by Kurt Ellis
The dog placed its only front paw on Creed’s knee as if to answer.
‘I know. Pisses me off too.’
He scratched the dog behind the ear, took another pull on the blunt and watched the re-enactment of his investigation on television. He scoffed at the inaccuracies and the poor attempts at the South African intonation. But his ridicule stopped when they began showing actual footage of the raid that had captured Mooney.
That was when the sound started. Soft at first, gradually getting louder.
White noise, making his skin crawl. The volume steadily increased until it became painful. He felt dizzy. A sharp pain struck inside his head, just behind his right ear. He gritted his teeth.
The final image he saw on the television was his own arrogant smirk as he was about to enter the room where Mooney had held a hostage. Creed squeezed his eyes shut, trying to block out the noise and the pain, but it just kept coming. Agony.
He stubbed out the joint on the table and got to his feet. His hand was trembling as he took a key from the bowl next to the television. With Tripod hobbling after him, he made his way back down the passage. Stopping in front of the closed second bedroom door, he inserted the key and twisted the handle.
‘You know the deal, boy,’ he whispered painfully. ‘Nobody comes into this room.’
3
Creed was in the shower when he heard his dogs barking, surely announcing the arrival of Eli Grey. Turning off the hard stream of hot water, he towelled himself dry before looking at his reflection in the mirror. His hair was black, cropped short, cut by his own hand with an electric razor a few days earlier. His five o’clock shadow the same length as the hair on his head, punctuated by a peppering of premature grey.
A thin scar cut through the outer edge of his right eyebrow, about four centimetres long: the ghost of a wound he had suffered in his early teens, when he had fallen from a mango tree and struck a branch on the way down. Beneath his brow, his eyes were dark, almost black. Sad and heavy, sunken into his skull. He looked as tired as he felt.
Creed had broad shoulders and a wide chest, earned through hours of short-interval training interspersed with weightlifting and martial arts. But his reflection now showed someone undernourished and way overmedicated.
On his right pectoral, the letters GF were crudely tattooed in green ink on his skin.
Back in Durban, such home-made tattoos were called ‘chuppies’, made by a simple sewing needle tied to a pencil and dunked into green ink. The process had been painful: a friend piercing his skin with an incessant series of tiny stabs. The results were awful, the lines of the lettering skew.
Years later at university, Eli recommended that he get it covered up with a better tattoo, but he couldn’t do that. As aesthetically crude as it was, this tattoo reminded him of the friends he had lost in the Sydenham gang war that took place in the late Nineties.
Instead, he decided to have the profiled head of the Egyptian queen Nefertiti added below the letters. It had a special meaning for him – it not only referenced his mother Rebecca’s love for the ancient world and mythology, especially Egypt, but was of an African queen, as his mother was to him.
His next tattoo, inked in red, orange and black, was of a phoenix bursting out of the left side of his chest, leaving flames in its wake. Years later in Seattle, he’d had an artist add red tail feathers that ran from his chest, across his shoulder and down his left arm, stopping at the bicep.
On his back, behind his right shoulder, was a tattoo in black. Two heads fused as one. One side of the head was a snarling wolf, teeth bared and brow creased; the other a human skull, calm and cold. Above the tattoo were three Latin words – Homo homini lupus. Man is wolf to man.
Another tattoo sat to the right of his belly button. A blue swirl of colour like the flow of water in a whirlpool, it became yellow the closer you got to the centre, like a star from Vincent van Gogh’s Starry Night. It represented his father, Gabriel.
The last tattoo he’d had done was for his mother after her passing. This was a stylised rosary in black ink. The beads wrapped around his right forearm with the cross on the inside of the arm. In calligraphy beneath were the words We shall be the mouthpieces of the divine spirit, split into two lines. Virginia Woolf, his mother’s favourite writer.
Creed’s ribs were visible beneath his arms. That once mighty phoenix now looked to be starving to death. Wrapping the towel around his shrunken waist, he left the bathroom to find Eli Grey staring at him.
‘Again?’
Creed slid past him.
‘Again?’ he repeated. ‘Another prostitute?’
Creed deadpanned, ‘You really don’t expect me to hire the same one each time, do you? What’s the point in that?’
Eli Grey looked as if he was about to say something else, but changed his mind. ‘Get dressed,’ he said curtly. ‘We’re late. I have a meeting with the General this morning.’
‘Where’s Cassie?’
‘Who?’
‘Cassie. My date from last night.’
‘Her name was Jasmin, Nick. And I showed her the door. And you owe me a grand. She wouldn’t leave until she got paid.’
Creed shrugged as Grey glared at him. ‘Don’t worry. I’ll give you the money back.’
He made his way into his bedroom to get dressed. A clean white T-shirt, cleanish pair of jeans and a pair of Bronx boots that had seen better days. He pulled a grey woollen skull cap over his ears and yanked on his favourite weathered leather jacket before meeting Eli in the lounge.
Major Eli Grey, PhD, Deputy Commander of the Investigative Psychological Unit of the South African Police Services, held what remained of the joint that Creed had smoked in the early hours of that morning.
‘Are you kidding me, Nick? Drugs?’
Creed gave him a look of mock terror. ‘What? It’s for my glaucoma.’
‘You need to stop doing this. And I won’t even ask you about that white powder on that plate.’ Grey flicked his head at the coffee table.
‘Oh, now that’s cocaine,’ Creed said matter-of-factly. ‘It’s not mine, though. It’s Cody’s. I don’t do uppers.’
‘Her name was Jasmin.’
Creed shrugged. ‘Ah, what’s in a name, Eli? That which we call a whore by any other name, would she not suck as sweet?’
‘Damn it, Nick!’
‘Hey, she’s not just a call girl. She’s also an actress. And her parents are university lecturers … somewhere. You might even know them, Professor. And she also does piercings during working hours.’ Creed smiled. ‘She has many skills. She said she can give me a Prince Albert. Do you know what that is?’
‘Yes, I know what a Prince Albert is.’
‘So guess what I said?’
Grey flung the joint to the floor. ‘Cut out the bullshit, Nick. If you’re going to work with me, you need to stop this crap. And the drinking too. For Christ’s sake, stop bringing home stray dogs! Your place smells and looks like a bloody SPCA. How many do you have now?’
‘Seven and three-quarters, Tripod included.’
Creed could see Grey’s jaw muscles tighten with frustration. Grey took a deep breath.
‘I’ll wait for you in the car.’ He turned and walked out.
Creed trudged into the kitchen and filled the kettle. While he waited for it to boil, he took a large bag of dog pellets from his scullery outside to feed his animals.
He’d always had an affinity for dogs, especially strays. A dog was a simple creature. No hidden agendas. No dark desires. No psychopathy. Sure, you’d get some vicious dogs, but they were the spawn of vicious owners. Nurture besting nature. But a dog that was well treated and loved would protect its owner to the end. He liked that.
Loyalty. Companionship. No judgement. They were his family. They were his pack.
After he had filled all eight bowls with pellets, Creed fished in his pocket for a cigarette. Finding one that was bent into a banana shape, he put it to his lips and lit up. He savoured the t
obacco as the dogs devoured their food. The winters in Johannesburg’s Highveld were dry and harsh. The smoke helped to keep his innards warm.
As he finished the cigarette, Creed leant against his dirty white Ford Ranger parked under the car port. Beyond the cement wall surrounding his property he heard a door slam, followed by a man’s voice shouting curses and insults. He peered over the back of the bakkie into his neighbours’ yard.
A girl of about sixteen came rushing around the side of the house dressed in a brown school uniform. Her head was bowed, tears streaking her face. She looked up for a second and met Creed’s eyes. A red bruise had formed on her cheek. She lowered her face again and dashed out of the yard, onto the street.
Creed watched her leave; a brook of grey smoke oozed from his nose.
He went back inside to make two cups of strong coffee in metal travel mugs, then locked the door behind him and carried them into the street.
The chilly wind nipped at his nose and earlobes like the pin-sharp teeth of a puppy. Grey was waiting for him on the road, leaning on the bonnet of his car, his cellphone pressed to his ear.
Major Eli Grey looked like a Scandinavian superhero. Straw-blond hair neatly trimmed and combed away from his brilliant blue eyes and a square, clean-shaven jawline. He wore a charcoal Hugo Boss suit and a white pin-striped shirt, neatly tailored to fit his body. His tie was silk, a bright red, his black leather shoes freshly polished. He was well over six feet tall, his shoulders and chest massive, his waist narrow. When he moved, Creed could see muscles flex beneath the jacket of his friend and colleague. Grey was an amateur, competitive bodybuilder. He ate skinless, salt-free chicken, swallowed a bunch of flavoured whey proteins and worked out twice a day whenever possible. Sometimes three times. His life was work, expensive clothes and weightlifting.
Grey tapped the phone screen to end the call. Creed handed him a cup.
‘A peace offering.’
Grey took it from him, ‘Coffee?’
‘Of course. No milk or sugar.’
‘Thanks.’
Good, strong coffee was the one and only vice Grey allowed himself.
Grey slid into the driver’s seat of his silver BMW M3. It growled to life and they drove out of the suburb of Florida in the West Rand in silence, listening to Talk Radio 702. The host said, ‘Later on in the show we’ll be looking at the violent strike taking place at Legodu Mine in the North West. And after that, I will be interviewing …’
Grey switched the radio off.
‘Nick,’ he said softly. He seemed to be searching for the right words. ‘I need you to help me, to help you. Understand? I’m doing everything I can here to make this work. I’m putting myself, and my reputation, on the line.’
Creed didn’t take his eyes off of the houses as they blurred past. His only response was to put the rim of the metal cup to his lips and take a gulp.
Grey sighed. ‘We have a body.’
‘A body?’
‘Yeah. Black female. Found in the veld off of the Golden Highway. Signs of sexual assault and mutilation.’
Creed nodded as he looked out at the awakening city of Johannesburg.
4
Grey parked his BMW in the yellow emergency lane. The traffic on the freeway was moving at the pace of continental drift, not because the crime scene had overlapped onto the motorway, nor had the police closed off any lanes. It was a combination of regular morning traffic and motorists rubbernecking – slowing to a crawl to see what the hubbub and flashing lights were about. Nothing fascinated more than crime. Nothing.
Creed got out of the car and was slapped in the face by the frigid air. He pulled his jacket tighter around himself as he circled the vehicle. Swinging first one, then the other leg over the cement barrier, he hopped off of the freeway and into the veld. His boots disappeared into the dry, shin-high grass.
Fifty metres from the road, a group of police officers stood in a circle, peering down at the lump at their feet. Creed could almost smell their unease.
It seemed that the moment they saw Major Eli Grey walking up, their posture abruptly stiffened. Some sucked in their guts; others stood taller and stuck out their chests.
Creed knew it wasn’t only because Grey was one of the youngest majors in the history of the SAPS at thirty-four years of age – he also had an arrest record second to none.
Grey, with his PhDs in psychology and criminology and a best-selling book behind his name, was a rare breed: an academic who had worked his way up from constable to police major with a conviction rate in the mid-eighty per cent. An intellectual with real world experience. Besides being a regular guest lecturer in criminology at his alma mater, the University of the Witwatersrand, he was internationally renowned in the criminal psychology field. Grey had trained international police forces in profiling and had been a guest lecturer across the globe. The local media adored him too. He had the face, the physique and the reputation that television channels loved to film and newspapers wanted on their front pages.
A path opened in the circle of blue uniforms to give Creed and Grey access to the corpse.
‘A call came in this morning at approximately 5 a.m., but the caller rabbited,’ Grey informed him. ‘He didn’t stay behind to be interviewed. According to the 10111 operator who took the report, the caller said he was crossing the freeway on his way to work when he saw her lying here. He didn’t see anyone else near the body.’
Creed took in the corpse. ‘Well, there’s certainly a ritualistic look to the body.’
Sprawled at their feet was the body of a female in her late teens, perhaps early twenties. She lay on her back, her unblinking eyes staring vacantly into the bright winter sky. A grotesque, gap-toothed smile was fixed on her face. Her lips had been cut off. So too were her hands and feet, neatly removed at the wrist and ankle respectively. She was clothed in only a pale-green man’s T-shirt that covered her to mid-thigh.
‘Good day, Major.’ A slight Chinese man approached Grey.
‘Professor, this is Nick Creed. Nick, this is Professor Stephen Cho, forensic pathologist. He works with our unit.’
The pathologist gave Creed a sharp nod in greeting. He had a pair of gold-rimmed glasses that rested at the tip of his nose. Despite the cold weather, he wore a short-sleeved black-and-white checked shirt tucked tightly into his black pants.
‘I had to keep the curious cops back a bit when I arrived, but they were here before I was, unfortunately,’ Cho said in a mild accent. ‘The scene is no longer pristine. There is no need to wear coverall now, gentlemen.’
Cho offered Grey a ball of blue latex gloves from his pocket. After pulling on a pair himself, he handed another pair to Creed.
Grey crouched beside the body and, using his index finger, pushed down on her chin firmly. ‘Tongue’s gone as well.’
Creed bent down to lift the bottom of her T-shirt. ‘Assault and mutilation to the genitalia.’
‘Sexually motivated?’
‘Aren’t they always?’ Creed let the T-shirt fall back, covering her.
Grey turned to Cho. ‘Do we know the cause of death?’
‘There’s bruising to the trachea and neck, and blood-vessel rupture in the eyes. It looks like manual strangulation. I’ll confirm once I’ve done the post-mortem.’
‘Muti killing?’ Creed offered.
He saw a slight change in Grey’s posture. ‘Possibly. Let’s not rule out other motives though. The term “muti” makes people uncomfortable, particularly in the SAPS. Besides, if word gets out that we think it’s a muti killing, I’ll have the Occult Unit at my door, demanding the case.’
Grey looked around as if he expected the unit to materialise out of thin air. ‘They’re already not too keen on us.’
Creed pushed himself up by his thighs and scanned the land around them.
Flat and brown, it was bordered by the freeway on one side and a growth of greener bush on the other. To his right, the much-hated e-toll gantry loomed over the tar freeway like a white sp
ider’s web capturing motorists’ monies. At his ankles, a dirty ocean of dry grass waved in the breeze and a brown grasshopper jumped from one blade to another.
‘Definitely a secondary site,’ he said. ‘The unsub killed her somewhere else and dumped her body here.’
‘I agree. Not enough blood here for this to be the primary crime scene.’
Creed nodded. ‘Also, there are few traces of blood on the shirt. The unsub put it on her after he’d killed and cut her. If she’d been wearing it during the assault, it would be soaked in blood.’
‘What are you thinking, Nick?’ Grey walked closer to him. ‘Why would he re-dress her? Remorse?’
‘Has to be. No other reason.’
Grey turned to Cho. ‘Let’s get the body to the mortuary ASAP. I want the T-shirt removed and bagged the moment it arrives. That’s our biggest piece of evidence right now.’
Cho nodded. He walked off towards a large, black leather satchel that sat hidden in the grass.
Creed reached into his pocket and pulled out another cigarette. He lit it and walked away from the body. Strolling through the grass, his eyes scanned the ground.
‘What are you looking for?’
Creed exhaled the smoke before he responded. ‘No drag marks. The unsub carried her from the freeway, over the cement barriers and fifty metres into the veld. That’s quite a distance to carry dead weight.’
‘Strong guy.’
Creed nodded. ‘Very strong guy.’
5
The Investigative Psychological Unit offices were situated on Simmons Street, a major artery within the heart of Johannesburg’s CBD. Here, traffic oozed between the grey and brown buildings like thick platelets through the tarred veins of South Africa’s largest, richest city.
Both pedestrians and motorists clotted the streets and pavements. Hawkers sold their goods off the tops of brown boxes. Sweets, crisps, cigarettes, clothing, vegetables, fruit, the latest CDs and DVDs – anything passers-by could possibly want.
The taxi drivers, hooting sharply to attract the attention of potential passengers, used hand signals from their rolled-down windows to indicate which route they would be taking.
