by Paul Crilley
On the floor, the remains of what I think are two people. Cut into pieces. Body parts posed and swapped over like a jigsaw. The skin covered in cuts and burns. White glimpses of bone, a pile of purple and grey organs sitting in a bowl in the centre of the room.
‘They wouldn’t stop screaming,’ explains Dumelo from where he’s lying at the bottom of the stairs. ‘You understand, don’t you? I had to stop them screaming.’
I drag him up the stairs again. I snatch the bottle of whisky and shove him into the lounge. I push him into the couch and force his mouth open, pouring the whisky down his throat, hoping it will snap him out of whatever insane little safe place he’s drifted into. He coughs and splutters, tries to push me away.
I slap his face, twice. Hard.
I’m not sure if it’s that or the whisky, but he finally blinks and shakes his head, the confusion drifting away from his eyes. He looks at me. At Armitage.
‘Who are you?’ He wipes his face, sees the blood, tries to wipe it on his drenched shirt. He tries to get up but I force him down again.
‘The fuck you think you’re doing?’ he demands. ‘Do you have any idea who I am?’
I look at Armitage. She shrugs.
‘I am member of your government. I’m a close personal friend of the President.’
‘Yeah. And I’m Harry Potter. I’ve even got a wand.’
‘You dare to joke with me? I’ll have you arrested. I can make you disappear.’
‘You recognise him?’ I ask Armitage.
She shakes her head. ‘Can’t be anyone important.’
‘How dare you! Where is Miss Long? What have you done with her?’
‘Miss Long ain’t coming,’ I say. ‘She’s a bit dead right now.’
Dumelo’s eyes widen. Not sure if it’s panic or surprise. ‘You . . . you have no idea how much trouble you’re in,’ he says.
‘Whatever. We didn’t kill her. Look, you need to understand something here. We’re cops. OK? Long—’
Dumelo laughs. ‘You are police? Then you are very stupid police. I am protected.’
‘Who protects you?’
‘Everyone.’ He shakes his head and laughs again. ‘You have no idea how much trouble you are in.’
‘Us?’ says Armitage. ‘You’re the one with an abattoir in your basement, you sick bugger!’
‘I am allowed to do that.’
‘Who says?’
He shrugs. ‘I am done talking to you now. I think you should call one of your superiors. I will speak to him.’
‘You’re done when we say you’re done,’ says Armitage.
‘No. I am done now.’ Dumelo looks at us, his gaze filled with the arrogance you see in politicians everywhere. That look of entitlement, of superiority. ‘You are nothing. Understand? A speck underfoot. I am a member of parliament. My friends are some of the most powerful people in this country. You think you can just barge into my house and start ordering me around?’ He chuckles and picks a bit of skin from beneath his fingernail. ‘You know nothing.’
He takes the bottle from me and downs another gulp, watching us beneath hooded lids. I want to punch him. A member of parliament? Our government is so bloated I bet he’s never even set foot in the Parliament buildings. I want to shoot him in the knees. I want to cut his fingers off and stuff them down his throat.
Instead, I take a deep, steadying breath.
‘What’s happening tomorrow night?’
‘I’ve no idea what you’re talking about.’
‘When you texted Long. She asked why you couldn’t wait till tomorrow. What’s happening tomorrow?’
‘I’ve already told you. I will not talk to you. Summon your superiors.’ Dumelo smiles and leans back. ‘Perhaps I should do it? Where is my phone? I’ll call them.’
‘Bugger this.’
Armitage leans past me. I see the flash of a blade, but before I can do anything she slices it along Dumelo’s inner thigh. He screams and throws himself back into the couch as blood gushes from the wound.
‘That there is the femoral artery,’ says Armitage. ‘If you leave the wound untreated you’re going to bleed out in about two to three minutes.’
Dumelo tries to get up, but she hits him in the face with her gun. He looks at her in utter amazement. As if he can’t fathom anyone raising a hand to him.
‘Talk,’ she says.
‘Call a doctor!’ screams Dumelo.
I swallow nervously, watching the blood pour out of Dumelo’s leg. Armitage has killed him. The cut was deep enough to completely sever the artery. There’s no way he can get help in time.
‘Tick-tock,’ says Armitage.
‘You fucking bitch! You whore! I’ll kill you. I’ll cut you into pieces and piss on your body.’
Armitage yawns and looks at her watch.
‘I’d really start talking,’ I say.
‘What? What do you want to know?’
‘Everything. Who’s involved in this sin-eater thing?’
‘Everyone who has any real power is involved, you idiot!’
‘The government?’
‘Yes, the fucking government. Every government. The church. The World Bank. The IMF, everything. This isn’t some local operation. The sin-eaters – they’re worldwide. A secret society. Like the Templars or . . . or the Illuminati. They hire themselves out to take on the sins of the rich!’
Dumelo tries to hold the cut on his leg closed.
‘We’d have heard about them if that was true,’ I say.
‘Not if they didn’t want you to.’ I notice that he’s shivering now, the blood flowing freely between his fingers. ‘You . . . don’t get it, do you? They’re rich. Bilderberg rich. You think getting a clean slate comes cheap? All those war criminals, corrupt ministers, spies, you name it. They want to live without sin. They’ll pay anything that’s asked of them. The sin-eaters are the most powerful group in the world. They control governments, organized crime, everything.’
He looks down at his once-white couch and moans. ‘That’s too much blood. It shouldn’t be outside.’
‘So what’s happening tomorrow night?’
‘A . . . a gathering. A party. They . . . the corporation – the sin-eaters – do it once a year. Throw a party for their important clients. Their . . . leader. Or whatever he is . . . the senior sin-eater, attends. It’s the most important event in the social calendar. It’s where . . . where policies get discussed. Where businesses decide on . . . on prices for the year ahead. Where foreign policies are agreed upon.’
I knew it. I fucking knew it. Everyone thinks I’m a cynical bastard for hating politicians. Now look. Everything I say is true. We’re talking secret meetings, handshake deals, billion-rand tenders handed out with a wink and a nod. Exactly how everyone used to think the Freemasons operated.
And we can expose the lot of them.
I pause at the thought. Could we do that? Get evidence? Record them, perhaps? Leak it to the media? Christ, it would be huge. The whole government would implode.
Then I think of something. ‘You say all the powerful people are involved in this. Do you mean law enforcement? Like the State Security Agency?’
Dumelo laughs weakly. ‘Of course.’
Armitage looks at me. There we go. That explains why the SSA spooks are after us. Either they, or their bosses, found out we were investigating sin-eaters. And obviously, the powers-that-be don’t want that.
But how did they know?
Then I realize. GHOST.
Only someone really high up could have hacked into GHOST and wiped out the entries on sin-eaters. That’s why there was no information. And I bet there was some sort of call-back embedded in the code. So that whenever anyone calls up the sin-eater entry, it triggers an alarm that tells them who’s looking. We all have to sign into GHOST using our personal IDs.
I shake my head, almost impressed. This is big. Huge.
Does Lilith know about it? Is she going to expose it to the world? Is that how she was going
to ‘shake everything up’ as she put it?
‘How do you get into the party?’
‘An . . . invitation.’
Dumelo’s face is grey. His breathing is slow and laboured. He doesn’t have much longer.
‘Where is it?’ asks Armitage. He doesn’t respond, so she slaps him until his eyes flutter open. ‘Where is it? The invitation.’
‘In . . . my suitcase. By . . . by the stairs.’
I find the suitcase and bring it into the lounge. I unzip it. Smart clothes, toiletries. An A4 envelope made of thick, gilded paper. I turn it over. No marks. No address.
I open it up. There’s something big inside. Some kind of . . . mask? I shake it out. A wolf mask. But just the top half. So it would cover the eyes and nose but leave the mouth free. There’s something else inside the envelope. A card.
It’s the invitation. Has to be. A time and a date in a simple, stylish font. Beneath that an address up in Johannesburg.
Dumelo sees what I’m holding. ‘Nuh . . . no. That is . . . mine.’
He tries to get up, slips in his own blood. His face cracks hard against the tiles. He moves weakly, wallowing on the floor like a beached whale for a few seconds before finally sliding to a stop.
I hear his last breath slide softly from his body.
‘And good riddance,’ snaps Armitage.
‘Can we go now?’ says the dog, who has been watching from the doorway, not wanting to get his paws bloody.
‘In a minute.’
I study Dumelo’s body. He looks to be about the same size as me. I toss the mask and invitation back into the suitcase and zip it shut. Then I track down his car keys.
‘What are you doing?’ asks Armitage.
‘I can’t very well turn up at an exclusive party in my old Land Rover, can I?’
‘So that’s the plan? You’re going to pretend to be one of them?’
‘Why not?’
‘Because,’ says the dog, ‘ten minutes with that lot and you’re going to go loco.’
‘We don’t have much choice, do we? Unless you’ve got a better idea?’
Nobody does, so we slip out the house and head round to the garage. Dumelo’s car is a BMW X6, the newest on the market. Courtesy of the taxpayer. So really, it’s not actually stealing, is it? My taxes paid for this car.
Armitage drives behind me in the BMW till I find a shopping mall where I can leave the Land Rover for a couple of days. Then I climb into the BMW and we head west towards Johannesburg.
‘Road trip!’ says the dog from the back seat.
Then, a few seconds later, ‘Are we there yet?’
Chapter 15
Five o’clock the next day and we’re driving along the winding back roads about forty-five minutes west of Johannesburg, heading towards the address on the invitation.
None of us are talking to each other. It’s been that kind of day.
It’s only a five-hour drive to get to Gauteng. Dragging it out as much as we could, stopping at every service stop along the way for coffee and energy drinks, meant we still managed to arrive at a rundown bed and breakfast on the outskirts of Johannesburg by four-thirty this morning.
Which was still too early. The place wasn’t even open yet.
We spent the next hour and a half playing I-spy with the dog. Armitage and I wanted to get some sleep, but every time we tried to quit the game he threatened to stink out the car.
And that was the best part of the day, to be honest. The next ten hours were spent cooped up in a tiny bedroom with the dog and Armitage, each of us wondering who would snap first.
It was Armitage.
The dog was watching some old movie on the TV where women were running around screaming, calling for the big manly men to save them.
The dog grinned at me. ‘Ah, the good old days.’
Armitage whirled around and smacked him on the nose.
The dog couldn’t believe it. He looked at me beseechingly. I shrugged and took a sip of my beer. The dog looked back to Armitage.
‘You . . . you hit me!’ he said accusingly. He actually sounded hurt. Not physically, but emotionally.
Armitage said nothing. Just grabbed her mac and left the room.
The dog turned to me. ‘Reckon I’ll stick to being a voice in your head from now on.’
‘Probably better that way, anyway. What if a member of the public hears you?’
‘Fuck ’em. They’ll just think they’ve gone mad.’
‘Either that or they’ll steal you and sell you to the circus.’
So now we’re out in the middle of nowhere, the flat, green landscape stretching away to either side of the endless road. Blue-grey clouds are building up on the horizon, piling up higher and higher into the hazy summer sky. Too far away for us, but someone’s about to get a hell of a storm.
The aircon is on full blast but we have the back windows all the way down. Yeah, so sue me. Global warming is one thing, but travelling anywhere with the dog in an enclosed space is another thing entirely. I think his smell is actually sticking to my penguin suit.
‘So what’s the plan, exactly?’ asks the dog.
‘The plan is I use the invitation to get in, scout around while the bigwigs do their back room deals, and keep an eye open for the head sin-eater. Then I politely ask him what this first sin is, why Lilith is after it, and what it can do.’
And then once that’s done I make the fucker tell me who Cally’s killer is. Because he has to know. If he’s in charge of all the sin-eaters he has to have a list of some kind. A database.
I feel a rush of fear and nervousness at the thought. This is the closest I’ve ever gotten to finding out what really happened that night. Three years of disappointment. Three years of pointless searches and false leads. Thousands of hours of viewed CCTV footage, tens of thousands of rands paid to informers – all for nothing. Nobody knew who had taken the kids. Nobody knew the men at the house. Nobody knew anything.
This time tomorrow, will all that have changed? Will I know the names of the people who killed Cally?
We drive though a tiny village about twenty kilometres from the address. The main attraction here seems to be a rundown liquor store where the locals hang around drinking quart bottles of Black Label and Castle Milk Stout. I could do with a drink myself, but I’m not going in there dressed like this.
We pass through the village, keep going for another ten kays or so. When I’m sure we’re out of sight of any witnesses, I pull over. I pop the trunk and we climb out and head round to the back of the car.
Armitage and I stare into the cramped space.
‘It won’t be for long,’ I point out.
‘You realise I blame you for this,’ she says. ‘All of it.’
‘What the hell did I do? I didn’t take the ramanga case. You did.’
She waves her hand in irritation. ‘You’re my subordinate. It’s always your fault.’
The dog leaps into the boot and sits there, giving us a bright-eyed-bushy-tailed look, tongue hanging out the side of his mouth.
‘If you even dare – and I cannot stress this enough – even dare, to generate any kind of smell, I will shoot you in the head,’ Armitage says.
The dog stops panting. Closes his mouth and looks at me.
-She serious?-
-Want to risk it?-
Armitage scowls at her surroundings then holds a hand out for me to help her climb in. She lies down, pushing herself as far to one side as she can go.
‘You stay down there,’ she snaps, pointing at the dog.
I close the trunk. Not all the way. Armitage holds it with her hand so she can get out later. I climb back into the front and put on my mask, checking my reflection in the rear-view mirror. It’s good. No one can see who I am. Just another anonymous corrupt minister. One of thousands.
I drive for another few kays, then turn off the main road into a long tree-lined driveway. There’s a warm wind picking up. The sun flashes and darts through the swaying branches,
blinding me with late afternoon light. I take a deep, steadying breath. Have to stay calm. Keep in character.
The road leads to a set of huge double gates, ornately carved with tree motifs. Two armed guards stand on the other side, R5 rifles held in the resting position, fingers resting along the trigger guard.
A third guard comes out of the gate house to the right. The gates open and he approaches the car. I don’t say anything to him, just stare straight ahead. (I’m in character here. A South African politician does not deign to acknowledge those lesser than him or herself.) I crack the window just enough to flick the invitation through the gap. The guard checks it, then waves at the armed guards.
They step aside and I drive past, watching the gates close in the rear-view mirror. I’m inside. For better or worse.
I turn my attention to the winding cobbled road unravelling ahead of me. It’s about a kilometre long, flanked by more massive, stately trees.
The driveway eventually loops around a huge, swimming-pool size fountain outside the house. I stop the car, peering up through the windshield and mentally correct myself. That’s not a house. That’s a mansion.
No, it’s an estate. It’s five floors high, and it stretches away to either side, square, neat windows frowning down at me as if daring me to step inside.
There are a couple of cars here already, masked figures climbing out to hand over their keys to smartly dressed valets. I squint, but don’t recognize any faces. But I suppose that’s the whole point.
There’s a knock at my window. I start, then see a young dude in a bow tie and white shirt waiting for me. I get out the car and he hands me a valet chit.
‘Thanks.’
He doesn’t answer. His eyes look kind of vacant, as if he’s been watching reality TV for hours on end.
‘Busy night ahead, huh?’
Again, no answer. He climbs into the car and drives off around the rear of the house, leaving me standing next to the fountain all by my lonesome. I walk over to check it out, just to look busy in case anyone’s watching. There’s a statue of the Greek goddess Hebe, bearing her traditional cup for the gods. Water spews out of the cup. I lean over and see the other Greek gods have been inlaid in a mosaic at the bottom of the fountain.