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Kwela Books
This is mine.
“He that troubleth his own house shall inherit the wind …”
Proverbs 11:29
The Holy Bible
King James Version
Prologue
Dawn snuck up out of nowhere. Across the grass, patches of morning gold swelled and merged, creeping over stretch by stretch of dewy lawn. Blinking as rays striped across her face, Vee swallowed hard and picked up the pace.
She squatted and examined the dead man’s feet. His shoes were relatively clean, bar disks of dried mud and grass caked to the back of the soles. Flecks of mud spattered the bottom inch of his chinos. She leaned closer and snapped a picture with her phone. Gingerly, Nokia pinched between two fingers, she inched up the cuff and peered up his leg.
A flurry of gasps made her jump.
“Hhayi, wenza ntoni!” Zintle yelped.
“You flippin’ crazy?” Chlöe growled.
“What I should do?” Vee hissed over her shoulder. “Y’all got a better idea?”
Huddled like lovers, Chlöe and Zintle wild-eyed her in silence, ample bosoms undulating in unison. Zintle tightened her grip on Chlöe’s arm, chunky fingers digging trenches of red into Chlöe’s milky skin. Dah helluva mark dah one will leave, Vee thought, wincing.
“We’re not supposed to touch anything. And you’re touching things!”
“Dammit Bishop, I touched one thing!” Vee wobbled getting to her feet and reached out to steady herself. Her flailing hand grappled over dead leg, immediately sending her stomach contents into a slow roil. The man’s body, strung by the neck to the coat hook, took up a gentle pendulous swing, the fabric of his jeans and leather of his shoes making a low, eerie rasp against the grainy cement wall. Chlöe and Zintle shrieked and leapt away. Vee toppled onto her butt, scrabbling in the gravel till she found her footing and scurried over to them. Together, the circle heaved in harmony.
“I’ve never seen a dead person before,” Chlöe whispered. “No, I mean I’ve seen a normal dead person before. At a couple of funerals, when they’re clean and stuffed and make-upped. But not like this.” Knuckles to her cheek, she moved her hand in frantic circles against her skin, a sure sign she was freaking out. “Not, like, a brutal murder.”
Vee sucked her teeth, a biting ‘mttssshw’, clipping it short in consideration of the sombre atmosphere. “Dah whetin you call a brutal murder? It somethin’ like a very orange orange?”
“Ag, man.” Chlöe rolled her eyes. “I mean … you know …”
“I’ve been to hundreds of funerals,” Zintle breathed, then stopped, mouth agape. From her expression, this was clearly a new one for her too.
“Exactly. Who’s seen this kinda thing happen every day?”
Vee held her tongue. In her time, more recently than she cared to recall, she’d seen far too many abnormally dead people. Shot, hacked, diseased, starved … And once, bloated flesh piled high enough to darken the horizon of her young mind for months, years even. In comparison, this hapless soul had gone with reasonable dignity.
She averted her eyes, the violence of her heartbeat reaching up her chest like a witch’s claw, squeezing her throat closed. Now was not the time to let an acute phobia of dead bodies run riot. The dangling man had her property. Every time she peeked, tried not to, her eyes were drawn to his neck, a thickened, bruised pipe wrapped in purple fabric. Her flesh tingled and shrank, drawing her face tight. Time to think clearly and quickly. Neither was happening.
“Why isn’t anyone coming? Why the hell’s it taking so long?” Chlöe whined.
Zintle turned her back to the hanging man. “They’re coming. We called them, so they should be here soon. But you’re right, it’s taking forever.” Eyes fixed to the gravel, she smoothed down the front of her maid’s uniform and shuffled her feet. “I want to leave this place.”
Chlöe clucked sympathetically. “It’s cool if you want to go back to reception. We can all wait there.” Vee whipped her a withering look. “Or maybe hang around a bit longer. Please. It’ll look weird to the cops if we’re left alone with him, when we’re the ones …”
Vee launched another eye, sharper still, watched Chlöe taper off to gnawing at her lips.
The situation was bad enough already. Why help it escalate from strange to outright damning, which it sure as hell would when the police inevitably found out exactly which guest had been present when the body was found? The less incriminated she looked, the better.
“I can’t keep working here anymore,” Zintle elaborated. “Too much bad luck.”
Vee softened. The last forty-eight hours had been rough on all of them, but Zintle had borne the brunt. If she heard the phrase ‘excelling outside of one’s job description’ ever again, she would think of hospitality’s unluckiest ambassador.
Zintle’s face contorted. “Ugghhnn, I feel sick.” She doubled over, clutching her stomach.
Chlöe’s horror magnified. “Sies man, don’t throw up.” She rubbed a soothing hand over the maid’s back. “If I see or even hear someone throw up, it makes me sick too.”
“I … uuggghhnn … won’t vomit …” Zintle compelled herself, gulping air like a landed fish.
“Oi! Can you not say ‘vomit’ either? It’s not helping.”
Vee edged closer. The man’s eyes were shut, tiny slats of the whites just visible when she crouched. She’d always thought the standard strangled expression was one of bulging, terrified eyes, shot through with harried blood vessels. Tongue drooping over toothy grimace for effect. Nothing like that here. Facial muscles slack, expression … not peaceful, or particularly anything for that matter. Just gone.
She sucked in a deep breath and clamped her airways, creeping even nearer. Once upon a time in a faraway lab somewhere, super-nerds had taken time to ascertain that the soul allegedly weighed twenty-one grams. They probably hadn’t bothered identifying its odour, but some process made the human body smell torturously different after death. Not decay exactly; this man had been gone a mere matter of hours. But there was that subtle yet unmistakable turn after the flesh and spirit parted ways, the most repulsive aspect of the thing. She stared at the noose around the man’s neck, throbbing alternately with regret and then shame for feeling such regret.
“Don’t even think about it.”
Vee whipped around. Eyes narrowed, Chlöe stared her down over the head of a wilting Zintle, now snuggled in her bosom.
“I wasn’t,” Vee snapped. Maybe a tiny, foolish part of her was. But if she removed the scarf … hide it where? And explain the lack of a murder weapon how? Massive shitstorm potential.
The silk had been knotted twice, then twisted completely along the length stretched across the man’s windpipe. The noose closed in a third knot at the back of the head, where the loose material had been fashioned
