unfolded it with his perfectly manicured fingers and held it up to Burn. “Do you know this woman?” He was showing him a printout of Susan’s mug shots, from ten years ago.
Somehow Burn managed a laugh. “Glad to say I don’t. She looks like trouble.”
The black man flashed a row of very white teeth. “Well, thank you, Mr. Hill.”
“Sure. My pleasure.”
Burn closed the door, leaned against it for a second while he tried to convince his heart not to hammer its way out of his chest.
Zondi walked back to his car, pressed the remote, and the lights flashed and the doors clicked open. He removed his jacket and folded it carefully. He slid into the car and reached back, hanging the jacket from a hook in the rear. He shut the door, started the engine, and sat with his eyes closed, the aircon at its maximum.
An American. Coincidence? There were a lot of Americans in Cape Town this time of the year, escaping blizzards and, for all he knew, the War on Terror. The man, Hill, hadn’t shown anything in his eyes when he looked at the mug shots of the American woman. He’d even cracked a joke. So either he was on the level or he was a practiced liar. And his shoes, top-of-the-line Reeboks, were those flecks of blood around the toe caps or mud from watering his garden, maybe?
Zondi led his mind to a place of stillness for a minute, feeling the aircon chilling the sweat on his body. Zondi, to his credit, knew that he was an obsessive. He knew enough Buddhism to understand that his quest for order and control was ultimately useless in the face of the cosmic joke called life.
He opened his eyes. What the hell? Maybe he should succumb to Cape Town’s charms while he killed time until his flight. The wind had died, and the sun was shining on the ocean. Why didn’t he cruise down to Camps Bay, sit at one of those sidewalk cafes, and sip something with an umbrella on top while he watched the girls go by?
Or he could take the used condom and the slug he’d dug out of the wall down to the police lab.
He started the car. The police lab won.
Burn was in the kitchen, drinking a glass of iced water from the fridge. He knew he was delaying the walk down the steps to the garage. He was scared of what he might find.
What if the watchman had taken the opportunity to kill Barnard? That aerial image of the sprawling Cape Flats came to Burn’s mind once more, and he imagined Matt lost out there, in the second day of this nightmare. He felt the boy’s terror. What if the one voice that could tell him where to find his son had been silenced?
Burn put down the glass and walked across to the stairs.
When he emerged in the garage below, he paused, tking in the scene before him. Barnard was motionless, slumped forward, prevented from falling by the ropes that tied him to the chair. His many chins were compressed down onto his bloody chest, and his hair hung over his eyes, wet with sweat and blood. His naked torso was cross- hatched with cuts, some fresh and bleeding freely, others fringed by darker blood already coagulating.
He’s dead, thought Burn. He has to be.
The watchman squatted in front of the fat cop, lighting a cigarette. He didn’t look up at Burn. He inhaled deeply and blew out a plume of smoke toward the ceiling; then he leaned forward and gently, almost delicately, placed the cigarette between Barnard’s lips. For a while it dangled there; then Burn saw the end glow as Barnard inhaled. He was alive.
Finally, the watchman looked up at Burn.
“Well?” Burn asked.
The watchman nodded. “He has spoke.”
The kid woke her, tugging at her arm. Carmen groaned and opened her eyes, immediately feeling the throb in her cheek where the fat bastard had hit her. She ignored the kid, who was whining about his mommy, got out of bed naked, and went across to what was left of her mirror. Jesus, her face looked like shit. The cheek was swollen, with enough colors to make a rainbow look anemic.
She didn’t know what was worse, the throbbing cheek or the spiders that crawled across her skin. She scratched herself, hard enough to draw blood with her chipped fingernails. She needed to score, and fast. But she didn’t have a fucken cent. All of Gatsby’s money was gone, and he had fucked off without leaving her more.
She dressed, trying to tune out the whining of the kid. When she couldn’t stand it anymore, the crying and moaning grating on her frayed nerves, she crushed up half a Mogadon in a teaspoon. She poured what was left of a milk carton into a glass, added the powder, and stirred it until it dissolved.
She handed the glass to the boy. “Drink this.”
He shook his head, his eyes swollen from crying. She got down on her knees, her face level with his. “Matt, you drink it, and I take you to your mommy, okay?”
He looked at her suspiciously. “You promise?”
“Cross my heart.” She made the sign of the cross on her chest, God forgive her, and the kid took a sip of the milk. He grimaced. It was sour. “Only if you drink it all up.”
He forced the rest of the milk down, leaving a mustache of white above his upper lip. Within a minute he was looking woozy. She lay him down on her bed and attacked her wild hair with a brush. Soon she heard the child snoring softly.
Now she had to score.
On her way to the door she passed Uncle Fatty, who was in his usual place on the sofa, communing with a bag of wine, dressed only in his foul underwear.
“I’m coming back now, okay?”
He nodded, staring into space.
She went on the hunt for tik, begging, cajoling, absorbig rejection and insult until she found the retard Conway. She told him more stupid lies about getting him to deal for Rikki, and he eventually made her a globe.
She sucked the smoke into her lungs and found peace. At least for the moment.
As she hurried back toward the ghetto block, Carmen tried to work out how long she’d been gone. She had no idea. What if the fat bastard had come back and taken the kid without leaving her more money? She broke into a run, the tik giving her a burst of raw energy.
She ran up the stairs, unlocked the front door, and went inside. The sofa was empty. She walked through to the bedroom and stopped in the doorway. It took a few moments for her to comprehend what she was seeing.
The American kid lay on the bed, passed out on his back. Uncle Fatty was crouched over him, busy loosening the boy’s pajama pants. His dentures lay on the bed beside the child. The old man turned and looked up at her, a necklace of drool dangling from his toothless gums.
Carmen grabbed the first thing that came to hand, a plaster statuette of the Virgin Mary. She brought the Virgin down on Uncle Fatty’s head, again and again and again, blood spraying across her face and her white T- shirt.
The dead were speaking to Barnard. Whispering to him, a choir of unearthly voices. They were calling his name. He had to fight hard to pull himself away from them, to open his crusted eyes. A blur. Hard sunlight lasered his eyes. He blinked, forced his eyes to focus, and saw the Cape Flats moving by him.
He was in a car. His car. The Ford. In the rear seat, his face pressed up against the side window. Even though the sun was shining and he was covered by a blanket, he was still freezing, shivering. He felt his loose fat shaking like jelly. And he was in agony, every square inch of his body screaming in pain and anguish. His mouth was dry, and his tongue felt as swollen as meat left to rot in the sun.
He tried to move his head. Unspeakable pain burned through his nerve ends as he managed to turn his head and look forward. He heard a voice, the American, speaking from far away, as if through a very long tube.
“He’s awake.”
Barnard looked into that nightmare face, the missing eye, the snakelike scar. The half-breed watchman, staring at him from the front seat. The watchman reached an arm over and forced him back down on the seat. Barnard heard an animal wailing and then realized it was him, a sound of pure agony tearing itself loose from his body.
The half-breed pulled the blanket over his face, and Rudi Barnard could see nothing but the dead.
CHAPTER 28
