The Monster's Daughter Read online

  “I know.” Mathebe stopped in front of the wire gate designating the Terblanche property. Alet got out, unhooked the rusted pin and swung the gate open. There was no point getting back into the van, it was hotter than hell either way, so she walked alongside as it crawled over rocky terrain to the next gate.

  Boet Terblanche met them up the road. He leaned against his white pickup, his broad shoulders hunched, his tanned arms crossed over his chest, brown hair falling in his face, long and unkempt. His olive-green sweatshirt was full of holes, the sleeves pushed past his forearms, grass stains on the knees of his cargo pants. Jakob, his coloured foreman, sat on the back of the truck, his blue coveralls’ arms tied around his waist, his head resting in his hands, barely looking up as the police van approached.

  Boet nodded in their direction and got into his pickup. Alet and Mathebe followed, slowly traversing the rocky mountainside. Jakob jumped off the truck to open and close gates, his sinewy body moving fast for his fifty-odd years. Abandoned ruins were scattered along the path, their roofless white walls patched with brown stains, broken windows like unblinking eyes staring out over the valley. Alet wondered how people lived all the way up there back in the day, without running water or electricity. Even the squatter camps had satellite dishes nowadays.

  Boet’s truck came to a stop where the road dead-ended at the bottom of a rise, cordoned off by an ancient wire fence. He got out and pointed to a small ruin in the middle of an open patch of dry grass and rocks, forlorn trees perched on the edge.

  “On the other side.”

  Jakob huddled quietly on the back of the pickup. Alet wondered why he wasn’t making a nuisance of himself. The foreman was a boisterous character, full of talk about the way he saw things and the gossip of the valley. Alet had had to lock him up for public intoxication a few weeks before, but he was generally a good bloke, always ready with a smile and a story.

  Alet took the camera out of the glove box and followed Mathebe, climbing over heaps of discarded furniture, rusted oil drums and inner tubes—junk left behind by a string of unwelcome transients. Strange smells intertwined, acrid and sweet, growing stronger as they walked past the house, burned rubber and something she couldn’t put her finger on right away, something comforting, familiar even. It was the smell of lazy Sunday afternoons, trying to forget your troubles, beer in hand, men talking about rugby and politics and children chasing each other around the yard, as steaks and boerewors grilled on an open fire.

  Alet’s stomach turned when she saw it. The body lay curled in a fetal position, its hands balled into fists in front of its face, like a boxer readying for a fight. It had been burned, the flesh so charred that it looked as if the slightest breeze might lift the ashes into the air and destroy its integrity. Blackened skin split across the corpse’s abdomen exposing charred bowels. A brown flaky substance extruded from the skull. Its jaw hung open, mouth agape in a silent scream. Wire hoops, clearly the remnants of a tire, encircled its shoulders.

  “A necklacing?” Alet felt jittery. She had read the case files. Members of the ANC had used necklacings in the mid-eighties to keep dissidents in check. The practice disappeared after the party won South Africa’s first multiracial election in ’94. But after years of escalating violent crime, necklacings were resurfacing. An old black woman had been attacked in her home in the Eastern Cape the previous year. Two men had raped her and killed her son, then fled with her valuables. During their crime spree, men in the community caught them and dragged them to the town square, where people took turns beating the offenders with planks and throwing rocks at them. Tires filled with petrol were forced around their shoulders and set on fire. The whole community watched them die. And nobody saw a thing.

  “It appears that way.” Mathebe laid a measuring stick next to the body. He stepped aside.

  Alet focused the camera. “A vigilante killing?” She snapped a photograph of the body.

  “Not here.” Mathebe was right. Necklacings happened in high-crime areas, not in towns like Unie.

  “Nobody’s been reported missing in Unie in the past month.” Alet changed the angle of the shot. “Maybe there were some violent offenders that walked in from George or Oudtshoorn.”

  Mathebe made a sweeping motion with his upturned palm. “But look where we are.”

  Alet’s eyes trailed the movement of his hand over the valley below. God’s country, she thought wryly. She turned back to Mathebe. “So?”

  “Necklacing is a warning not to step out of line, Constable. It happens where everyone can see.”

  “It would have been a hell of a job to get a crowd up here.”

  Mathebe went down on his haunches next to the body. “Nobody here to see,” he muttered.

  “So, the killer burned the body to get rid of evidence? Made it look like a necklacing to throw us off?”

  “He perhaps saw the old tires over there and said, yes, this is how I become invisible.”

  “Well, that’s a bitch.”

  Mathebe closed his eyes.

  “I mean, the evidence is burned to a crisp.”

  “We will do the best we can.”

  Mathebe’s stoicism frustrated Alet. He followed procedure like a robot, even at moments like this. She, meanwhile, wanted to punch something, feeling sick, angry, and yet curiously excited, something long dormant in her stirring. “I’ll go see if Oosthuizen got lost,” she said.

  Dr. Oosthuizen was the only local doctor. He ran a clinic near the location, treating minor injuries and venereal diseases, doing double duty as mortician. The white farmers only went to him if it was an emergency, preferring the two-hour drive to Oudtshoorn or George.

  “Radio April,” Mathebe called after her. “We need help searching the area.”

  Boet Terblanche sat in his truck, his arm resting on the open window, staring off into the distance. He barely took notice of Alet as she walked over.

  “Hey, Boet.”

  “Alet.” His green eyes were wary, tired. He smelled of earth and animal.

  “What time did you find it?”

  Boet cleared his throat, his voice hoarse when he spoke. “Jakob saw smoke during morning meeting. Six, six-thirty maybe.”

  Alet looked up at the back of the pickup. “Is that right, Jakob?”

  “Ja, Mies.” Jakob peered at her between the guardrails. The flesh around his left eye was bruised and swollen.

  “And you told Baas Boet right away?”

  “Ja, Mies. The baas, he always says to be on the lookout.”

  “The river’s low,” Boet interjected. “No way to get water up here if a fire gets out of hand.” He ran his thick fingers through his hair. His fingernails were dirty.

  “Did you touch anything?”

  “No.” Boet watched Mathebe walk into the ruin. “We drove to the house, to call you people, but they said nobody could come out right away. So we waited.”

  “I’ll need a full statement. From Jana too.”

  “I told you everything,” Boet snapped.

  Alet touched his forearm. “Are you okay?”

  “I have a farm to run, Alet.” Boet looked away. “I don’t have time for this. And Jana is almost due …”

  Alet withdrew her hand. “I need to talk to Jakob, then.”

  Boet sighed and crossed his arms.

  “Jakob?”

  “Ja, Mies?”

  “Come with me.”

  The foreman climbed down from the back of the pickup and followed Alet to the police van.

  “What happened this morning, Jakob?”

  Jakob looked at Alet as if she was stupid, the slits of his brown eyes almost closed, a frown deepening the grooves in his leathery face. “We found the body, Mies.”

  Alet smiled. Patience, she reminded herself. “Ja, I know, Jakob. Tell me what you saw when you got here.”

  “It looks like a man or a flat-chested woman to me, Mies. I can’t say.” Jakob’s gaze drifted back to where the body lay, his eyes glassy. “All curled up like
. Mies, you know, like a baby. Like it doesn’t want to show its privates or something. You then saw it with your own eyes.”

  Alet nodded. “Did anything else happen?”

  “We waited for you, Mies.”

  “And that shiner? Looks fresh to me.”

  The foreman fixed his gaze on the ground. “Ag, it’s nothing, Mies.”

  “Jakob, I’m not in the mood for this. Tell me what happened. If not, I’ll take you to the station and ask there. Baas Boet won’t like it. And you’ll lose the day’s wages.”

  “Ai no, Mies. That’s not right.”

  “Then tell me.”

  Jakob glanced over at Boet before he spoke, his voice low. “I checked the smoke, Mies. I’m old but my eyes are sharp-sharp. None of the others saw, just me.” Jakob’s tongue dashed between his missing front teeth. “So I tell the baas and he says it’s skollies and that we have to go chase them before they steal cattle. But when we get here, there’s nobody. Just that black thing, still smoking. I went over to it and Baas Boet, he looks sick, but I couldn’t take my eyes off it. It looked like the wings of a million black butterflies. Like if I touch it, they will all chaile and the thing will vanish.”

  “Okay. So you found the body. Then what?”

  “I’m sorry for it, Mies. Ag shame, I think. Ag shame.” Jakob folded his hands.

  “You still haven’t told me why your eye looks like that, Jakob.”

  “Mies, I’m coming to that, see? I reached to touch it. I didn’t mean anything or nothing, honest. But Baas Boet, he goes ape, yelling at me.” He shook his head. “So I go back to the truck, but the baas he says no, I gotta stay.”

  Jakob reached for the half-smoked cigarette behind his ear, rolled it nervously between his thumb and forefinger. “Mies, right then I get scared. I don’t want to be alone with that thing, hey. And the baas he says we cannot just leave it there. But me stay alone and that black thing checking me? No ways! It’s bad, Mies. I feel it. The baas, he feels it too, that’s why he wants to get away. So I say, “No, Baas, man, not that. I go with you.” Then the baas hits me, see? Square in the eye. Baas Boet, he’s a big man. It was like my eyeball went poosh! Like there’s too many things trying to be in my head and there’s no room no more.”

  “Baas Boet hit you?” Alet frowned. This didn’t meld with the Boet Terblanche she knew.

  “Ja, Mies, like I said, but don’t tell him I told you. I don’t want no trouble.”

  “Has he done this before?”

  “No ways. Never did the baas hit anybody that I know of, Mies. Maybe when he was a small boytjie did he rumble with the other laaities. Boys do that you know, but not when he got to be boss. He’s okay. Just had a fright. I don’t want no trouble with him.” Jakob pulled a book of matches from his pocket and lit his cigarette with a shaky hand.

  “And then?”

  Jakob hesitated, as if he had forgotten. “My eye hurt like mampoer on a raw sore, Mies, but I run till I get on the truck. I say, I’m sorry, Baas. I’m sorry, my Basie. I just say it over and over again until the baas starts driving and then I feel better. ’Cause I’m away from that thing, see? That thing lying there, bad, dead, like a hole in the world.” Jakob looked back at the body again, his eyes wet.

  “And you waited at the bottom. You didn’t come back up here, right?”

  “Ja, Mies.”

  Jakob ran to the pickup as soon as Alet told him it was okay to go. He huddled in the back, clinging to the guardrails, shaken about by the truck backing up and turning around. He lifted a weathered palm to her as the pickup descended, no bigger than a child’s toy in the distance.

  1901

  Andrew

  Pritchard sprawled sideways over the train tracks, black lines of ants pulsating across his pale face like throbbing veins. His khaki helmet lay next to him, useless against the bullet hole in his forehead. Large curved tree branches, piled in as levers to dislodge the rails, stuck in the air like the ribs of an animal carcass.

  “Maundin is going to have a bleddie fit, ja,” Jooste, one of the joiners, shouted from down the line, his English crippled by a thick Dutch accent. He was a big brute with yellow hair, eyes that sat too close together, and a ruddy complexion. He kicked at one of the erect branches, trying to dislodge it. The sound rolled across the dry open veld.

  Andrew noticed the ghost of a smile on Jooste’s lips. He wondered again if they had been wise to trust the man. Jooste was too slick, too easily converted to their side, too eager to participate without a hint of guilt when he sabotaged his own people. But he knew the land and spoke the language, making him a valuable asset to the British forces. And they were desperate. After two years, they were still stuck in this Godforsaken country, the easy victory promised to them made elusive by the Boers’ guerrilla tactics.

  Andrew dusted the red dirt from his knees. “I don’t envy you, then, Mr. Jooste.”

  “What do you say, hey?” Jooste walked closer to Andrew, dragging one of the tree branches, a snakelike trail waking the dirt behind him.

  “You have to go report to the lieutenant. Oudtshoorn needs to be notified that the tracks are out before the supply run.”

  “Why don’t you do it?” Jooste looked back at the damaged track, his distaste for the task at hand clear. Andrew felt a whisper of satisfaction at seeing his distress.

  “It’s an order, Mr. Jooste.”

  The corner of Jooste’s mouth lifted, exposing crooked teeth. “Sir.” He unzipped his pants. “After this, ja.” His eyes challenged Andrew as he started relieving himself.

  “You could do that behind a tree, Mr. Jooste.” Andrew looked away.

  “I don’t waste time, sir.”

  The disdain with which Jooste pronounced “Sir” boiled Andrew’s blood. He pretended to survey the veld. There was nothing but dry grass stirring on the plain in the biting morning breeze, but that didn’t mean that they weren’t being watched. Jooste finished his business and walked away without a word, starting the hour-long journey to camp with a languid stride. Andrew thought about following the joiner, but he didn’t want to leave Pritchard behind. Pritchard was seventeen, had been on African soil for barely a month. He hadn’t even had the time to dull his buttons and scabbard. Andrew squatted next to the body, hoping the tall grass would provide enough cover. He closed Pritchard’s eyelids, the flesh cold under his fingertips, and said a silent prayer. Pritchard had family in Wales, a mother and three sisters. To his shame, Andrew felt envious at the thought of their grief. There was no one waiting for him back home.

  Andrew’s joints were stiff from the cold by the time Jooste came back with more men, six of them in khaki uniforms, their faces red from the sun. There was a restlessness among them, a nervous buzz of excitement barely contained by rank or protocol.

  “Some action at last.” Jooste had a strange light in his eyes. “I didn’t join you people to patrol railway lines, ja?”

  “What do you mean, Mr. Jooste?”

  “We’re going to hit the Boers where it hurts, Corporal,” one of the privates chipped in, an Australian by the sound of him. He gestured toward Pritchard with bombastic bravado. “Those bastards will pay for this.”

  “Lieutenant Maundin gave the order?”

  “Scorched Earth, sir. All the way from Lord Kitchener himself. We’re going to the farms.”

  VERGELEGEN. The stern letters filled the breadth of the gatepost. A curving lane led to a small whitewashed farmhouse sheltered by black mountains. Andrew knocked on the door. Next to him, Lieutenant Maundin rocked on his heels, the day’s dust clinging to his red beard. Andrew braced himself, dreading the anticipated shock on the women’s faces, the subsequent abuse or begging, the inevitable pattern of their raids in the week since they had found Pritchard’s body. His thoughts of revenge had been crushed by the devastation they were leaving behind, their column tracing a black trail through the Dutch farms.

  Maundin banged on the door with his fist when there was no immediate answer. It was opened
, at last, by a small girl, no older than fourteen.

  “Who are you?” Maundin’s words radiated contempt.

  “Anna Richter.” She tucked a stray strand of fair blond hair behind her ear, terror flaring in her sky-blue eyes.

  “We are here in service of the Crown.” Maundin pushed past her into the house.

  Andrew followed, venturing an apologetic look to the girl. The front room of the house was simple, but clean. A family Bible lay next to an oil lamp on a large wooden table. The hide of some sort of small native buck covered the floor next to a rudimentary couch made from wood and woven leather thongs. A young boy with short blond hair peered around the doorway of a back room, then immediately ducked out of sight again.

  Maundin turned to Anna. “Where are your parents?”

  “My mother is baie sick,” Anna said in broken English. “She is by the other farm.”

  “And your father?”

  “He’s gone away.”

  “Is that right?” Maundin sighed, catching Andrew’s eye, sarcasm twisting his lips. “Your father is Christiaan Richter, a Boer commander, is he not?” He waved his hand dismissively. “Don’t bother denying it.”

  Anna’s bottom lip quivered.

  “We know you aid the Boers who kill our men.” Maundin spat each word out as if it was a piece of chewing tobacco. “Therefore, all property will be seized and destroyed under order of Her Majesty.” He took a dramatic pause, his pleasure in this piece of theater not lost on Andrew. “You have ten minutes.”

  Anna’s eyes wandered from Maundin to Andrew, silently pleading with him. Andrew felt embarrassed and looked away.

  “Ten minutes!” Maundin shouted over his shoulder as he strode out of the house. Anna stood dazed in the middle of the floor as if she couldn’t make sense of what just happened.

  “Please. Hurry,” Andrew whispered. “Take what you need and get out.” His words seemed to break her spell.

  “Hansie!” Anna’s voice broke as she ran to the back room.

  The boy left his hiding place. He was small, too young to ride out on commando with his pappa. Anna stroked his shoulders gently as she spoke. Andrew had trouble understanding their rapid exchange, recognizing only a few of the Dutch words. The boy nodded, tears and snot streaming down his face as he followed Anna into the bedroom. They returned, pushing a large wooden dowry chest into the front room. Anna disappeared into the kitchen while Hansie held on to the chest as if his life depended on it. The commotion in the farmyard brought a new wave of tears to his eyes. Anna cradled dried meats, fruit and a metal tin in her arms when she returned. She opened the dowry chest lid and made room for the provisions among bed linens and clothes.