there. The Mongoose paces the corridors, looking thin and miserable.
There was nothing I could do there.
Eight days to Kigali if I keep to the tar, and don't hit any potholes or roadblocks I can't bribe my way out of.
Day one: Johannesburg to Harare
Day two: Harare to Lusaka
Day three: Lusaka to Mbeya
Day four: Mbeya to Dar es Saalam
Day five: Dar es to Nairobi
Day six: Nairobi to Jinja
Day seven: Cross into southern Uganda
Day eight: Mbasa to Kigali.
The place names sound like new worlds. I have only ever travelled to Europe. On a skiing holiday with my parents when I was eleven, when Thando broke his leg, not on the slopes but slipping on an icy pavement. On a working holiday to London when I was eighteen, which lasted a month before I decided to hell with living in a shitty apartment and working a bar and returned to the creature comforts of my parent's Craighall house with the pool and the gardener and the char lady who made my bed. Before I met Gio, before I killed my brother, before Sloth.
I have an
What I do not have is permission to leave the country in the wake of a multiple homicide/serial killer investigation.
Celvie. Armand. Ginelle. Celestin. It's going to be awkward. It's going to be the best thing I've done with my miserable life.
And after that? Maybe I'll get lost for a while.
Acknowledgments
Making the fantastic seem credible is hard work. I was lucky to have co-conspirators.
Special thanks to Johnson Sithole of JBS Security, who was my fixer in Hillbrow and Berea (special thanks for not bringing your gun), and to photographer Marc Shoul for recommending him.
Thanks to Lindiwe Nkutha for taking me to Mai Mai and Faraday healers' markets and for getting bounced from the Rand Club with me when we weren't appropriately dressed. I'm grateful to the management of High Point and their passionate young security team, who gave me a complete tour of the building and really did catch a rapist.
Nechama Brodie's fine pop-culture history of the city,
My music industry insiders/informers were Esther Moloi, Jason Curtis, Gabi le Roux, Shamiel Adams and music journalist Evan Milton, who insisted on being allowed to interview Odi Huron, albeit for a fictional magazine. Thanks to you all, and to travel writer Justin Fox for helping me plot Zinzi's travel arrangements.
Thanks also to Charlie Human and Sam Wilson who were roped in to write additional materials for this book, the psychological paper on the Undertow and the prison interviews respectively. Both pieces added a depth to my story and provided perspectives I wouldn't have thought of on my own.
Dr Meg Jones and Cape Medical Response paramedic Chris de Meyer were invaluable in providing expert medical opinions on fictional conditions and injuries.
I'm very grateful to Jamala Safari, who shared his journey from the DRC to South Africa (hopefully soon to be a novel), unravelled acronyms and the tangle of conflicts over resources that has resulted in an estimated 5.4 million deaths in the Congo since 1998. James Bocanga, another DRC emigre who runs his own security firm in my neighbourhood, patiently explained slang and daily life, and provided translations for me.
Bishop Paul Verryn invited me to visit the Central Methodist Church, where, at the time, over three thousand refugees were living in terrible, dehumanising conditions – that were nevertheless better than sleeping on the street. It was a shocking and humbling experience that has stayed with me, even though I couldn't find a way to fictionalise it. The church offered shelter during the xenophobic attacks of 2008, and continues to offer support and assistance even as many try to ignore the dire situation of refugees in South Africa. There's been ongoing controversy about it, especially recently, but the people I met there were courageous and empathetic, and doing the best they could in the worst possible circumstances.
Tim Butcher's
Other books that proved invaluable include Bongani Madondo's
Matt Weems's fantastic website
Friends on Twitter leapt to help me with research questions on anything from storm drains to good places to dump a body (only a
Various 419 scammers were very helpful in sending reference material direct to my inbox (you're welcome to contact me to claim a percentage of my royalties, although there may be a small administrative cost involved), but I owe greater thanks to the good people of
Thanks to my meticulous and highly critical readers: Sarah Lotz, Sam Wilson, Zukiswa Wanner, Lindiwe Nkutha, Verashni Pillay, Nechama Brodie, Charlie Human, Louis Greenberg and my husband, Matthew Brown – you all helped make this book what it is.
Genius illustrators John Picacio and Joey Hifi created the two most beautiful covers in the world for the international and South African editions of the book respectively. They're both incredible in different ways, and both artists took time out of their insane schedules to do the work. I'm grateful.
Marc 'Marco' Gascoigne and Lee Harris at Angry Robot, and Pete van der Woude and Maggie Davey at Jacana have been exceptional and brilliant people to work with, as has been my editor, Helen Moffett.
Finally, thanks to my family and friends – especially to Matthew and Keitu – for making everything worth it.
About the Author
Lauren Beukes is a writer, TV scriptwriter and recovering journalist (although she occasionally falls off the wagon). She has an MA in Creative Writing from the University of Cape Town under Andre Brink, but she got her real education in ten years of freelance journalism, learning really useful skills like how to pole-dance and make traditional sorghum beer. For the sake of a story, she's jumped out of planes and into shark-infested waters, and got to hang out with teen vampires, township vigilantes, AIDS activists and homeless sex workers among other interesting folk.
She lives in Cape Town with her husband and daughter.
www.moxyland.com
EXTRA.
