by JT Lawrence
“I don’t know what to say.” Keke’s head is spinning.
“Are you working with Mister Girdler?”
“I’ve told you already. Zack and I were on jury duty together. We sleuthed a case together. If that counts as working together then, yes, we worked together.”
“He paid you for this work?”
Keke laughs. “Of course not.” Then she thinks of the hospital bill and her stomach becomes a tightly coiled rope.
“The BSS has no record of Girdler’s presence at the Carbon Factory.”
“I’m telling you, that’s impossible, okay?”
“You said you were on jury duty together?”
“Yes. The Lundy case. Judges Mbete, Rens, and Vlok.”
“You see.” Ramphele smiles. “That’s where this thing gets funny again. There’s no record of him there, either. He’s not on the jury list. Not on any of the paperwork.”
“He was there. I sat next to him. That’s how I met him.”
“He’s not even on the security footage. Again.”
Ramphele shows another clip of Keke on the roof of the courthouse building. She’s sitting, eating lunch alone.
Seeing herself eating gives her an idea. She goes to the bin next to the hospital bed and roots for the brown paper bag with the leftover packaging of the dinner they shared.
“What are you doing?” asks the cop.
“He brought me dinner,” she says. “We ate together. If he brought me dinner then there’ll be evidence of him in this bag.” An extra plate, cutlery, serviettes.
She finds the bag and tears it open. Inside is one lonely, crumpled-up serviette, and a sauce-smeared paper plate. The branding on the bag is the Gordhan deli logo, and it’s clearly labelled as Dinner For One.
She remembers Zack wiping his fingerprints off the table. Folding up and eating the rice-paper plate.
“Themba!” she shouts. “Themba!” The nurse must have been listening at the door because she nearly falls into the room.
“Themba. Was there a man in here earlier?”
The nurse shakes her head.
“Good looking. Expensive suit,” prompts Keke.
“No,” she says. “I didn’t see anyone here, and I’ve been on duty all night.”
“I…imagined him?” Keke asks the detective. “This whole time?”
Memories of her conversations with Zack now take on a surreal quality. She imagines herself on her own, now, driving her bike to the Carbon Factory, getting a coffee at ProntoPrint. Imagines herself sitting in the corner, laughing at an invisible person’s jokes. Has this all been a dream?
“I’m…delusional,” she says, not believing it. Although she’s pretty sure that does not count in her favour.
The detective shakes his head. “No.”
“I am. I’m going insane, aren’t I? You’re here to…take me away. Lock me up in some padded cell.”
“No,” he says again, this time with some compassion in his voice.
“Then, what? What the fuck is going on?”
Is the cop gaslighting her?
“Zachary Girdler is the slipperiest person of interest I’ve ever encountered.”
“Never,” grumbles one of the cops at the door.
“Alright,” he says. “That I’ve never encountered.”
Keke remembers her first impression on hearing his name. Onomatopoeia. Zack! Crack! Crash! She feels for a chair.
“Are you okay?” asks Ramphele.
Keke nods, but in truth she feels like she is falling sideways.
“You’re not the first person he’s done this to.”
Done what to? It’s not like he’s taken any kind of advantage of her. He was a friend. A sidekick. She and Marko would be out on the street if it weren’t for him footing the medical bills. Kate wouldn’t have the GPS co-ordinates to find Silver. But why? What is his end game?
“Are you aware,” asks Ramphele, his badge glinting in the too-bright artificial light that is now not only hurting Keke’s dry eyes but also her brain, “that Helena Nash is dead?”
It takes Keke a few seconds to register what he’s just said.
“What?”
The cops look dubious. “You really don’t know?”
“No,” says Keke. “What happened to her?”
People hardly ever died in the PLCs now, not like the overcrowded prisons that South Africa used to have, where you’d be shivved for your dirty pillow. The penal workers have excellent security and medical care. Plus they have to wear those terrible new-tech smart copper handcuffs when they aren’t actively working. Terrible, but safe. The Nancies are forever bragging about how they are able to keep their prisoners alive and well, but of course they do what they can to keep them breathing. It’s a significant part of the country’s workforce.
“She committed suicide.”
“No,” says Keke. “That can’t be. We were in the process of getting her guilty verdict overturned.”
“Did she know that?”
“She knew we were working on it. That was the reason we went to see her.”
“She left a letter and everything. Said without her kid or her freedom she had nothing to live for.”
“But I thought that PLCs were suicide-proof.”
“They are. Unless someone on the outside helps.”
“Who?”
The police officers all glare at her. She laughs. She can’t help it. “Me? Really? That’s why you’re here?”
Ramphele watches her face closely. “She couldn’t have received the kill pill from anyone else. She’d never even had a visitor before you two traipsed in there.”
Keke blanches at the mention of the lethal pill.
“And now her body’s in a cooler.”
“Do I need a lawyer?”
“I don’t know. Do you?”
“I haven’t done anything wrong.”
“You aided and abetted a known serial killer.”
There is noise in her head, now, a clunking, and her legs feel weak. She can’t get any words out; it’s like her cerebrum is choking.
“Zack,” she finally gets out. “Is not a serial killer.”
“Really?” says Ramphele. “You said yourself that you hardly know him. You only met him a few days ago.”
“But I would know,” she says. “Don’t you think I would know if I was spending time with a psycho?”
Ramphele taps his Tile again and pictures of dead people float in the air between them. An old man in a standing wheelchair, a young woman, a couple holding hands. A teenage boy in a Mars-themed bed.
“Ted Simmons, dead. Neo Kodwa, mother of two, dead. Tracy and Charlie Fenton, twins, dead. Cindi Page, about to graduate from high school, dead.”
Keke closes her eyes, waves the holograms away as if to make them disappear. As if she hasn’t seen enough dead people during the past week.
“They all supposedly took their own lives, but in each case there’s been a common denominator: a visit from Zachary Girdler.”
A moment of quiet follows.
Slowly, she opens her eyes. “He told me he was a Suicide Expert.”
The detective taps out, and the pictures twist away.
“Well, that part seems to be true.”
Keke needs to sit. She looks for a seat, and her eyes automatically skitter over to the lazy chair, which is empty. Her stomach plummets.
“Mally?” She checks under the bed. Did he get scared of the cops in their crazy get-up and hide in a cupboard? “Mally?”
Ramphele looks at her as if she’s lost it.
“Did you see a little boy in here?” asks Keke. “A little boy? He was sleeping on the chair!”
The officers all shake their heads. “That chair’s been empty since we arrived,” says Ramphele.
“No,” says Keke. “No, no, no,” as she checks the cupboards and the bathroom. She hasn’t seen him since she woke. He must have stolen away when she was asleep. Keke jams on her boots, ready to run outside to loo
k for him, but a solid arm across her chest stops her from leaving the room.
“Let me go!” she says, trying to push past him. “I need to find Mally!”
“We can’t let you leave,” says the cop. They scuffle some more.
“I have to find him. He’s three years old! He’s in danger!”
Ramphele walks over to her, and she stops squirming. “You’re not going anywhere,” he says, and before she has time to register, she looks down to see that he’s clicked copper cuffs on her.
Chapter 67
Re-break the Bone
“Wake up,” says Kate, shaking Seth. She has let him sleep for as long as possible, to recover, but she needs him now. His lips are still blue from the medicine Zeebee’s men forced down his throat.
“Yes,” he says, swiping his mouth for drool and sitting up. “Yes, I’m awake.” He looks out of the tinted windows, into the darkness.
“I’ve been out for hours,” he says, knuckling his hair, as if she doesn’t already know. As if she hasn’t been counting the minutes till she can rouse him.
“Are you okay?” she asks. “How do you feel?”
“I’ll live.”
“Well. That’s good news. I wasn’t convinced of that an hour ago.”
“I know. I’m better now.”
“What was that blue stuff?”
“Blue stuff?”
“What’s the last thing you remember?”
He looks at her suspiciously. Looks down at his mostly naked body. “Why? What happened?”
“I had to take you to these men, to help you…oh, never mind. It was awful. But we’re okay now. Right?”
“Blue stuff?”
“Like…paint. They called it muti. Poured it down your throat.”
“Prussian Blue,” says Seth, wiping his mouth again.
“Yes. That’s it. I mean, I don’t know what that is but it tastes exactly right.”
“It’s a dye. It binds with radiation molecules so it gets them out of your system. Wait. You didn’t know what it was but you let them administer it to me?”
“I would have let them force-feed you wet cement if they’d suggested it. I was desperate, and they’re the ones who know their stuff. They’ve been helping the Zama-zamas for years.”
She hands him the old clothes. He holds up the faded Iron Maiden shirt and nods in approval, then climbs into the soft, smoke-fragrant garments.
“What happened to you?” he asks.
“What do you mean?”
“You look different. Did something happen?”
She swallows hard and looks away. “No,” she says, feeling Zeebee’s hot breath on her cheek. “Nothing happened.”
She can tell he wants to ask again, but he keeps quiet. There’s not a lot of time to talk.
“Where are we?”
“Keke gave me the co-ordinates but before she could tell me where we were going we got cut off. I tried to call back but she’s not answering.”
“You don’t know where we’re going?”
“It’s a long story.”
“Tell me the short version.”
“Keke. She did it for us.”
“Did what?”
“She got that doctor to…to hack Marko’s eyeborg.”
“Jesus.” He holds his eyebrows with his fingertips.
“She found out where Silver is.”
Kate’s Helix rings. Keke’s smiling icon appears and Kate answers the call.
“Kex,” she says. “You’re on speaker.”
“Is that Kate?” says a burly male voice.
Her stomach lurches. “Where’s Keke? What have you done to Keke?”
“This is detective Ramphele of Rosebank Murder & Robbery.”
“No,” says Kate, thinking the worst. “She’s not. She’s not dead.”
“She’s not dead,” he says.
Oh, thank the Net. The relief is so palpable it feels liquid.
“Why are you calling me?”
“We’ve had to confiscate her device, but as a once-off favour, I agreed to call you to deliver some important information.”
Now Kate can hear Keke yelling in the background. She tries to make out what she’s saying. Something about –
“Miss Msibi would like me to tell you that your son is gone.”
“Gone?” says Kate. “What do you mean, ‘gone’?”
Keke is still shouting.
“She woke up and he was gone. I’ve notified the force. They’ll be on the lookout for him.”
Keke yells something else.
“She’s saying that he must have heard your last conversation.”
“What?”
“When she gave you the co-ordinates – ”
“Fuck!” shouts Keke. Kate can hear her struggle.
“She thinks he’s on his way to that destination.”
Seth is pale again.
Kate imagines all the kinds of people who would open their car door to a little lost boy late at night. She sees the moon shining on his blonde hair just before someone grabs him roughly by the arm and makes him disappear forever.
“This can’t be happening.” It’s too much. Silver in the hands of the enemy and now Mally is on his way there too.
“Look, lady,” says Ramphele. “I’ll dispatch a team to help you find him.”
Muffled conversation follows.
“I’ve already got people looking for your boy on the streets. Send me a recent photo to distribute, and his dynap code.”
“No,” says Kate.
“No?”
“Don’t go near my children. They said if we got cops involved they’d kill her.”
“Kill her? I thought – ”
“Let me speak to Keke,” says Kate.
The man’s sigh drifts through like grey smoke down the line.
“Please.”
“Okay,” he says. “You’ve got one minute.”
Keke comes into view. Her eyes are bloodshot. She opens her mouth to talk but Kate doesn’t hear anything except for the loudest bang she’s ever experienced in her life as the cab is shunted by an unseen vehicle and the superglass all around them explodes into flying crystals. They are weightless for a second before they spin 360 degrees and the siliconeskin airbags blow up into their faces, punching them backwards into their seats as the car revolves again then slows down to a sudden stop as they crash into something stationary. Kate gets a sniff of burnt rubber and metal sparks over the new-plastic smell but then liquid gushes out of her nose and sprays the airbag with crimson. She wants to scream but there is no breath in her lungs. She holds a hand up to her nose, not quite believing that all that red paint could be coming from her. Beyond the deafening ringing in her ears and the spirals of blue that scribble across her vision, Kate can hear her name being called, as if she is dreaming and someone is trying to wake her up.
“Kate! Kate!” comes the muted voice then she realises it’s Seth calling her, and she turns her head to look at him, her hand still covering her spurting nose. “Are you okay?”
“I think so,” she says, but she can’t hear her own voice over the screeching in her head. It hurts her neck to nod, but she does so anyway. She can feel the blood running down her throat so she tries to spit it out, knows that ingesting blood can make you sick, and that she can’t afford to feel ill when her life is imploding right in front of her like the inside of this car.
“It seems that we have had an accident,” warbles Turing. “I have sent our location to Emergency Services. Please stay still and calm while we wait for someone to arrive.”
Kate wants to obey, wants to sit back under the reassuring pressure of the airbag on her chest but she looks out of the shattered window and sees black boots approaching the car. For a millisecond she thinks, thank goodness, they’re already here to help us, but then she sees the glint of gunmetal against the night sky. Realises that these people caused the accident. Silhouettes with AK47s. Someone smashes in the crystallised window next to her and
the superglass peels down like a flayed pelt. Two automatic weapons are pointed at her head while the man in black pulls her from the wreckage, shearing her torso on the broken glass.
“Fuck!” Kate exclaims as it razors ribbons into her skin. One of the other shadows pulls Seth from the wreckage. The man’s grip is so strong it makes her arm buzz with blue, warning her that more pressure might re-break the bone.
Chapter 68
Scented With Gunpowder
The men in hooded robes and JC face masks drag Kate and Seth away from the smoking car and towards their multi-van, which is matte black against the tar of the street, against the pitch of the night. Black on black on black, as if they are being swallowed into a vacuum where nothing will matter.
Seth is unconscious, but Kate resists the pulling.
Not again. Not again not again not again.
The man towers above her in height and muscle. He’s stronger than her but every molecule in her body is telling her to not get into the MV. Her broken nose hums sky-blue. It’s not like she’s having flashbacks of her childhood kidnapping – nothing as clear as that – it’s more like her body is remembering the trauma and refusing to make the same mistake again. Her gun is lost in the wreck of the car. She tries to fight him off, feeling for a moment that she’d rather die brawling right here and now than ever get abducted again. Who are these people who think they can just take others, and take their children? As if their bodies are nothing more than packaged meat, something bloodless to be possessed and traded on a whim. Her anger builds, and with it, her strength. She screams as she lashes out at him. Punches him on his jaw, which remains unmoved, and her knuckles crack. Tries to knee him between the legs but there is some kind of armour there, and it’s like she’s just slammed her knee against a concrete wall. She’s injuring herself more than him. The other man – just a few metres away – is trawling Seth’s body towards the van.
Half-thoughts flitter. She’ll use her adrenaline-energy to try to get away; she may not be able to fight him but maybe she can escape. Just then there is a flash of light. With a bright crack, the night air is scented with gunpowder and blood. Seth has just shot one of the men, whose head glances backwards, struck by the force of the bullet. The other man hefts his AK47 up for a better grip and starts firing at Seth, who darts to take cover behind the still-smoking cab.
