Last Train to Retreat Read online

  Hannibal was ravenous. In the kitchen he removed the dental bridge from where his four upper front teeth used to be and proceeded to make a bunny. He hollowed out half-a-loaf of bread, microwaved last night’s bean curry, slopped it into the hole, squeezed Mrs Balls chutney onto it, closed the bunny up again with the part he’d taken out, and devoured it with gulps of milk. He loved bunnies – no plate, no knife or fork, just fingers. He licked them one by one afterwards making smacking sounds and staring fondly at the letters ‘J-A-G-S’ printed on the bridge. He chuckled. In bed the word ‘horny’ drove women crazy. He never used his bridge for eating – he didn’t want food acids on it. He kept it wrapped in cloth in his cupboard with his other removable bridges, each with a different four-letter word on it.

  Hannibal felt tired and worried. He’d get the full story from Curly tonight and go to the Boss tomorrow. Get the facts and then sleep on them. He wasn’t the kind to dump problems on someone like the Boss and lose control in the process. One had to tread carefully with Jerome the Gnome. The fact that he was small meant nothing – so were tarantulas. What freaked Hannibal out was the possibility of nameless people out there planning to destroy him. He should change his sleeping pattern again, alternate between his house and various safe houses – families he could trust from the days when the God factor had given him a halo of respectability and made him a hero of the community.

  With bare feet and a swagger – swaying slightly from side to side – Hannibal walked through the house drawing blinds and curtains. He had spent money on the interior since hooking up with the Gnome. The outside he had left looking dilapidated so as not to attract attention. At the back, out of sight, was a big yard with recreational facilities for his members: two pool tables, some gaming machines, and a bar – all under cover, and all paid for by the Gnome.

  Gleaming in the light on a table in the lounge stood his Mixed Martial Arts trophies, the only things he personally cleaned because they were the only things he cared about. He held up his prized National Championship cup for the light heavyweight division, and like a curved mirror it reflected the ‘God Warrior’ tattoo on his forearm and the Braveheart sword below it. The trophy made him feel good but the tattoo didn’t. He had wanted to remove it after striking his alliance with the Gnome but had kept it for the good PR. The reality was that the Gnome had superseded God – a human G-force supplanting the divine G-force. He stared at his reflected image, the young face with eyes that had become old long before their time, the raised, ropey scars on his right upper cheek and left chin – cuts left unstitched – the T-shirt bulging around his neck and shoulders.

  •

  Hannibal couldn’t go to sleep after Curly had gone. Too many things were whirling through his mind. In the lounge he put on a Hong Kong triad movie. He had a whole rack of DVDs that included the entire Young and Dangerous and A Better Tomorrow series, Sworn Brothers, The Mission, and Century of the Dragon. The mix of bullets and bodies in slow motion, the blood, money, smart clothes and cars always mesmerised him. Hard eyes, dangling cigarettes, jade rings and Rolexes, piles of chips on baize counters, brotherhood, loyalty – Hannibal could feel himself slipping away. He imagined himself with wavy black hair instead of the brown stubble he’d been born with and had dyed to resemble a harvested, cropped mealie field. He is the Red Pole in the movie – a rank accorded to top triad fighters – fearsome warriors with absolute loyalty to their Dragon Heads, who decimate rival gangs with guns, meat cleavers, baseball bats, and chains if there’s any threat to their turf. He has lost his black heart to a beautiful woman but keeps his true identity from her, fearing he might lose her. Her brother, a gang member who has become disillusioned, finally tells her who and what her lover really is. Devastated, she enters the nunnery at the Chi Lin Buddhist monastery in Diamond Hill – more beautiful than ever but lost to him forever.

  Hannibal switched off the DVD, too distraught to see it through to the end. He took out the picture of Chantal he always kept in his wallet. Long flowing hair, steady but soulful eyes, gentle yet so passionate – how long had it been? His God had been a fierce one, a warrior; her love, gentle and like balsam.

  He savoured what had happened just a few days ago. The house recently acquired by the Gnome for the purpose of producing more crystal meth happened to be close to where Chantal and her family lived. Hannibal knew they were still there because late one afternoon while he was fitting the cylinders, gas tank, and burner to heat up and shape glass lollies, he had suddenly glimpsed her through the window walking in the direction of Darwin Court. He had stood there with a thudding heart, fighting the impulse to run after her and shout her name. The moment came and went like a swooping swallow but he knew that fate had thrown him another chance. He felt sure she couldn’t have married otherwise she wouldn’t still be in Lavender Hill. He had to think more this time, feel less. There was still her brother, Zane. For the first time in many years Hannibal was pleased that he had held off – revenge too early would have destroyed this chance with Chantal. In any case, her brother never had what it took to be part of his kring, the inner circle of the Evangelicals. Killing him would have been like clubbing a young seal. After all this time Hannibal felt a little sorry for the boy he had tried to mould into a man. The trouble was how could he respect someone he felt sorry for, an oraait kak vedala laaitie – a boy who was always fighting with himself?

  Eleven

  As Zane helped the girl out of the train at Wynberg station, she spoke for the first time, ‘Los my, djy, ek loep self.’ Then she saw the guard waiting at the rear. ‘Laat hom dink ek’s dronk,’ she whispered hanging onto Zane pretending she was drunk. In a matter of minutes she had become his sister in crime, he thought.

  They got as far as the steps leading to the subway before she had to sit down. Blood smeared the concrete. He couldn’t tell if it was old or fresh, or all hers. He had to get her to a hospital. The belt had to come off. She clearly wasn’t the crying type but as she looked up at him in the harsh platform light he thought he saw moistness in her eyes. He picked her up and carried her down to the subway. He heard hollow footsteps behind them. ‘Sout, meisie!’ he warned. ‘Pretend you like me – your arms, quick, around my neck, I don’t bite!’

  ‘Sies,’ she said but did as she was told. A geitjie, he thought, cold and vicious. Two passengers overtook them without giving them a glance.

  There were no officials checking tickets at the exit – to them the last train had been the previous one, an hour earlier. Fruit sellers, hair stylists, and other vendors normally crowding the street had all gone and the shops had shut their doors. No taxis were to be seen. It was a dead and dirty concrete jungle that he was walking through. Maybe he could flag down a motorist when he got to Main Road. There was the Southern Cross emergency unit nearby, and Wynberg Hospital. He could ask.

  ‘Don’t even think about it,’ she said.

  ‘Think about what?’ His breathing had become rapid but so had hers. Her cheek felt moist against his neck.

  ‘A hospital … I don’t wanna go to hospital.’

  ‘Minute! I got no idea how bad that wound is. Nobba what you think, meisie, you need a doctor!’ The words came thickly from his battered mouth. His arm ached. He felt pissed off that his world had been turned upside down by an awkward slip of a girl.

  ‘Langaanie, jy vattie vi’ my hospitaal toe nie,’ she said.

  ‘Nuh, what must I do then? You wanna bleed to death?’

  She said nothing.

  ‘Ah, you paaping, I see!’ he said, ‘worried they’ll ask what happened and call the police?’ But the thought had been with him since they stepped off the train. It wasn’t just tonight – what had happened years ago when he was a member of Hannibal’s Evangelicals could come back and destroy him. Magnus would get shot of him so quickly he wouldn’t have time to clear his desk. And his parents and Chantal would be stuck in Lavender Hill until they died. But the girl – what was she worried about?

  ‘Listen, it was se
lf-defence,’ he said. ‘He was going to rape you. We can explain it to the police.’ He suddenly realised he was using the plural ‘we’. They were in it together. There was every chance he’d be regarded as an accomplice to murder, and possibly robbery. Curly was on the loose, there was a body and Curly would simply put a spin on what had happened. Why did she have to kill Gatiep then rob him? What kind of woman was she, for Christ’s sake? How stupid was he for not striking Gatiep and immobilising him before she got to him. By pinning Gatiep he had presented an easy target for the crazed girl. Perhaps he should find a taxi and send her home and hope it would be the end of it. But murder didn’t just go away. And what if she died in the taxi or at her home because there was no one to care for her?

  As he laboured along Church Road he was thankful for the False Bay breeze on his back and the girl’s body concealing his bloodied arm. What was normally a 10-minute walk to his flat was taking Zane twice as long. The girl complained of dizziness, her breathing was coming fast, and she appeared to be perspiring almost as much as he was. What if she died in his home, what then? His leg muscles were beginning to burn but he endured the pain. He broke into a semi-jog.

  He passed the undertakers and then the church, turned up into Court Road, passed the law courts, and finally the cemetery. How many times in the past two years had he walked or ridden past them, and how they spooked him now – the law, God, death, burial, all within a block. They were bad omens.

  •

  Not only did she not cry, she hardly talked. She felt awkward and stiff as he carried her through the streets to the safety of his flat. He put her down on his bed so that he could remove his belt and her bloodied jeans but when he touched her she shied away like a wild cat. When he tried to take her to the bathroom she resisted fiercely until he told her sharply that if the wound was not washed properly she would regret it. It started bleeding again the second he released the belt and he made her press a clean towel on the puncture to stop the flow while he carried her. She knelt under the tap in the bath dressed only in her bra and panties. He rinsed the wound for at least three minutes and then washed it with soap. She had nice long legs and for a breathless moment he wondered what she looked like naked. He gave her a big towel to put around her and another small clean towel to press on the gash and carried her back to his bed where he put lounge cushions under her leg to raise it as high as possible. Her breath was short and she was shivering uncontrollably. When he tried to feel her pulse she pulled her hand away.

  ‘Take off what you’re wearing, it’s wet. Come on! I won’t look. Here’s a T-shirt.’ With his head turned away he gave her ten seconds and then threw a blanket over her. He fetched another from the cupboard and put that on her as well. ‘Now keep that towel pressed on the wound. If the bleeding doesn’t stop soon I’m going to have to take you to hospital, you understand?’ To Zane the possibility of her dying in his flat outweighed all other considerations. She said nothing but her eyes told him no.

  He thought of the time he was learning to ride Malaki’s longboard at Strandfontein Beach, how the board’s fin gashed his ankle and the life guards had to give him first aid. He had to go to hospital for stitches. The only trouble was that the wound became infected from the polluted water and he had to have an intravenous antibiotic drip until it cleared. He was fortunate that BAT’s medical aid had covered the expenses. Tonight he had no dressing, bandages, or antibiotics of any kind.

  She fell asleep. He lifted the blanket, only up to the wound, resisting the temptation to see all of her and feeling ashamed of his rampant thoughts. Her hand was still pressing on the wound. No fresh blood was seeping through the towel. He gently removed her hand, cut the towel away around the wound leaving the part that was still sticking to it. Then he snipped a strip of cloth from a cotton T-shirt and used it as a crude bandage. Her leg twitched as he worked but her face under her squarely-cut fringe told him she was still asleep. How strange that a girl like this could kill a man without a moment’s hesitation and not cry afterwards. As he gazed at her he realised he didn’t know her name and that he had not told her his.

  •

  Zane waited on platform 1 for the 7.20 am train that would take him to work, his eyeballs feeling as if they’d been wrapped in fine sandpaper, his arm stiff and aching. Fortunately the blade had not cut through any blood vessels but it did damage the muscle on his forearm. More concerning was his appearance – his teeth had split open his lips which were now swollen and blue. He’d sustained karate injuries to his face before but they had been from strikes and punches pulled too late. Curly had had no intention of pulling his punch.

  The girl had called from the bedroom at 5 am asking for something to eat. Zane brought her a huge helping of ProNutro with warm milk, sliced banana, and honey. She ate four slices of toast, two with Marmite, and two with peanut butter and honey, washing them down with cups of Rooibos tea. He commented on how much she could eat considering she was so slender. What he really meant was how amazing it was that she could eat at all after escaping rape then calmly killing a man. He asked her name and she wouldn’t tell him. Neither would she say where her knife and Gatiep’s things were. He exploded: ‘After all we’ve been through you won’t tell me who you are? Jeez, I even know the name of the guy you killed! Well, I’m Zane Hendricks.’ Still she said nothing. Relieved to see that no new blood was coming through the bandage, he had brought his bike to her, adjusted the saddle to maximum height, and shown her how to use it as a crutch to get to the bathroom and kitchen during the day. The empty flat that he usually left with a perfunctory turn of the key had been filled overnight by a strange, awkward creature, hurt, he suspected, in ways beyond the physical and over many years.

  Zane boarded the train like a person getting back into a car after a crash to restore his nerve. He found only standing space, and, self-conscious about his battered mouth, glanced at the passengers to see if they noticed. But nobody cared a damn – not the young woman reading and blowing pink bubble gum, the man with the fez texting furiously, the youth possessively clutching his skateboard, or the middle-aged woman with no forearms and blind in one eye who, having been offered a seat, was now singing Jesus songs clearly expecting to be paid for it.

  He was on his own.

  Twelve

  At BAT they did notice his mouth, and, being an advertising agency, offered opinions thick and fast. It didn’t help that Zane worked in an open plan area. The burst of creativity so early in the morning was something he could have done without.

  ‘Hey, Zane, hope the other guy’s looking worse!’

  ‘Did the lamppost walk into you, buddy?’

  ‘I knew Zane was right for the liquor business!’

  ‘Good omen, we’re gonna win the pitch for sure.’

  ‘Was she nice, Zane?’

  ‘Some kiss, some passion!’

  ‘More like a girl vampire!’

  It was Appleby who gave him a way out. ‘Must’ve been some fight at the dojo last night, Zane?’ Appleby knew about Zane’s karate. Zane nodded, cracking his lips in a feeble smile. With Sensei Simon he knew it wouldn’t be that easy.

  Later Zane bumped into Magnus. ‘I sincerely hope you’ll have your normal face back for the pitch, Zane,’ Magnus said, eyes protruding like those of a freshly-caught fish. Magnus walked on, letting his words hang around like a spray of insecticide. There’d be no pitch for Zane with a face like that, and maybe no promotion. How bad would it be not to have to work on the goddamn liquor business, Zane thought. He shook his head – it was a loser’s thinking. He had to grab all opportunities and simply manage them – for the sake of his family.

  In between meetings Zane rushed out and bought the afternoon paper. There it was, at the bottom of the front page: ‘Gruesome find on suburban train. Last night’s 8 pm train to Simonstown presented cleaners with more than the usual litter – a body lying in a pool of blood. The as yet unidentified man had died of a stab wound to the chest. According to a spokesperson the train fr
om Cape Town’s main station probably carried no more than the usual 20 passengers spread out over 8 carriages, making it possible for an incident such as this to go undetected while the train was en route. He added that as trains reached their final destination the rear end guard would check that all doors were in good working order for the first ride the following morning. After that the cleaners would go to work. It was during this routine operation at Simonstown that the body was found. He declined to elaborate as an investigation was underway. Police are appealing to commuters who were on the 8 pm train from the city to Simonstown last night to contact …’

  Zane tossed the newspaper into a bin in Spin Street, his mouth dry and hurting. Ja, unidentified because the girl had emptied Gatiep’s pockets. But there was still Curly – would he go to the police or lie low? Curly was probably wondering the same thing about Zane and the girl. Zane looked at his watch – it was 4 pm. He walked back into the agency to where Appleby was sitting.

  ‘I need to see a doctor, Appleby. I think the inside of my mouth needs checking.’

  ‘I thought you guys wore gum guards?’ Appleby stared at him with rheumy eyes – probably a rough session with his client Good Hope Distillers last night, Zane thought. Zane imagined himself looking and feeling like Appleby in the months to come – hangovers on the morning train, no longer riding his bike or surfing with Malaki on weekends. And Bernadette not wanting to kiss him anymore – hell, who’d want to kiss a mouth like his?

  ‘Forgot it at home … stupid of me.’

  ‘Well, go if you have to. Maybe just as well. The pitch is soon, kid, and you know and I know Magnus won’t let you near the client looking like that. In fact, I’m not too happy with you seeing clients right now. They’d think you’d been in a real fight … ‘