by Mike Nicol
‘What the fuck?’ said Paulo.
Behind them Mace cocked the nine mil and shut the door. The couple turned to face him.
‘Who the hell’re you?’ said Vittoria.
‘Ask your boyfriend,’ said Mace. ‘Meantime we’ve got business. The sooner we do it, the sooner it’s over. So let’s have your head in a noose, either one, the choice is yours, and your hands behind your back.’
She didn’t move. ‘Paulo?’
Paulo sneered at Mace. ‘Her one-time screw. Isabella’s old gigolo.’
Mace whipped the pistol across Paulo’s face, opening the cut that had almost healed, Paulo staggering back clutching at his mouth.
‘You bastard,’ screamed Vittoria, and Mace hit her too, Vittoria collapsing against the bed.
‘Cooperate,’ he said. ‘Make it easier for all of us.’
‘What d’you want?’ said Paulo, the words slurred through his bleeding lips.
‘I told you once,’ said Mace. ‘For her to put her head in a noose, either one. You don’t want me to repeat it.’
‘We haven’t got the diamonds.’
Mace hit him again and Paulo fell, Vittoria sliding over to him crying ‘Baby, baby.’ Mace tapped her on the head with the gun butt.
‘Into the noose.’
She spat blood at him, coming up fast to make a run for the door.
‘Not a good idea,’ said Mace, and caught her by the hair and slammed her hard into the wall, hearing her nose break at the impact.
‘Listen to me people, okay? Before you get truly hurt.’ He pushed Vittoria towards the bed. ‘Humour me.’
She did and stood unsteadily beneath the noose but the noose was too high.
‘Stand on the pillows,’ said Mace, ‘and you’ - he kicked at Paulo - ‘go on, help your girlfriend.’
Raised by two pillows Vittoria put her head into the noose. Mace told Paulo how to tighten it and had him tie Vittoria’s hands behind her back with a length of rope. ‘Now you,’ he said, ‘down here’ - and had Paulo kneel on the floor while Mace tied his hands. Paulo saying all the time, they hadn’t got the diamonds. ‘That’s alright,’ said Mace, ‘at this point we don’t need the diamonds.’ When he was done, helped Paulo onto the bed, brought the noose over his head and tightened the knot against the side of Paulo’s face. Paulo stretched up on tiptoe to stop choking.
Mace sat down on a chair behind them and the room went quiet.
‘Please,’ rasped Paulo. ‘Enough.’
‘I hope so,’ said Mace.
Vittoria screamed then which brought Mace out of the chair to sweep away the pillows from beneath her feet and Vittoria dangled, her cry choked off. Mace let her hang. Paulo in tears going, ‘Please, please, she’s gonna die.’ Until Mace put the pillows back beneath Vittoria’s jerking feet.
‘Screaming wasn’t a good idea,’ he said, the woman gasping and heaving, almost losing her balance. Mace steadied her. ‘What I want you to do is think about your situation. I want you to think about the diamonds you have stolen but more than that I want you to think about the two people you killed on the weekend, and you’ - he dug the pistol’s barrel into Vittoria’s back, ‘you must also think about the two men you killed last month. That wasn’t nice. Especially cutting off the one’s dick.’
While he spoke Mace searched through the suitcases, fishing out a bra that he used to gag her, Vittoria snorting and snuffling through the blood of her broken nose.
‘And when you’ve done enough thinking then tell me and you can make your confession into this tape recorder.’ He held it up for them to see. ‘But what you need most now is some time to think about the dead and about your situation.’ He opened the mini-bar and selected a beer and uncapped it. ‘Take as long as you want, there’s no hurry.’
It took Paulo half an hour before he moaned, ‘Please, please, help me.’
‘I’d like to,’ said Mace. ‘Really I would. But what I have in my head is this picture of Isabella with a hole right here between her eyes. Isabella lying on a mortuary slab. That’s not how I like to think of Isabella.’
‘The diamonds …’
‘Forget the diamonds for a moment, Paulo. Mourn for your wife. The woman who married you to give you opportunities.’ Mace paused, heard Paulo sniffing. ‘Good, Paulo. Good. You should get emotional. Let the grief come out.’ He paused again, seeing the shake in Paulo’s shoulders. ‘Let me tell you how I’m feeling. How Isabella’s old gigolo’s dealing with his grief. Right now Isabella’s old gigolo cannot accept she’s dead. He has to keep reminding himself of the corpse he saw in the morgue. That that corpse was once Isabella. The woman who was his friend and, you’re right, lover once upon a time. Isabella’s old gigolo’s got a problem dealing with these emotions. Can you understand this, Paulo?’
‘The diamonds …’
Mace waited. Watched Vittoria jerk towards her lover, making muffled noises which could’ve meant anything.
‘… in the safe.’
He got up and went to the safe, looking across at Paulo expectantly. The guy’s face was red, streaked with tears.
Between sobs Paulo gave the combination numbers and Mace pressed them into the safe’s keypad. The diamonds inside in a draw-string pouch.
‘This’s a start,’ said Mace, spilling some of the stones into the palm of his hand. ‘It goes a little way towards demonstrating remorse. Maybe even sorrow.’
He uncapped another beer, sat down again to drink it. The problem, he thought, was that at this rate Paulo would be done and dusted within an hour, while the chick wasn’t anywhere near being obliging. You had to admire her, holding out even with a broken nose.
After he’d finished the beer, Mace waited in the chair, half an hour slipping past before Paulo broke down again, crying, enough, he couldn’t stand it, he’d talk.
‘Okay,’ said Mace coming round to face him, holding up the tape recorder. ‘It’s got a sensitive mic, all you have to do is speak clearly. Start by giving your name, followed by the sequence of events that led to you shooting Isabella and Ludovico.’
‘Then you’ll go?’
Mace shrugged. ‘Maybe. Depends on what you say.’
‘In court,’ said Paulo, sobbing still, ‘I’ll say I was tortured.’
‘I know.’ Mace adjusted the volume on the tape recorder. ‘This isn’t about evidence. Nor about courts of law. It’s personal. It’s about how Isabella died. It’s about admitting the truth. That’s what we do here, Paulo. That’s our party trick.’
‘She shot her,’ said Paulo. ‘She shot the gay guys too.’
‘Slowly,’ said Mace. ‘I want you to start with your name.’
Paulo’s confession had Vittoria as the shooter of both Isabella and Ludovico. When he’d finished Mace said to Vittoria, ‘You want to talk now?’
But Vittoria made a muffled noise and Mace went back to his chair. ‘I can wait.’
‘You … you said you’d go,’ said Paulo. ‘Please go.’
‘Not yet. Not without her story.’
Paulo said, ‘Ria, please Ria.’ Vittoria giving him no response.
‘Like I said,’ said Mace. ‘I can wait.’
He sat watching them over the next few hours until the first red of dawn started low in the east. Quarter to five. Another hour until the friendly guard came on the gate. He took the sodden bra out of Vittoria’s mouth and held up the tape recorder by way of asking did she want to talk? But the woman was past it. Mace clicked off the tape, glanced from one to the another, Paulo snivelling. Another time, another place he’d have done it differently, he thought. He shook his head, partly in disgust at the twosome, partly in wonder at his change of approach. From the chair picked up the pouch of diamonds and weighed it from hand to hand, the stones clicking. Slipped it into his pocket.
Mace slowed to a stop at the gate and slipped the gear into neutral. Zwide came smiling towards him.
‘You are the first person out of the paradise this morning.’
&nbs
p; ‘Some of us have to work.’ Mace grinned at him. ‘One day what I’d like to do is come back and do nothing with the rich people.’
Zwide laughed. ‘Me, I want to see New York. One American said he would send me a ticket for the jumbo jet but maybe the ticket is lost in the post.’ And again he laughed, lifting the boom for Mace to drive through.
‘Hope you get to New York,’ Mace said, holding his hand up in salute, seeing Zwide in the rear-view mirror waving goodbye like they were big buddies.
PAYBACK
‘… in this city rise up the angry bones …’
- Anonymous imam
1
At 6:00 p.m. the barometer measured 1000 millibars. Down two hundred over six hours. Mo Siq tapped the instrument through the day, watching it drop as the storm came in. Watching the storm come in. From the first slates of high cloud in the morning to the dense, low greyness of the sky by late afternoon. From the stillness when he’d stepped onto his balcony mid-morning to make a cellphone call, to the gusts of wind that now buffeted his windows. New flush-fitting anodised windows that shook nonetheless. At times during the afternoon he stood at these windows looking out at Signal Hill, at how the wind flurries chased patterns through the tall grass. He stared down at the little yacht basin, no longer a building site, two yachts moored against a jetty.
Once, while Mo stood there smoking a cigarette, he watched a man wearing a beanie and thick jersey hurry onto the further boat and test the ropes and the knots and the pins that secured the hatches, then dash back into the apartment block. Mo smiled. The man considered himself an old salt, would hold cocktail evenings on his yacht for people with too much jewellery. Mo had been to one, got a deal going with an Israeli to supply five hundred thousand rounds of 7.62mm they could use in their carbines. At that party the old salt promised Mo a sail into the wild ocean. Mo took a rain check, then again he’d never seen the old salt put to sea. At 6:00 p.m. Mo set the marker on the barometer at 1000 millibars.
Mo Siq, in a baggy tracksuit, was unshaven, his bed unmade. Through the day he drank five cups of coffee and the five dirty mugs were scattered about the apartment: one on the bedside table next to a paperback of Cogan’s Trade, the bookmark at page one-sixty-five where Cogan runs the 30-06 Savage semi-automatic rifle out the rear window of the car he’s in and puts five shots into a designated hit; another two mugs on the dining room table where Mo sat most of the day preparing a report; a fourth on the kitchen counter beside a plate with the remains, the crusts, of a cheese sandwich; the fifth on a coffee table next to a leather armchair in the lounge.
He smoked sixteen cigarettes: one stubbed out in an ashtray on the bedside table, twelve while writing the report, although he twice emptied the ashtray into the kitchen bin, three extinguished in a small soapstone dish on the coffee table beside his armchair. Alongside the dish and his coffee mug was the video case of the movie The Usual Suspects. Shortly after setting the barometer at 1000 millibars, Mo Siq sat down to watch one of his favourite films. Afterwards he ordered a marguerita pizza with anchovy, olives and capers from the St Elmo’s at the Waterfront.
The report Mo spent the day working on concerned opening an avenue for the minister of defence around the restrictive memorandum No 4 of 1997 that consigned surplus ammunition smaller than, and including, 12.7mm to be destroyed. Mo Siq believed that by circumventing this memo, not only would the state earn revenue, but he could arrange commissions that would benefit The Opportunity. At the end of his report, filed on his laptop under the heading New Regulations, a paragraph concluded that an export permit could not be issued for surplus state or parastatal stock that had been designated for destruction. Which gave the minister the loophole not to designate any stock as surplus. Mo reckoned nine million rounds would be made available with the minister’s signature.
Mo took the day off, a Friday, to work unhindered. He unplugged his landline, switched to silent his official cellphone, but left his private cell open. He made twelve calls on this phone: to his sister, to three women in different parts of the country, to a travel agent in India and a wine distributor in Ireland, to three hunting organisations in the United States, a Lufthansa freight manager, a former minister in the Yemen government, and finally to order the pizza. He made a single call on his official cellphone to ask his staff for clarity on some financial implications and this call he took on the balcony.
The pizza was delivered at 8:40 p.m. according to the chit, and Mo put the box on the kitchen counter and ate from it. He uncapped an Amstel and drank the beer from the bottle. While he ate, Mo stared at the lights of the Waterfront hazed by the rain beating against the windowpanes. He thought about The Usual Suspects and the nature of truth, and with this thought went over to his laptop and reread his report, marvelling at how a single word could change a situation. The gale threw a loud rattle of rain against the windows and Mo shivered, on the thermostat behind him switched up the underfloor heating two degrees. He hadn’t finished the beer or the pizza, three slices remained, when his intercom phone buzzed. He groaned: to answer or to leave it? He answered.
‘Mo I have to talk to you.’ He could barely make out the words against the storm noise.
‘Who is this?’
‘Mo. Let me up.’
‘Who’s it?’
No response. Then: ‘Mo, this is urgent.’
He recognised the voice now. ‘Ah for bloody hell’s sake, Sheemina!’ he said, pushing the lock release.
He saved the file on his laptop, brought down the screen and clicked it closed. Waited there until his doorbell rang, wondering what this was about.
The moment he opened the door, it slammed back against him and through the pain Mo saw a man rush at him, a blow smashed his nose, cartilage broke. Mo went down on his hands and knees, blood flooding his nostrils, leaking into his throat. He took two kicks to the kidneys in that position and collapsed on a kelim given to him by the travel agent in India. He didn’t lie there long: the man had him up by his tracksuit top, walked him on air into the lounge, dropped him in the armchair. The point when Mo saw the silenced nine mil in the guy’s hand. A big man, blond hair, surfer’s tan.
Mo probed gentle fingers at the hurt of his nose, the throb excruciating. Still managed to say, ‘Where’s Sheemina?’
‘Doesn’t matter,’ said the invader, ‘I’m what matters.’
Mo said, ‘What’da she wan?’ - the words running into one another with the pain of talking. ‘Who’re you?’ The stream of blood out his nose not letting him pronounce properly.
‘Questions, questions,’ said the surfer. ‘Slow down, china. Take it easy a minute, hey. Put your head back, it’ll stop the blood.’
Mo did, wondering why he listened to this thug, swallowing blood now but aware it was easing. He watched the invader picking his way round the room, examining photographs, objects, the video collection.
The guy said, ‘I’m Mikey Rheeder, I’m telling you that to be polite. No other reason.’ Mikey Rheeder then finding the pizza box on the counter top with the three uneaten pieces. ‘St Elmo’s,’ he said, lifting an olive from the topping, elastic bands of mozzarella coming away with it. Holding it in his left hand that was rigid like a claw. ‘Personally I prefer Moma Roma. A better kinda base. St Elmo’s they could make two pizzas outta one, I always think. They’ve got this thick crust here that gets too doughy. Especially when it’s not hot anymore.’ He turned to Mo. ‘You mind if I help myself?’ - lifting out a triangle anyhow. ‘You want another piece?’
Mo said, ‘Nug.’
Mikey said, ‘I understand.’ He put down the pistol on the counter, using both hands to hold the pizza slice to his mouth. Chewing and swallowing rapidly. ‘I saw this movie once, these dudes, two black suits, talking about the best burgers they’d eaten. Discussing the finer points. On their way to cause all kindsa shit they’re talking about burgers. That’s hectic, hey?’
‘Wha thew wan?’ said Mo, bringing his head down to test if the bleeding had stopped. It
had.
Mikey lifted out another slice of pizza and took two bites. Chewing, looking over at Mo. He put the remains of the slice back in the box, wiped his hands on a dish towel. ‘If it was a thin crust, I’d probably have finished it,’ he said, taking the gun off the counter. ‘The thing is this, Mo, Sheemina told me to tell you this isn’t about you and her. I don’t know what that means, she didn’t tell me. But whatever that was about, it’s not about that. What she told me to tell you this is about is what she called misappropriation. More than that I can’t tell you.’
Mo said, ‘Misapplopliation! Shi-t.’
‘Something like that,’ said Mikey, raising the nine to put one through Mo Siq’s heart, so much nosebleed on his T-shirt that the extra seep wasn’t noticeable. Most of the wound being at the exit point anyhow.
In the after-quiet, the rain against the window was like a child’s tapping. The wind gusts howling along the building.
Mikey found the casing, unscrewed the silencer, putting it in the left pocket of his leather jacket, the pistol going into the right. He took a look round the apartment, hesitated over the laptop. Leave everything was a standard rule. Crap, he decided, why not? Worst case: he could sell it. Then again, depending on what was Mo Siq’s line of business, Sheemina February might be interested in shelling out a couple of Ks extra as a bonus.
2
The cellar had been prepared. You came down the wooden staircase and opened the door on a room six metres long by four metres wide, the same size as the sitting room above, lit by a buzzing neon strip over the door.
The walls were hand-cut blocks of Table Mountain sandstone, cleaned of two centuries of grime and damp, freshly whitewashed. The floor, an overlay of flagstones on a foundation slurry of dung and mud, tamped down to a hard surface, the flagstones set into this. The ceiling of planking supported by thick rough-hewn beams.
The only furniture was a metal bed and a foam mattress, the foam new and spongy. No pillow or blankets on the bed.