‘Ma, listen! I know what I gotta do. She’ll be okay but if you go off to the police she won’t, you understand? You have to understand, Ma.’
Gloria cried some more. ‘But what about you?’ she sobbed. It was Malaki’s fear too.
‘There’s no other way, Ma. Now promise me you’ll stop Pa from doing anything silly?’
He spoke to his father anyway. Up to that point Zane’s parents had not worried because of a message from Chantal saying she was okay and staying with a friend. Now Eddie listened with a calm that Zane knew from experience he couldn’t trust. There were too many balls in the air and Zane was no juggler. To make matters worse Lena said in the middle of the night as they lay next to each other, ‘Who said you’d be on your own?’
‘I can’t and won’t bring my friend into this!’
‘I don’t mean Malaki, Zane, I mean me.’
He turned on his side to face her. ‘No, Lena, no, don’t even think about it.’ A dying log shot some last sparks into the night.
She almost hissed at him, ‘He’s the leader, he’s worse than Cupido and Gatiep, he’s made slaves of women, he’s killed, and he murdered the one person I cared about.’
‘Let it be, Lena. Sarai’s dead. You did your best.’ But he thought about her words, ‘the one person I cared about’ – Sarai, not him. And he knew again that he loved Lena regardless of how she felt about him or what she had done. There was nothing phoney about Lena Valentine. She was genuine, the real thing. She was nothing like the Zane Hendricks who had made it to the larney side of the tracks pretending he was someone else. It was just that her life had been fucked up by her father. But had it not been for her father she might have turned out differently – maybe a scatty, shallow, sex-driven girl like Bernadette. He knew he was going round in circles because he was exhausted but it made him love Lena even more.
What he found difficult to tell her – apart from the fact that he loved her – was what Hannibal wanted him to do.
Thirty-six
As Zane and Lena made their way down the dusty street it was like going back into his past. It was a street from his childhood that he and Chantal had walked for so many years. Now there was a sense of high noon about it – men with hard eyes watching them come into town, the street ominously clear of ordinary people. Down the road to the house imprinted on his mind since the day Chantal had told him about the tik explosion, aware with each step he took that he was staking his sister’s life, Lena’s, and his own on the next few hours.
It was 12 o’clock, the time Hannibal had called for. Zane stuck his hand through the smaller of two gates and knocked on a wooden door. A man waved them in and proceeded to frisk them. Lena squirmed, ‘Hey, don’t you dare touch me there!’ He found the knife, grinned as he held it up.
Zane said tensely, ‘Okay, where do we go?’ The man pointed to a side door and then at his open mouth. ‘God, Zane, he’s got no tongue,’ Lena said. The man went into the street, locking the door behind him.
Zane and Lena entered a kitchen. Leaning against the counter were three men smoking crystal meth. Smells of long ago came to Zane – plastic shower curtains his drunken father Eddie had set on fire, stale piss from feral cats around Darwin Court. He’d heard the more impurities there were in the crystals the more the smoke smelled.
A man was saying, ‘So this is pasela, Delron … on the house, all we want?’
‘On this house, ha, ha, I like it!’ another man said, inhaling fumes through a straw from a light bulb which had had its metal threading removed. The heated crystals made a clicking sound as he smoked.
‘Yeh, Goppies, from the Boss. Lekka, nuh?’ Delron was in black jeans and a bright yellow T-shirt and smoking from a larney designer lolly.
‘I already had three, man,’ Goppies said. ‘Jissis, the hits are jits …’ Goppies was thick-set, with acne-marked cheeks, and his front teeth were missing.
‘This is just the horse-dove,’ Delron said, ‘there’s mains and pudding coming.’
They looked up, stared at Zane and Lena.
‘We heard you were coming,’ Delron said.
‘Kyk net die bruin ogies,’ Goppies said.
‘En die mooi lyfie, oulike kind,’ the third man said, his pupils dilated.
They ignored Zane and devoured Lena with their eyes. She held onto him. It was like being back in the train, he thought, why did it have to come to this again? This time there were more of them, and he knew what tik did to men.
He looked at Delron coldly, ‘Take us to Hannibal. I want to see my sister.’
They walked into a large room, empty except for a chair on which Chantal was sitting, arms and legs bound, cloth in mouth, eyes dull and sunken, long auburn hair surprisingly clean and shiny and brushed down one side of her face. It was her hair that troubled Zane most – had Hannibal been preparing her for himself, at last? She had a ghostly beauty that made him hate himself for having let her down. Tears welled up when she saw him and she tried to speak.
Were it not for Hannibal’s hard eyes his little smile might have been welcoming. Zane had never forgotten the look – lulling and dangerous all at once. They stared at each other, the elapsed years feeling not like old scars but fresh wounds.
‘What can I say except it gives me great pleasure to see you – together,’ Hannibal said. He gazed at Lena a little longer. ‘Nuh, you look like a lady but you’re nothing but trouble. To think you killed Cupido and Gatiep.’ He shook his head in grudging admiration.
‘I’m ready, Hannibal, let’s get it over with.’ Zane held his gaze.
‘Not so quick. Delron, Pattat, Goppies, kom, kom!’
They came like a pack of dogs – tails up, mouths open, eyes moist with anticipation.
‘Sit, and wait.’ Hannibal said. They sat on the floor.
‘I said I’m ready, Hannibal.’ Zane disengaged from Lena.
‘Oh, you are?’
‘Ja, what you said – we fight, no weapons, and whoever wins walks away, remember? If you win, you get Chantal. If I win I walk away with Chantal and Lena. That was what we …’
‘Minute!’ Hannibal said, ‘boys, is it right that if I lose, which I won’t, I get nothing?’
‘Nah, Boss!’ they chorused.
Zane said, ‘You’d lose only what you didn’t have in the first place, Hannibal. If I lose I lose my sister.’
‘I had Chantie …’
‘For a short while, Hannibal, long ago, then you fucked up.’
‘I had Chantie!’ Hannibal’s voice rose. He looked desperately at Chantal. ‘Say that if I beat him and let him go I’ll have you again?’
‘She can’t talk, Hannibal … maybe you don’t want to know.’
Hannibal’s face twitched but he said nothing, stood motionless. Then he jerked the cloth from Chantal’s mouth. ‘Remember, Chantie, it’s his life we’re talking about.’
Chantal put her face in her hands and sobbed, ‘I love you, Zane.’
‘Does it mean yes, but that you won’t or can’t love me?’ Hannibal’s dark eyes glittered. Chantal’s look gave him the answer. He took out his gun and waved it at Zane and Lena, ‘Down, sit down – hands on your head!’ He gestured to his men, ‘It’s time for the mains, boys.’
They advanced on Chantal.
‘Now this is what I call a dish,’ Goppies’ grin was a gummy hole where his teeth used to be.
‘Compliments to the chef,’ Delron said.
‘She’s stirvy this one, stuck-up, I can see it in her eyes, makes me kak jags, who’s first anyway?’ Pattat jabbered like a DJ on a roll.
Zane knew the crystal meth had got hold of them and it freaked him out. The room had the heady smell of pent-up violence, as in men preparing themselves for a hit or a night of rape – savagery that could murder and desecrate and in the morning not remember a thing. That was tik.
‘Hannibal!’
‘What, Zane.’
‘We had a deal. It’s not like you to break it.’
‘Ha, ha,
boys, you hear that?’ Hannibal strutted with contempt. ‘He thinks this is a dojo! This is the Flats, man. How do you explain it, he never made it here but in the dojo he got black?’
‘Beats me, Boss,’ Pattat went into a mock karate stance. Goppies uttered a cat-like whine like Bruce Lee’s. Delron shouted, ‘Ja, it’s all that bowing shit, Boss!’
They suddenly went quiet, stared at Chantal, the thought of what she held for them naked on their faces. Lena sat next to Zane, hands on her head, the snout of the silencer on them both. Delron started to cut the rope around Chantal’s legs with his flick-knife. She sobbed quietly. Freeing her for the feast – the horrifying thought paralysed Zane. After Chantal it would be Lena. That was what happened with men like these.
Then Zane’s hands dropped and his body rolled across the floor like a fallen weaver’s nest in a gust. The snout plopped, sounds of splintering wood next to him. Zane was up before the next bullet, his arm around Goppies’ bull neck, the bony edge of his forearm finding the Adam’s apple and squeezing hard. Desperate wheezing came from Goppies as he tried to throw Zane off but Zane clung to him like a rodeo rider.
Zane was now holding Goppies between himself and Hannibal.
‘Impressive, Zane,’ Hannibal said, ‘but you didn’t think he’d die for me, did you?’ Without waiting for an answer he shot Goppies through the heart. The dum-dum bullet mushroomed inside Goppies and Zane felt warm tissue bursting against him and a sudden pain. Zane let go and Goppies crashed to the floor.
Zane and Hannibal stared at each other. Zane took a step forward, gaze unwavering, every fibre in his body focused on the man with the gun.
‘What, Zane, no sorry, no asking for mercy? One bullet and a second of pain, is that all?’
With bloodied chest Zane took another step.
‘You don’t have it in you, never did.’ Hannibal cocked his gun, steadied his grip. Instinctively Delron followed.
‘Shoot me, Hannibal,’ Zane said, ‘it’ll give you all the satisfaction you want – you needn’t kill them too. Don’t make it worse for yourself, let them go.’
Zane walked unsteadily towards him, the room suddenly losing its edges and corners, and the beams of light through the windows melting into a golden syrup.
‘Jesus, you give me no choice,’ Hannibal said.
Then Lena was on her feet and running like a buck breaking out from thick bush. ‘Hannibal, don’t!’ Zane screamed. She was between Zane and Hannibal when the bullet hit her small body knocking her sideways and down.
‘It’s the end, Hannibal, you know that.’ Grimly Zane tried not to lose consciousness as he advanced on Hannibal.
‘Chantie, tell me what I need to hear and your brother will live.’ The barrel was chillingly steady as if aiming at a mock figure on a practice range. Delron and Pattat stood with guns drawn confused as though they had walked in halfway through a murder.
Chantal’s voice rang out, ‘Hanno, you did the betraying, not Zane – you betrayed God, me, the community, yourself. You changed so that it became impossible to love you. You once fought for things good, now you fight for titles, in a cage like an animal, no, animal’s too good for you – them I can love, you never, even if you let Zane live!’
The muscle on Hannibal’s face twitched again. His scars were red welts.
Chantal’s words came fast, ‘You think you control everyone, well, you don’t! You’ll never have me, Hanno. Don’t you see, to me you’re dead already – even before you pull that trigger!’
Hannibal flinched as if struck by an unseen force. He lifted the gun, rammed the barrel into his mouth smashing his bridge as he did so. Then, with his eyes on Chantal, he fired.
Something in Pattat snapped. Howling like a dog he aimed at Zane. A shot rang out, then a second, a third, a fourth. Surprise replaced the loyal look in his eyes as he sank to his knees. Delron had already fired off a round when a bullet opened up his nose and cheek like a pomegranate. He tried to bring his hands to his face but it was as though they were being held down by a great, unbearable weight. He couldn’t see what it was but it no longer mattered.
On hands and knees Zane crawled to Lena lying on her side with eyes open and a half-smile, willing him to get to her.
Thirty-seven
Zane regained consciousness to find Chantal and Malaki sitting by his bedside. A tube snaked into his arm from a bag of fluid hanging next him, the air smelled of medicine, the lights hurt his eyes. They smiled at him, and Chantal took his hand. She was alive, his dear sister was alive. ‘Sussie, I’m so glad,’ he muttered. Lena! Where was Lena? He tried to sit up. Sharp pains ran through his chest.
‘Don’t, you’ve had an operation.’ Chantal pushed him back gently. ‘You’re okay, just take it easy.’
‘Lena, where’s she?’
They said nothing. How strange. She’d been alive, and she had tried to say something before he blacked out. That much he could remember.
‘So where is she?’ he asked, shivering. ‘More blankets please.’
Chantal fetched another blanket from the cupboard and tucked him in so that only his face was visible. He had to clench his teeth to stop them from clattering.
Malaki cleared his throat, and said slowly, ‘She didn’t make it, my friend. We thought it best to bury her … as soon as possible. We were going to wait for you, but after hearing what the doctor said …’ He shrugged. ‘She’s got no family, Zane, someone had to decide.’ Malaki’s powerful presence was comforting.
There had been no goodbye, she was gone for good. There was a numbing finality to it. The thought that he’d go to his grave not knowing what she had been about to tell him was too much to bear. ‘And Hannibal … is he dead too?’ As he said it he thought: evil never died, it came back, again and again. It came into the world with every womb.
‘Yes, so are the three men,’ Chantal said, a shiver running through her.
Zane suddenly remembered, ‘Hang on, there was a lot of shooting, I don’t understand?’
Chantal related how the police had burst into the house through the kitchen catching the men just in time. Malaki interrupted, grinning, ‘It was I and I that told them, Zane … we weren’t going to leave you in there, my bra, no ways! I just had to check which house.’
Malaki and Jah, Zane thought thankfully but wearily. Yet Lena had to die. Whatever name God came by, He was picky and fickle.
‘Ja, Malaki cleverly went to Ma and Pa. They knew where the house was because I’d spoken about it. Then they called the police,’ Chantal said.
A man entered the room unannounced and asked, ‘How are you feeling?’ He had a West Coast Afrikaans accent, and looked remarkably young to be a surgeon, Zane thought.
‘Dunno, doctor, just freezing.’
‘It’s the morphine, kills pain,’ he said checking Zane’s blood pressure, ‘hmm … a bit low but nothing to worry about.’
‘Thanks for everything.’
‘Well, here’s something you might want to keep, call it a good luck charm.’ The surgeon held out a misshapen piece of lead. ‘I took it from your chest. It had already gone through a body hitting all kinds of bone then stopped in you, close to your heart.’
Zane took it, waited for the doctor to leave and gave it to Malaki. ‘Chuck this into the Bay, my bra, but only after you’ve paddled out a moer of a long way.’
•
The next morning a police officer came to see him – short black hair, nice skin and eyes, and a delicate build that made her gun look awkward and heavy.
She put out her hand. ‘I’m Captain Ontong, from Lavender Hill station.’
‘Hello, Captain … Zane Hendricks, but I get the feeling you already know me.’
She nodded. ‘Your sister’s made a detailed statement, so has Mr Arendse. But you’re the most important person in this whole thing from what I can make out.’
He frowned, Arendse? Then he remembered it was Malaki’s real name. He waited. How much of his past would come up? ‘I’d be glad to
help,’ he said, inching up his pillows.
‘Could you start from the beginning, Mr Hendricks, please, from the time you got to know Hannibal Fortuin. He was known to us of course – let’s say he made his presence felt in many undesirable ways over many years. We just couldn’t pin him down.’
The beginning, with Hannibal – Zane had been dreading the moment. He had managed not to tell anyone other than Chantal for so long he thought he’d never have to, least of all the police. Now he had to choose – duck and dive, or tell it as it happened.
Zane told it as it was. Everything, from his time at school to the moment Hannibal pulled the trigger on himself. Not once did the Captain interrupt, and she made not a single note. At the end of it he lay back, exhausted. She poured him a glass of water and he gulped it down. He could now only wait.
‘Mr Hendricks, I came here to see how you were … and to shake your hand. Because you knew what kind of person Hannibal was you must’ve realised you had little chance. Yet you went into that house – for your sister. That’s real courage, Mr Hendricks, in my book.’ Then she said softly, as if to herself, ‘Even with faith, few can walk through the valley of the shadow of death and not flinch.’
Something made him ask, ‘It wasn’t you, was it, Captain?’
She nodded. ‘Got there just in time, thank God.’
‘You shot them?’
‘I had a sergeant with me, we did it together.’ She said it as if it were something intensely distasteful. ‘We’re not releasing any more details to the media until we’ve done our investigations. Please don’t speak to reporters until then.’
‘Captain … the stuff I told you, what’s going to happen to me?’
She smiled at him. ‘Let’s bury the old stuff, shall we? In that house you showed that you were not the boy you once were.’
‘But Gatiep …’
‘Self-defence, and frankly, good riddance … off the record, tussen ons, you understand.’
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