Payback - A Cape Town thriller

by Mike Nicol

‘No ways. What for?’

  ‘Save me Jesus.’ Pylon rolled his eyes, took more coffee.

  Mace said, ‘I’d bet on Ducky working alone. Must’ve made a look-a-like. Probably got all the specs over a few beers with one of his cop mates. Only bit of different technology was the cellphone. The forensics ever examine it, they’ll scheme PAGAD’s getting clever.’

  Outside in Dunkley Square a car engine revved, tyres squealed. Two gear changes then the shriek of brakes. Again the tyre squeal before the night went quiet. Mace and Pylon glanced at one another, raised eyebrows.

  Their office was on the square, in the Victorian terrace row given to small legal practices, architectural partnerships, graphic designers, and Complete Security’s discreet operation. They liked the sense of professionals going about their business. Across the way, Maria’s restaurant did good Greek meals; the coffee shops good coffee. Their clients liked it. They’d take them into the Company’s Gardens for the noonday gun: watch the pigeons fly up at the boom. The clients were impressed. They’d gaze at the art gallery, the synagogue, the copper dome of the observatory, the mountain behind, and sigh. ‘Oh Mr Bishop this has been life transforming. What a romantic city.’ They’d had fat sucked from their thighs, wrinkles ironed from their faces, their boobs elevated, both males and females. They’d lounged at swimming pools watching lions at waterholes. For what Complete Security did, Dunkley Square was the best location in the city.

  Pylon stood up. ‘The guy you shot would need a hospital?’

  ‘Sure. Someone to plug the hole.’

  ‘Who’s legally required to report all gunshot wounds.’

  ‘In a perfect world.’ Mace reassembled the parts. ‘Most likely if a report’s filled in at all it’ll be attempted hijacking. Happens all the time.’

  He jacked the clip into the butt, put the gun on the table. He’d shot three people with that gun. One was fatal. It had to be.

  Pylon finished his coffee, went through to fix another one. From the kitchen he called out, ‘Want to tell me about Isabella?’

  ‘Nothing to tell,’ Mace said. ‘I haven’t seen her.’

  Not since Paris 1991. The Hotel Meurice. Where the Nazis had put up for their stay in the city. Mace running a double agenda, part of it a payback few days for Isabella, wining and dining her in the gilded restaurant. The two of them rampant in the bedroom suite. Isabella saying, luxury hotels were built for sex. Testing the theory sprawled on her stomach on the sheets in the late afternoon when room service wheeled in a trolley with ice bucket, Moët, and two crystal flutes. The waiter not blinking at the sight of Isabella naked. Going about his job of opening the champagne with a flourish, pouring half-glasses that rose in bubbly heads.

  ‘À votre santé, madame, monsieur.’

  ‘See what I mean?’ said Isabella, as the door clicked closed. ‘French style. Unfazed.’

  ‘To good times,’ said Mace, the crystal ringing at their toast. An amazing few days, even if they were the last time he’d been with her.

  ‘I haven’t seen her,’ Mace said again to Pylon.

  Pylon looked dubious. ‘So tell me anyhow.’

  Mace swallowed coffee, said, ‘I have prostate cancer.’

  Pylon said nothing, cooked up the pot, brought it through to offer him more.

  ‘Why didn’t you say?’

  ‘It’s not a death sentence.’ Mace held out his mug; Pylon filled it. ‘Just didn’t expect it at forty-two.’

  ‘You’re having treatment?’

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘And the prognosis is?’

  ‘It was discovered early. There’re no complications, no need for operations, I’ll be a survivor by Christmas.’

  ‘Bru,’ he said. ‘Bru, bru, bru.’

  ‘It’s okay,’ Mace said, ‘my head’s getting round it. Funny thing is Ducky Donald’s been a great help. Gave me something else to think about.’

  ‘And the knocked elbow that bleeds more like a knife cut?’

  ‘A mugging. Street kids in the Point car park.’

  A beat, then Pylon laughed. His infectious, deep belly laugh. Mace had to join him.

  Oumou was awake when Mace got home. Sitting up in bed, pensive, expectant. Four-thirty, according to the radio clock on the pedestal. He’d phoned her about the bombs, the bloody mess and the death toll. Her eyes said everything he needed.

  Mace bent over to kiss her. Their lips met and hers stuck hard. He gave back the pressure, felt her tongue slipping between his teeth as her arm came around to pull him to her and he went despite the pain shooting in the stab wound. But Oumou caught his flinch, broke the kiss.

  ‘You are hurting?’

  ‘A scrape.’ His lips found hers again. Again she pulled back.

  ‘Let me see.’

  ‘It’s nothing,’ he said, sliding against her.

  ‘That is not nothing,’ she said. ‘Oh Mace.’

  The concern in her voice was balm. ‘Say it again,’ he said, burrowing in her long beautiful neck.

  ‘No. Stop.’ And she was out of bed, bending over to examine his arm, her breasts ripe fruit. ‘You need a doctor.’

  He pulled her naked body down, sliding beneath her.

  ‘Non. Non.’ She swore in French. ‘Let me go.’ Again she was up, and heading for the bathroom. ‘First we must clean that wound.’

  ‘Tomorrow,’ he said, undressing, intent on what they’d started. His arm throbbed just to undo the belt buckle. When Oumou came back, he was naked, she was swaddled in a white towel. Stunning against her ebony skin.

  Gently she unwrapped the bandage, blood had leaked through and dried, the wound was weeping, the gauze embedded in the rawness.

  ‘Merde,’ she whispered. ‘What is this?’

  He told her. While she cleaned his arm with antiseptic solution and rebound it with bandages they’d last used in the desert, he told her how streetkids had taken him blind.

  ‘Me!’ he said. ‘Of all people.’

  ‘Oui. Now tell me about the other thing. The thing that is troubling you.’

  Mace looked at her. ‘What d’you mean?’

  ‘Is it Isabella?’

  He shook his head, no, and explained about his prostate tumour.

  ‘You should have told me straight away,’ she said, hurt welling in her eyes.

  ‘I couldn’t.’ He caught at her hand, pulled her down beside him on the bed. ‘This shouldn’t have happened to me.’

  16

  1999

  A late Easter, with the days cool, shortening, Mace stood in their bedroom gazing down at the city, the bay beyond. He put the cellphone back on its unit to charge.

  Below, Christa in the garden with Cat2, putting flowers from the well-trimmed hedge on the grave of Cat3 that’d lived until they moved into the renovated house, then died suddenly when stones formed in the urinary tract. Happened sometimes in males, the vet said. So he’d heard, Mace told him.

  His own water works were clear. Blood tests negative. The doctor’s finger test caused him to grunt, ‘That’s okay, meneer, just keep coming in for checkups.’

  Off the gurney Mace hitched up his jeans. ‘Great job you’ve got.’

  The doctor stripped off plastic gloves, washed his hands at a basin. ‘Just another day at the orifice’ - handed him an invoice to pay on the way out. Between the doc and the prostate pills Mace believed he could’ve financed a war of liberation in Sierra Leone.

  Thing was he had his health and the Victorian gem in the City Bowl.

  ‘My son,’ Dave Cruikshank said when Mace signed the papers, ‘I thought your missus had your balls in her grasp. Good on yer.’

  After the renovation, he said, ‘I told you didn’t I. A dream you were buying, I told you. My son, you’ve done good. This is a marketable proposition.’

  ‘Not for sale,’ Mace said.

  Mace gave the house a total make-over. Not just spruced up. Redone. Olde worlde meets stainless steel and glass. Featured, after they’d moved in, in Home and
Garden. The cellar even getting a special picture and a comment from the university historian that he believed it went back to the seventeenth century.

  When Mace told Oumou he’d signed and sealed she said, ‘This is because of your cancer, I understand. But I am telling you I will not live there.’

  When he persuaded her to at least look at the renovations, she went grudgingly at first. Inspected the changes without a word, then said, ‘You think you are a smart man, no?’

  He smirked.

  ‘I shall give up,’ she said. ‘This will be a beautiful house. We can stay here.’

  Mace showed Christa her en-suite bedroom. ‘Ah cool,’ she said. ‘Papa can I have my own TV?’

  Instead he promised her the world.

  They moved in a month into the new year. Handed the keys and lease to their suburban townhouse to Pylon and Treasure.

  ‘I don’t want this,’ said Pylon. ‘This’s smaller than we’ve got. This is crappy. We’re giving up four en-suite bedrooms, hi-tech kitchen, entrance hall, marble tiles, for what? For a better address?’

  ‘So what?’ said Treasure, stamping township dust from her shoes. ‘No shit in the streets. No dead dogs in the gutters. No all-night shebeens. No slaughtering cows in the backyard. Security. No worries my daughter’s going to be kidnapped. No more township. This’s fine by me.’

  Her daughter Pumla’s rave: ‘Can I have my own TV?’

  Mace’s wasn’t the only renovating going on in those months: Ducky Donald and Mattie-boy got their insurance payout and fixed up Club Catastrophe due to rise from the ashes, according to the invite Mace got, in ten day’s time. One thing he was pleased about, Ducky Donald had no more favours to call in.

  He called nonetheless. Sheemina February had set up another meeting with Matthew, could Mace be present?

  Mace said, ‘I see on the news some of her clients are in jail. What’s to meet about?’

  ‘Same thing again.’

  ‘So go to the newspapers. Stir the pot. People are on your side.’

  ‘Not so easy, china. What’m I gonna tell them? We got a PAGAD lawyer threatening us?’

  ‘Sounds good.’

  ‘I’d rather hear her out first.’

  Mace said nothing, let the silence go until Ducky said, ‘Please, okay?’

  ‘We’re square,’ Mace said. ‘Far as I’m concerned. No more obligations to you. And you forget about Cayman and Techipa.’

  ‘Sure. Agreed. Forgotten already.’ Ducky cleared his throat. ‘This’s more something involving you.’

  ‘Not interested.’

  Mace could hear him swig at a drink, Ducky loving this. ‘Thing is there’s something else here that I don’t understand. The bitch said she wants my Mattie and his advisor. Mattie tells her he hasn’t got an advisor. She says Mace Bishop. He says history. She says, you, meaning you, owe her.’

  ‘Interesting perspective.’

  ‘Not one I comprehend, Mace.’ Ducky took another gulp. ‘Further, she says Mattie doesn’t have you with him, Mattie’s gonna be the only paraplegic club owner in the city. I tell Mattie we’ve got no holds on you. Debt paid up in full. The only thing I can do is put it to you, see what you say.’

  Mace had encountered Sheemina February a good couple of times since PAGAD bombed Mattie’s club. Each occasion had to keep himself from getting in her face about the bombings. The victims. Once had been in the foyer of the Cape Grace, another time at an evening concert in the winelands. Then again about a month back on the forecourt of the petrol station on Orange where he usually filled up. Mace was busy signing the chit, she stopped at a pump alongside. Electric blue BMW coupé open to the early autumn. This was a small city, people moved in small circles. Bumping into people you knew was nothing out of the ordinary. Point was, if she’d wanted to have her say about the hole in her goon’s shoulder she could have phoned him at any time. But no, she kept her cards. Until now.

  The voice in his ear said, ‘So what d’you say?’

  ‘Don’t know, I can’t see the leverage here.’

  ‘Except my boy’s health.’

  ‘There’s that.’

  ‘And my memory.’

  ‘I wouldn’t go there.’

  ‘Joke, boykie. Take half an hour of your time. Give a bit of interest to your day.’

  Mace looked down at Christa in the garden, her attention now on her toys. He should have said no, he’d said, ‘Alright, for this you owe me.’ Thinking, maybe he’d unload some opinions of his own.

  Pylon asked Mace in the weeks after the bomb, was he going to have a word with Gonsalves about his theory regarding the Hartnells? Mace had more pressing matters on his mind: getting his prostate back to size for one, rebuilding a house for another. Also he still worried Ducky would pull the Cayman and Techipa plug.

  Gonsalves was in touch though to let him know Ducky Donald Hartnell had powerful friends. He mentioned the name Mo Siq early in the conversation. Asked Mace if he knew such a man. Mace said he did.

  Captain Gonsalves said, ‘One night the phone rings, my wife answers, says to me a Mr Siq says he wants to have a word. I leave my warm chair next to the gas heater, go out into the passage where there’s no heating and it’s colder than a witch’s tit. My wife says we should get a cordless phone but they cost five hundred bucks, Mr Bishop. I tell her while there are pension instalments there are no cordless phones. Except while I’m out in the freezing passage listening to Mr Siq I did consider it.

  ‘What Mr Siq had to say,’ he said, ‘was that anything I could do to expedite - which is the word he used - to expedite the report on the Club Catastrophe bombing would be appreciated, seeing as how it was a simple PAGAD bombing situation. Here I hesitated. Simple bombings. I dunno about simple bombings. I gave a long aaah. He then told me Mr Hartnell had made a considerable investment in the rebuilding of the club but was feeling exposed - which is also the word he used - because the insurers were waiting for the police report before they paid out. Mr Siq said he wasn’t going to offer me an inducement - again his word - because that was bribery by another name but that he had entered my details in his little book as an aide-memoir. Either way.’

  ‘Either way what?’ Mace said.

  Gonsalves chewed into the mouthpiece of his phone for a moment. ‘I believe you know what that means, Mr Bishop,’ he said.

  Mace told him, ‘Uh huh.’

  ‘The next day,’ the captain continued, ‘I found out that Mr Siq is known by the first name Mo and that he buys big grey ships and fast grey jets on behalf of my employer. My ultimate employer that is. What they call in the vernacular my makulu baas. Otherwise known as el presidente. I learnt that I should not mess with Mr Mo Siq.’

  ‘You should not,’ Mace said knowing that Mo was not the guy he once was, who drank palm wine on a Lagos beach till sunrise. Mr Mo Siq now dressed in Armani suits, Rolex watches and Bally boots. Mace had no problem with the Bally boots.

  ‘What I’m saying,’ said Captain Gonsalves, ‘is that I appreciate the tip-off, even if we didn’t act on it as we should have. I have Matthew Hartnell’s account of his - your - meetings with a person called Sheemina February, who is known to us as a PAGAD lawyer, and Abdul Abdul who we had the pleasure of hosting until he got bail. Ms February represents Abdul Abdul but that is her only association with known suspects. On the other hand she is a lawyer. In my experience they are at home in what my wife would call sleaze.’

  He coughed loudly. When the spasm petered out, told Mace he would be grateful for any further information.

  Below in the garden Christa arranged in a circle Cupcake, her teddy bear, the Incredible Hulk, Belinda, a Barbie doll, and Spiderwoman. She placed a cup and saucer before each and poured a brown fluid from one of Oumou’s reject pots. She stood back to admire her tea party. Mace came to a decision.

  In the room directly below their bedroom Oumou had her studio, she was there now, throwing clay, at the wheel fashioning tall elegant vessels. He went down and kissed her on he
r neck below the silver and amber earrings she was never without. These earrings were the envy of Christa who never let up to Mace on how she couldn’t wait to have her ears pierced.

  ‘I’ll be an hour,’ he said. ‘An unexpected meeting.’

  Oumou gave him lazy hooded eyes. ‘This is your holiday, no?’

  ‘Supposed to be.’

  ‘Do not be long,’ she said.

  Outside Christa wanted to know, ‘Papa, can I come?’

  Mace swung her round on a three-sixty carousel ride until he got giddy. ‘Next time, C. This is business.’

  ‘Please, please please please,’ she said, slightly giddy herself. At his shaking head changed tack, ‘Can Cupcake go with you instead?’

  Cupcake went with Mace on away business trips to fetch important clients. He’d been to Madrid, Milan, Munich, Hamburg, Copenhagen, London, New York, Los Angeles, Miami, Lusaka, Chobe, Victoria Falls. Also a number of cities and safari ranches within the country. Never before had Mace had to strap him into the passenger seat of the Spider and drive him about town with the top down.

  When he pulled into the Harrington Street parking lot, a surly black guy handed him a slip of paper. On it was a name he couldn’t make out.

  ‘Where’s the Angolan?’ Mace asked. ‘Cuito?’

  The car-guard shrugged, gave him a hard stare.

  Mace looked about, only locals. He reckoned if Cuito wasn’t dead, he was probably close to it. Wondered about Dr Roberto. Locals had a hatred of foreigners, especially those with enterprise.

  He pointed at his passenger. ‘The bear’s called Cupcake,’ he said. ‘He goes home with me. So does everything else in here.’

  The Xhosa didn’t even register he was talking to him.

  17

  Matthew was waiting in his hole of an office, smoking, playing a game on his cellphone. He’d smartened up his image: leather jacket, black T-shirt, regular jeans, hi-tech footwear without socks. His hair gelled into spikes. The office was unchanged, occupied but not occupied, as the corridor had been unchanged, every room locked with a security door, occupied but not occupied.