There was a sudden thump behind me. I whirled round to find Zak right there.
‘No sign of our feline friend,’ he said. ‘There are a few caves above us. He’s probably in there, so let’s get the hell off this mountain. I don’t know how you survived as a kid around here.’
I couldn’t speak. Relief flooded my body and I dug my broken nails into my hands to stop myself crying. I tried to turn away. What was the matter with me? This was ridiculous. Zak took hold of my shoulders. His knuckles brushed my neck and his eyes lingered on my mouth.
‘What’s this? Feelings, DI Tswane? Surely not for me?’
‘Of course not. It’s just an adrenaline rush,’ I managed to say.
‘You must have seen a few leopards up here when you were a youngster?
‘Yes, but they are dangerous. Thanks for checking.’
‘Not at all,’ he said. His eyes focused on me, but although I tried to read what was in those dark eyes, I couldn’t. As our eyes met, my body flooded with warmth. His eyes moved to my mouth and stayed there. Then he took hold of my shoulders and pulled me against him. His big hands covered both sides of my head. He kissed me as if he was biting into fruit. It was sweet, hot, and dangerous. He kissed me with his whole mouth. I felt tingling and alive. I wanted it to go on, forever –
It was he who broke away. He held me at arm’s length.
‘Forgive me,’ he said, with a wry smile. ‘That must have been an adrenaline rush too.’
When he let me go, I nearly fell over, my legs like jelly. It was all I could do to clamber up the cliff path.
We climbed the rocky way back to the dirt road where we had left the four-wheel drive. When I looked back down into the valley the huts looked like toys, drifts of smoke rose slowly in the lazy afternoon air.
We hardly spoke on the journey back to Grahamstown.
Okay, okay, so I did find Zak Khumalo attractive. But it was more in a moth-to-a-flame sort of way. When it came to looking for a partner – a proper life partner that is – he wasn’t my type. At all. He was just another colleague – with a really bad reputation around women.
When we arrived at the Grahamstown police station, although it was late, Bea was standing in the office, dressed in a yellow suit with enormous shoulder pads and impossible zebra-print heels. She was clutching a huge lemon meringue pie from the home industries shop nearby. When she saw Zak her mouth dropped open.
‘Wow!’ she said, clutching the pie as if it was a life jacket in a storm. She swallowed visibly and dragged her eyes away.
Okay again, so Zak was definitely a ‘wow’. Half a head taller than me, perfectly toned muscle, dressed in his usual black. His T-shirt looked like it had been painted onto his biceps. His skin was dark. His eyes were dark. His hair was dark. And apart from now knowing he could kiss like Jude Law kissed Nicole Kidman in Cold Mountain, I knew nothing else about him. His life was a pretty dark secret too.
Zak walked into the director’s office. Bea rolled her eyes at me.
‘It’s a work relationship,’ I said.
‘Are you kidding? If he’d been here any longer I would have melted,’ Bea said. ‘And this has melted,’ she said, slamming the lemon meringue pie down on the desk. ‘Now tell me all about it – and I mean all!’
‘He’s a player, Bea, that’s all. It’s quite sad really,’ I said.
‘I’ll play with him,’ Bea said. She turned and looked back at me over one of her padded, yellow shoulders. ‘Oh, by the way, that Australian doctor, Tom Winter, has phoned here a few times, looking for you. Some girls have all the luck!’
13
22 June 2006
Sue leaned forward, her shoulders hunched.
‘I got a job. I met a man. I got involved. He persuaded me to do things, not that I needed much persuasion after the first time. I didn’t know much about thrills and violence, until he exposed me to them. Then I loved it all. It appealed to my screwed-up personality. I loved the adrenaline rushes. I loved living on the edge. It was so exciting.’
Julia didn’t say anything. But she knew exactly what Sue was talking about because she had felt it too. She sat at the scrubbed wooden table in the kitchen resting her chin in her hand and straining her body and her eyes towards Sue. Outside the wind howled as a storm moved up the coast, whipping the ocean into great, rolling waves that smashed down onto the beach outside the cottage.
‘Go on,’ she urged.
‘I had a choice. I could stay home and be safe, or get out and live dangerously.’
‘Don’t you think armed hold-ups are a bit extreme?’
‘You mean shop-lifting would have been more acceptable?’
‘It isn’t life-threatening.’
‘Maybe I didn’t care about life-threatening.’
‘How could a man persuade you into this sort of crime? Was he blackmailing you?’
‘I was mad for him. I would have done anything for him.’
Sue was speaking in the past tense. Was she having second thoughts? Was it over?
‘Go on...’
‘An ad in the newspaper started it,’ Sue said. ‘Just what I was looking for, an overseas job to get me away from England, out of the rut of living in bloody Essex. I was working for boring idiots, earning peanuts. No life at all.’
‘So you got the job?’
‘I applied and they phoned me, told me they wanted to meet with me. So I went up to London for an interview. When I walked in, there was this big black guy in an Italian suit. The office was enormous, with pictures of animals all over the walls. Lots of deep cream carpet, a huge walnut desk, it was all rather like I imagined the President of the United States’ office would be. As soon as I walked into the room I was captivated by the sheer power of the man. The way he moved to greet me, his cool confidence, immaculate clothes, long tapering fingers, half-mocking smile. He had so much more magnetism than my current boyfriend, Freddie, a computer nerd with a Porsche. This man would need nothing but his own presence to excite women. He would just have to stand there and look at a woman, like he was looking at me. I ran my eyes over him and imagined him naked. I’d never fucked a black man. I was intrigued. I’d always wondered if the rumours about them were true.’
Julia didn’t blink. ‘And are they?’
‘All true.’ Sue smiled slowly and rolled her neck on her shoulders.
‘What happened?’ Julia asked.
‘Well, long story short, he made a play for me, I got involved, came to South Africa and everything changed. There must be something in my makeup, some adrenalin-junkie streak that he picked up on. I knew he was newly married, and his wife was some amazing beauty queen, she was Miss Ethiopia or something, but I didn’t care. He wanted me. I wanted him. We were like animals on heat. A big part of the excitement was the discovery that in the lying and deception stakes I’d met my match. He was a man after my own heart.’
‘So he’s somebody important?’
‘You don’t need to know.’ Sue paced the room. Her eyes were doll’s eyes, blue glass, blank.
‘It was like being a drug addict. I couldn’t do without it. Him, the sex, the power, the rush. Once we did it in his office, on his desk, with his secretary knocking on the door. Another time I sent him an SMS when he was in an evening business meeting. I pictured his face when he read it. I could almost hear him say, “Excuse me for a moment. I have to take an urgent phone call.” I waited for him, naked, in the ladies’ cloakroom. The risk was knife-edge, my heart was beating so fast I thought I’d have a heart attack, but he was ready, willing and able. I unzipped him, straddled him on a toilet seat and fucked him stupid. Afterward he zipped up and went back to the meeting. Mr Cool.’
Julia said nothing.
‘I’ve heard that stuff about people who drink love potions and turn into sex zombies,’ Sue said, ‘and that’s what I became. Have you ever felt like that?’
‘No,’ said Julia. ‘Never.’ She felt as if she’d been split into two separate women: one practical,
un-shockable, listening to these unimaginable things; the other looking at everything from a distant place, through a strange, detached lens. Weighing the evidence, storing facts away for when she might need them.
‘I’ve always loved shocking people. I wore combat boots with my school uniform, dyed my hair purple with pink stripes, and pierced my tongue. I had tattoos before anyone else did, in the weirdest places. Took drugs. I didn’t give a shit what people thought of me. Not like you, Julia, with your dignified airs, your cucumber-sandwiches-with-the-queen voice. I suppose you were head girl at school and all that crap?’
‘Don’t worry about me. What did your parents think about all this?’
‘Parents? There weren’t any parents. My mother ran away with hippy freaks when I was about three. She didn’t even know who my dad was. My grandmother tried to bring me up. But in the end, she gave up on me. I don’t blame her. I was a nightmare.’
Sue began to laugh, but it wasn’t a real laugh, just an empty cut-out sound, dark, like something hurtful was choking her. She sat forward quickly and fixed Julia’s eyes with a stare.
‘After all the sex tricks, he wanted me to go further.’
‘In what way?’
‘More adrenaline rushes. Petty crimes, to start with. It escalated pretty rapidly. He said that what he liked best about me was that I was brave. I was wild. I’d do anything.’
Julia felt she was in a dream, sitting at the kitchen table talking about crime, as if it was a shopping list, or they were discussing the weather.
‘Like what?’
‘First we held up an Indian restaurant and stole naan bread for a curry party, just for fun. And so that he could test me I suppose. See if I could keep my nerve for the big stuff. Because the next thing we did was scary. We broke into a high-security town-house complex in Sandhurst, right under the noses of the security guards and stole jewellery and gold bars. We did a few more like that and then, the next job was insane. We broke into a cabinet minister’s apartment and took some photographs. Political leverage, he said. Always very useful. It was terrifying. We had to climb up a fire escape in the dark and break a window. I nearly fell off the roof and killed myself. But somehow, when I was with him I felt electrically charged and the fear just added spice to the thrill.’
Sue stared into middle distance, a faint smile on her lips. ‘Being with him in a posh bedroom was the best; smelling the scent of rich women – women like you, Julia. I loved inhaling their perfumes, looking at their expensive clothes, rifling through their underwear, trying their clothes on. That was the exciting part, that’s what gave me the biggest rush.’
‘And he was with you all the time?’ Julia asked.
‘Yes,’ Sue said. ‘He got a huge kick out of it. When we had sex afterward, rolling round on the rich people’s beds, it was incredible. I would have done anything for him. Anything.’
‘Was it just for kicks, or something else?’
‘He was grooming me.’ Sue blinked. ‘It hit me one day. Like a ton of bricks. I realised suddenly that he had ulterior motives. I should have cottoned on sooner, but I was too blinded by lust and need and want to pick up on it.’
Julia watched the emotions play across Sue’s face. ‘What was he preparing you for?’ she asked.
‘He moves in certain circles, politics, judges, cabinet ministers. It allows him to see things coming and prepare for them. He’d taken many years to get his spider web in place. Then, just as he had everything set up the way he wanted it, and his career was set to go through the roof, he heard there were incriminating documents concerning him which the press might get hold of.’
‘What sort of documents?’ Julia imagined hot fingers prodding her along, forcing her to ask these questions, while Sue just kept talking, a torrent of words tumbling from her lips. It seemed like a relief for her to tell Julia these things.
‘A crime he had committed in his youth. It would be twisted to make him look bad, once the police and the press got hold of it, it would destroy his whole life, his future would be blown out of the water. It’s something really bad, but he won’t tell me what it is. He swears he was framed, that he’s not guilty.’
‘And he wants you to get these documents?’
‘First he wanted me to do a heist on my own at Mama Ruby’s restaurant, just to prove I could go it alone.’
‘So, that’s why...?’
‘Yes. He told me he’d organise the getaway car. He also said he’d be there. In the restaurant. Watching me.’
‘So he was there that night?’
‘Yes, so was his wife.’
Julia leaned forward. ‘What did you think about that?’
‘I never asked questions about his wife, but I was surprised to see her in the restaurant, of course. I was angry but tried to stay cool – he hates scenes.’
‘What sort of man is he?’ Julia whispered.
‘Powerful, self-made, complicated. He hates weakness of any sort. He thinks most people are idiots. “There’s so much opportunity out there, why don’t people realise they’ve got to grab it?” That’s what he says.’
‘He particularly hates beggars, “How can they stoop so low,” he says. “Why don’t they go out and find something useful to do?” When they unfold those cardboard messages, “Retrenched, four children, thank you, God bless”, he wants to unfold his own message: “Fuck off and get a job”.’
‘He also despises most women; he’s a complete chauvinist, even about his own wife.’
‘And did that include you?’ Julia asked.
‘No, he said I was his partner, his brave, wild partner. But underneath, yes, he probably did despise me. He was always in charge, he always did the planning, he was the director of everything we did.’
‘Why do you think he was like that?’
‘I don’t know. He was just totally fucked-up about women. He spent five years at university in England. It made him question his culture, which often treated women like second-class citizens. But in the long run, instead of changing his attitudes, helping him see women as equals, being in England entrenched his feelings. Made him want to dominate and humiliate women even more. The old ways were the best he’d say. Women knew their place then. None of this trying to be as good as men, or better, even. That used to make him really mad, thinking about women being in control. I think he must have had some damaging experiences with women at Oxford. It was as if he wanted revenge to get back at them, at all women. He sought out the wild, liberated ones and then crushed them. There was something in me that made me stand up to him and fight back... for a while anyway.’
‘What would he do if he knew about me?’ Julia asked.
‘He’d come down here and kill us both.’
‘I know him, don’t I?’ Julia’s eyes didn’t leave Sue’s face. Inside she was shaking. For a precious moment she was the interrogator. But how long before Sue’s tiger swung round and bit her?
‘Who is he, Sue?’
‘I can’t tell you.’
‘It’s Ollis, isn’t it? Ollis Sando? He was in the restaurant that night.’ Julia’s shoulder blades tensed under her sweater. She leaned forward and touched Sue’s arm. ‘Sue, let me help you. I know Ollis and Sitina Sando.’
Sue got up from the table, her arms crossed defensively in front of her chest. She bit her lip and paced the floor of the kitchen. It was as if the scales had fallen from Sue’s eyes, and she realised that she may have gone too far. Crossed a dangerous line. She glanced at Julia, ‘I’m not telling you anything more,’ she said.
But Julia saw the uncertainty in her face. ‘Why do you still want to do this for him?’ she asked. ‘Why do you let him manipulate you?’
There was a long pause. It was the first time Julia had seen Sue unsure, vulnerable. ‘He’s got too much information on me. He could get me arrested; I don’t fancy a South African jail. And I still... care about him.’
‘If it is Ollis, and I believe it is, I’ve got to tell you about Sitina, his wife. He�
��s married to a powerful woman. She’s well connected in top political circles; her father is the Ethiopian ambassador.’
‘She’s very beautiful,’ Sue said.
‘Very beautiful. But it’s not just her beauty. She’s a force to be reckoned with.’
‘Fuck you!’ Sue rounded on Julia. She turned from her restless pacing, dragging a hand through her tangled hair. ‘Of course it’s Ollis. Next you’ll be telling me how happily married he is. Right?’
‘I was at their wedding. I didn’t get the impression that it was a convenience thing.’
Sue pressed her lips together. ‘I don’t want to hear this, okay? Just shut up about it.’
‘Okay.’ Julia shrugged. ‘But Ollis didn’t marry Sitina only because –’
‘Okay, I get the message. She’s beautiful. Well-connected. She’s also a cold controlling bitch.’
‘Sue, what can I gain by lying about this?’ asked Julia. ‘Sitina’s lovely. An incredibly warm person. Everyone was amazed when she married Ollis Sando. He’s the cold, controlling one. He might be in line for the presidency, but he’s an arrogant, devious shit.’
The angry tiger pounced. ‘Shut the hell up!’ Sue swallowed hard. ‘Remember who you are. Remember what I can do to you!’
Julia cursed herself for relaxing her guard. She had treated Sue as if she was a friend who needed support and advice. Bad mistake. This woman could kill her. She was a hostage. She had to behave like one.
‘I don’t want to upset you, I’d do anything to help you, Sue, you know that,’ she said quietly.
Sue relaxed for a moment, her shoulders slumped. She looked tired and drawn. She turned on her heel and walked out of the kitchen and into her bedroom, slamming the door behind her.
Julia stared after her. Sue was still in command, but the scales were tipping.
14
27 June 2006
Every year Grahamstown’s streets explode with pulsing energy during the annual arts festival fortnight. Every possible venue buzzes. Schools, churches, theatres and halls sizzle with plays, symphonies, ballets, recitals and dance events. While I was at school in Grahamstown, I was aware of the build-up to the festival, but most of it happened during the holidays, when I was back in the valley. So I loved the vibe now.
Now I See You Page 11