She accepted Manon’s news about her brother without comment, confident that they would find him. After all, they were grown-ups. Manon spent the next twenty minutes with her while she chose a new second hand dress from the charity box. She wanted her to look her best for her first day at school. It was yellow. With frills. Faded but whole, the material still thick and unworn. The newest, nicest thing that Thandi had ever owned. She couldn’t wait to show Vusi.
Garrett walked up to the door at Brian’s place. Even before he let himself in he was aware of the overpowering smell of burnt toast. When he opened the front door the air was full of rank, purple smoke and the stink of burning caught at the back of his throat. A physical presence.
Brian sat at a barstool next to the toaster, empty wine bottles strewn around him. Three. Four. Another, half finished, stood at attention on the glass kitchen surface. As Garrett watched, two pieces of charcoal toast popped out of the toaster. A pyromaniac’s Jack-in-the-box. Brian removed them carefully from the machine. His movements precise. Particular. As seen in recovered stroke victims. Or the very drunk. He pushed the foot pedal of the stainless steel kitchen bin. The lid jerked open like a hungry hippo and Brian threw the toast in. Dropped the lid. Then he inserted two more slices into the toaster and pushed the reset lever to the bottom.
‘Hey, mate,’ said Garrett. Quietly.
Brian’s head bounced up. ‘Hey, Garrett.’
‘What you doing?’
‘I’m feeding the bin. They like burnt toast. Love it. Their favorite food. I’m feeding it.’
Another pair of burnt offerings raised their heads to be snaffled by Brian and proffered to the ever-hungry stainless steel mouth.
Brian picked up the bottle and downed it, spilling a good amount down his neck and chin. Red wine. The blood of Christ. Garrett lunged forward and caught the bottle as it slipped from his friend’s fingers. Placed it safely on the floor.
‘Wine finished. Gone. Be a good friend, Garrett. Get more.’
‘I thought that you’d given up.’
‘Fuck you.’
Garrett ignored the insult. Drunken friends are allowed leeway. He glanced around the kitchen. ‘There is no more wine.’
‘Is.’
Brian pointed carefully at a door that Garrett had assumed to be the broom closet. ‘In there. Down a steps. Wine cellar. Lots. Give it to clients. Lots’
Garrett opened the door. A switch on the left. Flick. Light. A narrow corridor and a short flight of steps opened into a small but well stocked wine cellar. Garrett simply grabbed the bottle closest to him and turned to leave. But as he turned the bottle slipped. Smashed on the floor. It was the least of his problems so he grabbed another and went back into the kitchen. Handed Brian the bottle.
Brian squinted at the label. ‘Good choice. 1972 Nederburg Baronne. Highly recommended with burnt bakery products.’ He laughed. Loud and high. A child laughing at the dark, hoping to drive the monsters away. Brian struggled with an opener. Slipped and cut his thumb. The blood flowed rich and dark and velvet. Pooling on the thick glass kitchen surface. Garrett grabbed a dishcloth. Tore off a strip and bandaged the cut.
Brian stared at the small pool of blood. ‘Six liters. That’s about ten pints.’
‘What you talking about, mate?’
‘That’s how much blood we have in us. How much life.’
Garrett nodded. ‘Apparently.’
‘Bullshit.’
‘What?’
Brian stood up and threw the unopened bottle against the wall. It exploded. Left a shape on the wall like a melting purple chrysanthemum.
‘Bullshit. I was in Burundi once. Shot a guy in the leg. Just missed his dick. He sat down and bled out. Took him about four minutes. I gave him a cigarette. He thanked me. I’d just shot the fucker. Thank you, he said. Looked like he was sitting in a pool of old engine oil. Pints of it. Fucking pints and fucking pints. Gallons.’
‘What’s wrong, Brian?’
Brian stared at Garrett like he was a stranger. His eyes red rimmed. Watery. ‘I’m not an evil person.’
‘You’re a good friend, Brian.’
‘Not evil. No one ever called me Popobawa. Never.’ The dentist’s eyes rolled back into his head and he slumped to the floor. Unconscious before his head hit the tiles. Garrett carried him to bed.
Chapter 8
The next morning when Garrett awoke and went through to make himself coffee Brian had not shown his face. He could hear him in his room. Moving about. The muted sounds of someone getting ready. Buzz of shaver. Running water. But after half an hour the room grew quiet and Brian did not emerge. Garrett figured that he might want some time alone so decided to go for a run. He left the townhouse complex and turned left, running at an easy soldier’s pace. A loping stride that ate up the miles. There had been times when he and his men had run like this for days on end. With full battle pack. Burundi. Burkina Faso. Angola. Sierra Leone. The names flashed through his mind like a litany of horrors.
As Garrett ran he drew some strange looks from people. After a while it struck him that he didn’t look like a jogger. More like a man on the run as opposed to a running man. This was because Garrett had no use for trainers or running shoes. His clothes were practical. Long khaki trousers. Cotton shirt in similar autumn shade. Hand made Altberg combat boots from Yorkshire in England. No Lycra, skimpy shorts or neon colors. Simply a man. Running.
He ran through fenced off suburbs. Eight foot high electric fencing. A boom. Bored guard. Armed with a pump action shotgun. Mossberg or Remington. Waved him through without stopping. A man. With combat boots. Running.
After three hours the air felt like it was burning his lungs. He had forgotten that Johannesburg was 5500 feet above sea level. He turned and headed for home. When he got back in, Brian had left. He made himself breakfast. Brown bread thickly sliced. Peanut butter spread with teenage abundance. Calories. Energy.
His cell phone rang as he was getting out of the shower. Stripping water from himself using his hands. He answered. It was Manon. Her voice was tight, like she had a weight resting on her chest.
‘Garrett, the children finish school early on Saturdays; they should all be back by now. But they aren’t. The new girl, Thandi, she isn’t here.’
‘Give me eight minutes.’
***
Garrett arrived in just over seven minutes after the nun’s call. Hair still wet. Shirt drying on his back.
Manon was pale. Petrus non-committal.
‘Tell me.’ Said Garrett.
Manon spoke. ‘When the children returned for lunch Thandi wasn’t with them. I phoned the school and they say that she isn’t there. Gladys says that she saw Thandi being picked up by a man in a big car.’
‘Call Gladys.’
Petrus went inside and returned with a small girl. Perhaps six. Wearing a dress that had once been a bright poppy-red but was now the color of boiled ham. She carried a doll with no arms. The lack of limbs caused the beast to grunt in the darkness.
Gladys looked afraid but Garrett smiled and picked her up and her fear was dispelled. ‘Hello, my flower. So tell me, did you see someone pick Thandi up?’ Gladys nodded, the fingers of her right hand in her mouth. Doll in her left. ‘When was this?’
‘Today.’
‘Okay. What time today?’
Gladys looked puzzled. ‘I don’t know. I do not have a watch.’
‘Well, was it early or a little later?’
‘It was morning teatime. We had milk and biscuits and then we went to play and then the man in the big car came to the fence and called us. I didn’t go because I couldn’t find my ball but Thandi went and she spoke to the man and he stayed in the car.’ Gladys pointed at the sky. ‘Look. A bird. And then Thandi got into the car and the man took her. Maybe she has gone to a nice big house with a swimming pool and servants and new clothes and a baby brother and a mommy and a daddy. Maybe.’ She sucked her fingers for a while. ‘The bird has gone. See?’
‘Gla
dys. What did the man look like?’
The little girl thought for a while. ‘He had a big car and a baby brother for Thandi.’
Garrett sighed. ‘That’s nice. Anything else?’
‘No. Can I go now? My dolly is hungry.’ Garrett lowered her to the ground and she scampered off.
‘Where is the nearest police station?’
‘Close,’ answered Petrus. ‘Down to the end of the road. First left, over the crossroads and first left again. I will come with you.’
Garrett shook his head. ‘No. You and Manon go to the school. Speak to the teachers. See if anyone else saw anything. And then search the area.’
Garrett climbed into the Jeep and drove the short distance to the police station. Parked outside in the gravel topped designated area. The station was a low-pitched bungalow. A cross between a ranch house and an army barracks. The front door armored glass. A reception area with wooden benches against the wall. Stained, blue needle-punch carpet tiles on the floor. Walls painted a mucus-green gloss up to armpit height and then matt bile-yellow above. A ceiling fan squeaked away, whining about the heat but doing nothing to dispel it. A charge desk ran the width of the room. On it, a dead spider plant.
A woman lay sprawled on the one bench. Blood dripped from her head. Sporadically, she would let out a yelp of pain followed by a long drawn out moan. Two black police officers sat behind the counter chatting to each other in low voices. They ignored her utterly. Judging by the pool of blood on the floor she had been there for over half an hour.
Garrett walked up to the counter and rapped on it. One of the policemen stared at him for a while and then turned back to his companion. Both of them were in full combat gear. Blue overalls, matching blue flak jackets with webbing and R5 assault rifles strapped to their chest, steel butts folded. Nine-millimeter semi-autos rode on their right hips. Helmets, Ray-bans and tactical gloves lay strewn on the countertop. They were both big men. Made even bigger by their attitude. Their swagger. Garrett pointed at the bleeding woman. ‘What about her?’
One of the policemen leaned over the counter. ‘Shut up,’ he bellowed at the woman. The other laughed. Genuine amusement. Big full-throated guffaws petering out into little hiccups of mirth.
‘Maybe you could get her some water,’ suggested Garrett.
The laugher shook his head.
‘Do you have a vending machine around?’ Asked Garrett. ‘I could get her a Coke.’
The laugher pointed to the corner of the room. There was a lighter, cleaner rectangle on the carpet. A broken plug socket in the wall above it. ‘There was a machine. It is gone.’
‘Where?’
‘Someone stole it.’
Garrett raised one eyebrow in disbelief. He gestured at their outfits. The weapons. Armour. ‘Brave man to steal from you.’
There was a long pause. Both policemen stared at him. Eyes dark. Dead. And then they both laughed. The one so much so, that he literally fell onto the floor and grasped his sides.
‘Brave man. Yes. Very brave.’ He stood up and slapped his palm on the counter. ‘Very brave,’ he repeated. ‘Good looking too.’
Through the door Garrett could see an open back pickup truck parked out back of the station, the coca-cola vending machine lying on its side in the load area. He wasn’t quite sure why the two cops found the situation so hilarious but it was obvious that it was their truck. Hence, their vending machine.
The less amused of the two beckoned Garrett over.
‘Come, funny man. How can I help you.’
Garrett told of the missing orphan, Thandi. The policeman shrugged.
‘Sorry. We can do nothing. She is not missing for another forty-eight hours. Even then, these sort of ex-street children go missing all of the time. It is no big issue.’
‘She is about eight years old.’
‘Eight. Eighty-eight. No difference. She is not yet officially missing.’
‘But there was an eye witness,’ argued Garrett.
The policeman looked up from picking his nails. ‘Well, that makes a difference. Where is this witness?’
‘She is back at the orphanage. One of the other little girls.’
The cop shook his head. ‘One street-child saying that she saw another street-child being abducted. A likely story, funny man.’
‘They aren’t street children. They’re orphans. Anyway. She saw what she saw. A man in a big car took Thandi away.’
‘Very unlikely, sir. Now we bid you goodbye, as you can see,’ he gestured at the bleeding woman. ‘We are very busy.’
The one policeman came around the counter and walked Garrett to the door. His manner had changed. No joviality. He propelled Garrett through the door, one hand on his shoulder.
‘Go, funny man. We cannot help you. You see, you have made a mistake. Go,’ he glanced around and then repeated himself. Shouting. ‘Go!’
Garrett went.
***
The three of them sat in the small kitchen. The door and windows were wide open to create a through draft that drew the cigarette smoke from the room. Garrett was at a loss, as were Manon and Petrus. This was not the soldier’s area of expertise. And the more Garrett ran through his options the more limited and helpless he felt. They had questioned everyone that they could at the school and then searched the surrounding area thoroughly but to no avail.
Mister Sweets had arrived with a delivery in the late afternoon as well as a gift of scented soap for Manon. He too had joined in the search, driving around the whole area and asking questions. To no avail.
And then there was the way that the police reacted. He thought that they seemed suspicious. However, when he had discussed the incident with Petrus, the guard had assured him that it all seemed pretty normal. Corrupt policemen, stealing from their own station. Bleeding victims sitting unattended in charge offices. Neither the will nor reason to even attempt to take Garrett’s alleged abduction seriously. With over five hundred violent crimes a day to deal with Garrett could understand why. His problems were so far down the list as to be almost non-existent. He needed someone that he could question. He was a soldier. Soldiers fought battles. But he had no one to fight. So he sat in the kitchen and the day turned to dusk.
***
Vusi had walked all day. He had visited three churches but only one person had talked to him. The other two had chased him away. Voetsak, they had shouted. Bugger off.
At the third church there was an old lady who was sitting outside, in the church garden. She had spoken to him. He had explained to her that the church ladies had stolen his sister and he was trying to find her so that he could take her home. To their home. With a door. She had told him to go to Randburg, Wolmorans street, behind the supermarket. There he would find the church mission. This is where they took the homeless people.
So Vusi walked all day. But when he got to the mission it was filled with men. Only men. Men, old before their time. Faces scoured by the outdoors, pared down to essential lines like crude paintings. Every slash of the artist’s brush a story of defeat. Of hardship. And suffering.
A young girl with a ring in her nose and purple hair had told him that he should try the children’s orphanage in Honeydew. So he had started to walk there.
But the sun had gone down and he had left the road and wandered off into the veldt to try to find somewhere safe to spend the night. For this was Joburg and at night the crazies came out. Especially on a Saturday, the night after payday. Drunkards, drug addicts and worse. But Vusi knew how to hide. He found a small copse of thorny bushes and crawled into them, curled up into the fetal position and lay still, his screwdriver in his hand. Tomorrow he would wake early and find his sister. Tomorrow he would take Thandi home.
Chapter 9
To most of the people in SOWETO he was known as Mister Big. Those closer to him were allowed to refer to him simply as Big or Mister B. He was fifty-three years old. Eighteen months ago he had looked closer to thirty-three. A big man in all aspects of his life. Three hun
dred pounds of muscle overlaid with a good quantity of sleek fat, a sign of his wealth. His ability to afford meat meals whenever he felt like it. His suits tailored to fit his bulk. Shoes, off the shelf but the very best of quality. The Rolex was real but had not been paid for. The gold chains around his neck had.
His laugh was large and his sexual appetite was as voracious as a lion. He was a man amongst men and had fought his way up from the very bottom. Running with street gangs back in the evil days of apartheid. Fighting the white security forces and opposing black gangs with equal dedication and ferocity. And in a land where violence was an everyday occurrence he had made a name for himself as one of the most violent. He had personally killed more men than he had fingers and toes and, as a result, he was the acknowledged king of the darker side of the southwestern township or SOWETO. Illegal gambling, unlicensed drinking houses and protection all fell under his auspices. Armed robberies, hijacking and crimes outside of the township fell under someone else’s umbrella. Someone whom even Mister Big talked of with a voice lowered in respect. A man that few had ever met or even knew that he existed. Many had met his second in command. A man whom, behind his back, people called The Dog. To his face, however, they called him Sir and bent their knees as in the serfs of old.
But that was eighteen months ago. Now Mister Big’s suits hung on him like a king’s robes on the court fool. Limply draped over his wasting frame. The Rolex looked outsize on a wrist as thin as an old lady’s. Spare flesh drooped from his face in empty folds. Skin, once a glossy black now the color of old car tires. His chest was covered in skin infections, warts and ringworm. Sores in his mouth were so painful as to make eating an almost impossible task.
He had seen doctors. At first only white doctors as was befitting his standing in society. No traditional healing for him. He was a man of the future. A modern man unfettered by superstitions and the old ways.
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