Payback - A Cape Town thriller (29 page)

After takeoff Mace ordered a Windhoek from the steward pushing the drinks trolley. For Pylon, in the aisle seat, a still mineral water. He’d been up and to the loo as soon as the seatbelt lights pinged off, and looked, Mace thought, a whiter shade of brown, if that were possible.

‘Have a drink?’ he said. ‘It’ll relax you.’

Pylon said he’d stick with the water, breaking out tablets to stop the runs and any nausea.

‘Suit yourself,’ said Mace settling back to watch the desert, the swirls of white river beds, the shadows darkening in the mountain kloofs. Here and there the glint of a corrugated-iron roof, a homestead in the brown emptiness, smoke rising from an outside fire.

His thoughts went to Sheemina February about what was her case exactly? Like suddenly she was right there again. In six weeks had popped up at a concert, at a café, then started the strange stuff: the flowers, the blatant telephone call. Okay, so the concert was a coincidence, the café explainable, the flowers and the call weren’t subtle but they didn’t mean the same without the other two incidents. Funny how it kicked in as the deal firmed. Pointing to Mo. Except what was his advantage? Or a leak in Mo’s office, which was a scary notion. But more likely if she was keeping tabs on him for future gain. Leverage? Revenge? A payoff? The first two he could credit, the last was an outside
runner
, probably a handy by-product of her main play. Hence her portfolio of properties. Yet he couldn’t see her calling for a cut on this transaction, more likely she’d stay clean, keep the moral high ground, to call large when she needed to. Mostly, though, the way he reckoned it, that was Mo’s problem. His problem was something else.

Starting with Christa, the kidnapping, that’d had Sheemina February in the background somewhere. Collateral damage in Ducky Donald’s estimation but Mace didn’t believe so, although he had no other explanation. And then she’d bought their house. How weird was that? A detail he’d kept from Oumou. Not that Oumou had given a damn about the buyer. Just wanted to get rid of the house. Fair enough. After that Sheemina February had gone quiet until … until there’d been a need to talk to Mo. Then hey ho, Sheemina February’s back on the scene. But then surely Mo was the common denominator, an explicable line of association. More collateral damage? That was what it looked like. So why the moral angle about Isabella? Or did the woman just like causing shit?

Mace ordered another beer with his lunch. Nudged Pylon, the guy sitting upright in his seat, hands gripped to the armrests, eyes shut tight behind his sunglasses.

Pylon groaned. ‘What’s it?’

Mace said, ‘Sheemina February, after you’d found out about her and Mo, was that where you stopped?’

Pylon took off his sunglasses, pinched the bridge of his nose. ‘More or less. Like what else’re you thinking about?’

‘Education, maybe. To be a lawyer you need degrees.’

‘Wouldn’t believe it, the way they act,’ said Pylon. ‘Don’t remember going into that.’

‘I think she’s in this. Working an angle somehow.’

Pylon groaned. ‘Save me Jesus.’

Mace couldn’t tell if it was at what he’d said or a passage of bumps the plane flew through.

‘You’re joking?’

‘No. Not this time.’

‘I’m going to be sick.’ Pylon heaved, got out the barf-bag not a moment too soon.

Not an ideal way to travel, Mace thought. He pushed Sheemina February out of mind. What was the sense in obsessing about it at a time like this?

An hour out of Luanda the plane hit serious turbulence. A summer afternoon over the savannah, the towers of cumulonimbus building, the plane was going to hit turbulence. A given.

‘Shit,’ said Pylon, ‘I can’t take this. I hate this.’ His body a panic of nerves, his stomach in agony, his palms sweaty. ‘Why’m I doing this, oh Lord?’

Ping - the seat-belt light came on.

Mace closed his magazine. ‘Sometimes there are great big holes in the air,’ he said. ‘I heard about a jumbo fell into one of those. Didn’t go all the way down but some people got badly flung around.’

Ping. The plane dropped, bounced, the taste of mayonnaise from lunch rising in Mace’s mouth.

Ping. Pylon groaned, closed his eyes, gripped the armrests.

The stewardess staggered the aisle. ‘Your seat-belt, sir, seat-belt please.’

‘After an event like that,’ Mace said, ‘a lot of people won’t get into an aeroplane again. The one I heard about was somewhere over Mali. Long haul Cape Town to London. They’ve been going five, six hours, it’s the middle of the night, people are sleeping, watching movies, not many people’re strapped in. Suddenly the plane falls into the hole. Jesus, the way these people recounted it, what wasn’t held down went flying: people, trolleys, bottles banging off the ceiling, things smashing, people breaking limbs, ribs, getting cut up. Like about two kilometres down the plane punches through the hole but the inside’s a disaster zone. What they need is to land fast, get the injured attended to. But, hey, they’re over Africa. No coms, except with other planes. No radar tracking anyone so they can’t head off for the nearest airport because, hell, they might hit another flight. Besides it’s night-time, there’s no one there. The nearest airport they can talk to is Marseilles, three hours away. That’s where they come down, people groaning and crying and shit scared for three hours. Then, those that don’t need hospitalisation have to get on a flight to London. The people I heard this story from said that was bad, being so terrified that it might happen all over again. They couldn’t stop shaking all the way until they touched down at Heathrow. But they’re flying without too much trouble these days.’

‘Wonderful,’ said Pylon. ‘I appreciate the story.’

‘The thing is,’ said Mace, ‘the plane didn’t crash. That’s what’s important to remember.’

‘Sometimes they do,’ said Pylon, referring to once flying into Malitia on a Dakota, an engine stopped, leaving only one prop to get them down. The pilot had to force-land in a field, stripping off some vital parts of the plane in the process. Everyone walked away with only cuts and bruises.

‘Sure,’ said Mace, knowing what Pylon meant, ‘but
propeller
planes are better fliers. Easier to get down than jets, if there’s trouble.’

Pylon sucked in air as the plane jolted. ‘The last place I need to be is on any plane. Bloody Lear jet or a bloody turboprop like this.’ He groaned.

Ping. The plane fell and Pylon grabbed at the sickbag, losing what little was left of his stomach contents.

‘Where’s your sense of adventure?’ said Mace, staring down on the empty land. Land-mined, shot out, peopleless land. Thirty years of war didn’t do anyone any favours, unless you sold the ordinance.

Luanda was a party.

On the twilight streets people singing and dancing: men in wedding dresses, women in tight minis, everyone whooping in a carnival. Mace and Pylon checked into the hotel, wanting to know what all the fun was about.

‘For a festival,’ said the reception clerk. ‘Every year it happens. The people like it.’

Mace left it there, asked if there were any messages for them. The clerk shook her head.

‘Anyone calls for us, tell them we’ll be back in an hour.’

‘No senhor, no. Is dangerous. Without a guard you cannot leave the hotel.’

‘We’ll manage,’ said Pylon.

Out on the streets people laughed at them, tried to pull them into the procession.

Pylon said, ‘What the hell’s this about?’

A man came past with a severed cat’s head dangling round his neck, the tabby’s body draped over his shoulder, blood spatters on his T-shirt. Pylon tried to stop him, getting caught up in a group led by a young boy with a ginger kitten nailed to a cross. The kitten still alive. Meeuwing. Men followed wearing blue robes, blue paint daubed on their faces. Chanting solemnly: Bin La-den, Bin La-den. Behind them a knot of cross-dressers holding aloft a crucified chicken.

Pylon pulled aside the man with the severed cat’s head, wanted to know in pidgin Portuguese what was with killing the cat.

Was told, ‘Porque o gato é gatuno,’ - getting a hard stare, the man fondling the ears of the cathead. Finally spat on Pylon’s brand new square-toed lace-up Cats.

Pylon jumped forward, but the brother took off.

‘What’s he say?’ said Mace.

‘Ah shit! Can you believe this?’

‘Sure,’ Mace said. ‘This’s Africa. So what’s happening here?’

‘I should know,’ said Pylon, wiping the phlegm from his shoes with a piece of litter.

‘You didn’t understand him?’

‘He said something about the cat was a thief.’

‘For that he hacks its head off?’

‘Apparently.’

‘Nice people,’ said Mace, wondering what it was about cats that got them so reviled.

Pylon flicked aside the piece of paper, straightened up as a pack of children howled out of the carnival to paw at them, going, ‘Camel, Benson, Peters.’ Their lips were smeared with pink lipstick, they wore padded bras over skinny chests.

Pylon shouted above the melee, ‘Treasure thinks this’s a festival!’

‘Let’s duck.’ Mace pointed up the street. ‘Get to the hotel.’

They fought free of the kids, edging back against the crowds the way they’d come, people trying to drag them into the procession every step of the way. A woman with burning cigarettes in her ears and nose offered Mace a mouthful of the snake she was eating. Her friend in bra and miniskirt flashed Pylon a full-frontal that wasn’t female at all. Pylon gawped. Thought to tap the silly bitch a back-hander but Mace pulled him away, the two of them bulldozing a passage clear.

The hotel’s dining room was a clutch of flimsy tables, the Formica tops scorched with cigarette burns, the metal legs rusting, the chairs plastic. No other diners. Flies circled the ceiling fans. The fans long since stopped. A black-and-white photograph of Agustinho Neto on one wall, when he was president. The only picture on the walls. Not even one of the current president, though neither Mace nor Pylon could remember who that was.

A waiter came through the batwing doors from the kitchen when they were seated, all smiles, a tea-towel folded over his arm. ‘You would like to order?’ he asked.

Mace smiled back at him. ‘Sure. What’re you offering?’

The waiter told them the menu was steak and chips or fish and chips. Mace said, fish would be good.

‘Yesterday is fish,’ said the waiter. ‘Today is steak.’

‘Okay, steaks,’ said Mace. ‘And beers.’

In the silence after the waiter had gone, Pylon said, ‘Before, I thought the Wodaabe were weird, pretty boys prancing about in all that makeup. Except that was at least something they’d been doing for a long time. A tradition. And they didn’t kill things. But what’s this about, huh?’

‘A local version of Rio?’

‘Bit extreme.’

The waiter brought their beers, uncapped them at the table.

Pylon asked if he was going to party with the carnival.

‘Of course, senhor.’ The waiter grinned. ‘After I am finished in the hotel, I dance.’ He did a quick jive, laughed. ‘You like it?’

‘Not tonight, José,’ said Mace, reading the man’s name off his lapel badge.

José bowed out. ‘I bring your steak soon.’

Mace and Pylon clinked bottles, and drank, talking some more about the nightmare of the carnival. Fifteen minutes later José laid down huge plates of steak and chips.

‘Very rare,’ he said. ‘You can taste the blood. Good eating.’

They were: the steaks tender, the juice welling red at the corners of their mouths as they ate.

Through a mouthful Pylon said, ‘Our Mr Webster’s taking his time, don’t you think? I’d expected some call of welcome by now.’

Mace shrugged, cutting loose a piece of pink flesh. ‘Maybe he’s at the carnival.’

‘Why not phone Isabella. Get her onto it.’

‘She didn’t have a number.’

‘Shit, Mace, she’s got to have made the deal with him somehow.’

Mace chewed, thinking, for a broken city the steak was
melt-in
-the-mouth. Could teach the Spur Ranches a thing or two.

‘Just call her.’

Mace did and got her voicemail.

Pylon shook his head. ‘Great handler. You got guys out in the field for you, you switch your phone to voicemail. That’s what I like about Isabella. Care and concern.’ He stabbed at the last of his chips. ‘Down to the flowers.’

‘You shouldn’t listen to other people’s conversations.’

‘I listen to everything.’

‘Anyhow, she didn’t send them.’

‘That’s what she says.’

‘She doesn’t know my address.’

‘That’s what you say.’

They drank two more beers in the lounge, not much happening there except a group of USAID-types talking in a corner about securing people’s trust. ‘They don’t trust us,’ a big black guy was saying, ‘we’re going to get no cooperation. No cooperation means no more budget, bottom line. Our asses get hauled back to Washington’ - the rest of the group nodding at him. ‘We get hauled back to Washington, these poor folks stay starved. First thing we do tomorrow is give them candy. Sweeten them up, hey?’ The group laughed. Mace and Pylon exchanged a wry glance on their way out the lounge.

In his room Mace paused, thinking he’d left his suitcase on the bed, not the rack, but maybe a maid had moved it. Then again this wasn’t the sort of hotel to have maids cleaning up a room every time a guest stepped out. He checked through his suitcase.
Nothing
missing but it had been gone through. Neatly enough repacked but the order of things wrong.

He phoned Pylon. Pylon answered, saying, ‘Yeah, someone’s been through my bag, too.’