Strong Medicine (23 page)

CHAPTER FIFTY-SEVEN

The door swung slowly open and a swathe of moonlight cut through the darkness of the room. The naked form on the bed lay still, ropes around her wrist and ankles. The old man stepped into the room, and his shadow fell across the girl’s frail body. She shivered and pulled away from him as far as she could in her bonds. He swung the door closed behind him, and crossed to the bed.

I hardly breathed, completely exposed now that the door was closed. The only cover I had came from the shadows that pooled in the corners of the room.

Lindsey’s breath wheezed in and out of her nostrils. Her eyes peeled wide open. The old man reached over the bed and I heard a box of matches rattle in his hand. The man struck a match, the white flare of light settled into an orange flame, leaving halos in my eyes. He leaned forward and held the match to a candle stub on a small shelf above the bed.

“You spat out the gag?” The old man bent down and picked up the wad of cloth I’d thrown onto the floor, he scrunched it up into a small ball. He placed one hand on Lindsey’s jaw and forced her mouth open.

“No! No! Sto—” Her words were cut off as he shoved the gag into her mouth.

“And you pulled your blindfold off. You have been naughty today.”

I lifted the wooden stool slowly, making sure I stayed out of his line of sight as I did. I would only have one chance to get this right. It was an old kitchen stool. Decades of use had scoured the varnish off the seat. My fingers curled around the back legs as I raised the chair above my head.

Two quick steps had me within striking distance of Bongani Zulu. I could see the fine grey curls of his hair, and a sheen of sweat beaded the back of his neck.

I swung the chair as hard as I could. All the rage and fear and hatred I had felt in the past two weeks boiled out of my chest, down my arms and into the old man’s back. The chair struck with a crack and he fell to his knees, and then collapsed on the floor, writhing and moaning threats.

I pulled the loosely wound ropes from Lindsey and heaved her up into my arms.

“Let’s go, baby girl.” The door clanged against the wall as I kicked it open.

“Help!” Zulu’s voice came from inside the building as I carried Lindsey out into the cold night air. She shivered and pressed her body close to me. The yard was empty. A few lights burned in the house, but the garden was clear all the way to the front gate. That was my best bet. There was no way I could lift Lindsey over the wall on my own. It was dangerous, more exposed, but my only choice.

I adjusted Lindsey’s weight in my arms and sprinted toward the front gate as fast as I could.

“Nyala! Help!” The old man’s voice rang across the yard like a church bell.

The front door of the house swung open as I crossed the dry lawn. Fifty meters from the gate, a huge shape came out of the house, moving like a hyena stalking a wounded impala. He crossed the driveway, passed the fountain and the old Mazda, and angled towards me. He moved so fast.

“Erin! Stop! You can’t get away. Don’t make this worse for yourself.”

I recognized that voice. I’d spoken to him in the middle of the night, on a half-dozen occasions in the police station. It was Detective Nyala.

My legs faltered. I’d known it all along. Nyala was a bent bastard, doing Bongani Zulu’s dirty work. But seeing him here, realizing for sure that he had known all along where Lindsey was, turned my guts to fire.

“Fuck you, Nyala!” I screamed over my shoulder and pumped my legs even harder.

Forty meters to the gate now, but Nyala was closing in.

Lindsey squirmed and whined in my arms. My shoulders screamed with the weight of her. She’d started out lighter than a pillow, now she weighed a thousand tons. I wouldn’t make it to the gate before I dropped her.

Thirty meters. My legs screamed for relief. I sucked air into my lungs through gritted teeth. Nyala was right behind me now. The brittle grass crunched beneath his heavy boots. I dared not look behind me. The whites of Lindsey’s eyes showed me all I needed to know. She peered over my shoulder, her lips trembling and moving in an almost-silent chant of “Faster, faster, faster.”

I couldn’t go any faster.

We never made it to twenty meters.

A huge weight crashed into me from behind. Arms like tree-trunks wrapped around me and sent me sprawling to the floor. Lindsey screamed as she tumbled from my embrace and struck the hard earth. A loud snap, followed by shrieks of agony. Had her arm broken again?

Before I could find my feet, Nyala was on top of me. His fists pounded my nose once, twice. He hoisted me over one shoulder and dragged Lindsey up by one arm, then threw her over the other shoulder.

Her face was screwed up in agony, tears and snot ran down her cheeks and soaked into her hair.

I had failed her. My baby. We were so close to freedom and now everything was worse. Her arm was broken again. Her chest and shoulders were covered in fresh scratches.

I shook my head to try and clear some of the fog from behind my eyes. All I got for my trouble was a blinding pain behind my eyes and a gout of blood flowing from my nose.

CHAPTER FIFTY-EIGHT

Detective Nyala ducked, turned sideways, and we were inside the outbuilding again. He dropped Lindsey onto the bed in a squeal of hinges and a shriek of pain.

“Tie her to the chair,” Bongani Zulu said.

The world shifted and I dropped into the wooden chair. Two pairs of hands looped ropes around my legs, pulled my arms around the back of the chair, tightened knots on my knees and elbows until the ropes bit at my skin through the thin clothes I was wearing.

“Leave us now.” Zulu stood over me and waved Nyala out of the room.

“But Makulu, what if something happens?” Nyala said.

“Nothing will happen to me. Bring me my knives from the study, then go to Priscilla and ask her if you can help clean the kitchen.”

“Yes, sir.”

When we were alone, Bongani Zulu leaned in close to me, his eyes locked with mine, and he exhaled whiskey-flavored breath as he smiled a smile that didn’t reach his eyes. “I’m going to have to kill you both now. But I’m not going to let good meat go to waste.”

“Fuck you.” I spat a wad of spit into his face that hit him squarely between his dead, black eyes. “You’re not going to get away with this. The cops will stop you.”

He straightened slowly, stretching his back as he went, his left hand pressed into the small of his back. “The cops? I own the cops.”

He turned to Lindsey next. She was curled up in a ball on the bare mattress, sobbing over her broken arm.

“You broke my toy,” he said, casting me a hurt look. “She was so much fun. Oh well, there’s always another one.”

“She’s not a toy, she’s my daughter!”

“And yet, I’ve been playing with her for weeks.”

The door swung open and the bodyguard came back in with a leather-wrapped bundle in one hand and a fresh candle in the other. Bongani took both and dismissed the man again. He fished a keyring out of his pocket and locked the door behind the bodyguard.

I watched as he lit the fresh candle from the stub on the shelf. It wasn’t in a holder or anything, just melted into a puddle on the wood. The old man jammed the new candle in next to its companion. Then he pried the old one off the shelf and held it between us.

“You know, I didn’t always like hurting people,” he said. The candle flame danced in his eyes. “I guess I’ve changed.”

The candle hovered over Lindsey’s naked body. Zulu moved it back and forth, over her legs, her exposed ribs, and her cheek. He tilted it ever so slowly. The flame still burned straight up but the pool of wax at the base of the wick started to draw together, like raindrops collecting on the tip of a leaf, preparing to fall.

“Don’t hurt her, please,” I said. “She’s suffered enough already. Do it to me. Do it to me.”

He looked longingly at Lindsey, and then set the candle down on the shelf again. He unwrapped the leather bundle and raised a carving knife, he flicked the blade with the side of his thumb and it sung with the feel of flesh.

“Where shall I start?” He stepped closer to me, inspecting me, his fingers brushed loose strands of hair behind my ears and I bit back the urge to scream.

“The breasts and the vagina are always the best sellers. I’ll take them last once you’ve screamed a lot. Fingers and hands are good too. But for you, I’ll start with the lips. You have such pretty lips. Just like your daughter’s.”

The knife blade was cold where he pressed it against my cheek. He pulled my bottom lip out with salty fingers. “Try not to jerk around too much, but scream as much as you like.”

A line of fire opened up below my lip, like a ladder directly to the pits of hell. Then the blade pulled away. Blood poured out of the wound in my lip and filled the room with the smell of copper and autumn leaves.

Zulu’s knife clattered to the floor and he reached up behind himself, turning slowly as he did to reveal the wooden handle of a carving knife protruding from his back.

He reached for the naked stick figure standing behind him, his hands like claws as he scratched at the air between them. Lindsey raised another knife and slashed at him, carving a pink and red gash into his cheek. Blood poured from the wound, splattering the floor, and her.

Zulu collapsed on the concrete floor between us and Lindsey looked up at me. Her eyes were on fire, and tears fell from her chin.

“Untie me baby! Quick!”

She stumbled over to me, avoiding the twitching figure on the floor. Her fingers scrabbled at the ropes, every movement agony. She could barely use her bandaged right hand and her left one was almost useless on the end of her broken forearm. The bones pressed against the skin. Her breath came in ragged gasps behind me.

In front of me Bongani Zulu lay dying. Such a powerful man, defeated by a child. My child. My beautiful, brave, baby girl.

Finally the ropes dropped away from my wrists and I yanked the bindings away from my legs.

I knelt down in front of Lindsey and looked into her blue eyes. She smiled and my heart soared.

“Let’s get out of here!” I pulled my tracksuit top off and wrapped it around her shoulders. It wasn’t much, but it was better than being naked.

Bongani Zulu exhaled a wet cough as the door banged closed behind us.

The yard was empty and quiet. The sheep huddled together under a little lean-to in their pasture.

We crossed the grass together, my arms around Lindsey’s shoulders. Her body quaked with the cold and I could feel the icy tingle against my bare arms.

The gate rattled open in my hands and I led Lindsey through the gap between the bars and the wall.

We were free. Cars streamed past in the road in front of us. People just going about their business, watching me lead a half-naked child around in the dark in the middle of winter. Nobody stopped. I wouldn’t stop if I was passing by. You never know who is really in trouble and who’s got a buddy behind a bush waiting to ambush you.

#

The world exploded into light and noise around us as two cop cars tore down the street and came skidding to a stop in front of us. I pulled Lindsey close to my body, hugging her into me as she shivered and cried into my shirt.

Four cops jumped out of the blue-and-white cars and ran up to me, guns drawn and stiff expressions on their faces.

Had Zulu phoned the cops? How? The last time I saw him, he’d been twitching in a pool of his own blood. Maybe it was Nyala who’d called.

Zulu had said he had them in his pocket, but could he really have this much power? Would they arrest me now?

I held up my right hand, my left still clasped Lindsey to me. They would have to pry us apart with a crowbar.

A female cop draped a silver space-blanket over Lindsey and smiled at me. “It’s over now,” she said in a deep, mellow voice. “We’ll take care of you.”

“My daughter, her arm is broken.” It was all I could think of. Never mind that she was missing fingers on her hand, and her body was covered in bruises, cuts and cigarette burns.

“There’s an ambulance on the way,” the cop said. “I’ll stay with you while my partners go into the building.”

“The old man,” I said. Tears brimmed my eyes and my knees started to wobble. “He’s in the outhouse. He’s been stabbed.”

“Don’t worry, come over here and sit in the car.” The cop steered us to her car and let Lindsey and I climb into the back seat. The car was warm, almost suffocatingly so, and she turned the heater up higher.

“How did you know?” I asked.

The cop smiled and pointed at the window next to Lindsey. Detective Brits stood outside with a stuffed Bugs Bunny in his arms. 

CHAPTER FIFTY-NINE

I stroked Lindsey’s hair backwards, tucking loose strands behind her ears. Fluorescent light exaggerated the dark bags under her eyes. The hospital room beeped and hissed with the sounds of monitors and an oxygen mask that rested beside Lindsey on the starched pillow.

My left hand held firmly to hers. I hadn’t seen my baby girl for two weeks, and I wasn’t going to let go of her yet.

Two doctors and a team of nurses filed into her room, all plaintive smiles and whispered conversations. Nobody asked me to move as they drew the curtains closed around us and gently pulled the blankets off Lindsey.

Her eyes flicked open. Her whole body went rigid, fear boiled out of her in tears and a ragged gasp.

“It’s okay baby, you’re safe.” I patted her hand and smoothed her hair again as she lay shivering with fear.

The doctors started taking an inventory of her wounds.

Multiple stab wounds. Burns from a cigarette. And, worst of all, the things that were missing. Three fingers from her right hand. The bud of her left breast. Gone.

The line of stitches beneath my lip itched and I resisted the urge to dig a fingernail beneath the butterfly plaster. My wound was superficial. It would heal in a couple of weeks and all I’d have to show for my ordeal would be a thin white scar.

Lindsey looked at me and her lips twitched up in a tiny smile.

“I’m sorry he hurt you,
Ma
.”

Oh my baby. My dear sweet baby. How could I express my sorrow at what Bongani Zulu had done to her? It was too much, too heavy. But I could tell her something else.

“I’m glad I found you.” My voice hitched on the last words and I surrendered to the relief, the love, and the tears.