Read Random Violence for Free Online Page B

They were soft, used to shoes. He stood bowed, swaying and snuffling through the gag.
    “Walk.”
    The other man climbed out of the passenger seat and trained the gun on him. There was nothing he could do. He stumbled into the trees. They were somewhere out in the bush, far from anywhere. Tears welled in his eyes as he walked. What had he done to deserve this?
    “Stop.”
    Trees were all around him. Their long trunks stretched up to a winter sky. Birds twittered in the branches. His feet were planted in a carpet of leaves.
    The man shoved him backwards against a tree trunk. He had more cable ties with him. Long enough to stretch around the tree. Two were tightened around his neck. Another two pulled his ankles back against the rough bark.
    He couldn’t speak, but his pleading eyes asked questions. The tall man laughed.
    “You might be wondering what we’re going to do to you now.” He waited for a moment with his head on one side, as if expecting an answer.
    “Nothing.”
    The two men turned and walked away. He couldn’t move his head, only follow them with his eyes. They reached the car. Were they going to leave him on his own?
    He closed his eyes for a moment, wondering if anyone would find him or if he would die slowly, strangled by the cable ties when his exhausted legs finally gave way.
    He heard scrunching on the leaves and strained his eyes sideways again. The tall man was returning. He was wearing a full-length protective mackintosh, the sort of coat that might keep you dry in a monsoon.
    The man smiled. “Before I go, I think I’ll cut a little wood. It’s always nice to have freshly chopped wood in winter, for the fireplace.”
    His eyes grew wide in horror and he struggled with all his might, bucking and fighting the cable ties.
    The man had produced a heavy-looking, long-handled axe from under his raincoat.
    The forest was still for a moment, seeming to hold its breath. Then the first blow of the axe landed. A shower of dry leaves fluttered to the ground and, in the tree above him, the birds took fright and wheeled away into the air.

7
    Dean Grobbelaar had a hoarse, grainy voice. It sounded as if he had been chain smoking for decades. Jade couldn’t ask him if he had though, because he wasn’t answering his land-line or his cell phone. Each time she phoned, she got the same rasping growl of his voicemail. She left yet another message asking him to call her back. She’d just have to wait.
    Jade clenched her fists in frustration. She didn’t want to wait. There was too much to do. She wanted to have this investigation finalized as soon as possible. Preferably before Viljoen was released from prison.
    Thinking of Viljoen made her even more restless. She decided not to go back to the icy cottage. Instead, she drove to a shooting range for an hour of practice.

    Her father taught her to shoot the day she turned thir-teen. It was a rite of passage. When he’d turned thirteen, his father had taken him shooting for the first time. Jade was his only child. He’d told her he didn’t see why he should make an exception for her just because she was a girl. Besides, Jade played football and took judo lessons and fought with the other kids in the area, just as she would have done if she’d been a boy. Maybe more, because being a cop’s daughter in a poor neighborhood wasn’t easy. Jade was as tough as any boy, and he wasn’t going to treat her any differently when it came to her first shooting lesson. Not when she was looking forward to it, pestering him about it every day.
    That very morning he took her to a shooting range in Upington, where they were based for a few weeks. It was a place where daily temperatures regularly broke the forty-degree barrier and the distant mountains shimmered in the waves of heat. Her dad’s service pistol was boiling hot from the short trip in the car. The heat baked her feet in their thin sandals and billowed up from the ground onto her bare legs. Her baseball cap shielded