Murderous David Hickson (best thriller novels of all time TXT) 📖

I fired up another cigarette.

“I thought you’d quit,” she said as I exhaled.

“So did I,” I said. “That day I walked out of the Warehouse with my box of belongings. The day Fehrson realised I was not employable.”

“We’ll cover expenses and I’m sure there will be reimbursement,” said Khanyi. “But I know it’s not the money you care about.”

“You’ve got me all wrong, Khanyi. That’s all I care about.”

Khanyi laughed, told me I was keeping her up and then yawned to prove it. She welcomed me back to the Department and ended the call.

Long after Khanyi would have dropped into a dreamless, nightmare-free sleep, I was still gazing out over the black ink of the sea, wondering whether being a successful businessman and a white supremacist were mutually exclusive activities. Or what about being the playboy son of a millionaire?

And even if one of them was a white supremacist, could that have been the reason for the massacre of thirty-three worshippers? Had someone decided that they could crush Hendrik van Rensburg’s group of White Africans by removing everyone in that church? Had they failed because neither of the Van Rensburgs had been there? Or was that all a part of the plan?

The rain cleared, and the shrouds were lifted from the sea to reveal the heavy tankers and cargo ships making their way along the shipping lanes, a string of bright clear lights reaching to the horizon. Fluttering between them were the blue lights of the military inspection ships. It was hard to imagine why the inspection of cargo ships contributed to the increased stability of our fragile country, but I supposed that is what happens when private enterprise gets involved in political matters.

Six

My decision to live in South Africa had been a spontaneous one, made when I awoke one morning shortly after throwing the pills in the faces of the psychologists and walking out of the medical rehabilitation centre in Surrey. I’d awoken with a memory of my mother floating at the edge of my dreams. She had been a seventh-generation Afrikaner, originally of German descent. Beautiful and kind, she was a little rough around the edges. She told me stories of her childhood, and later, after her death, when I spent time in Cape Town on breaks between active duty on the mines, it felt strangely like returning home. Strange because I had grown up in the United Kingdom, where my Canadian diplomat father had taken his South African bride when his posting was changed. England had been my home, although my father told me I was Canadian, and my mother would whisper that she knew where my home truly was; that we would return there one day, and that I would know it too. But we didn’t return together. England was where she had died. Her slow, miserable, cancerous death.

That morning, when I awoke with her memory fleeing back into the shadows of my mind, I failed to think of a single reason for me to stay in England. My father had remarried and lost interest in me. The British army, which had substituted as a family, had also lost interest if I understood the long-winded sentences that described the situation in my discharge papers. That morning I recalled how Cape Town had felt like home, and how Robyn had been stone-faced and frail at Brian’s funeral. How she had asked me what my plans were and how I’d replied like a naïve fool that my plans were in the hands of the British army. And how she had lifted her dark glasses from her eyes to make certain that I received the full force of her scorn.

I considered myself South African, even if other South Africans did not. And I felt the aftershocks of the Minhoop massacre as keenly as other South Africans. The first twenty-four hours after the massacre of those thirty-three worshippers, the country reeled from the shock. Headlines stated the facts: the number of victims, their ethnic provenance, their ages and their location. The next twenty-four hours were devoted to the international response. The shock, the bewilderment and the outrage. Questions were raised: Who had done this? Why had they done it? And why had the South African police service failed to find the person or persons who had wielded the gun?

During this second day, the ‘white genocide’ theory was seized upon by the camp of journalists who liked to stoke the bellicose fires smoldering so near the surface. They were opposed by those who argued that the murder of thirty-three people was not genocide. Other conspiracy theorists called the massacre a false flag event. Fuel was added to the fire when the President of the United States called for more attention to the issue of white genocide. He was criticised in turn for speaking without checking the facts. And so the wheel turned.

During the third day following the massacre, the media focused on individual stories: details of the four-year-old child who had been killed, and the tragedy of the sister who had been too ill to go into church with him that morning, and who was now the lone survivor of her family. Tributes were paid to the victims. An effort was made to find some sense in their lives, as none could be found in their deaths.

I found what I needed on page three of the morning papers as I sat at the doors of the warehouse on one of the broken deckchairs. Robyn had left without a word to find alternative lodgings. The door onto the sea was open, and the rain had abated, although the sky wasn’t letting a lot of sunlight through, and the tips of the waves were foaming at the mouth, they were feeling so fed up.

Piet van Rensburg was devastated, said the article on page three. His thoughts were with the families of the community of which he was considered a pillar. He urged moderation and calm. This was