R
OXY WAS STARTING TO FEEL MORE COMPOSED, WANDERING ALONG A lane of oaks that cut through the old graveyard facing the chapel. Crumbling headstones, dismembered angels reaching up to heaven through long grass.
She heard the tap of high heels behind her and turned to see the African cannibal and the Ukrainian whore approaching through the drizzle. It took Roxy a moment to place them. Not that they weren’t memorable, but a lot had happened since that dinner in Camps Bay, the night it all began.
The whore held an umbrella over her man, keeping his silk suit dry, the rain turning her yellow hair to string. The hair was no longer braided but hung loose, split ends brushing the dandruff on her dark coat.
The cannibal reached out and enfolded Roxy’s hand in both of his.
“Mrs. Palmer. So tragic.”
Tragique.
The limpid eyes brimmed with sympathy. “All my condolences.”
His hands felt like a cane toad Roxy had found nestling near a scummy swimming pool in Hialeah when she was a kid. She’d made the mistake of picking it up, and it had squirted a toxic goo on her hands, leaving the skin inflamed for days.
She took her hand back.
“Thank you for being here.”
“And to think that we were together. For the last supper.” A shake of the noble head.
Roxy was feeling out of whack anyway, and the last-supper reference nearly had her giggling. But she bit back the laughter. “Yes. Who would have thought?”
The bottle blonde T-boned the conversation. “Your dress, it is a Nina Ricci?”
Roxy nodded. “Yes, it is.”
The whore looked like she was about to rip the dress off Roxy’s back and make a run for the main road. The African elbowed her aside.
“Mrs. Palmer, of course it is difficult to discuss these matters at such a time. But …”
Roxy was staring at him, shaking her head, confused. She looked over his shoulder and saw Billy Afrika standing on the sidewalk outside the church, watching them.
The cannibal pressed on. “That night, I left Mr. Palmer with an attaché case. You remember, perhaps?”
Roxy nodded. She did vaguely recall Joe carrying a case as they walked back to the car. Saw him sling it into the trunk of the Mercedes after opening the door for her.
“It was a deposit on some equipment your husband was going to supply. Equipment my country very desperately needs, Mrs. Palmer.”
Billy was walking toward them. Roxy looked at the African. “I’m not sure I get what you’re saying here …”
“That money, that down payment, was a substantial amount
of dollars.”
Dollairs.
“Money, Mrs. Palmer, that is like the blood of my people. You understand?”
“No. I don’t.”
“I, we, our country needs it back, Mrs. Palmer. At all costs.”
She laughed. Understood why they were here. “Get in line, buddy. And speak to my husband’s lawyer.”
She tried to walk past him, but he put out a hand to stop her. Billy was there, and very suddenly the African had pulled his hand away and was rubbing his arm. She hadn’t seen what Billy did; he’d moved too fast. But it had hurt.
The cannibal was breathing heavily, saying something in French that she was sure wasn’t another expression of sympathy.
Billy took Roxy gently by the arm and walked her away.
“What did they want?”
“Same as you.” He looked at her. “Blood money.”
She stepped away from his hand and headed toward the car, wanting to get out of there before the mourners left the chapel.
MANSON SAT IN the rear of the Hummer, parked outside the high school in Paradise Park. A grim-looking place with more razor wire surrounding it than Pollsmoor. He was waiting for his daughter, Bianca.
Manson had offspring littered across the Flats. But he had a soft spot for this kid, always had. She’d been born a tiger. Just like him. Bianca’s mother had been a good-time girl, who was all sex at sixteen, a used-up tik head at eighteen, and a corpse at twenty.
He’d put the child with his sister, Charneze, over by the tik house. Had Bianca at his place sometimes, on the weekends.
The girl was in the shit again. His sister phoned him and told him to go get her at school. Charneze was too busy cooking—big weekend coming up. So Manson got Arafat and Boogie to drive
him over. Didn’t have time for this mess, he had a business to run, but what could a father do?
While he waited, he thought about sorting out that little rabbit, Disco, who was hiding his punk ass away. Couldn’t hide forever. Didn’t think he’d kill him, just carve his initials in Disco’s pretty face, let him walk around reminding everybody not to fuck with Manson.
He looked out the window, saw Clyde’s kid. Jodie. In her netball outfit, close by the fence. Tight little ass in that tiny pleated skirt, didn’t cover none of her goods. She saw him and waved—fucken begging for it—then skipped up to take a shot at the hoop, skirt lifting to show her panties.
He could get any girl he wanted, by choice or force. And he didn’t need the money her mommy was giving him. But it was all about power. Power over the dead cop’s family.
Captain Clyde Adams had been a hard-assed bastard. Proud that he couldn’t be bought. Spat in your face when you tried to bribe him. Made life tough for the Paradise Park gangsters. There had been a number of attempts on his life before Piper got it right.
He wasn’t missed.
And the wife, Barbara, refused to greet Manson on Sundays over at the New Apostolic Church. She always held herself better than everybody else. As if the holy light shone right out her crack.
Manson remembered laughing when some little piece of ass he was screwing—worked at Standard Bank near Bellwood South—came and told him about the dollars going into Barbara Adams’s account every month. All it had taken was a visit or two, Protea Street side, to persuade Barbara to hand that cash over to him.
Manson had enjoyed making her squirm and beg. And fuck his promise to Billy Afrika; he was going to enjoy this little Jodie, too.
Manson’s eyes moved from the girl playing netball to his
daughter crossing the dusty yard toward the Hummer, hips swaying under her short school skirt, tits pushing at her blouse. Way too developed for her age. She had grown up wild and beautiful. So much like her mother he had to squint sometimes to see who he was looking at.
Bianca slid into the car next to him, blowing a pink bubble of gum the size of a balloon. She popped it with a wet smack and started chewing again as Arafat got the Hummer rumbling down the street.
“The fuck’s up with you, Bianca?” Manson asked, trying for a parental tone. Failing.
“Nothing’s up with me.”
“It true about you pulling a blade on some girly?”
“Of course, yes. Any bitch gimme shit, I gonna cut her.”
“What happened?”
“She say my mommy were a bushman. That’s why my hair is like so.” She fingered her wild tangle of curls.
“Okay, that’s a lie, first. And it’s a shit thing to say, second. But you can’t go round killing people, understand?
“Why? You do.”
“That’s different,” Manson said, sensing thin ice ahead.
“Why so?”
“’Cause, it’s my fucken job is why.”
“Okay. But you had to start somewheres.”
“Bianca, you fucken thirteen.”
“So?”
“So, these things can wait a few years.”
“You saying I can only kill some bitch when I’m a grown-up?”
“Ja. That’s what I’m saying.”
“Fuck that. I want me a gun. Shoot the cunts.” She popped the gum. Smacked like a gunshot.
Manson shook his head, saw himself when he was her age. Didn’t understand life sometimes. Why the hell couldn’t she have been born a boy?
BY THE TIME they passed the Waterfront they were back in the sun, and the air had turned thick and hot. The other side of the mountain like a foreign country.
Roxy had been silent since they reached the car, and Billy let her be. Still, he wondered who the darky—so black he was blue—and the bottle blonde were. Needed to know if they were going to come between him and his money.
They were winding up toward Lion’s Head when Roxy spoke. “You kill people, don’t you?”
“Not if I can help it.”
“But you have? In the past?”
He nodded. “To defend myself.”
She hesitated, as if searching for the right words, gazing out at the last clouds burning off the flat blue sky. “How are you meant to feel, when you’ve done something like that?”
He shrugged. “Every time it’s different.”
“I don’t feel any remorse, or guilt, for what I did. I’m just totally terrified I’ll be caught. Is that bad?” Her eyes were on him now. Like she wanted some kind of absolution.
“Roxanne, I told you already, I don’t give a fuck you shot Joe. He’s dust. Nothing more to say. You need to talk about it, see a priest or a shrink.”
Billy looked across at her.
Saw her blink. Nod.
ROXY DIDN’T SPEAK the rest of the way home.
She felt spaced out, like when she was fourteen and taking cheap drugs to smear and soften the hard edges of her life. Ten years later, in Europe, the drugs were expensive and she chased them with French champagne, but they’d still left her hollow
and fragmented, her life a blur, like images glimpsed from a speeding train.
Roxy closed her eyes. She hadn’t told Billy the whole story. She was afraid, of course, of getting caught for what she did. Doing jail time. But back there in the chapel, with the ghoulish Christ staring down at her, she’d felt another kind of fear: that she was going to have to pay for what she did to Joe. In whatever way.
“Fuck.”
Billy’s voice startled her. She opened her eyes.
He was slowing outside the house. Gates standing wide-open. Police vehicles and an occupying army of uniformed and plainclothes cops cluttering the driveway. Billy smashed the Hyundai into reverse, looking back over his shoulder, accelerating.
She looked back, too, in time to see a police van slide in behind them, blocking their exit.
R
OXY STEPPED OUT OF THE CAR. SAW THE FRONT DOOR OF THE house standing open, blue uniforms in the hallway merging with the ocean beyond.
Billy was around to her, speaking in low tones before the cops reached them: “Don’t say anything to these guys until you speak to your lawyer, okay?”
A man in a suit, too expensive for a cop, approached her. “Are you Mrs. Roxanne Palmer?”
“Yes, I am.”
“My name’s Ronald Barker. I’m the
curator bonis
, executing the warrant to seize property under a preservation and forfeiture order.” He was flapping something official-looking under her nose.
“Want to run that by me in English?”
“I am working with the Asset Forfeiture Unit. We have been granted a high court order to seize all assets belonging to Mr. Joseph Palmer.”
“But he’s dead.”
“Exactly. In these cases we have to move promptly to prevent the estate absorbing the disputed items. Mr. Palmer was under investigation on various charges, including tax fraud and the recruitment of mercenaries for foreign countries. As such, all his assets are to be seized and all bank accounts frozen.”
Roxy stared at Billy, still not getting this.
He took her arm and walked her away, her eyes still on the man in the suit.
“Roxanne,” he said, voice low. “Look at me.” She looked at him. “This isn’t about you killing Joe. You understand?”
“Yes. Kind of.”
“So say nothing. This is a whole other deal. Joe was in deep shit. That’s why I wasn’t being paid. Why his business fucked up. He didn’t mention this to you?”
She shook her head. “No. He was just drinking more. Angrier.”
Angry enough to smack her down the stairs and kill her baby.
“Good news is, you’re not being busted for murder.”
“And the bad news is, I’m out on my ass with nothing?”
He nodded. “Ja. That’s about it.” A tight smile. “At least you got your ass, though.”
“That’s hilarious.” Not smiling. “And there’s not going to be any money? Ever?”
He shook his head. “No. If these vultures are here, it’s gone.”
She was taking this in. Adjusting. “What are you going to do?”
“Whatever I need to do,” he said.
“I’m sorry.”
He shrugged. “Don’t be. Worry about yourself.”
Roxy nodded, then walked over to the man in the suit. “Mr … . ?”
“Barker.”
“I need to speak to my lawyer.”
“Would that be Mr. Richardson?”
“Yes.”
“You’ll need to find another attorney. Mr. Richardson is in custody. Let’s just say he was giving your late husband pretty bad legal advice.” He looked smug. A man who enjoyed his job.
It made sense now, the way Dick had looked when he’d come by the day before. Wanting Joe’s laptop. The bastard had known the shit was about to hit, and he hadn’t even warned her.
Roxy tried to keep her voice level. “What can I take from the house?”
“You’ll be allowed to take a limited amount of personal effects, toiletries, and so on. Some clothes. No jewelry or household items. One of the female officers will accompany you.”
A woman cop had appeared at her side. Roxy looked across at Billy. He shrugged.
She turned and entered the house, the cop walking a step behind her.
BILLY, A YOUNG white uniform dogging his heels, went up to the spare room. All of his things were already in his duffel bag: razor, toothbrush, the lot. An old habit. He was always ready to roll. The cop scratched around in the bag. Nodded. Billy zipped the bag, slung it over his shoulder, and walked.
In the corridor he passed a room he’d never seen open before. A pink room, like a kid’s nursery. Roxy stood inside the room, the woman cop hovering in the doorway. Roxy looked up at Billy. He saw an expression of pure pain on her face. It almost made him stop, go to her, and comfort her.
Then he turned and walked away, toward the stairs.
She had her problems. But that’s all they were: her problems.
He had a family to protect. And he had to find the money to protect them with.
MAGGOTT WAS LATE for the strategy briefing.
He opened the door at the end of a dim corridor on the top floor of the Sea Point cop shop, saw some darky in a flashy suit running the show—brought in from regional HQ, pretending he knew what he was talking about.
Maggott found a seat, sensing an air of embarrassment in the room. He almost laughed. When you looked past the suit, you saw straight out onto Three Anchor Bay and Rocklands Beach. Where the two blondes had lost their heads.
No wonder these guys felt small.
The room was full of the cops you got everywhere: good, bad, bored. The darky was saying they had “developed a profile.” Passed around the Identikit of a suspect who had allegedly been seen in the area around the time of the murders. White guy with a face flat as a shovel. Maggott could smell the bullshit. This was for the media. End of story.
Maggott had his hand up.
The suit raised his eyebrows. “Yes?”
“Detective Maggott. Bellwood South.”
“What’s on your mind, Detective?”
“These women, no signs of sexual assault?”
“We covered that before you arrived. Answer’s no.”
“So just their heads taken? You not thinking
muti
here?”
Mutters around the table, nobody wanting to meet his eye except the suit who looked like his pants had suddenly grown too tight.
“Jesus, not again. What is it, this obsession with witchcraft? Soon as you get a body part missing, it has to be an African indulging in some primitive ritual.”
Maggott pressed on. “Just, I’ve worked some
muti
cases out in the”—he almost said “squatter camps,” caught himself in time—“the informal settlements. Always have the missing bits.”
The suit shut him down. “Thanks for sharing your expertise, Detective. We’ve got a serial killer here. Different ball game.
And serial killers prey on their own ethnic groups. Fact. Our perpetrator is white. Apartheid is alive and well among the psychos and bipolars.” A couple of chuckles. “In fact it always was.”
Laughter at this, leaving Maggott’s face red and zits ready for liftoff.
The darky held up the Identikit. “This is our suspect. Okay?”
The briefing wound down with the suit assigning tasks. Maggott could have predicted it: he was from the Flats, so he was sent out to walk the oceanfront with a bunch of trainee cops in uniform. Hand out xeroxes and talk to the pensioners and the homeless and the lunatics the state could no longer afford to keep locked up.
Fuck.
Maggott grabbed a handful of the Identikits and went down to his car. Robbie, for once, had obeyed him and stayed inside. Looking tearful and as pink-faced as the bear he clutched. Maggott took the boy across to the strip of grass next to the ocean. He sat Robbie under a tree, while he walked the beachfront, stewing with rage. Sun beating down on him. Sweating in his lace-up shoes, jeans, and shirt. The people strolling around him were in shorts and swimwear, and the smell of coconut oil fought the stink of rotting kelp.
He wasted his time handing out the flyers and speaking to the derelicts, lying on the lawn like junk washed up by the ocean. Maggott had ambitions to work this side of town, but they didn’t include speaking to people who stank worse than those out on the Flats.
He approached an elderly white woman who crabbed across the grass, clutching a plastic bag. Maggott thought she was wearing baggy tights, until he saw that her sun-damaged skin sagged in furrows around her ankles, legs bare beneath tiny shorts. The old woman cringed back from him as if he was going to mug her. He flashed his badge and showed her the Identikit. She stared at it, blank.
Shook her head as she took a stale crust of bread from the bag and broke it apart with shaking fingers, throwing bits onto the grass. Within seconds she was lost in a boiling cloud of screaming seagulls, fighting each other for crumbs.
Maggott walked off, cursing in Cape Flats Afrikaans.
He couldn’t keep his mind off that house up on the mountain, sure that if he craned his neck past a drunk digging in a trash can, he could see its glass front catching the sun. He was obsessing, and he knew it.
Maggott stood by the railing, looking out over the ocean. He lit a cigarette and ran his theory: the blonde gets those two lowlifes from Paradise Park to take out her husband, make it look like a hijacking. She does it for the money, what else? Then something goes down, maybe Disco and Godwynn try to blackmail her. So she pays Billy Afrika—guy who works for Joe Palmer—to sort them out, and he kills Godwynn.
It could fly,
he thought as he drew on the Camel and trickled smoke from his nostrils. But there were holes, he had to admit. Like, why was Disco still walking his punk ass around White City? And Billy Afrika—Barbie—was fucken chickenshit. Couldn’t even plug the guy who killed his partner, so was he up for a hit, point-blank, execution style? If Maggott could run ballistics on the slug in Godwynn MacIntosh’s head, he’d be able to answer that. But some brown life meant dick.
Kill a white bitch or two, and you had a media circus.
Maggott finished his smoke, thinking of the lip Barbie gave him, while that American blonde stayed all cool and untouchable in the background. Thinking of the two of them getting away with murder. What he needed was to get Billy Afrika out of the way and do the Cape Flats version of social networking: Facebook without the Internet. Put Disco and Roxanne Palmer in a room together, in each other’s faces. Bet that one of them would crack.
Maggott flicked his cigarette butt onto the grass and looked
around for Robbie. The fucken kid wasn’t under the tree anymore. He saw him standing next to a homeless woman who sat on the grass beside a supermarket cart. A darky, dressed in rags, with one of her legs—a weird red color—stuck out in front of her.
“Robbie!” He shouted, but the kid didn’t hear him. Maggott walked toward the boy, who was staring at the cart, which had all sorts of shit on it, mirrors and feathers, and what looked like a doll tied on with rusted wire.
And the stink.
Fuck. What did she keep in there under that rancid blanket?
The woman was muttering to herself, gazing into a piece of broken mirror hanging from the cart. He saw something leaking from her swollen leg, and the flies were enjoying it.
“The fuck you doing here?” Maggott grabbed the boy by the arm. “Thought I tole you to stay by the tree?”
Before he could stop himself he whacked the kid on his butt with an open palm. Harder than he meant to, and Robbie opened his mouth and leaned back like one of the Three Tenors and let rip with a scream.
Maggott waited until the boy had to pause to catch air, panting.
“You shut the fuck up, and I’ll take you to the Spur tonight. Okay?”
Robbie looked up at him, all snot and quivering lips. But the Spur, a steakhouse chain where the waiters sang to kids on their birthdays, was irresistible.
“You swear?”
“Yes, Jesus. I swear.”
Without warning, the darky woman growled, like she had some animal in her throat, and reached over and grabbed Maggott by the cuffs of his jeans. Her eyes were dipped right back, white as bone fragments in her black face. He tried to pull loose, but Christ, her hands were like steel claws. She opened her mouth, made a gargling sound, and spewed all over his shoes.
Maggot kicked free of her hands, cursing, the sour smell filling his nostrils. He could feel the tacky wetness on his socks. The woman slumped forward like she was boneless, face almost touching that oozing leg, something that sounded like a jungle song coming from deep inside her.
Cursing, Maggott grabbed Robbie’s hand and dragged him over to the line of sprinkler heads spraying a mist of water onto the grass. He sat down, loosened the laces of his shoes and took them off, trying to keep his fingers out of the sticky puke. He removed his socks, too, rinsed them in the water. Then washed the slime off his wingtips.
He stood, holding his shoes and dripping socks. Sweating, his zits seething. Rage cooking his blood.
His fucking nympho wife.
The asshole superintendent.
Billy Afrika and the blonde.
Maggott reached his tipping point.
He dumped the Identikits in a trash can, and, carrying his shoes and socks, he headed for his car. Robbie running to keep up with him.