by T. M. Clark
‘What happened? He was supposed to be a nobody, not someone who knew how to fight. He kicked our arses. I think Joe set us up. He wanted us to be caught; it’s like me mum says, you can’t trust nobody but family.’
‘Bullshit,’ said Douglas, ‘being part of a gang might be the only thing that’ll save us now.’
‘Hell yeah, and only if we don’t talk.’
Douglas nodded.
Tommy swayed then sat down. ‘I don’t feel so great.’
Douglas heard the copper return to the van, then he slammed the front doors as he got in.
They braced themselves for the bumpy ride they knew was coming. This was not the first time Douglas had travelled in the back of the paddy wagon, and he was sure it wasn’t going to be the last, but as the van went around the corner and his head hit the side, he hoped to hell that he would actually make it to the police station without them killing Tommy and him on the way.
As it turned out, Tommy was dead by the time they reached the police station. The beating he’d received from the coppers had caused a brain aneurysm, and he died in the back of the paddy wagon that fateful night. The only silver lining was that this helped Douglas receive a softer sentence, because the magistrate felt that he’d had it bad enough with losing his best friend. She was wrong about that, but Douglas didn’t bother correcting her.
Finally, at the age of sixteen, Douglas walked out of his community home for the last time, and his mother wasn’t there to meet him. In fact, she’d only visited once during the time he’d been there, and only to tell him how disappointed she was in him.
He went to his family’s terrace house to find it’d been demolished as part of the slum clean-up taking place. Bare ground and rubble was all that remained. He found himself walking to the old dock area, hoping that Joe would be there.
He had a score to settle with him.
The building on the pier that the Dead-Snakes had used was still there, with a few new slogans scratched into the bricks and painted over the walls. Cigarette smoke came from inside, and music blasted from a radio.
‘Password?’ a young boy playing pointsman at the door challenged.
‘Fuck off,’ Douglas said, easily pushing him aside as he walked in.
Joe was in the same place Douglas had last seen him two years before. Only this time, Douglas realised what he hadn’t noticed before. There were no older members in Joe’s gang of Dead-Snakes supporting him, only young boys and girls between twelve and fifteen hanging on his every word.
‘Still working the same old tricks, I see,’ Douglas said as he approached Joe.
Joe’s chair tumbled backwards as he stood up and took a step away from Douglas, putting out his arm.
‘Who’re you sending to the community home this time?’ Douglas asked, looking around. ‘What did he promise you? The same that I was promised before they threw me in that children’s jail? To run with his gang? To have money to take you away from the slums?’
He looked around; the kids were all silent. ‘He promised me that, too. And he made me promise not to snitch, never to tell anyone. Do you want to know why?’
No one answered.
‘Because he takes a kickback from the coppers for every street kid that’s convicted and put in there. Don’t you, Joe?’
Joe had backed up and was now against one of the walls. ‘That’s not true. Alfred Weasel went last week, was initiated and he got to leave Manchester, his pockets filled with money after he passed his initiation.’
‘Alfred,’ Douglas said. ‘About this tall,’ he indicated with his hand, ‘hair a bit long and blond, thin, worn sideways. He likes to make it flick a little, curve on his forehead, to cover up a red birthmark across the left side of his face?’
‘Yeah, that’s him. How do you know him?’ asked one of the kids.
‘He entered the community home right before I left. He didn’t snitch by the way; he kept quiet about the Dead-Snakes, so you guys can trust him when he gets out. But the guard, the fat one, he talks all the time. He’s the one who said that as long as Joe keeps supplying them with new fodder for the principal, then the old man wouldn’t care if the guards had a little fun on the side. Alfred was too pretty to not be someone’s bitch in there.’
Joe paled and looked at the window to see if he had a clear run.
Douglas stepped into his escape route. ‘Do you know what a little fun on the side is, Joe? Do you understand where these men stick their cocks?’
‘Don’t … Don’t believe him,’ Joe stuttered. ‘He … He’s lying …’
‘Let’s test me, then,’ Douglas challenged, ‘see who tells the truth, good Joe with his promise of the gang and the free ciggies, or the kid who served his time and was set up to go to jail by Joe? Give me a name of any of the boys before him who were initiated and got away that you can remember.’
‘David Wellington,’ one of the boys said.
‘Dark hair, fifteen years old. His mum lived with his family on Common Street. He was sent to the community home for assault and battery.’
‘No way,’ said the kid who had supplied the name, shaking his head.
‘Another one?’ taunted Douglas.
‘Simon Adams and Colin Martins,’ one of the girls said.
‘Simon was tall for a fifteen-year-old. Red hair and lots of freckles. Talked with a lisp from a cleft palate. That Simon? I didn’t meet Colin. Simon said he was let off because of his important lawyer, and the whole family moved away from Manchester. Apparently, his family had a bit of money, and they spent it all on keeping him out of jail.’
‘That’s him.’
Joe went to move away, and Douglas shook his head. ‘I wouldn’t try to leave if I was you, Joe. You see, funny story. Simon and Colin’s initiation was just like mine and Tommy’s. They were sent to kill the old war pilot under the bridge, to finish him off. Only no one is finishing him off, are they? That’s your old man, and he’s in on the scheme. He used to box. Anyone attacking him thinking they’ll kill him and pass “initiation”, would fail. We got lucky because we were pumped on drugs the night we did it and were invincible, but the others—none have been as lucky. They’ve got you to make sure he isn’t hurt too badly, to call the coppers so that they come at the right time. Then the coppers send the violent offender to the community home, and you and your father get paid by the guards for filling their quota. They need new kids to replace ones who leave, and what better way than to get those who think they’re joining a gang? Ones who’ll be silent and follow instructions after you’ve groomed them.’
‘They get a better future there than here in the slums.’
‘Bullshit. No one deserves that. They’re not better off. Do you think Tommy is better off? The cops killed him! Is he better off?’
‘Tommy wasn’t meant to die.’
‘But he did. And that’s because of you, Joe, isn’t it?’
Joe was waiting for Douglas to jump him, to hurt him.
‘You’re a worm, nothing. These kids will go out there and spread the word that you’re nothing, that there’s no such thing as the Dead-Snakes gang, and they’ll tell everyone what you did. You’ll never send another kid there, and so help me, if I hear that you have so much as passed a shit near those guards, you’ll die. Understood!’
Joe stood against the wall, visibly shaken.
‘You’re disgusting,’ Douglas said and turned away, but as he began to walk towards the door one of the kids shouted a warning, making him spin back around.
Joe had the leg of an old chair and was running at him.
Time slowed down as if he’d had a shot of drugs. While he could see Joe coming, he took time to think. He’d watched many fights in the community home. He’d even been in a few. He had to deflect Joe and make him fall hard, hit the floor first to give himself the advantage, because Joe was still older than he was, and probably stronger.
Douglas ducked down, easily avoiding the chair leg as Joe swung it like a club. He stepped closer
and crouched to put his shoulder low into Joe’s belly to flip him over. A move he’d learned early on in the community home, taught by some of the older kids, to help the younger ones fend off the guards and wardens.
Douglas lifted Joe without too much trouble, but Joe got up and came back at him.
One of the kids threw Douglas a metal bar, which he caught midair. Now they were both armed.
Joe rushed at Douglas, and Douglas sidestepped him; he followed through by hitting Joe’s departing exposed back with the pole. A sickening crunch was heard by everyone in the room.
Joe screamed in pain, but anger overruled. ‘I’m going to kill you,’ Joe howled as he ran at him again, the chair leg raised like a club. Only he tripped as he got close to Douglas, and he flailed his arms around madly, the chair leg flying out of his hands. Douglas instinctively lifted the metal pole and dug his knee into the concrete, making a pike.
And Joe ran right straight into it.
Douglas let the rod go, and Joe slipped to the floor, his body at a strange angle as it rested on the rod.
Blood welled out of Joe’s mouth as it worked like a fish on a riverbank. Opening and closing as he struggled to breathe, his blood pooling around him. No sound came out of his mouth, no scream of agony. Only silence.
Joe’s body twitched as Douglas stepped back. Watching, adrenaline pumping through his veins, his mind tried to process what had just happened. Waiting for Joe to attempt to turn onto all fours, waiting for the chance for him to expose his head, his kidneys, and his stomach for a good kick while he was down. Yet Joe didn’t move.
Douglas stood there, waiting, but Joe was never going to get back up.
Slowly, the awareness of the situation hit. The night sounds of the city, a far-off hooter of a ship in fog, the water lapping against the loading dock, the hushed sound of every other child standing there, breathing, and the overriding sound of his own blood pumping through his ears, the beat steady but racing.
‘Go get an ambulance,’ Douglas heard one of the other kids call the door watcher, who ran off instantly.
He noticed the movement of the girl that came towards them. But the sound was still muffled in his ears as she asked, ‘Joe, can you hear me? Joe?’
A deafening silence answered her as she tentatively put her hand over his mouth to try to feel his breath. ‘He’s dead.’
Douglas’s legs collapsed beneath him, and he vomited. He hadn’t meant to kill Joe. That’d been an accident.
He began to shake, realising that unlike the intentional attempt on the old pilot, this time there were witnesses to what happened. But he knew that there was a chance they would try to pin this on him.
He knew from experience that, even if his legs had wanted to work, he shouldn’t leave the scene. He also knew from listening to the other kids in the community home that the best thing to do would be to just sit there, to make sure he didn’t fight when the coppers came. That way he might not get a beating.
‘It wasn’t your fault,’ the girl was saying. ‘Everyone saw Joe come at you. We all saw it was his fault,’ she lifted her voice. ‘Didn’t we?’
A murmur rose from the kids still gathered there, from those that hadn’t already silently slipped away into the night.
Douglas threw up again. He’d killed a person. This time, he’d passed Joe’s initiation with flying colours. Only there was no gang to join, and he didn’t want to anyway. Not with Tommy dead. That one was on Joe. Joe’s death was also on Joe. It wasn’t his fault that Joe had come at him, and that the accident with the steel bar had happened.
As he looked at Joe on the timber boards, for the first time, the blood of another human on his hands felt right.
He tried to tell himself it was justice for Tommy, but in his heart, he knew better.
* * *
Douglas threw another log on the fire, and stared at the fax he’d received from the 6th headquarters again. They’d changed his client list, requesting an assessment hunt by an American client.
Man, he hated the Americans. Somehow, they always managed to mess with his carefully planned schedule. He would have to fit in the three-day hunt, back to back, between the German client, Heinz Koch, and Nicole Schaffer, the woman who was after leopards and due on the last Friday in November. The hunt required the setting of bait to coax a leopard into the area, and he would have liked more time preparing for that. Now he would have to leave it to his tracker to get that first bait done. He sighed, acknowledging that sharing responsibility had never been a strong point, but admitting that the addition to his schedule was tight but doable.
The client to be assessed couldn’t have come at a worse time. He frowned, thinking about the increase in demand from the general members of the 6th in the past year. His hunting grounds were shrinking, and he wondered how he would fit in even more harvesting with his normal animal-hunting clients. He had no idea.
Already he was on the lookout for new 6th hunting grounds—even if it wasn’t a permanent one, he needed to visit a different area for his next 6th hunt, because four bodies, which included the one he’d chosen to take for himself during the last hunt in Phalaborwa, in the same place would attract unwanted attention.
That was why he always rotated his hunting grounds, leaving some fallow for a few years before returning. He had different hunting grounds in Angola, South Africa, South West Africa, Botswana and Zimbabwe. Where there was still place for people to go missing without the authorities coming after you. Other hunting grounds had been shut down permanently because they had become too populated.
He’d even chosen to stop hunting on the Transkei coast, one of his favourites, and his more military-style one, adjacent to district six, near Cape Town. The urban sprawl and settlements had become a problem in both areas, because with them had come more South African Defence Forces—SADF—and the bright-eyed conscription boys strutting around in their brown uniforms, poking their noses into everyone’s business. Phalaborwa had become like that now, with too many police around.
His most frequented stomping ground was still right where he was just outside of Coutada 16, in Mozambique. It was close and convenient to the lowveld in Zimbabwe where he conducted most of his professional animal hunts. And he often came there alone to think, and to satisfy his own craving for a kill, after his paying clients were on their planes and flying back to their meaningless lives somewhere in the world. The need to show his dominance often came after he accompanied a 6th hunter on their harvest. He just liked to know there was nothing anyone could do to punish him for it.
Originally, he had been looking for elephants when he’d come into the granite kopjes—which his tracker had called the ‘work migration route’. At first, he hadn’t believed his old tracker that there were migrants walking through the bush, but now he knew better. The bush was never quiet, and you were never alone out there.
The perfect hunting ground for the 6th hunts.
Five years later, and the area was as productive as ever. The stem of migrations through the bush had never slowed, regardless of the dissident wars, civil war or the racial violence in South Africa. There was a vein of people there, just waiting for him.
If he brought the woman client here, he could fit in the assessment of the American client, too. But that would mean he couldn’t take a 6th of his own in the morning as it would leave two bodies for the scavengers to clean away and dispose of too close to each other. Once he killed here, the bush talked, and the area would be devoid of movement for a while, and he needed the area to have traffic within a month to bring the woman here and harvest her 6th.
The thought of how to further streamline his process, to fit in more 6th hunts, filled his mind.
He had always set up his hunts with time at the end for him to provide a guided tour through different parts of Africa. Sticking as close to the truth as he could, with only a slight smokescreen, had helped him be a successful 6th hunter. His clients hunted the animal trophies in legitimate concessions, and then after
wards got a few days of a one-on-one guided tour with him in a game reserve and finally their 6th harvest.
He took his weapons-cleaning kit from his backpack and, stripping down his hunting rifle, he began giving it a thorough clean, the smell of the oil soothing his mood.
He noticed movement in the bushes below his elevated camp, and taking his telescopic sight, he looked through it. He could see a herd of elephants passing on the trail, migrating just as they had before humans came into the bushveld and built roads. Their great grey bodies so quiet as they trod softly on the sun-baked ground. The huge matriarch at the front had impressive tusks, and if he had a hunting client with him they might have gone after her for the trophy, but today he just admired her from afar, and watched as she led her small herd northwards.
He followed behind the herd with his scope, looking to see if anyone was utilising the well-trodden trails, but couldn’t see anyone. Tonight, he would look for small fires along the trail, and that would give him an indication of anyone in the area.
A fleeting thought crossed his mind that he would love to be free to spend more time exploring Africa, go to Kenya to see the great migrations of the wildebeest and zebra herds as they crossed the Maasai Mara, or go scuba diving off the Berbera coast of Somalia and explore the coral reefs in the Gulf of Aden. And just for once, do it without the 6th breathing down his neck.
But the only out for a 6th hunter was when they died. It was a job for life.
CHAPTER
5
Chloe climbed out of the Datsun after grocery shopping at Checkers. ‘Come on, slow poke, if we hurry up and unload, we can catch some of that re-run of last night’s third test match. Bet you Imran Khan wins it for the Pakistani team in the end.’
‘No way Malcolm Marshall is going to bring it home for the Windies.’
‘Seriously?’
‘Yes, seriously, just like seriously we did not really need that Milo—you wanted it, and I didn’t,’ Enoch was saying.