Killer Country (13 page)

Pylon drove up to the golf estate’s security gate, relieved to see his former employee on duty. Let down his window, said, ‘Don’t you get time off?’

The guard frowned, unfriendly, mumbling something about standing in.

Pylon lifted his shades to squint at the man in the harsh morning light. ‘You get a bitching out?’

‘Big time.’

‘What for?’

‘Letting you in without clearance.’

‘That’s harsh.’

The guard looked away. Pylon marking his unease and thinking there wasn’t a hope in hell he’d do him a favour now.

‘The house still a crime scene?’

‘Uh huh, taped up.’

‘And a cop standing sentry?’

‘No.’

‘Listen.’ Pylon looked up at the anxious man in the gate house. ‘I need a favour.’

The guard shook his head. ‘Forget it. No chance.’

‘You don’t know what it is?’

‘I don’t have to.’

‘Five minutes, okay. That’s all it’ll take.’

‘No ways.’

Pylon took his hands off the steering wheel, held them out the window, palms open. ‘Look. No bullshit. All I need is to see his CD collection. What sort of music he was into.’

‘Why?’

‘Something I’m working on. Five minutes. In, out, before the cops get there. Assuming they’re coming back.’

‘There’s major shit about this.’

‘I know. It’s why I’m here.’

The guard hesitated. Clicking a pen against the counter top faster than a rave beat. Pylon sensing the issue here: part going against regulations, part what’s in it for me? Said, ‘I can ease your pain.’

The guard sighed, glanced away at the mountain. ‘One large.’

Pylon pursed his mouth, about to cut the sum in half but the guard jumped in first.

‘No deals, okay. I don’t need this kinda crap. I do it for one thousand or I don’t do it at all.’

Pylon nodded, taking out his wallet. ‘Okay’ – justifying it to himself that he owed the guy for the earlier favour as well.

‘Not here,’ said the guard.

Pylon in his Merc followed the guard on his bike to the house. The golf estate as quiet as a Sunday. Maybe quieter. Nobody on the fairways. Gardeners weeding among the border shrubbery and the greens manager out plugging holes, but not a resident visible. As they stopped at the crime scene, Pylon saw a curtain flicker across the road, a white face appearing. He waved in greeting and the face disappeared. 

The two men ducked under the crime tape and the guard unlocked the front door, going in ahead of Pylon. Inside a mess: fingerprint dust on every surface. Chalk marks of the bodies on the carpets. More blood where the woman had fallen than where Popo Dlamini had gone down.

‘One grand,’ said the guard, holding out his hand.

Pylon palmed him ten one hundred buck notes.

‘Just sort out what you want,’ said the guard. ‘Fast.’

Pylon was going to say relax but shrugged instead. Headed over to a wall unit on the far side of the room. On it kitsch ornaments in porcelain and wire, and a single rack of CDs above a mini-tower sound system. On a tray next to the player a bottle of red wine with the level one measure down. As Pylon remembered it there’d been a broken wine glass on the floor, a damp stain on the carpet. The wine was a cabernet. Good estate. The lady’d had cultivated tastes. But then the lady, having been who the lady had been, she would’ve taken high-end for granted.

He scanned the CDs. Best of Makeba, Masekela, Abdullah Ibrahim, a Youssou N’dour, an Ismaël Lo, some female soft voice stuff, the first Tracy Chapman, Brenda Fassie’s Memeza, a clutch of symphonies. Collections of mood music. Nothing that he was looking for.

Lying open on a shelf an empty box of Zola’s Khokhovula. Pylon picked it up: he guessed this had to be more Lindiwe’s style than Popo’s. The cover showed the kwaito star’s screaming face, his hand slammed into a pane of glass, the glass spider-webbed from the impact. Pylon powered on the system and found the disc in the tray. He pressed play. The sound was turned low but high enough to get the guard jumping.

‘No, no,’ he shouted, pushing Pylon aside in his haste to switch off the system.

‘That’s what must’ve been playing,’ said Pylon. ‘Kwaito to die for.’ 

‘We’re outta here,’ said the guard. ‘Now.’

Pylon shrugged. ‘I’m done.’

Sunday night, Pylon had spent three hours listening to the music on the iPod. Or rather, some of the music on the iPod. Specifically the playlists titled: Killer Country I, II and III. No hardship here.

Many of the artists he recognised. Cash, Giant Sand, Emmylou Harris, Tindersticks, Sixteen Horsepower. The guitar wonder of Steve Earle. Also the mournful voice of Jesse Sykes and the Sweet Hereafter and some Calexico tracks.

This was familiar territory. So was the new stuff: love songs and madness songs and murder songs and maudlin motel songs for long dark nights. Songs by the Cowboy Junkies, and the Handsome Family, and M Ward, and the Willard Grant Conspiracy that gave him the rittles: a cold gooseflesh shiver like people doing a jig on his grave.

Listening to it Pylon thought the iPod’s owner was someone he could talk to. Someone out in the same badlands. But he couldn’t see it being Popo Dlamini. Popo Dlamini didn’t have any of this poetry in his soul. It could be a neighbour dropped the iPod coming back from his jog. Or it was Lindiwe Chocho’s? Or someone who’d knocked on Popo Dlamini’s door.

A neighbour he couldn’t see. A neighbour would’ve gone looking for it. Nor could he place it as Lindiwe Chocho’s. She was into kwaito. Someone who did kwaito wasn’t going to do killer country. So maybe, just maybe it was the someone who’d knocked on Popo Dlamini’s door. The courier. Aka the shooter with the .22 and the Long Rifle loads.

He could believe this. It was the sort of music to kill by.

But first he’d had to cross off Popo Dlamini from his list. And simultaneously the lovely Lindi. And with the neighbour theory junked, Pylon reckoned that the chances were these songs haunted the mind of Mr Death. A neat ordered mind that loaded specific themes into each of the playlists. A mind that collected stories and arranged them. That gave the playlists a descriptive title.

As he drove away from the golf estate, taking the road through the forest and the leafy suburbs before he joined the highway into the city, Pylon wondered if the hit was about Popo or Lindiwe or both of them. Was it business or revenge? Land or love?

He jacked the iPod into the car’s player and brought up Billy Bob Thornton singing about love, the guy’s oily voice oozing the ‘forever and ever and ever’, as sincere as a motel bedroom. Sunfilter curtains and brandy afternoons.

When his cellphone rang Pylon jerked back to the slow crawl of traffic towards the university. He pressed on the hands free and a voice said, ‘My name is Judge Telman Visser, Mr Buso. I wonder if you could give an urgent message to your colleague, Mr Bishop.’

Pylon turned down the music. ‘He’s out of the country.’

‘I know. I spoke to him on Saturday. He told me he would be back today.’

‘He is. This evening. Six, seven something like that.’

‘Please, Mr Buso, it is essential that I speak to him as soon as he has landed.’

‘He’s got a phone.’

‘I have left messages on his phone. I left a message last night. He didn’t return my call either then or this morning. I have left a message at his home. Now I’m leaving one with you.’

‘No problem,’ said Pylon. ‘What’s it?’

‘It’s critical that he contact me.’

The judge paused.

Pylon said, ‘About?’

‘Tell him to phone me.’

‘That’s it? That’s the message?’ But the judge had disconnected. ‘Funny message,’ said Pylon aloud, turning up a Johnny Cash song that reeked of a dirty old man doing bad things to a budding  teenager. A girl Pumla’s or Christa’s age. A song that unsettled him. Despite the great man’s voice.

Still he rode with it. That and the next about Emmylou’s poisonous love and the next about Billy Bob Thornton’s private madness and the next about a lone man’s loneliness, the drive bringing him in above the city on a day so crisp the air smelt of salt and fish. He swung down Hatfield into Dunkley Square and a parking space outside the terrace row. Lounging against Complete Security’s office gate was Captain Gonsalves, chewing, a rolled-up newspaper under his arm.

‘I’m not staying,’ said Gonsalves as Pylon came up. He moved a plug of tobacco from cheek to cheek, a yellow glisten at the corners of his mouth.

Pylon noticed shreds of cigarette paper littered on the pavement. Flecks of tobacco on the captain’s tie. ‘You should quit,’ he said.

‘I have.’

‘Chewing it’s not quitting it.’

‘Hey,’ said Gonsalves, ‘I don’t need your shit. This sorta shit I get from my wife.’

Pylon went for his wallet, counted out five hundreds and handed it to the policeman. ‘So what’s happening?’

‘Zip, nada, niks, nothing, bugger all. Total blank out.’

‘Come on.’

‘No kidding.’

‘Like it didn’t happen?’

‘It happened. Officially botched robbery. Don’t you read the papers?’ He offered the newspaper to Pylon. ‘Everything’s in there. ‘Cept her name, pending telling the next of kin.’

‘So why’m I paying you five hundred bucks when I could’ve paid four singles to the man at the robot.’

‘Because what it doesn’t say is that the file is tight in the commissioner’s office. Or that the investigating officer was told, nice work, Jack, let’s move on now.’

‘It was a hit?’

‘Doesn’t seem like it.’

Pylon stared at him. Gonsalves exposing his ivory peg teeth.

‘That’s it? That’s all? The investigating officer’s shrugging off.’

‘I would. My commissioner took a file off my desk I wouldn’t stop him. One less I’m not gonna solve. Know what I mean. One less I don’t have to put on the stack.’

‘Save me Jesus,’ said Pylon.

‘No grief, okay,’ said Gonsalves. ‘We’ve all got headaches. You want to know my headache, I’m sitting with thirty-two murders in my basket. That’s over the last month. Most stations every detective’s got the same number give or take. It’s a war, my friend.’ He pushed himself off the gate. ‘So smile. You’re alive. It’s a beautiful day. Hey, how often we see the mountain this clear?’ Captain Gonsalves gave a yellow grin, patted Pylon on the shoulder as he sauntered off.

‘Anything more let me know,’ Pylon called after him. Without turning round, the policeman held up his hand.

Pylon sighed. Halfway through the morning and fifteen hundred bucks down. For what? Zilch. Except he knew the hitman liked some killer music. He unlatched the gate to see young Tami the receptionist standing at the front door, worried. A stunner too. Which Treasure had had something to say about.

He greeted her in Xhosa. Tami not even going through the ritual hullo, telling him two people were waiting, had been waiting for thirty minutes. The Smits.

Pylon thought, maybe there was a god.

Until Henk Smit told him, ‘We felt it the right thing to tell you personally, we’re not going with your deal.’ Olivia, serious faced, nodding agreement. The two of them sitting on the sofa in his office facing him perched on the coffee table.

‘It wouldn’t make good business sense,’ said Olivia. ‘We’ve run the figures, there’s a bigger margin on Mr Chocho’s scheme.’  

‘On paper,’ said Pylon.

‘Admittedly.’ Henk took a slurp from a bottle of mineral water.

‘But?’

‘But he’s better positioned. Better connected. To swing it.’

‘Ah!’ Pylon stood in exasperation. ‘The man’s a fraudster. As of the moment a convict. He is not going to want you as part of his scheme.’

‘We don’t think that’s true.’

‘You are going to lose your investment. Believe me.’

The Smits glanced at one another. Henk said, ‘Why should we trust you more? You’re an arms dealer.’

‘Was. Was an arms dealer.’ Pylon sat down on the coffee table again. Faced them. ‘Listen. There’s no reason for you to trust me more. But think of this. We will take you on as part of the consortium. Is Obed Chocho doing that? I would doubt it.’

Olivia shook her head. ‘We’re sleeping partners.’

‘Hidden partners more like it.’

‘Sleeping, hidden doesn’t matter.’

‘It matters. If no one can see you, you’ll disappear. When it’s convenient for him, poof, you’re history.’

Henk snorted. ‘He’s going to do what? Kill us?’

Pylon looked at them, didn’t say anything, didn’t raise his eyebrows, nod his head, make any gesture.

‘Ag, don’t be ridiculous. We’re not in a crime novel.’

Pylon flipped open the newspaper Gonsalves had given him. Held it out, pointing at the story headlined: Botched Robbery on Golf Estate. Two killed.

‘The story names one of the victims, Popo Dlamini. Popo was part of our consortium but I think he had a deal going with Obed Chocho.’

‘Oh, come on,’ said Henk.

‘No, no, wait, listen okay. The woman who was shot in his house is Obed Chocho’s wife, Lindiwe. She and Popo were having it off.’ 

‘How do you know that?’ said Olivia.

‘That’s tabloid stuff,’ said Henk.

‘Isn’t it,’ said Pylon. He glanced at Olivia. ‘Let’s just say I know it. Tomorrow her name will be in the papers.’

‘You’re telling us Obed Chocho from jail got a hitman to take out his wife.’

‘Put it together,’ said Pylon.

Henk Smit stood. ‘Forget it, my friend. No ways. Doesn’t happen like that. Never in a million years. This is Cape Town. Not LA Confidential.’

Pylon got up from the coffee table. ‘Alright. Here’s a suggestion. Tonight our backer’s flying in. Tomorrow you can talk to him. Before you go with Obed Chocho, talk to our man. See how the project’s structured. Sure, the profit’s bigger on the Chocho’s scheme. I’ll admit it, you’ll make more money. If you make any money at all.’

‘Nice try,’ said Henk.

‘A cautionary,’ said Pylon.

‘One thing,’ said Olivia. ‘If this is a black empowerment deal, it’s not going to fly with white faces.’

‘We’ve got another card,’ said Pylon. ‘Community organisations.’ He named a few. ‘We’re bringing them in as shareholders. So the money doesn’t only go to the bling blacks. It’s called real trickle down.’