“He’s gone?” he managed eventually.
“Yes, sir, he’s gone. The military people took him away against the wishes of the entire medical team.” Her voice was calm and soothing; she saw O’Grady’s red face and shaking torso and wondered whether he was going to have a heart attack in her office.
“Ffffff…” he said, and controlled himself with superhuman effort.
“Just about ten minutes ago. Not even in an ambulance.”
“Did they say where they were taking him?”
“Into custody. When I objected, they said they had medical treatment available for him.”
The curses were poised on his tongue but he bit them back.
“What was his condition?”
“He was stable but we were about to run tests on him. A blow like that to the head, there could be major brain damage.”
“Was he conscious?”
“Delirious, I would say.”
“Coherent?”
“I don’t know.”
“Who took him?”
“A Colonel Brits.”
The frustration, the impotent rage, washed through O’Grady’s big body. “The bastard,” he said, and then he could no longer hold the obscenities back. “The motherfucking, absolute, total, complete cunt of a bastard,” he said, and deflated like a big balloon.
“Feeling better now?” asked the matron. But O’Grady didn’t hear her. He was on his way down the passage, cell phone in his hand. He was going to speak to that dolly-bird attorney, but first he would phone Mat Joubert. Joubert must phone Bart de Wit. Bart de Wit must phone the commissioner and the commissioner could phone whomever he wanted, but Bester Brits was going to get fucked before the day was out.
He was wrong.
♦
The man whose skull had been cracked by a spade was sitting on a wooden Defence Force chair, in a prefab building in a forgotten area in a Port Jackson thicket on the far edge of the Ysterplaat Air Force Base. He wasn’t tied down or shackled. Bester Brits, standing in front of him, was in complete controclass="underline" there was no need for restraints.
Outside there were four soldiers with R5 rifles, and in any case, Spadehead wasn’t in great shape. His head was lolling, the eyes rolled up every few seconds, his breathing was fast and uneven.
“Does it hurt?” Bester Brits asked, and slapped Spadehead on the purplish red head wound.
The sound that came through the swollen lips was just decipherable as “Yes.”
“What’s your name?”
No reply. Brits lifted his hand again, poised threateningly.
A sound.
“What?”
“Ghaarie.”
“Gary?”
Nod, head rolling.
“Who sent you, Gary, to the house to attack the women?”
Sound.
“What?”
“Please.” Hands lifted to protect the wound.
Brits swept the hands aside, slapped again. “Please? Please what?”
“My head.”
“I know it’s your fucking head, you moron, and I’ll keep on hitting it until you talk, do you understand? The faster you talk, the faster – ”
Sound.
“What?”
“Oh-ri-un.”
“Orion?”
“Yes.”
Brits hit him again with the frustration of more than twenty years, all the hatred, the rancor in him that opened like an old, stinking sore. “I know it was Operation Orion, motherfuck.” The words unlocking memories.
Gary moaning, “No, no, no.”
“What do you mean, ‘no’?”
“O-ri-unShh…” The word slurred in the saliva that ran from a corner of his mouth.
“What?”
No reply. Gary’s eyes were closed, the head flopping.
“Don’t pretend to be unconscious, Gary.”
There was still no reply.
♦
“I can’t talk to you now,” Van Heerden said to Kara-An Rousseau.
“I heard it on the radio. About the shooting.”
“I’ve got to go.” He stood in the doorway of his house, machine pistol in his hand.
“Why were you at my house last night?”
“I wanted to…tell you something.”
“Tell me now.”
“I’ve got to go.”
“You want to know why I am like I am.”
He shifted past her. “This isn’t a good time,” he said, and walked toward his mother’s house. He had to get Tiny.
“Because you’re afraid you’re like that, too.” Not a question.
He halted, turned. “No,” he said.
She laughed at him. “Zatopek, it’s in you, too. And you know it.”
He looked at her beauty, her smile, the perfect teeth. Then he walked away, faster and faster, to get away from the sound of her laughter.
♦
At four minutes past two Nougat O’Grady walked into Hope Beneke’s office and said, “We have taken over the case. Completely.”
“I know,” said Hope Beneke, wondering how she could get rid of him in the next few minutes.
“I believe Van Heerden has not been absolutely frank with us,” he said, and wondered why this female attorney always wore clothes that hid her talents. He suspected there was a nifty body underneath it all. He sat down on a chair opposite her. “A lot of people have died, Miss Beneke. And unless you share everything with us, the killing won’t stop. Now, do you want that on your conscience?”
“No,” she said.
“Then please – ”
The phone rang. She started.
“Been expecting a call?” he asked, and knew instinctively that something was cooking here. “Please go ahead. We’re a team now, so to speak.”
♦
The owner of the Girls-to-Go Agency on Twelfth Avenue, Observatory, looked like a retired film star – long, elegant nose, square jaw, black hair flecked with gray, bushy Tom Selleck mustache – but when he opened his mouth to speak, he showed a set of teeth that were terrifying in their decay: stained yellow, crooked, half of them missing.
“It’th confidenthial information,” he said to Zatopek van Heerden and Tiny Mpayipheli, lisping slightly.
“A prostitute’s destination is not confidential information,” said Van Heerden.
“Thyow me your badge.” The lisp was more marked.
“I’m a private investigator. I don’t have a badge,” he said slowly and patiently. But he didn’t know how much more of the man’s attitude he would be able to take.
“Here’s my badge,” said Tiny Mpayipheli, the impatience strong in his voice as he opened his jacket to show the Rossi model 462 in its shoulder holster.
“I’m not thcared of gunth,” the film star said.
The Xhosa took out the .357 Magnum revolver and put a hole in the O of GO in the sign behind the man, the noise of the gunshot earsplitting in the small room. Behind a door a few women shrieked.
“The next one goes through your knee,” said Mpayipheli.
The door opened. A young woman with green hair and big eyes asked: “What’s going on, Vincent?”
“Nothing I can’t handle.” Calm, unintimidated.
“The address, Vincent,” said Van Heerden.
Vincent looked at them with eyes that had seen everything, looked at the Rossi aimed at his leg, slowly shook his head back and forth as if he didn’t understand the universe, and patiently pulled a large black book toward him, then took the credit card slip that Van Heerden had put on the counter and lazily started leafing through the book.
Tiny put the weapon back under his jacket. They waited. Vincent licked a finger, leafed on.
“Here it ith,” he said.
♦
“This telephone is tapped by Military Intelligence,” Hope said to the man on the phone. “I must ask you to phone another number, a cell phone number. My colleague is waiting for your call.”