by H. J Golakai
Vee raised her index. ‘Adele …’
‘A woman who, unless she’s a raging psychopath, has no reason to murder her only child. Come off it. Then we’ve got the Three Stooges, Rosie, Lucas and Serena.’ Chlöe counted them off on her hand and rolled her eyes. ‘Whom I won’t even dignify with reasons. Which of those three would make a likely candidate for murder?’
‘Serena.’
Chlöe dipped her head from side to side. ‘Eh. She wouldn’t get her hands dirty unless she absolutely had to. And I don’t want to hear one more word about it being Ian. You’ve made it make sense because you’re gunning for him so bad. One afternoon with nurse Duthie and you were sold. And yet the prime suspect and self-confessed murderer, Carina, who all but painted you a picture when you saw her yesterday, you always put at the bottom of the list.’
‘She didn’t confess. Like, how would she even–’
‘This theory-thrashing game sucks and I’m not playing it any more. Jacqui Paulsen committed suicide. She drowned herself at Camps Bay and we’ll never know what happened to the body. Carina will unfortunately pay for a crime she didn’t commit and everyone else will move on with their existence. Here endeth our fruitless foray into the inner lives of a warped cross-section of the Western Cape middle class. Amen.’ Chlöe reopened the magazine. ‘You really should get some rest. When you’re back at work for real, you’ll kick yourself for not taking advantage of this.’
Vee nodded absently. ‘Maybe later. What I need right now is to check up on something medical. I hope you won’t mind dropping me off, seeing as I can’t drive.’
‘What, now? It’s nine o’clock at night, it’s raining and the doctor who attended to you at Kingsbury won’t be there.’ Chlöe meshed her eyebrows. ‘What’re you up to?’
‘Hospitals are open all night, and I didn’t mean Kingsbury.’ Vee locked eyes with Chlöe, watching slowly as it dawned on her.
‘Oh, come on! Right now, at this flippin’ hour, you want us to chase Ian down for what reason?’
‘Ian? Who said anything about Ian?’ Vee flexed her slung limb and winced for effect. ‘My arm hurts. A doctor needs to take a look at it.’ She laughed at the incredulity and disgust on Chlöe’s face. ‘Oh, stop. We’ll swing by, poke around, rattle him a little, be back here in forty-five. Nothing too intense. Haven’t you ever played detective?’
‘This,’ Chlöe touched Vee’s sling, ‘and this,’ she pressed her bruised ribs, and Vee yelped and slapped her hand, ‘don’t look like playing. They look like trying to die.’ Chlöe put her hands over her face and grunted. ‘You’re unbelievable. I want it on record that I’m thoroughly opposed to this craziness, and I feel it in my bones that nothing good can come of it. I say we sleep on it and approach everything with a fresh mind tomorrow morning.’
‘Duly noted and overruled,’ Vee said and tossed her the car keys.
*
It took forever convincing Chlöe to leave, but eventually Vee managed it. Chlöe delivered a stern lecture on the link between destructive behavioural patterns and early death, gave her an impressive list of reliable night-time cab services, and drove off looking deeply concerned.
Directionless, Vee lingered in the WI’s reception for a quarter of an hour. An arm in a sling was perfect cover; people took one pitying look at it and assumed she belonged. She had no idea what she wanted to do, or how she’d go about doing whatever it was once she figured it out, but she felt imbued with purpose. Something would nose her on the right path, and it could happen at any moment.
The ebb and flow of humanity’s afflicted trickled past the front desk. Television dramas had the world fooled, for not every medical facility was a battleground strewn with blood and pierced with screams twenty-four-seven. The skeleton crew manning reception was taking it pretty easy. Vee deflated a little. The ambience didn’t feel like the penny was about to drop at any moment.
She wandered up two floors and over to the specialist units. There wouldn’t be a cardiologist working this late, not unless there was an emergency, but it was worth a shot. If she so happened to chance upon Ian in the halls …
Her phone beeped as a text came in. She scrolled through it and her heart pattered:
Hi its Bronwyn Abrams. Sorry it took so long 2 get bak 2 u, been away in Worcester. Free 2 meet 2morow @ lunch or b4 I leav 4 my eveng shift. Call me, chat soon.
‘How now, brown cow?’ Vee murmured.
Bronwyn Abrams was back in the mix! Jacqui’s long-lost friend had risen, and the wait had better be worth it. It could mean everything to talk with her, or it could mean absolutely nothing. She already had a healthy serving of zilch on her plate, so what harm would it do? If Abrams–
‘What the hell are you doing here?’
Ian Fourie came towards her in angry strides. Apparently, consultants did work late, especially when the announcement for unit chief hadn’t been made yet.
Vee tilted her slung limb in response. ‘I’m a patient,’ she replied, more calmly than she felt. ‘Just thought I’d pass by and …’ She let it hang, executing a frantic yet surreptitious recon of the floor. Two nurses poring over files … one random-looking person in a dark hoodie messing with a cell phone … a busy cleaner. Not fantastic odds, but good enough. She wasn’t alone with a possible murderer.
‘You’re enjoying this, aren’t you?’ Ian fumed.
‘No. That’s where you’re completely wrong. I’m not.’ She turned to go and stopped. It was worth a shot. ‘Do you know a Bronwyn Abrams, by any chance? Close friend of your daughter’s.’
Ian ground his teeth so hard that muscle stippled at his jawline.
‘She has information about Jacqui. I’m meeting her tomorrow to hear what she has to say. Might be the stroke of luck we need, right?’
He glared, then tipped the barest of nods and marched off.
*
‘So you saw Ian and pissed him off again,’ Chlöe said.
Vee juggled her phone to the other ear and took a breather, resting her sore hip against the wall of the corridor. ‘I didn’t piss him off. We talked. Gimme a minute,’ she panted.
The longest hallway in the history of hallways sneered at her bruised body, and she still had two-thirds of the way to go. What was it about the construction of hospitals that brought out the sadistic bastard gene in architects? she wondered.
She’d been hopped up to get here, now all she wanted was to get out of this place. She must have taken a wrong turn somewhere. Vee tried to remember the baffling directions to the ground-floor exit that the night-shift cleaner on the second floor had given her. Some parts of the building were closed off and the lifts were under maintenance, the cleaner had said. Sisi, just take the stairs down, neh, then walk all the way down down down that long corridor, then take a left when you see the blue door, don’t use the orange one …
The labyrinth of passages and the odorous medley of faeces, stale boiled potatoes and industrial-strength cleaner weren’t the only things giving her the creeps. Her radar was bouncing off the walls. Vee wasn’t sure who or what it was, but underneath her breathing and the rhythm of her heart, she imagined she could feel someone else’s. In which direction, she couldn’t tell. She scanned the corridor and each doorway that fed into it. The only passing stragglers were nurses and other unfortunates looking for a way out of the facility.
The feeling persisted, pulling taut the hairs on her arms and the back of her neck.
Calm yourself, woman.
‘What’s going on? Are you still there?’ Chlöe’s voice warbled and squawked, fading in and out.
‘The reception’s terrible down here. And I think I’m being followed.’
‘What d’you mean, followed? If you’re trying to freak me out, it’s not funny. Vee? Vee?!’
Vee pushed open the double doors below the exit sign and a chilly breeze hit her in the face. The rain had slowed to a mist that swirled and spun around the orange haloes of the streetlights. She was in a semi-covered parking area, empty. To her right,
a concrete fence demarcated the edge of the WI premises. She found her bearings and her heart sank. She was at the back of the premises – it was either turn back or walk all the way around to the main entrance to get a taxi. Why the hell had she forced Chlöe to leave?
Especially when there was that other pulse riding the wind, disguising itself in the dark.
‘Somebody’s here,’ Vee whispered.
She lowered the cell but didn’t cut the call. A streak of black dipped past her blind spot. She lifted her arms and spun. Two blows landed on the back of her neck and brought her down.
37
‘Richie! Richie!! Richie!!’
‘Urrmgnghnshssh …’
‘Get up, right now!’
A long, unintelligible grumble and rustle of bedclothes came down the microphone of Chlöe’s phone. ‘It’s so flippin’ late, CC. What’s so important that it can’t wait till tomorrow morning? Always gotta be so dramatic.’
Chlöe closed her eyes and wrested her wits and temper under control. CC – short for cotton candy, strawberry of course, which her dear primary school friend had used to describe her then frothy mass of hair. How time flew. Not fast enough, if Richie was still hanging on to that stupid nickname. Well, time moved differently for Richie. The same kid she’d known all her life had regressed from a pretty respectable person into a mole rat, burrowed so deep under so many shadows he bordered on a spook. A spook who was on every hacker watch list locally and probably a few internationally.
‘Richie, if you don’t wake up right now, I swear to God …’
‘Hey, hey, whoa. I told you never to use my real name when you call me on a cell. What’re you playing at?’
Chlöe swore long and loud. She didn’t know much about computers but she did know Richie possessed every firewall and IT gizmo countermeasure invented. Security was no problem for him. She also knew that if the cowboys of cyberspace were actually paying him half the attention he thought he deserved, he’d have a lot less free time on his hands. It was a game he liked to play with himself – one of the few Chlöe was comfortable thinking about – that of the misunderstood whiz on the run from The Man.
She heard more rustling, exaggerated yawning and lip-smacking. Somehow he’d managed to link a cell phone, motherboards and a sound system into a symbiotic animal of wires, humming metal and blinking lights. It was a twisted thing of beauty. He could answer calls without having to touch a keypad, and every sound he made amplified fivefold as it came down the line. Chlöe pictured him, bleary-eyed, face creased, crawling off a mattress on the floor and probably tripping over a piece of cable in the search for a light. She wondered if his current digs, or rather his revolting sinkhole, was still the mess it had always been. Computer geeks were such a cliché.
‘Right.’ Heavy breathing, the sound of switches flipping, the hum of an engine being highly productive moved even closer. ‘What can I do for you?’
‘Two things. Check your phone first. I sent you a recording of a call I was just on. I need a trace on the phone I was connected to, like yesterday.’
He was silent as he listened to the playback. Fear bubbled in Chlöe’s throat when the thumps and clattering and a sharp cry from Vee reverberated in her ear.
‘Jesus, CC. Sounds pretty hectic. Who was that and what the hell are you mixed up in?’ Richie laughed in wonder, alert now. ‘How can you be having a jol this lekker without me? You’re faking being a fashion blogger.’
‘Journalist. And I’m not faking, so take this seriously and move faster than you’re moving at whatever it is you’re doing!’
The comforting patter of fingers flying across a keyboard filled her ear. ‘You should know this isn’t an exact science. I can’t just magically give you an exact fix on where a person’s using a cellphone. It’s not a satellite tracking system. Calls bounce around between network towers depending on how close the caller is to one.’ More tapping and distracted murmuring. ‘And don’t forget this isn’t exactly legal. I have to stay a ghost in the system or my whole existence could blow up in my face.’
‘Shut up and fix this, Richie, please,’ she breathed.
At last, he chirped: ‘Okay, got it. The phone is still on–’
‘It’s still on?!’
‘Yup, active and bouncing a signal off a tower in Claremont, near Lansdowne Road. It went back and forth between that and a Wynberg tower a few times … hang on … twenty minutes ago. Now seems it’s stationary, somewhere in the Claremont area.’
Chlöe didn’t know whether to exhale in relief or tremble even more. ‘Stationary in the area’ could mean Vee had fought off her attacker. She could be injured but safe, grumpily wandering through the WI seeking help for a fresh set of injuries. Or far worse: there could be a dead or unconscious body lying in a parking basement with a blood-spattered cell phone next to it. Chlöe chewed her lip, tasting the sweat lining it.
‘Where are you?’ Richie asked.
Chlöe’s heart did a pirouette as she peered through the windshield. For a second, she imagined movement darting near the empty parking lot. Maybe it was only a cat.
She should’ve gone home like Vee had told her, instead of sticking around and trying to be brave. She was so not brave, not even a little. Vee was good at daring plans on the fly; Chlöe liked her plans measured and easy to wriggle out of. But she was tired of obeying orders like a boring kiss-ass, which she suspected was the image she was cementing of herself in Vee’s mind.
All she had to do was drive away, to the nearest police station. Yet she couldn’t bring herself to do it.
‘I’m home in bed,’ she told Richie. ‘Safe and sound.’ The wind howled and her pulse fluttered. Another shadow that seemed a little too solid for her liking hurtled past.
‘CC …’ Richie sang his disappointment. Of course – how could she forget who she was talking to? He’d had her position locked before he’d even started working on Vee’s.
‘Listen, I said there were two things I needed from you.’ She swallowed. He was never going to forgive her for this. ‘I need you to call central station. Tell them what’s happening. Insist on speaking to a Sergeant Ezra Mthobeli.’
‘CC …’ This time his voice was leaden. ‘You know I can’t–’
‘Just do it, Richie. This is literally a matter of life and death.’
Chlöe took the phone from her ear and pushed it down between the cushion and the handbrake, careful not to press the ‘end call’ button. She managed it in time. A figure in black rushed out of the shadows, and in one swift motion yanked the door open and dragged her out by the hair. The last thought Chlöe Bishop had before her screams were cut off by a chokehold was, Shit, forgot to lock the door.
38
Voinjama Johnson was on her knees, the top half of her chest slumped over something hard and wooden. The smell of rust, mildew and new plastic mingled with that of fresh dirt. Her senses were, in a rudimentary way, attuned to her unfamiliar and uncomfortable surroundings, although her mind was not. She was conscious, but operating on a much-altered cerebral plane. Her breath condensed into vapour as she exhaled; her eyes were wide open, rolled back to the whites. On the monitor in her mind’s eye, a sequence of events played out. It was a memory dulled by time, one nearly two decades old, that had squirrelled itself away in a recess she couldn’t storm, hoping to destroy it. It surfaced when it chose.
The little girl shivered, legs crossed in front of her as she sat on the ground. The cold was coming from inside her bones. Fear danced in her bloodstream. There were people on the ground next to her. Some of them were dead. She couldn’t see how many. She didn’t want to see. But she could hear the buzz of flies and feel the foggy stench that came off their bodies, building like a raincloud over her head.
The ones who were still alive had a frightening heat coming off their skin, and they groaned and coughed and vomited on themselves. Every now and again they would twist like snakes or lift their arms up, as if reaching for an invisible force to help them. S
ome whispered, but the child couldn’t hear what they were saying. But she knew they were talking to God.
So was she. She wasn’t very big, and neither was her voice, but her Sunday school teacher said God could hear everybody, fish of the sea and ants on the ground alike. She wanted her mother and brother back, wanted to find them or for them to find her. But for now she couldn’t hope for that. She would pray for one thing at a time, because God’s hands were full with everybody’s problems coming in one big rush. Now all she wanted was to get out of this place alive. The room was dark and stank with the smell of dead and dying human beings. Worst of all, it stank of fear.
All of them had walked as a group for miles across the city to cross into the ‘safe zone’, the side where the rebels didn’t threaten and shoot civilians. She didn’t know a single person in the group, but being with others made her feel safe. They walked and walked, and more people running from the shooting joined them. Some were carrying loads on their heads and sick children on their backs. Others had bundled their injured onto cloth or wooden stretchers. The crowd got bigger and easier to see.
By afternoon they came upon armed men, more like boys, who stopped them and told them to line up. They were asked their names, their tribes, what language they spoke and which part of upcountry their village was in. Some answered and others were too scared to talk. Some tried to run and were shot. The boys with weapons larger than their bodies got bored with harassing them, gathered them into their truck and drove back to a camp.
The camp looked like it had been a nice neighbourhood not long ago. Now it was just a spread of deserted houses. The people who used to live there were gone, and the walls were full of holes made by bullets and mortars. The rebels had kept the big houses for themselves and parked their trucks in a clearing in the middle of the compound. They separated the males from everyone else and said the men would join their forces. They said nothing about the women and girls and sick people. All the people they didn’t need they pushed into one room with a small window high up on the wall and no air.
