Black Heart

by Mike Nicol

  With the straw she stirred her drink into a vortex of melting ice cubes and lemon slice. ‘I wrote an essay about why girls should learn to shoot. The teacher failed me.’

  Mace frowned. ‘She give a reason?’

  ‘She said guns kill. We haven’t got a right to kill anyone.’

  Mace nodded. ‘Your ma would probably have agreed. When we got together she made me stop selling guns for a living. And I did.’ He looked at his daughter. Her eyes dull where earlier they’d been alive, quick, flashing. ‘This teacher know what happened?’

  ‘Everyone does.’ Christa stopped the vortex. ‘I don’t care what the teacher thinks. A man like that should die. If he were alive I’d shoot him.’

  ‘Yeah,’ said Mace, ‘so would I.’

  The waiter came up with their meals: spaghetti bolognaise for Christa, pesto gnocchi for Mace. The waiter giving his French another workout. Christa all smiles again. As a parting piece the man whipped out a pepper grinder to shower a coarse grind on their food. Bowed off with a bon appétit.

  ‘Sounds a happy chap for a refugee,’ said Mace.

  Christa didn’t respond, absorbed in winding spaghetti onto her fork.

  Mace sprinkled a teaspoon of parmesan over his plateful. ‘I suppose even refugees have to laugh sometimes.’ He forked up two potato pellets, let them melt in his mouth. ‘Good, hey?’

  Christa sucked up a strand, spraying sauce on to her T-shirt. Nodded furiously. ‘Very yummy.’

  When they’d eaten, Mace raised the issue of scattering Oumou’s ashes. Of having to put if off for a few more weeks, at least until Pylon’s wound was healed. He could see Christa’s disappointment.

  ‘I need to do it, Papa,’ she said. ‘It’s like Maman’s not at peace.’

  ‘I know, C. I know how you feel. I’m the same. Thing is, we don’t have to take her back to Malitia. We could scatter her at home. In the garden somewhere. Outside her studio.’

  ‘I suppose.’ Christa wiping a piece of bread round her plate. ‘It just that …’

  ‘Just that?’

  ‘I also want to know where she lived. When she was my age.’

  ‘I’m not saying we don’t go. In your October holidays there’s a window, I’m not saying we don’t go then. I’m saying that maybe she should stay with us. Maybe if you … if we want to put her to rest we do it in the garden. Properly. Make it a ceremony. The two of us alone. Or ask Pylon and Treasure, they were her friends, and Pummie, to be there.’

  She looked across at him, those big brown eyes that made his heart ache. Pleading. Confused.

  ‘You want to think about it?’

  She nodded, her eyes becoming pools.

  In the car going up Molteno Road into a black night, the rain sheeting through the streetlights, the mountain invisible, he said, ‘I’ve got to be gone in the morning by four to catch a plane. Tami’s coming over, she’ll take you to school.’ Hearing Christa suck in breath.

  ‘She’s going to sleep at our house?’

  ‘Sure.’

  A silence. One streetlight. Two streetlights. Then: ‘I don’t want her to. I don’t like her. I don’t want her in our house.’

  Mace thought, where’s this coming from? Was about to ask, why, what’s she ever done to you? – but didn’t.

  ‘I can’t do it any other way, C. It’s one night, okay?’

  ‘You could take me to Pylon’s.’

  ‘C. Please, come on. We’ve had a great evening. Don’t spoil it.’

  ‘I didn’t. You did. It’s your fault.’

  ‘My fault?’

  ‘I can get my things. We can go to Pylon’s. Please, Papa. It’s not too late.’

  Mace sighed. ‘Please, C. I’ve arranged it with Tami. It’s no big deal. Leave it.’

  Christa slamming shut beside him, he could feel it like a door blown closed.

  At home she headed for her room, huffy.

  ‘Don’t fall over your lip,’ Mace shouted after her. Christ! That a perfectly happy evening could go to hell in a moment.

  He flopped onto a couch, noticed Cat2 slipping off to Christa’s room, like the two were in league against him. He pulled out his cellphone, put a call through to Silas Dinsmor.

  ‘She’s dead,’ said the Native American. ‘My Dancing Rabbit’s dead. I know it.’

  Mace hadn’t an answer for that. He could hear gunshots in the background. Men shouting. Started to say, ‘Until they call we don’t know …’

  ‘I can feel it,’ said Silas Dinsmor. ‘That’s what they wanted. It was an assassination. They were going to kill us both.’

  ‘Who?’ said Mace.

  ‘Oh, we’ve got enemies, my friend. At home I’ve got, we’ve got enemies, Dancing Rabbit and me. Jealous people. Green-eyed envious sons-of-bitches that resent our success. Want to bring us down into the gutter. Wanna take what we’ve built up for themselves. There’s people would kill us for a dime, for the pleasure of doing it.’

  Mace thought, the guy’s liquored up. Speaking pure minibar.

  ‘Where’s your girl? The beautiful Tami with the tight arse? She’s got an arse, my friend. In those jeans. Hey, man, she’s got a round arse.’

  ‘She’s deployed elsewhere tonight.’

  ‘Deployed. You an army, Mr Pike Bishop?’

  ‘Mace.’

  ‘I got Pike on the telly vision, I got Mace on the telly phone. Bishops rule. Send me Tami, Mr Bishop. She can make it alright.’

  Mace’s intercom buzzed.

  ‘You’ve got guests, Mr Bishop. Company for the evening. Oh lucky man.’

  ‘I’m ringing off now,’ said Mace.

  ‘Where’s Tami?’ Silas Dinsmor barely audible.

  ‘Not on duty tonight,’ said Mace. ‘We’ve got another guard in the next room. If you get a call, phone me. Any time.’

  Mace disconnected, wondering if a call came in an hour would Silas Dinsmor even hear it?

  He let in Tami. Gorgeous Tami, smelling of soap and shampoo. You had to agree with Silas Dinsmor about her bum. Mace suspected it was Tami Mogale’s bum that most offended Treasure.

  ‘I’m here,’ Tami said, sliding a small rucksack off her shoulder, ‘though this is not a good idea. I’ve got a life. I don’t want it tied up in yours.’

  Mace offered her a drink.

  ‘Scotch,’ she said.

  While he poured it said, ‘Only tonight. An emergency.’

  ‘Like last night was only an emergency.’

  ‘Shit’s happening, Tami. You know that.’ He clinked glasses with her. ‘Christa’s in her room throwing a sulk.’

  Tami sipped at the drink. ‘Because I’m here.’

  Mace shook his head. ‘Why d’you say that?’

  ‘Because I’m a woman, Mace. I’m not stupid.’ She took another hit of the whisky. ‘Nice scotch.’

  ‘Glenmorangie.’

  ‘I’m supposed to be impressed?’

  He shrugged. ‘If you like.’

  Tami sat on the couch where he’d been sitting. ‘You needed a babysitter you shoulda brought one of the guys in. Left me smoking peace pipes with the Indian. Christa doesn’t want another woman in your house, her house. Her mother’s house. Wena, Mace, like what’re you thinking, dude?’ She tapped her head. ‘Stop being thick.’

  He sat down opposite her. Nights, Oumou had sat there, where Tami was now, he’d sat where he was sitting. Christa curling next to her mother to watch Desperate Housewives. The three of them together with winter howling off Devil’s Peak.

  You looked at it that way you could see Christa’s point. Especially here’s this woman in a soft fleecy rollneck staring at him with brown eyes. Brown eyes did it for Mace. Ancient brown eyes.

  ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘What?’

  Mace gulped at his drink, felt the heat.

  From her room Christa could hear their voices. She unrolled a tube of tissue that contained the three-blade razor head, took this between her thumb and index finger. Brought it to her eye till the steel blurr
ed.

  He could walk in at any moment, her father. Sometimes he’d knock first, sometimes he wouldn’t.

  She didn’t care.

  She wore a knee-length cotton nightie, patterned with smileys. In her bathroom, sat on the edge of the bath with her feet in the tub, stared at herself in the wall mirror. Not seeing her image: the dark hair pulled back from her face, her careful eyebrows, her mother’s eyes, slightly hooded.

  She spoke to herself, said, ‘The blood runs like teardrops.’ It was what she’d written in her diary the last time.

  The blood runs like teardrops.

  The Friday slits on her inner thigh were scabbed, not yet healed. On her left thigh, she’d made all the cuts there. The older wounds ghosted in pale lines. Her right thigh was unmarked. She opened her legs and held the blade against her skin, pressed down without cutting. She looked at her hand, her thigh, then at her reflection in the mirror.

  She fastened her eyes on her eyes.

  Sliced the blade lengthways. Felt the burn, gasped with the pain. The blood came up quickly, dropping off her thigh onto the white porcelain.

  Tuesday, 26 July

  29

  Her car was on the deck. He wanted this done with quickly. Get in, not even bother to wake her up, put a bullet in her head, get out. He had a plane to catch.

  So much for his first thoughts of going in easy. Of getting to know her schedule. Now he had the opportunity he wanted it over.

  Mace parked the station wagon, Oumou’s car, against the kerb. Unwrapped two sticks of spearmint gum. Waited five minutes, chewing like bloody Gonsalves. No traffic, no sign of life anywhere, not even a cat on the prowl. He took the gun from the glove box, the silencer from his jacket pocket. Glanced about: silent dark apartments. A couple of turns he had the can screwed to the pistol’s barrel, racked a bullet into the breech. Slipped the safety. Fitted it into a shoulder holster.

  Patted his jacket pocket for the reassurance of the pick tool. Simple little rechargeable modified from an electric screwdriver, included a tension wrench. Something Pylon had got Tami to buy off the net. Came with a handy lock-picker’s starter kit, extra needles plus a 240V recharger. Very neat. The sort of gadget that would get spies excited.

  Mace pulled on a beanie that rolled down into a balaclava. He eased out of the car, pressed the door closed, leaving it unlocked. Didn’t want the two-beat neek-neek of the remote waking some light sleeper. That person maybe getting nosey and taking a look-see.

  He walked quickly to the apartment block. At least the rain had stopped. The smell of the sea was as strong as before, the waves as loud. Which was good. Although he could have done with some wind noise as well, but the wind was down. Not that a couple of shots from a silenced .22 was likely to wake anyone.

  He checked his watch. Four-twenty. From here without traffic would be less than a half-hour run to the airport. In three minutes he could be in and out. Mightn’t even take that long.

  Mace let himself into the block with the security code he’d been smsed. Pressed the keys with gloved fingers. The door clicked open. He kept his head down going in under the camera, reached up to stick the gloop of chewing gum over the lens.

  Mace took the stairwell down to Sheemina February’s level. Lights clicked on automatically in the corridor. Amazing that a block like this didn’t have proper security. Then again lots of blocks like this didn’t have proper security, which was why armed response was a growth industry.

  Did have a camera at the end of the corridor but he’d expected that, kept his face down. Two doors: one green, the other red. Black numbers painted large on them. The red door was Sheemina February’s. Right underneath the camera.

  Mace gave the camera the back of his head, took a look at the door lock: he reckoned a latch bolt attached to the handle, and a single or double cylinder deadbolt. Most people, in Mace’s experience, didn’t use the deadbolt. Just depended on Sheemina February’s levels of paranoia, which given Sheemina February would probably be high. He brought out the lock pick, pressed in a short hook needle, tightened the screw. Occasions like this he was thankful for Pylon’s insistence that if you were going to keep the baddies out you had to know how they might get in.

  ‘By throwing a bloody rock through a window,’ Mace’d said.

  ‘Not our sort of baddies,’ Pylon came back.

  So on quiet afternoons they practiced picking locks.

  The result: Mace was into Sheemina February’s flat in forty-three seconds. Only a locksmith would’ve bettered him.

  He rolled down the balaclava, looked up at the camera before he went inside. In the apartment stood still, let his eyes adjust to the dark. Listened. Fridge hum and sea noise. He pocketed the lock pick, brought out a torch. Found his way over white flokatis to her desk, opened drawers, rifled through accounts, invoices, credit card slips. He flicked the beam over pictures on the walls, stopping at the display case of cut-throat razors mounted above her desk.

  One missing.

  The one that’d killed Oumou.

  Mace tightened his fist around the torch. Wanted to smash the case from the wall. Wanted to scream his rage. Instead he held himself, controlled his breathing.

  I see a red door …

  Let out his breath slowly and stepped towards the bedroom, thinking, this is why I’m here. To end it. To end her.

  The bedroom door stood slightly ajar, moved easily to the touch, swinging wider. He swept the beam over the bed, expecting her shape, her hair on the pillow. For a moment saw her staring at him with her cold blue eyes. The bed was empty. Mace lowered the torch.

  He gave the room a quick check out. Went through her cupboard of clothing, her underwear drawers. Had a feel of a black evening dress, material soft as young skin. Lifted a thong from among her knickers. Not his image of her. Not the sort of underwear he expected. Lacy stuff, yes. Silky stuff, yes. Sexy stuff, yes. Not a thong. Too unsubtle. Almost too obvious. Sheemina February doing aggro knickers wasn’t in his understanding of her. Stone cold killer was how he thought of her. But here it was Sheemina February the sex vamp. He flopped back on the bed, found a black negligee beneath the pillow. Held it up. See through. Short. Would hardly cover her crotch. Then saw the photograph in the silver frame on the bedside table. Took a closer look at himself in a Speedo at the gym swimming pool.

  Chrissakes.

  His guts tightened. He brought the torch up to the photograph. The bitch. Right there in the gym smack in front of him taking pictures like she was invisible. Might have been for all he’d known, standing there dripping wet, not a care in the world: an open target. The bitch looking right at him. Gave him the spine creeps.

  Mace put the photograph back on the bedside table. Crushed the negligee into his anorak pocket, launched himself off the bed. He swung the torch beam about the room, no more photographs. She was setting him up. Working him. The bitch. He closed the drawers, shut the cupboard doors, got out of the apartment.

  Like she was saying, I expected you.

  Mace swallowed a foulness in his mouth.

  No way. No way she could be controlling this. He worked through the sequence: estate agent Dave had come up with the gen. To have Sheemina February calling the shots meant she’d gone through Dave. A helluva outside chance. Except, Mace remembered, years back Dave had sold a house for him. A house Sheemina February bought. And trapped him in. Almost had him murdered in.

  He had the same feeling about now as he’d had about then.

  She’d set him up. Anticipated him. Why else the photograph? She was calling this every step of the way. Making him out the victim, the hunted, the prey.

  Mace headed quickly for the door.

  Face it. She was way ahead. Stringing him out for the kill. Except he’d get her first.

  In the corridor the lights snapped on, he backed inside, listening. Waited until the lights went out before he moved again. The lights came back on. He pulled the door closed behind him, heard the latch bolt click into place. Again he paus
ed. Then moved fast to the stairwell. It was empty. He went up two stairs at a time, slipped into the lobby on the car deck.

  Everything as quiet as it’d been five minutes earlier. Still, Mace took it cautiously, sliding his back along the wall to the entrance door. Pressed in the key code. He stepped onto the deck, went quickly to his car. Stuck in the windscreen wipers a long-stemmed rosebud.

  Going up Kloof Road through the stone pines, down into the City Bowl, out along De Waal, Devil’s Peak rising high and dark against the starred sky, Mace thought of Sheemina February, her sheer cunning. Sheemina February somewhere out there in the vast glow of city lights no doubt smiling to herself.

  He’d seen her wiliness from the start. The bedraggled but stunning girl who’d pitched up in the MK camp with the I-walked-from-Cape-Town story. The girl who’d cried that she was telling the truth.

  ‘Believe me. Why won’t you believe me?’

  Because there was intelligence fingering her as an agent. And the times were paranoid. Everyone who walked in was an agent. Everyone had to prove themselves.

  He’d given her a chance. Gone to her one night, said, ‘We know about you. Accept it. You’re going to die if you don’t tell the truth.’ She’d reached out, stroked his cheek.

  The next morning he and Pylon smashed her hand with a wooden mallet. Her blue eyes on him when he brought down the hammer. No ice in the blue then, only the loneliness of long distances. Like being on the ocean, blue about you, blue above.

  At that moment Sheemina February became herself. He’d seen it. Seen the blue harden in her eyes. Even through the tears of pain, she’d set her mind. Even as he smashed her bones. Right then and there she started playing a different game, a game that was manipulating him through her deviousness even now.

  Mace came off the dark highway into the airport approach, thinking, this was more reason to kill her. Find her, kill her before she could play out the revenge she’d let lie for decades. Her deadly intent.

  What plagued him all the way to the airport was, how she knew he’d go to her apartment? How she got it timed so right? So right to put the rosebud on his car?