Payback - A Cape Town thriller (13 page)

‘I know what you can do,’ said Mace. ‘You know where my daughter is. Tell me.’

A pause. He could hear no background noise, then she said, ‘Some things, Mr Bishop, are not what they seem.’

The connection closed off. Mace shouted, ‘You bitch. You fucking bloody bitch.’ Hit the dashboard, again and again, the elderly couple edging past the front of the Merc staring at the two men inside. The one yelling, hitting the dashboard.

7:15 p.m. Oumou phoned Mace, her voice a whisper. As Mace pieced it together a man had buzzed her from the street intercom, said he was a courier with Ajax Deliveries, had a package for Mr and Mrs Bishop. Sender one François Barber. Oumou had said, no, she wasn’t expecting a parcel. Didn’t know anyone called Barber. The courier said, Please lady, here’s the tracking number, look up Ajax in the phone book, I can’t stand here all night. Oumou did, everything was kosher. She let the guy in, he handed over the parcel.

That was when her voice disappeared.

‘What, Oumou, what?’ Mace shouted.

‘It is Christa’s hair,’ Mace heard her say.

He told her he’d be there in five.

He left Pylon in the Merc, took the Spider, jumping lights into Glengariff, along High Level, after the quarry going through the Bokaap side streets, down Wale into Buitengracht to Orange and steeply up to the house on Glen Steps. Rushed in shouting Oumou’s name from the front door to where he found her in the kitchen. On the table the envelope, a standard over-the-counter padded number for sending documents. Beside it, a huge pile of Christa’s hair, dark and soft. Mace picked up a handful, held it to his nose. Could smell his daughter.

He didn’t want to imagine where she’d been when they’d shaved her head, how they’d held her, except the flash came unbidden: a bare room, his daughter on a stool in the middle, shivering. Mikey Rheeder with a hand on her neck, another on her shoulder. Abdul Abdul holding
electric
clippers, the cord trailing across the floor to a wall plug. Grinning, his sharp-pointed teeth grin. Behind him a woman in a long coat. Her arms crossed. Sheemina February. Didn’t matter where she was, she was there. The only sound the electric hum of the clippers.

A printed note that’d been included with the hair read: ‘Get your friend to close his club.’

Mace checked with Ajax who had brought in the parcel. The clerk remembered the sender, a personable man wearing a suit had paid the fee in cash. Coloured guy. His only stipulation that the delivery was urgent. They’d got it dropped in forty-five minutes. Not bad going the clerk felt, seeing as the point of departure was their northern office, twenty clicks out of the city.

Mace reckoned that’s where they’d got Christa: somewhere in the northern suburbs, in one of those ranch-style houses, double garage, behind high walls in a street where nobody was going to notice anything out of the ordinary. Knowing this didn’t make anything any easier.

He stayed with Oumou, the two of them sitting either side the kitchen table with Christa’s hair between them.

7:40 p.m. An SMS. Disappointed in you again Mr Bishop. What next must your daughter sacrifice?

A new cellphone number.

Mace didn’t show it to Oumou, told her it was an update on a client.

8:10 p.m. Pylon phoned. ‘I’m sitting here with Mikey in his flat,’ he said. ‘Nice place. Very comfortable. He wants to tell us where Christa is, but he’d rather give it straight to her daddy. That right, Mikey?’

Mace heard Mikey say, ‘Piss off, prick.’

Then Pylon: ‘I can understand why you shot him. He has this effect on people.’

‘I’m there,’ said Mace, pocketing his phone. He reached across the table for Oumou’s hand, laced his fingers into hers. ‘We have someone who might know where Christa is. With a little
persuasion
. I won’t be long.’ He squeezed her fingers, unlocked their hold.

‘I must come with you,’ said Oumou. ‘This is our daughter.’

Mace shook his head. ‘No. I need you to be here, for any phone calls. Sometime they have to talk to us. Make their demands, ask us for money, whatever it is they’re after. They want to hear we’re desperate. Frightened for what they’re doing to Christa. They’ve sent her hair, they have to know how they’re hurting us. If they call you’ve got to tell them that.’

Oumou stayed focused on his eyes.

‘I know,’ said Mace. ‘I know what you’re thinking. You want to hear him say it. Tell you where she is. You have to hear it, I know. But you’ve got to be here.’

‘They will not phone,’ she said.

‘We can’t be sure of that. My guess is they will, in the next hours, unless this Mikey tells us first.’

‘What will you do?’

Mace shrugged. ‘Can’t say, really. There’s a way we had, Pylon and me, in our early days at the camps. Membesh especially. When people were coming through that we didn’t know if they were genuine or spies. If the word was that they were spies we’d talk to them and they’d usually tell us. Quite quickly.’

Oumou said, ‘I have a way too.’

‘I’ve seen it,’ said Mace. ‘But this time you have to be here.’ He stood, bunched his hand again into the pile of Christa’s hair. ‘I’m going to take some.’

Oumou reached up to him, to his fist that held their daughter’s hair. ‘Hurt him,’ she said.

‘Oh, that’s likely,’ Mace said, smiling at the desert in her eyes.

‘I’ve been asked to hurt you,’ were the first words he said to Mikey Rheeder fifteen, sixteen minutes later after Pylon had buzzed him into the block and he’d taken the lift to the fifth floor and gone down the corridor to number five ten and knocked and been let in. Mikey Rheeder sat on a straight-backed oak carver, one of six around a lime-washed oak dining room table. His arms were taped to the arms of the carver. The left arm he’d fastened himself under the watchful barrel of Pylon’s pistol, before Pylon had done the other.

‘Nice dining table,’ said Mace.

‘Part of the rental,’ said Pylon. ‘Not a reflection of Mikey’s taste.’ He indicated the open-plan kitchen. ‘That’s nice too. Well equipped. Serious knives for the serious chef. Got everything in it for someone doing a gourmet meal. Sort of thing would make Treasure rush out to Boardmans to upgrade the cutlery.’

Mace took the fistful of Christa’s hair out of his jacket pocket, put it on the table, dark against the white surface. He saw Mikey’s eyes flick to it and away.

‘Recognise that?’ he said.

‘Get stuffed,’ said Mikey.

‘This’s not an attitude I would take,’ said Pylon. ‘Under the
circumstances
. The best would be for you to treat us politely. Know what I’m saying?’

‘My sense is you would recognise it,’ said Mace, sitting down across the table from him. ‘I have a feeling you probably helped shave my daughter’s head this afternoon and your friend, the coloured guy, delivered this to the couriers, Ajax.’ He pushed the clump of hair into the centre of the table. ‘Surprising how soft her hair is, like that. But you’d know this from stuffing it in the envelope. When she asks me to brush it, it seems different, almost liquid. If I smell that hair, I can smell her. Amazing that. That we can tell one another from the smell of our hair.’

Mikey said, ‘Up yours.’

Mace and Pylon let it go, stared at him until Mikey said, ‘Look, you’ve got the wrong guy. I’m not on this one. I’m just security for them. They don’t let me go on jobs. I’m white can’t you see. White’s not a colour they trust.’

‘The thing is,’ said Pylon, ‘this’s not our understanding. We believe differently. Especially about the kidnapping of Mace’s daughter.’

‘I’m not lying.’

‘Ah, Mikey that’s easy for you to say now. How you convince us is the more difficult part.’ Pylon put a hand on his shoulder. ‘We need you to scoot up closer to the table so’s your hands are on the surface. I’ll help you, keep the chair from falling over. Don’t want you to hurt yourself.’

Mikey wouldn’t oblige. Mace sighed, stood up and went round the table to Mikey’s chair. He and Pylon manoeuvred the man against the table and got Mikey’s hands where they wanted them.

‘You’re a big guy, Mikey,’ said Mace. ‘What’re we talking,
eighty-five
, ninety kilos? Impressive. Good muscle tone, too. Is it steroids you’re using? The boys do, I’m told. The serious weightlifters.’

‘Look,’ said Mikey, ‘I’m not the man you want.’

‘Are you right-handed or left-handed?’ asked Pylon. ‘It’s
important
we know otherwise you’ve got no way of communicating with us, and you’ll most certainly want to do that.’

‘Right-handed,’ said Mikey. ‘What d’you mean anyhow?’

‘We need you to write down where we can find Christa,’ said Mace. ‘It’s that simple. Give us a clue where the paper and pens are, you write down the address, and then we go check it out. If you’re sensible we could have put this whole thing behind us in … what? An hour? Hour and a half max.’

Mikey said, ‘I can’t give you the address. I don’t know it. I’m not involved.’

‘But you know about what’s happened?’

‘I’ve heard. I won’t lie.’

‘That’s good, Mikey,’ said Mace. ‘Telling the truth’s a good start.’

Pylon found a pad of notepaper and ballpoints in a bureau drawer, brought them over to the table. He went across to the kitchen, returned with a chopping board and mallet for tenderising steak. One of the old-fashioned wooden ones, heavy, no staining so probably unused. Pylon smacked it into the palm of his hand, said, ‘Eina. Points are still sharp.’ He placed board and mallet beside Mikey’s left hand, just out of reach.

‘Before we ask you to give us the address,’ he said, ‘we’re going to strap you in a bit tighter. You know, fasten your ankles to the legs of the chair. What could happen is that you’ll want to move around a bit with the pain but we need to keep you upright and focused.’

He bent down with the roll of duct tape but Mikey kicked out his legs and Pylon stood up again, shaking his head. ‘Mikey, Mikey, Mikey. Don’t do this.’

Mace pulled the Ruger from his belt and slid a round into the chamber. ‘I found this worked before,’ he said over Mikey’s head to Pylon. ‘But he screams so maybe the gag first’s a good idea.’

‘No, hang on,’ said Mikey. ‘Just a bloody minute. No, I can’t help you. Don’t you understand. Listen to me. Listen. I’ve got nothing to do with this. You’ve got the wrong man here. I’m no good to you. I don’t know what’s what. ‘Strues. Hey, hey. I can give you Val’s address. If you want that I can give it to you. Speak to him. He’s in there. Big time. Fully. With Abdul. You know, like in the leadership.’

‘Write that, too, Mikey,’ said Mace. ‘Because we don’t want a situation where we’re disturbing the neighbours.’

He put down the Ruger and gripped Mikey’s head and worked his thumbs into Mikey’s cheeks until Mikey opened his mouth. Pylon balled in a sponge he’d found at the sink and got the duct tape winding round Mikey’s head to secure it. At the end Mikey couldn’t move his jaws at all.

It took the two of them to fasten Mikey’s ankles to the chair legs, the guy doing his best to be uncooperative. When they were done, Mace stood, dusting carpet-lint from the knees of his jeans.

‘Spunky, Mikey,’ he said. ‘Perhaps not the right time, though.’ He shifted the pad of paper under Mikey’s right hand and fitted the pen between his fingers. Mikey flicked it away. ‘I wouldn’t do that,’ said Mace. ‘I would realise now is the moment to be cooperative. What we need to see is that you can write. For your own sake.’

He retrieved the pen and put it back in Mikey’s fingers. This time Mikey scrawled ‘fuck you’ on the pad.

Pylon laughed. Mace smiled sadly.

‘Here’s the question: where can we find my daughter, Christa?’

Mikey repeated his answer.

‘Fine,’ said Mace. ‘We’re going to do things a little differently from now on.’ He took a coin from his pocket, glanced at Pylon. ‘Best of three?’

Pylon shrugged. ‘Your call.’

Mace called heads and won. On the second flip Pylon called heads and lost. Mikey staring at them with crazed eyes.

Mace slipped the chopping board under Mikey’s left hand, but Mikey balled his hand into a fist and kept it angled upwards from the wrist.

‘That’s not going to help,’ said Mace. He raised the mallet and brought it down hard on Mikey’s knuckles. The man’s fingers splayed. Mace gave Mikey’s index finger three piston blows, at the second smack splinters of bone showed white through the pulp.

Mikey screamed and jiggled in the chair and rolled his head and for a moment looked like he might wrench free his hands from the strapping. Then his head flopped forward.

‘That used to do it,’ said Pylon.

Mace got a jug of water from the kitchen, poured it over Mikey’s head, which brought the big fellow round.

‘All you have to do,’ said Mace, ‘is give us the answer. If you’re right we can drop you at a hospital afterwards. That doesn’t look good, that finger.’

Mikey made a movement of his head that both Mace and Pylon took to be a negative.

‘Got a lot of the hero in him,’ said Pylon. He pinned Mikey’s splayed fingers to the board, brought the mallet down on the pinky. The blow broke the skin, pushed the nail out at an angle. Mikey jerked about until Mace put both hands on his shoulders to quieten him. When he was still Pylon smashed the pinky four, five times. Mikey fainted about the third hit.

Mace brought him back with another jug of water and put the question to him again. ‘Help yourself,’ he said. ‘Write it down.’

Mikey was snorting through his nose as if he couldn’t get in enough air. From the noises he was making, Mace wondered if he hadn’t swallowed the sponge. Also the guy was scrawling on the pad but nothing that was legible.

‘We’re going to cut free your gag,’ said Mace, ‘then you can tell us in your own words.’

Pylon kept Mikey’s hand fastened to the chopping board while Mace worked a boning knife into the duct tape and slit it. Mikey was heaving for breath, sobbing with pain. But he got the words out.

‘Grown older, grown wiser,’ said Pylon, putting down the mallet.