Of Cops & Robbers

by Nicol, Mike;

  ‘I did,’ she says. ‘Smoked snoek. Basmati rice. Four tomatoes. Two onions. Packet of raisins. Bottle of Mrs Ball’s chutney, extra hot. You’ve got some sweet wine, I’m hoping?’

  ‘Somewhere,’ says Fish. ‘You want me to make smoervis?’

  ‘That’s the general idea,’ says Vicki. ‘Reason I bought all those ingredients. You cook, I tell you what I’ve found. You tell me what you’ve learnt. Means you’ve got to multi-task, but you can manage that? A big boy like you?’

  Fish pulls out a bottle of sweet jerepigo from a cupboard. Says, ‘Very funny.’

  Vicki slaps down a notepad on the table. ‘In the bag there’s also a Pinotage. I’ll have some of that.’

  Fish pours two glasses, smacks his lips at the first taste.

  ‘You could say cheers.’ Vicki holding up her glass.

  ‘Just checking it wasn’t corked,’ says Fish.

  ‘To the man in the crocodile shoes,’ says Vicki. ‘May the wrath be upon him.’

  ‘I’ll go with that.’

  ‘The very same charming man who offered me a job.’

  Fish frowns at her. ‘You didn’t say.’

  ‘I was thinking about it.’

  ‘And now?’

  ‘I’m not.’ She points at the rice. ‘But let’s have some action, babes, some of us’re starving.’

  ‘Simple as that, you’re not thinking about it? About taking his job offer?’

  ‘Simple as that. First my smarmy boss came over all cootchy-coo, hen there’s this.’ She points at the photostats.

  ‘Okay, you go first, I’m listening.’ Fish gets the rice steaming. Weeps over the onions as he dices them.

  Vicki says, ‘This goes back to Dr Gold in the 1970s, when he was minister of finance.’ Tells how the government salted gold bullion away, millions and millions of taxpayers’ money, mostly in London. A long story of who and what and when and how.

  ‘I know that,’ says Fish.

  Vicki stops. ‘How? How d’you know?’

  ‘A birdie told me.’

  ‘Come on, Fish.’

  ‘This professor I know. He’s into politics, lectures it. I showed him the photostat of the man in hospital, he told me what you’ve just said. I’m ahead of the curve. Also he recognised Jacob Mkezi.’

  ‘So he told you how Dr Gold moved the gold from London to Zurich for a small percentage per ounce sold?’ Vicki asking Fish this in her quiet way. Her lovely voice filling his head as he fries the onions.

  ‘He did.’

  Vicki saying, ‘But here’s the thing, I’ve been going through the Truth and Recon papers. You don’t find the minister’s name anywhere there, but you do find Jacob Mkezi.’

  ‘Oh yeah?’ says Fish. He’s set aside a cupful of raisins in water to soften. He’s chopping up the tomatoes.

  ‘I think Jacob Mkezi worked for both sides.’ Vicki takes a swig of her wine, shuffles papers. Says, ‘Three times Jacob’s name comes up. The first time it’s mentioned is after an attack in Swaziland. At the hearing this woman says she prepared a meal for Comrade Jacob Mkezi.’

  ‘What woman?’

  ‘A woman who was there. The Security Branch shot her, but she survived. She told the hearing they were waiting for Comrade Jacob Mkezi. They’d cooked food but Comrade Jacob didn’t come.’

  Fish nods, adds more butter to the onions, says, ‘Hang on, you’re saying that back then there was a link between young Jacob and this Dr Gold?’

  ‘What I’m saying, Fish … All I know is Jacob was MK from sometime early in the 1980s. How he got from there to sitting on Dr Gold’s hospital bed in Switzerland, I don’t know. You read Jacob Mkezi’s biog details you’re reading about a revolutionary. A man the security police want dead.’

  Fish unwraps the snoek, starts easing the flesh from the bones with a knife.

  ‘There’s another hit attempt on Jacob Mkezi a year later, back home in South Africa.’

  ‘Uh huh.’

  ‘Uh huh. Look,’ Vicki glancing hard at Fish, ‘suspension of disbelief, okay.’

  ‘Get on with it.’ Fish waving the knife in the air, bits of snoek flying.

  ‘There’s a mysterious car wreck with three comrades on a mountain pass. The car leaves the road, catches fire, they all die.’

  ‘Stuff like that happened.’

  ‘Sure, but they were supposed to be driving Jacob Mkezi to a political meeting but Jacob Mkezi never pitched at the rendezvous. Hear what I’m saying?’

  ‘Sort of. You’re saying because he misses two attacks that can’t be coincidence. That someone tipped him off.’

  ‘Right.’

  ‘Bit of an assumption.’

  ‘But a possibility.’

  ‘I’ve heard stranger stories.’

  ‘Exactly. But I’ve got another story, about Paris.’

  Fish tastes the rice. It’s done. ‘Paris?’

  Vicki waves a small diary at him. The cover’s a blue plastic worn at the edges. She thumbs through it to a yellow Post-it sticker. ‘Here, 15 September 1987 at eleven thirty Swiss ambassador written in ballpoint. That was a Tuesday.’

  ‘So?’

  ‘So my aunt Amina was a big-time strugglista. In the movement’s finance section. She ran their money. She would’ve seen payments coming in, payments going out.’

  ‘Your aunt?’

  ‘My aunt.’

  ‘Okay.’

  ‘She was killed. Stabbed in the metro, five days later.’

  Fish upends the rice onto the onions and tomatoes, adds the snoek bits, raisins, a cup of white wine. Mixes it all with a spatula.

  ‘So she met Dr Gold. So what? Maybe the assassination’s a coincidence.’

  ‘I don’t think so. We got the diary anonymously, separately. It wasn’t with her other effects. They were all in a cardboard box: clothing, some books, ornaments, a few records, photographs, letters she’d received from family and friends. Nothing out of the ordinary. The diary pitched up with our post, except it hadn’t been posted. It was a hand drop.’

  ‘You’re saying someone who should’ve got rid of the diary, someone who should’ve destroyed it, didn’t?’

  ‘Exactly.’

  ‘We didn’t get any of her other diaries, just that one for 1987. I’ve been through it day by day. The only person she met who was not part of the struggle was Dr Gold.’

  ‘Still doesn’t mean anything.’

  ‘Something happened at their meeting.’

  ‘You’re assuming.’

  ‘Then why is her file secret? We tried to get her death investigated by the TRC. They got nowhere. The investigators got death threats. I got a death threat.’

  ‘What sort of death threat? A letter? A phone call?’

  ‘A phone call. African voice. Told me I didn’t want to go the same way as my aunt. That was it. That and the investigators telling me there was a file on my aunt but it was secret.’

  Vicki sweeps up her papers. ‘There’s a story, a family story that my aunt knew something. Something she didn’t like.’

  ‘Such as?’

  ‘That the struggle heroes were doing a deal with Dr Gold. Probably involving the bullion. I don’t know. I’ve only met Jacob Mkezi twice, both times he said he’s got something to tell me about my aunt. Why would he do that? Why say that?’ She forks a mouthful of smoervis from the simmering pan. ‘This’s ready. I need to eat.’

  Fish dishes. Twists open the cap on the chutney. ‘You want some?’

  ‘Of course.’ Vicki’s into her second mouthful. ‘Delish, Fish.’ Grins at the rhyme, the pun. ‘I suppose I’ll just have to wait till I have the sit-down with Mr Mkezi.’

  They eat. Fish clears space for the photostats. ‘Which brings us to these. And the thing here I don’t want to admit.’

  ‘Which is?’

  ‘That Daro was a Special Branch cop. Part of an icing unit.’

  ‘Tell me.’

  Fish takes wine, another mouthful of food. Slides the photostat of the gr
oup of men on the beach in front of her. The background’s whited out but the vegetation’s thick to the side of them. Four men. Three with uncombed hair, probably unshaved, wearing shorts or swimming costumes and T-shirts. The one with a mop of hair’s got on surfers’ baggies, has a cigarette in his mouth. One’s better-dressed, stylish. Looks like he’s stepped out of a smart-casual lunch party. All of them with sunglasses.

  Fish hands her a magnifying glass. Says, ‘The snappy dresser, the black guy, you look closely at his face you’d say it was Jacob Mkezi. Problem is without the original there’s no telling for sure. But you compare the two copies and that’s who it looks like.’

  ‘Accepted,’ says Vicki, bent over the image.

  ‘Now, one thing I’ve heard Special Branch used to have these beach parties. Like they were an institution. Maybe that’s what’s happening here. And those guys are an icing unit. Questions: what is Jacob Mkezi doing at a Special Branch beach party? Who took this picture of Jacob Mkezi and Dr Gold? Why is Jacob Mkezi visiting Dr Gold in hospital? And why did Daro make sure I got them?’

  ‘Good questions.’

  ‘And what connects those two men to Daro is the blond guy with the cigarette in the beach pic.’

  Vicki looks closely. Glances at Fish then down again at the picture. ‘I don’t want to think that.’

  ‘Me neither,’ says Fish. ‘Because I’ve got this feeling it’s probably these guys who killed your aunt. Daro being one of them.’

  81

  They come down the street in a black Golf GTI, tinted windows, a faint rumble to the exhaust, keeping below the speed limit. Three men in the car. The driver wears a leather jacket, the passenger beside him a black suit, a white shirt with an open collar, a red AIDS ribbon pinned on the jacket lapel. The man on the back seat’s got both his hands buried in the pockets of his coat.

  ‘Hey, man,’ he says, ‘this is a cold place.’

  What’s left of the day’s clouding over, will be dark in half an hour. A wind’s cutting through the trees, shaking off dry leaves.

  The men drive past domestics, gardeners, housekeepers hurrying along the street, making for bus stops.

  Mart Velaze’s at the wheel. Vusi Bopape’s in the back seat with a handy Cougar in his pocket. He’s told Daro Attilane in the passenger seat, any nonsense he’ll shoot him. Daro’s hands are cuffed behind his back. He’s sitting awkwardly, leaning forward against the seatbelt.

  ‘You want to live in Bishopscourt?’ Vusi Bopape asks Mart Velaze. ‘All these high walls. Electric fences. CCTV security.’

  ‘Not my scene,’ says Mart Velaze.

  ‘There’s brothers I know this’s what they want,’ says Vusi Bopape. ‘This place, Constantia, all the larney suburbs in Joburg, Pretoria, Durban. Live like whiteys.’

  ‘That’s okay,’ says Mart Velaze. ‘They’ve got the bucks.’

  ‘Not okay when you have other brothers who fancy your car.’

  ‘They can do that in the townships. You drive a M5 down a township street, ten jackers roll you for the ride.’

  ‘No respect,’ says Vusi Bopape. Laughs as he says it. ‘Hey, my brother, we have become our fathers. Always complaining.’

  Mart Velaze drives past Jacob Mkezi’s driveway, stops on the side of the road.

  Vusi Bopape looks at the house, the mansion, rising behind the high wall. ‘Nice place. You sure no one’s home?’

  ‘Hundred per cent. Got a call from Mzoli. He’s there, at the restaurant, nursing scotches.’

  They hustle Daro up the steps to the front door. Mart Velaze flips the car keys to Vusi Bopape. ‘I’ll call you,’ he says. Smiles at Daro. ‘If Daro doesn’t perform.’

  ‘Up to you, Daro,’ says Vusi Bopape. ‘I’m gonna see how Georgina and Steffie are doing.’

  They watch Vusi Bopape drive off.

  ‘He better not,’ says Daro.

  ‘Or?’ Mart Velaze opens the front door, keys in the disarm code, realising Jacob Mkezi left without setting the alarm. He prods Daro into the sitting room, undoes the handcuffs. ‘Up to you now, Daro, my brother. Don’t try any heavies with me, you’ll wake up dead. Just be nice and civilised. You be good, your little women stay alive. Remember that. You act macho, they’re in the morgue tomorrow, simple as that.’

  Vusi Bopape drives down the street, pulls to the side. From the boot takes a laptop. He checks his pistol, the fifteen-clip Beretta Cougar. A preference. Six times he’s used it for jobs, no misfires. Not that he’s gone through a full load. Squeezed off a single, a double sometimes. Once three in an extreme situation when the hit wouldn’t die.

  On the range he’s put maybe fifteen thousand rounds through it. Good accuracy, soft recoil. But especially it’s compact, doesn’t bulk your jacket, has no snaggy edges to catch on the holster. It’s a quick gun, quick into your hand, quick to fire. Most of all a fifteen-clip 9-mil is reassuring.

  Back in the car he powers up the laptop, checks out the tracker’s position. Not in the city anymore. Now down the peninsula on the coast, Muizenberg.

  Visiting the boyfriend, says Vusi Bopape aloud. Okay, no problem.

  He checks the clip. Fully loaded. Slips the Cougar into the little holster he wears on his belt. Rock ’n roll. Vusi Bopape fires the car, gets out of Bishopscourt, heading up Edinburgh Drive to the Blue Route motorway. Down Wynberg Hill puts the speed at ninety-five, the Muizenberg mountains ahead, rolls of cloud coming up behind them. Probably going to be a wild night. Probably, make that a certainty. Vusi Bopape grinning to himself.

  He keys through a call on the handsfree. It rings and rings. Always the long wait, like the phone’s locked in a safe. Vusi Bopape counts fifteen rings, on the sixteenth it’s answered. ‘Chief,’ says the Voice, ‘talk to me. What’s happening? Tell me things.’ Going into Xhosa: ‘Good things. Ticks in all the boxes?’ Back to English: ‘Start with the vet.’

  ‘Dead,’ says Vusi Bopape.

  ‘Ja, well, this was unfortunate. He did good work with animals.’

  ‘You said …’

  ‘I said your call on that account. Chief, move on. Where are you?’

  ‘On the way to the woman, Vicki Kahn.’

  ‘You know where she is?’

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘Good. Good.’ Vusi Bopape’s never met the woman on the phone. The Voice. He’s only spoken to her twice before. The first time he was told by his boss to expect her phone call. To follow her orders. Don’t ask questions. He did as told. The reward was in cash, lots of it. He’s got only a hazy idea of what she looks like: imagines a well-dressed woman behind the quiet voice. A sophisticated woman. Someone at home in foreign cities. There is something in her voice, an accent on some words, that’s strange.

  The Voice says, ‘And Velaze?’

  ‘Afterwards.’

  ‘Velaze is with Mkezi?’

  ‘He’s handling that part.’

  ‘Then he goes.’

  ‘I understand.’

  ‘This is critical. No mistakes. Velaze has other agendas. Other loyalties. It is time we got rid of him.’

  ‘I understand.’

  ‘Chief,’ says the Voice in Xhosa now, ‘you have done very well. We have the rhino horns. Nothing has gone wrong. We appreciate you, Bra Vusi. There are ways we can show you this. Afterwards. You understand when this is finished. There will be people who will be pleased. Appreciative. You understand?’

  ‘I understand.’

  ‘Chief,’ says the Voice, ‘go with the ancestors.’

  Vusi Bopape disconnects, thinks the Cougar’s more reliable than the ancestors.

  He comes off the motorway, takes Main Road to the level crossing, parks in a side street. Vusi Bopape’s preference on a job like this is to walk off. That way nobody gets a car make and colour, a number plate. All they can say is I saw a black man walking away. Black man in a black leather jacket. Every black man’s got a black leather jacket. Cops’ll just roll their eyes.

  It’s almost dark, the wind hassling him.
He crosses the vlei bridge, finds the house no trouble at all. There’s the red Alfa MiTo parked in the driveway. No lights on in the windows, but there’s a glow in the frosted panes of the front door.

  Vusi Bopape touches the gun in its holster, rolls his shoulders, starts up the path to the door. How this plays out is best played out inside, is Vusi Bopape’s plan of action.

  ‘Mart Velaze,’ says Mellanie, wheeling a suitcase into the lounge. ‘Well, well. Who’s he, Mart?’

  The two men turning, surprised. ‘Hey, Mellanie.’ Mart Velaze frowning. ‘What’re you doing here?’

  ‘Packing my things,’ she says. ‘We’re finished. Finished professionally, finished as his trophy cover-up. Jacob Mkezi is history.’ She glances at the handcuffs in Mart Velaze’s hand. ‘Who’s he?’

  ‘Old friend of the commissioner’s.’

  Mellanie studying Daro Attilane, taking in the ill-fitting clothes. ‘He’s not here, the former commissioner’ – Mellanie putting some grit into the title.

  ‘Yeah, I know. You seen him today?’

  ‘He was leaving. I told him not to hang around.’

  ‘Okay, we’ll wait,’ says Mart Velaze.

  ‘I’m outta here,’ Mellanie moving around them towards the entrance hall. ‘Mkezi’s had it,’ she says. ‘The comrades’ll nail him, big-time. They already are with those rent boy pics. Make yourselves at home, gents, you could have a long wait. Adios.’

  ‘Where’s your car?’ says Mart Velaze. ‘Wasn’t outside.’

  ‘In the garage,’ says Mellanie. ‘To make my life easier.’ Right then noticing the gun in Mart Velaze’s hand, her face alarmed. ‘What’s with the gun, Mart? Point that thing away.’

  Fish and Vicki eat in silence, Fish staring at the picture of the group of men on the beach. A group of men on a beach. Could just be fishing buddies. But he thinks not. He thinks it’s sinister.

  ‘You really think that?’ says Vicki. She finishes her meal, pushes the plate aside. ‘That Daro was part of a hit squad?’

  ‘I think it. I don’t know it. Big difference. But, yes, I think it.’

  ‘This isn’t a nice story.’

  ‘No.’ He lifts the lid on the smoervis. ‘Some more?’