by JT Lawrence
“Welfare?”
“I’m sending you the report right now,” says Keke.
Kate’s Helix pings.
“It says it’s sealed.”
“Don’t worry, I unsealed it.”
“How?”
“A fellow juror – the one I told you about – he came to visit, and he helped me. It turns out that because of his job he has special privileges when it comes to certain personal information.”
Kate’s not surprised that Keke has this kind of contact. Her career has been built on giving and getting favours. She realised before anyone else that information would be the currency of the future and she’s been building her database for decades.
“I gave him the footage and he – ”
Kate’s heart skips when she opens the file and sees the computer-generated 4D mugshot.
“It’s the same woman!”
“What?”
“It’s the Resurrector. The woman who we’ve just been fighting. The one who tried to take Mally at the show. You found her!”
“Well, Marko found her.”
What they don’t say is: And then, unfortunately, she found Marko.
Kate starts reading the file and sees that the woman’s name is Rosalind Jackson. A jarringly pretty name for such a work of evil.
“Her parents were nutters. Crunchies.”
Kate scrolls down and sees another head-shot; this time it’s a photo of a scrawny little girl with knotted pigtails. Her raisin eyes and mean mouth give her a feral appearance. Small bubbles of scar tissue on her cheeks and neck.
“What now?”
“You know the type. Anti-GMO, artisanal vegan, carbon negative, home-schooling, communal-living crazies. They took her away when she was six years old.”
In her mind’s eye, Kate sees the little girl with a slit throat, sees the stained sword in her own hand. It makes her feel ill. She refuses to feel guilty, but, still, there is a hint of blood-copper on her tongue. What happened to this child to turn her into the killer she is? The same question can be asked of herself, although she knows the answer all too well.
“You can’t take someone’s child just because they’re fringe dwellers.”
“It wasn’t because of the home-made muesli. The girl almost died.”
“Abused?”
“You could say that. One of the crunchy hippies called it in. A neighbour. Saw how sick and weak the girl looked, then stopped seeing her altogether. Questioned the parents but they said that they believed in meditation over medicine. Ha!”
Emotion has pushed up Keke’s volume. She tones it down again. “Can you believe that?”
“They were anti-vax,” says Kate. It’s not a question.
“Of course they were anti-vax. Rosalind would have died if it weren’t for the nosy neighbour. She was practically dead when the ambulance collected her from those bat-shit crazies.”
“Diagnosed with Varicella, VZV. What’s that?”
“Chickenpox.”
“You can die from chickenpox?”
“You can die from complications from chickenpox. Inflammation of the brain membranes. Meningitis.”
“The crackers parents didn’t treat her at all? Even when she was clearly ill?”
“They treated her with their own homegrown hoodoo-voodoo shit. Calamine ice. Organic cannabistea compresses.”
Kate can almost feel the cool trail of calamine on her skin. Can taste the dusty pink. “That sounds quite good, actually. I mean, as a name of a colour.”
“I thought that too. I thought: I could do with some cannabistea right now.”
“You and your weed booze.” Kate almost smiles. “Okay. Rosalind Jackson. So the Nanny State takes custody. Then what?”
“So because of the infertility crisis, some of the orphanages were already closing down then. Plus she stayed sick for a long time. Turns out no one wants to foster a sick six-year-old with dead grapes for eyes.”
“What about the parents? Didn’t they appeal?”
“No record of appeal. They were probably all, like, if it’s meant to happen it will happen.”
“Everything happens for a reason.”
“Morons.”
“Weasels.”
“Managed to spawn a right fucker of a daughter too.”
“She broke out of the institution they put her in. Can’t blame her, really. You know what those places are like.”
Kate shivers. The mention of any kind of institution makes the hairs on the back of her neck turn into exclamation marks. As if the calamine ice cube has travelled into her backbone and lodged itself inside there.
“She broke out. Lived on the streets.”
“A rat hunter,” says Kate.
“A what-now?”
“A rat hunter. That’s what Seth calls them. The street urchins. Says he hates to see them because it lends credence to Doctor Van der Heever’s uGeniX scheme.”
“What can I say? He has a point.”
“Yuck.”
“I know. I despise that man as much as it’s possible to despise a corpse – ”
Kate scrolls through the leaves of the dossier as she listens to Keke. She sees the charge table and interrupts her. “Arrested for petty crimes: shoplifting, pick-pocketing, vandalism of a Bilchen Burger vending machine. Nothing violent. It looks like she was just doing what she could to feed herself.”
“I also would have broken into a burger vending machine if I had grown up with…what did you call them? Artisanal-vegan parents. I don’t even know what that means.”
“I know, right? Shudder.”
“So, she was a little girl on the streets. Pretty much the most vulnerable thing you could be. I’m guessing that someone came along and took advantage of her.”
“You couldn’t be more spot-on if you tried. You ready for the reveal?”
“Born ready.”
“The Good Samaritan took her in. Do you remember him?”
“No.”
“The bearded guy. The loin-cloth guy. He used to make the news when we were kids.”
“I have a vague recollection. You know me and my childhood memory blank.”
“The Good Samaritan gave up his life as a high-flying corporate something-something to be a better person. He donated all his cash and possessions, including a Maserati, to the needy and roamed the streets, surviving on ‘the milk of human kindness’.”
“I’m surprised he didn’t starve altogether,” murmurs Kate.
“He even gave up his name. Was always telling the people who interviewed him that he’s never been happier. I always found it hard to believe.”
“The Good Samaritan took her in? Into what? His cardboard box in a dirty alley?”
“Ja. And soon he had an entire collection of rat hunters,” says Keke. “Very Dickensian.”
“Very what?”
“Oliver Twist, you know?” says Keke. “Fagan? Never mind. I always forget that you don’t read and then I wonder how we can possibly be friends.”
“You know why I don’t read.”
The car takes an exit off the highway.
“So. In an ironic twist, people were so enamoured by The Good Samaritan’s renunciation of materialism that they started throwing cash at him. Someone opened an NPO bank account on his behalf and all of a sudden he’s a multi-millionaire again. He realised that he’d never be able to escape his wealth – ”
“Ah, well, we all have our cross to bear.”
“And decided to keep the bank. Do something worthwhile with it. He built a –”
The cab disappears into a tunnel, cutting off her signal.
Chapter 65
Cold Lullaby
Keke tries to call Kate again, but she can’t get through. Themba arrives, and Keke steels herself for the frown she knows she is going to receive from the nurse, but it doesn’t happen. Instead, she hands Keke a mug of tea. She’s brought another packet of Holee Molees too, for Mally, who is still sleeping on the lazy chair.
“You’re not
angry with me anymore?” Keke asks.
“I wasn’t angry with you,” says the intern, avoiding eye contact.
“You’re a bad liar.”
“Okay. I was, but I felt bad for him. For Marko. He’s my priority, you know.”
“He’s my priority too,” says Keke. “You just don’t understand the stakes.”
She starts to say something in rebuttal but then puts a finger to her lips. “You’re right. I don’t know the whole story.”
“What changed your mind?”
“About what?”
“About you being cross with me.”
“Well. You were very generous. Too generous. And then I felt bad.”
“What?”
“I’ve never received a tip that big before. I mean, sometimes patients leave their leftover baskets of stale muffins for us, or wilting flowers, but…well, thank you. It was very generous of you.”
She gives Keke a shy smile then disappears out of the room.
Zack. Keke checks the Gordhan invoice total on her live statement for Marko’s medical account. At first she’s confused. Has the amount owing doubled? But then she sees the minus mark in front of the total. It’s all paid off, and more. It’s an eye-watering forty million in credit. The man in the grey suit must be grinning from ear to ear. She doesn’t even know what to think about Zack. Why is he helping her? She’s learned some hard lessons in the journo trade: there’s no such thing as a free lunch, but what could Zack want from her? She doubts it’s anything as prosaic as sex. Hell, she’d shag him right here on this hard hospital counter if she thought it would mean getting to keep Marko in this ICU, and she doesn’t care what that says about her.
They won’t kick us out. She has a sip of tea and leans her head back, massages her neck muscles. She starts to yawn, stretches her arms above her head then hugs herself. Her body is absolutely finished: stiff, sore, on the brink of getting sick. Keke can’t remember the last time she slept and feels ready to collapse. She climbs onto the hospital bed, next to Marko, and cuddles into him. Slings her arm over his battered chest, puts her warm hand over his cool one. She’ll just close her eyes for a moment. She won’t sleep. She can’t. How long has it been? 48 hours? 72? Keke tries to count back to a time when things were normal but the numbers tumble down around her. Slumber swirls in and inks her temples. The medical equipment beeps a cold lullaby.
Chapter 66
Dinner For One
Keke drifts up from her dreamless slumber. She’s still in exactly the same position in which she dozed off, spooning Marko’s sleeping slab of a body. She doesn’t want to wake, doesn’t want to open her eyes and face the world since it has been turned inside out. Even in her semi-conscious state she longs for a rewind button – just a week – if they could go back just a week then she could have Marko back, and the twins would be safe. Now a bitter new reality awaits her. She wants to float back down again, into the peaceful shallows, but someone is calling her name. Has something happened? She opens her irritated eyes – her BioLenses need replacing – but her sleep deprivation closes them again. She’s drunk on delicious sleep, and wants to keep drinking. Has she ever felt this tired? The person is calling her again.
“Kekeletso,” says the woman. “There are some people here.”
Keke grunts.
“They need to speak to you.”
She opens her eyes again, blinking into the harsh fluorescent light. Why do they make hospitals so damn bright?
“Who?” Her mouth is stuck together, so she has to say it again for it to be heard. “Who?”
Themba’s face comes into view. “There are some men here, looking for you.”
She sits up and tries to blink away the bleariness. Her brain is still half asleep. “What?”
“They said they need to speak to you urgently.”
“Is it about the hospital bill? It’s been paid.”
“It’s not about the hospital bill.”
Keke sighs, puts the pads of her fingers on her closed eyes to try to reduce the swelling then gets up off Marko’s bed.
Why is the nurse looking sheepish? Or is it apologetic? What has she done? She opens the door and three uniformed police officers stride into the room. Keke’s brain can’t make sense of their presence. Have they tracked down that woman – Jackson? – who did this to Marko? But it must be more than that. Why would they go to the trouble of finding her in a private ward in a hospital?
“Good evening,” says the one who takes centre stage. The other two stand at the door.
Keke glances out the window: a shallow pane of darkness. What time is it?
“I’m detective Ramphele, with the SAPS.”
Alarm bells go off in Keke’s head. This isn’t making sense. “How do I know?” she asks.
He moves his legs so that his knees bandy back and forth, as if he’s warming up for a race. “How do you know what?”
“That you’re with the police?”
“It’s not important. We’re here to ask you some questions.”
“Has something come up?”
“I beg your pardon?”
They look entirely out of place in their new police uniforms. Black spines and kevlar scales, as if they’re preparing to go into battle, instead of questioning an exhausted woman with swollen eyes who barely has the energy to stand there in front of them.
“Would you like to…sit down?” Awkward.
“We won’t be here that long.”
Keke wants to pour herself a glass of water but she feels as though she is stuck in the officers’ sights, and that any sudden moves would be risky.
“Have you found something?”
The police officer’s eyebrows knit together. “Could you be more clear?”
Keke fights the urge to roll her eyes. Could the South African Police Service be any more incompetent? She’s reported on so many cases where important evidence has fallen through the cracks because of corruption and badly trained cops. Now it seems like it’s her turn to experience it for herself.
“Why are you here?” she says, unsuccessfully keeping the irritation from her voice. “Have you found something, some evidence? Have you caught the person who did this to Marko?”
The men’s faces mirror her confusion.
“The break-in at my place,” says Keke. “The attack.”
“We’re not here about that,” says Ramphele. “We don’t know anything about that.”
Of course you don’t, she wants to say. Because you’re fucking useless.
The men have been here for about two minutes but the confusion and dead-end questions make it stretch before her: an hour stuck in Kafka spiderweb. Keke doesn’t have the emotional bandwidth to deal with this. She closes her eyes, breathes, then opens them again.
“Can you please just tell me what’s going on?”
Ramphele clears his throat. He’s stopped warming up for his imaginary race, now. “We have it on record that you visited a Ms Helena Nash a couple of days ago, in the Carbon Factory Penal Colony.”
Keke frowns. “Yes?”
“Why was that?”
Keke’s head spins. “What is this about?”
“Just answer the question,” pipes one of the men at the door.
“We saw Nash because we had a theory about a case we were working on.”
“You were working on a case?”
“Not officially.”
Ramphele taps his foot.
“I was on jury duty, and then I had an idea. So we tracked down Nash.”
“You had an idea?”
“You’re amused that I had an idea?” she snarks. “Why is that? Because I’m not a cop, or because I’m a woman?”
“It was just the way you said it.”
“I didn’t realise there was a more serious way of putting it.”
“No offence meant. You made it sound… frivolous.”
“Fuck you.”
“Now listen here, Ms – ”
“Don’t tell me to �
��listen here’. Look around you. Look at this man who’s a whisper away from dying. Does any of this look ‘frivolous’ to you?”
Ramphele exhales out of his nostrils, puts a hand up in apology.
There’s a tense silence. The machines breathe and beep.
“Let’s just get to the answers,” he says, “then we’ll be out of your way.”
“Fine.”
“You went to see Nash. On a…hunch?”
“Yes.”
“What transpired?”
“It’s complicated.”
“Believe me,” says the detective. “It’s a lot more complicated than you think.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“Who were you with, when you visited the convict?”
“A fellow juror.”
“Why?”
“Why? I don’t know. Because we both had the same hunch? Because it was nice to have company?”
“Was the man Zachary Girdler?”
“Yes?”
“You’re not sure?”
“I know him as ‘Zack’.”
“You were together.”
“Yes,” says Keke, “but you knew that already. It’s not like you can just walk into a crim colony. They have a biometric record of us being there.”
“That’s the funny part,” says Ramphele.
“There’s a funny part?”
“In a manner of speaking.”
“Tell me.”
“It seems that after your visit to the Factory there was some kind of surveillance breach. None of the twenty-three cameras that should have recorded your visit had any footage of Mister Girdler.”
“What? That’s peculiar. Are you sure?”
“We wouldn’t be here if we weren’t sure.”
“Well, I can tell you that we were definitely there.”
Ramphele takes a glass Tile out of his chest pocket. He taps on it and a hologram swirls out above it. It’s a security video of the Carbon Factory. Keke sees herself walk into the building, thumb-scan, and endure the frisking for weapons.
“Zack came into the building with me. We walked to the interview room together.”
“Not according to this,” says Ramphele, clicking on another clip. It shows Keke walking on the conveyor belt, alone, apparently talking to herself.