Killer Country

by Mike Nicol

  ‘Obed,’ she was saying, ‘let’s start this again.’

  Obed Chocho said, ‘Does Lindiwe’s family know?’

  ‘Good morning, Obed,’ said Sheemina February. ‘This would be the proper way to start.’

  ‘Mighty fine, mighty fine,’ he said, ‘do they know?’

  ‘Good morning, Obed.’

  He looked at her, at her profile, her eyes steadfastly on the road, a rage building in his chest. Who was this woman?

  ‘Don’t do it,’ she said, without glancing at him. ‘Don’t dare raise your voice at me, don’t even think of it. I’m not patronising you. I know you’re going through hell but there’s stuff to be handled, Obed. Business.’

  Obed Chocho let out his breath in a whoosh. Closed his eyes behind his dark glasses and controlled his breathing. The woman was right. He had to stay in the frame. Eventually he said, ‘Alright. Mighty fine, my sister, what’s the business?’

  ‘To answer your first question,’ said Sheemina February. ‘Yes, her family have been told. They want to see you. I suggested this afternoon in my offices.’

  ‘They will cause trouble.’

  ‘What trouble?’

  ‘They will think I killed her.’

  ‘Really?’

  ‘Someone will have dreamed about it.’

  ‘The murder?’

  ‘Of course. We can use Spitz and Manga,’ said Obed Chocho. ‘For security.’

  ‘I don’t think so.’

  ‘They’re hanging around, costing me my money.’

  ‘A,’ said Sheemina February, ‘you do not want to be associated with those two. B, they have a job later today.’

  ‘From tomorrow,’ said Obed Chocho. ‘No one will know. They stay in my house, that is where I need them. So there’s no surprises when I get home at night. Please arrange this.’

  ‘You’ve got to be joking.’

  ‘No, why not? I am paying them. Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, I’m paying them to sit at a swimming pool drinking my money. So, mighty fine, instead they can be useful by sitting in my house. I have a swimming pool. Beer. Dish television. Music. Servants to make the beds, cook the meals. This is like room service. For Spitz and Manga what is the difference to a hotel?’

  ‘And for the ceremony, when you slaughter the bull? What do you do with them then?’

  Obed Chocho turned to face her, he allowed a smile. ‘You know my culture?’

  ‘I know you have to appease the ancestors. Have a cleansing ceremony. Wipe out the blemish of jail.’

  ‘We will slaughter on Saturday. By then Spitz and Manga will be gone.’

  ‘It’s not a good idea, Obed, having Spitz and Manga hanging around.’

  ‘It’s mighty fine,’ said Obed Chocho. ‘No problem.’

  Sheemina February shook her head but said nothing more.

  The highway opened to three lanes as they took the Tygerberg hill, and she kept the needle on one thirty, flashing slower traffic out of the way. At the top, on the long right sweep, Obed Chocho caught the view hazed by smoke and fumes over the low suburbs to the peninsula and ahead of them the distant city buildings and the mountain. At the sight he forgot his grief and thought, my city, the boy’s back in town.

  ‘Talking about Spitz and Manga,’ said Sheemina February.

  ‘Yes, what?’ he said, coming reluctantly away from the brief rush of swagger.

  ‘Spitz wants another gun for the farm shooting. And they need a car.’ She held up a hand. ‘I know what you’re going to say, I’ve said it to him already. But he has a point. So I can organise it, or you can organise it.’

  She kept the car’s speed constant down the hill and onto the straight past the malls of Canal Walk.

  ‘I can,’ said Obed Chocho, remembering the times Lindiwe had dragged him there shopping, and lapsed again into moodiness.

  They drove in silence until nearer to the city, Sheemina February said, ‘The judge sends his condolences.’

  Obed Chocho heard her distantly. ‘Huh? Who?’

  ‘Judge Visser. He’d read about Lindiwe’s murder. He sends his condolences.’

  Obed Chocho remembered the judge on his bench in court C staring at him, handing down six years. Six years! Like this was for real.

  ‘Sure. Mighty fine.’

  ‘Amazing, I thought.’ Sheemina February paused but Obed Chocho wasn’t going to play along and kept shut up. ‘The man who sentenced you, sending his condolences. Can’t imagine it happening many places in the world.’

  ‘He’s alright.’

  ‘Sentencing you to six years! That was alright?’

  Obed Chocho didn’t respond.

  ‘That was harsh, Obed. That wasn’t about what you’d done. That was about sending a message. That was about politics. About making Obed Chocho the scapegoat.’

  Obed Chocho didn’t respond. That sentence had allowed him to ditch his lawyers in favour of Sheemina February.

  ‘Someone’s got the judge by the curlies.’

  ‘I don’t think so.’

  ‘I do. Someone important. In the cabinet maybe.’

  Obed Chocho laughed. ‘You think I’m that important? Mighty fine, you think that.’

  ‘I do. That’s why the judge sends condolences.’

  Obed Chocho flicked his hand dismissively. ‘Believe it if you want to.’

  Sheemina February took the elevated freeway between the harbour and the city, catching the lights on green until halfway up Buitengracht. At Wale she turned left.

  ‘Another thing. Judge Telman Visser’s heading a commission.’

  ‘I read newspapers.’

  ‘He’d want to talk to Rudi Klett.’

  Obed Chocho shrugged, ignoring the upturned hands of a streetkid dancing at his side window. Ignoring his lawyer’s remark.

  ‘I was wondering,’ said Sheemina February, ‘about the connections. The links to Rudi Klett.’ The lights changed and she turned right into Queen Victoria back of the court where Obed Chocho had been sentenced to six years. A block from where Judge Visser had his chambers.

  ‘Where’re we going?’ said Obed Chocho.

  ‘My offices. Up near the museum.’ She fished in the ashtray for a remote control. ‘Some people in government wouldn’t want him to talk to Rudi Klett. Would they? They’d want a tame commission. Like all our commissions.’

  Obed Chocho didn’t answer. Stared out at the Company Gardens, at tourists and children being told its history, at young people lying on the lawns, at a woman in an overcoat talking to herself. At the statues and the cannons and the columned portico of the National Gallery. Why hadn’t he ever walked in the gardens with Lindiwe? He snapped his mind away.

  ‘What about the Smits?’ he said.

  ‘I spoke to them. They’ve left three messages on your phone. When you didn’t answer they phoned me.’

  ‘And?’

  Sheemina February aimed the remote at the gates under a block of apartments. ‘They want in and they’ve done the paperwork. It’s in my office.’ The gates opened and she drove in.

  ‘Mighty fine,’ said Obed Chocho, feeling anything but.

  28

  They went sightseeing, Manga and Spitz. Drove to the Waterfront and browsed the high-ticket clothing shops, Robert Daniel, Hugo Boss, Fabiani, at the Spitz store Spitz trying on Bally moccasins, a pair of which he considered buying when the money came through. Afterwards wandered the malls, licking Italian sugarcone ice creams.

  ‘Captain,’ Manga said as they drifted outside to watch a Nigerian fir-eater going through a fast routine, ‘maybe I’m living in the wrong city.’ Manga tossed five bucks into the man’s pot. ‘Other hand, you couldn’t pull a job here. Too much going on.’

  They sauntered further, past camping shops and restaurants, tourist traps selling carved ostrich eggs and beaded wire baskets to where a banjo band in get-ups of blue and white played the local beat beneath a pepper tree. Too shrill for Spitz but he liked the vibe. Manga dropped five bucks into an open banjo
case.

  They took the lane between Hildebrand’s and the Green Dolphin jazz bar that opened on a plaza dotted with soapstone sculptures and a view across the harbour to the loading quays. A red clocktower caught their eye and they headed for it over a swingbridge.

  The sight before them impressed Spitz: Paulaner’s, a German-style beer garden selling weissbier in tall glasses. He led Manga towards it.

  ‘A beer and maybe white sausage and pretzel, if we are in luck.’

  They sat beneath an umbrella, ordered large weissbiers. Spitz flicked through the menu, salivating.

  ‘Amazing. Here is my favourite,’ he said, finding white sausage on it. ‘Try them. With sweet mustard, they are very good.’

  Manga rolled his tongue over his teeth, tapped a cigarette from a pack. Eyed Spitz. ‘How d’you know this?’

  ‘For six months I lived in Bavaria. Sometimes we went to a beerhall on the lakes. I remember sitting there, outside at benches, and across, in the distance, there was the Alps.’

  ‘You were in exile?’

  Spitz lit a menthol and exhaled a plume. ‘No. I was not in exile. I have done some training in East Germany, Berlin. Afterwards to West Berlin and by car to Hamburg down the corridor. Then for a while in Munich. In those months I listened to country music. The German where I stayed had only country and western music. In the beginning I thought it was stupid, these sad cowboy songs. But when you listen to them you hear something different. Now I like country rock. I like the stories. They are my company.’ Spitz stared wistfully across at the tourists clustered round the clock tower. ‘When we are back in Jozi I can make another playlist.’

  The weissbiers arrived and Spitz ordered the white sausage in German, carried away by the atmosphere, the Bavarian get-up of the serving staff. The waitress smiled at him. ‘I’m from here,’ she said. ‘Cape Flats. But I know what that is.’ She spun away with a swirl of her skirt: both men glimpsing her legs.

  ‘Oh captain,’ said Manga. ‘Gimme some of that.’

  ‘Gesundheit,’ Spitz said, holding his glass out, the base towards Manga.

  Manga leant forward to click, Spitz instructing him to use the heavy base. ‘Bavarian-style,’ he said.

  They drank the beer quickly and ordered seconds when the sausages arrived, getting another sight of the waitress’s legs. Spitz told Manga to skin the sausage, peeling off the sheath like a used condom. Manga grimacing as he dropped it on a side plate.

  ‘Germans have got funny ideas,’ he said. But he liked the sausage with the mustard.

  ‘Better than a Big Mac,’ said Spitz.

  ‘Right at this minute,’ said Manga, ‘but maybe not later.’

  As Spitz bit into his second sausage his cell rang. He glanced at the screen, swallowed quickly. ‘My girlfriend.’

  ‘You kept her quiet, captain,’ said Manga through a mouthful.

  Spitz lowered his tone to say hello to Sheemina February.

  She laughed. ‘I like your voice, Spitz,’ she said.

  ‘We are having a drink,’ said Spitz. ‘Perhaps you could come here and join us.’

  ‘I don’t think so.’

  ‘Even lawyers must eat some food.’

  ‘We prefer our client’s blood.’

  Spitz guffawed. ‘I like that one.’

  ‘But you won’t like this,’ she said. ‘Tomorrow you’re checking out of the hotel and staying at Obed Chocho’s for a couple of nights. Until Friday.’

  ‘No,’ said Spitz. ‘That is not the arrangement. I do not do this sort of business.’

  ‘I know. You’re just going to have to bend your rules, okay. You’ll get en suite bedrooms each. Plenty of servants running round to feed you, take your drinks out to the pool. Staying at Mr Chocho’s the same as staying at a hotel. He’ll be there too. In and out.’

  ‘Mr Chocho is out of prison?’

  ‘Compassionate early release.’

  ‘I do not like this idea.’

  ‘Neither do I particularly. But this is how it’s going to be.’ She paused. ‘He’s hurting, Spitz, but he won’t take it out on you. He needs you. Remember that.’

  ‘This way is not my style.’

  ‘I’ve told you I appreciate that. My hands are tied. Do the job tonight, check out of the hotel tomorrow at ten and we take it from there. After tonight you’ll be his main man. Oh yes, Spitz. I’ve couriered the photographs. Look carefully at them. Don’t kill the wrong man.’

  She disconnected and Spitz told Manga what Sheemina February had laid out.

  Manga finished his beer. ‘Captain,’ he said, ‘this is not good news.’

  29

  Mace was pissed off all the flight to Cape Town.

  Pissed off that there were voicemail messages from Judge Telman Visser. Pissed off when he got into the car beside Wolfie in the cold wet dark outside the Kempinski, Rudi Klett in the back cheerfully good morning him like the Herr Dr Konrad Schultz interlude hadn’t happened, pissed off when Rudi Klett walked the P8 through check-in at Tegel, pissed off when the only in-flight movie he hadn’t seen was Shrek 2.

  Pissed off at Rudi Klett running endless Sudokus on his PDA.

  Pissed off at the loop of the REM song in his mind. An hour from Cape Town, calmed down to a point he even wanted to talk to Rudi Klett, Mace said, ‘What was that all about, last night? I didn’t need that, Rudi. I try to stay out of those situations.’

  Rudi Klett took off his glasses, glanced at Mace. ‘I am the same. Believe me.’ He switched off the PDA, reached for a watered whisky on his tray. ‘Those sort of situations are not pleasant. I avoid them, too. Usually, these days, people are more cooperative. But the Herr Dr I had been told was a problem. Above his station in life. Like me he is an intermediary. Like me he feeds at the trough. But not like me he worked the margins also. You know what I mean by this?’

  Mace nodded. ‘Sure.’

  Rudi Klett sipped his whisky. ‘He would keep the money for too long so he could earn interest. If you say the deadline is Thursday, he waits to Monday to make the deposit. Because why? On Friday when you want to know where is the money he says the transaction has gone through but the bank clearance takes a day. On Monday when you phone he says, ah, because of the weekend everything slows down. On Tuesday you have the money so no problem, but in the meantime he has made some thousands that could have been yours.

  ‘Many people have told him, Herr Dr you are making a mistake. In this business time is honour. If you say Thursday then next Tuesday is not acceptable. I am told that Schultz is yesterday’s man. He gives you any trouble, Herr Klett, I am told, take him out of the loop. This is meant literally. So I do everyone a favour.’

  ‘Except me.’

  ‘Na ja. You are unlucky. I am sorry, Mace. Forgive me.’

  Mace thought, typical Klett, forgive me over and done with but let it go. Said, ‘Tell me about Chancery Court.’

  ‘Ah ha.’ Rudi Klett grinned. ‘That is a story. In the Dickens book it is where a legal case was heard. Something to do with an inheritance. This case goes on and on until there is no money left in the estate so the lawyers can’t get paid anymore, so the case is dismissed. I think who chose the name for the business had a sense of humour.’

  ‘I don’t see it.’

  ‘You know, it is about… what is that English word? Ja, obfuscation. It is about making everything complicated. Chancery Court is a good business I am told. Lots of money goes through the account. But if you phone the office of Chancery Court, no one answers. The phone rings and rings in this little room they have in London.’

  ‘And so?’

  ‘So I thought it would be interesting for you to know this.’ Rudi Klett took another swallow of whisky. ‘Once you were in the business of trading arms. Your old friends now trade armaments. The money is different. There are big kickbacks. Maybe what I was doing was offering temptation to you.’

  ‘I don’t need it,’ said Mace.

  Rudi Klett shrugged. ‘Good. Then it is academic.’r />
  The two men fell silent, Mace thinking maybe it might have been a better option than security, to carry on selling guns. The commissions were major. He’d have had no financial worries. Not like now. The house would be paid for and no final demands from the bank for missed payments. A whole different scenario. Then again Oumou’s law had been simple: her or the guns. No choice. But there were always side deals. Things she didn’t need to know about.

  Rudi Klett touched his arm. ‘In the future, if you want to change your mind, let me know. People remember you still. Not only in your country. All over. They ask about Mace and Pylon. They want to know what you are doing. How you are. So if you have a change of heart…’

  ‘It’s not going to happen,’ said Mace.

  ‘The beautiful Oumou.’

  ‘That’s right.’

  ‘Well, you have that saying, needs must when the devil is driving. Something like that. What I am saying is you can always be in touch.’

  30

  Late afternoon, Cape Town International was chaos. Drivers pulling strange manoeuvres with no warning. People crossing the approach road blind to the traffic. Manga and Spitz drove round once to get the layout, came back through the parking lot looking for an old-model Alfa Spider, not a difficult car to spot. There it was gleaming red two rows back in the first section, outside the international hall.

  ‘Sharp car,’ said Manga, driving them past to an empty bay diagonally opposite, reversing in. ‘Me, personally, I’d take the new model. More vooma. Cars’ve moved on, the new Spider’s got stuff they weren’t even dreaming about when they made that one.’ He switched off.