The Mall (33 page)

‘Fuck you,’ she says.

‘Not today, Josie. Not any day.’

Insulting her isn’t the best way to keep her here, but somehow I can’t stop myself. I’ve smelled blood. Anyway, very soon someone’s going to see Bradley through the
window. I’ve got a minute or two at the most to
find this fucking plan
.

‘You’re a loser, Daniel,’ Josie snaps. I nick my finger on the knife point again. ‘I don’t know why you think I was…’

I zone her out. Maybe I’ve found my plan. What’s the other way of keeping her here? I take the knife out of my pocket.

chapter 29

RHODA

‘You’re pathetic, Dan,’ the blonde bitch is saying. ‘Face it. A loser.’

She doesn’t hear me entering the office; she’s way too busy enjoying herself. She’s even added a pseudo-bored drawl to her voice, as if dissing Dan is, like,
soooo
beneath her.

She flicks her hair, cocks a hip. ‘What did you think you were going to do with that knife? Cut me? That’s a joke. Wait till I tell Bradley. He’ll call the cops, then
you’ll be screwed.’

I let the door slam behind me. She jumps and whirls around to face me.

‘Hi, bitch,’ I say, feeling a spurt of adrenaline coursing through my body. I immediately feel energised, powerful, like I’ve got total control over what happens next. I glance
over to where Dan is standing against the far wall, head down. His hair hangs to one side, and I can clearly see the scabbed-over wound on his neck. He’s holding my knife loosely in his
hand.

‘Rhoda?’ he says woozily, looking up at me.

The blonde glares at me, tosses her hair back. ‘You!’ she says, ‘Don’t I know you from somewhere?’

‘You tell me,’ I say, taking a step forward. ‘Do you?’

‘Customers aren’t allowed back here,’ she says, but now there’s a wobble in her voice and she starts to back up. She’s not a complete idiot; she can read the
expression on my face. ‘Tell her, Dan,’ she says, looking to him for help. Dan doesn’t move.

‘Apologise to him,’ I say. My voice is oddly calm, I sound reasonable, polite even.

‘What?’

‘I heard what you were saying. It’s a bunch of shit. I think you should take it back.’

‘What’s it to you? He came at me with a knife!’

‘I didn’t,’ Dan says, his voice still zoned out. ‘I wanted to, but…’

I’m moving closer to her now, and she’s forced to scramble away, her back almost touching the metal shelves slotted against the wall.

‘Dan!’ she says. ‘Dan!’

I’m now so close to her that I can smell her cheap body spray and see where her foundation has clogged in her pores.

‘So?’ I say, almost conversationally. ‘Are you going to apologise?’

She can’t help it. Her face morphs into that sneer I remember from when I’d asked her about the kid, and it’s the same sneer I saw on Yellow Eyes’ lips the first time I
encountered him; the same sneer on the faces of that bitch in the dress shop this morning; the cunts in the travel agency. I don’t even think twice.

I clench my fist, draw my bent arm tightly into my body and slam my elbow upwards and under her jaw. A bolt of bright, intense pain shoots through my arm, but I ignore it. Her breath whooshes
out, she falls backwards, and her head knocks with a solid clunk on the corner of the shelf behind her. Blood pours out of her mouth; she must have bitten through her lip or (I hope) her tongue.
She reaches out, touches her mouth as if she can’t believe what is happening, and slowly, without any grace whatsoever, crumples to the floor. As she lands, her head thunks on a pile of
hardcover arty-farty coffee-table books.

I don’t move for several seconds. I concentrate on stilling my heart, listening to the far distant rumblings of the mall beyond the room.

My elbow aches like it’s been dipped in fire – that knocking-your-funny-bone pain that you can almost feel in your teeth – and I straighten my arm experimentally, checking
that nothing is broken. It’s fucking sore, but I’ll live.

‘Dan!’ I say.

His eyes are glassy. I have to step over the blonde’s body to get to him. I take his hands, pocketing the knife in the process.

‘What the fuck happened out there, Dan? What did you do?’

He doesn’t even glance at the bitch’s body. He swallows noisily. ‘He was saying, stuff, Rhoda, and I… I… fuck it. Something came over me.’

I nod.
Something came over me
. He just picked up a fullgrown man and impaled him. Jesus.

‘Is he dead?’ he says.

From what I could see when I barged into the shop he certainly looked pretty fucking dead, but I didn’t actually look that close. ‘I don’t know,’ I say.

‘It was so fucked up. I got this jolt. Like electricity. Like I was plugged in to something. I was so fucking strong.’ For a second, a triumphant glint I’ve never seen before
flicks into his eyes. I don’t like it. There’s something cold and hard about it, but then it dies. Did I imagine it? ‘I couldn’t help myself. I guess I just
snapped.’

‘I know what you mean,’ I say. I reach behind me and prod the blonde’s body with my index finger. Her chest rises and falls shallowly, but she’s out cold, her mouth slack
and bloody. I’m not sure if I’m relieved that’s she’s breathing, or disappointed. Her skirt has ridden right up her thighs, but I’m fucked if I’m going to give
her any dignity. ‘I felt exactly the same. No one should fuck with us, right?’

He looks up at me in surprise. ‘Yeah,’ he says, deadpan. ‘We’re the revenge twins.’

There’s a pause while we both replay what he just said, and then we’re laughing. Great raucous waves of laughter, tears rolling down our cheeks, both of us losing our balance and
clutch ing each other with the force of it.

‘We’re, like, totally hardcore,’ he sputters, when he can breathe.

‘The hardest mutherfuckers in Joburg,’ I say.

‘Like, gangsta-syle,’ Dan says, forking his fingers and waving them in the air, and we’re off again.

Then, as if by silent agreement, our laughter snaps off. My legs are shaky, probably from the after-effects of the adrenaline.

He stares down at the bitch’s body, a strange vacant expression on his face. ‘Fuck, Rhoda,’ he says. ‘We’re fucked.’

‘No shit,’ I say.

He wipes his hand over his face, a familiar gesture. Then, absently, his hand moves behind his head and under his hair. ‘We’re dead,’ he says.

‘Not necessarily,’ I say.

‘Huh?’

‘Think about it. How will they know it’s us?’ I say. ‘Did anyone see you… do that to the guy outside?’

He shrugs. ‘No.’

‘So if he dies – and let me tell you, Dan, he didn’t look like he’d be playing a round of golf anytime soon – then we have no witnesses. Could have been a robbery
gone wrong.’

He looks down at the girl. ‘She’s not dead.’

There’s a lump in my throat. ‘Not yet,’ I say.

Our eyes lock.

‘You mean… ki… Finish her off?’ Dan says, watching me carefully, making it clear that this is my call.

I try and look nonchalant as if I’m a hit man in a Tarantino movie, used to killing and death, always wisecracking and talking shit while I blow someone’s head off. Could I do it? I
didn’t have any problem almost breaking her jaw.

But this is different. This would be final. Do you really want to deal with that?

‘I’m not going to kill her,’ I say.

He looks relieved.

‘So let’s think about this logically. Will there be other staff coming in soon?’

He nods. ‘Yeah. The store should have been open already.’

‘So sooner or later – probably sooner – someone’s going to come in and find that bloke you whacked.’

‘Yeah.’

‘Then we’d better get the fuck out of here.’

‘Where to?’

‘Fuck it, Dan, do I look like I’ve got all the answers?’ A picture of Yellow Eyes jumps into my brain. ‘We can’t go out through the front…’

‘No shit, Sherlock.’

‘Okay… We can get out through the delivery entrance, can’t we?’

‘Yeah, Rhoda, but then what?’

‘You can come home with me.’ I blurt it out without thinking.

‘Home with you? But you don’t have anywhere to stay.’

‘I mean… to the UK.’

‘The UK?’

‘Yeah. Why not? I mean…’ But my voice trails away. Stupid. There are small hurdles to consider, like the fact that Dan has just killed someone, I’ve probably just broken
someone’s jaw and the British authorities aren’t that keen on letting wanted criminals through immigration these days.

‘But I’ll need a visa for the UK,’ Dan says, as if this is our only problem.

Could Zinzi help us get away? As if. Scoring dope is about the height of her powers.

Dan pulls his cigarettes out of his pocket, lights one, hands it to me, lights another. We stand in silence, smoking over the blonde’s body.

‘So,’ he says.

‘So,’ I say.

‘If we’re caught we’ll go to prison.’

‘They’ll throw away the key.’

‘You know what will happen to me in prison,’ Dan says.

‘Yeah,’ I say. ‘I don’t think it will be a picnic for me, either.’

‘But you could leave,’ Dan says. ‘You could chance it – get to the UK.’

‘I’m not leaving you, Dan,’ I say. And I mean it. ‘We’re in this together.’

‘So what can we do? Go all
Natural Born Killers
and run off into the platteland?’

‘The where?’

‘Never mind.’

We finish our cigarettes in silence. Dan stubs his out on the carpet and I do the same.

Neither of us wants to be the first one to say it.

‘We could go back,’ he says in a small voice.

‘Back where?’ I say. The saliva has dried up in my mouth.

‘You know where, Rhoda.’

A scream cuts through the air. Then someone – a woman – shrieks: ‘Oh my God! Brad! Help! Someone! Help!’

We have to make the decision now.

‘Let’s go,’ I say.

‘Where to?’ Dan says, holding my gaze.

‘You know where, Dan.’

And the weird thing is, now we’ve made the decision, my heart suddenly feels lighter. I almost feel relieved.

I lean against the wall and catch my breath. The corridor we’re in doesn’t look at all familiar; the walls are smooth polished concrete instead of the rough brick I
remember from before. The door ahead looks bland and forgettable, like the others we’ve pushed through so far. And where are all those numbered doors? They can’t have just
disappeared.

Why not? Stranger things have happened.

‘Are we going the right way?’

‘How would I know?’ Dan snaps. He’s also out of breath.

‘Fuck it, Dan, some help would be nice.’

‘I’m doing my best!’

Talk about fucking déjà vu. We’re bickering like we did on our first trip into the bowels of the mall.

‘I seriously don’t remember this,’ I say.

‘Ja. Well, it’s not really surprising,’ he says.

‘What the hell are you talking about?’

‘We were being chased by some sort of monster thing,’ Dan says.

‘It wasn’t a monster, it was a hobo.’

‘Whatever.’

‘You think they’ll follow us down here?’

I shrug. ‘They won’t know to look, will they? That blonde bitch—’

‘Josie,’ he says, sounding almost peevish. ‘Her name’s Josie.’

I glance at him in irritation. ‘Whatever, Dan, Josie the Blonde Bitch is out cold and so… hang on.’

I push through the door, and the temperature immediately seems to drop several degrees. This corridor does look familiar – it’s ill-lit, slightly damp and there are doors cut into
the brickwork. I try the handles one after the other, until finally one gives.

‘Thank fuck!’

‘What?’ Dan says, catching up and peering past me.

I point towards the rusted can of Vim and the dried-up maggot that I’d picked from Dan’s hair all those aeons ago.

‘Okay,’ I say. ‘We’re on the right track.’

‘We are?’

‘Don’t you remember?’

In unspoken consent we both enter the room, and sit down, backs against the wall. I’m hit with a feeling of weird but not entirely unwelcome nostalgia, almost as if I’m revisiting a
place from my childhood.

Dan hands me a cigarette.

‘You told me you had asthma last time we were here,’ I say, watching as he takes a deep pull of his cigarette. ‘You freaked out when I lit a cigarette. How things
change.’

He shrugs, and we smoke in silence for a few seconds.

‘We’re really going to do this?’ I say to him. ‘Go back?’

‘We don’t have any choice, Rhoda,’ he says.

But that’s not true, and he knows it. We could go on the run. We could plead temporary insanity. We could do lots of things. But I don’t argue with him. Oddly enough, my mouth is
starting to water – all I can think about is the bubbly and canapés at the champagne bar. And I find myself wondering if there’s new stock in You Got Sole. Should I go there
first? Or maybe…

‘Hello? Rhoda?’ Dan’s looking at me as if he’s been trying to get my attention.

‘Yeah?’

‘You were daydreaming.’

‘Sorry. You were saying?’

‘We could hide out there. In the other mall… come back when the coast is clear. It doesn’t have to be forever.’

‘Sure,’ I say, playing along. ‘Do you think we should at least let your mother know? I mean, if we go to the other mall—’

‘When we go,’ he says, fingers toying with the wound at the back of his head again.

‘Okay. When we go, then.’

‘She’ll cope.’ He drops his eyes. End of conversation. I dump the fag butt and get to my feet. Dan follows me out into the corridor.

‘Okay,’ I say, trying to convince myself. ‘Around this corner we’re going to see those freaky mannequins. Remember them?’

Dan grins at me. ‘How could I forget? Let’s go.’

We both start jogging around the corner, increasing our pace as if we can’t wait to get to our destination.

‘Race you!’ Dan says.

We hare around the corner, and both immediately stop dead.

‘Fuck,’ Dan says, sounding almost disappointed. ‘They’re gone.’

‘Way to state the obvious, Dan.’

I walk towards the exit sign at the end of the now empty corridor, pausing to pick up something lying underneath the light. It’s one of those horrible false fingernails, this one painted a
bright putrid pink. I drop it and wipe my hand on my legs.