Payback - A Cape Town thriller by Mike Nicol

Donald who’d reappeared. He and Pylon were wrecked, fire-blackened, cut, bruised, blood-splattered. Neither Hartnell had extended himself.
    Firemen trained a hose on the smoking building. The ambulances were gone, the paramedics putting the last bandages on the lucky. Those who needed to thank Dr Roberto wouldn’t think to look for him as a car-guard.
    Either end of the street, cop cars still closed off entry, emergency lights flashing. The road was cleared of vehicles, except two near the club’s entrance smashed with rubble. Club Catastrophe had no roof, was gutted. Crime tape cordoned off the scene.
    The first blast left four dead: a man, three women. Five criticals. Forty, fifty needed treatment. The second brought the first floor down, set the place on fire. Just so happened the paras had got everyone out by then. Mace suspected probably a cellphone trigger on the second but he kept that quiet. Suspected, too, someone in the vicinity chose the moment.
    Ducky Donald said, ‘I was wrong then.’
    ‘Seems like it,’ Mace said. Noticing the prick was out of his whites into a grubby tracksuit, his dolly-bird nowhere to be seen. ‘Where were you?’
    ‘Gone home,’ Ducky said. ‘This is Mattie’s thing. Doesn’t want the old fart around.’
    ‘You didn’t say goodbye,’ said Pylon.
    Ducky Donald lit a cigarette from the butt of the one he was finishing. ‘Didn’t know you cared.’
    ‘Should have listened to us,’ Mace said. ‘There wouldn’t be kids dead now.’
    ‘Protection’s what I wanted,’ said Ducky, ‘not advice. I want advice I’ve got a lawyer.’
    Mace and Pylon let that drift. At what had been the club entrance, Captain Gonsalves appeared with the fire chief, both in oil skins, the captain clutching a black bin-liner.
    Pylon said, ‘Insurers won’t be happy.’
    ‘That’s their problem,’ said Ducky. ‘We’ll start the remake soon as the cops are finished their business.’
    ‘Taking out the blown-off bits, you mean.’
    Matthew jerked round at Mace, said, ‘Christ!’ without a stutter; Ducky Donald let out a ring of smoke. ‘Not nice, Mace. Uncalled for. Even for a mean shit like you.’
    It brought Mace into his face. ‘Four dead. Some others maybe soon to be. Some legless. Armless. Kids we’re talking. Twenty-somethings . People who’re going to wake screaming in the night reliving it. Afraid to walk in the street. Scared to drink coffee at a pavement café. Maybe lose their jobs, spend their days in pain. Because you and Mattie boy have a point to make with PAGAD. You think they care? They don’t care. In their heads you’re the ones flicked on the timer.’
    Pylon pulled his partner away, Ducky Donald shouting, ‘What about your body count, you righteous saint? Not just here. All over the bloody continent. How about a figure on that? Thousands? Tens of thousands? Hundreds of more like it. You shitheap.’
    Gonsalves came up. ‘Mr Bishop,’ he said, ‘I owe an apology.’ He handed the black bag to the fire chief, spat a gob of yellow muck on the pavement. ‘How about a cigarette?’ he said to Matthew. Matthew knocked the bottom of his pack, extended it. ‘Obliged.’ Gonsalves selected one delicately, started stripping off the paper, balling the tobacco in the palm of his hand.
    A squat man made squatter by the oilskins, grey moustache that needed trimming, wild, random eyebrows.
    ‘I’ve given up,’ he said, flicking the cigarette paper into the gutter. ‘Used to smoke fifty a day. Now I just chew them.’ He glanced from Matthew to Ducky Donald. ‘Would these be the owners?’
    Mace nodded.
    ‘Nasty situation here,’ he said, ‘two bombs like that. New scene for PAGAD.’ He popped a pellet of tobacco into his mouth, gave it a quick hard chew. ‘Splendid.’ Then greeted the Hartnells. ‘Seems they don’t like you much, PAGAD. Makes it easy for your claims though.’
    ‘Sure,’ said Ducky Donald.
    ‘Structural damage’s severe.’
    ‘We’re