Wellington and through Bains Kloof, over Mitchells Pass to Ceres and via gravel roads to Sutherland.
At first he rejected the possibility that Sangrenegra might be innocent.
It was the other elements that came together first?the movement in the house opposite, the man he thought he saw running across the road in his rear-view mirror. The newspaper reports that taunted him. Carlos?s words, ?The police . . .? He wanted to say something, something he knew.
They were waiting for him. They had set up an ambush and he had walked into it like a fool, like an amateur?unconcerned, overconfident.
He wondered how much they knew. Did they have a camera in that house across the street? Was his photograph on its way to the newspapers and television right now? Could he risk going home?
But he kept coming back to the possibility that Carlos was innocent.
His protestations. His face.
The big difference between Carlos and the rest, who welcomed the blade as an escape. Or justice.
Lord. If the Colombian was innocent, Thobela Mpayipheli was a murderer rather than an executioner.
Thirty kilometers west of Fraserburg, over a radio signal that came and went, he heard the news bulletin for the first time.
?A task team of the police?s Serious and Violent Crime Unit was just too late to apprehend the so-called Artemis vigilante . . . set up various roadblocks in the Cape Peninsula and Boland in an apparent attempt . . . a two-thousand-and-one model Isuzu KB two-sixty with registration number . . .?
That was the moment when self-recrimination evaporated, when he knew they knew and the old battle fever revived. He had been here before. The prey. He had been hunted across the length and breadth of strange and familiar continents. He knew this, he had been trained for it by the best; they could do nothing he hadn?t experienced before,
before.
That was the moment he knew he was wholly back in the Struggle. Like in the old, old days when there was something worth protecting to the death. You see furthest from the moral high ground. It brought a great calm over him, so that he knew precisely what to do.
She met Carlos at the Mugg & Bean at the Waterfront. She watched him coming towards her with his self-satisfied strut, arms swinging gaily, head half-cocked. Like an overgrown boy that has got his own way. Fuck you Carlos; you have no idea.
?So how?s your daughter, conchita?? he said with a smirk as he sat down.
She had to light a cigarette to hide her fear.
?She?s fine.? Curtly.
?Ah, conchita, don?t be angry. It is your fault. You hide things from Carlos. All Carlos wants to do is to know you, to care for you.?
She said nothing, just looked at him.
?She is very beautiful. Like her mother. She have your eyes.? And he thought that would make her feel better?
?Carlos, I will give you what you want.?
?What I want??
?You don?t want me to see other clients. You don?t want me to hide things from you. Is that right??
?
That is right.?
?I will do that, but there are certain rules.?
?Carlos will take good care of you and the leetle conchita. You know that.?
?It?s not the money, Carlos.?
?Anything, conchita. What you want??
He drove from Merweville across the arid expanses of the Great Karoo to Prince Albert as the sun set in spectacular colors.
According to the radio they thought he was still in the Cape.
In the dark of night he crossed the Swartberg Pass and cautiously descended to Oudtshoorn. On the odd one-lane tarred road between Willowmore and Steytlerville he recognized that fatigue had the better of him and he looked out for a place to turn off and sleep. He shifted into a more comfortable position on the front seat and closed his eyes. At half-past three in the morning he slept, only to wake at first light, stiff-limbed, scratchy-eyed, his face needing a wash.
At Kirkwood, in the grimy toilets of a garage, he brushed his teeth and splashed cold water on his face. This was Xhosa country and no one looked twice at him. He bought take-away chicken portions at Chicken Licken and drove. Towards home.
At half-past ten he crossed the Hogsback Pass and thirty-five minutes later he turned in at the farm entrance and saw the tracks on the reddish-brown dirt of the road.
He got out.
Only one vehicle. Narrow tires of a small sedan. In. Not yet out. Someone was waiting for him.
?My daughter?s name is Sonia.?
