Roger Smith - Mixed Blood

But up on the mountain the rules were different. Money bought lawyers. And the media spotlight. Barnard would have to learn new tactics if he was going to find out what really happened. He was playing for much higher stakes. He would have to take it nice and slow. Be smart. The time would come when he would do what he did best.

Kill somebody.

Barnard had no idea how many people he had killed. Some men he knew kept an obsessive count, but he had never felt the need. Just got on with it. But he remembered his first time. You always do.

At the age of thirteen Rudi Barnard had killed his mother’s lover. Seconds later he had killed his mother.

Barnard was born in a forgotten rural village five hours northeast of Cape Town. The town was split in two by a stream that trickled like piss through the semidesert. The half-breeds’ hovels were on the one side. On the other the whites’ houses huddled around the spire of the Dutch Reformed Church, which pointed like an accusing finger at heaven. Barnard had spent an eternity of airless Sundays in that church, in fear of the hell and brimstone pouring from the pulpit, waiting in vain for God to speak to him.

At thirteen Rudi Barnard was already fat and unpopular. And he stank. One day a bitch of a teacher sent him home early with a note telling his mother to purge his bowels before sending him to school again. Humiliated, Rudi trudged home through the heat, the sun like a fist pounding down on his pink neck.

When Rudi walked up to the house, he saw the ramshackle truck belonging to Truman Goliath, a half-breed handyman, parked in the driveway. His father was paying Goliath to replace some rusted corrugated iron roofing.

Rudi walked into the house, the fly screen door slapping closed behind him. He heard his mother screaming. Barnard ran to his parents’ bedroom and flung the door open. It took him a few seconds to understand that Truman Goliath wasn’t murdering his mother. In fact she was urging the athletic half-breed on with slaps to his naked haunches and yells of encouragement, unaware that her son stood in the doorway.

It was then that God spoke to Rudi Barnard for the first time.

The young Rudi went to his father’s gun room, removed a. 22 rifle, and carefully loaded it. Then he walked back to the bedroom and blew the back of Truman Goliath’s head onto the wall. The naked Mrs. Barnard, covered in blood, bone shards, and brain matter, stared at her son and opened her mouth to scream, her mouth a perfect operatic oval.

Rudi Barnard shot his mother in the face.

Then he phoned his father at his slaughterhouse. The two fat Rudis, father and son, put their heads together and worked out the story the town wanted to hear. The rape and murder of Elsie Barnard.

Truman Goliath had waited until father and son were out of the house and had forced himself on Elsie. Like a good Boer wife of old, she had managed to get to her husband’s rifle and shoot the bastard. Unfortunately, with his last strength, he had wrestled the rifle from Elsie and sent her to the arms of Jesus.

If the half-breeds in the shacks across the railway line had wondered how Truman could have done all this with his head blown away, they had known to keep their thoughts to themselves.

After that first time, killing came easily to Rudi Barnard. He had a talent for it.

Barnard sat at a light on Voortrekker, the sweat flowing from his body. A tik whore hobbled toward him on her high heels. She lifted her skirt to reveal her scrawny thighs, as seductive as a cadaver. Normally, Barnard would have been out the car, ready to make her regret her mistake. But he felt a sudden urgency to get home.

He was going to print out those pictures on his cell phone, the pictures of Rikki and his buddy. He had somebody he wanted to show them to.

Burn lay in his sleeping wife’s arms. His son slept beside him. He couldn’t remember when last he’d felt this good. Tomorrow he would go down to the real estate agents and rent an apartment. Whatever it cost, they would be out of this house by tomorrow night.

Then he would spend time on the Internet, researching New Zealand. He vaguely recalled there were two islands, North and South. The South was meant to be wilder, more remote, less people. High mountains and unspoiled beaches.

It was with these images in mind that Burn fell asleep.

When he awoke, sun streamed into the room. He was alone. He heard water bubbling in the plunge pool beneath the bedroom window. The African shouts and jibes of the builders next door drifted across to him.

He yawned, rubbing a hand across his stubble.

He heard Susan’s voice, from inside the house. She sounded like she was in the kitchen. Probably talking to Matt while she fixed breakfast. The idea pleased him.

Then he heard another voice. A man’s voice. A voice he couldn’t quite place.

Reflex moved Burn from the bed. He pulled on shorts and a T-shirt. Before he knew it, he’d opened the closet and the Colt was in his hand.

Moving silently in his bare feet, he went toward the kitchen. Susan was saying something he couldn’t catch. It sounded like a question. The man responded. Now Burn recognized the voice.

The fat cop was in the kitchen with Susan.

Burn stepped into the kitchen.

Susan and the fat cop watched him. Susan looked scared. “Jack, I was about to call you.”

The cop leaned his massive gut against the kitchen counter. Susan was on the other side of the counter, keeping her distance.

“How can we help you, Inspector?”

Burn tried to stay cool, relaxed. He didn’t want to give anything away. Just aaw-abiding guy surprised to see a cop in his kitchen first thing in the morning.

“I just want you and your wife to look at a couple of photographs.” Barnard held a large yellow envelope at his side. He lay it down on the counter and slid out two glossy prints.

He handed them to Susan. She took them, one in each hand, and stared at them. Then she closed her eyes for a moment. When she opened them, she stared at Burn. Her face was bled of color.

Barnard had not taken his gaze off her. “Do you recognize either of these men?”

She shook her head and put the photographs down on the counter as if they were toxic.

Burn stepped closer and saw the faces of the men he had killed. Jesus, they had been found. So soon. They looked bloated, mottled. Decomposition already doing its work. He forced himself to stay calm, not allowing his face to tell anything.

He didn’t touch the photographs.

Barnard was looking at Burn. “How about you, sir?”

“Never seen them before.”

Then Burn was in behind Susan. She was trembling. He eased her onto a stool.

“Look, what’s this all about? My wife isn’t in any condition to be upset like this.”

Barnard slid the photographs back into the envelope. “You know that car that was outside? The red BMW?” Burn nodded. “I think these two men drove it here. To your street.”

“I’ve told you already. We know nothing about the car. Or these two men.”

Barnard was heaving his gut off the counter. “Well, I’m glad about that. They weren’t nice people.” He leered at Susan, yellow teeth like bone fragments in an open wound. “I’m sorry if I upset you, Mrs. Hill.”

Susan said nothing, stared at him blankly.

Burn’s hands tried to soothe his wife. Her shoulders were tight with tension. She shrugged him off. The cop noticed. Matt came into the kitchen. He looked at the fat cop, then gave him a wide berth and went to the fridge.

“This your boy?” The cop watched Matt help himself to juice.

Instinctively, Burn put himself between his son and the cop. “Is there anything else, Inspector?”

Barnard shook his massive head. “I’ll be in touch if there is.”