Capture (31 page)

He feels rested. His mind calmer, focused now. His rage wrapped up nice and tight, ready for when he needs it. He knows all he has to do is keep chilled and a plan will come about how to deal with Exley and Dawn, forming piece by piece in his mind, like his plans always do. 

He needs to take a piss and walks deeper into the house than he has ever been, toward the noise. The short corridor leading from the living room to the kitchen is crammed with old newspapers and magazines and bits of broken furniture and junk food boxes. The linoleum, cracked and buckled, is sticky with something that grips at Vernon’s shoes, making kissing sounds as he walks.

He stops in the kitchen doorway and sees Doc, wearing a pair of old swimming goggles, at work at the kitchen table, cutting into something with a small power saw. The room is a mess. The sink is filled with dirty dishes that spread across onto the tabletop smeared with something dark and greasy and hundreds of flies buzz around, eating. A big box freezer rattles and moans and more flies hang over it in a thick cloud.

Doc looks up at him and nods, then carries on with his work, the saw screaming, its blade black with blood. Vernon steps closer to the table and sees that Doc is busy sawing the toes off a human leg, amputated just beneath the knee. The leg belonged to a whitey. A woman. The toes are painted with chipped red nail varnish.

Fucken Doc. Selling body parts from the police morgue to the darkies for muti. Witchcraft. Juju.

Vernon is ready to reverse his ass out the room and find the piss-house when he is struck by an idea. He waves his hand and Doc shuts down the saw, the blade rattling as it slows.

The old boozer looks at Vernon through goggles peppered with bone chips and flesh. “Ja, Detective?” he says, using the opportunity to suck on the bottle of brandy that rests beside the amputated leg.

“Doc, what can I use to keep a kid quiet?”

“Permanent?”

“No, man. Just for a couple of hours.”

“How old’s this kid?”

“Four or five.”

Doc nods, then he rummages in a kitchen drawer and comes out with a small bottle with a rubber stopper.

“Put ten or so of these drops in Coke or milk or whatever. Should sort it out.”

Vernon takes the dusty bottle, the label long gone, and stashes it in his pocket. Not sure yet if he’ll need it. But it soothes him to know he has this, as insurance. Doc fires up the saw and starts his work again, detaching the big toe and placing it in a small ziplock baggie. Gets busy on the next toe.

Vernon leaves the kitchen and goes looking for the toilet. The passage runs dead at a bathroom so stinking that he almost hurls. There’s no light, but enough of a glow comes in from the passageway for him to see that the pot overflows with shit. The little room is heaven for the flies, singing like a church choir.

Vernon doesn’t go near that filthy pot, just unzips and drills his stream of piss onto the floor, and who is ever going to know? He finishes and leaves the house and goes out to his car.

He can’t face going home now, with his mother hovering around like a lost shadow, so he sets course for Voortrekker Road and Lips, knowing this is the time he’ll find Costa alone in the empty club, counting his money.

He’s going to sit himself down in Costa’s office and tell him to give Dawn another chance and if the bastard tries to argue Vernon’ll lean back in his chair, nice and relaxed, and say, “Costa, buddy, remember I know where the fucken bodies are buried.”

And the Greek will look at him and feed a cigarette in beneath his mustache and nod and do exactly what he’s told.

Chapter 47

Exley’s eyes flicker once and then open. Wide. There is no gentle transition from sleep to wakefulness, with dreams dispersing like mist. He’s pitched straight into a roll-call of the dead: Sunny wet and lifeless on the beach. The bloody Rastafarian. Caroline prone on the kitchen floor as life leaves her. The cop’s smashed skull.

Exley sits, fighting for breath, alone in the bed in the spare room. Then he remembers last night, remembers Dawn, and even if that memory isn’t enough to temper the hell of the others, it does get him standing, pulling on his shorts over his chafed dick, knowing that at least he won’t begin this day alone.

Exley goes into Sunny’s room. The bed is empty and he hears no voices. They’re out on the beach, he tells himself.

He pads downstairs and across to the deck, slides open the door onto the beach. It’s deserted but for a mob of seagulls fighting over the pizza crusts that Brittany dumped on the sand last night, Exley promising that she could watch the birds feed in the morning.

“Dawn?” he shouts. No reply.

He goes into the deserted kitchen, then runs upstairs again and sees their bags are gone, feeling a tightness in his chest and the grip of panic at his throat.

What did he do? Or what didn’t he do? He has no idea.

Trying to reach Dawn through Vernon Saul is not an option, and he has no phone number for her. He doesn’t know her last name, or even if Dawn is just her stripper’s handle.

What he does know, as he walks unsteadily back down the stairs, is that the little oasis of comfort that Dawn and her daughter brought is gone. It was just an illusion. Like his belief that yesterday’s crying jag in the shower had straightened out his head.

Standing near the kitchen, all alone and sober, the events of the last days hit him and take him down. Exley starts to shake and even though he staggers out onto the deck into the blazing sun, the tremors continue. He sinks into a squat with his back to the wall, clenching his jaw to stop his teeth rattling, and feels madness coming in to claim him.

He has no skin. No muscle and sinew and bone. Nothing to contain him, to stop him leaking away, disintegrating and dispersing into a future of infinite pain.

Exley has come, he understands, to the place where the debts are paid.

Chapter 48

Like fucken clockwork, is how it went. Just like Vernon knew it would. He stands on the sidewalk outside Lips, in the familiar sun-bleached ugliness, lighting a smoke, hearing the rat’s-claw scratches as Costa locks up after him from the inside. The Greek has agreed to take Dawn back. From tonight.

Vernon didn’t even have to bring out the threats. The fat white bitch Costa got in as Dawn’s replacement went and OD’d, so the Greek’s desperate.

Vernon, inhaling nicotine, finds himself standing across from Dawn’s apartment block, staring up at her place. On the sidewalk beside him a homeless darkie woman with white blotches on her face curses out a one-legged brown guy on a crutch, his remaining foot bare and cracked as elephant hide.

“Go to her, go to your whore!” she shouts.

The cripple says in Afrikaans, “But it’s you that I love. To her I’m just a sex toy.”

Vernon laughs at the ways of the world, wondering how the next part of his plan is going to come together, how he’s going to get Dawn away from Nick Exley. But he’s not hassled, knows he’s in the flow. That things will just come together for him now he’s at his creative best.

And he’ll be fucked if he doesn’t see a flare of sunlight as Dawn’s balcony door swings opens, like a welcome mat telling him to come on up.

The cramped apartment has never seemed so ugly. Or so hot. Dawn forces open the kitchen window in the hope of a breeze but all she gets is the stink of the plumbing so she slams it again. Nothing for it but to unlock the balcony doors, letting in the stale KFC and taxi fumes.

Brittany sits on the bed, eating a bowl of ice cream, talking to Mr. Brown, and it is Uncle Nick this and Uncle Nick that. Long and elaborate tales of how she swam with Uncle Nick, and how he bought her pizza and how he’s got a whole pile of Disney movies.

“Hey, Britt,” Dawn says, switching on the TV, giving it a smack to settle the picture that wobbles and floats and then locks on some South African kid’s show with crude talking puppets. “Come watch.”

But Brittany isn’t interested. She’s been given a taste, now, of another life, of a world beyond her dreams.

Dawn stares at the stupid puppets, their voices scratching at her nerves. She kills the tube and just parks there on the sofa, lights a cigarette wishing it was a joint, trying to tune out her daughter’s ramblings, but can’t help hearing Brittany telling the bear how her mommy’s gonna marry Uncle Nick and they gonna all go live there by the sea, Mr. Brown too.

Jesus. Enough.

She’s about to lose it with the kid, shout her to silence, when the all-too-familiar Vernon-knock sounds at the door. She puts a finger to her lips and Brittany, God bless her, shuts up. The two of them sit like statues, staring at each other. The knock comes again.

Vernon shouts, “Hey, Dawnie, I know you in there. Open up. I’m not pissed off, I promise. I got good news for you.”

It’s pointless to try and avoid him so Dawn unlocks the door and he comes banging in, looking like he’s slept in his rent-a-cop gear.

Dawn doesn’t meet his eyes, turns her back on him and goes and stands on the balcony, smoking. She hears him grunt as he sits, and the thump of his boot as he adjusts his gammy leg.

“So, Britt,” Vernon says, “you have a nice time there by the sea?”

The sick bastard knowing just how to get at Dawn.

Of course, this starts the kid up again, with her tales of the wonderful world of Uncle Nick.

Dawn turns. “Britt?” The child ignores her, pouring out tales of yesterday. “Brittany!”

This gets her attention and she looks up at Dawn. “Ja?”

“Go wash your face, it’s full of ice cream.”

“But I wanna tell Uncle Vermin ’bout swimming in the sea.”

“Brittany, I’m not talking again,” Dawn says in her serious voice, and the kid sighs and humps herself off the bed, carrying the bear, moaning and grumbling to him as she goes into the bathroom.

“Close the door,” Dawn says, and the door slams. Then she looks at Vernon, who sits with his hands locked behind his head, a cheesy grin spread across his face.

“So, Dawnie,” he says, “Llandudno not up to scratch, you back here so soon?”

Dawn tries to keep her expression neutral, to give nothing away, but his pebble eyes miss nothing. He’s got that thing abused kids grow up with, of being able to read signals in the air. See things. Make connections others can’t. Comes from watching people very carefully, sensing their moods, trying to protect yourself from them.

“Trouble in paradise?” he says, and again she doesn’t reply. Doesn’t have to. He knows that something is wrong, the smile relaxing, becoming more genuine. “Well, then my news is gonna be even more welcome.”

“Ja? What?” she asks.

“I just been over by Costa. He says you can come back. Immediate.”

“Serious?”

“Ja, dead serious. What you reckon?”

“It’s okay, I suppose.” She shrugs, keeping cool. But, Jesus, she needs this lifeline now.

“There’s a condition, though, Dawn. From Costa.”

She knows what it is but still she says, “What?” He just shrugs. “The rooms?” Dawn asks.

“Ja. You gonna have to work them. From tonight.” She nods. “You understand, Dawnie? No excuses?”

“Ja,” she says, “I understand,” and feels a circle closing around her with a solid little click and she’s back where she was and where she always will be, and that, as they say, is fucken that.

Chapter 49

What rescues Exley from himself is a matchbook. How long he sat there shivering in the sun he doesn’t know, but later, when he takes off his T-shirt, his face, neck and arms are thermometer-red.

His spell of catatonia ends when the wind, a hot little zephyr that hang-glides down from the mountain, ruffling the waves and stirring the beach sand, sends something scuttling into Exley’s naked foot. That contact, that merest of brushes, is enough to break the spell, to switch his attention from the blank screen within himself to a close-up of his right big toe with its yellowish nail, grains of sea sand sprinkled like talcum powder on the cuticle.

He pans left from the toe and registers the object that has re-engaged his nervous system: the matchbook that the wind sent skidding like a hockey puck across the wood of the deck, the cover flapping in the breeze, the crudely rendered silhouette of a nude woman dancing and beckoning. Exley reaches down and lifts it.

The word
Lips
is printed in a flowery font, the letters a blur of red ink from a poor print job. Below it is a line of copy that he has to squint to read
: For Gentlemen of Distinction
. There is an address out on Voortrekker Road, a place he has never been.

Exley understands that this is a portent. An omen. He has been sent Dawn’s matchbook, from the bar where she used to dance. They’ll know her there. Know where he can find her.

Exley stands, animated by a sense of purpose: he has the power to transform the lives of Dawn and her daughter. Lately he has been all about death and destruction, but now he can do some good. He knows this is some crazy shot at redemption, a way of cooking the karmic books, which is laughable of course.

But so be it.

The day is almost gone, the sun sagging toward the choppy sea, the shadows lying black and heavy across the beach. Soon it will be dark and this bar, Lips, will be open for business.

Exley showers, his sunburned skin stinging under the hot water. He dries himself and rubs aloe vera cream onto his arms and face to soothe the throbbing, and dresses in dark jeans and a black T-shirt, imagining this will make him look anonymous.

Reversing the Audi from the garage, he punches the address on the matchbook into the GPS and lets the schoolmarmish English voice—he dubbed her “Caroline” the first time he heard her—guide him out to Voortrekker, a long, flat road that drains the city of its broken dreams and traps them in an endless smear of short-time hotels, escort agencies and pussy bars.

Chapter 50