The old man walked towards the counter again. He pulled a trolley. On the trolley were three boxes. They all belonged to Charmaine Zeller, victim number four. “You better come to this side,” the old man said. “Two of them are too heavy to pick up.”
Hobbs jumped over the counter while Sauer walked around. By the time Sauer got to the trolley, Hobbs had already broken open all three boxes. One contained her computer. Another had the face cloth, blankets and paraphernalia from her bathroom, while the third one contained vibrators, sex books and her more personal goods.
Sauer looked at the box containing the vibrators, careful not to touch anything again. One vibrator was still in its packaging. Sauer carefully lifted it out of the box. He looked at it closely. The packaging was still sealed. On the back was a small, yellow price label that read Luscious Love Sex Shop. R156, 95. Sauer handed it to Hobbs. Hobbs looked at the vibrator through the hard plastic packaging.
“Look at the label at the back,” Sauer said. Hobbs turned the package over and looked at the label.
“Thanks,” he said to the old man, “We’ll take this one.” The two of them walked out of the warehouse and climbed into the Turtle, leaving a huge chimney of black smoke hanging as they sped off towards their office.
Back in the office, they looked through the telephone directory. Luscious Love Sex Shop was not listed so they phone the telephone supply company and got a street address for the shop. They got back into the Turtle and drove towards Hillbrow. The notorious neighborhood frequented by prostitutes, drug lords and lost souls. Few prostitutes were on duty at this hour. The sun was still high in the sky.
“I wonder why the sleazy things always happen when it’s dark,” Sauer wondered.
“Because evil is dark,” Hobbs said. “Evil works at night and sleeps by day.”
Chapter Thirty-Six
Sauer slowed down as he turned into Twist Street. He drove slowly as Hobbs scanned the street for the Luscious Love Sex Shop. Nothing.
Twist Street is a one-way. They had to come down Claim Street before turning up in Twist again. Sauer crawled along. The motorists behind them honked their horns and swore. Sauer threw a signs out the window, not really paying attention to who it was aimed. Up and down they drove, retracing their steps again and again. Nothing. “Why don’t we just ask?” Hobbs suggested.
“Yes maybe…I think the place has either been moved or closed down.”
Hobbs spotted a line of tired prostitutes sunning themselves outside a café. The sat with their backs against the wall, their legs wide open. “Let’s ask them.”
Sauer slammed on the brakes. All of the prostitutes jumped up and run away, except for one. She merely looked up at them. “I am a South African,” she repeated loudly while patting herself on the chest. “I am a South African.”
“Where is the sex shop?” Hobbs was very short.
“You want some now?” She dropped her head slightly to one side.
Hobbs took a deep breath. “There is nothing in this world that I would want from you. I have a hand…I want to know where the Luscious Love Sex Shop is.”
She looked at him wearily, shaking her head.
“I take it you have never heard of it or seen it.”
She stared at Hobbs with a blank face. He felt like swearing at her. “Fucking useless whore!” he whispered through his teeth. “Why is it that they always sit with their legs apart?”
“To air the wares.” Both detectives sniggered.
Sauer drove further down the road. A block away he spotted a dirty boy sitting on the pavement in the late afternoon sun. He drove the Turtle onto the pavement opposite the boy, and with his huge hand, waved to the boy. “Come here,” he bellowed. The boy cautiously walked closer to the Turtle, checking over his shoulder all the time.
“Are you the police?” the boy asked when he stood next to Sauer.
“Yes,” Sauer said and showed the boy his identification card. “Why?”
“Uncle Burney said he would call the police, but that was two days ago and nobody came yet. Please come help me,” the boy said, “I can’t wake my mom.”
Sauer killed the Turtle’s engine and both detectives jumped out. “Where’s your mom now?” he asked. The boy retreated as he saw Sauer’s huge body.
“Still in the bedroom.”
“Where do you live?” Sauer asked.
“Up there,” the boy said, pointing upwards towards a block of apartments.
“Since when can’t you wake her up?” Hobbs asked.
“Since two days ago.”
Hobbs put his arm around the boy. “Show us.”
They walked across the road and into a dilapidated building.
“Don’t take the lift,” the boy said. “It’s broken.”
They walked the three sets of stairs, Hobbs in front with the boy, Sauer puffing behind. The door of the apartment was locked. The boy retrieved a key hanging around his neck. He opened the door and Hobbs indicated to Sauer to stay outside. Hobbs could smell the decay as he followed the boy into the tiny apartment. Dirty clothes and dishes were scattered everywhere. The heat made the body decompose faster. The boy stopped at the bedroom door and pointed to the lump under the blankets. “There she is.”
“You stay here,” Hobbs said as he walked over to the bed. He lifted the blanket carefully and looked at the corpse. The woman was indeed dead. Her neck was bruised. She was strangled. Hobbs dropped the blanket on top of the corpse again and walked to the boy. He took the boy’s hand. “You come with me,” he said.
Back in the hallway, Hobbs took his mobile phone out of his pocket and dialed a number. He spoke briefly. He picked the boy up, and the three of them walked down the steps to wait for the sirens to come closer. Within minutes, the police vehicles stopped outside the building. Hobbs spoke to the uniformed policemen briefly before crossing the street towards the Turtle. “Where you taking me,” the boy asked, resting his head on Hobbs’s shoulder, trusting the stranger completely.
“To a lady that will love you forever.”
“Who’s that?” Sauer asked silently.
“Mother Tilly.”
Sauer got into the Turtle and waited for Hobbs to place the boy in the middle of them. “Cool,” said the boy, “I’ve never been in a car before.”
“This is not just any old car,” Sauer said. “This car has supersonic jets that kick in the minute when we have to chase a crook.”
“Really?”
“Yes.”
“How fast can it go?”
“Faster than anything you have ever seen,” Sauer said as he drove the short distance to the Saint Mary’s School. They stopped outside the gates and Hobbs walked over to the intercom system and spoke into it. The gates opened slowly and Sauer waited for Hobbs to get back into the Turtle before they drove up the beautiful driveway. The boy had now lost interest in the Turtle. He only had eyes for the imposing building and the massive grounds. Sauer stopped outside the impressive front door. The boy jumped in Hobbs’s arm as he climbed out. The door opened and Mother Tilly herself came out to meet them. She stretched her arms out to the boy. “Welcome my darling, welcome.” The boy turned his face onto Hobbs’s shoulder and clung unto him for dear life.
Mother Tilly stroked the boy’s back. “Come in, let’s have some tea.”
Why always tea? Can’t we for once have a beer?
The two men followed Mother Tilly into her office. Several nuns were busy scrubbing floor or polishing the wooden furniture. She sat behind her huge desk and picked up the phone to order tea.
“Now then young man, what is your name?” she asked the boy, who still had his face buried in Hobbs’s shoulder. He dug his face in deeper and Hobbs’s instinctively closed his arms around him tighter. It was Sauer who broke the ice.
“Mother Tilly, am I right in saying that you have been in this neighborhood for a long time?”
“Oh yes, since 1962. I came here as a young nun from India.”
“Perhaps then,
you can tell me where the Luscious Love Sex Shop is,” Sauer asked with a straight face. He saw the shock on the nun’s face and the amusement on Hobbs’s.
“Why on Earth would I know something like that?” she retorted.
“I was just wondering. It is part of our investigation.”
Mother Tilly sat back in her chair. She pointed a finger towards the back of the boy. “Is his mother one of the victims?”
“Not of our serial killer. Don’t really know, but experience tells me it was a violent, domestic incident.”
The tea arrived and Mother Tilly managed to coach the boy into taking a biscuit. He ate it hungrily and then held his hand out for another. Mother Tilly walked over to him and gave him another. He smiled at her shyly and buried his face into Hobbs’s shoulder again. Hobbs’s shirt was smeared with crumbs, snot and spit. Slowly, she managed to win his confidence.
“What is your name?” she asked in a sickly sweet manner.
The boy dug his face deeper into Hobbs’s shoulder.
“Eddie,” he mumbled.
“How old are you Eddie?”
“My mom said I was five.” The boy was clearly older than that.
“Which school do you go to?”
“I don’t go yet. My mom said next year.”
“Do you think you will like school?”
“Yes…I can’t wait to go.”
“I have a school here. With lots and lots of friends and food. Would you like to come to my school?”
Eddie looked at Hobbs, who smiled down at him. Then the boy shook his head up and down slowly.
She took the boy from Hobbs’s lap and nestled him to her bosom.
Both the detectives looked up in surprise. The boy was rather small for his age. As if she read their minds, Mother Tilly said, “We find that the children from this district often suffer from malnutrition. For this neighborhood, he is about right for his size.”
Sauer thought of the mountains of food that appeared on their dining room table three times a day when he was a child. He never had to go to bed hungry. Neither did any of his siblings or anyone he ever knew as a child. He saw hunger for the first time when he became a policeman.
Hobbs got up and stroked the boy’s hair. “We’ll come visit you soon,” he said, knowing full well he would never see the boy again. But saying it somehow soothed his conscience.
As the detectives turned to walk out the door, the boy spoke, “That place you’re looking for, that sex place…”
“Yes,” Hobbs replied as he walked back towards him.
“That place is in an alley near my house. Outside the alley is a China food place…Foo Shie. They give me food.”
Hobbs fluffed the boy’s hair again with a smile and followed Sauer out the door.
Chapter Thirty-Seven
Finding the Luscious Love Sex Shop now was easy. Outside the alley there was indeed a Chinese Shop: Yen Shoo Food and Grocer. Sauer parked the Turtle on the pavement and the two detectives walked down the urine smelling alley. Right at the end was the Luscious Love Sex Shop. The shop’s windows were painted a sickly yellow color. The glass doors were still locked. Sauer rattled the doors but nobody stirred. They walked out the alley and into the Chinese shop. The China man behind the counter greeted them with a wide smile. Some of his front teeth were missing.
“What time does the sex shop open?” Sauer asked.
The China man laughed and said, “Yes, yes, good food. Yummy, yummy. Special for the day is Sweet and Sour Chicken.”
Sauer and Hobbs stared at the toothless man in front of them. Sauer smiled at the China man and said, “You’re ugly and your mother dresses you funny.”
The China man laughed. “Yes, yes, very nice food.”
“Just as I thought,” Sauer smiled, “no English.”
He took a deep breath and started again.
“We don’t want any of your cockroach invested food, thank you. We would like to know when the sex shop would be open.”
“Oh, the sex shop, Luscious Love,” the China man said as he walked from behind the counter. “There is,” he pointed with his arm down the alley. “You go there. Nice place. Bootyful girls. Meny nice things.”
“What time they open?” Sauer pointed at his watch.
“Oh…oh…six o’clock.”
Sauer and Hobbs thanked the China man and walked back towards the Turtle. It was almost six now. They would come back, much later.
“I suspect the place is only open at nights because they would have no trade during the day,” Hobbs though out loud as Sauer drove back to their offices.
Chapter Thirty-Eight
Sauer saw Amy again that night for an early supper at her place. That was the condition. He told her that he had to interview a suspect later that night. She accepted his explanation without hesitation. She sensed that his quietness during supper was because his mind was occupied elsewhere, so she babbled on about her work, knowing that he did not really listen to her. Yet, his presence gave her such an air of security. In his presence she could be carefree and relaxed, just herself. She did not have to be the pretty, brainy dolly who dressed to kill. She loved him for that. She also knew what she was involved in—a man who walked on the dark side of life, keeping it safe for people like her. It never crossed her mind to question his working hours.
“Shall we go sit in the living room?” Amy asked after supper. Instead, Sauer took her into his arms and kissed her passionately. He broke the kiss off slowly and looked questioningly into her eyes. She smiled the answered and led him to the bedroom.
Later when she was alone still cuddled in the sheets, she wondered how it is that such a big man could be so incredibly gentle.
At about ten that evening he excused himself saying that he still had to pick Hobbs up before midnight. He kissed her on the cheek and gave her a hug, thanking her.
Chapter Thirty-Nine
Hobbs was at their favorite watering hole, in the same clothes he came to work in that morning. Sauer knew that he must have had a few already. He also knew that never interfered with his policing skills. So he sat next to Hobbs and ordered a drink.
“So, how’s Amy?”
“She’s well. Cooked me a nice meal.”
“And…”
“And none of your business.”
“Hmmm…so she is indeed special.”
“Shut up and drink.”
Just before midnight they got into the Turtle and drove to the streets of Hillbrow. The place was totally transformed. It was now vibrant with life. Colorful souls littered the streets. Prostitutes looked up in curiosity as the Turtle roared past. Drugged youngsters staggered across the roads without giving the Turtle a second glance. Sauer parked the Turtle half on the pavement again outside the Chinese shop. Three prostitutes immediately walked towards them. Hobbs ignored them and walked down the alley. Sauer leaned against the back of the cruiser and looked the three up and down with great interest. “Sorry ladies, but tonight is my night for boys. Perhaps some other time?” One of the whores walked over to him and slid a red condom into his shirt pocket. “Maybe later…” she cooed, trying her best to look as sexy as possible.
Sauer followed Hobbs down the alley. The doors of the Luscious Love Sex Shop were wide open. Loud music thumped from massive speakers attached to the ceiling. The floor was black and a red satiny fabric covered the walls. Red and yellow lights dimly lit the interior. Shelves loaded with porn videos covered the length of the one wall. There were videos for every taste and liking, every fetish, obsession and fixation.
When Sauer entered he saw that Hobbs was already at the counter talking to a scrawny Englishman. “Was this bought from your shop?” Hobbs handed him the vibrator they found in Charmaine Zeller’s belongings.
The scrawny Englishman looked at the vibrator. “May I see you identification cards,” correctly presuming that they were policemen.
Hobbs and Sauer produced their cards and the scrawny Englishman looked at them in detail.
/> “Yes,” he said, “this is one of our products.”
“I know it may be difficult, but can you remember who bought it?” Sauer asked.
He looked at the price label and typed something into a computer.
“It looks like one of the playthings Jimmy would have bought for one of his girls.”
The detectives were all ears now.
“Jimmy Love?” Sauer asked.
“Yes,” said the man without much interest.
“Dead Jimmy Love,” Sauer continued.
The scrawny Englishman looked up in shock. “What do you mean dead? He was in here just the other night.”
“Doing what?”
“Chatting to the new owner, Henry.”
“What did they talk about?”
“I don’t really know. Jimmy had the hots for Henry. But Henry is straight…and very good looking…but he was not interested. They, nevertheless, spoke for hours on end.”
Sauer looked at Hobbs.
“Where is Henry now?”
The Englishman looked up at them and assessed them for a long time. “I’ll go call him for you.”
He picked up a phone and said something softly into the receiver. Almost immediately, a door opened in the middle of the satin wall. A voluptuous black woman walked into the reception area. Soft droning music followed into the room. She walked past the detectives without looking up and stood behind the counter next to the Englishman.
“Wait here,” he said to Sauer and Hobbs, and walked towards the same satin-covered door.
Sauer looked at Hobbs and then at the woman behind the counter. She was clearly a sex worker.
“Why do you think he called her,” Sauer mocked.
“Maybe he was scared we would run off with a handful of porn videos.”
“Which one would you run off with?” Sauer asked Hobbs.
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