“Want start some kinda nonsense dis late night. You think dah brothel here?” She sucked her teeth viciously and hustled across the stretch of lawn, throwing cautious glances behind her every now and then.
“Ahem. Ma’am.”
The voice hailed from her far right. Swallowing a squeak of surprise, she squinted into the dark, shaking as she tried to attach a body to the voice. Darkness melted back a tad; the concierge from earlier that morning solidified, nib of his flicked cigarette bouncing sparks onto the concrete. Tony was his name, if she remembered right. Timothy maybe. Tom?
“Are you alright?” Even as he asked his eyes filled with knowing, a little pity, a touch too much smugness. Uninvited guests were always uninvited guests.
“I’m fine.”
“I could escort you back to your room.” He nodded in the direction of the main building behind him. Through the glass doors, silhouettes crisscrossed the large dining area. The festivities were still in full swing.
Vee pursed her lips. You know damn well my room ain’t on this side of the wall. “No, thank you,” she replied curtly, picking up pace again before common sense hit, slowing her to a halt. “Actually,” she turned back, “I’d appreciate that, thank you.”
“No problem. I’ll walk you as far as the gate. The security guard will see you safely through to the other side.”
As he fell into step beside her, Vee hugged her handbag to her chest, huddled against the sudden chill.
On the steps of the concrete walkway several metres behind them, her forgotten scarf billowed and snaked.
Chapter Eight
“I can’t believe this,” Lovett said.
“You can’t believe this?!” Vee exclaimed.
Her phone vibrated: another missed call from Nico. Five in total. She should’ve held off on letting Chlöe call him. She typed a quick text along the lines of getting back to him as soon as she had a free second and slipped it in her back pocket. ‘Silent mode’ could take the flack when he lost it.
She peeped across the room at Chlöe, tucked away in a corner seat next to Lovett’s hyper-blonde, Slavic-cheekboned companion. Chlöe’s eyes kept zipping round, a new emotion swiping another off her face every few seconds; worry in Vee’s direction, rabid puzzlement and hope in Lovett’s, barely veiled amazement at the blonde’s impeccable attire at just gone seven in the morning, distaste every time she scratched her scalp and terror every time her phone beeped. Vee turned back to Lovett, who kept releasing a relay of soft sighs as he ever so calmly paced the wood-panelled floor of the small dining room, stirring a warm draft of toothpaste and men’s cologne every time he strode past.
“It’s ridiculous. They’re holding you on a very flimsy premise. They know that, hence the time-wasting while they get their act together.”
“Lovett.” Vee stopped him with a hand on his shoulder. “Lovett ooo. You boy, dis not play-play. A man is dead. Strangled with a piece of my property. They saw the marks round his neck where I choked him.” She drew in a long, shaky breath to steady her voice. “Now, I don’t know if you trying to approach this as a lawyer or as a fr–” She stopped, bemused by the audacity of what she’d been about to say. Were they actually friends? Did Lovett even do friendship? She had no clue.
Lovett returned what approximated an amused smile and patted her hand. “Look, all I mean is it’s taking longer than it needs to. The police haven’t laid charges because they don’t have evidence enough to charge you with. Besides the damn scarf, which is circumstantial. They’ve questioned you for an hour this morning, and you cooperated and stuck to your story. Because it’s true. Nothing … untoward transpired between y’all?”
“Ehn? Like I’hn got better things to do than screw Papa Smurf?”
He cocked his head sternly; she sighed and shook her head. “So then. They just have to find this concierge fellow and everything will be settled.”
He strolled back to the sliding doors, closing his eyes and inhaling deeply as the morning sun struck his face. Vee noticed that his shirt had not a single wrinkle in sight. She edged away from the aura of suave, pressing her armpits to her sides to conceal half-dried circles of sweat on yesterday’s rumpled T-shirt.
“But what if they don’t find him? What if this killer got to him too last night? Two people dead already.”
“What? Two people? Which two people now?” He pivoted from the view to drill her with a highly concerned look, the kind given to addled unfortunates just before padded cells and calming drugs came into play. “There’s one dead body, Voinjama.” He held up a single finger. “One victim. Just relax. And shush.”
Chlöe watched Vee slump into a chair. Lovett, sensitive to her turmoil, sighed into the seat next to her. Arms wrapped tight around her middle, Vee kept shaking her head and nervously jiggling the toes of her sneakers against the floor.
Lovett shook his head. “Finegeh, jes relax. Stop worryin’ like dis.”
Chlöe smiled. Leaning sideways, she intimated: “This ‘finegeh’, or ‘finegirl’ if you pronounce it properly, it’s such a major part of this slang of theirs. I guess it’s like ‘meisie’ in Afrikaans. Only they say it a lot more often, right?”
“I guess so.” The blonde carried on texting for another second before looking up. “You can really understand that stuff they’re saying?”
“I’ve gotten a pretty good hang of it,” Chlöe preened. “The accent and the speed’s the hard part. But you catch on. It’s like pretending half your brain is dead and the other half is completely drunk.”
The blonde fired an ‘as if I give a shit’ look and went back to texting on her iPhone. Alarmed, Chlöe saw she was tweeting. Nico’s fuming on the phone earlier that morning had included his outrage that they and their incident were blowing up locally on Twitter, and he’d had to hear about it from an office underling. Chlöe looked back at Vee, who looked like she was trying to devour her bottom lip.
“Aay, my pipo,” Vee clapped her hands despondently. “Wha’ kanna troubo I nah put mysef in again ooo?”
Chlöe closed her eyes, which, somehow and mysteriously, did wonders in unjabbering the jibber. You mean what kind of trouble has found you once again, my dear friend, she thought, equally dejected. And it’s bad if she thinks it’s bad.
“Aay, you geh man,” Lovett replied impatiently. “I’hn like de way you ackin’ so. Ehn I nah tell you, de pipo dem ee’hn got nuttin to charge you wit.” Come now, girl. I’m not at all impressed with your current behaviour. As I’ve told you, these people haven’t got a shred of evidence against you.
“Dah lie o! Dey got dah scarf, dah sumtin. And even sef, who say dey can’t jes hitch it behind me jes because dey’hn got nobody else who lookin’ guilty?” Behold, a falsehood! That scarf is a lot of something. Besides that, who says they can’t just pin it on me just because they need a fall guy?
“Move from heah, man. You nah nobody in dis town heah, so nobody want hitch nuttin’ on you. Da’hn anythin’ hard to sort dis out. So don’t come chakla the situation wit dah yor mouf.” Get outta here. You’re nobody around these parts, so no-one will be looking to gratuitously pin any crimes on you. So don’t mess this up by losing your cool.
Vee chuckled. “Well, ay betta be true you talkin’, ’cause I nah ready to go to no jail.” You better be right, because I won’t fare well behind bars.
At the welcome sound of Vee’s laughter, Chlöe blinked her eyes open. Behind her lids, they’d started to water. Her throat felt dry; she was actually getting a headache. Let’s never go to West Africa, she advised herself bitterly. The patois could short-circuit the human brain. She wearily tuned back in when Lovett took off again.