Nowhere

by Roger Smith

  TEN

  Mmutle left Zondi sitting in his office at the Nêrens cop shop, waiting, staring at a photograph on the desk: a hefty woman who could only be the captain’s wife, wearing a pink cake of a dress, looking at the camera like it was going to assault her.

  After the business the night before in Rosetown Zondi had repaired alone to his foul hotel room and sought solace in the bottle of White Horse he’d procured from the bar, and he was suffering the consequences.

  At last Mmutle returned carrying a cup of tea in a saucer. He closed the door, crossed to his desk and sat down, eyeballing Zondi, taking forever to stir the tea, the spoon scraping and clinking against the china. He lifted the cup and slurped, and Zondi’s nerves screamed like somebody had taken a rasp to them.

  “You witnessed the events of last night?” Mmutle said.

  “Yes, I did.”

  “You saw Detective Assegaai pistol-whip Sergeant Phofu and break his nose?”

  “Yes. But only after Sergeant Phofu drew on him.”

  Mmutle stared at him. “You saw this?”

  “As I said.”

  “You saw the sergeant threaten Assegaai with the pistol?”

  Zondi sighed. “Again, yes.”

  “The sergeant denies this.”

  “He would.”

  “He also denies sexually assaulting the girl.”

  “He would.”

  “You understand that it’s the girl’s word against the sergeant’s.”

  “Yes.”

  “And you stand by what you have told me?”

  “Yes.”

  “You’ll sign a statement to that effect?”

  “Yes.” Zondi swallowed bile. “Where’s Detective Assegaai?”

  “Suspended. He’s on his way down to Kimberley where he’ll appear before a review board.”

  Mmutle sucked on his tea again and Zondi closed his eyes, feeling a migraine coming on. When he opened his eyes the captain was staring at him. The cop sat back and made a little steeple of his fingers and placed them under his flat nose.

  He regarded Zondi for a while, then dropped his hands and said, “Why are you still here? In Nêrens?”

  “My work isn’t done.”

  “Mnnn.” The captain tapped the tea spoon against his cup. “You know we had some fancy investigator down here a year or so ago? Sent by the Ministry or whoever, to sniff around for corruption?”

  Zondi said nothing, staring at the prune-colored man.

  “They found him behind the wheel of his BMW out on the road to Holpoort. Somebody had put a bullet in his head.”

  “Are we done?” Zondi said.

  “For now.” Mmutle slurped his tea, looking through the dusty blinds at the sparse morning traffic on the main road.

  Zondi went out into the sun and blinked, his head aching. He crossed to a 7-Eleven and bought a box of aspirin and dry swallowed two of the pills as he stood at the cash register, his mouth tasting like he’d put his tongue to a battery terminal.

  ELEVEN

  The drone of an engine brought Sue Kruger out of her delirium. Her eyes were swollen almost shut and it took an effort of will to part the lids far enough to squint over the sand, alive with heat, and watch the truck swim up out of the haze.

  Sue heard the door slap shut and saw the skinny man step down and walk toward her. She allowed her eyes to close and lay without moving.

  - - -

  When Leon saw the blonde bitch lying there on the sand, her skin red and blistered, her face swollen, he thought she was dead and his heart sank.

  Fuck. He’d had such plans . . .

  He hurried toward her, scuffing through the dirt, already sweating after just a minute in the sun, imagining how it had been for her.

  He stopped and looked at her and said, “Hey?”

  She didn’t respond.

  He stepped closer.

  “Hey!”

  Nothing. He wandered even closer, looking for a sign of her ribs moving as she inhaled. Still nothing.

  Then her leg reared up and her foot caught him in the balls and he grabbed at himself and cursed and folded in and her other leg scythed beneath him and toppled him to the sand.

  - - -

  Sue, her tethered arms useless had only her feet and legs to work with and when she felled him she bicycled her legs and kicked him in the face and he cursed and threw himself out of range and sat on his ass and held onto his balls with one hand and his nose with the other.

  “You cunt,” he said.

  He stood and backed away and she knew that had been her one chance and she’d blown it.

  - - -

  Leon caught his breath and explored his nose with his forefinger. It was bleeding but not broken.

  He found a laugh. The bitch had fuckin stones you had to give her that, and, happily, she wasn’t dead.

  He shrugged himself free of the backpack and opened it, removing a bottle of water, still chilled from the night in the freezer of his refrigerator, moisture dripping from the plastic as it unthawed.

  Leon held up the bottle.

  “Want some?” She said nothing, just looked at him through those eyes swollen like a prizefighter’s. “Come on? You must be thirsty?”

  - - -

  Sue saw the bottle in his hand, saw the beads of moisture on the plastic, as beautiful as some product shot in an over-art-directed Evian commercial, and every cell in her body screamed for water.

  Leon uncapped the bottle—she heard the crack of the seal breaking—and eyed her as he drank long and hard, sighing with satisfaction as he took the bottleneck from his lips, wiping his mouth on the back of his hand.

  “C’mon,” he said, “you must need a drink?”

  She clamped down on her teeth to stop a plea from escaping her lips.

  Her only hope was to win his respect.

  To force him to see her as a human being.

  Maybe, then, she could talk him into releasing her.

  He stepped closer, approaching her from above her tethered arms, keeping well clear of her legs.

  She craned her neck to watch him and he squatted and stared down at her, holding the bottle out, shaking it, and she could hear the slosh of the liquid inside.

  “How about it? A little drinkee?”

  She couldn’t stop her swollen tongue from darting between her cracked lips.

  He laughed. “Knew it!” he said and held the bottle closer.

  Oh god, she thought, he is human after all.

  Then he tipped the bottle and poured a stream of water onto the sand, the parched earth soaking it up. She screamed and yanked at her tethers, lifting her head, forcing her mouth toward the water, the tendons in her neck corded, the liquid close enough for a drop or two to rebound from the sand and land on her cracked lips, a torture too profound to describe.

  Leon laughed and took another drink and capped the bottle, stowing it in the backpack.

  Sue dropped her head and sobbed.

  She heard him scratching in the pack and he brought out an iPhone attached to some kind of gadget.

  “Know what this is?” Sue said nothing. “I mean you know that this is an iPhone, but this,” he said, nodding at the green rectangle, “is a solar cell. I’ve got it hooked up to the phone’s charger.”

  He walked a little way from her and kneeled down, positioning the phone against a small rock so that it pointed her way, fiddled until he was satisfied. Then he built a little mound of sand around the base of the phone to hold it steady.

  He delved again into the pack and brought out a cardboard shoe box with a rectangular hole cut into one side. He placed the box over the phone, sheltering it from the sun, the hole allowing the phone’s camera to see her.

  “You probably know this, being a big YouTuber and all, but there’s a really nifty little iPhone app that allows you to shoot time-lapse video. I’ve set it to take one frame every minute which means around twenty seconds of footage per day—it’s a clever little fucker and knows not to shoot
when it’s dark. So, the phone camera’s not going anywhere and neither are you—unless you believe in heaven or hell, that is. For the record, I don’t. Anyway, it’ll just sit here and click away and watch you die and swell and burst and decompose. Probably the vultures’ll help things along. Hope so, that’d be very cool to see. And somewhere down the road, maybe in a month, I’ll be able to take the video and edit it, set it to some sounds. Maybe you could give me some advice, hey? You’ve done this shit before?”

  Sue didn’t speak.

  He shrugged. “Not into collaborating, huh? Okay, that’s cool. I can respect that. I’m thinking something New Agey, maybe. Like what’s that chick's name? Enya? Or else classical. I’m not big into classics, but it could work. Anyway, that’s later, so there’s time for that. What do you think?”

  Again she didn’t speak.

  “Bit too much to take in? To absorb? Must be. But, hey, think of this as your big art thing, man. The performance piece to end all fuckin performance pieces. And, I promise you, I’ll get it out there. Not YouTube, of course. They’d just block it and it would be too risky for me. Nah, I’m talking Dark Web. Those sites that are hidden and secret and safe, but where the real connoisseurs go to find the shit they like. Don’t you worry, this performance will be appreciated.”

  He crouched behind the box and reached in and jabbed at the phone and she heard the sound of its camera’s shutter.

  “Okay, there we go. I’m not gonna give you direction or anything, since you’re kinda the pro. All I can say is: just be yourself.”

  He laughed and tipped her a little salute and shrugged on the pack and walked back to his truck and drove away.

  And Sue knew that she was dead.

  TWELVE

  Crossing the lobby of the hotel, intending to stay in his room until his headache cleared, Zondi caught the whiff of stale beer and old tobacco wafting from the bar and walked inside.

  A wizened yellow woman in a torn housecoat piloted a dirty mop across the floor, ignoring Zondi.

  Behind the counter the bartender, on his knees as if in prayer, a crease of butt crack on display, was transferring longnecks of beer from a crate into the refrigerator, the chiming glass spiking Zondi’s headache.

  “We’re closed,” the barkeep said.

  “I just want to ask you a question,” Zondi said.

  “What?” the man asked as he worked.

  “I’m looking for that big farmer who was in here the other night. The guy with the beard. Alwyn somebody.”

  “Why?”

  “I just want to talk to him.”

  “He’s not a farmer. He’s Alwyn Van Staaden and he owns the Sasol station down the road.”

  Zondi spied one of the sweating beer bottles in the fridge and he knew it would do more for his whiskey headache than any analgesic.

  “Give me a beer, man,” he said.

  “Told you. We’re closed.”

  Zondi put a twenty on the counter and the bartender shook his head and grunted himself to his feet, the pink knees that protruded from his shorts bearing striped indentations from the slatted wooden lattice behind the bar. He uncapped a bottle of Black Label and slid it across to Zondi, white foam bubbling from the neck.

  Zondi took the beer and went and sat near the dart board, in the darkest corner of the room, smears on the linoleum indicating that the woman with the mop had already done her work here. He sipped from the bottle, the sour, chemical taste unpleasant to his tongue. But, by the time he’d drunk half the beer, the pincers of the headache had eased, and his nerves, rawer than he liked them to be, were sheathed again by the little balm of alcohol.

  Zondi carried the half-empty bottle and placed it on the counter and walked out past the woman who was leaning on the mop and staring at the dirty floor as if it had something to tell her.

  THIRTEEN

  “So, Joe, the press conference is set for 3:00 PM at your hotel,” Steve Bungu said, taking the M5 exit at the Koeberg interchange, just driving, going nowhere in particular, but preferring to have this conversation in his car where he knew there were no other ears listening.

  “Okay,” Louw said staring out the window, munching on something.

  “What’s that you’re always chewing?” Bungu said, turning onto Voortrekker Road.

  “Nicorettes.”

  “They work?”

  “Well, I haven’t had a smoke in two years.”

  “But you’re still getting nicotine into your system all this time, so what’s the point?”

  “At least my lungs are clean.”

  “You couldn’t just go cold turkey? Throw the fuckin things away?”

  Louw shook his graying blonde hair. “No. Too weak. Smoking’s my one big vice. And eating.”

  “Don’t think eating’s a vice.”

  “Ja, maybe not. But wasn’t gluttony a sin? In the Bible?”

  “I’m not much for the Bible, me.”

  Louw didn’t reply, chewing, watching Voortrekker go by, used car lots and escort agencies.

  “You okay?” Bungu asked.

  “Ja, why?”

  “You seem preoccupied.”

  “Preoccupied?”

  “Ja.”

  Louw raised a sour laugh. “I’m about to lie through my teeth to the whole bloody world this afternoon, so maybe I’m entitled to be a little fuckin preoccupied.”

  “I’m not going to have any hassles with you, am I?”

  “What do you mean, hassles?”

  “With what you’re going to say later?”

  “No.”

  “So run it by me,” Bungu said.

  “Run what by you?”

  “Run by me what you’re going to say.”

  “You know what I’m going to say.”

  “Humor me, okay?”

  Louw sighed. “I’m going to say that I’ve reviewed everything and can state with confidence that nothing has been hidden from me and the events of that night were as were reported. The bodyguard killed the president’s wife and attacked the president and was then himself killed by one of the president’s close protection personnel. Satisfied?”

  “Yes. But are you ready for questions from the left field?” Bungu said.

  “I don’t see any bloody left field. It’s cut and dried. Finish and klaar.”

  “Okay, then.”

  Louw looked at him. “You’re not going to be there, are you?”

  “No. That wouldn’t be a good idea. I have a certain profile.”

  “Ja. You’re a fuckin maniac.”

  Bungu laughed. “But I’ll check in with you after.”

  “What are you going to do about my son?” Louw asked.

  “Nothing. All the evidence against him will disappear.” He felt Louw’s eyes on him. “Something troubling you?”

  “No.”

  “Because if there is, now’s the time to spit it out.”

  “No. I just want this shit done with and to go home.”

  “Okay, then.”

  “Pull over,” Louw said.

  “Why?”

  “This is Maitland Cemetery.”

  “So?”

  “So I want to go and visit my wife.”

  Bungu stopped the SUV outside the sprawling graveyard and Louw stepped down.

  “Want me to wait for you?” Bungu said.

  “No. I’ll get a taxi.”

  “Okay. Don’t be late.”

  Louw slammed the door and walked away, hunching a little against the gale that roared in over the mountain.

  Bungu caught a sour whiff of the crematorium carried in on the wind and he put the car into gear and got the hell out of there.

  FOURTEEN

  Zondi, back in the little lilac bug, bumped into the gas station and parked under a thorn tree. The pumps were rusted and what had once been a minimart was shuttered and closed. A faded poster for a performance by an Afrikaans singer—an alcoholic wife-beater who sang sentimental songs about little blond children and ox wagons—was
gummed to a broken window, flapping in the hot breeze that came off the desert, bringing with it grit that had Zondi blinking as he walked across to the workshop.

  A black man in coveralls was washing a truck and Zondi asked him where to find Van Staaden. The worker gave him a once-over and then went into the dim workshop, talking to a man who looked like he was being swallowed by the hood of an old Mercedes.

  Zondi heard “Boss Alwyn,” a couple of times and a few grunts from the man under the hood.

  Sue Kruger’s car was parked outside the workshop. The slashed tires had been replaced, the windows repaired and the obscene graffiti sprayed over. The new paint didn’t quite match the old, but she’d be able to drive it back to Cape Town without attracting attention.

  Or maybe that was her thing—attention?

  “Ja?”

  Zondi turned and looked up at the bearded man: impressed again at just how huge he was. Van Staaden wiped his hands on a cloth. He wore a khaki shirt, legs as thick as oaks protruding from khaki shorts, ending in knee-high socks and lace-up shoes.

  “Can we talk?” Zondi said.

  “We are talking.”

  Zondi looked at the couple of black men who were eavesdropping as they jacked up a car.

  “Don’t worry about them,” Van Staaden said and raised his voice: “Get on with your fuckin work!” The men bent their heads to their task.

  Zondi walked farther out into the sun and the big man lumbered after him.

  “I went to Soetwater,” Zondi said.

  “Ja?”

  “Ja.”

  “And?”

  “I want a word with Mrs. Maritz.”

  “She’s down in Upington.”

  “You know where?”

  “I’ve got an address to forward post. It’s in my office.”

  “She’s not local? Amanda Maritz?”

  “No. She was brought in by those bloody do-gooders at Witsand.” He saw Zondi’s confusion. “The old aunties go to all the towns for miles around and they find Afrikaans girls who are in trouble. Whores basically. Drug addicts. They bring them back to Witsand and try and straighten them out. Fallen women they call them.”