places my teapot next to me, two teabag strings dangling out the side. Next, he places a mug on a chipped saucer, and slides over a bowl full of dark sticky sugar.
‘It’s on the house, Helen. You look like you need it. Don’t work so hard.’
A young man is buying me pity tea. Next thing they’ll be helping me cross the street. Still, I take a sip and do feel relieved. Good Ceylon tea. Now that’s one thing that wretched bunch of colonials got right. If not for Cecil, what would I be drinking? Then again, if not for Cecil, would we even be in this mess?
I can’t believe that ugly statue covered in pigeon poo started all of this. If the university hadn’t been so stubborn about it, the kids would have moved on victorious. But no, history trumped present concerns as it is wont to do, and so now we have a riot on our hands and police up to our eyeballs. Soon they’ll call in the army, if that’s not only allowed for the State of the Nation Address. Statues may fall, but their shadows last a lot longer.
Shit is too fucked up here to think about it bit by bit. It’s much easier to cope with if you think of it as a big mess, rather than a series of small painful ones.
But what is the big picture this time? Something is amiss, nagging at my brain, the type of thought that will wake you up in the night. I’ve been sitting here trying to jot down exactly what it is and I keep coming back to the police. New page, new list.
The police seem different.
‘Wow, Helen, you’re really making headlines,’ I mumble to myself.
Of course they’re different. Since 2012 those cops on the ground know it’ll be them who get blamed if there’s a massacre, not the people telling them to execute it.
They have a deadness in their eyes.
Normally, especially on a protest day, you can sense a gravitas – the glimmer of panic in their eyes because they’re either adrenalin-fatigued or high on the power. But these new cops don’t even flinch when I take the pictures.
They don’t even blink.
Holy shit.
‘Hey, John?’
‘Yes?’
‘Have you seen these latest public order cops blinking?’
He rolls his eyes at me behind the bar, but this time he’s leaning towards the mirror enough for me to see him do it.
‘Don’t roll your eyes at me, young man. I’m serious.’
‘I think that tea’s getting a bit too strong for you. We’re going to have to go back to one teabag if you keep this up.’
Am I losing it? I wish Steve were still around. He always had a nose for the distinction between roses and the bullshit that fertilises them. Eight years of wishing can’t bring someone back from the dead, though. I’ve tried.
Glitching? What was Thuli even talking about? Far as I know, time travel is as real now as it was in Back to the Future. The whole premise of her dream or hallucination or whatever it was doesn’t make sense. Taking out one youngster isn’t going to stop this movement. The government can’t be stupid enough to think that; they’d have to do more.
Still, that Hector kid, he’s been at the helm of things for a good while now. It would be in the interests of the state to be free of him. It might make people too scared to come out to the protests if he were shot. On the other hand, it might make the movement bigger, especially if it’s obvious it was government who’d ordered the shooting. I suppose I’d better stop speculating and get back out there. I leave money on the counter as an indication to John that I will not accept free tea like a pensioner.
I walk from the bar in the direction Thuli suggested the hit might take place. It’s pretty far from the buildings right at the top of campus, and walking towards the action up there looking up, I can’t see many places where a sniper might stand. Even if there were a sniper, he’d have to get past all these kids in order to get up there, which is possible but not likely.
The campus is built like a series of platforms. First a parking lot, then some steep concrete steps around a flat and accessible plaza, then more steps up to the actual hall. You’d have to have a powerful rifle or a fantastic eye even to get close to hitting someone at this distance. In the crowds it would be almost impossible. I suppose that’s the point of a sniper, but it doesn’t make me feel any more convinced that it’s realistic.
To me there seem to be too many entry and exit points. At the first sound of a shot, the kids would scatter, and there are thousands of them. Whoever was shooting wouldn’t be able to be sure that it was Hector they’d get.
Maybe they don’t care. Maybe they want the instability.
‘Is that what this is – state-sponsored terrorism?’
A student looks at me, the crazy overweight middle-aged white lady in shitty old clothes, mumbling to herself. Among all these revolutionary fashionistas I feel even more frumpy than usual. I must look like what they’d call ‘a hot mess’.
I’d probably be less sceptical of Thuli’s story if I believed our cops could arrange something like this in the state they’re in. A murder like this would require planning, skill and expertise. Our cops struggle to stick to the ‘stomach in, chest out’ nonsense. Expecting them to be able to plot and organise state-sponsored terror seems to be a bit of a push. Still, an ill-planned execution is even more terrifying than a well-planned one. It would be a disaster. But not one worth worrying about based on the ramblings of someone who believes she can time travel.
My phone rings like Sally knows I’m not concentrating on the job at hand.
‘What’s happening there?’
‘Nice to hear from you too, Sal. I’m fine thanks, and you?’
‘Helen, I’m watching this on TV and it looks like a picnic, not a protest. I think you should come back to the office. We just got word of a presidential—’
‘Sal, just be patient; I think things are going to heat up here. Trust me.’
She’s too new on the job to recognise the calm before the storm. God, I miss Steve. Always, but right now in particular.
‘Helen, there are other stories to cover. Get your butt back to head office in an hour.’
‘But, Sally—’
She’s gone before I can explain that sometimes you have to trust your gut, that when a time-travelling barely post-teen tells you there’s going to be a murder, the least you can do is stick around and investigate it. I don’t have the room to disobey her though, not after she’s cut me so much slack.
I snap a few pictures of the building and the cement slab, wondering whether any of what Thuli said could happen, then walk back down to my car.
CHAPTER 4
Noné
I won’t allow anything to get in the way of my launch on Friday – especially not a bunch of quasi-intellectual student activists. They’ve chosen the wrong president to picket against.
I’m exhausted. Being stressed like this is enough to make anyone tired – thixo wam! The usual Facebook quiz hasn’t helped me feel any better, especially not when it says a meerkat is my spirit animal. Unlikely, Facebook! I’m a hunter, through and through.
I hear the door creak open, and Alice marches in.
‘Your schedule, Your Excellency. And I’ve made you a smoothie and lined up your vitamins on this tray. You need to stay nourished. Now, here are today’s documents. Sign here, and here. Right, that’s POPI and CLARA. The rest of the day isn’t too busy, mostly calls and a few commissions of inquiry to authorise.’
‘Cancel the calls.’
‘Yes, Your Excellency.’
‘So,