Mixed Blood

by Roger Smith

  Although by law no woman could now be prevented from entering the Station Bar, few did. The bar was ugly, it stank, and it was filled with crude and violent men. It took a certain kind of woman to be drawn to this sort of company, and most of them were out on the street plying their trade.

  Barnard grabbed a stool. The barman, a bald and wrinkled man with skin the color of nicotine, shoved a bottle of pine nut Double O across to him. Barnard grunted his thanks and took a gulp.

  He didn’t come to the Station for alcohol or company. He was a teetotaler and a loner. Rather he came here to plug into the cop network; when mouths were loosened by booze, he often gleaned information that was to his advantage.

  He needed a few questions answered. The grapevine had been whispering to him, telling him stuff that woke him from his sleep, his hemorrhoids aching and the itch between his thighs burning like crazy.

  He watched a skinny guy with a potbelly and styled hair, dressed fifteen years too young, in conversation with a half-breed down at the other end of the bar. The half-breed nodded, laughed at something, chugged back his beer, and left.

  Barnard took his Double O and levered his fat onto the stool beside the snappy dresser. “Lotter.”

  Lotter looked at him with disinterest. “Barnard.”

  Waving at the barman who slumped like a dirty rag across the counter, Barnard pointed at Lotter’s empty glass. “Give him a drink.”

  “Whatever you want from me, the answer is no,” Lotter said.

  “Who says I want something?” Barnard leaned in close and tried a smile.

  Captain Danny Lotter wasn’t a squeamish man; in fact he had been known to eat hot dogs during postmortems, but the full blast of Barnard’s halitosis forced him back on his stool. He quickly fired up a Camel, not offering one to Barnard.

  Lotter’s brandcoke arrived, and Barnard lifted his Double O in a toast. “Good luck.”

  Lotter grunted, but he didn’t turn the drink down.

  “Lotter, I’ve been hearing some funny things.”

  “Get your ears tested.”

  Barnard had to restrain himself from grabbing the skinny cunt by his blow-dried hair and pulping his face on the bar. He wheezed, taking it calm. “Things about some task force, anticorruption what-what being set up.”

  Lotter looked at Barnard. “Ja, so?”

  “So, I know you’re screwing that girlie in the superintendent’s office.”

  “Marie?”

  “Ja. The ugly one?”

  “She’s not ugly, exactly …”

  “Lotter, just because you fucking her doesn’t mean she’s not a dog.” Barnard laughed one of his sucking laughs.

  Lotter drained his glass and set it on the counter. He stood. “Thanks for the drink.”

  Barnard put a heavy paw on Lotter’s shoulder, easing him back onto his stool. “I’m trying to be nice here. Let’s keep it that way.”

  Lotter looked for a moment like he was going to resist; then he realized it would be foolish and he nodded. “Okay, but take your hands off my jacket. It’s just been dry-cleaned.”

  Barnard took his hand back, and Lotter adjusted his collar. “Look, it’s all very hush-hush, and I’ve only heard bits and pieces, but there is some investigation.”

  “Ja?”

  “Ja. And you one of the people they going to be looking at.”

  “That so?”

  Lotter nodded. “So I hear.”

  Barnard shrugged. “Fuck them, anyway. How many of these task forces haven’t there been?”

  “This one’s different.” Lotter sucked on his cigarette.

  “How?”

  “Darkies from Jo’burg, sent down from Safety and Security. To clean up the Cape.”

  “Darkies, hey?”

  “In BMWs and suits.”

  “That so? They got bugger all on me.”

  Lotter shrugged. “Then you got nothing to worry about.” He stubbed out his cigarette, stood, and walked away.

  This wasn’t entirely unexpected. A man like Barnard made enemies. Often powerful enemies. He had seen what had happened to other cops who had fallen foul of their superiors. The lucky ones were booted out with no pension. The unlucky ones were thrown into Pollsmoor Prison with the half-breed scum they had spent their lives fighting.

  This was not a fate that Rudi Barnard was prepared to entertain.

  If Lotter was right, and Lotter was too unimaginative to invent any of this, then Barnard had a battle coming. He knew well enough that the way to win a political battle in South Africa—and if there were darkies involved, this was political—was to throw money at the right people. A shitload of money, dumped in the right places, could make anything disappear.

  Throw money at people. Or kill them.

  Benny Mongrel and Bessie were on the top floor of the house. Bessie slept. She had moved more easily up the stairs that night, and when he’d touched her ribs, where the fat cop had kicked her, she hadn’t moaned.

  Ever since his conversation with his white boss, Benny Mongrel had been scheming, planning. Lying at home in his shack, unable to sleep, listening to the wind howl like the dying.

  Thinking.

  He felt at peace now that he had made up his mind. He knew what he had to do. Just two more days, and he picked up his month’s pay. A pittance, but it was all he had. Then he and Bessie would start a new life together.

  He had sworn to go straight when he walked out of the gates of Pollsmoor, wanted to find a life outside the all-too-familiar structures of prison. Now he was going to commit another crime.

  True, stealing a dog, a mangy old bitch with tired hips, was bugger all compared to what he had done in his life. But she belonged to Sniper Security. That alone gave her more value than most of the brown men he’d wished goodnight over the years. Even though she was destined for the vet’s needle and then a sack on a dump somewhere.

  He had to do this. For them both.

  He would build another place for them in the sprawling maze that adjoined Lavender Hill, a shack settlement called Cuba Heights. Nobody would find them there.

  Benny Mongrel had a plan for him and his dog. They would find work, guarding the shops and the small factories that were built on the peripheries of the Cape Flats, vulnerable to attack and theft. Most owners couldn’t afford Sniper Security, but they would be able to afford Benny Mongrel and Bessie.

  “Not long now, Bessie,” he whispered. “Not long.”

  He stroked her as she slept.

  Barnard drove up Voortrekker, past the car dealerships and the junk-food joints and the hookers who smiled tik smiles into his headlights. He wouldn’t be able to sleep. Not after what he’d found out from Lotter. So there was no point in going home to his cramped apartment in Goodwood.

  He was going to need money. Not the small change he got from the likes of Rikki Fortune. Real money. Serious bucks.

  He thought about the dead Americans, Rikki and his beanpole buddy, lying wrapped up out on the Flats. Something had spoken to him the moment he saw those bodies. Call it intuition. Call it a hunch. Call it what you wanted, but Rudi Barnard knew that the other American, the one from the US of fucken A, was inolved.

  John Hill was the key. He was sure of that.

  Barnard wanted to drive across to that fancy house with his gun in his hand and kick his way in. Feed his gun down the throat of that fucken American. Slap his pregnant wife. Threaten his kid. Do what he would do out his side of town. Do what he needed to do to get to the truth.

  But up on the mountain the rules were different. Money bought lawyers. And the media spotlight. Barnard would have to learn new tactics if he was going to find out what really happened. He was playing for much higher stakes. He would have to take it nice and slow. Be smart. The time would come when he would do what he did best.

  Kill somebody.

  Barnard had no idea how many people he had killed. Some men he knew kept an obsessive count, but he had never felt the need. Just got on with it. But he remem
bered his first time. You always do.

  At the age of thirteen Rudi Barnard had killed his mother’s lover. Seconds later he had killed his mother.

  Barnard was born in a forgotten rural village five hours northeast of Cape Town. The town was split in two by a stream that trickled like piss through the semidesert. The half-breeds’ hovels were on the one side. On the other the whites’ houses huddled around the spire of the Dutch Reformed Church, which pointed like an accusing finger at heaven. Barnard had spent an eternity of airless Sundays in that church, in fear of the hell and brimstone pouring from the pulpit, waiting in vain for God to speak to him.

  At thirteen Rudi Barnard was already fat and unpopular. And he stank. One day a bitch of a teacher sent him home early with a note telling his mother to purge his bowels before sending him to school again. Humiliated, Rudi trudged home through the heat, the sun like a fist pounding down on his pink neck.

  When Rudi walked up to the house, he saw the ramshackle truck belonging to Truman Goliath, a half-breed handyman, parked in the driveway. His father was paying Goliath to replace some rusted corrugated iron roofing.

  Rudi walked into the house, the fly screen door slapping closed behind him. He heard his mother screaming. Barnard ran to his parents’ bedroom and flung the door open. It took him a few seconds to understand that Truman Goliath wasn’t murdering his mother. In fact she was urging the athletic half-breed on with slaps to his naked haunches and yells of encouragement, unaware that her son stood in the doorway.

  It was then that God spoke to Rudi Barnard for the first time.

  The young Rudi went to his father’s gun room, removed a .22 rifle, and carefully loaded it. Then he walked back to the bedroom and blew the back of Truman Goliath’s head onto the wall. The naked Mrs. Barnard, covered in blood, bone shards, and brain matter, stared at her son and opened her mouth to scream, her mouth a perfect operatic oval.

  Rudi Barnard shot his mother in the face.

  Then he phoned his father at his slaughterhouse. The two fat Rudis, father and son, put their heads together and worked out the story the town wanted to hear. The rape and murder of Elsie Barnard.

  Truman Goliath had waited until father and son were out of the house and had forced himself on Elsie. Like a good Boer wife of old, she had managed to get to her husband’s rifle and shoot the bastard. Unfortunately, with his last strength, he had wrestled the rifle from Elsie and sent her to the arms of Jesus.

  If the half-breeds in the shacks across the railway line had wondered how Truman could have done all this with his head blown away, they had known to keep their thoughts to themselves.

  After that first time, killing came easily to Rudi Barnard. He had a talent for it.

  Barnard sat at a light on Voortrekker, the sweat flowing from his body. A tik whore hobbled toward him on her high heels. She lifted her skirt to reveal her scrawny thighs, as seductive as a cadaver. Normally, Barnard would have been out the car, ready to make her regret her mistake. But he felt a sudden urgency to get home.

  He was going to print out those pictures on his cell phone, the pictures of Rikki and his buddy. He had somebody he wanted to show them to.

  Burn lay in his sleeping wife’s arms. His son slept beside him. He couldn’t remember when last he’d felt this good. Tomorrow he would go down to the real estate agents and rent an apartment. Whatever it cost, they would be out of this house by tomorrow night.

  Then he would spend time on the Internet, researching New Zealand. He vaguely recalled there were two islands, North and South. The South was meant to be wilder, more remote, less people. High mountains and unspoiled beaches.

  It was with these images in mind that Burn fell asleep.

  When he awoke, sun streamed into the room. He was alone. He heard water bubbling in the plunge pool beneath the bedroom window. The African shouts and jibes of the builders next door drifted across to him.

  He yawned, rubbing a hand across his stubble.

  He heard Susan’s voice, from inside the house. She sounded like she was in the kitchen. Probably talking to Matt while she fixed breakfast. The idea pleased him.

  Then he heard another voice. A man’s voice. A voice he couldn’t quite place.

  Reflex moved Burn from the bed. He pulled on shorts and a T-shirt. Before he knew it, he’d opened the closet and the Colt was in his hand.

  Moving silently in his bare feet, he went toward the kitchen. Susan was saying something he couldn’t catch. It sounded like a question. The man responded. Now Burn recognized the voice.

  The fat cop was in the kitchen with Susan.

  CHAPTER 11

  Burn stepped into the kitchen.

  Susan and the fat cop watched him. Susan looked scared. “Jack, I was about to call you.”

  The cop leaned his massive gut against the kitchen counter. Susan was on the other side of the counter, keeping her distance.

  “How can we help you, Inspector?”

  Burn tried to stay cool, relaxed. He didn’t want to give anything away. Just aaw-abiding guy surprised to see a cop in his kitchen first thing in the morning.

  “I just want you and your wife to look at a couple of photographs.” Barnard held a large yellow envelope at his side. He lay it down on the counter and slid out two glossy prints.

  He handed them to Susan. She took them, one in each hand, and stared at them. Then she closed her eyes for a moment. When she opened them, she stared at Burn. Her face was bled of color.

  Barnard had not taken his gaze off her. “Do you recognize either of these men?”

  She shook her head and put the photographs down on the counter as if they were toxic.

  Burn stepped closer and saw the faces of the men he had killed. Jesus, they had been found. So soon. They looked bloated, mottled. Decomposition already doing its work. He forced himself to stay calm, not allowing his face to tell anything.

  He didn’t touch the photographs.

  Barnard was looking at Burn. “How about you, sir?”

  “Never seen them before.”

  Then Burn was in behind Susan. She was trembling. He eased her onto a stool.

  “Look, what’s this all about? My wife isn’t in any condition to be upset like this.”

  Barnard slid the photographs back into the envelope. “You know that car that was outside? The red BMW?” Burn nodded. “I think these two men drove it here. To your street.”

  “I’ve told you already. We know nothing about the car. Or these two men.”

  Barnard was heaving his gut off the counter. “Well, I’m glad about that. They weren’t nice people.” He leered at Susan, yellow teeth like bone fragments in an open wound. “I’m sorry if I upset you, Mrs. Hill.”

  Susan said nothing, stared at him blankly.

  Burn’s hands tried to soothe his wife. Her shoulders were tight with tension. She shrugged him off. The cop noticed. Matt came into the kitchen. He looked at the fat cop, then gave him a wide berth and went to the fridge.

  “This your boy?” The cop watched Matt help himself to juice.

  Instinctively, Burn put himself between his son and the cop. “Is there anything else, Inspector?”

  Barnard shook his massive head. “I’ll be in touch if there is.”

  He was hauling himself to the front door. Burn went after him to buzz him out and make sure he left.

  Out of the corner of his eye he saw Susan exit the kitchen. He heard the bedroom door slam.

  Berenice September was at the satellite police station at seven in the morning. There was no sign of the cop. The sun beat down on the commuters on their way to work. A group of kids in school uniform walked past, shouting out at one another.

  Her son Ronnie hadn’t ce home. Every parent on the Cape Flats lived in fear of this moment. Scores of children went missing every year. Most of them turned up in the veld, raped, sodomized, murdered.

  By seven fifteen Berenice was fretting. She was already late for work. She wouldn’t be able to pay her bills at the
end of the month if they docked her pay. Then she saw the cop, strolling up from the taxi rank like he was with his girlfriend at the Waterfront. Berenice waved at him. This did nothing to speed his pace.

  She walked toward him, pushing through a bunch of commuters shoehorning themselves into a taxi. “You remember me? From yesterday?”

  It took a moment before the cop nodded. He carried on walking, and Berenice fell in beside him. “I haven’t seen my son since I left him by you.”

  The cop shrugged. They had reached the container, and he fished in his pocket for a set of keys. “I haven’t seen him.”

  “What happened last night, after I left?”

  He unlocked the door to the container and pulled it open. The hinges screamed for oil. “Nothing happened.”

  The cop stepped inside and Berenice followed him. It was like walking into a wall of heat. She was already perspiring, from the sun and from the tension. She felt faint and stepped back out, getting her breath. The cop looked at her with blank disinterest.

  She tried again. “Last night, you said somebody was coming. I left my boy, Ronnie, here so he could speak to them.”

  “Ja. But he fucked off. The kid. Before they got here. He waited for you to go; then he ran.”

  She was staring at him. “Ran where?”

  “How must I know? He’s your bloody son.” The cop set out the occurrence book and a pen.

  Berenice shook her head. She turned and walked back home. She was going to phone in sick. They could dock her pay. She had to find her son.

  “That cop knows something, Jack.” Susan paced the bedroom, anger flaming her cheeks.

  “How could he?” Burn stayed still, deliberately, to counterbalance her motion.

  “Then what was he doing here?” she asked, demanding that he make sense of this mess.