Hard rain, p.18
Hard Rain, page 18
part #1 of Rogue Series
“Who’s the other person?”
“Uh-uh, my turn. Why did you and Billy break up?”
“I met Alex at a wedding and . . . it just happened. For the first time it was about more than sex or convenience or need. I wanted to keep it clean, so I told Billy it wouldn’t work between us.”
I see Charlie biting back his next question. My turn.
“What happened to Hamisi in San Francisco?”
“No one is a hundred percent sure, but rumor has it that the FBI ordered him to leave the country.”
“There must be more. Come on, Charlie.”
He leans back in his chair and puts his hands behind his head. “There was nothing concrete. Like everything about Hamisi. There were rumors about sex. About young girls. About men. Drugs. You name it.”
“What about the wife’s friend? Did you speak to her about San Francisco or only to the police?”
“Me first. Do you think Billy was murdered?”
What shall I say? Can’t tell the truth.
“I think he could have ended up in the water along with his house, or someone could have killed him,” I say at last. “Your guess is as good as mine.”
Charlie frowns, unconvinced.
I throw my hands in the air. “What I know and what I suspect are two different matters. I think someone probably killed him, but I have no proof. Hamisi has no proof. If it hadn’t been for the rains, things might have turned out differently. Everything might have been clearer.”
I look Charlie in the eye. “And you can have the next answer on the house. No, I didn’t kill Billy. The two of us had come a long way. He saved my skin on a number of occasions. I would never have hurt him.”
“Calm down, Ranna. I hear you.” He taps on his desk with the pen. “About the friend. I spoke to her. She said Hamisi was obsessive about his wife. Didn’t trust her. Wanted to know where she was all the time, what she was doing and who with. But he himself regularly went away, and no one knew where to. After his wife’s disappearance her colleagues reported her missing, but the police never searched for her, despite the friend’s belief that Hamisi had done something to her.”
“Do you think there was someone else? For him? Her?”
“I’ll give you a bonus as well: For her, no. For him? I’m almost a hundred percent sure there was someone. But she wasn’t in Dar. Someone would have known. People talk in this town.”
His eyes pin me down. “My question.” The pen in his hand clicks in and out. In and out.
The sound echoes through my brain.
“Why did Hamisi suspect you of Billy’s death?”
“Billy occasionally gave me money. Apparently I’m also in his will.”
Charlie’s eyes widen.
“It’s not what you think,” I protest with a smile. I know my answer was deliberately misleading, but I couldn’t help it. “He left me something like a hundred thousand dollars—small change for someone like Billy Jones.”
I see Charlie writing down the amount. He’ll check the number, and I don’t blame him. I’d do the same. But what he can never quantify is that a hundred thousand dollars is enough for me to start over, even a second time, and Billy knew it.
I wait for him to look up again. “Last question, Charlie.”
“I have many more questions.”
“But I’m done. Besides, you have enough for a story. By tomorrow I won’t be able to answer my phone. How long do you reckon it will take before CNN knocks on my door? Or the BBC?”
Tom is going to kill me for giving this story to Charlie. In fact, the overall personal cost of this conversation will be massive.
Charlie hoists himself out of his chair, walks around the desk, and comes to a halt in front of me. “Forget about all the journos. Just for a moment. And about me. I don’t know what’s going on, Ranna, but I know something is wrong.” He puts a large hand on my arm. “Be careful—very careful. Hamisi is no fool. Don’t cross swords with him.”
“I appreciate your concern, Charlie, but I’ll be okay. I’m all grown up and I know what I’m doing,” I say, though I hardly believe myself.
He shakes his head. Grins. He doesn’t believe me either.
“As you wish, Ranna. As you wish.” He retreats to a safe distance. Sits on the corner of his desk. “What’s your last question?”
“Was Hamisi ever in Paris? And New York?”
“New York, yes. I got a postcard once. And a few copies of the New York Times.”
“When?”
“Years ago. Soon after he inherited his father’s money.”
“When exactly? Think of the newspapers—what were the dates on them?”
“About ten years ago. I remember the papers were full of stories about GM filing for bankruptcy.” He pushes his hands into his pockets.
Summer. The same time I was there. “And Paris?”
“I don’t know.”
Damn.
Charlie nods. “Okay. My final question. Did you love Alex?”
“That has nothing to do with Billy’s death.”
“I’d still like to know.”
“Why?”
“He’s worried about you. He calls here every now and then to check on you.” His eyes seek out mine.
I turn to the window. “Charlie. Don’t.”
“Ranna. You promised to play along. Did you love Alex?”
“No. I love Alex.”
“Why this thing with Hamisi then? Why are you still here?”
“Because sometimes love just isn’t enough.”
15
Maggie puts a steaming cup of coffee in front of me. Slaps me gently on the arm with the dish towel in her hand. “I’m glad you’re not drinking today.”
“What happened to being nice to your customers?”
“This is me being nice.”
I’m back at my usual table. Jakes in his white cap is nowhere to be seen, but I keep thinking he’ll walk into Hardings any moment.
No matter how guilty Hamisi looks, it doesn’t mean I can rule everyone else out entirely.
Maggie spots me looking around. “He hasn’t been here since your little game of twenty questions.” She makes a snorting sound at the back of her throat. “I wouldn’t want to look at you again either.”
“I had to find out something. It was important.”
“You chased away my second-best client.”
“Sorry.”
“He paid well. Tipped well. I miss him.” Maggie lifts her eyebrows and wipes my table vigorously.
I put my hand over hers. “Sorry. I’ll try and make up for the tips you’ve lost.”
She throws the white cloth over her shoulder and puts her hands on her hips. “I don’t know what the deal is with you and men. I see them with you, and the next minute they’re here alone, asking about you, like schoolboys. Tom. Some cop or other. What happened to Alex? He was good for you.”
“I wasn’t good for him.”
“Hmm. I don’t know about that. With you, he lost some of his angles. You know, those stiff shoulders. The straight back. He relaxed.” She looks at me quizzically. “Are you sure you can’t get him back?”
“Maybe I can,” I sigh. Am I equally persistent at times? “Who knows, Maggie. Maybe I can work a miracle if I try hard enough.”
“Do you have a plan? It’s always good to have a plan.”
“Maybe.”
“Do you have a plan involving him?” Maggie knows to drive me into a corner.
“Half a plan.”
I realize it’s the truth. I want Alex back. What’s more, everything I have done in the recent past has been with that single objective in mind.
The only problem is that I’m running out of options. I can think of only one more plan of action. Instead of sitting here, looking for ghosts, I can wait for the ghosts to come to me, to find me, as always.
One last time.
“What’s this?” Hadhi points at the photos of my front door on the fridge.
“Just some shots I took.”
“I can see that. Why are they here?”
“Long story.” I hand her a knife and fork. “Food’s ready.” I motion at the couch. “Shall we sit here?”
Hadhi takes her plate of bobotie and sits down. She tastes the curried minced beef carefully. “Lovely.”
“My mother’s recipe, though I improvised a bit.”
“I remember. You’ve been promising me an invitation to dinner for months.”
“Yes, sorry about that.”
Her knife and fork freeze midair. “If it’s finally happening, I presume you’re on your way?”
I chew. Swallow. What can I say?
“Yes.”
“When?”
“I don’t know yet.”
“Where?”
“Not too sure about that one either.”
She points at the images tacked to the fridge. “The burglary. Do those have anything to do with it?”
“They have everything to do with it.”
I go to bed that night like one who fears nothing. Like someone with a plan. With the courage to start over.
I close my eyes and fall asleep.
When I wake, my head is clear and my body rested.
I have to start packing. Where shall I go? Australia, perhaps. Or somewhere smaller. Peru. Northern Canada.
New name. New job.
No, that’s too hard. I must make it easier, though not too easy. I must be careful not to do anything that will make the man suspect I’m planning something. It must be a well-known place, yet somewhere people can disappear. Vanish into thin air as if they never existed. Where lots of people stand out, so that in the end no one stands out.
The green hands of my alarm clock say it’s already past eight. I’ve slept for ten hours. No wonder I feel so rested.
I put the clock down and get back under the covers, close my eyes.
During the night I had a dream. It played in my mind like a movie. Clear and precise. Frame by frame.
No. It was more than a dream. It was memories. Something triggered the camera in my head, made me understand exactly what I should do.
I go to the bathroom, take a shower, and brush my teeth. I’m on my way to photograph three new cabinet ministers. The extra cash will be useful, now that I’m about to get on a plane again.
I look at myself in the mirror. The woman staring back at me looks different than the one who stood there yesterday. This one is sure of herself. Purposeful. Is this what you look like when, after so many years, you finally know what you want from life?
ALEX
1
My mother is a small woman. Like a duiker or a sparrow or an ant.
You could easily miss her in a group. She blends in with the color and the noise. Her half-finished sentences hang unnoticed on the fringes of everyone else’s noisy dialogue.
Among other people she becomes even more nondescript. Her pale blonde hair, now thoroughly streaked with gray, becomes even paler and the careful tread of her size-five sandals even more cautious. But when she smiles, people notice.
She’s standing next to the man with the day-old stubble in the wrinkled khaki shirt, airport passengers pushing past them to the exit. As usual, my father’s sunburned legs are wrapped in khaki shorts and brown socks pulled to his knees.
“Hello, Ma.” I lean over and kiss her lightly on the cheek. She holds on to me as if she’s drowning. Then she lets go, as if she knows it’s unavoidable.
“You’re home.” Her voice is brittle, like old yellow paper.
“Just for a while,” I warn.
“It’s better than nothing.” She points to her left. “Say hello to your father. He’s in a hurry to leave.”
I turn to the man with the disappointed mouth. The stem of his pipe protrudes from his shirt pocket, as always. “Pa.”
“Alexander.”
If he wasn’t standing next to my mother, he’d be an ordinary man with one light-brown eye not perfectly synchronized with the other. The hands that can completely enfold hers would appear smaller. The same with the shoulders and feet in their brown veldskoens. But next to my mother, he’s a giant.
Is that why he’s still here? Because she makes him feel more of a man than he actually is? I look for signs of pain in the way she’s holding her body, but I don’t see any.
My father points at the Avis sign. “I don’t know why you couldn’t just rent a car.”
I don’t mention that I offered but Sophia Derksen flatly refused.
“Let’s go. It’s a long way,” I say instead.
He mutters something, puts his hand on my mother’s elbow, and steers her through the doors, where a Cape shower is steadily falling.
The farm looks exactly as I remember it. Beautiful and open. The veld is looking good after the recent rains, a multitude of yellow, white, and orange flowers blooming as far as the eye can see.
Sometimes it doesn’t matter what you remember about a place, or what happened there. It’s still the place where you took your first breath. Something enchanting remains, even if what happened later nearly destroyed all that was good.
My earliest memory is of my mother singing me to sleep. I always slept with the windows wide open and dreamed of the sea. Of the deep blue water swallowing me and spitting me out somewhere else. My favorite Bible story was the one about Jonah and the whale.
At other times I dreamed I could fly. Especially on the nights when my father’s words unraveled into silence after too many brandy-and-Cokes.
Silence meant chaos would follow.
The older I got, the easier I found it to read my mother and father. I could probably read people before I could read books. When a muscle over my father’s right eye began to twitch, he was angry. When he chewed without closing his mouth all the way, he was almost drunk.
The irony would later become clear: My father made me into the good journalist I became. Because of him, I know what people are thinking. Feeling. What they will do next.
Ranna is the first person I found impossible to read, I consider, as my father unlocks the back door.
No, forget about her.
“I put clean linen on your bed,” my mother says as we step into the kitchen.
When I left for university, my bedroom became the guest room, even though there are seldom guests on the farm.
I drop my bag on the tiled floor. Push it up against the cupboards, out of my father’s way.
“How long will you be staying this time?” he asks when we sit down at the rickety kitchen table. For as long as I can remember, my mother has been asking him to fix it.
“Francois, don’t . . .” she begins.
We both look at her, surprised, but she has nothing more to say.
“Yes? You were saying?” I prompt.
My father won’t touch her while I’m here. He stopped beating her in my presence the year I grew taller than him. That was also the year I began to fight back. For my pains, I got the scar under my eye. He wears his on his right shoulder.
My mother peers at my father from under her hair. At me. Shakes her head.
She needs a haircut. Maybe even a touch of color, if she wants. The gray has almost taken over completely. In the past she always wore her hair neatly styled. It was the one thing my father was always prepared to pay for. He grew tightfisted about clothing after they stopped going to church because people were talking.
Have they run out of money? The farm wasn’t exactly a hive of activity when we drove up.
My mother gets up, begins to fill the sink with water for the dishes.
“I won’t stay long.” I finally answer his question. “Two weeks.”
I get up, look around for a dishcloth. “The two of us should spend a day in Cape Town, Ma. I missed a lot of birthdays.”
Her eyes light up when she looks at me.
“There’s no need to waste your money,” my father says as he fills his pipe.
“It’s my money. And it’ll be my pleasure. I’ll pay for the diesel,” I say over my shoulder.
“The bakkie’s brakes have just about had it.”
I say nothing. Focus on drying the dishes instead.
He lights his pipe. “Aren’t we having coffee, Sophia?”
My mother leaves the dishes and scrambles to fetch cups and put the kettle on.
I wonder why I came. Nothing has changed. Not the rickety yellowwood table, nor the ancient FM radio in the corner churning out country music. Not my mother, and not my father.
Have I?
2
“Alex.” I feel a hand on my shoulder. “Alex,” the voice says again.
Reluctantly I open my eyes.
It’s my mother. She motions with her head in the direction of the hall. “Someone on the phone for you. A woman.”
“For me?”
“Yes. Do you want me to say you’re sleeping?”
I look at the clock on the bedside table. Ten o’clock. Did I really sleep that late? Since I arrived it’s almost all I’ve done. Eat, run, sleep.
I sit up. “No, I’m coming.”
“Your father left early. Don’t worry, no one will eavesdrop.”
I want to protest, but keep quiet instead. She knows only too well I’m trying to avoid him. He gets up at seven—even later if he drank more than usual the night before—and comes in for breakfast at nine. By ten he has usually left again, got back into his bakkie to go and do whatever it is he does. The farm appears to be falling apart.
I get up, search for a clean T-shirt in my bag. “Are we going to town today?” I ask over my shoulder as I put on my shirt.
The hands that have begun to make the bed stop moving. “If your father says it’s all right.”
“Must he always give his permission?”
“Don’t fight with me. He’s not so bad. There has always been food on the table.”
I swallow my rising anger, walk down the hall, and pick up the receiver. “Hello?”
“Don’t put the phone down.”
