Last Train to Retreat Page 9

  ‘Quentin, you’ve been in your office all day, no lunch even,’ she said accusingly.

  ‘Lone wolves we are, Bella, sniffing and sniffing until we get the scent of corruption and murder. Then we track, catch and eat!’ Philander grinned. With his blue eyes and greying temples he looked like a sun-tanned White. He was serious about his work but with Bella he could be playful. In private it was first names; everywhere else it was Captain and Warrant Officer. A bond had developed between them since the murder of Philander’s wife seven months earlier. Bettie had driven to the station one night from their home in Retreat to fetch Philander who was ill. She never got there. She was found hours later in his burnt-out car in Lentegeur, a suburb of Mitchell’s Plain, her hands and feet tied with wire. God! To kill someone in that manner in a place called Lentegeur – the fragrance of spring – what meaning was there to anything? The murder remained unsolved. Philander had no idea if it was a lone-wolf or a gang. If a gang, they could have come from anywhere but Philander doubted it – Bettie’s route would have been through Retreat and Lavender Hill. Only members of a gang could have orchestrated such wholesale destruction – filing off the serial and chassis numbers, defacing the registration plates then dousing the car with petrol. They didn’t count on dental identification. Philander had thanked God that he would never know if she was gang-raped first.

  ‘You’re getting anywhere?’ Bella asked rummaging in her bag for her car keys.

  ‘Maybe, Bella, I’m not sure.’ Philander ripped an out-dated circular from the board on the wall, squashed it into a ball and launched it at Bella’s bin. It went in cleanly. ‘Good omen,’ he said and sat down, calmed somewhat.

  ‘Tell me.’ She stayed in her chair even though she knew she should go home. The stained white tiles, the walls as bare as a skull except for a notice board, the pitted desktop, worn-out chairs – none of it she saw. She was aware only of Philander’s eyes deep in his face, the carved lines around his mouth. She couldn’t leave now.

  He said slowly, ‘What if I tell you there could be a link between Bettie’s murder and crooked cops at our station?’

  ‘Christ, Quentin, that’s serious!’

  ‘Well, I can’t prove anything – not yet. Remember I wasn’t allowed to handle Bettie’s case myself and that it was given to two other officers?’

  She nodded. ‘Kuscus and Fritz, wasn’t it?’ Quentin’s superiors had insisted it would be wiser. It tormented him. When the case went nowhere Quentin had threatened to resign if he couldn’t take it over.

  ‘Yup, and you recall that the case was amongst those mentioned in a recent report?’ A review of 78 murder and attempted murder dockets had revealed gross negligence in the handling and investigation of dockets by investigating officers in the past year in the Western Cape.

  ‘So, Kuscus and Fritz got warning letters and you got your case … what’s new, Quentin?’

  ‘Shebeen talk is that they’re in the pockets of the Evangelicals. Remember the police raid a week ago – the gang was tipped off.’ In the shebeens the air was denser and the tongues looser than on the street. ‘I have informants … they cost me, Bella, but I’ll do anything to find Bettie’s killers.’

  ‘And Kuscus and Fritz were the ones who botched the case. Hmm … I still don’t get it though.’ But Bella sat up. Philander never blabbed about his cases – a true bloodhound running silently even when the quarry was in sight.

  ‘I found out that some laaities from the Evangelicals hijacked a car as part of their initiation, and guess what – it was about the time Bettie was killed.’ Philander hardly paused, ‘Don’t you remember a gang nearly copped Victoria Smurfit, the British actress, in Strand Street – in the middle of Cape Town – as part of their initiation? “Kill a tourist day” was their entrance exam.’

  Bella stared at him. ‘It explains why they drove all the way to Mitchell’s Plain – to divert suspicion from them in Lavender Hill. What are you going to do?’

  ‘Listen, look, sniff around,’ Philander said as he rose from his chair. ‘Ja, Bella, it’s been a good day at the office.’

  •

  Bella got into her VW Polo, loosened the laces of her boots to relieve her ankles from hours of entombment and set off feeling slightly breathless as if she were running home. What would she wear if ever she were to see Philander outside of work? There was nothing feminine about her formless uniform, not like Philander’s suits that brought out his handsomeness. She always felt at a disadvantage at the station in spite of outranking him.

  She was approaching Heathfield where she lived, near Princess Vlei and near the railway line that cut through the southern suburbs, on the wrong side of the track to be sure but she’d resigned herself to it long ago – how else could she properly serve the communities? As her reward she knew that they accepted her as one of their own. It was why she hated crooked cops – they helped criminals to break down what little was left of society on the Flats.

  As she reached home she was thankful that she had such a good husband in Wayne. He was wonderful with the kids while she was at work – Bokkie bless her, and Greg aka Snelvoet because he could run so fast. She loved her family dearly but on days after seeing Philander she’d come home and feel as if there wasn’t enough air in the flat – she’d open doors and windows and gulp in the evening or early morning air, depending on whether she’d been on a day or a night shift, and try to get rid of the stifling, smothering sensation in her chest. ‘Just a hectic day at work,’ she’d say and throw herself into preparing dinner or breakfast. By the time they gathered around the table and said grace she’d be in control again – Captain Bella Ontong, dependable, caring cop, main provider, mother, and occasionally, when her husband needed it, loving wife.

  Fourteen

  Jerome Sasman, aka the Gnome, never failed to remind Hannibal of a spider – small, hairy, creased, and dangerous. The dangerous part didn’t register with people at first – a fact many regretted later. They’d see Sasman in other, sometimes condescending terms – dwarf-like, sharp and jovial, and, if they were women, weird but rich enough to cuddle and fondle.

  Gesturing expansively Sasman called out, ‘Come Hannibal! Come and sit in this chair. One day, young man, you too will own a view like this!’ To a compact, muscular man with black wavy hair and almond-shaped eyes he said, ‘And Danny, you sit over there.’

  Sasman always gave Hannibal the same seat at their monthly meeting – brought forward this time because of ‘recent disturbing events’ as he called it. From the deck on the second floor of Sasman’s house in Plattekloof, Hannibal could see Table Mountain, Lion’s Head and Cape Town, with the bay stretching out to the right. Not out of kindness did the Gnome give Hannibal a view seat but to make him eat his heart out – Lavender Hill had nothing like it – so that he would work even harder. The Mother City they called it, so bright and beautiful today in the summer sun, Hannibal thought. Some mother! Favouring her fair-skinned children and banishing her mixed-blood offspring to the Flats. Having given of herself so promiscuously over the centuries, enduring the pains of birth only to reject her young – things neither black nor white – flinging them out of sight never to take them back in her arms. Some mother-fucker she was. Hannibal wished he could nuke Cape Town, create a contaminated wasteland twenty, no, thirty times the size of District Six’s eerie empty space.

  ‘Hannibal, we were hoping you’d bring Curly,’ the Gnome said, removing his glasses and wiping the lenses in measured fashion. ‘He saw it happen on the train, right?’

  ‘I got everything out of him, don’t worry. And just now he gets stirvy from all the attention,’ Hannibal said. ‘Already he wants Gatiep’s job at the parlour.’ He grinned, his dental bridge displaying the letters J-I-T-S which meant ‘cool’. S-O-E-K with its meaning of ‘look for trouble’ might have put the Gnome in a mood because there was enough trouble already. K-I-L-L would probably have been just right.

  It was as though Danny read his thoughts. ‘Firs’ Cupido,
now Gatiep. We mus’ fin’ them … kill them dead,’ Danny said. He could have been talking about cockroaches or mosquitoes. He clenched and released his fist making the dragon tattoo bounce around on his muscular forearm. Danny had strange-looking tjappies all over his back. Hannibal had seen them once at the Gnome’s pool.

  Sasman raised a hand. ‘Everything at the right time, okay … next time I’m doing an agenda, I swear! Lettie, please bring tea and biscuits, the ginger ones,’ he shouted through the sliding doors. ‘Now let’s start with what we know. Over to you, Hannibal.’ Black stubble covered Sasman’s lower face like blackened veld. There was a carpet of hair on his arms, and from his throat, ears, and nostrils strands protruded in an attitude of anticipation. Danny fixed dead eyes on Hannibal. The only thing Hannibal liked about Danny Ho was his long wavy hair – he looked like the men in Hong Kong triad movies – but he distrusted Danny like he distrusted Sasman. They would take his turf if they had half a chance; only the fact that Hannibal was Lavender Hill stopped them. Danny had grown up in Hong Kong on the edgy streets of Mong Kok and was in his time a top triad fighter and leader of a gang of 49ers under a notorious Dragon Head. Today Danny was a businessman and his own boss. Sasman poached abalone off Hawston and Hermanus, sold it to Danny who exported it to China, Hong Kong, and Macau, bringing back heroin and cocaine from China, girls from China and Thailand as well as from Johannesburg, Durban, and Bloemfontein, and selling them to Sasman while still keeping a share – a spider-web arrangement that defied being put on paper and netted them millions. ‘A real win-win situation,’ Sasman said, proving that alliances were all about looking after your own. Danny was already onto the next thing in South Africa – slaughtering rhinos for their horns which fetched astronomical prices in the East especially Vietnam. Hannibal dreamed about being in a cage with Danny, locked up until one of them was down, and then going after the Gnome and his men in the style of De Niro in the movie Taxi Driver.

  ‘Okay, this is what I make of it,’ Hannibal said, avoiding Kapie-taal because of Danny’s Hong Kong English, ‘One, the girl and the man weren’t together on the train, it was like they were strangers, but then they could’ve planned it. Two, the girl pulled a knife and stuck it in Gatiep … a real Rottweiler bitch according to Curly. Three, there was this guy thought he was son of Bruce Lee … legs like rubber, bringing Curly down.’ Danny’s eyes went from dead to alive at the mention of Bruce Lee. ‘I show him any time, jus’ fin’ him, okay? He fuck wit’ me an’ I fuck him!’ he said. ‘Hey!’ Sasman said, ‘let Hannibal finish … and Danny, you fuck someone up, okay?’ Jesus, how he hated these meetings, Hannibal thought – three people, three agendas. He carried on, ‘Four, they got off at Wynberg, Curly saw them … the girl limping badly from Gatiep’s knife. Five, Wynberg Hospital knew of no girl who was admitted with such a wound on that night because I got Lulu to phone. Six, the paper reported an “unidentified body”, so Gatiep’s stuff, his ID and cell, must’ve been stolen.’

  Teaspoons clinked. A gingerbread biscuit crunched as the Gnome bit into it. Hannibal’s new jeans felt tight around his crotch. In the beginning Hannibal had worn his best clothes to show the Gnome and Danny that he wasn’t just any hotnot from the Flats. But nowadays it was because for 60 kilometres – from Lavender Hill in the south to Plattekloof in the north and back again – he rode in the backseat of Sasman’s Mercedes S 500 and that alone was worth dressing up for. He’d leave his Honda Civic 1.8 CVi at home, walk to the corner of Prince George Drive and Concert Boulevard for Terrance to pick him up on the first Sunday of every month. He’d watch, with a mixture of scorn and pity, people on their way back from church – they having prayed to a timid, weak God who couldn’t, or wouldn’t, do a fucking thing to help them while he, Hannibal, was looking out for himself and doing very well thank you.

  ‘I paid Danny a lot for the Thai girl,’ Sasman said accusingly, ‘and she didn’t even make the first night of the World Cup. You know how much revenue we lost in the six weeks of the tournament – a fucking fortune!’

  ‘Yeah, Jelome, that chicken was something, best catch in two years,’ Danny said proudly. ‘You know what she looks like, Hannibal?’

  ‘Only photos, in Cupido’s book,’ Hannibal said dismissively. Just as he had to go to Sasman’s house, so Cupido and Gatiep had to come to him, it was the way it worked. Sasman was paranoid about layers – to protect all of them, he’d say, when in fact he thought only of himself, in the same way he left the recruiting of girls to Danny. Danny had run small newspaper ads in Beijing, Shanghai, Bangkok (in Hong Kong police were sharper), Johannesburg, Durban, and Bloemfontein for jobs at health spas and wellness centres in Cape Town four months before the World Cup. Interested women between the ages of 18 and 25 had to phone or email information, including pictures. Danny would carefully select the ones he wanted. Then they were flown in on a tourist visa, or, if they were local, put on a bus, met in Cape Town and taken to Sasman’s parlour in Long Street where wham! The chameleon tongue of deception would shoot out and catch them. Locked up and drugged, their passports, money, and clothes would be taken away, they’d work as prostitutes, and whatever they earned would go on their drug habit, on their keep, and towards paying off the Gnome’s acquisition costs. It was a self-imprisoning scheme for women that made a lot of money for the Gnome, Danny, and, to a lesser extent, Hannibal and his gang. And Hannibal’s wasn’t the only gang in Sasman’s pocket – Sasman could choose from 130 gangs and 100,000 members on the Flats. He was like a murderous rich kid on the loose in a gun shop.

  ‘I hope you’re still looking for her, Hannibal,’ Sasman said, hitting out at a fly near the biscuit plate. ‘Fuck off!’ he bellowed. ‘Christ, I hate them – flies and gattas!’

  Hannibal nodded – he hated cops more – and said, ‘It took two months to do Voortrekker Road, you know how long it is, then it was Bo-Kaap and Green Point. Now it’s Sea Point, it’s dense and you don’t always recognise sex joints – they look like ordinary houses. After that we’ll do the southern suburbs. Manpower’s my problem, and the hours it takes.’ He could have been a businessman talking about a knock-‘n-drop promotion.

  Danny suddenly turned on Hannibal: ‘Cupido dead and now Gatiep, bot’ men yours, bot’ in charge of the girls, bot’ killed with knife. We mus’ fin’ these people, Hannibal!’ He had the aggrieved tone of someone who’d swatted a mosquito only to see his own blood smeared on the wall.

  Sasman added, ‘And both of them Evangelicals … what if Gatiep is identified and the cops realise they both belonged to your gang? They’ll knock on your door, Hannibal, then mine.’ A chain-eater when agitated, Sasman was now devouring biscuit after biscuit. ‘More biscuits, Lettie!’ he shouted. ‘I’m gonna have to pay those cops more … I mean, we didn’t kill Cupido and Gatiep, and what’s two dead gangsters anyway? It helps the cops, doesn’t it?’

  Danny went for the jugular: ‘Curly say Gatiep start it all on the train then Curly run away! In Mong Kok, bad discipline mean you be killed by myriad of swords, Hannibal. And losing face worse than death, not so, Hannibal?’ A breath of wind picked up strands of black wavy hair and deposited them over one dead eye, leaving the other to stare at Hannibal like a demented pirate’s.

  Hannibal knew it – he knew it would be two against one today. That was their way, just as they’d kill each other if either felt threatened. Kak on them! He turned his Jeep cap to shade his eyes from the sun arcing westwards and said: ‘One, I’ve got Curly at Wynberg station every day, watching early departures to the city, and again arrivals from the city from 5 pm until the last one at 8.24 pm. He’s the one who knows their faces. Two, Cupido could have been targeted – he was working the streets – but not Gatiep. The man and the girl didn’t know Gatiep and didn’t know he was getting on that train at that time. So Cupido and Gatiep couldn’t have been killed by the same people, right? Three, if that’s true, it means their deaths just happened, so why panic? Four, Gatiep’s got only a father – mother’s gone – and I’m
not gonna tell him his son’s in the morgue … leave the body to be buried unidentified. Five, I’ll make clear to Curly that if he talks he’ll end up as fish feed in the Steenbras Dam. Six, I personally want to know who the man and the girl on the train were, and if Curly can’t find them I’ll find them wherever they are, okay?’

  Through his lenses Sasman’s eyes became hot points of light on Hannibal’s caramel face. Sasman hated being treated as an equal by anyone. He regarded his gangs and their leaders as his soldiers, there to do his bidding. Hannibal was different. He paid over to Sasman and Danny the profits due to them – to the cent – but he made sure his men stayed his own and took directions only from him.

  ‘Your arrogance doesn’t sit well with your youth, Hannibal. Never forget, you’re successful only by the grace of the Gnome,’ Sasman said slowly. ‘And if you’re fobbing me off, think again – you have thirty days, Hannibal, to find the man and the girl and bring them to me. Your only choice is, dead or alive.’

  •

  To nuke this house too would be awesome, Hannibal thought as he walked across the gravel to the Mercedes. It was located in Plattekloof 2, the most expensive of the four parts of this suburb nestled against the Tygerberg. Streets were all named after trees – Olienhout, Keurboom, Essenhout, Lorea, Mimosa, Aurea, and Swarthout – some of them cul-de-sacs with bulbous ends for turning around in, their shape reminding Hannibal of glass lollies for smoking meth. Sasman’s house was in one of them. It had three storeys, each with a deck, sliding doors and expansive views; the main bedroom and study were on the top for security, the lounge, dining room and kitchen on the middle level, and more bedrooms on the ground floor. It also had two servants’ quarters, four garages, and a swimming pool. Not less than R15 million, Hannibal guessed. Protecting it were large electric gates, high walls with electrified fencing running along the top, and two Dobermans.