things right. For all of us. Stop shutting me out. Because I made some bad choices doesn’t mean you have to.”
She was looking at him, at least. Holding his gaze. “So, you’re saying we go to New Zealand? With me like this?” She pointed at her belly.
“After you have the baby, yes. I’ll get us an apartment here until then. In a security block. Tomorrow. We’ll pack up and get the hell out of this house. And we’ll leave as soon as it’s safe for you to fly.” He saw that he was reaching her, sensed an opening in her armor. “Susan, I love you. And Matt. I want a chance to make it right.”
She shook her head, turned away from him, fighting tears.
He walked over to her and wrapped his arms around her from behind. She tried to free herself, but he held her tight and at last he felt her begin to relax and give in.
Susan almost surrendered, almost let his words convince her. Then she saw him with the knife, crouched over the skinny man, and she broke his hold on her and stepped away from him.
She saw his face, the desperation in his eyes. “Leave me alone, Jack.”
“Susan…” He was reaching for her again.
“Just leave me the fuck alone!” She shouted before she could stop herself. Burn nodded and walked back out onto the deck. She held on to the kitchen counter, battling to calm herself.
She looked up to see Matt staring at her from the sofa. He was crying.
She composed herself and went across to him, sat down beside him, and put her arm around his shoulders. “It’s okay, Matty.”
She knew she’d pushed her son away, and she’d been trying, since she got back from the clinic, to reconnect with him. To love him again. But every time she looked at him she saw his father.
The child sobbed as she held him and stroked his hair and whispered reassuring words. She felt his pain and confusion. And she felt her own guilt. God, how could she have done that? To her baby boy?
Matt was calming down; the sobs were not as desperate. Susan blew his nose on a tissue. She pointed to something on the screen, the antics of a cartoon character, and Matt smiled. Then he laughed. Susan sat next to him, held him, until she saw that he was caught up in the swirl of color on the screen. Then she went out on the deck, where her husband stood with his back to her, staring out at the night.
He didn’t see her, and she watched him for a few moments. He had always been her rock, the one thing in her life she could trust completely. Not anymore.
“Jack.” He turned to her, his face catching the light from the house. The beaten look on his face aged him.
“Okay,” she said.
“Okay what?”
“Let’s do it. Let’s go to New Zealand. Or wherever.”
He was staring at her. “You’re serious?”
“Yes. But I’m doing it for Matt and for her.” She put a hand to her belly.
He came toward Susan and took her in his arms, her belly pressing up against him. She stared over his shoulder, out at the swollen yellow moon hanging like a bruised fruit over the ocean.
“I’m sorry, baby,” he said. “I’m going to make it right. I promise.”
More than anything, she wanted to believe him.
CHAPTER 10
Why hadn’t he smacked the brown bitch in her filthy mouth?
As Rudi Barnard left the Flats behind, drove the Toyota across the railway bridge to Goodwood, he puzzled over that half-breed slut, Carmen, and why he hadn’t he hit her. Normally he didn’t think twice about something like that. Disrespect or cross him, and you paid the price. He was confused by this aberration in his behavior.
Did he really want to fuck her? No, he decided. It wasn’t that. He realized, relieved, that she was someone who would be of use to him sometime. And his intuition was that she had been beaten senseless so often by so many men that it meant nothing to her. In fact, he reckoned he would have more power over her if he didn’t hit her.
Barnard smiled to himself in appreciation of his psychological insights. He knew women. Hell, he’d been married to one once, hadn’t he?
Fucken bitch.
On impulse Barnard stopped in at a cop bar on Voortrekker Road, a few blocks from his dingy apartment. The Station Bar had opened back in the days when men were left alone to do their drinking, women banished to the cocktail bar where a real man wouldn’t set foot.
Although by law no woman could now be prevented from entering the Station Bar, few did. The bar was ugly, it stank, and it was filled with crude and violent men. It took a certain kind of woman to be drawn to this sort of company, and most of them were out on the street plying their trade.
Barnard grabbed a stool. The barman, a bald and wrinkled man with skin the color of nicotine, shoved a bottle of pine nut Double O across to him. Barnard grunted his thanks and took a gulp.
He didn’t come to the Station for alcohol or company. He was a teetotaler and a loner. Rather he came here to plug into the cop network; when mouths were loosened by booze, he often gleaned information that was to his advantage.
He needed a few questions answered. The grapevine had been whispering to him, telling him stuff that woke him from his sleep, his hemorrhoids aching and the itch between his thighs burning like crazy.
He watched a skinny guy with a potbelly and styled hair, dressed fifteen years too young, in conversation with a half-breed down at the other end of the bar. The half-breed nodded, laughed at something, chugged back his beer, and left.
Barnard took his Double O and levered his fat onto the stool beside the snappy dresser. “Lotter.”
Lotter looked at him with disinterest. “Barnard.”
Waving at the barman who slumped like a dirty rag across the counter, Barnard pointed at Lotter’s empty glass. “Give him a drink.”
“Whatever you want from me, the answer is no,” Lotter said.
“Who says I want something?” Barnard leaned in close and tried a smile.
Captain Danny Lotter wasn’t a squeamish man; in fact he had been known to eat hot dogs during postmortems, but the full blast of Barnard’s halitosis forced him back on his stool. He quickly fired up a Camel, not offering one to Barnard.
Lotter’s brandcoke arrived, and Barnard lifted his Double O in a toast. “Good luck.”
Lotter grunted, but he didn’t turn the drink down.
“Lotter, I’ve been hearing some funny things.”
“Get your ears tested.”
Barnard had to restrain himself from grabbing the skinny cunt by his blow-dried hair and pulping his face on the bar. He wheezed, taking it calm. “Things about some task force, anticorruption what-what being set up.”
Lotter looked at Barnard. “Ja, so?”
“So, I know you’re screwing that girlie in the superintendent’s office.”
“Marie?”
“Ja. The ugly one?”
“She’s not ugly, exactly…”
“Lotter, just because you fucking her doesn’t mean she’s not a dog.” Barnard laughed one of his sucking laughs.
Lotter drained his glass and set it on the counter. He stood. “Thanks for the drink.”
Barnard put a heavy paw on Lotter’s shoulder, easing him back onto his stool. “I’m trying to be nice here. Let’s keep it that way.”
Lotter looked for a moment like he was going to resist; then he realized it would be foolish and he nodded. “Okay, but take your hands off my jacket. It’s just been dry-cleaned.”
Barnard took his hand back, and Lotter adjusted his collar. “Look, it’s all very hush-hush, and I’ve only heard
