Деон Мейер - Cobra

‘Please.’

On the navigation bar on the left, Davids clicked on ‘More’, and then ‘All Mail’.

Only the single post from Lillian Alvarez appeared.

‘Talk about good housekeeping,’ said Davids.

‘What does that mean?’

‘It means he’s cleaned up everything. There is no other mail. Everything he sent or received, is gone.’

‘ Fok ,’ said Griessel.

‘Shall I try to find out who Lillian Alvareth ith?’ asked Lithpel Davids.

The security guard with the pimples held onto his left arm and the one with muscles pulled his right arm painfully up against his back.

‘Let me go!’ said Tyrone, his voice shrill and frightened.

‘We’ve got him, control, we’re bringing him in,’ said Pimples, white and young, into his radio. Then to Tyrone: ‘Not as clever as you thought, hey?’

They pushed and dragged him towards the shopping centre.

‘What are you talking about?’ Tyrone tried to bring his fear under control, tried to sound indignant, but his heart beat in his throat. Deny, deny, deny,Tyrone. And when that won’t help any more, then you lie.

‘ Maaifoedie , fokken pickpocket,’ said Muscles, the coloured one. ‘We’ve been after you for a long time.’

Bystanders made way for them, staring.

‘Pickpocket?’ said Tyrone. ‘Where you come with that?’

‘No. It’s where you are going ,’ said Muscles, and he pressed Tyrone’s arm even higher ‘Now shut up.’

Through the pain he thought: They don’t have anything, the cameras were too far away. They must have been following him, he hadn’t spotted them in the crowd of tourists, he was too focused on the woman and the handbag. He must get her wallet out of his trouser pocket. It was the only evidence they had. But he wouldn’t be able to get his arm free.

He was stuffed – that knowledge came down suddenly like a black curtain.

Christ, what would Nadia say?

Who would pay for her studies?

A good thing Uncle Solly was dead. All that training, and he let himself get caught like an amateur. A total disgrace.

Fear gnawed at his guts.

They took him into the shopping centre via a service door, and down the stairs. Their radios crackled and rasped, excited voices echoing down the wide corridor. Two sharp turns, then he saw the sign: Security: Control Room. A security man came out, stood waiting. He had stars on his shoulders. A general probably. He was white. He smiled, but not in a good way. ‘Little shit,’ he said, ‘we’ve got you.’

The general stood aside so they could bundle him through the door.

Two more men sat inside, both coloured. They looked up. ‘ Ja , that’s him,’ one of them said.

Big room, one wall was just TV monitors, a number of radios were recharging on long workbenches down the walls. A double door right at the back, and a single door just here, beside the map of the V&A against the wall. Photos of people, low resolution, as if they were printouts of TV screen shots, on a noticeboard beside a handwritten notice saying NO TIME SHEETS, NO PAY!!!! Tyrone saw his picture there. Maybe four months old, he was in just black chinos and a black T-shirt. Summer time.

He was fucked. More adrenaline, more fear shot through his body.

Muscles let go of his arm and the relief was instant. His rucksack was pulled off, and Pimples shoved him into a chair. The general took the rucksack, came to stand in front of him, feet planted wide. Pimples and Muscles covered the door like two soldiers on guard.

‘Check this,’ one of the coloureds in front of the TV monitors said to him. Sneering.

There was Tyrone standing beside the Mediterranean beauty, the hairpin in front of her, frozen and beautifully zoomed in on the screen.

From a camera that he had never seen.

‘Call the SAPS,’ said the general.

‘So I wanted to give her back her hairpin,’ Tyrone spoke in desperation.

‘And now her wallet is in your trouser pocket,’ said the general. ‘And we’re going to leave it right there, until the police come. So they can get your fingerprints nicely. Call them, Freddie. And tell Vannie to bring the girl in, she probably still doesn’t know she’s been robbed.’

‘She dropped the wallet, look there on your cameras,’ said Tyrone. If only he could gain some time . . .

Freddie was one of the guards who were sitting at the monitors. He picked up a phone. They listened in silence as he reported the whole thing.

‘Police on their way,’ said Freddie, his eyes searching the screens. ‘But the girl . . . I don’t see her . . .’

Two minutes later it was not the police who came.

20

It was an odd noise that came from the direction of the door, almost like an asthmatic cough, then a low, sick sound. Pimples dropped like a sack of potatoes. Tyrone felt a spattering on his face.

A cartridge clinked on the bare floor.

Blood ran out of Pimples’s head.

That sound again, and Muscles went down, right beside him. The same story.

Tyrone saw the man appear in the doorway. The pistol, the long black silencer. The general looked around, indignant that his authority was being undermined. Another quiet shot. The general collapsed. The delicate metallic sound of a bullet cartridge against the wall, then the floor.

It was surreal. Tyrone felt he wasn’t really there, he was paralysed, a mingling of fear and shock and relief. ‘ Jirre ,’ he said, and looked at the shooter, who now stood directly in front of him. A coloured man under a faded grey baseball cap, eyes like an eagle, all-seeing, looking through you. A fleeting thought: Who is this guy? Had he come to rescue him? Why was he shooting everyone?

The pistol swung towards Tyrone.

The security men at the TVs screamed.

The firearm was aimed at Tyrone, between his eyes.

Freddie jumped up, rushed towards the shooter.

Pistol swung away, to Freddie.

Tyrone did not think, it was just a sudden knowing: One chance.

He dived blindly, under and past the gunman, grabbing the rucksack beside the general. It snagged, he looked back, a strap was looped around the general’s arm. Everything happened in a weird slow motion, like someone was holding back time. Freddie screamed, then the scream was cut off sharply. Freddie fell. Tyrone let go of the rucksack, because the shooter was turning towards him. He leaped at the door, adrenaline giving him strength and speed. The pistol was pointed at him again. He was at the door. The pistol coughed as he kicked off to the left, and out, he felt the burning pain across his shoulder blades. He was shot. He screamed, and ran the way they had brought him in. Jirre , Thank God for the sharp turns in the passage. One, two, and then the steps were ahead.

Up the stairs, yelling in terror. The second to last step hooked his foot, he fell forwards, reached out his hands to fend off the closed door. He banged his head hard, a thundering, against the wood, just above his right eye. Scurried to his feet, half dizzy, grabbed the door, jerked it open. He heard the footsteps behind him, ducked instinctively and suddenly as he went out, a bullet smacked against the door jamb. He was outside, he ran to the people, the tourists, he ran as he had never run before. He didn’t look back, he sidestepped suddenly left, then right, he ran till he was in the midst of the crowd, he kept running, weaving between them. He felt blood run down his face, and down his back. Through the wide esplanade, into Mitchell’s Waterfront Brewery, right through to the kitchen, people standing dumbfounded. He ran out of the back door, turned right, up the steps to Dock Road.

He wiped his hand over the blood, to get it out of his eyes.