by Nicol, Mike;
‘Supposition.’ Vicki making a show of looking around under the bushes. ‘I don’t see a dead body.’
‘They’ve dumped him. Could’ve dumped him anywhere. Bergies die every day. Too much booze. Too much meths. Heart attacks. Knife fights. Who cares? What’s one more?’
Vicki places all the bits of the phone on the boulder: the smashed screen, the broken keypad, the battery, shards of plastic casing. ‘This phone had a camera?’
Fish nods. ‘I reckon he took photographs. Thought he was being smart. Problem is pictures go to the phone memory. Then again, I know someone who knows cellphones. If the memory’s not smashed he could take a look.’
Fish gets his phone working, dials, the call going to voicemail. He leaves a message. ‘Not ideal.’
‘I know someone too,’ says Vicki. She tries her contact, scores a hit.
‘Let’s go,’ says Fish. ‘One stop first on the way.’
This’s the cop shop along the road, up in the old primary school building.
Fish flashes his PI card at the desk jockey. The man’s drinking a Fanta orange through a straw, holding the can in his left, his right making slow calligraphy with a flat-nib pen. His eyes flick up, his lips take a suck on the straw. He swallows, stands the pen in an ink pot.
‘How can I help?’
‘Beautiful writing,’ says Vicki.
‘I like it,’ says the constable. ‘My granny wrote like this.’
‘So did my aunt,’ says Vicki. ‘I’ve still got a couple of her letters.’
Fish tucks away his card, says, ‘You have any bodies brought in this morning?’
The constable frowns. ‘Bodies?’
‘Dead people.’
‘Only a bergie.’
‘Right,’ says Fish, leaning closer to the constable, speaking softer. ‘Look, do me a favour, let me see the corpse?’
The constable sucks at his Fanta. ‘She’s gone already, to the mortuary.’
‘She?’
‘Mad Martha. You know the crazy woman, slept there by the synagogue.’
‘There’s no dead men?’
The constable frowns at him. ‘You got a problem with that?’
In the MiTo, Vicki says, ‘So maybe your Colins is alive.’
Fish shakes his head. ‘Long shot maybe. Maybe your whizzboy can help us.’
29
Tol Visagie leads them out the cave, into the clearing. Pauses there to listen: the engine grind of the oncoming vehicle less distinct in the open. He gestures at them to follow, heads through the cut, then angles behind the black rocks towards the south. They can hear a vehicle in low gear approaching, then the engine idling, then silence. Tol Visagie keeps moving until the koppie hides them from the newcomer. He’s not following any path but moving down a bank towards the soggy vlei ground. They’re hidden in riverine bush, can see the SUV stopped some distance from theirs. A door opens, Vusi Bopape gets out, lets the door click closed.
‘You still think I’m joking about the tracker?’ whispers Tol Visagie. ‘How’d he know to come here?’
They watch Vusi Bopape scan the vlei through binoculars. Turn around, gaze at the koppie. He takes a rifle out of the vehicle, slams closed the rear door. Again he scans the vlei, turns, walks towards the koppie, stopping when he reaches the black rocks.
‘An AK,’ says Jacob Mkezi. ‘Interesting.’
‘That gun?’ says Mellanie. ‘That’s an AK? What’s he doing with that?’
They watch him hesitate, listen, pan his binoculars along the high ridge.
Tol Visagie looks at Jacob Mkezi. ‘You want to say hello?’
‘To a man with an AK? Why’d I want to do that?’
‘He knows we’re here. Somewhere. He probably thinks we’re watching him.’
‘Let him keep thinking that. For the moment.’
‘You sure?’
‘I’m sure.’
‘Jacob …’ Mellanie waves at a cloud of midges buzzing her. ‘Jacob, this isn’t a boy’s game. Why’s that man here? Why’s he got that sort of gun?’
‘I don’t know. Okay? I don’t know why he’s here, I don’t know why he’s carrying that gun.’
‘In the bush you need some sort of gun,’ says Tol Visagie. ‘The AK’s not a bad option.’
‘And you wanted me to stay in the car! You knew about this guy, and you wanted me to stay in the car! Heaven’s sake, Jacob, where’s your head?’
They watch Vusi Bopape return to the cars, walk over to theirs, make a slow circle looking in the windows. He tries a door. Glances back at the ridge.
Taking his time he wanders across to his SUV, stows the rifle, lights a cigarette. He perches on the driver’s seat, staring up at the koppie. Smokes leisurely, rolling the ash off the cigarette against the side of the door.
‘He reckons we’re up there,’ says Tol Visagie. ‘We can surprise him.’ He points north along the vlei edge at an animal path that leads towards the water. ‘If we go that way for another two hundred metres we can come behind him. The bush is thick, he won’t see us.’
Jacob Mkezi nods. ‘Let’s do that.’
Mellanie sighs. ‘You men lead such exciting lives. Never stop playing cowboys and Indians.’
They walk quickly along the sand path to the edge of the bush. Beyond is vlei grass. Beyond that, sun glinting on sheets of water.
Tol Visagie leads them up the bank onto the edge of the clearing. Calls out a greeting.
Vusi Bopape swivels to face them, frowning.
‘That’s surprised him,’ says Tol quietly.
Vusi Bopape now coming towards them, arms open. ‘I took a chance you’d be here. Too good a place for Tol not to show you.’ He grins at Jacob Mkezi. ‘Wonderful birdlife on the vlei.’ Takes Mellanie’s hand. ‘Hello again. As I said last time, I think you’re one of the best. Né, Mr Mkezi? Even if you are standing in the rain, Ms Munnik can convince you the sun’s shining.’
Mellanie pulls free her hand. ‘Cut the bull.’
‘And then she can also be a straight talker. Is that not right, Mr Mkezi?’
Jacob Mkezi doesn’t respond, brushes past Vusi Bopape. ‘Time we got back for lunch, Tol,’ he says.
Vusi Bopape standing amused, watching them. ‘There’s no need to be like that. Relax. We’re in the bush. The Angolan bush, having time off.’
‘For a man on his honeymoon, maybe you should be with your bride,’ says Jacob Mkezi. ‘New wives don’t like being left alone.’
Vusi Bopape laughs, winks. ‘Something you’d know, Commissioner.’
Jacob Mkezi spinning on him, hard-eyed. ‘I’ve retired. I’m not the commissioner any longer. Cut it.’
Vusi Bopape steps back, holds out his hands. ‘No offence, Mr Mkezi. Just a joke. You know, just a funny between friends.’
‘Look.’ Jacob Mkezi gets in his face. ‘I don’t know who you are. I don’t know what’s your problem. I do know I’m seeing too much of you. Understand, my friend. A little privacy, all right?’
‘All right.’ Vusi Bopape knocks a cigarette out of his twenty pack, lights it with a Bic. ‘No offence.’
‘Right, no offence.’ Jacob Mkezi shakes his head, gets into the Land Rover, Mellanie following. ‘I were you, Mr Bopape, I’d get back across the border.’
Vusi Bopape gives a half-salute. ‘I’ll be doing that. Right behind you.’ To Tol Visagie he says, ‘Nice gun, the 700.’
‘Ja.’ Tol Visagie unloads the Remington, slides it into the rifle bag. ‘Helluva coincidence you found us here as well, Mr Bopape?’ He slams shut the rear door.
‘Not really,’ says Vusi Bopape. Stands there watching them pull away. Waves before they disappear between the trees.
30
‘This one’s useless,’ says Fish, flapping the printout. ‘It’s fuzzy. All you can tell is maybe it’s the fort.’
‘You can see a face in this one,’ says Vicki. ‘Not sharp but sharp enough.’
‘Let me look,’ says Fish.
They’re
going down the stairs of a block of flats, the sort of block of flats students colonise. The sweet smell of doob ubiquitous. The walls papered with posters of gigs, movies, parties, plays, exhibitions. Voices in harmony somewhere.
Fish thinking wasn’t so long ago he used to live in places like this. Like the boykie they’d just seen: strong BO, cigarette breath, a patchy beard, jeans sagging round his arse. His flat a midden of hi-tech junk.
‘How’d you come by this guy?’ Fish asked Vicki, while they waited. He and Vicki squashed on a two-seater couch.
‘She works for my uncle,’ the boykie had answered.
‘Who, Cliffie?’
‘Yeah, Cliffie.’ The boykie laughed. ‘He’d like that. Being called Uncle Cliffie.’
‘Really?’ said Fish. ‘Clifford Manuel?’
‘Yes, Clifford Manuel,’ said Vicki. ‘Let the guy work.’
The boykie did. Finished the job in no time flat. For which Vicki’d forked out two hundred.
‘Not great pictures,’ he said as he gave Vicki the printouts. ‘Nothing I can do about that.’ Offered Fish the broken phone. ‘You want this?’
‘Of course,’ said Fish, not keen to have nerdy types frootling around in his old cellphone. ‘Could come in handy.’
‘It’s stuffed.’
‘Doesn’t seem to be. You got the pictures out.’
The boykie lit a cigarette, scratched at his beard. ‘You got secrets in there?’
Before Fish could reply, Vicki had him out of the flat, pulled the door closed behind them. Started down the stairs.
‘Interesting family Cliffie’s got,’ Fish’d said, catching up with her. ‘Come’n then, let’s see the pictures.’
Two flights down they stop on the landing, Vicki angles the printout to the light. A dull light through milky windows.
Fish squints at it.
‘There’s a thing, look who we’ve got?’
‘Who?’ says Vicki.
‘Seven.’ Fish taps at the face. ‘The pharmacist of Muizenberg.’
31
Jacob Mkezi and Tol Visagie, perched on stools, clutch bottles of beer in a bird hide, the view over a vlei. Not much going on: a heron stalking the verge, two Egyptian geese on the water. The hide’s not far from the lodge, close enough they can hear the murmur of voices on the veranda.
Tol Visagie’s been on the pitch about the rhino horns, Jacob Mkezi listening, keeping his thoughts to himself.
‘I’d say a fifty per cent deal would be fair,’ says Tol Visagie.
Jacob Mkezi considers this. Stares at the heron, sips his beer, says, ‘There’re big logistics. Major arrangements to be made. You know that.’
‘I know that.’
‘These things cost.’
‘I realise, ja.’
‘Even before a buyer’s lined up.’ Jacob Mkezi leaves it there. Takes another swallow of his beer. It’s still cold, the bottle wet with condensation.
‘It’s just that,’ says Tol Visagie. ‘It’s just that there’s a helluva lot I can do with the money. Get a clinic started and funded. Pay for another medic, nurses, maybe even interns. This’ll ease people’s health problems out here. We can maybe save lives from the landmine detonations. In many cases save limbs. You see what I’m saying? There’s nothing for these people. They get malaria, they die nine times outta ten. They get hepatitis A and E, meningitis, typhoid, a bunch of fevers, rabies. They die. They get HIV from the truckers. The kids are born with it, or they get it at birth or breastfeeding. A clinic could stop this.’
Tol Visagie turns to Jacob Mkezi. Shifts his stool.
‘Getting a clinic on the go’s expensive.’
Jacob Mkezi keeps his gaze on the heron. The bird’s perfectly still, focused.
‘This sort of clinic is expensive. The paperwork, the plans, architects, even before the bricks and mortar. Then equipment, medicines, maintenance, upgrades, running costs. They eat away at budgets, Mr Mkezi. I’ve seen it.’ He lifts his bottle, doesn’t drink. ‘Fifty-fifty’d be fair.’
‘You going to put all your fifty into the clinic?’
‘Most of it, ja. Some of it I’ll need personally.’
‘Sure.’
‘I’ve got no pension. No investments. Nothing for old age. And that’s not far off, Mr Mkezi. Twenty years or so. Maybe a bit longer if I go to sixty-five. Without this, I’m in the shit. Truly.’ Tol Visagie drinks. Waits for Jacob Mkezi to say something. Jacob Mkezi keeps watching the heron.
‘The sort of jobs I’ve had there’s never been the opportunity. Bush vets get paid peanuts. Enough to get by, have a holiday now and again. Buy a car. You see what I’m saying? Being out here I never bought a house in the city. Now I can’t afford one.’
The heron strikes fast, its head snaking down. Jacob Mkezi lifts his binoculars, sees the heron’s stabbed a frog.
‘You catch that?’ he says to Tol.
Tol raises his binoculars, says, ‘It would make a difference to me. Give me security. A clinic’d give people health security. We could maybe call it the Jacob Mkezi Clinic if you wanted. Something like that.’
‘Amazing,’ says Jacob Mkezi. ‘You don’t often see a bird do that.’
The heron drops the frog, stabs again.
Jacob Mkezi stays riveted.
‘So fifty-fifty?’
‘It’s eating bits, stabbing them off.’
‘I could go sixty-forty.’
Jacob Mkezi puts down his binoculars. ‘I’ve never seen that. That was fascinating.’ He swigs his beer, eases off his stool. ‘I think I’m going to have to pass on this one, Tol. Sorry.’
Tol Visagie stares at him. ‘What? You’re not …’
Jacob Mkezi shrugs.
‘You don’t mean it. You saw them, the horns. You saw how many there are. You know how much they’re worth. You don’t mean it. Please, Mr Mkezi, I need your help.’ He puts a hand on Jacob Mkezi’s arm. ‘Please.’
‘It’s the risk, Tol. The risk.’
‘Seventy-thirty.’
‘Stop.’
‘Seventy-five, twenty-five. I could do that.’
‘Let me think about it,’ says Jacob Mkezi.
THE ICING UNIT, MARCH 1986
They’ve been on the pass an hour, the Fisherman and Blondie, sitting in a stolen BM with the doors open, drinking the last of the beer.
It’s hot. The bush ticking with insects, flies buzzing them. Blondie walks to the road edge, unzips for a piss. Below, the ground slopes off through boulders, aloe clumps, euphorbias, spekboom thickets towards a ravine dark with forest. Beyond, the escarpment drops into haze.
A week ago, when the Fisherman got the message that the job was on he checked out the pass, decided this spot above the U-bend was best. A clear view from the rocks down the twists and turns. For bloody miles. You can see them coming up a long stretch to the snake bends where they’d do it.
The plan’s simple, he tells the Commander: as the trade union boys come round the last bend, Blondie forces them over the edge. There’s no barrier, they roll down the slope, plunge into the ravine. They go into that, finish ’n klaar. Home James.
This’s simplicity, he tells Blondie.
Blondie thinks it’s mad. What if the car doesn’t bounce into the ravine? Gets stuck in a stand of aloes. What then?
The Fisherman says, ‘Don’t question, china. Just do it, okay.’
Blondie keeps stone-faced.
Now the Fisherman glances at his watch: 3.42. ‘I better go check.’ He takes the binoculars, scrambles up the incline to his lookout. Stands there scoping the scene.
Blondie shields his eyes, squints into the bright sky, shouts, ‘See anything?’
No response. Then: ‘Ja, there’s dust. Far away, about ten kays.’
Could be anyone, Blondie thinks. Not a car’s been over the pass the time they’ve been sitting there.
‘Two cars,’ shouts the Fisherman. ‘Definitely, ja. Two cars. The other one about a kilo behind.’
‘Wha
t colour?’
‘Could be anything.’ A beat. ‘Light colour. White. Ja, white.’
The unionists are in a white Corolla. That much they know.
‘There’s the flare.’ The signal that the plan was on. The Fisherman smacks his thigh. ‘We’re on, boykie. This’s it, hey.’
The Fisherman worked it out, told the Commander where to let off the flare. ‘There’s a farm gate on the left,’ he said. ‘All sorts of stuff stuck on it. Keep-out notices, buck horns, sheep skulls, the name of the farm’s Vergenoeg. When they get there, fire the flare. They won’t see it, I will. Even if they do, what’s it mean? Some farmer playing silly buggers. Nothing they’re gonna worry about.’
Blondie takes some cans of waste oil out of the BM’s boot, empties the slime over the gravel a couple of metres out from the bend.
Mad bloody plan, he thinks. The sort of plan could get himself killed. The Fisherman’s idea. They drew straws, he pulled the short one.
The Fisherman’s reassurance: ‘The driver will brake, swerve, skid, won’t even touch you. Trust me.’ Giving into a crazy cackle hew-haw laugh as if he knew better.
Blondie hurls the empty cans into the ravine.
The Fisherman’s yelling, ‘Start up, start up. They’re crossing the drift. Come’n, man, start up.’
Blondie mumbling, ‘Keep your hair on,’ as he tries to fire the car. The engine turns but won’t catch.
‘Shit’s sake,’ screams the Fisherman. ‘They’re coming, man. They’re coming fast.’
All Blondie hears is the naaah, naaah, naaah of the engine. Maybe the battery’s dying. He glances up at the Fisherman on the rocks. The oke’s doing a dance, like he’s being bitten by ants. He’s pointing down the pass, his mouth working overtime.
Blondie sticks the gear in reverse, lowers the handbrake. Keeps turning the key as he rolls. There’s about fifty metres of straight before the next bend. Shit happens, he doesn’t make the turn, he’s into the ravine backwards. Though which way you go into the ravine doesn’t matter at that point.
The car gathers speed.
The starter motor swings naaah, naaah, naaah.