Agents of the State

by Mike Nicol

  ‘And what?’

  ‘And who’s tracking me?’

  He didn’t answer. He’d disconnected. Bloody typical.

  Vicki shrugged into her coat, picked up her handbag and laptop case. Turned, about to head off down the concourse, stopped at the sight of two security men running, supporting a woman between them. Medics rushing towards them. The woman: Linda Nchaba. Dangling between the men, her head lolling, eyes glazed.

  Vicki started towards them, stopped herself. Don’t get involved, stay out of it. Henry Davidson’s voice shouting in her head. She didn’t interfere. Watched as medics arrived, laid Linda Nchaba onto a gurney. The men checking for vital signs, fingers at her throat, running in an iv line. Could have been a cardiac case they were handling. Then the rush away, the security men clearing a path through the ebb and flow of passengers.

  Vicki headed for her departure gate. Phoned Henry Davidson once she’d checked in.

  ‘Thought you might like to know, they’ve got her,’ she said.

  Henry Davidson responding, ‘Who is this her? Who are the they?’

  ‘Linda Nchaba.’

  ‘Got her how?’

  ‘How the hell should I know?’ said Vicki. ‘Stabbed, pricked, poisoned, doesn’t matter. She couldn’t stand, her eyes were gone.’

  ‘They? Who are they?’

  ‘Men. Airport security.’

  ‘Get on the plane,’ said Henry Davidson. ‘Just get on the bloody plane. Phone me from your hotel.’

  9

  Off Surfer’s Corner nothing doing but sloppy wind waves. Okay, given the south-east breeze you couldn’t expect anything else. Fish Pescado wasn’t expecting anything else. Enough fun on a paddleboard if you liked that sort of thing. When there was no alternative, Fish Pescado liked that sort of thing. Also if there wasn’t much else going on in your life, why not be on the water?

  There wasn’t much else in his life. Some insurance work, some background stuff on the mining industry for his mother, the whizz-bang business scout. That was about it. Couple of other jobs on retainer. Which was not to say that Fish Pescado was scratching for a living. He wasn’t. He was doing okay by his own measures. Life was on the up.

  His other business, the herb business, was ticking over nicely too. A few clients wanting to score a bankie of doob, nothing urgent. Nothing that couldn’t wait for a Saturday drop. Easy times for Fish Pescado.

  Might as well go surfing.

  Mostly, though, with Vicki in Germany, what else to do on a Thursday afternoon but go surfing?

  Fish spent an hour in the slop having fun. The paddleboard a great alternative when the waves weren’t serious. Only problem in choppy water, the shark spotters on the mountain couldn’t see the sharks so Fish kept checking the surface. Always lurking at the back of his mind, this imaginary great white. Big pink jaws agape showing sharp teeth. He’d been buzzed by whites a couple of times. Scary fishies cruising through, giving the baleful eye. The eye that saw you as food. No eyes like that this afternoon, hallelujah. When he’d had enough, Fish moved onto a swell, let it take him. With some paddle work he caught broken waves into the shallows.

  In the car park the car guard said, ‘There’s a woman looking for you, Mr Fish.’ Nodded towards Knead café, handed Fish his car keys. The good thing about this car guard, he’d actually look after your car, and your keys. ‘I tell her have a cup of tea meanwhile. I tell her you going to be some few minutes. Just having fun in the sea.’

  ‘Yeah, thanks,’ Fish said. ‘How long’s she been here?’

  ‘Half an hour.’ The car guard’s hand rocking in estimation. ‘More or less. I tell her, she give me a phone number, I’ll pass it on. She say, no, man, it’s better to wait. I tell her I can get you called in. She say, it’s okay, she can wait.’

  ‘Nice lady?’

  ‘Very nice, Mr Fish. Very quiet voice.’

  ‘Her car?’

  ‘Very nice car.’ He pointed at a black Fortuner. ‘That one with the dark windows.’

  ‘Tell her I’m just gonna get changed,’ said Fish. ‘Five minutes.’

  Fish headed towards his Isuzu, the car guard coming after him.

  ‘Ah, Mr Fish, man, can you do me a favour, man? The cop fined me again for guarding.’

  ‘What?’ Fish stopped. Frowned at the car guard. ‘Again? How much this time?’

  ‘Five hundred. The cop doesn’t like me.’

  ‘You’re not kidding.’

  ‘Can Mr Fish ask Miss Vicki for help with the legal?’

  ‘Sure,’ said Fish, ‘sure.’ Taking the summons the guard held out. ‘What’s the cop’s case anyhow?’

  ‘His sister loves me,’ said the guard. ‘That’s the problem. Foreign Congos not supposed to love coloureds.’

  Yeah, thought Fish, you should hear my mother on the subject. Fish’s mom a bit edgy about the Indian girlie in his life. Her phrase, as in: ‘You still going with the Indian girlie, Bartolomeu?’ Fish’s mom the only one who called him by his first name, Bartolomeu, after the Portuguese explorer, Bartolomeu Diaz.

  ‘Don’t worry, Vicki’ll sort it.’

  10

  Fish changed into a white T-shirt, board shorts, flip-flops, headed for Knead. Noticed a woman gazing at him, serious face, serious eyes watching him. Fish ran his fingers through his hair, surf-blond thatch. Good-looking woman, early forties, striking more than pretty, wearing a black T-shirt, a black scarf around her head. Fish thinking she looked familiar. He came in, she raised a hand.

  Fish caught a waiter by the elbow, ordered a double espresso and a Danish, pointed at the woman’s table. The woman standing up, waiting for him. He went over, introduced himself.

  ‘Please sit,’ she said, sitting herself. A tight, neat lady in designer jeans.

  ‘You?’ Fish pointed at her pot of tea, then back at the waiters. ‘A refresh?’

  ‘No, no.’ The woman fluttering both hands.

  A French accent there. Might be Senegal, could be central Africa, Mali even.

  ‘I have heard about you, Mr Pescado,’ she said.

  ‘Fish,’ said Fish. ‘Please call me Fish.’

  She smiled. ‘Fish? That is a strange name. Is it because you are a surfer boy?’

  Fish laughed. Shook his head. ‘No. Pescado means fish. At school my friends called me Fish. The name stuck.’

  ‘I like it.’ The woman went quiet, Fish watched her hands, fine hands, long-fingered, the tips meeting round the teacup. ‘You recognised me,’ she said.

  Fish nodded. Thinking, but from where: in a magazine, a newspaper, television? On television.

  ‘I am Cynthia Kolingba,’ she said. ‘Some men killed my daughter. Some men tried to kill my husband. He is in a coma. Probably he will not live.’

  Fish remembered: St George’s last Sunday. Murder in the Cathedral the newspapers had headlined it, not too bothered about the inaccuracy of the preposition. ‘I’m sorry about your daughter,’ he said.

  ‘She was four years old. Do you know what it is like to be hugged by someone who is four years old?’

  Fish shook his head, watched the tears welling in the woman’s eyes.

  ‘I can still feel her arms around my neck. I can still feel her hugging me. I wake in the night from a dream that she is holding me. But she’s not there. My bed is empty. Yet I can feel her.’ Cynthia Kolingba’s voice disappeared in a rush of sobbing. ‘That hurt inside,’ she said, stabbing a finger at her chest, ‘is worse than any pain. They can shoot me, they can cut me, they can whip me, I will feel nothing. There is no pain to compare with this: my dead daughter.’

  Cynthia Kolingba wept. Turned away from Fish, her face collapsing in sorrow. Fish let her have her grief, looked into the car park, thought of the anguish of mothers. Relieved he had no children to worry about. Thing was, you looked at the families rocking up at the beach in their suvs, laughing, joking, everyone chilling at the end of the week, and you thought maybe that would be fun. Despite the sloppy surf, moms and dads and sons
and daughters pulling on wetsuits, no cares in the world.

  Except one family’s life was shredded.

  Cynthia Kolingba brushed tears from her eyes. Poured another cup of black tea, her hand trembling. Drank it off. Stared at Fish with reddened eyes. ‘I want your help.’

  ‘I don’t see …’ Fish began, waited for the waiter to place his coffee and pastry on the table.

  ‘You have been recommended,’ she said, her hurt now suppressed, a dullness in her eyes.

  Fish bit into the Danish. God, they did a good apple Danish. He wiped crumbs from his mouth with the back of his hand. Took another bite.

  ‘I want you to find the people who did this.’

  ‘The police … Surely?’ Fish licked his fingers, took a mouthful of espresso.

  ‘Bah, the police,’ she said. ‘The police are very nice. Don’t worry, Mrs Kolingba, we will catch them. Don’t worry, Mrs Kolingba, the investigation is going well. Don’t worry, Mrs Kolingba, we have good leads. We will have results soon. Don’t worry, Mrs Kolingba. They are saying this. They can do nothing. We are foreigners. They think this is political.’

  ‘You’re from?’ Fish trying to remember, either Central African Republic or the Democratic Republic of Congo. Not much to choose from. Both of them less than stable. C’est la vie, Africa.

  ‘CAR,’ she said. ‘The newspapers say it was hitmen from my country. They say my husband is a threat to our government. That he is planning a coup. Everyone is a threat in my country. There are rebels everywhere. Muslim bands. Christian militias. I can promise you, Mr Pescado, Fish, my husband is not a threat. We are here in Cape Town, we are thousands of kilometres away from Bangui. I can promise you he is not planning anything. There is no reason for them to shoot my family. There is no reason to kill my daughter.’

  ‘Why’re you here?’ Fish asked through a mouthful. Then softened. ‘I mean, you’re here because you’re in exile, right?’

  ‘We are in exile, yes. We have no choice. In Bangui we were in danger, there is anarchy. Sometimes they shoot at our house. Sometimes they shoot at my husband. They try to capture my children, that’s how you say it?’

  ‘Kidnap.’

  ‘Kidnap. They try to kidnap my sons, from the school. That was why we leave Bangui. There are people who call it the Republic of Nowhere. They are right. CAR is not a country.’

  Fish popped the last of the Danish into his mouth, wondered if he should have another. ‘Ah,’ he chewed and swallowed, ‘when’d you leave? How long ago?’

  ‘Three years.’

  He downed the remains of the espresso.

  ‘Three years. Not such a long time.’

  ‘A long time. A long, long time. Every day I want to go home. I want there to be peace in my country. I want to live there in freedom.’

  Fish glanced at her, she held his gaze. In her eyes a determination. The same resolution he saw in Vicki when she got on a case. The come-hell-or-high-water attitude.

  ‘While you’ve been here, it’s been alright though?’

  She shrugged. The French comme-ci-comme-ça shrug, clearly it was part of the language.

  ‘We live in a nice area. It is quiet.’

  ‘Where’s that?’

  ‘Bel Ombre. It is a part of Constantia, near the mountain.’

  Fish could picture it: large house, large grounds, high walls, electric fencing, security cameras, buzz-boxes, armed response. Thing about these politicos, they went into exile, there was always money. Most times the host’s generosity. Sometimes foreign backers, investors with vested interests: the international mining houses or the Chinese wanting raw materials. Sometimes their own emergency funds in offshore accounts. You could have a good life doing nothing in luxury. Except, you looked at Cynthia Kolingba’s face, you saw something else. You saw suffering. Just glimpses, as if the pain came in waves.

  ‘It has not been an easy time for us, Mr Pescado.’

  Fish let the formality go. ‘You’ve been threatened?’

  ‘Some problems. There have been some problems.’

  ‘Oh yeah?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Some problems such as?’

  ‘There was graffiti on the garden wall a few times. Once they put a skull on the driveway. Once a puppy was poisoned.’

  ‘You know this, about the poison?’

  ‘The vet said so.’

  Slowly, Fish said to himself. What’re you doing here, dude? Like you’re getting into this thing. He ran a hand up his cheek, realised he hadn’t shaved. What must he look like to her? The surfer boykie. One of the Cape Town shoo-wah tribe. He leant back in his chair, rocked it onto its hind legs. Slowly, he thought, first things first. Came forward so suddenly, Cynthia Kolingba gasped.

  ‘Look, Mrs Kolingba,’ he said, ‘the cops’ve only been on it four, five days. What can I do better than them?’

  ‘They will do nothing.’

  ‘You can’t say that.’

  ‘They will do nothing.’ She said it with her face turned away from Fish, looking out at the happy families. Stayed that way, looking out; Fish letting the silence between them roll on. When she faced him again, said, ‘You know a man called Mart Velaze?’

  ‘Mart Velaze?’

  ‘He said you would know him.’

  ‘I know him, yeah. Never met him.’

  Not exactly someone Fish would call a friend. Fish’s only dealing with Mart Velaze being troubling. At the time Fish thought Mart Velaze wanted him killed. Not only him but Vicki too. Then there’d been their last telephone conversation: ‘I’m still out here. Yebo yes, I’m still out here. But I’m no hazard. No jeopardy to you or your loved one. Not at the moment. Enjoy the rest of your life, Mr Pescado. Surfing, smoking doob, investigating. Making out with Vicki.’

  Since then nada from or about Mart Velaze.

  ‘He said you would help me.’

  ‘Oh yeah?’

  ‘He said you were good at finding people.’

  ‘Mart Velaze said that?’

  ‘Yes.’

  Fish thinking, the only time he’d been involved with Mart Velaze and a missing person, he’d not found the missing person. Now here was Mart Velaze giving him the thumbs-up.

  ‘D’you know Mart Velaze?’

  Cynthia Kolingba shook her head. ‘No. He said he is a friend of my husband’s.’

  ‘Is he?’

  ‘I do not know.’

  ‘So why d’you trust him?’

  ‘There is no one I can trust.’

  Fish considered this. You’re in a foreign country, your family’s shot at, your daughter killed, your husband in hospital, what d’you do? You take a chance. A stranger phones you, says speak to this other stranger. Came down to it, desperate people would do anything. ‘What’d he say about me? Why’d you think he wasn’t lying?’

  ‘He said you are a private investigator. He said you find people who are missing. He said I must talk to you. He said the police will do nothing. He said I will find you here. I find you here. Can you help me, Mr Pescado?’

  Fish took a long time looking at her, both of them in the eyeball moment. You had to be crazy getting into something that had Mart Velaze in the wings. He nodded, saw something brighten in her eyes.

  ‘Thank you,’ she said.

  For the second time Fish realised she was a stunner. The sadness in her face quite beautiful.

  ‘I have money,’ she said. ‘What do you cost?’

  Fish told her. She reached for a bag at her feet, counted out the cash, pushed it across the table. Fish folded the wodge, stuck it into his pocket. He asked for her contact details, said he’d be in touch, probably over the weekend.

  As they stood, he said, ‘What was your daughter’s name?’

  Cynthia Kolingba keyed through the menu on her phone, held it out to Fish. An image on the screen of mother and daughter eating ice creams on a boat. ‘Calixthe, she was called. My mother’s name. We were going to Robben Island with the tourists, the day before the men kil
led her.’

  11

  ‘Who is this person?’ Kaiser Vula pointed at the image on the tablet screen. The image that of Fish Pescado and Cynthia Kolingba in Knead. The image slightly blurred, taken through a window. Kaiser Vula’s finger tapping on Fish Pescado.

  ‘I don’t know, Major,’ said Joey Curtains. ‘I just got in now-now. I thought, Major wanted to see this urgent.’

  Kaiser Vula rolled his chair back, stared up at Joey Curtains. The hotshot Joey Curtains. Bloody hotnot Joey Curtains always quick with the comeback, always a smirk on his lips. A smirk Kaiser Vula believed Joey Curtains was born with.

  ‘What’s it that I tell you guys?’ Kaiser Vula waiting for Joey Curtains to look at him. ‘What’s it I tell you? Every briefing, hey, Agent Curtains?’ Kaiser Vula liked calling his people Agent. It put them in their place. You are agents of my doing, he told them. Remember it. ‘What’ve I told you?’ He paused, stood. ‘Look at me, Agent.’ Waited until Joey Curtains glanced at him. ‘What do I tell you people? Don’t come to me with half a story. Half a story’s no story. Half a story is a waste of my time.’

  They were on the Aviary’s top floor, the floor where all the heavies had their offices. Downstairs in the Aviary proper it was open plan. Fieldworkers, agents, don’t need offices, the logic went. They need to be out there sniffing around. Give them a desk, a couple of drawers, a typist’s chair, nothing too comfortable, don’t want them lolling around enjoying the air-conditioning.

  ‘Her phone records? Have you checked her phone records? She must have set this up, this meeting. They must have agreed to meet. Who is he? Her lover?’

  ‘I only got here now-now with the pictures,’ said Joey Curtains.

  ‘Her phone records? You’ve checked them?’

  Joey Curtains nodding. ‘I checked, Major. Nothing unusual. No strange numbers.’

  ‘Ah, impossible,’ said Kaiser Vula. ‘They met. Nobody meets like that, by chance. How long did they talk for?’

  ‘Half an hour.’

  ‘Half an hour. Half an hour they were sitting there. Half an hour you didn’t think maybe you should go in there and listen? Half an hour. Ah, wena, man.’ He tapped his agent on the head. ‘You must use this, okay. What else you got?’