Last Train to Retreat (16 page)

Zane had three Appletisers and missed his second training session in a week.

•

When Zane cycled back from the dojo the next evening she was waiting for him on the corner of Court and Ebenezer. He recognised her quiet, slender figure even before he saw her face. Wordlessly they walked to the lift, the precedent having been established. She briefly stroked the bike as if remembering how it had helped her to get around in the flat. He’d never seen her showing any kind of affection and it made him wonder what her life had been like.

As they entered the flat she said, ‘Did you see the paper?’

‘No, it’s been too hectic at work. Why?’

‘A body was found on Saturday at Miller’s Point … not rotting yet, a few days in the water at most. No ID but sounds like Curly – big man,
dik
neck, and wiry, curly hair.’

As he wheeled his bike to the bedroom the insects in his stomach were on the move again. All week his emotions had been going crazy like an irregular heartbeat – up, down, up, down. He came back and sat down. ‘Without going to the morgue you can’t be sure, Lena. And going to the morgue is not a good idea because you’d raise suspicion’.

She said slowly, ‘It’s him alright – they say there was a cut on his upper right arm.’

It sounded like Curly. How bizarre, he thought – both of the men who had attacked them now dead. ‘Aren’t you glad you didn’t kill him after all, Lena?’

‘Yes, we should both be. It doesn’t look as if he’d been swimming because he was dressed in a T-shirt and tracksuit pants. The report says police are investigating. It says they reckon the cut on Curly wasn’t new.’

Zane’s stomach played up again, the girl was bad for him.

She seemed to sense it. ‘Okay, okay – so I’m not wired for optimism. The police don’t know Curly’s from Lavender Hill but
I
know. His body was found a long way from where he lived and I think there’s something fishy about it.’

‘You’re not only charming but witty as well. Maybe he
was
fishing?’

‘Well, then, where’s his car, and his things? You don’t just take a rod.’ She seemed consumed by the need to find out what had happened.

Zane could contain himself no longer: ‘Lena, look, why you’re so interested in all this? Curly I can understand, but you want to know more – like the stuff about human trafficking and if the guys were involved. Are there things you’re not telling me?’

‘Get us some Horlicks and I’ll tell you about Sarai, the girl from Thailand … oh, the Horlicks is in the top shelf of the cupboard to the right of the stove.’

The thought flashed through him,
I’m the last one left who knows she’s killed Gatiep. Had Curly not drowned she would’ve killed him too. She’s a coldblooded geitjie that feels nothing, why would she treat me differently? She’s in my flat and she’s going to get me.

‘You shouldn’t just pitch up like this,’ he said. ‘I’ve got a friend …’ he stumbled over his words, ‘who sometimes stays over … you wouldn’t want my friend to get curious about you … us … would you?’ For someone in the communications business he wasn’t doing too well.

‘Ah, you mean one of your
kinners
, a
girlfriend?
’ Her face pulled in disgust. It changed to one of apprehension at the possibility of a third person sharing their terrible secret.

He sidestepped the question. ‘Rather phone if you want to talk, okay? Now that we’re on first name terms it’s okay to swap numbers,
nuh
?’ For the first time with her he grinned.

He held his cup of Horlicks with both hands. It was hot and comforting. As he sat back listening to the story of the girl from Thailand he became aware of a different kind of heat. It came from Lena’s look – intense, wrathful, with no hint of melting in her rich brown eyes. It was a look meant for all men, and he was a man wasn’t he?

S
ollie Baatjies woke up one morning and decided he’d had enough of waiting for Gatiep. He had a quarter loaf of bread with syrup, three cups of tea from the same tea bag, and walked to Retreat station, T-shirt and jeans loose on his gaunt frame, weathered skin drawn tightly over his face like a mummy’s. He’d been putting it off for days and was now dreading what he might find.

At Salt River station near the city he got off and walked to the mortuary. He explained to the first person he saw, a man walking briskly down a corridor dressed as if it was winter, why he had come. The man called another man wearing a pull-over under his white coat. The second man asked Sollie to wait and came back with papers clipped to a board. He led Sollie down a cold, grey passage with heavy doors every ten metres or so all the while consulting his clipboard. He stopped at one of the doors, put on a pair of gloves, and took Sollie inside. Sollie wanted to run out again. A sweet, ripe smell hit his nose – it made him want to
kots –
then the cold bit through his T-shirt. He stared at row upon row of cream-coloured shrouds stacked on frosty steel trays and started trembling. ‘
Liewe God is my Gatiep hie onner die dooies?
’ he cried out silently even as he knew God would not be giving him the answer.

The man started unwrapping shrouds, one after the other. Sollie looked solemnly at the dead, shook his head each time. The man could have been checking carcasses in an abattoir. Sollie was beginning to feel faint. There was nowhere to sit. He gripped a steel rack and it was like touching a block of ice. As the shroud came off the sixth corpse Sollie suddenly looked into his son’s face – a passive, pale, putrid Gatiep, eyes closed, the cut in his chest stitched up thank the Lord.

Sollie had prayed that Gatiep would be back, that he’d suddenly re-appear in the door of their house. But as the days drifted by, dread had taken over from hope. Now, three weeks later, with a certainty that only the mortuary could give him and the knowledge that no further harm could befall his son, Sollie knew what he had to do. He remembered the girl at SASSA helping him with his pension and asking if he’d been to the police. She just got her timing wrong –
now
was the time.

•

Bella Ontong was on night shift at the station, for twelve hours from 6 pm to 6 am. Tomorrow she’d do a similar shift and then thankfully get three days off before her two twelve-hour day shifts would start again. Night-time at the station, with her husband and two children asleep at home, was when Bella got her admin done provided all hell didn’t break loose with gangs fighting or people assaulting each other at home. She was in the charge office behind a computer studying the station’s performance against its monthly targets. The way things looked she didn’t have enough ‘A’ class arrests for drugs and possession of illegal firearms, and house and car break-ins were still too high. Her ‘B’ class arrests by contrast were good – for drunken driving, causing a disturbance, traffic violations. She sighed. If only it was the other way around. The radio near her crackled:

‘Ah, control, permission with Richmond Delta three two please.’

‘Go ahead. Keep it short.’

‘Thanks control. Richmond Delta three two it’s Richmond Delta.’

‘Three two make a turn for me there at 39 Horstley, East Lavender. Zero one four alpha. Housebreaking in progress, call when you break.’

‘One four alpha, 39 Horstley, we’re on our way.’

It wasn’t far for the car to go. Bella carried on working. Then, five minutes later: ‘
Control, Richmond Delta 32 breaking.’

It never let up because crime did not heed time and the station served a hundred thousand people who lived a hard existence. The calm, steady flow of crackly voices provided a form of companionship to those at the station and reassurance to Bella that crime
was
being addressed.

‘Captain, could we talk please?’

It was Philander. His blue eyes stood out in a part of the Cape where brown eyes were as plentiful as
snoek
in an autumn sea.

‘
Hoesit
, Quentin. This is a surprise,’ she said softly. He’d been on day shift and she’d missed him. ‘
Bot
at home?’ she teased him. With Bettie gone Philander preferred the station to the boredom of home.

‘
Nah,
something happened you should know about,’ he said and walked towards one of the meeting rooms at the side of the charge office.

As Bella followed his suited figure she wondered – as she always did – if her shapeless uniform was as unfeminine and
arag
to Philander as it was to her. Her boots made squashy sounds on the shiny floor. The standard issue Z88 9mm pistol bulged on her hip. She’d often felt the irony of carrying a weapon of destruction on a part of her body that had been instrumental in bearing her children. She’d carried them each for nine months and her gun for twenty years – empowered by nature to give life and by society to take it away. In terms of God’s plan it seemed all wrong but then she wondered if He ever realised that some people were so bad they were beyond help, beyond any kind of salvation. She had looked into some eyes and seen the evil but had never had to use her gun – she thanked Him for that – and prayed that she would make it to retirement without having to kill another human being.

‘A man called Sollie Baatjies came to the station today … lucky for me I was on duty,’ Philander said pulling out a seat for Bella. That was Philander, she thought, and loved him for it. As a man he was a general, not a mere warrant officer.

‘Why?’

‘Remember the body on the train at Simonstown? Well, it came from right here – Baatjies checked the mortuary, it’s his son, Gatiep.’ Philander seemed energised. ‘Baatjies let on he was an Evangelical which is new to me, I didn’t know Gatiep. It appears Gatiep worked for them in the city.’

‘The case isn’t with us, Quentin,’ Bella said matter-of-factly. She understood him – since the murder of his wife, Bettie, Philander had had his sights on the Evangelicals but there was police protocol. ‘What are you going to do? Advise whoever is investigating the case?’

‘I have to,’ he said studying his nails, ‘but I’ve got home ground advantage, don’t I?’ His eyes shone bright in the ceiling light.

Why did she worry so much about this man, Bella thought?

•

Four days later Philander walked into the office where Bella was sitting and spread the Cape Times out on the desk with a flourish. A report had been circled in red on page four with the heading ‘Body at Miller’s Point.’

Bella glanced at it. ‘Yes, I saw it, Quentin, two days old, not for us, but it’s nice to see you.’

‘I know, Bella, it’s for the Simon’s Town police. But Baatjies is mine. When I spoke to him he mentioned Gatiep’s
choms,
he was quite specific – Curly Booysen then Delron, Goppie and someone called Cupido. Told me where they hang out. I asked for Curly at the disco in Main Road but they said they’d not seen him for a while. Went to his house a few times but it was dead quiet. Then I saw this report about the drowning. Strange that there was no car, no fishing or swimming stuff – nothing. It got me thinking, so I asked Baatjies again for a description of Curly …’

‘Sit down, Quentin, you’re making me nervous.’ Her elbows were on the desk, fingers forming a tepee. She could smell his aftershave – warm spices. If she ever came across it in a faraway place she’d think of Philander – it was her dream to travel one day. ‘Go on.’

‘Well, on a hunch I took Baatjies to the Salt River mortuary. You’ll never guess, Bella.’

A woman’s shrill voice came from the charge office – a complaint of abuse, no doubt, Bella thought. In the background she could hear the comforting crackle of the radio.

He continued, ‘For the second time the poor man had to identify a body, and it
was
Curly Booysen. The question is how come it was found so far from Lavender Hill? I tracked down Delron in a
shebeen
… I didn’t say a thing about Curly and Gatiep, just asked general questions about the Evangelicals. He got nervous, and blabbered.’ Philander laughed. ‘Most do, even if they’ve done nothing wrong … well, not in the past twenty-four hours, anyway! Then Delron dropped a gem –
the person killed outside Green Point stadium at the time of the World Cup was Cupido
.’ Philander was now running, nose to the ground, a blue-eyed bloodhound.

In a flash Bella could see where Philander was going. ‘
Yster
, Quentin! On the surface the three men have nothing in common – they died in different places at different times, two from stabbings one from drowning – but they were all Evangelicals! Have you told the EGM? Dockets for multiple killings have to go to them as you know … and you have to advise the Simon’s Town police.’ Philander had little time for the EGM –
Ernstige en Geweldsmisdaad Eenheid
, the Serious and Violent Crime Unit.

‘
Minute,
Bella! It’s complicated. There’s still Kuscus and Fritz … and very much still Bettie, and now of course Cupido, Gatiep, and Curly. How can one docket cover all of that?’ Philander patted his stomach, ‘Gut-feel, Bella, I know, but it’s all pointing to the Evangelicals. I just need time …’ Philander impulsively grabbed her hand sending a shock through Bella. ‘What are you doing, Warrant Officer Philander?’ she said without taking her hand away. ‘What if someone walks in?’ It was too late to say ‘please don’t do it,’ or ‘you’re out of line’.

‘I need a few more days, Bella. You know how I feel about the EGM.’ He was always complaining that the EGM didn’t know the streets as well as he did; he’d get the info and they’d get the credit.

She loved the feel of her hand lost in his and looked at him with more than just a docket for multiple killing on her mind – she felt sudden want, love, and burning guilt.

•

Philander seemed unstoppable. Two days later he said cryptically, ‘I’m baiting up hooks, Bella, I’m going fishing.’

‘For God’s sake, Quentin, are you
versin!
So far I’ve treated everything as off the record but I can’t go on much longer. You’re not Rambo, you know, you’re SAPS.’