Secret of the Cederberg (eBook)

An SA Police Series Suspense Story, Book 4

Meiring Fouche, Pieter Haasbroek (Autoren)

Pieter Haasbroek (Herausgeber)

eBook Download: EPUB

2025 | 1. Auflage
131 Seiten
Pieter Haasbroek (Verlag)
9780001021563 (ISBN)

Infos

One moment, he was a stranded motorist on a desolate plain.

The next, he was the target.

A powerful car swerves not to avoid him, but to kill him, plunging Constable Henk van Reenen into a deadly mystery.

In the rugged shadow of the Cederberg mountains, the newly transferred constable expected a quiet life of policing country folk. Instead, he finds a community gripped by fear after a beloved local farmer vanishes while investigating suspicious tracks. The only clues are the same strange tracks Henk saw after his own near-fatal encounter. Tracks that lead him deep into the unforgiving mountains.

The trail leads to a deserted homestead hiding a sinister secret and a ruthless killer who will stop at nothing to protect a vast criminal enterprise. With his new commanding officer acting suspiciously and a grieving family looking to him for justice, Henk is on his own. He's no longer just solving a crime. He is hunting a murderer in a landscape as beautiful as it is deadly, where one wrong step could be his last.

This is a classic, pulse-pounding mystery thriller set against the stark beauty of the South African wilderness. A gripping tale of suspense, action, and betrayal that blends a classic detective story with high-stakes adventure.

Your favorite SA Police Series just keeps getting better! The Secret of the Cederberg takes you to a stunning new landscape in this thrilling fourth book, brimming with the pulp, action, and mystery you've come to expect. Dive into the unknown now!

Textauszug

4. THE SECRET OF THE CEDERBERG

Chapter 1

TRACKS ALONG THE ROAD

Constable Henk van Reenen was relieved when he saw the ribbon of dust approaching on the main road. The little car he was travelling in from Cape Town had decided to fail him on this godforsaken grit-plain before the Cederberg mountains in the Western Cape. It was the first time Henk van Reenen had journeyed this way, and he had to admit he was not very taken with the world he had found here.

When they had informed him that he was being transferred to the little town of Bloudoring at the foot of the Cederberg, Henk van Reenen had been quite pleased. He had looked forward to being transferred to a remote place where it was quieter, where he could come into contact with country folk, where he could do a bit of shooting, and where he might also be able to do some mountaineering. Henk loved the countryside, for he had grown up on a farm in the Eastern Cape.

And now he had this disappointment. He must have been walking for nearly six miles. He already felt sore-footed, thirsty, and just plain hungry. He had imagined he would never run into anyone on this road. It stretched across the grit-plain as far as the eye could see. He had never seen such a flat, uninteresting, arid, barren world. It looked like a desert here, and it was so desolate that Henk occasionally looked around to see if he could not spot something, somewhere.

And now he saw the dust approaching far ahead of him on the main road. It was a deliverance. In all the distance he had come, he had not spotted any sign of a farm or anything of the sort. It seemed as if the whole world here had died and as if no human being had ever set foot here.

When he saw the ribbon of dust approaching, Henk began to walk more slowly. No reason to exert himself now. Whoever was in that motorcar would surely help him out. He just hoped they had water in the car. He also hoped that whoever was in that car had some knowledge of a car’s engine. He had fiddled and tinkered with the engine of his little car but could not get the thing started again. At his wit’s end, he had set off on foot in the hope that he would find help somewhere.

Nearer and nearer came the ribbon of dust, and the closer the car came, the more grateful Henk van Reenen felt. His thirst was more severe than he had first imagined. His feet felt pinched in his shoes. Truly, he had no desire to walk much further. So he went to stand beside the road to wait for the car.

Constable Henk van Reenen stood there in the open, exposed on the grit-plain. For a moment, he recalled seeing the name Knersvlakte on a map somewhere. But he was sure this was not that plain. That Knersvlakte, marked as such on the map, was in all likelihood even worse than this one, which in his mind he simply called the grit-plain. Those who were approaching could not fail to see him. He stood scarcely a pace from the road.

Yet the car was approaching at a considerable speed. He would have thought that by now they should have started to slow down significantly to be able to stop for him. That vehicle was surely moving at about seventy miles per hour. Now the car was very close to him. It looked as if they were not going to stop.

Astonished, Henk van Reenen stepped almost into the middle of the road, raised his hands, and waved his arms to signal that he wanted the car to stop.

To his bewilderment, he saw that they were not reducing their speed at all. It seemed to him, rather, that the car was now going faster. It was now barely fifty paces from him. The engine droned deeply. It was a large, powerful vehicle that kicked up a tremendous plume of dust.

Henk van Reenen wildly and emphatically waved his hands once more to make them understand that they must come to a stop. Surely they must see him. He was standing practically in the middle of the road.

He saw the large nose of the vehicle. Its drone became almost deafening in his ears. He heard the song of the wheels on the dirt road.

The next moment, the car was on him like a monster. He gathered himself and leapt out of the road, and just as his feet hit the ground, the heavy vehicle stormed past. There was a dense cloud of dust and, as he jumped, Henk stumbled and fell head over heels. The dust was so suffocating that he coughed and sputtered from it.

He watched the racing motorcar, trying to make out the number, but in the thick dust, it was impossible. He saw that it was a heavy, reasonably modern car. An American model. That was all. He could ascertain nothing further.

As the vehicle sped past him, stones whistled and buzzed past his head as they were kicked up by the wheels.

Henk van Reenen got to his feet, completely dumbfounded. The dust was still swirling around him. A little further on, he saw the denser patch of dust where the car was speeding away in the direction of Ceres.

The young constable with his thick, dark hair and his light blue eyes, with his slender, lean, lithe figure, was furious as he stood there. Did these people have no feeling for another person? What were they thinking, racing past him when they could see well enough that he needed help?

Anger, however, was not the primary emotion in Henk van Reenen as he stood beside the road, dusting off his clothes. He had received another, definite impression. When the car was almost upon him, at the moment he jumped away, he had distinctly got the impression that the car had swerved slightly, swerved straight towards him. As if the driver had taken it into his head to simply knock him, Henk, out of the way if he would not yield.

This astounded the young constable. What could have possessed the man to do that? If he had not jumped, he would most likely be dead; at that speed, the car would have crushed him. Of that, he had not the slightest doubt.

For a moment, he thought that he must surely be mistaken. But when the dust settled and he walked a little way in the car’s tracks, Henk van Reenen saw that the car had, without a shadow of a doubt, swerved towards him. It was clear from the vehicle’s tracks. At a spot probably twenty or thirty paces from where he had been standing, the tracks veered sharply to the right, straight for the place where he had stood.

He stood there in the sun, watching the plume of dust. The car was already climbing the distant hill he had walked over. He frowned, coughed once more, and looked again at the car’s tracks. He came to one conclusion: the driver had wanted to knock him out of the way, as sure as he lived and breathed. It would have happened if he had not jumped quickly enough and far enough.

But why? What had possessed the man? If he had been in his police uniform, he might have understood it. Perhaps those in the car had done something wrong somewhere. If he had been wearing his uniform then, they might have wanted to burst past him. But he was dressed in civilian clothes. As far as they were concerned, he could just as well be a farmer or someone else. And yet they had deliberately tried to run him down.

Henk van Reenen sat down on a rock beside the road and thought further. He would try to remember the model of the car. He had a fairly clear impression of it. The driver, he now recalled, had looked like a white man, but then he remembered something else that unsettled him further. The man next to the white man had looked to him like an Indian, or a dark Coloured man. He could not see if there were people in the back of the car.

The vehicle had sped towards him so quickly that he had not had much time to see who was in it. But he had the definite impression that the driver was a white man and that his companion was non-white. A strange combination, Henk thought. Perhaps not so strange. Possibly a travelling salesman, and possibly the non-white man beside him was the driver.

“Yes, that’s probably what it is,” Henk said. He knew that travelling salesmen, in many cases, did not like to be stopped on the road. Often they were in a hurry to get home. Many of them had had unpleasant experiences with people they had picked up. Some of them had been assaulted by people who had flagged them down on the road. Perhaps he should not blame the man. The fact that the man had swerved towards him might also mean nothing. Perhaps the fellow just wanted to scare him into getting out of the way. He had been determined not to stop, and when he saw that the man in the road would not give way, he swerved slightly towards him, and that had the desired effect, for Henk had then made himself scarce very quickly.

Henk van Reenen sat there on the rock for a good while. He felt confused, uncertain, and a little aimless. What to do now? He truly did not have the heart to turn back to his little car. He might walk the distance back without being able to accomplish anything. He cursed himself for not knowing more about cars. But that was one thing he had never really been interested in. When his colleagues in Port Elizabeth usually tinkered with their cars, he would go swimming or for a walk or go shooting on some farm. Now he was paying the price for knowing nothing about a car. He took off his shoes for a moment and pressed his feet. They felt hot and sore. Thirst plagued him. He rolled the pebble under his tongue, but that was not really helping much anymore.

He looked along the main road and saw that the dust from the car had now disappeared over the hill. Then he looked in the direction he was walking, and he saw how the road seemed to stretch out endlessly before him.

Finally, he decided there was only one mercy for him. He would have to struggle on along the road and see where he ended up. He did not feel at all comfortable. Henk van Reenen did not have a fearful bone in his body. He...

Produkt-Details

• Erscheint lt. Verlag: 18.9.2025
• Übersetzer: Pieter Haasbroek, Ai
• Sprache: englisch
• Themenwelt: Literatur ► Krimi / Thriller / Horror
• ISBN-13: 9780001021563 / 9780001021563