Capture (27 page)

Feeling the wind of karma at his back, Exley picks up the bag and takes it with him. To show the cop. Evidence against Vernon Saul.

Wheezing, sweating booze, Exley emerges on the dirt road that leads toward the disused Scout Hall. He can see the building in the distance, silhouetted against the lurid sunset: a shell of brick, with empty window frames and doorways, the roof bare to its trusses, all but picked clean by scavengers.

A light-colored Ford sedan is parked outside the hall and Erasmus stands leaning against the hood, smoking, surveying the palatial homes that follow the sweep of the coastline far below, the sky behind the mountain a strip of dirty red torn from the black sky.

“Must be nice to have money,” the cop says, not looking at him. “You bloody foreigners come here buying up everything, living in the lap of luxury. But let me tell you, no amount of money is gonna save your ass now.” Exley doesn’t reply, fighting for air. Erasmus turns to him, pointing that snout like a shotgun. “You going down, Mr. Exley.”

Exley nods. It’s all got out of control and he’s got to bring it back. Tell the truth. Tell how he killed Caroline in self-defense and rage. How Vernon manipulated him.

He’s about to confess to this creep with his unfinished face when Erasmus says, “So what really happened with your daughter?”

Exley’s confession gets stuck in his throat and he says, “What do you mean?”

“That drowning. Your wife off screwing Stankovic somewhere, I suppose? And you and that Australian doing what? Getting fucked up on drugs and just letting it happen? You bloody people are degenerate.”

Exley shakes his head, tries to say, no, that’s not what happened.

Even though it is.

But the cop isn’t done. Exley can feel the heat of this brown man’s rage and race hatred rising from his body. “Still and all I’m sure it’s a relief now. Daughter dead and gone. Killed your wife. Now your way is free and clear to get yourself some dark meat, way you people always do.” To Exley the man’s words have the weight of blows. “Oh, I know she was by your house yesterday, that little street whore. No time for feeling guilty about your dead family, is there, when you got a bushman mouth sucking on your white dick?”

A surge of fury collides with the substances Exley’s been ingesting, and the toxic mix takes out his nervous system for a few seconds, as if he’s suffered an aneurism. Dizzy, he falls back against the car, shaking, fighting for control. He has none and his fingers unclench and the plastic bag slips from his grasp and falls to the ground, the weapon inside gonging dully against a rock.

The cop stares at him and then sticks out a worn Hush Puppy and toes the bag open, the gunmetal gleaming salmon pink in the last light.

Erasmus laughs when he sees what’s inside.

“Oh, sweet Jesus, this is just great,” he says, sniffing the air in delight, his flaring nostrils holding their own little celebration. “You know, this was my final throw of the dice, meeting you here? I couldn’t find fuck all on you and your buddy Saul. My boss told me to drop it. Let’s not piss off the foreigners, he said. We need their money, he said. I was looking at being kicked out of Special Investigations. A fucken embarrassment they were calling me. And now? Now, I see a promotion coming my way.” The cop unholsters his own weapon and points it at Exley. “Pick up the gun.”

Exley doesn’t move. Tries to say something, explain, but his tongue is set in cement. Erasmus jabs him in the ribs with the gun barrel. “Pick it up now.”

Exley obeys, light-headed as he bends down and lifts the bag. “No. Pick up the gun by the fucken butt.”

Exley does as he’s told, the weapon leaden in his grip.

“So,” the cop says, “you come here to shoot me? Do it, then.”

Exley feels the trigger cool and slick beneath his finger, but his hand shakes like he’s piggybacking a steam hammer, the barrel wagging wildly.

Erasmus laughs at him. “Can’t do it, can you?” He reaches forward and grabs the barrel. Exley’s fingers slacken and the cop takes the gun and sets it down on the hood of the car.

Erasmus grins at Exley, gives him a little shove in the chest. “You bring a gun, sonny, you better have the balls to use it.”

Then he punches Exley in the gut, smiling all the while. Exley falls to his knees, his hands tearing on the rocky road. He knows this is it. His fate is sealed. That karmic wind is howling now, blowing him into as bad a future as he can imagine.

“Take a nice good look at the view,” Erasmus says, “because all you gonna see from now on is high walls, barbed wire and the smiles of the AIDS-rotten fuckers coming to rape your tight white asshole.”

Without thinking Exley scoops up a fist-sized rock and draws on some last reserve of strength to spring to his feet and smack the cop on his snout, hearing bone and cartilage go snap, crackle, pop. Erasmus makes an animal sound and sags, blood geysering from his nose, his weapon spinning from his hand. Exley hits him again. And keeps on hitting him until things go soft and wet and Exley is too spent to continue, on his hands and knees, drooling, gasping for breath.

It is fully dark now and Exley is grateful that he can’t see what he has done, the cop a dark shadow beneath him. There is no movement. No breath coursing through what remains of that crude nose.

Some instinct for self-preservation drives Exley to throw the rock as far as he can into the thick undergrowth. Then he takes the dead cop’s gun and puts it in the plastic bag with the unused surgical gloves. He forces himself to frisk Erasmus, finding his wallet with his ID. He takes that too. Making it look like a robbery.

Maybe.

Finally he grabs the pistol, lying on the hood of the car like it’s waiting for a game of Russian Roulette, and dumps it in the bag. He flees the corpse, down into the bush, fighting his way toward the sniggering ocean, his breath coming in torn rasps. He emerges close to where Vernon Saul executed the Rasta, the rocks lying slick and black under the night sky.

Exley throws the guns into the water. Follows them with Erasmus’s wallet. Then he strips off his bloodstained clothes and finds two stones the size of footballs. He ties his shirt around one and sinks it. Does the same with his jeans and underwear. Frisbees his Havaianas out into the swell.

He squats down, his dangling foreskin scraping the surface of the rock, and edges himself into the freezing water, feeling his balls shrivel, forcing himself on until he is submerged, kelp tugging at his legs. There is a moment when he is ready to surrender, to give himself to the ocean, ready for some
Finding Nemo
reunion with Sunny.

But the moment passes and he knows he is too pathetic and useless to kill himself. So he washes off the cop’s blood and brains and drags his body from the water. Naked and dripping, he scurries over the rocks toward his house, feeling more beast than man, and retraces his steps into the sanctuary of the living room.

He grabs a handful of dishtowels from the kitchen and dries himself, wielding a mop to get rid of his wet footprints on the tiles. Teeth chattering from adrenaline and the freezing water, he stumbles upstairs into the bright bathroom that bears evidence of another, more civilized, Nicholas Exley: a red and white striped toothbrush, shaving cream and razor, an uncapped deodorant stick with a coiled armpit hair caught on the sticky ball. Property of a man he’ll never be again.

He gets under the hot shower and scrubs at his skin until it hurts. The bandage on his left hand lifts free of the adhesive tape, slipping down toward his fingers, and he sees the fabric is stained with blood. His or the cop’s, he doesn’t know. He pulls the bandage free and inspects his palm. His flesh has knitted.

Exley leaves the shower and wraps himself in a towel. He drops the bandage into the toilet and flushes. The fabric swirls and dives like an eel but floats back to the surface. He flushes again and this time the bandage is sucked away.

Exley walks through to the bedroom to dress. As he pulls on his clothes he hears a cat’s choir of sirens. He crosses to the window and sees spinning lights high up in the bush, turning the night sky red as blood.

Chapter 41

Within an hour a perfect little new South African trio is at Exley’s door: the black captain, a power-dressed brown woman who looks like a lawyer, and a geeky white guy in jeans and a short-sleeved shirt with
Sniper Security
embroidered on the pocket in red cotton, a laptop slung from his shoulder.

“Mr. Exley, this is Captain Demas from Special Investigations, and Don,” the black man searches for a surname and can’t find it, “uh, Don, from Sniper.”

“Yes?” Exley says.

“From Detective Erasmus’s cell phone records we’ve established that he called you around seven thirty this evening.”

“Yeah, he called and said he was coming over, but he never showed up.”

The woman says, “Did he say why he wanted to see you?”

“No. Just that he had some questions.”

“And he never arrived?”

“That’s right,” Exley says, trying to discipline facial muscles that seem intent on betraying him. “Is there a problem here?”

The two cops exchange a look.

“Would you mind, Mr. Exley, if uh, Don, checks the surveillance camera footage on the, the…” The black cop looks to the geek for help.

Don points toward the small metal door recessed in the exterior wall, near the front gate. “It’s stored on a hard drive right over there. I can pull the data off onto my laptop in a minute.”

“Go ahead,” Exley says. “But he wasn’t here.”

“Of course,” the black man says.

Exley turns and walks inside. He wants a drink and a hit on a joint. Remembers there are still a few of the little bastards lying out on deck, like loose ammunition. Enough to get him arrested, if one of these cops sees them. What the fuck, that’s the least of his problems. He flops down on the sofa and stares at a tennis match on TV. Two Amazonian women grunting like wild boars.

The geek goes off to do his duty and the cops stand in the hallway, whispering.

“You can sit down if you like,” Exley says.

“No, we won’t impose,” the female cop says.

“Impose away,” Exley says, but they ignore him and the woman’s cell phone rings and she speaks rapidly in Afrikaans, a low, guttural tongue, words dragged up from deep in her throat like phlegm.

On the TV one of the Amazons hammers the ground with her racket and curses in some hill dialect. The other woman hides tennis balls in her underwear. The whole thing takes on the quality of a primitive ritual, freshly minted, and Exley is transfixed.

A noise behind him turns his head. The geek places his laptop on the kitchen counter and the two captains flank him. Exley can hear snatches of their mumbled conversation over the tennis.

The geek: “Nothing. No visitors. The detective wasn’t here.”

The brown captain: “Any sign that Exley left?”

The geek: “No. He didn’t leave.”

The black captain: “You’re sure?”

The geek: “The cameras don’t lie.”

Exley has to cough to mask his hysteria-induced hilarity. The technician is dismissed and the two cops come and stand over Exley like attending angels.

“So, Captains,” he says, “is there some problem with the detective?”

The black captain says, “His head was beaten in with a rock.”

The brown captain says, “Up near the Scout Hall.”

Exley says, “Good God, by whom?”

“We have no idea,” the woman says, her eyes holding Exley’s as intently as a lover’s.

“Did he have a family?” Exley asks.

“A wife and two children,” she says.

“They have my sympathy. How are they taking this?”

“Well,” the black cop says, “I imagine they are praying for a miracle. As we all are.”

Exley stares at him stupidly.

“Detective Erasmus is still alive,” the woman says. “Unconscious. But alive.”

Exley sees them out and closes the door and returns to the sofa. The tennis match has lost its allure, so he gets up and goes out onto the deck and sets one of Port’s little joints ablaze.

What next? he asks of the smoke. What the hell next?

Stupid. Fucking. Cunt.

The words run over and over in Vernon’s mind like a loop. Two uniformed cops have just left Lips—guys he knows from the force—here to check on his alibi. Telling him what happened to Dino Erasmus: head pulped to mincemeat with a blunt instrument. Probably a rock.

Vernon, suddenly blind to the naked slut on the stage and deaf to the pounding music, is back in a place long ago and far away, hammering his father’s brains out.

What the hell got into Exley and made him use a rock, for Chrissakes? Leaving Erasmus alive? He’ll wake up and talk. Panic seizes Vernon and he hurries to the men’s room.

A drunk Boer is in there, staring at himself in the cracked mirror, but seeing some woman as he says, “A bitch is a fucken bitch. And you, you’re a fucken bitch.”

Vernon grabs him by the shoulders, throws him out and bolts the door. The small room is airless and filled with the white man’s stink and Vernon thinks he’s going to hurl, his belly clenching up tight, but he breathes it away and the spasm passes, and he splashes water onto his face.

He’ll end up in Pollsmoor Prison with all the bastards he sent there. Tattooed mutants, rancid with AIDS, who will rape him year in and year out to get their revenge. He has already been warned.

The mouths of those men shouting at Vernon from barred cells and police vehicles and courtrooms become his father’s mouth, calling him a fucken little rabbit and burning him with matches and shoving himself inside from behind, saying this is what I do to little rabbits, leaving him bleeding and crying and all alone, his mommy giving his daddy eggs and beans for breakfast like there was nothing wrong.

Vernon flees the bathroom, his father’s sick whispers hanging in the air like old smoke. He tells Cliffie to keep an eye on things and pushes out onto the sidewalk, into the stifling heat and fumes and dust, walking into the night. He doesn’t know where he’s going, trying to shake those whispers like sandpaper on his skin.