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Had his senses been playing tricks on him?

No, there was no chance of that.

He pushed against the door. Cool, stagnant restaurant air wafted towards him. He glanced quickly around at the tautly pulled tablecloths, the motionless ferns and the bar. From the other side of the swing doors he heard a machine start up, possibly an air-conditioner. He froze and listened. No more sounds. Nothing to suggest that anyone was here apart from him.

But where could the man have disappeared to?

Automatically, his right hand grazed the hilt of his Glock. It was resting in its usual place, narrow and discreet. Even though he had come to warn Donner, there was no way of predicting how the man would respond to his visit. He paced lightly over to the bar and looked behind the ornate counter. No one. Behind the swing doors, the gleam of light flickered icily. He went back into the middle of the room and turned his head towards the bead curtain in front of the toilets. Thinking that he saw some of the cords swinging softly, he looked more closely. Like naughty children caught in the act, they froze into motionlessness.

He blinked.

Nothing was moving. Nothing at all. Nonetheless, he went closer and peeped through the bead lattice into a short, gloomy corridor.

‘Andre Donner?’

He didn’t expect any answer, nor did he get one. The door on the left led, as far as he could tell, to the men’s toilets, and opposite them was their female counterpart. At the end of the corridor was another door, marked ‘Private’. He pushed his hand between the cords, awakening them to a lively murmur, then pulled them further apart. He hesitated. Maybe he should put off the inspection of the toilets and the private room until later. His gaze wandered back to the swing doors, and at that moment the hum of the generator stopped. He could now clearly hear—

Nothing.

He had preferred the sounds of the machine.

‘Andre Donner?’

He was answered by dry stillness. Even the noises from the street seemed to be cut off here. Slowly, he walked over to the swing doors and peered through one of the tiny windows. There wasn’t much to see. A little world of its own, made up of chrome and white tiles, chopped up in a strobe effect by the defective fluorescent
lamp. The archaic body of a gas cooker with dark attachments, covered by a tarnished cooker hood. The corner of a workbench. Roasting pans and pots were piled up in a cupboard.

He walked in.

The kitchen wasn’t that small after all. It was surprisingly spacious for a restaurant like Muntu. Three walls were taken up with shelves, cupboards, fridges, a sink unit, oven and microwave. Along the fourth wall were storage surfaces and struts, draped with casserole dishes, pans, soup ladles and splatter screens. A longish work table took up the centre of the room, occupied at the stove end by two huge pans, bowls of finely chopped vegetables under cling film and closed polystyrene boxes. As if to balance it out, a huge slicing machine was enthroned at the opposite end. The kitchen smelled of stock, congealed frying fat, disinfectant and the cold sweetness of thawing meat. The latter was resting half-covered on a baking tray, pale brown in the pulsing light and coated with iridescent skin, its bones protruding. It looked like the hind leg of some huge animal. Kudu-antelope, thought Jericho. He couldn’t picture the breed, but he was sure he was staring at the leg of an antelope. He suddenly pictured the whitish tendons and ligaments under the fur of a living creature, a masterpiece of evolution which enabled the animal to take such stupendous leaps. A highly developed flight mechanism, but ultimately useless against the smallest and quickest of all predators, the rifle barrel. Cautiously, he went closer to the stove. The bluish flicker was increasingly reminiscent of an insecticide device, every flicker a record of death. Smeared wings and little legs, compound eyes, staring unfazed before they boiled in the electronic heat and exploded. In the crystal silence, he could now hear the humming of the lights too, their stumbling clicking when they sprang on and then died again, like some strange code. His gaze fell on a casserole dish on the stove. The contents gripped his attention. He looked in. Something was wriggling in it, something that seemed to be alive and squirming in the pulse of the lights, a headless, rolled-up snake.

Jericho stared at it.

He suddenly felt the temperature fall by several degrees. Pressure exerted itself on his chest as fingers encircled his heart, trying to bring it to a standstill. The hairs on the back of his neck stood up. He felt someone breathing behind him and knew that he was no longer alone in the kitchen. The other person had stalked in without a sound, appeared from nowhere, a professional, a master of disguise.

Jericho turned round.

The man was considerably taller than him, dark-haired, with a strong jawline and light, penetrating eyes. In an earlier life he had had a beard and been ash-blond, something which was only detectable from his light eyelashes and brows, but Jericho
recognised him at once. He was familiar with the faces of this man; he had seen them again just a few minutes ago, on the display of his mobile.

Jan Kees Vogelaar.

Alarmed thoughts came in a rush: Vogelaar was waiting for Donner in order to kill him. Had already killed him. A body in the freezer cabinet. And he was in the worst possible position, much too close to his opponent. Unbelievable stupidity on his part, to have gone into the kitchen. The ghostly effect of the flickering neon light. The weapon in Vogelaar’s hand, pointing at his abdomen. Talk or fight? The failure of rational thinking.

Reflexes.

He ducked and aimed a blow at Vogelaar’s wrist. A shot freed itself from the weapon, echoing into the base of the cooker. Springing back up, he rammed his skull against the man’s chin, saw him stagger, grabbed the saucepan and hurled it towards him. A twitching alien whipped out, the skinned body of the snake. It smacked Vogelaar in the face, the casserole dish scraped his forehead. With all his strength, Jericho kicked out at the hand holding the gun, which clattered to the floor and slid under the workbench. He reached for his Glock, grasped the hilt and tumbled backwards as if he’d just been hit by a ram. Vogelaar had got a grip of himself, turned on his own axis as quick as lightning, flung up his right leg and given him a kick in the chest.

All the air drained from his lungs. Helpless, he crashed into the cooker. Vogelaar whirled up to him like a dervish. The next kick got him in the shoulder, another, his knee. He fell to the floor with a cry. The huge man leaned over, grabbed his lower arm and rammed it hard against the edge of the cooker, again and again. Jericho’s fingers twitched, opened out. Somehow he managed to maintain his grip on the Glock and sink his left hand into Vogelaar’s solar plexus, but it had zero impact. His opponent hit his lower arm again. A sharp pain flooded through him. This time, the pistol flew out of his hand in a wide arc. He punched Vogelaar’s ribs repeatedly with his free hand, around his kidneys, then felt the grip around his arm loosen. Released, he crawled sideways.

Where was the Glock?

There! Not even half a metre away.

He threw himself forwards. Vogelaar was quicker, pulling Jericho up and hurling him towards one of the huge pans. Instinctively, he tried to get a grip on it, buckled over as Vogelaar kicked him in the back of his knees, and ripped the pan down with him as he fell. A torrent of greasy broth gushed down over him, hailing bones, vegetables and meat. Filthy and wet, he writhed around on the kitchen floor, then saw the other man leaning over him, saw his fist coming down towards him, grabbed
the empty pan with both hands and rammed it as hard as he could against Vogelaar’s shins.

The South African tried to suppress a cry of pain and stumbled. Like an amphibian, Jericho glided through the pool of liquid, grabbed a bowl of finely chopped tomato and threw it at Vogelaar, then another, fruit salad relieved of gravity: mango, pineapple and kiwi in free fall. For a few seconds his adversary was busy with dodging manoeuvres, giving him enough time to gain a metre of distance before the giant attacked again. Jericho fled around the workbench, grabbed the struts of a high cabinet, bringing pots, tins, bowls and sifters, pans, casserole dishes and cutlery drawers crashing down to the floor. Vogelaar sprang back, away from the avalanche. In no time, half of the kitchen was blocked. There was only one route left, along the opposite side of the workbench.

But Vogelaar was closer to the swing doors.

You idiot, Jericho cursed to himself. You’ve backed yourself right into the trap.

The South African bared his teeth sneeringly. He seemed to be thinking exactly the same thing, except that Jericho’s predicament was visibly cheering him. Eyeing each other, they paused, each clasping their end of the workbench. In the flicker of the neon light Jericho had the opportunity to get a good look at the man for the first time. His short-term memory simultaneously unearthed the birth date of the former mercenary, and he suddenly realised that his opponent was long past sixty. A fighting machine of pensionable age, against which the privilege of youth withered away, a farce. Vogelaar didn’t seem in the slightest bit tired, while he was puffing like a steam engine. He saw the man’s eyes light up, reflecting the flicker of the neon light. Then, without any warning, it went dark.

The light had given up the ghost. Vogelaar faded into a silhouette, a black mass emitting a low, triumphant laugh. Jericho narrowed his eyes. The only light still coming in was through the gaps in the swing doors, just enough to see the only remaining escape route. Like a crab, he shuffled out from the protection of his cover. As if mirroring his movements, the silhouette of the South African set itself in motion too. An illusion. He wouldn’t get to the doors fast enough. Perhaps a little conversation was advisable.

‘Hey, let’s cut the crap, shall we?’

Silence.

‘We won’t achieve anything like this. We should talk.’

The disheartened tremolo in his voice wasn’t good at all. Jericho took a deep breath and tried again.

‘This is a misunderstanding.’ That was better. ‘I’m not your enemy.’

‘How stupid do you think I am?’

An answer, at least, albeit croaky and threatening and not exactly emanating a desire for understanding. The silhouette came closer. Jericho backed off, grappled behind him, got hold of something jagged and heavy and closed his fingers around it in the hope that it was suitable as a weapon.

With a dry bang, the lights sprang back on.

Vogelaar stormed over, swinging a worryingly long kitchen knife, and Jericho was paralysed by a déjà vu. Shenzhen. Ma Liping, the paradise of the little emperors. At the very last second, he pulled up what he was holding in his hand. The knife sliced the radish in two, whizzed through the air and missed him by a hair. Jericho stumbled backwards. The giant chased him around the table towards the upturned cabinet. On a wing and a prayer, he reached into the pile of kitchen utensils that had poured out from it, grabbed hold of a baking sheet and held it in front of him like a shield. Clanging steel screeched over aluminium. He wouldn’t be able to fend off Vogelaar’s enraged attacks for long, so he grabbed the tray with both hands and went on the attack, swinging it around wildly and landing an audible hit. Vogelaar swayed. Jericho threw the tray at his head, fell to the floor, rolled under the table through to the other side, sprang to his feet and started to run. Vogelaar would have to go around the table—

Vogelaar went
over
the table.

Just centimetres before the door he felt himself get grabbed and pulled back with such force that he lost his footing. Effortlessly, Vogelaar spun him around and knocked him down. He crashed against something hard, making him lose his hearing and sight, then realised that the South African was holding his head against the meat slicing machine. The next moment, the blade began to rotate. Jericho wriggled, trying to break free. Vogelaar turned his arm behind his back until it made a cracking sound. The blade sped up.

‘Who are you?’

‘Owen Jericho,’ he wheezed, his heart in his throat. ‘Restaurant critic.’

‘And what do you want here?’

‘Nothing, nothing at all. Donner, to speak to Donner—’

‘Andre Donner?’

‘Yes. Yes!’

‘About a restaurant review?’

‘Yes, damn it!’

‘With a gun?’

‘I—’

‘Wrong answer.’ The South African pressed his head against the metal and pushed it towards the racing blade. ‘And a wrong answer costs an ear.’

‘No!’

Jericho gave a howl. Burning pain shot through his outer ear. In fear and panic, he kicked his feet out and heard a muffled blow. The pressure on his shoulder suddenly gave way. Vogelaar slumped over him. He pulled himself to his feet, saw his torturer stagger and rammed his elbow into his face. The other man sank his fingers into his belt, then toppled over. Jericho held onto the edge of the table to avoid being dragged down with him. Something big and dark landed on the back of Vogelaar’s head. The man collapsed and didn’t move again.

Yoyo was staring at him, both hands clasped around the bones of the frozen antelope leg.

‘My God, Owen! Who is this arsehole?’

Dazed, Jericho felt behind his ear and touched raw, ripped-open flesh. When he looked at his finger, it was red with blood.

‘Jan Kees Vogelaar,’ he mumbled.

‘Damn it! And Donner?’

‘No idea.’ He drew air into his lungs. Then he crouched down next to the motionless body. ‘Quick, we have to turn him over.’

Without asking any more questions, Yoyo threw the antelope leg aside and helped him. With combined effort, they managed to roll Vogelaar onto his back.

‘You’re bleeding,’ she said, casually.

‘I know.’ He opened Vogelaar’s belt buckle and pulled it out of the loops. ‘Is there any of my ear left?’

‘Hard to say. It doesn’t really look like an ear any more.’

‘That’s what I was afraid of. Back on his stomach.’

The same sweat-inducing process. He bent Vogelaar’s lower arms behind him and tied them tightly together. The unconscious man breathed heavily and groaned. His fingers twitched.