Payback E-Book

Mike Nicol

• Herausgeber: Old Street Publishing
• Kategorie: Krimi
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2011

Beschreibung

Mike Nicol is one of the brightest thriller writing talents to have emerged in the last decade, and the Mace and Pylon novels are as good as any being written in the field today. This is not just superb genre writing: it is superb writing, period, and proves that the thriller, at its best, can both entertain and provoke, while tackling serious issues with the lightest of touches. Read Mike Nicol now, before everyone else starts telling you how wonderful he is' JOHN CONNOLLY 'Mike Nicol is the rapidly rising star of South African crime fiction. His novels have everything I love about the genre in just the right amount: shady characters, twists, turns, murder, mayhem, humour, wonderful dialogue, white-knuckle pace and lots of authentic Cape Town colour.' Deon Meyer 'Watch out Elmore Leonard, here comes Mike Nicol, who scores 10/10 for this gritty, fast-paced thriller about revenge ... Payback has it all: murder, sex, drugs, crooked cops, greedy developers and revenge ... Nicol has captured perfectly the dark underbelly of life in Cape Town. Payback is so realistic you can almost taste the dagga and smell the cordite after the bombs explode ... You won't be able to put it down until you've read the last line.' Southern Mail Read of the Week 'The dialogue is brilliant, the writing too, and Payback has perhaps the coolest ending one is likely to find anywhere' Mail and Guardian 'Exceptional ... Nicol is a talent deserving a wide international recognition' The Weekender 'A heady mix, and Nicol stirs it with vigour, inventiveness [and] wit ... Payback is a great read, pacy, cool, hard-bitten and hard-hitting. The laconic, street-smart style is so convincingly laid-back that it may blind readers to the artistry of the writing, which is taut and economical' Sunday Independent 'In the top rung of South African fiction writers ... Nicol s clipped dialogue and sparse, high-impact prose recalls that of revered American recluse Cormac McCarthy' The Citizen 'South Africa joins the hard-boiled stakes, and in a wondrous dazzling humorous novel. Imagine Elroy joining forces with Chester Himes, Coffin Ed, and Gravedigger, throw in the spectacular landscape of South Africa, and you ll get some sense of this wild and daring novel. One prays this is the first in a series if Tom Sharpe wrote mystery, this would be it.' Ken Bruen More than a decade after the end of Apartheid, ex-gun-runners Mace Bishop and Pylon Buso are trying to settle down to a comfortable Cape existence. But when an old contact calls in a favour, they become embroiled once again in the country's violent underworld of crime and corruption -- and with the lethal Islamist organisation PAGAD. A gripping tale of narcoti, arms-dealing and international intrigue, PAYBACK heralds the arrival of a major new crime-writing talent.

Leseprobe

PRAISE FOR MIKE NICOL

‘Crime fiction flourishes in South Africa, and Mike Nicol is a king protea. Payback reminds you of the best American genre fiction: peculiar perverted characters like those favoured by an Elmore Leonard, the always dark, sometimes pitch-black humour of a Carl Hiaassen at his best, and the James Ellroy-like depiction of a Cape Town underworld that is true and believable. But Nicol’s voice and style is new, fresh, unique, truly Cape Town and South Africa. His dialogue snaps like pistol shots and the story is as fast as a Cape hare with unexpected twists and turns, so that it’s not until you’re finished that you consider the excellent writing.’

Deon Meyer

‘The dialogue is brilliant, the writing too, and Payback has perhaps the coolest ending one is likely to find anywhere’

Mail and Guardian

‘Watch out Elmore Leonard, here comes Mike Nicol, who scores 10/10 for this gritty, fast-paced thriller about revenge … Payback has it all: murder, sex, drugs, crooked cops, greedy developers and revenge’

Southern Mail

‘Exceptional … Nicol is a talent deserving a wide international recognition’

The Weekender

‘Payback is a great read, pacy, cool, hard-bitten and hard-hitting. The laconic, street-smart style is so convincingly laid-back that it may blind readers to the artistry of the writing’

Sunday Independent

‘In the top rung of South African fiction writers … Nicol’s clipped dialogue and sparse, high-impact prose recalls that of revered American recluse Cormac McCarthy’

The Citizen

payback

mike nicol

CONTENTS

Title Page

Going Down

The Deal

Payback

Copyright

GOING DOWN

‘… in this city of bombs and pain …’

- Anonymous victim

PROLOGUE

They sat for two hours waiting. Three men in an old white Toyota looking out at the sodden street. No one to notice them. No one about in this dark suburb above the city. In some of the houses lighted rooms in the upper storeys. The houses behind high walls. Below they could see the city’s tall buildings drifting through the trees.

‘This’s up to shit,’ said the one in the back, Mikey. He had a 9mm in his hand, racked the slide, released it. Racked it again.

‘Doesn’t matter what you think.’ Abdul Abdul turned round to grin at him. ‘You got no staying power, my bru.’ He tapped his fingers on the steering wheel. ‘Patience, hey.’

Mikey grunted. He looked up at the mountain rising black above them. Threatening as the sky. He had his window open despite the rain gusts, the cold that numbed his feet seeped into his marrow. He had his window open because Abdul and Val smoked from cigarette to cigarette.

‘It’s bloody freezing,’ he said, putting the gun down to blow on his hands.

‘Close the window.’

‘Then stop smoking.’

‘Isn’t gonna happen,’ said Abdul.

Between cigarettes Abdul brought out a joint. Mikey toted on that.

‘You smoke dagga but you don’t smoke cigarettes.’ Abdul said to Val. ‘What a stupid. Mikey the moegoe.’

Mikey heard the car approaching, said, ‘Shit, man, watch it. He’ll see the glow.’ The car came past them, an Alfa Spider, swerved in at the open gates thirty metres down the street.

‘That’s him,’ said Mikey. ‘Mace Bishop.’

Abdul turned down Abdullah Ibrahim’s ‘Mannenberg’ that’d been on a loop in the tape system.

‘And now?’ said Mikey.

‘We’re gonna wait,’ said Abdul.

‘Jus wait?’

‘Jus wait.’

‘Maybe he’s not gonna go out again.’

‘He will.’

Mikey sat back, sighed. ‘For how long, hey, we havta wait?’

‘Long as it takes.’ Abdul wound up the song.

‘Enough,’ said Mikey. ‘We been listening to that for two hours. Three if you take it from when we left.’

‘So,’ said Abdul. ‘It’s a good song. Cape Town’s theme tune.’

Mikey took a last pull at the roach. Squashed it underfoot. He went back to playing with his gun. Rack release. Rack release.

They listened to ‘Mannenberg’ for another forty-five minutes until Mace Bishop drove out fast in the Alfa.

‘Here we go,’ said Mikey, hunching forward.

‘Not yet,’ said Abdul.

They waited five more minutes. All quiet. Mikey sitting hunched forward all that time.

Abdul started the car. ‘You get the pill down the woman’s throat, Mikey. That’s what you gotta do.’

‘Then I can bang her.’

‘Thought your thing was kiddies rather,’ said Val.

‘Kiddies. Grown-ups. I got a bone needs picking with her.’

‘Ag sies, man.’ Val opened his door, spat onto the gravel.

‘Remember,’ said Abdul, ‘we’re here for the girl.’ He turned, cuffed Mikey lightly on the cheek. ‘No shit, right. No bones. What we want’s the girl.’ He reversed the Toyota into the driveway.

The men pulled on balaclavas. Mikey had his pistol in his hand, Val and Abdul slid their guns into their belts. Abdul fancying American style with the barrel down the crack of his arse. They stood looking at the Victorian house. No burglar bars over the front windows. Same thing as leaving a door unlocked.

‘Those windows,’ said Abdul.

Mikey smashed a pane and they were in. Inside stank of wet clay and turps. Before he could say anything, Abdul put his hand over Mikey’s mouth. They listened, a television playing somewhere. Val pointed up. Abdul nodded.

They came out of the room into a hallway, facing a flight of stairs. Again Val pointed up.

Abdul drew his pistol, went up the stairs first, treading close to the banister. Still some of the boards groaned. Each time he stopped dead. Listened. No movement. Just the television, bangs and sirens of a cop show. He waited on the landing for Mikey and Val.

They came up separately. Mikey the only one silent as a cat.

He grinned at Abdul and Val. Mouthed: ‘Good, hey.’

Abdul grimaced, pointed with his gun at the third door along the landing. The door slightly ajar. He gestured for Mikey to go in. ‘The woman,’ he whispered. ‘Get the pill into her.’

‘Relax,’ said Mikey. ‘Be cool like a schul.’ He shoved open the door, stepped into the room. ‘Hello, darlings.’

Mother and daughter lying on the bed. The woman with her eyes closed, the girl under the duvet, watching television. The woman opened her eyes, seemed to spring from the bed at the same time. Mikey had to crack her one with his pistol. She went down and he was on her. Had a good feel of her breasts in the tumble.

The girl screamed.

Abdul had her, hauled her free of the duvet. The kid’s PJ top hiked up.

‘Sshh, Christa,’ said Abdul, squeezing the wind out of her. ‘Bru,’ he said to Val, ‘light us a cigarette.’

Val did. Mikey was raising up the woman, his pistol hard against her neck. Blood trickled down from where he’d opened a cut on her forehead.

‘Oumou,’ said Abdul, ‘my friend’s got a pill we want you to take.’ He put the cigarette to his lips, pulled gently. Blew out the smoke from the corner of his mouth. ‘If yous don’t’ – he pushed back the girl’s pyjama sleeve to expose smooth skin – ‘I’m gonna put this out right here’ – brushed the hot tip of the cigarette across Christa’s arm.

1

1998

Mace Bishop, wearing sunglasses, said, ‘There are people I’m happy to offer my services to, Ducky. And those I take on because I owe.’ He owed Ducky Donald Hartnell for five RPGs, two dozen Chinese AKs, and an assortment of pistols, grenades, ammunition. A debt Ducky had let slide fifteen years.

Fifteen years back Ducky’s son Matthew was ten years old. When Ducky called in the favour, Mace had heard tell of Matthew as a stuttering dipshit cokehead running a nightclub that daddy set up.

‘I’d rather come to an arrangement,’ Mace told Ducky over breakfast at Café Paradiso up Kloof, among the young suits, male and female, execs one and all.

‘Sure you would,’ Ducky said. ‘But a payback I don’t need, Mace. I need someone like you. A ruthless cold bugger. To be a babysitter.’

‘That I can arrange, if you like. Just not me. Or Pylon.’

Ducky wiped egg from his chin. ‘How’s that black bastard these days?’

‘These days,’ said Mace. ‘In love.’

‘Never could keep his pecker in.’

Mace took his espresso in a swallow. ‘In love, Ducky. It’s not the same thing.’

‘You mean he’s not balling her?’

Mace shrugged. Ducky Donald Hartnell always had been a rude pig.

‘I hear you’ve got a neat thing going, you’n Pylon, playing muscle for the rich and famous.’

‘We’re doing alright.’

‘Complete Security. What sorta bloody name’s that? For two gun runners!’

‘Times change.’

‘You’re not kidding.’ Ducky Donald cut into his bacon. ‘Look, Mace, it’s a favour, okay? The boy’s got bouncers, Centurion Armed Response. He’s paying protection …’

‘To?’

‘Americans. It’s their corner of town.’

Mace watched him shovel a load of bacon, mushrooms and fried banana into his mouth, half-closing it but not enough so he couldn’t talk.

‘I told him, you’ve gotta understand how the city’s divided up. You pay who you must if you want to stay in business. Revenue takes their assessment, the gangs get their turf toll, and the strollers and the homeless need an allowance. So what we’re a heavily taxed society? We have sea and sun. Pay the rate, don’t overpay, I told him.’

He masticated for a moment.

‘That much he did, I’ll admit. I was proud of him. He’s gonna manage this, I thought. Next thing the fundamentals start blowing up bars, even that steak house, Planet Hollywood. I warned him, Matt, they’re going to come calling. Chill dad, he tells me, they’re not a scare. Attitude like that suggests to me the boy’s taking too much white, Mace. Know what I mean?’

Mace nodded. Matthew Hartnell’s pretentious little rave cave had a reputation as the place you could get anything. For a price. But anything.

‘All due respects,’ Mace said, ‘your son’d be safer wandering in a minefield.’

‘This much I’m aware of, china. What I’m doing here is keeping the boy’s mother happy in Hampshire. Reassuring her that all is well in our new land that we struggled so hard and so long to create. The land she so generously gave back to the natives by returning to the country of her forefathers. All the same, the last thing she wants is for her darling boy to get blown up. Lose a few digits like his dear old dad.’

‘Would be tragic.’

Ducky glanced up from mopping a crust of toast through the eggmush and brown sauce on his plate, but Mace kept po-faced until he went back to his trough. ‘What I want you to ensure is he doesn’t. Do me the favour, hey. So I can tell people Mace Bishop’s good for his word.’

Mace caught the threat but let it ride. Easier said than done admittedly. He picked up the empty espresso cup, put it down. Gazed out the window at the tower blocks below and the sea beyond them, brown haze turning the view murky. Most autumn days the city disappeared in the muck, only the mountain rising behind into a stark blue.

‘Your son’s a drug dealer,’ he said. ‘Here is an obstacle.’

‘Sure,’ Ducky said. ‘I’m working on it.’

‘Also, I have some sympathy with those trying to take out druglords and gangsters.’

‘Don’t we all. Meantime I need the protective power of my old pal Mace Bishop.’ Ducky wiped a serviette across his mouth, squinted at Mace. ‘Maybe I should mention two other things could help you in this.’

‘Like?’

Ducky paused for effect. ‘Like Cayman accounts. Like what happened at Techipa.’

Mace kept blank, Ducky leaning into his face. ‘I know, china, about both. Trust me, I wanna keep your secrets.’

Mace thinking, how in Christ’s name?

Ducky Donald saying, ‘So how about it? Boy’s got a meeting with those wonderful types in a few hours. Woman the name of Sheemina February.’ Ducky grinning. The sort of grin Mace believed a hyena might have running down a zebra foal. ‘Tell me you’ll be there.’

2

Matthew Hartnell had an office in a sad building on Harrington, one block up from the Castle. A quarter of town nothing much happened at any time, day or night. A lick away from a major tourist site but no frumps with cameras came wandering here even by accident. Vagrants and cardboard collectors staggered about the street, Angolans ran the parking lot. Mace’s little red Alfa Spider caused them some excitement. He left the top down, a holder of CDs in the glovebox, the Becker a shining invite to anyone with a screwdriver.

A car-guard sauntered over, smiling.

‘Hey, Cuito,’ said Mace, ‘you’ve moved your patch?’ The last time he’d seen him the Angolan was car-guarding at a shopping mall in the leafy suburbs. Had done Mace a favour by keeping an eye on a wealthy client.

Cuito gave a wide white smile. ‘Sometimes the local Xhosa do not like our hard work, Mr Mace. They make trouble. It is best to move away.’

‘Sorry to hear it.’

Cuito pointed at the Spider. ‘It’s safe,’ - taking the offered ten.

‘Obrigado,’ Mace told him.

The foyer of No 23 Harrington Street was cold and dark and stank of urine. The lift was boarded up, the stairs stripped of what lino might once have covered them. Mace went up to Matthew Hartnell’s business quarters on the first floor at the end of a corridor where every door had a security gate. Once there were probably frosted glass panes in the doors and people had their names scripted on in attractive flourishes. Obromowitz & Sons, Jewellers. Jackman & Jackman, Shipping Chandlers. Now you didn’t want to know what went on behind the closed doors. Or why club-owner Matt regarded this as a good address. Mace knocked. Matthew opened.

‘Yo, the ar-arms dealer,’ Matthew greeted.

Mace pushed in past him. ‘Don’t give me uphill, Matt, okay, I’m doing your daddy a favour. And stay off the weed before you meet people.’

Which got Matthew pouty. ‘I d-d-don’t need you. I got my own g-guys. I’m looked after b-better than the president. I can ha-handle this.’

Mace thought, I, I, I, bullshit. Raking a glance down the thin youth in a beanie, baggy jeans and a bomber jacket that was vogue when Neil Young sang ‘Heart of Gold’.

‘Matt,’ he said, ‘Matt, we’re talking People Against Gangsters and Drugs. You’ve seen the pictures. They carry serious weaponry. How many bombs are we talking? How many dead? Fifteen? Twenty? I don’t know. These are the people coming to see you.’

Matthew tapped his cellphone against his front teeth. ‘I ca-can sort it.’

Mace took a look out the window at the side of a building an arm’s length away. Gave a cursory scan of the four plastic garden chairs, the second-hand desk and the grey-green filing cabinet that served as office furniture. Pulled a chair to the side of the desk and sat down.

‘Sure you can.’

Matthew took his place behind the desk.

‘How long do we have to wait?’

‘That’s the-them,’ Matthew said, the tread of the well-heeled echoing on the concrete stairs.

They came in: a woman first, then a fat man, followed by a goon who worked out so much his neck and head were a continuum. She was well-groomed: silk trouser suit, fingernails like drops of blood on her right hand, her left in a black glove, plum lipstick, eyes an ice shade of blue, a silk scarf over her hair that Mace felt was pure statement. She carried a leather briefcase, attorney-style, in the gloved hand.

Her name was Sheemina February, a senior partner in the law firm Fortune, Dadoo & Moosa, legal representatives for the anti-drug vigilantes. As Mace understood it, she’d called Matthew to suggest the meeting would be in his best interests.

The fat man was a brand name type, labels all over him. Gold wrist watch. Gold cufflinks. Open-necked shirt under a leather jacket. A short haircut giving a black fuzz to his skull. His cheeks pitted from acne, his front teeth filed to points. Mace recognised the face: Abdul Abdul, on bail facing two murder charges. Assassinations: bullet in the back of the head style.

The goon wore de rigueur snakeskin lace-ups and a black suit. Mace watched him take up a position beside the door, the way goons did it in the movies. The oddity about him was he was white.

‘Matthew?’ queried the woman, frowning at Mace as if she recognised him, shifting her gaze from him to Matthew.

‘Mr Matthew Hartnell to you,’ Mace said.

She swung at him: ‘And you are?’ Some aggression in her face.

‘Doesn’t matter. Just accept I’m here.’

‘He’s my ad-visor,’ said Matthew.

‘A lawyer?’

‘Something like that.’

She extended a hand to Matthew. After he’d shaken she held it at Mace. ‘Mr Advisor.’

He ignored the sarcasm and took her outstretched hand: cold, firm. ‘Who’s he?’ pointing at the goon.

‘A friend,’ said Abdul. ‘Mikey. Say hello, Mikey.’

‘Hi,’ said Mikey, his voice flat and nasal.

Sheemina February and Abdul sat down on the two chairs other side of Matthew’s desk. They placed their cellphones on the table. Mace’s cell was already there, so was Matthew’s. Sheemina February put her attaché case on the floor and looked at Matthew and said, ‘There’s drugs being sold in your club and we don’t like that.’

Matthew shook his head. ‘Na-na-no way. There’s no shit g-going down. Out of the qu-question.’

Sheemina February shrugged. ‘Well, maybe that’s what you think, but that’s not what’s happening.’

‘I don’t allow d-drugs,’ said Matthew. ‘Not e-even weed.’

Mace marvelled the kid could say it barefaced. Shades of daddy.

Abdul Abdul laughed. Sheemina February bent down and took out of her briefcase a plastic bank packet filled with a mix of sticks and pips, flipped it onto the desk. Very casual. Very neat.

‘Ganja,’ Abdul said and laughed again, harsh and ugly. ‘Top dagga,’ he said. ‘Bloody first-class weed.’

Mace raised his eyebrows, but let the bankie lie where it lay.

‘Sold to one of our people on the floor last night,’ said Sheemina February.

‘I-I’ve only got your w-word for it,’ came back Matthew.

‘Of course.’ Sheemina February tapped the bankie. ‘But we’ve no reason to lie.’ They made eye contact: Matthew looked away first. ‘You say you don’t allow this stuff. Then we’re on the same side, Matthew. We’re both against the drugs and the gangsters.’

‘Who’re you paying protection to?’ interjected Abdul Abdul, reeling off some names: ‘Twenty-eights? Americans? Pretty Boys?’

‘No wh-one,’ said Matthew.

Abdul gave an imitation of a laugh. ‘Americans,’ he said. ‘Don’t give me any shit. I know.’

‘It’s not only the grass,’ said Sheemina February. ‘They’re selling hard stuff too.’

‘Im-im-impossible,’ said Matthew.

Sheemina February took another bank packet out of her briefcase, flipped it on to the table. ‘Heroin,’ she said.

‘Could be talcum,’ said Mace. ‘For all we know.’

‘Try it.’ Abdul pushed the bankie towards Matthew. ‘Take a taste, my friend, this’s your scene.’

‘Believe me,’ said Sheemina February, placing her hand over the packet.

‘You have all this,’ Mace said, ‘take it to the cops.’

Abdul Abdul snorted. Sheemina February smiled vaguely then quickly turned to Matthew.

‘This is killing our children.’ She held up the packet of heroin.

‘You have the evidence. Call the cops,’ Mace said. ‘The man says he knows nothing about this stuff.’

Abdul Abdul frowned at Mace and dismissed him with a flip of his hand.

The vague smile returned to Sheemina February’s purple lips. ‘Mr Advisor, the cops will close down your client’s business.’ She held his eyes. ‘Do you want that?’

‘No,’ Matthew broke in. ‘No. The-there’s a way to w-work this out.’

‘Good. The simple thing here Matthew is the drugs have to stop.’

The ‘or’ left hanging. She dropped the packet onto the desk. ‘Right. Here’s how we can help you.’

‘You don’t g-get to,’ Matthew replied. ‘Th-the way we work this out is you f-f-fuck off.’

A quiet, a sudden quiet that went on so long Mace could hear the rumble of the city. He let his glance slide from face to face: Sheemina February amused, Matthew staring at his hands, Abdul with a tic working below his right eye.

Abdul Abdul broke first, reached for his cellphone and shook it at Matthew. ‘We are telling you,’ he shouted. ‘We are telling you this must stop.’

Sheemina February put her hand on Abdul’s arm. He flicked her off. Said,‘You think this is fun and games, my friend? You think this is fun and games to have all these drugs? You want Ecstasy? I can push so much Ecstasy down your throat you have a straight trip to hell. You are cheap shit. You are small shit, my friend.’

Matthew stood up. The goon moved away from the door closer to his boss, flipping his jacket to show a thirty-eight tucked into his belt.

‘Wh-what’re you g-going to do?’ Matthew hurled back. ‘Th-throw a pipe bomb in my club? K-kill a whole lot of in-in-innocent p-people like you did at those res-restaurants? B-blow off some kid’s feet just to t-teach me a lesson? Wh-who’s the cheap shit?’

‘Be careful.’ Abdul Abdul was standing now, spit catching at the corner of his mouth.

Sheemina said quietly, ‘Shut up.’ Said louder, but not shouting, looking at Mace throughout. ‘Shut up. Both of you, shut up.’ Mace held her stare, not interfering, holding her eyes until she took them off him. Wondering, had they met before? Like what was her case? Her face seemed familiar. But how? From when? From the old days when there’d been women by the night? As easy as the flow of beers.

Matthew the drug dealer and Abdul Abdul the assassin shut up.

‘Sit down, Matthew,’ she said, ‘sit down and listen to me.’ He did, so did Abdul. ‘Here’s the deal. You lose the security. Centurion and the Americans both. You close down for a week. You speak nicely to Abdul and then we get you back up and running. Nothing different to before, just being done by other means.’

Matthew gagged, suddenly off the boil, getting only the first part of the words out. ‘Ca-ca-ca,’ he went.

Sheemina February waited. ‘You were saying?’

‘Ca-ca-ca.’

She turned to Mace. ‘Perhaps you should advise him, Mr Advisor.’

Mace uncrossed his legs, tipped back the plastic chair. The thing about Sheemina February, he reckoned, was her calm blue eyes in her olive face. Eyes from a Nordic ice land. Untroubled eyes. The sort of eyes you’d remember. Eyes that mocked. Like her smile. The purple of her lipstick against white teeth. Easy to be suckered, to believe she was the voice of reason.

‘So?’

He let the chair drop forward. ‘What’s your percentage?’

She exposed the tips of her teeth. ‘Mr Advisor, please. Matthew pays for our services. Nothing different to what he’s been doing except we’re cheaper. And we keep him clean. A major advantage.’ Mace got a full smile before she turned to Matthew Hartnell. ‘So, Matthew, what do you say?’

Matthew said, ‘Ca-ca-Christ!’

‘Consider it,’ said Sheemina February, standing. ‘Talk about it with your advisor.’ She slid a card onto the desk. ‘Let me know this afternoon. Before close of business.’ A smile. ‘No call, I’ll take it you’ve declined the offer. Your choice. It’s a free country.’

She snapped shut her briefcase, picked up her cellphone. The goon reached over and put the dope packets in his pocket.

‘Think hard about it, my friends,’ said Abdul Abdul, pressing his fangs into the flesh of his lower lip. ‘We are worried about you.’

‘Goodbye,’ said Sheemina February, and the goon squeezed past her and opened the door. He stepped into the corridor and she followed him. Abdul flicked his wrist to rattle his gold watch strap. He pointed the cellphone at Matthew, raised it to his lips, pretending to blow smoke from a barrel, then was gone without closing the door. Mace listened to the strike of Sheemina February’s heels along the corridor and down the stairs. He stood, shoved back the plastic chair and headed for the door. On his way out, paused. ‘My deal with Donald is to give you protection for two weeks. Let me know what you’re planning.’

‘Wha-what d’you think?’ Matthew said. His voice back now, the tremor still in his hands though. ‘You th-think I’m just gonna close up like she wa-wants? Fuck her. Ca-Christ, man, f-fuck her.’

Mace shrugged. ‘You’re a drug dealer, Matthew. You run a club where it’s easier to score coke than Coca-Cola. More especially, you’re making my life difficult.’

‘So f-fuck off too.’

‘I would, except this is an obligation.’

‘Not to m-me.’

Mace shook his head. ‘It’s an honour debt Matthew. Something you wouldn’t understand.’

Matthew pulled a joint from deep in the bags of his jeans and held it to a Bic, drawing long on the smoke. After the exhale he coughed, said, ‘I-I-I don’t wa-want you, ch-china. I g-got pro-protection. Experienced people. El-electronic s-s-surveillance. Metal detectors. The-they’re not g-gonna drop a bomb on me.’

‘Dream on.’ Mace’s cellphone rang: Pylon’s name on the screen. While he thumbed him on, he kept at Matthew. ‘Another thing, if I don’t hear from you, your club four-fifteen is when we meet.’ With that was gone.

‘Let’s hear it,’ said Pylon in his ear. ‘We got a fabulous new client?’

‘A freebie.’

Pylon groaned. ‘What’re you saying?’

Mace told him right down to the purple lipstick, saving the best for last: Cayman and Techipa.

A long silence from Pylon. Then: ‘Save me Jesus.’ Then: ‘You think he knows or he’s guessing?’

‘Cayman, it’s possible. Those bankers say they’re like the gnomes but stuff gets out. If someone’s looking.’

‘We’ve given no clue. No flash living. So-so business.’

Mace said, ‘He starts putting this around we’re buggered. Big time.’

Pylon coming in, ‘What I don’t get is Techipa. Everyone was dead.’

‘Someone wasn’t.’

‘He started this with the guns? Return of a favour?’

‘Yup.’

‘I’d forgotten the guns.’

‘Was a long time ago in another country. Hadn’t been him it would’ve been someone else. We’d have got them in the end.’

Except in the end it was Ducky Donald who saved them from what might have been The End with slit throats. As Mace recalled it the Arab wasn’t pleased that his suppliers had hit a shortfall on the consignment. No matter who the partners contacted there was nothing in that corner of the Sahel at that time that would appease their irate buyer. Until a desperate call to Ducky Donald siphoned off the requisite from a cache stockpiled in a Jo’burg mineshaft. Where the RPGs came from Mace never asked. Suffice to say he suspected Ducky Donald was also trading for the SA army. For him business was business. For Mace and Pylon at the time business was revolution. Which came to seem a quaint perspective. Which now seemed positively idealistic, Mace thought.

‘We could say no,’ said Pylon. ‘Call his bluff.’

Mace took the last concrete step into the piss-stink of the foyer. ‘We could, except Ducky isn’t. Bluffing. He’d put it out and that’d be bye bye Cape Town.’

‘Nice.’

‘Exactly. So much for old comrades. My thoughts: better to bite the bullet for two weeks, what happens afterwards is we come to an arrangement.’

‘We can do this?’

‘Egg-dancing. What we were so good at. The Pylon and Mace routine.’

Dar-es-Salaam, 1984: a house up the coast north of the city. Old colonial beach place: shuttered windows, covered veranda round three sides with French doors onto the bedrooms. A short walk off the veranda across the sand scrub onto the beach into a sea, tepid and salty.

A month they spent there, waiting, playing backgammon, waiting for the buyer to collect. No one around day after day after day. Occasionally a dhow sailing along the horizon. The light pouring down. Only fish and coconuts for food. Back in the house anti-personnel mines, assorted assault rifles, Canadian Sterlings, Mats, Madsens, a few Chinese 79s, sweating in the heat. Sufficient hardware to depose an African dictator. All of it packed neatly into rooms where once the colonials frolicked their white mischief.

Mace and Pylon were extended, their credit zippo because their middleman wanted bucks on the table. If the deal went bad they could ship the stuff elsewhere, over time. Over time was the problem. Each day increased the risk of bad guys lifting the merchandise without payment. The ordinance sweated. They sweated: at night the egg-dance. Until the deal went solid, and they carried payment away in three suitcases. He who sits it out sits it out. The first time they skimmed a commission.

Freetown, 1986. On the runway the weaponry being unpacked from a Hercules transport into three UN trucks destined for a warlord in the hills. When a better offer came in. Actually came steaming out of the cane fields in a Land Rover: three soldiers, one driving, two in the back toting Brazilian Urus, a man wearing a DJ in the passenger seat. DJ put down his offer in cash, US dollars, on the bonnet of the Land Rover. Mace counted it. Said to Pylon, ‘Let him have it.’ Happy to fly out on the Hercules toot sweet. Pylon unsure. They confabbed. Pylon arguing, the warlord was a source they’d supplied before. Someone who, if he stayed alive, would want guns again. Mace countered, with a call to their new arms contact Isabella they could make good in two days, three max. Both of them keeping an eye on DJ, standing apart, staring into the middle distance, patiently, while they weighed the pros and cons. Decided in the end to take the cash. DJ headed off, the trucks following. Hadn’t smiled once through the whole exchange.

In the air, Mace radioed the warlord that the consignment had been hijacked, they’d get back to him with new stock in two days. In two days the warlord was dead. Mace and Pylon egg-danced, diverted the new consignment whistled up by Isabella to Sierra Leone. The Mace and Pylon routine. A large wad wired to their Cayman account.

‘You guys!’ Isabella had said. ‘If it wasn’t for me you’d be dead. Or worse.’ More truth in it than Mace had ever wanted to admit, fancy footwork notwithstanding.

‘Stay flexible,’ he said to Pylon. ‘Especially where Ducky Donald’s concerned. Be cool. Don’t think too much about what he’s holding.’

‘We could move the account.’

‘We could. Best option for now is to play it his way.’

Pylon agreeing, wanting to know, ‘Are you going to come in at all today?’ - as Mace crossed Harrington into the car park, Cuito angling towards him, a grin breaking ear to ear.

‘Got to collect Oumou to see a house. Pick up Christa from school. Maybe later this afternoon. If not, Club Catastrophe four-fifteen. Could turn out to be somewhere you can take Treasure clubbing.’

‘That being high on Treasure’s list of to-dos.’

‘Chicks want these jives.’

‘This’s a mama with a daughter the same age as your’s we’re talking about.’

‘Still a chick.’

‘Treasure wasn’t a chick. Ever.’

They disconnected. Cuito stood grinning as Mace jiggled the Alfa’s keys from the pocket of his jacket.

‘Those people you come to see are the Muslims?’ he said.

Mace shifted down his sunglasses to squint at the Angolan over the frames.

‘They come here yesterday. Drive around. The fat one he goes up the stairs.’

Mace juggled his keys from hand to hand. ‘What makes you think I want to know that?’

Cuito laughed. ‘I have my eyes.’

‘You know the thin guy who’s got an office up there?’

Cuito nodded.

‘Tell you what, you see those people again, you call me.’

‘For how much?’ he said.

‘It’ll be worth it.’ Mace took out his wallet.

‘Also at the club?’

Mace laughed. ‘Cuito you know things.’

‘Many things, Mr Mace,’ he said, his fingers closing another ten into the palm of his hand.

3

Mikey, in the passenger seat of the white Toyota said, ‘In the Yellow Pages there’s a place called DAWG, that has cats. In Hout Bay.’

The coloured guy driving said, ‘DAWG, has cats?’

Mikey kept his finger on the advert. ‘Why not? It’s a pseudonym, Val. Like PAGAD.’

‘An acronym.’

‘A what?’

‘That’s what it is. DAWG stands for something. An acronym. Pseudonym’s something else. Like Madonna.’

‘Madonna with the pointy tits?’

‘She’s not doing that anymore.’

‘No? Shame, hey.’ He glanced at the advert. ‘Says it’s got kennels. People bring their pets they don’t want. Same as the SPCA.’

‘Sounds okay, long as it’s got cats. You heard Abdul. Cats. Has to be kittens.’

Val took the Constantia off-ramp, the signs pointing to Hout Bay over the Nek, a drive he liked taking on a Sunday afternoon with a new cherry. Drive around the peninsula: sea one side, mountain the other. A1 impressive. Romantic to any chickie. Under the oaks, up the hill all the larney mansions left and right down the narrow curvy road into Hout Bay. Only thing that spoilt it, Val reckoned, was the squatter camp, Imizamo whatnot, some tongue twister like that perched right there on the mountain at the entrance, a weeping pit of human stink, their raw shit washing down every time it rained. You could understand whiteys in the valley getting upset.

Mikey said, ‘Hout Bay’s buggered. They’ve got wild crime from the squatters. Story I heard about a black family come down from Jo’burg to cycle in the Argus, they book into this expensive guesthouse, full-on security, armed response, electric fences, anyhow the black daddy gets up to take a pee in the middle of the night there’s another black daddy on the landing who’s got a shopping list from the shacklands, this dude does him right there, pow, nine mil smack in the chest.’

‘Gives the city a bad image.’

‘No kidding, bru.’

Val picked up the signs for the kennels over the bridge, turned into side roads heading back up the valley along the river away from the sea, the plots getting bigger, the road going from tar to gravel. The sign on a gate said Domestic Animal Welfare Group. He parked the car on the verge. They walked up a path to a ranch-style house set under bluegums. Everything in shadow. The house in need of paint, a glass pane in the front door cracked. A note above the buzzer said ring for attendance.

They did. And again. Twice more before a woman appeared with a parakeet on her shoulder, small dogs yapping at her feet. Mikey noticed she wore sheepskin slippers that might’ve been chewed by a dog.

They both said ‘Hi ma’am’ - gave her full smiles.

What she saw was two clean and tidy young men, dressed in chinos and v-neck polo shirts with their sunglasses stuck in the v. She smelt a hint of aftershave.

Val said, ‘We’re from the Mitchell’s Plain Baptist Congregation, ma’am, I’m Val and this is Mikey and we’re arranging a party for orphaned children from a home that is run by our church.’

Mikey held out a letter with a printed masthead. ‘This is our address and charity number, ma’am, and if you’ll phone our pastor he’ll confirm our mission.’

She barely glanced at it. ‘Alright. So what’s it you want?’

‘Bless you,’ said Mikey.

Val said, ‘We were hoping, ma’am, that you’d have twelve kittens seeking good homes because it is our intention to give our orphan charges a pet to care for. Under our supervision at all times.’

‘In the name of the Lord,’ Mikey said, ‘our intention is to give our young charges something to love and to provide a home for neglected animals.’

‘Really?’ said the woman. The parakeet on her shoulder pecked at her hair and she flicked her head to stop the bird.

‘All we ask, ma’am, is that the kittens be donated as all our funds are for the running of the orphanage.’

‘That so?’ said the woman, looking from one to the other, stopping on Val’s face. ‘Alright. I’ve got kittens I can give you. On your word you’re going to care for them?’

‘So help me God,’ said Mikey.

‘We’re Christians,’ said Val.

They followed the woman through the dim house that smelt of cat pee out to the kennels at the back: rows of sad dogs, cats curled asleep in patches of sun, the kittens in a wooden Zozo hut with a high reek.

‘It’s two litters,’ said the woman. ‘I’ve got to feed them because their mothers won’t.’ She stared at the men. ‘You know how to feed kittens?’ They said no, and she showed them, telling them how much each kitten needed.

‘No problem,’ said Val. ‘The kids will love doing it.’

The woman fetched two cardboard boxes and divided the kittens between them.

‘In God’s name we thank you,’ said Mikey, taking one of the boxes.

The woman glanced at him like she couldn’t believe he’d said that. She indicated a path round the house they could take to get back to their car.

They put the kittens in the boot and Val took the coast road to town under the Twelve Apostles. Cranked up some R&B on the sound system. Even so, they could hear the kittens screeching.

‘I hate cats,’ said Mikey. ‘Dogs too.’

‘How about her bird,’ said Val. ‘It’d shat all down her jersey. Jesus Christ, some people.’

‘Weird. Fully.’ Mikey’s cellphone rang: Abdul Abdul.

‘I’ve got Sheemina on the other line,’ Abdul said. ‘I want to tell her a nice story.’

‘We’re passing through Camps Bay,’ said Mikey. ‘Lotsa babes on the beach. Moms with their kiddies under the palms.’

‘Don’t give me shit,’ said Abdul. ‘You wanna be a tour guide, I can arrange it. Give you a special interest in paraplegics.’

Mikey made a gesture of throwing the phone out the window. Said, ‘Give us half an hour we’ll be done. Mikey’s Decorators at your service.’

He heard Abdul sigh, say, ‘You stuff-up, I phone the SPCA.’

Mikey disconnected. ‘What’s his case?’.

Val shrugged, wondering how nice it would be in a Clifton apartment, view of the sea, view of the mountains. A place like Sheemina February had. Among the rich larneys.

4

Oumou took one look at the house and said, ‘Non.’ Continued in French, What was he thinking? Had he taken complete leave of his senses? Went into English so there could be no possibility of Mace misunderstanding the message. ‘This is a ruin. We cannot live in a broken house. We have a daughter.’ She gestured at the wild overgrown garden. ‘There will be horrible insects. A little girl cannot play in a place with horrible insects. Non, non, non. The house is not in the question. We have to build a new house.’

‘Whokai. Whoa, whoa, whoa, love. Don’t chew his head off.’

Oumou shifted her glare from her husband to Dave Cruikshank, the estate agent.

‘Love,’ he said, lighting a cigarette, ‘this is wonderland. Beatrix Potter, hey?’ He blew a stream of smoke out the side of his mouth. ‘Call in a garden service, they’ll sort it out no time at all. The kiddy’ll think it’s magic.’

‘It is a ruin,’ said Oumou.

‘So knock it down, love.’ Dave flicked ash into the riotous vegetation. ‘What I’m showing you and Mace here is a bargain. This sort of property doesn’t come on the market every day. This sort of property’s scarcer than hens’ teeth.’ He gave a display of his teeth. ‘You want to build a new house, love, then that’s what you do. Get your Mace to speak to his pals in the building trade. Six months’ time you open the door onto shiny travertine marble.’ He grinned again: his upper dentures not quite straight, and put a hand on Oumou’s arm. She drew back. ‘Don’t look at what you see, love. Look at the potential.’ Dave put the key in the front door. ‘Stand back a bit, \ is not a pleasant smell.’

Before he sold property, Dave sold cars. He sold Mace the Spider, a good deal and a sound buy. After an engine overhaul, a wonderful car. As he put it, ‘The 1970 Alfa’s class, Mace. The least you can do is give it an overhaul.’

Mace now believed it was time to give their lifestyle an overhaul. Get out of the security complex in the suburbs and into the city. If you were going to live in Cape Town, you lived in the City Bowl. The peninsula suburbs were too House and Garden, the seaboard out of his price bracket, both sides, the Atlantic and False Bay. He wanted some of the city’s life: the sirens, the lights, the wail of the muezzin’s call to prayer, the cotton days of fog. And to be below the mountain, to feel its heat. What he liked about the city was the whacking great mountain in its middle. Anywhere you looked, the mountain loomed. He’d heard Dave was in property. He called him. Dave said, ‘Funny you should ring now, there’s this place just come on our books, Mace, come’n take a look see.’

Oumou said, ‘Non. Dave is a crook. What he sells there is always a story.’

Mace said, ‘Let’s see what he’s got.’

Oumou came back, ‘I know what you are going to do. You are going to buy this house. Because it is a bargain.’

Her mind was set on concrete, glass and chrome. This desert woman, who’d lived in a mud house most of her life, wanted concrete, glass and chrome. Mace couldn’t understand it.

Before he opened the door, Dave said, ‘Like I say, love, you could knock it down. But why would you do that when you got walls and a floor here already. You get me?’

‘We are coming to the city for the view,’ said Oumou.

They turned to look at the view hidden behind a hedge so thick and wild not even a bird could nest in it.

‘Trim the forestry, love,’ said Dave. ‘You’ll get all the view you want.’

He opened the door. The house exhaled must, dust, rot, and death.

‘It’s not good,’ said Dave, ‘like I said.’ He took two torches out of his jacket pocket, handed one to Oumou. ‘Like I say, what we’ve got here, love, is about dreams. Forget the present. This is the future.’

Oumou gave the torch to Mace so she could tighten the bandanna tied over her hair. Mace watched her, saw a faint smudge of clay beside her right ear where she’d hooked back a stray strand. Her dungarees, too, were stained with clay. Her canvas shoes smudged and clotted like she’d been treading in mud.

‘Today is my pottery class,’ she’d said to protest the time Mace set.

Dave had said, ‘Move fast, my son, I’m fighting off the pack.’

‘Forty-five minutes,’ Mace had said to Oumou. ‘I’ll fetch you.’

‘What we’ve got here,’ Dave had said, ‘is your deceased estate. Owner went into a home twenty years ago. Died last week. One son in Canada. Who wants shot of the hassle. What I’m telling you is any price is good.’

‘And your commission?’

‘Fixed as of the asking price, my son. You get below the marker, you owe me.’

Mace could hear him sucking at his dentures. ‘Deal?’

He looked over Oumou’s shoulder into the stench and darkness of the house. Ripped wallpaper, old newspapers, shit everywhere, much of it human.

‘Mind the planks, love,’ said Dave, ‘bit dicey some of them.’

They followed him in, Mace in front, Oumou behind, her hand latched onto his belt. Dave opened a door off the passage into a sitting room, streaks and spots of light filtering through holes in the corrugated-iron sheeting at the windows.

‘Think sun,’ he said. ‘Think big couches, thick carpets, sun, sun, sun. Sun all over this room. Your kiddy lying there in front of the winter fire doing her homework.’ Dave rubbed his hand over the fireplace tiles. A dull green showed through the grime. ‘Genuine, my son. Old Victorian. That’s what you’re buying here. History. Vintage Cape Town. Gracious living. What you say, love? You getting the picture here? Seeing how things could be in the not too distant?’

Mace moved the torch beam over the walls, smoke blackened, the skirtings charred. In all the rooms the same smoke markings, filth everywhere. Bottles, broken glass, tins, faeces, lumps of food dried to a powder, spider webs snagging against their faces. Behind him Oumou sneezed, cursed in French.

Dave said, ‘I was into property, I’d snatch this myself.’

‘Where is the problem?’ said Oumou.

Dave patted his trouser pocket. ‘None of the ready, love. Dave Cruikshank’s right extended.’

He shuffled them back into the entrance hall. A staircase disappeared into the dimness of the upper storey.

‘Bit rickety,’ he said, kicking at the lower stairs. ‘Take my word for it, great views.’ He bent to open a door to a cupboard beneath the staircase. ‘But take a decko here. Down there’s your original mud-floor cellar. History bloke we contacted at the uni said probably belonged to an earlier house. He reckoned might’ve been a farmhouse up this part of the mountain once. How’s that? You get that racked up, you can lay your Cape reds down there ‘n become a connoisseur.’

‘You going to show us?’

Oumou’s cellphone rang, and she headed for the warmth of the sunlight to answer it.

‘Right now, it’s best you take my word for it.’ Dave closed the cupboard door. ‘Spiders mostly. The history bloke said he wasn’t going in there till there’d been fumigators. Not the sort of chap to excavate the pyramids. But then me neither. You convinced?’

Mace nodded, half-listening out for Oumou.

Dave dusted off his hands. ‘Your wife a born Frenchie, my son? Looks like that model. The shaven-headed bird. Iman.’

‘Malian. Place called Malitia. One of those mud towns.’

‘Always wondered what happens when it rains. Those towns must just wash away.’

‘Mostly it doesn’t. Rain.’

‘That right? Not a drop?

Oumou came towards them holding out her phone. ‘This woman says she is calling for you.’

Mace took the phone and answered but the connection was gone. The call register gave no number.

Behind him Dave said to Oumou. ‘What you think, love? You see yourself and the kiddy living here? Your old man mowing the lawn?’

Before she could answer, Mace, riding on an instinct this might be Sheemina February, said, ‘Did the caller give you her name?’

Oumou shook her head.

‘She knew your name?’

‘Oui.’

‘She say anything else?’

‘Non. She says Mrs Bishop can I speak to your husband.’

Dave locked the front door, came to stand up close. ‘Children, I’m not putting pressure, far from it, thing is, you’re running ahead of the pack but the dogs are closing. Quick decision is of the essence. Next twenty-four hours this place is going to be in new hands. If those were your hands I’d be happy.’

Mace’s cellphone rang: Matthew Hartnell. ‘You-you-you’ve got to c-come here,’ he said. ‘To the club. N-now.’

5

In the car Mace said, pointing down Molteno Road, ‘Look at that. Don’t you want to live with this every day?’

Cape Town city spread below them, clear now with the brown haze lifted and the sun hard on the buildings. Across the bay a white sickle of beach gleamed up the west coast for such a distance you could almost make out the bulk of the nuclear power station.

Mace revelled, ‘Oh man.’

Oumou reached out to put her hand on his arm. ‘Oui, this is beautiful. But not the house. In the house there is a bad feeling.’

‘Ah, come on.’ Mace slowed for the traffic lights at the reservoir. ‘It’s an old house. Get the renovators and the painters in, like Dave says, it’s what the house can be, not what it is.’

Oumou smiled, took her hand off his arm.

* * *

Mace, she knew, could be stubborn and demanding. And sometimes she resisted and sometimes she didn’t. This time she would wait. In the waiting much would change. Maybe they would move to this house, but maybe they wouldn’t. She kept the smile, thinking of how for a time at the beginning she had resisted him, even when she didn’t want to.

‘You come here for your business, to my town Malitia to sell guns, you go away again,’ she had told him. ‘For months you are away. You come back with that woman, Isabella, I think she is your wife.’

‘Isabella is a contact. American. She can get us guns. It’s business.’

‘You sleep with her. This is business?’

Mace had said, ‘That’s over’ - and reached out for her hand, drawn her towards him.

She laughed at his brazenness, pushed him away.

In Paris men had been like that. She met them, she talked to them, they thought they could lay her. She told them no. Three years she’d spent fighting them off, one way or the other. Four or five she’d pulled a knife on to make her point. The ceramicist she worked for said, ‘Why make pots when rich men want to screw you?’

‘Because I do not want to screw them or you,’ she said.

He leered at her. Always trying to feel her bum, her breasts until she threatened his groin with a knife and said she’d set free his testicles, if he didn’t stop it. The gesture got them to an understanding.

When her time was up she went back to the desert, to Malitia, to shape pots from her native clay.

The potter said, ‘Stay in France, you will make more money. We can organise an exhibition.’

Oumou said, maybe one day.

The man she met on her return to Malitia was Mace Bishop. He was sitting with her brother at a café where men gathered in the afternoon, smoking hookahs, drinking coffee. Playing dominoes. He looked at her as the French men had done, but said nothing. That night he ate at their house. He and the other man, Pylon, joking with her brother.

He admired her pots. He spoke to her in poor French and she told him to speak in English.

‘You know English?’ he said, surprised.

‘Like French, it is the language of guns,’ she said. ‘When I was a girl there was a man here the same as you. An Englishman. If he had nothing to do he would teach me English.’

‘He couldn’t have been very busy.’

She laughed. As he stood grinning at her said, ‘Why must you sell guns here?’

The grin didn’t leave his face. ‘For the money.’

Oumou set a lump of clay on the wheel the French ceramicist had given her. ‘So that people can kill each other. Kill women and children. Little babies even.’

‘They do that,’ he said. ‘Anyhow.’

‘You are a heartless man.’

He told her then about his country and the war there and the need to finance what he called ‘the struggle’. He didn’t tell her about Cayman. About his nest egg.

‘And this makes it right, to sell guns?’ she said.

‘I sell guns to those who need to fight. Like we are.’

‘To children.’

‘In my country they took the lead. They have a future.’

‘Empty words,’ she said, turned to her clay, smoothed it, rounded it, began to shape a form that was long and elegant like her neck. She started the wheel and let this man who sold guns watch her make something beautiful.

For a time she resisted him, his kind attention that would tease her, never touch her, make her laugh. And then one sunset they walked through the mud streets, across the casbah where men packed away their wares and went up the steps onto the wall that had once enclosed the town, gazing into the wadi at boys playing soccer with a ball on the sand between the palm trees. Behind them the imams in their mosques called the faithful to prayer and Mace said, ‘I want to sleep with you.’

The words startled her. She stiffened, broke away from him. ‘You come here for your business, to Malitia, you stay for a few weeks then you go away again. Now you want a sex toy?’

Mace stepped towards her. ‘That’s not what I’m saying.’

‘Stop.’ She put a hand against his chest. Glared at him. ‘If you stop the guns.’

He laughed. ‘What?’

‘You must stop the guns.’

He stared at her for a long time and she didn’t waver. In the wadi the boys ended their game as the dusk thickened, their voices sharp in the stillness. ‘Okay.’ He turned away from her. ‘I’ll think about it.’

Two days later Mace came in from the desert with the body of her brother. She did not cry, her grief was silent. He told her he knew about those who had raped her when she was a girl. Raped her, stabbed her in the stomach, left her for dead. That her brother had told him this in the long hours he took to die. Mace told her he could not let rest the matter of her brother’s death. That night she did not resist him.

But she was insistent. You must stop the guns. You must stop the guns.

When she told him she was pregnant, he said he would stop selling guns.

‘This you will make as a promise?’

‘Yes,’ he said.

And she believed he would.

6

Matthew and Ducky Donald were standing on the pavement when Mace and Oumou pulled up. The two of them smoking. Only Ducky Donald’s slight lean to the right a clue that he might be favouring a good leg. No one else in the short side-street. At night a trendy part of town; during the day not a lot went on. Some cars got repaired at a small garage. A junk dealer took in odd pieces of the city’s discard. Maybe import-export happened in upstairs offices. Nor much passing traffic. The motormac and the junk dealer were keeping to themselves. Mace stopped behind Ducky Donald’s SUV.

‘Won’t take a minute,’ he said to Oumou.

‘Perhaps you can let me have the car?’

‘Ten minutes. That’s all, ten minutes.’

She told him in French he pushed her to the limit.

Ducky Donald leant over the open Spider, grinning at Oumou. ‘Hey, darling! You the one made Mace all the money in the desert? Can see why he did business with you.’ He leered at Mace. ‘Shouldn’t hide her, boykie.’

Mace ignored him. ‘What’ve you got me here for?’

‘Art exhibition,’ said Donald. ‘Appeal to your pitiless heart. Step inside.’ He quashed one cigarette, lit another. ‘The best of gothic. Not so, Mattie boy? Bloody wonderful example.’ Matthew scowled, stepped away so his father couldn’t thump him a second time on the back. ‘Come on, bring the wife, Mace, nothing here she wouldn’t have seen before. Considering what the Arabs get up to.’ He opened the door of the club and they followed him into the darkness.

Mace’s eyes took a moment to adjust. Before they did he heard a mewing, very soft. Also smelt a faint odour like old cat litter. When he could see he saw that kittens had been nailed to the walls through the fur at the nape of their necks. Most were dead, a few squirmed.

‘A grand display, don’t you think!’ said Ducky Donald, whisping a stream of exhale over their heads. ‘You want Mattie to switch the lights on? The strobe’s good.’

The strobe came on: pulsing at images of skulls, tombstones, ruined churches. Bats crossing a sickle moon.

‘Maybe you can tell me what happened?’ Mace said to Matthew.

Matthew licked the dryness of his lips. ‘About ha-ha-half an hour ago I got a ca-all.’

‘Cell? Landline?’

‘My cell-cellphone.’ He cadged a cigarette from his father. ‘No num-number. This guy sa-says they’ve added some decor-ations to my c-club. He ha-hangs up. My first thought it’s Pa-PAGAD. Second that they’ve t-trashed the place. I get down here the door’s o-open …’

‘You called the cops?’

Matthew gave him a pained look. ‘L-like what’s with you-you and the c-cops?’

‘Like breaking and entry. Cruelty to animals. What about Centurion?’

Matthew got red-faced. ‘Wa-wasn’t act-activated. The contract’s ex-pired.’

‘We need protection here, Mace,’ said Donald. ‘These people are shitting the constitution. You gonna let what we struggled for go up in a kilo of Semtex?’

‘You want my protection? Call the cops.’

‘Je-Jesus,’ Matthew rounded on Mace, ‘don’t you g-get it? This isn’t st-stuff for the cops. This is Sh-Sheemina Feb-February. The cops can do sweet fa-fanny about her. You see Abdul Abdul wa-walking around. Two mur-murder charges, he’s out f-free. This’s tha-thank you Sheemina. So what good’re c-cops? Huh! You can t-tell me?’

A shadow darkened the doorway into the street and Oumou came in. Mace heard her catch her breath, say, ‘Merde!’ and disappear.

‘That’s a stunner you picked up,’ said Ducky. ‘You’re a cagey boy, Mace Bishop.’

‘You want my advice?’ Mace shifted from one kitten to the next. They were well tacked in. Some had their heads busted in the hammering. Five of the twelve were alive. ‘Close down. That’s the best protection I can give.’

‘Not possible,’ said Ducky. ‘We’re talking business, Mace. Mattie closes down, the income stream collapses.’

‘They put a pipe bomb in here it’s going to explode, not just collapse.’

‘What you’re engaged to prevent.’

Oumou came back with a pair of pliers from the motormac.

‘You gonna yank the nails out with that you gonna need visibility,’ said Ducky Donald. ‘Bring the lights up, Mattie, give the girl some illumination.’ He closed on her. ‘You need a hand there?’

Oumou ignored him. Got at the first live kitten, put the pliers to the nail head and pulled back hard with a grunt. The nail came out and the kitten fell to the floor, screeching. Ducky Donald got a load of French for not catching it. Pity was, Mace thought, he couldn’t understand a word of it.

‘You gonna enlighten me?’ Ducky Donald asked as Mace handed him a box that must have been the container the kittens were brought in.

‘In a word, you’re an arsehole.’

Matthew sniggered. Oumou pulled free another kitten, gave it to Ducky with an expression suggesting arsehole was too soft a translation. She got down the five, said, ‘Give this back to your neighbour’ - swapping the pliers for the box. Mace followed her out.

‘Ask him what he saw,’ Mace called back at father and son. ‘The motormac.’

Ducky Donald shouted, ‘You’re not running out on us Mace?’

‘Till four-thirty. Meantime think of closing down.’

7

The vet saved three. While he was snipping fur, cleaning the wounds, preparing syringes, wanted to know what happened. Mace gave him a story of how he and Oumou had found them tacked to a wall in the wrong part of Woodstock, probably some sort of gang initiation. Right, he said, he’d heard of that. Dogs being crucified. Cats skewered. Even cows with their udders cut off. Once about a dozen hens plucked alive. Made you wonder what sort of drugs they took, these gangsters.

‘You want me to take these to a pet’s refuge?’ he said. ‘Should imagine if they stay alive over the next few days someone’ll give them a home.’

‘We are having them,’ said Oumou.