Mixed Blood (16 page)

Donovan nodded. Saying nothing. He was the quiet one, her oldest son. So quiet, sometimes, that it worried her.

“Donovan.”

He stared at nothing, trying to process what she had told him.

“Donovan, look at me.” His eyes found hers. “I want you to promise me that you aren’t going to do something stupid now. The police will sort this out.”

He spat into the sink. “The police. Fuck the police.” He never spoke like that. He rinsed his mouth, then turned to her. “I’m sorry, Mommy.”

“It’s okay. You’re a good boy. I just don’t want you getting into trouble.”

He nodded. She came up to him and put her arms around him. “Promise me, Donovan.”

He stared over her shoulder. “I promise, Ma.”

Benny Mongrel huddled against a wall with Bessie, trying to escape the southeaster. The builders had left a mound of sand uncovered, and the gale flung it up against the unfinished house. The dog wheezed and moaned, disturbed by the wind. Benny Mongreers.roked her coat. He could feel the grit sticking in the matted fur. Sniper Security treated their watchmen like animals and their dogs like shit. He didn’t know when last Bessie’s coat had seen water.

That’s the first thing he was going to do when he got her to his shack, put that tin tub out in the yard and fill it with water. Then he was going to take Sunlight soap and wash her. And if the knots refused to wash out, he would cut them out with his knife.

The wind drove Benny Mongrel crazy too. He had a cloth wrapped around his ears and mouth, but still the sand got in somehow.

He squatted, watching the flames dance on the mountain above him, acrid smoke and ashes raining down on him and Bessie. The helicopters were still at work, chattering overhead and dumping water into the mouth of the inferno.

It reminded him of being in Pollsmoor, when the mountain burned, and the inmates started pacing, restless, when even the old-timers who could endure anything started trying to bend the bars open with their hands.

A year ago, during the winds, an idiot, another Mongrel who was due for parole, had lost his mind and stolen food from Benny Mongrel’s bed. He had caught the man, and the other prisoners in the cell had waited for Benny Mongrel to say goodnight.

But Benny Mongrel ordered that the man be held down, and a towel was forced into his mouth to keep him quiet. Benny Mongrel then amputated the fingers of both of the man’s hands with his prison shank, a job that required time and strength. Benny Mongrel left him his thumbs. Blood spurted, and the man passed out from the pain.

One of the prisoners had a hot plate in the cell. Benny Mongrel had taken the bleeding stumps and cauterized them on the hot plate, and the smell of burning flesh mingled with the smell of smoke from the mountain fire.

In the morning the warders took the man to the prison hospital. He refused to say a word about who amputated his fingers. Within a week he was back in the cell, with bandages on his hands and a new nickname.

Fingers.

The men had asked Benny Mongrel why he left the man’s thumbs. So he can hitchhike home, he told them. They had laughed. He had not.

This fucken wind made men go mad.

Benny Mongrel heard the car engine. He knew it was the Jeep from next door and didn’t bother to get up. During a lull in the wind he caught the rattle of the American’s garage door rolling up; then he heard the car ease forward. Then the sound of metal scraping brick.

Bessie growled. Benny Mongrel stood and went to the edge of the balcony.

The American had driven into the wall and caught his right fender. He reversed and got out to have a look at the damage. He was drunk, and Benny Mongrel could hear him curse. He got back into the car and drove it into the garage, and the door came down.

Benny Mongrel huddled back against the wall, waiting for the wind to blow itself out.

Barnard drove, still excited by the intensity of his visit to Lombard. He had felt a force, a heat channeled through Lombard’s hand into his bodyfelt renewed, filled with the fervor he needed to handle what lay before him.

His cell phone chirped, and he pulled over, so he could work it free from his pocket. When he saw caller ID, he answered eagerly and heard Dexter Torrance’s slow drawl.

“Rudi, hi. I have news.”

“I’m listening.”

The deputy U.S. marshal told Barnard that he had run the woman’s fingerprint and come up with a minor drug case years ago. Then he had cross-referenced a number of other databases and found out that the woman was married now. And the name of her husband. And what he was running from.

Barnard thanked Torrance profusely.

Then he killed the call and thanked his God for sending him Jack Burn.

C
HAPTER
14

Barnard drove home, knowing that he had received the clearest possible message. About this American who called himself Hill but was in fact a fugitive who had escaped from the States with millions of dollars.

Barnard intended to make Burn pay.

Dexter Torrance, the deputy U.S. marshal, had no interest in making his findings known to the American authorities. “Burn killed a cop, Rudi, whether he pulled the trigger or not. But he had the dumb good luck to do it in a state that doesn’t have the death penalty. I have no interest in seeing him spend time in prison on the taxpayer’s dollar. He deserves to pay the ultimate penalty.”

Rudi Barnard assured Torrance that he would take care of that. The American would get what he deserved.

But first Barnard needed money. Simple blackmail wasn’t going to work. This American was clearly tougher and more resourceful than Barnard had suspected. At the first hint of exposure he would disappear.

No, Barnard had to do something that left Burn no room to maneuver.

Barnard, his mind working through the permutations, approached his apartment block. When he saw an unmarked cop car parked outside, he thought nothing of it. Many cops lived in the area. Then his eyes traveled up to his fourth-floor apartment. The curtains were drawn, but through a gap he saw a light was burning. Had he left it on? Not that he remembered. He pulled over, engine idling. Was he being paranoid? He didn’t think so. As Lombard had so graphically put it, this was a battle between the forces of good and the forces of evil. They would stop at nothing.

Barnard drove away.

Disaster Zondi stood in Barnard’s apartment, watching the detectives search the place. It was small and, given the man’s repulsive physical appearance, surprisingly neat. Just one room with a bed, a sturdy chair in front of a desk, and an open-plan kitchen. No TV. No sound system. No photographs. No memorabilia. Zondi caught the unmistakable stink of Barnard, as if his essence had soaked into the curtains, the worn beige carpet, and the outsize clothes hanging in the closet.

Zondi took in the atmosphere of the room. He found it oppressive, depressing. The futional furnishings, the lack of any noticeable aesthetic. Most of the corrupt cops he investigated were greedy materialists, funding their appetites with their illegal activities. In Soweto last week Zondi had seen a plasma screen so big, it overshot the wall and hung halfway across a passageway, forcing his team to duck around it until he’d ordered them to remove the bloody thing. He was used to searching houses littered with electronic gear and leather sofas, closets bursting with designer wear and bling, garages with doors that couldn’t close on fat-assed SUVs.

It was almost reassuring to come across the physical manifestation of man’s basest urges. There was no ambiguity. You knew exactly who you were dealing with.

But this was the refuge of a fanatic. A man driven by an inner certainty that not only was he right in doing what he did, but he
had
to do what he did. In the old days of apartheid Zondi had come up against a few men like that. Different from the boozers and the cowboys, the profiteers; they were the believers. The ones with a mission.

He recognized them because, he supposed, he was one himself.

Zondi shook himself free of his thoughts and walked across to the desk. A laptop, lid closed, lay next to an empty notepad and a cheap ballpoint. Zondi slipped the laptop into its bag and slung it over his shoulder. Then he walked across to the bed and opened the Afrikaans Bible that lay on the bedside cabinet. He saw the inscription in cramped writing:
TO RUDI. FROM YOUR FATHER ON YOUR TENTH BIRTHDAY.

Even monsters had fathers. And mothers.

Zondi sat on the bed and slid open the cabinet drawer. A
Hustler
magazine, well thumbed, and a tube of Preparation H hemorrhoid ointment. Zondi, a fastidious man, recoiled from the image of the obese Barnard applying the ointment to his fundament. He slid the drawer closed.

He opened the door to the cabinet and saw a small pile of right-wing Christian tracts. Illiterate bile. Predictable. A photograph, the first he had found in the apartment, lay beneath the pamphlets.

Zondi lifted a faded color shot of four men cooking meat over an open fire out in the bush. They were all white, beefy, holding beers in their hands, and mugging for the camera. He recognized one man immediately, a former Security Police captain who had later publicly apologized for the atrocities he committed during the apartheid years in order to avoid prosecution. The man on the captain’s right was the young Rudi Barnard. No mustache, still heavy, but much slimmer than the mountain of flesh who had wheezed into the interview room the other day.

Zondi stared at the photograph. The quiet conversation of the detectives faded from his ears.

He slipped the photograph into his pocket.

Barnard was parked across from the Station Bar. He saw Captain Lotter step out of the bar and walk toward a new Nissan. Barnard crossed the road and dropped into the passenger seat of the Nissan before Lotter pulled away.

Lotter took one look at Barnard and started shaking his blow-dried head. “I had nothing to do with this. Nothing.”

Barnard laughed one of his sucking laughs. “Relax. If I was going to plug you, I would’ve doneit already.”

“So what do you want?”

“Just tell me what’s going on.”

“All I’ve heard is that there’s a warrant out for you.”

“What for?”

“Killing a kid. And two unidentified males.”

This was unexpected. He’d anticipated some trumped-up charge, but they had connected him to the little half-breed. “I didn’t kill those two bastards.”

Lotter was looking at him. “And the kid?” Barnard said nothing. Lotter shook his head. “Jesus, Barnard.”

“Have they got Galant?”

Lotter nodded. “He’s locked up at Bellwood South. Hear he’s already sung.”

“Piece of shit.” He sucked on his mustache, staring ahead.

“You better disappear bloody fast, Barnard. I don’t fancy your chances in Pollsmoor.”

Barnard said nothing as he lifted himself from the car. He watched Lotter drive away, probably already on his cell phone to Peterson.

Barnard went back to his car and got the hell out of there.

The pressure was on him. He had to move—and fast. The only way he was going to survive this was to get enough money together to go deep underground, change his identity. The irony wasn’t lost on him.

Just like his American friend.

The helicopter cut through Burn’s sleep, low enough for him to hear the blades whipping. The sound of the chopper and the acrid smoke in his nostrils spun him back to February 1991, as an Apache attack helicopter swooped over Burn and his platoon driving through the smoldering wreckage on the Highway of Death.

The four-lane highway through the desert, jammed with vehicles laden with plunder from the Iraqi sack of Kuwait City, had been bombed the night before. Vehicles were riddled with bullet holes, cars blown up, hundreds of Iraqi soldiers and civilians incinerated.

Then Burn woke up. He was in Cape Town. The mountain was burning, and he had the mother of all hangovers. He lay in the spare bedroom, and the windows were closed, the room airless.

He pulled himself to his feet, still fully dressed. His mouth tasted like shit. He put a hand in his pocket and found a wad of notes. Last night’s blackjack winnings. He cursed himself for his weakness and stupidity.

He headed off to the kitchen to find an aspirin.

Susan was making breakfast. Bacon and eggs. The smell of the food was enough to make him puke. Matt sat at the counter, swinging his legs, reading Dr. Seuss. A book that Burn used to read to him at night back home. Jesus, how long ago had that been?

Burn ruffled his son’s hair. “Morning, Matty.” His voice sounded like a work in progress. A poor one.

Matt nodded, absorbed in the book. Susan didn’t look around from the stove.

Burn found aspirin in the drawer and washed two of them down with a glass of water. Susan dished food for herself and Matt. She set the boy’s plate before him and walked out onto the deck with hers. It wasn’t much after seven but the sun was already fierce.

Burn followed her outside, squinting.

The mountain above them was charred, black, smoldering. Choppers were dousing any last sparks. The wind, mercifully, had stopped.

Susan sat down at the table on the deck, her eyes hidden behind black Ray-Bans.

Burn didn’t sit. He hovered over her. “I’m sorry.”

She said nothing. It was as if he wasn’t there.

There was nothing more he could say to his wife. He knew that she would find peace only when he turned his back on her and left.

Disaster Zondi sat at a table in his room at the Arabella Sheraton and ate his breakfast. Fruit salad with extra kiwi, poached eggs, and whole-wheat toast. Freshly squeezed orange juice. No bacon. He never touched pork. He wore his suit trousers and white shirt without a tie. His Italian loafers gleamed.

When you worked for the ministry, you were looked after. You flew business class; you rented BMWs and Mercedes-Benzes. You had an expense account that allowed you to afford the Cavalli suits. Almost. And why the hell not? It was a tough job, trawling the dark pits of corruption, facing the very worst of human nature day after day. A few small luxuries were a balm to the soul.

He carefully picked crumbs off the white tablecloth and placed them on a plate. Then he put the breakfast dishes on a tray and deposited it in the corridor.

Zondi returned to the table and booted up Rudi Barnard’s laptop once again. He had spent the previous night, into the early hours of the morning, trawling through the contents of the hard drive. It didn’t reveal much, which didn’t surprise him. Barnard wouldn’t be stupid enough to leave details of his activities on a computer.

Searching his e-mail files had produced mostly innocuous correspondence: police pension fund updates, an objection to a rental increase at his apartment. Then Zondi had found the e-mail to an anonymous Yahoo address with a JPEG of a fingerprint attached. Zondi had pondered it at length the night before, studying the whorls as if they would lead him to some further understanding. None came, and he had forced himself to sleep.