Mixed Blood (19 page)

The kid was hyperventilating, sucking air through his nose, his blue eyes wide with terror. Barnard spun him onto his stomach, pulled his hands roughly together behind his back, and slipped one of the cable ties around his wrists, pulling it tight enough to cut into the skin. He did the same with the kid’s bare ankles.

Barnard grabbed the boy, holding him under one of his massive arms like he was a bag of oranges, and stepped over the dead woman on his way to the door.

C
HAPTER
17

One thing that Benny Mongrel knew how to do was wait. Spend more than half your life in prison, and you develop a Zen-like ability to live in the moment. Those who don’t, kill themselves or go crazy. Or get themselves killed.

He dug Rizla papers and a bag of tobacco from his pocket and set about rolling a smoke. He would give Isaacs an hour. If the bastard wasn’t back, he and Bessie would start their journey.

Isaacs was all show. There was no way he was going to spend his night driving around the slopes of the mountain. No, some woman in a head scarf, fat thighs whispering beneath a Punjabi pantsuit, was waiting at home with a pot of curry on the stove, ready to serve him.

Benny Mongrel paused in his cigarette making and stroked Bessie’s matted coat. The old dog looked up at him, and her tail slapped the cement as she wagged it. Then she groaned from deep in her throat and rolled onto her side, sighing contentedly. She was still hooked up to her chain. Benny Mongrel unclipped it.

Let the old girl relax; she had a long walk ahead of her.

Benny Mongrel finished rolling the cigarette, ran his tongue along one side of the paper, and glued it together with his fingers. He spat out a shred of tobacco, shielded the cigarette from the wind that was starting to gust again, and fired up.

He took a long drag, feeling the movement of the smoke deep into his lungs, and then allowed it to trickle out of his mouth and nose. Smoking was another prison ritual. Sucking on a cigarette and allowing time to pass by. That was life in prison. Minutes, hours, days, years, flowing away like a muddy river.

Benny Mongrel stood and walked to the edge of the balcony, smoking, staring up at the flames that were being fanned by the wind, zigzagging along Lion’s Head.

Then the wind died. Suddenly. Like a TV being switched off. He could hear the murmur of traffic down in Sea Point, a car alarm wailing somewhere far below, and the distant clatter of the choppers circling the mountain like dragonflies.

And he heard the click and buzz of the door of the neighboring house. This got him moving back into the shadows. Fuck. He had forgotten about the fat cop. There stard was, sticking his big head out, looking up and down the street, before he stepped out and slammed the door. He had something under his arm.

The fat cop took off up the road, his legs chafing together and his ass shaking like a belly dancer’s. The thing under his arm was moving, writhing. Benny Mongrel watched the fat cop stop and change his grip, right under a streetlight. That’s when Benny Mongrel saw what the cop was carrying. A boy with blond hair.

The American’s kid.

Fucken little bastard. He was small, but he was fighting like a cat in a sack. Barnard held him in both arms, squeezing the boy’s face against his chest, smothering him. That seemed to calm him down a bit. For good measure he brought the side of his hand down into the kid’s guts, hard. He felt the boy jerk, knees digging into Barnard’s fat; then he was still.

Barnard arrived at the Ford, went back to holding the kid in a one-armed grip while he fished in his pocket for his keys. While he was battling to work the keys past the rolls of fat that hung from his hips, the kid kicked his bare feet against Barnard’s paunch and propelled himself out of the cop’s grasp. The little shit fell to the pavement and hit his head, hard. Barnard saw blood, dark against the kid’s blond hair.

Wheezing, Barnard popped the trunk. Then he bent, his legs spread wide like a sumo wrestler getting into first position, as he grabbed the boy and threw him into the trunk. He heard the kid gasping and saw the tears and snot streaking his face.

Fuck him.

Barnard slammed the trunk closed and leaned on the lid, fighting to get his breath. Sweat rolled freely from his forehead, into his eyes. His shirt clung to his back, and the itch between his thighs stung like a thousand mosquitoes had nailed him.

When his breathing was easier, he stood up and looked straight at the building site. Was that half-breed bastard with the dog up there, watching? Barnard couldn’t take the chance, couldn’t risk being tied to this kidnapping.

He was sure the American would keep his trap shut. But if the cops got wind of a foreign kid being abducted, there would be hell to pay. Very bad for the tourist industry. This wasn’t the Flats, where a child’s life was cheap. There would be a manhunt, pictures on TV and in the papers. Rewards offered. All of which would severely fuck up Barnard’s plans.

He got into the car, didn’t start the engine, just freewheeled down until he was level with the entrance to the building site and pulled up the brake. He wiped his sweating hands on his jeans, moved his wet shirt out of the way, and slid the .38 from the holster.

He stood up out of the car.

The knife was in his hand. Benny Mongrel waited at the top of the stairs, behind the half-built wall, listening. He heard the crunch of heavy feet as the fat cop walked across the builder’s sand and gravel.

Benny Mongrel was in a place within himself that he had been in many times since he had killed that American gangster when he was a boy. It was a place of perfect focus, all his senses honed, every muscand sinew waiting for the command that would send the blade deep into flesh.

The cop had entered the building site. He was making no attempt to move quietly. From where he stood, two flights up, Benny Mongrel could hear the wheeze of the fat cop’s lungs as air sucked through phlegm like a clogged pool filter. The cop coughed and spat.

The fat man walked the two planks that spanned a plumber’s ditch and led to the ground floor of the house; the planks creaked and bounced under his weight.

Benny Mongrel heard the cop’s voice. “Hey, watchman. You there?”

Bessie growled behind Benny Mongrel. The growl was low and deep. She had rolled up and was trying to stand, the nails of her back paws scrabbling at the cement floor as she fought to lift her hips. Benny Mongrel stared at her, willing her to be quiet. He held out a warning hand. She seemed to understand, and the growl died in her throat. She raised her long snout and sniffed the air. But she stayed where she was.

“Watchman? I got something for you, man. Some cash. Want you to gimme a hand with something.” The fat cop was heading up the first flight of stairs, his boots heavy on the cement.

Benny Mongrel stood dead still. Let the bastard come to him. The moment he stepped onto the landing on the top floor, Benny Mongrel would strike.

He heard the cop reach the landing on the floor below. He was wheezing like he’d climbed Table Mountain, his breath coming in short gasps. “Watchman? Don’t make me fucken come and look for you …”

The sound of the cop’s boot on the first step leading up to the top floor. Not long now. Benny Mongrel was ready for him.

And then, before he could stop her, the old dog was flying past him, digging deep into muscle memory and finding some last echo of the speed and strength she had once known. Benny Mongrel made a leap for Bessie, tried to grab her by her thick coat, but his fingers found air and he hit the cement hard, his knife spinning away from him.

Barnard was on the second step, panting toward the top floor of the house, when he saw the dark shape flying down toward him. The fucken dog. He raised the .38 and got off a shot, knew he had missed.

The dog’s paws hit him in the chest. A smaller man would have been sent flying backward, but Barnard did nothing more than lean, before righting himself. The dog bounced off him and hit the stairs with her back. He heard the crack as her left hip shattered. The dog moaned, but she was still fighting to get up at him, snarling, yellow fangs visible in the spill of the streetlight.

Barnard shot her at point-blank range, in the chest.

The shot almost deafened him, bouncing off the hard cement walls, reverberating through the unfinished rooms and escaping out into the night. Unbelievably, the dog was still coming, a sound somewhere between a growl and a scream coming from her bloody muzzle. He shot her again.

She was still.

Dogs in the houses next door started to bark, a chorus that kept collecting new voices as it rolled across the suburb.

When he heard the first shot, Benny Mongrel was racing across to retrieve the knife that had spun from his grasp and come to rest against a cement bag. He grabbed the knife, felt the reassuring shape of the hilt as he curled his fingers around it.

Then the second shot.

Benny Mongrel took off for the stairs.

From where he stood Barnard could see out through the unfinished rooms and across the streets and houses below.

An armed response patrol car, hazards flashing, barreled down the street three blocks away. The shots had been heard.

Barnard needed to go upstairs and finish this.

He looked back toward the patrol car, saw it brake, skid, and fishtail as it avoided an SUV that had reversed out of a driveway into its path.

The moment he needed.