Book Excerpt: Exhibit A by Sarah Lotz

March 25th, 2009 by Ben - Editor

The announcement, yesterday, of the publication of Sarah Lotz’s new novel, Exhibit A, caused the plates to rattle in London.

Well, perhaps I exaggerate a touch. But such was the outpouring of enthusiasm (on BOOK SA, on Facebook, in the literary ether) that we were left with no choice but to drop everything and work the phones to secure the very first peek inside book – expressly for your pleasure, dear reader.

Exhibit A, it seems, is being positioned within the family of SA crime novels currently marauding across the land – but on the fringes, playing the role of the clever cousin rather than the full-blooded scion. For a plot summary, click here; and for a taste, read on:

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The Dog’s Bollocks

‘Don’t you want to know where we’re going?’

Patrick tips his cereal bowl to his mouth and glugs down the dregs of his breakfast. ‘I’m sure you’ll tell me when you’re good and ready, laddie,’ he says.

Balancing the bowl on his knees, he ferrets in his bottomless briefcase and whips out the box of Frosties and carton of milk. Being Patrick, he does this nonchalantly, as if eating cereal in a moving car is the most natural thing in the world. Within seconds he’s slurping his way through his second helping. The dog on the back seat is making a sound that I can only describe as scrolfing: a combination of grunts and the same liquid smacking noises my granddad used to make whenever he ate a chop without his dentures in. It’s been attacking its bollocks ever since we left Cape Town with a dedication that would have been admirable, had it been doing anything else.

Deep breath, George.

I mash my foot on the accelerator as we approach the Du Toitskloof Tunnel, hoping that the increased road noise will block out the sickening sounds filling the car. I can’t crank up the radio – all that’s left of it is an oblong hole spewing a tangle of cut wires.

For absolutely no reason (other than it’s a piece of shit) the car suddenly lurches. Not a drop of milk spills over Patrick’s suit. How does he do it? I can barely touch a cup of coffee without giving myself third-degree burns or slopping it over a nearby laptop.

‘Sure you don’t want some, laddie?’ Patrick says through a mouthful of frosted flakes.

‘I’ll have some ProNutro, if you’ve got.’

He doesn’t miss a beat. ‘Banana, chocolate or regular?’

He’s actually got me there for a second.

I glance at him out of the corner of my eye. It’s not a pretty sight at this time of the morning. Shit. Did I make the right decision, bringing him along? This case is going to be sensitive and I’m not sure Patrick even knows the meaning of the word. At five foot two and weighing in at one hundred and twenty kilos, he’s known to the entire legal fraternity (including his wife, Barbara) as the Poison Dwarf. He readily admits that he compensates for his lack of physical stature by being (in his words) a ‘total and utter bastard’.

I’d decided at the last moment that I might need backup, and instead of heading straight onto the highway, I’d backtracked to the Bo-Kaap and Patrick and Barbara’s steadily decaying fifties mansion, trying to ignore the creeping apprehension I always feel whenever I approach their driveway. This has nothing to do with the refugees that squat at the bottom of their garden and everything to do with Patrick’s domestic set-up. His kids’ belongings are always splattered across his balding lawn like a Toys ‘R’ Us holocaust, and out back there’s a graveyard of junked appliances that even the squatters have spurned. As I climbed out of the car to have a quick smoke I’d almost broken my ankle on the severed head of a Bratz doll. This bedlam could well be the reason why Patrick is one of the most feared advocates in Cape Town. Unless he can help it, he’s rarely at home. And even though it’s Sunday morning, it hadn’t taken much convincing to lure him along.

He’d answered his cell phone on the third ring, his Scottish accent thickened by sleep.

‘Who the fook is this?’

‘Good morning to you too, Patrick. Hope you don’t greet your clients like that.’

‘Only the ones I like. What’s up?’

‘Feel like a road trip?’

‘When?’

‘Now. I’m outside.’

Silence.

‘Well?’ I prompted. ‘I’ll throw in breakfast.’

Silence again.

‘I’m waiting,’ I said.

‘You had me at breakfast.’

As it turned out, Patrick had thrown in his own breakfast and his own surprise addition – the dog. As Patrick blearily heaved his way into the car, it scrambled across his lap and into the back seat with the confidant air of an old campaigner.

‘Patrick?’ I said, incredulous. ‘What’s with the dog?’

Patrick glanced behind him, as if he’d only just noticed it. ‘Oh, that. It’ll have to come with.’

‘You’re joking.’

‘Well, I canna be leaving it here, now can I?’

‘Why?’

‘For its own protection of course.’

‘Yeah? Another one of your asylum seekers is it?’

‘It’s a grass. A snitch. In Glasgow some fooker would have slit its throat by now.’

‘Okay, I give up. What the fuck are you talking about?’

As we puttered out of the city and made our way towards the N1, he filled me in. Two days ago, Patrick, Barbara and their offspring had arrived back from a rare family outing only to find their house surrounded by police vans and several members of their gung-ho security company. The police informed Patrick that he’d been burgled (how could you tell? I asked) and apologised for tying his dog to the tree next to the garage while they completed their perimeter search.

‘What dog?’ Patrick had asked. ‘I haven’t got a fooking dog.’

After a disjointed exchange, Patrick had managed to convince Cape Town’s finest that the dog wasn’t his and suggested that perhaps it could help them with their enquiries. Bemused, the cops had untied the dog and followed closely behind as it sniffed the air and headed straight off towards the rival squatter camp in the quarry just below Patrick’s property. Like a disloyal Greyfriars Bobby it padded amongst the rows of shacks and stopped outside one that was coincidentally full of Patrick’s stuff. As the owner had scarpered and the dog had decided to turn state’s witness, Patrick felt obliged to take it in.

‘Couldn’t you have left it at home with Barbara?’

Patrick doesn’t dignify this with an answer. Things on the domestic front are obviously as tenuous as usual.

A trickle of sweat creeps down the back of my neck. It’s only eight-thirty but the heat’s transforming the car into a microwave on wheels. It’s got to be thirty degrees out there, yet Patrick’s dressed in his habitual woollen three-piece suit that looks as if it’s on the run from a forties noir movie. I know for a fact that Patrick’s suit is tailor-made. Not because it fits him like a glove (it doesn’t), but because I’ve witnessed his confrontations with his octogenarian tailor. Sometimes, when I’m feeling down about my lot as a used-car-selling-rats-and-mice lawyer, I console myself by imagining what life would be like as Patrick’s tailor.

Or his wife.

The dog now appears to be redoubling its efforts. And even with the windows fully open the car now hums with the stench of unwashed mongrel.

‘Can’t you at least make it stop doing that?’

Patrick grunts. ‘It’s the only thing it’s got going for it. Give it a break.’

The car hiccups out of the tunnel and I’m almost blinded as the morning sun shafts through the windscreen. I scrabble on the dashboard for my sunglasses, remembering too late that whoever nicked the crap radio last night had also relieved me of a pair of knock-off Ray-Bans. Mind you, the radio and the sunnies were probably the best thing about the car. I doubt I’ll be able to sell this hunk of shit now. Even without the new additions of dog hair and smell of sour milk, it would have taken an act of God to shift it. I’d done a client a favour by taking it off her hands. A big favour. The suspension’s shot and the clutch is slippery and engages so high that every time I change gear I feel like a car-driving Irish dancer. I’m dreading Nomvuyo’s face when I drop it off at the lot. I can hear him now: ‘Well, Mr George, on the plus side, it has four wheels and half a tank of fuel. On the down side: everything else.’

I don’t normally tell my clients that I sell second-hand motors on the side. It tends to give the wrong impression. Patrick’s always saying that I should get into life insurance or politics to make up a hat-trick of dodgy professions.

As if cheered to be out of the gloom of the tunnel, the car’s epileptic fit subsides and the engine shudders back to its normal death rattle. The dog opens its mouth in a jaw-clicking yawn, and snuggles deeper into my only good suit jacket – the one I wear to court. Maybe it’s not such a bad thing. The jacket should probably have been put out to grass decades ago. It’s still got the tang of the mid-eighties, and briefly came back into fashion recently. For a couple of months, I hadn’t actually been the worst-dressed lawyer in Cape Town. ‘Love that retro look, boss,’ said my PA, Chesray, through a gobful of mouth piercings the first time he laid eyes on it. Nowadays he just shoots me dubious glances and leaves copies of Men’s Health around the office, pointedly open at the style pages.

‘What’s the dog’s name, anyway?’

Patrick shrugs, ‘I dunno.’

The dog pauses, as if it knows that it’s being talked about. It’s not a bad-looking dog, as far as dogs go. Small and scruffy with a patch over its eye. Sort of generic Hollywood mongrel-type.

‘You have to call it something.’

‘Why?’

‘Isn’t that what you do with dogs?’

‘Is it? You name it then.’

I think for a second. ‘Let’s call him Exhibit A.’

Patrick grunts in agreement. He’s probably pissed off he didn’t think of it first.

I pull in behind an HGV. You never know, the slipstream could help. I’m not used to driving at this Zimmer-frame speed, and the frustration’s building up. Time for a smoke? Better not. I’ve been promising myself for the last decade that I’ll quit, and only serious addicts fire up a fag at this hour of the day (I should know – I’ve already smoked at least three this morning). We’re tootling along so lethargically that even a Smart car overtakes us. There’s a hugely obese man behind the wheel, and he shoots us a superior sneer as he passes.

Patrick checks out the guy and reads my mind. ‘They think driving a tiny car makes them look thinner. You know, like when you wear trousers a size too small. Never works.’

‘You should know.’

‘Temper temper. Have a ciggy already and leave us fatties to our comforts.’ Patrick chucks the cereal bowl on the floor and pulls out a packet of cashew nuts.

‘You’ve just eaten!’

‘Think of me as a camel.’

‘Grumpy and hunchbacked?’

Patrick harrumphs, sounding almost exactly like a camel. ‘Able to survive for days on well-stored fat.’

At least the smoke will help mask the reek of unwashed dog. But in this heat I’ll only end up with horrible breath and a dry throat. And I don’t want horrible breath when I see Rachel again.

‘So? Go on then.’ Patrick tips a handful of cashews into his mouth and talks with his mouth full, torpedoing nut crumbs over the dashboard. ‘Where we off to this fine summer morning?’

‘Barryville.’

‘Hmmm. Isn’t that one of those tiny South African towns that’s stuck in a time warp and is dripping with small-town prejudice and incipient racist values?’

‘You been?’

‘No, just a wild guess.’

‘Ah.’

I haven’t been to Barryville before either, although I’ve driven past the turn-off several times on the way to Joburg. It’s about two hours from Cape Town (in a normal car); three and a half in this one (the car equivalent of a fifty-year-old with emphysema).

Patrick cranks open a can of Coke Light without the slightest trace of irony. ‘And what might be in Barryville? Someone’s maid refusing to call them “madam” or something? Workers’ rights dispute at the biltong factory?’

‘Rape case.’

Silence. That shut him up.

We’re forced to overtake the truck as the road slants upwards. The rolling landscape is starting its slide into sepia tones the further we head inland. We pass a horror movie farmhouse slotted next to the highway. It’s surrounded by a cluster of dehydrated fruit trees.

‘And why on Sunday? Could this not have waited till normal grafting hours?’

‘It’s a bit delicate.’

‘So’s my marriage, but I don’t usually fook up a good Sunday by trying to sort it out.’

‘Trust me, Patrick. If the client’s story pans out, you’re going to be gagging to get involved in this one.’

‘Right. And who’s the client? Anyone I know?’

‘Nope.’

Patrick shoots me a shifty look. ‘Not another one of your favours is it, Georgie?’

‘It’s the sister of this woman I know.’

‘Cherchez la femme? I should have known.’

We head past the Rawsonville weighbridge. It’s the HGV’s turn to have the upper hand. It roars past us and the Golf rocks in dismay. A couple of guys hawking boxes of stolen grapes at the side of road run next to us. They also look as if they’re about to overtake.

‘Come on, fill me in. Who is she? And is she worth this?’

The dog takes a deep shuddering breath as if to say, ‘my work here is done’, snuggles deeper into my jacket and starts snoring. I light a cigarette and fill Patrick in on what he needs to know.

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