Black Heart

by Mike Nicol

  The German Jakob and Kalle the Swede in a C-class Merc on the highway into Cape Town, smoke from their cigarillos blueing up the interior, two brown butts already in the ashtray.

  ‘We are lucky it is sunny today. In winter you can be unlucky with the rain. The rain and the wind for days. But it is a nice city to pick up ladies.’

  ‘Fine,’ said Kalle.

  Jacob gestured ahead at the mountains. ‘From here you cannot see the table top properly, only when we get round the Devil’s Peak.’

  ‘I know,’ said Kalle.

  ‘You have visited here before?’

  ‘Once.’

  ‘When was this?’

  ‘Years ago. Before Mandela.’

  ‘On a collection?’

  ‘No. To fetch some pictures. Art works. Small sketches by Kandinsky from the twenties.’

  Jakob said, ‘I don’t know this artist.’

  ‘Squiggles. Squares. Circles. Not very interesting but worth a lot of money.’ Kalle took a long suck on the cigarillo, let the exhale trickle out his nose.

  Jakob, at the wheel, glanced sideways. ‘I will bet I can tell you this story.’

  ‘It is a Nazi story,’ said Kalle.

  ‘Sure. Of course. The grandfather dies and the family find out he is a Nazi. An art thief. The Jews he robbed are holocaust victims. All dead. His family have a bad conscience, they want the pictures returned. But there is no family. So you must take them to a museum.’

  ‘In Berlin.’

  ‘Exactly. This is not the first time I have heard such a story.’

  Kalle crushed the butt of the cigarillo in the ashtray.

  ‘I think first we should find the house where Mace Bishop lives,’ he said. He opened a map book he’d bought at the airport.

  ‘What is wrong with the GPS?’

  ‘Nothing. I prefer map books. This way we have the whole layout. We can see where we are.’

  ‘I can see where I am when I look out the window.’

  Kalle let it go, gave directions that took them on to De Waal Drive up Molteno to the last street beneath the mountain.

  ‘This Mr Bishop has a lot of money,’ said Jakob, swinging the car in at the gate. ‘Do we see if he is at home?’ He cut the engine.

  ‘I think so.’

  Kalle got out, buzzed the intercom. He took in the view across the city to the sea. Looked up at the mountain heights.

  Jakob joined him, offering a cigarillo. ‘Some people live in paradise. Meanwhile I have a flat in Essen with a view of the railway lines.’

  Kalle lifted a cigarillo from the box, fitted it to his lips. He pressed the buzzer again.

  The two men lit up, stood smoking, watching the cable car ascending.

  ‘We must do that,’ said Jakob. ‘Go up the mountain. Enjoy some sight-seeing. Even a day in the winelands.’

  ‘When we have found Roland,’ said Kalle. ‘Then we can relax.’

  They finished their cigarillos, ground out the butts on Mace Bishop’s cobbled driveway. Calling cards, as Jakob put it.

  He rubbed his hands together. In English said, ‘As the Yankees say, now we shall brace Mace.’

  The two men in macs headed downtown to the offices of Complete Security.

  39

  THE DINSMOR KIDNAPPING – NEW DEVELOPMENT

  Special Correspondent

  American businessman Mr Silas Dinsmor disappeared from his Cape Town hotel this morning in what is believed could be a kidnapping.

  This follows the violent hijacking of his wife Veronica Dinsmor on Sunday evening shortly after the couple arrived in the Mother City.

  There has been no word of her since she was abducted.

  In this morning’s ‘abduction’ a police spokesmen said there were no signs of a struggle and that hotel staff were being questioned.

  According to a hotel source, Mr Dinsmor was eating breakfast in the dining room with two security personnel from Complete Security and a police detective. While taking a phone call he walked onto the stoep in full view of his bodyguards.

  ‘One minute he was there and the next he was gone,’ said the source. ‘It doesn’t say much for the security company. Or the police.’

  The Dinsmors were in the city to support their tender to build casinos in rural areas.

  In the earlier attack on the Dinsmors in which Mrs Dinsmor was taken hostage, two kidnappers were shot dead and security operative, Pylon Buso, a co-owner of Complete Security, was wounded.

  Attempts to get further comment from the police and Complete Security have been unsuccessful.

  Mr Bill Hill, chairman of the newly formed security industry’s regulatory authority, said that it was important for clients to ‘do their homework’ before engaging private security firms.

  ‘Our members are regulated by our code of conduct and audited regularly to ensure they meet the high standards we demand,’ he said.

  He confirmed that Complete Security was not registered with his association.

  The owners of Complete Security, Mr Mace Bishop and Mr Buso, were involved in the arms trade before they ventured into the guarding industry.

  40

  Mace was hyper.

  He’d seen a poster: Another American Kidnapped. He’d bought the newspaper, read the story. Complete Security was head to heel in the crap.

  His cellphone rang: the reporter, Rachel Pringle. He pressed it to voicemail. Bloody Chrissakes!

  Mace drove to the beach, stared at the sea. For five minutes sat there not moving, hands gripped to the steering wheel. On the passenger seat the front page story screaming at him.

  In four days, since Sunday night, everything had changed. Got loose, out of control. He let out a whoosh of breath. This was getting to him. Too much going wrong all at once.

  Mace closed his eyes. In the darkness saw the blood pumping out of Oumou, spreading around her, running across the floor to slide about his feet. Her face turned up to him, sad, so sad.

  He blinked to refocus: the ocean flat and blue, dotted with kelp gulls. The mountains across the bay ash grey from the summer fires. Seal Island high and clear. Rain was coming. Another cold front.

  Christ, thought Mace. Christ, Jesus H.

  Then: kill her. Sheemina February. Kill her and stop the nightmare.

  He got out of the car, agitated, needing to move. To be in the water swimming, no sound but the bubbles of his breath, the green light around him.

  He walked down to the water’s edge. A low tide, the sand tracked with plough snails: a pair of them sucking the juice from a dead crab.

  What to do?

  For the first time realised the kidnapping could take them down, him and Pylon. Collapse the business. The bad press would destroy them. Comments like Hill’s nailed tight the coffin lid. Oosthuizen was a sideshow. Unpleasant, unfortunate, a stress they didn’t need, but a sideshow. What was killing them was the Dinsmors. This weird situation.

  He bent down, plucked the snails from the crab remains, tossed them into the sea. Let the crab have its death.

  Godssakes. To be sucked dry by plough snails.

  His phone rang: Tami.

  ‘Where’re you?’

  ‘At the beach.’

  ‘Oh wonderful. Nice. We’ve got a hell-on-wheels state of affairs, the boss goes to the beach. You’ve seen the afternoon newspaper?’

  Mace ignored the question. ‘Any news?’

  ‘Apart from the bad press. Only that Christa and Pumla need picking up from school. You were supposed to do it.’

  ‘Ah, bloody no.’ Mace smacked his head. ‘I’d forgotten.’

  ‘Also the newspaper woman’s been ringing.’

  Tami stopped there, Mace watching a snail sliding towards the dead crab. He flicked it away with the toe of his shoe.

  ‘Can you fetch the girls for me?’

  ‘You’re losing it, Mace.’

  ‘Can you?’

  ‘I suppose so.’

  ‘Then you’d best get down to the Longbitch flat.
Babysit the Kraut.’

  ‘That’s all I need. Europeans have a thing about black women.’

  Mace didn’t respond.

  ‘I can’t wait.’

  ‘Just kick him in the balls, you’ll be fine.’

  ‘That gets them going, a bit of S&M.’

  ‘So practice your karate chops. And Tami?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Take the gun.’

  ‘What for?’

  ‘You never know.’

  ‘What’re you not telling me?’

  ‘Nothing. It’s a babysit, that’s all.’

  ‘So then?’

  ‘So just in case.’

  ‘Wonderful.’ A pause. Then: ‘Mace, you’ve got to talk to Christa.’

  ‘I do?’

  ‘Yeah, I know. I don’t mean that way. She needs help.’

  ‘Ah come on, it’s grief. Time, Tami. That’s what she needs.’

  Again a pause. ‘Yeah, sure, alright, whatever. But keep watching her.’

  ‘Thanks for the advice.’ An edge in his tone.

  ‘Mace …’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Nothing. Forget it. None of my business.’

  ‘What isn’t?’ – but she’d disconnected.

  Mace looked at the dead crab. A hole in the carapace where a gull had gone in. More snails grooving towards it. He turned away, went back to his car. Some things you couldn’t stop.

  Mace decided he needed Pylon. The guy had a hole in his arm, a new baby, a post-partum bedonnerd wife, but it didn’t matter. Their livelihoods were on the line. He needed Pylon’s cool.

  Except Pylon wasn’t cool when Mace, newspaper in hand, came calling.

  ‘Want to know about Max Roland?’ were his first words. Pylon at his front door, blocking Mace’s entrance, no intention of inviting him inside. Pylon wearing a tracksuit and slippers, his arm in a sling.

  ‘Yeah,’ said Mace. ‘Sure.’ He moved forward. Stopped when Pylon didn’t budge. ‘Out here?’

  ‘Shssh.’ Pylon keeping his voice low. ‘Treasure’s asleep.’

  Mace whispering back, ‘Can we go …’ – jerking his thumb at his car. ‘Maybe go to the office for a few hours.’

  ‘I can’t duck out now.’ Pylon rubbing his wounded arm. ‘It’s urgent though.’

  ‘You didn’t say so.’

  ‘I said we had to talk.’

  Mace shrugged. ‘About what?’

  ‘I told you. About Max bloody Roland. That’s what. The guy’s a butcher.’

  Mace stared at him.

  ‘War-crimes-type butcher. Wanted by the International Criminal Tribunal.’

  Mace said, ‘Ah come on.’

  ‘I’m not kidding.’ Pylon half stepping back into the house. ‘I’ve got footage. Real footage on a DVD.’

  ‘From where?’

  ‘Mart Velaze.’

  ‘Him?’

  ‘Him.’

  ‘And you believe it?’

  ‘Looks bloody real.’

  Mace paused, thinking, all the more reason they needed a few hours at the office. ‘Just till five. Three hours tops,’ he said. ‘In that time Treasure’s going to be asleep mostly. So’s the baby. They wake up, Treasure feeds him, changes his nappy, mother and child go back to sleep. She’s not even going to know you’re gone.’

  ‘Can’t do it.’

  Mace stared at his partner. Pylon meeting his eye, then glancing off.

  ‘A big ask, I know. But I’m asking it. We’re in shit, you and me.’

  ‘No kidding we’re in shit.’

  ‘We’ve got to find the Dinsmors. Big time. You seen this?’ Mace cracked open the newspaper. ‘That’s the sort of shit we’re in.’

  Pylon read it, sighed. ‘They’re killing us. This and Roland. Wait till they get onto Roland. We’ll be dead. Might as well close up shop, become night watchmen in the marble foyers. Join Gonz on his pension.’ He read the piece again. ‘Hill’s beating us up because we’re not members. I’m going to phone him.’

  ‘And tell him what? That the association’s a bunch of arseholes. Government BEE toadies. No more backbone than a slug in a compost heap. Forget it. Don’t waste your breath.’ Mace shifted from foot to foot. ‘Come in for a couple of hours. Help me work the phones. We got to find the Dinsmors.’

  ‘You’ve got to see the Roland footage.’

  ‘Okay, okay. Can we go?’

  Pylon hesitated. ‘I can’t, Mace, I told you.’

  ‘Can’t what?’ said Treasure coming up behind Pylon unheard. ‘You and Mace going to stand whispering at the door all afternoon? He can come in you know.’

  ‘I can’t, Treasure,’ said Mace, wondering, what’s with the woman and the friendly attitude? ‘We’ve got a bad situation.’ He took the newspaper from Pylon, handed it to her.

  She read the piece and shrugged, said, ‘Where’re the girls, Mace?’

  The question he’d been waiting for, dreading. ‘Tami’s bringing them.’

  A uh-huh grunt but no comment. She looked at Pylon. ‘You’re back here by five o’clock, buti. On the nose.’

  Pylon got soprano-voiced. ‘I’m not going anywhere, babee.’

  ‘I heard. I’m saying you’re back by five. I’ve got the girls here that’s fine, they can help. I don’t need you drinking beer watching soccer reruns.’ She took her matron eyes off Pylon, turned them on Mace. ‘You hear: five sharp, he’s back.’

  In the car heading up the Blue Route to town, Pylon said, ‘My mother used to do that. Let me out to play. Yours?’

  ‘No mother,’ said Mace.

  ‘That’s right. I forgot. You didn’t miss anything.’

  Mace thought a mother would’ve been better than a boys’ home. Said, ‘So what’s with the Roland thing?’

  ‘Nasty, nasty, nasty stuff. But you gotta see it first before we decide.’

  Mace nodded. ‘Fair enough.’ Thinking this was going bad faster than fish in summer. Any more shit they’d need trauma counselling. He tried for a change of mood: ‘Treasure was unexpected. Coming through that way.’

  Pylon laughed. ‘Oh yes? You think so? After all these years you still don’t know her. There’s a price tag, you just couldn’t see it. Earlier I almost phoned you to take me away.’ He shifted in the seat. ‘She gets home from the hospital, puts the baby to sleep and we sit down for a cup of tea. I’ve made it, one-handed. A parental moment: mom and dad with the baby upstairs. Very sweet. What’s on her mind’s not so sweet. She’s thinking adoption already. Capital A. Also stands for Aids orphans. We’ve got our baby now, Pylon, I’m told. Now we do our social bit. Can’t leave it to whiteys. They’re showing us up. I say, How do you know that? When darkies adopt, the kid’s the same colour so nobody knows it’s adopted. White, it’s obvious, that’s why they do it. Earns them brownie points. You know what I mean. She’s looking at me so hard she doesn’t even laugh. Very funny, Pylon, she says. Very funny but it’s not a joke, buti. It’s up to people like us to show the big boys and girls rolling in money what’s their moral responsibility.’

  Pylon adjusted his sling to make his arm more comfortable. Grimaced at a lance of pain. ‘So when you hear Treasure being nice, what you hear is Treasure writing up a price tag. All I don’t know is how big it’s going to be.’ Pylon jiggled in his seat. ‘This car’s uncomfortable. We need to get the Merc fixed.’

  Mace waved his partner down. ‘Uh-uh, no, no. No we don’t. Tami got a quote. It’s like thousands. Forty grand.’

  ‘And the excess?’

  ‘Seven.’

  ‘That’s okay, we can manage that.’

  ‘Sinks our overdraft.’

  ‘It’s a business expense. Tax deductible.’ Pylon squirmed again. ‘You got a spring going to pop through this seat. Where’s the Merc now?’

  ‘In a friendly vulture’s yard, waiting our instructions.’

  ‘So let’s get it done. Save me Jesus, Mace. What you been doing for two days?’ Pylon grinning at him.

  ‘Don�
�t start,’ said Mace. ‘Just don’t start.’

  They shuffled through the Paradise robots, the traffic thick with moms collecting school kids. A million bucks of SUVs surrounding them. Mace biting his teeth at the thought of Christa without a mom to fetch her. He should’ve picked her up. A wrong move not doing it.

  ‘I should’ve made it to the school,’ he said, ‘to get the girls.’

  Pylon didn’t respond.

  ‘I’ve got to organise my day better.’

  ‘Like stop clients being kidnapped.’

  ‘That’d be a start.’

  ‘Tell me about Max Roland.’

  ‘Bit fulla shit. Bit of a prick.’

  ‘But doesn’t seem like a killer.’

  Mace smiled. ‘Who does?’ Glanced at Pylon. ‘Didn’t see him as a situation. Not the way the Dinsmors are.’

  ‘I been thinking about them,’ said Pylon. ‘I think the call he took was to get him away. And he went. You said the guy’s a poker player, a gambler. He’s gambling.’

  ‘With his life?’

  ‘Why not? He figures he’s got a good hand. You told me they’ve been in these sort of circumstances before. It’s just Texas holdem with an Injun.’

  ‘You reckon?’

  ‘I do. The tricky-dickeys are Max and Magnus.’

  ‘You reckon? You believe that? I don’t know.’

  ‘You haven’t seen the footage.’ Pylon wriggled. ‘This spring’s right under my bum.’ He moved from cheek to cheek. ‘Max and Magnus. Not nice people. People we need to keep in our sights. Talking of which where’s my gun?’