‘Yes,’ said Kipsel, savouring the beauty of it, ‘and I won’t be surprised if the Regime starts threatening anyone who tells these stories of the missing Bubé’s missing millions. People will get into trouble for telling stories.’
‘The chances are,’ said Blanchaille, ‘that Bubé will be completely cleared, his name will be incised on all the war monuments and the attacks upon him cited as further evidence of the Total Onslaught against our country. The missing presidential millions have their uses.’
Kipsel nodded emphatically. ‘What would we do without them?’
They sat by the roadside and gazed down at the lake far below. A tiny white steamer moved in a wide arc across the still blue water, it followed a great circle, creeping round like the second hand of a watch. Running down the sides of the lake the vineyards seen from this height stretched out with a green and metalled regularity.
After some while I heard Kipsel ask: ‘Blanchie, what were you drawing in the sand when you were talking to Bubé?’
In reply, Blanchaille drew in the dust the letters ASK 3. ‘When I was in London, before Van Vuuren was killed, we met Father Lynch. He had been following us. Don’t ask me how. We talked about death. His and ours and Ferreira’s. Having explained to us why the price of shares fell after Tony’s murder we asked if he knew who’d killed him. He said he didn’t. But he said something interesting. What if the letters scrawled on the wall did not stand for the Afrika Straf Kaffir Brigade, or the Azanian Strike Kommando No. 3? What if those letters had not been written by his killers, or even by someone wanting everyone to think they’d been written by his killers? What if they’d been written by Ferreira himself? I remember his words, “If you can read the writing on the wall you may be close to the killer.” Back there, when we saw the police with Bubé, something suddenly occurred to me. Look at the letters again — ASK 3. Now imagine someone writing them in a hurry, someone in a state of shock, in pain, someone dying. Maybe he would write clearly. Look at the number 3 — and remember that the people who saw it said they “thought” it looked like a 3. But say it wasn’t. Say the dying man had been trying to write not 3 but B.’
‘All right, say they were,’ said Kipsel. ‘All it does is to make the message even more mysterious. You can’t make sense of B. At least ASK 3 can be made to fit the initials of two known organisations both of which were capable of murdering a Government official who had discovered something nasty about them.’
‘Exactly,’ said Blanchaille triumphantly. ‘Those letters can be made to fit. Your words, Ronnie! And they were made to fit. They made possible a theory to explain Ferreira’s death. So we grabbed it. But we were being too clever by half. We were forgetting the first rule in African politics, the principle which dominates the way we are.’
‘Which is?’ Kipsel asked, amused.
‘That what begins as tragedy turns into a farce at a blink. That in all Government activities you must suspect a cock-up. We forgot that rule. Why should the letters on the wall stand for anything? Why shouldn’t they mean exactly what they say?’
Kipsel jumped up and began to turn around in excited circles banging his foot on the ground as if to try and anchor himself, as if he might spin too fast and fly off the mountain. ‘Blanchie! Of course!’
Blanchaille leaned forward and completed the message in the sand. ASK BUBÉ, the message read.
Kipsel stopped spinning and sat down. The little steamer now circled the lake like a racing car. He closed his eyes. ‘And so you did just that. You asked Bubé?’
‘Yes.’
‘Well, don’t hang on to it — tell me, who killed Ferreira?’
‘I wish I could make this something you’d like. Something you could respect. I apologise in advance for what I have to say. Entirely typical. In a way I prefer the earlier theory of the political organisations. It’s more elegant, more serious. And it makes the killing seem more important. Something to look up to. Hell, we need something to look up to.’
‘Blanchie, please!’
‘His killer was a small-time English thug named Tony “the Pug” Sidelsky, from Limehouse.’
‘You’re pulling my leg. From Limehouse, England?’
‘I’m perfectly serious.’
‘Then why are you smiling?’
‘I can’t help it. According to Bubé, Sidelsky drove to Ferreira’s house on the appointed night knowing what he had to do. It was supposed to be professional, clean and quick. But it wasn’t. Sidelsky, it seems, was none too bright. For a start he behaved as if he were going to knock off an old-age pensioner in Clapham. He didn’t seem to realise that in South Africa houses are barred, wired, and fortified against night attack, that some of them even have searchlights. Now Ferreira didn’t have all that security. He didn’t even have a dog, which was most unusual and lucky for Sidelsky. But Ferreira was no idiot and naturally he was armed. Sidelsky found himself unable to enter the house without breaking a window. Ferreira was waiting for him. I don’t know what Sidelsky expected. Perhaps he expected Tony to put up his hands and get shot. Instead he got hit himself a couple of times before he got Ferreira.’
Kipsel turned on him a look of intense suffering. ‘But you still haven’t told me — why get an Englishman to kill him?’
‘It’s really not so surprising,’ Blanchaille said. ‘Not when you think about it. English killers have been used for one job or another for many years in South Africa. It’s almost traditional. Do you remember the shooting of the racehorse, Golden Reef? That was done by that bookie fellow from Ealing. Who was it again? Sandy Nobbs. He had been secretly commissioned, for reasons I don’t remember, by the manager of the Tote. They caught him, remember? And then there was the killing of the fairy mining-magnate, what was his name?’
‘Cecil Finkelstein.’
‘That’s right, Finkelstein. He was gunned down one night when he opened his front door. You remember the story?’
‘Yes, I remember the story,’ Kipsel said. There was immense weariness in his voice. And contempt. ‘Years later some English guy in Parkhurst prison confessed to Finkelstein’s murder after he got religion. Of course I remember the old story. It’s the story of imported labour. It’s the story of our country. Lack of muscle power in some areas, lack of skilled technicians in others. So you import them, engineers, opera singers, assassins. It’s always the same — the butler did it, or the cook, or the gardener. Anybody but ourselves.’
‘I said you wouldn’t like it, Ronnie. I’m just telling you what I know.’
‘Who ordered the killing? Bubé?’
‘He swears not. He says that this was a Bureaucratic decision, as he puts it. He says the order came directly from Terblanche.’
‘— who may not exist.’
‘Correct. Bubé’s story is strengthened by the fact that men from the Bureau were the first to arrive on the scene after the murder. I believe they probably expected to find Ferreira neatly dispatched and the place turned over and robbed so as to make it look like some sort of violent burglary. But what did they find instead? They find Ferreira dead, or damn nearly, and Sidelsky dying on the carpet. You can imagine the problem this gave them. I believe, at least Bubé says, they came close to panicking. You see it meant they first had to dispose of the killer and then return to the house and pretend to discover the body of the dead accountant. It was a very hairy business. Bubé’s story had the ring of truth to it. You should have heard the way he sounded off about the Bureau. He says that the Bureau chose Sidelsky because he was broke and unemployed in England and they got a real bonehead for their pains. False economy. He says the money they saved on the contract then got eaten up by the burial costs of the dead Sidelsky and they couldn’t even claim on his return ticket because they’d booked him Apex, or something like that. Cost-cutting costs money, Bubé told me, showing a flash of the old financial brain that made him the big wheel he was. He was absolutely scathing!’