Zoo City - Lauren Beukes

"Lovely." I smile and heap in five spoons of sugar. It makes the brew only marginally more tolerable. What does it take to get a decent cup of tea? "I'm not sure I can even help you, Mr Huron."

"Call me Odi. Really." He puts an envelope on the table. "Open it."

I do. Sloth cranes his head to see. It contains a cluster of crisp blue R100 notes. I put it back on the table.

"What's this?"

"Two large, just to hear me out. If you like what I have to say, you take the job and consider this an advance. If you don't, you take the money, you don't repeat any of what I told you, we're all friends."

"This all seems very serious. Are you sure you have the right girl here?"

"Mark and Amira think so."

"Just in case I'm getting the wrong end of the microphone here – you do know I can't sing?"

"Like that ever got in the way of a pretty girl getting a record deal. Autotune is a beautiful thing." He laughs, but his eyes are cold. "Let me assure you, you are here for your other skills." He watches me closely. I take the envelope and slip it into my bag, ignoring Sloth scratching at my arm, the halo of black stumps waving around Huron's head.

"All right, good. Now, you're no doubt familiar with iJusi." He waves his hand impatiently at my blank look. "The twins? Song and S'bu?"

The name sounds vaguely familiar, another life glimpsed on the TV at Mak's, maybe on the cover of an old Heat magazine at the spaza shop. A boy and a girl. Twins. Beautiful. Wholesome.

Huron sighs, exasperated. "Well, you can do some research."

"Has something happened to them?"

"Officially, no. Absolutely not. Everything's just fine. They're keeping a low profile because they're in studio, writing new songs. The new album drops in three weeks. We've got a big party planned."

"And off the record?"

"Songweza is missing."

"Run away? Kidnapped?"

"Either is possible. She hasn't been home for four days, according to her house mother."

"Is that unusual?"

"You see the thing about iJusi, although you wouldn't know this, is that they're a little ray of sunshine in an ugly, ugly world." He pinches the corner of his lower lip and rolls it between his thick fingers. "They're good kids. Role models."

"And you want to keep it that way. No nasty real-world taint for Papa Odi's little girl."

"Amira said you had an ugly mouth." The stumps lash and twist.

"I prefer to think of it as a fast mouth. So, there's no boyfriend? Girlfriend, maybe?" I push.

"Plenty of time for that later."

"Because she's a good girl."

"You see. We understand each other."

"I don't understand why you're talking to me, rather than the cops or a private investigator. Four days is a long time. She could be dead."

"Now, Zinzi, that's not very discreet. Police. PIs. If the tabloids get a sniff…"

"I get it. You're making a mistake, but I'll take your money. How much are we talking?"

"If you bring her back before the official launch and intact?" He smiles thinly. I know what that means. Sweet. Innocent. Un-animalled. "R50,000." Sloth takes a sharp breath at the amount. All very serious indeed.

"Make it two hundred, I'm your girl."

"Eighty-five."

"One fifty. Plus expenses. Don't worry, Mr Huron, I'll submit receipts."

The Marabou looks pained. Huron gives me a slow, evaluating look. The tentacles pause, like they're holding their breath.

"Odi, please." And we share a conspiratorial grin. Or maybe we're just baring our teeth at each other, like chimps competing for dominance.

"Odi? There's a phone call for you," Carmen pops her head out the door, plaintive, like she thinks we've taken up too much of his time already. She is cradling a black Rabbit, stroking its ears. It does explain the fossilised chocolate raisins in the dining room. Who knew that Odi Huron's eccentricities included cultivating a personal menagerie of zoos? I can't help wondering what she did

to get her Bunny.

"Ah, thank you, Carmencita," Odi says. "I think we're done here. Amira and Mark will brief you and make all the necessary arrangements. Whatever you need."

He stands up, all business, downs his drink and throws out the ice towards the pool. The blocks go skittering over the cracked tiles and plop into the water, sending greasy ripples across the surface to stir the leaves. By the time I look up, Odi is disappearing into the house. And I didn't even get the studio tour.

Sloth is pissed with me. I can tell by the way he clambers onto my back, stiff and cross. "You have a better idea?" I hiss at him.

"What was that?" the Marabou asks mildly, staring at the pool, at the lichen-blinded maidens and the ripples breaking at their bare feet.

"I was wondering if this is the best idea," I say. "There must be more qualified people."

"More qualified, but maybe less discreet. And harder to vanish if everything goes wrong."

"You know, I'm pretty sure no one mentioned any vanishing."

"You do this thing, you disappear. No questions asked. Back to Zoo City and your own small world."

"I see." But I'm thinking about her lost gun.

"Shall we? You should probably be getting started."

The Maltese is waiting in the car upfront. It's been polished and waxed to within an inch of its warranty. The interior is awash with pine air-freshener and just a hint of ammonia. The combination makes Sloth sneeze. Which means I was wrong about the guy. I was convinced "spit and polish" was a euphemism for sex. But I have no doubt that dear Odi is nailing sweet little Carmen sideways and backwards. Maybe even now.

The Maltese – Mark – seems eager to get going. The car is idling, he's already strapped in and the Dog is standing on his lap, its paws on the steering wheel. It yaps once, impatiently, like this is a Formula 1 pit-stop and we're holding up the race.

"How was that, sweetie? Was he everything we said?" Mark says, putting the car into gear as I close my door.

"And more!" I say, in chipper imitation of Carmencita. "I'm on the case and I've been put in my place."

"Don't take it personally, sweetie."

As the car pulls away down the drive, Huron appears in the doorway. I turn to look back over the headrest, past Amira and her creepy bird. He's rocking back on his heels, his hands embedded in the pockets of his jeans, just the picture of laidback cool. It's a junkie look. That desperately pretending that everything is hunky-dory, you're not stressed at all about anything in the world, when inside your jeans pockets, your hands are clamped into sweaty fists, fingernails leaving grooves in your palms. If Huron's grooves were an LP, they would be playing the Johnny Cash cover of Nine Inch Nails' "Hurt". And the tentacles would be waving along in time.

10.

CALEB CARTER

HM Barwon Prison

Australia

"I didn't have the Tapir when I got here. She came on the second night, after I was jumped by a couple of the 4161s from Melbourne. Lucky my mate Len was already inside, and knew their game. He gave me a shank when I arrived, and it ended up in the neck of this one guy, a tattooed fuckwit called Deke.

"That night, at about the same time Deke was dying in a hospital in Geelong, the Tapir appeared outside my cell. I heard her scratching at the door of solitary confinement. Scared the hell out of me. The guards said she was still covered in jungle mud when they found her.

"I mean, there's cameras everywhere. And this thing's from a different continent. How come no one saw her arrive? How did she get here? If she can walk through walls or fly or something, why can't she carry me out of here?

"Anyway, I love her. They let me look after her good, take her on walks around the yard. She's a stupid-looking creature and she's dopey as shit, but when the guys here see her at my side, they remember what happened to Deke. They remember not to fuck with Carter."

ZIA KHADIM

Karachi Central Jail

Pakistan

"They keep our animals in cages in another part of the prison. We don't see them. When they want to torture us, they put them in the back of a car and drive away to Keti Bandar. The pain is unbearable, you scream, you vomit and you say anything.

"My Cobra was with me when I was arrested. I was nine. The police saw me walking on the street with my Cobra round my neck, and they grabbed me. They said I robbed a house. I didn't do it, but they beat me until I said I did.

"When they brought me here, they threw my Cobra into one room with all the other animals. The animals would bite each other and get infected and die. The Undertow would come every night for the prisoners. Too many people died. Now they keep the animals in cages, but they still don't let us see them, not unless we give a big bribe, a month's salary for a guard. I don't have that money.

"I haven't seen my Cobra since I was arrested. I'm now fourteen years old."

TYRONE JONES

Corcoran

USA

"It's crazy in here. I know you can't tear a man from his animal. Ain't right. But some of these niggas got real wild animals, man. One guy's got a Cougar. You can't tell me that's right, letting a prisoner walk around with a Cougar.

"There's an order to things, too. Don't matter what you did, you got a bad-ass animal in here, you're a bad-ass too. And it don't matter how many people you killed, you got a Chipmunk or a Squirrel, you're gonna be a bitch. Way it is.

"Then there's me. I got a Butterfly. Keep it in a matchbox. I oughta be pissed off, man. You can guess what it's like being in here with a Butterfly. Except for the stuff it lets me do.

"See, when I go to sleep every night, I wake up as someone else. For the time I'm asleep, I live the day of someone else on the other side of the world. Man, I've been kids in Africa and India, I was once this old Chinese woman. Mostly I'm poor, but sometimes I get lucky and I'm rich.

"What I'm saying is, I can't hate the Butterfly. Butterfly breaks me out of here every night."

Excerpt from Caged: Animalled Behind Bars Photography and interviews by Steve Deacon HarperCollins 2008

11.

Traffic in Joburg is like the democratic process. Every time you think it's going to get moving and take you somewhere, you hit another jam. There used to be shortcuts you could take through the suburbs, but they've closed them off, illegally: gated communities fortified like privatised citadels. Not so much keeping the world out as keeping the festering middle-class paranoia in.

"I'm going to need my own ride."

"What's wrong, sweetie? You don't like my driving?" the Maltese says, but the jibe is half-hearted. He's been off-kilter since we left Huron's. Even the Mutt is subdued, although we're still hitting the green lights at speeds better left to rocket ships.

"Not particularly. But mainly it's that whole little dog thing."

"You just don't let up, do you?" Mark whines. For the first time, it seems like I've got under his flea collar.

"I need to do this alone. It's how my shavi works. I need to talk to people, to pick up a sense of her." This is all monkey crap, but it's not like they know any better. I'm hoping to stumble on a lost thing that will lead me right to the girl, but I can't count on it.

"I thought you could just see things?" Marabou says.

"Sure. If the person is in the room. But then you wouldn't need me. So this is how we're going to work. You can introduce me to people, but then you have to piss off. You can't expect someone to open up to a crowd. One's an interview, three's an interrogation."

"Ve hav our vays und means," Marabou says from the backseat – evidence that she may have a sense of humour after all.

"I don't need anything fancy."

"No. We wouldn't want you to be hijacked," Marabou says.

"That would be bad," I agree, but the words come out on autopilot, because I'm ambushed by the memory of the bullet that tore away half my ear before it ripped through my brother's skull

"A Kia, then," Maltese says, oblivious to my mental picture of Thando sprawled in the daisy bushes, my mom screaming, running down the driveway in her favourite dressing-gown with the Japanese print. Afterwards, she had the daisy bush ripped out, the grass concreted over.

"What?" I say, dragging myself back.

"Or something secondhand. A skedonk on its last tyres. A car that fits your lifestyle. The kind of thing you'd expect a disgraced zoo girl to drive."

"Gee, thanks. How about if it doesn't drive at all? We could get me a gutted shell on bricks. That would suit my lifestyle."

It takes us an hour and a half to get to Midrand and the golf estate where S'busiso and Songweza Radebe share a townhouse next door to their legal guardian, Mrs Prim Luthuli, all generously sponsored by their record label. Another ten minutes to get past the gate guard, who grills us and insists that we all step out of the car to be photographed by the webcam mounted on the window of his security booth.

"Animalists everywhere," Mark says through clenched teeth, as the guard raises the boom and waves us through. "They'd bring back the quarantine camps if they could."

"What do you call Zoo City?" I say.

"Just be glad we don't live in India," Amira says.

Mark revs the Merc unnecessarily. "Because who knew there was a caste below untouchable?"

The townhouses are variations on a theme of relentlessly modern, with trim front lawns and rear-facing views onto the golf course.

"I always get lost here," the Maltese says. The numbering system is completely insane and the estate is huge, so it takes us a few minutes to find H4-301. From the outside, it looks identical to all the other cookie-cutter townhouses with their perfect green lawns and chorus line of hissing sprinklers.

"Aren't there water restrictions?" I ask.

"Borehole. There are underground water reservoirs all over this area. Costs a fortune to tap, of course, but if you run a golf course…" he shrugs.

It would appear no one is home at H4-301, domicile of one Mrs Primrose Luthuli.

"Maybe we should have phoned ahead."

"We can talk to the boys in the meantime."

"Do they know?"

"No. And Mr Huron would prefer if we keep it that way." Marabou walks up to the door of H4-303, ignoring the intercom phone with embedded camera, and raps directly on the door. She waits. Then raps again. And then pounds. There's no way to tell if it's penetrated through the hip-hop bass emanating from inside.

Heavy footsteps shuffle towards the door, suggesting a senile hippopotamus in fuzzy slippers. A moment later, the door opens to reveal a very fat, very white kid wearing a very loud hoodie patterned with neon pink robot monkeys. He is scuffing at his nose with the back of his hand, his eyes are red and the reek of dope has soaked right through the hoodie into his pores. He's muttering as he opens the door, "Listen, you people need to chillax, man, the residents' association can get a restraining order – Christballs!" His bloodshot eyes open very wide as he registers the Marabou. He falls backwards into the house, barely recovering his balance before scrambling away in his dirty socks, yelping, "Dude, it's happening! They're fucking here, man! Break out the hardware! Shit!"