by Roger Smith
“Sure thing.”
“All right if I wander around a bit?”
“Hey, whatever. I’ll be downstairs if you need me, okay?”
Zondi nodded and watched as the surfer boy bounced back down the stairs, probably counting the minutes until he could get into his wet-suit and go catch some waves. Zondi went up to the top floor, the roof open to the sky.
He was alone up there. He walked to the edge of an unfinished balcony, saw a small pile of cigarette butts. Roll-your-owns. He was prepared to bet that this was where the watchman and his dog had hung out. He wanted to talk to that watchman.
Zondi looked down onto the deck of the house next door. Another one of those high-walled boxes with big glass windows. A man stood on the deck, staring down over Cape Town, the breeze flicking his hair.
Zondi turned and walked back toward the stairs.
It had become too much for Burn. The watchman betrayed no emotion, focused on his task with single-minded determination. He applied the blade with precision to the body of the fat man, stabbing into the blubber, drawing blood that flowed down onto the garbage bags and the newspapers. He worked his way up the legs, then began on the massive torso.
Barnard, shirtless, his immense body streaked with blood, strained in the chair, the veins on his forehead popping out like cords. Sweat and blood coursed off him. He had pissed and shit himself, which, mixed with his fetid body odor and the smell of blood, made the room stink like a charnel house.
Every few minutes the watchman would remove the gag, and Burn would repeat the question. “Where is my son?”
And the fat cop would shake his head, his fringe wet and dangling, and spit two words through his bleeding lips. “Fuck youse.”
The watchman would shove the gag back in and tape it up. Then he would wipe the blade down and start his work again, inserting the knife into the body of the fat man deep enough to cause agony but not deep enough to cause death.
“I’m going upstairs. For some air,” Burn told the watchman, who merely nodded as he inserted the blade into Barnard’s shoulder. A keening noise rose from somewhere within the cop’s chest, and tears and sweat dripped from his face. His body bulged against the ropes.
Burn headed for the kitchen, where he splashed his face and drank a long draft of water. Was this fat bastard ever going to break? The longer this continued, the more remote the likelihood that he would ever see his son alive again.
Burn stepped out onto the deck and sucked air. Even the smoky breeze, still heavy with the charred smell of the fire, was sweet after the foul atmosphere of the torture chamber that was now his garage. It was hard to believe, looking out at this scene of quiet beauty, that the world went on, untroubled by the universe of pain and corruption that he had somehow stumbled into. Then he looked beyond the city and the ocean, out to where the land was flat, covered in a haze of smog and smoke.
Burn had taken Matt on a helicopter ride before Christmas. The chopper had done the usual tourist things, gone around Table Mountain, along the coast; then it had banked over the Cape Flats on its way to land, and Burn had looked down at the endless sprawl of box houses and ghett apartment blocks dumped on the scrubland like forgotten toys in a sandpit. As he stood on the deck, he had a memory of that sprawl. He knew his son was out there somewhere.
Burn had no idea how long he stood there, the wind cooling the sweat on his body, before he heard the voice calling to him. He looked down to the street and saw a black man in a very well-cut dark suit, designer shades, staring up at him.
“Excuse me,” the man said for maybe the fifth time.
Burn stepped toward the railing of the deck. “Yes. Hi, sorry.”
“I’d like to have a word with you, if you don’t mind.” The man was holding something toward him.
Burn focused. It was some kind of official ID. He almost wanted to laugh. Not again. Not now.
CHAPTER 27
A voice inside Burn’s head told him to open the street door, to extend his wrists in supplication toward this black cop and ask for the handcuffs. Lead him toward the garage that now doubled as a DIY torture chamber. Beg him to find his boy.
But Burn opened the door and did something with his facial muscles that resembled a smile. “Afternoon. Can I help you?”
The black man, his shaven dome gleaming in the sunlight, offered the ID document for Burn to view. “Special Investigator Zondi. Ministry of Safety and Security.”
Burn nodded, making no move to open the door any wider.
“Can I have your name, please, sir?”
“Hill. John Hill.”
“You’re American?”
“Yes, I am.” Burn made a point of looking at his watch. “I’m in kind of a hurry …”
“My apologies. Do you know anything about a red BMW that was parked next door to your house a few nights ago? Outside the building site?”
Burn shook his head. “No.”
The black cop thought for a moment before he spoke. “Was there maybe another officer here, asking questions?”
Burn was tempted to lie. But what if there was some record of Barnard having been here? He told a version of the truth. “Yeah. There was. A few days back.”
“Is that a fact? This officer, was he by any chance Inspector Barnard?”
Burn made a show of looking uncertain, playing the dumb foreigner. “These South African names kinda confuse me. He was a big guy, pretty heavy.”
“Sounds like him. He asked you about the car?”
“That’s right. Wanted to know if I had seen anybody. Heard anything. I told him what I told you.”
“Do you live here alone, Mr. Hill?”
“Well, at the moment, yes. My wife and son are away.” He was steping back. “If that’s all, I’ve got to get down to Sea Point. To the bank.”
“Just one more thing.”
The man reached into his well-cut jacket pocket and came out with a neatly folded sheet of paper. He unfolded it with his perfectly manicured fingers and held it up to Burn. “Do you know this woman?” He was showing him a printout of Susan’s mug shots, from ten years ago.
Somehow Burn managed a laugh. “Glad to say I don’t. She looks like trouble.”
The black man flashed a row of very white teeth. “Well, thank you, Mr. Hill.”
“Sure. My pleasure.”
Burn closed the door, leaned against it for a second while he tried to convince his heart not to hammer its way out of his chest.
Zondi walked back to his car, pressed the remote, and the lights flashed and the doors clicked open. He removed his jacket and folded it carefully. He slid into the car and reached back, hanging the jacket from a hook in the rear. He shut the door, started the engine, and sat with his eyes closed, the aircon at its maximum.
An American. Coincidence? There were a lot of Americans in Cape Town this time of the year, escaping blizzards and, for all he knew, the War on Terror. The man, Hill, hadn’t shown anything in his eyes when he looked at the mug shots of the American woman. He’d even cracked a joke. So either he was on the level or he was a practiced liar. And his shoes, top-of-the-line Reeboks, were those flecks of blood around the toe caps or mud from watering his garden, maybe?
Zondi led his mind to a place of stillness for a minute, feeling the aircon chilling the sweat on his body. Zondi, to his credit, knew that he was an obsessive. He knew enough Buddhism to understand that his quest for order and control was ultimately useless in the face of the cosmic joke called life.
He opened his eyes. What the hell? Maybe he should succumb to Cape Town’s charms while he killed time until his flight. The wind had died, and the sun was shining on the ocean. Why didn’t he cruise down to Camps Bay, sit at one of those sidewalk cafés, and sip something with an umbrella on top while he watched the girls go by?
Or he could take the used condom and the slug he’d dug out of the wall down to the police lab.
He started the car. The police lab won.
Burn was in th
e kitchen, drinking a glass of iced water from the fridge. He knew he was delaying the walk down the steps to the garage. He was scared of what he might find.
What if the watchman had taken the opportunity to kill Barnard? That aerial image of the sprawling Cape Flats came to Burn’s mind once more, and he imagined Matt lost out there, in the second day of this nightmare. He felt the boy’s terror. What if the one voice that could tell him where to find his son had been silenced?
Burn put down the glass and walked across to the stairs.
When he emerged in the garage below, he paused, tking in the scene before him. Barnard was motionless, slumped forward, prevented from falling by the ropes that tied him to the chair. His many chins were compressed down onto his bloody chest, and his hair hung over his eyes, wet with sweat and blood. His naked torso was cross-hatched with cuts, some fresh and bleeding freely, others fringed by darker blood already coagulating.
He’s dead, thought Burn. He has to be.
The watchman squatted in front of the fat cop, lighting a cigarette. He didn’t look up at Burn. He inhaled deeply and blew out a plume of smoke toward the ceiling; then he leaned forward and gently, almost delicately, placed the cigarette between Barnard’s lips. For a while it dangled there; then Burn saw the end glow as Barnard inhaled. He was alive.
Finally, the watchman looked up at Burn.
“Well?” Burn asked.
The watchman nodded. “He has spoke.”
The kid woke her, tugging at her arm. Carmen groaned and opened her eyes, immediately feeling the throb in her cheek where the fat bastard had hit her. She ignored the kid, who was whining about his mommy, got out of bed naked, and went across to what was left of her mirror. Jesus, her face looked like shit. The cheek was swollen, with enough colors to make a rainbow look anemic.
She didn’t know what was worse, the throbbing cheek or the spiders that crawled across her skin. She scratched herself, hard enough to draw blood with her chipped fingernails. She needed to score, and fast. But she didn’t have a fucken cent. All of Gatsby’s money was gone, and he had fucked off without leaving her more.
She dressed, trying to tune out the whining of the kid. When she couldn’t stand it anymore, the crying and moaning grating on her frayed nerves, she crushed up half a Mogadon in a teaspoon. She poured what was left of a milk carton into a glass, added the powder, and stirred it until it dissolved.
She handed the glass to the boy. “Drink this.”
He shook his head, his eyes swollen from crying. She got down on her knees, her face level with his. “Matt, you drink it, and I take you to your mommy, okay?”
He looked at her suspiciously. “You promise?”
“Cross my heart.” She made the sign of the cross on her chest, God forgive her, and the kid took a sip of the milk. He grimaced. It was sour. “Only if you drink it all up.”
He forced the rest of the milk down, leaving a mustache of white above his upper lip. Within a minute he was looking woozy. She lay him down on her bed and attacked her wild hair with a brush. Soon she heard the child snoring softly.
Now she had to score.
On her way to the door she passed Uncle Fatty, who was in his usual place on the sofa, communing with a bag of wine, dressed only in his foul underwear.
“I’m coming back now, okay?”
He nodded, staring into space.
She went on the hunt for tik, begging, cajoling, absorbig rejection and insult until she found the retard Conway. She told him more stupid lies about getting him to deal for Rikki, and he eventually made her a globe.
She sucked the smoke into her lungs and found peace. At least for the moment.
As she hurried back toward the ghetto block, Carmen tried to work out how long she’d been gone. She had no idea. What if the fat bastard had come back and taken the kid without leaving her more money? She broke into a run, the tik giving her a burst of raw energy.
She ran up the stairs, unlocked the front door, and went inside. The sofa was empty. She walked through to the bedroom and stopped in the doorway. It took a few moments for her to comprehend what she was seeing.
The American kid lay on the bed, passed out on his back. Uncle Fatty was crouched over him, busy loosening the boy’s pajama pants. His dentures lay on the bed beside the child. The old man turned and looked up at her, a necklace of drool dangling from his toothless gums.
Carmen grabbed the first thing that came to hand, a plaster statuette of the Virgin Mary. She brought the Virgin down on Uncle Fatty’s head, again and again and again, blood spraying across her face and her white T-shirt.
The dead were speaking to Barnard. Whispering to him, a choir of unearthly voices. They were calling his name. He had to fight hard to pull himself away from them, to open his crusted eyes. A blur. Hard sunlight lasered his eyes. He blinked, forced his eyes to focus, and saw the Cape Flats moving by him.
He was in a car. His car. The Ford. In the rear seat, his face pressed up against the side window. Even though the sun was shining and he was covered by a blanket, he was still freezing, shivering. He felt his loose fat shaking like jelly. And he was in agony, every square inch of his body screaming in pain and anguish. His mouth was dry, and his tongue felt as swollen as meat left to rot in the sun.
He tried to move his head. Unspeakable pain burned through his nerve ends as he managed to turn his head and look forward. He heard a voice, the American, speaking from far away, as if through a very long tube.
“He’s awake.”
Barnard looked into that nightmare face, the missing eye, the snakelike scar. The half-breed watchman, staring at him from the front seat. The watchman reached an arm over and forced him back down on the seat. Barnard heard an animal wailing and then realized it was him, a sound of pure agony tearing itself loose from his body.
The half-breed pulled the blanket over his face, and Rudi Barnard could see nothing but the dead.
CHAPTER 28
There was not a day that Fingers Morkel woke without excruciating pain in his missing digits. The fingers that Benny Mongrel had cut off with his knife. As he lay in bed, Fingers lifted his two scarred stumps up to eye level to make certain—yet again—that his fingers really were gone. They were, but they still hurt like fucken hell. Doctors had told him that he was suffering from phantom limb syndrome. That he was experiencing phantom pain.
They made all sorts of smart-ass sggestions: apply heat to the stumps, flex what was left of his hands to improve the circulation. Some white fucker had even told him to imagine that he was exercising the missing fingers. Fingers had imagined he was raising the middle digit of each hand to the asshole doctor, but that hadn’t got rid of the pain or his anger.
The way Fingers dealt with this whole sorry mess was to shove as many drugs down his throat as he could. And to imagine killing Benny Mongrel.
By removing his fingers, Benny Mongrel had deprived him of many pleasures. No longer could he put a gun to some motherfucker’s head, feel his index finger curling around the trigger as he blew him away. No longer could he wrap his hands around some bitch’s throat until he half killed her before he screwed her.
And then there were his monkey nuts. He loved the fucken things so much that he’d previously been known as Peanuts. A nickname he much preferred to the present one that reminded him constantly of what had been inflicted upon him and by whom. He had refused to eat the nuts unshelled. The pleasure had been in cracking open the shell, letting his fingers find the two nuts inside, each in its own little compartment, and bringing them to his lips.
Now if he wanted to eat monkey nuts, he had to get one of his guys to break the shells open for him, and put them in a little pile on a paper plate, so he could grab the plate between his two thumbs and pour the nuts into his mouth. It was humiliating. He was sure his guys laughed about it behind his back, so he had stopped eating monkey nuts.
Benny Mongrel. The way the ugly bastard had walked into the Lotus River tavern last night and sat and stared a
t him, as if daring him to do something. Like he still had the power he’d had in Pollsmoor. He was nothing on the outside. Fuck all. The only reason Fingers hadn’t had him killed there and then, in the tavern, was out of respect for Llewellyn Hector. He didn’t want to make a mess on Hector’s doorstep.
But that was then. This was a new day.
When he was finished inspecting his stumps, Fingers sat up in bed. The sun baked down on the tin roof of his small house, and he was parched.
“Rashied,” he yelled. After a few seconds a tattooed Mongrel with buzz-cut hair stuck his head into the bedroom. “Bring me some Coke. The whole bottle.”
Rashied went to do his bidding, and Fingers trapped his cell phone with his left thumb, using the right thumb to speed-dial for his messages. He hit speakerphone and listened. There were a couple of messages from girls, which he skipped over, and a message from Leroy, the little punk who sold tik for him, which made him sit up. Something about Gatsby. And Benny Mongrel.
Fingers played it again.
Then he went through the laborious process of dialing Leroy’s number with his thumb. Leroy was small-time; he didn’t rate a speed dial. He got Leroy’s voice mail, some smart-ass message with LL Cool J jawing away in the background. Fingers killed the call with a jab of his thumb.
By the time Rashied came back with the bottle of Coke, Fingers was busy with the clumsy business of dressing.
Burn drove the Ford through the sprawl of the Cape Flats, the endless monotony of poverty stretching in every direction. It was a good thing he’d been forced to leave his Jeep at the Waterfront. The only people who drove Cherokees on the Flats were drug dealers. Way too visible.
Burn had flown over the Flats and skirted past on the freeway, but he had never ventured down these mean streets. The small houses huddled together, their foundations unsure in the sandy ground. The watchman’s curt navigation led them past rows of soulless ghetto blocks, where the relentless wind danced washing on lines strung across concrete walkways. They passed sandy, open patches, trading spots where young men huddled behind concrete walls scarred by gang graffiti.