Roger Smith - Mixed Blood

Zondi had participated, at a distance, in a number of other necklacings. He had long since closed the book on those memories and the thorny questions they sometimes begged. Now, like a lot of men washed up in the twenty-first century without an easy moral compass, he was defined more by what he didn’t believe in than what he did.

But this, he had to concede, had a certain poetry to it.

He overheard two young colored uniforms talking on the other side of the crime scene tape.

“Shit way to die.”

“Ja. I won’t be able to eat Kentucky for a week.”

They laughed and started talking about South Africa playing Australia in a rugby test match that weekend.

Zondi took a last look at Barnard, successfully fought the urge to toyi-toyi in his Roberto Cavalli suit and Brunori loafers, and walked over to the cops.

“He was running away from something, apparently?”

The cops gave him the usual once-over, just a degree away from insolence, before the taller man answered. “Ja, he was in those flats up there. People say he jumped out the window.”

“Drive me up there, please, Constable.”

Zondi was already walking across to the cop van, getting into the passenger seat. The tall cop exchanged a glance with his colleague, then got in beside Zondi and started the van. They bumped down the sand road, coming to a stop outside the ghetto block branded by the thug life graffiti.

Zondi climbed out, looked up at the shattered window. A bloody blanket lay in the dirt directly below. Zondi saw a lace curtain twitch in the apartment above the one with the broken window, and he glimpsed a leathery old face before it disappeared.

Zondi followed the cop up the narrow stairs. His nose wrinkled at the smell of piss. The door to the apartment withthe broken window stood ajar. Zondi gave it a push with the toe of his loafer, and it swung open until it stopped against the body of a man. The constable had his service pistol in his hand and followed Zondi into the apartment.

Three dead men. All with that unmistakable look of gangsters. Two of them shot, one probably by a shotgun. The third man, who had at some point in his career had his fingers amputated, lay with his throat cut. Zondi could see bone.

Zondi and the cop walked through to the bedroom. He looked down at the fourth body, an emaciated man in his sixties, wearing only briefs. The dead man’s brains were all over the statuette of the Virgin Mary that lay on the floor beside the bed. Zondi saw a child’s pajama top, covered in blood and brain matter, lying beside the dead man. He noticed the American label: Big Kmart.

Zondi turned to the cop. “Constable, there’s an old woman in the flat above. One of those types who spends her whole day watching at the window. Ask her who lives here and who she saw coming in and out of here today. And ask her about a kid. A boy. A white boy. You got that?”

The cop nodded. “Yes, sir.”

He left Zondi to wander around the apartment. Zondi opened a chipped closet in the bedroom and saw a few items of women’s clothing. A brush, clogged with dark hair, lay on a dresser beneath a broken mirror. The stinking bathroom didn’t tell him much. A few cheap cosmetics and a box of sanitary pads.

Zondi went back into the living room. From the way the bodies lay, the gunshot victims had been met with fire as they entered the apartment. And then the amputee’s throat had been slit.

At some point during all the action, Barnard had thrown himself out the window.

The constable was back. “She say a woman lives here. Early twenties, maybe. Carmen something, doesn’t know her last name. The old guy is her uncle. An alkie, she say. She saw three guys come in here; one was white. Then another three. Coloreds. Gangsters, she say.”

Zondi nodded. “These three.”

“She say she saw the woman, Carmen, leave before any of these guys come in. She had a boy with her. He was white with blond hair.”

Zondi reached for his phone and called Bellville South HQ. He spoke to a sergeant on duty, wanted an APB put out on this boy.

“Sir,” the sergeant said. “The boy. He’s sitting right here.”

Burn drove through the sprawling ghetto without any sense of direction, just trying to get as much distance as possible between himself and the dead bodies. The wind had come up again, and it drew a gauze of dust across the Flats. The dust hid Table Mountain, the only landmark he could navigate by. He’d given the watchman the. 38, and the crowd had taken the Mossberg. He was alone and unarmed in one of the most violent places on the planet.

Burn stopped at an intersection. A taxi drew up beside him, and the passengers stared down at him. He pulled away and almost collided with a beat-up pickup truck. The men inside swore at him. Burn barely noticed.

Maybe he had fled the ghetto block too soon? Maybe there was somebody there who could tell him where Matt was? He could offer money. He still had a million in local currency in the trunk of the car.

Jesus, he told himself, you go back to that place, even if you could find your way back, and you’ll be arrested or murdered. And you’re the only person who has some vague idea of what happened to your son.

Burn passed a group of youths, who shouted something. One of them threw a beer can, which bounced off the rear window of the Ford. Without the watchman he had no idea of how the hell to get out of this place.

Burn was lost.

When Zondi heard the kid talking American, he didn’t doubt for a second that this was the son of the man who’d called himself Hill. He had to be. Just too many coincidences.

The child was sitting on the counter in the charge office, wearing a soiled T-shirt and pajama bottoms. They matched the pj top Zondi had seen in the apartment. The child’s hair was matted on one side with something that looked like blood. He was saying, through tears and snot, that he wanted his mommy.

In that unmistakable accent.

A prim-looking woman with tight hair and tighter features stood next to the boy in the charge office. She looked as if she couldn’t wait to unload him and get the hell out of there. The constable on duty was taking her statement with painful slowness.

“How did this child get here?” asked Zondi.

The woman looked him up and down, immediately suspicious of this dark stranger. He allowed her a glimpse of his ID before repeating his question.

“My name is Belinda Titus. I’m a social worker. A girl, a former case of mine, brought him in. She refused to say where she had found him.”

“Name of Carmen?”

“Yes. Carmen Fortune.”

Zondi had no patience with children, but he manufactured a smile as he turned to the boy. “What’s your name, son?”

“He says his name is Matt,” said the woman.

Zondi’s smile frosted over when he turned it on her. “Thank you, but let me handle this.”

Zondi took the pen and a piece of paper from the desk cop’s hands and slid them to the boy. These American kids were precocious, so he went with a challenge. “Bet you can’t write your name.”

The kid looked at him through the tears, wiped a grubby hand across his nose. “I can, too.”

“Do you like ice cream?” The kid nodded. “Okay, you write me your name and I’ll buy you an ice cream. Deal?”

The kid weighed the offer; then he took the pen and concentrated, tongue jutting from his lip, while he applied himself to the paper. His penmanship only a little worse than the desk cop’s.

Zondi looked at the paper. “Matt Burn?” The kid nodded.

Zondi reached into his jacket pocket and took out the same mug shot printout he had shown the American. He held it up for the kid to see. “Matt. Who is this?”