Black Heart

by Mike Nicol

  Silas Dinsmor dialled his office, left a message to call him urgently.

  ‘Now all we have to do is wait. But while we’re doing that I’ll get the contract drawn up,’ said Sheemina February. She pressed speed dial to her office. ‘And arrange a car for after lunch. I do an excellent moules marinieres with local black mussels. And there’s a fine sauvignon blanc in the fridge. It’ll be worth waiting for.’

  In the afternoon Sheemina February had the Dinsmors taken to Cavendish Mall.

  ‘When the money’s in our account, we’ll sign the contracts,’ she’d said before they left the cottage. ‘Till then enjoy Cape Town. See the sights.’

  Dancing Rabbit couldn’t wait to get into the car. ‘Honey,’ she’d said before the door closed, ‘you might make good mussels but I don’t like your way.’

  Silas Dinsmor hadn’t said anything, only given a brief nod.

  At the mall the driver took them to the Vida e Caffè. Said he’d been told to leave them there. Was gone before they could stammer out a response.

  Silas ordered two double macchiatos, put through a call to Mace Bishop. ‘Pike, this is Silas Dinsmor,’ he said.

  42

  There was Silas Dinsmor and Dancing Rabbit sitting on red seats at a white table at the Vida e Caffè. Dotted about the other tables a mother and baby, three sales reps with laptops displaying Excel sheets, a couple of students, two women in coats and scarves hovering over skinny lattes, the Lindt chocolate squares untouched on the table.

  Very clever, Mace thought, to drop them off here. Better than the side of a road, very considerate. Kidnappers with heart. A pissed-off cramp churned its way through his stomach into his mouth, bringing up a bad taste. Like the world and its Chihuahua were jerking his chain.

  He saw Dancing Rabbit not looking all that cool about the situation either, her face bruised and cut, washed out with no lipstick, bags beneath her eyes. Staring into the bookshop opposite at some mental horror, the skin furrowed across her forehead, tight.

  Silas bright as a starling though. Scoping the scene, spotting Mace and Pylon about the same time they saw him. Stood up with a wide smile to hold out the afternoon paper folded to the story headlined: ‘The Dinsmor kidnapping – new development’.

  As they approached, said, ‘You’re being crucified, partners, so now you’ve got some good news for the morning paper.’ Coming over like the last forty-eight hours had been a walk on the beach, or that he hadn’t been disappeared for most of the day. Bucko Silas getting a kick out of things.

  The two ladies glanced over, bright red lips and pearly teeth.

  ‘What’s going on?’ said Mace, brushing aside the newspaper, leaning down on the Dinsmors’ table.

  ‘Quietly,’ said Pylon beside him.

  ‘That’s not the attitude, Pike.’ Silas Dinsmor dropping the paper as he sat. ‘What we want is some concern. Like we meant something to you as clients.’ He smiled. ‘You want a coffee?’

  ‘What we want,’ said Mace, ‘is an explanation.’

  The mom with her baby also giving them some attention. The mom jiggling the baby, shish, shish. Mace aware of the onlookers but keeping his eyes on Silas Dinsmor.

  Pylon said to Dancing Rabbit. ‘You alright, Mrs Dinsmor? You need to see a doctor? We can arrange that for you. Or trauma counsellor. The police have them.’ His voice low.

  ‘What’d she want to do that for?’ said Silas, the American tone loud and clear. ‘She’s fine. I’m fine. You can get us back to our hotel and we’ll call it quits. Go our ways. Forget about this … shall we call it unpleasantness?’

  ‘I’m alright,’ said Veronica Dinsmor in a voice so quiet Mace hardly caught it under the noise of the coffee orders.

  ‘Not that easy,’ he said to Silas Dinsmor. ‘Your wife was kidnapped. You were kidnapped. People are dead. The police’ve opened a file. They need to talk to you, get an explanation. Which is what we need.’

  This stopped the laptop reps and the students.

  Pylon said, ‘Not here, Mace. Let’s go.’ Putting his good hand on Mace’s shoulder.

  Mace shrugged him off.

  ‘I wouldn’t say kidnapped,’ said Silas Dinsmor. ‘More like a private business meeting.’

  Veronica Dinsmor nodded her head. ‘Please. Please. Can we go to the hotel? If you don’t mind.’

  ‘We don’t,’ said Pylon.

  ‘Captain Gonsalves is going to be at the hotel,’ Mace said to Silas. He looked at Veronica, lowered his voice. ‘What I’d like to know is why this’s suddenly not an issue?’

  She was trembling, her eyes liquid.

  Mace poked at the newspaper. ‘You’ve read what they’re saying about us.’

  Pylon coming in. ‘Mace, let’s go. Leave it, okay.’

  Mace keeping at her: ‘They’re wiping us out. Crucified’s got nothing on it. We’re dead meat. After this we can close up shop, Mrs Dinsmor. Go twiddle our thumbs. What we don’t know is why. Why this’s happened with you. So what’s going on?’ He looked at her, ignoring the teary eyes. ‘People’ve been shot. Pylon’s got a hole in his arm. We’re being hung out. Because of you two.’

  ‘You shot them.’

  Mace nodded. ‘I did. Correction: one of them. That’s what we do in that situation to save our clients.’

  Pylon, bumped against him, said, ‘Mace, not here.’

  Mace glimpsing the mother dumping the baby into its pram, getting out in a scurry. The ladies open-mouthed, can you believe it, doll! The students watching. But Mace knowing he was too far into the scene to end it.

  ‘We see video footage of you tied up,’ he said. ‘Two dead bodies.’

  One of the sales reps went, ‘Oh shit!’ loud enough that it got Mace’s attention. Mace glared at them only an instant, came back to Veronica Dinsmor.

  ‘This morning your husband disappears on a private business meeting. And then here you are, both of you, having a quiet coffee in a shopping mall. Mr Dinsmor telling us: let’s all go home ’n forget about this. Drama’s over. And guess what, we don’t need you anymore. We’re safe and sound in your beautiful city.’ Mace hit the table with his fist. ‘What’s happening here?’

  That did it for the reps at the spreadsheet, had them closing down their computers like they had an urgent call schedule to maintain. Only the students and the latte ladies stayed riveted, unfazed, enjoying this. The one woman loosening her scarf to show some cleavage.

  Pylon eased up Dancing Rabbit, Silas Dinsmor getting to his feet. Pylon said, ‘Mace, let’s get out of here. We can do this in the car.’

  Mace stepped close to Silas Dinsmor. ‘This’s been crap from the go. You don’t tell us jack shit. You think you’re American, you can come in here and change the scene any which way you want. Forget it, pal. It’s not like that.’

  In the car cutting through the suburb to the hotel, Silas Dinsmor took a softer line.

  ‘We’ll give you good press,’ he said, leaning forward from the back seat, obscuring Mace’s vision in the rearview mirror. ‘Talk to reporters, make sure you don’t take any of the flak on our score.’

  ‘Bit late for that,’ said Mace.

  ‘We can put it right. Straighten out the misunderstandings. Give it good spin.’

  ‘Like what? That your wife wasn’t actually kidnapped.’

  ‘She was but I wasn’t. You with me? I was AWOL this morning. Guilty as charged. I’ll take the rap. My fault, I ducked out of your protection. Foolish. Stupid. Dangerous even.’ He leaned back. ‘I had my reasons.’

  ‘Which are?’ said Pylon, holding on to his damaged arm as Mace swung a tight corner.

  ‘Strategic,’ said Silas Dinsmor. ‘Like I’ve said, business-related.’ He let it trail into silence.

  ‘Funny goddamned way to do business.’

  Mace glanced in the rearview mirror at Veronica Dinsmor, her head turned away from her husband, eyes fixed on the passing houses: palaces set in rhododendron gardens. From the stillness of her she was off in some private zon
e. And she was supposed to be the tough cookie able to talk Colombian hard men out of a kidnapping. Two days with the locals, she’d taken leave of the planet. Mace tuned back to Silas Dinsmor.

  ‘You better have a story for the cops. Something they can get their heads around.’

  ‘It’s not gonna be a story,’ said Silas Dinsmor, smoothing a hand over his hair, bunching it around his ponytail. ‘It’ll be the truth, so help me God.’

  At the hotel, Captain Gonsalves ushered them into a conference room he’d set up. Got them seated round a circular table with a silver tray of bottled water in the centre. Mace and Pylon going right to the chairs nearest the door, the two Dinsmors other side of Gonsalves. Once they were seated, the captain coming over officious, reading Silas the sort of riot act that Mace couldn’t, not to a client.

  Silas apologetic, humble, moving his jaw like he was eating the pie.

  At the end Gonsalves returned to his opening riff: ‘You’re here under our protection, the protection of the South African police, not only the services of Complete Security. In this matter there’s gotta be some cooperation. Considering your wife’s abducted, you have a video of dead bodies, we are talking about a fraught situation, kidnapping, murder, but you still go walkabout. That’s irresponsible behaviour. Out of order. Why’s that, Mr Dinsmor?’ The captain, hunched forward, taking out a packet of cigarettes that he toyed with, turning it in cartwheels between his thumb and forefinger.

  Silas Dinsmor nodded like a toy dog on the rear window of a long-finned Valiant.

  ‘I’d like to hear an explanation.’ Gonsalves doing a tap tap tap with his cigarette packet. ‘We’ve got a case opened of kidnapping. We’ve got four bodies. The sort of thing we can’t wish away. So what’s happening, Mr Dinsmor? As you Yanks say, what’s going down?’

  Mace thinking he hadn’t seen the captain quite so stung in a long while.

  Silas Dinsmor coughed against the back of his hand. ‘Captain, I would ask if this can wait.’

  There it was. Just as he’d thought. Mace sat back wondering what Gonsalves could say to this. Nothing he could say. They didn’t want to talk to him, they didn’t have to. As long as they made statements.

  ‘My wife’s safe. I’m safe. Another twelve hours isn’t going to change anything.’

  ‘Another twelve hours,’ said Gonsalves, ‘we can close the file. Know what I’m saying?’ Looking at Veronica Dinsmor’s bowed head. ‘Mrs Dinsmor, maybe a description?’

  Dancing Rabbit brought up her face, put her wounded eyes on the captain. ‘I didn’t see him. He wore a hood, a what d’you call it?’

  ‘Balaclava.’

  ‘A balaclava.’

  ‘There was only a male with you all the time. One. The same one?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘No one else?’

  ‘No.’

  He turned on Silas Dinsmor again. ‘Where were you taken, Mr Dinsmor? Who’re the people you talked to?’

  ‘Full statements tomorrow,’ said Silas Dinsmor, standing up. ‘We can help you then, captain.’ He shifted his wife’s chair. ‘We need to rest. Get some perspective.’

  And that was it. Mace balled his fists. Would’ve been a pleasure to smack it straight into Silas Dinsmor’s Injun nose. Hear the gristle crunch. Whatever the deal was Dinsmor’d worked out, it was sick. The guy playing a rogue hand. Impossible to even imagine the scene.

  ‘Alright,’ said Gonsalves. ‘I can only ask for your cooperation.’

  ‘And we’ll gladly give it. Tomorrow.’ Silas Dinsmor taking his wife’s elbow, steering her round the table towards the door.

  ‘A proper statement.’

  ‘Whatever our legal obligations.’ To Mace and Pylon he said, ‘We appreciate your efforts.’

  Mace shrugged. ‘Your decision.’

  ‘It is, Mr Bishop. It is.’

  The three men standing up while the Dinsmors left, closing the door behind them.

  ‘What you got to tell me, Mr Bish?’ said Gonsalves, knocking a cigarette out of the pack.

  ‘Less than he told you. He hasn’t said a word, except he walked off this morning on a business arrangement.’ Mace dropped back onto his chair. The other two staying on their feet.

  ‘A business arrangement.’ The captain stripped the cigarette, spilling the tobacco shreds onto the table.

  ‘Private business meeting, to quote him.’

  ‘He said that, a private business meeting?’

  ‘He did.’ Mace watching the process of Gonsalves bending to scoop the tobacco into the palm of his left hand.

  ‘A private business meeting with his wife’s kidnappers.’

  Pylon came in. ‘He didn’t say that.’

  ‘Stands to reason, though.’ Gonsalves rubbing the tobacco into a ball with the fingers of his right hand. ‘Where else’d he be tippy-toeing off to? Comes back like it was no big deal. Everything’s hunky. I rescued my wife.’ He examined the pellet he’d made – a gobstopper. Broke it down, going through the process again with half the tobacco shreds.

  ‘He didn’t say that either.’

  ‘He’s got that cockiness. We can’t even guess what shit happened.’

  Mace said, ‘What’s your position?’

  Gonsalves popped the pellet into his mouth, sucked hard. ‘They’ve gotta give me statements. I can put some questions, maybe they answer them, ’n maybe they don’t. Who’s gonna push it? We got four dead tsotsis in the morgue, one of them a police informer. Only not inside on this story, inside on another one that’s got the commissioner having heart thumpers. Sorry for him. Part from that who cares about four arseholes? Huh? In a scene like ours? Serious Crimes opening murder dockets by the hour. No one. Nobody. I give an update, report the American citizens back safe and sound, I’m gonna be told file the file. Move on. See if there’s something that’ll give us happy statistics. Show that we’re doing a great job.’ The captain gave the pellet a vigorous chewing. ‘Know what I mean?’

  Gonsalves chewed, the click of his teeth audible to Mace above the birdsong coming in from the garden.

  ‘Silly bastard terminating you.’

  ‘You got it,’ said Pylon.

  Mace got up, went to the window. ‘That’s our sort of clients.’ The gardens yellow in the lowering sun. Winter gardens, all bare branches and leafless shrubs. He looked at his watch: 4:20. ‘We’ve got to move,’ he said to Pylon.

  Gonsalves kept chewing, facing the two security men. ‘Staying in a hotel like this must be something. Only for the rich, hey.’ He indicated the door. ‘So. Back to the mayhem.’

  43

  Tami sat on a couch reading You magazine, a story about a Hollywood star wanting to adopt a black baby. A spread of pictures of the celeb and children in the Malawian bush, the celeb and children sitting beside a fire in the dirt, the celeb with children draped around her neck at home among the roses. Tami didn’t have a radical opinion on the subject. In Tami’s eyes given the chance to be raised by a Hollywood bimbo was a helluva lot of notches above a Malawian kraal. The way she saw it the baby was a refugee taking shelter in a foreign land. Like the child had escaped.

  Max Roland sat at the round table working on his laptop. Focused on it, tap tap tap. Asked her twice to bring him coffee. The first time she did. The second time, she said, ‘It’s all there, next to the kettle.’ Didn’t look up from her magazine.

  Max Roland said, ‘This is a favour I am asking, please.’

  Tami didn’t budge, pulled out Pylon’s gun, waved it at him. ‘See this? This is what I do for you. Protection. Not making coffee or sandwiches or going for take-aways. I do killing the baddies that want to cause you injury.’

  ‘You are a cookie,’ said Max Roland, the grin across his face pushing his ears back.

  ‘A cookie with a gun.’ Tami’s heart sinking a level at the sight of Max Roland’s wet lips.

  He got up, made his own coffee, brought one for her.

  ‘You see I am a modern man’ – holding out a sachet of suga
r.

  ‘Keep it that way,’ said Tami. ‘We’ll be friends.’ She shook her head at the sugar.

  ‘Because you are sweet enough.’

  The man standing in front of her so pleased with his witticism. Tami kept the groan to herself.

  He went back to work then. For two hours kept at it straight through, didn’t say a word. Hummed something that could’ve been Coldplay’s Speed of Sound. Did this a couple of times out of tune, only vaguely like the song but enough there to get it going in Tami’s head. Coldplay being a group she fancied.

  She put aside the magazine, got up to stare out the window at the closing day. Shadows lengthening across the parking lot. Clouds ridging in from the Atlantic. Another bad front. More rain, more dark days in the grey city. Perhaps it was time to head for Johannesburg. Her friends were there, kept telling her, Jozi’s where it’s at. The city with the vibe. The city with long bucks. Telling her Jozi was real Africa, the heart of the continent. The times she’d been there she’d got the sense of fun. Not like Cape Town. Cape Town hadn’t been fun. She’d been lonely most of the time, after a relationship that’d gone bad. A hurt she still wasn’t over. Though she kept it bottled. Kept it from Mace and Pylon. As if they’d notice. As if they thought of her until they needed something. Men. Maybe a change of scene would swing it. She switched the heater up, suddenly aware of the chill in the room.

  Max Roland said, ‘When I am finished I would like to have supper with you. Perhaps in the shopping mall there is a restaurant, I am sure.’

  ‘Eating out’s not on my list of to-dos.’

  ‘Ah come, doch. It will be okay. Nobody knows I am here even. We can have a beautiful evening.’

  A prospect that didn’t send tingles of joy racing up and down Tami’s spine.

  ‘Come. Just for two hours, nobody will know.’ Max Roland absorbed in his work, looking up briefly to catch her eye. ‘Please, you do not have to play the ice maiden.’

  Tami couldn’t see why not.