There was a slow, tired, hungry ripple of movement in front of the line of trucks and a few metres of track were cleared. The trucks rumbled forward again until they were swallowed up in the ocean of humanity and had to stop once more, some thirty metres now from the house. The man with the gun, who had been walking beside the leading truck, kicking people out of his way, fired another burst into the sky, and again a path through the throng, shorter and narrower this time, briefly appeared. When even this progress had reached its limit, the man accepted the inevitable. He turned round to face the line of trucks and shouted, ‘Enough, we stop here! Get them out!’
A dozen or so more soldiers spilled from the trucks’ cabins. They went round to the backs of the cargo bays and opened them up, screaming ‘Get out!’ to the people inside, prodding them with the barrels of their AK-47s and lashing out with the butts at anyone who dared protest, or even ask where they were or what was going on.
Mary had learned her lesson the previous night. She said nothing. She just held Peter tight, hoping that he would keep quiet. It made no difference. One of the soldiers smashed her in the face with his gun, just for the hell of it. He laughed and pointed Mary out to his mates as she fell to the ground, one hand still clinging to her baby, the other clasped to her face, blood seeping out between the fingers.
‘Stop that!’
The shout came from the building. A boy in his late teens and a girl of about the same age – brother and sister by the look of them – were standing in the open front door. They seemed a little healthier and better-fed than the rest of the people around them and they carried themselves with the confidence of young people who have been raised in the belief that anything is possible and have yet to discover the limitations and dangers of that particular delusion.
It was the boy who had shouted. Now he was walking through the people towards the truck, moving with the purposeful stride of a warrior prince. He ignored the soldiers and went straight to Mary Utseya, crouching on his haunches beside her and wrapping a consoling arm round her shoulders.
The boy looked up at the soldier who had hit Mary. ‘Shame on you,’ he said with dismissive contempt. ‘A real man has no need to hit a defenceless woman.’
The soldier took a step forward and the boy sprang to his feet to meet him. They stood opposite each other, glaring, barely a pace apart.
‘This woman needs help, her child too,’ the boy said. He turned his head towards his sister and called out, ‘Farayi, come and give me a hand.’
The girl ran towards him, picking her way through the crowds with the sure-footed grace of a young gazelle. She took hold of Mary’s elbow, gently guiding her as the boy lifted her to her feet.
‘We’re taking her to the house,’ the boy said.
He turned to lead the two women in that direction. They’d only taken three shuffling steps towards their destination when the sergeant’s voice rang out again: ‘Where you going, boy? You stay right here.’
The boy hissed at his sister, ‘Keep going. Ignore him.’
She hesitated for a second. ‘Canaan, do what he says.’
The sergeant ignored them both. He had his own way of resolving tricky situations. He slammed a fresh magazine into his AK-47, took careful aim and fired a three-shot burst. Mary Utseya seemed to dance in the two kids’ arms, then her body slumped to the ground as the boy and girl jumped aside, away from any more shots.
Peter was left lying on the ground between them. He started to cry. The sergeant walked up to the small bundle wriggling on the bare red earth. He aimed his gun at it then lowered the barrel. No need to waste a bullet. He raised his right foot high in the air, bringing his knee up almost to his chest, then slammed it down, crushing the baby’s skull with one blow of his boot heel.
‘Now you got no reason to go to the house,’ the sergeant said, rubbing his boot in the dirt to scrape the fragments of skull and brain matter off its sole.
He pointed his index finger at four of his men. ‘You, you, you, you.’ He jerked a thumb at Canaan and Farayi. ‘Seize them. They are rebels. They are trying to sabotage our mission. They must come with us.’
‘No!’ The simple word was dragged out into a long, wailing cry of despair as a third person came out of the house, a middle-aged woman, her once-elegant features ravaged by exhaustion and stress. ‘You will not take my children!’ she shouted, hurrying towards the trucks.
‘Stay away!’ the sergeant shouted, but she kept going.
‘Do what he says!’ Canaan cried, struggling to free himself from the soldiers who had him in their grip.
His words were drowned by the chatter of the gun.
As Nyasha Iluko – wife of Justus Iluko, mother of Canaan and Farayi – lay on the ground, twitching in her final death-throes, the sergeant walked up to Canaan and jabbed him in the chest with the burning-hot barrel of his gun. ‘You see, young man? This is what happens when you meddle in another man’s business. These two women, this child, they all died because of you.’
34
Wendell Klerk’s gamekeeper Donald McGuinness was a wiry Scotsman who combined an impeccably polite manner with a sharp, sceptical look in his eye that suggested he was a very easy man to get along with, but a very hard one to impress.
‘If ye’ll just follow me, please,’ he said in a soft Highland burr, leading Carver, Klerk and Zalika down a set of stairs that led to a subterranean hallway off which there were two doors. One of them led to the wine-cellar of which Klerk was so proud. McGuinness ignored it. He went directly to the second door, to one side of which was a keypad. McGuinness punched in a number.
Klerk looked at Carver. ‘I think you’re going to like this,’ he said.
Carver heard the sound of a lock being released. The door swung open. It was solid steel and hefty enough to resist anything short of an artillery shell. McGuinness stood aside to let them through, and Carver followed Klerk and Zalika into a room about forty feet long and fifteen wide. Three of the walls were wood-panelled and decorated with photographs, prints and oil paintings that depicted shooting scenes, dogs and artful arrangements of dead game. The fourth was taken up with a gigantic cabinet. Its lower portion consisted of a series of twin-door wooden cupboards, rising some three feet from the floor. Above them, the rest of the cabinet was set back behind a narrow shelf, covered in green baize. This upper section rose to the ceiling and was fitted with toughened, shatterproof glass. Behind it, a long line of guns marched the full length of the room.
The majority of them were shotguns, presented in matched pairs. Beyond them came a much smaller selection of rifles for use in target-shooting or stalking deer. There must have been at least a hundred weapons, enough firepower to equip a company of soldiers, and their quality was as striking as the quantity.
Klerk was smiling more broadly than at any time in the entire weekend, clearly delighted by Carver’s evident appreciation of his collection. ‘Pretty impressive, hey?’ he said. ‘And look here…’ Klerk opened two of the low cupboard doors to reveal a metal cabinet that looked like a small safe. Above its door, a digital readout showed the figure 68.5. ‘That, my friend, is a climate-controlled ammunition store. The temperature is constant. The air is dessicated to prevent any moisture corrupting the cartridges and their contents. When you fire my ammunition, Sam, you get the best bang my bucks can buy!’
Carver got the feeling that this was not the first time Klerk had used the line, but he was impressed nonetheless.
‘So,’ Klerk continued, ‘let us choose our weapons. I’ll have my usual gun, please, Donald.’
McGuinness unlocked one of the panes of glass and slid it open. He took out a supremely beautiful double-barrelled twelve-bore shotgun engraved with an image of a pair of pheasants taking to the air. Around the birds, the gun’s action was decorated with an intricate swirling pattern of stylized leaves and flowers. In the midst of them a scroll bore the words ‘J. Purdey amp; Sons’. The Mayfair-based gunsmiths, founded in 1814, were to shotguns what Rolls-Royce were to cars: the ultimate example of traditional British craftsmanship and luxury. Their products were priced accordingly: a gun like Klerk’s, Carver reckoned, must have cost seventy thousand pounds at the absolute minimum. It was as much a work of art as a firearm.