Jogged now, back to the edge of the bush. Had to check where they were.
The Opel was visible through the long grass and trees. It was parked across the road, a hundred and twenty metres from the petrol station. The doors were still shut, but vapour trailed from the exhaust pipe.
Two minutes.
I would have to cross the road behind them. I jogged back deeper into the trees, turned parallel to the road, zigzagging between tree trunks in the dense growth. I counted steps in time with the seconds. Anthills, thick grass, trees.
Three minutes, seventy metres.
I found a footpath. Cattle spoor. I accelerated. Ninety metres, a hundred, a hundred and ten, hundred and twenty. Heat and damp in my shoe. The cut was bleeding again. I swerved towards the road. Dropped back to a jog, then to a walk. Sweat ran down my face, down my chest, and my back.
The bush opened up suddenly. I stopped. The Astra was thirty metres to the right, its rear facing me. The engine idled. They were watching the filling station.
Momentarily, I hesitated, breathing as deliberately and slowly as possible.
Four minutes. They’d be getting restless.
The sound of a car approached from the left. I could use that. I waited for it and when it was directly in front of me, I bent over and ran across the road behind the vehicle. It was a pick-up with railings and a bored-looking brown cow on the back.
I turned right towards the Astra and ran alongside a fence, hopefully in the occupants’ blind spot. I wiped sweat from my eyes. Twenty metres, ten, five, and then the driver turned his head, a black man, he looked into my eyes, his mouth made an ‘O’, and he said something. The passenger door opened and then I was there and opened it wider. The R4 was swinging around, I grabbed the barrel with my left hand, the sight scraped deep into my palm, blood and sweat made it slippery, I got a grip and jerked violently up and away. I hit the white man on the nose with my right hand as hard as I could. It was a forceful blow, pain shot up my arm and I felt his cartilage break. His grip on the rifle slackened.
It was an R5, the shorter version of the R4.1 got both hands on it and jerked it from his grasp. He made a noise as I hit him above the ear with the folding butt.
I spun the weapon around, cocked it and pressed my thumb against the safety catch. It was on. I clicked it off and pointed the rifle at the driver.
‘Afternoon,
The white man brought his hand unsteadily up to his bloodied nose, now bent against his left cheek.
14
I called Emma. She answered in an anxious voice. ‘Lemmer?’
‘You can come now. I’m standing at the Astra, about a hundred metres left of the garage,’ I said, and then put the cell back in my pocket.
I saw her leave the cafe and jog in my direction. The men lay in the grass in front of me, side by side, face down in the dust, hands behind their backs. I kept the R5 pointed at the black man; the white would give us no trouble.
Emma approached. Her eyes widened as she took in the scene, the bloody crooked nose. I held an ID card out to her, the black sergeant’s. ‘They are policemen,’ I told her. ‘Jack Phatudi’s men.’
‘Police?’ She angrily wiped the sweat from her forehead and took the card.
‘You’re in deep shit,’ the white constable said.
‘Watch the language, buddy. You’re now in the presence of a lady,’ I said, and moved closer to him.
‘Why were you following us?’ asked Emma.
‘To protect you,’ said the black sergeant.
‘From what?’ Emma asked.
I had asked the same question – and received the same silence.
‘Get up,’ I said, and took out the R5’s magazine. They got to their feet, the constable with more difficulty than the sergeant. I turned the rifle around and passed it butt first to Crooked Nose. I put the magazine in my pocket. ‘Your pistols are in the car.’
‘You are under arrest,’ said the sergeant.
‘Get Jack Phatudi on the phone.’
‘Are you resisting arrest?’ he asked without much conviction.
‘Call Phatudi, and let the lady talk to him.’
He wasn’t a big man, twenty centimetres shorter than I am, and skinny. He was unhappy and I suspected he didn’t relish calling the inspector and explaining.
‘Just give me his number,’ said Emma, cell phone ready in her hand.
He preferred this option. He recited the number. Emma keyed it into her phone while I went over to the constable.
‘Let me help you with your nose,’ I said.
He stepped back. ‘I’m going to lock you up, you fu…’ He bit the word off and looked at Emma.
‘Suit yourself.’
‘Inspector?’ Emma spoke into her phone. ‘This is Emma le Roux. I’m standing beside the road near Klaserie with two of your men who say that you ordered them to follow us.’
She listened. I could faintly hear Phatudi’s voice, forceful and angry, but couldn’t make out the words.
‘Who?’ she asked eventually, worried. It became a one-sided conversation. Now and then Emma interrupted with questions and statements:
‘But how, Inspector? I haven’t …’
‘That is just not true.’
‘Why didn’t you inform us?’
‘Yes, but now one of them has a broken nose.’
‘No, Inspector. You were the one that had nothing to say this morning because it was
‘I am sure we will survive without your protection.’
‘Thank you, Inspector,’ with the same icy tone as when Wolhuter had called her ‘Emmatjie’. She passed the cell phone to the black sergeant. ‘He wants to speak to you.’
‘There are people who are angry with me,’ Emma said as we drove towards White River.
I had no idea what Phatudi had said to his sergeant. The conversation was in sePedi. When it was finally over, the black sergeant had looked away into the bushes and said, ‘You must go,’ with extreme dissatisfaction.
Now Emma sat with her legs tucked up, her feet on the passenger seat of the BMW, arms encircling her knees. ‘That’s what Phatudi said. There are people who have heard that Jacobus is my brother and that I have brought a lawyer to get him off. Can you believe it? He said he’s heard all sorts of rumours and he’s worried about our safety. One of the rumours is that I know where Jacobus is. Also that I want to lay the blame for the murders on others. That I’m working with Mogale to derail the land claim. So I asked him who was saying all these things and he couldn’t answer me. But he’s the only one who knows why I’m here.’
And all the people who’d been present in the charge office in Hoedspruit. She seemed to have forgotten them.
She shook her head angrily and looked at me. ‘Why does it have to be like this, Lemmer? Why is there still so much hate in this country? When are we going to move on? When will we get to a stage when it’s not about race or colour or what happened in the past, but just about right or wrong?’
When we are all equally rich or equally poor, I thought. When everyone has the same land and possessions. Or when nobody has anything …
