Signals. They’re speaking to one another.
There was another sound too, a soft rattling that was oddly familiar. She frowned, trying to identify the noise. It reminded her of Ben and Nico, in the lounge at home, playing their never ending game—
Then a voice spoke softly from a cage not far away. “Three ones—and a six—and a five.”
Dice! They were throwing dice, but how could they read the numbers? They must be feeling them, somehow.
“Keeping the ones.” A young man’s voice. “Throwing the six and the five again.”
“Trying for a full house?” said another voice, from the other side of the corridor, this one an older woman.
“No,” said the man. “I got one already.”
“Oh, right.”
The dice rattled again. “Ah. Another one and a five. No good to me.”
“My turn then.”
Somebody breathed almost in Gia’s ear, startling her so much she nearly dropped the mop. “Hi, baby.” Then a long, sniffing breath. “Hmm, sweetheart you do smell good. What’s your name, honey-bun?”
Gia felt the hair on her arms rise and felt sure the creature in the cage could hear her heart pounding. Remembering the sergeant’s advice, she did not say anything. The sound of the dice came again and the woman said, “Two and a four, no, sorry, that’s a five. And another five and a three and a five again. I’m going to go with fives, so that’s...fifteen. Got that?”
“You guys ever get tired of that fucking game?” said somebody from further down the row.
“Well,” the young man’s voice came out of the dark. “It sure beats playing ‘I spy’. That kind of got tired in a hurry. Okay, maybe I’ll get it this time.”
Mopping and rinsing, Gia worked her way down the corridor, backing slowly, not wanting to seem as if she was trying to put distance between herself and that sniffing, breathing thing that had spoken to her. She wanted to take her stunner out of its holster, to arm it and hear its reassuring whine, but then they’d know she was scared.
Just ignore them. Just keep going.
“Hey,” said the breathy voice again, a growl creeping into it now. “Don’t be like that, sweetie. So unfriendly...”
“Oh, dry up, Connor,” said a woman from further down. Gia paused at the sound. Lizzie. That’s Lizzie speaking.
She mopped until she reached the cage where she judged Lizzie’s voice had come from. Then she tried to see inside it, but the torch lit up nothing past the bars. “Lizzie?” she said, softly.
Something moved near the back, a rustle and then a scrape as of boots on concrete. Suddenly, she was there, Lizzie, close enough to touch, if the bars had not been in the way. The girl studied Gia, blinking a little in the torchlight.
“Gia,” she said. “Thought I might see you round.”
“Hi, Lizzie.” Gia hesitated. “Are you okay?” The question was idiotic, inadequate, but she didn’t know what else to say.
Lizzie gave a snort-laugh. “Yeah, I’m okay. Although they really worked me over that last time. That stuff they knocked me out with gave me real babbelaas. My head feels like it’s going to come right off.”
“I’m sorry,” said Gia. “I don’t— I wish—”
“No, it’s okay. What could you do?”
Gia shrugged, but couldn’t think of anything to say.
“Listen,” said Lizzie. “Do you have any idea, when they’ll be, you know—when I’m due for another session? More of these experiments?”
“I don’t know. They don’t really tell me that kind of thing.”
“You one of these new baby-cops, aren’t you. One of Whitey’s lot?”
Whitey, Gia realised, must mean Captain Witbooi. She nodded.
“Thought so. Although—” Lizzie took in a deep breath and sniffed once, then twice. “You don’t seem like you belong here. There’s crook scent on you, if you don’t mind me saying so.”
“Really?” Gia faltered. She’d completely forgotten the purpose of these Special Branch werewolves: to smell out the use of magic. But what was Lizzie smelling? Gia wasn’t crook; the Special Branch tests had proved that she had no magical abilities. But maybe Lizzie could somehow smell her mother on her, or Brakman, or any of the magicals she’d so recently been interacting with.
Lizzie expelled her breath. “Ja. It’s not you yourself, but something about you. I doubt any of these other dead-noses here would even notice. But I could smell it, from the moment I walked into that—” She drew her shoulders up and ran her hands over her arms as though she were cold. “That place with the chair.”
“Oh, really?” Gia cast about for a safer topic of conversation. “You always here in the midnight row when you’re—um—human?”
“Mostly. We get moved into the twilight row for a bit in the middle of our hair-free phase.” Lizzie grinned and Gia tried to ignore the fact that her teeth seemed a little longer and sharper than they should be. “I don’t really mind it that much.”
They stood, looking at each other through the bars. Then Lizzie ducked her head and spoke so softly that Gia had to strain to hear her. “Do you think— Is there any way you could, you know. Spring me out of here?”
The question caught Gia by surprise. “Uh— I’m sorry, Lizzie. I wish I could, but I don’t think so. I don’t even know where the keys are kept and they’ll never let me have them.”
“Okay, it’s cool, don’t worry about it then.” Lizzie swallowed and licked her lips. “But there’s another way you can help me, if you want.” She was staring at Gia now. “If you get a chance, you’ll kill me, won’t you?”
Gia felt the shock of the words like a slap. She shook her head, unwilling to understand. “I’m sorry?”
“Gia,” Lizzie’s fingers hooked into the bars that separated them. “I don’t think I can go back to that chair again, see. I just—can’t. And there’s no other way out.” The words were threading out between her lips, a mere whisper. “I know they’ve got ways to do it here. Quick and painless. That’s what they do to the old ones, when their noses get blunt and they’re no more use. It will happen to me anyway, eventually, so why not now?”
“I—uh—” Then Gia nearly yelped with fright as her radio crackled to life.
“Grobbelaar?” It was Controller Pienaar, his voice very loud in the dark. “Move your butt, cadet, it’s twenty to eleven and the patrol is waiting for you.”
-oOo-
The truck was already rumbling and the driver far from pleased at the delay.
“Get a move on, already,” he snapped as Gia waited for another constable to climb into the cab ahead of her. She buckled herself into the passenger seat closest to the window. The cab was enormous, big enough to hold her, the driver and two constables. It felt very different from being in a car—much higher off the ground, for one thing. She could look down on the world outside the windscreen and the people and cars out there in the parking lot looked somehow unimportant and unthreatening. It felt good and Gia tried to put the disquieting conversation she’d just had out of her mind. She didn’t want to think about Lizzie, locked in the dark. Just for a while, she wanted to enjoy herself, get away from all the horrors she’d seen in Valkenberg.
“Everybody else loaded?” said the man next to the driver.
“Yes, sir,” said the constable who sat next to Gia. “We’ve got Controller Samuels and that black werewolf, what’s his name again? Zulu or Tsotsi or something like that.”
“Bandiet,” said the man who, Gia guessed from the constable’s respectful manner, must be the officer in command. He was a stocky man with a blond moustache. He didn’t seem to be in the best of tempers. “Well,” he said now. “That’s okay, then. We may need a bit of muscle on this trip, and Samuels knows his stuff.” He glanced at Gia and frowned.
“This is Cadet Grobbelaar, sir,” said the constable. “Cadet, this is Warrant Officer Lategan, and I’m Constable Robertson. You’ve been told the deal, right?”
“I’m sorry, sir?�
�� said Gia.
“Stay out of our way,” said Lategan, without looking at her.
“Yes, sir.”
“Just do as you’re told and don’t try anything clever.” Lategan put a hand on the driver’s arm. “Hold it, Beanie. Something’s up.”
The truck drew to a halt again and Gia saw what had attracted Lategan’s attention. Somebody was hurrying towards them.
“Roll down your window, cadet,” said Lategan and Gia, after a panicky moment, found the right button. The man outside jumped up onto the footrest so that he could look in the passenger side window. It was only then that Gia recognised him. He was dressed differently—his leather jacket had been replaced by a slithery silver shirt and he wore an oversized chequered cap set at a rakish angle, but it was definitely the man she’d seen meeting the doctor. The man who’d said such strange things about spore guns and explosives.
“Mornings, Lategan,” he said with a broad smile. “Got a message from the man in charge.”
“Yes, Mandla,” said Lategan heavily. “What’s it this time?”
“You going to the Werdmuller today?” Mandla adjusted the angle of his cap. “Maybe have a chat with our favourite dealer in not-quite-legal goods. What’s his name. Seepie?”
“We’ll visit Mr Soapstone, yes,” said Lategan.
“That’s right, that’s right, that’s what I heard,” said Mandla. “Now, you might not know this, but we’ve got some sensitive stuff going on right now. It’s possible you might hear something about some special friends of mine in your journeys today. Some people I’ve been...working with, you check?”
“Just spit it out, Mandla. You don’t want me to arrest your contacts and mess up an undercover job. Give me some descriptions so I know who to leave alone.”
“Bingo.” Mandla winked. “Okay. Two of them. I don’t know what they are, but one is big and hairy, got him a really grand old-school bush of dreadlocks, likes to dress in surfer gear. Name of Billy. The other is this little skinny dude, lots of white hair. Goes by Spyker. Got that? And they’ve got some kind of weird dog-thing too. If you come across anything to do with them, no need to file a report or we’ll end up arresting my chommies before they can do what they’re supposed to do.”
“And the less I know about that the better,” said Lategan. “Okay, Mandla, I got it. We’ll leave hairy and skinny alone, as long as they don’t go and do something we can’t ignore. Right?”
“You the man,” said Mandla and stepped down.
The truck moved again, slowed at the boom gate then they were rumbling down Liesbeek Parkway. It felt remarkably good to be out in the familiar world again. The real world. Back in the real world. The day was overcast and a fine rain was mizzling down so that the driver put the windscreen wipers on a slow beat. There was a fair amount of traffic, but it felt quite different from driving at normal car level. It seemed to Gia that the truck could roll over the other vehicles without even noticing.
“What was all that about?” Robertson asked Lategan, who shrugged irritably.
“Doctor Scubbe’s little games,” he said. “Politics. That guy does all kinds of undercover jobs for the doctor. Gets the Belle Gente to show their hand a bit.”
“I heard Mandla’s a spy, but I thought that was just a joke. He seems so—” Robertson laughed. “Unsubtle.”
“I know what you mean,” said Lategan. “He acts like a real chop, but better not get on his bad side. He’s a slippery guy. If you ask me, that stuff is pretty dodgy. He gets some random magical to pretend to be Belle Gente agents, then blows them up so that Luxulo Langa can put out a press release that we’re being ‘effective in the war against enemy aliens’ or some such bullshit.”
“Entrapment,” said Robertson.
Lategan nodded. “Plants weapons on them, that kind of thing. The real Belle Gente are far too subtle to show their hand like that. Or when they do, it’s a bloody disaster and they run rings around us and make us look like fools, which is the last thing those politicians want right now. We’re the shiny boys, right? And especially now, with the referendum coming up, Mr Langa will want to put the frighteners on everybody. Get them to vote the way he wants them to.”
“And this is Doctor Scubbe’s game? I thought that it was Captain Witbooi who was Luxulo’s man.”
“Not any more, from what I hear,” said Lategan. “The doctor’s edging him out. He’s Langa’s bright-eyed boy at the moment.” Lategan jutted his jaw out. “Bloody politics. If only they’d leave us alone to do our jobs.”
Gia listened to this with growing interest. It made sense of the snatches of conversation she’d overheard already. Hadn’t Mandla said something about “giving them spore-bombs” then discussed some kind of explosive? But Constable Robertson was speaking to her now.
“These daytime patrols are mostly just making our presence felt,” he said. “Making sure people see we’re around, making them feel safe, see? Occasionally we get called out to deal with a situation, but a lot of the time we just do the rounds. It’s amazing how much difference it makes, just being seen out there.”
The truck slowed and stopped at an intersection. All around was the bustle of everyday life, the things Gia had taken for granted, but that now seemed vivid and strange. People in colourful, everyday clothes. People chatting while they waited for the lights to change. Walking their dogs. Doing their shopping.
Every lamppost was festooned with posters shouting about one or the other of the referendum options. It was hard to believe that these things had kept going on while she was stuck there in Valkenberg. Normal life. It felt oddly dreamlike.
The light turned green and the truck pulled off again.
“The place we’re going to, you might have heard about it. Werdmuller Centre?” said Robertson.
“I think so,” said Gia. “It’s that big concrete place near Cavendish Square?”
“It’s a real pain in the arse, is what it is,” said Robertson. “People have been trying to get that place demolished for years now, but it’s got some kind of historical status so it’s still standing. Bloody eyesore, if you ask me. It’s been boarded up for more than a decade, but that doesn’t mean it’s empty. Attracts the worst kind of low-life scum. The guy we’re going to see, Mr Soapstone, he’s got a shop in there. Sells all kinds of stuff under the counter. Lots of it legal. Some of it, not so much. Magical equipment, weapons, you name it, but if we shut him down, he’ll just go undercover, work out of our sight, see? So we don’t press him too hard. Pop in for a chat every now and then, to see what he can tell us. That’s the kind of thing you need to learn about if you want to become a cop. Things aren’t always straightforward.”
Lategan gave a short bark of laughter at this. “And that’s the truth.”
-oOo-
The Werdmuller Centre was just as Gia remembered it. Concrete walls bulking up above the temporary fencing that blocked access to it from the street. The pavement in front was crowded with vendors selling toy texters, scarves, caps, shoes, handbags and a multitude of other cheap, brightly coloured things.
The truck simply stopped in Main Road, forcing the traffic to find ways around it. Gia jumped down onto the pavement and watched as the others got out. Apart from Roberson and Lategan, there were also four constables who’d been riding in the back, all padded out with bulletproof vests. Last came the controller and his werewolf, a glossy black beast with a broad head and heavy jaws that made it look more like a pitbull than a wolf.
That must be Bandiet. By now, Gia knew enough about weres to know that this one had only been lightly drugged. His eyes were a little dazed, but he seemed alert enough.
“Where to first?” said Robertson.
“Let’s pay a visit to Mr Pranesh,” said Lategan.
Gia looked about her curiously. It was strange, being in this familiar environment in the uniform of a Special Branch cadet. She felt intensely conspicuous, but she soon saw that nobody looked directly at the patrol. People gave them sidelong glances or
turned to stare once they were past. All at once she was glad that her friends would still be at school. How horrible it would be to run into Sonella, Fatima, or Ben in this situation.
The patrol walked unhurriedly towards a gap in the sidings that had been put up around the Werdmuller Centre. A shop nestled there, shabby but cheerful. Hand-painted letters announced that this was Mr Pranesh’s Pet Palace. It's a place she’d seen often, but never paid much attention to.
Inside, Gia looked around with pleasure. One wall had rows of cages almost up to the ceiling, in which a multitude of birds hopped and chirped—budgies, finches, canaries, small parrots and other birds she did not recognise. Another wall held large tanks, full of tropical fish. On the floor nearby stood several crates in which rabbits scuffed their bedding and elsewhere a hamster drove its wheel so hard that it made its whole cage rattle. The air was heavy with the sweet scent of straw and birdseed.
“Can I help you gentlemen?” A grey-haired man stood behind the counter, leaning on his fingertips. “Oh, Captain Lategan, I didn’t see you there. Good morning to you, captain.”
“Morning, Pranesh,” said Lategan. “Got anything interesting for us?”
A parrot, perched on top of a nearby cage, turned a beady yellow eye on Lategan and let out a whistle. “Salaam Aleikum!” it said, in a quacking voice. “Good morning, goeie môre, sawubona, ngubani igama lakho,” and ended with another whistle. Lategan reached out a finger and for a moment Gia wondered if the bird would bite him. But instead it bowed its head, eyes narrowed in anticipation of pleasure.
“Not really, captain,” said Mr Pranesh. His gaze flicked to the entrance. Controller Samuels was just stepping inside. “Oh, would it be possible for the—uh—creature to wait outside?”
Lategan, who was scratching the parrot’s head, did not even look up. “Got something to hide, Pranesh? Worried the were will sniff out some ghost dust among fish food here?”
“Ek skop jou gat, jou dom donner,” said the parrot throatily. “Stoute kabouter.”
“Oh, no, no of course not, captain,” said Pranesh with a frightened smile. “No, you know I don’t sell anything like that here.”
Wolf Logic Page 19
