‘There’s the sign,’ I said. ‘Wild Things Organic Farm.’
Candice swerved onto the dust road. A mongoose dived into the bushes. We headed up towards the farmhouse that was on the foothills of the Swartberge. The veld looked green and healthy here. There was long grass and flowers growing between the bushes and trees. A line of sweet thorn and other trees ran down from a kloof, so there was probably a river bed. There were also those old gwarries and spekboom trees all over the veld.
‘Slow down a second,’ I said to Candy.
We were passing a grove of trees, with a strange fence around it.
‘Pomegranate trees,’ I said. ‘But the fruit is small and green.’
‘Looks like an electric fence,’ said Candy. ‘Attached to solar panels.’
She was right – there were two panels at the bottom of the field, catching the sun.
‘What’s that barking sound?’ she said.
‘Baboons,’ I said, hoping it wasn’t Dirk and Anna we were hearing.
But it was baboons. As we turned a bend in the road, we saw them running out of a greenhouse. They were galloping out, their arms full of stuff, like rude customers at a summer sale. One baboon was sitting on the glass roof eating a bunch of black grapes.
Ahead of us was the farmhouse.
‘There’s the ambulance,’ said Candice.
‘Your phone?’ I said.
We parked next to the ambulance. Candy handed me her phone and I called Hattie.
‘The ambulance is here,’ I said.
‘Goodness! Is everything all right?’
‘I don’t know yet. We’re going in now. Are the police coming?’
‘Finally got through to Kannemeyer. He’s leaving now. I’ll call him again to confirm that the ambulance is there. Maria, please do be careful.’ Candy and I got out and walked to a wheelchair that lay on its side at the foot of the stoep stairs. It looked like Anna’s wheelchair. But where was she?
The stoep was big and wide, with a corrugated-iron roof and wrought-iron broekie-lace around the edges. One of those really old farmhouses. It had been nicely whitewashed but there were some dusty cracks where the thick mud-brick walls needed repairs. A skinny woman in blue dungarees was standing on the stoep, looking in through the doorway.
‘Just leave him alone!’ she shouted.
Candice trotted past her, and I followed.
‘Careful,’ she said to us, ‘they’re mad.’
‘Stay away!’ called Anna, as we walked inside. ‘Or we’ll kill him.’
‘Anna,’ I said.
‘Dirk,’ said Candice, her hands on her hips.
Anna and Dirk looked up at us as if they were two dogs that we had caught up to no good. But they did not let go of their prey. John was lying face down, with Dirk sitting on his back, pinning him to the floor. Dirk’s eyes were wild, and his arms were still in a sling and a bandage, but he had a good grip on John with his legs. His hairy bum peeped out from the gap in the green hospital gown. Anna was sitting beside John on the floor, her gown neatly closed. The leg with the bandage was tucked under her and the plaster-cast leg stuck out straight in front. With one hand she was pressing a long metal pipe across the side of John’s neck and in her other was a big syringe jabbed just beneath his ear.
The metal looked like the stand that supported a hospital drip. Anna’s cheeks were pink and her hair was wild. Wild Things Organic Farm, I thought.
‘What are you doing, Anna?’ I asked.
‘Eep,’ said John.
Anna sniffed, and tightened her grip on the pole and the syringe.
‘It’s got air in it,’ said the woman at the door. ‘She said she’d inject it into his bloodstream and kill him if I came inside or phoned the police.’
Candice pulled up two chairs and we sat down. The woman stepped inside. She found a third chair and the three of us sat in a line, facing them in our front-row seats.
‘Are they escaped lunatics?’ the woman asked us.
Candice nodded. I shook my head.
‘We know he did it,’ said Anna. ‘He just won’t talk.’
‘Did what?’ said dungaree girl.
‘Killed Tienie,’ said Anna.
‘Slept with my wife,’ said Dirk at the same time.
‘What’s going on, John?’ said Dungarees.
‘Elp,’ John squeaked.
‘These three people were in love with the same woman,’ said Candice. ‘Martine. She was murdered. The two of them are blaming John.’
‘Lawrence saw your car that day,’ said Dirk. ‘That’s why you killed him.’
‘Martine?’ said Dungarees. ‘That woman in the photos? You were still seeing her?’
John wheezed.
‘I found photos of this woman,’ she told the two of us in the front row, ‘that he kept in a book by his bed. After we’d been together for a year!’ She turned back to John. ‘You promised me you’d never see her again.’
John’s tongue was sticking out between his lips.
‘Did you see her again, John?’ asked Dungarees.
John looked like he was trying to shake his head, but he was not in the right position for it.
‘Anna,’ I said, ‘how is he going to talk if you keep squashing his neck like that?’
Anna released her grip on the pole, but kept the syringe in place. John sucked some air in.
‘Help,’ he said.
Dungarees folded her arms.
‘Did you?’
‘I did nothing wrong,’ said John.
‘You called out her name, John. At just the wrong time. I pretended I didn’t notice. Martine, you said, when you should have been calling Didi. My name. Didi.’
‘Did you visit Martine?’ I asked.
John sniffled. Anna pressed the pipe down again, and he made a noise like a choking chicken. She released the pressure.
‘Please don’t kill me,’ he said.
‘The truth, John,’ said Didi Dungarees.
‘I did go see her. Not because I loved her. But because of the fracking.’
‘I knew it!’ said Dirk.
He bounced his weight on John’s back and I thought I heard something crack.
‘No!’ John said. ‘Not that. Hydraulic fracking. The mining companies are doing it to look for gas. They are buying up farms and I think Marius is working for them. For Shaft. He wanted to buy your land, and I was telling Martine that she mustn’t sell. Fracking will destroy the Klein Karoo.’
‘Ja, it’s very bad, fracking,’ I said. ‘You’ll see Jessie’s article in tomorrow’s Gazette.’
‘So you still love her,’ said Didi.
‘No. I love you, Didi. She was in my past. Help me here.’
‘Did you ever take her pomegranate juice?’ I asked.
‘No,’ he said. ‘No.’
‘Do you have pomegranate juice?’ I asked Didi.
‘It’s not the season,’ said Didi. ‘They ripen in March.’
‘Nothing frozen?’ I asked.
She shook her head.
‘What about in that greenhouse, where you make things ripe early?’
Didi looked at John.
‘You have got a pomegranate tree in there, John, haven’t you? Are they ripe?’
‘No,’ said John. ‘Green. Please. Let me up, I can’t breathe.’
‘That Mr Marius,’ said Dirk, shifting his weight to turn to Anna. ‘Do you think he did it because Martine wouldn’t sell?’
John moaned under Dirk’s movements.
‘Dirk,’ I said, ‘you and Anna need to be in hospital getting better. The funeral is tomorrow.’
‘I don’t trust that Mr Marius,’ said John. ‘If he’s working with Shaft . . . And he wanted that land for fracking . . . What would he do to a woman like Martine who stood in his way?’
Anna loosened her grip on the pole and took the syringe needle out of John’s neck. She was gazing into a corner of the room. She said something under her breath that was hard to catch. But Dirk and John heard her, and they both nodded. I knew what it was because I’d heard her say it before: ‘I’ll kill him.’
Dirk climbed off John, and sat down in an armchair. Anna pushed the pole aside and poked the syringe under a chair cushion. She used her arms to pull herself a little away from John, and stretched the leg under her alongside her plaster cast. John turned himself onto his back and stroked his ribs.
‘That blerrie fracking donder,’ said Dirk.
‘We’ll get him,’ said John.
John looked at Anna and then Anna looked at Dirk. These were very different looks from the earlier ones of hatred and fear. They were like naughty children now, hatching a secret plan.
There was the sound of a car racing along the dirt road towards us.
‘It’s the police,’ I said.
‘How about some tea?’ said Didi, getting up.
The show was over. I went to help her in the kitchen.
Then they were at the door. Kannemeyer and Piet. Kannemeyer cleared his throat. Candice stood up, and gave him a sunshine smile. One of those smiles that showed off her long legs and pearly toenails.
‘Well, hello, big guy,’ she said.
She wasn’t talking to Piet.