Wouldn’t recognize it now.”
“No, I bet she wouldn’t. Not something she’d use in the carpool.”
Zondi sat in the front seat. He popped the glove box: a couple of nipped joints and a half-empty bottle of vodka. He moved the bottle aside and saw a used condom.
“Pass me your pen, please, Sergeant.”
The cop obliged, and Zondi lifted the condom out with the nib of the pen and held it to the light. Damned if he was going to use his Mont Blanc. There was a good squirt of semen in the tip of the condom. He took a folded paper evidence bag from his jacket pocket and shook it open. He dropped the condom into the bag and held the pen out to the cop.
“Thanks.”
The sergeant hesitated, then shook his head. “You can keep it.”
Zondi dropped the pen onto the floor of the car. He had a quick look around the interior, saw nothing more of interest, then slid out, back into the howling ing “So this car was found up above Sea Point?”
The cop wiped sand from his eyes, then squinted at his clipboard. “Ja, we towed it from Thirty-eight Mountain Road.”
“Write that address down for me, won’t you?”
“Yes, sir.” The sergeant muttered to himself as he bent to retrieve his ballpoint from the car.
Zondi was already walking away, back toward the shelter of the office. How did people live in this bloody place?
The wind whipped across the graveyard, blowing the imam’s Arabic chant back toward the Maitland railway line. Burn stood at the rear of a small knot of mourners-all men-some dressed in traditional Muslim garb, others wearing knitted kufi caps with Western clothes. Burn had been handed a kufi as he joined the group, and he had to hold it down with one hand to stop it blowing away. He stood with the duffel bag containing one million in notes between his feet. His other hand was on his cell phone in his pocket, to feel the vibration if Barnard called.
Mrs. Dollie’s body, wrapped in a white cloth, lay next to the open grave as the imam droned the prayers. Mr. Dollie, small and bearded, looked almost lost inside his Muslim clothing. His face was pinched and drawn, and a young man in a suit had to steady his arm, as if the wind might take him.
Burn wasn’t sure why he had attended. He could have made an excuse, that Susan was about to have a baby. It was a valid excuse; the cesarean section was to be performed that afternoon. He knew it was ridiculous, but he felt that by attending the burial, facing Mrs. Dollie’s husband, that he was at least atoning for some of his actions.
Burn had been brought up a Catholic but had lost touch with religion by the time he was a teenager. He was surprised to find that now, in his midforties, the idea of guilt and retribution should be so present. As he stood and listened to the Arabic prayers directed at a god he was not on first name terms with, he heard a voice making a deal with some invisible force out there: I’ll face up to my guilt, I’ll take what comes to me, but just save the life of my son. It was his voice. He knew it was superstitious. He knew it was irrational. He didn’t care.
It was all he had right now.
That and a disfigured brown man with prison tattoos, sitting in the Jeep in the graveyard parking lot. The watchman had made it clear that he was going to shadow Burn until this thing was over, until he could get to the fat cop.
And kill him.
Burn had no reason to trust the watchman, which was why he stood with the bag of money between his feet, and the. 38 Colt belonging to the dead gangster in his waistband. He knew that the watchman was a killer, but for now, at least, they wanted the same man dead: Barnard.
Men stepped forward and carried the wrapped form of Mrs. Dollie toward the grave. They lay the body on its right side, facing Mecca. The prayers moaned along with the wind.
Burn felt his phone vibrating, and he stepped away from the mourners as he looked at caller ID. Mrs. Dollie. He was almost moved to hysterical laughter at the surreal juxtaposition of her body in the gravand her name on his phone.
Then he took the call from his son’s kidnapper.
CHAPTER 25
Benny Mongrel sat beside the American, who sped through Salt River, toward Woodstock, on the frayed fringes of the city. Burn was tense, checking his mirrors, nosing the Jeep into gaps. Then he made a visible effort to calm himself, and he slowed down, dropped to the speed limit.
Benny Mongrel had a cell phone in his hand, looking at it as if it might bite him. He’d seen people using them, sure, the guards at Pollsmoor, many people since he was released. But he had never held one in his hand. Never mind used one. Burn had given it to him earlier, saying it was a spare he kept as a backup. It would allow them to keep in contact during the drop-off of the money.
They had stopped at a light. Burn was looking at him. “You understand how to use it?”
“Ja.”
“Call my phone. Just to see everything is okay.”
“It’s okay.”
“Do it. Please. We can’t afford screw-ups.”
Benny Mongrel shrugged and jabbed a finger at the tiny phone. Burn had showed him that he only had to push that one number, the three, and it would dial his phone. Burn’s cell, lying on the seat between them, chirped and flashed.
“Okay, hit the red button.”
Benny Mongrel’s finger searched, found the red button, and jabbed at it. The chirping stopped. They were driving again.
“You clear on how we’re going to do this thing?”
Burn overtook a minibus taxi, which suddenly veered into their lane, and he had to swerve, almost colliding with an oncoming truck, horn blaring.
“Jesus!” When they had passed the taxi, Burn shot him a look. “You clear?”
Benny Mongrel nodded. “Ja.”
He was clear. Burn would drop him off just before they got to the Waterfront. Benny Mongrel would make his way to the place where he could observe the drop-off point. Burn had drawn him a map. He would watch the fat cop pick up the money and follow him. If the cop didn’t leave the boy, Burn wanted to know where the fat man was, to go after him. Benny Mongrel had no doubt the boy wouldn’t be left. The fat cop would take the money, and he would go back to his car. Benny Mongrel would follow him and kill him. He had no use for this stupid little phone.
Burn was talking, asking him to run through details of the plan. Benny Mongrel grunted, nodded, but his hand was in his pocket. He gripped the knife, the blade honed to perfect sharpness.
The Waterfront, Cape Town’s dockland development, attracted twenty-two million visitors every year, and it looked like most of them were there that day. Part shopping mall, part theme park, the Waterfront sprawled around the working dock. Restaurants, street musicianoat trips, and spectacular views across the city packed in the crowds.
Burn, duffel bag hanging from his shoulder, pushed his way through throngs of European tourists, skins fried Bockwurst pink by the African sun. They strolled in their shorts and sandals, digital cameras slung around their sunburned necks, wallets bulging with euros. Burn checked his watch; he had five minutes to get to the drop-off point.
Barnard’s instructions had been clear: Burn was to leave the bag on the stairs of the Mandela Gateway and cross the pedestrian bridge toward the shopping mall. Once the money was in place, Barnard would call his cell and tell him where in the Waterfront he could find his son. Burn’s gut instinct was that Matt was nowhere near the Waterfront. Barnard would be keeping him as an insurance policy.
If he was still alive.
