Lauren Beukes - Zoo City

"What are you doing here?"

"Oh sweetie, don't you check your voicemail? Your services are no longer needed. We found her all on our ownsomes."

"My phone was stolen."

"Very unprofessional," Maltese tuts.

Song looks from me to them and back again. Then she drops into a crouch, puts her hands over her ears, and screams loud enough to be heard in Cape Town. I don't know about her singing, but all that voice training has paid dividends. The screaming, one note perfectly sustained, sets off the Mutt, which starts yapping in a hysterical frenzy.

Security Boy clicks open the holster that holds his mace canister. "Okay, I mean it. What the hell is going on here?"

"Don't let them take me," Song says, sobbing. She throws herself at him, clutching onto his pants legs.

The door of 1910 down the way opens a crack and Security Boy shouts down the corridor, "Close that door. Mind your business!"

"As you should," the Marabou says.

"They're trying to kidnap me!" Song yelps, on her knees, hanging onto Security Boy's belt, looking up at him with huge kohl-lined eyes.

"She's been off her medication for a week," says the Maltese, slowly unbuttoning his blazer in a deliberate Idon't-have-a-weapon-in-here kind of way. "She's totally delusional."

"Wait. Wait a minute." Security Boy is flustered.

"I have a letter from her doctor." The Maltese reaches into the inside pocket of his jacket and removes a piece of paper. He carefully unfolds it, revealing the Haven's letterhead.

"Just wait! Let's start again. Who are you people?"

"This is a letter from the clinic that will elaborate on her condition. Severe paranoid delusions. She's been missing for days. We've come to fetch her home."

"Please. It's a trick. Don't listen," Song whimpers. The Maltese proffers the letter. But as Security Boy reaches for it, Song grabs at his mace, yanks it out the holster, and sprays him in the face with it. He recoils, choking, fists digging into his eye sockets.

Sloth starts wailing as we catch some of the misty residue. My eyes and nose start streaming with the burn, but it's not so bad that I can't lunge to grab Song's skinny arm and swing her back. The momentum swings her round so that she slams backwards into the window with a terrible crack. For a sickening second, I wait for it to splinter under the shock of her weight and catapult her nineteen storeys down. But the glass holds.

"Ow! Msunu!" she swears.

"Calm down. No one's going to hurt you," I try to reassure her.

"Are you kidding me? You just did. Fuck you!" She tries to smash my instep with the heel of her boot, but I've already removed my foot from harm's way. Security Boy is half kneeling on the floor, one hand cupped over his eyes, gabbling into his radio to summon the cavalry. The Marabou and the Maltese watch, amused.

"A little help here?"

"Oh no. You need to earn your fee," Marabou says. Her Stork throws back its head and makes awful gulping motions, as if it's laughing.

Song is struggling and writhing like she's midgrand mal seizure. When she throws her head back to smash my nose, I grab her hair, hold her head, and march her forward. And that's pretty much how we descend nineteen floors, with her squirming and swearing all the way. Security Boy stumbles behind, one hand against the wall guiding him down. I try to talk to her, softly so that the Marabou and the Maltese won't hear.

"Why'd you run away?"

"Fuck you."

"Was it something Odi did?"

"What didn't Odi fucking do?"

"I'm trying to help you, you little brat."

"By taking me back? Some help you are."

"What did you think you were doing here? Playing house with your bouncer boyfriend?"

"He's not my boyfriend, and it's not his place. Ro lives three floors down. It's mine. I paid for it." She adds for emphasis, "With my money. That I earned."

I try a different tack. "You had Mrs Luthuli really worried."

That shuts her up, but only for a moment. "I'm sorry," she stage-whispers. "They're going to kill me, you know."

"I completely understand that. I'd quite like to kill you myself right now."

"Ask them what happened to Jabu."

"Who's Jabu?"

"Ask them. Ask them where he is now." She yells the name so it echoes down the stairwell. "Jaaaaabulaaaaani Nkutha!" She rolls her eyes at me. "Ask them!"

When we get downstairs, a police car is parked on the street outside, with a small cluster of High Point's security gathered around, watching disapprovingly. Their commander, an older man with features ravaged by sun damage and acne scarring, pours milk onto Security Boy's face to neutralise the mace.

The Marabou bundles Songweza into the Mercedes, which is parked across the road, and locks the doors. The Maltese walks over to talk to the cop and smooth things over with the official letter from the Haven that Explains Everything. As he hands it over, I get a glimpse of a wad of blue R100 notes folded inside.

"So who's Jabu?" I ask Marabou, playing innocent.

"Jabu? A horrible boy she met in rehab. He stole her money, broke her heart and took off."

"Just disappeared?"

"Maybe he went back to his parents. How do I know? I didn't install a tracker."

"Is she normally-"

"Hormone imbalances. Manic depression. Whatever it is called. She is supposed to be on medication."

"And how exactly did you find her?"

"She made a call to a friend. The friend called us. Do not worry, you'll still be paid, as long as you are discreet." She gives me an appraising look. "I'd hate to see this feature in a blog." The Bird does that horrible swallowinglaughing thing with its head again. I have no idea what she is talking about.

"When can I get my money?"

"My, we are in a rush. We'll get it to you in the next few days. I assume cash is acceptable?"

"I'll come by tomorrow to collect it. And I'd like to see how Songweza is doing."

"Your concern is touching," she says indifferently. I glance up at her lost things. They're strangely sharp. Maybe it's just her, or proximity to her. The gloves and the book are still tethered to her among her lost things, but the firearm is noticeably absent.

"I see you found your gun," I say.

"What?" Her head swings my way. Her Bird clatters its beak at me.

"A Vektor?"

"Ah yes. One of my "lost things"? I did find it, thank you."

"Is it licensed?" I glance over at the cops.

"If you understood what I had been through, you would know I would need something for self-defence."

"I've been thinking about that. Your tuna-fish story."

"Yes?"

"You don't strike me as the tuna-fish type. You're more of a shark. Were you really inside the container, Amira? Or were you on the outside, arranging passage? Another kind of procurement?"

"And I think you are a stupid girl with crazy ideas in her head." She jabs a long finger into my direction and stalks towards the car. I watch the Merc pull away, back towards the suburbs.

I'm out past the shark nets now.

25.

I'm met by wolf whistles and monkey whoops from D'Nice and his idiot friends, who are sprawled on the steps outside Elysium, already mostly drunk.

"Hey, Zee Zee On Top!" D'Nice catcalls. "You can ride me reverse cowgirl, baby!" He bucks his hips and pretends to swing a lasso above his head.

"You need to get a job, D'Nice. The beer is rotting your brain."

"Oh, I got one. You're looking at the new Elias. I start on Tuesday."

Upstairs, I find a print-out tacked to my door that explains D'Nice's behaviour, the Marabou's sarky remark. It's from Mach blog, a sneak peek of an upcoming feature (full story in the May issue!) called "Was It Good for Zoo?"

There are photos.

Some of them are five years old. Candid. He swore he'd deleted them.

Some are from a couple of nights ago. A kiss pinned against the wall of a grungy building. Dancing at the Biko Bar. Me looking wistful in the backseat of the car, streamers of city lights reflected in the glass. I don't remember Dave taking that one.

The naked pictures are not the worst of it. It's the words.

The copy is a mash-up of truth and invention. Gio writes about all the ways we have sex. Reverse cowgirl included. This, at least, is based on past experience, but he makes up the rest. How Sloth shivers and yowls when I come because we're connected like that. How he gets a little squeamish about it all. Calls it his pseudo-bestiality threesome. A gang-bang really, because the shadow of murder, of my sin, is like a fourth in the bed with us.

Mama always told him to avoid the bad girls, but hey, he writes, in a moment of tender confession, he loved me once.

"Cocksucking pigdog bastard mothercunt!" I kick the door for emphasis, leaving a vicious dent and cracking the paintwork. Mrs Khan pokes her head out of 608, concerned. "Is everything all right, sweetheart?"

"Peachy," I snarl, and head upstairs to Benoît's apartment. He should be back by now. I just hope he hasn't seen it, but D'Nice is sure to have made extra photocopies to shove in his face.

Benoît is sitting in the middle of his floor sorting through a meagre selection of clothes, in front of the sagging nicotine-yellow couch he and Emmanuel lugged all the way from Parktown when they spotted it dumped on the pavement.

The Rwandan kid sees me first. He's taping up a collection of tatty cardboard boxes salvaged from the superette. Everything Benoît has in the world. I could tape myself up in one of them and wait for his return.

"Benoît," Emmanuel says in a warning voice, a voice that tells me everything has changed.

Benoît looks up to see me standing in the doorway. He turns back to his job without comment, but he looks frayed, like a carpet that's been trodden down. The Mongoose gives me an evil look – our moment of bonding at the window last night forgotten.

"It's not true," I say, adding in exasperation. "Emmanuel, can you get lost, please?"

"Uh-" Emmanuel looks to Benoît for confirmation, but there's none forthcoming: he just keeps folding and rolling his t-shirts. Emmanuel has always been a little scared of me. He sets down the tape and ducks out the door past me. "Sorry," he says, like it's a funeral, and squeezes my arm.

As he finishes folding each one, Benoît places the sausage-roll shirts neatly inside one of those damn checked bags. I kneel down next to him.

"Please don't use that. I have a backpack I can lend you." He ignores me.

"Thanks for the phone. And the tip. I found her. I couldn't have done it without you. I'm getting the cash tomorrow. I can pay for fake papers, for your plane ticket."

"I don't want your money," he says, taking all the rolled-up shirts out again and starting to re-roll them.

"Oh for fuck's sake. Look, Giovanni and I had a thing years ago. He made up the rest. You can tell it's bullshit. That obscene stuff about Sloth coming at the same time-"

"Oh, that?" says Benoît. "I don't care about that, Zinzi."

"Where are you going?"

"Central Methodist Church. It's just for a couple of days until I leave."

"And fight over a piece of concrete floor to sleep on, an edge of staircase? Please. If you've got someone else moving in here already, you can stay at my place. I won't even try to have sex with you."

"I don't think that's a good idea."

"I can't believe you're letting this piece of shit's disgusting slander get between us. A couple of hours ago we're fine, and now this? Over ancient fucking history?" Sloth murmurs in my ear, soothing noises. He hates it when I shout.

"It's not him." Benoît hefts the bag onto the couch and stands up to face me. "It's you, Zinzi. I used your computer. I needed to email Michelle. The aid worker," he clarifies when I look blank.

"Oh." I sit down heavily on the couch next to his bag.

"I found your scam letters. I wasn't looking for them. But you had replies in your inbox. Many replies."

"So what? If you knew the circumstances-"

"Do you know their circumstances, these people you steal from?"

"I just write the formats, Benoît. You think this is easy for me? Living on money scrounged from finding a lost set of keys here, a passport there? I have debts to pay." I am aware of how childishly defensive I sound.

"We all have debts to pay!" Benoît raises his voice for the first time, gestures at the open doorway. "All of us here."

"Mine happen to be financial as well as moral."

"I didn't know you were this selfish."

"I'm an addict! It comes with the fucking territory. I'm sorry I'm not as perfect as your fucking wife. And I hope for your sake she's as fucking perfect as you remember. That she doesn't have an animal of her own. Five years is a long time, Benoît. How do you know she even wants you back?"

"I have a message from her."

"And I have a whole outbox full of messages promising untold riches. How do you know you're not just another moegoe, pinning everything on a dream that's patently impossible?"

"I don't. I just have to go and see how it is, see how to make it work."

"Fine. Whatever. Go live your life. Why do you care about these idiots giving away their money?"

He sits down next to me, the couch creaking mournfully. "It's because I knew a boy like Felipe once. The one who gets shot in the back in your Eloria letter?"

"I didn't know. How could I have known? It wasn't on purpose, Benoît. It wasn't to hurt you."

"Like your letters are not to hurt people? You don't care about anyone else, Zinzi."

"Of course I care, why the fuck do you think I took this missing persons job? And so far it's turning out more dodgy than all the scams I've ever been involved in. I did it so I could get out of this. Aren't you taking this a little personally?"

"I shot Felipe."

"What?"

"We used to sleep in a church, all the children and us older kids looking after them. I was nineteen. It was meant to be safe. They took us anyway. Armée de résistance du Seigneur. Lord's Resistance Army. Even before these troubles now, they used to make incursions across the border from Uganda. Or maybe it was a splinter group. They broke the windows. Used their rifle-butts to smash in the heads of the little ones too small to walk. Anyone who resisted. In the forest, they did things to drive us mad. Muti. Drugs. Rape. Killing games. His name wasn't Felipe. But he was my friend. And I shot him because that was the choice they gave me."

"God."

He smiles wanly. "Nzambe aza na zamba te. God is not in the forest. Maybe He is too busy looking after sports teams or worrying about teenagers having sex before marriage. I think they take up a lot of His time."