A mile from the gallery, a man in stained janitor’s overalls slipped unnoticed into the dumpster behind the Mount Nelson Hotel. Crouching ankle-deep in Norwegian salmon, he froze as the kitchen door opened and another load of half-empty plates from the dining room was dumped. He winced as a lamb shank poked him in the eye, and he bit down on his tongue to prevent himself from shrieking as a tennis-ball-sized gob of icy Ukrainian caviar slipped down the front of his shirt. Pain is good, he murmured to himself. Mmm. So is this grey stuff sticking to my shoe. Pensively he picked at it with his thumbnail, nibbling at what seemed to be congealed cheese sauce enlivened with a cheeky hint of grouse lard and garnished with a long blonde hair.
It was quiet inside now, and he seized the moment. Silently he slid through the door. A chef across the room was lost in concentration, decorating a chocolate mousse made from dachshund milk with strands of liquid platinum. The assassin slipped from the room, and in moments had reached the door of the Lady Chatterley Suite on the second floor. The key he’d been given was a match. At last he could breathe. He’d done it. But first …
Safe inside the suite, he peeled off the overalls, stripping down to his jacket and socks. The curator’s blood had hardened now, forming a rather fetching crust that brought out the subtle ochre tones of some of the leather patches. The curator. How the bugger had fought. A worthy opponent. And now it was time to purge. It was time to mortify the flesh to atone for its sins. Pain is good.
He opened the small suitcase on the bed, removing a cardboard tube and a small mobile CD player. Slowly he knelt at the side of the bed, bowing his head. He opened one end of the tube, and slid out four rolled-up posters. He slipped a CD into the player. Then he carefully unfurled the posters and pinned them open with a Gideon Bible and the Yellow Pages. The familiar kindly faces beamed out at him, comforting him. How pleased they looked, he thought. How saintly.
The CD began to play, and he winced at its first lush orchestral chords. His skin began to crawl as a thousand violins burst into an orgy of three-part harmony. His breathing was laboured now as he felt the familiar, comforting pain in his ears. Soon the bagpipes would begin, and the ordeal would cleanse him. And then . . . the final purging.
Right on time. The whine of the pipes. His stomach began to churn, and his joints ached. He fought the urge to run, to press his fingers in his ears, to vomit, to throw himself out of the window on to a party of retired English cab drivers on the patio below. No. Wait. The true pain had not yet begun. He shook uncontrollably as he knelt, clutching at the posters. The faces smiled as before.
The third horseman of the musical apocalypse: pan pipes. Their reedy tones whooshed into the room, and the assassin bit down hard on the duvet, the sweat running down his temples. Soon, my lord, soon . . .
And then the voice came, the thin, eternally cheer-ful, diabolically nauseating voice. It sang of Austrian hayrides, of romance in Paris, of high-steppin’ cavorting in Idaho. It sang of Lili Marlene underneath her lantern, it sang of raindrops on roses and whiskers on kittens. And all the while the assassin bled inside, clutching his stomach and moaning softly.
It was too much. He slumped unconscious to the floor, blood oozing from his nose, a dab of condor pâté smeared across his forehead. In his hand the CD cover glinted in the morning sun: Helmut Lotti’s Best Loved Sing-Along Tunes. Up on the bed Gé Korsten, Bles Bridges and Steve Hofmeyr beamed out from their posters, unmoved by their limp acolyte on the carpet below.
The phone was ringing, and the assassin stirred. ”Master?” he said groggily.
”No, sir, this is Mandy at reception downstairs. I have a message for you from Mr Master.”
”Ja?”
”Yes, sir. Mr Master says a Mr Langa is at the gallery, and that you need to kill him too. I asked Mr Master if you’d require us to put you in touch with an arms dealer, but he said that you had your own gun. Would you like me to send someone up to steam-clean it? I’m afraid there’s nothing we can do about ballistic evidence, short of re-rifling the barrel, and I’m sure you don’t have time for that. Perhaps you’d like a massage?”
”No time,” grunted the assassin, getting to his feet and reaching for his trousers. So they’d got Langa in. This was big. Still, Langa was human. He could die like anyone else. Put enough bullets in someone, and they rarely pulled through. Except for Kaizer Tsebi, the taxi baron he’d tried to whack last year. ”72-slug Kaizer” they called him now. Apparently the guy raised hell in metal detectors.
Quickly he slipped four boxes of ammunition into his jacket and hurried for the lobby.
The DeVilliers Code is published by Penguin