Zoo City - Lauren Beukes

"Nee, man. I don't knows this okie," Hannes shakes his head.

"Are you sure? He might not look the same anymore." Definitely not after being burned to charcoal, but I won't show them that set of photographs. "His name was Patrick Serfontein."

"Sê weer?" asks the old lady clinging to his arm.

"Patrick Serfontein. He was fifty-three years old. From Kroonstad."

"No, lady,'' Hannes says again, shaking his head.

The old woman smacks his shoulder. "Jong! Dis Paddy! Jy onthou!" She grabs the photocopy with shaky hands, either Parkinson's or the drink. "Ja, okie with a beard, nè. En dinges wat daar woon." She makes a scrabbling gesture at her chin as if scratching at lice. "You remember, Mr Snyman. With the Miervreter, mos."

"So he did have an animal?" I say.

"I do remember him." Snyman shakes his head. "That damn Aardvark used to get its tongue into everything, especially the sugar. It drove our cook crazy."

"And he used to feed it baby cockroaches, Mr Snyman. You remember?" She holds her finger and thumb two inches apart to demonstrate.

"That's not a baby cockroach," a sullen man with a strong German accent corrects. He's leaning on a shopping trolley loaded with the remains of a single mattress.

"It is around here!" boasts the old lady, slapping her thigh, and even the sullen German and Snyman laugh.

"When did you last see him?" I ask.

"Must have been a few weeks ago," Snyman muses. "Maybe even a month. He came and went a lot, if I recall correctly."

"He was his own man," Hannes says, approvingly. "The shelter isn't for everybody, hey. Some people like their freedom. They can't be dealing with other people's rules all the time." He gives the old biddy on his arm a little warning nod.

"Jy! Don't make me laugh," she says.

Snyman says, "A lot of our residents come and go. They'll live on the street until it gets cold – our highest occupancy is in winter – or something happens. A fight, a beating, an accident. It's ugly out there."

"Is there anyone else you haven't seen in a while? Anyone with an animal?

They exchange looks and shake their heads.

"How would we know?" says the sullen German guy.

Exactly what the killer is counting on.

31.

Mandlakazi is not just fat, she's enormous. Her belly rolls have belly rolls. She's chewing her way through a bag of vegetarian samoosas, one hand on the steering wheel, the other dipping into the bag and back to her mouth like an assembly line, as she drives us through to Cresta to meet the Witness. Sloth takes to her immediately, although perhaps that's just the butternut samoosas she keeps plying him with.

The Witness phoned this morning while I was checking out airline charity cases, claiming to have seen the whole thing. Dave phoned me to let me know, and I've insisted on coming along.

"Dave said you been hanging out with the juicy babies," Mandlakazi says through a mouthful of samoosa. It takes me a second to figure out that she's talking about iJusi.

"Yeah. I was doing an article on them."

"Past tense? Too bad, koeks. Dave tell you I was the gossip columnist past tense for the Sunday Times?"

"He mentioned it."

"He mention why I got fired? I got so big I filled up the social pages all by myself." She roars with laughter. "No, I'm kidding. I got sick of it. That stuff is cancer. All that celebrity bullshit, it'll eat you alive if you let it."

"And the crime beat won't?"

"Way I figure it, covering the celebrity beat is like dying from a nose job turned gangrenous. Or cancer of the arse. Just a stupid way to go. Give me a good headshot or a fatal stabbing. At least that's worth something. So what's your thinking on this unholy mess? Someone with an anti-animal vendetta and a panga to grind?"

"It's muti murders."

"If only! Screw Slinger and his fake puppy dog, we'd be riding the front page for a week. How do you figure?"

"Two murders in the space of the week. Both animalled. Both bodies found with no trace of their animal in sight."

"And you know these two murders are related because…? I mean, on the one hand we got your homeless guy, necklaced. On the other, we've got a very nasty case of the stabs. Doesn't sound like the same M O to me, and baby, believe me, I got the hots for the serial killers."

"I got an email."

"From the killer?"

"From the victims. Ghosts in the machine. Their own special brand of lost things."

"Which is your bit, right? The lost things thing?"

"It's my bit," I confirm.

"But how do you know it's not just sick for kicks?" Mandlakazi wipes her fingers on her jeans.

"I met some junkie kids behind Mai Mai with a Porcupine. They'd cut off its paw to sell it for muti. They offered to do the same with Sloth. Someone's buying." But then, someone's always buying in this city. Sex. Drugs. Magic. With the right connections you can probably get a twofor-one deal.

"Muti from zoos?" Dave whistles appreciatively. "That's got to be expensive."

"Killing kids for muti is expensive," I correct him. It doesn't happen a lot, but every year there are a handful of cases that make the papers: prepubescents murdered and harvested for body parts. Lips, genitals, fingers, hands, feet. The more they scream, the more powerful the muti, although the morgues have a brisk backdoor business going too. A hand buried under your shopfront door will bring you more customers. Eating a prepubescent boy's penis will cure impotence.

"People miss kids. Zoos, especially homeless ones, streetwalkers, the ones nobody will miss, probably won't even notice they're gone. I don't know if that's expensive."

"Risky though," Dave says.

"Probably worth it," Mandlakazi says. "People pay a pretty penny for rhino horn or perlemoen, and that's before you add mashavi in to the equation. Animals are already some heavy magic shit. Mix that up with muti and who knows what you can do? I sure don't. But it would be a great story, let me tell you."

We meet the Witness at an airy coffee shop on the lower level of the mall. She is sitting right at the back, curled up miserably in a booth. She's tiny, barely fifteen, with hunched shoulders that speak of a lifetime of making herself as unobtrusive as possible.

"You Roberta?" Mandlakazi asks, sticking out her hand to shake.

The girl gives a little nod so quick you'd miss it if you blinked. She doesn't extend her hand. She points at me and says, "Just her."

"Baby, I'm the reporter, you want to talk to me. I can send these other people away if you want to keep it private."

She shakes her head. "Just her."

"Zoos got to stick together, huh. Fine. We'll be at the table outside." She hands me her Dictaphone, disgruntled. "It's the red button on the right."

"Like riding a bicycle."

I emerge forty minutes later and take a seat at Mandla and Dave's table. "Okay, first up, she says no police. Not yet. Maybe you can talk her round. Second: she's badly scared. Too scared to go home. I need one of you to put her up for a couple of nights."

"Why can't you?" Mandlakazi says.

"Because I live in her neighbourhood. Where the murder happened. To her friend, who happened to be a prostitute like her."

"She can stay at my place. For the night, at least. We can make a plan tomorrow. The paper can put her up in a hotel if this story is going to go somewhere. What did she say about the murder?" Mandlakazi is practically choking on her eagerness.

"You should probably hear it for yourself. I made a note of the timecode on the most useful quotes for you," I pass her a napkin annotated with a ballpoint pen I borrowed from the waiter.

"Well look at you, intrepid girl reporter."

"Worth more than an "additional reporting" credit?"

"Depends on what's on the tape."

I skip to 05:43 on the Dictaphone. They have to lean in to hear Roberta's voice, barely a whisper, over the grind of the espresso machine, the clank of cups.

ZINZI DECEMBER: Okay, I just want to go back a minute. What exactly do you mean, "like a spook"?

ROBERTA VAN TONDER: I'm telling you! Like there was no one there. One minute she's bending down to fix her shoe, that heel was giving her trouble all night, and then Pah! Pah! Pah! Pah!

In the coffee shop, she stabbed at the air, her face contorting unconsciously.

RVT: [contd] There is blood opening up all over her. Her head, her arms and she falls back against the wall, blood spraying everywhere. Psssssh! But Pah! Pah! Pah! More cuts. Blood! And she's on the ground, holding her head and screaming, but it's Pah! Pah! Pah!

ZD: How did her Sparrow react?

RVT: It's flying all over like it's crazy. Shoooo shoooo. Flying this way, that way.

ZD: Like it can see the spook?

RVT: Like it can see the spook.

ZD: Like it's attacking the spook?

RVT: I don't know. I don't know.

ZD: And you didn't see what happened after that?

RVT: No. I run. I run and run and run until I think my heart gon' explode.

ZD: I'm sorry, I just need to check that I understand. You couldn't see anything or anyone. No shadows. Nothing visible at all?

RVT: No, no, nothing. Well, maybe a grey. Like a shadow. Like a demon. An invisible demon!

"Oh this is gold, baby. This is gold," Mandlakazi says.

We spend the next few hours transcribing the tape and knocking it up into a rough.

32.

I get home well after eleven, exhausted and pissed off at having to park two blocks away because of the roadworks outside Elysium. Maybe they're finally fixing the damn water. Roberta is safely housed at Mandlakazi's place. The news story is a solid little piece, even if I had to hype up the hysteria for the Daily Truth's audience. From nowhere, anything is a step-up, even tabloid journalism. Maybe after this I'll write that rehab tourism story after all – for a decent publication, not Mach.

It's because I'm tired that I don't notice that the charms on my lock have been broken. I shrug Sloth off onto the climbing pole by the door and flick on the lights. Vuyo is sitting on the edge of my bed with a gun. He holds it loosely, his legs slung wide, so that it dangles between them like a penis. He looks resigned.

My phone chooses this precise moment to break into the jaunty mbaqanga jive of iJusi's "Fever". We both jump and the gun twitches in his lap.

"You want to get that?" Vuyo offers, but he doesn't mean it.

"Nah. I'll call them back later," I say, as casually as I can. It's a ringtone I've programmed for calls from certain numbers. Arno. Song. S'bu.

"Do you want some tea? I've had a really long day, I could use a cup," I blather, venting some of the nervous adrenaline that just kicked in harder than a Taekwondo champion, but also covering that I'm not getting out teacups, I'm looking for a weapon. "How do you take it? I like mine strong and black. That's not a come-on by the way."

It takes all my nerve to keep my back turned to him. I can hear him jiggling his knee, the micro-sound of his jeans rustling. It's the only time I've seen him out of a suit, and that frightens me more than anything.

I yank open the cutlery drawer to be confronted with an anomaly worse than emails from dead people or a man with a gun sitting on my bed. It's a large carving knife with a viciously serrated edge and two broken teeth. It's tarnished with rust. It's not mine. And neither is the china figurine of a kitten with one paw playfully raised, also stained with rust. But it's not rust. It's not rust at all. Perversely, the thought that flashes through my brain is "I can haz murder weapon?" I laugh out loud, a sobbing hiccup.

"Is this yours?" I say, turning to Vuyo, holding up the knife by the tip like a dead cockroach.

"Don't make me shoot you," he says, sounding tired.

"You're going to shoot me over an email?"

"People have done worse for less. No girl, I'm going to shoot you because you made me look bad. Put the knife down." He points the gun at my head. I follow instructions.

"Are you sure you don't want tea?" I say numbly. My mother was a firm believer in tea. Also, my kettle is heavy, solidly built. Less expected than a knife. I take a risk, turn back towards the counter, reach for my old-fashioned metal kettle. But in that moment, he crosses the room, yanks me round, grabs me by the throat and shoves me against the counter.

"No, I do not want fucking tea," he hisses, spraying spit into my face. He shoves the gun into my cheek. "I want my money."

I start to bring up the kettle, but he slams his knee up between my legs. Everything goes white. There is the clunk of metal dropped onto a linoleum floor.

He lets go of my throat and I sag down against the counter, trying to remember how to breathe. He watches impassively before tucking the gun into the back of his jeans, all the better to beat me.

"I don't- I gave-" I manage.

He backhands me. His knuckle splits my cheek open. "You made me look bad. Get up. I said, get up!" Vuyo drags me to my feet.

"I gave you the money!" There is blood in my mouth.

"Did you think I wouldn't fucking notice? Did you forget who you were dealing with?"

"Notice what? Wait-"

Still holding my arm, he punches me in the gut. I fold up around the point of impact, but he won't let me fall to my knees.

"Notice what? That it was counterfeit? Every single fucking blue note!"

"I didn't. It's a set-up, Vuyo. They set me up."

"I am so sick of your mouth," Vuyo says, reaching into the back of his jeans. But he doesn't get to pull the gun, because Sloth drops onto him from the ceiling. Vuyo goes down under a ball of fur and fury. The gun goes skittering across the floor, skidding under the bed. I start to scramble for it, think better of it, and change direction.

Then Sloth screams. I stop dead, a frame-grab of a girl bending down to snatch up a kettle. I close my hand over the handle and turn, very slowly, to see that Vuyo has Sloth's arm wrenched backwards at a terrible angle, his knee between Sloth's shoulders, pressing him into the linoleum. There are deep gouges on Vuyo's face and neck. A chunk of flesh has been torn out of his cheek by sharp little herbivore teeth.