The Fallen (A PI Jade de Jong Novel, Band 3) - Softcover

Buch 3 von 5: PI Jade de Jong

Mackenzie, Jassy

 
9781616952174: The Fallen (A PI Jade de Jong Novel, Band 3)
Softcover
ISBN 10: 1616952172 ISBN 13: 9781616952174
Verlag: Soho Crime, 2013

Inhaltsangabe

When P.I. Jade de Jong invites Superintendent David Patel on a scuba diving holiday in St. Lucia, she hopes the time away will rebuild their conflicted relationship. Jade’s dreams are soon shattered when David calls off their affair, forcing her into the arms of environmentalist Craig Niewoudt. But the next morning, romantic issues are put aside when a scuba diving instructor, Amanda Bolton, is found brutally stabbed to death.

Amanda is a most unlikely candidate for murder—a quiet and intelligent woman who until a few months ago pursued a high-powered career as an air traffic controller. She had few acquaintances and no lovers. The only loose end is a postcard in her room from Jo’burg-based Themba Msamaya, asking how she is doing “after 813 and The Fallen.” Jade and David put their differences aside and start the deadly hunt.

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Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Jassy Mackenzie was born in Rhodesia and moved to South Africa when she was eight years old. She lives in Kyalami near Johannesburg and edits and writes for the annual publication Best of South Africa. She is the author of three novels in the Jade de Jong series.

Auszug. © Genehmigter Nachdruck. Alle Rechte vorbehalten.

1

Themba Msamaya didn’t suspect a thing on the morning he
opened his door to death.

He was halfway through his first cup of tea when the knock
came. Over the past few months, he’d developed something of a
ritual. He’d get up early, boil the kettle and dunk a bag of cheap,
Shoprite own-brand tea into a chipped South African Airways
mug. He’d learned to do without milk, but a teaspoon of sugar
was an essential he couldn’t forego. Black tea didn’t have to be so
strong—it tasted better weak, in fact—and he had discovered
one teabag could easily stretch to two mugs.

He would drink the steaming, reddish brew while sitting at
the desk in his tiny Yeoville bedsit, yesterday’s papers open at
the Classifieds, his elderly laptop ready to browse the Jobsearch
websites.

Over the last few days, his searching had become more stressful,
because his useless Internet connection, slow at best and
unreliable at worst, was close to reaching its cap. He’d nearly
got through the five hundred megabytes that his low-spec package
allowed him, God knew how, seeing it was only the twentysecond
of the month, and all he’d been using it for was trying to
find work. But once the threshold was reached, he would be cut
off. Rudely, instantly and without any warning. It had happened
a couple of times recently, once while he was right in the middle
of sending off his cv.

Today, JobSA was slow to load and Workopolis had no new
listings, but his favourite site, nats Careers, was advertising a
position that looked promising.

Email us your application and cv, the advert read. All companies
required candidates to do that these days. Phone calls appeared
to have become redundant.

A quick read through the well-worded cv that he’d paid a
specialist company to put together for him five months ago. Now
he wished he hadn’t wasted the money on it.

Did he need to change anything in the accompanying letter?
He scanned the document once more, slowly, even though he
knew the damn thing off by heart. He thought it sounded fine.
As fine as was possible, at any rate. He attached it and pressed
‘Send’, willing the email to go through the first time, praying
that the connection would not drop, as it often did, forcing him
to repeat the task and gobbling up even more of his precious
bandwidth allocation.

A series of clanging sounds and shouts from outside disturbed
his concentration, and he looked up, frowning. Was this his
neighbour causing trouble again? Themba didn’t know him by
name, but he was convinced the guy was a drug dealer. People
were in and out of that room at all hours, talking, partying,
banging on his door late into the night, and occasionally on
Themba’s door by mistake; and just last week he had overheard
an argument that had ended in a gunshot.

No, it couldn’t have been his drug-dealing neighbour. The
morning after the gunshot, he’d been on his way to the shops
when he’d seen the man hurrying down to the garage, carrying
what looked like a hastily packed gym bag, half zipped up, in one
hand, and his firearm in the other. A few minutes later, Themba
had heard the unmistakable roar of his black, souped-up, spoilerdecorated
bmw. The man had left and, as far as he knew, he hadn’t
been back since.

Then Themba realised what the sound was. It was the dustbins
being emptied. There had been a municipal strike for weeks,
and the bins lined up on the uneven paving outside the building
had quickly gone from full to overflowing. Black bags had split
open and vomited their contents onto the pavement and into the
road. Those that hadn’t split had been torn apart—by stray dogs
or vagrants or both, he guessed. Crumpled plastic now littered
the sidewalks, mushy piles of leftover food had swiftly started
stinking in the heat, and dirty nappies disgorged their foul
contents, which were soon blanketed by flies.

Now he could hear the loud drone of the garbage truck and the
clanking of its crushing mechanism. Above this, the shouts of the
workers, more clanging as empty metal dustbins were flung on
their sides, and the clatter of the plastic wheelie bins being upended.
And then a second, closer sound, only just audible above the
racket. A quick, polite-sounding rat-tat-tat on his door.
Themba glanced at the email. It looked like it was going through.
Then he got up from his wooden chair and squeezed past his bed.
As he wasn’t expecting anyone, he was sure that whoever was
outside the door was yet another customer looking for his drugdealer
neighbour.

He twisted the Yale latch open with his right hand, pulled the
door handle down with his left, and opened the door a crack,
snapping out a rather irritated ‘Yes?’ before squinting out into
the shady corridor.

That one word was all he had time for. The door exploded
open, its handle wrenched out of his hand, its edge smashing
against his temple as he staggered backwards and a sharp, stabbing
pain lanced through his gut.

Themba slammed against the rickety desk and sprawled down
onto the floor, blinking as hot rivulets of spilled tea splashed
down onto his face.

And then a black-clad figure wearing a dark mask was inside,
standing over him. The pain in his stomach was dreadful; he
could taste blood in his mouth, but in his shock he hadn’t begun
to associate any of this with the slim black handle that now jutted
from his midriff.

Until his assailant leaned forward, grasped the handle with a
gloved hand, and pulled.

The pain was sickening. Themba screamed, a shrill, breathy
sound, and clamped his hands over the deep gash, now pouring
blood. He glanced up, only to see the knife coming at him again.
‘Don’t . . .’ he begged, but his voice had reduced to a whisper.
He mouthed the words, ‘Please don’t.’

He wanted to plead for his life, to explain that this wasn’t fair,
that this was the wrong room, that he was not the right man.
That he didn’t deal in drugs and never had. That this was all a
terrible mistake.

But there was no time.

He tried to stop the blade, tried to grab it with his right hand,
but it sliced cleanly through his palm and buried itself in his
chest.

And then his attacker was gone.

Themba found he couldn’t move. He wanted to cough, but he
couldn’t do that either. All he could do was lie in his own blood,
watching as a dark mist rushed to cover the smeary ceiling.
Outside, the clanging of the garbage truck faded into silence.


2

Jade de Jong was fighting to convince herself she wasn’t going to
drown.

She was six and a half metres under the surface of the sea and
sinking, with tons upon tons of water forcing her downwards.
She was burying herself in a pale-blue grave, every movement of
her fins taking her closer to the ocean’s sandy floor and further
from the sky and sun above.

She reached out in front of her, striking forward, pushing just
a tiny fraction of all that water aside, noticing that her cupped
hand looked sickly white in the dim light. Like a sea spectre. Or
perhaps more like a corpse.

The thought paralysed her with fear—she was unable to keep
going down, unable now even to breathe. Just as she had been on
the dive before. And the dive before that.

God, get me out of here, she thought frantically. She knew
how easy it would be to escape. A few kicks with her flippers and
she could be hurtling up out of...

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Verlag
Soho Crime
Erscheinungsdatum
2013
Sprache
Englisch
ISBN 10 
1616952172
ISBN 13 
9781616952174
Einband
Taschenbuch
Anzahl der Seiten
338
Kontakt zum Hersteller
Soho Press
https://sohopress.com/the-best-of-soho-press-2021/

4 rue Fernand Laguide
Corbeil Essonnes
Ile de France
91100
Frankreich

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