Last Train to Retreat by Gustav Preller Page A

a matter of minutes she had become his sister in crime, he thought.
    They got as far as the steps leading to the subway before she had to sit down. Blood smeared the concrete. He couldn’t tell if it was old or fresh, or all hers. He had to get her to a hospital. The belt had to come off. She clearly wasn’t the crying type but as she looked up at him in the harsh platform light he thought he saw moistness in her eyes. He picked her up and carried her down to the subway. He heard hollow footsteps behind them. ‘
Sout, meisie!
’ he warned. ‘Pretend you like me – your arms, quick, around my neck, I don’t bite!’
    ‘
Sies,
’ she said but did as she was told. A
geitjie
, he thought, cold and vicious. Two passengers overtook them without giving them a glance.
    There were no officials checking tickets at the exit – to them the last train had been the previous one, an hour earlier. Fruit sellers, hair stylists, and other vendors normally crowding the street had all gone and the shops had shut their doors. No taxis were to be seen. It was a dead and dirty concrete jungle that he was walking through. Maybe he could flag down a motorist when he got to Main Road. There was the Southern Cross emergency unit nearby, and Wynberg Hospital. He could ask.
    ‘Don’t even think about it,’ she said.
    ‘Think about what?’ His breathing had become rapid but so had hers. Her cheek felt moist against his neck.
    ‘A hospital … I don’t wanna go to hospital.’
    ‘
Minute!
I got no idea how bad that wound is.
Nobba
what you think,
meisie,
you need a doctor!’ The words came thickly from his battered mouth. His arm ached. He felt pissed off that his world had been turned upside down by an awkward slip of a girl.
    ‘
Langaanie,
jy vattie vi’ my hospitaal toe nie,’
she said.
    ‘
Nuh,
what must I do then? You wanna bleed to death?’
    She said nothing.
    ‘Ah, you
paaping,
I see!’ he said, ‘worried they’ll ask what happened and call the police?’ But the thought had been with him since they stepped off the train. It wasn’t just tonight – what had happened years ago when he was a member of Hannibal’s Evangelicals could come back and destroy him. Magnus would get shot of him so quickly he wouldn’t have time to clear his desk. And his parents and Chantal would be stuck in Lavender Hill until they died. But the girl – what was
she
worried about?
    ‘Listen, it was self-defence,’ he said. ‘He was going to rape you. We can explain it to the police.’ He suddenly realised he was using the plural ‘we’. They were in it together. There was every chance he’d be regarded as an accomplice to murder, and possibly robbery. Curly was on the loose, there
was
a body and Curly would simply put a spin on what had happened. Why did she have to kill Gatiep then rob him? What kind of woman was she, for Christ’s sake? How stupid was he for not striking Gatiep and immobilising him before she got to him. By pinning Gatiep he had presented an easy target for the crazed girl. Perhaps he should find a taxi and send her home and hope it would be the end of it. But murder didn’t just go away. And what if she died in the taxi or at her home because there was no one to care for her?
    As he laboured along Church Road he was thankful for the False Bay breeze on his back and the girl’s body concealing his bloodied arm. What was normally a 10-minute walk to his flat was taking Zane twice as long. The girl complained of dizziness, her breathing was coming fast, and she appeared to be perspiring almost as much as he was. What if she died in his home, what then? His leg muscles were beginning to burn but he endured the pain. He broke into a semi-jog.
    He passed the undertakers and then the church, turned up into Court Road, passed the law courts, and finally the cemetery. How many times in the past two years had he walked or ridden past them, and how they spooked him now – the law, God, death, burial, all within a block.