by Mike Nicol
The words startled her. She stiffened, broke away from him. ‘You come here for your business, to Malitia, you stay for a few weeks then you go away again. Now you want a sex toy?’
Mace stepped towards her. ‘That’s not what I’m saying.’
‘Stop.’ She put a hand against his chest. Glared at him. ‘If you stop the guns.’
He laughed. ‘What?’
‘You must stop the guns.’
He stared at her for a long time and she didn’t waver. In the wadi the boys ended their game as the dusk thickened, their voices sharp in the stillness. ‘Okay.’ He turned away from her. ‘I’ll think about it.’
Two days later Mace came in from the desert with the body of her brother. She did not cry, her grief was silent. He told her he knew about those who had raped her when she was a girl. Raped her, stabbed her in the stomach, left her for dead. That her brother had told him this in the long hours he took to die. Mace told her he could not let rest the matter of her brother’s death. That night she did not resist him.
But she was insistent. You must stop the guns. You must stop the guns.
When she told him she was pregnant, he said he would stop selling guns.
‘This you will make as a promise?’
‘Yes,’ he said.
And she believed he would.
6
Matthew and Ducky Donald were standing on the pavement when Mace and Oumou pulled up. The two of them smoking. Only Ducky Donald’s slight lean to the right a clue that he might be favouring a good leg. No one else in the short side-street. At night a trendy part of town; during the day not a lot went on. Some cars got repaired at a small garage. A junk dealer took in odd pieces of the city’s discard. Maybe import-export happened in upstairs offices. Nor much passing traffic. The motormac and the junk dealer were keeping to themselves. Mace stopped behind Ducky Donald’s SUV.
‘Won’t take a minute,’ he said to Oumou.
‘Perhaps you can let me have the car?’
‘Ten minutes. That’s all, ten minutes.’
She told him in French he pushed her to the limit.
Ducky Donald leant over the open Spider, grinning at Oumou. ‘Hey, darling! You the one made Mace all the money in the desert? Can see why he did business with you.’ He leered at Mace. ‘Shouldn’t hide her, boykie.’
Mace ignored him. ‘What’ve you got me here for?’
‘Art exhibition,’ said Donald. ‘Appeal to your pitiless heart. Step inside.’ He quashed one cigarette, lit another. ‘The best of gothic. Not so, Mattie boy? Bloody wonderful example.’ Matthew scowled, stepped away so his father couldn’t thump him a second time on the back. ‘Come on, bring the wife, Mace, nothing here she wouldn’t have seen before. Considering what the Arabs get up to.’ He opened the door of the club and they followed him into the darkness.
Mace’s eyes took a moment to adjust. Before they did he heard a mewing, very soft. Also smelt a faint odour like old cat litter. When he could see he saw that kittens had been nailed to the walls through the fur at the nape of their necks. Most were dead, a few squirmed.
‘A grand display, don’t you think!’ said Ducky Donald, whisping a stream of exhale over their heads. ‘You want Mattie to switch the lights on? The strobe’s good.’
The strobe came on: pulsing at images of skulls, tombstones, ruined churches. Bats crossing a sickle moon.
‘Maybe you can tell me what happened?’ Mace said to Matthew.
Matthew licked the dryness of his lips. ‘About ha-ha-half an hour ago I got a ca-all.’
‘Cell? Landline?’
‘My cell-cellphone.’ He cadged a cigarette from his father. ‘No num-number. This guy sa-says they’ve added some decor-ations to my c-club. He ha-hangs up. My first thought it’s Pa-PAGAD. Second that they’ve t-trashed the place. I get down here the door’s o-open …’
‘You called the cops?’
Matthew gave him a pained look. ‘L-like what’s with you-you and the c-cops?’
‘Like breaking and entry. Cruelty to animals. What about Centurion?’
Matthew got red-faced. ‘Wa-wasn’t act-activated. The contract’s ex-pired.’
‘We need protection here, Mace,’ said Donald. ‘These people are shitting the constitution. You gonna let what we struggled for go up in a kilo of Semtex?’
‘You want my protection? Call the cops.’
‘Je-Jesus,’ Matthew rounded on Mace, ‘don’t you g-get it? This isn’t st-stuff for the cops. This is Sh-Sheemina Feb-February. The cops can do sweet fa-fanny about her. You see Abdul Abdul wa-walking around. Two mur-murder charges, he’s out f-free. This’s tha-thank you Sheemina. So what good’re c-cops? Huh! You can t-tell me?’
A shadow darkened the doorway into the street and Oumou came in. Mace heard her catch her breath, say, ‘Merde!’ and disappear.
‘That’s a stunner you picked up,’ said Ducky. ‘You’re a cagey boy, Mace Bishop.’
‘You want my advice?’ Mace shifted from one kitten to the next. They were well tacked in. Some had their heads busted in the hammering. Five of the twelve were alive. ‘Close down. That’s the best protection I can give.’
‘Not possible,’ said Ducky. ‘We’re talking business, Mace. Mattie closes down, the income stream collapses.’
‘They put a pipe bomb in here it’s going to explode, not just collapse.’
‘What you’re engaged to prevent.’
Oumou came back with a pair of pliers from the motormac.
‘You gonna yank the nails out with that you gonna need visibility,’ said Ducky Donald. ‘Bring the lights up, Mattie, give the girl some illumination.’ He closed on her. ‘You need a hand there?’
Oumou ignored him. Got at the first live kitten, put the pliers to the nail head and pulled back hard with a grunt. The nail came out and the kitten fell to the floor, screeching. Ducky Donald got a load of French for not catching it. Pity was, Mace thought, he couldn’t understand a word of it.
‘You gonna enlighten me?’ Ducky Donald asked as Mace handed him a box that must have been the container the kittens were brought in.
‘In a word, you’re an arsehole.’
Matthew sniggered. Oumou pulled free another kitten, gave it to Ducky with an expression suggesting arsehole was too soft a translation. She got down the five, said, ‘Give this back to your neighbour’ - swapping the pliers for the box. Mace followed her out.
‘Ask him what he saw,’ Mace called back at father and son. ‘The motormac.’
Ducky Donald shouted, ‘You’re not running out on us Mace?’
‘Till four-thirty. Meantime think of closing down.’
7
The vet saved three. While he was snipping fur, cleaning the wounds, preparing syringes, wanted to know what happened. Mace gave him a story of how he and Oumou had found them tacked to a wall in the wrong part of Woodstock, probably some sort of gang initiation. Right, he said, he’d heard of that. Dogs being crucified. Cats skewered. Even cows with their udders cut off. Once about a dozen hens plucked alive. Made you wonder what sort of drugs they took, these gangsters.
‘You want me to take these to a pet’s refuge?’ he said. ‘Should imagine if they stay alive over the next few days someone’ll give them a home.’
‘We are having them,’ said Oumou.
The vet glanced at her sympathetically. ‘You’ve done enough already, you don’t have to feel responsible.’ He flicked his eyes at Mace for confirmation.
Oumou said, ‘They are for us to look after.’
Mace didn’t argue. Arguing with Oumou on matters like this got nowhere.
In the car heading up the steep streets she told him it was a good idea for Christa to have pets. This was something they should have done years before. The girl was six years old she should have a pet to look after. ‘You can see this is true, no?’
Mace swung the Spider out of Kloof Street into Union, slowing on the approach to Christa’s crèche.
‘They’re not g
oing to live. Not all of them anyhow. How’s she going to feel when they die?’
‘We face that one, maybe, when it happens.’
‘It’s going to.’
‘Maybe.’ He got flashed a look a million years old. ‘But maybe not.’
The crèche was hidden behind a high wall, a notice at the security gate read: ‘Parents must ensure that their children are handed into the care of accredited staff at the beginning of the day.’
Oumou slid out of the car, reached the gate in two strides and punched the intercom buzzer. He heard her speak her name. The gate clicked unlocked and she went in. The noise of kids at play came loud from behind the wall. Mace opened the boot to gentle the kittens.
Christa came hurtling through the gate. She stopped at the sight of the kittens curled into one another in the box.
She wore a red T-shirt, black tracksuit bottoms and Nikes. Her hair was wild, dark, but in the sunlight it caught fire and turned almost auburn. Her eyes could have been her mother’s, he believed, mysterious pools that had gathered secrets for so long they were incapable of registering surprise. She had the same texture and skin colour as her mother, a brown as golden as the head on an espresso. When he searched for traces of his genes in her expressions, movement, the tilt of her face he could find none. Other stuff, yes: pigheadedness, temper, irritability. Then again nothing there that wasn’t in her mother. To look at, most times he reckoned Oumou made her alone. She was the only child they could have, and that gave her special dues he felt.
Mace took her hand, drew her closer to the boot. There was blood on the cardboard. The kitten with the leaking wound stared up, opened its mouth to mew but made no sound. Christa reached out to touch it, poking a finger into the fur.
‘Softly, ma puce,’ said Oumou. ‘They are sore.’
‘Why?’ asked Christa.
‘Someone hurt them,’ Mace said.
The kitten opened its mouth, red as a wound, silent.
All the drive home down the peninsula, Christa didn’t say a word.
8
‘I’ll drop you,’ Mace said as they waited for the security guard to roll the gate back manually to let them in. For three days the electronics had been faulty. The man took his time, smiling at them, waving at Christa like there was no hurry in his day. Mace gritted his teeth but kept from saying anything.
‘You can’t have coffee?’ said Oumou.
Mace shook his head. ‘A meeting.’
‘With that man and his boy?’
‘Uh huh.’
‘This is not your work, to give them protection.’
‘It’s a favour. I owe him.’
Oumou didn’t reply, not looking at him either as they drove through the gate. Lavender Mews: neat white duplexes, BMs, SUVs, station wagons lining the pavements, toys left out on the front lawns, flowers bright in the flower beds. A street of identical townhouses, theirs in the middle of the row. A box between boxes, Mace thought of it. Spruce and clean and sanitised. Except their house had no flowers and the grass needed mowing. The sort of detail he didn’t see. The sort of home neither of them wanted.
‘I do not like that house,’ Oumou said, getting out. ‘I have a bad feeling.’
‘We’ll talk later,’ said Mace, popping the boot to pick up the box of kittens. ‘Just think about it. About what it could be.’
‘For me I do not have to think about it.’
Five minutes later Mace was thinking about it, about how the hell he was going to convince Oumou on this one. She wanted to move, he wanted to move, get out of the suburbs. This was the opportunity. Except she wasn’t seeing it. She wanted to build a concrete, glass and chrome number.
He pushed the thought away. More worrying, what had eaten at him all the way home, was the call to Oumou’s cellphone. He drove out of the neat streets into the Main Road heading for the Blue Route highway, the mountain chain hazy against the sky. Had to be Sheemina February. Why he couldn’t say. Just a feeling this was how she operated. Had to be she’d found out his name.
The on-ramp opened into three lanes and Mace pushed the Spider over the speed limit, flashing cars that didn’t move out of the fast lane. Had to be she had someone inside the cellphone service providers to get the number, not just his number but his wife’s. With the right contacts, anybody’s phone number was only ten minutes away. No reason Sheemina February didn’t have the right contacts. If one call had given him the number behind the call to Oumou, two calls could’ve got her to Oumou’s phone.
Up Wynberg Hill Mace thumbed through to Matthew’s number. He came on sounding like he’d pulled a bunch of dead kittens off a wall.
‘You been in touch with Sheemina February since our meeting?’ Mace said.
‘She-Sheemina?’ - Matthew’s voice rising through the syllables, surprised.
‘All I need is yes or no.’
‘N-no,’ he said.
Ducky Donald shouted in the background. ‘When’re you pitching, Mace? You’ve got obligations here.’
He told Matthew to tell his father thanks for the reminder, he’d be there shortly. But the traffic was slow down Edinburgh Drive through the Claremont S-bends and Newlands Forest. During the crawl Mace dialled the cellphone number used to call Oumou, found out it belonged to a woman who’d had her phone stolen the previous week.
‘Off my office desk,’ she said. ‘You can’t turn your back for a minute. Anywhere.’ She laughed. ‘Insurance paid out and I got an upgrade. That’s how things work these days.’
He said, ‘Sounds like a win-win situation’ - and they both laughed. Added a new dimension to Sheemina February though. Always assuming it was her. Which he did.
The traffic eased on Hospital Bend, Mace working the Spider across four lanes, the revs up into the sweep at the top, the city opening below and the mountain grey behind. This was the city he wanted. Forget the suburbs, the townships, the shacklands. Sheemina February, he said aloud, I’m going to get your number.
By the time Mace pulled the Spider into the curb outside the club, the motormac’s shop was closed, likewise the second-hand dealer. Only sign of life was a black guy settling to a meal of fish and chips in a doorway. He watched Mace walk over.
‘You work for Cuito?’
The man grinned. ‘My name is Dr Roberto from Luanda at your service. I am here all night.’ He wiped his hand on his trousers, holding it out. They shook.
‘A medical doctor or something else?’
‘General practitioner.’ Dr Roberto plopped a chip into his mouth. ‘Excuse me, I am very hungry.’ He followed the chip with a portion of fish. When he’d swallowed, said, ‘My training was in Cuba. But I am not here. I do not exist.’
‘Like Cuito.’
The two men laughed. ‘Like Cuito. It is very sad.’
Mace pulled out a fifty, handed it to him. ‘I never visited Luanda. From the photographs I’ve seen it looked like a beautiful city once.’
Dr Roberto sighed. ‘For me it was always broken. All my life there has been the war.’ He went back to his fish and chips.
‘You let me know if there’s anything I should know.’ Mace turned towards the club. ‘Any time of the night.’
‘I have your phone number Mr Mace. Cuito has informed me what you want.’
Inside Club Catastrophe, Pylon, Ducky Donald, and Matthew stood in the dance zone drinking from bottles of beer. Not a trace of the kittens but some smear marks of blood on the walls. Pylon held up his hand in greeting. Ducky Donald smirked as Mace registered the blood.
‘Mattie’s idea,’ he said. ‘In memoriam.’
‘You’re opening tonight then?’ Mace took the beer Matthew uncapped.
‘Why not? What’s to stop us?’
Mace caught Pylon’s eye. ‘Maybe you can explain it to him. Slowly.’
Pylon stepped back to rest his elbows against the bar counter. ‘I already have. Didn’t change the way the world spins.’
Ducky Donald put his arm round his son’s shoulders. �
��Accept it guys. This’s the modern age. The ravers wanna rave. You can’t let them down. We’re opening. Hasn’t even been a bomb scare yet.’
Mace took a mouthful of beer, the taste in his mouth gave it the taste of iron. ‘Okay. You’re set on this, we have no option.’
‘That’s how it is, my brother.’
Mace shook his head. ‘You’re wrong, Donald. You’re wrong in forcing this.’ He and Pylon headed off to take a look round the premises.
‘Not the sort of words would’ve been spoken by the gung ho Bishop I used to know,’ he called after them.
Out of earshot Pylon said, ‘We haven’t got the guys for this. We’re stretched.’
Mace didn’t respond.
‘Putting a blanket down’s going to cost us big time.’
‘You’ve got another suggestion?’
Pylon grimaced. ‘I’d known it would be like this, I’d have told Ducky Donald where to put his AKs.’
Behind the dance floor they found a chill room and toilets with skylights onto a service lane. What passed as burglar bars weren’t going to stop a pipe bomb being lobbed in. Weren’t going to stop anybody getting in if they wanted to. Nor was a backdoor onto the room Matthew used to store his booze stocks. Might have a security grille but a tyre iron would’ve sorted that in less than thirty seconds, Mace reckoned. Also, with all the walls painted black, any packages left lying around were going to disappear into the shadows. Because shadows were everywhere. Somebody managed to sneak a four-, five-pound parcel around the pat search they could put it down in a corner, walk right out, nobody’d know anything until the boom. Above the club was empty office space, above that an attic. The floors between were wooden boards, some creaking like it wasn’t a good idea to stand on them. In a broom cupboard Pylon found a trapdoor; you opened that you could see how Ducky Donald was thinning on top. Pylon slid it back into place, dusted his hands.
‘Nice of Ducky. At the time, choice between this and the Arab gun runner, I’d have taken the Arab.’