If he avoided the main street through the gated community and alternated between the street closest to the wall and the wall itself… Maybe he could reach the exit. Then straight out. First to catch his breath and then to take care of his car.
He thought about Sandi again. It was already after one thirty. She had to be really worried by now. People disappeared every day in South Africa. Just like that. Rarely was this a voluntary decision. Most of them reappeared later—though typically not breathing.
However, before he could be in touch with her, he had to get out of here.
“Hey!” someone behind him yelled. Moses spun around and saw the white man with the club. He took off at once. “Stop!” he heard, but he had already slipped between two houses and was only a few meters away from the outer wall. Keep running. Away from the white guy.
This isn’t going to go well, Moses thought as he hurtled over a shrub. Someone would see him. Hopefully, they’d just call the cops and not shoot. He didn’t want to imagine that scenario.
The cops, he thought, leaping over a waist-high wall. As he cleared it, he caught one of his shoes on the topmost edge. He briefly struggled to keep his balance, then everything was all right. That wall had been tall. The cops, he thought again. Why shouldn’t they come to his rescue? He hadn’t done anything. Hadn’t even thought anything marginally criminal.
Over the next hedge. Lift the one leg high and pull the other one up. And he was lying on his stomach, his right hand under his body. He had tried to catch his fall. Left hand stretched out from his body. Right leg bent, left one extended out where it had gotten tangled in the shrub.
Fortunately, he had fallen on a stretch of grass, but his right hand throbbed. He propped himself up and got to his knees. An alarm siren was going off somewhere. Security? That wasn’t a cop siren. As he started to stand up, Moses saw a thin, old woman through the window on the other side of the open terrace door. She was holding a phone to her ear. He took off, clearing the next bush but only with great difficulty.
He couldn’t hear the alarm anymore, which had been replaced by the sound of a motor. Not far away. The next wall. Moses leaned forward. As he slowed down, he caught sight of the crack between the window and its sill. He glanced quickly around the yard. Browning grass, beds without flowers, a child’s bike, patio table and a couple of chairs scattered about. Everything shut. Terrace door and windows. Only one of them wasn’t. He slowly approached the house and looked up at the second floor. The house seemed to be abandoned. Not forever, but just for the day. He carefully raised the window. Children’s room.
Think this through, Moses warned himself. You have to think this through. The siren momentarily went off again. Close by. Moses jumped up, wedged his body through the opening, and took a deep breath. He then squeezed the rest of the way through and landed head-first on the colorful rug. He quickly stood back up and closed the window. For a moment, he just stood there, listening to nothing except his own breathing.
23
“Luvoyo, the ladder. Peter, grab the materials. Mcebisi, the tools. Fezile, additional supplies. Eddie, you’re on watch. Let’s go, chaps.” Rob van der Merwe clapped his hands. “Hi, Mr. Bartlett,” he said more softly. He held his hand out to a fat man wearing a white button-down shirt and light blue shorts. Spots of sweat on his chest and under his arms.
“Hi,” Mr. Bartlett said. “How long will it take?”
“Less than two hours. We have to make sure it’s tight. That’ll take longer than the actual work.”
“Friggin’ monkeys. I have to go back to work, but for you, this is good business.”
“It’s okay. It’ll take some extra effort on your part, but I always recommend not setting the trash right out at the door. It belongs on the other side of the gate, outside.”
“Coffee?”
“Too hot.”
“Water? Laziness. Where the trash is concerned.”
“That would be great. I know. But that’s how you’re attracting the monkeys. And if they jump around your roof long enough, you’ll need my help. Thank you.” Van der Merwe grinned as he took the glass and drained the cold water in a single gulp. “I better go back out and make sure everything’s going okay out there. You know how it is. Better to be overly careful.”
“Nothing’s more important than control. You don’t need to tell me that.”
Van der Merwe picked a spot where he could keep an eye on his workers. A small thing, really. Just needed to trade out a few shingles. Actually, the entire roof needed to be replaced. But people pushed off stuff like that, preferring to take care of the small repairs while clinging to the hope of being able to postpone the larger investment. Who could blame them in these hard times?
“Don’t daydream, Mcebisi!” he shouted. “Get to work. We’re getting paid for the work we do, not the time we waste. And don’t forget we have to be in Amalinda around 3:30. So…”
He was going to have to have a chat with Mcebisi about coming to work without his overalls. That was the only thing he demanded of them. Never without overalls. And the idiot had also lost the cloth he used to protect his head from the sun. Without it, he’d get sunstroke up there on the roof.
Of course, he also demanded punctuality. And thoroughness. Sometimes it was enough to drive you crazy.
24
“What is that?” Thembinkosi asked. Nozipho just looked at him.
“What is that? Why in the world did you even open the freezer?”
“You found 20,000 rand in a freezer once,” Nozipho shot back. “Stop with your questions. That’s a dead woman.”
“Did you look at her?”
“Only a little.”
“And?”
“Older than us. White. Not poor.”
“White.”
“Mmhmm.”
“And?”
“And what?”
“What should we do with her?”
“Nothing. We wait until the folks out there leave, and we get lost,” Nozipho declared.
“We never should’ve come in here.”
“But you didn’t say anything beforehand.”
“I know, but I had a bad feeling. And…”
Nozipho opened the freezer again. “We didn’t put her in there. We didn’t kill her. We simply disappear, and that’s that.” She lowered the lid.
“How do you know she was killed?” Thembinkosi studied Nozipho.
She gazed back at him. “I don’t.”
“Then why did you say that?”
Nozipho needed a few seconds to collect her thoughts. “Why would someone stick a woman in a freezer?”
“So she wouldn’t smell?”
Nozipho said nothing.
“Because…” Thembinkosi continued. “It is the hottest day of the year?”
Nozipho nodded, looking thoughtful. “But… what did you do when your mother died?”
“Called a doctor.”
“But she was dead. Why a doctor?”
“Because… because… I had to do something.”
“But you knew she was dead.”
“Sure,” Thembinkosi said. “I somehow knew that, but maybe part of me wasn’t certain.”
“And on that day, did it ever occur to you to stick your mother in a freezer?”
“Are you nuts?”
“But it was hot when she died. I remember that.”
“But still!”
“See?”
“See what?”
“That people don’t stick women in freezers. That’s what I wanted to say. Even if they’re dead.”
“True,” Thembinkosi said. “I know that, too. That’s just not something you do.”