Payback - A Cape Town thriller (42 page)

A grey dawn, cold and dripping. The city below ghosting tall buildings through the mist; the sea beyond invisible. Cloud down on Lion’s Head and Devil’s Peak and veiling the face of the mountain. And in the kitchens of the houses and flats, lights on for breakfast; a smell of porridge and of toast, the raised voices of children and the television news. People leaving for their offices, kissing goodbye.

‘Please,’ said Oumou to Pylon, ‘you must find him.’ He held her hands, stared at the sadness in her brown eyes. The sadness that Mace was always on about, as if her eyes had seen too much.

For a couple of hours after midnight Pylon had driven the
neighbourhood
streets: round Gardens, Vredehoek, even into Higgovale. Nada, nix, nothing. Which was the weird thing about this, he felt. The car was nearby. Mace was nearby. The hell was Mace up to? The hell was going on?

The rest of the night they’d watched television, the five of them in the lounge drinking coffee, Pylon putting calls through to Mace’s cellphone every half hour. The girls slept, Pumla most of the time, Christa intermittently. Pylon thought he might have dozed off in the chair but never for long, and each time he jerked awake, Oumou and Treasure were staring at the television. Twice he phoned emergency services, drew negatives. The same with the cops at a range of police stations through the city and down the peninsula. Twice, too, the tracker company. ‘He moves, we’ll call you,’ the operator said.

In the grey dawn Pylon said to Oumou, ‘He’s not moved by eight, half past eight then the tracking company’s got a mobile scanner which’ll find the car. A couple of hours that’s all it’ll take.’

‘Oui,’ she said. ‘But why must we wait? They could have done this in the night.’

‘They couldn’t,’ said Pylon. ‘They’ve only got one mobile. That was somewhere else last night. They said to me they’ll have it here by half past eight. If Mace hasn’t shown up.’

Oumou looked at the kitchen clock: half past seven. ‘We are wasting time,’ she said. ‘There is trouble for Mace.’

Pylon turned away from her and back again. ‘What can I do Oumou? I don’t know what else to do until they get the scanner here.’

‘It is too late at half past eight,’ she said.

‘Phone them, tell them yourself.’

She did. They told her the other job had taken longer than they thought, it was about tennish they expected the scanner back.

‘It is too late,’ she said. ‘You must get here sooner.’

‘Lady,’ the operator said, ‘that’s how long it takes to drive it here, all right, from where it is now. The guy’s on his way. Full speed.’

Oumou looked at Pylon, no tears in her eyes but the anguish in them stung him. ‘Please,’ she said. ‘You must find him.’

When Pylon got to the office there was a CD in the letter box. No packaging, no address, no instructions. It came up on his laptop as a video clip and there’s Mace against a white background but the focus too tight to give anything away, Mace mouthing something. At the end a voice saying, ‘You want him back, I’ll do a swap: I get his diamonds, you get him.’

Not a long clip, enough to see Mace’s lips moving but not make out the words. The voice no one’s Pylon recognised. Cape Town white accent, although you got black and coloured guys with that accent too depending on the schools they got into. Which narrowed things down to about a couple of hundred thousand males.

Pylon thought probably not the sort of thing to show Oumou. At least not yet. Probably best not to tell her even. The thing being that Mace and his car might be well separated. The car dumped in a parking garage. In the tracking company’s block there being about four he could think of. He called them, suggested they start with the parking garages.

‘When the mobile gets here,’ said the operator.

Pylon said, ‘I’m not hassling. I know your problems, I’m just making a suggestion.’

He hung up, went back to the disc in his laptop. ‘You want him back, I’ll do a swap: I get his diamonds, you get him.’ Played that over and over.

The thing here being the diamonds. Weren’t too many knew about that deal. He wrote down the names on a notepad: Mo Siq, Stones Mkize, Mace’s broker. Brokers being brokers could let out this sort of information. Stones wouldn’t. Mo was dead. Pylon drew a circle round Mo’s name, wondering if there was a link in his killing to Mace’s disappearance. Remembering someone else who knew about the deal was Sheemina February. Remembering the call Mace had got from her before they flew to Angola. While they were waiting in the departure lounge. Wondering if that had something to do with this. Getting a bad sense. The sort that made him look out the window on a pissing-down Dunkley Square at a scattering of empty cars, no one staking him out. Made him think maybe he needed to get someone in, do a sweep of the office for bugs. A thought he put on hold, better now to let the cameraman play his game, no suspicions raised.

Instead Pylon called for the telephone records, his contacts wanting to know why he couldn’t wait a couple of days to the end of the month when he’d get the detailed billing anyhow. A special favour, he replied, and like urgent, guys, this morning would be good.

He spoke to Francisco. ‘Wanna know my sense here, pal,’ Francisco said, ‘my sense is the same as with Isabella. I try to get connectivity with her hour after hour. Into the second day I know she’s dead. I don’t sleep, I don’t eat until I get the call from Mace confirming. Then I howl. Make noises like I don’t believe a human can make. That’s disconcerting. People don’t answer their cellphones, it means they can’t. They’re dead or dying I’d say.’

Thanks for that, Pylon thought, hanging up, the phone ringing immediately. Gonsalves.

‘He pitched up yet?’ said the cop.

‘Not a trace.’

‘The case gets postponed ‘n he still disappears!’

‘This’s not about the case. This’s about something else.’

‘So report a missing person?’

Pylon snorted. ‘They’ll tell me wait forty-eight hours.’

‘That’s bullshit,’ said Gonsalves. ‘Some desk jockey gives you that kinda crap, call me.’

He didn’t take the advice, instead worked up another scenario: a hijacking. A long long shot: someone had an order on a red Alfa Spider vintage 1970s or whatever and some cool dudes pulled it in the rain. Stored it in a garage nearby. Stranger things had happened. Oupa K didn’t think so.

‘Chief, chief,’ Oupa K told Pylon in English, ‘listen to me chief’ - switching to Xhosa. ‘Nobody’s gonna want that car south of Lusaka. Not to drive around. The person wants that car’s gonna put it in a garage.’

‘Exactly.’

‘There’s what,’ said Oupa K back in English, ‘about two red Spiders in the city? Three tops. If I’m gonna roll that type of car I’d find out the owners. Settle on the one’s likely to cause the least shit.’

Pylon in vernacular said if he got any whispers to call.

‘Only a mlungu,’ said Oupa K. ‘No big deal.’

At 9:45 Pylon heard from the tracking company that they’d have the mobile scanner on the job in an hour, hour and a half max. At 10:30 they called to say they were starting the search, doing the Gardens section of the block first.

‘No,’ said Pylon. ‘The parking garages first. And you find it, you do nothing except call me. Nobody touches it before me.’

‘Nobody’s gonna want to,’ said the operator.

Half an hour later Pylon collected Ducky Donald for the press conference. Ducky less concerned about Mace than how the press was going to angle the story.

‘Bones, ashes, what’s the difference?’ he said to Pylon in the car. ‘They didn’t have cremation those days, or there wouldn’t have been bones to start with, know what I’m saying? Pity, when you think about it. Ashes are better. Ashes are less emotional. ‘Cos ashes can be anything: wood, plants, humans. When they’re ashes there’s no telling them apart. Not like a skeleton. That looks like us. We know it’s us. These people with pointy teeth look at skulls with pointy teeth and they go, ancestor. You can’t look at ashes in the same way. So there’s that. I can’t see her problem with how I wanna handle the ashes. Makes them part of the building. One of the ways you can look at this is that the building’s their memorial. A living monument. There’s a point, wouldn’t you think?’

Pylon didn’t respond.

‘What I called in that article a contribution to the urban fabric of the city, takes on a second meaning under the circumstances.’ He half-turned towards Pylon. ‘You see the thing we’re talking about isn’t bones or ashes, it’s dignity. Recognition. Acknowledgement.’

‘When you’re finished building you could be a PR,’ said Pylon.

Ducky beamed. ‘There’s this possibility.’

The press conference was full, maybe ten, twelve journalists: newspapers, radio, even television. Pylon stood back at the entrance to the foyer, Ducky Donald’s safety in this situation a low priority. At the table up front Sheemina February, the reverend, the imam, the public relations-types. Ducky’s lawyers huddled with their client, no doubt trying to talk down the developer’s gung-ho spiel.

Pylon stood listening, not listening, heard Ducky get defensive, the imam and the priest lashing him about the fire, Sheemina February alert and stern through it, coming in with the business that among those bones could have been those of her ancestors. Her slave ancestors that built the city. Pylon heard that as his phone rang: Oumou. He ducked away to take the call.

He told her the tracking company had started the search, been on it over an hour, he expected to hear from them at any time.

‘I know,’ she said, ‘I have called the operator. Perhaps you should be with them?’

‘I can’t,’ said Pylon, ‘nor will that make them go any faster. One thing, the car’s not been left in a parking garage. It has to be on private property.’

‘That is not better,’ said Oumou. ‘Then someone has caught him.’

‘I don’t know,’ said Pylon. ‘I don’t know what’s going on.’ He heard her gasp and disconnect. He dialled Treasure.

‘She’s okay,’ said Treasure. ‘Where’re you?’

He told her the Slave Lodge and she said, ‘It’s the waiting, the not knowing. Can’t you do something?’

‘There’s a call holding,’ he said, ‘I have to go.’

The call was from the tracking company. They’d found the house. A long-wheelbase Isuzu in the driveway, no sign of the Spider. Had to be in the garage, the technician said. Pylon took down the address, thinking, that’s familiar. Thinking, Save me Jesus, Mace’s old address, the Victorian, the house Sheemina February bought. Looked at her holding forth to the journalists, and walked out. Didn’t seem like anyone intended hanging an arson charge on Ducky either. Guy had more luck than was good for him. Or anyone else. Pylon put an SMS through to Ducky Donald to get a lift home with his lawyer.