Glittering Gallows

Chapter 19

135 C Chapter 19 he feminine figure covered from head to toe in a dark burqa stepped on the accelerator of the damaged Nissan Qashqai. Apart from the figure’s hands, the garment covered the whole body. The wearer could be let through a Taliban roadblock as a Shari a-adhering woman. But close scrutiny of the hands would reveal a facetious indulgence. The hands were light in complexion, venous, hairy and thick. The knuckles were dark patches, the knuckles of a man who did press-ups on sand, broken stones and hard surfaces. The smell of burnt rubber pervaded the interior, but air gushing into the vehicle dissipated it in no time. The smell of tyres didn’t worry the motorist. His worry was that the damage to the front of the vehicle might’ve extended to the radiator. He feared the car would overheat and stall. If the vehicle stalled there would be a massacre if people tried to stop him. The rear view mirrors told him no one was on his trail, at least not as yet. Three turns later, he slowed down to avoid attracting the undue attention of traffic police officers, and resorted to sanitary lanes that took him to the western fringes of the city. Then it began to rain, a censorious downpour that soaked him and reduced his visibility drastically. A hidden merit came with the storm. He saw for only a few metres ahead. The same applied to everybody in the downpour, which increased his chances of sneaking away undetected. The Nissan Qashqai attracted curious attention and sympathy from fellow motorists in slow-moving on-coming traffic. The roof was curved in and there were peripheral, stubborn shards where the windscreen had been, and rain lashed an Islamic woman on the wheel. If the authorities stopped him for whatever reason, he was going to shoot. A Colt M1911, the longest serving pistol of the USA, rested within arm’s reach on the front passenger seat. Tucked in his belt was T 136 a semi-automatic Smith & Wesson .45 Model CS45. Though he felt like an army, he wasn’t going to risk it just because he was armed. It darkened and rained in slates. Nobody paid particular attention to the car when he switched on the headlights, now cross-eyed, and drove westwards along Church St. There was a trifle irony in his choice of the road. He, a hardened assassin, was driving a getaway car, doubtlessly smeared with the blood and flesh of a victim, along an aptly named road that reminded the city’s citizens of the cluster of pioneering churches in Pretoria–for their salvation. The city’s founding fathers were passive evangelists who wanted the people to shun sin, he thought. The impact had been violent. He saw Lerato springing into the air, smashing into the windscreen, and heard her body forging a furrow in the roof of the car. No doubt he had killed her. Had he shot her through the head or chest as she left the cathedral, it would’ve been ruled a downright assassination. Fatal hit-and-run accidents were a common occurrence in South Africa. His principal would be happy. The western fringes of Pretoria were the closest to the city’s CBD. Avoiding a freeway, he turned into a dirt road snaking through rolling commercial farmland. The road was muddy, wheel-mottled and almost impassable in many water-logged places. But he drove along, the car leaving tracks in its wake. The farmland gave way to bush and then hills and a forest. When he reached warning signs informing him that he was about to drive past the National Nuclear Research Station and stopping was prohibited, he turned the Nissan Qashqai into a northern primitive track and drove towards the small settlement of Hennopsrivier. The storm thinned, fizzled and died. When he was about ten kilometres shy of the settlement, he steered the car onto an overgrown track that took him to a secluded bank on the Hennops River. He was glad that from the moment he left the freeway and drove through farmlands until now, he had encountered no one, neither pedestrian nor motorist. César Miguel tactfully wriggled out of the burqa. Beneath the garb were a hugging muscle-mania grey T-shirt and a pair of black 137 leather trousers. Using his hands, he rearranged his wet...