The Last Goodbye, page 31
Time.
And then something else caught my eye.
I didn’t take my gaze off it, just sidestepped to my right, looking past Cronje’s body, my attention fixed on the corner of the room, on an area my light couldn’t quite reach. There, it looked like the shadows were moving.
I raised the knife, coming around Cronje.
Another step.
A second.
‘Stop.’
One word, spoken from the darkness.
There was someone else in here with us.
The Red Wolf: Part 3
Unknown | January 1985
Behind him, Mienkie Bauer is sobbing.
‘Can you see why they call me the “Red Wolf”?’ he says.
He stands there, his naked back to her, folding his shirt now, placing it neatly on to the arm of the chair. He fans out the photographs he took from the top drawer. There are four of them. One he’s already shown her – the one of her, her husband and their son Kian – but he has others here that he needs to get answers about. He has his camera too.
He adjusts the Polaroid.
Brushes some dust from it.
He won’t use the camera until the end.
‘Can you, Mienkie? Can you see why they call me the “Red Wolf” now?’ He shows her his back again but is able to watch her in the reflection from a blacked-out window on his left. He pulls down the blinds in here and blacks it out for a couple of reasons: because no one can see in; and because he can use it as a mirror.
It allows him to see these final moments.
Their faces as they realize the Red Wolf is real.
He picks up the photographs and moves across to her. She lurches back in her seat, the binds jamming, her eyes soaked with tears. She can’t go anywhere – the chair has been bolted to the floor – but he feels a second of electricity as he senses how close he is now. A few more questions, and then he’ll pick up the Polaroid, and he’ll take a picture of her that will hang on the wall next to the others in his quarters. The men here think he’s taking a risk with the pictures. They think – since Larsen left, since Cronje took over – that some of the founding principles of C9 – no paper trails, no evidence, nothing written down – have been forgotten. They don’t actually say that to him, just with their eyes – but Cronje doesn’t give a shit. He has two advantages here: the first is that he’s in charge, so he gives out the orders; the other is that the men are terrified of him.
‘Who are these people?’ he asks, holding up the first photograph. It’s a long-lens shot of Mienkie Bauer talking to two black men in overalls outside the City Hall building in central Johannesburg. ‘Tell me the truth and we let you go.’
She says nothing.
‘I mean it.’
‘I don’t believe you.’
‘I swear to you, Mienkie. It’s not you we’re interested in.’
‘You’re a liar,’ she says.
He just stares at her.
‘You’re all fucking liar—’
He grabs her by the neck, fingers snapping shut on her throat, and squeezes. It takes only seconds before she’s struggling to breathe – gasping, choking, her chest expanding and expanding until it’s like a balloon. He lets go of her.
She starts coughing.
‘Who are the men?’ he says.
She gives him the men’s names. He writes them down, and then takes out the second photograph and shows it to her. It’s another long-lens shot, this time taken in the rickety stand at a tiny sports ground just off the M2. Mienkie is seated way back in the shadows with a black guy in a suit. Again, Cronje asks her who the man is, and again she holds out, and again he grabs her throat. This time he chokes her for longer and, when he’s done, she’s coughing up blood. She leans forward – as far as the binds allow – and wheezes the man’s name.
Cronje writes it down.
He puts the other photographs aside.
There’s only one left now.
66
Vaguely, I could see the shape of someone at the edges of my torchlight.
They were little more than a faint grey outline deep in the shadows. It looked like they were dressed head to toe in black and had some sort of mask on.
In the gloom, it looked terrifying.
‘Don’t come any closer.’
The second they spoke, I froze.
It wasn’t a mask they were wearing.
It’s a voice changer.
I thought of the code I’d discovered echoed on the condolence card, the mask I’d found when I’d gone searching for what it meant.
I took a step forward. ‘Were you the one that sent those cards?’
‘If you come any closer, I’ll put a bullet in your leg.’
The shadow-person raised their arm from their side: a gun. I could see the shape of it, the straight line of the barrel.
‘Lower your torch,’ the voice said.
I did as I was asked, the light falling away to the floor, the entire back wall of the room descending into absolute darkness.
‘Who are you?’ I asked.
I knew the question was futile, but there must have been a reason why this person was using a voice changer, why they were dressed entirely in black, why they were hidden in a corner ordering me not to come any closer.
They didn’t want to chance being identified.
But could it have been more than that?
Do they think I might recognize them?
‘Do I know you?’ I asked.
‘No, we’ve never met.’
‘But you did this to Cronje?’
‘Yes.’ A pause. ‘You see all those files over there?’
I didn’t look, just kept staring into the darkness.
‘Go and search them.’
I stood my ground, unsure if it was a trick.
‘There’s not one on Fiona Murphy,’ the voice said. ‘But there are others.’
I glanced across the room, to the alcove with the files in it. They were right on the edge of my light now, greyed-out. When I turned back towards the voice, I lifted the torch a little, trying to illuminate more of the space between the two of us.
Something clicked.
A gun being cocked.
‘Go and take a look,’ the voice said.
I did as they asked, moving past the suspended figure of Cronje. When I got to the files, I pulled one randomly out of the nearest shelf to me. It had ten pages inside and was made up entirely of information that the club should never have had access to: the member’s bank statements, his phone bills, his internet use.
I put the file back and took another, then another. One after the other, they were all the same, the truth crashing against me. This wasn’t only every person who’d ever joined The Castle, going all the way back to 1985; it was a huge collection of personal data. It was leverage. An affair, some decision or mistake that – in the wrong hands – could be used against the person in question. I thought of Letitia Scargill, of the trap that Cronje had set. When I found her file, I found a USB stick taped to the inside cover. It must have been the recording of the call she’d had with her sister.
Below the S’s were the L’s and the M’s, and I quickly went looking for Mark Levin, found his file and pulled it out. There was hardly anything inside. No evidence of the affair he’d had with Jennifer Johnson, no reconnaissance on him, no blackmail material. Levin should have been ripe for turning – he was a detective in the Met, he’d been having an extramarital relationship with a member of the club; the two of them were playing into Cronje’s hands, making it simple for him. But there was nothing.
Why was Levin still such a ghost?
I double-checked M, just in case, but the person watching me from the shadows had been right: Fiona wasn’t here. There was no file, because she’d never been a member.
I went up a row.
Jennifer Johnson’s was fronted with not only her membership application but her employment record. Again, I was surprised to find nothing about the affair that Jennifer had had with Mark Levin.
It was like Levin had been erased from history.
But in Jennifer’s file, I did find someone else.
Fiona.
Not Levin’s search for her, not the reasons she and Jennifer were targeted by the two South Africans, but I finally had confirmation of what I’d suspected all along: the two women knew each other; were friends. Photos confirmed it: a long-lens shot, taken from the other side of the street of the women in a café; Fiona following Jennifer into her flat; Fiona and Jennifer in front of a car under a tree.
What were you two saying to each other?
There were two timesheets at the back of the file – one for Jennifer and one for Fiona. It was full of mundane details, the two women shadowed, the minutiae of their routines documented, what looked like daily activities noted in Afrikaans – none of which I could understand – until entries for Jennifer stopped on the night she vanished. Fiona’s ceased only a week later, on Boxing Day.
The entry that day read, Taak voltooi.
Mission complete.
‘He doesn’t leave anyone alive,’ the voice said.
I felt a sudden surge of emotion – fury, sorrow, failure. ‘You say we don’t know each other, so how do you know I’m looking for Fiona Murphy?’
‘Because I make it my business to know.’
I glanced at Cronje. ‘Why have you done this to him?’
‘He needed to be stopped.’
‘So you’re a good Samaritan?’
‘No.’
‘Then what?’
Quiet. I hated how they could see me but I couldn’t see them.
‘I helped him take the Brenners last night,’ the voice said. ‘He needed someone capable at Seven Peaks, someone who’d follow his instructions. That’s the thing with Cronje, the thing I’ve figured out: if you don’t fight him, if you stick to the plan he’s laid out – if he thinks you can follow commands to the letter – his guard drops. Just a fraction.’
I looked again at the man strung up in front of me.
‘And – what? – he let his guard drop today?’
‘The two of us brought the Brenners in. There’s a second, hidden entrance right next to me here.’ I tried to spot it, but still couldn’t see a thing. ‘And then I left – or so he thought. Really I just hid. No one’s ever seen this cellar, as far as I know. I didn’t even realize it existed until last night. And I knew, if I left, he’d never let me back in. He’d change the locks, barricade it. I had one chance.’
‘So you’ve been here since last night?’
‘Yes. In the shadows, just waiting for the right moment.’
The silence was as absolute as the dark.
‘When he got back here earlier after taking Vance, he never saw me coming. He doesn’t know it was me that did this. The blow to the back of the head put him out, and since then I’ve been keeping him sedated. He likes to do it to other people, now he’s having it done to him.’
‘And now?’
‘He’s going to be awake in about three minutes.’
‘At which point he’ll know it was you that put him here.’
‘No,’ the voice said. ‘I told you, he never saw me coming. He’s going to think it was you.’
‘Even if he does, what’s the endgame?’
‘Well, you want answers, don’t you?’
I frowned. ‘So you’re helping me now?’
No response. I looked between Cronje and the shadows.
‘He’s not just going to spill everything,’ I said.
‘Then you’ll have to persuade him.’
I heard a brief, metallic clatter and then – a second later – something slid out of the dark across the floor towards me. It rattled to a stop at my feet.
Another gun.
‘It’s unloaded,’ the voice said. ‘But Cronje doesn’t know that. If there’s one thing he values above his anonymity, it’s his life.’
I picked it up, pushed the thumb lever and released the magazine. There were no bullets inside.
‘He won’t believe I’m going to kill him.’
But then I stopped, thought of what had happened at the caravan park this morning, and realized I might be lying to myself. Maybe I could make him believe I was a killer. Maybe I could easily become the type of man I hated.
‘What do you get out of this?’ I asked.
For the first time, Cronje moved.
‘He’s waking up,’ the voice responded. ‘If you tell him it’s not just you and him in here, I will kill you where you stand.’
Cronje’s eyelids fluttered.
His wrists twitched inside the handcuffs.
‘You have twenty minutes.’
‘What?’
‘You have twenty minutes to ask your questions.’
‘And then what?’
But, this time, the voice didn’t reply.
Next to me, Cronje opened his eyes.
67
He blinked and raised his head.
His bones clicked, his body stiff, as he looked up the chains to the pulley system. When his gaze returned to me, his expression was something close to admiration.
The plan had worked.
He thinks I’ve done this to him.
‘I read that your father taught you how to shoot.’ His voice crackled with age and pain, with the disorientation of waking from a sedative. And his accent was clear, even forty years on. Gone was the one he’d put on for people, the one he’d used as a disguise, the soft English dialect that he must have practised and practised until he’d got it off pat. This was the Afrikaner who had shown nothing of himself for four decades, except perhaps in private when he was alone with Martin Larsen. He glanced at the gun I was holding. ‘That was one of the few things I could find out about you in the media. Your work life, that was easier. Your personal life, not so much. You’ve done a good job of hiding it.’
‘What did you do with Fiona and Jennifer’s bodies?’
He rolled his shoulders. ‘You know, it might not seem like it at first, but you and I actually have a lot in common.’
‘Why did you kill them?’
‘Fathers,’ he said softly, ignoring me. ‘That’s where we’re definitely different, even if they both taught us to shoot. Yours sounded like a proper dad. Mine was a prick. Did you know, in strict Afrikaner families, we don’t call our fathers Pa, we call them Vader?’ He pronounced the V as an F. ‘You know why that’s significant?’
‘Vader is a term usually reserved for God.’
A flash of surprise in his face. ‘I forgot you spent time in South Africa,’ he said, eyeing me in the same way he had when he’d come to my house pretending to be an estate agent; like he was trying to see inside my head – my life, my history, anything personal to me. ‘You’re right. A term usually reserved for God. What a fucking joke.’ He turned his body, shifting on the chains again. It was obvious he was starting to hurt. ‘But, like I said, the two of us, we actually have quite a lot of other things in common.’
‘No, we don’t.’
‘We both grew up on farms. Do you know where Graaff-Reinet is?’
I did. ‘Is that what’s on your wall in there?’
‘I like to remember where I’m from.’
It was a town in the Eastern Cape, the sixth oldest in South Africa, and a site of historical significance to the Afrikaans community because it was one of the starting points for the Great Trek, where Dutch-speaking settlers had migrated north from the British-run Cape Colony. Now the mural in his sleeping quarters made sense: the view of the town was from the Valley of Desolation, a sweep of vertical cliffs and dolerite columns stretching out across the semi-deserts of the Karoo.
‘So why did you change your name to Cronje?’
‘Because of Vader. When I joined the army, I wanted a fresh start. My name – my actual family name – it was a weight. I wanted to become someone else.’
‘A fresh start where you killed thirty-six people.’
‘Oh, I killed more than that.’ He looked at me like I was simple, ignorant. ‘Don’t forget, I spent a year fighting in Angola, another three in Namibia …’ His eyes flickered. ‘Namibia taught me a lot about life. It taught me a lot about death too.’
‘So how many have you killed?’
He shrugged. ‘I don’t know.’
‘Do you even care?’
‘I killed before those people at the farm, and I killed after them, and every person I killed, I killed because I cared.’
‘Those people on the wall were innocent.’
‘They weren’t innocent in the eyes of the state.’
‘Your state was run by racists.’
‘We were patriots.’
‘You were murderers.’
Instantly, he thrust his face towards me, as if he were a rabid animal going on the attack. I staggered away, almost stumbled, but he never even got close, the chains tightening and dragging him back.
I gathered myself, flush with anger.
‘Don’t ever speak about my country,’ he said. ‘You have no idea what we –’
I jabbed the gun into his neck, forcing his head away from me. ‘You’re right, my father did teach me how to shoot guns. But that’s where you and I are different, because I hate them. I hate what they do. I hate everything about them.’ I moved in to his ear. ‘But if you think for one second I don’t have the guts to pull this trigger, then you’re mistaken. I do. I’ve done it before, and I’ll do it again. You’re not leaving this place a free man. It’s over for you. You know it, I know it.’ I paused, thinking of what the voice in the shadows had said to me only moments ago: If there’s one thing Cronje values above his anonymity, it’s his life. ‘You can leave this place alive if you tell me what happened to Fiona and Jennifer. You can walk out of here in handcuffs. Or you don’t tell me anything, and I pull this trigger, and I carry on looking while they’re burying you in a potter’s field. It makes no difference to me. I genuinely mean that.’
