by Nicol, Mike;
He hears doors slam, the fishermen’s bakkie harrah-harrah into life. With a skittering of gravel they pull out, leaving Dom alone.
He waits, expecting Ray Adler to appear from behind a dolos. He even calls out, ‘Ray, come on, man, stop the nonsense.’
Nothing. Except seagull squawk, distant motorway noise.
Dom is retired. Has been retired for three years. Well, took a package because he could see the way of things and that way didn’t look like he would have a job in the new country. Worse. There might be witch hunts. Tricky questions. Better to duck out, keep a low profile. Which Dom did. Cut his cop mates, kept away from old drinking holes. Went fishing. Found work in a paint shop three days a week and Saturday mornings, selling gloss to homeowners. The paint shop in a small centre in an outlying suburb. Not much chance of bumping into his past.
A sweet enough life. Until now.
Dom worries about the bullet for two days. Keeps it with him in his trouser pocket. Doesn’t tell his wife. Doesn’t tell anyone. Thing is, Dom has no one to tell. The cops he cut were his friends. Beer and braai friends. He dropped them, he dropped his social life. Men who’d known him all his working days. Proper gabbas. Good mates. Some of them tried to keep it up but Dom didn’t respond. Truth? Dom was nipping scared.
He’s nipping scared now. Rubs the bullet between his fingers trying to figure out what to do.
He’s got one, maybe two cops in the service he could phone. At a push. The one being a former brother-in-law. The brother-in-law whose wife he’d screwed. So maybe only one contact who might have a number for Ray Adler. Or Pat Foreman, with his rictus grin. Though he’d heard Foreman was a drunk. Out of it on an hour-to-hour, day-to-day basis. Completely stuffed.
From a public phone near the paint shop where he works, Dom puts through a call to his contact, Flip.
‘Yusses, Dom, you got a cheek, hey,’ says Flip.
‘Please, man, Flip,’ says Dom.
Flip goes off on a diatribe about Dom dropping his mates, not caring about years and years of friendship. Not coming to funerals. Just disappearing. ‘As if we were nothing.’
‘Don’t be like that, Flip,’ says Dom. ‘You know I had reasons.’
‘Reasons? We all had bloody reasons. We were all in the kak after the elections. Why were your reasons any worse?’
‘Forget it,’ says Dom. ‘Forget it. I just asked if you had his number.’
‘Listen, my friend. You’ve heard about this TRC thing. Truth and Reconciliation. A commission, hey. That’s gonna be major kak. What’re you gonna do about that?’
‘Nothing.’
‘You tell the truth and they believe you, you get amnesty. Some of the manne think that’s the way to go.’
‘Not for me.’
‘You gonna blab, Dom?’
‘I said no.’
‘The okes that’re gonna try for amnesty, they’re leaving. Leaving the force. Rats ’n sinking ships. They’re gonna drop us. Name names. Nice, hey? You wanna know what it’s like round here these days. Bloody kak. Everybody’s on their nerves.’
Dom says nothing.
‘Yusses, Dom, you’ve got a cheek.’
‘This’s urgent, okay.’ Dom keeps his voice low, his lips touching the phone’s mouthpiece. There’s a woman behind him, staring at him.
‘Will you be much longer?’ she says.
‘One minute, lady,’ says Dom. To Flip, ‘Please, Flip, I wouldn’t ask otherwise. It’s an emergency.’
‘Alright, alright,’ says Flip. ‘The last number I’ve got he was in the UK. But he could be in Oz. I heard that he went there. Maybe.’ He gives Dom a London number.
‘What about Foreman? Pat Foreman?’
‘How much more, hey? You want a roll call?’
‘Come’n, Flip. Please, man.’
He hears Flip sigh. ‘Foreman’s an alkie. Forget about him.’
‘Strues?’
‘Strues bob. Bag wine and meths. Does blue train.’
‘Shit.’
‘Ja. Very shit.’ And Flip laughs. ‘Who wants to be a cop, hey? Not you.’ Again he laughs.
‘Thanks,’ says Dom. ‘Thanks, Flip.’
‘Easy to say.’
‘I mean it.’
‘So buy me a beer.’
Dom hears this but hangs up. Flip Nel’s a good man, but Flip can go on, moan, moan, moan. He glances at the number he’s written down, glances at the woman, decides, bugger it, this’s an emergency, she can wait.
‘Are you finished yet?’
‘One more,’ says Dom.
‘Can you hurry up, please?’
Dom ignores her, presses the numbers. He’s got a pocketful of coins. When the phone’s answered he feeds the slot, says. ‘I’m looking for Ray Adler.’
‘Ray Adler?’
‘That’s right.’
‘No one here by that name, mate.’
‘Wait,’ says Dom, but the line’s cut.
‘Can you let me phone now?’ says the woman.
Dom doesn’t go fishing for two weeks. Mopes about the house getting on his wife’s nerves.
‘For heaven’s sake, Dom, what’s with you?’
‘Nothing, girlie,’ he says, sitting in the lounge watching repeats on television ten o’clock in the morning. Having just got out of bed. And Dom usually a seven o’clock up and raring to go sort of man.
‘You don’t go fishing anymore. Four days you’ve skipped work. What’re you sick?’
‘I’m okay, okay?’
‘You’re not, boykie. You’re a bloody pain sitting here all the time.’ She picks up his empty coffee mug. ‘I’m going to phone the doctor, you’re depressed or something.’
‘Ag, girlie.’
‘No really, Dom. This’s worrying, you sitting here day after day. Look at you. All you wear’s that old tracksuit like a poor white. Twenty years of marriage you’ve never done this. You’re forty-five, Dom. Not seventy-five.’
She hauls him off to the doctor, the doctor says there’s nothing physically wrong but maybe, yes, he’s depressed.
‘You anxious about something, Dommiss?’ the doctor asks.
Dom’s wife’s in the consulting room and she comes in with how he spends all day in the chair watching television. Doesn’t go fishing. Doesn’t go to work. Well, called in sick for the last four days. Doesn’t dress properly. Doesn’t talk to her. Doesn’t have any friends.
The doctor prescribes antidepressants, a tonic, tells Dom to go fishing.
‘That’s what I tell him,’ says Dom’s wife. ‘Only before you didn’t have to tell him that. Before you couldn’t stop him. Any excuse he’s away like a stray. Before I had to beg him, Dom we got family for a braai, can you get back for that please? To start the fire early so we don’t have to eat at midnight.’
All the ride home in the car she’s at him to go fishing. Beautiful day like it is, no wind for a change, he should go down to Cape Recife. Buy a tin of mud prawns from the Greek. Go cast a line. She’ll make him sarmies, a flask of Nescafe. Maybe take a couple of beers. He can sit there, get some fresh air and sun. Even, if he wants to, on the way home stop in at the old bar for a beer with his mates. Because why’d he drop them? Sometimes the wives phone, say they used to enjoy the fish braais on the weekends. They’re not the only ones, she misses it too. So what’s your problem, Dom? What’s going on?
‘Alright,’ Dom says. ‘Alright, okay, alright.’ Anything to get her off his back.
They get home, he clips his fishing rod to the roof rack, checks there’re enough hooks and sinkers and line and swivels and bait cotton in his tackle bag, and his knife’s in the side pocket.
‘Good,’ says his wife. ‘It’ll do you good to get out for a bit.’
He changes into jeans and a T-shirt, sticks his .38 into his belt.
His wife kisses him on the way out. ‘Enjoy it, Dom. Catch us a fish.’
‘Ja, girlie,’ he says.
He doesn’t go to Cape Recife, he goes to the do
losse. There’s a rusty Corolla in the parking area, the only vehicle. Dom slings his tackle bag over his shoulder, heads for the breakwater to find himself a spot. He’s not fully into this, the bullet’s nagging at him as it has been all this while. His wife doesn’t know but he’s been sitting with the .38 under the cushion of the lounge chair every day. Waiting for them, him, whoever it is, to break in. Each day that passes he reckons the heat’s going off but you can’t be sure. They could be playing him. On the plus side there’ve been no more little presents.
Dom stands on the dolosse, surveys the scene. There a black guy fishing the Bluewater end, otherwise nobody. The guy doesn’t even notice him. Dom skips along about fifty metres in the city direction before he baits up.
This time the Greek’s sold him fresh mud prawns that’re squirming and clicking in the tin. He threads one onto the hook, binds it fast with cotton. Stands, holds the rod in his left hand over his shoulder, balancing, feeling the weight of the sinker. The sea’s got some life today, a chop that cracks among the dolosse, spitting up spray. Its colour’s blue, that dark blue it goes in the afternoon. Good elf water. Dom casts a long arc. The line plays out, slackens. He reels in one, two turns, tests the line between his thumb and forefinger.
For a while he stands there, the butt of the rod resting on his belt. A Thursday afternoon, peaceful, the city at work. What’s to worry about? But still Dom’s edgy, not quite the laid-back happy fisherman. There’s that bullet in his pocket with the cross-hatched knob, the way they used to cross-hatch the lead before a job.
One o’clock the Friday morning, more than ten hours after Dommiss Verburg went fishing, he’s not home. His wife’s going spare, hysterical. She reported him missing, the cops’ve said they don’t do missing until twenty-four hours have passed, minimum. She called them bastards, hung up in tears. Her daughter’s with her but that’s small consolation when she’s convinced her husband’s dead. Convinced he’s killed himself. Because his gun’s missing.
‘He always takes the gun, Ma,’ says her daughter. ‘Pa doesn’t go around without it.’
‘You don’t understand,’ says her mother. ‘He’s depressed. That’s what the doctor said. He’s supposed to take tablets.’
First light she and her daughter drive to the fishing spots. First down at Cape Recife, the Willows, then Skoenmakerskop, finally the dolosse. His car’s not there, there’s no one there. The wind’s come up. The last place anyone wants to be is on the dolosse in a full-frontal forty-kilometre-an-hour wind.
They go home.
Round ten o’clock, the phone rings: it’s the police. They were told of this car on fire in New Brighton township. They sent a van. The car was burnt out, luckily they could still read the registration. They ran a check, seems the car belongs to a Dommiss Verburg. ‘You know this man? That your husband, lady?’
No, the cop woman tells them, no sign of Mr Verburg. She’ll put out the alert.
Hijacking is the word nobody uses.
Early in the afternoon, the cops come round. They’ve found her husband at the dolosse. He’s passed. Seems he shot himself in the head.
Two months later, the autopsy hearing into the death of Dommiss Verburg by a gunshot wound to the right temple, hands down a verdict of suicide. This consequent upon the party holding a recently fired .38 in his right hand, said gun owned by said party. Couple of days drag by then Dom’s friend Flip Nel calls on Dom’s wife to pay his respects.
‘Sorry for your loss, Mrs V,’ he says to her.
‘Come in, Flip,’ she says. ‘It’s been a long time, my word.’
She makes two instant coffees, finds a box of Romany Creams in the cupboard. They sit down in the lounge, Flip plopping into Dom’s favourite chair.
Flip comes straight out with it because that’s Flip’s way.
‘The autopsy report,’ he says, ‘it’s kak.’
Mrs V frowns. Surprised. ‘I didn’t see it,’ she says. ‘Didn’t want to. Why d’you say that?’
‘Cos I don’t think Dom would kill himself.’
‘Dom wasn’t my Dom, hey, Flip. For a long time Dom wasn’t my Dom.’
They crunch into Romany Creams.
‘The thing is,’ says Flip, ‘I haven’t the faintest what was Dom’s problem after he left the force but he stopped seeing the okes. Turned his back on all of us. I don’t know why. Maybe he was scared.’
‘Dom wasn’t scared of nobody. You know, Dom.’
‘Not in the old days. But with the change, there’s a lotta okes poeping themselves. Worried about what’s gonna happen. Some of them are hiding like Dom was.’
‘Dom wasn’t hiding.’
‘He stayed away from us.’
‘I know, Flip, I used to tell him, phone your friends, go’n have a drink like before. But no, he just goes fishing. The only time he sees other people is at the paint shop.’
‘That’s what I mean, Dom wasn’t like that before.’
‘Never.’ She gets teary-eyed, sniffs. ‘The day he died, we went to the doctor. I said to him, Dom, you’ve got to see the doctor. He wasn’t going out. Was phoning in sick at the shop. For about two weeks every day he just sat there, in that chair’ – pointing at Flip – ‘watching TV.’
Flip takes a swallow of coffee. ‘He phoned me, you know.’
‘He phoned you?’
‘Ja, about a week before he died. Wanted the number of one of the okes he worked with, Ray Adler. I gave him the number but that’s the last I heard.’
‘He didn’t say anything to me.’
Flip looks at her. ‘He sounded worried.’
‘He didn’t say anything.’ She raises her eyes to meet his. ‘What’re you saying, Flip?’
Flip shakes his head.
She sighs. ‘You can tell me, Flip. Nothing can make it worse.’
He says, ‘Ray was into some heavy stuff in the old days.’
‘Like what?’
‘Security branch ops.’
She nods. ‘Ja. Ja.’ Puts down her mug on a coffee table piled with magazines. ‘So what’re you telling me, Flip? It wasn’t suicide? It was murder? Yusses, man, you think I haven’t thought about that? Over and over. Someone shot him. Dumped his car in the township.’
‘Report says Dom was shot in the right temple,’ says Flip.
She looks at him. ‘What’re you saying?’
‘Dom was left-handed.’
The shudders start in her shoulders, her face distorting. ‘I don’t want to think about it. I don’t want to think about it.’
50
The driveway gate is open. Fish never leaves the gate open. It’s a hassle getting out to open it when you’re busting for a pee after a long night’s stake-out, or close it when you’re in a hurry to catch the surf but Fish does, without fail, shut it. Now the gate’s unlatched.
The reason Fish keeps the gate closed is dogs. Dogs get in, they foul up the place wherever there’s any grass. In the front there’re these scratchy patches of buffalo grass holding down the sand. Not what you’d call anywhere near a lawn, but it’s got that at-the-beach feel which Fish likes.
What he hates is coming out in the morning, finding piles of gut-processed special canine formula, light brown and mucousy, on his grass. You slide a spade underneath those mounds, they stick. Then you’ve got to hose down the spade. Only way to really pick up this crap is wrap a plastic bag over your hand, do it manually. Then you’re dealing with turd feel, which makes Fish gag.
An option is to wait until they dry out. Only problem then is the sausages break into black pellets, scatter every which way. Cleaning up’s a major mission because there’re always some you miss.
Also, once a dog’s found a spot it’s back every day. Only option then, Fish’s heard, is spraying Jeyes drain cleaner about the place until it smells like a municipal boghouse. Better not to get to that position.
So Fish keeps the gates closed, no matter the hassle factor.
When they’re open it means bergies, stroller
s, Muizenberg flotsam have come visiting. Gets Fish’s ire big-time. But what’s to be done about it? You can reason till you’re bloody blue in the face, the dude comes back, ‘Mr Gentleman, don’t be so fierce. Yous’ll strike a coronary.’ Not a heart attack, a coronary for heaven’s sake.
But Fish’s got this soft spot for bergies and strollers. They want a place to spend the day, they can sit on his back stoep. One or two of them, that’s all, that’s the rule. Come night there’s the shelter at Kalk Bay, he doesn’t want them hanging out on his stoep. Another rule. Charity goes so far then it gets messy.
Fish parps the hooter, expecting some itinerant to come down, open the gates properly. No one shambles round.
Hoots again.
Still no one.
He gets out, slots the gates back, drives up to the garage. His inherited Isuzu’s in the yard, invisible from the street. Only when he’s stopped, he notices the bakkie’s standing lopsided, both tyres on the near side flat.
Then the chunks of surfboard scattered about. And glass. The Isuzu’s windscreen shattered, the rear window smashed, same with the wing mirrors.
But it’s not the glass that gets him, or the slashed tyres, it’s the destroyed surfboard. Broken in four. Hurled about the place. His beloved Vudu Hybrid. That board wasn’t just a board, it was a way of life. Worse, his other board, the Beach Break with the Vudu shapers, is in for repairs.
Fucking Seven.
The bastard.
The last thing Fish thought he’d do.
He looks over at the boat, the Maryjane: it seems okay. No holes. They’d holed that he’d’ve been pissed off. Fish thinking to sell the boat.
Unlocks the Isuzu, reaches under the seat for the Z88. Doesn’t seem the house has been broken into, but you can’t tell. The buggers could be inside. He walks slowly to the back door easing up when there’s no sign they got in.
Turns then to stare at the devastation, imagining Seven and his toothless sidekick going at the bakkie with hammers. Stomping on his surfboard till it snapped. Plunging an Okapi knife into the Isuzu’s tyres.