Payback - A Cape Town thriller

by Mike Nicol

  Into the far wall of the cellar, low down, about ten centimetres from the floor was a thick iron pin with an eye. A length of chain was fastened with a padlock to the iron pin and ended in a handcuff. The length of chain was long enough to allow whoever was manacled to lie without discomfort on the bed. The length of chain was not long enough to allow the captive to reach the door. The length was such that the captive would have to stretch to reach any bowl of food placed on the floor by the captor.

  When the door was closed, someone held captive in the cellar could scream and shout and never be heard even by those upstairs. There was no one upstairs. The house was empty. City Bowl Properties had a laminated For Sale sign tied to two metal rods staked on the pavement.

  3

  Mace Bishop wasn’t pleased to hear Ducky Donald Hartnell’s voice on his cellphone but he wasn’t surprised. He looked out the window at a dripping Dunkley Square, the cloud down low on Devil’s Peak and no let-up in the rain visible, and thought, why’d I expect this?

  From what he’d read in the papers, he knew the bones had become a major headache for Ducky Donald. Then again he thought Ducky had been handling the matter with unusual sensitivity.

  ‘I need protection,’ Ducky Donald said. ‘They wanna kill me.’

  On and off in your life, Mace wanted to say, someone has always wanted to kill you. Instead said, ‘We’re not in that kind of business, Ducky.’

  ‘What’re you saying, boykie? Just ‘cos I’m not some dazzling New Yorker wanting a face job, you’re not interested. I’m not asking a favour. I’m asking for a professional service. I’ve come to the best place in town.’

  ‘Very flattering.’

  ‘Not supposed to be. I’m getting phone calls from people who wanna unravel my intestines. It’s on tape. You interested to hear it?’

  ‘Enter the cops.’

  ‘Ah, come on. Do me a favour. Of course I’ve told the cops. The first thing I did, but they’re not gonna protect me, are they? They’re not watching my back. I need that, Mace. Protection. When I’m out there I need someone with my interests at heart because I’m paying him to do that. Someone like you.’

  Mace sighed. Probably louder than he should have.

  ‘Maybe this sounds tedious to you,’ Ducky Donald said, ‘but to me it sounds bloody frightening. Now, I’ll say it again, I’m paying.’

  ‘Forget it.’

  ‘It’s my life. I’m on my knees Mace, okay. What more? I’m offering to do this straight up.’

  ‘There’s another way?’

  ‘Sure, square one: Cayman and Techipa.’

  Mace groaned. ‘Not that again.’

  ‘It’s always there.’

  ‘What’s there?’

  ‘Stories for the taxman. War story for a magazine: two men’s act of mercy.’

  ‘That’s bullshit.’

  ‘No question. Except I’m shit scared, china, ‘n I need you on this one so don’t push me.’

  Mace laughed. ‘If you blab you’re not going to get me anyhow. Doesn’t solve your problem.’

  Ducky Donald went quiet for a beat. Then, ‘Mace, chommie, do it. Please. One last time. Fifty large up-front.’

  ‘Cash.’

  ‘If that’s what it’s gonna take.’

  ‘It is,’ said Mace.

  They agreed to meet at Hartnell’s warehouse, some place with a Paardeneiland address, in half an hour.

  A gust of northwester brought the rain against the windowpane and blurred the world. It was warm in the office. Quiet and cosy. The last thing Mace wanted, the last thing he needed, was to stand in a cold warehouse while Ducky Donald Hartnell explained why persons unknown wanted to withdraw his intestines from a hole in his gut.

  Mace gave Pylon the good news. Pylon lay on the couch in his office reading a travel magazine. Said, ‘Is the guy shitting himself?’

  ‘As much as Ducky Donald ever sounds like it, it sounds like it.’

  ‘Good.’ He held up the magazine. ‘How about this? Lake Garda, Italy. Glorious, hey? I think maybe that’s where I’ll take Treasure. Get away from this miserable weather for a few weeks.’

  ‘That’s a fly-in destination?’

  Pylon looked hurt. ‘I can handle it.’ He tossed the magazine onto his desk. ‘Is this a paid job we’re discussing?’

  ‘Absolutely.’

  ‘Our rates or his?’

  ‘Hey. I said we’d hear him out. Maybe it’s not even a job.’

  Pylon laced up his boots. ‘With Ducky Donald you know you’re never going to score.’

  Mace knew the story, at least the part that was public news. Come the end of the last summer, Club Catastrophe shut its doors. An event that got space in the papers and talk-radio time as Ducky Donald maximised the publicity. Spinning, it’s the end of an era that had seen its share of tragedy, the end of a personal journey. Even some star-sign bullshit that it was time for him to initiate new ventures. Nothing about what part his son Matthew played in this, although Mace believed he might have heard that he was going on to greater things, Ib-Ib-Ibiza or somewhere.

  He’d been invited to the bash on the last night but hadn’t gone. Didn’t want to be reminded of Christa’s kidnapping. But gossip had it this was a party to rival the opening, or rather the second opening after the bombing. Much the same crowd made up the guest list. Ducky Donald might be moving on but the direction he was headed required the influence of the same movers and shakers.

  Someone who hadn’t been at the opening but was at the closing was the estate agent Dave Cruikshank. Just before that party, he and Ducky Donald were quoted together in a property article. Dave was on about the ‘rejuvenation of the city centre’ as developers converted vacant office space into apartments while Ducky Donald talked about a desire to ‘contribute to the urban fabric of the city’. His words, though Mace felt he must have borrowed them. What it came down to was that Ducky and Dave had formed a partnership to develop the site.

  A month after the closing of the club, the demolishers moved in, and a couple of weeks later Ducky Donald and his new mate Dave were pictured in the Saturday Argus pretending to dig the foundations. Next to this photograph was an architect’s drawing of the proposed seven-storey block with loft apartments.

  Two days later they were back in the press. The excavations had been brought to a halt by a pile of bones. The archaeologists moved on site. Ducky Donald’s proposed contribution to the urban fabric had sunk its foundations into an old graveyard. Worse. These were not merely the bones of colonial Capeys, these were the bones of slaves.

  What a find, said the archaeologists holding skulls with teeth filed to points as television cameras swept over a jumble of skeletons sticking up through the mud and sand. Like they were trying to get out.

  Not a moment later but priests, imams, community leaders, politicians were clamouring for the remains of their ancestors. This was a sacred site. It should be a memorial. Part of the national heritage. It had to be protected. These people whose lives had been lived under the whip of slavery deserved to be honoured and left in peace. They were the builders of the city and yet again they were being abused. Tempers were raised. The situation got ugly. But until Ducky Donald’s call, Mace had thought a truce of sorts prevailed.

  They found the warehouse down a side-street in the middle of a row of buildings, each one closed against the rain and wind. The only cars in the street Ducky Donald’s BM and Dave’s Volvo.

  ‘Not a lot going on,’ said Pylon. ‘Where’re the sentries? The way everybody talks about these bones I’d expected them under twenty-four hour guard.’

  Mace parked the Merc close to the entrance and they made a dash for the door, Dave standing there holding it open, a cigarette dangling from his lips.

  ‘Hello, my son,’ he said, ‘never thought I’d be one of your clients, did you? Never wanted to neither. Still and all, welcome to the ossuary of Hartnell and Cruikshank. Keepers of the sacred dead.’

  The warehouse was an old bui
lding, wooden floors, exposed wooden rafters, a wooden catwalk running round two sides some three metres off the floor. Ducky Donald standing on the stairs to the walkway surveying a stack of seven hundred boxes. He raised a hand in greeting, came down to meet Mace and Pylon.

  ‘I’ve stored stuff in my time,’ he said. ‘Stuff you could do things with. Shoot it. Drive it. Eat it on one occasion. Merchandise with value. Bones’re not my style. Nevertheless I hired this warehouse to store them. I’m paying the rent.’

  ‘We, my son,’ said Dave Cruikshank. ‘Out of the development budget.’

  ‘Every day,’ said Ducky not taking in Dave’s interjection, ‘I’m losing money. Every day nothing happens I might as well have flushed hundreds of thousands of bucks down the toilet. Hear what I’m saying? I’m saying we’ve got schedules, contractors, contracts with penalty clauses, not to mention the loans we’re financing while these ponces in their frocks, Christian and Muslim both, tell us sorry boykies this is the same as a massacre site. Bullshit! It’s a bloody graveyard. That’s what it is. But no, to them it’s a site of atrocity. A place of mourning. On this spot the brutality of white oppression exacted - that’s the word they use - exacted its inhuman toll. I’m quoting. That’s the sorta shit they spit in our faces. You ask the archaeologists is this right, they tell you no these people died of old age, illnesses, the kinds of things that normal people die from normally. Okay. Alright. I understand the sentiment. In my day I was on their side. Much of what they’re saying I don’t even dispute. But Chrissakes we’re talking eight years later. Eight years into democracy. We’ve gotta let go of that stuff. So nevertheless I think, fine, this is a sore spot, these people have been dished shit for centuries what can I do here to defuse the situation?’

  ‘We, my son. We.’

  Ducky Donald spun on Dave. ‘What? What’s it?’

  ‘We,’ said Dave. ‘Our partnership.’

  ‘Jesus,’ said Ducky Donald, ‘I’m telling these two, they know what I mean, okay!’ He stared at Dave. ‘Now I’ve lost it. Chrissakes, what was I saying?’

  ‘Defusing the situation,’ said Dave.

  ‘Right.’ Ducky Donald flipped open a box, picked out a bone, a long femur. ‘We held a meeting. Asked them what can we do to be accommodating. No, more’n that, brought stuff to the table. Said we’d give the archaeologists three months to dig the site. Which, okay, legally we’re obliged to do. But over and above we give them a financial donation, your actual cash-in-hand out of our expensive loans which no bank manager’s saying, ag shame, let me chip in here for national reconciliation. Bugger me no. The banks want their interest. To hell with the touchy-feely. Leave that to the poor bastard on the ground. Anyhow, all this I do. We do. And more. Much bloody more. ‘Cos now there’s a problem with all these bones. Goddamned hundreds and hundreds of goddamned bones that’ve got to be stored. The archi blokes suggest the Castle. Lots of space. The military’s gone, the place’s been sanitised for the people. Why not? Get some poetic justice going here. The Castle protecting the remains of the people it brutalised. But hell no, that’s the original terrain of horror. That’s the place that caused all the shit in everybody’s lives in the first instance. Sending them there’s like dropping them in the dungeons. Donker gat here we come. Okay, okay. We hear them. We might think it’s crappy logic but we hear their pain. We put our hands in our pocket, we find a warehouse that is suitable to all concerned. Everybody’s happy. Let’s get on with the future.’

  Ducky Donald whacked the side of a box with the femur.

  ‘The dozers move in. The hole starts going down ‘cos we’ve gotta go down a depth for the underground parking. No problem, it’s just ground down there now. Dave here and me put our feet up. There’s been a blood-letting but hey we’re recouping. Next thing, outta the blue, slap bang an interdict, the bones’ve gotta be part of the building, there’s gotta be a museum on the ground floor. No more development until this is sorted. I thought about it. I thought how can we work around this. Maybe it’s possible. But then reality-check. Are you gonna live in an apartment that’s got a goddamned huge pile of bones in a room downstairs? Where every time you come home dog-tired at the end of the day there’s a memorial telling you how shitty were the lives of the people whose skeletons are stored in the room under your million rands of luxury. This’s not gonna work. Anyhow they can’t ask this. They know it. We know it. We go to court. We get the interdict chucked out. Hasn’t solved the problem of what about the bones? The frocks are still on about the bones of their ancestors. About disrespect. About the denigration of human rights. Writing articles in the newspapers. Phoning us at the office, at home. Wanting meetings. Harassment it’s called. I told Dave here, one day there’s gonna be a death threat. And one day, tru’as bob, there was. Not one either. Plenty. Only thing they haven’t done yet is nailed my pussycat to the front door.’

  Ducky Donald dropped the bone into a box, wasn’t the box it had come out of but that didn’t bother him.

  ‘But the day’s gonna come.’ He glanced from Pylon to Mace. ‘What I want from you guys is personal protection. Every time I step outside my front door. The same for Dave here.’

  ‘It’s costly,’ Mace said.

  ‘We’ll pay.’ He kicked at a box. ‘All this shit for a bunch of old bones.’

  4

  That afternoon Mace opened the door on a black couple, mid-thirties, smart and trim, he in leather jacket, roll neck, black pants, brogues, she in an open duffel coat, white blouse, tartan skirt, calf-length boots, both huddled under a J&B golf umbrella. The man with a wispy moustache; the woman with a face the colour of dry clay, careful eye-liner, red lipstick. They looked at him, the woman flicking her eyes behind Mace into the passage. The man said, ‘Mr Bishop?’

  Mace said, yes, thought, spooks.

  The man didn’t introduce himself or his colleague, said, ‘Can we talk to you? And Mr Buso if he’s in?’

  ‘About?’ said Mace, keeping them out in the rain. ‘Where’re you from?’

  They didn’t answer that. The woman, her hands buried in her coat pockets, said in an English accent, ‘Can we rather do this somewhere warmer.’

  Returnee back from exile, went through Mace’s mind as he stood aside to let them in, the man collapsing the umbrella, leaving it to drip outside the door.

  ‘Get stolen there,’ said Mace.

  ‘I don’t think so.’ Mr Brogues grinned at him, pointed at a BMW in the square, a black bulk visible in the driver’s seat. ‘He’s watching.’

  Bloody wonderful, Mace thought, not potential clients then. He closed the front door, directed them down the passage to the boardroom, calling upstairs for Pylon that there were visitors. The two went in, stood on the far side of the table, hands resting on the back of the chairs like clergy at a synod.

  Mace said, ‘What’s this about?’

  ‘Shall we wait for your colleague,’ said the woman. ‘In the meantime do you mind if we sit? This won’t take long, but no reason to stand on ceremony.’

  Mace gestured at the chairs. ‘That’s what they’re for’ - sitting down opposite them.

  Pylon came in, said, ‘Save me Jesus, the NIA.’

  The man smiled slightly, barely twitching his lips beneath the wispy hairs, the woman kept blank-faced. She could be a sheriff of the court delivering a summons, Mace reckoned.

  ‘You know them?’ he said.

  ‘No,’ said Pylon, ‘but you can tell can’t you? From the attitude. The clothing too. Smart-casual. Blend in with the crowd. Hi guys, I’m Pylon Buso’- extending his hand.

  The man shook, the brother’s shake. The woman kept her hands knotted before her on the table.

  Pylon shrugged, took a chair beside Mace. ‘So the National Intelligent Agency’s after some protection?’

  ‘Very funny, Mr Buso, but no,’ said the woman. ‘We’re here on another matter.’

  ‘Perhaps you should tell us who you are,’ said Mace. ‘Show us some ID.’

  ‘Th
at’s not necessary,’ she said. ‘Seeing as how Mr Buso knows where we’re from.’

  ‘Bit mysterious,’ said Mace. ‘Very secret service.’

  ‘Think of it this way,’ said the woman, ‘if it’s going to help you. We could give you our names and show you ID and you wouldn’t know if it was real or not. So we’re not going through the charade.’

  ‘Thoughtful of you,’ said Mace. ‘Charades would’ve been good though.’

  The agents exchanged a glance, the man getting straight to the point. ‘We’re not here on official business, not investigating anything, nothing like that. We’re not cops. All we’re wanting to do is put you ahead of the game.’

  ‘Huh!’ said Mace.

  ‘We believe you know a man called Mr Mo Siq. You were comrades.’

  ‘You asking or telling?’ said Mace.

  The man ignored him. ‘Since the settlement have you kept in touch?’

  ‘Are you investigating him?’ said Pylon.

  ‘As my colleague told you we are not investigating anything or anyone,’ said the woman. ‘Believe it or not we are here to help you.’

  Simultaneously Mace and Pylon pushed back their chairs.

  She said quickly, ‘Let me be frank. We know you had lunch with Mr Siq at Uitsig restaurant in November last year. We know you visited him at his apartment in early January this year. We know that in the same month he came here to your offices. We have the records of landline and cellphone conversations, not the conversations, but the times and duration of these conversations between both of you and him over the same period. We know you have not been in touch with Mr Siq subsequently.’ She looked from Mace to Pylon.

  Mace thinking, they’re onto Mo about the weapons transfers. Probably they also knew about the weekend jaunt to Luanda.

  ‘You can see that this might be of interest, under the circumstances?’

  ‘Under what circumstances?’ said Pylon.