Random Violence (9 page)

15

Before she could reply, Robbie pulled away from the curb and drove in silence, threading his way through the narrow winding roads, following a tortuous route that Jade couldn’t memorize. She’d told him no. He hadn’t accepted her answer. What was she going to do? Jump out of a moving car and try to find her way in late-night Pretoria with no phone and no money, and only an illegal gun for help?

She waited, watching the road, forcing herself to stay relaxed, stay cool, and not betray her rising anxiousness. After a while, Robbie began to talk.

“So this guy’s got a daughter. Sixteen years old, pretty girl, good grades. No problems till she goes to a nightclub and some asshole pushes a few grams of coke up her nose and takes her to a motel for a night of fun.”

Robbie glanced at a street sign and turned onto a main road.

“So now daddy’s little princess is hooked. Instead of writing her Matric exams she’s coke-whoring in Hillbrow, shacked up with a bunch of Nigerians. Then she climbs the ladder, meets a bigger supplier, moves in. He feeds her drugs, lets his friends play with her.” He accelerated through a traffic light as it turned red. Jade didn’t recognize any of the street signs, but she had a feeling they were heading south. Back towards the wealthy side of Pretoria.

“So all’s well and good for her. Except one day,” Robbie snapped his fingers, “something clicks in Princess’s head and she runs away. Back home to Daddy, skinny as an Auschwitz prisoner and pregnant. So he gets her into rehab, sorts out the baby problem, and decides he’s going after the main man. Princess agrees to testify, the police make an arrest, and every-one’s looking forward to a day in court.”

“Then what happened?” Jade asked, although with a sinking heart, she knew.

Robbie grinned, without warmth. “What do you think? Princess is home alone one afternoon, and there’s a break-in. She gets five bullets in the chest. No key witness and, sur-prise, surprise, no case. There was a problem with it. Seems one of your friends in the police service didn’t follow correct protocol so the file got trashed.”

Jade watched the streetlights flicker over the windshield. Who’d been paid to quash the case? She swallowed, trying to keep a check on her mounting anger.

“So Daddy hired you?” she asked.

Robbie shook his head. “Daddy’s dead.”

Jade shivered. She’d been convinced that she wouldn’t change her mind, regardless of threats or blackmail, although she’d been expecting both from Robbie. She was back for one reason, to take care of Viljoen. That was where it began and ended. Her burden of guilt weighed heavy enough already.

But the part of her that screamed with triumphant glee a decade ago, as she watched her victim slump onto the side-walk, justice finally done, shouted in outrage now. What had happened to this girl was wrong and foul and vicious. And she could help avenge it.

Robbie’s latest mission echoed Jade’s own past. Was that why he’d known he could rely on her to help?

“There’s a problem with the Viljoen case,” her father had told her when she arrived home one night during a February heatwave to find him hunched at his little desk surrounded by sheaves of papers and notes.

He rubbed his eyes and closed his notebook. Two beetles buzzed and banged around the lamp, casting crazed shadows onto the wall.

“Probably won’t sleep tonight at all.” When he looked at her, she saw the deep rings under his eyes. His lean face was lined with stress and his dull skin emphasized the grayness of his hair. At fifty-five, her father looked a decade older when he was worried or tired.

“Anything I can do?” she asked. She was familiar with the Viljoen case. She had flown to the little town of Redcliff, north of Warmbaths, in a mosquito-sized airplane along with her father, to help him with the initial investigation.

The Viljoen brothers were farmers and right-wing extrem-ists, desperate to fly the Afrikaner flag and overthrow the incipient threat of black empowerment. They had a history of violent treatment and intimidation of their African staff. One day, finding equipment missing from the shed, they had accused two of the workers at random and summarily fired them on the spot.

Poor and shabbily dressed, the workers spoke very little Afrikaans. But they understood enough to know that their jobs were in jeopardy. Using the unfamiliar language of their employers, they attempted to defend themselves in halting and trembling speech. All they wanted to do was explain. But their defense became their sentence. The burly farmers were outraged that anyone would dare to question their judgment, especially two lowly black workers.

The older Viljoen was a giant of a man with massive shoul-ders, a square beard and a mane of silver hair. His temper was legendary. He grabbed the offenders and bludgeoned them to the ground in a frenzy of rage. At first, his brother tried to stop him, but the older man shouted at him and hit him in the face with his rifle butt. Bleeding from the injury, the younger brother buckled down and helped him tie the workers’ legs together and fasten the ropes to the truck.

Viljoen senior then drove across the property to the fenced-off series of ponds where the brothers were experimenting with their latest money-making scheme, crocodile farming.

Behind the truck, the men shouted in anguish as their bodies were ripped raw and their heads and chests battered by the stony road.

Their wives and children ran behind. The women screamed and begged, holding out their hands as they tried to keep pace with the cloud of dust and the dreadful thudding of the bodies in its center.

At the crocodile enclosure, the Viljoens pushed open the gate that led to the biggest pond, the one where the adult breeders were kept. The three bulls and five females were sunning themselves on the opposite bank. Alerted by the noise of the gate, the crocodiles moved to the water’s edge and launched themselves into its fetid depths.

Barking out instructions to his brother, Viljoen senior slashed through the ropes, and the two men dragged the workers, semiconscious and bleeding, through the gate and dumped them on a heavily stained concrete ledge. As the ripples grew larger and small waves began lapping against the edge of the pond, the brothers headed back outside and waited to see what was going to happen, rifles ready, just in case.

The biggest of the crocodiles reached the ledge first. It gave one of the weakly struggling workers an experimental shove and then clamped its jaws around a leg.

The pond was a churning mass of crimson by the time the families arrived, panicked and breathless, a couple of minutes later. One man had already been torn apart by four of the thrashing beasts. The other worker was trying to pull himself forward along the concrete ledge, clutching at the fence and screaming for help. But as the families watched, another levi-athan surged out of the pond, tore him away from the metal rails and dragged him down under the water.

One of the wives ran forward, shrieking in anguish, her skirt flapping, to try and fight her way into the enclosure. She never reached the gate. The elder brother raised his rifle and shot her in the chest. She was dead before her husband finally drowned.

Before any whispers about this atrocity could reach sur-rounding farms, the Viljoen brothers fired all their workers, threatening them with a brutal fate if any of them dared to speak about what had happened. All the same, over time, word filtered out. Tracing and interviewing the witnesses was a lengthy process, because many of them were too terrified to say anything at all.

Commissioner de Jong had never been worried about race, gender or any other factors that differentiated one suspect or witness from another. He was only concerned with the dogged pursuit of the truth. Gradually, his dour patience and kind manner reaped results and the Viljoen brothers were taken into custody and formally charged with murder.

But now there were problems with the case. Standing in their little house on that hot February night, Jade was trou-bled by her father’s words.

“What problems?” He might not be allowed to tell her, but if she never asked, she’d never know.

“Sabotage. Two important reports are missing. Other evi-dence has also disappeared.”

“Any suspects?” Jade pulled her T-shirt outwards to let some air circulate around her body. The house was stiflingly hot.

For a while, she didn’t know if he was going to answer. Other than the persistent trilling of the crickets outside, there was only silence.

Then he shook his head. “I can’t tell you, Jadey. It’s confi-dential. One way or another, it’s my job on the line. This is a high-profile case. If anything goes wrong, I take the fall and then I’m out. I’ve got to get the investigation back on track and prosecute the person responsible for the sabotage.”

“Do you know who it is?”

“I’m pretty sure.”

“Will you be able to fix it in time?”

“I’m preparing everything tonight. Jacobs is driving me to John Vorster Square police station early tomorrow. We’ll meet the prosecutor. Finalize details. Implement damage control.”

Jade knew Jacobs, the Redcliff chief of police. He’d spent a couple of weeks in Jo’burg, working on the case with her father, and she’d been forced into his company more often than she’d have preferred. He was a pudgy man with bronze skin, a man whose racist attitude was at odds, she felt, with the history behind his shock of tight, black, curly hair. He made Jade feel uneasy. She didn’t like the way he watched her. And she didn’t like the way he touched her when her father wasn’t around, his big hands cupping the flesh of her arm or waist, hot and greasy against her skin.

“Can I do anything to help?” Jade repeated.

Her father smiled. “You can bring me another coffee.”

Coffee made, she turned back to look at him as she closed her bedroom door. He was bent over his work again, the mug steaming on his desk. His leather briefcase, soft and worn from years of use, rested against his chair.

It was the last time she would see her father alive.

“What happened to Daddy?” Jade asked. The hoarseness of her voice surprised her. She coughed and swallowed.

Robbie’s reply was slow and deliberate. His eyes didn’t leave her face.

“The next day, Daddy died in a car accident.”

Jade’s breath stalled in her chest. She stared at him word-lessly. Her heart hammered as memories came flooding back. She barely heard his next words.

“Mummy hired me,” he said. “She’s gone to England and she’s not coming back. But she wants him dead. She’s paid good money for it. Doesn’t know I’d do something like that for free, as a favor to society.” Robbie rubbed his hands together as he waited for the traffic light to change. “So. I’m asking you one last time. You in?”

16

As they drove through the dark streets, Robbie outlined his plan.

“Guy’s name is Hirsch. Lives in one of these high-security housing estates,” he told her. “They’re going up like weeds in this area. Rich folk want to feel safe. Safe from poor people.” He laughed. “Except this guy, he’s different. He wants to keep away from all the folk who’d like to kill him.”

“So what do we do?”

“We’ve been keeping an eye on him. This evening he’s meeting his squeeze for a bit of fun. He’ll be home around nine p.m. Now Hirsch has an armed security guard who rides with him during the day. But on nookie nights he comes home alone. Drives straight into his garage. Bulletproof glass in his car windows. There’s only one chance we’ll have to take him down.”

“What’s that?”

“When he swipes his card to get into the estate. He’s got to roll his window down to do it. We take him then.” Robbie glanced at the dashboard clock. It read 20.45.

As plans went, Jade thought this one sounded suicidal. She’d never heard anything so crazy in her life.

“He lives in a security estate? The entrance will be guarded, Robbie. There’ll be armed personnel watching us.”

“Yeah, that’s true, babe. Two guards on duty at night. But they won’t be there.”

“Where will they be?”

“Responding to a call from a resident. Mrs. Chalmers, who lives in number ninety-six. All the way on the other side of the estate.”

Robbie pulled over to the side of the road and handed her a cell phone. He pulled a black beanie onto his head and adjusted the pair of mirrored sunglasses he’d put on. “We’ll call the guardhouse as soon as his car passes us. I suggest you sound frightened. Say there’s a strange vehicle parked outside your house and you’ve just seen a man run into your garden holding a gun.”

A sleek silver vehicle swept past them.

“That’s him.” Robbie put the car into gear. “Make the call and let’s get going. We’re only going to get one shot at doing this, I’m telling you now. We mess up and he sees us, we’re dead meat.”

Jade spoke with a tremor in her voice that wasn’t put on for the benefit of the guards. She felt out of her depth, shocked by the sudden turn the evening had taken. She hadn’t done this kind of job for ten years. Was Robbie even telling the truth? Or was she about to become an accomplice in the murder of an innocent man?

As soon as she hung up Robbie floored the accelerator and they sped after the silver car.

“We’ll stop behind him, but not too close,” he said. “As soon as I jump out, move into the driver’s seat and get ready to turn and go.”

The road was lined with security estates that sported gran-diose names and ostentatious entrances. Robbie slowed as he approached a construction site. “MOUNTAIN VIEW VILLAS. LUXURY DWELLINGS, SECURE ENVIRONMENT,” the gigantic sign read. The place was being built by a company called White & Co.

“That’s the second phase in progress. Hirsch lives next door. In Mountain View Phase One. Here we are.” Robbie turned into the wide paved driveway, lined with palm trees and clay flowerpots. The headlights swept the spiky shadows of leaves across their path. He flicked a knob on the dashboard and switched the lights off so they could approach in darkness. He steered with one hand, tearing at the nails of the other, his lips pulled back from his teeth. Watching him, Jade took a deep breath. She wasn’t the only one who was nervous.

Robbie eased to a stop a few meters behind the silver car at the security boom. He tensed as the mirrored window started moving slowly downwards. The area was quiet. No cars leaving, none arriving. It was just themselves and Hirsch. The perfect situation for an ambush.

Quietly opening the door, he strolled over, the gun materi-alizing in his hand as if by magic. Jade scooted across the con-toured leather to the driver’s seat. Cold air rushed in through the open door. She drew out her Glock and held it by her side.

The window of the silver vehicle was now fully down. She saw a black-sleeved arm emerge. Hirsch hadn’t seen Robbie.

Robbie reached the car, crouched and sighted. She jumped as she heard the whiplash crack of the shot. He didn’t move. He must be checking his target was down. Her gaze snapped back and forth across the area. Nobody behind them. No movement from the guardhouse.

Then the back door of Hirsch’s vehicle flew open and she gasped as a gray-suited man leapt out and sprinted round towards Robbie, a large black pistol in his hand.

Jade scrambled out of the car in a breathless instant. Their intelligence had been wrong. The armed guard was traveling with the drug lord. For whatever crazy reason, Robbie hadn’t seen the man in the backseat. If she didn’t react in time, his life expectancy would be measured in seconds.

“Crap,” Jade hissed. Now she would be forced to shoot an innocent man to save Robbie’s life—if a drug lord’s security detail could be considered innocent. At any rate, he wasn’t the one who dealt in illegal substances. He hadn’t given orders for a sixteen-year-old to die. And he wasn’t trying to kill her.

Worst of all, from her dimly lit vantage point, she would have to shoot him in the back to be certain of hitting him.

Tension thrumming through her body, and hating herself for the cowardly crime she was about to commit, Jade sighted down the barrel of the Glock, watching the man’s blond hair blow back from his pale face as he rounded the car. She saw Robbie’s horror as he stumbled backwards, trying to straighten up from his crouched position, attempting to raise his own weapon. But he was too late and too slow.

Jade squeezed the trigger. Once, twice, three times. The gun bucked in her hands, the shattering explosions ringing in her ears. The impact of the bullets sent the man reeling forward and down, like a drunk being forcefully evicted from a bar on the wrong side of town. His arms fell to his sides and he folded to the ground. His fingers scrabbled weakly on the tarmac as if attempting to clutch onto life. Recovering fast, Robbie leapt up and fired another two shots into the fallen man’s head.

Then she was back in the car, feeling the powerful engine roar as she prepared for the getaway. Robbie dived into the passenger seat and slammed the door. Jade accelerated away in a tight, fast turn.

Glancing behind, she saw two men running to the silver car. The security guards, she was sure. Back from their ficti-tious call-out. She headed back onto the quiet road, past the construction signs, her legs quivering and a terrible coldness in her heart.

Robbie was slumped onto the seat, panting.

“Shit. Thought I was dead meat there for a second. You saved my ass, babe. Keep driving. Nice and slow, like a good citizen. Turn right here, then left to the main road. We can blend in with the traffic. God, my heart is racing. That’s the problem with these drug lord fuckers. They have instincts we don’t even know about. Something must have told him to keep the guard working overtime tonight.” He drew a deep breath and looked more closely at Jade. “Hey. You OK?”

Jade shook her head, blinking tears away. She wasn’t okay. She felt like turning the Glock on herself. She’d killed a man who had no part to play in Robbie’s client’s revenge, who was loyally protecting his employer. She had stepped too far over the line now. She was a murderer, no better than Robbie. No better than Viljoen.

“I’m fine.” Snapping out the words, she joined the main road.

“No, you’re not. I can see you’re upset. I’m sorry you had to get involved. But how was I to know that stupid guard was driving him home?”

Jade’s foot slipped off the clutch and the car choked to a stop. She turned to Robbie, eyes wide.

“The security guard was driving?”

He gave a shaky laugh.

“Couldn’t believe it when I checked the corpse and saw I’d shot some dwarf in a tuxedo. I couldn’t see into the back. It was partitioned off with more of that damn tinted glass. Next thing I know I’m looking down the barrel of a Little Eagle. Nice piece. Wish I’d had time to grab it. Anyway, point is, you shot Hirsch. He was your kill.” He fixed her with a steady gaze as she restarted the car. “I owe you a big one, Jade.”

She drove on, checking the mirrors for blue flashing lights, listening for the sirens she was expecting at any moment. And feeling relief slowly dilute her terrible guilt.

Robbie laughed again, louder and slightly hysterical. He elbowed her in the side.

“You’re so cute sometimes, babe, you know that? You get all upset because you think you shot somebody innocent. As if that guard wasn’t scum like the rest of them. He’s probably the guy who did all Hirsch’s dirty work on his behalf.”

Jade ignored Robbie’s humor attack.

“I’ll tell you how you can pay me back,” she said. “Find out who’s getting paid to quash cases. You brag about your con-nections. Find me the bent cop.”

He looked at her, eyes glinting, teeth bared in a grin.

“Consider it done.”