Roger Smith - Mixed Blood

Barnard smiled to himself in appreciation of his psychological insights. He knew women. Hell, he’d been married to one once, hadn’t he?

Fucken bitch.

On impulse Barnard stopped in at a cop bar on Voortrekker Road, a few blocks from his dingy apartment. The Station Bar had opened back in the days when men were left alone to do their drinking, women banished to the cocktail bar where a real man wouldn’t set foot.

Although by law no woman could now be prevented from entering the Station Bar, few did. The bar was ugly, it stank, and it was filled with crude and violent men. It took a certain kind of woman to be drawn to this sort of company, and most of them were out on the street plying their trade.

Barnard grabbed a stool. The barman, a bald and wrinkled man with skin the color of nicotine, shoved a bottle of pine nut Double O across to him. Barnard grunted his thanks and took a gulp.

He didn’t come to the Station for alcohol or company. He was a teetotaler and a loner. Rather he came here to plug into the cop network; when mouths were loosened by booze, he often gleaned information that was to his advantage.

He needed a few questions answered. The grapevine had been whispering to him, telling him stuff that woke him from his sleep, his hemorrhoids aching and the itch between his thighs burning like crazy.

He watched a skinny guy with a potbelly and styled hair, dressed fifteen years too young, in conversation with a half-breed down at the other end of the bar. The half-breed nodded, laughed at something, chugged back his beer, and left.

Barnard took his Double O and levered his fat onto the stool beside the snappy dresser. “Lotter.”

Lotter looked at him with disinterest. “Barnard.”

Waving at the barman who slumped like a dirty rag across the counter, Barnard pointed at Lotter’s empty glass. “Give him a drink.”

“Whatever you want from me, the answer is no,” Lotter said.

“Who says I want something?” Barnard leaned in close and tried a smile.

Captain Danny Lotter wasn’t a squeamish man; in fact he had been known to eat hot dogs during postmortems, but the full blast of Barnard’s halitosis forced him back on his stool. He quickly fired up a Camel, not offering one to Barnard.

Lotter’s brandcoke arrived, and Barnard lifted his Double O in a toast. “Good luck.”

Lotter grunted, but he didn’t turn the drink down.

“Lotter, I’ve been hearing some funny things.”

“Get your ears tested.”

Barnard had to restrain himself from grabbing the skinny cunt by his blow-dried hair and pulping his face on the bar. He wheezed, taking it calm. “Things about some task force, anticorruption what-what being set up.”

Lotter looked at Barnard. “Ja, so?”

“So, I know you’re screwing that girlie in the superintendent’s office.”

“Marie?”

“Ja. The ugly one?”

“She’s not ugly, exactly…”

“Lotter, just because you fucking her doesn’t mean she’s not a dog.” Barnard laughed one of his sucking laughs.

Lotter drained his glass and set it on the counter. He stood. “Thanks for the drink.”

Barnard put a heavy paw on Lotter’s shoulder, easing him back onto his stool. “I’m trying to be nice here. Let’s keep it that way.”

Lotter looked for a moment like he was going to resist; then he realized it would be foolish and he nodded. “Okay, but take your hands off my jacket. It’s just been dry-cleaned.”

Barnard took his hand back, and Lotter adjusted his collar. “Look, it’s all very hush-hush, and I’ve only heard bits and pieces, but there is some investigation.”

“Ja?”

“Ja. And you one of the people they going to be looking at.”

“That so?”

Lotter nodded. “So I hear.”

Barnard shrugged. “Fuck them, anyway. How many of these task forces haven’t there been?”

“This one’s different.” Lotter sucked on his cigarette.

“How?”

“Darkies from Jo’burg, sent down from Safety and Security. To clean up the Cape.”

“Darkies, hey?”

“In BMWs and suits.”

“That so? They got bugger all on me.”

Lotter shrugged. “Then you got nothing to worry about.” He stubbed out his cigarette, stood, and walked away.

This wasn’t entirely unexpected. A man like Barnard made enemies. Often powerful enemies. He had seen what had happened to other cops who had fallen foul of their superiors. The lucky ones were booted out with no pension. The unlucky ones were thrown into Pollsmoor Prison with the half-breed scum they had spent their lives fighting.

This was not a fate that Rudi Barnard was prepared to entertain.

If Lotter was right, and Lotter was too unimaginative to invent any of this, then Barnard had a battle coming. He knew well enough that the way to win a political battle in South Africa-and if there were darkies involved, this was political-was to throw money at the right people. A shitload of money, dumped in the right places, could make anything disappear.

Throw money at people. Or kill them.

Benny Mongrel and Bessie were on the top floor of the house. Bessie slept. She had moved more easily up the stairs that night, and when he’d touched her ribs, where the fat cop had kicked her, she hadn’t moaned.

Ever since his conversation with his white boss, Benny Mongrel had been scheming, planning. Lying at home in his shack, unable to sleep, listening to the wind howl like the dying.

Thinking.

He felt at peace now that he had made up his mind. He knew what he had to do. Just two more days, and he picked up his month’s pay. A pittance, but it was all he had. Then he and Bessie would start a new life together.

He had sworn to go straight when he walked out of the gates of Pollsmoor, wanted to find a life outside the all-too-familiar structures of prison. Now he was going to commit another crime.

True, stealing a dog, a mangy old bitch with tired hips, was bugger all compared to what he had done in his life. But she belonged to Sniper Security. That alone gave her more value than most of the brown men he’d wished goodnight over the years. Even though she was destined for the vet’s needle and then a sack on a dump somewhere.

He had to do this. For them both.

He would build another place for them in the sprawling maze that adjoined Lavender Hill, a shack settlement called Cuba Heights. Nobody would find them there.

Benny Mongrel had a plan for him and his dog. They would find work, guarding the shops and the small factories that were built on the peripheries of the Cape Flats, vulnerable to attack and theft. Most owners couldn’t afford Sniper Security, but they would be able to afford Benny Mongrel and Bessie.

“Not long now, Bessie,” he whispered. “Not long.”

He stroked her as she slept.

Barnard drove up Voortrekker, past the car dealerships and the junk-food joints and the hookers who smiled tik smiles into his headlights. He wouldn’t be able to sleep. Not after what he’d found out from Lotter. So there was no point in going home to his cramped apartment in Goodwood.

He was going to need money. Not the small change he got from the likes of Rikki Fortune. Real money. Serious bucks.

He thought about the dead Americans, Rikki and his beanpole buddy, lying wrapped up out on the Flats. Something had spoken to him the moment he saw those bodies. Call it intuition. Call it a hunch. Call it what you wanted, but Rudi Barnard knew that the other American, the one from the US of fucken A, was inolved.

John Hill was the key. He was sure of that.

Barnard wanted to drive across to that fancy house with his gun in his hand and kick his way in. Feed his gun down the throat of that fucken American. Slap his pregnant wife. Threaten his kid. Do what he would do out his side of town. Do what he needed to do to get to the truth.