The Beginning

Kate ran up the winding path that led away from town. The ground was stony and hard, made treacherous by swathes of loose gravel, dotted with tall clumps of veld grass and the occasional shrub.

Her hair, wet with sweat, was bunched up under a baseball cap.. A kitbag bounced on her shoulder blades, the friction creating another pool of sweat in the small of her back.

She ran alone. It was two p.m. on a cloudless Sunday. Yesterday, temperatures had peaked at forty degrees. Today felt even hotter. People with any sense were indoors, their fans powered up to maximum, enduring the sweltering heat as they waited for the afternoon to cool into evening.

In a wire-fenced paddock, two chestnut ponies dozed together under a tree, tails swishing. They pricked their ears briefly as she passed and then lowered their heads again.

The forest loomed ahead of her.

Kate slowed, stopped, glanced back. Nobody was following. Behind her, the path snaked down to the valley, where the tin roofs of the town shimmered in a distant haze of heat. All she heard was the trill of cicadas and the occasional stamp of the ponies’ hooves.

She walked into the forest. It was cooler here, gloomy and dank under the thick canopy of leaves. Her sweat turned clammy on her skin, and she shivered.

Her head whipped round as she saw a flicker of movement to her right. She stared at the yellow crime-scene tape that flapped between two tree trunks.

Her heart banged in her chest, as loud and urgent as a drum.

Kate slipped her backpack off her shoulders and rummaged inside. Her fingers closed around the solid handle of a rolling pin. The smooth, curved wood felt reassuringly heavy in her grasp. She held it for a moment, then replaced it in the bag and hoisted it onto her shoulders again.

Two weeks ago, an eighteen-year-old girl had been murdered in this forest, right there in the place now marked by the yellow tape that gleamed so incongruously bright among the dark trees. Kate had known the girl – blonde, beautiful Celeste Schoeman. She was in Kate’s Matric class.

Celeste had come to this forest in the evening – why, nobody knew. Bird watching, some folk thought, although she hadn’t had binoculars or a bird book with her. Meeting a boyfriend, others guessed, although no boyfriend was seen, and nobody had come forward to help the police with their enquiries after her body had been discovered the next morning, propped against a tree trunk, her skull shattered from the repeated blows inflicted by the chunk of sandstone that lay next to her.

The crime had rocked the town to its foundations. At Celeste’s funeral, her parents had begged anyone with information on their daughter’s death to come forward. A ten thousand rand reward was offered, sponsored by Dirk Grobler, the wealthiest farmer in the district.

No information had surfaced, only rumours. Some people said in hushed tones that Celeste had been murdered by one of the migrant labourers who were in town for the cherry-picking season. Possibly even a tourist or backpacker, or one of those oddballs from the hippie retreat in the neighbouring valley. Others voiced their suspicions about the town’s only black residents – Mrs Molumi and her son Jacob. Twenty-one-year-old Jacob was tall and quiet, hard-muscled, his dark face stern and unsmiling. He could easily have crushed the girl’s skull with a rock. Perhaps she had refused his advances. Nobody knew, because nobody had seen Jacob since the murder. He had disappeared.

Everywhere she went in town, Kate heard the whispers. She heard them outside the church, in the local tearoom, in the town’s second-hand bookstore, in the Internet café run by old Ouma Pieters.

The police were investigating. Two detectives had travelled all the way from Bloemfontein, and were staying at the town’s only guesthouse. The sandstone used for the murder had yielded no evidence, nor any clues. It occurred naturally in the area, and there were pieces of it strewn throughout the forest.

The detectives were interviewing suspects and hunting for Jacob Molumi.

Since the murder, none of the townsfolk had been into the forest to walk their dog, ride their pony or meet their lover. In the hottest summer on record, this cool, peaceful haven had become a no-go area.

Or had it? Looking closely, Kate saw faint footprints tracked into the dirt.

She circled the taped-off area, treading carefully, staying in the shelter of the thicker trees. The tape surrounded a tall Australian bluegum, its bark ghostly pale in the gloom.

This was the tree where Celeste’s bloodstained body had been found, half-naked and stiff with rigor mortis, ants swarming in her hair.

Or so the stories went.

Kate breathed deeply. She took a cautious step forward. Leaves rustled loudly ahead of her and she froze.

An annoyed squawk, a flap of wings. Just two grey loeries having an argument.

Then another rustle, this one from the other side of the tree.

Kate stood stock-still. Then, cautiously, she turned towards the sound.

Rustle, rustle, scrunch, scrunch. Someone was approaching, his footsteps loud and confident.

A tall, blonde man wearing jeans and a red T-shirt came into view. He lifted the crime-scene tape, ducked underneath, and strode over to the bluegum tree. He stood with his back to the trunk and scanned the surrounding forest. Then he tensed. He stared in Kate’s direction and his hand dropped to a leather pouch on his belt.

“Wie’s daar?” he called. Who’s there?

Kate exhaled slowly. It was Wouter, the handsome eldest son of wealthy Dirk Grobler. Every girl in town between the ages of fifteen and twenty-five fancied up their hair and wore their push-up bra when they knew Wouter was going to be at a town social. He’d never paid Kate much attention. She was too skinny and too English, she guessed, and she wasn’t blonde enough to show up on Wouter Grobler’s radar.

Kate crept out of the cover of the trees and into the blue laser-beams of Wouter’s eyes.

“Just me,” she said, approaching him cautiously.

Wouter stared at her for a long moment, then relaxed.

“Jislaaik. You surprised me, Kate.” He smiled, showing sparkling white teeth. “What’s up? You look scared to death. I don’t blame you. This forest is creepy.” His Afrikaans accent was strong, but not unattractive.

“I am scared,” she replied. “I didn’t want to come here on my own, but I had to.”

“Why?”

Kate hesitated. “I’ve been getting some weird letters. Hand-delivered to my postbox. I don’t know who sent them.”

Wouter stared at her, his expression a blend of confusion and fear.

“You serious? I’ve been getting them, too. What do yours say?”

“I brought one with me.” She turned round and indicated a small zip-up pocket on her backpack. “It’s in there. Can you take it out for me please?”

Wouter moved behind her. She twisted her head to watch him. He raised his hand and she flinched, but all he did was remove a leaf stuck in the fluffy brown scrunchie that held her hair back. Then he unzipped the pocket and removed the envelope. He opened it. Inside was a single page. On it, laser-printed on white A4 paper in big black capital letters, was, “I KILLED CELESTE SCHOEMAN.”

“That was the first one. I got others, too,” Kate said. “I didn’t bring them, but they told me to be here in the forest this Sunday at two p.m. And to come alone.”

Wouter frowned as he read the note. “I got the same letters. I didn’t bring them with me though. I threw them away.”

He held the paper out to her.

Kate shook her head. “Please keep it. I don’t want it back. It’s too creepy. I didn’t want to touch any of them after the first one arrived. I wish I’d thrown mine away too.”

“I know how you feel,” Wouter said, looking down at the page again.

“Do you think the murderer wrote it?” she asked.

Another rustle in the trees. They both spun round.

Nothing there. Just more quarrelsome birds.

“I think so,” Wouter replied. “Looks like it was printed at Ouma Pieters’ shop. You see, it’s got that fuzzy grey line in the middle of the page from her old laser jet. My notes had that, too.”

Kate craned her neck to see. “You’re right.”

“Not that it helps,” Wouter continued, “because the whole town is in and out of that Internet café. It could have been anyone.”

He replaced the page in the envelope, folded it, and stuffed it into the pocket of his jeans.

“So why would this person have written these letters?” Kate asked.

Wouter shrugged. “I don’t know. To confess, perhaps. Or else…” His voice tailed off into silence.

“I don’t feel safe here.” Kate glanced behind her again. “Standing right where Celeste was killed. What if the murderer is watching us, Wouter?”

Wouter’s hand strayed to the leather pouch on his belt. Looking more closely, Kate saw the black handle of a knife protruding from it.

READ THE REST OF THIS STORY IN BAD COMPANY!