The Serpentine Road (38 page)

‘Perhaps we should wait for the Sergeant’s arrival?’

‘I, too, have a schedule, General. It has been set by the Minister himself.’

‘If Sergeant Thwala does not step off that plane in perfect health, you will be held responsible, Major.’ Thulani stands. ‘Now, get the fuck out of my office, and never come back.’

Mabena salutes, turns smartly and leaves the room. De Vries is reminded of Julius Mngomezulu, at large elsewhere now, spinning on the spot and clacking his heels.

Classon begins to move away. Thulani is muttering to Wertner. De Vries follows Classon from the room. When they exit the ante-room, reach the corridor, Classon says: ‘You want me, Vaughn?’

‘No.’

He strides away down the corridor.

From the far end of the main foyer, De Vries watches Mabena and two other men escort Nkosi away. He follows them, watches Nkosi and his guards enter a police van and slowly drive away. A few moments later, Mabena gets into the driver’s seat of a saloon car and moves towards the exit of the underground car park. De Vries moves to his own vehicle, starts the engine, drives towards the exit, allowing two other cars to insulate him from Mabena’s rear mirror.

Mabena turns out of the headquarters and heads to the Nelson Mandela Boulevard, the freeway which leads to the airport and the Southern Suburbs. De Vries expects Mabena to fork left for the main N2 highway but, at the back of his mind, he is suspicious that Mabena has separated from Nkosi and his colleagues, that he is driving a private car on his own. At Settlers Way, Mabena forks right onto the M3 freeway to the Southern Suburbs. De Vries nods to himself. He is almost certain where Mabena is headed.

De Vries overtakes Mabena, speeds past the University and Newlands Forest. He sits with the rest of the traffic in the ubiquitous queues at the junctions and then powers up Edinburgh Drive and turns off into Bishopscourt. He positions himself across the road from the impressive entrance, hidden from the cameras. He waits little more than three minutes before Mabena’s car arrives, indicates right and turns into the gates to Bheka Bhekifa’s mansion. De Vries takes four photographs on his cell phone. Twenty minutes later, having listened only to the smacking of sporadic but substantial drops hitting his car roof, his front and back views obscured by sodden leaves and small, fallen twigs, he takes six further pictures of Mabena leaving the property. He does not know what can be seen in these pictures, less still what he is even doing recording such information. When Mabena turns onto the road and accelerates, De Vries follows him. After twenty-five minutes, he turns off the N2 onto the airport slip-road; De Vries drops back, but continues driving towards the terminal, badges the security guard at the special-access gate, and parks up directly outside the arrivals terminal. Officers will meet Thwala when he appears through security, but De Vries wants to see him; however immoral the process taken to retrieve him, at least he is alive.

General Thulani’s heavy head pulls his neck muscles taught as he tilts it back, stretching sore muscles. He feels emasculated by the events of the afternoon, betrayed that he is not party to the secrets of the high command of whom – he knows now mistakenly – he believed to be part.

He sits up straight, faces David Wertner.

‘After all this, De Vries has proven loyal to me, and useful to us. He seems able to solve crimes others might be . . . reluctant to bring to conclusion.’

‘Is it worth the risk?’

Thulani smiles thinly.

‘We know we do not like De Vries. Part of me despises him, but he has two traits I do admire: he wants the SAPS to be respected, and he wants to find justice for the victim. I think there are many in government, many in our own service, who might, for whatever reason, decide to compromise that goal and, if their view prevails, then what becomes of the SAPS? What becomes of our country?’

‘If needs be,’ Wertner says, ‘De Vries can be controlled. I have sufficient material to bring his character into question.’

Thulani draws himself up.

‘Listen to me. De Vries is to be left alone. Officially, he is not to be monitored, he is not to be publicly challenged – even here within this building. Keep him off your list right now. There may be scrutiny and we do not want it to reflect badly on us. Leave Brigadier du Toit to run his department and be seen to focus on other matters.’

‘Be seen . . . ?’

‘Be seen.’ Thulani stares at Wertner, wonders if his discretion is at the cost of plain comprehension. ‘Those are my words. You hear them clearly? Those are your orders.’

Wertner continues to look puzzled. Thulani sighs.

‘What you may do privately is up to you. For now, we are seen to be the leaders of men, to applaud any action which roots out corruption and exposes government interference and illegality.’

‘Mngomezulu?’

‘Beware, Colonel. There are many more like him. I expect you to ensure that there are no more snakes in my office.’

Thulani hauls himself out of his high chair.

‘I am thinking of the men and women who look forward to the weekend. I have not looked forward to a weekend in a very long time. The crime never stops, the meetings and the forms, they never end. This weekend, I have only time to prepare my presentation and reflect that, perhaps, some of my thoughts have been re-aligned.’

‘In what way?’

Thulani flicks his right hand.

‘You spend too much time eavesdropping and spying. You should listen more openly.’

‘I am doing my job.’

‘Do it well, Colonel. We have challenged the hierarchy. The time will come when we must be certain who is our friend and who is our enemy. That is, I think you will agree, a basic tenet of war.’

‘Don’t even think about it, Vaughn. You’re pissed, the roads are treacherous.’

De Vries looks up at John Marantz.

‘I’m fine.’

‘Do me a favour. You can’t go back home. Not yet. Not now. I’ll open another bottle. Have some. Spend the night in the guest room.’

De Vries’s head nods until his chin hits his chest; his eyes half close.

‘One glass. I’ll have one glass. I will drink to the health of my officer, the redoubtable Sergeant Thwala.’

‘Redoubtable?’

‘I don’t know where that came from . . .’

‘An education? A long, long time ago . . .’

Marantz walks to his kitchen, unscrews another bottle of Merlot, pours a generous measure.

‘I feel happier with you back on wine. You’re more predictable.’

‘That’s bad.’

Marantz sits opposite him, across the broad, low coffee table. The fire crackles.

‘What happens to Nkosi now?’

‘Who knows . . . ? My bet is that he will disappear. But, if not, he’ll become someone else, move somewhere else. He’s back with his own now.’

‘At least everyone knows. You found him. You caught him.’

De Vries shrugs drunkenly.

‘Everyone knows?’

‘You can tell everyone. There are websites, newspapers, television shows.’

‘You think?’

‘No. Probably not. I’ve never considered provocation a positive tactic. Threat, now that’s a different matter. You hold the evidence; you hold that threat.’

The wind blows back the blue smoke from Marantz’s open fire. They both watch it ooze into the living area, then recoil against the chimney breast and meander high up to the ceiling, suddenly cut off mid-way by another gust which sucks the cloud back inside the fire and up, out, into the damp mountainside night air.

‘I made the worst mistake of my life,’ De Vries says blankly.

‘What was that?’

‘I stayed quiet, in ’94, when Nel was like a rabid dog. I should have spoken out.’

‘No, you shouldn’t,’ Marantz says. ‘A man like Nel – the man you described. He would have come after you, after Suzanne, after your baby . . .’

They both seem to know at once what he has said.

‘I could have protected them . . .’

‘Perhaps. Or maybe we would be talking as widowers both. You have them all still. That can never equate to a mistake. Not in the long run.’

‘I thought about those black kids. Lots of times.’

‘How can you know it was one of them?’

‘Because she stared at me and I knew she recognized me.

Because it makes sense when nothing else does.’

‘To kill six men?’

De Vries looks ahead, looks out of the tall windows as far as the misty vista of suburbs and the Cape Flats, the townships and squatter camps. Amidst the concertinaed perspective, he knows that Khayelitsha lies ahead of them, the sandy track once called Pama Road, the corner house with the blue car.

‘To kill six men who came to her home when she was no more than a child and murdered her family. I understand that. That is not a mystery. You’d kill the men who took your family; I’d kill them too. That is what we are.’

‘That’s what I have become.’

‘That’s delusional, Johnnie. You don’t become this way. This is what we are, what we always were. What we will always be. It is dormant inside us . . .’ He pauses. ‘. . . Inside more people than we could ever contemplate. It only needs the catalyst.’

‘After twenty-one years, I don’t know. I don’t know how she even identified each of you, found each of you.’

‘I don’t know either, but I think I can empathize with something, and I think you can too. It took her twenty-one years, from the moment her family was murdered to the six deaths. Can you imagine what those twenty-one years must have been like? Do you think she ever thought of anything else? Whatever she was doing, whatever she was thinking, however she tried to live her life, it always came back to this, to one moment in time when everything changed.’

‘That . . . I understand that.’

‘Her or me?’ De Vries says. ‘That was the equation. You know, I almost began to believe I deserved it. And then I thought, I don’t. I don’t know why, but that’s all that kept me going. Just one decision, one judgement.’

Marantz sits, mouth agape, counting out the years since he last held his daughter. He nods curtly, closes his mouth and swallows.

De Vries raises his glass roughly, watches the red wine spill, spatter on the light stone floor; he smiles.

‘To the next twenty one . . .’

Nqobani waits. Waits for his sister, just as he has always done. He does not keep track of the time, less still the days of the week.

Nqobani remembers. He has no recollection of time before that night. His history begins then. Nqobani remembers the four men: four white men in his family’s house, the noise they bring, the shouting and spitting, the deafening fire. He still feels the moment when it is as if his body is split in two. Wendile drags him through the tiny opening at the back of the shack; half of him is burning, wet with blood, half is cold, soaked with icy rain. He feels the rusty corrugated iron catch his loose sweater, scratch his side. He wriggles free, vomits, senses Wendile urging him on in a hushed bark. Though he is younger than her, he is bigger, yet she picks him up. When they are away from their house, she goes back, leaves him panting and shivering behind a scrubby bush. When she comes back, he can see the expression on her face, knows to say nothing, knows that whatever it is she has seen, she will not forget.

‘We go now,’ she hisses, pulling him after her down the narrow alley between the tin and wooden shacks. Nqobani remembers the tube-like alley filled with detritus, catching his arm on the wire, feeling the blood hot on his body, crying and whining, the rain thumping like a crowd’s footsteps on the roofs either side of him. He feels the sounds close in on him, the walls of the shacks arching over him. Even though they are both small, they have to squeeze and shuffle to pass dwellings whose walls bulge and subside into the tight corridor. He hears the drumbeat of the rain, the shouting of the white men and, deep in his head, echoes of the gunfire which cut apart his mother and father, his sister, his uncle and aunt. He sees their blood: on their faces, on the walls of the shack, spattered across his own clothes. He looks down at his legs, crossed and bent. His trousers are saturated with blood, yet he feels nothing. Now, in the village, he dreams of blood; he dreams of the dark tube in the cold rain and a looming wave of blood which both chases and awaits him.

Nqobani waits. Wendile should be back soon. She is his legs. With her, he can move throughout the village. He can see the outside and be free of the dark, smoke-filled hut in which he lies for so long. The villagers stoke his fire and bring him pap. But they never touch him, never hold him. Whatever it is they say is within him, they dare not come close.

Nqobani waits; days and nights pass.

Nqobani prays every night, just as he has been taught. He prays for strength in his legs, for his body to be renewed. He prays for their family, for their memories, and their place next to the Lord in heaven. He does not know why they pray since God seems so far away; since that night, He has always seemed so distant. But she insists; it is their ritual.

He wonders now where she is, away for weeks at a time, in the city. She says she is cleaning, but he sees a light in her eyes, a light absent since she was eleven years old. He wonders whether she has found a man; he wonders whether she will leave him now, abandon him in exchange for a life.

Nqobani does not know how long has passed; he does not know how long since he has seen daylight outside his hut, save when he has slithered across the earth and lain on his back with his head out of the hut, looking up at the heavens. He did not realize it then, but now, as he sits waiting for the sun to move across the sky, for the temperature to fall once more so that the air thins and he can breathe fully once more, he feels it so strongly it is as if it swims within him, in his blood, in his heart. Last night, as he lay staring up at the stars, he knew. He was alone. Wendile was absent; Wendile was not under the stars.

Huge thanks to my editor, Krystyna Green, Martin Fletcher and all at Constable who continue to support their authors so admirably.

My excellent SAPS advisor, Marianne Steyn, answers all my procedural questions, but none of the views expressed by the fictional SAPS characters within the story are necessarily a reflection of her own.