Stolen Lives (21 page)

“Mummy, what …?”

Clamping a hand over the mouthpiece, with an angry frown at her daughter and a finger of the other hand on her lips in warning, praying that the caller hadn’t heard her small voice, Eunice stood up. Stumbling and nearly falling over the chair in her haste, she turned and hurried out of the dining room.

“What do you mean?” she asked again. She could hear the tremor in her own voice.

“In the box on your gate. The blue one.”

Oh, Lord, no.

It was fully dark, but the street lamp near her house offered some light. Peering out of the lounge window, she could see the shadowy outline of the post box attached to her gatepost. He knew what colour it was. That meant Lindiwe had told him where she lived.

Eunice squinted into the shadows, but couldn’t see anyone at the gate, or any cars on the road outside. Even so, he had been here. She gripped the phone harder, with a sudden surge of anger. How dare Lindiwe give this man her home address.

“You’ll find your payment there, too,” the man said in the same dry, emotionless tone.

Then he hung up.

“Mummy?” the young girl said again, her voice anxious.

“Stay where you are, darling,” Eunice said, trying her best to sound reassuring. She hurried back into the dining room and pulled the curtains tightly closed.

Taking a deep breath, she opened the front door and stepped onto the short path that led to the gate. A low gate, useless against intruders, which was why Eunice had installed industrial-grade burglar bars on all the windows, and a sliding security door on the front and back entrances.

A rustle in the flowerbed made her jump and she spun towards the sound, stifling a cry. It was only the neighbour’s cat, who used the soft earth as a toilet and, Eunice was sure, was the reason why nothing grew well there.

For once, she didn’t shoo the cat away. He stared at her, eyes bright in the dim light, looking oddly disappointed that tonight she wasn’t playing her usual game with him.

A fat, brown manila envelope was protruding from the post box. She wrestled it out, hearing a small ripping noise as its side caught on the narrow, steel rim.

The envelope was heavy and strangely bulky. Holding it tightly, Eunice hurried back towards the house. She slid the Trellidor across the doorway, listening to the reassuring snick as the double lock sprang into place. Then she slammed the front door, realising her breathing sounded as if she’d just run round the block.

She couldn’t open the envelope in front of her daughter—children notice, children talk—so she took it into the kitchen. Glancing into the dining room as she passed, she saw the little girl was focused on her textbook and chewing her pencil.

She slid a knife under the envelope flap and slit it open, then carefully removed the smaller, slimmer window envelope with the photos inside.

Eunice raised her head when she heard a soft noise coming from the direction of her bedroom. The damn cat must have sneaked inside while her back was turned. Well, he’d have to stay where he was for now, because she was too busy to chase him round the house and throw him out.

At the bottom of the manila envelope, she found a small, black plastic bag containing an oddly shaped object.

Was this the payment? There certainly wasn’t any cash inside.

Eunice felt her heart speed up again as she took the bag out, because her first crazy thought was that it was drugs, that the man had paid her with a chunk of cocaine or a few baggies of dagga, that it was a setup and the drugs squad was now closing in on her house.

She slid her hand into the bag and touched the strange object. It felt cool and soft and oddly familiar.

Rethinking her approach, she upended the bag onto the kitchen counter.

Two severed fingers tumbled out and rolled onto the Formica, curled up like the legs of a dead house spider.

The skin was black, the nails neatly manicured. Protruding from one of the raw ends, Eunice could see a jagged piece of bone. With a lurch, she realised she recognised the enormous rings on each one. They were real diamonds, her friend had told her proudly. Valuable diamond rings.

Oh Jesus, he’d cut off Lindiwe’s fingers.

Open-mouthed, panting hard, Eunice felt the scream building up inside her. A scream of pure horror, from somewhere deep inside her soul.

Somewhere along its journey, the sound morphed into a low, dreadful groan. Eunice turned away and leaned over the kitchen sink, gagging and spitting as the contents of her stomach rose up in her throat. Dear God, somehow she was going to have to pick up those fingers again and put them back in the bag, or risk her little one seeing them.

The thought of touching them made her retch again and she grasped the steel rim of the sink for support, gasping for air.

After a while, she turned on the tap and splashed her face with cold water. Now that her panic had subsided, although she was still terrified, she felt able to think more clearly.

Eunice wasn’t stupid. She’d had a contingency plan in place for a long time now, to be put into action if the worst happened, even though she hadn’t had any idea what the worst could be.

Now she knew.

Despite the potential consequences, Eunice wasn’t going to cooperate. First, and most importantly, she was going to get in her car and drive herself and her daughter somewhere safe. Her ex-husband lived on the other side of Pretoria, in Moreleta Park, and they were still on good terms. Good enough terms, anyway, that she knew he would be prepared to take them in for the night.

Then she was going to call the police and blow the whistle on the syndicate. She’d lose her job, but if she gave the police the names of the other syndicate members, she hoped she’d avoid a lengthy prison sentence.

She was going to turn state witness. She was going to ask the police to protect her and her daughter, even if it meant spending the rest of her life under house arrest.

“Sweetie?” She called her daughter, surprised at how steady her voice sounded. “I need you to pack up your homework and put some clothes in a bag. And your toothbrush, and your jammies. We’re going to see Daddy.”

She wrapped a tea towel around her right hand. Then, half-closing her eyes and gritting her teeth, she managed to poke Lindiwe’s severed fingers back into their little bag.

Eunice hurried down the short passage to her bedroom to pack an overnight bag for herself. She still felt sick, and she was shaking so badly she hoped she would be able to drive.

She would just have to manage. If she did, then in an hour they would be safe. And although her life was about to change for the worse, in a way it would be a relief not to have to keep on looking over her shoulder at work anymore.

Her bedroom was dark. As Eunice fumbled for the light switch, the shadows in the corner of the room seemed to shift. The next moment, a cold hand yanked her forward and another clamped itself roughly over her mouth. Her legs turned to jelly as she felt the prick of a sharp blade at her neck. As she tried to twist away from the pain, pinned by her invisible captor, she heard a fast, rough, snuffling noise that she suddenly realised she was making as she fought for air.

“Have you forgotten you have a job to do, Eunice?” The man’s voice hissed in her ear. His breath smelled rank, rotten. “One last job, before you run away.”

Eunice froze, unable to reply, terrified to do so much as nod.

“Your little girl would not want you to let me down. I promise you that.”

Then he coughed. His wiry body convulsed against hers and the action drove the blade deeper into her skin. Something warm and liquid landed on Eunice’s sleeve and for a horror-filled moment she thought he’d sliced an artery open, sentencing her to a swift and bloody death.

Then, as he turned her roughly round and pushed her down the passage ahead of him, she saw another crimson gob on her shoulder. Had her captor coughed up the blood?

That thought stopped her in her tracks, but he shoved her forward again.

With the blade jabbing at her throat and his fingers crushing her lips against her teeth, Eunice stumbled towards the brightly lit dining room where she knew her child would be busy packing her homework away. All she could think, through her haze of panic, was that, if he allowed her to speak again, she was going to start begging.

Don’t hurt my little girl. I will do whatever you want me to. And, dear God, please don’t use your knife on me.

26

Jade hadn’t been into Midrand for a while, so she was surprised to see a huge concrete flyover had sprung up, seemingly overnight, next to the main road. David told her it was part of the new Gautrain network.

Heads & Tails was in a small shopping centre just opposite the entrance to the Randjesfontein racehorse-training complex. Jade guessed that its location was only too convenient for the trainers and owners in the male-dominated world of racing.

A massive sign was lit up by pink and blue neon lights, the ampersand cleverly manipulated to look like the silhouette of a naked woman bending over. A security guard manned the gateway, and beyond it a large car park was already three-quarters full.

Three Mercedes Benz minibuses were parked next to the gate, all with tinted windows. Two of them were custom-painted in red and gold with the naked female logo on the side and the legend “Heads & Tails—Mobile Entertainment.”

The third was plain white. Waiting for a paint job, perhaps? Or, more probably, used for those events where it would not be wise to arrive in a vehicle loudly advertising exotic dancers.

David parked, muttering something about people milking cash cows.

They made their way to the entrance, following a man who walked rather furtively inside after glancing behind him as if expecting people to be looking on in disapproval.

At the door a blank-faced receptionist dressed in bunny ears and a low-cut black jacket asked them for a surprisingly hefty cover charge.

“That’ll keep the riff-raff out,” David said.

Looking at the bouncer standing with his back to the wall, Jade guessed he’d do an even better job of keeping unwanted guests away. The man’s shoulders were so massive and bull-like that she thought he must have to turn sideways to get through doorways. He was dressed in black from head to toe, with a shaven head, a bleached goatee and narrowed, aggressive eyes.

She insisted on paying for both of them. After all, she wasn’t exactly short of cash, thanks to Pamela.

They walked through a metal detector and were patted down: David by a large, unsmiling man and Jade by an equally humourless woman. Then a blonde hostess dressed in six-inch stiletto-heeled boots, shiny tights and matching red hotpants and bikini top escorted them down the well-lit passage.

“Welcome to Heads & Tails,” she said. Her tone was friendly and her smile welcoming, but her greeting was directed only at David. Her eyes flicked over Jade as if she didn’t exist. From the thick sound of her accent, Jade thought she might recently have taken the bus from one of the small Afrikaans-speaking towns on the platteland. A pretty girl, rebelling against the confines of her sheltered rural life and leaving to seek her fortune here in the big, bad city of gold.

The main seating area was huge, with ranks of tables arranged in a giant semi-circle around a raised stage. The tables were occupied mostly by men, and a surprising proportion of them were on their own.

The lighting was subdued in a dull, reddish, slightly shabby way, and a Beyoncé song was playing at a volume just too loud to allow for comfortable conversation. The table the blonde hostess showed them to, flanked by two leather armchairs, was small but sturdy. Thick wooden legs, a firm top, not a hint of a wobble. Jade could see why, because next door to them a long-haired woman in black lacy underwear and impossibly high heels was preparing for a table dance. At least Jade supposed that was why a uniformed cleaning lady had removed all the bottles and glasses, and was spraying the table’s surface with disinfectant.

In the meantime, the dancer sat on the customer’s lap with her arms around his neck.

“Isn’t there a no-touching rule in these places?” she asked David.

“Applies to the customers only, I guess,” he said. “Not the dancers. They need to work the guys, get them excited, persuade them to shell out for the extras.”

Jade watched the woman step onto the table and crouch open-legged, slowly easing her bra straps off her shoulder, rotating her hips from side to side in time to the music.

The man on the sofa was spellbound. He was so intent on the dancer that Jade was sure he wouldn’t notice if the building started falling down.

“You’re not supposed to watch another table’s show,” David shouted, pulling his chair closer to hers. “It’s considered bad etiquette.”

“How do you know?” Jade retorted. “I thought you’d never been to one of these places.”

David grinned. “I told you I’d done raids back in Durban. Some of the customers used to get quite chatty while I was taking down their details.”

A waitress in a similar black outfit and bunny ears handed them menus. Jade went for a sparkling water and David, after some deliberation, ordered a Coke.

Boy, did they know how to party.

“What else did the customers tell you?” Jade asked.

“They vehemently denied having sex with any of the ladies.”

“Were they telling the truth? Or was it a case of protesting too much?”

“In some of the places I raided back then, it definitely wasn’t the truth. But this strip club doesn’t look like it’s set up for sex on the side. I don’t know how it used to be, but I guess Terence must have cleaned up his act after his arrest.”

“How would you know the difference?”

“Look around you.”

Jade surveyed the gigantic room. The dancer next door to them was completely naked now. She was sitting on the table with her legs splayed, an ankle on each of her customer’s shoulders. He seemed to be enjoying the view. On the big stage three dancers in skimpy red and gold outfits were performing a sequence that, predictably enough, involved taking their clothes off. To her left was the entrance to a passage. According to the neon sign above it, this was the Tunnel of Pleasure.