Payback - A Cape Town thriller (34 page)
Read Payback - A Cape Town thriller Online
Authors: Mike Nicol
He disconnected. While he waited Mace thought, unlikely it was a client, even if the profile fitted maybe two couples on their books. Except on both counts the men were snazzy dressers.
His phone rang. Number restricted on the screen. He thumbed it on, told Gonsalves this wasn’t going anywhere.
‘How about coming round to confirm?’ said the captain.
‘That’s all I need.’ Mace stood up to stretch his back.
‘When’re you back?’
‘Tomorrow,’ he lied.
‘Give me a call,’ said Gonsalves.
‘I’ll do that,’ said Mace, as he put down the cellphone and headed for the bathroom and a long shower. Supposing there was long water. Afterwards he checked on his clients. No one missing.
At breakfast he raised the idea with Pylon of giving Gonsalves the chick’s whereabouts after they’d done the deal with Paulo.
‘Ten to one she’s with him. Right?’
Pylon nodded.
‘All we do is follow him home afterwards. We phone Gonsalves, the cops call round and get her. Get him too on suspicion.’
‘And turn up a parcel of diamonds meant for your Isabella.’
‘There’re ways round that?’
‘Gonsalves?’
‘A pension contribution.’
Pylon spread margarine on his toast, toast thin and dry that cracked into pieces under his knife. He looked at Mace in
exasperation
. ‘How do they do this? Why can’t they make toast that’s like toast? You know, warm bread lightly browned both sides.’
Mace ignored him. ‘So where does the exchange happen? Our offices? Mo’s place? Somewhere neutral?’ Thinking, not Mo’s place if Sheemina February was on his case.
‘Like hire a room?’ Pylon crunched down on the toast. ‘Our offices are fine.’
Mace SMS’d Paulo the address and time. Copied it to Mo Siq. ‘Now all we need is your cousin AC.’
Pylon wiped crumbs from his fingers, pulled out his cellphone. ‘Toast is so easy. The toaster we’ve got now, in six months there’s not one piece I’ve had to scrape off the charred stuff. I hate that, when it burns. A slice burns, you get the taste goes right through the toast. I’d throw that away. Not Treasure. No. That’s wasting. There’re kids would die for a piece of burnt toast, so you’ve got to scrape it off and eat it. May as well toast cardboard.’ He thumbed an SMS into his phone. Pressed send. ‘So now, with the new toaster, you can’t burn the toast. Even if you forget it’s on, it pops up.’ He smeared margarine on another piece. Bit into it and choked.
‘Come,’ said Mace, thumping his partner on the back, ‘let’s go, we’ve got a plane to catch.’
With the last rays of the afternoon at the window and the aircon up high, they sat round the table in what Mace and Pylon grandly called their boardroom, the diamonds in the centre, refracting sunlight against the dark wood. Mo Siq, AC Mkize, and Mace and Pylon waiting on Paulo.
AC was impressed with the diamonds.
‘Tell me again. You walked in with these in your pockets. Through Customs?’
Mace grinned. ‘Who’s to guess? No one even checked the baggage.’
AC laughed. More relaxed than the last time Mace had seen him. Not suited, drinking a beer from the bottle. He and Mo reminiscing about some deal they’d done in Luanda at a dinner party to fund the war effort.
Mo saying, ‘There we were in penguin suits, Stones and me, at this huge colonial house modelled on some Lisbon mansion that the minister of defence had moved into after the owners left for Portugal, and there’s maybe fifty people at the do, seated at tables on the back patio and at our table this Cuban colonel’s all over the wife of the minister of defence, in front of the minister of defence. Which was embarrassing,’ Mo said, ‘except the minister of defence’s not getting fraught and his wife’s touching the colonel almost as much as he’s touching her.’
‘Until they disappear,’ said AC. ‘One minute they’re there, the next they’re gone. At which point I look at Mo and he nods towards the minister of defence who’s rising from his seat, not in much of a hurry, keeping on a conversation with his neighbour, smiling like there was no problem in the world.’
‘We watched him walk out,’ said Mo, ‘but as we’d not seen which direction the colonel and the minister’s wife had taken, who could tell what was going on? And Stones is other side of the table so I can’t be too blatant.’
‘Probably he wasn’t gone more than five minutes,’ said AC, ‘when he comes back and sits down, not a problem in the world.’
‘And five minutes later the colonel returns not looking quite as happy as when he went out,’ Mo said.
‘The next thing I noticed,’ said AC, ‘was that the minister’s wife is sitting at another table talking to another Cuban officer. Now she’s got on a different dress, different jewellery, maybe her hair was even done in a new style. The colonel can’t stop looking at her but she has her attention on the colonel’s colleague. Eventually the colonel at our table is so embarrassed he leaves the party. The next morning,’ said AC, ‘we heard the Cubans were sending in troops, vehicles, jet fighters to stop the Boer army from invading. What we never established was what part the minister of defence’s wife played in the alliance.’
After the laughter AC said, ‘This is a good pile’ - sorting through the diamonds, picking out ones for a special examination under his eyeglass. Mace explained how the deal had to be divided and AC began shifting the diamonds into three groups, asking Mace could he tell him anything of their provenance?
‘Nothing,’ said Mace. ‘There was a guy called John Webster involved. But that’s all we know.’
‘Oh yes,’ said AC, glancing up. ‘A big fish. Major IDB player.’
‘Was,’ said Pylon.
‘Was?’ AC shifted his gaze from Pylon to Mace, back to Pylon, slow, half-hooded eyes. ‘Interesting. You want to tell me more?’
‘Not really,’ said Pylon.
AC laughed. ‘I’m curious that’s all.’
‘Situations change,’ said Pylon.
The doorbell rang. Mace said, ‘Our man Paulo.’
He brought in Paulo, Paulo stopping abruptly at the sight of three men staring at him. ‘Go in,’ said Mace. ‘You’re among friends’ - introducing Mo Siq and explaining AC Mkize’s part.
‘It’s all divided up there on the table,’ said Mace, pointing at the piles. ‘The big one’s how much you owe Mo. The small one’s how much you owe Pylon and me, the other belongs to Francisco. According to AC that’s worth a good few dollars. And that small stone is his commission. Out of your heap.’
‘And I’ve gotta trust you?’
Mace shrugged. ‘Isabella does.’ He went over to the drinks’ cabinet. ‘What’s your fancy?’
‘I won’t,’ said Paulo. ‘Thank you.’
‘You should,’ said Pylon. ‘Considering what we did to get this for you. A toast’s the least you could share with us.’
Paulo hesitated, moving to gather up the diamonds. Pylon restrained him.
‘Let them lie. A toast first.’
Paulo shook him off. ‘What’s with you guys?’
‘Part of the way we do business.’
‘Like this,’ said Paulo, indicating the cut on his cheek, his split lip, the three-day-old wounds still red and crusted.
‘Nasty,’ said Mace. ‘But not like that, no. Whisky doesn’t have the same effect. Nor beer.’ He poured Paulo a shot of whisky without waiting to hear what he wanted. ‘Here. You’ll like it.’
Paulo took it, not looking happy, frowning at the amber liquid in the glass.
‘These are very good diamonds,’ said AC. ‘You should be happy.’
‘I’m happy,’ said Mo.
‘So’re we,’ said Pylon.
Mace said, ‘Give us the toast then, Paulo?’
Paulo shifted from foot to foot, keeping his gaze focused on the diamonds, avoiding any eye contact with the men standing round the table. They waited. Watching him, expectant. Paulo flushed, couldn’t get to something witty. Something with a double meaning. Ended up with: ‘Okay, here’s to having pulled it off.’
Mace clipped bottles with Pylon. ‘I’ll drink to that.’
Paulo smirked, holding out his glass for everyone to tap it. He took the single malt in a swallow. ‘I’m outta here, guys,’ he said, scooping his pile of diamonds and this time no one persuaded him otherwise.
‘Treat them carefully,’ said AC, ‘that’s serious value you’re carrying.’
‘Don’t worry,’ said Paulo, backing out, Mace and Pylon seeing him to the door. A taxi waited outside.
‘Give my best to Francisco,’ said Mace.
Paulo nodded from the backseat, that smirk writ large across his face.
‘Makes you want to smash in his dial,’ said Pylon as the taxi pulled out of Dunkley Square down Barnet Street.
‘Not sure there’ll be an opportunity if you don’t get after them,’ said Mace, although Pylon was already unlocking the white Toyota parked at the curb. As he eased away the taxi reached the bottom of Barnet, turned left into Vrede Street.
‘Shouldn’t be too taxing,’ Mace called after him, Pylon giving him the thumbs down at the bad pun.
Mace smiled, went inside to join Mo and AC for another drink.
‘And Pylon?’ said Mo.
‘Filling in the details,’ said Mace, ‘following our erstwhile
associate
to wherever he’s going.’
Mo said, ‘Problems?’
Mace brushed it aside. ‘No big deal.’
They weren’t finished their drinks, AC was on a story about how De Beers operators moved in what he called ‘the IDB
environment
’ when Pylon phoned that Paulo was paying off his taxi on the forecourt of the Table Bay Hotel. ‘Must be flush,’ he added before disconnecting.
AC picked up then on a story about how a diver in the restricted coastal zone used carrier pigeons to get out his illegals, those birds doing a round trip of near on three hundred kilometres with a halfway stop at a farm to lighten their payload. If a kid with an airgun hadn’t shot down a bird before it left the zone there was no telling how long the scam would’ve lasted.
‘Honest little bugger to report it,’ said Mo.
‘According to the diver, not all of it,’ said AC. ‘The parcel was supposed to be a six-pack, the bird was only carrying four when security got involved.’
Mace’s phone rang again. Pylon said, ‘I’ve lost him. He’s not booked in. Never has been. Not in his name at least, and no one knows the description.’
Mace thought, nice one. All Paulo had to do was walk through the hotel foyer out the other side into the Waterfront, get another taxi at one of the entrances.
‘Clever,’ said Mace, ‘we’ll have to rethink this.’ To Mo and AC he said, ‘Our bird’s flown the coop too.’ Put through a call to a contact at the airport but his birds weren’t listed on international flights. Didn’t mean they weren’t going under different names. Mace considered the possibilities, decided that given the hotel ruse, Paulo and Vittoria probably had another plan.
What Paulo did was walk through the hotel foyer and out the other side into the Waterfront. He took the first entrance into the shopping mall towards the Mugg & Bean where he’d met Isabella, thinking, Isabella if you could see me now, and fingered the diamonds in his pocket as he stepped onto the escalator down to the underground parking. Almost at the exit, Vittoria sat in their hired Merc. He could see her watching his approach in the rear-view mirror and did a dance step to amuse her. From where it was stuck in his belt under his shirt, Paulo tugged out Ludo’s pistol, wiped the grip with his shirt, dropped the gun in a wastebin. A present for some cleaner. What would he do with it? Hand it in to the cops? Sell it? Keep it? Paulo believed one of the last two options. He opened the passenger door.
‘They follow you to the hotel?’ said Vittoria as he got in.
‘No idea,’ he said. ‘But if they did they’re gonna be really pissed’ - showing her a handful of diamonds. ‘Let’s go kiddo. We’re on safari.’
They drove to the airport, took a late domestic flight out of the city. In the air Vittoria leant across and kissed Paulo on the mouth. ‘You’ve got the style, babe.’
‘Sure have,’ he said.
They asked for two dinky bottles of sparkling wine from the stewardess and Paulo said, ‘I had to make a toast this evening for the diamonds. May as well drink to the same thing again.’
‘What’s that?’ said Vittoria.
‘To having pulled it off.’
Mace woke with Oumou’s hand on his stomach and turned towards her, reaching out to draw her closer, feeling her shift easily into his arms and come hard against him, thigh to thigh. Her lips sealed on his and his hand trailed down her back to the swell of her buttocks, resting there, his fingers pressing into the flesh. He hugged her fiercely, this woman who would look at him sometimes with sad eyes but never respond to his ‘What? What is it?’ except to maybe smile slightly as if she knew all about him. Everything he did. Everything he thought. Yet did not judge him. Her leg lifted over his thigh and he opened his eyes to find her watching him.
Afterwards they slept and Mace woke with the sunlight, and Oumou gently rocking him.
‘Mon chéri,’ she whispered in his ear, ‘there is a telephone call.’
Mace glanced at the bedside clock: 6:40. Who was going to phone at 6:40?
‘He said he is a policeman. Captain somebody,’ said Oumou. ‘Three times I ask him who but I cannot understand his name.’
‘Gonsalves,’ said Mace, pulling her down until she fell across him. ‘You are simply the best,’ he said into her hair but she pushed herself up and looked at him the way she had done earlier and said, ‘Oui, that is what you always say,’ laughing as she said it, holding out the cellphone.
Gonsalves said, ‘Mr Bishop you were supposed to call me.’
‘It was past your bedtime,’ said Mace.
Gonsalves ignored him. ‘How about this morning, first off?’ he said. ‘Another thing you might like to know: it was the same gun that killed the queers. And the man’s name is Riccardo Ludovico. Ring any bells?’
‘Yes,’ said Mace, ‘I’ve met him.’
‘Good. The morgue. Say eight o’clock.’
‘Eight-thirty,’ said Mace, but he was talking to dead air.
Mace showered and half an hour later put through a call to Dave Cruikshank, on the off-chance.
‘Seven-fifteen,’ said Dave, ‘is no time to be calling even if I haven’t heard from you since your famous clients were forcibly passed on. But I’ll overlook that, being as I am a man of
generous
nature. Well-disposed towards his fellow human beings, not inclined to disturb their early mornings without so much as a how are you? So how are you, my son? How’s the lovely Oumou? And the darling Christa who I heard tell along the grapevine is to be seen in the swimming pool giving her old man something to
consider
? The girl’s doing alright then?’
Mace said she was and reiterated his question: did he have any Americans on his books who’d signed for holiday lets in recent days?
‘Could be, my son, could be. But I need more clues.’
‘I’m looking for a guy called Paulo Cavedagno,’ said Mace. ‘Might be staying in a hotel, a self-catering flat, a B&B for all I know. Mightn’t even be in the city any longer for that matter.’
‘Doesn’t ring a bell, my son,’ said Dave. ‘A name like that would ring a bell.’
* * *
Salt River wasn’t Mace’s favourite part of town. Not at any time, especially not in a gritty wind. Wide Durham Street with its factory shops wasn’t his idea of a good address. Nor did the morgue’s palisade concrete fence topped with barbed wire thrill him. Nor the whipping flag. Nor the morgue itself, brown facebrick, a barrack-like building with an incongruous gable. Nondescript if you were driving past, too obviously visiting the dead if you were not. He registered at the security post.
‘No public until twelve o’clock,’ said the guard.
‘I’m with him.’ Mace pointed at the figure of Captain Gonsalves hunched at the entrance door, his back to the wind.
The guard grunted, pressed knobs to open the electronic gate.
Mace parked in the yard, as he killed the Spider’s ignition his phone rang: Dave Cruikshank.
‘My son, you’re in luck and as always it goes to show my finger is on the pulse. Turns out my young colleague here entered a Mr Paulo Cavedagno on our books. Even turns out I spoke to the selfsame man on Saturday afternoon. Not that the name stirred the dust when you mentioned it but then what does these days, all the names that come through my agency? Now, my colleague is a chatty sort and engaged Mr Cavedagno in some light conversation and learnt that after his stay at our fair Cape our client was headed up to a safari lodge for a few days before going home. Chap was doing a whistle-stop round the country. Only booked the house from Friday to Monday which is not our favourite rental but it happened last minute and the place was free so we did it. Money is money, my son, as you’d know.’
Mace could see Gonsalves waiting for him at the door, said, ‘Was he alone?’
‘A bachelor, my young colleague assumed, to use the
old-fashioned
term. Very personable, I’m informed. Drove a Merc. Came in himself to collect the keys. Paid with an American Express. Not our favourite card but when you’re dealing with our American cousins you take what they’re offering.’
‘That’s helpful,’ said Mace. ‘Any chance your colleague remembers the name of the lodge.’
He heard Dave relay the question and the answer: Hippo Pools.
‘You hear that?’ said Dave.
‘I got it,’ said Mace.
‘Nice chatting, then. Got to rush, my son, morning call of nature. My best to your lovely lady wife.’
Mace thought, well, wasn’t Hippo Pools in for some exciting times, deciding not to tell Gonsalves until he’d checked out the information.
The captain was shrugged into a jacket with leather patches at the elbows. ‘This’s not my favourite place,’ he said as Mace approached.
‘Not anywhere I’ve been before,’ said Mace.
‘I bring people here usually they’re going to be looking at someone they love who was alive the last time they looked.’ He made no move to go inside. ‘This Ludovico, how’d you meet him?’
‘He was at a house in Llandudno. I was there on business.’
‘Business?’
‘For a client.’
Gonsalves chewed on this, then gestured at the morgue. ‘He’s American, this Ludovico?’
‘Certainly sounded it.’
‘So why’s he dead?’
‘I wouldn’t know. My business wasn’t with him. My client was a Paulo Cavedagno.’
‘Smooth talker,’ said Gonsalves. ‘I met him the day I went there looking for the bird. What was it you did for him?’
‘Hey!’ said Mace, ‘why the questions?’
Gonsalves shrugged. ‘So tell me, what? When? How?’
‘The man was interested in a surgical safari, I went to explain the details.’
‘And this Ludovico was there?’
‘Watching the cricket on television. Pylon even talked to him about the game.’
Gonsalves nodded. ‘You know what the dead smell like in here?
Before Mace could answer, he said, ‘Disinfectant. Jeyes fluid. Ammonia. Dettol. Toilet cleaner. Everything you eat for the rest of the day’s gonna taste like the morgue.’ He pushed at the glass and aluminium entrance door and led the way into the building, down a corridor and through swing doors into a room with two gurneys, bodies on both of them, side by side. The attendant uncovered the face of the nearest one and Mace looked down at the man who’d been watching television, who’d come out to intervene after he’d slammed some punches into the arsehole Paulo. ‘That’s him,’ he said. Dread filling his stomach, the certainty coming on him hard and cold that Isabella was the other body.
‘You want to take a look at the female?’ the attendant asked without waiting for an answer, pulling down the sheet.
Mace forcing himself to glance over, taking in the wound between the eyes, the pallid skin, knowing it was her before he recognised the face.
‘Jesus!’
He stepped closer, reached out to touch her face, saying her name, ‘Bella. Bella.’ Heard Gonsalves say, ‘You know this woman?’ - the voice coming from a distance as Mace gripped the side of the gurney, bent over the body, his breathing loud and ragged in his ears. He looked at her: her closed eyes, the roman nose, her lips unsmiling, the angry rose in her forehead where the bullet had smashed in. He stood like that looking down at her and it might have been five minutes or half an hour, there were no thoughts but her name on a loop through his mind and behind it the realisation: She’s dead. She is dead.
* * *
They gave him sugared tea in an office, he and Gonsalves alone, sitting at a table. The captain waited until Mace finished the tea before he said, ‘For now what I need to know is her name, okay, and where she was staying. Some contact numbers too if you’ve got them.’ He pushed a notepad and pencil across the desk to Mace. ‘This’d be a help, okay? Statements can come later.’
Mace nodded. He picked up the pencil, a tremor in his hand and wrote down the name: Isabella Medicis. Brought out his
cellphone
, copied the numbers he had for her, and for Francisco. ‘The last one’s her brother,’ he said. ‘In New York.’
Gonsalves stretched over for the pad. ‘Any idea where she was staying.’
Mace told him the Mount Nelson.
Gonsalves stood. ‘I’ve gotta go. If you want some more time with her that’s okay. Just ask them.’
Mace shook his head.
‘Then how about you come to my office about eleven,
eleven-thirty
? That give you enough time?’
‘Sure,’ Mace said, the word grating in his throat.
He heard Gonsalves pause, then turn away and go out, closing the door quietly. For a while he sat tracing beneath his fingertip a pattern formed by the gouges and gashes in the table top, round and round. No thoughts, only the distracted circling of his finger from scar to scar until slowly he refocused, the image of two people walking hand-in-hand on Llandudno beach rising in his mind’s eye. Paulo and the woman Vittoria.
He pulled out his cellphone. Directory inquiries gave him the telephone number of Hippo Pools. The receptionist at Hippo Pools confirmed that Mr and Mrs Cavedagno were expected during the morning for a short stay. Was there anything she could do for him? But Mace had disconnected and was thumbing through his contacts for the travel agent he used. He had her book him onto a noon departure to the airport nearest Hippo Pools. A three-hour flight, maybe an hour’s drive from the airport to the lodge. Beyond that he wasn’t planning.
Mace left the room. He found the attendant drinking tea in the corridor and arranged for five minutes with the body of the woman who’d been his lover once. Who’d tempted him again for old-time’s sake.
‘No problem,’ said the attendant, taking him to the room they’d been in first, the gurneys as they’d left them.
‘I need to be alone,’ said Mace. ‘Can you get him out?’ - waiting until the other trolley was wheeled away before he lifted off the sheet to expose her head and shoulders, her marbled whiteness.
‘Nice guy you picked for a husband,’ he said, feeling her hair between his fingers, not the soft texture he’d felt mere days back but strands, coarse and sandy. ‘The issue is how you’d like him to die?’ He trailed his fingers down her face over the curve of her jaw and down her neck to the hollows at her collarbone, but the flesh wasn’t her flesh anymore. It was meat. ‘Personally I’d opt for hanging. Both of them. Side by side from a fever tree. Or maybe staking them out on an anthill for the hyenas.’ He bent towards her and caught a faint hint of the Chanel, and sniffed closer to her skin but the scent was gone. He swung away. ‘Jesus, Bella. This, after everything. This arsehole.’
Paulo and Vittoria’s plane touched down mid-morning at a small airport only used now for tourist flights but had once been an airforce base in the border-war years, the pilot told them. Admitted he’d been stationed there, Number Two Mirage Squadron. Those were the days, folks. Enjoy your stay, folks.
They stepped out into heat and glare, white heads of cumulus building on the sky’s horizon.
‘Real Africa,’ Paulo said as the courtesy Land Rover took them to the lodge along a dirt track through scrub mopani and bushwillow woodlands, the air dry and singing. At the sight of grazing impala, Vittoria made the driver stop and he said, ‘Lady, by tonight you’re not gonna want to see another one of these buck. They’re everywhere.’
‘But now is not tonight,’ said Vittoria, snapping off a picture on the digital she’d bought courtesy of Isabella’s credit card.
The lodge accommodation thrilled them: a stand-alone wooden and thatch-roofed chalet under this tree the porter said was called a jackalberry tree. Right at the edge of a waterhole. Inside bushveld chic: exposed rafters over a large bed with white linen, grass mats on the tiled floors. From the bedroom window Vittoria could see pig creatures on their knees rooting in the grass along the banks of the water. And what could have been a log but what the porter said was a crocodile at the far end of the pool.
‘Sometimes at night,’ he said, ‘we get lions in the camp. It is best not to wander around after your dinner.’
‘Exciting,’ said Paulo.
They arranged for a night game-viewing drive then settled on the deck with beers from the minibar.
‘Nice place,’ said Vittoria. ‘Maybe four days isn’t going to be long enough.’
Six hours later Mace landed at the same airport. He was travelling light: from the overhead locker took down a plastic packet with a coil of thick rope and a torch, the pockets of his bush jacket carried a tape recorder and a twenty-pack of cigarettes, and at the exit the stewardess handed him his nine mil with a full clip and a Leatherman that’d been stowed in the plane’s safe. Told him the car hire desk was in the terminal.
On the flight he’d spent time with a map and a layout of Hippo Pools pulled off their website. The place ran a small guest lodge and five individual chalets overlooking a waterhole, each one located for privacy which was good. The guest lodge of ten rooms, a dining room and bar fronted a river and the hippo pools that gave the reserve its name. Well to the side were staff quarters, probably hidden from the lodge by thick bush. Outside the main building a small parking lot. All this in thirty thousand hectares of rolling hills savannah. Pure paradise for Paulo and his chick. Mace saw Isabella’s dead face and thought, It’s going to be hell, pal.
