Present Tense. Natalie Conyer
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Praise for Present Tense
‘Present Tense is an atmospheric and taut trip into the heart of the complex modern-day politics of South Africa. A fascinating read.’
Jacqui Horwood Sisters in Crime Australia
‘A gritty dive into the dangerous world of South African policing where the long shadow of the past hangs over the present. Clean, taut writing from a writer to watch.’
Malla Nunn
author of the
Detective Emmanuel Cooper series
Published by Clan Destine Press in 2019
PO Box 121, Bittern
Victoria 3918 Australia
Copyright © Natalie Conyer 2019
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, including internet search engines and retailers, electronic or mechanical, photocopying (except under the statuary exceptions provisions of the Australian Copyright Act 1968), recording or by any information storage and retrieval system, without prior permission in writing from the publisher.
National Library of Australia Cataloguing-In-Publication data:
Conyer, Natalie
PRESENT TENSE
ISBN: 978-0-6485567-5-6 (paperback)
ISBN: 978-0-6485567-6-3 (eBook)
Cover Design © Willsin Rowe
Design & Typesetting: Clan Destine Press
For Sarah and Robert
1: MONDAY
Schalk Lourens got out his phone and started filming, something Pieterse taught him years ago. Keep a record. Do it yourself, boykie, every time. That way you can be sure. Cover your arse. Don’t trust any of them.
Schalk began with Pieterse himself, what was left of him. On his back, fists curled up and in like a prizefighter, his head and shoulders shiny grey and featureless, his mouth a wide black ‘O’. Bits of the tyre still there, Dunlop, from when it was forced over his head, doused with petrol and set alight. What was left stank of rubber and braai.
Schalk stepped away from the worst of it. He breathed out and, lifting his phone again, turned slowly, panning a circle into a rich man’s death.
Pieterse’s body lay on tarmac in front of a low gabled building, probably the original slave quarters. Next to it stood a modern copy, a garage holding a Merc and a Jeep, both black; between them a gap. Across the tarmac, a timber deck and a pool – the kind where water comes to the edge – and a tennis court. When did Piet Pieterse, strictly wors-and-beer, ever play tennis?
Behind Schalk, the back of the farmhouse: Cape Dutch, the real thing, thatched roof and all. The fourth side of the square was open. Grapevines, gnarled and thick, marched in strict ranks to the foothills of the Hottentots Holland Mountains whose peaks spiked sharp as knives against the sky on this golden summer morning.
Schalk squinted up at them. He remembered Sunday drives in the Franschhoek valley, their battered white Valiant cruising into the village before fighting its way up the pass in second gear. They’d stop at the lookout, he and his parents, his father still with them then, stand and gaze at the heart of the Cape, at centuries of winemaking and civilized living. Not the place for a necklace.
Not the first necklace Schalk had ever seen, not by a long shot, just the first white one. In South Africa, necklaces were black people’s justice. During apartheid, necklaces were punishment for collaboration and Schalk remembered one in particular, a man in his prime, shirtless and muscles glistening, the centre of a tight circle of onlookers learning what would happen if they betrayed the Struggle. The man was too scared or too confused to beg for mercy. Unresisting, he let them tie his hands behind him. He showed no expression as they forced him to his knees. When they put the tyre over his head he buckled and sank to the ground. Then petrol, flames.
Apartheid was a quarter century gone but necklaces lived on. Now they were used for revenge or money or community punishment. So, Schalk asked himself, what’s this one all about?
Next to him, Joepie Fortune adjusted his sunglasses. Joepie favoured the mirrored kind, classic aviator style. When he wasn’t wearing them, they sat on top of his shaven head.
‘What makes you so sure it’s Pieterse?’
‘Shape of the body. And…’ Schalk pointed to where things were clearer, calves emerging from blue board shorts, ‘white. Who else is it going to be?’
‘You should know,’ said Joepie.
Schalk pocketed his phone, thought how much he didn’t want it to be Pieterse. Not because Pieterse didn’t deserve it but nobody needed the grief. Petrus “Piet” Pieterse, formerly BOSS, apartheid’s Bureau of State Security. Murderers, torturers, bombers, general doers of evil. Famous for it, for getting away with it via the Truth and Reconciliation Commission. Now Piet Pieterse, wearing a necklace. Every news team in the country would want a piece of this.
The day’s heat was kicking in. Schalk and Joepie headed for the shade of an oak where the local sergeant, name of Bheki, waited with two constables. Bheki was fat, legs splayed like tent-ropes and arms folded on top of his belly. The constables, one on either side, rested on their haunches. Bheki saluted, the constables snapped to attention. Schalk waved them down.
At least Bheki was on the ball. He phoned it in, the call bouncing from person to person until it reached Schalk’s boss, Lieutenant- Colonel Sisi Zangwa of Cape Town Central Police Station. When Colonel Zangwa phoned Schalk she told him this would be big, so find Captain Fortune and both of them get out there ASAP.
Now she waited to hear what was what. She picked up immediately.
‘It’s him,’ Schalk told her, lighting a Lucky Strike.
Tapping, pencil on wood. ‘Is it a farm murder?’
‘Not a lot of necklaces in farm murders.’
‘OK. Keep me in the loop. And make sure nobody there talks to the media. I’ll take care of my end.’
Good luck with that, Schalk thought. The station leaked like a sieve.
He stuck out his hand. ‘Sergeant Bheki? Captain Lourens. You’ve already met Captain Fortune.’
Bheki shook. ‘Who found him?’ asked Schalk.
‘The servants,’ Bheki said. ‘This morning.’
‘Where were they last night?
‘He gave them the night off. Nobody in the house, only him.’
‘Wife?’
‘Not here. I didn’t ask yet. I waited for you. There’s labourers too, none of them were here last night.’
‘What about security?’
‘The whole place got a high fence around it and the fence got barbed wire on top. But the front gate was open and the alarms were off.’
‘CCTV?’
‘The camera at the front is the only one. It’s off. He had dogs too, down there.’ Bheki took them round the back of the slave quarters where, in a caged run at the end of a dirt clearing, two honeyed Rhodesian Ridgebacks lay humped against the wire. Not a lot of blood.
Schalk sent Bheki and his boys to check the perimeter and keep reporters out. He and Joepie took the buildings.