Capture (34 page)

This place is imagination’s graveyard.

Jesus, what the fuck are you doing? he asks himself. What are you thinking? And there’s a moment when he’s ready to get the hell out and not look back.

Too late.

Dawn walks in and closes the door and locks it, turns to him and scans his face. “What were you expecting, Nick? A penthouse?”

“No, no. It’s fine.”

She smiles at him. “Don’t bullshit me. It’s a fucken hole and I know it.” She crooks a finger at him. “Come here.” Walking across to the kitchen window, forcing it open.

Nick follows her and his nostrils twitch at the gassy plumbing stench that wafts in. The narrow window offers a slice of a railroad line, a bridge, a strip of low-rent stores and then an endless expanse of small cramped houses and faceless ghetto apartment blocks.

“You know what that is?” she asks.

“The Cape Flats?”

“Ja. Ever been there?”

“No.”

“Okay, that’s where I grew up. For most people living out there, a place like this is their idea of heaven. When I was a kid I lived in a house smaller than this room but there were sometimes ten of us in it. I never wanted that for Britt, so I shat off and did whatever I had to do, to get us here and keep us here.”

“I understand, Dawn,” he says.

“No, Nick, you don’t bloody understand. By the time I was Brittany’s age my uncle and his three sons, and sometimes their buddies, had been raping me for years.” She sees his face but continues, relentless. “It went on until I was ten and the social services finally got it together to take me away from my fuck-up mother and put me in an orphanage. I ran away when I was sixteen and started hooking.”

“I’m sorry.” His words hollow to his ears.

“Don’t be. It’s a long time ago. Believe me, it goes on out there every day, kids raped and murdered like some epidemic.” She lights a cigarette, inhales and looks him dead in the eye. “So me, I’m damaged goods, okay?” Exhales. “But Britt, now, she’s my jewel. I won’t let that shit happen to her. Ever. And yes, I fucked up last night and I’m grateful to you for saving me. Saving us. Honest to God, I am. But let me tell you one thing straight: I won’t never let Britt get hurt. Not only in that way, the way I was, but in any way. You hearing me?”

“Yes.”

“Like I won’t let her get used to things and then lose them. I know you’re on some crazy grief trip and you see me and her and you think, okay, this could work, and maybe you even mean well, but what if down the road you wake up and go: hang on, I’m Nick Exley, what the fuck am I doing with that colored whore and her bastard kid?” He tries to protest but she wields the cigarette like a weapon, shutting him up. “Wait. I want you to know what that would do to Brittany. I want you to really think now. I’ve told you what I am. I’ve told you what I won’t let happen. So, you got second thoughts just walk out that door, no hard feelings.”

“I’m not going anywhere,” he says, ashamed she can read him so well.

“Okay, then.” She exhales smoke, left breathless by this outpouring. “But, Nick, you ever hurt Britt and I’ll kill you. I’m not kidding. I will.”

“I know.”

“Good.” Dawn crosses to the closet, opens the hanging door and starts throwing clothes and underwear onto the bed. She points to a cheap suitcase leaning against the wall. “Don’t just stand there looking cute, get packing.”

Exley lays the suitcase on the bed and unzips it and starts to cram in a jumble of female clothing, some large, some small. Almost as if he has a family again.

Vernon, slumped behind the wheel of the Civic, blows a succession of smoke rings, each one more perfect than the last. He sits up when he sees Dawn and Exley leave the building, the whitey wheeling a suitcase.

Exley collapses the handle of the case and stows it in the trunk of the Audi and opens the passenger door for Dawn. Vernon has to catch a cackle at that, Exley treating this street whore like she’s a lady. Then Exley’s behind the wheel and the Audi’s floating its pretty German ass down Voortrekker and gone.

No kid. Beautiful. Upstairs with the old Porra babysitter.

Vernon feels a surge of adrenaline that gets his fingers drumming on the steering wheel. He has to force himself to wait ten minutes, making sure Exley and Dawn don’t return. He locks the Civic, ducks across the road and drags himself—leg paining and stiff from the time in the car—up two flights of stairs. He bangs loudly on the old woman’s door, knows she’s deaf or maybe just pretends to be when it suits her. Bangs again and hears shuffles and scuffs but the door stays closed.

“Eh?” A muffled voice from inside.

“Mrs. de Pontes, my name’s Vernon Saul. I’m a friend of Dawn’s.”

“Eh?”

“Please open, she wants me to bring Brittany to her.”

“I not know you. I not open.”

Vernon’s about to give the door a kick when he chills himself and reaches for his wallet and pulls out a fifty-rand note. He moves his withered leg aside and kneels down, grunting, and slides the banknote halfway under the door. It disappears in a flash.

“She tole me to give you one more, when I get the kid,” he says, using the doorknob to haul himself to his feet, panting as if he’s just run a city block.

There is a clanking of chains and the turning of locks and the door opens far enough for him to see a little face wrinkled as a tortoise staring up at him. “Dawn she send?”

“Ja, I tole you. There’s been a change of plan with her and Nick. They want me to drop Britt off with them.”

“Why she not phone?”

“Her airtime’s finish. Come, please, I’m late.”

The old woman opens the door and Brittany stands beside her, holding a little brown bear. “You know him?” the old bitch asks, pointing a claw at Vernon.

“Ja, it’s Uncle Vermin.”

“I phone Dawn,” the old woman says, digging into her dress pocket and fishing out a huge black Nokia as ancient as she is.

If the kid wasn’t there Vernon would put the old bitch’s lights out, permanent, but he can’t freak out the girlie, needs her docile and cooperative.

So he switches on a smile and says, “You won’t get Dawn now. They gone to the movies.”

“Movie?”

“Ja. I’m meeting them when they done. At the Waterfront.”

The old Porra looks suspicious, then Vernon gives her a glimpse of his wallet and greed wins the day.

She lowers the phone. “Okay, give money.”

Vernon lays another note on her, and the woman gets Brittany’s bag and Vernon takes the kid’s hand and walks her down the stairs.

“We going to the Waterfront, Uncle Vermin?”

“Ja,” he says.

“To Mommy and Uncle Nick?”

“Ja.”

Once they’re on the sidewalk he points to a take-out joint. “You wanna juice?”

She nods. “Guava.”

Vernon stands by the hatch and orders the drink. The zit-faced boy behind the counter fills a plastic cup from a glass container of bright pink slush, and gives Vernon the drink with a corrugated straw sticking out the top.

Vernon gets the kid into the rear seat of the Civic, tells her to buckle up, and while she battles with the seatbelt he stands by the driver’s door, balances the drink on the roof of the car and finds Doc’s little bottle in his pocket. He loosens the cap, squeezes ten drops into the juice and stirs it with the straw. He screws the cap back on the bottle and stows it, then slides in behind the wheel, the kid still fighting the seatbelt, her tongue sticking out in concentration.

“Here,” he says, giving her the juice, clicking the seatbelt home for her. Watches as she takes a good, strong hit of the spiked drink.

Vernon starts the car, forcing his way into the traffic, checking the kid out in the rearview. By the time they’ve driven two blocks her eyes are starting to droop. He stops at a light and frees the plastic cup from her fingers and tosses it out into the gutter. The light turns green and he drives on, watching her in the mirror. She’s gone, chin on her chest, head rocking with each bump.

“Doc,” he says, “you fucken beauty.”

Chapter 53

God only knows how Yvonne Saul’s going to get through the day. The sun is high and fierce, pumping in through the living-room window, sweat running between her breasts and down her thighs as she sits on the sofa. She forces her eyes to focus on the blinking green display of the DVD player, sees that it’s past four in the afternoon and she doesn’t know how long she’s sat herself here, not moving.

Yvonne feels weak. Disconnected. Her body craving insulin. Her supply is finished and she hasn’t injected herself in nearly twenty-four hours. She’s been phoning Vernon since yesterday, leaving messages on his voicemail, begging him to stop by the chemist. He never called her back and now she’s out of airtime and doesn’t have a cent to her name.

When she stands to go get herself some water, she feels dizzy and has to put a hand on top of the TV, knocking a teacup to the floor, where it shatters. She shuffles her carpet slippers through the mess and into the kitchen. At the sink she opens the faucet, the water warm as blood when she puts her hand under it. She lets it run, feels it cooling slightly, but never going to get cold.

She wets a dish towel and puts it to her face, covering her forehead and her eyes, sees bright lights like falling stars. Yvonne breathes deep and lets the cloth drop, looking out the kitchen window. Knows she’s really seeing things when that sick little jailbird from next door comes walking up, carrying a plastic bag, and pushes open the broken door of the shack and goes inside. No sign of the woman and the child, but he’s back. Bailed already.

Yvonne gets herself away from the window, battling for breath, terrified that he’ll see her and know it’s her that called the cops. She walks slowly back to the living room, supporting herself on the wall, barely making it to the sofa.

She feels her heart beating too fast, and her head feels too light on her shoulders. The armpits of her dress are wet with sweat and she can feel the salt itch between her thighs. She closes her eyes, the banging of the blood in her ears almost drowning the rumble of Vernon’s car.

She says a little prayer of thanks, listening to his footsteps on the pathway and his key in the door. Please God, let him have the blue chemist packet in his hand. But when he pushes open the door with his foot he’s not carrying no packet, he’s carrying a child. A white child with blonde hair, flopping like a dead thing in his arms.

He kicks the door closed and dumps the child next to Yvonne on the sofa, taking a fluffy toy from his pocket and throwing it down beside the girl. Yvonne stands and backs away, feeling the wall against her shoulders.

“Boy,” she says, her voice a whisper torn from deep inside her. “What you done now?”

He stares at her with his dead father’s mad eyes. “Relax. It’s just sleeping.”

“No, Vernon. You can’t do this. Not with a white child.”

“Take it easy,” he says, wiping sweat from his face with his palm, his hair hanging down like a noose over his eye. “She’s as colored as us. I just need you to watch her for an hour or so, okay?”

Yvonne shakes her head. “No, Vernon. Please.”

Her son moves fast, grabs her by the front of her dress and slams her back against the wall, her head hitting the bricks. He slaps her and she slides down to the floor, weeping.

“Get up,” he says, nudging her with his shoe. She doesn’t move and he kicks her in the ribs. “I said get up!”

She obeys, using the back of the sofa to pull herself upright. He leans his face so close to hers she feels his spit on her skin. “Now you fucken do as I say. You hear me?”

“Ja.” She nods.

“Good. I’m showering and going. I’m back here in two hours.”

He leaves her and she stares down at the child, sees that its little chest is moving as it breathes. She hears him in the shower and thumping    around in his room and then he’s back, in his uniform, with that big gun holstered at his hip.

“Vernon,” Yvonne says. “My insulin.”

“Stop bitching at me. I’ll bring it when I come back.”

He slams out, leaving her alone with this pale girl child, and Yvonne wishes she’d taken a coat hanger to her womb thirty-three years ago and saved herself all this heartache.

Dawn dumps the belongings of Nick’s dead kid into black garbage bags, feeling creeped out and sad. This only child of rich parents was given everything she wanted but she’s gone now, the closet crammed with clothes and toys a heartbreaking reminder of who she no longer is. As the bags swallow her things—tiny red rain boots, a one-eyed doll, little-girl panties—the kid fades more and more into nothingness.

Dawn can’t get Britt’s face out of her mind, feeling again that panic on the beach when her child went missing. Wonders how Nick hasn’t gone mad with the loss of his daughter. She looks up and sees him in the doorway, checking out the stripped room.

Dawn stands. “You okay?”

“Yeah. Thanks for doing this. I don’t think I would have been strong enough.”

“It’s cool, Nick.” She drags one of the bags toward the door. “You done? With your wife’s stuff?”

He nods. “It was weird, going through her things.”

“You must be freaked out?”

He shakes his head. “No, it’s not that. They were just things. The person I married left a long time ago.” She’s staring at him and he shakes his head. “I guess I’m not making sense.”

He sits down on the bare mattress and tells her how his wife went cuckoo after the kid was born, about her rages and her depressions. How their marriage was over years ago. His words coming in a tumble, like some cap has been popped and everything just spills out.

“I’m sorry,” she says when he’s done.

“The reason I’m talking like this is so you don’t think I’m some cold bastard, my wife just dead and I’m already moving on.”

“Thanks.” She means it. It does reassure her and Christ knows she needs reassurance. She takes his hand. “Come, let’s have a break, okay?”

He nods and they go downstairs and she knows it’s forward of her but she heads for the fridge and snags the bottle of white wine she’s seen chilling in there.