The Seventh Secret

PROLOGUE — Cheryl’s Predicament

The sky over Port Elizabeth was clear, but beneath the peaceful mask of the pleasant late summer weather, a putrid stench wafted around the old buildings in the city center. With the night came the vermin — hidden in the crevices by daylight — and crime. Under the pale yellow street lights lining the empty sidewalks of Govan Mbeki Avenue, footsteps echoed; two pairs almost in perfect cadence with each other. It was just before 3 am, a time for the city's pests to thrive, but there were darker things exchanged here than the common lechery of prostitution and the desperate deeds of broke junkies.

Cheryl stared out over the melancholy of the barren street, flanked on either side by historical buildings and once beautifully constructed museums, now reduced to slums and crumbling memories of order and care. Her windows were tainted, not by some fancy form of glazing but rather the layers of dirt and build-up from years of foregone cleaning.

It was irrelevant that she was a careless housewife or a woman of ill repute with a drug habit. Cheryl loved architecture, and she adored visiting the old public library nearby, built in the heyday of the British rule. Inside its oddly placed corners and sections, lined from wall to wall and floor to ornate ceiling with books, she found solace. History and its long forgotten buildings beckoned her, in particular, the lovely curls and intricate stucco of the façades she found on Cape Dutch structures. She would read everything about the settlers who came from Europe in 1820, most at the behest of the greedy queen, who sent men south to conquer and subjugate in her name, only to leave their descendants homesick for the lands of their forefathers. Cheryl was one of those descendants.

The footsteps she heard reverberating from the grimy filth on the walls of the shops and eateries that closed before nightfall were on their way to see her — Cheryl the hooker. They emerged from the shadows under the window of her third-story flat and just stood there at first as if they were surveying the area for witnesses. Cheryl caught her breath. Through the gray obscurity of the dirty window pane, she hoped that they were mere specters, monsters from her dreams, shrouded by the veil of her reality. But their imposing figures were regrettably only cloaked by the window and very, very real. Cheryl wanted to cry, but she had been expecting this after all. Not only did she know that this time would come, but she knew full well she had brought this upon herself.

All she wanted to do was find a way to escape the hellish country she did not belong in, having no idea that searching a shortcut to obtaining the relevant documents would dump her into such a dangerous underworld. Like many other women in the building she lived in, she had come into prostitution when she had no longer been able to afford her medical needs on a personal assistant's salary. When she inadvertently became addicted to various substances to cope with an unfortunate incident that had made her another of South Africa’s crime statistics, she had subsequently lost her job at the University of Port Elizabeth.

As much as her boss, Dr. Billy Malgas, had tried to help her kick the habit, Cheryl had just not been able to let go of the beautiful delirium of heroin, and eventually she had been abandoned by her friends as well. She had found out very quickly how awkward it was to constantly ask friends for a hand-out, a loan, sometimes even crossing lines of propriety to beg for money. They had dumped her and her burdens to liberate themselves from her anxious company.

After almost a year of prostitution, she had still avoided the claws of pimps and police officers who abused their power for inappropriate favors. But being a free agent in this despicable line of work did not protect her from beatings, robbery, and humiliation. The only way in which it benefitted her if that was even a term one could use in this context, was that she kept all her earnings to herself. She got less business than other women, but she was calling her own shots. With the money she made, she was able to sustain her expensive habit and pay her rent by working as a prostitute. Her clientele consisted mostly of traveling businessmen who frequented the cheap bars in the area.

International visitors were her best callers. Being a Cape Malay beauty, she had the exotic looks that drove the Europeans at the Black Jack tables crazy. They loved her bronze complexion paired with her emerald green eyes, which were typical of the Colored beauties with Malaysian ancestry. It was this very attractiveness that had her secure a fateful evening four months ago with a client from Stockholm who baited her into the quicksand she now found it impossible to escape from. She had not seen him since the week before last, even though he had promised her that he would facilitate her immigration as smoothly as possible to join him in Sweden before Christmas.

Now he was nowhere to be found, and she was being pursued by his associates, the men he employed to falsify her credentials to use for Home Affairs; the same men he had neglected to pay after the job had been done and her passport delivered to her. In no uncertain terms, they had informed Cheryl that she was now liable for payment, a sum she could not come up with even if she fucked her way through seven clients a day for the next two months.

Cheryl blew out all her candles. Their bases were jammed into empty wine and beer bottles set all over her small flat since she could not afford electricity and the wiring in her light fixtures was broken anyway. It was part of the decrepit condition of all the once majestic old apartment buildings in Central, slowly falling into utter dilapidation since the new government had put the fox in charge of the henhouse by appointing crooks to run the city treasury. The misappropriation of funds was the reason the Oceanarium had gone from a grand complex of marine wonder and dolphin shows to little more than a half-assed attempt at a reptile park and an empty pool. The only water the latter held these days were the pond scum filled puddles left by occasional rainfall and neglect. Port Elizabeth had gone from a vibrant cultural and entertainment hub to nothing but a dreary industrial town with a beautiful ocean front.

Corrupt regional government and nepotism assured that the city Cheryl grew up in was mostly ruled by criminals who lined their pockets instead of maintaining the centuries of exquisite architecture she so admired. Two of those crooks were on their way up to her flat. She had gathered the little money she had been able to earn over the last few days and prepared for the worst case scenario. It paid to be just a little paranoid in her profession. Her nostrils filled with the sharp whiff of exhausted wicks and the white tongues of smoke they breathed out in their demise.

The two men knew where Cheryl lived, but they had no idea on which floor her place was on as far as she knew. The Swedish deceiver had never known her exact location, but they knew that her domicile was one of the only two decrepit old buildings that still housed vagrants and illegals near the town square. They made their way up the filthy staircase, dodging the disgusting remnants of cheap sex and the fickle minds of drunkards and drug thugs. Broken bottles threatened to infect their soles and used condoms littered every other step.

“Ag man, the people here are dirtier than the rats,” the shorter of the two men suit wearing tacky suits remarked to his associate.

“Wat’n krot,” Zain agreed as he winced from the scenery that only barely outdid the pungent stench around them. The street light outside slightly illuminated the steps’ black peeling paint in stripes of yellow, lighting the way for Zain and Sibu.

“I think she is on the second floor,” Sibu whispered as they reached the third landing, getting ready to be seen by the residents in the corridor. But they neglected to consider the time of night. Even here, most people had turned in or passed out for the night. Sibu pointed to a door on their right, “There. Number 3C.”

Zain turned to look at him in astonishment. “How the fuck do you know? This place has no numbers anywhere. The scum here probably stole the copper numbers off the doors to sell for scrap.”

Sibu chuckled, that was not at all unusual here. He revealed his secret, “Don’t think I’m psychic or anything, man.”

“I didn’t. You’re an idiot on the best days, Sibu.”

"Well, I saw in her police report that I… borrowed… that she is in 3C, Dunlop Heights, Central, right?" he started, but Zain interrupted him promptly.

“Her police report?” he asked.

“Aggravated assault and sexual assault charges she filed a while ago Zain. I thought you knew this,” Sibu bragged, for once having information Zain did not already know. “The file included pictures of the damage to her door where the guys broke in. Her flat door had that green chalky skull mark up there in the corner. So, that’s how I know this is 3C.”

“No wonder she is so jumpy,” Zain sighed as he pulled his lock pick set from his jacket pocket. He sank to his haunches while Sibu kept watch. Somewhere down the hallway, there was a loud argument, which masked the noise of Zain’s tampering with the lock. Finally, the lock clicked, and the door creaked open under the light force of the intruder’s hand.

They smelled recently extinguished candles as they entered, but there was no sound or movement in the seemingly vacant apartment. Slowly, Zain closed the door behind them and left his associate to guard it, should Cheryl the hooker decide to make an escape.

“Cheryl,” he said into the dark, steering his sight just outside the borders left by the penetrating street light, “Cheryl, we are not going to hurt you unless you try something stupid. Okay? You just come out so we can make an arrangement and this doesn’t have to turn ugly.”

“I don’t think she is here, Zain," Sibu murmured, leaning with his back against the front door, scanning the visible parts of the flat.

“We’ll see about that. I don’t enjoy having to come to the shittiest part of P.E. this time of night and be fucked with by a stupid bitch. How smart can a junkie whore be?" Zain fumed. He made for the small bedroom opposite the tiny kitchen that made up pretty much the entirety of the flat, save for the toilet and shower just by the front door where Sibu stood. He could see clear into the tiny bathroom. There was no wall or door to Cheryl's kitchen if one could call it that. It was nothing but a sink and a fridge with a ripe trash can in between.

Zain came back. He was furious. He was breathing heavily with frustration, wiping his perspiring brow, about to unleash his tirade.

“Sibu,” he whispered suddenly, holding his breath and staring at the large sash window in the living room, the one allowing the outside street light to shine in. He motioned for Sibu to keep quiet, sneaking past the furniture in his path to the window. It was unlocked but slid down completely. Outside the window, he noticed the flapping of a dress in the mellow breeze that escalated into quite a forceful gust at this elevation.

Zain smiled. “Gotcha.”