Barnard was still eating his gatsby as he drove through Paradise Park, ready to take care of the last of the night’s business. A half-breed tik cooker who paid Barnard protection money was selling to suburban schoolkids. Barnard didn’t give a shit about the schoolkids, but the situation was attracting heat. Other dealers were getting pissed off. Local politicians were asking questions about the tik suppliers. And the protection they got.
After the visit to Carmen Fortune, he’d hauled his fat into the Golden Spoon, home of the best gatsby in Cape Town. Which meant the whole fucken world.
As soon as the Muslim woman behind the counter had seen him, she’d shouted into the back, “Masala steak full house for the inspector.” Without him asking, she passed him a pine nut Double O from the fridge, keeping as far away from his stink as she could.
He grunted and tipped the bottle, glugging back most of the fake pineapple brew in one swallow. Then he lit a cigarette beneath the NO SMOKING sign. Let the bitch say a word.
The woman put his gatsby down on the counter without comment.
The gatsby is to Cape Town what a hot dog is to New York, and the full house was Barnard’s feast of choice: a football-sized French loaf stuffed with chunks of steak, eggs, melted cheese, and fries, all drenched in mayonnaise and industrial-strength chili.
Barnard shoved half of the gatsby into his mouth, sauce oozing down his jowls. He spoke as he chewed. “Gimme a pine nut for the car.”
The woman had handed him another bottle, and he’d left without a word or an offer of payment.
Barnard was still chewing as he approached the tik cooker’s place. He saw a patrol van pulled up outside, blue light flashing across the front of the squat house.
Fuck, what now?
When Barnard levered his massive bulk from the Toyota, the suspension lifted with a groan, as if relieved to be free of him. Two uniforms were standing beside a knot of people surrounding a dark shape lying on the road. The cops tensed at his arrival. They were afraid of him. He liked that.
“What’s going on?” He spoke around the last mouthful of food.
“Drive-by, Inspector.”
A half-breed girl no more than ten lay on the road. She was dying. A wailing woman was on her knees beside the child, people trying to pull her away.
Barnard looked on impassively. “Who were they targeting?”
The other cop pointed into the house. “There’s a gangster inside. They got him as he ran in. The kid was crossing the road.”
“The guy, he dead?”
“No. Wounded.”
Pity. Barnard walked into the house. In the front room a skinny half-breed in his twenties sat slumped on the floor, bleeding onto the worn carpet, shaking with fear. He was shirtless, his body a scribble of gang tattoos. He had taken a bullet to the leg. Barnard knew it wasn’t life-threatening. He would have to sort this out before they hauled this punk off to the hospital and he started to talk his mouth off.
The boy looked up at Barnard. If he had been scared before, he was terrified now.
A woman in her fifties, crying, mopped the boy’s head. She kept on repeating, over and over, “Stay awake.”
“Go outside,” Barnard said, dismissing her with a flick of his pink paw. She hesitated, saw the look on his face, and decided she better do as he said. “Close the door.”
Barnard grabbed the kid by his jaw and jerked his head up. “Look at me, you bastard.” The kid looked at him. “Jerome, why the fuck you don’t listen to me? I told you not to sell to that school.”
“I didn’t. They lie.”
Barnard held up a hand. “Shut it, okay? Why you think they shooting at you? You got everybody pissed off.”
“Inspector, I’ll stop. I swear, on my mommy’s life.”
Gatsby shook his huge head. “Too late, Jerome.”
He unholstered his Z88 and shot the kid point-blank in the right eye. He had enough time to take the throw- down, a snub-nosed. 32, from his waistband and wrap the kid’s fingers around it before the door slammed open and the uniforms came in.
“He drew on me,” Barnard said, holstering his Z88.
The uniforms looked at him, unspoken questions in their eyes. The half-breed’s mother burst past them and cradled her son’s bleeding head in her hands. Weeping.
Something wet from the kid’s face had landed on Barnard’s gun hand. He wiped it on the back of a sofa that sagged like a swaybacked dog.
As he walked out to his car, lighting a cigarette, he struggled to get a tiny cell phone out of his jeans and thumbed a number. No signal. He’d have to wait to call that little bastard Rikki and lean on him some more.
Barnard heard the ambulance siren in the distance. The paramedics were wasting their time. He could see the half-breed in the street was dead, too.
Burn drove along High Level Road, his eyes drawn to his rearview mirror. The two dead men, wrapped in the garbage bags, were under a tarpaulin at the very rear of the Jeep. The short guy had been easy to wrap and carry down to the car, but the tall man had left Burn sweating with exertion. Then he’d had to fold him double to fit him into the Jeep. The last body he had carried down had been that of his sleeping son. Burn prayed that Matt slept on; he’d already seen too much that night.
What Burn wanted to do was run again. Pack up and disappear like they had three months ago. But he couldn’t. Not yet. Not until Susan was stable.
He turned into Sea Point Main Road, on his way to the freeway. Before he could change his route he found himself in a roadblock, orange cones narrowing the road to one lane, uniformed cops with flashlights flagging down vehicles. A roadblock to flush out the stolen cars, the unlicensed drivers, and the drunks.
A car slowed behind him. There was no way he could reverse. He was trapped.
There were two cars in front of him. The cops were talking to the drivers, shining flashlights into the car interiors. They had pulled one man aside and were checking inside his car and in the trunk.
Burn started to sweat.
At last a flashlight waved him forward. A black cop in uniform shone the light into his face as Burn eased the driver’s window down. “Good evening, sir. Please turn off the car.”
“Good evening.” Burn killed the engine.
The accent immediately attracted the cop’s attention. “Are you on holiday, sir?”
“I’m out here visiting for a while.”
The cop directed the light onto the backseat and saw Matt asleep in the car seat.
“Your ID and license, please.”
Burn handed them over. The cop checked his passport photograph against his face. As always at these moments over the last few months, Burn prayed that they would stand up to scrutiny. Then the cop checked his international driver’s license and handed both documents back to him.
“Thank you, Mr. Hill.”
He seemed ready to wave Burn on when a cell phone rang, from the very rear of the car. Shit, Burn thought, it must be in the short guy’s trousers. The cargo pants with the endless pockets. The cell phone ring was loud, strident, the opening bars of some hip-hop song. Incongruous in this Jeep.
The cop heard it, looked at Burn, then started to walk toward the rear of the car, his flashlight held ahead of him.
Burn waited.
CHAPTER 4
It seemed as if the cell phone would never stop ringing. Then it did. Sudden, abrupt silence. Burn watched in his side mirror as the cop moved toward the back of the Jeep. Burn knew that if he was going to act, it would have
