by Mike Nicol
He scraped his fork around the plate. ‘So it’s not another woman suddenly?’
‘No.’
‘Still Mace we’re talking about. For twenty-four hours he disappeared the last time. Playing the big white hunter. Didn’t tell anybody where he was going. Just poof, Mace’s gone.’
‘He told Oumou.’
‘Oumou didn’t know.’
‘She did. Mace told her. I know that. Also Mace wouldn’t do it to Christa.’
Pylon pushed his plate aside. ‘He forgot. Something came up. Could be half a dozen reasons.’
‘Let’s go,’ said Treasure.
* * *
Pylon dropped Treasure and Pumla with Oumou and Christa. The women really worked up about this. He couldn’t take it seriously that Mace had disappeared, but okay he’d go through the motions: check Mace’s diary, see if there were any notes lying about on his desk. Put through a few calls to clients. Ducky Donald. Gonsalves. Francisco again. On a night like this it was the last thing he wanted, running through the rain from his car to the office door. The restaurants on Dunkley Square empty. No cars in the parking lot. Every sensible person indoors. What I don’t do for you Mace Bishop, he thought.
Mace’s diary had Francisco, Mount Nelson written at 4:30 and Christa at 5:00 p.m. No other engagements for the night. He paged back, but no strange names, no unattributed telephone numbers leapt out. Then Mace wasn’t a doodler, his diary a sparse record of appointments. No notes in the waste bin either.
Pylon made his phone calls, telling each one he was trying to track down Mace.
Ducky said, ‘I’m my brother’s keeper? Hell, china, if nobody knows where Mace is then Mace’s gotta be screwing his arse off somewhere. Randy bugger. So he should of been home three hours ago. So that’s news? Mace is a grown man last time I looked.’
Gonsalves said, ‘When you find him, tell him he can relax. Tear up the subpoena. The captain’s waved his wand.’
Francisco said, ‘I’m eating this cabulyou fish, got good texture to the flesh like I like it. No fishiness like I like it. Not bad with a sharp sauce. The waiter says to me, they’ve got it in fresh today, it’s their specialisation, been nowhere near the inside of a freezer. Bring it on John I tell him. Mace’d played his cards right he coulda been eating this too with some chardonnay. Tell him he missed out big time. Tell him justice is a donkey’s ass.’
Pylon sat back in Mace’s chair, played through the sequence so it looked to Oumou like he’d done the homework.
Four o’clock Mace tells Christa he’ll pick her up at five. Fifteen minutes later he tells Oumou he’s going to be home at five. He’s supposed to drop audio tapes at the Nellie at four-thirty. Must have been about four twenty-five, Mace shouted he was leaving. He gets into his car he drives out of Dunkley Square down Dunkley Street, left into Hatfield up to the traffic lights. Goes right into Orange, two hundred metres later swings left into the Nelson between the columns. Maximum couldn’t have taken more than three minutes even allowing for a red robot. Four-thirty Francisco’s waiting for him. He never pitches. In five minutes Mace Bishop disappears.
You laid it out like that, Pylon thought, it looked wrong. Unlikely that Mace suddenly thought of something he should have done. He would have made calls. He would have made the drop with Francisco, he was right there. No point in not doing it. So what happened?
Pylon locked up, drove to the Mount Nelson. Two security men at the entrance in trench coats and pith helmets came out of their warm sentry box when he beckoned.
Polite in the rain: ‘Can we help you, sir?’
Pylon asked if they could recall a red Alfa Spider coming in about four-thirty. The old style. They shook their heads, water spraying off their helmets. The one said he’d have remembered that sort of car, he’d seen it before, just a few days ago in fact. Probably, said Pylon, and made a U-turn on Orange, thinking, this was not a good scenario to lay before Oumou. Not encouraging at all.
He’d been through nights like this one was shaping up to be. They were long and dark, waiting for someone to pitch up. He put through a call to the vehicle tracking company that monitored their cars, asked the controller to get a reading on Mace’s Spider.
Not thirty seconds later the controller said, ‘I’d say he’s at home. Or in the vicinity. On that block of the grid anyway.’
‘Wonderful,’ said Pylon, hanging up, thinking any minute he’d get a call to say Mace had walked in. Maybe watching the soccer match was still a goer.
13
Mace opened his eyes, the only movement he made. He felt like shit. His head pounding, his throat dry, an ache in the calf muscle of his left leg. He lay trying to put together the run of events, listening, looking, smelling.
The smell was of damp, distemper. The paint job seemed recent but it couldn’t hide the smell. A familiar smell as the room was familiar. Not a room, more a cellar, his eyes taking in the stonework and the beams. A cellar like there’d been in the Victorian, cold as that too. Silent as that. He couldn’t hear any noise, no bumps, no footfall, nothing above the buzz of the fluorescent tube. In the cellar in the Victorian you couldn’t hear anybody moving above you either. Might be a wooden ceiling but there had to be stone and mortar packed on top of the boards.
Mace eased up onto his elbows, the pain hammering through his skull. He waited blinking, letting the throb settle. Saw then the handcuff on his left ankle, the chain running off the bed to the iron pin in the wall. He knew where he was then. He groaned, collapsed back on the mattress, something stiff and furry falling against his face. Mace reached for it, held up a child’s teddy bear: Cupcake, he reckoned. Had to be, the same spot on the back where the fur was worn away. The bear that’d gone missing, what, six months ago when the car was parked at the gym? So not some random theft, something deliberate.
That brought events back. Seeing himself clutching his jacket closed, running head down through the rain to the Spider, not looking around. Not paying attention. Beeping open the automatic locks from a couple of metres off. Dropping into the driver’s seat, the guy getting into the passenger seat at the same time. The guy in the Camry with the gun. The guy who put the same gun in his face, saying, ‘Roll outta here, brother, ‘n don’t tune any grief.’ The guy Mikey Rheeder.
Replying to him, ‘Piss off.’
Mikey Rheeder digging the barrel deep into Mace’s left kidney, telling him that at that range there’d be little left of the near kidney and probably very little of the other and a great deal of chewed up intestine in between.
Mace said, ‘Relax, okay.’
Mikey said, ‘Put the keys in, get us the fuck outta here. I can pull a trigger as easy as you.’
Mace remembered doing what the prick wanted: starting the car, driving slowly into Dunkley to the corner with Hatfield. Not challenging him with eye contact, playing submissive. ‘Don’t get worked up. Tell me what you want. I’m not going to cause you any shit.’
Mikey Rheeder laughing. ‘You bloody right there’ - coming round with his left hand, jabbing a syringe right into Mace’s neck. From there on it wasn’t clear to Mace what happened next, except the car going hard against the curb and stalling.
Mace touched his neck, winced as his fingers found the stick wound.
He sat up then, swinging his legs off the bed, ignoring the pressure bouncing round his skull. His wristwatch was gone, likewise his credit card holder, his belt, his shoes. Also the pen from the inside pocket of his jacket. A thorough guy was Mikey Rheeder. Mace stood, his calf hurt to put weight on, but was only a muscle-ache like he’d pulled a tendon. He shuffled to the end of the chain’s length, hardly enough slack to let him move beyond the bed. Sat down on the edge when he heard a key going into the lock. In came Mikey Rheeder.
‘Hey, bro, you’re up, hey.’
Mace said, ‘What’s your problem?’
Mikey, dangling a bottle of Black Label from his fingers, said, ‘My problem?’ Drank a mouthful of beer. ‘My problem. Hey dude, you shoot
me through the shoulder. You smash my fingers, you ask me what’s my problem?’ He stayed in the doorway, leaning against the architrave, pointing at Mace with the bottle of beer. ‘I’ll tell you what’s my problem. What was my problem. You was my problem. Except now you’re not my problem anymore. Now you’re your problem. Your own problem.’
Mace said, ‘Where’s this place?’
‘For someone chained to a wall you know what, you ask too many questions,’ said Mikey.
‘I know this house,’ said Mace.
‘Yeah. You’re a detective.’
‘It belongs to Sheemina February. Your boss, right. It’s empty now. On the market.’
Mikey grinned. ‘Like I said, clever dick.’ He took a swig of beer. ‘Know what’s gonna happen here? One day she’s gonna have a show house. The agent’s gonna open up ‘n think, Jesus, rats musta died in here. ‘N ‘strues bob, in the cellar they’re gonna find this dead rat. ‘N they’re gonna call the cops and the cops’re gonna say Miss February what’s going on here? Especially they’re gonna be interested when they find the bullet in you comes from the same gun that put a bullet in someone else just a coupla weeks ago. That’s gonna make them wanna talk in detail to her.’
‘I’d think twice about a plan like that Mikey. Anything involving Sheemina February I’d think twice.’
‘I have,’ said Mikey. ‘I thought the best would be not to be around. You see what I heard was that you’ve got some diamonds stuck away. I’m figuring to get those first. I’m thinking to send your wife a little video presentation. My idea is to do that now, get the show on the road.’
‘Had some diamonds,’ said Mace. ‘That is true. But I sold them.’
‘Sure,’ said Mikey. ‘I’d also say something like that in your position.’ He reached into a pocket of his cargo pants and brought out a camcorder. ‘What I want you to say is, “Get the diamonds”.’ He raised the camera, focusing tightly on Mace. ‘Nothing more. Just get the diamonds. Okay, go.’
Mace said, ‘I’m being held captive at our old home.’
‘Nice one, Mace,’ said Mikey shutting off the camera. ‘That’s what I heard about you, always the macho big prick. That’s okay, I got enough for what I want. Like they say, tomorrow’s another day. See you around, china.’ He turned to leave, stopped. ‘Oh yeah, I forgot to mention. What I’m gonna do later on is smash a couple of your fingers. Till then, my apologies, no room service, no plumbing. But, there’s your teddy bear and, hey, you’re not dead yet.’
14
A grey dawn, cold and dripping. The city below ghosting tall buildings through the mist; the sea beyond invisible. Cloud down on Lion’s Head and Devil’s Peak and veiling the face of the mountain. And in the kitchens of the houses and flats, lights on for breakfast; a smell of porridge and of toast, the raised voices of children and the television news. People leaving for their offices, kissing goodbye.
‘Please,’ said Oumou to Pylon, ‘you must find him.’ He held her hands, stared at the sadness in her brown eyes. The sadness that Mace was always on about, as if her eyes had seen too much.
For a couple of hours after midnight Pylon had driven the neighbourhood streets: round Gardens, Vredehoek, even into Higgovale. Nada, nix, nothing. Which was the weird thing about this, he felt. The car was nearby. Mace was nearby. The hell was Mace up to? The hell was going on?
The rest of the night they’d watched television, the five of them in the lounge drinking coffee, Pylon putting calls through to Mace’s cellphone every half hour. The girls slept, Pumla most of the time, Christa intermittently. Pylon thought he might have dozed off in the chair but never for long, and each time he jerked awake, Oumou and Treasure were staring at the television. Twice he phoned emergency services, drew negatives. The same with the cops at a range of police stations through the city and down the peninsula. Twice, too, the tracker company. ‘He moves, we’ll call you,’ the operator said.
In the grey dawn Pylon said to Oumou, ‘He’s not moved by eight, half past eight then the tracking company’s got a mobile scanner which’ll find the car. A couple of hours that’s all it’ll take.’
‘Oui,’ she said. ‘But why must we wait? They could have done this in the night.’
‘They couldn’t,’ said Pylon. ‘They’ve only got one mobile. That was somewhere else last night. They said to me they’ll have it here by half past eight. If Mace hasn’t shown up.’
Oumou looked at the kitchen clock: half past seven. ‘We are wasting time,’ she said. ‘There is trouble for Mace.’
Pylon turned away from her and back again. ‘What can I do Oumou? I don’t know what else to do until they get the scanner here.’
‘It is too late at half past eight,’ she said.
‘Phone them, tell them yourself.’
She did. They told her the other job had taken longer than they thought, it was about tennish they expected the scanner back.
‘It is too late,’ she said. ‘You must get here sooner.’
‘Lady,’ the operator said, ‘that’s how long it takes to drive it here, all right, from where it is now. The guy’s on his way. Full speed.’
Oumou looked at Pylon, no tears in her eyes but the anguish in them stung him. ‘Please,’ she said. ‘You must find him.’
When Pylon got to the office there was a CD in the letter box. No packaging, no address, no instructions. It came up on his laptop as a video clip and there’s Mace against a white background but the focus too tight to give anything away, Mace mouthing something. At the end a voice saying, ‘You want him back, I’ll do a swap: I get his diamonds, you get him.’
Not a long clip, enough to see Mace’s lips moving but not make out the words. The voice no one’s Pylon recognised. Cape Town white accent, although you got black and coloured guys with that accent too depending on the schools they got into. Which narrowed things down to about a couple of hundred thousand males.
Pylon thought probably not the sort of thing to show Oumou. At least not yet. Probably best not to tell her even. The thing being that Mace and his car might be well separated. The car dumped in a parking garage. In the tracking company’s block there being about four he could think of. He called them, suggested they start with the parking garages.
‘When the mobile gets here,’ said the operator.
Pylon said, ‘I’m not hassling. I know your problems, I’m just making a suggestion.’
He hung up, went back to the disc in his laptop. ‘You want him back, I’ll do a swap: I get his diamonds, you get him.’ Played that over and over.
The thing here being the diamonds. Weren’t too many knew about that deal. He wrote down the names on a notepad: Mo Siq, Stones Mkize, Mace’s broker. Brokers being brokers could let out this sort of information. Stones wouldn’t. Mo was dead. Pylon drew a circle round Mo’s name, wondering if there was a link in his killing to Mace’s disappearance. Remembering someone else who knew about the deal was Sheemina February. Remembering the call Mace had got from her before they flew to Angola. While they were waiting in the departure lounge. Wondering if that had something to do with this. Getting a bad sense. The sort that made him look out the window on a pissing-down Dunkley Square at a scattering of empty cars, no one staking him out. Made him think maybe he needed to get someone in, do a sweep of the office for bugs. A thought he put on hold, better now to let the cameraman play his game, no suspicions raised.
Instead Pylon called for the telephone records, his contacts wanting to know why he couldn’t wait a couple of days to the end of the month when he’d get the detailed billing anyhow. A special favour, he replied, and like urgent, guys, this morning would be good.
He spoke to Francisco. ‘Wanna know my sense here, pal,’ Francisco said, ‘my sense is the same as with Isabella. I try to get connectivity with her hour after hour. Into the second day I know she’s dead. I don’t sleep, I don’t eat until I get the call from Mace confirming. Then I howl. Make noises like I don’t believe a human can make. That’s disconcer
ting. People don’t answer their cellphones, it means they can’t. They’re dead or dying I’d say.’
Thanks for that, Pylon thought, hanging up, the phone ringing immediately. Gonsalves.
‘He pitched up yet?’ said the cop.
‘Not a trace.’
‘The case gets postponed ‘n he still disappears!’
‘This’s not about the case. This’s about something else.’
‘So report a missing person?’
Pylon snorted. ‘They’ll tell me wait forty-eight hours.’
‘That’s bullshit,’ said Gonsalves. ‘Some desk jockey gives you that kinda crap, call me.’
He didn’t take the advice, instead worked up another scenario: a hijacking. A long long shot: someone had an order on a red Alfa Spider vintage 1970s or whatever and some cool dudes pulled it in the rain. Stored it in a garage nearby. Stranger things had happened. Oupa K didn’t think so.
‘Chief, chief,’ Oupa K told Pylon in English, ‘listen to me chief’ - switching to Xhosa. ‘Nobody’s gonna want that car south of Lusaka. Not to drive around. The person wants that car’s gonna put it in a garage.’
‘Exactly.’
‘There’s what,’ said Oupa K back in English, ‘about two red Spiders in the city? Three tops. If I’m gonna roll that type of car I’d find out the owners. Settle on the one’s likely to cause the least shit.’
Pylon in vernacular said if he got any whispers to call.
‘Only a mlungu,’ said Oupa K. ‘No big deal.’
At 9:45 Pylon heard from the tracking company that they’d have the mobile scanner on the job in an hour, hour and a half max. At 10:30 they called to say they were starting the search, doing the Gardens section of the block first.
‘No,’ said Pylon. ‘The parking garages first. And you find it, you do nothing except call me. Nobody touches it before me.’