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

And in the manner of all siblings, they like to squabble. One day, you must join us in our box at Newlands. The Currie Cup final is in a few weeks. We could make a party of it. Rugby is a uniting force in this country of ours.”

He gave a broad smile of slightly ageing teeth, and his bright eyes tested me. There was a sharp mind behind his affable congeniality. Every move we made was being scrutinised.

Piet was a Renaissance man. Wealthy businessman, Media Mogul, Provincial Rugby Club owner, and Cook. The dining saloon was an expanse of Tuscan terracotta with the skins of dead animals to quieten the tread of the servants, a large fireplace, a glass wall through which to view the Atlantic, and a central cooking island which had its own small fire that had been tended by an elderly African, while the master of the house was warming up the guests. As we came into the room from the balcony, Roelof scurried ahead and issued a command. The man stepped away from the fire and another servant held open the neck of a super-sized apron into which Piet inserted his head. The servant then tied the cords of the apron behind Piet’s back so that his prosperous belly was encased. A third servant handed Piet a set of tongs and held a platter of bloody meat before him.

“I like to do my own cooking,” explained Piet. He lifted a slab of meat off the platter with the tongs and placed it upon the grid which sat over the coals that had been scraped to the side of the flaming fire by the elderly servant. The meat sizzled abruptly and billowed steam and wood smoke over Piet. He emerged from the cloud with a broad Cheshire cat smile, closed eyes and flared nostrils.

“Ah, the smell of a good braai. Nothing to beat it.” He opened his eyes and selected another slab of meat. “That’s a barbecue to you Engelse mense. But for us South Africans it’s a braai.”

“You had better not be vegetarians,” threatened Hendrik.

Chandler and I both showed carnivorous enthusiasm at the smell of the flame-grilled meat, and we took our places at the table as the silent servants poured wine and water and delivered bowls of salad and roasted vegetables. I guessed that Piet van Rensburg’s involvement as chief cook extended only to the few minutes of grilling, but he accepted our compliments on the meal as he took his seat at the head of the table while the elderly African cleared up the detritus.

“I am a man of the media,” said Piet modestly. “And I can tell you that this whole situation is going to come down to a choice of labels. It has nothing to do with the truth. Which labels are we going to stick onto it? That’s all there is to it.”

We looked up from our meals, but no one said anything. Piet had taken to the stage like he was doing a one-man show.

“Can we label this as the deluded act of a madman?” asked Piet, raising a forkful of slightly bloody steak to make his point. “In that case our fellow white-skinned folk could safely go to church again knowing that it is very unlikely that they are going to encounter another lunatic madman. There just aren’t that many of them around. On the other hand, what if the label is ‘white genocide’? Not a relief. Not for the white-skinned population. We will not be going to church with easy minds. If there is genocide underway against our people, then the chances of us encountering a man with an automatic weapon in our church are uncomfortably high. The question is not which label is correct. But which one do you think our trusted leaders will choose to unleash upon the public?”

“They’re going to tell us he’s a lone madman,” I suggested. “Even if he has an entire platoon waiting to follow in his footsteps.”

“Exactly.” Piet gave me a broad smile and pointed another chunk of meat in my direction in an encouraging way. “Believing they will release the truth about what happened is like believing that a fat man in a red suit climbs down your chimney on Christmas Eve.”

“It won’t stop the conspiracy theorists, though,” said the colonel.

“Of course not. Conspiracies, including white genocide, are here to stay. Myth or not. Every minority group in the history of the world has had their own persecution complex. We are no different.”

“And some of them turn out to be true,” said Roelof, as if speaking from personal experience.

“Absolutely, which is why one cannot simply renounce the white genocide idea, because like all good myths there’s an element of ‘could it be true?’ There’s enough killing in this country for us to make it into the top five on the intentional – not international – intentional death hit-parade every year. But the numbers are meaningless on their own. You can twist any statistic to prove your story.”

“That is what those people who went over to the States were accused of doing,” I said. “Twisting the statistics.”

Everyone looked at me. Except for Melissa, who was trying to get a servant to refill her glass.

“The ones who introduced the world to the idea of white genocide,” I clarified.

“The Suidlanders,” said Hendrik, and he glared at me in anticipation of my derogatory opinion.

But Piet jumped in. “My son is a revolutionary.” He gave a mirthless laugh. “He has his own little band of angry young men.”

“We are the White Africans,” said Hendrik, and looked at me to deny it. I didn’t.

“Yes,” said Piet, “the Suidlanders got some right-wing Americans all hot under the collar about it. All that business about a white farmer being killed every day in South Africa. It made for great headlines, but very few people bothered to scrutinise the numbers they were claiming. If anything, the deliberate killing that might be happening here is of