The Fallen (31 page)

‘And the Internet?’

‘He was job-searching. Apparently he’s unemployed.’

‘Oh.’

It all seemed plausible enough.

‘The landlord thought I’d come to ask about his neighbour.’

‘Msamaya’s?’

‘Yes. It seems the man who lives next door to him has had a couple of run-ins with the local police. He’s suspected of dealing in heroin.’

‘Ah.’

‘Seems the neighbour is two months behind with his rent. He’s been ducking and diving, and the landlord has a feeling that he’s going to end up doing a runner. I said I’d go back later this week. I’ll see if I can have a chat to Msamaya. Ask him about his neighbour and about the contents of that postcard.’

‘Thanks.’

‘I’ll come and visit you later this afternoon, sir. Oh, and when you’re out of
ICU
, I’ll bring you some flowers, like a devoted family member would do.’

This time, David’s chest was too sore for him to think about laughing. Besides, Moloi’s mention of the word ‘family’ brought the situation with Naisha to mind, in all its painful clarity.

He groaned.

‘I’d better go. Take care.’

David’s eyes closed again as Captain Moloi walked out of the
ICU
.

At nine-thirty a.m. Richards Bay General Hospital was busy. Day-shift nurses in fresh-looking uniforms bustled down the corridors between the wards. The distinctive aroma of well-done toast still hung faintly in the air, signalling to Jade that the patients’ breakfast had been far better than hers.

In fact, Jade hadn’t eaten anything at all and, although she was tempted to buy a coffee from the cafeteria she could see across the road from the lobby, she didn’t want to risk missing Dr Abrahams.

If, indeed, he was still planning to visit the hospital that morning.

She stood in the corner next to a row of chairs that were all occupied. An elderly man in a wheelchair was parked at the end of the row. Jade waited as minute after minute ticked by, trying to suppress the urge to pace back and forth as David did in times of stress.

She’d decided she was going to drive back to Johannesburg as soon as she’d spoken to Dr Abrahams. The new rental car that she’d picked up earlier that morning was packed with holiday gear—David’s as well as her own.

She checked the time on her phone again.

Nine thirty-five.

She could go now, if she wanted to. She didn’t have to wait for Dr Abrahams. She could simply walk away with her questions unanswered. It wouldn’t be the end of the world. She told herself she’d managed to live quite contentedly for nearly thirty-five years without the answers.

Admittedly though, until recently she hadn’t even known that there were questions to ask.

Perhaps that was the problem. Once she had known there were questions, she was compelled to find out the answers.

Why was there no Elise de Jong buried in the Richards Bay cemetery?

Why had Mrs Koekemoer said it was a secret?

Right now, establishing the facts seemed like a good way to occupy her mind. To distract her from the memory of what had
happened the night before, from the sound of Bradley’s choking gasps and the sight of splintered bone protruding from ragged stumps.

Her arms would have looked like that if she hadn’t followed her instincts and thrown the phone away. Her chest would have had a crater-sized hole in it, and her face would have been torn and shredded from the effects of the powerful explosives.

Jade rubbed her forehead to physically clear the thoughts.

Then she allowed herself to smile at the memory of the paramedic’s utter confusion when he’d arrived at his latest call-out to find her there, yet again.

‘Are you stalking me or something?’ he’d asked. ‘We can’t carry on meeting like this. People will talk!’

Jade gave another private smile as she remembered how she’d waited for a moment when Pillay and his assistant were preoccupied with the forensics crew at the other side of the station. Then she had unzipped the gym bag that Bradley had handed to Kobus just before shooting him, and quietly passed each of the filthy, oil-streaked prisoners a generous wedge of the tightly packed money inside. It was the only way they were going to get any payment, she reasoned. Once the bag reached police headquarters, who knew what would happen to the cash? In any case, they deserved a sizeable bonus as compensation for their imprisonment, their near-starvation and their consequent health problems.

The news of the oil spill had travelled fast. It had been the top story on the radio earlier that morning. Clean-up crews were working hard to contain the oil. Thanks to the fact that the tanker had gone down when it was still in the harbour waters, it appeared that only that area had been contaminated. To Jade’s relief, the spill had been successfully contained, and the St Lucia estuary and the surrounding coastline would remain an unspoilt paradise.

The elderly man in the wheelchair next to her began to cough, bringing her attention back to the present. It was a soft, dry cough, but once he had started, he couldn’t seem to stop. Hands gripping the arms of his chair, shoulders shuddering, the man hunched over as the coughing overpowered him.

Jade turned away and walked out of the hospital’s side entrance and into the cafeteria. The smell of toast was replaced by the aroma of coffee, and once again she was sorely tempted to order herself a mug.

Later, she decided.

She took a small plastic bottle of still water off the shelf, paid for it, and returned to the hospital lobby.

The elderly man was sitting upright again, taking in small, careful sips of air, as if frightened that breathing too deeply would provoke another round of coughing.

‘Here you are,’ Jade said, loosening the cap and placing the bottle gently in his lap.

‘Thank you,’ he whispered. ‘My throat …’

Jade nodded. ‘The air is very dry in here.’

He seemed to be breathing more easily now. And if he started coughing again, at least he would have some water to soothe his throat.

Jade turned her attention back to the lobby and saw Dr Abrahams. Or, rather, the back of him. That distinctive silver head of hair atop another dark suit. He was heading down the main corridor, walking briskly.

Today he was alone.

Stepping away from the elderly man in the wheelchair, Jade ran after the doctor, calling his name.

Dr Abrahams didn’t look pleased to see her again, although Jade couldn’t help wondering if he ever looked pleased about anything.

‘You said I should wait for you in the lobby this morning and that you’d tell me about my mother.’

The doctor nodded, pursing his lips as if considering what he should say next.

A nurse holding a clipboard hurried past them, followed by an orderly who was walking more slowly and pushing a large steel trolley piled high with crumb-encrusted plates and dirty cups. The crockery rattled as the trolley bumped over a gap in the linoleum.

Jade wondered if Dr Abrahams would prefer to go somewhere quieter or more private, but he didn’t move. After a short pause, he began to talk.

‘Your mother was admitted to this hospital after a near-drowning incident when she was pregnant, and again when you were born. Then, a few months later, she came back for the third and last time.’

Jade nodded. Mrs Koekemoer had told her this, too.

‘So the third time was after she developed cerebral malaria?’ she asked.

With her question, Dr Abrahams’s frown deepened. Behind him, another orderly with a loaded trolley approached and Jade stepped closer to the wall to allow him to pass.

‘Your mother never had malaria,’ he said. ‘We tested her for it, of course, when she was admitted. But malaria was not the cause of the kidney failure that led to her death.’

‘But …’ Jade felt her mouth fall open and she made a conscious effort to close it.

But my father told me she died of cerebral malaria.

Or had he?

Had he ever actually said so in so many words? Or had he simply allowed Jade to assume that that was how she had died?

Had he simply presented her with a series of facts that led towards an obvious conclusion that she, as an investigator’s daughter, would be drawn to make?

Old, half-remembered fragments of conversation spun through her mind. Her father answering her questions, or so she had thought at the time. Now, she realised, he had not been answering them directly at all.

‘How did my mother die?’

‘Kidney failure.’

‘What caused that?’

‘Cerebral malaria causes it sometimes.’

‘How did my mother get malaria?’

‘There was a very wet summer the year you were born. A lot of mosquitoes around. They can carry it. Richards Bay is a high-risk area for malaria in summer.’

Another realisation hit Jade like a punch in the gut.

In all likelihood, there had been a wet summer the year she was born. But now she remembered that her mother’s death
certificate had been dated early August. Right at the end of a cool, dry South African winter, a time when the risk of malaria would have been at its lowest.

So her father had gently guided her into believing a blatant untruth.

Jade found this almost impossible to accept. Commissioner De Jong had been a man of great integrity; a follower of the truth at all costs, no matter how long the hunt or how hard the result.

There was only one reason he could possibly have kept the real facts from his only child—he thought they would be too difficult for her to accept.

Jade swallowed hard. She met Dr Abrahams’s enquiring gaze and looked directly into his hawk-like eyes.

‘So what did cause my mother’s kidneys to fail?’ she asked.

The doctor moved aside, rather impatiently, as two more orderlies pushing wide linen carts approached.

‘Perhaps we should talk somewhere else,’ he said. ‘Come this way.’

The doctor strode off down the corridor and Jade followed, staying behind him, just like his business-suited retinue had done the day before. She guessed that was what Dr Abrahams was used to—what he expected.

Their zigzagging walk through increasingly quieter and newer-looking corridors took a couple of minutes. Then Dr Abrahams stopped in front of a door marked ‘Supervisor.’ Taking a bunch of keys from his pocket, he quickly selected the right one and opened the door.

The small office was home to a desk, two chairs, piles of cardboard boxes, which Jade assumed from their labels contained spare uniforms and stationery, and shelves upon shelves of ancient-looking files.

There was a window at the back of the office, shaded by off-white blinds. Dr Abrahams walked over to the window and drew them up. Morning sun streamed in, dust motes dancing in its rays. Outside, Jade saw green lawns stretching away to a high, face-brick wall.

They sat down, the doctor on one side of the desk and Jade on the other.

Dr Abrahams cleared his throat.

‘Your mother was very ill by the time the ambulance brought her here,’ he said. ‘When she arrived, she was suffering from
hyperpyrexia. That’s a dangerously high fever. Hers was one hundred and seven degrees Fahrenheit, and she was semiconscious. She was also vomiting—and passing—blood. She had a number of other even more unpleasant symptoms. But by then there was very little we could do for her. She was too far gone—she was dying.’

‘I see.’ Her words came out in a hoarse croak.

‘We placed her in isolation immediately and ran a battery of tests. We attempted to get her fever down as a matter of urgency, but it spiked even higher—to one hundred and nine, which is an extremely dangerous level. The human body simply cannot cope with sustained high temperatures like that. The brain swells, causing long-term damage and vital organs to fail. The doctor on duty packed her in ice, but by then she was comatose.’

‘Was my father there?’

Abrahams shook his head. ‘He was at a police conference in Johannesburg. He returned as soon as we notified him that his wife was ill.’

‘Did you … did you ever find out what it was?’

Abrahams shook his head.

‘We thought at first that it might have been a type of viral haemorrhagic fever similar to Ebola—as you may know, the very first recorded case of the Ebola virus occurred in Zaire at around the same time. There are a number of different strains in existence, all contagious and some up to ninety per cent fatal. They make the news every so often. Most recently, you may have read the news reports about the tourist who died in a hospital in Johannesburg after falling ill in Luanda. A few days later, the paramedic who was with her during the flight became fatally ill, and a nurse at the hospital where she was treated also died. They called that one the Lujo virus, because its only occurrences were in Luanda and Johannesburg. No other cases have been reported before or since.’

‘Was my mother’s illness never diagnosed, then?’

‘No. We still have no idea whether it was an Ebola-type virus or something completely different. Although, according to your father, Elise hadn’t travelled outside of South Africa after you
were conceived, or, as far as he knew, come into contact with anybody who had visited West Africa. Of course, he had been away from home.…’ Abrahams inclined his head. ‘It was unlikely that she’d gone anywhere, he said, because of course she had a small baby. Although when he arrived at the hospital, he was extremely distraught, because you had disappeared.’