Killer Country

by Mike Nicol

  Mace pushed up at the pain. The men kicking him down, kicking him while he slithered leopard-crawl under the Spider, the exhaust pipe burning across his back. When the kicks stopped, Mace heard the men laughing, heard them running off onto the mountain. For a moment he lay there, eyes closed, smelling hot oil and burnt flesh.

  Mace, more troubled than angry, sat on the edge of the bath, showered, a towel wrapped round his waist, Oumou swabbing an antiseptic solution into his cuts and scratches.

  ‘It’s the Klett bullshit,’ he said. ‘Has to be. Got me freaked out. It’s scary.’ He paused. ‘It’s why I fell for the trick. I’m not thinking straight. I’m distracted. Two arsehole rubbishes pull a stunt like that and I fall for it. The story I warn everyone about. I don’t even consider this is what’s happening to me’ – flinching as Oumou smeared ointment on the burn across his back.

  ‘I tell people, the gate gets stuck someone’s jammed the track. All it takes is a stone. So sit tight. Drive off. Don’t get out the car. What do I do? I get out of the car and some useless piece of shit puts a gun in my ear. Eina.’ He pulled back.

  Oumou squeezed his arm. ‘You must keep still.’

  ‘Being sliced’s not as sore.’

  ‘Of course because it is macho.’ She dabbed at the cut behind his ear. ‘This one is deeper. Maybe you need a doctor for a stitch?’

  ‘Not at this time of night. Pinch it closed. Tape it.’

  ‘This is macho.’

  ‘Hey,’ he turned and slid his hands round her, linking his fingers above the swell of her bum. ‘What’s with the lip?’ Opened her wrap and caressed her belly with his cheeks, the rasp of stubble loud in his ear.

  Oumou took his head in her hands. ‘Mon copain,’ she said, ‘so many times I have seen you dripping with your blood. Always it frightens me.’

  Mace stood, pulled loose the fold of the wrap above Oumou’s breasts, and held her.

  ‘This is like it was in Malitia,’ she said. ‘Any time we could be dead. Even our home is not safe.’

  Mace knew it, knew there were no words to reassure her differently. Knew he’d been suckered like a tourist. Mr Security made out a prick. He held Oumou to quiet a surge of anger and stepped out of the bath, walking her to the bed, the two of them falling in a tangle of limbs.

  34

  In the night the wind came up. Dawn, the city woke to a cloth low on the mountain, grit in the air, an incessant howl across the houses and through the streets.

  Mace took an early walk on the scrub slopes opposite his house, leaning into the wind that poured over Devil’s Peak, scoured the amphitheatre. Behind a rock not two hundred metres away he found his wallet, driving licence, credit cards scattered about. Small compensation.

  He crouched there out of the wind, sheltered by the rock. Noticed then the bottle neck that’d been a white pipe. Stubbed out cigarette butts. A half-jack of brandy.

  They’d sat there he realised and watched him. Watched him crawl out from under the car, remove the stone, drive into the garage. Watched the gates roll closed, the garage door come down. Two men armed with guns and a knife watching his house from this rock.

  Two men who’d crushed Mandrax tablets into a stash of dagga, lit the white pipe, passed it between them while Oumou was cleaning his cuts and bruises. Mace touched the tenderness on his cheek where he’d been hit. Grimaced at the pain.

  All that time they’d sat here: finished the pipe, drunk a half of brandy, smoked cigarettes. Sitting here in the dark above the city like all was right with the world.

  Two more thugs wild on the mountain. Like the mugger rolling tourists up on the plateau. Fourteen hits in two weeks. Someday vigilantes would do something about it. Hurl the bastard down Skeleton Gorge. Shoot him. Stash his body in an old mine shaft. Time was coming someone would start justice for the people.

  He looked down at his house: he could see Christa swimming lengths, the movement of Oumou in the kitchen. Maybe the men had been here for days, watching. Mace clenched the wallet in his fist. It was all too easy: the trusting carelessness of people’s suburban lives.

  He shifted his gaze to the city and out across the northern urban sprawl. In the hospital lay Rudi Klett shot in the head. Somewhere was the man who’d shot him. And somewhere, probably under a bridge or a flyover, were the two men with his cellphone and his small change. Luckily they’d missed the P8 Rudi Klett had thought would take care of all contenders.

  Mace sighed. Sometimes it didn’t matter how careful you’d been, you hadn’t been careful enough.

  He walked down the slope, entered the house through the garage. In the kitchen Oumou was talking on the landline mobile.

  ‘One moment, he is here,’ she said, covering the mouthpiece. To Mace she said, ‘He says he is a judge. Yesterday he phoned as well.’

  Mace took the phone.

  ‘You’re a difficult man to get hold of,’ said Judge Telman Visser. ‘I have left voice messages and smses on your cellphone. I have left messages with your daughter and your wife and your colleague. I have expressed an urgency. But you haven’t phoned me back.’

  ‘My cellphone was stolen,’ said Mace. ‘I was mugged.’

  ‘Hardly a good advert. Were you hurt?’

  ‘Cuts and bruises.’

  ‘I’m sorry.’ The judge paused. ‘The thing is this, Mr Bishop. I need to confirm your visit to the farm.’

  ‘I’ll have to get back to you on that,’ said Mace.

  ‘You will be able to go?’

  ‘I’m not sure.’

  The judge hesitated. ‘I see. I thought it was arranged…’

  ‘Ninety-five per cent.’

  ‘And now?’

  ‘Maybe sixty per cent.’ Mace grinned at a frowning Oumou, enjoying stringing out the judge.

  ‘Mr Bishop, please, it needs to be this weekend for a number of reasons. I can’t postpone it. It has become even more urgent.’

  ‘Judge,’ said Mace. ‘I’ll get back to you. This afternoon.’

  ‘Please, Mr Bishop,’ said the judge. ‘I’m counting on you.’

  Mace wondered what the reasons were. What since Saturday had ratcheted the trip up a notch? But he had other things on his mind: Rudi Klett being primary.

  After the judge had rung off, Mace phoned the hospital. No change in Rudi Klett’s condition: critical but stable. He got hold of Pylon next, his partner already driving into Dunkley Square.

  ‘We’ve got to talk,’ said Pylon.

  ‘Later,’ said Mace. ‘I need an hour’s swim.’

  ‘Uh uh. No, Mace. We must talk first. This is major stuff. Like there’s something going on.’

  Mace walked onto the patio outside the kitchen, watched his daughter climb out of the pool, lithe, supple, snatching off her swimming cap, shaking free her hair. When’d she changed from the child who’d been chubbier?

  ‘Give me half an hour,’ he said to Pylon, turned back to Oumou in the kitchen. ‘Last night,’ he said, ‘after we’d spoken, you went to Treasure to fetch Christa didn’t you?’

  ‘Oui.’ Oumou bit the end off a croissant. ‘It took half an hour that was all.’ She poured Mace coffee, held out a plate of croissants. ‘By quarter past eight we were at home.’

  ‘It’s dark now by quarter past eight,’ said Mace. ‘They could’ve got you.’

  ‘Who is this?’ Oumou swallowed, licked the butteriness off her fingers.

  Mace looked at her. ‘The men who got me. They could’ve got you and Christa.’

  Oumou gave a Gallic shrug. ‘This is true.’

  ‘Last night you weren’t so relaxed.’

  ‘What can we do? Tell me? What is another way? From Malitia we run to Cape Town for the safety?’ She came over to Mace, took his hand. ‘There is nowhere to run now. This is how people live in the world. In many of the places in the world. We can live here with it.’

  ‘I don’t know,’ said Mace. He looked over at Christa drying herself on the edge of the pool. Unconcerned about the whip of t
he wind.

  Oumou let go of his hand. ‘All that we can do is to be careful.’

  Famous last words, thought Mace. Said, ‘Sometimes it doesn’t help.’

  He dropped Christa off at school, Christa wanting to know all the way there about the bruise on his cheek, the plaster keeping closed the slice on his neck. At first Mace joked about walking into doors, shaving nicks, even slipping on a cake of soap in the shower.

  Christa said, ‘Yeah, right’ – scratching about in her bag, not paying him that much attention.

  ‘You don’t believe me?’

  She shook her head, her hair swirling.

  ‘The truth?’

  ‘Papa,’ she said, ‘your truth’ll be another story. I know.’

  ‘I was mugged.’

  Christa stopped the bag search. Turned to her father. ‘In Berlin?’

  Mace loved the look of concern. The frown, the clear worry in her eyes. He opted for more of the truth. ‘At our front gate, last night, by two men.’

  She gasped. ‘With a knife?’

  ‘And a gun. But it’s okay, alright, C. Just a random thing because I should’ve known. When the gate doesn’t slide you know there’s a problem. I should’ve realised there was a problem. I wasn’t thinking. So, a wake-up call for all of us.’ He reached over and squeezed her arm. ‘No panic.’

  Mace pulled up at the school but Christa made no move to get out of the car. ‘I want to learn to shoot a gun,’ she said.

  ‘That’s what it’s come to,’ Mace said to Pylon ten minutes later, sitting opposite him at the long table in what they half-jokingly called their boardroom. He’d set the context, described his mugging. ‘She wants a gun. My daughter wants to shoot. Shooting means killing.’

  ‘She wouldn’t’ve thought about that.’

  ‘Maybe. Maybe not.’

  ‘A kid says that after what you’ve told her, she hasn’t thought about it. She hasn’t had a chance to think about it. She’s just saying it. Pumla says things like that all the time. One day she saw my gun, the first thing she said was “Cool, can I shoot it?” Treasure goes ballistic. What’m I doing bringing guns into the house. Letting Pumla see it. Whadda, whadda, whadda. This is my job, I say. I have to carry a gun. Nothing new here but Treasure plays the gun-free card. Fewer guns, less crime. I don’t go near that argument. Pumla’s listening to all this. A couple of hours later she comes to me, she wants to see the gun. I show it to her on the promise she doesn’t tell her mother. Afterwards, that’s it, the gun doesn’t come up again. I’m talking about probably a year ago when this happened. What I’m saying is kids don’t think. Stuff happens in the moment and then it’s gone.’

  ‘I don’t know,’ said Mace. ‘It’s more like they store it away.’

  Pylon slid a copy of the morning paper across the table to Mace, folded back to the page three story on Rudi Klett, named as Wolfgang Schneider. Not a long story but enough to let the shooter know that his job needed finishing.

  ‘It’s going to cause some trouble somewhere,’ said Pylon.

  ‘They might sit it out.’

  ‘I don’t think so. What I think,’ said Pylon, ‘is that Obed Chocho’s riding this. I’ve been putting the pieces together.’

  Mace gazed out the window at the small yard behind the house, Tami, sheltering from the wind in a corner taking a smoke break. ‘I thought Tami didn’t smoke.’

  ‘She doesn’t,’ said Pylon, leaning back to look. When he saw her smoking he opened the window. ‘That’ll kill you.’

  ‘I’m giving up,’ Tami said.

  ‘By smoking?’

  ‘My last day. Okay?’

  Pylon closed the window. ‘I better get Treasure onto her.’ He turned back to Mace. ‘Look.’ Then started at the Popo/Lindiwe affair: how Popo must’ve told Obed Chocho about Rudi Klett causing Obed Chocho to order up a hit on the German to secure the development contract also do some government people a favour then thinking why stop at that when he could also get Popo out of his life, and, by accident or design it didn’t matter which, took out Lindiwe too. Which would have repercussions with Lindiwe’s family who wouldn’t read it as anything other than a jealous husband’s revenge and want compensation. But Obed Chocho was a man of resources and would handle that too. It all stood to reason. Why else, said Pylon, had the Smits defected to the Chocho camp? Why had the police closed the file on the Popo/Lindiwe killing? Why was a .22 gun used in both hits if it wasn’t by the same shooter? That calibre not generally what your street-hired gunmen favoured.

  ‘Doesn’t explain,’ said Mace, ‘how a hitman would’ve known who Rudi Klett was?’

  ‘Maybe he didn’t have to,’ said Pylon. ‘Maybe all he had to know was what you looked like.’

  ‘Assuming all along that you knew where I’d gone to in the world. And who was coming back with me.’

  ‘Assuming,’ said Pylon. ‘That’s the missing bit.’ He stood and went to the window. Tami was no longer in the back yard. ‘I heard too Obed Chocho’s out on compassionate parole. He’s laughing. His bid’ll go through the process faster than the pages can be stamped.’

  Mace thought, so much for that million-buck nest egg.

  ‘What stinks is I can’t see how to touch him.’

  ‘Get his cellphone records.’

  ‘I thought about that.’

  ‘And?’

  ‘It’s happening.’

  ‘Watch Rudi Klett.’

  ‘I’m going to do that,’ said Pylon. ‘Right now. Coming?’

  Mace shook his head. ‘I’ve got things to do. Get a new cellphone. Go swimming.’

  35

  Obed Chocho smacked the newspaper with the flat of his hand. Held it in Spitz’s face. Spitz giving the full eye to Sheemina February. The woman as stunning as her voice. Sheemina February staring back at him unfazed.

  ‘He is not dead.’

  Spitz took the newspaper and read the report about Wolfgang Schneider’s critical condition.

  ‘He is going to be dead in a short while.’

  ‘He is,’ said Obed Chocho. ‘Because you’re going back to make sure.’

  ‘It would be better to wait.’

  ‘Wait!’ Obed Chocho looked from Sheemina February to Manga and back to Spitz. Sheemina February might’ve smiled, that slight derisive twitch of her lips. Manga seemed to be sucking a lemon by the sour purse of his lips. Spitz, though, Spitz wasn’t troubled, dropping the newspaper onto a chair as if there was no big deal about this stuff-up. As if he wasn’t talking to the husband of the woman he’d shot. Obed Chocho burst out again. ‘Wait? What d’you mean, wait?’

  Spitz took a step back from Obed Chocho’s spit range. ‘Later today, otherwise tomorrow, he will die.’

  ‘Oh, mighty fine, my brother. You can lie here drinking my beer while you wait. Take a break. Maybe go for a swim. Ask the servants to bring out a plate of chicken nuggets for lunch. Mighty fine. Enjoy yourself, mighty fine.’

  Spitz wondered why he’d let himself be dragged into this. With a type like Obed Chocho. Someone as unhinged as this man. Sweating even when there was no heat to sweat in. When the wind was blowing crazily.

  ‘This afternoon,’ said Obed Chocho, ‘if he is still alive I want him dead.’

  ‘That will be difficult,’ said Spitz, catching Manga’s worried frown as he said it, and Sheemina February’s dancing eyes. ‘It is against my methods.’

  ‘Hey, my brother!’ said Obed Chocho. ‘Do I hear you correctly? It is against your methods. To pull a trigger, that is your methods? So, mighty fine, that is what you will do.’

  ‘No.’ Spitz shook his head. ‘Not in a hospital. There are too many dangers.’

  ‘You’re afraid?’

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘The great Spitz-the-Trigger is afraid?’

  ‘Let me explain. In that situation if I am caught, you are caught,’ said Spitz. ‘The first thing I will tell the police is Obed Chocho has ordered the job.’

  Obed Chocho barked
a laugh. ‘Mighty fine. Your word over mine, my brother?’

  ‘I have some evidence.’

  ‘What evidence?’

  ‘I have telephone calls recorded.’

  ‘That wasn’t a good idea, Spitz,’ said Sheemina February.

  Spitz focused on her. ‘There is always an insurance policy. You will have one too I am sure.’

  Manga shifted his weight from foot to foot and Spitz noticed the movement but kept his eyes on Sheemina February. He felt she was still playing with him. Enjoying the game if the amusement on her face meant anything.

  ‘Alright,’ said Spitz. ‘At four o’clock I will phone the hospital. If the man is not dead we will take some action.’

  ‘It better happen,’ said Obed Chocho. ‘Otherwise no payment, my brother.’

  ‘And for Saturday?’ said Manga, his voice sounding like a little boy’s.

  ‘One thing at a time,’ said Sheemina February.

  At five o’clock Spitz and Manga drove into the hospital parking lot. Manga found a bay two rows back from the entrance with the view across the Flats to the mountains of False Bay. Salt hazing the distance. He lowered the chair back a few notches, and switched on the radio to some larney-voiced sports jockey gabbing about cricket. Manga hated cricket.

  ‘All yours, captain,’ he said. ‘Work your magic.’

  ‘What you have to understand,’ said Spitz, not moving, ‘is why we are staying at his house.’

  ‘Why’s that?’ Manga turned off the know-all on the radio.

  ‘Because he is worried he will be killed. He is afraid his wife’s family will send someone to shoot him. We are there as his bodyguards.’

  Manga considered this. ‘Nah ways. Which of us is gonna stop a bullet for him? Not me, captain.’

  ‘And not me either.’

  ‘So?’

  ‘I am saying this is the way his mind thinks.’

  ‘Isn’t gonna happen. Someone wants to shoot the shit outta Obed Chocho I’ll let them.’