Zulu (30 page)

“Where were you planning to go, bitch?” Terreblanche growled.

Ruby's mouth was full of earth. Brian's plan was a washout. No surprise there, then.

 

 *

 

Brian was standing groggily against the wall of the room, waiting. The impact had almost killed him, but by some miracle he was still conscious. The guards had found him on the ground surrounded by fragments of glass and torn blinds. Anxious to retrieve the girl who had escaped through the window, they had left him with his open wounds and set off in search of her. Ruby wouldn't get far, he knew.

And in fact, here she came, with nasty gashes on her forehead, her pretty dress in shreds, her arms grazed, her face and shoulders covered in blood. Terreblanche threw her on the bed like a toy that had outlasted its purpose.

“Tie their ankles,” he ordered Debeer. “And clear up these pieces of glass. We wouldn't want them cutting themselves.”

Military humor. Ruby looked at Brian, distraught. Part of his scalp was torn away. Debeer started with him.

“You can untie them when they're dead,” Terreblanche said.

That was the second part of his plan. The first was lying in the middle of the living room, with the cop's bullet in the back of his neck. Terreblanche had planned to eliminate Van der Verskuizen and his whore before getting to the airfield—making it look like a burglary that had gone wrong—but the latest developments had modified his plans.

“Give them a first injection of 4cc. Wait for half an hour until it's taken effect, then give them the second one. They'll both be groggy and won't offer any resistance.”

Debeer nodded.

Terreblanche wiped his prints from the .38. “After that, kill the girl with this gun,” he said, placing the revolver on the desk. “Don't forget to wear gloves, or to put the cop's prints on the gun. It has to look like a murder during a fit of madness, followed by an overdose. Understood?”

“Affirmative.”

Debeer was in charge of the dirty work. He didn't particularly like it. The main thing was not to think. Terreblanche placed a small leather case on the ground. Inside was a tourniquet, syringes, powder, and a pickax handle.

“Rape the girl before you kill her,” he said. “It'll be important for the postmortem. We meet up as planned.”

Ruby huddled on the bed, her eyes bulging.

“No one will believe I killed her,” Brian cried. “Everyone knows we love each other.”

“That's right!” Ruby said.

Terreblanche did not even look at her. “Do it.”

 

The first injection was like a thunderbolt in an already dark sky. Brian felt the heat rise to his cheeks, spread in a spasm to his muscles, and run along his fingers. The burning was intense, although in a subtler way than the electrical generator. He went from pain to insensibility, and came to a halt between indifference and dynamite, almost imploding. Finally, once past the first shock, the miracle—after the flow of lava carrying away his veins, the shards of glass in his head, his back, he stopped feeling anything at all. With the Earth atomized beneath his feet, the smells of skin and the flames of the fire ravaged him from floor to ceiling. A long crack soon laid him flat like a plain in the moonlight.

“Don't touch me!”

The voice had emerged from nowhere. He opened his protruding eyes.

“Shit! Don't touch me!” the voice repeated.

Brian shuddered. Ruby was there, very close. He felt her breath on his mouth.

“But . . . I'm not touching you,” he cried.

He looked around him, saw only a nightmare. Good God, yes, he
was
touching her. But it wasn't him. Those hands, those fingers. Ruby was there, a few inches away. The blood was dripping from her wounds, spattering her face, and he was lying over her, somewhere else. Desire had fled from love, infinity had disappeared. He saw things that didn't exist, without believing them, Ruby lying beneath him with her thighs open, her eyes rolling with the effects of the drug, the convulsions, the patterns on the striped blanket, and that female breath constantly on his neck. Everything came back to him at the same time: the cellar, their attempt at escape, the first injection.

Brian rolled over on the bed and let himself fall to the wooden floor.

The guards had appeared as soon as the window had broken, but he had had time to send a shard of glass under the bed. He looked in the corners, saw only blackness surrounded by stars. At last he saw a pale glimmer against the skirting board. The piece of glass. He twisted on the ground, and with his foot managed to move it toward him.

Heavy footsteps approached in the corridor. The key turned in the lock. Brian writhed about, closing his eyes as the door opened.

Debeer came in. It was half an hour since the first injection. He went to the bed and put the small case down next to the girl. The cop was also in a lethargic state, lying on the floor. Debeer put on a pair of latex gloves, and prepared his instruments. The sooner it was over, the sooner he'd get to the airfield. He began by tearing off what was left of the dress, then snapped the elastic on her panties and sent them spinning to the floor. After which he put a condom on the end of the pickax handle and parted the girl's legs. The main thing was not to think.

“Show me your ass, bitch.”

Brian, on the floor, saw Debeer on the bed, with his back to him. Ruby had stopped reacting. He got to work on the tape, but the drug had turned him to wood, and his hands were almost completely numb—he might have been cutting his own veins for all he knew. A torn pair of panties flew to the ground. Brian had cramps from sawing through the tape, his fingers were gashed with a thousand cuts, but nothing came. Debeer was muttering insults in Afrikaans when all at once Brian's hands came free. He hesitated a moment, realized he could barely move. His brain sent his body orders, without effect. He saw Ruby on the bed. Debeer had put one of her legs over his shoulder, the better to part them. The heaviness that had kept Brian riveted to the floor disappeared in a flash. He threw himself on the man, foaming at the mouth with love and anger. A fatal mixture—the piece of glass sank into Debeer's throat, severing the carotid artery.

 

 

 

T
he moon was slowly fading in the sky. Neuman was finalizing the plan of attack he would soon be presenting to Karl Krüge when he got the call from Miriam. The young nurse had passed Josephina's house early this morning on her way to work and had been surprised to see the shutters open. She had knocked at the door, but there had been no answer. Worried, she had woken the old woman's friends. One of them told her that Josephina had had an appointment the previous evening at the church in Lengezi, on the edge of Khayelitsha, with the priest's maid, Sonia Parker, to talk about a gang of street kids.

Neuman turned pale.

Parker.

Pamela, the colored girl found dead in the cellar, was named Parker.

He had thanked his mother's guardian angel, then checked the SAP records. He soon found what he was looking for.
Pamela Parker, born November 28, 1978. Parents deceased. One sister, Sonia, whereabouts unknown.

Neuman filled his pockets with bullets and left the deserted station.

 

The sandy area bordering Lengezi stretched as far as the sea. Old newspapers, pieces of plastic, sacking, sheets of corrugated iron—the shelters on the edge of the open space were among the most wretched in the township. Neuman slammed the car door shut and walked down the unpaved street.

A subdued wind was knocking at the closed doors. Everything seemed deserted, abandoned. He advanced, chasing away the shadows, saw only a rat scampering beneath his feet. The front of the church was turning red in the light of dawn. He climbed the steps to the half-open door and slipped inside without a sound.

He aimed the barrel of his gun into the shadows. The chairs were empty, the silence like a locked trunk deep in his head. Nobody. He walked down the cold aisle, the handle of the gun now warm in the hollow of his hand. He made out the pillar near the altar, the white cloth, the extinguished candles. He stopped halfway along the aisle. There was a black shape behind the altar, a very distinct shape, which seemed to be hanging from the cross. Josephina. Her wrists had been tied to the big wooden crucifix with a rope. Her head was drooping on her chest, slumped, inert, her eyes closed. Neuman went close to her face and stroked her eyelids. Her makeup had run, blue makeup still sticky with tears. Mechanically, he stroked her cheek, for a long time, as if to reassure her. It would soon be over, yes, it would soon be over. The images became confused. His jaws were quivering. He didn't know how long it had lasted, but his mother wouldn't suffer anymore. The Cat had planted the spoke of a bicycle wheel in her heart.

Neuman took a step back and let go of his gun. His mother was dead. Blood had come from her mouth, staining her white dress, her beautiful black skin, congealed blood that stuck to her chin, her neck, her half-open mouth. He saw the cuts on her lips. Gashes. Left by a knife. He opened his mother's mouth and shuddered. She didn't have a tongue. It had been cut out.

The cry drilled into his temples.
Zwelithini
. The war cry of the last Zulu king, before his nation was massacred.

Zwelithini
. Let the earth tremble.

 

Like all township cops, Constable Beth Zumala lived in fear—fear of someone breaking down her door during the night and raping her, fear of being killed for her service pistol, fear of a random murder in broad daylight, fear of reprisals if a big-time
tsotsi
was arrested—but she loved her job.

“Any good at shooting?” Neuman asked.

“I was one of the best in my year at hitting moving targets,” she replied.

“These targets fire back.”

“I won't give them time.”

Stein, her partner on the night team, was a sturdy albino in an impeccably ironed uniform. He, too, had never imagined he'd ever be working with the head of the Cape Town Crime Unit, let alone on an operation of this kind. He adjusted his bulletproof vest and checked his gear.

The first rays of sunlight were touching the bullet-riddled facade of the Marabi. The Americans' lair was all closed up, the door protected by a metal grille, the windows barricaded with wooden planks and sheets of steel. No sign of life. The street, too, was strangely calm.

“Let's go,” Neuman said.

“Maybe we should wait for backup,” Stein suggested.

“Just cover me.”

Neuman wouldn't wait for Krüge's Casspirs or Sanogo's no-hopers. He cocked the pump-action shotgun he'd found in the trunk of the patrol car and moved forward. Stein and Xumala hesitated—they were paid two thousand rand a month to uphold the law, not to die in a suicide mission against the top gang in the township—but Neuman had already gone around to the other side of the building.

At his signal, the two officers climbed the adjoining roof. Neuman stifled a groan as he fell into the backyard of the
shebeen
. He weaved his way between the overturned garbage pails and scattered bottles, and was the first to reach the iron door leading to the games room.

“If there's any suspicious movement, fire,” he said in a low voice.

The officers were nervous. This man didn't care. The armor-plating dated from apartheid, the lock from the Great Trek. Neuman tilted the pump-action shotgun and fired two salvos one after the other, smashing the lock to pieces. Stein kicked the door open. Neuman ran into the private room. On the right was the storeroom and the
tsotsis
' rooms, on the left Mzala's room. He aimed straight for his target, rushing through the half-open door and aiming the shotgun at the gang leader's straw mattress.

A naked woman lay there in the half-light, a plump colored woman he had seen the other day with Mzala. She was staring up at the yellowed ceiling, her eyes bulging, her throat cut. Her clothes lay strewn on the tiled floor, but the closet was almost empty. Neuman slowly kneeled and parted the girl's jaws. She'd lost her tongue, too.

“Captain!” Beth called from the dormitories. “Captain!”

Neuman stood up, not even feeling the pain in his ribs anymore. Officer Stein was in the corridor, radioing for backup. His partner was just coming back from the bedrooms, ashen-faced.

“They're all dead,” she said.

Neuman found posters of naked women on the cracked walls, a portable stove for heating canned food, empty beer bottles, and a corpse on each of the bunk beds. All members of the Americans. Others lay on the floor, their heads tilted, their noses in puddles of alcohol. Twenty-two bodies, all executed with a bullet in the head. Even Dina, the
shebeen
queen, had been liquidated—her body lay behind the bar counter, surrounded by empty bottles and half-smoked joints. The American gang had been wiped off the map. They had been killed in their alcohol-induced sleep, and then their tongues had been cut out.

Mzala wasn't among them.

Neuman ground his teeth. Everything was being stolen from him, even death.

He left the officers to call the emergency services and went out without a word.

A small, silent crowd had gathered outside the Marabi. Neuman didn't want to think—not yet. He got in his car, deaf to the screaming police sirens, and set off for Lengezi. A few women were walking along the street, carrying baskets or plastic bowls. Khayelitsha was slowly waking up. He slowed down outside his mother's house, and stopped without even realizing it. The hedge was trimmed, the shutters were open. Neuman closed his eyes, and took a deep breath, felt the anger rumbling. The monster inside him was stirring.
Zwelithini
. He wouldn't sleep. He'd never sleep again.

At that moment, absurdly, there was a signal from the cell phone in his pocket. Neuman saw Zina's text, and it made his anguish even sharper.
Meet you at 8 a.m. Boulder National Park. XXX.

His eyes misted over. He looked up and saw his mother's house through the windshield, the sun on the shutters. Kids were playing on the street, with their cars made of wire. Neuman opened the door and vomited the breakfast he hadn't eaten into the hedge.

 

 *

 

The revolving lights outside the church, the ambulance, the police officers dispersing the last onlookers, Miriam sobbing at the foot of the steps with her head in her hands—Neuman walked through the desolate reality of it all with another man's eyes.

Two constables were guarding the front door of the church. Neuman walked past them without seeing them. The Methodist minister stood in the doorway. He had a graying crew cut, and eyes like flickering candles. With a gesture, Neuman ordered him to be quiet. He wanted to see the medical examiner first.

Rajan worked at the Red Cross Hospital in Khayelitsha, a sickly-looking man of Indian descent he had met once or twice. Rajan greeted him with a mixture of sympathy and embarrassment. His initial conclusion was that the murder had taken place in the church, around nine the previous evening. The tongue had been severed, probably with a knife, but death seemed to have been caused by a sharpened wheel spoke plunged straight into the heart.

That had been the preferred style of execution in Soweto, in the days when the vigilantes and the comrades settled their scores at the expense of history. The horror of it was trying to make him lose his footing, but Neuman was already a long way off the ground, in Zulu country, where he would bury his mother beside her husband, when all this was over.

There was a glacial silence in the church, barely disturbed by the murmurs of the crowd outside. The stretcher bearers were waiting near the altar.

“Can we take the body away?”

Rajan was waiting for the word from Neuman.

“Yes. Yes.” He looked at his mother for the last time, before she disappeared beneath the zipper of a plastic body bag.

“I know it's no consolation,” Rajan said in a low voice, “but if it's any help, it seems the tongue was cut out after death.”

He didn't flinch. Too many vipers in his mouth. History didn't repeat itself, it stammered. Neuman walked over to the minister, who was waiting by the pillar.

“My mother had an appointment with your maid,” he said, looming over him. “Where is she?”

“Sonia? At home, I assume. There's a little house next to the church. That's where she sleeps.”

“Show me.”

The minister was sweating despite the coolness of the morning. They went out through a concealed door.

The little plot of earth behind the building belonged to the congregation. There were a few rows of sweet potatoes, carrots, and lettuce, which his maid used to make soup for the poor. Neuman opened the door of the shack. It was already hot beneath the corrugated iron. There was a smell of sweat in the main room, and a heady odor of blood. A young black woman was lying on the mattress in the bedroom. Blackish blood had flowed from her severed throat.

“Sonia?”

The priest nodded wordlessly. Neuman examined the body. The girl had clearly tried to defend herself—there were red marks on her wrists and one nail was broken. The blade had severed the throat, then her tongue. The time of death must have been about twelve hours ago. He looked around at the furniture, the shelves, the soup she had been making in the adjoining kitchen.

“How long had Sonia been working for you?” Neuman asked the timid little minister.

“Since last year. She came to see me. A lost girl, who wanted to expiate her sins by helping her neighbors and answering the call of the L—”

Neuman grabbed the minister's tunic and pinned him to the wall. “The Lord has been silent for a while now,” he said between his teeth. “Your maid's sister was killed because of her involvement in the selling of drugs to street kids, and Sonia was in contact with the kids hanging about the zone. Well?”

“I don't know . . .”

“A kid in green shorts called Teddy, and another one with a scar on his neck. Mean anything to you?”

The minister trembled in Neuman's grip. “Sonia!” he said in a strangled voice. “It was Sonia who made soup for them.”

Neuman thought of the garden, the huts. “Do you have animals?”

“Hens. A few pigs, too, and rabbits.”

He dragged the little man out to the vegetable garden. The rabbits were in their hutches, sniffing at the grilles. A small distance from them, the hens were pecking at the straw as if it were boiling water. A cinderblock shack at the far end of the garden served as a pigsty, with an iron roof and a trough filled with brackish water. Neuman pulled out his Colt .45 and shot off the padlock.

A foul odor greeted him inside the shack. The three pigs wallowing in the mud came up to the barrier and grunted. A larger male and two females, their pink snouts smeared with shit.

“What do you give them to eat?”

The priest was standing in the doorway. “Whatever . . . whatever's available.”

Neuman opened the barrier and freed the animals. The little man tried to make a gesture to hold them in—the pigs were going to trample his precious vegetable garden—but then changed his mind. Neuman leaned over the trough. He opened his penknife and stirred the revolting swill until he found bones in it—human bones. Most had been ground down by the pigs. Children's bones, to judge by their size. Dozens of bones.

 

 *

 

Boulder National Park was home to a colony of Cape penguins, which frisked about freely on the sandy beach, using the thundering waves as diving boards. Neuman strode across the wet sand.

Zina was waiting for him on the rocks, the wind blowing sea spray onto her dress. She saw him coming from a distance, an incongruous giant amid the waddling penguins, and drew her arms tightly around her bent knees. He walked up to her, and immediately killed all thoughts of love.

“Do you have the document?”

A plastic wallet lay beside her, on the rock. Zina wanted to talk to him about the two of them, but this didn't seem like the time or the place.

“This is all I could find,” she said.