Killer Country (14 page)

What he needed to do was bring in Treasure. Ten minutes and she’d have them signing on the line. Probably also making out personal cheques to Treasure’s NGOs of choice.

‘Like I said,’ said Henk. ‘Nice try.’

‘It’s genuine,’ said Pylon. ‘I can give you names and addresses. Audits. We’re talking organisations of long standing. Reputable operations. Into HIV/AIDS, housing projects, anti-rape and child abuse. All the stuff on our conscience.’

‘We’d have to see it,’ said Olivia.

‘No problem.’

They shook hands and Pylon saw them out, not convinced he’d done anything but buy time. When Treasure played the guilt card she got results. Commitments. When he played it, people suspected an angle.

He went upstairs to his office. What people never allowed was that you’d changed. Still, the charity tie-in just had to be a winner.

Pylon phoned the others on the consortium. The wavering Smits the second bit of bad news he’d had to give them in two days. Mostly they took it on the chin. Resigned. Sighing heavily. What they all needed was Rudi Klett to convince them everything was green fields and blue skies.

The prison commander looked through the peephole at convict Obed Chocho. Chocho’s holdall packed and upright on the bed. A stack of books on the coffee table, no evidence of the DVDs or CDs. Chocho suited, sitting on the couch staring at the wall. At the place on the wall where he’d hung the picture of the hunters in the snow. The print not hanging there anymore.

What the prison commander couldn’t see was the broken picture glass that Obed Chocho had smashed with the heel of a shoe. Or the remains of the picture that had been ripped from the frame and torn into shreds. This debris lay at the base of the wall out of the prison commander’s line of sight.

The prison commander glanced at his watch: eleven o’clock. Obed Chocho had been sitting in that position for almost an hour and a half. According to the warders, Obed Chocho had not eaten breakfast. He had been taken a mug of coffee but not touched it. The mug could be seen on the table next to the books.

According to the prison doctor, Obed Chocho was fine. Or ‘mighty fine’ as he’d said to the doctor when the doctor asked. His  blood pressure was marginally up but nothing to worry about. His pulse strong, his lungs clear. No symptoms floating in his eyes, no infection in his ears.

As far as the prison commander knew, the only time Obed Chocho had spoken during the morning was his response to the doctor. At nine-thirty he’d been seen answering his cellphone but he’d not said hello or goodbye or anything in between. His phone had rung often throughout the morning but he’d not taken any other calls.

The prison commander held Obed Chocho’s parole release authority in his hand. In the downstairs reception room waited the lawyer Sheemina February. A fragrant Sheemina February. An unsmiling Sheemina February, her lipstick a harsh gash of plum red. She’d handed the release form with Judge Telman Visser’s signature to the prison commander and said, ‘Let’s do this without any fuss.’ His idea too, although he resented agreeing with her.

The prison commander tapped on Obed Chocho’s door and opened it. As much as Obed Chocho was a bastard, he was a grieving husband and this weighed with the prison commander.

‘Mr Chocho,’ he said, ‘you’re free to go. Your lawyer’s downstairs.’

Obed Chocho looked up at him, cleared his throat. ‘My brother,’ he said, his voice grating. He coughed, started again: ‘My brother, I’m donating this’ – he waved a hand at the television, video and DVD players, the mini-sound system, the pile of books – ‘to the prison.’

The prison commander nodded. ‘It will be appreciated.’ He noticed then the smashed frame against the wall, the shards of broken glass, but said nothing.

Obed Chocho lifted his bag from the bed and followed the prison commander downstairs to the reception room. Sheemina February stood waiting for him, making no move towards him. Not smiling or greeting him. And he neither smiled nor greeted her. At the door the prison commander held out his hand but Obed Chocho ignored the gesture, saying ‘Mighty fine, my brother, mighty fine’, and pushing past, heading through the doors to the car park. Sheemina February watched the big man until he was through the doors.

‘Thank you, prison commander,’ she said, holding out her ungloved hand. ‘You have been most cooperative.’

‘He’s depressed,’ said the prison commander, feeling the strength in the hand that shook his.

‘Understandably so,’ said the lawyer, stepping sharply after her client.

In the car, Sheemina February said, ‘Don’t do that to me again in public. I am not your woman. I’m your lawyer. You are my client. This is worth remembering.’

She drove out of the prison compound and onto the highway and still Obed Chocho had not answered her. He stared at the houses lining the motorway: small cramped places in patchy gardens. Occasionally a smallholding littered with junk between them. His thoughts were of going home to a house without Lindiwe. Where everything in the house would remind him of Lindiwe. He had another concern: when news of the killing of Lindiwe reached her family they would send a delegation. When they heard that Lindiwe was killed with Popo Dlamini they would suspect the reason. Matters would become tense. Sheemina February broke into his thoughts.

‘Obed,’ she was saying, ‘let’s start this again.’

Obed Chocho said, ‘Does Lindiwe’s family know?’

‘Good morning, Obed,’ said Sheemina February. ‘This would be the proper way to start.’

‘Mighty fine, mighty fine,’ he said, ‘do they know?’

‘Good morning, Obed.’

He looked at her, at her profile, her eyes steadfastly on the road, a rage building in his chest. Who was this woman? 

‘Don’t do it,’ she said, without glancing at him. ‘Don’t dare raise your voice at me, don’t even think of it. I’m not patronising you. I know you’re going through hell but there’s stuff to be handled, Obed. Business.’

Obed Chocho let out his breath in a whoosh. Closed his eyes behind his dark glasses and controlled his breathing. The woman was right. He had to stay in the frame. Eventually he said, ‘Alright. Mighty fine, my sister, what’s the business?’

‘To answer your first question,’ said Sheemina February. ‘Yes, her family have been told. They want to see you. I suggested this afternoon in my offices.’

‘They will cause trouble.’

‘What trouble?’

‘They will think I killed her.’

‘Really?’

‘Someone will have dreamed about it.’

‘The murder?’

‘Of course. We can use Spitz and Manga,’ said Obed Chocho. ‘For security.’

‘I don’t think so.’

‘They’re hanging around, costing me my money.’

‘A,’ said Sheemina February, ‘you do not want to be associated with those two. B, they have a job later today.’

‘From tomorrow,’ said Obed Chocho. ‘No one will know. They stay in my house, that is where I need them. So there’s no surprises when I get home at night. Please arrange this.’

‘You’ve got to be joking.’

‘No, why not? I am paying them. Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, I’m paying them to sit at a swimming pool drinking my money. So, mighty fine, instead they can be useful by sitting in my house. I have a swimming pool. Beer. Dish television. Music. Servants to make the beds, cook the meals. This is like room service. For Spitz and Manga what is the difference to a hotel?’

‘And for the ceremony, when you slaughter the bull? What do you do with them then?’

Obed Chocho turned to face her, he allowed a smile. ‘You know my culture?’

‘I know you have to appease the ancestors. Have a cleansing ceremony. Wipe out the blemish of jail.’

‘We will slaughter on Saturday. By then Spitz and Manga will be gone.’

‘It’s not a good idea, Obed, having Spitz and Manga hanging around.’

‘It’s mighty fine,’ said Obed Chocho. ‘No problem.’

Sheemina February shook her head but said nothing more.

The highway opened to three lanes as they took the Tygerberg hill, and she kept the needle on one thirty, flashing slower traffic out of the way. At the top, on the long right sweep, Obed Chocho caught the view hazed by smoke and fumes over the low suburbs to the peninsula and ahead of them the distant city buildings and the mountain. At the sight he forgot his grief and thought, my city, the boy’s back in town.

‘Talking about Spitz and Manga,’ said Sheemina February.

‘Yes, what?’ he said, coming reluctantly away from the brief rush of swagger.

‘Spitz wants another gun for the farm shooting. And they need a car.’ She held up a hand. ‘I know what you’re going to say, I’ve said it to him already. But he has a point. So I can organise it, or you can organise it.’

She kept the car’s speed constant down the hill and onto the straight past the malls of Canal Walk.

‘I can,’ said Obed Chocho, remembering the times Lindiwe had dragged him there shopping, and lapsed again into moodiness.

They drove in silence until nearer to the city, Sheemina February said, ‘The judge sends his condolences.’

Obed Chocho heard her distantly. ‘Huh? Who?’ 

‘Judge Visser. He’d read about Lindiwe’s murder. He sends his condolences.’

Obed Chocho remembered the judge on his bench in court C staring at him, handing down six years. Six years! Like this was for real.

‘Sure. Mighty fine.’

‘Amazing, I thought.’ Sheemina February paused but Obed Chocho wasn’t going to play along and kept shut up. ‘The man who sentenced you, sending his condolences. Can’t imagine it happening many places in the world.’

‘He’s alright.’

‘Sentencing you to six years! That was alright?’

Obed Chocho didn’t respond.

‘That was harsh, Obed. That wasn’t about what you’d done. That was about sending a message. That was about politics. About making Obed Chocho the scapegoat.’

Obed Chocho didn’t respond. That sentence had allowed him to ditch his lawyers in favour of Sheemina February.

‘Someone’s got the judge by the curlies.’

‘I don’t think so.’

‘I do. Someone important. In the cabinet maybe.’

Obed Chocho laughed. ‘You think I’m that important? Mighty fine, you think that.’

‘I do. That’s why the judge sends condolences.’

Obed Chocho flicked his hand dismissively. ‘Believe it if you want to.’

Sheemina February took the elevated freeway between the harbour and the city, catching the lights on green until halfway up Buitengracht. At Wale she turned left.

‘Another thing. Judge Telman Visser’s heading a commission.’

‘I read newspapers.’

‘He’d want to talk to Rudi Klett.’

Obed Chocho shrugged, ignoring the upturned hands of a   streetkid dancing at his side window. Ignoring his lawyer’s remark.

‘I was wondering,’ said Sheemina February, ‘about the
connections
. The links to Rudi Klett.’ The lights changed and she turned right into Queen Victoria back of the court where Obed Chocho had been sentenced to six years. A block from where Judge Visser had his chambers.

‘Where’re we going?’ said Obed Chocho.

‘My offices. Up near the museum.’ She fished in the ashtray for a remote control. ‘Some people in government wouldn’t want him to talk to Rudi Klett. Would they? They’d want a tame commission. Like all our commissions.’

Obed Chocho didn’t answer. Stared out at the Company Gardens, at tourists and children being told its history, at young people lying on the lawns, at a woman in an overcoat talking to herself. At the statues and the cannons and the columned portico of the National Gallery. Why hadn’t he ever walked in the gardens with Lindiwe? He snapped his mind away.

‘What about the Smits?’ he said.

‘I spoke to them. They’ve left three messages on your phone. When you didn’t answer they phoned me.’

‘And?’

Sheemina February aimed the remote at the gates under a block of apartments. ‘They want in and they’ve done the paperwork. It’s in my office.’ The gates opened and she drove in.

‘Mighty fine,’ said Obed Chocho, feeling anything but.

They went sightseeing, Manga and Spitz. Drove to the Waterfront and browsed the high-ticket clothing shops, Robert Daniel, Hugo Boss, Fabiani, at the Spitz store Spitz trying on Bally moccasins, a pair of which he considered buying when the money came through. Afterwards wandered the malls, licking Italian sugarcone ice creams. 

‘Captain,’ Manga said as they drifted outside to watch a Nigerian fir-eater going through a fast routine, ‘maybe I’m living in the wrong city.’ Manga tossed five bucks into the man’s pot. ‘Other hand, you couldn’t pull a job here. Too much going on.’

They sauntered further, past camping shops and restaurants, tourist traps selling carved ostrich eggs and beaded wire baskets to where a banjo band in get-ups of blue and white played the local beat beneath a pepper tree. Too shrill for Spitz but he liked the vibe. Manga dropped five bucks into an open banjo case.

They took the lane between Hildebrand’s and the Green Dolphin jazz bar that opened on a plaza dotted with soapstone sculptures and a view across the harbour to the loading quays. A red clocktower caught their eye and they headed for it over a swingbridge.

The sight before them impressed Spitz: Paulaner’s, a German-style beer garden selling weissbier in tall glasses. He led Manga towards it.

‘A beer and maybe white sausage and pretzel, if we are in luck.’

They sat beneath an umbrella, ordered large weissbiers. Spitz flicked through the menu, salivating.

‘Amazing. Here is my favourite,’ he said, finding white sausage on it. ‘Try them. With sweet mustard, they are very good.’

Manga rolled his tongue over his teeth, tapped a cigarette from a pack. Eyed Spitz. ‘How d’you know this?’

‘For six months I lived in Bavaria. Sometimes we went to a beerhall on the lakes. I remember sitting there, outside at benches, and across, in the distance, there was the Alps.’

‘You were in exile?’

Spitz lit a menthol and exhaled a plume. ‘No. I was not in exile. I have done some training in East Germany, Berlin. Afterwards to West Berlin and by car to Hamburg down the corridor. Then for a while in Munich. In those months I listened to country music. The German where I stayed had only country and western music. In the beginning I thought it was stupid, these sad cowboy songs. But when you listen to them you hear something different. Now I like country rock. I like the stories. They are my company.’ Spitz stared wistfully across at the tourists clustered round the clock tower. ‘When we are back in Jozi I can make another playlist.’

The weissbiers arrived and Spitz ordered the white sausage in German, carried away by the atmosphere, the Bavarian get-up of the serving staff. The waitress smiled at him. ‘I’m from here,’ she said. ‘Cape Flats. But I know what that is.’ She spun away with a swirl of her skirt: both men glimpsing her legs.

‘Oh captain,’ said Manga. ‘Gimme some of that.’

‘Gesundheit,’ Spitz said, holding his glass out, the base towards Manga.

Manga leant forward to click, Spitz instructing him to use the heavy base. ‘Bavarian-style,’ he said.

They drank the beer quickly and ordered seconds when the sausages arrived, getting another sight of the waitress’s legs. Spitz told Manga to skin the sausage, peeling off the sheath like a used condom. Manga grimacing as he dropped it on a side plate.

‘Germans have got funny ideas,’ he said. But he liked the sausage with the mustard.

‘Better than a Big Mac,’ said Spitz.

‘Right at this minute,’ said Manga, ‘but maybe not later.’

As Spitz bit into his second sausage his cell rang. He glanced at the screen, swallowed quickly. ‘My girlfriend.’

‘You kept her quiet, captain,’ said Manga through a mouthful.

Spitz lowered his tone to say hello to Sheemina February.

She laughed. ‘I like your voice, Spitz,’ she said.

‘We are having a drink,’ said Spitz. ‘Perhaps you could come here and join us.’

‘I don’t think so.’

‘Even lawyers must eat some food.’

‘We prefer our client’s blood.’

Spitz guffawed. ‘I like that one.’

‘But you won’t like this,’ she said. ‘Tomorrow you’re checking out of the hotel and staying at Obed Chocho’s for a couple of nights. Until Friday.’

‘No,’ said Spitz. ‘That is not the arrangement. I do not do this sort of business.’

‘I know. You’re just going to have to bend your rules, okay. You’ll get en suite bedrooms each. Plenty of servants running round to feed you, take your drinks out to the pool. Staying at Mr Chocho’s the same as staying at a hotel. He’ll be there too. In and out.’

‘Mr Chocho is out of prison?’

‘Compassionate early release.’

‘I do not like this idea.’

‘Neither do I particularly. But this is how it’s going to be.’ She paused. ‘He’s hurting, Spitz, but he won’t take it out on you. He needs you. Remember that.’

‘This way is not my style.’

‘I’ve told you I appreciate that. My hands are tied. Do the job tonight, check out of the hotel tomorrow at ten and we take it from there. After tonight you’ll be his main man. Oh yes, Spitz. I’ve couriered the photographs. Look carefully at them. Don’t kill the wrong man.’

She disconnected and Spitz told Manga what Sheemina February had laid out.

Manga finished his beer. ‘Captain,’ he said, ‘this is not good news.’