Poison City (29 page)

I hear a noise behind me and turn to see Armitage rushing towards us, her gun aimed directly at Dumelo. I grab her arm and shove it to the side. The silenced gun goes off with a muted, airy
thud
and hits the wall. Armitage fights me, trying to force it back towards Dumelo.

‘Bastard!’ she shouts. ‘You sick bastard!’

Dumelo curls his feet up beneath him on the couch, shaking his head. ‘No, no. Not me. Miss Long says I’m not sick. It’s perfectly normal behaviour, she says. Always fine.’

‘Armitage! Hey – boss! Look at me!’

Armitage tears her gaze away from Dumelo. I’ve never seen her this angry before.

‘What is it? Talk to me.’

‘Go look for yourself.’

I hesitate. ‘I think it’s better if we all go.’ I don’t trust her not to put a bullet in Dumelo as soon as I turn my back.

Her jaw tightens. She grabs Dumelo by the back of the neck and yanks him from the couch. ‘Move.’

She shoves him into the kitchen. As soon as he sees the door, he skids to a stop.

‘No, no. I can’t go in there. Miss Long will sort it out. She always does. She’s a magician, you see. She makes everything go away.’

Armitage pushes him and he stumbles through the door. He slips on the blood and tumbles down the steps with a cry of pain.

I put my hand on Armitage’s arm. ‘Easy!’

She shakes me off. ‘Don’t tell me to go easy. Go look. Go look for yourself.’

Our stares lock for a second. I don’t want to look. Whatever it is I’m going to find I don’t want to see it.

I tear my gaze away, look to the concrete steps. Bloody footprints stain the concrete, new and old. So many that the steps are almost black.

I head down into a cellar, trying futilely to avoid stepping in the blood. No point. Impossible. I note the walls first, padded. Soundproofed. There is music playing. Softly. A Disney song, I think. That famous one from the movie about the ice princess. The words accompany me as I descend past the level of the ground floor, the basement slowly coming into view.

Overhead strip lights illuminate everything in a harsh, surgical glare. Metal benches, tables, all spattered with pooled blood. The smell of iron and tin. Sweat and fear. Faeces and urine.

On the floor, the remains of what I think are two people. Cut into pieces. Body parts posed and swapped over like a jigsaw. The skin covered in cuts and burns. White glimpses of bone, a pile of purple and grey organs sitting in a bowl in the centre of the room.

‘They wouldn’t stop screaming,’ explains Dumelo from where he’s lying at the bottom of the stairs. ‘You understand, don’t you? I had to stop them screaming.’

I drag him up the stairs again. I snatch the bottle of whisky and shove him into the lounge. I push him into the couch and force his mouth open, pouring the whisky down his throat, hoping it will snap him out of whatever insane little safe place he’s drifted into. He coughs and splutters, tries to push me away.

I slap his face, twice. Hard.

I’m not sure if it’s that or the whisky, but he finally blinks and shakes his head, the confusion drifting away from his eyes. He looks at me. At Armitage.

‘Who are you?’ He wipes his face, sees the blood, tries to wipe it on his drenched shirt. He tries to get up but I force him down again.

‘The fuck you think you’re doing?’ he demands. ‘Do you have any idea who I am?’

I look at Armitage. She shrugs.

‘I am member of your government. I’m a close personal friend of the President.’

‘Yeah. And I’m Harry Potter. I’ve even got a wand.’

‘You dare to joke with me? I’ll have you arrested. I can make you disappear.’

‘You recognise him?’ I ask Armitage.

She shakes her head. ‘Can’t be anyone important.’

‘How dare you! Where is Miss Long? What have you done with her?’

‘Miss Long ain’t coming,’ I say. ‘She’s a bit dead right now.’

Dumelo’s eyes widen. Not sure if it’s panic or surprise. ‘You . . . you have no idea how much trouble you’re in,’ he says.

‘Whatever. We didn’t kill her. Look, you need to understand something here. We’re cops. OK? Long—’

Dumelo laughs. ‘You are police? Then you are very stupid police. I am protected.’

‘Who protects you?’

‘Everyone.’ He shakes his head and laughs again. ‘You have no idea how much trouble you are in.’

‘Us?’ says Armitage. ‘You’re the one with an abattoir in your basement, you sick bugger!’

‘I am allowed to do that.’

‘Who says?’

He shrugs. ‘I am done talking to you now. I think you should call one of your superiors. I will speak to him.’

‘You’re done when we say you’re done,’ says Armitage.

‘No. I am done now.’ Dumelo looks at us, his gaze filled with the arrogance you see in politicians everywhere. That look of entitlement, of superiority. ‘You are nothing. Understand? A speck underfoot. I am a member of parliament. My friends are some of the most powerful people in this country. You think you can just barge into my house and start ordering me around?’ He chuckles and picks a bit of skin from beneath his fingernail. ‘You know nothing.’

He takes the bottle from me and downs another gulp, watching us beneath hooded lids. I want to punch him. A member of parliament? Our government is so bloated I bet he’s never even set foot in the Parliament buildings. I want to shoot him in the knees. I want to cut his fingers off and stuff them down his throat.

Instead, I take a deep, steadying breath.

‘What’s happening tomorrow night?’

‘I’ve no idea what you’re talking about.’

‘When you texted Long. She asked why you couldn’t wait till tomorrow. What’s happening tomorrow?’

‘I’ve already told you. I will not talk to you. Summon your superiors.’ Dumelo smiles and leans back. ‘Perhaps I should do it? Where is my phone? I’ll call them.’

‘Bugger this.’

Armitage leans past me. I see the flash of a blade, but before I can do anything she slices it along Dumelo’s inner thigh. He screams and throws himself back into the couch as blood gushes from the wound.

‘That there is the femoral artery,’ says Armitage. ‘If you leave the wound untreated you’re going to bleed out in about two to three minutes.’

Dumelo tries to get up, but she hits him in the face with her gun. He looks at her in utter amazement. As if he can’t fathom anyone raising a hand to him.

‘Talk,’ she says.

‘Call a doctor!’ screams Dumelo.

I swallow nervously, watching the blood pour out of Dumelo’s leg. Armitage has killed him. The cut was deep enough to completely sever the artery. There’s no way he can get help in time.

‘Tick-tock,’ says Armitage.

‘You fucking bitch! You whore! I’ll kill you. I’ll cut you into pieces and piss on your body.’

Armitage yawns and looks at her watch.

‘I’d really start talking,’ I say.

‘What? What do you want to know?’

‘Everything. Who’s involved in this sin-eater thing?’

‘Everyone who has any real power is involved, you idiot!’

‘The government?’

‘Yes, the fucking government.
Every
government. The church. The World Bank. The IMF, everything. This isn’t some local operation. The sin-eaters – they’re worldwide. A secret society. Like the Templars or . . . or the Illuminati. They hire themselves out to take on the sins of the rich!’

Dumelo tries to hold the cut on his leg closed.

‘We’d have heard about them if that was true,’ I say.

‘Not if they didn’t want you to.’ I notice that he’s shivering now, the blood flowing freely between his fingers. ‘You . . . don’t get it, do you? They’re rich. Bilderberg rich. You think getting a clean slate comes cheap? All those war criminals, corrupt ministers, spies, you name it. They want to live without sin. They’ll pay anything that’s asked of them. The sin-eaters are the most powerful group in the world. They control governments, organized crime, everything.’

He looks down at his once-white couch and moans. ‘That’s too much blood. It shouldn’t be outside.’

‘So what’s happening tomorrow night?’

‘A . . . a gathering. A party. They . . . the corporation – the sin-eaters – do it once a year. Throw a party for their important clients. Their . . . leader. Or whatever he is . . . the senior sin-eater, attends. It’s the most important event in the social calendar. It’s where . . . where policies get discussed. Where businesses decide on . . . on prices for the year ahead. Where foreign policies are agreed upon.’

I knew it. I fucking knew it. Everyone thinks I’m a cynical bastard for hating politicians. Now look. Everything I say is true. We’re talking secret meetings, handshake deals, billion-rand tenders handed out with a wink and a nod. Exactly how everyone used to think the Freemasons operated.

And we can expose the lot of them.

I pause at the thought. Could we do that? Get evidence? Record them, perhaps? Leak it to the media? Christ, it would be huge. The whole government would implode.

Then I think of something. ‘You say all the powerful people are involved in this. Do you mean law enforcement? Like the State Security Agency?’

Dumelo laughs weakly. ‘Of course.’

Armitage looks at me. There we go. That explains why the SSA spooks are after us. Either they, or their bosses, found out we were investigating sin-eaters. And obviously, the powers-that-be don’t want that.

But how did they know?

Then I realize. GHOST.

Only someone really high up could have hacked into GHOST and wiped out the entries on sin-eaters. That’s why there was no information. And I bet there was some sort of call-back embedded in the code. So that whenever anyone calls up the sin-eater entry, it triggers an alarm that tells them who’s looking. We all have to sign into GHOST using our personal IDs.

I shake my head, almost impressed. This is big.
Huge
.

Does Lilith know about it? Is she going to expose it to the world? Is that how she was going to ‘shake everything up’ as she put it?

‘How do you get into the party?’

‘An . . . invitation.’

Dumelo’s face is grey. His breathing is slow and laboured. He doesn’t have much longer.

‘Where is it?’ asks Armitage. He doesn’t respond, so she slaps him until his eyes flutter open. ‘Where is it? The invitation.’

‘In . . . my suitcase. By . . . by the stairs.’

I find the suitcase and bring it into the lounge. I unzip it. Smart clothes, toiletries. An A4 envelope made of thick, gilded paper. I turn it over. No marks. No address.

I open it up. There’s something big inside. Some kind of . . . mask? I shake it out. A wolf mask. But just the top half. So it would cover the eyes and nose but leave the mouth free. There’s something else inside the envelope. A card.

It’s the invitation. Has to be. A time and a date in a simple, stylish font. Beneath that an address up in Johannesburg.

Dumelo sees what I’m holding. ‘Nuh . . . no. That is . . . mine.’

He tries to get up, slips in his own blood. His face cracks hard against the tiles. He moves weakly, wallowing on the floor like a beached whale for a few seconds before finally sliding to a stop.

I hear his last breath slide softly from his body.

‘And good riddance,’ snaps Armitage.

‘Can we go now?’ says the dog, who has been watching from the doorway, not wanting to get his paws bloody.

‘In a minute.’

I study Dumelo’s body. He looks to be about the same size as me. I toss the mask and invitation back into the suitcase and zip it shut. Then I track down his car keys.

‘What are you doing?’ asks Armitage.

‘I can’t very well turn up at an exclusive party in my old Land Rover, can I?’

‘So that’s the plan? You’re going to pretend to be one of them?’

‘Why not?’

‘Because,’ says the dog, ‘ten minutes with that lot and you’re going to go loco.’

‘We don’t have much choice, do we? Unless you’ve got a better idea?’

Nobody does, so we slip out the house and head round to the garage. Dumelo’s car is a BMW X6, the newest on the market. Courtesy of the taxpayer. So really, it’s not actually stealing, is it? My taxes paid for this car.

Armitage drives behind me in the BMW till I find a shopping mall where I can leave the Land Rover for a couple of days. Then I climb into the BMW and we head west towards Johannesburg.

‘Road trip!’ says the dog from the back seat.

Then, a few seconds later, ‘Are we there yet?’

Chapter 15

Five o’clock the next day and we’re driving along the winding back roads about forty-five minutes west of Johannesburg, heading towards the address on the invitation.

None of us are talking to each other. It’s been that kind of day.

It’s only a five-hour drive to get to Gauteng. Dragging it out as much as we could, stopping at every service stop along the way for coffee and energy drinks, meant we still managed to arrive at a rundown bed and breakfast on the outskirts of Johannesburg by four-thirty this morning.