Talion

by Beyers de Vos

  Slick massages the scar on his arm absent-mindedly – a scar many times opened and reopened in the years since that first cut – as he watches Benjamin Rust drop his sister off in front of Oxford’s and slowly drive down the street looking for parking. Slick stands, so that Benjamin Rust, seeing him standing here, would be drawn to the parking space.

  Slick is gambling; he is gambling that Benjamin Rust won’t recognise him, that he won’t see beyond the car-guard uniform. Even though Benjamin Rust knows this disguise, he won’t be expecting it; he won’t be able to see the truth through the darkness. Even if he did, though, he wouldn’t be expecting any foul play. He would drive right up to Slick, because he trusts him. And that’s when Slick would shoot him in the head and disappear. And all anyone would say afterwards, if they said anything at all, was that maybe there had been a car guard here tonight, but wasn’t there always? No witness would be able to see past his disguise, or remember his face.

  Slick smiles.

  He adjusts his body language, pulls his beanie down further. Ben pauses in the middle of the road, and the orange flicker of his indicator light flashes.

  Slick feels the first spasms of panic, his calm beginning to crumble, like a worm burrowing inside his brain. But he doesn’t have time to think; he doesn’t have time to reconsider. Trust the plan; trust the disguise. He chose a quiet night, a night on which most of the students were gone for the holidays; he has orchestrated an absence of police in the area. It is now or never.

  Act.

  Slick pulls out his gun.

  Ben is holding a cigarette out his open window, a habit of his that Slick is counting on.

  Benjamin Rust cannot be allowed to live any longer, cannot be allowed to spend another night stealing from him.

  He has to, has to die.

  Slick watches Benjamin Rust’s face as he lifts his gun, sees the shock flash across it. In the moment before he pulls the trigger, in the moment he throws this boy away, Slick winks.

  Bang.

  There is a scream . . . the sound of screeching tyres.

  And then Slick runs.

  He has never run this fast in his life.

  He jumps over the fence behind him, into the darkness of the office block, and sprints towards the other end of the block, to another fence that will deposit him two streets away. As he runs he flings his neon-­yellow bib aside, takes off his beanie. When he arrives at the other end of the property, he crouches low. Panting. The tall office block is behind him, hiding the street he just came from, the chaos. He hears sirens. At least his friend is off making sure all the pigs in the area are distracted by other things; he has some time before they swarm the area. I want to know everything you know asap, he texts quickly. He changes his clothes: the ragged T-shirt and jeans are exchanged for a suit jacket and chinos. He straightens the jacket, whips the discarded clothes into his backpack, and holsters his gun.

  He breathes deeply.

  Then he walks away, unhurried, into the embrace of the waiting city.

  Revenge Is a Purple Thing

  June

  1

  The man is throwing paint at the wall. The city can feel it hit the bare brick, wet and sticky.

  The man is dressed in a white tank top and white shorts. Paint has splattered back against his clean clothes, his bare arms, bare legs. His muscles are shining with sweat; his concentration is magnetic. He moves as if in a dance. His movements – reaching for his paint, stabbing his big brush deeply into the tin and pulling it out again with a great flourish, then throwing, dashing, tossing the paint against the wall – achieve a pulsing, repetitive rhythm. His eyes are closed, and his actions are smooth, sweeping.

  He is using vivid hues of red and blue that arc through the air between brush and wall slowly, some of it missing and dropping to the pavement. It is haphazard art; perhaps it isn’t art at all. But he is obviously caught up in his own energy – anger, ecstasy, and passion all flashing across his face as he works.

  He finishes suddenly, stopping with a final thrust of paint, almost half-­heartedly, across his shoulder.

  He is panting, and he puts his hands on his chest as if to still his heart. His hands are stained red.

  He opens his eyes and regards his work.

  On the wall, the paint is still wet, still settling. The blues and reds are running over each other, running ahead of each other, fighting for dominion. Rivulets of red and blue paint meet at the base of the wall, crash and collide.

  And as the man walks away, streams of purple follow him into the night.

  From the wall, the city bleeds.

  Tuesday

  2

  ‘What’s bothering you?’

  ‘Hmm?’ She’s sitting on the floor, back against her couch, watching an episode of The Closer. Her television screen is slightly skewed, damaged by age, and she’s in the habit of tilting her head when she’s watching. Frik’s been in the bedroom, talking quietly on his phone. ‘Who were you talking to?’ she asks. ‘It’s after midnight.’

  ‘A friend. Is it the Benjamin Rust thing?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘The thing that’s bothering you?’

  ‘No, why would that be bothering me?’

  ‘I dunno. Because it’s still not solved.’

  ‘Well, that happens. No new information, so the plot can’t move forward, can it?’ She sighs, watching the screen: always new information, always a guilty conscience in TV land.

  ‘Then what is it?’

  ‘The shots.’

  They’d heard them earlier, from her bedroom, while the white sheets were tangled about their legs. Two shots.

  Bang. Bang.

  They had sounded like they came from her street, right outside her window – too close to ignore. She’d jumped up as soon as she heard them, but Frik had remained still – still and naked – on the bed. ‘Aren’t you coming?’ she’d asked.

  ‘This isn’t our beat, babe. We can call it in. Let someone else take care of it. Come back to bed.’

  She called it in, radioed the Sunnyside station.

  But now: ‘I haven’t heard sirens or seen anything out there. It’s been an hour.’

  It’s the twist of his lip, the drop of condescension in his voice. It’s the way he called her ‘babe’ earlier. It’s the fact that those gunshots sounded louder, darker, than usual; a feeling she can’t explain. She has to do something.

  She’s at the door, zipping up her jacket and fastening her gun to her belt. ‘If you’re going to stay here,’ she says, ‘at least call some back-up.’

  Before her outstretched hand can touch the cold copper of her door handle, he says, ‘Wait, I’m coming.’

  It was a mistake to sleep with him, but she understands why she keeps doing it: he makes her feel powerful – he is so submissive, so laid-back and willing to let her lead. She’s never had that with a man. Not that there have been many men. Not that any of them lasted long. Too strongwilled, her mother’s voice whispers. Always chasing them away with your strength. Better strong than weak. Better alone than abused. Right, Mom? Right?

  Five minutes later – five minutes she wouldn’t have needed to wait had she been alone – they move into the street, torches held aloft. Guns drawn. She lives across from a large park, famous for its drug dealers and sex workers. On the far side of the park stands the National Art Gallery, a flat rectangle of glass and grey steel. She is sure the gunshot came from that direction; she can’t see anyone moving through the darkness.

  She motions for Frik to follow her, to flank her.

  The park is surrounded by large jacarandas – sinister shapes in the blue darkness – and covered in patchy grass slowly being eroded by years of loitering and litter. Stone pathways criss-cross the lawns, carrying them deeper into the interior, further away from the light of street lamps, and nearer the gallery and the wet shadows it casts.

  Fast-food boxes and empty soda cans collect at the feet of broken bins, the smell of rotting gar
bage carried on the air.

  They search for twenty minutes without finding anything.

  She called the Sunnyside station again while Frik was dressing, but still no sound of sirens, still no sign of anyone giving a shit. Frik comes walking out the darkness. ‘I haven’t found anything except a drunk beggar. He says he heard the gunshot, but doesn’t know from which direction it came. Didn’t see anything. Couple of girls on the other side of the park huddled away. Same story.’

  She is about to give up. A gunshot doesn’t mean a body. Gunshots are a common enough nightly chorus here. But this one had been so close, too close. She’ll come back in the morning and try to find a casing.

  ‘What’s that?’ Frik says, pointing.

  ‘What?’

  ‘That.’ From beneath a hedge planted against the outer wall of the gallery, where they have already searched, there is a hint of movement: a black shape passing through shadow.

  ‘Don’t know, I’m not sure I see anything.’

  ‘No, there’s definitely something.’

  They head towards the movement.

  Behind the museum, the moon is yellow and fat. It would almost be romantic if she didn’t have her gun in her hand, listening to the dirty silence: the kind of silence which means that someone is trying not to breathe. The kind of silence that swells.

  ‘There’s no one here,’ Frik says ahead of her, searching the hedges. ‘My mistake.’

  ‘No. Wait. Listen.’

  ‘Listen to what?’

  ‘You don’t hear that?’ Nolwazi walks up to the hedge, carefully shining her torch underneath it. She wouldn’t have said someone could fit beneath there, and earlier she had thought those shadows were natural, cast by the plants themselves. But now the shadows are slightly altered, sharper than before . . .

  There.

  Against the wall, cradled in the corner behind a row of bushes, is a young boy. He’s forced a space between the museum wall and the plant bedding, squeezed himself in, made himself small. She would not have seen him had she not parted the plants directly above him, had he not moved.

  ‘Shit,’ Frik says.

  ‘Call an ambulance,’ she says.

  The boy can’t be more than nine or ten; he’s wrapped in a too-large jacket. He’s looking at their guns with fear. He’s clutching at his stomach with red, red hands, and she can smell blood. ‘We have to take him to hospital,’ she says, moving towards him. But as she moves forward, the boy reacts: in a split second, he’s whipped out a gun. It’s a frantic, fearful gesture.

  He looks at her – a warning.

  But she takes another step.

  So he fires. The shot explodes into the quiet night.

  She feels the heat of the bullet firing past her legs.

  Frik is in front of her, pushing her towards the ground. She collapses under his weight. ‘Put the gun down!’ Frik yells. ‘Put it down!’ Frik’s gun is in the boy’s face, his body looming over him.

  Seconds tick by.

  Her own gun has fallen to the ground.

  Has she been hit?

  No.

  No, she can’t feel anything.

  She hears the boy’s gun fall. Frik lets go of her, allows her to stand. She retrieves her weapon. She watches the boy’s terrified eyes follow Frik as he leans down to pick up the discarded gun. He holds it carefully by the barrel. He is still pointing his own gun at the boy. Nolwazi takes another step towards the boy, puts her hand on Frik’s arm, pushing his gun down, away. She talks to the boy. ‘My name is Nolwazi,’ she says. ‘Can I take you to hospital? Will you let me help you?’

  The boy shakes his head: don’t come closer. Nolwazi slowly holsters her gun, showing him her bare hands. She takes off her jacket, offering it to the wounded child. He shakes his head again. Before she can move, Frik puts a hand on her shoulder. ‘Just leave him, babe.’

  ‘Inspector.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘We’re in the field. Use my title.’

  ‘Just leave him,’ Frik says again.

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘We can’t save him.’

  ‘We need to try.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘He’s the victim here, Frik.’

  ‘No, he’s not. He’s the problem. He’s the trouble.’

  ‘The trouble with what?’

  ‘The trouble with everything. With this country.’

  ‘So we should leave him to die? That’s what you’re saying?’

  ‘He’s going to be dead in a few minutes anyway. There’s no way you can get him to an ambulance on time.’ It takes her a moment to digest his words.

  Nolwazi’s heart changes in an instant.

  She turns to face Frik, and says, ‘Shut up, Frik. Shut the fuck up. Just call an ambulance.’

  She hands him her phone. He regards her impassively before taking it.

  She turns, and moves quickly towards the boy. His eyes widen, and he begins to scream. High-pitched and brutal, it pierces the night. But she moves through the sound. She picks him up; he weighs almost nothing. She presses her jacket into his wound. As soon as she does this, the screaming stops. The boy’s arms fall to his side. He’s passed out.

  ‘He would have shot you. You know that, right – he would have shot you and left you here to die.’ Frik is standing back from her, his shoulders hunched, his face in shadow. He hands her back the phone. ‘They’re on their way.’

  ‘He’s just a child.’

  ‘He wouldn’t have done the same for you.’

  ‘He isn’t a police officer, Frik. It isn’t his job to be better. But it is ours. Now fucking help me. Go get the car.’

  ‘The ambulance is en route,’ he protests.

  ‘Go get the car,’ she says again.

  ‘What about this? I can’t break chain of custody.’ He is still holding the boy’s gun.

  ‘That’s an order,’ she says.

  He nods slowly, and starts back towards her flat. Then she hears the ambulance sirens coming towards them. Somewhere on the other side of the park, red lights flash, flash, flash. Frik stops; he turns around and looks at her. He shrugs his shoulders, twisting his lip into a tight full-stop. He looks at her with something akin to pity; a dark, dead pity. Then he turns and starts walking again, slower than before. She takes this to mean he is leaving, not coming back. Good riddance, then.

  Angie was right anyway. He does have a small penis.

  3

  Freya Rust. Twenty-one. Art student.

  These words echo as she lies in bed, no longer an art student, no longer twenty-one. Barely still Freya Rust.

  She woke up because of the blood. It flooded her whole vision. Spilt over her hands. She wipes them on her sheets, then sits up, letting her eyes adjust, lighting a cigarette.

  ‘Happy birthday, Rusty,’ she says to the room, to the Ben inside her head.

  Freya had been dreaming about the first time she saw a murder, about the trail of tragedy that spread from that day to this day; a life remembered in blood.

  She was nine years old, and the whole world was red. They had been on holiday, in the deep north of the country, in the heat of the desert. There was very little vegetation: a few shrubs barely holding themselves in the earth, unable to resist the tumbling balls of hot, hot wind that scraped the world clean, covering everything in a soft red dust. It stained their tents, cars and clothes, their hair, the inside of their mouths, their food.

  The camp they were staying in was nothing more than six tents erected on wooden platforms and a few outbuildings, surrounded by a fence designed to stop elephants but not much else. The camp was perched on the edge of a dry pan, an ancient seabed where shiny rock formations glistened in the sun. Relief from the heat and dust could be found in a small stone hut, which overlooked the pan. Freya spent her afternoons with her head on her mother’s lap, having her forehead dabbed with a wet cloth; the cloth, too, came away with a smattering of red dust.

  There were no other guest
s in the camp. Just Freya, her family, and a few staff members: a cleaner, an animal tracker, and a ranger who took them out onto the farm at dusk, showing them the game. His name was Ranger Daniel, and he had skin as dark as anything Freya had ever seen; he spoke in a musical voice – a deep, melodious timbre. Freya was in love with him as soon as she set eyes on him.

  Although they ventured out into the flat, sun-spiked vastness every day, most of the animals they saw came to them: there was a small, mira­culous pool of water that still survived inside the dry pan. Lion, jackal, and impala all moved past in small numbers throughout the day.

  There was one animal that had made the watering hole its permanent residence – a heron which spent its life patrolling the area around the pool, challenging almost any animal that came too near its nesting ground. It was at least as tall as Ben, and its dark plumage glistened in the sun, glossy despite the dust. Freya spent many hours watching as it made itself suddenly large – extending its slim leather legs and its sinuous black neck – and swooped down on a jackal trying to drink. Only lions seemed immune to the heron’s wrath. Often the heron moved away from the water, turning its back on the pond. It would fold its neck down, and partially cover its face with its wing. Feigning disinterest. Through binoculars, Freya could see it open one yellow eye every few minutes, keeping watch. It was playing a game. As soon as another bird came into range, it would strike with incredible speed. Anything smaller than itself was dealt a deadly blow by a sharp black beak.