Jade didn’t sleep well that night. She didn’t know if it was because David was in the other room or because she was going to see Viljoen at last. She stayed awake for what felt like hours, remembering what had happened on that fateful morning she left the little house in Turffontein.
Her father’s coffee had stood half empty on his desk, a skin of cool milk wrinkling its surface. The lamp was off and his brief-case was gone. She climbed into her car and set off down the road to a surveillance appointment, taking the route that her father had when he’d left with Jacobs in the beige unmarked.
As she reached a bend in the road, she slowed down. There’d been an accident ahead, at the one traffic light that she’d always thought was a pointless waste of electricity. The road crossing it was a steep and narrow lane that, even when traffic was thick, never seemed to have any cars on it. This morning, there had been one.
A heavy truck must have been speeding down the lane and been unable to stop at the lights. The runaway vehicle had smashed into a car on the main road, crushing it under its wheels.
Jade could smell burning rubber and the choking fumes of scorched metal. She hurried across to the smoking body of the truck and the awful shape of the car underneath it. A small knot of people surrounded the accident.
As she walked closer, she felt her stomach clench. She recognized the crumpled car. It was Jacobs’s unmarked. The driver’s door was open but the passenger side was crushed under the chassis of the truck.
“Dad!” Jade screamed.
Jacobs grabbed her shoulders from behind. She turned and stared at him. He was wild-eyed, breathing hard, and his clothes looked rumpled.
“We’ve called an ambulance,” he told her. “The ambulance is coming. Move away from the car, my girl. There’s nothing you can do.”
“We’ve got to get him out.” She peered into the buckled mass of metal, the truck’s grille mounted on top in a bizarre display of victory. She recoiled from the blood that was oozing out of the shadows.
Then, sirens wailing, the ambulance arrived. Paramedics leapt out and sprinted over to the car and started working through the narrow gap in the metal.
“Where’s the truck driver?” someone asked.
“Must have run away,” someone else said. “Probably didn’t even have a bruise. The cab’s hardly damaged.”
“Probably drunk,” the first person said with loathing.
Tears blurring her vision, Jade sat by the side of the road, staring blankly at the tarmac in front of her. Three cups of tea had been provided by the solicitous onlookers. She hadn’t done more than sip at the first one because her hands were shaking too badly for her to get the cup to her mouth, and her chest was heaving in a series of dry sobs that she was sure would choke her.
She heard police sirens yipping and yapping followed by the screech of tires. An officer came and sat down beside her to ask some questions. She could hear the clank of heavy machinery and the hiss of hydraulics and the tearing scream of metal on metal. When she looked up again, the truck had been moved away and the paramedics were busy. She walked over, trying not to look too closely.
“Is he alive?”
The man shook his head. “He must have died on impact. Massive head injuries and internal trauma. Most probably he didn’t even know what was happening.”
They strapped her father’s body to a stretcher and wheeled it away. Rubbing tears from her eyes as she watched, Jade recalled one of her father’s sayings. “Even if things go wrong, even if tragedy strikes, it is essential to do your duty.”
She took a deep breath. She would take the file and give it to David. He could finish the work her father had started.
“What are you doing?” asked Jacobs, stumbling to his feet as she walked towards the shell of the car. She steeled herself and looked in the passenger side. The seat and carpet were stained with her father’s blood. She closed her eyes and swal-lowed hard, tasting bile in her throat. Then she looked again, forcing herself to get closer. The paramedics had cut through the seat belt to get him out. The canvas straps hung, frayed and useless, and she pushed them aside.
She looked in the back, under the seat, on the driver’s side. Then she walked round the car while the tow-truck driver sat patiently, waiting for her to finish, and checked inside the trunk. And then, because she didn’t trust herself to have searched properly the first time, she looked again, looked everywhere, her fingers sliding and scrabbling on the carpets, tears flooding her eyes again when she saw the dark red streaks on her fingertips and knuckles.
Then she straightened up and stared at the blue-white horizon and shivered in the heat of the glorious sunshine as she realized that things were perhaps not all that they seemed to be.
The briefcase was nowhere. It had disappeared.
The briefcase was gone.
The briefcase…
Jade felt hands clutch at her, and she screamed and strug-gled, fighting for her life, because Jacobs was there, waiting, and this time she couldn’t escape.
Then she realized that she was in
her bed, in the cottage. She must have fallen asleep and had her
old nightmare. But there was someone holding her and it wasn’t
Jacobs. It was David.
“Jadey, are you OK? You almost gave me heart failure there. I heard you crying and screaming. I came to see what was wrong.”
She held onto him tightly and he stroked her hair. Jade could feel her heart thudding, although now she didn’t know whether it was from the nightmare or because David was sitting on her bed, gently holding her in his arms.
“No, it’s nothing. Just a bad dream.”
David carried on stroking her hair. His hands felt strong and sure as they cradled her head.
“Anything you want to talk about?”
“Not really. I dream about my dad’s accident, sometimes.”
She felt David’s chest rise and fall as he sighed. “I wish I’d been in Jo’burg when it happened. I can’t believe you had to go through something like that on your own. Finding your father dead in that horror crash. I’m not surprised you’re still bothered about it. And then you disappeared and I didn’t know where you were. We thought you’d had some kind of a breakdown. Post-traumatic stress. I was worried about you and so angry I hadn’t been granted permission to leave that police conference in Durban, I nearly resigned.”
She closed her eyes, aware of the warmth of David’s body against hers. They had never been so close before. She squeezed her arms around him and felt him hold her tighter in response.
“Hey Jadey. I missed you.”
“I missed you too.”
“Are you okay now?”
“I’m fine. Thanks. Listen.” She took a deep breath. “I’ve wanted to tell you this for ages. I’ve always thought—you know, with my dad around, you ended up being like family to me. Like an older brother. And that wasn’t always the way I wanted to feel about you. Not at all.” She took another breath. This was hard work. David’s silence wasn’t helping either. His hand had stopped stroking her hair. What could she say next? How could she explain her feelings to him?
“I think I’d like things to go further between us,” she ended lamely. That was it. Her reserve of courage had run dry, her palms were icy and she’d rather face down a charging elephant than say another word to David about what was in her heart.
Then it all went wrong. She didn’t know why. It was dark, they were close together on her bed, separated by a couple of layers of insubstantial clothing. She was sharing her thoughts, her secrets. Something could have happened. Should have. But it didn’t. Instead, David pulled away from her and stood up.
“It’s five-thirty in the morning. I’ve got to get going.”
Jade struggled to her feet, rubbing her eyes. He hadn’t answered her, hadn’t shared his feelings in return. Why not? She’d have to wait until later to find out, because now he was pulling on his shoes and fastening his belt.
“I’ll let you out,” she mumbled.
“Thanks for letting me crash on your couch. Try and get some more sleep, and call me if you need anything.”
She turned off the alarm and buzzed open the gate. He closed the door behind him, and she watched him leave, lis-tening to the crunch of his footsteps on the road.