Why You Were Taken

LITTLE LAGOS ₂₉

Johannesburg, 2021

Seth spins around, hand in pocket, but he can’t see anyone in the alleyway. Rolo motions with his eyebrows that the interloper is ahead of them, around the corner to the right, effectively blocking his way out. He motions for a bouncer stationed inside to watch the door, and jerks his head for Seth to follow.

They enter the club and walk through the velvet curtains and over the plush carpet towards the restrooms. It feels like midnight inside. A woman in a snakeskin bikini dances lazily around a pole. Guests, swirling the ice in their drinks, nod at Rolo as he passes. The restroom is large and spacious, tastefully decorated in comparison to the gaudy interior of the club. A man is swaying at one of the urinals.

They walk to the last stall on the left, which is always closed. Rolo takes a bunch of keys out of his pocket, squints at them, locates the correct key and unlocks the door, revealing another door in the wall where the toilet should be. He hefts his bulk through the narrow stall door and unlocks the next door, which swings out into the darkness of the back street of the club.

‘Good evening to you sir,’ he says, as if nothing was out of the ordinary.

‘Good evening, Rolo.’

Seth glides in the shadows along the buildings until he reaches the car. He sneaks up to it and is about to jump in when he sees that the car is empty. He stays down, crouching next to it, pulls out his gun. As he moves forward he looks into the car and sees that it is not in fact empty, but that the driver’s body has listed to the side, a bullet-hole in his temple. He looks around, but the evening is silent around him.

‘Kirsten?’ he says, knowing if the killer is near he will be giving his position away, but in the moment not caring. ‘Kirsten?’

A hand shoots out from under the car, grabbing his ankle, and he yells with fright, pointing his gun at it. He realises a split-second before he pulls the trigger that he recognises the hand – it’s the female version of his own.

‘Kirsten!’ he whispers. She starts crawling out, he tries to help her. She’s ivory-skinned and beaded with sweat. He sweeps her into his arms for a moment. Opens the driver’s door and pushes the dead man out onto the street. He looks for a wallet but the driver’s pockets are empty. Kirsten clambers into the passenger side, feels the warm blood seep into the seat of her jeans. Seth jumps in, locks the doors, and presses the ignition button. It’s been a while since he has driven.

‘Put your safety belt on,’ he says, but Kirsten’s numb fingers can’t follow the instruction. He doesn’t flick on the headlights until they reach a main road, and keeps checking for a tail in his rear view mirror.

‘What happened?’ he asks, keeping his eyes on the road.

‘What happened? A boy with a nice face falls out of a window and a then man’s brain is blown out of his skull.’

‘Did you see who did it?’

‘No. He saw something—’

‘Who?’

‘The driver. Saw something or heard something. He told me to hide. There wasn’t any time. He would have seen me run. I rolled under the car. Then I just heard the shot and there were yellow stars everywhere. I saw his feet. The killer. Big. Black boots, like… workman boots. He circled the car, so slowly. I was trying not to breathe. Then he walked in the direction you disappeared.’

‘One guy?’

‘Yes. I think so.’

‘He must have followed us from the flower shop.’

Kirsten keeps quiet, looks ahead.

‘He was waiting for me, in the alley. Hopefully we’re a little ahead of him now.’ He fiddles with the air conditioning dial. It’s not cold in the car but he can see that Kirsten is shaking. They travel in silence for a while.

Kirsten scrolls down Keke’s drop-down list of contacts, looking for Marko. He isn’t listed by name, so she looks for FWB, but doesn’t find it. Most of the contacts seem to be in codes and nicknames. LoungeLizard; Open SAUCE; hotelbarsuperstar. Then she sees HBG and clicks on it. Hackerboy Genius.

He takes a while to reply.

Kirsten looks across at Seth, who is concentrating on navigating the narrow roads crowded with pedestrians.

‘Anything?’ asks Seth.

‘He’s looking. He’ll let us know as soon as he finds something.’

The roads are crammed with communal taxis of all different colours and states of disrepair. Reading the bumper stickers, Kirsten thinks that she should photograph them sometime and have an exhibition of taxi décor in Jozi. She thinks of all the mini-disco-balls, the hula girls, the fuzzy dice hanging on rear view mirrors she has snapped over the years. A cut-out picture of a car radio face Prestik-ed to the dash; a makeshift beverage holder made from an old plastic Castle lager beaker, held in place with an artfully manipulated coat-hanger wire; a handheld fan taped to the windscreen and wired into the cigarette lighter power source; a dog-eared picture, stuck in the sun-shield flap, of a young bride, perspiring in a synthetic fibre dress. They all tell their own stories.

People swarm around their car. Drivers steer one-handed, leaning on their hooters, heads out of their windows. There is a scuffle a few meters away from them.

‘Welcome to Gadawan Kura territory: Little Lagos,’ he says.

‘You aren’t supposed to call it Little Lagos,’ says Kirsten. ‘It’s un-PC.’

‘Fuck PC,’ says Seth. ‘It has the highest concentration of Nigerians – and hyenas – outside of Nigeria.’

‘And Malawians. And Zimbos.’

‘Those guys don’t count,’ he says, ‘too quiet.’

‘African Slum of Nations.’

‘That’s more PC. More representative. Good one.’

They haven’t moved for a while, so Seth decides to park and walk the rest of the way.

‘It’s nothing short of insane to walk around here, but if we sit in this gridlock your friend’s had it.’

Kirsten grabs the insulin kit, slings the handle over her arm and keeps it pinned to her chest as they manoeuvre their way through the throngs of people. Seth presses the button to lock the car and set the alarm, but has little hope for it to be there when they return. There are a few other white creeps around who look like locals – poor whites, thinks Kirsten – who don’t stand out as much as she does with her new apocalyptic hairstyle, and Seth’s smudged eyes and piercings. Having grown up in a virtually colour-blind society, it’s a novel feeling to be so aware of the tint of her skin; she feels the glances from everywhere. They pass an informal marketplace, a couple of stalls on the side of the road that seem to be doing a great deal of business. Airtime; doorstops of white bread; amaskopas; paraffin sold in re-purposed, scuffed plastic soda bottles; yellow boxes of Lion matches; half-jacks of cheap brandy-flavoured spirits; spotted bananas. Leathery R50 notes travel from palm to palm and change is slipped deftly into warm pockets, never counted. They weave in and out of the streams of people, Kirsten shielding her broken arm, till Seth turns into a road without a name.

They make a few more turns, passing a house in mourning with a SuperBug warning on the door. Their wailing sends streamers of powder blue out of the house and Kirsten tries to dodge them. Seth almost trips over a blind beggar with grey milk for eyes, and the stench of open sewers makes Kirsten retch in the direction of a greasy, defaced wall.

‘Almost there,’ he says, checking his Tile and grabbing her hand when she straightens up. She lets him lead her further into the jutting maze.

When they arrive at the destination it’s not at all what Seth expected. A 50s-style brick and mortar house stands defiantly among its corrugated-iron shack neighbours. Chipped steps lead up to a small burgundy veranda: sun-brittle plastic chairs and a blue front door. Cracked black windows like broken teeth in the grimy façade.

‘I expected… more of a… security system in place,’ says Kirsten, ‘taking their particular business into account.’

‘They move around a lot. I guess there’s not always time to put up an electric fence.’

They walk up the steps and are startled when something with matted brindle fur bolts straight for them, screeching, yellow fangs bared (Rotten Egg Yolk). They both jump. The animal gets to within a metre of them but is yanked back by its chain. A monkey.

‘Jesus Christ,’ says Kirsten, hand to hammering heart.

Despite the limitation of being chained to a pillar, it still tries to get at them, chattering and screaming in frustration. There is a raw patch of skin around his neck where the collar chafes; it seems there are frequent visitors to this house.

‘There’s your security system,’ says Seth.

They knock on the door. Kirsten has the urge to wash her hands and wonders if the house has running water. And if they have running water, would it be acceptable for her to ask if she could use it? She isn’t sure what kind of etiquette was expected in this kind of situation. She would smile and ask nicely, and hope to not offend protocol. There are footsteps behind the door and a masculine voice says ‘Yes?’

‘I’m looking for Abejide,’ says Seth. There is silence on the other side of the door. ‘Abejide,’ says Seth again. The door opens, but there is no light on inside, and no one says a word. They take it as a sign to enter, and as soon as they step across the threshold, the door is slammed shut behind them and they are pressed against the wall, smoke-fragrant hands over their mouths, gunmetal clicks to their heads.