Pale Horses by Jassy Mackenzie

Author:Jassy Mackenzie [Mackenzie, Jassy]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: RSA
ISBN: 9781415204689
Publisher: Umuzi, An imprint of Random House Struik (Pty) Ltd, South Africa.
Published: 2012-07-16T14:00:00+00:00

Half an hour later, Jade parked again, a few streets away from Zelda’s house, but this time on the opposite side of the suburb. This side was closer to the main streets of Cresta. There were one or two other vehicles still parked there. A couple of casually dressed student types were walking tiredly to their cars. Waitresses, Jade guessed, who’d just cashed up, the last stragglers in the bars having finally finished their drinks.

There was even a car guard sitting on the verge, wearing a battered-looking reflective vest, who got up when he saw her and waved her over to the side of the road.

As soon as she climbed out she could smell the smoke, and in the darkness the vivid glow of the conflagration was clearly visible through the border of trees.

Harris was standing next to the fire engine and literally wringing his hands. His face was ghostly. Only the ruddy glow of the flames gave it any colour.

‘How did this happen?’ he asked her. A pointless question, which she answered with one of her own.

‘Weren’t Randburg Guarding on duty?’

‘They had a guard stationed at the gate. He saw nothing until the fire started.’

Jade nodded resignedly. The property was large, inadequately secured, and there was no way one guard in one position could realistically provide anything except a placebo effect. The intruder, or intruders, could easily have climbed over the wall around the corner.

Smoke billowed out of blackened windows. The hissing of the high-pressure hoses was barely audible over the roaring of the flames. Even from as far away as the gate, the heat prickled Jade’s face.

‘They did a good job,’ she said, speaking almost to herself. Whatever secrets Zelda’s house had hidden were now lost in the smouldering rubble. If there had been notes concealed somewhere they were gone now.

‘Look, there was nothing you could have done to stop them,’ she told Harris.

‘I’ve let her down,’ he muttered. ‘I couldn’t keep her safe, and now her house is gone, too.’

‘Harris, you did all you could,’ she tried, but she could see that any attempt to console him would be futile. His grief insulated him from her words.

Other people had arrived at the scene. Residents from the surrounding properties stood in groups, watching the spectacle with concerned faces. Some wore dressing gowns, others had pulled on tracksuits. Men with rumpled hair and women with faces free of make-up. Far too many people for her liking. There were townhouse complexes in the area housing hundreds of residents. In such a crowd it would be easy for their pursuers to hide and watch.

‘You need to go home,’ Jade told Harris. ‘There’s nothing you can do here now. Come back later when it’s light. Then you can see if there’s anything left to salvage.’

He nodded but she wasn’t sure he’d really heard her words.

‘I don’t think it’s a good idea for you to be alone right now,’ Jade told him diplomatically. ‘You’re welcome to come with me and have an early

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.