Henning Mankell - The White Lioness

She’s challenging me, he thought. How dare she? He felt his rage rising again. He forced himself not to beat her again.

“No one’s leaving,” he said. “I just want you to tell me what’s going on.”

“What do you want to know?”

“Who you’ve been talking to. About me. What you’ve said. And why.”

She looked him straight in the eye. The blood under her nose and on her chin had already congealed.

“I’ve told them what I found in your pockets while you were sleeping here. I listened to what you said in your sleep, and I wrote it down. Maybe it was insignificant. But I hope it ruins you.”

She spoke in that strange, rough voice. Now he realized that was her normal voice, and the one she had used all those years had been a sham. Everything had been a sham. He could no longer see any substance in their relationship.

“Where would you have been without me?” he asked.

“Maybe dead,” she replied. “But maybe I’d have been happy.”

“You’d have been living in the slums.”

“Maybe we’d have helped to pull them down.”

“You leave my daughter out of this.”

“You are the father of a child, Jan Kleyn. But you don’t have a daughter. You have nothing but your own ruin.”

There was an ashtray on the table between them. Now that words were beyond him he grabbed it and flung it with all his might at her head. She managed to duck. The ashtray lay beside her on the sofa. He leapt up from his chair, shoved the table to one side, grabbed the ashtray, and held it over her head. At the same moment her heard a hissing noise, like from an animal. He looked at Matilda, who had moved forward from the background. She was hissing through clenched teeth. He could not make out what she was saying, but he could see she had a gun in her hand.

Then she fired. She hit him in the chest, and he lived only for a minute after collapsing to the ground. They stood looking at him, he could see them although his vision was fading. He tried to say something, tried to hold onto his life as it ebbed away. But there was nothing to hold onto. There was nothing.

Miranda felt no relief, but neither did she feel any fear. She looked at her daughter, who had turned her back on the corpse. Miranda took the pistol from her hand. Then she went to call the man who had been to see them, the one called Scheepers. She had looked up his number earlier, and written it on a scrap of paper beside the telephone. Now she realized why she had done that.

A woman answered, giving her name as Judith. She shouted to her husband, who came straight to the telephone. He promised to come to Bezuidenhout right away, and asked her to do nothing until he got there.

He explained to Judith that dinner would have to be postponed. But he did not say why, and she suppressed her desire to ask. His special assignment would soon be over, he had explained the previous day. Then everything would return to normal, and they could go back to the Kruger and see if the white lioness was still there, and if they were still scared of her. He called Borstlap, trying various numbers before tracking him down. He gave him the address, but asked him not to go in until he got there himself.

When he arrived in Bezuidenhout, Borstlap was standing waiting by his car. Miranda opened the door. They went into the living room. Scheepers put his hand on Borstlap’s shoulder.

“The man lying dead in there is Jan Kleyn,” he said.

Borstlap stared at him in astonishment.

Jan Kleyn was dead. It was striking how pale he looked, and how thin his face seemed to be, almost skeleton-like. Scheepers tried to make up his mind whether what he was witnessing was the end of an evil story, or a tragic one. He did not yet know the answer.

“He hit me,” said Miranda. “I shot him.”

When she said that, Scheepers happened to have Matilda in eyeshot. He could see she was surprised to hear what her mother said. Scheepers realized she was the one who had killed him, had shot her father. He could see Miranda had been beaten from her bloodstained face. Did Jan Kleyn have time to realize what was happening, he wondered. That he was going to die, and it was his daughter who was holding the last gun that would ever be pointed at him.

He said nothing, but indicated to Borstlap he should accompany him into the kitchen. He shut the door behind them.

“I don’t care how you do it,” he said, “but I want you to get that body out of here and make it look like a suicide. Jan Kleyn has been arrested and interrogated. That hurt his pride. He defended his honor by committing suicide. That’ll do as a motive. Covering up incidents involving the intelligence service doesn’t usually seem to be all that difficult. I’d like you to take care of this right now, or at least before tomorrow morning.”

“I’ll be putting my job on the line,” said Borstlap.

“I give you my word that you’re not risking anything at all,” said Scheepers.

Borstlap stared at him for what seemed like an eternity.

“Who are these women?” he asked.

“People you’ve never met,” replied Scheepers.

“Of course, it’s all about the security of South Africa,” said Borstlap, and Scheepers appreciated his weary irony.

“Yes,” he said. “Exactly.”

“That’s another lie.” said Borstlap. “Our country is a production line for lies, twenty-four hours a day. What’ll happen when the whole thing collapses?”

“Why are we trying to prevent an assassination?” said Scheepers.

Borstlap nodded slowly.

“OK, I’ll do it,” he said.

“On your own.”

“Nobody will see me. I’ll leave the body somewhere out in the countryside. And I’ll make sure I’m in charge of the investigation.”

“I’ll tell them,” said Scheepers. “They’ll open the door for you when you come back.”

Borstlap left the house.

Miranda had spread a blanket over Jan Kleyn’s body. Scheepers suddenly felt tired of all the lies surrounding him, lies that were partly within himself as well.

“I know it was your daughter who shot him,” he said. “But that doesn’t matter. Not as far as I’m concerned, at least. If it matters to you, I’m afraid that’s something you’ll have to deal with yourselves. But the body will disappear later tonight. The police officer who came here with me will pick it up. He’s going to refer to it as suicide. Nobody will know what actually happened. I can guarantee that for you.”

Scheepers detected a gleam of surprised gratitude in Miranda’s eyes.

“In a sense, maybe it was suicide,” he said. “A man who lives like him maybe shouldn’t expect anything else.”

“I can’t even cry over him,” said Miranda. “There’s nothing there.”

“I hated him,” said Matilda suddenly.

Scheepers could see she was crying.

Killing a human being, he thought. However much you hate somebody, no matter how desperate you were, there will be a wound in your soul that will never heal. He was her father after all, the father she didn’t choose, but couldn’t get rid of.

He did not stay long, as he could see they needed each other more than anything else. But when Miranda asked him to return, he promised to do so.

“We’re going to move out,” she said.

“Where to?”

She threw her arms wide.

“That’s something I can’t decide alone. Maybe it’s best if Matilda decides?”

Scheepers drove home for dinner. He was thoughtful and distant. When Judith asked how much longer this special assignment was going to go on, he felt guilty.

“It’ll be over soon,” he said.

Borstlap called just before midnight.

“I thought I’d better tell you Jan Kleyn has committed suicide,” he said. “They’ll find him tomorrow morning in a parking lot somewhere between Johannesburg and Pretoria.”