Of Cops & Robbers

‘Mike Nicol is one of the brightest thriller writing talents to have emerged in the last decade. This is not just superb genre writing: it is superb writing, period, and proves that the thriller, at its best, can both entertain and provoke, while tackling serious issues with the lightest of touches. Read Mike Nicol now, before everyone else starts telling you how wonderful he is’

JOHN CONNOLLY

‘Compelling … terrific dialogue, and Nicol’s Cape Town is cool, dangerous, full of humour and very far from its touristy image … paints a vivid portrait of the moral confusion of post-apartheid society.’

MARCEL BERLINS, THE TIMES

‘Shady characters, twists, turns, murder, mayhem, humour, wonderful dialogue, white-knuckle pace and lots of authentic Cape Town colour … Everything I love about the genre in just the right amount’

DEON MEYER

‘World class … pace, wonderful characters and brilliant dialogue’

ELLE MAGAZINE

‘In the top rung of South African fiction writers … Nicol s clipped dialogue and sparse, high-impact prose recalls that of revered American recluse Cormac McCarthy’

THE CITIZEN

‘South Africa joins the hard-boiled stakes, and in a wondrous dazzling humorous novel. Imagine Elroy joining forces with Chester Himes, Coffin Ed, and Gravedigger, throw in the spectacular landscape of South Africa, and you’ll get some sense of this wild and daring novel. One prays this is the first in a series if Tom Sharpe wrote mystery, this would be it.’

KEN BRUEN

They come down the street in a baby-shit yellow Ford Granada, going slowly, checking out the houses. A whisper of exhaust smoking from the tailpipe. A growl like the pipe is rusted, holed somewhere near the box.

Four men in the car, all wearing sunglasses. The driver’s got on racing gloves, olive-coloured racing gloves. The thing about him, his face’s huge and red, he’s known as the Fisherman.

The man behind him’s leaning back, his face in shadow. A cigarette hanging on his lower lip. A cigarette he keeps there like he’s breathing through it. He’s got mad wild surfer-blond hair.

The one in the passenger seat has his fingers steepled, but not in prayer or contemplation.

The man behind him sports a rictus grin standard on his face, his arm’s out the window, big glitzy rings on every finger.

They rumble at a crawl down the street in their baby-shit yellow Ford Granada.

The men are all carrying Browning HPs modified for screw-on silencers. Special issue for the job. The one with the rictus grin also carries an Italian stiletto, his weapon of choice. This one a nine-incher with a hilt inlay of mother-of-pearl. Very snazzy to his way of thinking.

They approach the house. No car in the driveway, the gate in the low wall is open onto a short slasto path to the front door. Rictus Grin and Blondie get out, their soles slap on the crazy paving.

Rictus knocks. Sees the bell push, jabs it with a thumb: bing-bong.

They wait. Hear a woman’s voice talking on the telephone, saying  goodbye.

Rictus looks at Blondie, raises his eyebrows. Who’s this?

Key turns in the lock. A woman opens the door: short hair, pretty face, long eyelashes, green eyes, no colour on her lips. Wears a brown dress to her knees, bare feet. Says brightly, ‘Hello, menere. What can I do for you gentlemen?’

Rictus doesn’t miss a beat. ‘Mevrou?’

‘Ja.’

‘Mevrou, we’re supposed to meet your husband at quarter past six.’ He glances at his watch. ‘Five minutes ago. Sorry, we’re late.’

‘You’re early, he’s late,’ she says. ‘He’s not here yet.’

Rictus with his hands bunched into the pockets of his bunny jacket. He and Blondie not moving.

‘Is it about constituency matters?’

Rictus nods. ‘Ag, it’s not that important.’

The woman smiles. ‘Why don’t you come in and wait? If he said quarter past six, I’m sure he won’t be long.’ She leads them into a dining room, the table piled with stacks of papers. ‘This’s his office,’ she says, closing the curtains. She turns to face them, palms out towards two easy chairs. ‘Make yourselves at home.’ In that moment seeing the gun in Rictus’s hand, the fear ritzing her face.

Rictus shoots her one time, chest shot, straight through the heart. What the newspapers will call point-blank. Then he’s at her with the stiletto. Grunting with each stab and pull.

Blondie’s rooted to the carpet. The speed of the other man’s mania brings a sourness to his mouth. He lurches towards his partner, pulls him away from the woman’s body. She’s on the floor, ripped and still. Her face untouched, her eyes open, pearly teeth glinting between her lips.

Rictus wrenches himself free, bloody stiletto in his right hand, the Browning HP in his left. Blondie hadn’t seen him pull either weapon.

Blondie shouting, ‘Stop, stop, bugger it, stop.’

At the same time the bell’s bing-bonging because the other two, the Commander and the Fisherman, are outside the front door.

‘Okay, okay.’ Rictus bends down to wipe the knife on the woman’s dress, comes up folding the blade into the hilt, crimson stains on the mother-of-pearl.

He watches from his car at the far end of the gravel parking lot. Watches through a night scope the white Subaru stopped facing the beach.

A hard southeaster’s blowing, hazing his windscreen with sea spray. So bad he switches on the wipers to clear his vision.

He’s been there half an hour, on the west side of the Sunrise Beach parking area. Was there twenty minutes before the white Subaru pulled up. It’s midnight, moonless.

Ten minutes later he sees a car peel off the traffic circle, dim its lights, come slowly across the gravel towards the white Subaru. It’s a Jetta, black. Black windows. The waiting man gets out of his car. The Jetta stops alongside. Two men step out.

He watches through the scope. Watches the men talking. Their hand gestures. Like these men aren’t here for a
transaction
as they should be, they’re arguing. Sees them back off, the two from the Jetta separating either side of the other man. Sees muzzle flash: four shots from the Jetta men, two returns.

‘Jesus Christ!’ Fish leans forward to start his car.

‘Don’t,’ says the man in the passenger seat. The man holding the .45 at his head. ‘Keep watching, my friend. This is what happens when you play shit with us. You get fucked up.’

There’re two bodies on the ground. The Jetta man hauls his mate into the car, spins off, showering the other body in dust.

‘We know you, Mr Fish Pescado,’ says the man with the gun. ‘You are the next one. You kill one of ours, we kill one of yours. Last time, the man you shot died, Mr Pescado. Bad luck for you.’ He opens the passenger door, backs out. Leans in again, opens the glovebox, takes the gun stashed there. Looks at it. ‘What old rubbish is this?’ Pockets it.

‘Leave the gun,’ says Fish.

The man says, ‘You better call Emergency for your friend, my friend. They can fill out the, what’s it? … the declaration of death.’

Laughs: ha, ha, hey.

Surfers’ Corner, Muizenberg, with a working sea. Waves: deep ocean storm outriders, metre and a half, two metres slamming in, breaking right. Got punch and power behind them, enough to give you the willies on the drop, a thrill across the face.

Fish Pescado and Daro Attilane in wetsuits paddle their
longboards
to the backline, feeling the sea surge going through the white water. When they get out to the swells and troughs, beyond where the peaks form, they’re aching.

Three sets roll under them.

They let them come, go, not talking, taking a breather. Sit on the ocean in the late afternoon, in the mountain’s shadow.

Then Daro says, ‘I’ve got something to ask you.’

‘Sure,’ says Fish, ‘long as it’s not personal’ – grinning while he says it.

He turns his longboard till the nose is pointing at Daro.

Daro Attilane, car dealer, member of the community police forum, veteran surfer. Short grey hair, tanned face, pale blue eyes, built like a rugby flanker.

‘This is about my daughter, Steffie. Teenage stuff. Someone selling dagga at school.’

‘A regular dealer?’

‘Uh huh, Steffie bought some. I caught her with it in her bedroom, blowing the smoke out the window.’

‘Nice one,’ says Fish. ‘I did that too. She give you a name?’

‘Kid in her class.’

‘You want me to talk to the kid, find out his supplier, I can do that.’

‘I know who’s the supplier. Seven’s the supplier.’ Daro gesturing at the beach. Fish follows his arms to the line-up of SUVs: every four parking bays more than two or three million bucks’ worth
of hardware. Daro’s is a Nissan X-Trail. Fish’s a rust-bucket Isuzu two-by-four he inherited, a good few notches outside the financial bracket of his surfing buddy. Fish frowns, realises it’s not the beachfront Daro’s referring to but the warren behind the upmarket apartments.

‘Problem is,’ says Daro, ‘dagga’s just the start. Next it’s pills, methamphetamine, tik. It gets to tik, you’ve got a major show. That meth bites.’

Fish looks at Daro, Daro not meeting his gaze.

‘Thing is, you know I’m on the forum.’

The forum wanting to clean up the resort. The scene in Muizenberg being hectic. Back in the warren behind Atlantic Road, crack houses, dagga dens, prozzies, young and old, putting out on the street, in the gang houses, anywhere for a globe of tik. And lord of it all, Seven. The bane.

‘No secret I’m on the forum. Everybody knows it at Steffie’s school. We’ve done talks to the kids, told the youngsters what’s what. Steffie knows, you get onto the hard stuff, you’re hooked, buggered. It’s that bastard, Seven. He’s targeting her to get at me.’

‘Seven is?’

‘I think so.’

‘You give him that much credit?’

Daro serious, eyes on Fish now. ‘I do. This’s his style. This’s how he does it. The last chairman of the forum’s on tranquilisers, had to move away. What worries me, one day I’ll answer the doorbell there’s a kid, nine, ten years old standing there with a gun. Gang initiation. So long Mr Attilane.’

‘So raid his place again.’

‘Every time we raid, he’s clean. He’s got a source in the cops.’

‘Don’t they all,’ says Fish.

Fish: Bartolomeu Pescado on his birth certificate. Nowadays has this discreet earring in his right lobe. His wild surfer hair, his quick eyes, his earring is how you notice Fish Pescado for the first time. Fish to his friends, for obvious reasons. Bartolomeu after the Portuguese explorer. No one but his mother called him
Bartolomeu. By way of earning a crust Fish’s an investigator with not too much work on the go.

Fish stares down at his bare feet in the green water. A chilly sea about twelve degrees C. This sort of temperature he should wear booties like Daro. Except booties upset his balance. Make him trip and stumble. He’s never worn booties. Booties are for older guys like Daro. Barefoot is cool, despite the cold.

He wipes blond hair off his face, looks at Daro, says, ‘This happened before?’

‘What? Steffie and drugs?’

Fish picks at a knob of wax on the board, flicks it away. ‘No. Any kind of threat? Letter? Telephone call? Stalker?’

Daro laughs. ‘Only the sort of threats that happen on a raid. That crazy “I’ll-get-you” stuff.’

Their boards touch, both men backpaddle.

‘Maybe Steffie’s just experimenting.’ Fish keeps backpaddling. ‘You told your wife?’

‘We’ve talked about it.’

‘What’s she say?’

‘Teenage curiosity.’

‘But you reckon Seven’s the issue?’

Daro nods. ‘I do. In the bigger picture.’

‘I can have a word with Seven, if you want. I can say the sort of things you can’t.’

Daro shakes his head. ‘Nah. Maybe later.’

‘So what’s the thing you want to ask me?’

‘What?’

‘You said you want to ask me something.’

Daro’s facing the open sea, points behind Fish. ‘They’re coming. Big ones.’

Fish and Daro see the first of a set roaring at them. Rising up, thinning at the top, feathering in the offshore breeze. You listen you can hear the hiss approaching.

‘Yours,’ shouts Fish, lying flat, paddling to get over the peak. He breaks through, goes down the back, there’s a mother staring
him in the face. A huge green wall, foaming to his right.

Fish swings the board round, stroking to get some speed, the water being sucked from under him into that mad crazy moment when the wave takes you, grips you. Fish letting out a long whoop all the way down the drop, getting to his feet, arms flung out, crunching off the pit onto the wall. Glued there, racing ahead of the white.

Fish’s surfed all his life. Started as a five-year-old grommet at this very beach. Fish can’t get enough. If he doesn’t get a surf on any given day he’s seriously miffed. Seriously. Fish drives by the ocean two or three times a day just to eye the swell. First thing in the a.m. he fires up his laptop to check the surf report. The steadycams at the peninsula’s breaks.

Surfers’ Corner his home zone. Okay, the waves don’t carry the kick of Long Beach or Noordhoek or the Reserve, but, hey, they’re a drive away. The nursery’s right on his doorstep. He rides the other breaks from time to time, but for a quick pop and peak, the nursery’s fine. Two minutes from his pad. He can walk here if he wants, which mostly he doesn’t. Fish believes in having wheels ready because you never know when you’re going to need them. A call-out. A chase. A getaway. Fish Pescado, investigator, always has wheels ready to rock ’n roll.

But now he’s surfing. Kicks out of that first long ride well stoked. Paddles through the incoming rollers, taking the first opportunity. This late hour of the afternoon he can’t pick and choose. The grommets and the hot kids are surfing the last light, like waves are never gonna happen again.

A glassy wall comes at him, picks him up, hollows, spits him over the falls. Bang into the washing machine. Fish tumbles, the board jerking at the leash like a wild thing. Fish with his hands clutching his head for protection.

He’s seen plenty guys got hit in the face in this sort of
situation
. Broken teeth, broken nose, enough blood loss to whistle up every great white in the bay.

He breaks the surface gasping. Another roil of thunder bearing
down. Fish takes a breath, dives. Listens as the churn passes overhead, his board tugging at the leash, dragging him. He waits out the set in the foam, then strokes for the backline with the lull.

Half an hour later Fish’s taking a breather, three more rides notched, two wipe-outs that cleared his sinus passages. Daro, kneeling on his board, paddles over.

‘Not bad.’

‘Very cool,’ says Fish. ‘Way to end the day.’ Would’ve been the way to pass the whole day for that matter, he thinks. There not being too much on his plate right now. Not being anything on his plate right now, truth be told.

‘One more then I’m done,’ says Daro. ‘Can’t keep the family waiting.’

Fish squints at him. ‘If this drug thing’s on your mind, you’ll let me know?’

Daro nods. ‘Course. Thanks.’

‘Your call,’ says Fish. Wondering what was the question Daro really wanted to ask.

The two of them sitting there, eyes on the backline, the ridges dark against the horizon. They’re about to line up for the next set when a guy waving calls, ‘Hey, Fish. There’s a chickee on the beach after you.’

‘They all are, man.’

‘Says you should get yourself in chop-chop. Says you’ve got five minutes. Whatta stunner, hey. Nice rack.’ The surfer cupping his hands at his chest. ‘Wouldn’t keep her waiting.’

‘Vicki,’ says Fish to Daro. ‘Keep your mind clean,’ he shouts at the surfer.

Gets as answer: ‘Just delivering the message, bro.’

Then the next set of peaks are on them, Fish and Daro
stroking
over the first. Fish whooping, pivoting his board, ‘Time to pump my soul.’ And he’s paddling down the drop, feeling the wave thump beneath the board with the gathering speed.