Payback - A Cape Town thriller (40 page)

Mace sat up that night after Oumou and Christa had gone to bed with two words in his head: Sheemina February. Threw rooikrans faggots on a log fire and nursed a tawny port. Thought: why’d this woman bother him? Outside a gale crashed through the stone pines: the mountain howling.

During the meeting, at every moment, he was aware that across the table sat the woman who’d okayed Christa’s kidnapping. Probably okayed, wasn’t in it, he was sure she had. Abdul Abdul being no more than a sidekick really. Sheemina February, the woman who gave Christa the pain. The nightmares. The flashbacks. The woman who put her in a wheelchair. If he looked up, Sheemina February would catch his eye. Sometimes smile, taunting. Always hold his glance for too long. Sitting there blatantly. Challenging. Daring him. Like she knew something he didn’t.

The pale blue eyes. The delicate nose. The lipstick on her Penelope Cruz lips. The perfume. Her hair uncovered. What was he supposed to do here? What was he supposed to feel? Hate? Anger? Fear?

He felt some of that, the hate, the anger. Was disconcerted by her, he had to admit that. He could do without having her pitching up in his business.

After the meeting Pylon had said, ‘How could you let her in here? Are you mad? After what happened, how could you? Save me Jesus! She kidnapped your daughter. Could’ve got Christa killed. She’s evil. Pure bloody undiluted evil. And you let her walk in like this isn’t our place to say who comes in, who we keep out. What’s in your head?’

What, Mace wondered, what was in his head?

That he hadn’t stood up to her? Why was that?

Something in some dark corner he couldn’t remember?

Or something else? Her words at the concert: that he was guilty. Of what though? Trying to get the truth? Selling guns?

More like he’d let her in out of curiosity. To see where it would go. How matters would pan out. Once there hadn’t been time for that sort of consideration. You acted. Earlier times he’d never have left the two Yanks alive, that Paulo and his bird, for the justice system to deal with. The justice system had more chance of cocking it up than of dishing out justice. Earlier times he’d have done them, saved everyone the trouble. Maybe even have done something about Sheemina February in earlier times. A weakness creeping in here. A sense that it made no difference.

He sighed, took a long swallow of the port.

Perhaps Pylon was right. He should’ve been decisive, kept her out.

After the meeting he’d had a swimming session with Christa. Coaxed her to put in two extra lengths, working her harder than normal. Willing strength into her legs. Mace watched her and thought, this is the triumph. The defeat of Sheemina February.

Some defeat, getting Christa to swim extra lengths.

He let the fire burn down, finished the port. Went to bed with the thought: Sheemina February’s rubbing your nose in it. What the it was, he couldn’t imagine.

Ducky Donald shouted into his phone, ‘What’s your problem? What’s it you don’t understand?’

Oupa K said, ‘What?’

So Ducky told him again at full volume.

Oupa K said, ‘Now?’ Then, ‘Chief, come again.’

At which Ducky Donald took the phone from his ear and looked at it in wonder as if the instrument wasn’t working properly.

He heard the words, ‘Alwyn, shit man, don’t do that.’ Then Oupa K talking to him again, saying, ‘Shh. There’s no need to shout. Talk nicely, okay?’

Ducky Donald stared at the television screen: a car chase through shopping arcades of the Via Roma. He put the phone back to his ear and said, ‘What’s this Alwyn doing that I’m straining to get your attention?’

‘Taking all the duvet,’ said Oupa K, the grunts of a tug-of-war audible to Ducky.

‘Five thou, I’m offering. Why’s that a problem?’

The Minis going up onto a rooftop, racing round a test track.

‘It’s midnight,’ said Oupa K. ‘That’s a problem place to start with.’

‘Keep off the boys, pal. That’s a problem place to start with.’

He heard Oupa K sigh. ‘I’m listening to you. I don’t need shit.’

‘Ten grand.’

‘I am at home, in my bed. I was asleep.’

Ducky Donald barked a laugh. ‘Sure, sure. You and Alwyn nice ‘n cosy.’

The Minis now bouncing down the stairs of a church, a wedding happening in the background. Leaving the cops in the Alfas looking stupid.

‘Also it is storming. And it is cold.’

‘Then this’s gonna warm you up,’ said Ducky, aiming the remote at the TV screen, getting back to the main menu. He clicked on scene selection: started the car scene all over again.

‘Tomorrow,’ said Oupa K. ‘When I can get some guys to do it.’

Ducky Donald watched the loot being loaded into the Minis. ‘Tomorrow’s good. It’s what I’ve been talking about. You leave right now, it’s tomorrow by the time you get there.’

‘Uh-uh. Not my party. I got people do this for me.’

On screen, it’s mayhem in the arcades. Ducky set down the remote to pick up a tumbler of brandy and Coke, his teeth clicking against the glass. He’d been to Oupa K’s house once with Matthew and had peeked in the bedroom: a kingsize mattress and base set on a shaggy white rug that was almost wall to wall. The rug smelt of dog, even though Oupa K kept his dogs chained in the yard. Probably all the shit from the street that Oupa K and his bumboys tramped in embedded in the fur.

Ducky scene-hopped to the end, the bus teetering on the edge of a cliff, gold sliding down the floor.

‘What else’re you doing tonight that’s gonna earn you ten grand? For an outlay of what? I dunno. Maybe five hundred bucks. And two hours of your time. Three hours max including travelling.’

‘’Cos I’m lying here. Cosy like you said. So tomorrow night.’

‘Don’t you understand?’ Ducky raising his voice again. ‘For Chrissakes, I need it done now. Come’n Oupa. Do me a favour.’ He paused for Oupa K to come in but the guy didn’t. ‘It’s easy, okay. Nothing to it. No security, no alarms, nothing. You’re back in your bed before morning.’

This time Ducky didn’t fill the silence, forcing Oupa K into it.

‘At seven I coulda made a plan. At ten I coulda made a plan. At nearly twelve I’m not gonna make a plan. Why didn’t you tell me earlier?’

‘’Cos I didn’t know earlier. You didn’t occur to me earlier. I only thought of you now.’

‘Tomorrow, chief. That’s it. Duze time.’

‘Fifteen.’

‘Hey, hey, hey, chief. Five, ten, fifteen. In five minutes of talking. Another five minutes you’re gonna be at thirty.’

The man had a point, fifteen was way beyond its worth but Ducky wanted it handled and he wanted it handled tonight. ‘That’s it. Take it or leave it. I know other fish in the sea.’

Oupa K laughed. ‘Hey, what’re you talking? I’m not asking any price, chief. You came to me. Other fish’ve got nothing to do with this. Maybe you should slow down the brandies.’

‘Hell, Oupa! Must I go on my knees? That gonna make you happier than fifteen K?’

‘That’s what Alwyn’s doing.’

Ducky flicked back to watch the opening shots coming down the pass.

‘I don’t wanna know what Alwyn’s doing. I wanna know if you’re going to help me out.’

Oupa K gave a long sigh of pleasure. ‘Oooooo … Alright. Alright. Say I do this, chief. How’re you paying?’

Ducky paused the movie. ‘The soon as you do it, the soon as you get here, it’s all yours. Just bring the video of the fire as evidence so’s I can see it.’

Silence from Oupa K. Then: ‘You got an address for me there, chief?’

Ducky Donald gave him directions. ‘Leave now, Oupa. I wanna hear it on the morning news.’

Before he thumbed off the connection he heard Oupa say, ‘We’re on our way, chief. Any moment now.’

For Mace the day started badly. He had to collect Francisco off the London flight at 7:00 a.m. 7:00 a.m. was still deep into what he considered a dark and stormy night. To make matters worse he phoned ahead and was told, the flight’s on schedule. So 7:00 a.m. his wheels were rolling: fifteen minutes to Cape Town International at that time of the morning against the traffic. His thinking was: Francisco’s disembarking, going through passport control, collecting his baggage, hitting the queues at Customs, it was going to be quarter to eight, eight o’clock before he’d cleared. Enough time to relax with the paper and a cappuccino, maybe also a blueberry muffin, at a concourse café.

Wrong.

On the N2 outgoing a lorry’s lost its load, the traffic’s at a dead stop for thirty minutes. Bang goes the coffee break.

It’s gone eight by the time he gets to the airport, there’s a
different
story on the ground. Sorry, sir, the flight’s been delayed for thirty minutes because of bad weather.

Okay, he reverts to plan A: a cappuccino, a blueberry muffin and the newspaper.

Only problem: no more blueberry muffins, no more newspapers. Sorry, sir, everybody wants a newspaper, sir, because of the delays.

He gets the cappuccino which is more a latte and a
second-hand
Cape Times with a story torn out on page three. This means the article on page four about the court case due to open in the High Court in a few hours is mostly missing. The court case featuring Francisco’s brother-in-law, the punkish Paulo and his delightful bint, the viper Vittoria. The lead paragraphs are about the murder of the American tourists and the link to the earlier killing of the Italian couturiers but that’s all. Mace has to wait until he can get someone else’s discarded paper to find that he’s made the last paragraph:

‘In a surprise development, security operator, Mr Mace Bishop, is to be subpoenaed by the accused on allegations of torture. According to the police, no charges have been laid against Mr Bishop. He is not under investigation.’

He’s staring at these words thinking so much for Gonsalves sorting it when Gonsalves calls. ‘Nice write up,’ he says. ‘A fine achievement to make the news.’ He gives Mace the sound effects of tobacco chewing.

‘I thought you’d organised something.’

‘You know with miracles they take a little longer’ – a slurp of saliva causing the captain to drag out the last word. ‘The sheriff’s men been on to you yet?’

Mace tells him, I’m not at home, I’m not at the office, the way the day’s shaping I’m not even going to be in at the start of the trial.

‘Keep on ducking and diving,’ Gonsalves says, ‘stay ahead of the law.’

For which advice Mace thanked him and joined the chauffeurs and the company drivers and the tour couriers holding up signs for Mr and Mrs So and So. Francisco came out ahead of the pack.

No preliminaries, no beating about the bush. ‘What I wanna do first, Mace,’ he said, ‘is tour the sight. This’s haunting me, the exact location of the final moments of her life. Maybe it doesn’t make sense to you. But me, I can’t get it outta my mind.’

Mace checked his watch. ‘The court’ll be sitting round about now.’

‘We got time for the court after. This first.’

They drove out to the sand dunes, Francisco silent all the way, staring at the low grey sky and the wild sea. The mountain and the city across that stretch of water a brooding dark.

Where the road comes down into Big Bay Francisco said, ‘Would that be Robben Island out there?’

Mace told him yes.

He said, ‘I heard about it.’

They drove on in silence for the next ten, fifteen kilometres, Francisco sitting there tense in his Burberry and brogues, giving off a faint scent of mint. At the junction to Atlantis he said, ‘This’s a long way outta the city. How’d that asshole think to come here?’

‘He talks about that,’ Mace said. ‘On the tape.’

‘You gonna let me hear his squealing?’

‘Up to you. I can make copies and drop them off. Except some of it’s harsh, I have to say.’

Francisco didn’t respond beyond a shrug.

In that gloom the dunes came up white, rolling away into a fog bank. Mace slowed, anticipating the farm gate beyond them but even so, overshot and had to U-turn, driving back along the gravel shoulder.

The gate was locked. The farm track mostly under water. Only advantage was the rain had stopped.

‘It’s here?’ said Francisco.

Mace pointed down the track and into the dunes. ‘About two hundred metres.’

Francisco conjured a camera from his raincoat pocket, took some snaps of the gate and the track and the dunes beyond.

‘You’ve been out here a coupla times?’ he said.

Mace nodded, tested the wire strands of the fence and climbed over. ‘In the summer. Not since.’

They stood either side of the gate.

‘You and her had this thing, right?’

‘Once. We went back some years.’

‘I’m assuming. She never talked about it, her feelings, just every now ‘n then the name Mace Bishop would drop into her conversation.’

Mace held out his hand. ‘I’ll take the camera while you climb over.’

Francisco gave it to him. ‘This’s not interrogational Mace, I’m telling you is all.’ He put his foot on the middle strand of wire and jiggled it. ‘Isabella I couldn’t figure. Her marrying the jerk. Her not putting the romantic clinch on you. This’s mysterious to me. I reckon she had other scenes. A woman like that musta done. But she holds tight to the dickhead till he fucking does her.’ He climbed onto the gate and Mace steadied him but he came down the other side badly, falling on a knee and a hand, soaking the cuff of his coat, likewise his lower trouser leg. ‘Ah shit. Ah for saint’s sake, man. Ah Lord Jesus look at this?’ He picked himself up. ‘This is what I truly need.’ He flapped his arm, stared down at his brogues. ‘One thing I’ve no partiality to is wet socks.’ He shook his head. ‘Okay, this’s my safari. This is what I have to do. So we better do it.’

Mace gave him back the camera and he took it, gripping Mace’s hand.

‘What I’m asking now Mace is, she mean anything to you’- he thumped his chest - ‘here in your heart?’

Mace didn’t answer him. Held his eyes until Francisco, releasing his grasp, said, ‘Yeah, I guessed, I suppose.’

They walked down the track without speaking, wading through vlei sponge that put water into their shoes. About a hundred metres farther, a path forked left off the track into the dunes, the going easier on the hard wet sand. The dune grass thickened and they entered the hollow where Isabella had been shot. Except the hollow was now under water.

Francisco stood beside Mace, his breathing fast. ‘This’s it?’

‘In the summer it’s dry,’ Mace said. ‘Though you wouldn’t believe so.’

‘And the spot’s in there? Under the water.’

Mace nodded.

‘Ah bloody saints,’ Francisco said, taking a small, framed photograph of Isabella from his coat pocket. ‘I wanted to lay this there.’ He flipped it into the centre of the pond and they watched it sink, zigzagging out of sight. ‘That about right you think?’

Mace told him it was, and for ten minutes they stood there until Francisco said, ‘Are you a praying man, Mace?’

Mace told him no.

Francisco picked at a head of dune grass, threw it on the surface. ‘In the sense I’m meaning, me neither. I do mass. I’d want a priest at my dying. But I don’t pray. Isabella wouldn’t even believe I asked you that question.’

Mace’s phone started ringing.

‘I reckon standing here’s as good as that. All the places she’d been she could of died. Yet this is it. A sainting pond in a sand dune outside a city in saint knows where.’ He clicked off some photographs. ‘God’s divine scheme this’s supposed to be. Tell me about it, pal. Tell me where there’s the hand of God, for saint’s sake.’

Mace fished his cell from the inside pocket of his jacket: Ducky Donald’s name on the screen. He thumbed him on, said, ‘I’ll call you back’ - disconnecting before the other man could get a word in.

Francisco turned to face him, red-eyed. ‘After your justice’s gone the course, that’s not the end of it for Paulo. The broad neither.’

Mace held his gaze. ‘Probably justice won’t go its course.’

‘I was wondering about that.’ He nodded, offered his hand. They shook. ‘You better get onto your caller.’

As they headed back across the sand, Mace phoned Ducky.

‘Chrissake,’ Ducky yelled. ‘You cut me off. I’m dealing with major shit here, Mace, ‘n you cut me off.’

Mace grimaced at the sky, speckles of rain on the wind again. ‘What’s it, Ducky?’

‘Big trouble. Like you wouldn’t believe.’

‘Why don’t you tell me?’

Ducky gave his hyena laugh. ‘The goddamned warehouse burnt down. How about that! In all the rain. Wooma it’s gone. Dust to dust, bones to ashes.’

Mace waited at the gate while Francisco climbed over. ‘That wasn’t smart, Ducky.’

‘Shit happens,’ he said. ‘I need to get there Mace. Pronto, show my disappointment and dismay at this disaster.’

The roof of the warehouse had burnt out completely, not a blackened rafter remaining. The walls stood but everything that was wood had gone up: the doors, the floor boards, the catwalk, the stairs to the walkway. Metal window frames warped in the heat, the panes of glass blown out. You didn’t have to be a fireman to know this had been a fierce blaze.

By the time Mace got there the drama was well over: the street still blocked off by a fire services’ car and a cop van pulled across it either end, but the fire tenders long gone. In the smouldering shell stood a knot of men, Ducky Donald and Pylon among them. With the sprung floor burnt away, the foundation cellar seemed an ancient ruin of columns and short walls, black sludge and mud. Like being in Pompeii, Mace thought, jumping down. Roofing sheets and other charred debris scattered about. The ground still hot.

Pylon walked him aside before he could join the group. ‘This’s him again?’

‘I’d reckon.’

‘But you wouldn’t tell from how he’s acting. In character as soon’s I picked him up: “this is a tragedy, just when everything’s sorted out” - words to that effect.’

‘And the bones?’

‘Ashes, mostly. Odd bits here and there where you can see anything under the roof sheeting. But what’s wood ash ‘n what’s human ash who can tell?

‘The priests will love this.’ Mace looked over at the group of men. ‘What’s the fire chief say?’

‘He’s talking a probable electrical fault but he’s dubious. Because of the intensity. Also a fault would’ve triggered the alarm. The alarm would’ve brought out the security patrol. Didn’t happen.’

‘What did?’

‘Smoke detector next-door got the fire services here before the street went up. The timeline’s something like: security logs a fire alarm at five-fifty thereabouts, the patrol checks it out, calls the fire brigade maybe six minutes later, it takes them ten minutes to get an engine here. Say six-twentyish they’re on the job. Seven the fire’s doused. Most of the damage done before anybody knew about it.’

‘And Ducky’s security system didn’t trigger.’

‘Probably I’d say it was switched off.’

‘Bloody pyromaniac.’

‘What’s puzzling the fire chief is why the floor burnt first. Usually it’s the roof he says.’

Mace noticed the knot of men breaking up, Ducky Donald limping towards them.

‘The forensics’ll get him. Or rather put it down to arson. But what’s that prove? Ducky’ll say it was a set-up, probably caused by the same people as are trying to kill him. Makes sense.’

‘Except for the security system failing.’

‘Dud technology. Why not? Happens all the time.’

Ducky Donald called out. ‘Christ, do I need this!’

‘Don’t you?’ Mace asked ‘Seems to me to sort out a problem.’

‘What’s that?’ Ducky dusted his hands.

‘Nothing left to fight over.’

He squinted at Mace. ‘Boykie, you’re too cynical. Anybody ever told you that?’

‘Also frees up the storage commitment.’

‘I was good for that. You heard me tell her.’

‘Tell her what?’ said the voice of Sheemina February, and they looked up and she stood there in what had once been the doorway, their heads level with her boots.

At any other time Mace might have said he could see what Mo Siq had seen when he married her. This alluring woman - black coat, black gloves, black hair - the flash in her pale blue eyes and the half-smile. The tips of her teeth white against her lipstick. At any other time.

‘Last night,’ she said, ‘we had an arrangement, Mr Hartnell. Draw up the contract, I’ll sign it you said.’ She held out her briefcase. ‘It’s in here. I took you on good faith. Funny thing this fire should happen now.’

‘Changes nothing,’ said Ducky. ‘I’m good for my word.’

She forced a laugh. ‘Good for what? Taking a scoop of sand and ash from where you’re standing and plastering it onto a wall.’

‘Of course. Make the ancestors part of the building.’

‘Nice try, Mr Hartnell. But we don’t want our ancestors churned up in a concrete mixer.’

She stared at the men, each one in turn. Mace met her eyes, held them until she said, ‘I’m calling a press conference. For tomorrow morning, in the Slave Lodge probably. Be there.’ And swirled away, Ducky Donald shouting after her, ‘Wait, wait.’

‘Forget it,’ Mace said.

‘Ah, shit, man.’ Ducky groaned. ‘They’re gonna crucify me.’

Pylon patted him on the shoulder. ‘Keep spinning, bro, you’ll think of something.’

Mace drove a subdued Ducky Donald home, didn’t stop for the coffee and a shot he offered.

‘You’ll get me to the lion’s den tomorrow?’

‘As per our agreement.’

Ducky didn’t think it was funny, slammed closed the Spider’s door.

When Mace got back to the office the sheriff’s man was waiting with a subpoena. A day starts badly it continues like that all the way, he thought.