Cobra

by Deon Meyer

  It was no place for his industry – mostly poor and lower-middleclass moving through here – for him it was a place to relax, to check things out, to shoot the breeze. Because the other great feature of the station was that you almost never saw a policeman here. He had already worked it out for himself: law enforcement turned a blind eye to all the counterfeit, and probably also the stolen goods, because there’s no serious crime here. Maybe because everyone was in transit, and there weren’t kwaai valuables to steal. Perhaps because all the shysters and counterfeit traders looked out for each other, did their own policing.

  So the cops don’t scratch where it doesn’t itch, and they don’t bother you here.

  Which was a good thing right now.

  Logic told him the cops were already looking for him. A nationwide manhunt, for the fugitive from the Waterfront killings. Tomorrow morning his face would be on all the front pages, but now his CCTV star appearance was probably a Kodak moment in every policeman’s breast pocket.

  Here he didn’t need to worry about it. He could just look for helpers. And that was where his trouble lay. It wasn’t going to be easy. There were a few coloured businessmen, mainly in the Bellstar Junction in front of the station. Rich cats, they weren’t going to do any monkey-business for a brother for just a few hundred rand. The Nigerian money-changers and drug dealers were also a no-go area. They had the good taste to make themselves invisible in small apartments on the second and third floors of the buildings in the area. And they didn’t come cheap either.

  But mostly, on the ground, it was all Little Somalia here.

  And your trouble with Somalians is that they’re cat-footed. They tread warily. Because of the xenophobic attacks. And the fact that so many of them are illegal aliens. They don’t trust anybody except fellow former countrymen. You see it in their sceptical Somalian eyes. If you didn’t buy anything at his stall, if you loitered, or you came to gooi a scheme, then they checked you out doubtfully, talk about under suspicion. And the shake of the head came early on, no, no thanks, not interested.

  But he had better get an assistant quickly. Because his time was running out. It was twenty past two.

  Griessel told Janina Mentz to text her number to him. He would think everything over and phone her back. Then he rang off, and he switched off his phone, and drove to Stellenbosch by the Bottelary Road, because it was easier to spot a tail on that route.

  And when he crossed the R300, his eyes constantly checking the rear-view mirror, the whole situation crashed down on him. Not gradually, but with a sudden, crushing weight.

  And with it, as always, like a whirlwind, the thirst for booze descended on him: he instantly felt the smooth, cool weight of a glass in his hand. Short. Neat. No ice. No mixer, just the raw, rich taste of Jack Daniel’s on his tongue, and the heat down his throat. He shivered and gripped the steering wheel; his body craved the tingle of alcohol, now. ‘Jissis,’ he murmured. His mind told him there were places he could go, here in Kraaifontein, shebeens and a few bars, and nobody would even know.

  But what about Nadia Kleinbooi?

  Just a quick stop. Five minutes. Brackenfell or Kuils River, it was just a little detour, two lightning doubles, line them up, barman. Christ, the bliss that would flow, slip, slide through his veins and fibres to the deepest reaches of his body. Only two, they would heal him, of everything, they would last him till tomorrow, and tomorrow everything would be better again.

  Saliva gushed into his mouth, his hands shook. It had been months since he had last had this uncontrollable thirst. Part of him was aware of what was happening. He knew the trigger. The ‘secondary one’ was what Doc Barkhuizen called it. When he realised how rubbish and useless and irrelevant he was. And he needed the drink to confirm it, and he needed the drink to heal it.

  Phone Doc.

  Fok Doc. Doc didn’t understand. Doc’s life worked; his did not. He was hopeless, useless, bad. His work was increasingly becoming a joke. He had drunk away his life, lost his wife, the respect of his children. He could hear it in Fritz’s voice when he talked to his son. Fritz just kept him informed, but he talked to his mother. His colleagues gave him one look on a bad morning, and immediately jumped to the conclusion that he had hit the bottle. They were merely tolerating him, that uneasy sympathy you have for the handicapped. And Alexa Barnard, she would drop him as soon as she had her alcoholism and her life under control again, as soon as she saw through him once more and realised how shit he really was. He, who lied and ducked and dived from her because his fokken rascal couldn’t keep up. And why couldn’t it keep up? Because he had poured his libido, along with the rest of his life, down his throat.

  He put his indicator on to turn left in Brackenfell Boulevard. There were drinking holes down near the hypermarket, his old, old hangouts when he used to pour one last dop before going home. Warm places in this wintry weather. Welcoming.

  At the back of his mind there was a voice asking:What about Nadia Kleinbooi? She was Carla’s age, Christ, would he go drinking if it were his daughter?

  He turned the indicator off again. It was faster to make a quick stop in Stellenbosch. Buy a little bottle. For the afternoon and the evening.

  That’s what he would do. He settled on that.

  Only once he drove past the entrance to the Devonvale golfing estate, did he focus on the true origin of his self-hatred and the urge to drink.

  Mbali Kaleni had spoken with so much feeling about the devastation of democracy. And then Janina Mentz said this government could not be trusted with such a great responsibility. The fuck-up was that they were both right. And therein lay two big problems. First and foremost was déjà vu. Because he still remembered what it was like under apartheid. It didn’t matter how hard he used to believe he was only fighting the good fight against crime, that he was on the side of the good guys, there was always the niggling little voice in the back of his head. You couldn’t avoid the hatred in the others’ eyes, or the rage of the media, and the grubby association with colleagues who were doing evil things – even a few senior men in what was then the Murder and Robbery Squad. It wore you down slowly, because when you worked with death and violence and everything that was sick in a community, impossible hours for a ridiculous salary, then you wanted to, no you had to, believe you had good and right on your side. Otherwise you lost your self-respect, your faith in the whole business, and you began to ask yourself:What was it all for?

  That had been one of the reasons for his drinking. That pressure. They all needed to soften the sharp edges of reality.

  And then came the New South Africa and the great relief: now he could do his job in the bright, clear daylight of justice and respect.

  It was what carried the SAPS through the first decade after apartheid, through the massive transformation, and the mess of national commissioners who were fired under one dark cloud after another. But now it felt like it was back to the bad old days again. A government that was slowly rotting. And it was catching. More and more policemen were doing stupid things, and there was more and more mismanagement, corruption and greed, sinking the Service deeper and deeper into the quicksand of inefficiency and public distrust. Despite the new national commissioner, who tried so hard, despite the work of thousands of honest and dedicated policemen, despite senior officers like Musad Manie and Zola Nyathi, whose integrity was entirely above suspicion.

  Just as in the old days, he was increasingly reluctant to tell people he was a policeman.

  Where did that leave him? A rat on a sinking ship. Once again. He couldn’t leap off, he had one child at university and another that wanted to go to a fokken hellish expensive film school. At forty-five he was just a stupid career policeman who could do nothing else.

  Which brought him to the second problem that Mbali and Mentz’s words had revealed: his inability to think about stuff like the powers of the government, information laws, and Struggle history. What was wrong with him that he was stuck at ground level, always wrestling with such basic, m
undane things? So that he was embarrassed when Mbali pointed out the bigger picture, the deeper principle, with so much passion and integrity.

  What was wrong with him? He had become irrelevant in a vocation that demanded deeper thought and insight and intelligence. In a country and a world that was changing far faster than he could adapt to it.

  What was wrong with him?

  Just about everything.

  But nothing that drink would not put right.

  The irony did not escape Tyrone Kleinbooi.

  Beggars can’t be choosers, he thought, but to go and choose a beggar?

  He had no choice: time was running out, and fast. He was hurriedly scanning the stall in front of Bellstar Junction for a helper, a sidekick, and then this ou appeared beside him, as abrupt and unexpected and embarrassingly silent as a wet dream. Filthy, and with many hard years on the clock. But under the brown layers of sunburn and lack of personal hygiene, he saw to his surprise that the guy was a whitey. In a faded blue overall jacket, ragged orange jersey underneath, eyes bright blue in a red-brown face, he said, ‘Brother, I haven’t eaten today.’

  At first Tyrone wanted to say, ‘Brother? Watse brother, nowadays you’re a brother of everyone that lives and breathes, what’s up with that?’ But he thought better of it and looked more closely at him. This ou would pass for a coloured.

  He’d never thought to ask a whitey. Because the ones you could trust wouldn’t help with a coloured man’s troubles. And the rest . . .

  ‘Show me your hands . . .’

  ‘Excuse me?’ said the man.

  ‘Show me your hands.’

  The man slowly lifted his hands, palms up. Tyrone looked. He saw no tremor.

  ‘You’re not on tik?’ Tyrone asked.

  ‘That’s not my drug.’

  ‘What is your drug?’

  ‘Boom,’ he said with a measure of pride.

  ‘When last did you smoke weed?’

  ‘Day before yesterday. But I’m hungry now, brother.’

  ‘What’s your name?’

  ‘Bobby.’

  ‘Bobby who?’

  ‘Bobby van der Walt.’

  It was such an unlikely name for a bum that he felt like laughing. ‘OK, Bobby, so you’re looking for a bit of money?’

  ‘Please.’

  ‘You can earn it, Bobby.’

  He could see the man lose interest instantly. ‘Just a small, easy job,’ said Tyrone quickly.

  The blue eyes were suspicious. ‘What kind of job?’

  ‘A legal job. Easy money. A hundred bucks for ten minute’s work.’

  ‘What must I do?’

  ‘Do you see that fl yover?’ Tyrone pointed at the M11 fl yover that ran past the station building on concrete pillars, high in the air.

  ‘I’m a smoker, but I’m not stupid,’ said Bobby van der Walt. ‘I see it. It’s the Tienie Meyer Bypass.’

  ‘Fair enough, brother,’ said Tyrone. ‘Now let me tell you what you must do.’

  When Benny Griessel drove into Stellenbosch, and his eyes began searching Bird Street for an off-licence, he thought: four hundred and twenty-three days clean. Four hundred and twenty-three long difficult days. He didn’t have a political struggle, he had a drink struggle, a life struggle. His whole being said, Fuck it all, but somewhere in his head there was an objection:You will have to tell Doc why you threw away four hundred and twenty-three days. You will have to tell Alexa as well.

  At the Adam Tas traffic light he stopped.

  Phone Doc.

  He couldn’t. His cellphone had to stay off.

  Phone Doc. The SSA would not be able to draw any sensible conclusion from the fact that he was in Stellenbosch.

  He sighed and turned on his phone.

  33

  At 14.40 Tyrone stood in front of the Sport Station in the Bellstar Junction shopping centre. The shop’s name was on a big sign on the wall behind him. When he had first walked up to it he thought for a fleeting second that they were lekker stupid when they made that logo because there was one giant S that had to serve for both words. But it didn’t really work – at first glance it looked like Sport Tation.

  But his mind was focused elsewhere now. He had the cellphone in his hands, he kept an eye on the time. He was shaking, his heart pounding in his chest, too fast, too hard. He wondered about Nadia, how scared she must be. What had they done to her? Tied her up? Hurt her? He didn’t want to think of it . . . He must believe she was OK, and afterwards she was going to be heavy the moer in with him, that fury that transformed her into a spitting, hissing feline creature. If she was heavy angry, her eyes went a funny colour, and words streamed out of her mouth fast and furious, like a waterfall. What were you thinking,Ty? Are you mad? I thought I knew you.

  But that was all OK, as long as she was orraait.

  He had begun to work out a story that he would spin to her, but he didn’t know if she would fall for it. And if the cops put the CCTV footage on the TV, he was going to have his work cut out for him.

  Jirre, he hoped she was OK.

  If they so much as touch her . . .

  14.43.

  He had a view from here, all down the broad corridor from the shopping centre, between steelwork curved into triumphal arches, to the entrance of Bellstar Junction. Happily he could see across Charl Malan Street, under the M11 freeway. Not a perfect view, because there were always people in the way, people coming and going, everybody always moving, moving.

  He could see Bobby van der Walt, a forlorn figure up there beside the concrete barrier of the fl yover. Bobby’s eyes were on him. He could hear the hiss and hum of the traffic racing past behind Bobby.

  He kept still, made no gestures, in case Bobby thought it was The Sign. With dagga smokers you had to be careful, the brain cells weren’t always firing in sequence.

  That blerrie whitey better do his part today, bum or not.

  14.46.

  When he’d recruited Bobby and explained carefully what he would have to do, he’d asked Tyrone, ‘Is that all?’

  ‘That’s all. But you have to wait for my sign.’

  The narrowed eyes were still suspicious. ‘For a hundred bucks?’

  ‘I told you it was easy money.’

  Bobby’s expression showed it might be too easy. There had to be a catch, somewhere.

  ‘It’s an important job, Bobby. That’s why I’m paying you properly.’

  ‘OK.’

  Tyrone could see how his head was working. Bobby liked it that he had been sought out for an ‘important job’.

  Then he took Bobby along and went to talk to the Somalian at the clothes and backpack stall. Bobby stood and listened attentively, keen to know how payday was going to work.

  That Somalian was called Hassan Ikar.

  ‘Hassan, I want to buy this backpack.’Tyrone pointed at a compact black rucksack.

  ‘I’ll give you good price.’

  ‘No, Hassan, I don’t want to pay a good price. I want to pay full price, and a little more, but I need a favour.’

  And he quickly explained to Hassan Ikar: he was going to pay him a hundred and twenty rand too much for the rucksack. Out of the change he must give Bobby van der Walt a hundred. The rest he could keep. But only when Tyrone phoned Hassan and said Bobby had done his work correctly and well.

  ‘Do we have a deal?’

  Ikar thought it over. He couldn’t see any risk. Then he nodded. ‘OK.’

  ‘So give me your phone number.’

  Tyrone phoned Hassan Ikar’s number to make sure it was working. Bobby stood listening to everything, and eventually agreed with a nod.

  The plan was made.

  But was it going to work?

  14.47.

  Tyrone checked the cellphone’s battery. More than enough juice, one of the few advantages of the Nokia 2700. Yesterday’s tech, but there weren’t a thousand apps sucking up the power.

  A group of coloured labourers walked from the direction of the platform.
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br />   ‘Are the trains running on time?’ asked Tyrone.

  ‘Just about,’ one called back. ‘Few minutes late.’

  That was OK. A few minutes late. ’Cause he was cutting it fine. If everything went according to plan, if he and Nadia got away, he wanted to catch Metrorail 3526, at 15.08 on platform 9, to Cape Town. And he could use ‘a few minutes’, just in case.

  Tyrone breathed deeply. Get a grip, you had to be cool and calm and collected. He looked up again at Bobby van der Walt – the figure was still standing there, solitary. Keep looking at me, Bobby, don’t let your concentration lapse . . .

  14.49.

  The security guard came walking towards him, a young black guy in a red beret with a fancy metal badge on it. ‘Can I help you?’

  ‘No, thanks, I’m waiting for my sister.’

  ‘OK.’

  Then the cellphone in his hand rang and his whole body jumped and the security guard gave him a keen look.

  ‘That must be her now,’ he said, his voice hoarse.

  The security man didn’t move.

  Tyrone looked at the screen. Nadia’s number. It was them. He answered. ‘Hello.’

  ‘I am at the corner of Durban and Voortrekker Roads.’

  Same voice, same accent.

  ‘Is my sister with you?’

  ‘Yes.’

  He wanted to ask to hear her voice, but the security man was still standing right beside him, keeping an eye on him. He said, ‘I need you to come down to Bellville Station. There’s lots of parking . . .’