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JASON HES
Chapter One
Birdie Schalkwyk had paws like slabs of marble, and a thick-sloped mug with a nasty overbite. With his build, one would assume he was the bastard child of a bordello bully and an ancient Greek juggernaut. During Lightfoot’s three weeks at the Colony, he had seen Birdie crunch a man’s face to mince with a single backhanded slap and throw another through a tavern wall. He was a violent mess, seemingly unstoppable to anyone who made the unfortunate mistake of crossing paths with the brute.
So, one could imagine Lightfoot’s amazement when he discovered that Birdie Schalkwyk made for an easy kill on the evening of January fourth, at the Wailing Mermaid Inn on Waterkant Street.
All it took was a mere four teaspoons of powdered Angel’s Trumpet mixed into his ale, and the monster turned blue at the lips. His bulk shivered as he spun drunkenly and grabbed hold of his and Lightfoot’s rickety table for support. The poor thing creaked under his weight as Lightfoot enquired if he was all right. He knew Birdie wasn’t, but it seemed polite to ask. A glossy sheen covered Birdie’s Cro-Magnon face and his pupils were dilated to the size of saucers. Birdie ignored Lightfoot’s question and bolted toward the back, knocking three fishermen out of the way as he did. Lightfoot sighed. All the Angel’s Trumpet was meant to do was get the code out of him. It tickled the drinker’s tongue to tell the truth. The plant wasn’t supposed to make Birdie crazed.
By the time Lightfoot found him a few moments later, Birdie was face down in the dingy alleyway behind the inn, lying in a pool of his own vomit. Time was not on Lightfoot’s side, and if Birdie passed away before he extracted the information he needed from him, not only would Lightfoot’s three weeks in the Colony be for naught, but the October House would have a thing or two to say about his performance when he eventually returned to headquarters.
Making a point to avoid the sticky pool in which Birdie lay, Lightfoot kneeled, turned him over as best he could, and brought his mouth to Birdie’s cauliflower ear. Lightfoot asked him for the code. Four numbers. It was all he needed, and then the brute could die in peace and leave the Colony a slightly safer place. Birdie’s eyes rolled to the back of his head as he shoved the tip of his fat thumb into the palm of his left hand. He convulsed once, farted, then took his last staggered breath.
Lightfoot’s entire body wound tense at the thought of his mission to the Cape Colony being an absolute failure. All because the large bastard couldn’t handle a bit of truth powder.
It was only when he noticed what Birdie had pointed to on his hand that his shoulders sagged, and relief bloomed in his chest. In the middle of Birdie’s clammy palm were four numbers tattooed in black ink.
Without wasting another moment, Lightfoot unbuttoned his rather filthy cutaway jacket and padded at his waistcoat until his fingers snagged the slight bulge his telescopic blade made beneath it. Pulling the tool out, he opened it and placed the knife at a perfect twenty-degree angle against Birdie’s fleshy palm. Lightfoot got to work.
It didn’t take long to carve the tattoo off Birdie’s hand with the sharpened blade. When the work was done, he shoved the tattered piece of flesh into the pocket of his cutaway. With his not-so-grimy hand, Lightfoot pushed back locks of his honey brown hair that had fallen over his eyes while using the knife. Propping himself against the wall of the inn, Lightfoot looked up at the clear evening sky. It wasn’t a windy night, which was unique for the Colony. The moon was full, casting the alleyway in a mineral silver. It was too well-lit. If he was to remain there with the corpse of Birdie Schalkwyk marinating in his pool of sick any longer, a mutton shunter was bound to arrive on the scene at the most inappropriate of moments.
Willing himself to stand, the severe voice of his instructor at the October House entered Lightfoot’s mind before he could even consider leaving Birdie’s body as it was in the alleyway. Destroy all evidence, she would drill into the empty heads of rookies almost daily back at headquarters. To be an agent of the October House is to be untraceable and hidden at any cost. Lightfoot groaned and buttoned up his cutaway to his loose necktie, then left the alleyway to seek a mode of transportation sturdy enough to carry the carcass of Birdie Schalkwyk.
Upon asking around a few of the other bordellos and taverns along Strand and Riebeck Streets, he met a molly who introduced him to one of her young cullies, a Dutch farmhand. The boy had brought his cart and horse to the brothel from the farm he stayed on past Jubilee Park. It had been quite a distance for him to travel, but he had heard the mollies were ripe at that particular spot and was searching for a lick of action three months of savings could afford. After much bargaining, he eventually caved and allowed Lightfoot to rent his horse and cart for three shillings, as long as he would return it to the bordello in under two hours. Shaking hands with the grimy lad, the farmhand took Lightfoot to the miniature stables behind the decrepit house where his rather skinny draft horse munched on a stack of hay while the laughter of mollies flittered through the air like birdsong.
It took time steering the horse and cart back to the Wailing Mermaid. When he eventually arrived at the inn, he tried his best to conceal both the horse and cart in the shadows of the alleyway while he rolled Birdie over and pushed him out his spew. Naturally, the oaf was as hefty as he looked, and calling the task of getting him loaded into the back of the cart a challenge would have been an understatement of note. Nevertheless, Birdie was settled beneath a frayed woollen blanket and ready for his deposit by the time the silver moon disappeared behind a thick patchwork of clouds.
It wasn’t a particularly warm night, even though the Colony was experiencing the dead of summer. However, Lightfoot’s evening wear began to feel like a corset, what with his sweat mixing and sticking to the material of his clothes. He chose to rid himself of his cutaway, throwing it on top of a hidden Birdie along with his waistcoat and necktie. Suddenly feeling lighter and far cooler than before, Lightfoot unbuttoned the winged collar of his shirt and gulped in a lungful of air, then gagged. Even after being in the Colony for three weeks, he still wasn’t used to the piscine odour and taste of fish rot that hung thick in the air on windless nights. The odour didn’t stretch to all corners of the Colony. Instead, it was confined to the dusty tumble of Cape Town, where most of his jobs required him to be.
A job was going to be briefed in soon, for Santorini. He could feel it in his bones and the prickle his skin enjoyed when thinking of leaving the Colony for good. He prayed almost every night before closing his eyes to the rest of the world that Santorini wasn’t a lie — a dangling carrot centimetres from his reach used to motivate him to complete his jobs with expert precision. He didn’t need to be motivated to be a good agent. He only desired fresh air. But until then, he had Birdie Schalkwyk to get rid of, and a horse and cart to return.
Chapter Two
Asher van Dijk, the mutton shunter who took up the evening shift guarding the entrance to Tana Baru cemetery, stood up from his stool with an excitable start. He aimed his Winchester 1873 short rifle at Lightfoot as he brought the draft horse to a stop. He wore a dirty rag cloth around his face that covered his nose and mouth, and in the silver of the moon, Lightfoot could make out the defensive stare in Asher’s normally friendly eyes.
“Put down your weapon, van Dijk,” Lightfoot said, kneading a knot in the back of his neck he’d developed from the strain it took getting Birdie onto the cart. “It’s only me.”
Immediately, Asher dropped the rifle and his defensive stare thawed. “Mister Starklove,” he called out cheerfully. It was the pseudonym Lightfoot used when he had begun bringing his business to the cemetery whenever it was required. It derived from the surname of a grouchy Latin professor he’d had back in his school days. “I didn’t recognise you without that handsome scarf you normally wear around your face.”
“I have it with me, good sir,” Lightfoot assured the gentleman, cocking his head in the direction of his cutaway thrown on top of Birdie in the cart.
“Best you put it on then before entering,” Asher said, taking his place on the stool once more. “There’s no need to catch whatever’s plaguing this damned graveyard.” He stretched his legs out and his joints clicked.
Lightfoot climbed off the cart and stepped around to the back. Picking up his cutaway, he felt inside the pockets for his scarf and coin bag. His fingers grazed against the skin of Birdie’s palm as he did. “Are you still charging two shillings for entry, or am I going to get lucky this evening?”
Asher chuckled.
Bringing business to the cemetery was becoming expensive. Birdie wasn’t the only target Lightfoot had killed by accident in the three weeks he’d been at the Colony. One of the only criticisms he had received from the October House during his time in Cape Town was that they found his execution of tasks to be somewhat hasty at the best of times. Before stepping foot on the shores of the Cape Colony, Lightfoot had never received negative feedback from his handlers or superiors. Not for his work implemented in Rome, Great Britain or the Americas. He chose to blame his rashness on his lack of research beforehand. Had Lightfoot known Birdie would suffer an allergic reaction to the powdered Angel’s Trumpet — probably from the scopolamine found inside it — he would have resorted to the old-fashioned way of extracting the code from Birdie. He’d have beaten the information out of him, or at least tried to.
Asher picked one of the shillings from his hand, flipped it and caught the coin before it fell to the mossy ground as Lightfoot wound his so-called handsome scarf around his nose and mouth tight. Asher looked up at him and winked. “Off you go then, Mister Starklove.”
It took everything out of Lightfoot to refrain from responding to that wink with a grin. Asher was a handsome man. Even though Lightfoot had always seen his face obscured by the dirty rag he kept over most of it, he could tell based on how Asher’s eyebrows arched and his accent purred in Lightfoot’s ear. It was enough to keep him awake at night.
Once Asher opened the gate, he gestured for Lightfoot to enter. Pulling on the reins gently, the draft horse strutted forward into the gloom of the graveyard beyond.
The earth beneath Lightfoot was cracked and uneven, so much so that Birdie’s corpse bounced and jolted every so often when the cart’s wheels rolled over rocks or yawning pockmarks from rain. Bones from skeletons poorly buried and long forgotten freckled the graveyard far into the darkness. A spindly arm, with both hand and decomposing flesh still attached, stuck out from the mud as though waving at Lightfoot as he rode past. He groaned when he noticed the broken tombstones that littered the landscape. Tana Baru cemetery appeared exactly as it did the last time he had visited, and the time before that. And yet, just like the air of Cape Town, the sickly site remained something he’d never get used to.
