Killer Country

by Mike Nicol

  The prison commander took the phone, heard Sheemina February say, ‘Regulations state a minimum forty-eight hours notice, commander. What’s your explanation?’

  ‘I can’t help you,’ he said. ‘Complaints must be addressed to the board.’

  ‘I will,’ said Sheemina February. ‘What I want to know is when you were told? This morning? Yesterday? Four days ago? When commander?’

  ‘Yesterday.’

  ‘Yesterday. And you wait until this morning? How is Mr Chocho supposed to make arrangements at this late notice?’ She paused. ‘You’ll hear from me, commander, officially. Now let me speak to Mr Chocho.’

  The prison commander returned the phone to Obed Chocho. A piece of work that Sheemina February. He’d run in with her before over the Muslim anti-drug vigilantes doing time for their bombings and assassinations. Sheemina February was not somebody he wanted on his case. The way this was going, he’d have to leave no footprints. Give Obed some latitude. He heard Obed say, ‘She’s with you? Lindiwe? Listening?’ The prisoner with his back to the window now, watching the prison commander. Scowling. ‘Good, good. I’ll call her later. I think first we fix a meeting with the Smits. Tomorrow afternoon. Their place. Wherever they want it. Yes, why not at the property? I can relax there, open a few beers.’ Laughing. Looking directly at the prison commander and laughing. The prison commander not happy about Obed Chocho’s attitude.

  Obed Chocho disconnected. ‘You know her?’

  ‘We’ve met.’

  ‘Mighty fine lady. Maybe if she’d been my lawyer before the trial there’d have been no trial.’ Obed dropped onto the couch. ‘How long’ve I got?’

  ‘Two o’clock to five o’clock.’

  ‘You can push it to six?’

  The prison commander hesitated. ‘There is the question of alcohol. Prisoners on parole may not drink.’

  Obed Chocho kept his gaze steady. ‘What if Sheemina February gets off your case?’

  The prison commander shrugged.

  ‘Lighten up, my brother’ said Chocho, stretching his legs. ‘I will not be drunk. No one will know if I am away for three hours or four hours. Only you.’ He smiled, and stood, came to stand next to the prison commander and put his hand on the man’s shoulder. Both men of equal height and build. The only difference, Chocho’s shaven head emphasising the two cushions of fat at his neck. Like his head rested on them. He squeezed the commander’s shoulder. ‘Everything will be mighty fine.’

  The prison commander shook loose of the grip, moved towards the door. ‘I am sure you want to make some phone calls.’

  ‘Too right, my brother,’ said Obed Chocho. ‘The world does not stop because you are in prison.’

  9

  She had the warder’s gun. Big lesbo bitch had given up the gun at the sight of the sharpened spoke. She’d wanted to stick it to her. Into that huge belly to see if it exploded like a balloon. But the big lesbo bitch caved. Let her run off into the night.

  Christ knew where she was. Vast darkness all around. Not a light twinkling anywhere. She ran, fell, picked herself up, ran, walked into clump scrub that scratched up blood on her hands, tore at her prison jumpsuit. She couldn’t hear them tracking her. Believed they would begin with daylight. At dawn she saw the ruined house. A kind of shelter.

  For hours she sat in the shade of the doorway watching. She was thirsty. Hungry too, but the thirst burned in her throat. She heard the van before she saw it. Heard it a long way out on the flats. Then the flash of metal in the sun. Then watched it come straight towards her, like they knew where she was.

  No point in running. Anything moved on the plain you could see it miles off. She went into the ruin, waited.

  The van stopped, the engine cut off. Silence. She imagined them scoping the scene, the big lesbo bitch and the male warder. The van’s doors opened, banged shut. The male warder called her name through a loudspeaker: ‘Vittoria. Vittoria.’

  Up yours, she muttered.

  She heard their voices, low.

  The big lesbo bitch did her number next. ‘Meisie, come out. Vittoria. Stop this nonsense.’

  Meisie? What was it with this word, they liked it so much? That it was belittling.

  ‘Come now.’

  Come now, meisie She kept dead still.

  She imagined they were in line with the front door. That was what it sounded like from the carry of their voices. She heard the warder say, ‘She’s not here.’ The big lesbo bitch reply, ‘Where else you think she is?’ Silence.

  ‘Vittoria. Come, meisie.’

  The male warder said, ‘Give me that.’ Came on: ‘Don’t give us shit, alright. Throw out the gun. We not going to stand here all day.’

  Instead she stuck the gun round the corner of the building, pulled off two rounds. A shatter of glass. The windscreen. On target. The warder swore. Told her if she didn’t chuck the gun out, follow it with her hands in plain sight, they’d shoot the shit out of the ruin until she was dead.

  You and whose army, she wanted to shout back but didn’t. Two bullets left in the cartridge. One chambered. What’d they have? Maybe five rounds in the warder’s gun. Big bloody deal.

  She reckoned they hadn’t got backup yet. There’d be sirens, helicopters if they had.

  So just the two warders with the transit van. Careless assholes hadn’t bothered to shackle her. Let her take a pee like she wasn’t going to try it on the first opportunity she got. Stupid dorks. Thinking she couldn’t screw them over.

  ‘I’m coming out,’ she shouted. Stuck a hand up, waggled her fingers. Her hand framed in what was once a window.

  No response to that. Just the stuck record: ‘Throw the gun out.’

  She stood up, framed by the window. Her hand holding the gun hidden from view.

  There they were standing beside the van like this wasn’t a shootout.

  ‘Come’n, meisie,’ said the big lesbo bitch. ‘Be a good girlie. Stop this shit. We’s all gonna get into kak otherwise.’

  ‘Hands.’ said the warder through the loudspeaker. ‘Lemme see your hands.’

  ‘Fuck you,’ she said, brought up the pistol put a shot smack into the loudspeaker. Saw the warder fall. She ducked down. Sat on the floor in the bird crap, listening to the wounded man groaning.

  The big lesbo bitch shouted, ‘That’s up to shit, meisie. Yous for it now. No chance yous gonna see your home again. No chance in heaven or hell. Better stop the tricks now.’

  Five shots zinged through the window, slammed into the mud bricks, earth chips falling on her.

  She got below the window, knelt to the side. Counted one, two, three, slipped into view. Saw the big lesbo bitch kneeling beside the man, not even looking in her direction. She shot. Watched the lead zap home. Looked like a neck shot. The big lesbo bitch laid out.

  And a bullet left.

  She punched the air. Said to herself, ‘Go out there, girl, drive away.’

  She went out there. Walked straight to the van. The big lesbo bitch shot her in the back.

  10

  The two men checked out of the motel mid-morning, the shorter one settling the bill. The other man waiting to one side, smoking a menthol.

  Earlier he’d walked into the veld, not far, a stone’s throw beyond the motel’s perimeter fence and stood staring at rock outcrops to the north. About him the yellow sweep of clump grass and low scrub and thorn. Blackened stones underfoot and sheep turds. Above him a large bird circled on the rising thermals. He wondered what type of bird it was. Where this place was. It belonged to no country he knew.

  He’d smoked two cigarettes in succession, flicking the filters away in an arc, then walked back slowly to his room and sat on the double bed with his back against the headboard and his feet in silk socks neatly crossed. His shoes, brogues, were on the floor beside the bed. From where he sat he could see himself in the wall mirror above the vanity table. He stared at his reflection without expression or recognition. In his ears Stuart Staples sang about strangling a girlfriend
.

  At ten thirty Manga rapped at his half-open door, looked in. ‘Ready to leave, captain?’

  Spitz swung his legs off the bed, tied up his laces. ‘They have phoned yet?’

  Manga shook his head. ‘Nah.’ Grinned suddenly. ‘That worry you?’

  Spitz didn’t reply. Picked up his holdall and walked out the door.

  Manga glanced round the room: half the bed still neatly made, a heap of crushed butts in the ashtray on the side table. The room he’d left was devastated: pillows flung around the floor, the bed rumpled as if he’d screwed a dozen women, a slop of tea stain across the sheets. The difference, he believed, was uptight Spitz-the-Trigger maybe obsessing on the day’s business.

  They drove in silence to a Wimpy off the main road, two trucks and a few cars pulled up outside.

  ‘Breakfast?’ said Manga.

  ‘Here?’ Spitz gestured at the roadhouse. ‘At this place? Is this what you eat? Fast food?’

  ‘Not only. Also sushi, Thai, Italian, Cajun. Captain’ – Manga half turned towards Spitz – ‘this’s Colesberg, middle of nowhere Karoo, there is no sushi here. Not even umpokoqo?’

  ‘I do not eat porridge.’

  ‘So no problem. This’s a good fry. The best. Two eggs, bacon, sausage, tomato, that American stuff, hash browns. White toast. Filter coffee. You can look out at the desert. Watch the cars go by. Captain, this’s breakfast, okay?’

  They took a booth in the window, ordered the full-house. Neither of them speaking: Manga tapping his cellphone on the table, Spitz staring at two truckers outside joking. Beyoncé or some other jelly baby warbling on the sound system. The waitress put down two cups of coffee. Spitz knew it would be watery, stale. He tasted it. Twisted his mouth at the thin bitterness.

  Manga, watching, laughed. Poured a sachet of sugar into his mouth and crunched the granules. ‘Sweeten it, captain. Isn’t espresso.’ He emptied two sachets into his cup, and stirred. Lifted the cup but before he drank said, ‘Tell me captain, why a man like you doesn’t hunt, hey?’ He sipped at his coffee. ‘This interests me.’

  ‘You mean shoot at donkeys?’

  ‘I mean hunt.’

  ‘Settlers hunt. White men hunt.’

  Manga waved his hand. ‘We’re finished with that shit. The great white hunter shit. Black men hunt. Businessmen. Lawyers. Judges. Politicians. Like they play golf, they hunt.’

  ‘I have noticed,’ said Spitz.

  ‘But you don’t. Hey, captain, why not?’

  Spitz examined the fried breakfast the waitress slid before him. The eggs cooked both sides, the bacon thick, the skin peeling off the tomato. ‘What for, hunting?’ he said. ‘Where is the reason?’

  ‘To get excited,’ Manga made a hollow fist, gave a few masturbatory pumps – ‘by the chasing.’

  ‘By standing in the back of a Land Rover.’ Spitz sliced into the eggs, the yolks were solid, the white rubbery. He wondered if he could eat it.

  ‘Sure. It doesn’t matter. What you want is the kick. The magic moment.’ Manga held an imaginary rifle to his shoulder. ‘When you stare down the barrel and you know that if you pull the trigger the animal is dead. This magic moment. Pow! Hey, captain. That is the kick.’ He lowered his arms. ‘When you see the kill. When you see the animal die. Is this not another magic moment? Hey, captain. I know why these big men hunt. It is like sex. They get excited.’ He pricked a sausage with his fork and released a spurt of fat. Gathered a mouthful of sausage and egg and bacon, and grinned at Spitz. ‘I am right?’

  Before Spitz could answer, Manga’s cellphone rang, some rap shit. Manga swallowed quickly. ‘Mornings, captain.’

  Spitz kept eating, watching the tension in Manga’s shoulders, the tightness of his grip on the small phone. The nodding of his head. ‘It was no problem.’ Then a change in his voice: ‘We must come to Cape Town now?’

  Spitz guessed it was Obed Chocho. Could tell by Manga’s frown and spluttering that there’d been a change of plan. A change of plan wasn’t good. He wasn’t contracted for a change of plan. The understanding was one job. He wiped his lips with a paper serviette and held out his hand to Manga, his fingers beckoning for the phone.

  ‘Captain,’ said Manga, ‘here is Spitz.’

  ‘Spitz,’ said Obed Chocho. ‘I have some extra work that’s unexpected. The same price, the same percentage. Help me out here.’

  Spitz stayed silent, thinking about it.

  ‘The other job can be done anytime. This is more serious.’

  ‘Plus five thousand,’ said Spitz.

  He heard Obed Chocho blow out a lungful of air. Could heara television playing, a signature tune he thought he recognised.‘Mighty fine. Okay mighty fine. Plus five thousand.’

  Spitz gave the phone back to Manga. They wanted him in Cape Town they could’ve flown him. This was a shit story shaping up. Heard Manga say, ‘About six o’clock. We gotta drive seven, eight hours.’

  That was it, seven, eight hours on the road. Maybe five grand had been too cheap. More like double that.

  Manga disconnected, took a swallow of coffee. ‘I don’t like a change of plan. That’s when things get stuffed up.’

  ‘Many times,’ said Spitz. ‘What are the details?’

  ‘Search me, captain. You don’t get details from Mr Chocho. You get instructions.’

  11

  Mace thought a better meeting place would’ve been Dutch’s. A table on the pavement watching gay Cape Town flounce about De Waterkant’s cobbled streets. Always something happening among the chi-chi renovations. What he liked too was the motor show, more expensive hardware parked in the streets than any other quarter of the city. Even the Clifton coke and tequila strip couldn’t compete. And his Spider caught the boys’ eyes.

  At a place like Dutch’s, you felt part of the city life. Also more relaxing than an art gallery. Art galleries made Mace nervous. Like when Oumou had pottery exhibitions, he stood there with a permanent grin that made his jaws ache and drank too much.

  ‘Darling meet the artist’s husband.’

  Jesus, enough to make your skin crawl.

  Mace parked the red Alfa Spider in De Smit, hoping the handbrake would hold on the incline. Took a brick he kept for these occasions from the boot and jammed it behind a back wheel. He left the top down. Any chancer tried to steal the radio he’d know about it.

  Surprising thing was, not a car guard to be seen. Just a block from pink city, yet empty. Nothing going on. Had to be one of the few streets left in town where some Congolese doctor or Angolan teacher didn’t tell you he would guard your car with his life.

  Not many cars in the street either. The A-Class Merc, Mace guessed, belonged to the judge. Not a quaint street either, blank walls of office blocks either side, only the windows of the gallery breaking the monotony. Would appeal to Oumou’s concrete and glass ideas of architecture but didn’t get him excited. Mace pushed through a heavy glass door into a small foyer. One lift, a security desk to the side. The guard looked up from his screen, indicated an open door on the left.

  ‘Maybe I don’t want the gallery,’ Mace said.

  The guard shrugged. ‘The judge tells me he’s waiting for you.’

  Mace stopped. ‘You don’t know me.’

  ‘Old-style red Alfa Spider, the judge tells me that’s your car. I don’t know this Alfa Spider, but I know old style.’ The guard gave a white tooth smile. ‘Still a nice car.’

  ‘You know the judge?’

  ‘Why not. He comes here to the artist openings. Plenty times.’

  The guard swung the monitor for Mace to see his car filling the screen.

  Mace laughed. ‘Just keep watching it.’

  Inside the gallery Mace nodded at a woman behind the reception desk, tapping at a laptop. She looked up quizzically.

  ‘Just having a look,’ said Mace.

  ‘The judge’s in the next room,’ she said, pointing at an opening behind him. ‘That way.’

  ‘Right.’ Mace turned, frowning. Anywher
e else this would be a set-up.

  He stepped into a large room, the walls a stark white, a minimalist exhibition of big pictures each the size of the Spider’s bonnet symmetrically arranged. Two black benches end to end in the middle of the room. Mace’s trail sandals squeaked on the wooden floor.

  The judge sat in a hi-tech wheelchair facing a picture. ‘Mr Bishop,’ he said and moved a lever on the arm and the chair whined as it turned. ‘I appreciate this.’

  Early fifties, Mace reckoned, big shouldered and fit, probably still worked a schedule at some gym. He walked over and shook Judge Telman Visser’s outstretched hand.

  ‘I wanted you to have a look at this photograph,’ the judge said, ‘well, it’s not a single photograph, a series, but its intention is singular. I have bought it. Probably to hang in my chambers. I buy most of my art from Michael, you know the gallery owner, Michael Stevenson’ – not a question, although Mace shook his head, the judge hardly pausing – ‘including, you’ll be pleased to hear, a pair of hands he acquired for me, fine porcelain hands clasped in anguish. The detail is exquisite, so poignant. But you know this. You probably saw them being made.’

  Mace nodded, unsure what the judge meant.

  ‘Your wife is good. Very good. I’d like to meet her sometime.’

  Mace eased, realising the judge was talking about the hands from Oumou’s obsessive period when the bowls and the plates and the jugs, the useful things, were abandoned for hundreds of hands. Hands modelled on his own hands. His hands she’d held against her breasts, and said, ‘These hands I did not think I would feel on my body again.’ Said that after he’d been kidnapped by Sheemina February’s hitman, Mikey Rheeder. ‘Every hour I thought you were dead.’ The hands that she turned into artworks. As she did with so much of the pain in her life.

  ‘You did some homework,’ said Mace, his eyes still on the judge.

  Judge Visser smiled. ‘I do that,’ he said. ‘I like to be sure of the facts. But don’t worry, Mr Bishop, I don’t know how many traffic fines you have outstanding and I don’t know how much money you owe on your house. Although I do know it is very modern, very angular, at least from the street.’