“Is there anything you would like to add to your statement, Ms. Shepherd?” Sergeant Tobias Coetzer sat opposite Lucy in the living room of Mountain Shadows.
“That’s all that I can think of at the moment.”
Sergeant Coetzer drained his coffee cup and stood up. “You’ve done incredibly well, Ms. Shepherd. And if you think of anything else, please just call me on my cell.” He handed her his card. “And we will keep you informed of the investigation as it progresses.”
“Thank you, Sergeant,” said Lucy, who was beyond exhausted but determined to give the police every detail she could think of while it was still fresh in her mind.
Josh showed the Sergeant Coetzer to the door. Annette came and sat next to Lucy, who lay on the sofa with a blanket. “My dear girl,” she said, her eyes full of motherly concern. “What an ordeal. You’re so brave. Who else could have escaped from a locked trunk and made a getaway in the middle of the night?”
“I knew I had to. I had the surest feeling that those men were going to kill me.”
“You don’t know that, Lucy,” Annette said, trying to be reassuring.
“Actually, Lucy’s right, Mother,” said Josh, who sat down on an armchair. “Those two men were hired to kill her.” Lucy could see the strain and exhaustion in his face.
“When you didn’t return home in time and didn’t answer your phone, I called Tom and we headed out to where your car was found. You see… I’m not sure how to tell you this, Lucy. But I had a tracking device fitted to your pickup truck. I’m sorry, but I simply never trusted that ‘deal’ you made with the Palmers. And with the likes of Hans Bekker around, I genuinely feared for your safety.”
“Why didn’t you tell me?”
“Honestly, I was afraid that with your stubborn independent streak you’d get rid of it or something like that.”
“I heard those two men push my truck into the river. Why did they do that?”
“The aim was to make you disappear.” Josh visibly winced as he said the words. “Tom and I headed to where you found us this morning. It was the last place that the tracker gave us a signal.”
“They forced me off the road. It was absolutely terrifying.”
“I think that was the plan. To run you off the road, make it look as if you had died as the result of an accident. When that didn’t work, they went to plan B.”
“Which was what?” asked Annette, her trembling fingers flew to her mouth
“It was to take Lucy out into the veld, kill her, and then bury her in a shallow grave.”
“No!” cried Annette. “This is simply too ghastly.”
Lucy was so worn out that she felt nothing but numbness.
“We could see by the skid marks that something had happened. We followed the tracks to the river where we found your truck half-submerged, and thankfully you weren’t in it. We saw your cell phone smashed on the ground. At that point, we called the police and once they’d arrived, I decided to pay Mikey’s mother a visit. She was the last person to see you and I just had an instinct about her. At first, she wasn’t keen to let me in, so I called Sergeant Coetzer and once he’d made it clear that she could be facing hard jail time, she broke down.”
“Mikey’s mom was involved in this?” Lucy and Annette were stunned.
“Yes, it seems as if she never really did forgive us for her husband’s death four years ago.”
“But that was an accident,” said Lucy. “And your family has been so generous to her ever since.”
Josh sighed. “Well, she was offered a large sum of money to set you up. I’m sure it was the largest she’d ever seen in her life. Your kidnappers followed you from her house.”
“So she was paid, but by whom?” asked Annette.
“She named Hans Bekker.”
“Why on earth would Hans Bekker want to see me dead?”
“I’ll bet that a forensic audit would reveal a few million reasons,” said Josh.
“So you think that the Palmers paid off Hans Bekker to get me killed?”
“Yes, and I also believe he was paid by the Palmers to sabotage our fermentation tank and to hack at our oldest vines.”
“It’s quite a step to go from sabotage to murder,” said Lucy.
“Not for those guys, the ones who kidnapped you. One of the men is Sarie Smit’s cousin. He has just returned from an eight-year stint in Pollsmoor Prison for armed robbery and aggravated assault.”
“Dammit!” said Lucy. “Wasn’t it enough that I was publicly humiliated? Forced to resign my job and the life that I had created here. What would the Palmers have to gain by having me killed?”
“I can only guess that you were a problem, Lucy. A loose end, a complication that they thought they were better off without,” said Josh.
“And don’t forget revenge, the oldest motive there is,” added Annette. “A mere retraction obviously didn’t satisfy that impulse.”
“Hans Bekker has already been taken in for questioning. I think he’ll give up the Palmers in a heartbeat in exchange for a plea bargain or some similar deal,” said Josh.
“The Palmers are smart, Josh. They would never try something like this without covering their tracks,” said Lucy.
“That’s true. And there’s no predicting how this thing will play out legally. International law, extradition, and so on, it’s complicated and expensive.”
“To be honest, I don’t really care if the Palmers are tried in court or not,” said Lucy.
“Really?” said Annette. “You don’t want to see them punished for trying to have you murdered?”
“Whether they stand trial in a court of law or not, this will make the news, anything involving them does. The suspicions and fallout will put them in a far worse position then they were before. And I don’t imagine they would be stupid enough to try anything like this again.”
“Well, all of that stuff can wait. You must be exhausted,” said Annette, taking her hand affectionately.
“I am.” And with Josh at her side, she headed upstairs to his room. She lay down, and after Josh had kissed her on the forehead, she closed her eyes and fell asleep. She slept more soundly than she had in months.