street.
If only the cleaning crew could do the same for my car. Benoît stares at it without saying anything. I wasn't the only thing that got knocked about yesterday – the Capri got trashed too. Comprehensively. The door panels have been kicked in, the headlights smashed and a mostly illegible word, that might read "FUK" if you squinted at it right, has been carved into the paintwork on the bonnet in letters four inches high. The windscreen sags under fractal spiderwebs, caused by multiple blows from a metal object, like, oh, say the crowbar I found lying on the back seat. Which had also been used to gouge up the leather. The cherry on top was the smeared shit – human, judging from the smell – on the bonnet. I guess I should be grateful whoever made the deposit didn't do it on the upholstery.
"Hazards of the job," I tell Benoît. But it's easy to be off-hand now. Yesterday, when the taxi I'd found to take me and my eau de drain downtown from Sandton pulled in to Mai Mai, the market was already closed up, evening shadows stretching across the parking lot, deserted apart from the ruins of the Capri. I insisted the taxi driver stick around while I got the car started. I didn't know if they were still there, hunched under the tarp watching, or loose in the city somewhere, but I gave them the finger anyway. I should have left the car there, but I'm stubborn like that. Also: not about to be overly intimidated by a cluster of junkie tunnel rats.
Benoît looks at the bruises and scratches on my arm as I drive. They look worse today. If I'd thought about it, I wouldn't have worn a sleeveless dress.
"You should have called the police," he says.
"The police don't care, Benoît."
"Then you should let me come with you."
"Don't you have your own day job?"
"I'm quitting anyway."
"And you have travel arrangements to make."
"You could just say "no thank you", cherie."
"You could do me one favour. It's dodgy, though."
He sighs. "I wouldn't expect any less from you."
"Hey, D'Nice is way worse than I am."
"But not nearly as cute."
"I'm telling your wife," I retort, but it's autopilot. Our easy banter is now laced with jagged edges.
"My polygamie offer is still open," he says, valiantly keeping up the façade.
"I might consider it, if you can get me the home address for one Ronaldo, bouncer at Counter Revolutionary, surname unknown. He works for Sentinel, same silly helmet on his badge." I flip a hand at the insignia on Elias's nametag.
"I'll see what I can do," he says, as I pull up outside the bottling plant where Benoît has been assigned to patrol today. Sentinel likes to shift security personnel around, so no one gets too comfortable, too familiar with the ins and outs, and sells the info on to someone like D'Nice. Who can be guaranteed to sell it to a gang of armed robbers.
"I don't have to do this," Benoît says, staying in the car. "They could live without a security guard for the day."
"What, and risk Elias's job?" I keep my hands on the steering wheel, the better to resist touching him.
"At least take my phone."
"I'll be fine. I'll stay away from storm drains and junkie tunnel rats with screwdrivers. Promise."
He looks pained. "I'll see you later, cherie," he says, and leans across to kiss me chastely on the cheek.
It's only pulling into Mayfields golf estate half an hour later that I realise he seized the opportunity to slide his phone into the change tray under the handbrake. Sneaky bastard.
Unfortunately, the smell of drains still lingers in my car and clings to me when I step into Mrs Luthuli's. She's polite enough not to say anything, and she makes me strong tea, adding milk and sugar without asking. I drink it while she hunts upstairs.
After about ten minutes, she comes back downstairs with a shoebox. She puts on her glasses and starts removing the photos one by one. "What is it you're looking for, exactly?"
"I'll be able to tell when I see it. May I?" I up-end the box onto the counter and sift through the photos. Most of them are cold dead things.
I latch onto one and turn it over. It's a photograph of a white wedding. A man and a woman – Song and S'bu's parents – squint into the sunlight at the bottom of a set of steps that could lead up to a community hall