Capture

by Smith, Roger

  She bought Britt a cone and the kid is skipping along, a smear of ice cream on her nose. Dawn stops and crouches, wiping her child’s face with a tissue.

  “Come, get done with that thing now. I wanna take you shopping.”

  The cone disappears, Brittany cramming it into her mouth—little pig—and Dawn neatens her up a bit and they walk into Egg, the kid’s store where Nick Exley’s dead daughter got her clothes.

  Young as she is, Brittany knows this place is something special. Britt looks cute, sure, in her outsized T-shirt and Chinese blue jeans, but Egg is designer wear for the under-tens.

  “Mommy gonna buy me one like so?” Brittany asks, feeling up an outfit on a kid-sized dummy like she’s a fashion buyer.

  “Ja. It’s your lucky day, girlfriend.”

  They find the rails for four-year-olds and Brittany’s hands are everywhere, grabbing and tugging, and some snotty brown sales bitch comes over and gives them a frosty smile.

  “May I help?” she asks in an accent she stole from the TV.

  “Nah, we okay. I need you I call you,” Dawn says.

  A hefty blonde woman with two fat kids comes in and the shop girl is across to them, all smiles. Dawn has a tug of war with Britt, until they agree on some outfits to try on, then Brittany drags her toward the changing cubicles. Dawn’s got Nick’s two grand in her pocket, but the prices of these clothes are sick. Fucked if she’s going to blow her cash on this stuff.

  When she gets Brittany into the curtained cubicle, she strips her down to her panties, and they quickly select an outfit they both like. It’s so adorable Dawn could just pee herself. A loose, sleeveless top with flowers and butterflies embroidered on it over tight little pink hipsters in something soft and floppy. Perfect.

  The pants and top are security tagged with plastic sensors the size of brooches that’ll get the alarm at the doorway screaming if she tries to smuggle the clothes out. Not a problem. Dawn digs a pair of nail scissors from her bag and she cuts into the fabric around the tags, removing them. She pulls at a few loose threads. Can’t hardly see no damage.

  Dawn dresses her daughter, covering the Egg clothes with Brittany’s cheap and nasties. Nobody would know. She hides the tags under the shelf in the changing cubicle, grabs the armful of rejected clothes, and takes Brittany’s hand.

  She dumps the clothes on the sales assistant saying, “I think maybe your clothes are better for fat-assed kids.”

  Marches Brittany out past the heavy whities and speed-walks her through the mall to the road, where the taxis gather like roaches, ready to take the workers back to the Flats. They squeeze in among aunties in cashier outfits and shop girls painted to the nines, lost in a world of mindless chick-talk all the way to Voortrekker.

  Back home Dawn makes them toasted cheese, then she washes Brittany’s hair and blow-dries it, smoothing out her blonde curls, taking peeks at the stolen picture of Nick’s kid, making sure Britt’s laser eyes don’t catch her in the mirror. When she dresses her daughter in the new outfit—doing a little rehearsal for tomorrow—she’s astonished at what she sees.

  “Well, Britt, what you think?”

  Brittany, pirouetting in front of the mirror, in love with her reflection, says, “Now I really look like a white kid, hey, Mommy?”

  Oh you do, my baby, you do. And not just any white kid.

  Exley has lost all sense of time in the eternal twilight of his studio.

  Terrified of coming down, he carries on drinking and takes steady hits on the joints Shane Porter left behind. When monitor blindness and carpel tunnel finally drive him from the room, the seagulls bicker against a hot orange sky.

  His cell phone, lying on the sofa, rings and blinks. He picks it up as the ringing ends and sees that he has fifteen missed calls. He doesn’t check his voicemail, knows they’ll all be from Vernon Saul. Hounding him. Demanding to know if Exley has been down to Hout Bay to buy an anonymous pay-as-you-go SIM card for his cell phone. If he’s used it to call Dino Erasmus. If he is executing The Plan.

  The phone vibrates in his hand, blaring out its ring tone, and he almost drops it in fright. Unknown Caller comes up on the display but he knows who it is. Takes the call, wanting to stop all this.

  “Yes,” he says, his voice a parched whisper.

  But it is not Vernon Saul. It’s the snout-nosed cop. “Mr. Exley?”

  “Yes.”

  “Detective Erasmus here.”

  “Yes,” Exley says again. Perhaps his vocabulary is limited to this single word? But when the cop asks if he can come around to the house to ask him a few more questions, Exley discovers that his range extends to “no”. Not wanting this ugly man with his denuding eyes anywhere near the house.

  “Why not?” Erasmus asks, pissed off.

  “My wife’s parents are here from England,” Exley says, “for the funeral, and they’re traumatized enough.” Realizes immediately how dumb this lie is.

  “Not my problem. I need to see you.”

  “Okay, but not here,” and just like that Exley borrows a line from The Plan: “Do you know the old Scout Hall in Llandudno?”

  “Ja. I know it.”

  “Meet me there.”

  “I’m in my car, coming up from Hout Bay. See you in ten minutes.”

  Exley is committed now and he has to haul ass. He finds his Havaianas out on deck and takes off across the beach, clambering over the hump-backed rocks—just like Vernon showed him—so he can avoid the eyes of the surveillance cameras positioned around the house.

  Suddenly he realizes that it doesn’t matter if he’s seen. He’s had enough. It’s over. He’s going to meet Erasmus to tell him everything.

  End this thing.

  The setting sun throws a gaudy light on the narrow footpath that carves its way through the dense green bush, up the steep slope toward the Scout Hall. To Exley’s monitor-fried eyes the overheated landscape is a swirl of acid colors, throbbing and shifting as he forces his starved and exhausted body up the path.

  There’s no one about. All the walkers are down on the beach with their dogs, enjoying sundowners. Exley comes across the old bench, right where Vernon said it would be. Just a rusted metal skeleton, the wooden slats rotted through and split, lying like matchwood beside the path.

  Exley tells himself that there will be nothing under the pile of wood. But there it is: a bile-green plastic bag, the top tied in a knot. Exley opens it, revealing an automatic pistol and a pair of surgical gloves.

  Vernon demonstrated on his own pistol the day before, showing Exley how to cock the gun and fire it. Telling him to get in close before he pulls the trigger. Telling him to wear the gloves, so if forensics test his hands they will find no trace of gunshot residue.

  Feeling the wind of karma at his back, Exley picks up the bag and takes it with him. To show the cop. Evidence against Vernon Saul.

  Wheezing, sweating booze, Exley emerges on the dirt road that leads toward the disused Scout Hall. He can see the building in the distance, silhouetted against the lurid sunset: a shell of brick, with empty window frames and doorways, the roof bare to its trusses, all but picked clean by scavengers.

  A light-colored Ford sedan is parked outside the hall and Erasmus stands leaning against the hood, smoking, surveying the palatial homes that follow the sweep of the coastline far below, the sky behind the mountain a strip of dirty red torn from the black sky.

  “Must be nice to have money,” the cop says, not looking at him. “You bloody foreigners come here buying up everything, living in the lap of luxury. But let me tell you, no amount of money is gonna save your ass now.” Exley doesn’t reply, fighting for air. Erasmus turns to him, pointing that snout like a shotgun. “You going down, Mr. Exley.”

  Exley nods. It’s all got out of control and he’s got to bring it back. Tell the truth. Tell how he killed Caroline in self-defense and rage. How Vernon manipulated him.

  He’s about to confess to this creep with his unfinished face when Erasmus says, “So what real
ly happened with your daughter?”

  Exley’s confession gets stuck in his throat and he says, “What do you mean?”

  “That drowning. Your wife off screwing Stankovic somewhere, I suppose? And you and that Australian doing what? Getting fucked up on drugs and just letting it happen? You bloody people are degenerate.”

  Exley shakes his head, tries to say, no, that’s not what happened.

  Even though it is.

  But the cop isn’t done. Exley can feel the heat of this brown man’s rage and race hatred rising from his body. “Still and all I’m sure it’s a relief now. Daughter dead and gone. Killed your wife. Now your way is free and clear to get yourself some dark meat, way you people always do.” To Exley the man’s words have the weight of blows. “Oh, I know she was by your house yesterday, that little street whore. No time for feeling guilty about your dead family, is there, when you got a bushman mouth sucking on your white dick?”

  A surge of fury collides with the substances Exley’s been ingesting, and the toxic mix takes out his nervous system for a few seconds, as if he’s suffered an aneurism. Dizzy, he falls back against the car, shaking, fighting for control. He has none and his fingers unclench and the plastic bag slips from his grasp and falls to the ground, the weapon inside gonging dully against a rock.

  The cop stares at him and then sticks out a worn Hush Puppy and toes the bag open, the gunmetal gleaming salmon pink in the last light.

  Erasmus laughs when he sees what’s inside.

  “Oh, sweet Jesus, this is just great,” he says, sniffing the air in delight, his flaring nostrils holding their own little celebration. “You know, this was my final throw of the dice, meeting you here? I couldn’t find fuck all on you and your buddy Saul. My boss told me to drop it. Let’s not piss off the foreigners, he said. We need their money, he said. I was looking at being kicked out of Special Investigations. A fucken embarrassment they were calling me. And now? Now, I see a promotion coming my way.” The cop unholsters his own weapon and points it at Exley. “Pick up the gun.”

  Exley doesn’t move. Tries to say something, explain, but his tongue is set in cement. Erasmus jabs him in the ribs with the gun barrel. “Pick it up now.”

  Exley obeys, light-headed as he bends down and lifts the bag. “No. Pick up the gun by the fucken butt.”

  Exley does as he’s told, the weapon leaden in his grip.

  “So,” the cop says, “you come here to shoot me? Do it, then.”

  Exley feels the trigger cool and slick beneath his finger, but his hand shakes like he’s piggybacking a steam hammer, the barrel wagging wildly.

  Erasmus laughs at him. “Can’t do it, can you?” He reaches forward and grabs the barrel. Exley’s fingers slacken and the cop takes the gun and sets it down on the hood of the car.

  Erasmus grins at Exley, gives him a little shove in the chest. “You bring a gun, sonny, you better have the balls to use it.”

  Then he punches Exley in the gut, smiling all the while. Exley falls to his knees, his hands tearing on the rocky road. He knows this is it. His fate is sealed. That karmic wind is howling now, blowing him into as bad a future as he can imagine.

  “Take a nice good look at the view,” Erasmus says, “because all you gonna see from now on is high walls, barbed wire and the smiles of the AIDS-rotten fuckers coming to rape your tight white asshole.”

  Without thinking Exley scoops up a fist-sized rock and draws on some last reserve of strength to spring to his feet and smack the cop on his snout, hearing bone and cartilage go snap, crackle, pop. Erasmus makes an animal sound and sags, blood geysering from his nose, his weapon spinning from his hand. Exley hits him again. And keeps on hitting him until things go soft and wet and Exley is too spent to continue, on his hands and knees, drooling, gasping for breath.

  It is fully dark now and Exley is grateful that he can’t see what he has done, the cop a dark shadow beneath him. There is no movement. No breath coursing through what remains of that crude nose.

  Some instinct for self-preservation drives Exley to throw the rock as far as he can into the thick undergrowth. Then he takes the dead cop’s gun and puts it in the plastic bag with the unused surgical gloves. He forces himself to frisk Erasmus, finding his wallet with his ID. He takes that too. Making it look like a robbery.

  Maybe.

  Finally he grabs the pistol, lying on the hood of the car like it’s waiting for a game of Russian Roulette, and dumps it in the bag. He flees the corpse, down into the bush, fighting his way toward the sniggering ocean, his breath coming in torn rasps. He emerges close to where Vernon Saul executed the Rasta, the rocks lying slick and black under the night sky.

  Exley throws the guns into the water. Follows them with Erasmus’s wallet. Then he strips off his bloodstained clothes and finds two stones the size of footballs. He ties his shirt around one and sinks it. Does the same with his jeans and underwear. Frisbees his Havaianas out into the swell.

  He squats down, his dangling foreskin scraping the surface of the rock, and edges himself into the freezing water, feeling his balls shrivel, forcing himself on until he is submerged, kelp tugging at his legs. There is a moment when he is ready to surrender, to give himself to the ocean, ready for some Finding Nemo reunion with Sunny.

  But the moment passes and he knows he is too pathetic and useless to kill himself. So he washes off the cop’s blood and brains and drags his body from the water. Naked and dripping, he scurries over the rocks toward his house, feeling more beast than man, and retraces his steps into the sanctuary of the living room.

  He grabs a handful of dishtowels from the kitchen and dries himself, wielding a mop to get rid of his wet footprints on the tiles. Teeth chattering from adrenaline and the freezing water, he stumbles upstairs into the bright bathroom that bears evidence of another, more civilized, Nicholas Exley: a red and white striped toothbrush, shaving cream and razor, an uncapped deodorant stick with a coiled armpit hair caught on the sticky ball. Property of a man he’ll never be again.

  He gets under the hot shower and scrubs at his skin until it hurts. The bandage on his left hand lifts free of the adhesive tape, slipping down toward his fingers, and he sees the fabric is stained with blood. His or the cop’s, he doesn’t know. He pulls the bandage free and inspects his palm. His flesh has knitted.

  Exley leaves the shower and wraps himself in a towel. He drops the bandage into the toilet and flushes. The fabric swirls and dives like an eel but floats back to the surface. He flushes again and this time the bandage is sucked away.

  Exley walks through to the bedroom to dress. As he pulls on his clothes he hears a cat’s choir of sirens. He crosses to the window and sees spinning lights high up in the bush, turning the night sky red as blood.

  Chapter 41

  Within an hour a perfect little new South African trio is at Exley’s door: the black captain, a power-dressed brown woman who looks like a lawyer, and a geeky white guy in jeans and a short-sleeved shirt with Sniper Security embroidered on the pocket in red cotton, a laptop slung from his shoulder.

  “Mr. Exley, this is Captain Demas from Special Investigations, and Don,” the black man searches for a surname and can’t find it, “uh, Don, from Sniper.”

  “Yes?” Exley says.

  “From Detective Erasmus’s cell phone records we’ve established that he called you around seven thirty this evening.”

  “Yeah, he called and said he was coming over, but he never showed up.”

  The woman says, “Did he say why he wanted to see you?”

  “No. Just that he had some questions.”

  “And he never arrived?”

  “That’s right,” Exley says, trying to discipline facial muscles that seem intent on betraying him. “Is there a problem here?”

  The two cops exchange a look.

  “Would you mind, Mr. Exley, if uh, Don, checks the surveillance camera footage on the, the…” The black cop looks to the geek for help.

  Don points toward the sma
ll metal door recessed in the exterior wall, near the front gate. “It’s stored on a hard drive right over there. I can pull the data off onto my laptop in a minute.”

  “Go ahead,” Exley says. “But he wasn’t here.”

  “Of course,” the black man says.

  Exley turns and walks inside. He wants a drink and a hit on a joint. Remembers there are still a few of the little bastards lying out on deck, like loose ammunition. Enough to get him arrested, if one of these cops sees them. What the fuck, that’s the least of his problems. He flops down on the sofa and stares at a tennis match on TV. Two Amazonian women grunting like wild boars.

  The geek goes off to do his duty and the cops stand in the hallway, whispering.

  “You can sit down if you like,” Exley says.

  “No, we won’t impose,” the female cop says.

  “Impose away,” Exley says, but they ignore him and the woman’s cell phone rings and she speaks rapidly in Afrikaans, a low, guttural tongue, words dragged up from deep in her throat like phlegm.

  On the TV one of the Amazons hammers the ground with her racket and curses in some hill dialect. The other woman hides tennis balls in her underwear. The whole thing takes on the quality of a primitive ritual, freshly minted, and Exley is transfixed.

  A noise behind him turns his head. The geek places his laptop on the kitchen counter and the two captains flank him. Exley can hear snatches of their mumbled conversation over the tennis.

  The geek: “Nothing. No visitors. The detective wasn’t here.”

  The brown captain: “Any sign that Exley left?”

  The geek: “No. He didn’t leave.”

  The black captain: “You’re sure?”

  The geek: “The cameras don’t lie.”

  Exley has to cough to mask his hysteria-induced hilarity. The technician is dismissed and the two cops come and stand over Exley like attending angels.