by Ian Patrick
‘No, sorry, sorry. Yes, of course. Look, here, I don’t want any trouble. Are you the boyfriend she spoke about? Lissen, mate, I’ll give you five hundred. I’ll ...’
‘You don’t give. You don’t take. Me, I take. Is mine.’
The malevolence that had been bubbling up inside, sitting in the bush, did not now emanate in fury or passion. A great icy calm descended upon him as he looked at the snivelling tourist. He felt the power of the nyaope coursing through his blood. He felt invincible. He levelled the pistol at the fat man’s chest. Cold-moon grey glinted off the weapon. There was no mistaking it.
‘No, please! No, what’re you doing? You can’t… I have a wife and ch...’
He pulled the trigger twice, quickly, and the fat man jerked. Extraordinary pain shot through his shoulder as both bullets shattered bone. One found the left clavicle and the other the scapula. The victim screamed and fell backward, but as his attacker bent forward to put another bullet into his throat, every remaining particle in his will to survive gathered to enable him to lunge out at the weapon and kick it from the assassin’s grasp. The blow connected perfectly, but it was too late to prevent a third bullet going into the fat man’s face just next to his right eye. The pistol traced an arc high into the darkness. The assailant, in a frenzy, stumbled a few paces in the assumed direction of the weapon and fell to his knees in the dark, hands flying furiously back and forth over the beach-sand, trying to find the gun. Hopeless. The moon gave away nothing concealed in the shadows of the wind-driven ripples and gullies of soft sand.
He cursed in frustration as he felt all around him. His arms and fingers stretched over the sand where he calculated the weapon might have fallen. Nothing. In the distance he heard a police siren. He scrambled back to the dying man and got to his feet. Every violent act that had been perpetrated upon himself over twenty-three years welled into his eyes as he kicked at the man’s head once, twice, three times, then paused, as he felt something underfoot. The wallet. He reached down and picked it up. He paused. Then a fourth kick, this time aimed at the man’s chest. The blow shattered two ribs, one of them penetrating the right lung.
The assailant walked away from the scene, across the beach to the distant lights of Snell Parade, clutching the wallet, but cursing at the loss of his weapon.
04.49.
Ryder always surfaced a few seconds before the alarm. For as long as he could remember he'd never been roused by the sound of the buzzer. Just the anticipation of it was enough.
‘Simple fear of being frightened,’ she had once suggested, when he told her he’d been that way since junior school. ‘You’re just psyching yourself to wake up a few seconds before you’re forced awake. Why not dispense with the clock? You clearly don’t need it.’
He'd replied that he needed it. Just in case. Otherwise he wouldn’t get to sleep, worrying about whether he would oversleep.
‘I give up,’ she’d said.
He hit the button just before it could trigger. Maybe it wouldn’t actually buzz. Maybe the alarm had died months ago and he had been wasting time setting the damn thing every night. So what?
He yawned noisily as he sat up, pushed the duvet back, swivelled, and planted his feet together on the floor. She stirred. He switched on the reading light and scratched his head all over, vigorously, eight fingertips digging roughly into his scalp. Got up stiffly from the bed. Balanced himself in the perpendicular for a moment and stretched until he clicked something, somewhere near L4. She turned away from the light and pulled the duvet over her head with a soft irritated grunt.
He dragged himself, feeling like an eighty-year old, to the shower, kicking off shorts and pulling off socks, one-legged, on the way. She insisted that if he used heel balm last thing at night, he had to wear socks to bed. To protect the handmade flat weave kilim that covered the floor next to their bed. It had been there since they had bought it for a small fortune on the Marmaris honeymoon more than fifteen years ago. Its warm terracotta, red and orange diamonds now still as clear and as bright as they had been on purchase. She was frugal but she knew quality when she saw it.
He flicked the bathroom switch and flinched at the bright white light, then grabbed a towel off the rail and hung it on the outside of the shower door while turning on the hot. Two minutes to wait before it would gush at top scalding temperature, during which he brushed his teeth, more vigorously than he needed to. Then in and under, shaking wildly like an Afghan hound under a hose.
‘Ten minutes needed in there, minimum,’ he had said on occasion to friends. ‘Mainly because my hair just does its own thing if I go a single day without washing it.’ Fiona sometimes corrected this. ‘More like twenty minutes,’ she would say, ‘along with some loud tone-deaf singing, which usually gets me downstairs to do the coffee.’
He gurgled and bellowed, off-key, while water gushed into his mouth and moulded his hair flat and submissive on his skull, hat size seven and seven-eighths, if he ever was to wear a hat. He didn’t have the lyrics in the right order, but his passion for JJ Cale’s Don’t Wait was such that he simply steamrolled on through the half-remembered verse by substituting the forgotten words with sounds ranging from boom to da-da in an effort to maintain some semblance of the rhythm.
Whenever he got the words wrong, he simply switched to other half-remembered snippets. Volume and passion and imagined guitar, held too low to be anything more than a manufactured memory of some rock festival, made up for inaccurate lyrics.
He emerged, pink and steaming and half the age he had been when he entered the cubicle. Can’t do it any other way, he thought. What is it with me? Like a train’s run over me when I wake up. Like a forty-something again after a bit of soap and steam. Weird.
He towelled his hair violently. Thrust his face into the mirror to check what was there that shouldn’t be there. Alert blue eyes stared back. Dark brown on top was ready for taming by the hairbrush, but sideburns were showing too much grey. Shouldn’t that happen only when I’m fifty? Ed had told him the week before that he was using that ‘just for men’ stuff: got it from some guys called Combe International, he had said. But Ed was ten years older. OK for him to ‘touch up first grey’ – he was trying to find a third wife. He needs to do something, I suppose, to nail down one of the particular thirty-something types he seems to be chasing all the time. Randy bastard. Needs a Fiona in his life. A forty-something. Shoulda had some kids and a dog a dozen years ago. Like me. Needs a guitar now. Like me. And an intelligent woman. Yep. Like me.
The bed was empty when he emerged from the bathroom, shaved and smelling of nothing more imaginative than Brut under the arms and Old Spice on his muscular neck and chiselled jaw. And hair now obediently in place. The main light was on, the reading lights were off, and the bed was made. She clearly hadn’t much enjoyed his rendition. She didn’t care much for J.J. Cale at the best of times. She just doesn’t get him, he thought.
He opened his wardrobe, rifled through the shirts, paused, decided to throw on the old favourites: black denim jeans and khaki long-sleeve. Both clean and threadbare from a hundred washes.
He strapped the holster under his left armpit and slid the Vektor SP1 into it. Old friend, he thought. After some serious skirmishes over the years he derived comfort from the SP1's double-stack magazine, short-recoil locked-breeches and double-action trigger. He gave it the briefest of reassuring pats, as if it was the pet Chihuahua his son's girlfriend always carried in her shirt. Ready for the new day. He reached for the dark-brown leather jacket.
Fiona called. ‘Jeremy!!! Coffeeeee!!’
05.25.
The security guard was asleep as usual, head down on folded arms. His desk faced the two massive glass-paned doors ten paces away. A four-digit code punched in from outside by a returning tenant would unlock them. So would the press of a button from someone on one of the dozen floors above, responding to an appropriate visitor’s intercom request. Fronting the doors on the street side, the two aluminium trellis-gates were closed b
ut not locked. They were never locked, unless the guard had to leave his post for a short while.
Beyond the gates and the dual carriageway carrying the occasional freight truck, lay the black murkiness of the bay. It was flecked with the first encroachment of dull morning grey. Yachts in the special enclave in the harbour rocked gently on the turning tide. Four shapes silhouetted against the grey passed quickly, heading toward the exit from the wharf and then swiftly, silently across the carriageway to the buildings opposite. To the trellis-gates.
He had barely stirred at the sound of the gates being thrust back, but started to lift his head as the glass doors clicked open in response to the four digits punched into the box. The four men were upon him before he could get to his feet to hit the panic button. The first one smacked him with the flat of the panga blade across his left temple and he went down immediately, twisting one hundred and eighty degrees from the blow and sprawling face down across the chequered tile floor. The second one grabbed him by the collar and twisted him around, face up. As he started to scream the third jammed a pistol-barrel into his mouth, tearing the bottom lip and cracking a molar. The fourth, also with a panga, hacked open the door to the flimsy wooden cupboard and flung the contents out onto the floor. Four or five bunches of keys, a spare visitor-book, pen, pencils, pale yellow baked-enamel coffee mug, teaspoon and a bottle of water all skidded across the surface toward the terrified hostage.
The man with the pistol bent close to him, hissing into his face:
‘Number 82. Keys. Now. Or you die.’
The guard gagged in terror, rasping sounds trapped in his throat, pointing at the nearest of the bunches of keys, three feet in front of his right foot. The pistol man pulled the weapon roughly from his mouth, wreaking more damage to teeth and lips. He reached for the bunch of keys and thrust them into the old man’s face.
‘Show me. Now! Number 82. Which one?’
The guard whined as he took the bunch and isolated no. 82 with its yellow tag from the rest of the keys, each with its own coloured tag. The gunman snatched it back and walked swiftly with the two panga-men to the elevator, while the fourth dragged the guard to his feet and pushed him down into the chair.
The whites of the old man’s bulging eyes were arctic against his dark wrinkled skin. They reflected fear that he had never imagined possible. He trembled violently and cried like a child as blood trickled from his mouth over his white beard.
His tormentor smiled. His brown eyes were rheumy and bloodshot. The old guard thought that the young man’s eyes seemed to be those of a much older man. The eyes seemed to be an extension of a brain that had been slowly fried away by noxious weeds mixed with potent chemicals.
‘Today, madala, maybe you die,’ the young man said. ‘Maybe today.’
05.57.
The two detectives chuckled together next to the urn as the third, deadpan except for a slight smirk, poured his own cup of thick black coffee. The two Afrikaners could never comprehend how their two Engelsmanne colleagues – especially this one in front of them – managed to muster up an endless supply of jokes, each seeming to start with This guy, he walks into a pub. And almost all of the stories – from this one, they thought, but not so much from his partner – were built on sexual innuendo.
‘Sies, jong! You’re a filthy man, Trewhella. No wonder you’ve had so many divorces.’
‘Ja, boet. How do your women react to filth like that?’
‘Never been a problem, as far as I can see. You gotta laugh, guys. Don’t bore the women. Make ’em laugh. Trust me. Get them chuckling. Makes them cuddly. Which reminds me. This feller. Walks into a pub…’
The sergeant ripped open the inner door, phone in hand, and bellowed out at them:
‘Koeks! Dipps! Captain needs you to go over to Addington Hospital. Right away. Shoot-out last night. Something about the bush near Suncoast casino. Pillay will meet you there. She called it in. She’s with the first responder. She says she needs help urgently because he’s got no clue. He’s already stuffed up the cordon, she says.’
‘OK, Piet. Let’s go, Dipps. See you, Trewhella. Hold that story for us, OK?’
‘Cheers, guys. I’ll wait for Ryder and practice it on him. If he doesn’t find it funny, you will.’
Koekemoer and Dippenaar grabbed their polystyrene cups and slammed the door behind them as they strode out to the cars. Sergeant Cronje retreated back to the inner office.
Trewhella pulled a chair up with his foot while stirring his coffee. He sat down to look at yesterday’s Tribune. He didn’t get past the back page. A colour photo of a model, twenty-five-ish, he surmised, kissing a chocolate flake that was stuck into a vanilla soft-serve cone. Nice, he thought. Just like wife number one, all those years ago. But before he could read the commentary the sergeant was back at the door, repeating his earlier performance, but more urgently, this time yelling at a much higher pitch:
‘Ed! Robbery and shooting. Now! At The Grove, Margaret Mncadi Avenue. Opposite the Yacht Club! Uniforms are there but they called in to...’
‘OK, Piet! I know the place. I’m gone.’
‘Ryder’s only due at 6.30, but…’
‘Don’t worry, I’ll get hold of him. You set up some backup just in case, Piet. I’ll call in if I need it.’
‘OK. Will do.’
‘If I miss Ryder, send him along as soon as he gets in…’
He spilled half the coffee on his way out while shouting all of this and by the time he reached his car he cursed and threw away what was left. He tore out of the parking area, kicking up white vapour as the souped-up police car lurched out into the empty street, skidded round the corner into Stalwart Simelane Street and burned its way up the road like a sewing machine about to burst.
06.15.
Ryder eased the Camry down the driveway. Following her plea on behalf of the neighbours as she kissed him goodbye, he waited till he was at the corner before turning on the CD player.
The main selling point for his purchase of the 2009 vehicle had been its six-speaker stereo with auxiliary input. The dealer had made a big thing about the five-speed transmission and seven airbags and anti-lock brakes and electronic stability and traction control and cruise control and power windows and locks and sport-tuned suspension, but Ryder had already made up his mind when he heard the impact of the speakers. Fiona had gone straight to the sound system and turned it on, knowing that it would play the key part in Jeremy's choice, as she had told friends. She had been right. The rest of the stuff was no more than OK, in his view. The car's great, Ryder had said to the salesman.
He turned up the volume to full only after scanning for the right lyrics from Don’t Wait, the ones he hadn’t been able to bring to focus in the shower. He found them when he was already well down the old main road.
Banging out the beat on the steering wheel, as he glided from the King Cetshwayo highway onto the N3, and bellowing aloud in an attempt to keep with the words, he missed the first three rings on the iPhone. He picked up halfway through the fourth, and heard Ed screaming:
‘Jeremy! Get over here! Two down at The Grove. Eighth floor, apartment block, Margaret Mncadi, right opposite the Yacht Club. Where are you?’
‘Three minutes, Ed. Maybe four. Coming up to Toll Gate.’
Ryder grounded the pedal and the V6 responded instantly. The Camry bolted forward, thrusting him back into the cool leather. He crested the rise under the bridge with a clear freeway down to the city, as Trewhella yelled:
‘Make it three! This is bad stuff! Gang of four. Security guard also badly smashed up. Uniforms are looking after him downstairs. Guard says they ran across the road to the harbour area. And - shit - I can see them from way up here! They’ve been into the main boat area and are now heading down to Wilson’s Wharf. On foot, walking fast. Not running. Carnage up here, Jeremy. Really bad shit! Old couple. Waste the bastards if you have half a chance. They’re really bad news. I’ll join you at the Wharf. I’m leaving the scene now!’
&n
bsp; Ryder hit one hundred and eighty kilometres an hour on the straight as he bellowed into the phone:
‘What are they packing?’
‘Can’t tell. Big blades, definitely. Maybe pangas. And from the wounds and what the security guard shouted at me it looks like at least two 9-mm as well. I’m still way up here, waiting for the damn lift. I’ll have to cross the Embankment to the yachts. Then down the road to Wilson's.’
‘I’ll be there! Wait for me!’
‘No! I can’t wait. I’ll be on foot. Don’t pick me up. Go straight past me down to the restaurants. Maybe they don’t know it’s a dead end. Scare the shit outta them with everything you got on wheels. They’ll duck from you and probably come straight back up the drag to me and I’ll nail them. Getting into the lift now - losing signal!’
‘Got it!
He opened the window, placed the magnetised blue light on the roof, and left the end of the freeway through the red light, spinning a right turn with all four tyres slipping, then grabbing, then slipping again before finding traction then screeching and depositing rubber through the intersection. He caught the next four lights – or was it five, he thought – on the green at one hundred and twenty, slowed down a fraction while pulling hard left as he skidded onto the old Victoria Embankment, then lurched forward again with his foot flat. Another twenty seconds and he had got there in way less than three minutes.
As he skidded up to the entrance to the bay area on his right he glimpsed Ed over the low wall, sprinting down the road to Wilson’s. He spun the wheel, clattered over the railway lines with siren bellowing and blues flashing and within seconds he had surged past his partner, who waved him on and hunched forward as he ran, eyes straining to see any shapes ahead that might be outlined against the bay. The dawn was still slow enough to provide dim cover for Ed. If Ryder’s partner was right and they chose to backtrack away from the car, they would run right back into him.