by Deon Meyer
She made a gesture with her hand to show she was guessing. Cocaine?
Yes, it is cocaine, of course it is cocaine. Colombia is the biggest cocaine producer in the world, conchita.
Oh!
You want? He held the packet up towards her.
No, thanks.
That made him laugh uproariously. You dont want A-grade, super special number one uncut Colombian snow?
I dont take drugs, she said, a bit embarrassed, as if it were an insult to his national pride.
Suddenly he was serious. Yes, Carloss conchita is clean.
* * *
She ascribed the early signs to his Latin blood, just another characteristic that was refreshingly different.
He would ring and say: Carlos is coming over.
Now?
Of course
now.
Carlos misses his conchita.
I miss you, too, but I can only see you at three oclock.
Tree
oclock?
I have other clients too, you know.
He said a word in Spanish, two cutting syllables.
Carlo-o-o-o-s, she stretched it out soothingly.
How much they paying you?
The same.
They bring you flowers?
No, Carlos . . .
They give you extra?
No.
So why see them?
I have to make a living.
He was silent until she said his name.
Carlos will come tomorrow. Carlos wants to be first, you unnerstand? First love of the day.
* * *
He phoned one day and he said he was going to send someone to pick me up. These two guys that I didnt know came in a big BMW, one of those with a road map on a television up front, and they took me to Camps Bay. We got out, but you couldnt see the house, it was up on the slope. You go up in a lift. Everything is glass and the view is out of this world, but there wasnt really furniture in it. Carlos said he had just bought it and I must help him, as he wasnt very good with decorating and stuff.
Maybe that was the night I clicked for the first time. I had been there for half an hour when I looked at my watch, but Carlos was angry and said: Dont look at your watch.
When I wanted to protest, he said: Carlos will take care of you, hokay?
We ate on the balcony, on a blanket, and Carlos chatted as if we were boyfriend and girlfriend. The other two who fetched me were around somewhere, and he told me they were bodyguards and there was nothing to be scared of.
Then he asked me: How much do you get in a month, conchita? I didnt like to say. Lots of them ask, but I never sayits not their business. So I told him: Thats private.
Then he came out with it. Carlos do not want his girlfriend to see other guys. But he knows you must make a living, so he will pay what you make. More. Double.
So I said: No, Carlos, I cant, and that made him angry, for the first time. He smacked all the food around on the blanket and screamed at me in Spanish, and I thought he would hit me. So I took my handbag and said I had better go. I was scared; he was another person, his face . . . The bodyguards came walking out and talked to him and suddenly he calmed down and he just said: Sorry, conchita, Carlos is so sorry. But I asked him, please, could they just take me home, and he said he would do it himself and all the way he was sorry and he made jokes and when I got out he gave me two thousand. I took it, because I thought if I tried to give it back he would be angry again.
The next morning I phoned Vanessa and asked her what I should do, this guy thinks I am his girlfriend and he wants to pay me to be with just him and she said that is bad news, I must get rid of him, that sort of thing could ruin my whole business. So I said thanks and bye, because I didnt want to tell her this guy is in drugs and he has a terrible temper and I havent a clue how to get rid of him.
So I phoned Carlos and he said he was terribly sorry, it was his work that made him like that, and he sent flowers and I started to think it would be okay. But then they assaulted one of my clients, just outside the door of my room in the Gardens Center.
* * *
The master bedroom of the Camps Bay house had a four-poster bed now. He had retained an expensive, well-known interior decorator who had begun with the bedroom and everything was in white: curtains, bedding, drapes on the bed like the sails of a ship. He showed off like a little boy, keeping his hands over her eyes all the way down the passage and then: Ta-daaa! and watched her reaction. He asked her four or five times, You like the masters bedroom? and she said, Its beautiful, because it was.
He dived onto the bed and said, Come to Carlos, and he was exuberant, even more boisterous than usual, and she tried to forget about the bodyguards somewhere in the house.
Later he lay beside her and softly traced little circles around her nipple with the tip of the little gold crucifix. Where do you live, conchita?
You know . . .
No, where do you
live?
Gardens Center, she replied, hoping he would drop the subject.
You think Carlos is stupid because he looks stupid? You work there, but where is your home, where is the place with your pictures on the fridge?
I cant afford another place, you pay me too little.
Carlos pay you too little? Carlos pay you too much. All the time the moneyman is saying: Carlos, we are here to make a profit, remember.
You have a bookkeeper?
Of course. You think Carlos is small fish? Cocaine is big business, conchita, very big business.
Oh.
So you will take Carlos to your house?
Never, she thought, never ever, but said, One day . . .
You dont trust Carlos?
Can I ask you a question?
Conchita, you can ask Carlos anything.
Did you have my client beaten up?
What client? But he couldnt carry off the lie and his eyes turned crafty. He is a child, she thought, and it frightened her.
Just a client. Fifty-three years old.
Why do you think Carlos beat him?
Not you. But maybe the bodyguards?
Did he buy drugs?
No.
They only beat up people who do not pay for drugs, hokay?
Okay. She knew what she wanted to know. But it helped not at all.
21.
Griessel and Cliffy sat in the fish restaurant a hundred meters beyond the entrance to Woolworths, each with a small earphone. They heard André Marais saying, Testing, testing for the umpteenth time, but this time with a tinny voice in the background calling, Next customer, please.
Cliffy Mketsu nodded, as he did every time. It irritated Griessel immensely. Marais couldnt fucking see them nod, she was in the food section of Woolworths and they were here. She was only wearing a microphone, not earphones. One-way communication only, but Cliffy had to nod.
At a table opposite, a man and a woman were drinking red wine. The woman was middle-aged, but pretty, like Farrah Fawcett, with big, round, golden earrings and lots of rings on her fingers. The man looked young enough to be her son, but took her hand every now and again. They bothered Griessel. Because they were drinking wine. Because he could taste the dark flavor in his mouth. Because they were rich. Because they were together. Because they could drink and be together and what of him? He could sit here with Nodding Cliffy Mketsu, clever Cliffy, busy with his Masters in Police Science, a good policeman, but confused, hopelessly absent-minded, as if his head was in his books all the time.
Would he and Anna ever be able to sit and enjoy themselves like that? Sit holding hands and sipping wine and gazing into each others eyes? How did people do that? How do you regai
n the romance after twenty years of married life? Actually, it was fucking irrelevant, because he would never be able to sip wine again. Not if you were an alcoholic. You couldnt drink a thing. Nothing. Not a fucking drop. Couldnt even smell the red wine.
He had told Doc Barkhuizen he was going to get drunk, but the Doc had said: Phone your wife and children and tell them, because he knew Griessel could not do that. He wanted to smash his cell phone on the bloody pavement, he wanted to break something but he just screamed, he didnt know what, not words. When he turned around, Cliffy and André Marais were sitting rigidly in the car pretending nothing had happened.
Vaughn, are you receiving properly? Cliffy asked the other team over the microphone. They were looking at Woolworths clothes on the second floor, the one above the food department.
Ten-four, good buddy, said Inspector Vaughn Cupido, as if it were a game. He and Jamie Keyter were the back-up team. Not
Yaymie
as the locals would say it, he called himself
Jaa-mie.
Nowadays everyone had foreign names. What was wrong with good, basic Afrikaner names? The men werent Griessels first choice either, as Cupido was careless and Keyter was a braggart, recently transferred from Table View Station after he had made the newspapers with one of those stories where facts do not necessarily interfere with sensation. Detective breaks car-theft syndicate single-handed. With his bulging Virgin Active biceps and the kind of face to make schoolgirls swoon, he was one of the few white additions to the Serious and Violent Crimes Unit. This was the team that had to protect André Marais and catch a fucking serial killer: an alcoholic, a braggart and a sloppy one.
There was another matter on his mind; two, three things that came suddenly together: were the older woman and the young man opposite married? To each other? What if Anna had a young man who held her hand on Friday nights? He couldnt believe that she no longer wanted it, of that he was convinced. You didnt just switch off her sort of warmth like a stove plate just because her husband was a fucking alky. She met men at workwhat would she do if there was a young man who was interested and sober? She was still attractive, despite the crows feet at the corners of her eyesdue to her husbands drinking habit. There was nothing wrong with her body. He knew what men were like; he knew they would try. How long would she keep saying no? How long?
He took out his cell phone, needing to know where she was on a Friday night. He rang, holding the phone to the ear without the earphone.
It rang.
He looked across at Farrah Fawcett and her toy boy.
They were gazing into each others eyes with desire. He swore they were just plain horny.
I thi . . . its tha . . . t, said André Marais in the earphone.
What? said Griessel, looking at Cliffy, who merely shrugged and tapped his radio receiver with the tip of his index finger.
Hello, said his son.
Hello, Fritz.
Hi, Dad. There was no joy in his sons voice.
How are you?
But he couldnt hear the answer as the earphone buzzed in his ear and he only caught a fraction of what Sergeant André Marais was saying: . . . cant afford . . .
What are you doing, Fritz?
Nothing. Its just Carla and me. His son sounded depressed, and there was a dull tone to his voice.
Hows your reception, Vaughn? Cupido asked. Her mike isnt good.
Just Carla and you?
Moms out.
I usually just buy instant, said André Marais clearly and distinctly.
Shes talking to someone, said Cliffy.
Then they heard a mans voice over the ether, faintly: I cant do without a good cup of filter in the morning.
Dad? Are you there?
Ill have to call later, Fritz, Im at work.
Okay. Like he expected it.
What . . . name?
. . . dré.
Fuck, said Cupido, her fucking mike.
Bye, Fritz.
Bye, Dad.
We might be too far away, said Jamie Keyter.
Stay where you are, said Griessel.
Pleased to meet you, said the policewoman below in Woolworths food hall.
A fish on the hook, said Cupido.
Cliffy nodded.
Moms out.
Just keep calm, said Griessel, but he meant it for himself.
* * *
Thobela made a noise of frustration in his deep voice as he rose from the hotel bed in one sudden movement. He had lain down at about three oclock with the curtains drawn to shut out the sun, closed his eyes and lay listening to the beat of his heart. His head buzzed from too little sleep and his limbs felt like lead. Weary. With deliberate breathing he tried to drain the tension from his body. He sent his thoughts away from the present, sent them to the peaceful waters of the Cata River, to the mist that rolled like wraiths over the round hills of the farm . . . to realize only moments later that his thoughts had jumped away and were pumping other information through his consciousness to the rhythm of the pulse in his temples.
Pretorius reaching for the weapon in his wardrobe.
Eternity in the moments before he reached the man, and the alarm wailing, wailing, to the rhythm of his heartbeat.
A heavy woman towering above a little girl and the billiard cue rising and falling, rising and falling with demonic purpose and the blood spattering from the childs head and he knew that was his problemthe woman, the woman. He had never executed a woman. His war was against men, always had been. In the name of the Struggle, seventeen times. Sixteen in the cities of Europe, one in Chicago: men, traitors, assassins, enemies, condemned to death in the committee rooms of the Cold War, and he was the one sent to carry out the sentence. Now two in the name of the New War. Animals. But male.
Was there honor in the execution of a woman?
The more he forced his thoughts elsewhere, the more they scurried back, until he rose up with that deep sound and plucked aside the curtains. There was movement outside, bright sunlight and color. He looked over the canal and the entrance to the Waterfront. Laborers streamed on foot towards the city center, to the taxi ranks in Adderley Street. Black and colored, in the brightly colored overalls of manual laborers. They moved with purpose, hasty to start the weekend, somewhere at a home or a shebeen. With family. Or friends.
His family was dead. He wanted to jerk open the window and scream: Fuck you all, my family is dead!
He drew a deep breath, placed his palms on the cool windowsill and let his head hang. He must get some sleep; he could not go on like this.
He turned back to the room. The bedspread was rumpled. He pulled it straight, smoothing it with his big hands, pulling and stretching it till it was level. He puffed up the pillows and laid them tidily down, one beside the other. Then he sat on the bed and picked up the telephone directory from the bedside drawer, found the number and rang Boss Man Madikiza at the Yellow Rose.
This is Tiny. The one who was looking for John Khoza, you remember?
I remember, my brother. The uproar of the nightclub was already audible in the background this late afternoon.
Heard anything?
Haiziko. Nothing.
Keep your ear to the ground.
It is there all the time.
He got up and opened the wardrobe. The stack of clean clothes on the top shelf was very low, the piles of folded dirty laundry were highsocks, underwear, trousers and shirts, each in their own separate pile.
He took the two small plastic holders of detergent and softener from his case, and sorted the washing into small bundles. The ritual was twenty years old, from the time in Europe when he had learned to live out of a suitcase. To be in control, orderly and organized. Because the call could come at any time. In those days he had made a game of it, the sorting of clothes acc
ording to color had made him smile, because that was apartheidthe whites here, the blacks there, the mixed colors in their own pile; each group afraid that another groups color would stain them. He had always washed the black bundle first, because here blacks come first.
He did that now, just from habit. Pressed and rubbed the material in the soapy waterrinse once, then again, twist the clothes in long worms to squeeze out the wateruntil his muscles bulged. Hung them out. Next the colored clothes, and the whites could wait till last.
Next morning he would ring reception and ask for an ironing board and iron and do the part he enjoyed the mostironing the shirts and trousers with a hissing, hot iron till they could be hung on hangers in the wardrobe with perfect flat surfaces and sharp creases.
