Killer Country (5 page)

She had the warder’s gun. Big lesbo bitch had given up the gun at the sight of the sharpened spoke. She’d wanted to stick it to her. Into that huge belly to see if it exploded like a balloon. But the big lesbo bitch caved. Let her run off into the night.

Christ knew where she was. Vast darkness all around. Not a light twinkling anywhere. She ran, fell, picked herself up, ran, walked into clump scrub that scratched up blood on her hands,  tore at her prison jumpsuit. She couldn’t hear them tracking her. Believed they would begin with daylight. At dawn she saw the ruined house. A kind of shelter.

For hours she sat in the shade of the doorway watching. She was thirsty. Hungry too, but the thirst burned in her throat. She heard the van before she saw it. Heard it a long way out on the flats. Then the flash of metal in the sun. Then watched it come straight towards her, like they knew where she was.

No point in running. Anything moved on the plain you could see it miles off. She went into the ruin, waited.

The van stopped, the engine cut off. Silence. She imagined them scoping the scene, the big lesbo bitch and the male warder. The van’s doors opened, banged shut. The male warder called her name through a loudspeaker: ‘Vittoria. Vittoria.’

Up yours, she muttered.

She heard their voices, low.

The big lesbo bitch did her number next. ‘Meisie, come out. Vittoria. Stop this nonsense.’

Meisie? What was it with this word, they liked it so much? That it was belittling.

‘Come now.’

Come now, meisie She kept dead still.

She imagined they were in line with the front door. That was what it sounded like from the carry of their voices. She heard the warder say, ‘She’s not here.’ The big lesbo bitch reply, ‘Where else you think she is?’ Silence.

‘Vittoria. Come, meisie.’

The male warder said, ‘Give me that.’ Came on: ‘Don’t give us shit, alright. Throw out the gun. We not going to stand here all day.’

Instead she stuck the gun round the corner of the building, pulled off two rounds. A shatter of glass. The windscreen. On target. The warder swore. Told her if she didn’t chuck the gun out, follow it with her hands in plain sight, they’d shoot the shit out of the ruin until she was dead.

You and whose army, she wanted to shout back but didn’t. Two bullets left in the cartridge. One chambered. What’d they have? Maybe five rounds in the warder’s gun. Big bloody deal.

She reckoned they hadn’t got backup yet. There’d be sirens, helicopters if they had.

So just the two warders with the transit van. Careless assholes hadn’t bothered to shackle her. Let her take a pee like she wasn’t going to try it on the first opportunity she got. Stupid dorks. Thinking she couldn’t screw them over.

‘I’m coming out,’ she shouted. Stuck a hand up, waggled her fingers. Her hand framed in what was once a window.

No response to that. Just the stuck record: ‘Throw the gun out.’

She stood up, framed by the window. Her hand holding the gun hidden from view.

There they were standing beside the van like this wasn’t a shootout.

‘Come’n, meisie,’ said the big lesbo bitch. ‘Be a good girlie. Stop this shit. We’s all gonna get into kak otherwise.’

‘Hands.’ said the warder through the loudspeaker. ‘Lemme see your hands.’

‘Fuck you,’ she said, brought up the pistol put a shot smack into the loudspeaker. Saw the warder fall. She ducked down. Sat on the floor in the bird crap, listening to the wounded man groaning.

The big lesbo bitch shouted, ‘That’s up to shit, meisie. Yous for it now. No chance yous gonna see your home again. No chance in heaven or hell. Better stop the tricks now.’

Five shots zinged through the window, slammed into the mud bricks, earth chips falling on her.

She got below the window, knelt to the side. Counted one, two, three, slipped into view. Saw the big lesbo bitch kneeling beside the man, not even looking in her direction. She shot. Watched  the lead zap home. Looked like a neck shot. The big lesbo bitch laid out.

And a bullet left.

She punched the air. Said to herself, ‘Go out there, girl, drive away.’

She went out there. Walked straight to the van. The big lesbo bitch shot her in the back.

The two men checked out of the motel mid-morning, the shorter one settling the bill. The other man waiting to one side, smoking a menthol.

Earlier he’d walked into the veld, not far, a stone’s throw beyond the motel’s perimeter fence and stood staring at rock outcrops to the north. About him the yellow sweep of clump grass and low scrub and thorn. Blackened stones underfoot and sheep turds. Above him a large bird circled on the rising thermals. He wondered what type of bird it was. Where this place was. It belonged to no country he knew.

He’d smoked two cigarettes in succession, flicking the filters away in an arc, then walked back slowly to his room and sat on the double bed with his back against the headboard and his feet in silk socks neatly crossed. His shoes, brogues, were on the floor beside the bed. From where he sat he could see himself in the wall mirror above the vanity table. He stared at his reflection without expression or recognition. In his ears Stuart Staples sang about strangling a girlfriend.

At ten thirty Manga rapped at his half-open door, looked in. ‘Ready to leave, captain?’

Spitz swung his legs off the bed, tied up his laces. ‘They have phoned yet?’

Manga shook his head. ‘Nah.’ Grinned suddenly. ‘That worry you?’

Spitz didn’t reply. Picked up his holdall and walked out the door.

Manga glanced round the room: half the bed still neatly made, a heap of crushed butts in the ashtray on the side table. The room he’d left was devastated: pillows flung around the floor, the bed rumpled as if he’d screwed a dozen women, a slop of tea stain across the sheets. The difference, he believed, was uptight
Spitz-the-Trigger
maybe obsessing on the day’s business.

They drove in silence to a Wimpy off the main road, two trucks and a few cars pulled up outside.

‘Breakfast?’ said Manga.

‘Here?’ Spitz gestured at the roadhouse. ‘At this place? Is this what you eat? Fast food?’

‘Not only. Also sushi, Thai, Italian, Cajun. Captain’ – Manga half turned towards Spitz – ‘this’s Colesberg, middle of nowhere Karoo, there is no sushi here. Not even umpokoqo?’

‘I do not eat porridge.’

‘So no problem. This’s a good fry. The best. Two eggs, bacon, sausage, tomato, that American stuff, hash browns. White toast. Filter coffee. You can look out at the desert. Watch the cars go by. Captain, this’s breakfast, okay?’

They took a booth in the window, ordered the full-house. Neither of them speaking: Manga tapping his cellphone on the table, Spitz staring at two truckers outside joking. Beyoncé or some other jelly baby warbling on the sound system. The waitress put down two cups of coffee. Spitz knew it would be watery, stale. He tasted it. Twisted his mouth at the thin bitterness.

Manga, watching, laughed. Poured a sachet of sugar into his mouth and crunched the granules. ‘Sweeten it, captain. Isn’t espresso.’ He emptied two sachets into his cup, and stirred. Lifted the cup but before he drank said, ‘Tell me captain, why a man like you doesn’t hunt, hey?’ He sipped at his coffee. ‘This interests me.’

‘You mean shoot at donkeys?’

‘I mean hunt.’

‘Settlers hunt. White men hunt.’

Manga waved his hand. ‘We’re finished with that shit. The great white hunter shit. Black men hunt. Businessmen. Lawyers. Judges. Politicians. Like they play golf, they hunt.’

‘I have noticed,’ said Spitz.

‘But you don’t. Hey, captain, why not?’

Spitz examined the fried breakfast the waitress slid before him. The eggs cooked both sides, the bacon thick, the skin peeling off the tomato. ‘What for, hunting?’ he said. ‘Where is the reason?’

‘To get excited,’ Manga made a hollow fist, gave a few masturbatory pumps – ‘by the chasing.’

‘By standing in the back of a Land Rover.’ Spitz sliced into the eggs, the yolks were solid, the white rubbery. He wondered if he could eat it.

‘Sure. It doesn’t matter. What you want is the kick. The magic moment.’ Manga held an imaginary rifle to his shoulder. ‘When you stare down the barrel and you know that if you pull the trigger the animal is dead. This magic moment. Pow! Hey, captain. That is the kick.’ He lowered his arms. ‘When you see the kill. When you see the animal die. Is this not another magic moment? Hey, captain. I know why these big men hunt. It is like sex. They get excited.’ He pricked a sausage with his fork and released a spurt of fat. Gathered a mouthful of sausage and egg and bacon, and grinned at Spitz. ‘I am right?’

Before Spitz could answer, Manga’s cellphone rang, some rap shit. Manga swallowed quickly. ‘Mornings, captain.’

Spitz kept eating, watching the tension in Manga’s shoulders, the tightness of his grip on the small phone. The nodding of his head. ‘It was no problem.’ Then a change in his voice: ‘We must come to Cape Town now?’

Spitz guessed it was Obed Chocho. Could tell by Manga’s frown and spluttering that there’d been a change of plan. A change of plan wasn’t good. He wasn’t contracted for a change of plan. The understanding was one job. He wiped his lips with a paper serviette and held out his hand to Manga, his fingers beckoning for the phone.

‘Captain,’ said Manga, ‘here is Spitz.’

‘Spitz,’ said Obed Chocho. ‘I have some extra work that’s unexpected. The same price, the same percentage. Help me out here.’

Spitz stayed silent, thinking about it.

‘The other job can be done anytime. This is more serious.’

‘Plus five thousand,’ said Spitz.

He heard Obed Chocho blow out a lungful of air. Could heara television playing, a signature tune he thought he recognised.‘Mighty fine. Okay mighty fine. Plus five thousand.’

Spitz gave the phone back to Manga. They wanted him in Cape Town they could’ve flown him. This was a shit story shaping up. Heard Manga say, ‘About six o’clock. We gotta drive seven, eight hours.’

That was it, seven, eight hours on the road. Maybe five grand had been too cheap. More like double that.

Manga disconnected, took a swallow of coffee. ‘I don’t like a change of plan. That’s when things get stuffed up.’

‘Many times,’ said Spitz. ‘What are the details?’

‘Search me, captain. You don’t get details from Mr Chocho. You get instructions.’

Mace thought a better meeting place would’ve been Dutch’s. A table on the pavement watching gay Cape Town flounce about De Waterkant’s cobbled streets. Always something happening among the chi-chi renovations. What he liked too was the motor show, more expensive hardware parked in the streets than any other quarter of the city. Even the Clifton coke and tequila strip couldn’t compete. And his Spider caught the boys’ eyes. 

At a place like Dutch’s, you felt part of the city life. Also more relaxing than an art gallery. Art galleries made Mace nervous. Like when Oumou had pottery exhibitions, he stood there with a permanent grin that made his jaws ache and drank too much.

‘Darling meet the artist’s husband.’

Jesus, enough to make your skin crawl.

Mace parked the red Alfa Spider in De Smit, hoping the handbrake would hold on the incline. Took a brick he kept for these occasions from the boot and jammed it behind a back wheel. He left the top down. Any chancer tried to steal the radio he’d know about it.

Surprising thing was, not a car guard to be seen. Just a block from pink city, yet empty. Nothing going on. Had to be one of the few streets left in town where some Congolese doctor or Angolan teacher didn’t tell you he would guard your car with his life.

Not many cars in the street either. The A-Class Merc, Mace guessed, belonged to the judge. Not a quaint street either, blank walls of office blocks either side, only the windows of the gallery breaking the monotony. Would appeal to Oumou’s concrete and glass ideas of architecture but didn’t get him excited. Mace pushed through a heavy glass door into a small foyer. One lift, a security desk to the side. The guard looked up from his screen, indicated an open door on the left.

‘Maybe I don’t want the gallery,’ Mace said.

The guard shrugged. ‘The judge tells me he’s waiting for you.’

Mace stopped. ‘You don’t know me.’

‘Old-style red Alfa Spider, the judge tells me that’s your car. I don’t know this Alfa Spider, but I know old style.’ The guard gave a white tooth smile. ‘Still a nice car.’

‘You know the judge?’

‘Why not. He comes here to the artist openings. Plenty times.’

The guard swung the monitor for Mace to see his car filling the screen. 

Mace laughed. ‘Just keep watching it.’

Inside the gallery Mace nodded at a woman behind the reception desk, tapping at a laptop. She looked up quizzically.

‘Just having a look,’ said Mace.

‘The judge’s in the next room,’ she said, pointing at an opening behind him. ‘That way.’

‘Right.’ Mace turned, frowning. Anywhere else this would be a set-up.

He stepped into a large room, the walls a stark white, a minimalist exhibition of big pictures each the size of the Spider’s bonnet symmetrically arranged. Two black benches end to end in the middle of the room. Mace’s trail sandals squeaked on the wooden floor.

The judge sat in a hi-tech wheelchair facing a picture. ‘Mr Bishop,’ he said and moved a lever on the arm and the chair whined as it turned. ‘I appreciate this.’

Early fifties, Mace reckoned, big shouldered and fit, probably still worked a schedule at some gym. He walked over and shook Judge Telman Visser’s outstretched hand.

‘I wanted you to have a look at this photograph,’ the judge said, ‘well, it’s not a single photograph, a series, but its intention is singular. I have bought it. Probably to hang in my chambers. I buy most of my art from Michael, you know the gallery owner, Michael Stevenson’ – not a question, although Mace shook his head, the judge hardly pausing – ‘including, you’ll be pleased to hear, a pair of hands he acquired for me, fine porcelain hands clasped in anguish. The detail is exquisite, so poignant. But you know this. You probably saw them being made.’

Mace nodded, unsure what the judge meant.

‘Your wife is good. Very good. I’d like to meet her sometime.’

Mace eased, realising the judge was talking about the hands from Oumou’s obsessive period when the bowls and the plates and the jugs, the useful things, were abandoned for hundreds of hands. Hands modelled on his own hands. His hands she’d held against her breasts, and said, ‘These hands I did not think I would feel on my body again.’ Said that after he’d been kidnapped by Sheemina February’s hitman, Mikey Rheeder. ‘Every hour I thought you were dead.’ The hands that she turned into artworks. As she did with so much of the pain in her life.

‘You did some homework,’ said Mace, his eyes still on the judge.

Judge Visser smiled. ‘I do that,’ he said. ‘I like to be sure of the facts. But don’t worry, Mr Bishop, I don’t know how many traffic fines you have outstanding and I don’t know how much money you owe on your house. Although I do know it is very modern, very angular, at least from the street.’

The judge had a small black bag in his lap, leather undoubtedly, the sort of handbag that had almost become a fashion accessory but never quite made it. The thought occurred to Mace that maybe Telman Visser was gay.

‘If you’re interested,’ the judge was saying, ‘mostly I got positive responses: family man, doesn’t drink to excess, doesn’t smoke, keen swimmer, good at his job. On the right side in the struggle, even trained in the guerrilla camps. I know you met your wife in Malitia. I know she is a ceramicist trained in Paris. I know you were gun-running in Malitia. Although I am not sure if arms trader is an advantage on a CV. To some people it might be off-putting. I am neutral. If there was a downside it was that you shoot too quickly. That you’re ruthless, even. I don’t know, is that a downside? Probably, in the eyes of the law these days. But I wouldn’t hold it against you. Oh yes, I know about your court case too. A nasty business.’

Mace thought, enough of the crap, judge, let’s cut to the detail. Said, ‘That’s reassuring.’

‘And, a colleague tells me you have a weakness for unconventional methods. Like threatening to hang people. He found the incident amusing. Then again, once upon a time, he, and others I know, had a penchant for hanging people. Personally I am against capital punishment.’

The judge manoeuvred his chair to face the photograph. ‘Have a look at this.’

Mace did. It was a large composite made up of smaller squares: five down, five across. The foreground almost at the photographer’s feet, at the top a distant horizon. Each photograph linked to the adjacent pictures like pieces of a puzzle.

‘The photographer,’ said the judge, ‘is a man called David Goldblatt. You’ve heard of him?’

Mace shook his head.

‘Excellent photographer. Done some extraordinary work. I have three of his photographs. Four counting this one.’ With his left hand, the judge wheeled closer to the photograph. ‘What’s important, from your point of view, is what’s happening in the middle.’

Wasn’t much happening in the photograph as far as Mace was concerned. Nobody hanging around. No cars. No trace of a house. What it seemed to be was the slope of a hill, grass, rocks, clumps of bushes down to a road then the plain sliding off to the horizon. Looked like bushveld. Thorn trees. Good kudu country.

The judge pulled back slightly. ‘Here, on this fence beside the road is the important detail.’

Mace leaned forward. The fence was adorned with wreaths and crosses.

‘Those were placed there by farmers,’ said the judge, ‘as a protest at the farm killings. Perhaps you didn’t know that last year alone a hundred and fifty farmers and their wives, if the women were unlucky enough to be around when the killers came in, were murdered. For no reason. No one was robbed, except of guns, food, liquor. Always the women were raped. In many cases the people were shot execution-style. They kneel. They feel a gun at the back of their heads. End of story. They are the lucky ones. In most cases people are tortured. Husbands and wives. No one is arrested. No one is even suspected. The killers come out of the night and disappear back into the darkness. They may as well be ghosts. The farm labourers do not see anything, they do not even hear anything.’

‘I’ve read about it,’ said Mace.

The judge backed his wheelchair away. He pointed at a bench. ‘Please sit down so that we can be eye to eye.’

Mace obliged and the judge positioned himself a metre off. ‘That,’ he gestured at the photograph behind his back, ‘makes a powerful statement. More powerful than the farmer’s protest. We have become used to crosses beside the road. The country is littered with them. But that photograph speaks of the aloneness, the emptiness, the indifference of the landscape. That is about our history. All those farmers were white. The descendants of settlers. People who took away the land from the indigenous people. And now the land is reclaiming itself.’ He stared at Mace, a slight smile on his lips. ‘Am I being fanciful? I don’t think so.’

The judge stroked his clasp-bag. ‘I had a privileged childhood on that farm. Running wild with our dogs across my own huge playground. Such days in my own worlds. The magical worlds we make as boys, not so, Mr Bishop? For children there is no better place than a farm. An adventure wonderland.’ He paused to look at the photograph. ‘My father and his wife live on the farm,’ he said. ‘My father’s elderly. In his eighties. She’s slightly younger. My grandparents are buried there, and my great-grandparents. There are older graves which are probably my forebears. My father believes that if it was good enough for the previous generation to die on the farm then it is good enough for him. My grandparents died naturally. I am afraid that my father will die at the end of a gun. Some black men will get into the house one night…’ He let the sentence hang but his stare stayed on Mace’s face, searching in his eyes for sympathy. 

Mace sat forward, clasping his hands between his knees. Was going to ask about the judge’s mother, then thought, no, don’t get involved. ‘We don’t do that sort of security, judge. Not our line of business.’

‘I know. I know,’ the judge waved his hand as if at a fly. ‘I know what you do. Big names. Top business people. Celebrities. Minor royalty. Surgical safaris. I know this. The people fly in, you babysit them, off they go again. The wild city doesn’t get in their face.’ He smiled, somewhat snidely Mace thought. ‘It’s not a big strain on you.’

‘The long and short of it.’

‘I’m not asking you to babysit. What I’m asking for is professional advice. You go out there, assess the situation, tell me what sort of security devices must go in. Maybe recommend a guard from your staff. I don’t know. We can work out a separate contract. Something.’

The judge stopped, his face serious. Mace thought, hey, the man’s worried.

‘All I’m requesting is an opinion. Your recommendations. No commitment beyond that.’

Mace sat up, stretched the muscles in his back. Why not do it? What was it going to take? Three, four days tops including travelling time. Get out into the wide open spaces. Had to be better than overnighting in Berlin. Had to be better than overnighting anywhere. He could take Christa. Father and daughter time. Said, ‘Okay, I can do that. I’m not sure about contracting a guard from my staff, that’s a different story. But I’ll check out the place for you.’

Judge Telman Visser exhaled a sigh of relief. ‘I’m obliged. Thank you. You take a great weight off my mind, Mr Bishop. A considerable burden. I will be able to rest easy. You’ve knitted up what Shakespeare called the “ravelled sleave of care”. Do you know the quote?’ 

Mace shrugged, not giving away that he did or didn’t.

‘Macbeth. Probably my favourite Shakespeare. And a great film version by Polanski I can recommend.’

He stretched out his hand. Mace shook it: firm, strong, may even have been a hint of Masonic pressure and rub that he’d not noticed the first time. If it had been there the first time.

‘Now. When can you do this? The sooner the better as far as I’m concerned.’

‘Can’t help you there,’ said Mace. ‘Probably not until late next week. The weekend.’

‘I see.’ The judge frowned. ‘That’s pushing it. I’d hoped for sooner.’

‘I’m in Berlin tomorrow, judge. Back Monday night. Tuesday, Wednesday, I’m duty bound. Wednesday night back to Berlin. Friday I’m home again. Friday’s the earliest I could go. And what’re we talking, a five, six hour drive? That’s not fun after a long flight.’

‘Charter flight could get you within an hour’s drive.’

‘If you’re picking up the tab.’

‘Of course.’

‘What if I want to take my daughter with me? Get her out onto a farm. Something she’s not experienced, that adventure wonderland.’

‘I’ve heard about your daughter,’ said the judge. ‘A horrible experience for you.’

‘She’s over it.’

Judge Visser unzipped his clasp bag. ‘I’m not sure this would be the best occasion to have her with you.’ He brought out a business card. ‘Maybe some other time I can arrange for you to stay at one of the hunting lodges. We hire them out. You could take your wife and daughter for a week. Be our guests.’ He offered the card to Mace. ‘Do you have a card?’

‘Sure.’ Mace took one from his wallet. 

‘I’ll get back to you on Tuesday,’ said the judge. ‘With the arrangements.’

Mace stood.

‘Thank you, Mr Bishop.’ The judge raised his hand. ‘I appreciate this.’

As Mace turned to leave, he noticed the judge swing his chair back to face the photograph.