ Chris began, although his heart wasn’t in his defence. He couldn’t continue the lie and, as sickening as it was, he knew he would never be completely right with himself. This would cleanse him, like a bitter, purgative drug.

‘I don’t care, you fucking wimp. You brought those highly contaminated samples back from where your
zama zama boeties
were working and you substituted them for the regular samples taken from the Global Resources workers. Either those bastards at the monitoring company went behind our backs to leak the information to the press because they
told
you about the elevated readings and you did nothing, or you organised the leak yourself.
Jissus
, Chris, you’ve nearly bankrupted this company because of your dishonesty, but that was what you intended all along, wasn’t it?’ Jan was red in the face, his fist bunched above the table as if he was about to jump across it and pummel him.

Chris took a deep breath. ‘No. I didn’t want to bring down the company. I just wanted to stop the mine going ahead at Lion Plains.’

Coetzee whistled through his teeth. Casper balled his fists on the table and Roelf shook his head in disgust.

Jan simply nodded, as though his words had confirmed what he thought. But how, Chris wondered, had he guessed? Perhaps someone had noticed the chemistry between him and Tertia. It had been her idea to submit the contaminated samples. After he was rescued she had asked him what he had done when he was underground with the
zama zamas
and he had told her about the air testing and the fact he had the samples with him.

Jan put his elbows on the table and his fingertips together. He lowered his eyes, almost as if he was about to start praying. ‘Leave us, gentlemen. I want some time alone with Chris.’

The other three stood, their chairs scraping on the floor in their haste to be gone from the poisoned atmosphere in the room. Coetzee shot Chris a look of pure loathing as he and the others filed out of the manager’s office.

‘How did you know it was me who switched the samples?’ Chris asked. He would keep Tertia out of this, at all costs.

Jan reached into the top pocket of his shirt and pulled out a packet of cigarettes, printed, Australian-style, with a picture of a dead cancer sufferer. He offered the pack to Chris, who shook his head.

‘Smoking’s not allowed indoors.’

‘You’d do well in Australia.’ Jan shook a cigarette from the pack, put it in his mouth and lit it with a silver zippo and exhaled to the ceiling. ‘It’s good to be back here, despite all this
kak
. Life was simpler in the old days. Everyone smoked everywhere, we
moered
the blacks when they didn’t do what we told them, and if someone like you did what you’ve done, your body would have been dumped in a
madala
side.’

Chris gulped. Jan blew his second stream of smoke in his direction and he coughed.

‘There’s nowhere in Eureka’s legal operations where the level of dust contaminants is above the legally mandated minimum, is there?’ Jan asked.

Chris shook his head.

‘No, because Cameron ran this mine properly. So those samples had to come from somewhere else. It was ironic, but clever, for you to be involved, because you could have lost your job over this. If the independent review proved, as it would, that there were no unsafe areas underground, then the only person who would have done wrong in this whole fucked-up mess, apart from whoever it was at the lab who leaked the result, was you. You didn’t tell Cameron about the elevated findings. If you had, we could have gone proactive and launched our own investigation rather than have the government and the union shut us down.’

‘I thought I was doing the right thing. And it wasn’t the lab. I leaked the letter they sent to the mine.’

Jan reached across the table with a speed that left Chris no chance to duck out of reach. He grabbed Chris’s shirt front and hauled him across the table until their faces were just inches apart. Smoke leaked from Jan’s mouth as he spoke, making Chris’s eyes water. ‘Don’t lie to me, boy. I’ve cut the throats of better men than you.’

Chris tried to struggle free, but Jan held him, effortlessly, for a few more seconds, before letting him go. Chris slumped back into his chair. ‘You made no secret of the fact that you were not in favour of the Lion Plains mine, but like a good little drone you still filled in all the forms in the environmental impact assessment that said there was nothing inherently wrong with our application. I admired your work ethic – viewing the project objectively, and concluding that we met all the requirements, but I also thought you were a gutless
moffie
.’

Chris shrank in his chair. He most certainly was not a homosexual. Indeed, it was his love of a woman that was partially responsible for his predicament.

‘If you were a real man you would have resigned in protest and fought the Lion Plains mine fair, but no, you decided to sabotage the company from the inside.’

It was true. He knew that if he could release damning evidence of Global Resources flouting the government’s environmental
standards the public outcry over mining on a game reserve – already strong and gaining momentum thanks to Tertia’s relentless PR campaign – would force the government to stall, if not cancel, approval for Lion Plains.