Zulu (11 page)

Dan looked up from the register. “Stanley Ramphele has been visiting his brother regularly since he was incarcerated,” he said. “But not for the past month.”

Kriek was cleaning his nails with his teeth. “I didn't even know he had a brother,” he said.

One of the guards chuckled behind him. For a moment, Brian forgot about the head guard's piggishness and that rancid odor of men in confined spaces that pervaded the air. “Can we have a quiet room to question Sonny?”

“Why? Planning to look up his ass?”

“You're a funny guy, Chief, you know that?”

“Ramphele's ass isn't up for grabs,” Kriek insisted. “It's not me who says that, it's the other prisoners.”

There was agreement from the other guards.

“What does that mean?” Dan said irritably. “That Ramphele's protected?”

“Apparently.”

“There's no mention of it in his file.”

“The animals eat each other, make no mistake.”

“What do the informers say?”

“That his ass is out of bounds.”

“You seem to be fascinated by his ass.”

“Not me, them!”

Kriek laughed first, soon imitated by his cronies. Brian signaled to Dan that they needed a change of scenery. Kriek was exactly the kind of guy who used to beat him up and leave him for dead in the ditches.

 

Two hundred percent overcrowded, a ninety percent reoffending rate, TB, AIDS, lack of medical care, blocked pipes, people sleeping on the floor, rapes, assaults, humiliations—Pollsmoor epitomized the state of South Africa's prisons. As the prison population kept growing, the private sector had been given the task of building new detention centers, most of which dated from the apartheid period. There were few social workers, rehabilitation was a utopian dream, and corruption was endemic. The number of escapes had reached a record high, with the complicity of a poorly trained, underpaid, even criminal staff. Some prisoners had to pay a fee to attend classes or participate in activities, while others, even with life sentences, spent the weekend outside. New prisoners were occasionally sold by the guards to those who asked for them, the guards' first reflex being to put themselves under the protection of one of the bosses, who monopolized the
wifyes
, and distributed favors.

Prostitutes, drugs, alcohol—eight crime syndicates divided the prison system between them. In this jungle, Sonny Ramphele had coped pretty well. He had struck a deal, like everyone. He had caught scabies, and there were swellings between his fingers that made it look like his hands were turning into flippers—Sonny had never taken very good care of himself, not like his cute brother—but he had managed to preserve his integrity. He was waiting for the end of his sentence, listening to his fellow prisoners quarrelling about who would be next in the latrines, when a guard came and stirred him from his long apathy.

Sonny grumbled—why the fuck did he need to see a doctor?—but obeyed, assailed by sarcastic remarks from the others.

The prison corridors stank of cabbage and bodily fluids. Dragging an invisible ball and chain, Ramphele passed through two magnetic gates before being led into an isolated, windowless room. This wasn't the infirmary. There was a table, two plastic chairs, a short brown guy with piercing eyes sitting with a bunch of photographs in front of him, and a taller guy with his back against the wall, who looked as if he might once have been in good shape.

“Sit down,” Dan Fletcher said, indicating the empty chair opposite him.

Like his brother, Sonny was a solid Xhosa, about six feet tall, with eyes that kept wandering to the sides. He walked forward sluggishly and sat down as if there were nails on the chair.

“Do you know why we're here?”

Sonny shook his head very slightly. He had the heavy-lidded look of a tough guy who had become a heavy smoker.

“You haven't seen your brother in a while,” Dan went on. “A month, according to the register. Any news of him?”

He made a contemptuous gesture. This was all water off a duck's back. Hundreds of police officers had been indicted for assault, murder, rape. Sonny didn't want to talk to them, especially not about Stan.

“He's been running your business for you, hasn't he?” Dan said. “Too busy, I guess, to visit his big brother.”

Sonny was keeping an eye on the other cop, who was prowling behind him.

“What was Stan dealing?
Dagga
? Or something else?”

Sonny made no reaction.

Brian leaned over his shoulder. “You were wrong to give your brother the keys to the truck, Sonny. Didn't you tell him he was going nowhere?”

Sonny did not react immediately. Fletcher turned over the photographs scattered on the table.

“Stan was found dead in your mobile home,” he said, indicating the photographs. “Yesterday, in Noordhoek. He'd been dead for several days.”

His bored gangster pose changed as he looked at the photographs: a livid Stan on the window seat in the mobile home, his face in close-up, eyes open, staring at a forever indeterminate object.

“Your brother died of an overdose,” Fletcher went on. “A
tik
-based mixture. Did you know your brother was a user?”

Sonny was shrinking on his chair, his head bent over his unlaced sneakers. Stan as a boy, laughing, the slaps on the head he'd given him, their fights in the dust—their life flashed before him, fading to black.

“Stan didn't have any needle marks on his arms,” Dan said. “What do you think of that?”

“Nothing.”

It was the most he'd spoken so far.

“Your brother was involved in something big. We think he was dealing a new drug to young whites in the city. Did you know?”

Still in shock, Sonny shook his head.

“Your brother was going out with a girl named Nicole Wiese, the one who's been in all the papers. Did Stan ever mention her to you?”

“That's none of my business.” He couldn't take his eyes off the photographs.

“Nicole was murdered, and everything points to Stan. We found drugs and the girl's purse in your mobile home, and we have proof they were together at the time of the murder. What is this drug?”

“Don't know.” Sonny was nervously twisting his fingers.

“I don't believe you, Sonny. Try harder.”

“Stan didn't say anything to me.”

“Apart from the Chief, no one knows about our visit,” Dan assured him. “No one will know you talked to us, your name won't appear anywhere. The appeals judge is lenient to people who turn State's evidence. Help us and we'll see what we can do.”

Ramphele sat on his chair, brooding. Things were looking bad.

Brian tried again. “Stan took over your patch on the beaches. We're looking for his supplier. You must know him.”

“I don't know anyone who deals
tik
. Neither did Stan.”

“Your supplier may have changed direction.”

“No. Too dangerous.”

Brian sat down on the edge of the table. “Why do you think your brother stopped coming to see you? Why had he been playing dead for a month? He started selling the hard stuff, to earn money and live it up with little white girls by the sea. He even bought himself some nice clothes and a flashy motorbike. Stan stopped coming to see you because he knew you wouldn't appreciate the way he'd taken over your territory. Except that he hit a snag. They used your brother, Sonny. Don't expect to get any respect from these people. They treat you like beasts for the slaughter.”

Ramphele shrugged. It was the same in here.

“We're offering you a way out,” Dan said, more gently. “Tell us who was supplying your brother, and your sentence will be reviewed.”

Sonny had stopped moving. His chin had fallen on his shabby T-shirt, as if his brother's death had broken his neck. There was only him left now—best to say nothing.

“
Dagga
, man,” he said at last. “Only
dagga
.”

A heavy silence fell over the interrogation room. Dan made a sign to Brian, who put out his cigarette. Either the brother knew nothing, or he had a good reason to lie. He was about to send Sonny back to his cell when Brian asked him point blank, “Stan was scared of spiders, wasn't he?”

Sonny's gloomy expression changed completely. He looked up questioningly at the cop in the black fatigues.

They'd found the flaw, a gaping one.

“Really scared,” Brian insisted. “Like a phobia.”

Sonny was disconcerted. Stan had fallen into a well when he was little, a dried-up well that hadn't been used for ages. They had searched for him for hours before they found him, trembling with fear, at the bottom of the well. There was no water there, but there were spiders, hundreds of them. Fifteen years later, Stan could barely stand to see those fucking spiders, let alone go anywhere near them.

“They used your brother to sell their dope for them,” Brian went on, “and when Stan knew too much, they shot him up to make it look like an overdose. Or rather, they gave him the choice of shooting himself up or spending some time with one of those nice little animals. A trap-door spider was found in the toilet in your mobile home. A big one.”

Sonny rubbed his face with his hands. The photographs on the table made sinister kaleidoscopes in his mind. The last pieces of his world were drifting away, and he had nothing to hang on to, only the moist eyes of the cop opposite him.

“Muizenberg,” he said at last. “We were dealing on the beach at Muizenberg.”

 

 *

 

Used for five thousand years by the Pygmies for their medicinal qualities, the roots of the
iboga
contained a dozen alkaloids, including ibogaine, a substance similar to that present in various species of hallucinogenic mushrooms. By acting on the serotonin, ibogaine increased self-confidence and a sense of general well-being. While the plant and several of its derivatives had mind-stimulating properties, they could, in larger doses, also be responsible for auditory and visual hallucinations, sometimes very anxiety-provoking, which could even lead to suicide. Etymologically derived from a word meaning “to heal,”
iboga
was an initiatory plant whose therapeutic properties and hallucinatory power made it possible for its user to connect with the sacred.
Iboga
was used during inner-directed ceremonies called
bwiti
, conducted under the aegis of a spiritual guide, a shaman known as an
inyanga
, who was thought of as a herbalist. Apart from these secret rituals,
iboga
root was used as an aphrodisiac or love potion.

True believers claimed that ibogaine provoked erections that could last six hours, in which the pleasure was indescribable. In Western medicine, ibogaine had been used in psychotherapy and the treatment of heroin addiction, but knowledge about its aphrodisiac qualities remained sketchy, due to the lack of scientific tests.

An African love potion.

Neuman was brooding like an old lion looking at its own reflection. Nicole Wiese had taken
iboga
a few days before the murder, a strong dose according to the medical examiner's analysis, probably in the form of an essential oil. What about the flasks found in Nicole's purse? Was her friend Stan also dealing
iboga
?

Neuman set off to see the medical examiner.

 

Tembo was the first black to run the Durham Road morgue. His short gray beard was reminiscent of that of a former secretary-general of the United Nations, and his glasses betrayed the fact that he was as short-sighted as a mole. A confirmed bachelor, Tembo loved anything old—baroque music, old-fashioned hats—and had a particular passion for Egyptian hieroglyphics. Dead bodies were for him parchments to be deciphered, puppets to which he was the expert ventriloquist. He only left them alone once he had exhausted their meaning. A man fiercely dedicated to his job—he and Neuman got on well.

The two men sat down in Tembo's laboratory.

Stan Ramphele's postmortem showed that he had died of an overdose following a methamphetamine-based injection. The exact hour of death was unclear, but it had happened four days earlier, in other words, not long after Nicole's murder. The sand on the flooring of the pickup matched the grains in Nicole's hair. Traces of salt had been found on Stan's skin, as well as pollen from the
Dietes grandiflora
, a flower better known under the name of Groot Wilde iris, confirming what they already knew—that Stan and Nicole had been together in the botanical gardens.

“But the most interesting findings were in the toxicological analysis,” Tembo said. “First, the
iboga
. Ramphele also took some, but more recently, just a few hours before he died. In other words, around the same time as Nicole Wiese was murdered. We found the same essence in the flasks in her purse. A very concentrated formula, one I've never seen before.”

“Homemade?”

“Yes. I wondered at first if this essence could change the behavior of its users, but the guinea pigs we tested the product on just fell asleep.” Tembo fingered his beard. “So then I looked at the powder that caused Ramphele's overdose and noted that the same molecule was in the cocktail taken by Nicole. Thanks to the sample from the mobile home, I was able to dig a little deeper. Like all synthetic drugs, methamphetamine has intermediary components that are toxic to the brain, but however hard we looked among the usual substitutes, we just couldn't find it. We still don't know the name of the molecule.”

“How do you explain that?” Neuman asked.

Tembo shrugged. “The Mafias are often ahead of State-funded research. They certainly have more resources than we do.”

Tembo knew the subject well. Ever since LSD and BZ gas, innovations in the fields of neuroscience and pharmacology had widened the range of possibilities. It was now possible to reprogram molecules so that they targeted certain mechanisms affecting neuronal functions or cardiac rhythms. What had emerged from this extensive experimentation was increasingly computerized, and the most promising bio-active components could be identified and tested with amazing speed. After having experimented in Iraq with drugs that increased the vigilance of soldiers, the military hoped, in the near future, to see troops leaving for combat filled with medication that increased their aggressiveness and their resistance to fear, pain, and fatigue, while acting, through a selective erasure of memory, to suppress traumatic memories. Tembo, who followed these things with great interest, was not very optimistic. September 11th had ushered in a period when international norms had been infringed, especially in the US. Experiments on chemical weapons that were banned in theory continued, linked to the use of lethal injections in judicial executions and of tear gas to maintain order. But the real purpose of these experiments was “counter-terrorism,” a sphere in which legal constraints were increasingly being ignored. There were research projects in progress everywhere. The Russians had not revealed the name of the chemical agent used to end the Moscow theatre siege in 2005. Since the first Gulf War, the US Air Force had been considering the development and dissemination of extremely powerful aphrodisiacs capable of provoking homosexual behavior in the enemy ranks. A Czech laboratory was working on the transformation of anesthetics combined with a series of ultra-rapid antidotes that could be used to induce a state of shock in crowds, after which special commandoes would be able to go in and carry out targeted assassinations.