Last Train to Retreat (30 page)

Zane knew the crystal meth had got hold of them and it freaked him out. The room had the heady smell of pent-up violence, as in men preparing themselves for a hit or a night of rape – savagery that could murder and desecrate and in the morning not remember a thing. That was
tik
.

‘Hannibal!’

‘What, Zane.’

‘We had a deal. It’s not like you to break it.’

‘Ha, ha, boys, you hear that?’ Hannibal strutted with contempt. ‘He thinks this is a dojo!
This is the Flats, man
. How do you explain it, he never made it here but in the dojo he got black?’

‘Beats me, Boss,’ Pattat went into a mock karate stance. Goppies uttered a cat-like whine like Bruce Lee’s. Delron shouted, ‘
Ja,
it’s all that bowing shit, Boss!’

They suddenly went quiet, stared at Chantal, the thought of what she held for them naked on their faces. Lena sat next to Zane, hands on her head, the snout of the silencer on them both. Delron started to cut the rope around Chantal’s legs with his flick-knife. She sobbed quietly. Freeing her for the feast – the horrifying thought paralysed Zane. After Chantal it would be Lena. That was what happened with men like these.

Then Zane’s hands dropped and his body rolled across the floor like a fallen weaver’s nest in a gust. The snout plopped, sounds of splintering wood next to him. Zane was up before the next bullet, his arm around Goppies’ bull neck, the bony edge of his forearm finding the Adam’s apple and squeezing hard. Desperate wheezing came from Goppies as he tried to throw Zane off but Zane clung to him like a rodeo rider.

Zane was now holding Goppies between himself and Hannibal.

‘Impressive, Zane,’ Hannibal said, ‘but you didn’t think he’d die for me, did you?’ Without waiting for an answer he shot Goppies through the heart. The dum-dum bullet mushroomed inside Goppies and Zane felt warm tissue bursting against him and a sudden pain. Zane let go and Goppies crashed to the floor.

Zane and Hannibal stared at each other. Zane took a step forward, gaze unwavering, every fibre in his body focused on the man with the gun.

‘What, Zane, no sorry, no asking for mercy? One bullet and a second of pain, is that all?’

With bloodied chest Zane took another step.

‘You don’t have it in you, never did.’ Hannibal cocked his gun, steadied his grip. Instinctively Delron followed.

‘Shoot me, Hannibal,’ Zane said, ‘it’ll give you all the satisfaction you want – you needn’t kill them too. Don’t make it worse for yourself,
let them go
.’

Zane walked unsteadily towards him, the room suddenly losing its edges and corners, and the beams of light through the windows melting into a golden syrup.

‘Jesus, you give me no choice,’ Hannibal said.

Then Lena was on her feet and running like a buck breaking out from thick bush. ‘Hannibal, don’t!’ Zane screamed. She was between Zane and Hannibal when the bullet hit her small body knocking her sideways and down.

‘It’s the end, Hannibal, you know that.’ Grimly Zane tried not to lose consciousness as he advanced on Hannibal.

‘Chantie, tell me what I need to hear and your brother will live.’ The barrel was chillingly steady as if aiming at a mock figure on a practice range. Delron and Pattat stood with guns drawn confused as though they had walked in halfway through a murder.

Chantal’s voice rang out, ‘Hanno, you did the betraying, not Zane – you betrayed God, me, the community, yourself. You changed so that it became impossible to love you. You once fought for things good, now you fight for titles, in a cage like an animal, no, animal’s too good for you – them I can love, you
never,
even if you let Zane live!’

The muscle on Hannibal’s face twitched again. His scars were red welts.

Chantal’s words came fast, ‘You think you control everyone, well, you don’t! You’ll never have me, Hanno. Don’t you see, to me you’re dead already –
even before you pull that trigger!’

Hannibal flinched as if struck by an unseen force. He lifted the gun, rammed the barrel into his mouth smashing his bridge as he did so. Then, with his eyes on Chantal, he fired.

Something in Pattat snapped. Howling like a dog he aimed at Zane. A shot rang out, then a second, a third, a fourth. Surprise replaced the loyal look in his eyes as he sank to his knees. Delron had already fired off a round when a bullet opened up his nose and cheek like a pomegranate. He tried to bring his hands to his face but it was as though they were being held down by a great, unbearable weight. He couldn’t see what it was but it no longer mattered.

On hands and knees Zane crawled to Lena lying on her side with eyes open and a half-smile, willing him to get to her.

Z
ane regained consciousness to find Chantal and Malaki sitting by his bedside. A tube snaked into his arm from a bag of fluid hanging next him, the air smelled of medicine, the lights hurt his eyes. They smiled at him, and Chantal took his hand. She was alive, his dear sister was alive. ‘
Sussie,
I’m so glad,’ he muttered. Lena! Where was Lena? He tried to sit up. Sharp pains ran through his chest.

‘Don’t, you’ve had an operation.’ Chantal pushed him back gently. ‘You’re okay, just take it easy.’

‘Lena, where’s she?’

They said nothing. How strange. She’d been alive, and she had tried to say something before he blacked out. That much he could remember.

‘So where is she?’ he asked, shivering. ‘More blankets please.’

Chantal fetched another blanket from the cupboard and tucked him in so that only his face was visible. He had to clench his teeth to stop them from clattering.

Malaki cleared his throat, and said slowly, ‘She didn’t make it, my friend. We thought it best to bury her … as soon as possible. We were going to wait for you, but after hearing what the doctor said …’ He shrugged. ‘She’s got no family, Zane,
someone
had to decide.’ Malaki’s powerful presence was comforting.

There had been no goodbye, she was gone for good. There was a numbing finality to it. The thought that he’d go to his grave not knowing what she had been about to tell him was too much to bear. ‘And Hannibal … is he dead too?’ As he said it he thought: evil never died, it came back, again and again. It came into the world with every womb.

‘Yes, so are the three men,’ Chantal said, a shiver running through her.

Zane suddenly remembered, ‘Hang on, there was a lot of shooting, I don’t understand?’

Chantal related how the police had burst into the house through the kitchen catching the men just in time. Malaki interrupted, grinning, ‘It was I and I that told them, Zane … we weren’t going to leave you in there,
my bra
, no ways! I just had to check
which
house.’

Malaki and Jah, Zane thought thankfully but wearily. Yet Lena had to die. Whatever name God came by, He was picky and fickle.

‘
Ja
, Malaki cleverly went to Ma and Pa. They knew where the house was because I’d spoken about it. Then they called the police,’ Chantal said.

A man entered the room unannounced and asked, ‘How are you feeling?’ He had a West Coast Afrikaans accent, and looked remarkably young to be a surgeon, Zane thought.

‘Dunno, doctor, just freezing.’

‘It’s the morphine, kills pain,’ he said checking Zane’s blood pressure, ‘hmm … a bit low but nothing to worry about.’

‘Thanks for everything.’

‘Well, here’s something you might want to keep, call it a good luck charm.’ The surgeon held out a misshapen piece of lead. ‘I took it from your chest. It had already gone through a body hitting all kinds of bone then stopped in you, close to your heart.’

Zane took it, waited for the doctor to leave and gave it to Malaki. ‘Chuck this into the Bay,
my bra
, but only after you’ve paddled out a
moer
of a long way.’

•

The next morning a police officer came to see him – short black hair, nice skin and eyes, and a delicate build that made her gun look awkward and heavy.

She put out her hand. ‘I’m Captain Ontong, from Lavender Hill station.’

‘Hello, Captain … Zane Hendricks, but I get the feeling you already know me.’

She nodded. ‘Your sister’s made a detailed statement, so has Mr Arendse. But you’re the most important person in this whole thing from what I can make out.’

He frowned, Arendse? Then he remembered it was Malaki’s real name. He waited. How much of his past would come up? ‘I’d be glad to help,’ he said, inching up his pillows.

‘Could you start from the beginning, Mr Hendricks, please, from the time you got to know Hannibal Fortuin. He was known to us of course – let’s say he made his presence felt in many undesirable ways over many years. We just couldn’t pin him down.’

The beginning, with Hannibal – Zane had been dreading the moment. He had managed not to tell anyone other than Chantal for so long he thought he’d never have to, least of all the police. Now he had to choose – duck and dive, or tell it as it happened.

Zane told it as it was. Everything, from his time at school to the moment Hannibal pulled the trigger on himself. Not once did the Captain interrupt, and she made not a single note. At the end of it he lay back, exhausted. She poured him a glass of water and he gulped it down. He could now only wait.

‘Mr Hendricks, I came here to see how you were … and to shake your hand.
Because
you knew what kind of person Hannibal was you must’ve realised you had little chance. Yet you went into that house – for your sister. That’s real courage, Mr Hendricks, in my book.’ Then she said softly, as if to herself, ‘Even with faith, few can walk through the valley of the shadow of death and not flinch.’

Something made him ask, ‘It wasn’t you, was it, Captain?’

She nodded. ‘Got there just in time, thank God.’

‘
You shot them?’

‘I had a sergeant with me, we did it together.’ She said it as if it were something intensely distasteful. ‘We’re not releasing any more details to the media until we’ve done our investigations. Please don’t speak to reporters until then.’

‘Captain … the stuff I told you, what’s going to happen to me?’

She smiled at him. ‘Let’s bury the old stuff, shall we? In that house you showed that you were not the boy you once were.’

‘But Gatiep …’

‘Self-defence, and frankly, good riddance … off the record,
tussen ons
, you understand.’

She got up and shook his hand again. He marvelled that her delicate fingers could pull a trigger with such deadly effect.

At the door she turned around. ‘What was Lena Valentine to you, Mr Hendricks?’

‘She was everything, Captain.’

‘I thought so. I also knew someone like that once. He would have done for me what she did for you.’

C
hantal and Malaki came to see him two days later, this time with his father and mother. Eddie and Gloria looked as if they’d come from church except it was Friday – she in black dress and hat, the one from twenty years ago, he in dark suit and tie, the only one he owned.

‘Who was at the funeral?’ As Zane said it he thought he’d rather not know. Were there so few people that it was pitiful? Lena had so much but it didn’t include friends.

‘Oh, the four of us, of course, and some people she worked with … Mavis, Adi, Ronnie, and others, all of them crying. They were really shocked,’ Chantal said.

‘Your bike is at home, I rode it there,’ Malaki changed the subject.

‘
Ja,
Ma made space for him in your old room, so he could come and visit you.’

Zane sensed that Eddie wasn’t at all sure of Malaki. Malaki with his dreads, dark skin, and piercing eyes – a surfer who slept in bushes – wasn’t exactly what Eddie wanted around his daughter. Zane smiled quietly. His sister looked more than happy being with Malaki, and that made Zane happier than he’d been for a while. Malaki wasn’t the officer and gentleman she’d dreamed of but he was genuine, the real thing. Like Lena.

•

Zane took the train from the hospital to Wynberg. It was as though he’d never been away – everything looked the same yet felt quite different.

He walked slowly up Church Street, past the church, the undertakers, then up Court Road past the law courts and the cemetery. They no longer spooked him, they were behind him now, and he would visit Lena every week wherever she was buried.

His flat had summer spiders in it, their webs having been spun undisturbed. In the kitchen a small brown spider had caught an insect bigger than itself. The spider hung from its web by two legs, holding its prey with four, and striking it in a pummelling action with the remaining two. It was an impressive, concerted effort – of small defeating big. Zane watched for a good ten minutes as the insect changed from black to deathly pale as the spider fed on it. He tried to understand what it was telling him and gave up. There were too many things he didn’t understand. Like the fact that violence, which he abhorred, had brought him Lena and violence had taken her away.

•

On the first Monday of the New Year Zane went back to work.

‘How was the holiday, old man, hope it was a good one,’ Appleby greeted him, looking as if his had been outstanding – extra streaky veins in his face and a puffiness under his eyes.

‘I had a bit of drama, actually.’

‘Sorted the women in your life?’

‘You could say that, Appleby, and quite a few other things. In fact there’s one more thing I gotta do.’

‘Oh?’

‘Come with me to Magnus, please … can’t talk now but I need you there.’

‘Bugger, I don’t like the sound of it, you’re not leaving us are you?’

Minutes later, sitting across the desk from Magnus, Zane said, ‘Magnus, I’ll understand if you fire me, and I’m fully prepared for it. It’s just that I gotta get something off my mind. Then you and Appleby can decide.’ His chest was hurting, he’d walked too fast.

As he talked, Zane watched Magnus’s bulbous eyes registering surprise, then irritation, then confusion, and finally attention. ‘So you see, Magnus, I like BAT, and I love Appleby, but I’m sorry, I just can’t work on stuff that I
know
can turn people into alcoholics. My father’s one … you remember the
dop
system? Well, basically there’s no difference between it and booze advertising – both have resulted in alcoholics – but I bet advertising has created many more. And here’s the thing, the better the advertising the worse it gets, especially when it’s aimed at young people, many of whom don’t have the confidence to say
no.
I mean, it was cool cigarette advertising that helped to kill millions, wasn’t it?’