Zulu (14 page)

“Stan Ramphele,” he insisted, again shoving the photograph in front of her face. “A young guy who spent his days on the beach. A good-looking guy. You must have seen him around.”

“You think?”

“Stan was dealing
dagga
, and more recently a kind of
tik
. Here, on the beach.”

The girl was still wiggling her hips. “Are you a cop?” she said.

“Stan's dead. I'm trying to find out what happened to him. I'm not here to arrest you or your friends.”

The wind made the charms in her hair jingle. She shrugged. “You know, I'm just a beach girl.”

Her gap-toothed smile faded. The rest of her continued to sway. She drank her beer in one go, caught hold of him again, and started laughing.

“Don't tell me you brought me out here just to talk about this guy!”

“You looked like an honest girl,” he lied.

“And now?” she said, putting her hand on his buttocks. “Am I honest or dishonest?”

The grass was bending in the wind, the sound of the waves mingled with the reggae, and Pam was feeling the merchandise, like a connoisseur. She rubbed her groin against his, lingered over his cock, kneeled and rubbed her breasts against it. Brian felt the girl's hand moving over his back. Within a second, Pam had pulled the gun from his holster.

She stood up again, amazingly quickly given her position, lifted the safety, and aimed the .38 at Brian, who had hardly moved.

“Don't move,” she said, cocking the hammer. “Hands on head. Come on!”

Brian didn't bat an eyelid. A man appeared from behind the dune, where he had been crouching. The tattooed man who'd been serving beer.

“It's all right,” she said to him, her gun still on Brian. “But this idiot's refusing to put his hands up.”

“Is that so?” the tattooed man said, coming closer. He had a gun under his Rasta shirt.

“Get down on the ground!” Pam hissed.

Instead of obeying, Brian took a curious object from his linen jacket. His forefathers' knout, with its copper loop.

“Too bad!” Pam cried, aiming at his head. “You had a nice face!”

She pressed the trigger, twice, while Brian rushed at the man. Pam continued to fire, until she realized that the . 38 was not loaded. The tattooed man took out his gun, but the leather thong struck his cheek and tore off a piece as large as a steak. The man let out a muffled cry and staggered. His eyes filling with tears, he did not see the second blow coming. The .32 leapt from his hand.

Pam had emptied the barrel between Brian's shoulder blades. Now he turned to her. The knout broke her wrist, and she dropped the .38 with a squeal. Behind her, the tattooed man tried to pick up his gun. The knout stripped his fingers to the bone. Brian's heart was pounding. They weren't dealing with small-time beach dealers, but with
tsotsis
who killed cops. A sudden gust of wind made him screw up his eyes. Abandoning his gun, the tattooed man set off at a run toward the straw hut, holding his cheek. The girl had still made no move to run away. She was looking at her broken wrist as if it was about to fall off. Brian punched her on the chin, knocking her out. He looked up, saw the tattooed man running up the side of the dune.

That was when he heard a scream in the distance, above the rollers. A man's scream, coming from the other side of the dunes.

Dan.

 

 *

 

“Go on,” Gatsha breathed in Neuman's broken ear. “Give me the pleasure of cutting open your dirty nigger face. Go on, let me blow away your balls.”

He was pressing so hard that Neuman wanted to vomit. One move and he was dead. That was what the guy was waiting for. Dan was weeping as he looked at his severed hand, wild-eyed, as if he didn't want to believe what was happening to him. The blood was spreading around the legs of the barbecue, the wind was swirling, and he was sobbing like a terrified child nobody would come and save. He was alone with his stump and his hand that lay there on the sand, detached from his body. He was living a nightmare.

Neuman closed his eyes when the
tsotsi
cut off his other hand.

Fletcher let out a terrible scream and passed out.

“Roast chicken! Roast cop!” the nervy guy bellowed, brandishing his machete.

Joey was smiling ecstatically. He picked up the severed hands and threw them on the barbecue. Neuman opened his eyes again, but things hadn't gotten any better—the blood spurting from the stumps, his friend lying unconscious on the ground, the wind stoking the charcoal, the smell of meat, the crackling of the hands on the burning griddle, the knife blade pinning him to the hut like an owl, the revolver in his guts, and Gatsha's bulging eyes and insane laugh.

“Ha ha! Roast cop!”

Sparks from the charcoal flew in the wind. The nervy guy planted his knee in Dan's back, but Dan had stopped reacting. He grabbed him by the roots of his hair and with a stroke of the machete cut his throat.

Neuman's heart was pounding as if it was going to burst. His brother's ghost passed behind his sweat-soaked back. They were going to cut Dan into pieces, they were going to grill him right here on the beach, and then it would be his turn. He clenched his teeth to chase away the fear that was making his legs turn to jelly. A warm liquid continued to run down his shirt, and Dan was dying before his horrified eyes.

The
tsotsi
with the machete turned to the younger man. “Joey! Go see what the others are up to while we deal with the nigger.”

The nervy guy was dreaming of spectacular deaths when Gatsha's head exploded. Thrown by the impact, the boy didn't even have time to press the trigger. The others immediately turned toward the straw hut, where the shot had come from. A slender figure was running down the dune, a white with a revolver in his hand. They raised their guns and aimed at him.

In spite of the pieces of flesh and bone that had spattered his face, Neuman reacted in a flash. He pulled out the blade that was pinning him to the hut and rushed at them. Sensing danger, the nervy guy turned to him, but too late. Two hundred and twenty pounds of hate planted themselves in his abdomen. The
tsotsi
staggered back a few feet, and fell to his knees.

The first shot hit the sand at Brian's feet, the second went completely wide. When he got to the foot of the dune, he stopped and aimed his gun. With the sun in his eyes, the guy did not have a chance. Brian brought him down with a bullet to his gut.

The leader of the gang stood by the barbecue, looking down incredulously at his stomach, where the knife was plunged in up to the hilt. Neuman did not bother to pull it out. Instead, he grabbed the hands crackling on the griddle and threw them on the sand.

Brian was looking around, searching for another target, as if the whole world was his enemy. That was when he saw Dan's mutilated body lying at the foot of the dune. Neuman had rushed to his side. He took off his jacket, felt his pulse. Dan was still breathing.

At last, Brian ran up, pale as a sheet.

“Quick!” Neuman cried, pressing Dan's jugular. “Call an ambulance!”

 

 

 

 

W
hat's the matter, big brother?”“I'm burning.” “What about your knees?”

“They're shaking.”

“Your red shorts?”

“As you can see, they're soaking wet.”

“And your cheeks, big brother, what about your cheeks?”

“Two trails of gasoline.”

Andy had burned in front of his eyes, the black tears melting like rubber on his cheeks, petrified into filthy bubbles. The vigilantes
21
had let go of him, there was no point holding him, he could stand by himself, or rather, he was looking for a place where he could stand. Andy had tried to roll on the ground, but the rubber had already melted to him. He could still gesticulate, scream so loudly he might split the eardrums of the earth, he still couldn't find a place to disappear.

Time had condensed in Ali's mind. He was still too young to fully understand. Everything was vague, unreal, strangely distant. He could make out figures in the night, bloodshot eyes beneath the ski masks, the gallows tree in the middle of the garden, the cracked moon, the SAP's lights flashing at the end of the street, the vigilantes mounting guard around the house, the plainclothes cops turning away the neighbors, but everything was false, apart from those black tears tumbling down his brother's cheeks.

Andy had become fire, a flaming torch, an upturned beacon. Ali didn't hear the screams or the noises from the street, he was deaf to the chaos, and the images continued to pile up, empty of meaning. His mother behind the window, her face pressed to the glass, being forced to watch, the cries of rage, the giants' fetid breath, even the smell of rubber passed over his head like a flight of arrows.

The men were holding him, making sure he missed nothing of the show. “Look, little Zulu! See what happens!” But the fear of dying had made him punch-drunk. Ali was ashamed, ashamed of being so weak he had almost forgotten about Andy burning. He was still alive, that was all that mattered.

He didn't see what happened next. The world had turned upside down, the moon had shattered into pieces.

When he opened his eyes again, the screams had stopped. Andy's huddled body lay on the ground, like a bird covered in oil, and that terrible smell of grilled meat was still there. Then Ali saw his father hanging there, and the reality of it came back to him like a boomerang.

No doubt about it. He was at home, which meant he was in hell.

A hand grabbed him by the roots of his hair and dragged him behind the house.

 

The wind blew across the grass and the quicksilver ocean glittered in the twilight. Neuman followed the stony path to the top of the cliff. Passing close to him, a hovering seagull gave him a stare before diving into the abyss.

The Cape Town lighthouse glowed, deserted. Neuman walked around the graffiti-covered wall and leaned on the parapet. Below, gray waves were tossing in the inlets. The fear had gone, but not the smell of burned flesh.

Dan had been transferred to the nearest hospital, in a critical state. The rescue team's helicopter had taken nearly twenty minutes to get to Muizenberg beach—to them, it had seemed like an hour.

They had done what they could, made tourniquets to stem the flow of blood from the arteries, sealed the open wounds with their jackets and shirts, but Dan's life was draining away like liquid through a sieve. They talked to him, told him his hands would be sewed back on, they knew a specialist, the best there was, he'd have new hands, better ones than before, more agile, hands like a surgeon's, they were talking nonsense just for the sake of talking. Claire and the children needed him, today and tomorrow and every day of their lives, they were talking to him even though Dan was lying unconscious, his cut throat open in a ghastly grin, his blood seeping into the sand. Neuman remembered the look of terror in his eyes when he saw the machete, his bright eyes imploring him, the way he had cried like a child when his first hand had been cut off. He was the one who had led Dan into that nightmare.

The medical team, the first aid given on the stretcher, the emergency transfusion, the helicopter that had carried him off into the sky, the assurance that everything would be done to save him—none of that made any difference. It wasn't that Brian had intervened too late, it was he himself who had failed.

But Dan was still clinging to life, and maybe he'd pull through—his heart was still beating weakly when they had transferred him.

Neuman stepped over the low wall surrounding the lighthouse and walked down to the mass of fallen rocks that hung on the precipice. A slice of moon yawned in the dead sky. He climbed over the rocks, closed his eyes, and let the wind buffet him. One more step, and the void would suck him in. One leap, and he would rest forever. But he could turn the skin of the earth inside out the way you skin a rabbit, merge with the silvery waves for a final embrace, at the end of the dizzy spell he was alone.

Neuman waited until night fell, then walked back down the path.

The moon guided him over the heath. In spite of the stitches, his ear had started bleeding again. A baboon approached, an old male, and Neuman gave him a fierce look to shoo him away. He was thinking about Claire and the children, and about all the things he hadn't done to save Dan. He was just leaving the reserve when his cell phone rang. It was Brian Epkeen, calling from the hospital.

A one-in-ten chance, the doctor had said.

Neuman held his breath, but it was no use.

“It's all over.”

 

 

 

F
or sixteen years, Joost Terreblanche had been a colonel in the 77th infantry battalion, the special unit given the task of keeping order in the Bantustan of KwaZulu.

The apartheid government had delegated authority within the enclaves to tribal chiefs, under the control of the ministry. These corrupt chiefs had the support of vigilante militias chosen from among the local beggars, who imposed the law with their blackjacks. The black population lived in terror, especially as the ANC and the UDF were ruthless in their reprisals against anyone breaking the boycott or collaborating with the oppressor. Politically isolated, apartheid had survived by dividing its enemies. So Chief Buthelezi's Zulu Inkatha movement had been left alone to battle with the ANC for leadership of the opposition, then criticize its possible participation in a coalition government, provoking ten years of virtual civil war and the worst violence in its history.
22
Demonstrations degenerated into bloodbaths. Whenever the rioting threatened to turn into an uprising, the Casspirs of the 77th battalion were sent in, those infamous armored vehicles that had traumatized a generation.

Joost Terreblanche had proved himself remarkably efficient at “cleaning up” the Bantustans, and his name was cited in military schools. Rewarding his exemplary service, the government had allocated him and his family a new home.

Ross and François, the two strapping sons his wife had given him in spite of her shortcomings, had up until then grown up in the austere, confined atmosphere of a military barracks. Now, at the ages of sixteen and fourteen respectively, they would have the freedom of this delightful new property. Joost was proud of his position, and confident in the future. The one weak link was his wife, Ruth.

A woman of delicate constitution, Ruth claimed that she couldn't take care of such a big house alone—a residence in the purest Colonial style that Joost's Huguenot ancestors wouldn't have sniffed at. Cook, gardener, cleaning woman, houseboy—Ruth had soon surrounded herself with a host of servants. Naturally the house was protected by a security system. What Joost didn't know was that the enemy would come from within.

The black gardener, a Zulu named Jake. Always wearing his old, faded-red cotton sunhat, and holding his shears in his worn gloves, Jake's exterior concealed the soul of a traitor. Ruth should never have left François alone with him, let alone allow him to help the man plant his damned flowers. François was younger, more impulsive, more delicate than Ross, who was solid in every way—you just had to see him sawing wood. The gardener had put dark thoughts in the younger brother's head. He knew that François was vulnerable. He had manipulated him with his humble, sun-dazed
kaffir
smiles. After a mere two years, François repeated this nonsense to his father one day, in the middle of dinner, with all the conviction of a young fool discovering the world. Joost had been firm, but François had stood up to him. There had been arguments, threats, punishments, blows, and a lot of weeping from Ruth, but no one had given in. The gardener had been beaten and dismissed, and François sent to boarding school. Joost told himself it was only an adolescent tantrum—he had tamed people a whole lot tougher than this wet rag. The boy would thank him later.

The year he turned eighteen, François had come back from boarding school one day and announced that he was leaving home for good. His father threatened to disown him, his mother to kill herself, his elder brother to smash his face in. François had sneaked away to join his beatnik friends—as his father called them—a group high on human rights and marijuana, who had managed to indoctrinate him with their dreaming of egalitarian utopias—egalitarian my ass, the colonel fumed. As if the blacks were capable of equality! You just had to look at Africa, children's eyes crawling with flies, petty tyrants in their military caps appropriating their countries' riches for their own clans, pasteboard emperors, greedy, bloodthirsty warlords, window cleaners promoted to ministers, starving, ignorant populations displaced like cattle! Blacks in power were immature, violent, mendacious, incompetent, and uncultured. They had nothing to teach the whites, certainly not the spirit of liberty and equality. You didn't share the results of two hundred years of hard toil with people who still worked with machetes. You just had to look at their fine symbol Mandela and his wife, Winnie, participating in the torture of opponents of the ANC, those thousands of crimes committed in the name of “liberation”—Apazo, ANC, Inkatha, UDF, all killing each other for the sake of power! The so-called liberal whites who campaigned for the black cause were knee-jerk leftists, and François was quite crazy to defy his father. He was never to set foot in the house again, was that understood?

And in fact, he never had. For three years, they didn't hear anything about him, until the day Joost got a memo from the SAP to say that François Terreblanche had been arrested for the murder of his girlfriend, Kitty Brown, found dead in a seedy slum in the center of Jo'burg. In his shame, anger, and bitterness, the colonel had done nothing to defend his son. Five years in prison without remission.

They had visited François before he was transferred to prison. Crazy with grief, Ruth had predicted to her son that she would die before he was released, and that he would have her death on his conscience. More sober by nature, Joost had wished him good luck surrounded by all those niggers.

The time had passed. Three years during which Ruth had resorted to spiritualism and rest cures. She had never been a healthy woman, and now she had become obsessed with her own fate. She had died of an aneurismal rupture just before he was due to be released. François, who was not even allowed to attend the funeral, thanks to his father, had followed her within a month—suicide, according to the internal inquiry.

Ancient history.

Joost Terreblanche had not testified before the Truth and Reconciliation Commission.2 He had obeyed orders in a country fighting the spread of Communism in Africa. The fall of the Berlin Wall had hastened the fall of apartheid, but the Western countries, although officially observing the boycott, had supported them in their fight against the Reds. That was the truth. As for reconciliation, well, they could always set up commissions.

Terreblanche was now sixty-seven, with an extremely lucrative new career, and anything related to that tragic period of his life left him as cold as ice. When brought to completion, the operation for which he was responsible would allow him to join his elder son Ross, who, after the expulsion of the white farmers from Zimbabwe, had taken refuge in Australia. They would have their revenge, and make a lot of money at the same time. They would enlarge the farm, make it the biggest in the whole of New South Wales.

He still had to deal with these fucking
kaffirs
. This one didn't seem to be in great form right now.

“Where did you find her?” Terreblanche asked.

“Here, with the others.”

The Cat was standing in the shadowy part of the shed, carefully filing his nails to sharp points. The sleeve of his shirt was red, his eyes misty beneath his deceptively sleepy eyelashes. The prey he had brought back to his master was an almost painful sight, her arms suspended on bicycle chains from the ceiling beam. Pam, the gang's whore, who had taken up residence in the shed.

Terreblanche approached the girl, who was grimacing in pain in the pale fluorescent light. Her toes barely touched the floor and the filthy steel was biting into her wrists. One was already broken, and she seemed to have exhausted her tears.

“Now,” he said, “you're going to tell me what happened on the beach.”

Blood was dripping from the whore's half torn-off scalp. A souvenir of the Cat.

Massive and compact, accustomed to combat sports and special operations, Joost Terreblanche was not a patient man. “Well?” his voice rang out in the silence of the shed.

Pam made a tremendous effort to look up. She stared at the riding crop with her bulging brown eyes.

“Gulethu. He was the one who told us to keep the cops away.”

Gulethu was the leader of this pathetic gang. Someone you could trust, according to the Cat. But things always went wrong—one of the vehicles was missing from the shed, the Toyota, along with the five men who used it.

“What did the cops want?”

“They . . . they were trying to find out about this guy,” the girl sniveled.

“What guy?”

“S . . . Stan.”

“Stan who?”

“Ramphele,” Pamela groaned.

“A small-time pusher,” the Cat explained from the shadows. “Ramphele took over his brother's business on the coast. He was found dead two days ago. An overdose, apparently.”

Terreblanche tightened his grip on his riding crop. At last he understood. “Gulethu unloaded his dope on Ramphele, is that it?” he growled.

The girl nodded, her eyes rolled upwards. He fumed in silence. Given the job of dealing in the squatter camps, Gulethu should have known how addictive the drug was. The idiot had tried to double-cross them by selling part of the stock to a small-time pusher on the coast, without even knowing what was in it.

“How long has this little game been going on?”

“Two . . . two months.”

“How many dealers?”

“Ramphele. He was the only one.”

He brandished his whip. “Who else?”

“No one!” the girl said, in a choked voice. “Ask Gulethu! He knows everything!”

She started crying. Terreblanche kept his composure. Gulethu had disappeared, but it wasn't too late. He must be hiding somewhere in the vicinity, they could still seal off the area, locate the Toyota.

“How many people took the drug?” he asked the girl.

“I don't know. There were about thirty customers. Only whites. They kept wanting more. As soon as they were hooked, the prices went up.”

At most, they must have made a few thousand rand a day. A pitiful sum when you knew what was really going down. Terreblanche lifted the little whore's twitching head. “What happened with the cops?”

“We were supposed to sweet-talk them, keep them away from the house.”

“What went wrong?”

No reply.

“Answer me!”

“Need any help?” the Cat called.

Pam was writhing at the end of the chain. Her ankles were giving way. Her strength was going. The pain of her broken wrist was boring into her skull.

“Joey,” she moaned. “One of the cops had already seen him. They tried to hide him, but the cops must have suspected something.”

There were twelve men in Gulethu's gang, divided into two groups. It was the day team the cops had run into. Three of them had died on the beach, three others were now in their hands—the girl hanging from the beam, and the two
kaffirs
counting their teeth in the dormitory next door. So there were still six black sheep at large.

“Where's Gulethu?” Terreblanche asked.

“I don't know. He left with the others, didn't say where he was going. He . . . he told us to stay here. Said he'd take care of everything.”

Terreblanche grabbed her scalp. To judge by the scream she gave, she was telling the truth.

Gulethu would be sharing out the loot among six instead of twelve. They had searched the shed without finding any money, just those filthy things of theirs in their canvas bags and Gulethu's
grigris
under his mattress. The money from the side deal must be stashed somewhere, in a place where no one would think of looking for it. They had to find the rest of the gang, before the cops did.

Terreblanche peered at the trinkets, the short clubs and the other finery piled up in a corner of the shed. There was dried blood on one of the clubs.

“These are Gulethu's, aren't they?” he said to the girl. “What was he doing with these
grigris
?”

“He . . . he mentioned an
umqolan
who was casting out bad luck.”

A sorceress, in the township jargon.

Terreblanche grinned contemptuously. He'd spent enough time in the Zulu Bantustans to know their beliefs, their rituals, all the old wives' tales they called their culture. “Do you know where we can find this sorceress?”

“No! No . . . I swear . . . Please . . .”

Overcome with nausea, Pamela drooped at the end of the chain. Terreblanche lifted one of her eyelids, but she had lost consciousness. She wouldn't hold out much longer in this state.

“What are we going to do with her?” the Cat asked. “Get rid of her, like the others?”

“No . . . No, we can still use them.”

“To do what? Clean up the place?”

Pamela's blood had gathered in a dark pool on the dirt floor. Terreblanche looked up. The house had been evacuated, but there must still be traces . . .