Lauren Beukes - Zoo City

More helpfully, there is also an unopened pill container marked "Songweza Radebe" and "Flurazepam", "dosage: 1 per day with food." I look it up on my phone. It's a generic, used for anxiety or insomnia, especially for those with manic depression. The date on the label is Friday 18 March. So one day before she runs away, she gets a prescription for heavy-duty anxiety pills. Makes it seem like the script wasn't her idea. Interesting.

Next door is a full-on bedroom studio with egg-boxes studding the walls, mixing-decks, a computer facing the tiniest voice booth you ever saw, but at least semi-pro, if I'm any judge of expensive. And I am.

Adjoining the studio is the final bedroom. This has been creatively adapted. It's barely a metre across because a slapdash drywall has been erected in the middle of the room, forming the back of the recording booth next door. A double bed takes up most of the remaining space, under a block-mounted poster of Barbarella gazing into the depths of space, managing to look yearning and bold all at once. The cupboard has been thrown open, and clothes dumped recklessly on the bed among a spread of comics. There are more comics crammed into every available space on a long, low bookshelf that runs the length of the window. I skim through a few. Swamp monsters and teleporting houses, a muscled guy wearing the Union Jack.

A collection of movie monsters are posed all along the top of the bookshelf. On instinct, I pick up the one that looks like an upside-down dustbin with rows of studs down the side. As I do, it says "Exterminate!" and I nearly drop it. The head comes right off. There's a bankie of dope inside. And it's quality, if I'm any judge of substances. And I am.

I put the little robot's head back on, leaving the dope where it is, and replace him carefully between Arnold Schwarzenegger, metal chassis gleaming from under ripped plastic skin, and a manga girl with a mane of bright pink hair and boobs popping out of the leopard-print bikini that matches her tail and ears. But I do take one of the A5 soft-cover notebooks ferreted away between the comics. It says lyrics on the cover. And © S'bu Radebe . I roll it up and slip it into my bag.

As we're heading back towards the stairs, Sloth chirrups. "My thoughts exactly," I say, stepping back into the anonymous hotel room, which is not in fact a guest room. I open the cupboard and face an array of pretty preppy clothing. White sundresses and Afro-chic numbers by Sun Goddess and Darkie and Stoned Cherrie. Perfect for a hip teen kwaito queen. But not for a Gothpunk Princess Barbie. There are empty hangers, like a gaptoothed smile. Wherever Song went, whoever she went with, she had time to pack.

I ransack the room for lost things, digging under the mattress, in the back of the cupboard. There are only dust bunnies and some spare change, a hair band. Nothing lost. Nothing to lead me back to Song. Which means I'm stuck with the investigative journalist angle.

"Uh-oh. Fweag aled," Arno says nasally as I approach. He's looking considerably less stoned, likely courtesy of the pain in his nose, although his eyes are still bloodshot.

"Just ignore her. Maybe she'll get the hint." Des lines up the tee, once, twice, and then swings hard, neatly chipping out a clod of earth to join the other clods of earth gathered around his trainers, which are not regulation golf shoes. But then, neither are mine. I've left distinctive tracks across three holes: the common kitten-heeled hustler.

"You play golf now as well as Blood Skies ?" Des says, mockingly.

"No. I hate golf. It's the genteel version of seal-clubbing, only not as much fun."

"What do you want?"

"Background stuff. Colour."

"Is bad a whide joke?" Arno bristles.

"As in painting a picture of iJusi's life. The people they hang out with, what goes down."

"You're bod gonna wide about de guns ding, are you?" Arno looks worried.

I laugh. "What was that?"

"It was the dope. He gets lank paranoid. Doos ." Des smacks Arno upside his head.

"Don't worry, I'll make that incident 'off the record'." I take out my notebook and pen, and look at them expectantly. "So tell me about you guys. How do you know S'bu?"

They look at each other uneasily.

"If this isn't a bad time for you. Wouldn't want to interrupt your…" – I look down at the pitted grass – "gardening." They have the grace to look sheepish. "C'mon, I'll buy you a drink at the clubhouse."

Turns out Des and Arno already have a well-established reputation at the clubhouse. "Oh no," the waiter says, wearing a bowtie and gloves, like this is Inanda instead of Mayfields. "No shirt, no service. And no animals."

"Hi there," I say, sticking out my hand. "Zinzi December, journalist for The Economist . You've heard of The Economist , I trust? I'm interviewing these young men for a piece on the South African music industry, and I'd really appreciate it if you could accommodate us. I'd hate to have to include something in my piece on the appalling service at Mayfields."

"Do you have a business card?"

"Not on me." I give him my best fake-tolerant smile. He considers this, then breaks out his best fake-obsequious smile in return. "Right this way, madam. But please inform the young gentlemen that we won't be serving them alcoholic beverages. We confiscated their fake IDs the last time they visited with us."

We sit outside overlooking the gentle rolling greenery of the course. A shrike eyes our table, checking out the scraps. Also known as the butcherbird, it has a habit of impaling its prey on barbed-wire fences. People tend to think animals are better than humans. But birds have their own serial killers. Chimpanzees commit murder. The only difference between us is that animals don't feel guilty about it.

"How many of these people actually play golf?" I say, waving my glass of Appletiser at the townhouses.

"Dwo?" Arno guesses.

"Three max. It's like gym," Des says. "Everyone signs up and goes for like a month and then never goes again."

"So, who are you guys? Tell me about you."

"Um. Anoo Wedelinghaze. Dad's Har-he-duh-he-," he spells out, leaning over my notebook. Listening to him speak makes my eyes water.

"Redelinghuys. Got it," I wink. "How old are you? Arno?"

"Fifdeen."

"And you, Des?"

"Twenty-two. And it's Desmond Luthuli."

"You go to school with S'bu?"

"I do!" Arno chirps. "Bud Des moved hewe wid him. He's da woombade. I jusd hang oud and sleeb over sombedibes."

"Moved out from where?"

"Valley of a Dousand Hills? In Kwa-Zulu Naddal? Dey, like, gwew up dogeduh, besd buds."

"I can speak for myself, Arno." There's something hungry about Des. I get the feeling reflected glory isn't enough for him.

"Sorreeee, dude. Shid."

"Yeah, so S'bu and Arno are only, like, friends from two years ago. They both go to Crawford," Des says. "But me and S'bu, we grew up together. Tiny little village called KwaXimba in the Valley of a Thousand Hills. So ja , when iJusi signed and S'bu and Song moved out here-"

"How'd they get signed?" I interrupt.

"You don't know?"

"I just want to get your take on it. In your own words." Actually, Maltese and Marabou filled me in on the way. There was a big hoo-ha after they aced the Coca-Cola Starmakerz auditions when they were still a tender fourteen; the youngest contestants ever to qualify, and from a desperately poor background that almost immediately made them the great bright nation-building hopes of the contest. But they had to drop out just before the semi-finals, after their grandmother died of lupus, barely two years after they lost both parents to Aids-related complications.

They were adorable. They were tragic. They were at least half-talented. And the song they chose to sing was a wrenching cover of Brenda Fassie's "Too Late for Mama". How could the General Public resist? There was a massive rallying around them. Radio 702 started a fund-raising drive to pay for granny's funeral costs and establish a trust for the new orphans. Coca-Cola put them up in a hotel for the duration of the competition, arranged minders to look after them, and gave them as much free Coke as they could drink. And hopefully paid for their dental work afterwards.