Payback - A Cape Town thriller

by Mike Nicol

  Francisco didn’t respond beyond a shrug.

  In that gloom the dunes came up white, rolling away into a fog bank. Mace slowed, anticipating the farm gate beyond them but even so, overshot and had to U-turn, driving back along the gravel shoulder.

  The gate was locked. The farm track mostly under water. Only advantage was the rain had stopped.

  ‘It’s here?’ said Francisco.

  Mace pointed down the track and into the dunes. ‘About two hundred metres.’

  Francisco conjured a camera from his raincoat pocket, took some snaps of the gate and the track and the dunes beyond.

  ‘You’ve been out here a coupla times?’ he said.

  Mace nodded, tested the wire strands of the fence and climbed over. ‘In the summer. Not since.’

  They stood either side of the gate.

  ‘You and her had this thing, right?’

  ‘Once. We went back some years.’

  ‘I’m assuming. She never talked about it, her feelings, just every now ‘n then the name Mace Bishop would drop into her conversation.’

  Mace held out his hand. ‘I’ll take the camera while you climb over.’

  Francisco gave it to him. ‘This’s not interrogational Mace, I’m telling you is all.’ He put his foot on the middle strand of wire and jiggled it. ‘Isabella I couldn’t figure. Her marrying the jerk. Her not putting the romantic clinch on you. This’s mysterious to me. I reckon she had other scenes. A woman like that musta done. But she holds tight to the dickhead till he fucking does her.’ He climbed onto the gate and Mace steadied him but he came down the other side badly, falling on a knee and a hand, soaking the cuff of his coat, likewise his lower trouser leg. ‘Ah shit. Ah for saint’s sake, man. Ah Lord Jesus look at this?’ He picked himself up. ‘This is what I truly need.’ He flapped his arm, stared down at his brogues. ‘One thing I’ve no partiality to is wet socks.’ He shook his head. ‘Okay, this’s my safari. This is what I have to do. So we better do it.’

  Mace gave him back the camera and he took it, gripping Mace’s hand.

  ‘What I’m asking now Mace is, she mean anything to you’- he thumped his chest - ‘here in your heart?’

  Mace didn’t answer him. Held his eyes until Francisco, releasing his grasp, said, ‘Yeah, I guessed, I suppose.’

  They walked down the track without speaking, wading through vlei sponge that put water into their shoes. About a hundred metres farther, a path forked left off the track into the dunes, the going easier on the hard wet sand. The dune grass thickened and they entered the hollow where Isabella had been shot. Except the hollow was now under water.

  Francisco stood beside Mace, his breathing fast. ‘This’s it?’

  ‘In the summer it’s dry,’ Mace said. ‘Though you wouldn’t believe so.’

  ‘And the spot’s in there? Under the water.’

  Mace nodded.

  ‘Ah bloody saints,’ Francisco said, taking a small, framed photograph of Isabella from his coat pocket. ‘I wanted to lay this there.’ He flipped it into the centre of the pond and they watched it sink, zigzagging out of sight. ‘That about right you think?’

  Mace told him it was, and for ten minutes they stood there until Francisco said, ‘Are you a praying man, Mace?’

  Mace told him no.

  Francisco picked at a head of dune grass, threw it on the surface. ‘In the sense I’m meaning, me neither. I do mass. I’d want a priest at my dying. But I don’t pray. Isabella wouldn’t even believe I asked you that question.’

  Mace’s phone started ringing.

  ‘I reckon standing here’s as good as that. All the places she’d been she could of died. Yet this is it. A sainting pond in a sand dune outside a city in saint knows where.’ He clicked off some photographs. ‘God’s divine scheme this’s supposed to be. Tell me about it, pal. Tell me where there’s the hand of God, for saint’s sake.’

  Mace fished his cell from the inside pocket of his jacket: Ducky Donald’s name on the screen. He thumbed him on, said, ‘I’ll call you back’ - disconnecting before the other man could get a word in.

  Francisco turned to face him, red-eyed. ‘After your justice’s gone the course, that’s not the end of it for Paulo. The broad neither.’

  Mace held his gaze. ‘Probably justice won’t go its course.’

  ‘I was wondering about that.’ He nodded, offered his hand. They shook. ‘You better get onto your caller.’

  As they headed back across the sand, Mace phoned Ducky.

  ‘Chrissake,’ Ducky yelled. ‘You cut me off. I’m dealing with major shit here, Mace, ‘n you cut me off.’

  Mace grimaced at the sky, speckles of rain on the wind again. ‘What’s it, Ducky?’

  ‘Big trouble. Like you wouldn’t believe.’

  ‘Why don’t you tell me?’

  Ducky gave his hyena laugh. ‘The goddamned warehouse burnt down. How about that! In all the rain. Wooma it’s gone. Dust to dust, bones to ashes.’

  Mace waited at the gate while Francisco climbed over. ‘That wasn’t smart, Ducky.’

  ‘Shit happens,’ he said. ‘I need to get there Mace. Pronto, show my disappointment and dismay at this disaster.’

  The roof of the warehouse had burnt out completely, not a blackened rafter remaining. The walls stood but everything that was wood had gone up: the doors, the floor boards, the catwalk, the stairs to the walkway. Metal window frames warped in the heat, the panes of glass blown out. You didn’t have to be a fireman to know this had been a fierce blaze.

  By the time Mace got there the drama was well over: the street still blocked off by a fire services’ car and a cop van pulled across it either end, but the fire tenders long gone. In the smouldering shell stood a knot of men, Ducky Donald and Pylon among them. With the sprung floor burnt away, the foundation cellar seemed an ancient ruin of columns and short walls, black sludge and mud. Like being in Pompeii, Mace thought, jumping down. Roofing sheets and other charred debris scattered about. The ground still hot.

  Pylon walked him aside before he could join the group. ‘This’s him again?’

  ‘I’d reckon.’

  ‘But you wouldn’t tell from how he’s acting. In character as soon’s I picked him up: “this is a tragedy, just when everything’s sorted out” - words to that effect.’

  ‘And the bones?’

  ‘Ashes, mostly. Odd bits here and there where you can see anything under the roof sheeting. But what’s wood ash ‘n what’s human ash who can tell?

  ‘The priests will love this.’ Mace looked over at the group of men. ‘What’s the fire chief say?’

  ‘He’s talking a probable electrical fault but he’s dubious. Because of the intensity. Also a fault would’ve triggered the alarm. The alarm would’ve brought out the security patrol. Didn’t happen.’

  ‘What did?’

  ‘Smoke detector next-door got the fire services here before the street went up. The timeline’s something like: security logs a fire alarm at five-fifty thereabouts, the patrol checks it out, calls the fire brigade maybe six minutes later, it takes them ten minutes to get an engine here. Say six-twentyish they’re on the job. Seven the fire’s doused. Most of the damage done before anybody knew about it.’

  ‘And Ducky’s security system didn’t trigger.’

  ‘Probably I’d say it was switched off.’

  ‘Bloody pyromaniac.’

  ‘What’s puzzling the fire chief is why the floor burnt first. Usually it’s the roof he says.’

  Mace noticed the knot of men breaking up, Ducky Donald limping towards them.

  ‘The forensics’ll get him. Or rather put it down to arson. But what’s that prove? Ducky’ll say it was a set-up, probably caused by the same people as are trying to kill him. Makes sense.’

  ‘Except for the security system failing.’

  ‘Dud technology. Why not? Happens all the time.’

  Ducky Donald called out. ‘Christ, do I need this!’

  ‘Don’t you?
’ Mace asked ‘Seems to me to sort out a problem.’

  ‘What’s that?’ Ducky dusted his hands.

  ‘Nothing left to fight over.’

  He squinted at Mace. ‘Boykie, you’re too cynical. Anybody ever told you that?’

  ‘Also frees up the storage commitment.’

  ‘I was good for that. You heard me tell her.’

  ‘Tell her what?’ said the voice of Sheemina February, and they looked up and she stood there in what had once been the doorway, their heads level with her boots.

  At any other time Mace might have said he could see what Mo Siq had seen when he married her. This alluring woman - black coat, black gloves, black hair - the flash in her pale blue eyes and the half-smile. The tips of her teeth white against her lipstick. At any other time.

  ‘Last night,’ she said, ‘we had an arrangement, Mr Hartnell. Draw up the contract, I’ll sign it you said.’ She held out her briefcase. ‘It’s in here. I took you on good faith. Funny thing this fire should happen now.’

  ‘Changes nothing,’ said Ducky. ‘I’m good for my word.’

  She forced a laugh. ‘Good for what? Taking a scoop of sand and ash from where you’re standing and plastering it onto a wall.’

  ‘Of course. Make the ancestors part of the building.’

  ‘Nice try, Mr Hartnell. But we don’t want our ancestors churned up in a concrete mixer.’

  She stared at the men, each one in turn. Mace met her eyes, held them until she said, ‘I’m calling a press conference. For tomorrow morning, in the Slave Lodge probably. Be there.’ And swirled away, Ducky Donald shouting after her, ‘Wait, wait.’

  ‘Forget it,’ Mace said.

  ‘Ah, shit, man.’ Ducky groaned. ‘They’re gonna crucify me.’

  Pylon patted him on the shoulder. ‘Keep spinning, bro, you’ll think of something.’

  Mace drove a subdued Ducky Donald home, didn’t stop for the coffee and a shot he offered.

  ‘You’ll get me to the lion’s den tomorrow?’

  ‘As per our agreement.’

  Ducky didn’t think it was funny, slammed closed the Spider’s door.

  When Mace got back to the office the sheriff’s man was waiting with a subpoena. A day starts badly it continues like that all the way, he thought.

  12

  Christa phoned Mace at 4:03 p.m. To remind him they were swimming that afternoon.

  ‘At five,’ he said, ‘I’m collecting you, as usual right?’

  ‘Just checking.’

  ‘You want to skip this one because of the weather?’

  It’d rained all day. It was cold. People were calling into the radio talk-shows to say there was snow on the lower slopes of the Hottentots Hollands, it must be thick higher up. If you could even see higher up, the clouds were so low.

  Christa giggled. ‘Never.’

  ‘I’ll see you at five.’

  ‘You can come earlier.’

  ‘No chance C, I’ve got this client, seriously strange man’ - and he dropped his voice to describe him.

  ‘Papa,’ she said, not really listening, ‘could we go to the mountains? To see the snow.’

  ‘Hey, there’s an idea,’ he said. ‘Why not? Talk to your mother. She’s at home?’

  ‘Downstairs.’

  ‘Ask her to make a booking for the weekend. At a farm B&B. The farmers do it when there’s snow.’

  ‘Papa,’ she said, drawing out the vowels, ‘what about our holiday?’

  ‘Your mother’s working on it,’ said Mace, ‘talk to her.’

  At 4:12 p.m. Oumou phoned Mace.

  ‘What is it Christa is talking about?’

  ‘There’s snow on the mountains. She wants to see it.’

  ‘Ah oui. This is what she is saying, about sleeping on a farm.’

  ‘See if you can’t make a booking somewhere. I’d do it but I haven’t got the time.’

  ‘Later you swim?’

  ‘Five o’clock. I told Christa five. As usual, I’ll pick her up. You coming with us?’

  ‘This is possible.’

  ‘Make her day. Mine too.’

  At 5:15 p.m. Oumou phoned Mace again. Got his voicemail and left a message: ‘Why are you late? We are waiting.’ Called again at 5:34 p.m. And then at 5:52 p.m.

  ‘Where’s your father?’ she said after the last call. ‘He said he would be here at five o’clock.’

  ‘He’s always late, Maman,’ said Christa. ‘You know.’ She put down her book, switched on the television to see the snow on the news.

  ‘For your swimming times he is never late.’

  She phoned Pylon, said, ‘Is my husband with you?’

  ‘I’m at home,’ he said. ‘Mace said he was going swimming.’

  ‘We are waiting for him. Since five o’clock.’

  ‘You’ve phoned him?’

  ‘Oui. Three times already. There is just his voicemail.’

  ‘I’ll call you back,’ said Pylon.

  At 6:01 p.m. Pylon phoned Mace and got his voicemail. He called Oumou immediately and said Mace was going to stop at the Mount Nelson on his way home to drop off some audio tapes. With an American called Francisco. About the murder case.

  ‘This is Isabella’s brother? He told me.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Pylon. ‘Maybe they’re having a drink.’

  ‘He would have phoned to tell Christa.’

  ‘I’ll talk to Francisco,’ said Pylon.

  He phoned the hotel, was patched through to Francisco in the bar.

  ‘So where’s your partner, amigo?’ Francisco said. ‘He tells me half past four, I get here half past four, the barman puts together a dry martini that it turns out he learnt how to make in New York, but I’m stood up. Undeniably. I tell the barman give me another, my man says he’s coming, my man keeps his word. Like the French Louis says it, punctuality is the politeness of kings. Nothing truer my friend. To show respect. An attribution I believed of Mace Bishop. Up till an hour thirty ago. That’s way over my leeside. Ten minutes, this happens at the end of the day. Bad traffic. You’re running late through your schedule. This I understand. But you call. You say, give me ten, fifteen, whatever. This I would’ve thought of Mace. How he strikes me is what they call fastidious. Know what I mean?’

  Pylon told Francisco that when Mace pitched up would he ask him to make some phone calls urgently. To his wife for starters, and to him, Pylon.

  ‘We’re talking some unusualness here?’ said Francisco. ‘Like maybe he’s had an accident?’

  ‘Wouldn’t know. I’m checking.’

  Pylon got through to his contacts on the paramedics. The guys laughed. No crashes involving red Alfa Spiders in living memory let alone the last hour. Two Golfs, one Beemer, a taxi minibus, one pedestrian dead on the highway. Nothing serious otherwise. Fender benders in the wet.

  He hung up, went through to Treasure in the kitchen. ‘I’m supposed to worry about Mace, d’you think?’

  She asked him worry about Mace doing what? He told her. She said, ‘He’s got a woman, maybe?’

  Pylon thought about this. About the rosebud in the box. About Mace and women. But it didn’t gel: Mace looked but wouldn’t go further. Whatever the rosebud was about, a secret admirer, a client getting cute, Mace wasn’t on the prowl. That he’d put money on.

  ‘I don’t think so,’ he said. ‘Something must’ve come up. Could be over the fire. Could be Gonsalves about the case.’

  ‘He’d have let you know.’

  ‘This’s true.’

  ‘Unless it’s a woman.’

  ‘I can’t see that.’

  Treasure kept stirring the risotto.

  Pylon tapped his fingers on the countertop. ‘The best thing here is to sit it out.’

  At 6:51 p.m. Oumou phoned Mace, the call went to voicemail. Christa wasn’t watching television anymore. The television was on, but she was staring at a book open on her lap not reading it either. Waiting. Oumou had to do something. Couldn’t sit there, went to the kitch
en to put a meal together: a pot of fish stew on the hob, a ciabatta warming in the oven like Mace was going to walk in at any moment - Hey, girls, sorry I’m late, this client, you just wouldn’t believe … - stooping to give Christa a kiss, giving her a hug as he now did every evening. The loving Mace. At 6:51 p.m. she picked up the cellphone lying on the counter: names, search, Mace, thumbed on the key with the little green icon of a telephone. Listened to seven rings willing him to answer until the voicemail clicked in. She didn’t leave a message. Put the cell on the countertop, took the lid off the stew to stir it, turned the heat to its lowest setting. Replaced the lid, balanced the wooden spoon against the hob. She looked up, stared at the city lights smudged by the condensation on the window. Swallowed to stop the hollowness in her stomach, and phoned Pylon.

  ‘Something has happened,’ she said. ‘Please.’

  Pylon forked up another mouthful of risotto, his favourite risotto with the toasted almond flakes and the croutons. Began to wonder if settling in front of the TV to watch the Bafana match mightn’t be at stake here.

  ‘It is two hours,’ said Oumou. ‘This is not normal for Mace. At five o’clock he was swimming with Christa. That was what he arranged. For his swimming, Mace would not be late. Please. Something has happened. Still he is not answering.’

  Pylon put down the forkful of risotto. Two hours in the life of Mace Bishop was not a long time to go missing.

  ‘Why don’t we wait another hour,’ he said. ‘You know Mace.’

  ‘Non,’ she said. ‘Not for this time. For this time he is in trouble. I can feel it.’

  Pylon glanced across the table at Treasure and Pumla. Both were looking at him. Treasure reached out her hand for the phone. He gave it to her, thinking, so much for the chances of watching soccer.

  ‘Oumou,’ she said. ‘What’s it?’

  He could hear Oumou talking, Treasure nodding as she listened. He ate the forkful of risotto, crunching almond flakes.

  Treasure said, ‘Alright, alright. Oumou listen. We’re coming over. Give us half an hour.’ She put down the phone, said to Pylon. ‘She’s crying. She knows something’s wrong. Oumou doesn’t cry for nothing.’